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What They've Thought
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What They Thought June 4, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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The League of Nations came into being after its constitution was adopted at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The Peace Conference, as it turned out, was little more than a prelude to World War II, punishing Germany for having started World War I and divvying up the Ottoman Empire under the assumption that the West could do whatever it wanted with the rest of the world. By 1939, a resentful Germany started WWII and these days the world’s attention is fixed on a block of Middle East nations that were the literal invention of those demented diplomats who put together nations like Iraq and Jordan by drawing lines on a map. The League of Nations stopped holding meetings during WWII and, on April 18, 1946, transferred its assets to the newly minted United Nations. It had taken a scant 27 years for it to die of its own ineptitude. The United States never joined because it did not want to cede its sovereignty to an international body whose actions might conflict with our Constitution. Having learned nothing from Woodrow Wilson’s failure, Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed hard to create the United Nations, a legacy taken up upon his death by Harry Truman. Other than some successes dealing with aid to refugees and famine relief, the League of Nations was most notably unable to stop nations from going to war with one another. Its most potent weapon was the use of boycotts. Today’s United Nations depends mostly on “sanctions” or “resolutions” issued by the Security Council. These days the Security Council includes the United States and three other permanent members with veto powers, France, China and Russia, each of which is intent on thwarting the ambitions of the Bush administration to expand democracy throughout the world. It was this same Security Council that issued seventeen resolutions warning Saddam Hussein of dire consequences if he did not heed their demands to stop trying to stockpile weapons of mass destruction. Through the humanitarian Oil for Food program, Saddam managed to bribe France and Russia, with China going along, to ignore his massive looting of the program in order to build more luxurious palaces and give grants to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, among a long list of criminal acts that were finally ended when the United States military drove into downtown Baghdad. We killed both his evil sons and hauled him out of a hole in the ground. In his book, “The U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America’s Security,” Eric Shawn, a senior correspondent and anchor for the Fox News Channel, takes the reader behind the scenes to reveal an utterly corrupt international institution. Like its predecessor, the League of Nations, the U.N. has demonstrated the maniacal insanity of expecting nations to cooperate with one another for any other reason than self-interest. “The United Nations has proven that it does not have the backbone to stand against tyrants, that its members abuse its systems for short-term gain, that it is careless with the money it’s given, that its employees and contractors cannot be wholly trusted to execute its lofty ambitions, and that even its humanitarian efforts are undermined and shortchanged as a result,” says Shawn. If it were a private corporation, it would be deemed a criminal enterprise. Moreover, since all 191 member-nations have a vote in the General Assembly equal to the U.S., there is a farcical aspect to the fact that it is the money provided by U.S. taxpayers that largely keeps the institution functioning. “The 2005 U.N. assessment for the United States stood at $2.2 billion, and that figure is pushed skyward by funding for U.N.-related development banks, resulting in a total of $3.7 billion,” notes Shawn. The poorest member-nation can buy in for a mere $17,795 in annual dues. What does the United Nations want today? More money! “The major financial goal of the millennium plan is the requirement that wealthy nations commit to spending 0.7 percent of their gross national product for development in the third world by channeling the billions through the U.N. system.” Shawn notes that, “Over years, the potential for graft and abuse could dwarf what Saddam achieved by perverting the Oil for Food program.” Not only has the United Nations proved itself to be incapable of mediating the avoidance of armed conflicts throughout the world, it has also distinguished itself by becoming the most corrupt and criminal organization on the face of the Earth. It is time to end U.S. participation, i.e., funding, in the United Nations, and time, at the very least, to invite it to relocate somewhere else. Anywhere else will do. It is time to formally withdraw from the vast matrix of U.N. treaties and protocols that already impose themselves on U.S. sovereignty. It is time to take the lead in the creation of an international organization of exclusively democratic nations. It is time to toss the U.N. on the ash heap of history where it can join the League of Nations. |
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No column this week. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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On Sunday, May 28, 2006, George Herman “Barry” Bonds officially passed George Herman “Babe” Ruth for the second most homeruns in Major League Baseball history. With widespread rumors of steroid use in mind, many baseball fans — and, indeed, many Americans in general — are already looking to dismiss Bonds’ accomplishments. His single-season record of 73 homers in 2001 is now looked back upon suspiciously. And if he manages to surpass Hank Aaron’s career total of 755 someday, many people have already decided that it just “shouldn’t count.” Unfortunately, this idea stems from the false belief that baseball’s cherry of innocence was somehow popped during the steroid era of the late 1990s. It wasn’t. Baseball has never been a pillar of absolute virtue. There have always been cheaters in our national pastime, just as there have always been cheaters in our nation. The only reason we talk about Bonds the way we talk about Bonds is because he’s seen as an unfeeling bastard. If his achievements are to be “called into question,” it has nothing to do with cheating and everything to do with his being a jerk. I realize it probably sounds like I’m excusing Bonds’ alleged steroid use here. In a roundabout way, I suppose that I am. But there’s a reason why we refer to the last 10 to 15 seasons of baseball as the “steroid era,” and it’s not because one man happened to be using steroids. It’s because a lot of men happened to be using them. Perhaps the public ought to feel gypped about that. Perhaps we ought to look back upon 1998, for example, and feel we were lied to during Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s