InstaPundit peeks into a parallel universe and finds a John Kerry whom we would probably support for the Presidency. Whether that universe is really as close to ours as Glenn Reynolds thinks, is doubtful, unfortunately. The trouble is not only that Kerry doesn't get it, it's that the Democratic Party, and much of its constituency, have gone on a long long journey into fantasy land.

Further to our recent items here and here, we invite you to vote in our new poll.

We said recently that we were not yet ready to venture an opinion on whether John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story was in essence true. Now Senator Kerry has explained the basis on which he wants us to form that opinion:

Speaking of the organization airing the ads that challenge his war record, Kerry said, “Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth and they're not telling the truth. …

“But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the President won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know.”

Some might say that that is all you really need to know. We disagree. The fact that the Senator is being evasive, petulant and paternalistic does not prove that he is a liar.

Islamist conspiracy theories act as the ideological fuel for the actions of many terrorist groups and their supporters, but not all. Anti-capitalism is another major conspiracy theory. It is behind the actions of Maoist terrorists in Nepal. Their conspiracy theory holds that economically successful people are responsible (in some never-quite-specified way) for all of the world's ills. Their “solution” is to use violence to impose a communist dictatorship in Nepal, whereupon they will kill all the rich people, thus making everything turn out for the best.

The Nepalese government is pursuing an ominously ill-conceived “peace process” with these terrorists. Naturally the BBC supports this because “there is a real concern that Washington is nourishing the belief that this war is winnable”, and that would never do. As everyone knows, the only winnable wars are those against America and/or its values.

The difference between this and, say, the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is that there is nothing to negotiate about. It is one thing to say that the Palestinians can have a state if they cease to support terrorism and negotiate about borders, but no civilised country can support any measure of communist tyranny. The only peace terms that the Nepalese government should offer are that the terrorist movement must be disbanded and the future of the country decided by politics not revolutionary violence.

He suggests a quip. Brilliant!

[Note: Readers who had no interest in politics in 1988 should look here first for one of the great put-downs. Readers who are unaware that the John Kerry campaign have just, embarrassingly, mistaken their candidate for a different Senator, Bob Kerrey, look here.]

If you're unaware of the story, blame (and change) your current sources of news, and look, for instance, here. In short, the Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry has said many times, including in a speech on the floor of the Senate in 1986, that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia while the then-President was denying that there were any US troops there. It has emerged that this cannot be true, but most of the mainstream media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have yet to mention the controversy. The Kerry campaign is saying that although Kerry made a mistake about the details, something substantially like that did indeed happen.

We are not yet ready to venture an opinion about whether it did or not, but we have two questions. First: why is no one asking Kerry the question: ‘who ordered you into Cambodia?’ Kerry's commanding officer at the time denies that there were any such missions. And second: why does a substantial segment of opinion well understand, when Kerry allegedly does it, that saying what one believes to be true cannot be lying, but when Bush allegedly does it they become as thick as two planks?

Update: Check out Solomonia's take on this as well.

With the world's attention focused via the Olympic Games on Greek civilisation, the Simon Wiesental Center has taken the opportunity to do its job as the ghost at the feast.

When renowned "Zorba" composer Mikis Theodorakis described Jews as "the root of evil," Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Education Minister Petros Efthymiou stood beside him, smiling, at a book signing ceremony heavily covered by the Greek media. Not too long ago, Giorgos Karatzafer, leader of the extreme right Popular Orthodox Party, used the party-owned Piraeus television station to denounce Greek politicians with "Jewish origins" and to claim, "Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks."

[…]

Earlier dialogue between senior Greek diplomats and Wiesenthal Center officials from New York to Berlin has been met with largely empty promises.

And so the Center invites us all to sign a protest addressed to Karamanlis, urging him to “take prompt and vigorous steps to denounce and contain antisemitism and other expressions of hate”.

Well, what are you waiting for?

The impending US Presidential election and the recent terror alerts have caused many commentators to speculate about which of the candidates Al Quaeda would prefer. Bush's supporters tend to conclude that Kerry is Al Quaeda's candidate, because he has no idea what the war is about and might therefore be expected to pursue it less effectively. Kerry's supporters say that Al Quaeda wants Bush to win, because, by fighting without the approval of France and Germany, he is increasing the rage and alienation of Muslims everywhere and thus assisting terrorist recruitment.

