Gender: Male
Status: Married
Age: 34
Sign: Gemini
City: ATLANTA
State: Georgia
Country: US
Signup Date: 11/18/2005
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August 17, 2007 - Friday
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Category: News and Politics
This book is a wonderful one for those of you who want ammo to use against the forces of Moral Equivalency and tu quoque arguments when they raise their ugly heads and say, "Well, even if violence is being committed in the name of Islam, Christianity did X hundreds of years ago!"
From the inside flap:
Christianity or Islam: which is the real "religion of peace"?
Almost any liberal pundit will tell you that there's a religion bent on destroying our Constitution, stripping us of our liberties, and imposing religious rule on the U.S. And that religion is . . .Christianity! About Islam, however, the Left is silent--except to claim a moral equivalence between the two: if Islam has terrorists today, that's nothing compared to the Crusades, inquisitions, and religious wars in Christianity's past.
But is this true? Are conservative Christians really more of a threat to free societies than Islamic jihadists? Is the Bible really "just as violent" as the Qur'an? Is Christianity's history really as bloodstained as Islam's? In Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer not only refutes such charges, but also explains why Americans and Europeans must regain an appreciation of our Christian heritage if we ever hope to defeat Islamic supremacism. In this eye opening work, Spencer reveals:
* The fundamental differences between Islamic and Christian teachings about warfare against other religions: "Love your enemies" vs. "Be ruthless to the unbelievers"
* The myth of Western immorality and Islamic puritanism and why the Islamic world is less moral than the West
* Why the Islamic world has never developed the distinction between religious and secular law that is inherent in Christianity
* Why Christianity has always embraced reason--and Islam has always rejected it
* Why the most determined enemies of Western civilization may not be the jihadists at all, but the leftists who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists
* Why Jews, Christians, and peoples of other faiths (or no faith) are equally at risk from militant Islam
Spencer writes not to proselytize, but to state a fact: Christianity is a true "religion of peace," and on it Western civilization stands. If we are not to perish under Islam's religion of the sword--with its more than 100 million active jihadists seeking to impose sharia law--we had better defend our own civilization.
It is definitely required reading for those of us who are struggling against the Jihad on the home front of information and education. Whether one believes in the tenets of Christianity or not, one cannot argue that Christianity is by far the more peaceful of the two faiths.
Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't
Review from Jihad Watch:
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Bostom: Sword Swallowing to Oblivion
Andrew G. Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, reviews my new book at The American Thinker:
A review of Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace?-Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, Regnery, 2007, 246 pp.
This past December, 2006, a British radiologist, and the executive director of the Sword Swallowers Association International published a fascinating survey which evaluated, "information on the practices and associated ill-effects of sword swallowing." The respondent sword swallowers typically required extended daily practice for months or years to appropriately desensitize their gag reflex,
...sometimes by repeatedly putting fingers down the throat, but other objects are used including spoons, paint brushes, knitting needles, and plastic tubes before the swallower commonly progresses to a bent wire coat hanger. The performer must then learn to align a sword with the upper esophageal sphincter with the neck hyper-extended.
Not surprisingly, such "desensitization" training does not spare sword swallowers from the predictable hazards of their chosen profession, including serious morbidities -- perforations of the pharynx or esophagus and associated neck abscess or aspiration, pneumothorax, pleurisy, pericarditis, and intestinal bleeding, ranging from melena (frankly bloody stools), to blood-transfusion-requiring hematemesis (vomiting blood)-and even death.
Robert Spencer's sobering new book, Religion of Peace? reveals how the prevailing multicultural orthodoxy in the West -- rooted in self-hatred, uncritical, blanket pacifism, and complacency -- negates the profound differences between Judeo-Christian and Islamic civilization, obfuscating the existential threat posed by Islam's enduring, central institution: the jihad. This corrosive mentality is disseminated by the avatars of immoral equivalence, "elite" sword swallowers for jihadism who have foisted their own self-destructive desensitization to this genocidal institution upon a general public, sadly ill-informed about Islamic doctrine and history.
Throughout the first four chapters, Spencer analyzes a spate of books that appeared in 2006 -- whose authors were oblivious to reams of daily, concrete evidence, and reason -- which warned not about the real global progress of Shari'a (both violently and non-violently imposed), but the supposed imminent threat of Christian theocracy in the United States, and the export overseas of this religious zealotry by a modern "Crusading" military adventurism.
Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy was prototypical of this genre which, by waves of the hand, dismissed obvious foreign and domestic threats of jihad terrorism while ignoring altogether cultural jihadism -- the aggressive, if transiently "peaceful" methods of Islamic dawa -- and their long term implications for truly theocratic, i.e., Islamic rule, including, within the West. Phillips insists that the post 9/11 incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were merely, "the war whoops of militant Protestantism...," the apotheosis of a "biblically stirred foreign policy," willing to use force to achieve its ultimate end: broader Christian missionary activity in the Islamic Middle East, another shameful Crusade.
Spencer eviscerates Phillips' "analysis" of George Bush's October 2001 speech (outlining the President's proposed military response to the cataclysmic attacks of 9/11), which epitomizes the counterfactual, and bizarre, if not frankly paranoid argumentation of the "Christian-ist conspiracy" mongering authors. Despite the fact that Bush had refrained from invoking religious language-in stark contrast to Osama bin Laden-Phillips,
...resorted to claiming that the president used "double coding," through which he "signaled attentive Bible readers that he shared their private scriptural invocations -- using phrases from the revelation of St. John (6:15-17, about the wrath of the lamb) and Isaiah (about evildoers hiding in caves and the lonely paths of the godless)." Never mind that Bush never used the words wrath or lamb, and never mind that bin Laden and other al-Qaeda operatives actually do hide in caves. Why let the truth get in the way of a great theory?
As Spencer continues, he exposes the full-blown preposterous absurdity of Phillips' putative "insights", which, depressingly, enjoy rather broad acceptance, regardless of well-established contradictory facts, including: the Sharia-based Afghan and Iraqi constitutions; the plight of unassuming Afghan Muslim "apostate to Christianity" Abdul Rahman; the ongoing tragic destruction of the ancient Assyrian Christian community in Iraq, accelerated since the US invasion, as perpetrated by Sunni and Shi'ite Arab Muslims, as well as Muslim Kurds, and taking place within a larger overall context of the attrition of all the indigenous Christian communities of the Islamic Middle East oppressed by resurgent jihadism, beginning after World War I, and increased since the culmination of the Western European colonial era, following World War II.
He [Phillips] describes Bush as an "evangelical Christian missionary, " influenced by "heady talk about bringing liberty and freedom to new shores." But maybe, just maybe, Bush's real mission was not biblical at all, but an attempt to defend America from a second September 1, and he was seeing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the replacing of their tyrannies with democracies as part of this effort. Phillips and his ilk certainly have to stretch to portray Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a Christian missionary enterprise; the constitutions of both contries give a privileged place to Islam, and the Bush administration has taken no special measures to halt the persecution of Christians in post-Saddam Iraq.
...the constitution of the new, post-Taliban Afghani regime stipulates that "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." Abdul Rahman's case showed that Islam's traditional classification of apostasy as a capital crime would be included in this. The prophet Muhammad regarded apostasy from Islam as a supreme evil, and one of the main reasons the punishment is so severe is because apostates were once Muslims but "turn renegade." Muhammad decreed that no Muslim could be put to death except for murder, unlawful sexual intercourse, and apostasy. He said flatly: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, although there is some disagreement over whether the law applies only to men. Thus it was not at all surprising that the Afghan government, constituted so that no law could be made that contradicted Islamic law, put Abdul Rahman on trial. Yet Western analysts seem to have trouble grasping the import of Rahman's case...After an international firestorm, Abdul Rahman was released, and asked for asylum in Italy, which was swiftly granted. However, the Islamic law provision in the Afghani constitution remains today. But if this episode made anything clear, it was that the Bush administration had no interest whatsoever in defending the rights of a Christian prisoner in an Islamic state. American officials did nothing, after all, to prevent the approval of the constitution, despite its stipulation about Islamic law. If the American incursion into Afghanistan represented a modern-day Crusade or an exercise in evangelical Christian wish fulfillment, it was a singularly inept one.
In Iraq, likewise, the dire predicament of Christians facing jihadist persecution after the fall of Saddam Hussein demonstrated this point. If spreading Christianity was what Bush was after, he was doing a decidedly poor job of it...In Iraq, half the nation's prewar 700,000 Christians have fled the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein...Christian communities throughout the Middle East that date back to the dawn of Christianity are decreasing so much that they are on the verge of disappearing from the area altogether...Overall the Middle Eastern Christian population has dropped from 20 percent in 1900 to less than 2 percent today.