Both these theories are false. They both make the fundamental mistake of assuming that Al Quaeda has a strategy. It does not. It merely has a fantasy ideology. Yes, Al Quaeda and its countless supporters are all yearning for a mega-attack on Americans before the election. Yes, they yearn to ‘have an effect’ on that election. But there is no such thing as ‘the effect that they want’ – or, to put that another way, provided that an attack causes death and pain and fear, there is no such thing, to them, as its not having had the desired effect. If they succeed in perpetrating such an attack, then whatever the outcome of the election, it will immediately go on their hallowed list of anti-American successes. And as they strut and bluster and celebrate, they will pick one of the two rationales mentioned above (they can always change it again later if circumstances dictate), and say that it was theirs.

Prozac has been found in our drinking water. Norman Baker MP, Liberal Democrat shadow environment secretary, can't have been drinking much water lately because he seems very upset:

Mr Baker said: “This looks like a case of hidden mass medication of the unsuspecting public and is potentially a very worrying health issue...

“It is alarming that there is no monitoring of levels of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water...”

We have bad news for Mr Baker: water isn't perfectly clean and it never will be. Even the freshest mountain stream contains traces of the EU's dreaded nitrates, from thunderstorms – and is quite frighteningly open to anything that might happen to fall into it out of a bird overhead. Enclose all mountain streams in hygienic plastic pipes, we say! The more chemicals you want to take out of the water, the more money it costs, and there is a limit to how much you can spend before it becomes harmful to divert any more money from other goods. Nor is it alarming that the government doesn't look for Prozac in our drinking water, because there is no reason to think that it will be there in toxic levels. Looking would be a waste of money.

However, we expect that Mr Baker's attempts to make a molehill into the Matterhorn will continue because he, like many other environmentalists, suffers from such a deficiency of proportion and perspective that no conceivable level of precaution would satisfy him and no amount of Prozac-laced drinking water would calm him.

In a sad op-ed entitled Joe Lieberman: A lonely voice of moderation, (via InstaPundit), James Kirchick ponders the change in the stance of the Democratic Party since the last election (part of a wider a change that we, too, have commented on):

It was only four years ago that Lieberman was his party’s vice-presidential candidate. Now, following a war that he strongly supported but was unpopular with the base, Lieberman has lost his luster within the Democratic Party. Slighted by Al Gore, upstaged by Howard Dean and largely ignored by the delegates, Lieberman is truly now a man without a party.

[…]

One would have thought that American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, specifically the liberation of some 50 million once-terrorized people, would be a source of pride for the party of Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy. True, this administration made mistakes in pressing the case for war, but at the end of the day, citizens of this country can be unequivocally proud of the fact that we are attempting to impart, however imperfectly, liberal democracy to nations that up until recently squirmed under the dual jackboots of religious fascism and Stalinist terror.

Lieberman told the Democrats in Boston that they should appreciate the magnitude of what our military has accomplished, and there is little doubt that the Republicans will use American victories in Afghanistan and Iraq to portray President Bush as liberator. But Democrats should not forget that an admirable tradition of liberal internationalism exists within their party. It’s a shame that the standard bearer of this legacy would be so spurned by the party that asked him to help lead it a mere four years ago.

Our question is: if Lieberman is a man without a party, what does his party think he is? Not ‘a lonely voice of moderation’, surely, for most people do not think of themselves as lunatic extremists. So what is Lieberman, to his party? The lone voice of the Bush-Hitler administration? The lone dupe of the neo-con conspiracy? A madman who still believes in liberal international values? Or what?

A study by University of California researchers claims that the Wal-Mart chain of stores is costing the State of California a mere $86 million a year. How did they arrive at this absurdly low figure? Like this:

“Wal-Mart workers' reliance on public assistance due to substandard wages and benefits has become a form of indirect public subsidy to the company,” said the report issued by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.

“[It] comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance.”

But this method of calculation wilfully neglects the far greater costs that Wal-Mart inflicts on the people whom it refuses to employ, or pay, at all! – namely all the other welfare recipients in the State. And it shamelessly ignores the wrongdoing of all the higher-wage employers in California, whose conspiracy not to employ fleeing Wal-Mart workers is a necessary condition for them to be a burden on the State, and for Wal-Mart to exist in the first place.

What could have caused supposedly impartial academic researchers to display such blatant right-wing bias, ignore the massive conspiracy that is staring them in the face, and whitewash a bunch of companies who are, quite frankly, capitalist? The answer to any such question is always the same: follow the money. Who do you think pays the salaries of these idle, bourgeois parasites on the backs of the working people of California? Why, the taxpayer, of course – in other words, Wal-Mart, and the other employers. Is it any wonder that their lackeys are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them?

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on CNN television today:

“The greatest moment of the race is not the touching of the wall, or when one swimmer begins to pull ahead of the pack. The greatest moment takes place before the pistol even fires, when, for a brief time, no nation is greater or smaller, stronger or weaker, than any other. For me, that is the Olympic moment.”