Spencer completes the first third of his book by highlighting another commonplace immoral equivalence espoused by assorted non-Muslim and Muslim apologists for Islam: comparing Pat Robertson and other Christian evangelical leaders, "despite the fact that they have killed no one and have no organization equivalent to Al Qaeda," and the handful of abortion clinic bombers, or murderers of physicians who perform abortions, to the legions of mass murdering global jihadists. The author contrasts the unequivocal, powerful denunciations of such isolated attacks on abortion clinics and their personnel, made by all major mainstream Christian denominations and their leaders, to the equivocal, elusive, and vaguely worded statements by Islamic organizations or religious bodies, and their clerical elites-domestic and international-who consistently refuse to condemn by name major Muslim entities responsible for heinous acts of murderous jihad terrorism, including Hamas, Hizbollah, and even Al Qaeda.
The remainder of this engaging, essential, and remarkably compendious work illuminates the profound theological (and philosophical) differences between the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, and civilizations. With the same erudition, wit, and lucid, didactic presentation style characteristic of his previous books, Spencer adduces convincing contemporary and historical evidence to support the following main arguments:
* Based upon its earliest inception by Muhammad -- an unabashed 7th century military and political leader, the antithesis of the pacifist proselytizer Jesus -- through the present, jihad has been central to the thought and writings of prominent Muslim theologians and jurists. The precepts and regulations elucidated in the 7th through 9th centuries are immutable in the Muslim theological-juridical system, and they have remained essentially unchallenged by the majority of contemporary Muslims. The jihad is intrinsic to the sacred Muslim texts, including the divine Koranic revelation -- "the uncreated word of Allah". The Old Testament sanctions the Israelites conquest of Canaan -- a limited domain -- it does not sanction a permanent war to submit all the nations of humanity to a uniform code of religious law. Similarly, the tactics of warfare are described in the Old Testament, unlike the Koran, in very circumscribed and specific contexts. Moreover, while the Old Testament clearly condemns certain inhumane practices of paganism, it never invoked an eternal war against all of the world's pagan peoples, as, for example enjoined by Koran 9:5.
* In opposition to the Judeo-Christian conception of God as a God of reason, the Koran (5:64) makes clear that Allah's hand is unfettered -- he was not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws -- which has had profound implications for the (arrested) development of the natural sciences in Islamic societies, and Islamic ethics.
o Spencer cites Professor Rodney Stark's observation that Islam lacks "a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science...Allah is not presented as a lawful creator, but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allah's freedom to act." Not surprisingly leading historians and sociologists of science have concluded "...it is indisputable" that modern science -- an organized, empirically directed effort to explain natural phenomena through theory construction and testing -- that modern science "emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else".
o Moreover, even notions about supposed Islamic contributions to pre-modern science and philosophy -- fostered by the triumphalism of the jihad conquests -- are purely mythical. Despite taking credit for the invention of algebra, the Arabs did no more than copy the treatises of Diophantus of Alexandria, who lived in the fourth century. The numerals commonly referred to as Arabic, and the system of notation which bears the same name, derive from Hindustan. The Arabs themselves called arithmetic "Indian reckoning," and geometry "Indian science" (hendesya). Arab knowledge of botany was obtained either from the treatises of Dioscorides, or from Hindu and Persian works. In chemistry, or rather alchemy, they were the pupils of the Alexandrian school. Djeber and Rhazes, the latter an Islamized Persian, did no more than copy the works of Alexandrian Hermetism. There is the same absence of invention regarding medicine. Greek physicians, from the third century of the Christian era, made their way into Persia, where they founded a celebrated school which soon became the rival of Alexandria. But earlier it was especially at Alexandria that Greek medicine emerged from empiricism and assumed a truly scientific character. Aaron, a Christian priest who lived at Alexandria in the seventh century, compiled and translated into Syriac the treatises of Galen, under the name of Pandects of Medicine. This Syriac version was translated into Arabic in 685, becoming a major source used by Arab physicians, most notably Serapion, Avicenna, Albucasis, and Averroes-whose own Koullyat is merely a translation of Galen. Rhazes best known work, the Kanoun, is a compilation of the treatises of Galen, from the Syriac versions. And the Arabs left the doctrines of Aristotle (and of the Jewish and Christian philosophers) just as they were transmitted to them by various non-Muslims-reproduced, but neither invented nor improved.
o Finally, the unique persistence of chattel slavery in Islamic societies, and both the brutal oppression of Muslim women (including widespread polygamy, wife beating, honor killings, and clitorectomy/genital mutilation), and non-Muslim minorities, are living testimony to the continued failed paradigm of "Islamic ethics", as sanctioned by the Shari'a-a seemingly immutable obstacle to modern conceptions of human rights, which evolved exclusively in Judeo-Christian societies.
Sword swallowers -- even when not suffering serious morbidity or death from their weird, dangerous vocation -- are prone to throat soreness, "sword throats", if their performances are oft-repeated. Abstinence from swallowing is the mainstay of treatment. The same therapy -- complete abstinence -- should be applied to contemporary sword swallowers for jihadism, so that they and the larger public who celebrate their performances finally awaken to the existential dangers posed by desensitization to the global jihad, and gag, collectively. Because, as Robert Spencer warns, it is indeed,
...but to state fact-a fact that many Muslims cheerfully and proudly avow. Christianity is a religion of peace, and it is a religion without a jihadist movement. Islam is a religion of the sword and there are, by even the most conservative estimates, more than one hundred million active jihadists seeking to impose sharia not only in the Islamic world, but in Europe and ultimately in the United States. And they will succeed, in time, if Westerners continue to delude themselves that Western civilization is uniquely responsible for the evil in the world, that Christianity is just as inherently violent as Islam, that all cultures are equal in their capacity to inspire magnanimity, nobility, generosity, and greatness of soul. This is a suicidal myth.
Whether one believes in Christianity or not, it is necessary now for all lovers of authentic freedom to acknowledge their debt to the Judeo-Christian West, to the Judeo-Christian assumptions that built Europe and the United States, and to acknowledge that this great civilization is imperiled and worth defending.
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August 16, 2007 - Thursday
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Category: News and Politics
This is an interesting laundry list of attempts to quiet critics of Islam in the US. Read them all; they are, after all, only the tip of the iceberg. There are two previous installments in this series of articles, linked at the bottom of the article itself. Read them as well, if you want to feel a chill up your spine.
We're fighting a war of ideology; and they're making tremendous strides against the civilized world on the social front. We can't let them silence the critics of Islam; we must be even more vocal than before!
From Political Mavens:
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What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims (The U.S. Edition)
By The Stiletto (bio) |
Following the riots in Denmark over cartoons depicting Mohammed, death threats against Pope Benedict XVI – accompanied by a nun's murder and firebombings of several churches – over an obscure reference in a lecture, and fears of violence that caused the Deutsche Oper in Berlin to cancel performances of Mozart's Idomeneo, The Stiletto observed:
[W]hether Muslims are in the majority or minority, living in a Western nation or in the Middle East, governed under laws that are secular or Islamic, "moderate" or fundamentalist they are all too often hostile to free speech rights.
Battles over freedom of thought and expression are not just occurring in Europe, which woke up to the threat of "Sharia creep" too late. Muslims are now waging their global jihad against free speech in the U.S., using any means necessary to intimidate and silence people.
† Herndon, VA: CAIR Threatens Lawsuit Over Speech
Robert Spencer, who runs the JihadWatch.org Web site had been invited to give a speech on "The Truth about the Council on American-Islamic Relations" at the 29th National Conservative Student Conference, Young America's Foundation. The day before his August 2nd speech, YAF president Ron Robinson received a fax from CAIR attorney Joseph E. Sandler threatening to sue if Spencer's speech was not yanked from the program:
"You should be aware that Mr. Spencer, a well-known purveyor of hatred and bigotry against Muslims, has a history of false and defamatory statements. Several of those statements have falsely accused CAIR of activity that would constitute a federal offense." …
"For these reasons, we demand that YAF cancel the subject session (at which Spencer is speaking), or else take steps to ensure that false and defamatory statements are not disseminated at that session. Our clients have instructed us to pursue every available and appropriate legal remedy to redress any false and defamatory statements that are made at the session. Please let us know by the close of business today whether you intend to comply with these requests."
Noting that the threatening letter does not cite even one "false and defamatory statement" by Spencer, investigative journalist Joel Mowbray points out that this is hardly the first time CAIR has sought to stifle free speech in America:
For years, CAIR has attempted to stifle debate and prevent inquiry into the domestic spread of radical Islam. Conservative columnist Cal Thomas was the latest target, when CAIR attempted to drum him out of his role as an official commentator at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. The group was emboldened by its success in the same city two years earlier, when it got then-Disney-owned WMAL to can talk host Michael Graham. Similar such smear campaigns are legion. …
Political commentator and University of North Carolina (Wilmington) criminology professor Mike Adams writes:
This notion of preventing "offense" by forcing people to relinquish their First Amendment Rights is itself offensive. Certainly, when one of my Muslim friends offends me - by forcing his wife to leave the room without speaking as soon as I come over - I just let it go. But maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should start my own organization called CAIRS, The Council Against Islamic Repression and Sexism.
Adams urges people to join him "in the fight against Muslim censors (and the lawyers who love them)" by contacting Sandler (sandler@sandlerreiff.com; 202-479-1111) to "tell him to stop helping Muslim extremists wage a Jihad against the First Amendment in the United States of America."
In case you're wondering, Spencer spoke as scheduled. Says YAF spokesperson Jason Mattera, "CAIR picked the wrong group to bully and intimidate."
† Oakland, CA: Newspaper Editor Gunned Down In The Street
In a scene eerily reminiscent of Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink's assassination in broad daylight on an Istanbul street by a hate-filled teenage boy who got caught up in Turkey's Nationalist movement, black journalist Chauncey Bailey was shot in broad daylight on an Oakland street by a hate-filled teenage boy who got caught up in the radical Black Muslim group.
In his confession, 19-year-old Devaughdre Broussard told detectives he considered himself "a good soldier" when he killed Chauncey Bailey for writing negative stories about Your Black Muslim Bakery, reports Inside Bay Area, adding:
Bailey had been working on a story about "the financial status of the organization" and the "activities of a number of people who were working in the organization," which included possible criminal activity.
When police raided the bakery and several adjacent houses, they found the shotgun that Broussard allegedly used to kill the 57-year-old editor of the Oakland Post, a weekly paper covering the black community. Broussard and six other people were taken into custody, including Yusuf Bey IV, son of the bakery's founder, the late Black Muslim leader Yusuf Bey.
In an eloquent editorial, The Washington Post notes that Bailey was murdered "while performing an essential task of democracy" … "doing his duty as a reporter."
† New York City: Author Shouted Down At Book Reading
At a Barnes & Noble bookstore on the Upper East Side in May, first-time author Margaret Ajemian Ahnert was answering questions after reading a passage from her book, "The Knock at the Door," which includes the story of how her mother survived the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 as a teenager and eventually came to the U.S.
Suddenly, a group of men that included Turkish immigrant Erdem Sahin, 41, started passing out leaflets denying the Armenian Genocide and shouting, "'This is a lie, this is a lie, this never happened." When they would not stop, audience member Mary Occhino, host of a call-in program on Sirius satellite radio told The New York Times she got up and said, "Enough! Her mother lived through the genocide - that's all she said."
Some 20 minutes later, police arrived at the scene to escort the men out of the bookstore. Sahin refused to leave and was charged with resisting arrest, inciting a riot, unlawful assembly, and disorderly conduct for disturbing a lawful assembly.
Ahnert told The New York Times, "It was the first time I had that ugliness," adding:
I was trying to tell the story of my mother, not making a political statement. It's a mother-daughter story, it's how it affected my life. It's not just about the Armenian genocide, it's about my mother growing up, my life, and events in her life that affected me. It's a mother-daughter memoir. I'm not making any historical statements. …
Someone in the middle of the back of the room stood up and said, 'That's not so.' Five or six men started to pass out fliers of denial. I thought, oh, my goodness sakes, it's like Holocaust deniers. I was completely taken aback.''
Among friends of the author's attending the reading were former NY Gov. Hugh Carey and Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, whose grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, chronicled the systematic annihilation of Armenians while he served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916.
† New York City: U.N. Genocide Exhibit Censored
In April, an exhibit on the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide consisting of panels of graphics, photos and statements installed in the visitors lobby by the British antigenocide group Aegis Trust was dismantled on the insistence of the Turkish mission because of its objection to a single sentence explaining the genesis of the word genocide:
"Following World War One, during which 1 million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."
Even after the Armenian ambassador to the U.N., Armen Martirosyan (whose name literally means "Son of Armenian Christian Martyrs", by the way), worked out a compromise that removed the words "in Turkey," so that the exhibit memorializing the 500,000 Tutsi victims could remain in place, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon ordered the exhibit dismantled anyway. A censored version opened three weeks later.
Addendum: CAIR mouthpiece Joseph Sandler, of the Washington law firm Sandler, Reiff, and Young, has now sent Mike Adams a letter threatening him with potential prosecution under federal statute 47 USCS § 223, "Obscene or harassing telephone calls in the District of Columbia or in interstate or foreign communications." Sandler demands that Adams take down the post on his Web site the post that exposes his role in assisting the enemies of free speech in the U.S., and provides his contact information so that Americans can exercise their First Amendment rights by telling him what they think about his attempts to silence YAR. The only way to fight enemies of free speech like Sandler and CAIR is for as many Web sites and blogs as possible to republish and/or link to this post and to Adams' columns. Sandler and CAIR cannot silence us all.
Editorial Note: You can read previous installments in the series, "What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims," here and here (third item). | ..>
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August 15, 2007 - Wednesday
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Category: News and Politics
Here is a great article on Front Page about China's recent threat to attempt to devalue the dollar, and what our response should be.
Go ahead. We dare you. In the end, it is your economy that will be broken
From Front Page:
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| Calling China's Bluff |
| ..> By William R. Hawkins
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/15/2007
In 1999, Senior Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) stirred up an international controversy with their book Unrestricted Warfare. Published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, it carried the mantle of official doctrine. It argued that in the new world of high-technology and globalization, war will not fade away as liberal Western economists predict. Instead, "war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions. In this sense, there is reason for us to maintain that the financial attack by George Soros on East Asia, the terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy by Usama Bin Laden....in which the degree of destruction is by no means second to that of a war, represent semi-warfare, quasi-warfare, and sub-warfare, that is, the embryonic form of another kind of warfare." The inclusion of financial attacks with terrorism as part of a conflict in which "there are no rules, with nothing forbidden" has worried American bankers and Treasury officials ever since.
The Chinese officers asked, "Can using financial instruments to destroy a country's economy be seen as a battle?"
Finding an answer to that question took on renewed importance after London's Daily Telegraph reported that Beijing had sent an "economic threat" to the United States. Economists Xia Bin and He Fan, of the State Council Development Research Center and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, were quoted as saying China could "liquidate its vast holding of U.S. treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation." If Beijing triggered a dollar crash now, when the U.S. dollar is already weakening, it could cause a spike in U.S. bond yields, ruin the country's housing market and even slow down its economy. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies, as in the case of Unrestricted War.
After letting speculation run for several days, on August 12, the People's Bank of China posed on its website an interview with the official Xinhua news service, in which an unnamed official says, "The U.S. financial market is huge and has high liquidity, and the dollar assets, including U.S. government bonds, are an important component of China's foreign exchange reserve investment." The statement also proclaimed that "For China, safety, liquidity and investment returns are the main targets of its foreign exchange reserve management." These economic goals would have to be abandoned to carry out the kind of financial attack hinted at earlier.
So what is one to make of this incident? In the Telegraph article, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard cited the use of the term "nuclear option" in the Chinese media for the financial threat. This should remind Americans of the October 1995 threat by Chinese General Xiong Guangkai to use nuclear weapons against the United States if it defended Taiwan. Any such attack would, of course, bring retaliation by Washington that would do immense damage to China. So while the threat did not appear credible as a rational strategy, it has still served to give those who want to appease China an argument to do so because Beijing might behave in an irrational self-destructive manner if pushed. For those inclined towards appeasement, the issue is not who would prevail in a confrontation, but how much damage would the U.S. suffer, even if it won. It is this find of fear that Beijing is counting on to deter American action.
America should not live in fear. As Peter Morici, economics professor at the University of Maryland"s Robert H. Smith School of Business, has argued, "If the Peoples Bank of China were to sell enough Treasury securities to disrupt financial markets and cast the U.S. economy into recession, where would China's factories sell all their stuff? Where would all those Chinese living in cities work if their stuff does not move? What would they do with their time if they were laid off? Oust their government? Riot in the streets? The Chinese Communist Party can make effective threats to disrupt the U.S. economy only if Americans are stupid enough to panic."
China holds dollar assets mainly in U.S. government bonds. If it were to start dumping these bonds, it would have no immediate effect on Washington finances, as the bonds would be sold in the secondary market. If Beijing wanted to overload the market to drive up interest rates on future debt issuance to a level where they would slow the U.S. economy, it would have to discount its bond prices, taking a lose. It might be willing to do that, but that would also offer the U.S. the chance to buy up its debt on the open market for less than it owed. The Federal Reserve could simply print the money needed to make these purchases. That's the strategic value of having the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The Fed would be reluctant to print money on such a scale because of inflation concerns, but then, debtors have often used inflation to lessen the real costs of their obligations.
In the end, Beijing would be left with a basket of less valuable dollars. It would then need to find a place to invest the money (again) if it wanted a return.
The economic threat China poses to the United States is not in financial markets, but in the markets for real goods. It is China's trade surplus ($233 billion with the U.S. last year) that has put $1.3 trillion in hard currency in Beijing's hands, a tremendous reserve of purchasing power that can be used to further expand China control of the world's productive capacity or resource base, the real wealth of nations that Adam Smith noted over two centuries ago.