Should the Olympics be more a celebration of equality than excellence, then?

A charitable interpretation of Annan's statement would call it a celebration of a moment of fairness, openness and civility among nations, and not as a howl of deep, suppressed resentment that there is a nation (let's not name it, shall we?) that is both greater and stronger, politically as well as athletically, than any other. But on either interpretation, this quote illustrates the fact that it is high time that the Olympic Games, and sport generally, ceased to be about nations. The spirit of the Olympic Games should become more like that of the Wimbledon Open Championship and less like that of the United Nations General Assembly.

John Kerry made a speech at the Democratic Convention last night. In it, he demonstrated that he does not understand the War on Terror:

Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military…

We will add 40,000 active duty troops not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure. We will double our special forces to conduct anti-terrorist operations.

The purpose of the War on Terror is not to go after terrorists who have attacked America. The purpose is not to deter future attacks by assuring prospective perpetrators that they would suffer a “swift and certain response”. Both these approaches are ineffective in an era of suicide-terrorism, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and terrorist-supporting states. Worse than ineffective: they are invitations to attack.

The terrorists are driven by evil ideologies, especially (though not exclusively) Islamism. These ideologies are based on conspiracy theories that furnish blanket justifications on demand for unlimited, savage violence against anyone who does not submit to their narrow and twisted vision of how people, and governments, ought to behave. These ideologies do not promise their followers life, so threats of retaliation are ineffective against them. But they do promise the satisfaction of inflicting suffering in the short run, and they promise that in the long run they will prevail by being intrinsically more willing to die. It is only by refuting those promises that the civilised world can end the fear, suffering and poisoning of our political cultures that are brought about by the terrorist threat. Every time a terrorist dies before hurting innocent people, these promises are refuted. Every time a terrorist, and especially a terrorist leader, surrenders in disillusionment with the attractions of death, these promises are refuted. Every time a terrorist-supporting regime ends, and its subjects embark on a decent way of life with life-affirming aspirations, these promises are refuted.

So long as those promises are not refuted, terrorists will hurt and kill innocent people in America and other free countries. It is not a question of if, but of when, how often, and how badly.

The War on Terror is not about responding to terrorist attacks, but putting an end to them. it is not about training special forces to hunt down perpetrators one at a time. It is about destroying the terrorist organisations, the terrorist-supporting regimes, and the evil ideologies that drive them. Anyone who does not understand that is not fit to be President.

The Scotsman tells us (via Daniel Pipes) that an international terror suspect is ill. What illness afflicts him? Flu? Syphilis? Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis? Well, no. Nothing like that:

An international terrorist suspect held at a top security psychiatric hospital is seeking bail so that his mental health problems can be treated “in the community”, the High Court heard today...

He was held on the grounds that he was suspected of actively supporting and raising funds for various international terrorist groups, including those linked to Osama Bin Laden.

As we have noted before, mental illness is not a real illness. This incident nicely illustrates the silliness of the whole idea of mental illness. If someone is capable of raising money to kill infidels, then it seems to us that he is perfectly capable of coping with being in hospital until his trial. We also think that a man who is capable of raising money for a mass murderer must be fairly difficult to upset. We also think he should be in jail so he doesn't run away. That such a capable person has been diagnosed with mental illness says more about the credulousness of psychiatrists than about his state of health.

We also wish to mention, in case it has slipped the government's notice, that we are at war. The government suspects this man of adhering to the enemy. Therefore he should not be running around and whether he is happy or unhappy about this should not be the determining consideration.

Michael Howard is now sounding increasingly like a parody of himself. His latest statement on Iraq is that he would not have voted to go to war in Iraq on the basis of WMD if he had known about flaws in the intelligence. But…

Mr Howard said he could not have backed the Commons pre-war motion on WMD, but he would have still supported going to war by backing a different motion.

Intellectually, this is pure sophistry. Politically, it is yet more cynical opportunism, designed for nothing other than to pick up a few careless votes by provoking the inevitable headline “Howard changes mind on WMD vote”.

Several leading Conservatives have made similar noises. But if a political party gives up on the quaint old idea of having political positions and arguing in their favour, who can support it? What is there to support?

The Times claims to have inside information that the Bush Administration is planning to “act to foment revolt” in Iran, in order to achieve regime change there without military action. A pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear-weapons manufacturing facilities is also allegedly mooted.

Of course, Iran vitriolically denies having any such facilities.

However, at at the end of the article, we find:

Despite the US threats one of Iran’s top ruling clerics vowed yesterday that the Islamic republic would continue to pursue its controversial nuclear programme. “We are resolute. It is worth achieving it at any cost,” Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardians Council, said.