China's government took the first official step June 27 to inject $200 billion into a new sovereign company that will buy equity assets abroad. Beijing had announced plans in March, calling it an effort to make more profitable use of its currency reserves. As its agents scout the world for lucrative investments, it will be acting to draw private enterprises into government control. It will be entering the market to subvert the market.
Beijing's foreign direct investment has focused so far on energy and raw materials to support its expanding industries. China would prefer to import from itself, owning its overseas supplies to assure security and avoid market fluctuations. Importing at the internal cost of production, rather than a price set by rising global demand, will give Chinese industry another edge in world competition. And holding real assets instead of paper assets will reduce its exposure to financial risks if there is a geopolitical confrontation with the U.S. in any of the many global hot spots where Beijing and Washington are on opposite sides.
The attempt by China National Overseas Oil Company (CNOOC) to buy the American energy producer Unocal in 2005 set off alarm bells in Washington. Unocal then accepted a rival bid from Chevron. To avoid another such confrontation, the new Chinese fund initially may limit itself to minority stakes administered by front companies like the Blackstone Group, into which it has poured $3 billion.
In the longer run, a state-run agency with such enormous reserves will likely try to use those funds to advance broader national objectives than merely a few extra percentage points of return on capital. Fortunately, on July 26, President George W. Bush signed the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (H.R. 556). The legislation strengthens the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). This multi-agency committee was created in 1988 to analyze foreign acquisitions of privately-owned entities to determine their affect on national security. CFIUS can modify or block any foreign acquisition or merger that is deemed dangerous. Having made the mistake of putting so much money into foreign hands, it would be even more foolish to allow them to spend it any way they wished.
The new law widens the scope of CFIUS jurisdiction to include "infrastructure" as well manufacturing related to high-tech and the defense industry. CFIUS derives its authority from the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA).
The findings upon which the DPA is based include, "the domestic defense industrial base is a component part of the core industrial capacity of the Nation; much of the industrial capacity which is relied upon by the Federal Government for military production and other defense-related purposes is deeply and directly influenced by-- the overall competitiveness of the United States industrial economy; and the ability of United States industry, in general, to produce internationally competitive products and operate profitably while maintaining adequate research and development to preserve that competitive edge in the future, with respect to military and civilian production." Thus the clear concern was to stay ahead of foreign rivals, not fall behind or accept a dependence on imports of either goods or capital.
The new CFIUS legislation came out of the Congressional banking committees. The Senate Banking Committee has also passed one of the major bills seeking to pressure Beijing to end the currency manipulation it uses to gain a competitive advantage in trade. The Currency Reform and Financial Markets Act of 2007 (S. 1677) was approved by the committee on a bipartisan 17-4 vote on August 1. Only a few days earlier, the Senate Finance Committee voted out the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1607) by an even more impressive 20-1 vote, indicating that patience with Beijing has worn thin on both sides of the aisle. In was in response to these Senate actions that Beijing rattled its financial saber.
But rather than deter the full Congress from enacting legislation to sanction Beijing for its unfair trade practices, the recent incident should encourage even stronger action, for it is clear that China is not a trade "partner." Beijing is a rival. Its predatory policies around the world are providing China with technology, resources, and strategic production capacity, as well as hard currency, to support its geopolitical ambitions– ambitions which are at odds with American economic and security interests.
The views of Senior Colonels Qiao and Wang are not as new as they may think. Some 350 years ago, Jean-Baptist Colbert, finance minister to Louis XIV of France, proclaimed "Trade is the source of finance, and finance is the vital nerve of war." It is time that the United States sought to deny China both trade and finance, to head off its emerging capabilities for war.
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August 9, 2007 - Thursday
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Category: News and Politics
Alright. This is a total pantload, and a example of how a cultural trend based on personal entitlement, especially of children, leads to said children thinking they need to be paid to stay in school.
When I was a kid, if I didn't go to school, my dad beat my ass with his belt. When I was in high school, my parents kept up with my day, and knew where I was and who I was with. My parents taught me that if I wanted to fail at life, then I should go ahead and drop out of high school, since that was what failures did. After all, if you can't handle high school, you sure as hell won't be able to handle the demands that life will put on you in the real world.
Good parents make sure their kids stay in school. Bad parents rely on the state to pay their kids and raise them, because bad parents can't be bothered with little things like teaching their children accountability or responsibility.
Of course, what can you expect from the land of Harry Reid?
From KVOA in Tuscon, AZ:
-------------------------------------------
Ed Tribble Reports
It pays exactly $25 for Tucson kids to stay in school
Aug 9, 2007 11:23 AM EDT
Local high school students will soon be cashing in for hitting the books.
A new pilot program promises to pay them to stay in school.
More than 20,000 Arizona teens dropped out of the class of 2006.
To fight the problem, 75 students from low income families at Amphi High and 100 from Rincon high were picked for the new program.
The students will get $25 a week as an incentive to stay in school.
A local nonprofit will pay for the project.
To get the money, the kids have to stay out of trouble and keep their grades up... Kids like Cassandra Hardin.
"I can get money for doing what I'm already doing."
Hardin was hand picked to be part of this pilot project, and says the money will make a difference to her future.
"You're getting paid to listen to a teacher tell you things you might need later," says student Travis Jager.
He says it's an incentive to stay in school. He plans on hitting the books to keep his grades up.
"I'll focus on my studies and help out around the house," he says.
The idea of being paid to stay in school bodes well for Dylan Ebright. He dropped out a few years ago and now fixes electronics.
Even though he got his GED, he wishes he'd stayed in school.
"I think a lot of kids see the rap stars and all the money they make and think if they drop out of school they can be like that," he says. His big message: stay in school.
It's advice for those still in school from someone who dropped out.
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August 9, 2007 - Thursday
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Category: News and Politics
Here's a great piece I found on Front Page. In it, Dick Morris deconstructs the sappy 5 minute blurb that Bill Clinton uses on Hillary's website to describe her early years and work.
It's definitely eye-opening. From Front Page:
---------------------------------------
..>
| Bill Crafts Hillary's Bio |
| ..> By Dick Morris
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/9/2007
Go to www.hillaryclinton.com and check out Bill Clinton's syrupy five minute ad for Hillary. He introduces the commercial by saying that he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary's background. His version of her biography is about as reliable as if it appeared in Pravda!
So, I wanted to make a few corrections:
Bill says: Hillary never wanted to run for public office, but she did want to work at public service.
The true facts are: When Clinton was considering not running for another term as Governor of Arkansas in 1990, Hillary said she would run if he didn't. She and Bill even had me take two surveys to assess her chances of winning. The conclusion was that she couldn't win because people would just see her as a seat warmer for when Bill came back licking his wounds after losing for president. So she didn't run. Bill did and won. But there is no question she had her eye on public office, as opposed to service, long ago.
Bill says: In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.
The true facts are: Hillary's main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.
Bill says: Hillary spent a year after graduation working on a children's rights project for poor kids.
The true facts are: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Panthers and traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.
Bill says: Hillary could have written her own job ticket, but she turned down all the lucrative job offers.
The true facts are: She flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected Governor.
Bill says: President Carter appointed Hillary to the Legal Services Board of Directors and she became its Chairman.
The true facts are: The appointment was in exchange for Bill's support for Carter in his 1980 primary against Ted Kennedy. Hillary became chairman in a coup in which she won a majority away from Carter's choice to be chairman.
Bill says: She served on the board of the Arkansas Children's Hospital.
The true facts are: Yes she did. But her main board activity, not mentioned by Bill, was to sit on the Wal-Mart board of directors, for a substantial fee. She was silent about their labor and health care practices.
Bill says: Hillary didn't succeed at getting health care for all Americans in 1994 but she kept working at it and helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance.
The true facts are: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between Bill Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. I helped to negotiate the deal. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals' tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with either source of funds.
Bill says: Hillary was the face of America all over the world.
The true facts are: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic, and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.
Bill says: Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children's and women's issues.
The true facts are: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives through Alzheimer's or other conditions. And two were routine bills to aid 9-11 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation.
Here is what bothers me more than anything else about Hillary Clinton. She has done everything possible to weaken the President and our country when it comes to the war on terror:
1. She wants to close GITMO & move the combatants to the USA where they would have access to our legal system.
2. She wants to eliminate the monitoring of suspected Al Qaeda phone calls to/from the USA.
3. She wants to grants constitutional rights to enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.
4. She wants to eliminate the monitoring of money transfers between suspected Al Qaeda cells & supporters in the USA.
5. She wants to eliminate the type of interrogation tactics used by the military & CIA where coercion might be used when questioning known terrorists even though such tactics might save American lives.
I can't think of a single bill Hillary has introduced or a single comment she has made that would tend to strengthen our country in the War on Terror. But, I can think of a lot of comments she has made that weakens our country and makes it a more dangerous situation for all of us........She goes hand in hand with the ACLU on far too many issues where common sense is abandoned. She is a disaster for all Americans.
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August 6, 2007 - Monday
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Category: News and Politics
Victor Davis Hanson tells it like it is yet again.
As much as the Muslim world seems to hate the West and wish for the destruction of our "decadent" culture, they sure seem to enjoy avowing themselves of its benefits.
They riot and protest when they feel that their faith has been threatened or insulted, yet they call us "infidels" and "Kaffir" and the Jews the "descendants of apes and pigs". They rant and burn US flags on a regular basis on college campuses, yet pressure the same college adminstration to punish a group of college Republicans who tread on a flag of one of their little third world groups of "freedom fighters".
Time to demand of them the same respect they demand of us. Or else.
From Front Page:
-------------------------------
..>
| Middle East Mindsets |
| ..> By Victor Davis Hanson
The Washington Times | 8/6/2007
Radical Islamists love to scream about the "decadent" West. Everything from our operas to our attitudes about women outrage these loud, pious critics.
As part of their condemnation, fundamentalist Muslims say they put a higher premium on family values and reverence for the past than crass modern Americans and Europeans do. But that is hardly true.
In Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, unforgiving Shariah law administered by stern state clerics dictates the cutting off a hand for theft.
Is there less stealing then? Not at the highest levels at least. Sheiks from the ruling House of Saud are notorious for gambling and squandering abroad their nation's collective petro-wealth. But few such royals walk around Riyadh with missing limbs from "judicial amputation."
Recently on a British Airways flight to London, members of Qatar's royal house were outraged that its princesses had been seated next to male passengers who weren't related to them. Was this a clash of civilizations?
Not quite. The entire entourage was, in fact, returning from an all-day shopping spree in Milan, Italy. The angry members of Qatar's royal house may claim outrage at gender equality, but they seem to have no problem with the libertine West when it comes to splurging their kingdom's wealth on luxury items.
This type of hypocrisy in the Muslim world is not limited to supposedly devout oil-rich Gulf sheiks who cherry-pick Western sin. Terrorists — with one foot in the seventh century and the other in the 21st century — want it both ways, too.
How often have we heard Ayman al-Zawahri, the mouthpiece of al Qaeda, damn the disruptive culture of the West? Yet he has no reservations about broadcasting his infomercials using video technology made possible by a secular science unique to Westernized culture. And does the observant Zawahri object that his pals, the pious Taliban, are linked to heroin traffickers?
Jihadists champion Shariah law, too. But when captured, they hire sophisticated secular Western nitpicking lawyers to sue over conditions in Guantanamo or incarceration in British prisons. Al Qaeda, of course, complains about everything from American troops once stationed in Saudi Arabia to even the U.S. failure to sign the Kyoto accords. Meanwhile, by blowing up religious shrines across Iraq, they show far less respect for mosques than we do.
There is a general pattern in these various paradoxes of fundamentalist Islam, both its violent and nonviolent manifestations.
Supposedly Western sins, such as drugs, bribery and rampant consumerism, turn out to be as common in the Muslim world as they are here. In Saudi Arabia, homosexuality even seems to be tolerated as long as it is not overtly discussed in public. Indeed, the only real difference may be our Western tendency to talk freely in a secular context about controversial topics rather than hide or repress their presence.
Moreover, it is not always what we do in the Middle East, or even who we are, that infuriates the radical Muslim world. Its frustration also rises out of fascination with the West — and the ensuing religious embarrassment over wanting what we enjoy.
It's worth noting that the United States is not hated in numerous other places, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where it has had a military presence or adopted controversial foreign policies.
In contrast, the peculiar furor at the U.S. in the radical Islamic world arises because our culture, when viewed on DVD, satellite television and the Internet, is judged to be incorrect in the ideal world of seventh-century Islam — and impossible for conflicted Muslims to enjoy fully in the 21st.
Of course, our foreign policy, or even the crassness of Western pornography, can inflame this pre-existing anti-Americanism. But, ultimately, there remains this divide between vibrant modern life that is the product of the Western Enlightenment and a static tribal order that is not.
What to do? The time is over both for coffee-table talk in the West about a pie-in-the-sky "reformation" needed in Islam, and the endless habit in the Middle East of blaming others for self-inflicted miseries.
Instead, right now we should hold the Muslim world to the same standards of tolerance that we demand of ourselves — no more apologies for things like our insensitive cartoons or excuses for their insane anger against novelists.
In turn, the Middle East must grow up and accept, like the rest of the world, that there are social and cultural costs and consequences for any who wish to embrace the benefits of modernism.
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August 1, 2007 - Wednesday
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Category: News and Politics
Here is a great commentary about the most recent affront and challenge to the First Amendment that the Islamists at CAIR and in the Muslim Student Association are attempting to pull off. A student at Pace University who flushed a Koran (which he owned) 2 times, has been arrested and charged with 2 felony charges. Apparently, he committed the heinous sin of performing a "hate crime".
You can burn a flag in this country. You can piss on a cross and it is sold as art and federally funded. You can wipe your ass with the pages of the Torah. But, put a Koran in a toilet, and you get a one way ticket to Club Fed.
Those animals riot and in their riots produce some of the most stunning examples of "hate speech" ever witnessed in the world today. Why do we appease them so damn much?
Something is very very wrong with this country.
From Front Page:
-------------------------------------------------
..>
| Why Are We So Scared of Offending Muslims? |
| ..> By Christopher Hitchens
Slate | 8/1/2007
During the greater part of last week, Slate's sister site On Faith (it is jointly produced by Newsweek and washingtonpost.com, both owned by the Washington Post Co., which also owns Slate) gave itself over to a discussion about the religion of Islam. As usual in such cases, the search for "moderate" versions of this faith was under way before the true argument had even begun. If I were a Muslim myself, I think that this search would be the most "offensive" part of the business. Why must I prove that my deepest belief is compatible with moderation?
Unless I am wrong, a sincere Muslim need only affirm that there is one god, and only one, and that the Prophet Mohammed was his messenger, bringing thereby the final words of God to humanity. Certain practices are supposed to follow this affirmation, including a commitment to pray five times a day, a promise to pay a visit to Mecca if such a trip should be possible, fasting during Ramadan, and a pious vow to give alms to the needy. The existence of djinns, or devils, is hard to disavow because it was affirmed by the prophet. An obligation of jihad is sometimes mentioned, and some quite intelligent people argue about whether "holy war" is meant to mean a personal struggle or a political one. No real Islamic authority exists to decide this question, and those for whom the personal is highly political have recently become rather notorious.
Thus, Islamic belief, however simply or modestly it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were, any other gods to be repudiated. And when these ontological claims have collided, as they must, with their logical limits, it is even further beyond the cognitive capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia. Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about. (I hasten to add that those who boast of knowing about Moses parting the Red Sea, or about a virgin with a huge tummy, are in exactly the same position.) Finally, it turns out to be impossible to determine whether jihad means more alms-giving or yet more zealous massacre of, say, Shiite Muslims.
Why, then, should we be commanded to "respect" those who insist that they alone know something that is both unknowable and unfalsifiable? Something, furthermore, that can turn in an instant into a license for murder and rape? As one who has occasionally challenged Islamic propaganda in public and been told that I have thereby "insulted 1.5 billion Muslims," I can say what I suspect—which is that there is an unmistakable note of menace behind that claim. No, I do not think for a moment that Mohammed took a "night journey" to Jerusalem on a winged horse. And I do not care if 10 billion people intone the contrary. Nor should I have to. But the plain fact is that the believable threat of violence undergirds the Muslim demand for "respect."
Before me is a recent report that a student at Pace University in New York City has been arrested for a hate crime in consequence of an alleged dumping of the Quran. Nothing repels me more than the burning or desecration of books, and if, for example, this was a volume from a public or university library, I would hope that its mistreatment would constitute a misdemeanor at the very least. But if I choose to spit on a copy of the writings of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx or James Joyce, that is entirely my business. When I check into a hotel room and send my free and unsolicited copy of the Gideon Bible or the Book of Mormon spinning out of the window, I infringe no law, except perhaps the one concerning litter. Why do we not make this distinction in the case of the Quran? We do so simply out of fear, and because the fanatical believers in that particular holy book have proved time and again that they mean business when it comes to intimidation. Surely that should be to their discredit rather than their credit. Should not the "moderate" imams of On Faith have been asked in direct terms whether they are, or are not, negotiating with a gun on the table?
The Pace University incident becomes even more ludicrous and sinister when it is recalled that Islamists are the current leaders in the global book-burning competition. After the rumor of a Quran down the toilet in Guantanamo was irresponsibly spread, a mob in Afghanistan burned down an ancient library that (as President Hamid Karzai pointed out dryly) contained several ancient copies of the same book. Not content with igniting copies of The Satanic Verses, Islamist lynch parties demanded the burning of its author as well. Many distinguished authors, Muslim and non-Muslim, are dead or in hiding because of the words they have put on pages concerning the unbelievable claims of Islam. And it is to appease such a spirit of persecution and intolerance that a student in New York City has been arrested for an expression, however vulgar, of an opinion.