Yes: increasing Iran's electricity supply by 1% outweighs any other national goal and is worth achieving at all costs.

That is what their nuclear programme is for, isn't it?

The significant, often determining role played by insane conspiracy theories in current affairs is being dangerously underestimated. Here are some that have been espoused recently by prominent people:

• The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, thinks that the United States and Israel are behind the recent spate of kidnappings and beheadings of foreign nationals in Iraq.

• Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is 95% certain that the recent terrorist attacks against Westerners and oil installations in Saudi Arabia were perpetrated by “Zionists”. Other Saudi officials were quick to agree and expand on this thesis: Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister said, “Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism.”

• A successful popular song in the United States contains the lyrics “Why did Bush knock down the Towers?” Jadakiss, the singer, commented: “A lot of my people felt that he [Bush] had something to do with [the destruction of the World Trade Center].”

• Michael Moore's conspiracy-theory-laden movie Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and is enjoying huge success at the box office.

• Yasser Arafat has said that the recent bus bombing in Tel Aviv was masterminded by Israel. (The attack was in fact carried out by his own Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorists.)

• Vanessa Redgrave, the celebrated actress and United Nations ‘Goodwill Ambassador’ has stated as fact that Israeli snipers habitually murder Palestinian schoolchildren in their classrooms.

  No mother could possibly be accustomed to the fact that her little girl will go to school “and will sit with her classmates and an Israeli sniper will shoot at a classroom full of Palestinian children who are in their uniforms with their little scarves,” she said in Jerusalem.

  “Any Palestinian mother or schoolchild knows that a schoolchild who is dressed in the uniform can be and is frequently shot in the head – not in the chest, not in the legs, in the head,” she said,

Leaders of countries, role models, and shapers of opinion are affected just as much as billions of people not in the public eye. Anyone who wants to understand world affairs today has to take on board that extreme irrationality of this type, often with a powerful antisemitic component, is a major determinant of opinions and actions worldwide. Restricting one's attention to the factors more usually considered, such as political or economic self-interest, ideology, nationalism, or even strategy or tactics, is like denying the role of viruses in causing influenza.

Jeffrey Sachs, an economic advisor to Kofi Annan, has said that African countries should renege on their debts:

“The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to Annan on global anti-poverty targets. “If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves.”

No doubt many of them will follow this advice, for the simple reason that they never had any intention of paying their debts. Many of them are torn apart by civil war and/or ruled by vicious thug regimes that are the very reasons why they are poor in the first place. They are obviously not good loan risks. So who is lending to them?

The short answer is taxpayers. The somewhat longer answer is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For all practical purposes, the IMF is a tax funded institution for showering money on governments. But not all governments qualify. Only those who have caused economic catastrophes in their countries.

The IMF also showers these governments with advice (often bad advice) on how to be more financially responsible. However, whether or not the governments follow this advice, the IMF will usually keep ‘lending’ them money anyway.

This pretence that the IMF (directly or through its pretend-bank, the World Bank) is giving loans is indeed a silly and destructive charade. It causes companies to invest in non-viable projects in non-viable countries on the understanding that they will be wholly or partially bailed out if it all goes wrong. If Western governments really insist on giving money to charity they should insist on giving it to suffering people, not those who make them suffer. The only good reasons for a government to give money to another government are strategic or military ones, or as payment for doing something they want them to do, like fighting terrorism. The hostile and/or bad governments who form the IMF's main client base deserve nothing. And the IMF itself should be closed down.

This [via Belmont Club]

"We've already had instances where we know that people who have been released from our detention have gone back and have become combatants again," said Rep. Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

is reminiscent of this.

Scott Ott of Scrappleface urges the Democratic Party to adopt the war philosophy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

"We are not a warlike people. We have never sought glory as a nation of warriors. We are not interested in aggression. We are not interested--as the dictators are--in looting. We do not covet one square inch of the territory of any other nation. Our vast effort, and the unity of purpose which inspires that effort are due solely to our recognition of the fact that our fundamental rights are threatened...These rights were established by our forefathers on the field of battle. They have been defended--at great cost but with great success--on the field of battle, here on our own soil, and in foreign lands, and on all the seas all over the world. There has never been a moment in our history when Americans were not ready to stand up as free men and fight for their rights." [Radio address from Hyde Park Library, September 1, 1941]

The contrast between Roosevelt's values and those of the inheritors of his party today is stark and depressing. One could equally well quote a more recent President from the same party:

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge--and more. [President John F Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.]

Some time between then and now, something terrible happened to the Democratic Party. And therefore to America, and the world.