This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. There can be no concession to sharia in the United States. When will we see someone detained, or even cautioned, for advocating the burning of books in the name of God? If the police are honestly interested in this sort of "hate crime," I can help them identify those who spent much of last year uttering physical threats against the republication in this country of some Danish cartoons. In default of impartial prosecution, we have to insist that Muslims take their chance of being upset, just as we who do not subscribe to their arrogant certainties are revolted every day by the hideous behavior of the parties of God.
It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.
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July 30, 2007 - Monday
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Category: News and Politics
This is the monster who the Liberal Left glorifies in film, and with those stupid Che and "Si Se Puede" t-shirts.
Che Guevara is not an icon, and of all the people that Hollywood and the Left glorify, he is one of the least deserving of any real accolades or applause. The animal took pleasure in executing "dissidents", especially in front of their family members.
Also, towards the end, he offered to sell out all that he believed in; all of his "principles", to save his worthless hide from death.
From Front Page:
-----------------------------------------------------------
..>..>
..>
| Tinseltown Deifies a Mass Murderer |
| ..>..>..> By IGS
IGS | 7/30/2007
Not content with only one disingenuous biography of mass executioner Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Hollywood's now got plans for another Che-flattering flick.
In Tinseltown, historical reality routinely loses out to radical chic.
The real lowdown is that Guevara helped Castro come to power in Cuba and personally carried out executions for him.
The same group that wanted California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the execution of multiple murderer Tookie Williams because of opposition to capital punishment have no problem walking around in Che T-shirts, despite the fact that on a routine basis Guevara carried out summary executions for Castro, assassinating hundreds of innocent people.
The other recent fawning Che biopic was Robert Redford's 2004 film, "The Motorcycle Diaries," a twisted tribute to the thug's youthful days.
Now Oscar winner Benicio del Toro will reportedly portray the ardent Argentine communist in a movie that will reunite the actor with director Steve Soderbergh. Del Toro picked up an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work with Soderbergh in the critically acclaimed 2000 film, "Traffic."
Del Toro's Web site refers to Che as "many things to many people: an exemplary human, a hero, a tyrant, a fanatic."
Well, the actor got the last two descriptions right.
The site also divulges the upcoming Che movie title, "Guerrilla," and lists Ryan Gosling and Benjamin Bratt as being among the cast.
And Julia Ormond, who starred with Brad Pitt in "Legends of the Fall" will co-star, according to the Internet Movie Database.
216 DOCUMENTED VICTIMS OF CHÉ GUEVARA IN CUBA:
CUBA ARCHIVE
From Armando M. Lago, Ph.D.
Cuba: The Human Cost of Social Revolution
Manuscript Pending Publication.
The exact number of Che's victims in Cuba is unknown. Guevara is said to have acknowledged ordering many executions -all carried out without affording the victims due process of law. Combat deaths caused by Che in Cuba or other countries where he led guerrilla operations have yet to be tallied.
The following list is not exhaustive and includes only cases for which historic reference is known -those he personally executed as well as those killed under his orders. Names are cited as reported. Additional details, including bibliographic information, are available for most cases.
Executed by Che in the Sierra Maestra during the anti-Batista guerrilla struggle (1957-1958)
1. ARISTIDIO - 10-57
2. MANUEL CAPITÁN - 1957
3. JUAN CHANG - 9-57
4. "BISCO" ECHEVARRÍA MARTÍNEZ - 8-57
5. EUTIMIO GUERRA - 2-18-57
6. DIONISIO LEBRIGIO - 9-57
7. JUAN LEBRIGIO - 9-57
8. "EL NEGRO" NÁPOLES - 2-18-57
9. "CHICHO" OSORIO - 1-17-57
10. UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER ("EL MAESTRO") - 9-57
11-12. 2 BROTHERS, SPIES FROM THE MASFERRER GROUP - 9-57
13-14. 2 UNIDENTIFIED PEASANTS - 4-57
Executed or sent for execution by Che during his brief command in Santa Clara (Jan. 1-3, 1959)
1. RAMÓN ALBA - 1-3-59**
2. JOSÉ BARROSO- 1-59
3. JOAQUÍN CASILLAS LUMPUY - 1-2-59**
4. FÉLIX CRUZ - 1-1-59
5. ALEJANDRO GARCÍA ALAYÓN - 1-31-59**
6. HÉCTOR MIRABAL - 1-59
7. J. MIRABAL- 1-59
8. FÉLIX MONTANO - 1-59
9. CORNELIO ROJAS - 1-7-59**
10. VILALLA - 1-59
11. DOMINGO ÁLVAREZ MARTÍNEZ - 1-4-59**
12. CANO DEL PRIETO - 1-7-59**
13. JOSE FERNÁNDEZ MARTÍNEZ-1-2-59
14. JOSÉ GRIZEL SEGURA - 1-7-59** ( Manacas)
15. ARTURO PÉREZ PÉREZ - 1-24-59**
16. RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ PÉREZ - 1-11-59**
17. FRANCISCO ROSELL - 1-11-59
18. IGNACIO ROSELL LEYVA - 1-11-59
19. ANTONIO RUÍZ BELTRÁN -1-11-59
1. RAMÓN SANTOS GARCÍA - 1-12-59
2. PEDRO SOCARRÁS - 1-12-59**
3. MANUEL VALDÉS - 1-59
4. TACE JOSÉ VELÁZQUEZ - 12-59**
**Che signed the death penalty before leaving Santa Clara.
Executions documented for La Cabaña Fortress prison during Che's command (January 3 to November 26, 1959)
1. VILAU ABREU - 7-3-59
2. HUMBERTO AGUIAR - 1959
3. GERMÁN AGUIRRE - 1959
4. PELAYO ALAYÓN - 2-59
5. JOSÉ LUIS ALFARO SIERRA - 7-1-59
6. PEDRO ALFARO - 7-25-59
7. MARIANO ALONSO - 7-1-59
8. JOSÉ ALVARO - 3-1-59
9. ALVARO ANGUIERA SUÁREZ - 1-4-59
10. ANIELLA - 1959
11. MARIO ARES POLO - 1-2-59
12. JOSÉ RAMÓN BACALLAO - 12-23-59**
13. SEVERINO BARRIOS - 12-9-59**
14. EUGENIO BÉCQUER - 9-29-59
15. FRANCISCO BÉCQUER - 7-2-59
16. RAMÓN BISCET - 7-5-59
17. ROBERTO CALZADILLA - 1959
18. EUFEMIO CANO - 4-59
19. JUAN CAPOTE FIALLO - 5-1-59
20. ANTONIO CARRALERO - 2-4-59
21. GERTRUDIS CASTELLANOS - 5-7-59
22. JOSÉ CASTAÑO QUEVEDO - 3-6-59
23. RAÚL CASTAÑO - 5-30-59
24. EUFEMIO CHALA - 12-16-59**
25. JOSÉ CHAMACE - 10-15-59
26. JOSÉ CHAMIZO - 3-59
27. RAÚL CLAUSELL - 1-28-59
28. ÁNGEL CLAUSELL - 1-18-59
29. DEMETRIO CLAUSELL - 1-2-59
30. JOSÉ CLAUSELL - 1-29-59
31. ELOY CONTRERAS 1-18-59
32. ALBERTO CORBO - 12-7-59**
33. EMILIO CRUZ PEREZ - 12-7-59**
34. ORESTES CRUZ - 1959
35. ADALBERTO CUEVAS - 7-2-59**
36. CUNI - 1959
37. ANTONIO DE BECHE - 1-5-59
38. MATEO DELGADO - 12-4-59
39. ARMANDO DELGADO - 1-29-59
40. RAMÓN DESPAIGNE - 1959
41. JOSÉ DÍAZ CABEZAS - 7-30-59
42. FIDEL DÍAZ MARQUINA - 4-9-59
43. ANTONIO DUARTE - 7-2-59
44. RAMÓN FERNÁNDEZ OJEDA - 5-29-59
45. RUDY FERNÁNDEZ - 7-30-59
46. FERRÁN ALFONSO - 1-12-59
47. SALVADOR FERRERO - 6-29-59
48. VICTOR FIGUEREDO - 1-59
49. EDUARDO FORTE - 3-20-59
50. UGARDE GALÁN - 1959
51. RAFAEL GARCÍA MUÑIZ - 1-20-59
52. ADALBERTO GARCÍA - 6-6-59
53. ALBERTO GARCÍA - 6-6-59
54. JACINTO GARCÍA - 9-8-59
55. EVELIO GASPAR - 12-4-59**
56. ARMADA GIL Y DIEZ CABEZAS - 12-4-59**
1. JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ MALAGÓN - 7-2-59
2. EVARISTO BENERIO GONZÁLEZ - 11-14-59
3. EZEQUIEL GONZÁLEZ - 1-59
4. SECUNDINO GONZÁLEZ - 1959
5. RICARDO LUIS GRAO - 2-3-59
6. RICARDO JOSÉ GRAU - -7-59
7. OSCAR GUERRA - 3-9-59
8. JULIÁN HERNÁNDEZ - 2-9-59
9. FRANCISCO HERNÁNDEZ LEYVA - 4-15-59
10. ANTONIO HERNÁNDEZ - 2-14-59
11. GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ - 7-26-59
12. OLEGARIO HERNÁNDEZ - 4-23-59
13. SECUNDINO HERNÁNDEZ - 1-59
14. RODOLFO HERNÁNDEZ FALCÓN - 1.9.59
15. RAÚL HERRERA - 2-18-59
16. JESÚS INSUA - 7-30-59
17. ENRIQUE IZQUIERDO- 7-3-59
18. SILVINO JUNCO - 11-15-59
19. ENRIQUE LA ROSA - 1959
20. BONIFACIO LASAPARLA - 1959
21. JESÚS LAZO OTAÑO - 1959
22. ARIEL LIMA LAGO - 8-1-59 ( Minor)
23. RENE LÓPEZ VIDAL - 7-3-59
24. ARMANDO MAS - 2-17-59
25. ONERLIO MATA - 1-30-59
26. EVELIO MATA RODRIGUEZ - 2-8-59
27. ELPIDIO MEDEROS - 1-9-59
28. JOSÉ MEDINA - 5-17-59
29. JOSÉ MESA - 7-23-59
30. FIDEL MESQUÍA DIAZ - 7-11-59
31. JUAN MANUEL MILIÁN - 1959
32. JOSÉ MILIAN PÉREZ - 4-3-59
33. FRANCISCO MIRABAL - 5-29-59
34. LUIS MIRABAL - 1959
35. ERNESTO MORALES - 1959
36. PEDRO MOREJÓN - 3-59
37. DR. CARLOS MUIÑO, M.D. - 1959
38. CÉSAR NECOLARDES ROJAS - 1-7-59
39. VICTOR NECOLARDES ROJAS - 1-7-59
40. JOSÉ NUÑEZ - 3-59
41. VITERBO O'REILLY - 2-27-59
42. FÉLIX OVIEDO - 7-21-59
43. MANUEL PANEQUE - 8-16-59
44. PEDRO PEDROSO - 12-1-59**
45. DIEGO PÉREZ CUESTA - 1959
46. JUAN PÉREZ HERNANDEZ-5-29-59
47. DIEGO PÉREZ CRELA - 04-03-59
48. JOSÉ POZO - 1959
49. EMILIO PUEBLA - 4-30-59
50. ALFREDO PUPO - 5-29-59
51. SECUNDINO RAMÍREZ - 4-2-59
52. RAMÓN RAMOS - 4-23-59
53. PABLO RAVELO JR. 9-15-59
54. RUBÉN REY ALBEROLA- 2-27-59
55. MARIO RISQUELME - 1-29-59
56. FERNANDO RIVERA - 10-8-59
57. PABLO RIVERO - 5-59
58. MANUEL RODRÍGUEZ - 3-1-59
59. MARCOS RODRÍGUEZ - 7-31-59
60. NEMESIO RODRÍGUEZ - 7-30-59
61. PABLO RODRÍGUEZ - 10-1-59
62. RICARDO RODRÍGUEZ - 5-29-59
63. OLEGARIO RODRÍGUEZ FERNÁNDEZ - 4.23.59
64. JOSÉ SALDARA - 11-9-59
65. PEDRO SANTANA - 2-59
66. SERGIO SIERRA - 1-9-59
67. JUAN SILVA - 8-59
1. FAUSTO SILVA - 1-29-59
2. ELPIDIO SOLER - 11-8-59
3. JESÚS SOSA BLANCO - 2-8-59
4. RENATO SOSA - 6-28-59
5. SERGIO SOSA - 8-20-59
6. PEDRO SOTO - 3-20-59
7. OSCAR SUÁREZ - 4-30-59
8. RAFAEL TARRAGO - 2-18-59
9. TEODORO TELLEZ CISNEROS - 1-3-59
10. FRANCISCO TELLEZ - 1-3-59
11. JOSÉ TIN - 1-12-59
12. FRANCISCO TRAVIESO - 1959
13. LEONARDO TRUJILLO - 2-27-59
14. TRUJILLO - 1959
15. LUPE VALDÉS BARBOSA - 3-22-59
16. MARCELINO VALDÉS - 7-21-59
17. ANTONIO VALENTÍN - 3-22-59
18. MANUEL VÁZQUEZ - 3-22-59
19. SERGIO VÁZQUEZ - 5-29-59
20. VERDECIA - 1959
21. DÁMASO ZAYAS - 7-23-59
22. JOSÉ ALVARADO - 4-22-59
23. LEONARDO BARÓ - 1-12-59
24. RAÚL CONCEPCIÓN LIMA - 1959
25. ElADIO CARO - 1-4-59
26. CARPINTOR - 1959
27. CARLOS CORVO MARTÍNEZ - 1959
28. JUAN GUILLERMO COSSÍO - 1959
29. CORPORAL ORTEGA - 7-11-59
30. JUAN MANUEL PRIETO - 1959
31. ANTONIO VALDÉS MENA - 5-11-59
32. ESTEBAN LASTRA - 1-59
33. JUAN FELIPE CRUZ SERAFIN - 6-59**
34. BONIFACIO GRASSO - 7-59
35. FELICIANO ALMENARES - 12-8-59
36. ANTONIO BLANCO NAVARRO - 12-10-59**
37. ALBERTO CAROLA - 6-5-59
38. EVARISTO GUERRA - 2-8-59
39. CRISTÓBAL MARTÍNEZ - 1-16-59
40. PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ - 1-10-59
41. FRANCISCO TRUJILLO - 2-18-59
**The death sentence was signed by Che, but the execution was carried out after he left his command.
15 additional executions were reported by The New York Times, but names are unknown.
Information provided by CUBA ARCHIVE, an initiative of the FREE SOCIETY PROJECT, INC.
www.CubaArchive.org
P.O. Box 757
Summit, NJ 07902
Tel. 973.701-0520
Info@CubaArchive.org
Reproduction and distribution of this material is authorized as long as its source is cited.
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July 30, 2007 - Monday
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Category: News and Politics
Another great explanation by Hugh Fitzgerald about the recant of jihad by a "repentant" Egyptian terrorist leader. And why we infidels should not hold our breath for the end of all the terror attacks and the Jihad against the West.
From Jihad Watch:
----------------------------------------------------------------
July 28, 2007
Fitzgerald: "Anti-jihad" initiative offers no hope for Infidels
In a prison cell south of Cairo a repentant Egyptian terrorist leader is putting the finishing touches to a remarkable recantation that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and is set to generate furious controversy among former comrades still fighting with al-Qaida.
[…]
Their authors are neither secular nor liberal: their self-criticism includes observations that the wrong path to jihad benefits only the Jews, the US and Egypt's Christian minority. -- from this article
There is no reason -- none -- for Infidels to be relieved, much less overjoyed, at this news. This is purely an internal Muslim matter. It has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam, the texts of Islam, the inculcated hostility or hatred toward Infidels, and the state of permanent war (not necessarily active warfare, but war) that must exist between the Muslim world and Infidels. For Infidels, the ability of this or that group of Muslims to convince another group of Muslims not to consider them to be "Infidels" (the "takfir" business) not only offers no hope to us, the full-fledged Infidels, but is likely to be misunderstood. Ignorant Infidels eager to grasp at straws will seize upon it -- and there are a great many of those "taking a leadership role" who, almost willfully ignorant, are eager to grasp at those straws. They will take it as proving what it does not prove and cannot prove: that Muslim terrorists can be "reformed" and that if only we play our cards right, and do nothing to offend Muslims, why then the same new view of things can extend to us, the Infidels.
It can't. It won't. There is no possibility, in Islam, of doing away with the central view on which that fighting faith is so obviously based: on the opposition of Believer to Infidel. Islam itself was concocted early on to justify conquests already under way by Arabs, conquests of lands possessed by far more settled, wealthy, advanced populations of Christians and Jews (and later, Zoroastrians, and later still, Hindus, Buddhists, and others).
What has happened as described above is simply that clever and ruthless and corrupt regimes are accused (quite rightly) of being corrupt and ruthless. The accusers naturally framing their opposition in Islamic terms. They must describe those regimes -- the Al-Saud princes, princelings, and princelettes, or Mubarak and his family-and-friends plan -- as "un-Islamic," and the rulers as "non-Muslim." Since, in Islam, one is encouraged to obey the Ruler, no matter how ruthless, as long as that Ruler (or government) can be called "Muslim," the only way to arouse opposition in states and societies full of Muslims is to put everything in terms of Islam.
Americans and other Westerners have failed to realize this. They have failed in the past to realize that the numbers of the truly Westernized and secularized are small, and that they -- such people as Kanan Makiya and Mithal al-Alusi and Ahmad Chalabi -- will forever be a small minority. Thus when we fashion policy on the assumption that they or others like them will win out, it always will lead to naught. In the end one Muslim regime will be replaced by another.
Still another, even more dangerous conclusion, is that drawn by some who believe we have "nothing to fear" from Muslims who are, or seem to be, outraged largely by domestic corruption. Obviously the Slow Jihadists of Fatah are much more corrupt than Hamas. Their cosmetic accommodation with the West, and their differences on timing and tactics (a longer wait, and less obvious support for outright annihilation by military means of the state of Israel) should not obscure the fact that their goals remain the same. In Egypt, Mubarak's regime is corrupt and unjust (which causes his opposition) and also meretricious abroad. Yet it manages by uttering a few phrases to be a continuous recipient of American aid (more than $60 billion) -- though its regime is vicious, and its people far more anti-American than, say, the people in Iran.
Some now argue, in their latest attempt to ignore or miscomprehend Islam, that we should take the side of the opponents of such regimes, and not be "afraid" to work with, for example, the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, "as long as its methods are peaceful."
This is senseless. Of course the Ikhwan will promise us, we the foolable Infidels, that its methods are "peaceful." Of course the opposition to the Al-Saud, similarly, can rightly point to the viciousness of the regime, and suggest that if only...if only, the Americans and other Westerners would support them, they would be glad they did, because an honest regime of Muslims will result. These Muslims, we will be told, and are being told, are "not part of Al Qaeda." That is formally true, and also utterly irrelevant). We will be told that this new regime will create -- well, something. Something good.
One lesson from Iraq is that the Infidels should not presume to think that they can undo the effects, or attitudes, or atmospherics, of Islam. Only those regimes in Muslim countries that can hold Islam in check, and what's more, work steadily to create a class that is truly secular, and a class that will be able to constantly enlarge its numbers through iron-fisted control of education and the media, can contribute to lessening the overall menace of Islam. Turkey under Kemal Pasha was such a regime. But he died in 1938, and those Turks who are secularized and Westernized, that is, those who managed to get beyond deep belief in the obvious replacement-theology of "the Turk" and "Ataturk" (instead of "Believers" and "Muhammad"), relied too heavily on the army as the final guarantor of their own position. Instead, they should all have been working night and day to enlarge their own ranks, and to constrain Islam still further, using whatever elaborated ideas they could. They might also have encouraged a truthful coming-to-terms with the Armenian genocide. What's more, they could have begun openly to discuss just how many "Turks" must, in fact, be of Armenian, Greek, Jewish origin -- and even encouraged a "search for roots." (The same thing, by the way, would be useful in Iran, where a revival of interest in Zoroastrianism, and a depiction of Islam as the "Arab gift" that turned out to be the source of so much present and past woe, sounds absurd, but it isn't.)
What is described in the article above is only an intra-Islamic accommodation. As such, it has no meaning for Infidels and offers nothing useful that will help them. In fact, like other kinds of accommodation, like that sought by the Bush Administration in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'a, it may actually work against us. For we do not want an Egypt or a Saudi Arabia where there is no domestic opposition. We want the Al-Saud to go to bed at night worried about what will happen to them. We want them to be deeply concerned about whether or not foreign workers, without whom Saudi Arabia would collapse, will stay. We want them to worry about the loyalty of their people. We want them to worry about all that so much that they will discover the need to stop spending the fortunes they are spending on mosques and madrasas, and on public relations campaigns -- such as the recent transparent campaign of Op/Eds and media appearances and coordinated "Letters to the Editor," all meant to demonstrate that "Muslims" in America are "just as American as apple pie," aw-shucks and good country people. The whole shtick was designed carefully to keep us from looking at the texts and tenets of Islam. Rather, it focused on participation in some local group, all very inspiring. No doubt, such sentimentalists as Bush or the unsentimental careerist Dinesh D'Souza would focus on this kind of thing as "proving" that there is no problem with Islam, no menace from campaigns of Da'wa and demographic conquest all over the European half of the West, because this or that Muslim has run for office (and therefore this means he must have "accepted" the American way, for he has chosen not to throw bombs but to "work within the system").
And, as a just-published article by Stanley Kurtz shows, the Saudi effort is not limited to all those mosques (with the anti-Infidel hate literature that the Center for Religious Freedom investigators discovered) and madrasas and public relations specialists (Western hirelings, eager to take on any client, indifferent to the results to their own society, even possibly to their own children). Now there is also an effort to take control of how Islam is taught in schools, and to carefully limit what is said and written in those carefully-compiled courses, with the lesson plans all prefabricated, and the syllabi all pre-written. Read what Kurtz has to say, and then read as well what Sandra Stotsky says in her study of what is being done in Massachusetts, thanks in part to "Middle East experts" relying on their ability to intimidate and silence opposition -- because, you see, they are associated with Harvard.
Saudi Arabia's rulers are not our friends. And we do not wish or should not wish them well. We should wish that their domestic opposition causes them anguish and worry. We should not be happy that the Saudi rulers, or the Egyptian rulers, have found a way -- if they have found a way -- to stay solidly in power by making sure that Al Qaeda, and all others who wish to participate personally in active Jihad, operate only outside their countries.
If indeed some of the most corrupt and vicious regimes have managed to successfully deal with the "takfir" problem -- that is, the problem of one group of Muslims defining another group as "not Muslim" or as "Infidels" who can be treated as Infidels of course can be treated -- that is to their advantage, but not to ours. We will only suffer the more. We have a stake in encouraging division and demoralization in the Arab and Muslim world. If our cities are not off-limits to the Jihad, we have a stake in Riyadh and Jiddah and Cairo and Damascus being similarly unsettled. We have a stake in Muslim regimes that cannot be allowed to believe that their domestic opposition will always and everywhere target only the certified Infidels of the West, or only the local non-Muslims. Nothing is said in the article above about managing to convince Al-Qaeda supporters in Egypt to lessen their vicious hostility to non-Muslims, such as the insecure and frightened Copts.
The more secure the Mubarak regime is, the more that dissatisfied Egyptians can no longer take out their dissatisfaction against the regime but are persuaded that their only enemies are, as before, the "Infidels," the more likely it is that they will, within Egypt, attack the Copts. It is still more likely that they will go off to attack the Infidels elsewhere -- perhaps after having been admitted to a Western country as merely a hard-working "economic" immigrant. There are no merely "economic" immigrants among Muslims in Infidel lands; they bring Islam, undeclared, in their mental baggage, and the Infidel governments, like the people they are supposed to be protecting, simply have no understanding of this.
No, for Infidels this news means nothing good, and very likely will make our task, rightly conceived, much harder. And just wait. Just how many breathless articles do you think you will now see from oily Fawaz Gerges, from lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, from that thrusting young academic who seems deplorably to have turned his media party trick (raised as an "Orthodox Jew" but now an "expert on Islam") into a frequent gig at The Times, Noah Feldman, from Tom Friedman and from Nicholas Kristof, in other words -- tutti quanti -- about what "hope" this new development offers, and what a magnificent model this is for us, if only we do not listen to "those who preach that there can be no accommodation with Islam" when the turn-around in the minds of former terrorists, by the Egyptian authorities, is..."nothing short of miraculous"?
Oh God. Spare us this kind. But we won't be spared.
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July 27, 2007 - Friday
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Category: News and Politics
It appears, in a stunning display of rationality and good sense, the FCC has decided that the implimentation of the so called "Fairness Doctrine" most definitely did not need to be re-enacted.
Now, it is entirely possible that they did this realizing that the vast majority of all media coverage out there is overwhelmingly Liberal-biased, and they didn't want to mess with that.
But whatever the reason, I'm glad that they have made at least one good decision this year.
From BreitBart:
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| FCC Chair: Fairness Doctrine Not Needed |
 | ..>..>
..>
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| WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Communications Commission has no intention of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine imposing a requirement of balanced coverage of issues on public airwaves, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said.
Martin, in a letter written this week to Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and made public Thursday, said the agency found no compelling reason to revisit its 1987 decision that enforcing the federal rule was not in the public interest.
Several Democratic lawmakers suggested that Congress take another look at the doctrine after conservative radio talk show hosts aggressively attacked an immigration reform bill when it was on the Senate floor, contributing to its defeat.
Pence and other Republicans in both the House and Senate countered by introducing legislation to bar the FCC from reinstating the rule.
Under the doctrine, first instituted in the late 1940s, broadcasters could lose their licenses if they failed to give free airtime to opposing sides on controversial issues.
Martin, in his letter, said government regulation was not needed to ensure public access to a wide range of opinion. "Indeed, with the continued proliferation of additional sources of information and programming, including satellite broadcasting and the Internet, the need for the Fairness Doctrine has lessened even further since 1987," he wrote.
Pence, in a joint statement with Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., welcomed Martin's position but said Congress should still pass his legislation so that no future administration or FCC chairman could revive the doctrine without an act of Congress. | ..>..>
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