historic — if steroid-powered — pursuit of Roger Maris’s single-season homerun record. But as far as I can tell, most people don’t seem to feel that way about McGwire and Sosa. They certainly think they were lied to during the drama of that wonderful season. But they don’t feel they were lied to. Both men may have enhanced their proverbial performance through steroids that year, but if either of them currently held the single-season homerun record — or were in pursuit of Hank Aaron’s career total — we wouldn’t be asking ourselves whether we should “count” it. We would be talking about their on-field achievements as metaphors for whatever it is our military is doing on the field of battle. We would never talk so lovingly about Bonds’ on-field achievements, and this is because, unlike McGwire and Sosa, Bonds has never looked happy while signing an autograph. His steroid use isn’t what makes him a villain. It’s just the pretext we need to hate him for being one. For this reason, all talk of “striking” Bonds’ records “from the record books” is both foolish and counterproductive. Bonds may be remarkably contemptible, and the idea of him holding two of baseball’s most cherished records may not sit very well with us, but what we have in Bonds is a man perfectly willing — perhaps even happy — to shoulder every last bit of anger or distrust we may have over the issue of steroids. We have a man for whom being loathed is part of his character. We should be taking advantage of this. Instead of striking his records from the books or pretending he never set them, we should be glad that he set them — even while thoroughly hating him for it. This is the only way to accept steroids’ impact on baseball while at the same time not really accepting it. And in the end, that’s the only practical way to proceed. Just imagine what it would mean if we decided to pretend Bonds never accomplished what he accomplished over the last few years. If steroid use has been nearly as rampant as it’s been reported, you would need to strike not only Bonds’ accomplishments from the record books but every other steroid users’ as well. How could you possibly do this? How could you possibly know who used what, and when, over the last 10 to 15 seasons? Furthermore, even if you could know it, how would you implement such information? Would you go back and take away every hit and every homerun, etc., etc., of every player who ever juiced? Because that would affect the outcome of every game they ever played in. You’d have to go back and re-tabulate all the scores of every game played by every team since the Reagan era. This would dramatically change the standings in each of those seasons, which, in turn, would dramatically change each season’s playoff picture. There’s no way to know who would’ve won the World Series in any of those years. You’d basically have to recruit all the players who comprised every roster over the last two decades and have them come back and re-play every game. Not only would this be impractical, but there would be some major complications involved in the process. For instance, what would you do about players who are dead now? Would you recruit them and force them to play the games anyway? Because surely players who play the game dead affect the outcome just as strongly as steroid users. Don’t you think? This is why Barry Bonds isn’t the worst thing ever to happen to baseball — and why, under the circumstances, he’s probably the best. You can’t go back and undo the steroid era, because that would make the entire dynamic of baseball history useless. But at the same time, you can’t let all those seasons stand, as is, either. Because then baseball history would be living a big fat lie. Barry Bonds provides a convenient solution that neatly addresses both sides and all of the issues. If anyone was going to break the records he’s broken during the steroid era, he’s the one who should have broken them. After all, even before steroids, he was already the best player of his generation. By emotionally dismissing his achievements, however, we can dismiss the steroid era without really dismissing it. And until we accept the fact that steroids are here to stay, this is the only reasonable way to proceed. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Many Americans understandably are upset with the sharp spike in gas prices since Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast in August, and are concerned by reports of oil company profits. But we must understand that high oil prices are not the result of an unregulated free market. On the contrary, the oil industry is among the most regulated and most subsidized of U.S. industries. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether too much government involvement in the oil markets, rather than too little regulation, has kept the supply of refined gasoline artificially low. Consider Marathon Oil, which operates a refinery in Texas City. Marathon recently announced the construction of new refinery that will bring several hundred thousand barrels of oil online every day- which is exactly what the nation needs. But building a new refinery is a daunting task that requires billions of dollars in capital investment. The process of obtaining federal permits alone can take several years. As a result, we won’t see a drop of refined gasoline from the new Marathon facility until 2009. Federal subsidies and regulations are largely responsible for limiting the supply of refined gasoline in this country. The demand for gasoline has risen dramatically in America due to population growth in recent decades, but virtually no new refining capacity has been added. Basic economics tells us that rising demand and a fixed supply will lead to higher prices. No amount of congressional grandstanding about price gouging will change this economic reality. We must increase domestic exploration, drilling, and refining if we hope to maintain reasonable gas prices. We need more competition, which means we need less government. Most Americans agree that the American economy should not be dependent upon Middle East oil. Economist George Reisman, however, explains that our own domestic regulations make us slaves to OPEC: “Today, it is possible once again to bring about a dramatic fall in the price of oil- indeed, one even larger than occurred in the 1980s. And it could begin right away. All that is necessary is to abolish the U.S. government’s restrictions on domestic energy production inspired by the environmentalist movement.” Reisman also explains how abolishing restrictions on coal production, natural gas production, and nuclear power would further reduce the OPEC stranglehold. By increasing the supply of these other energy sources, demand for oil would decrease and prices would drop. Note that much of the support for unrealistic environmental regulations comes from northeastern politicians and media, who weren’t nearly as interested in oil fortunes when the business hit rock bottom in the 1980s. Texas and the gulf coast have always been willing to supply the nation’s energy, and it’s a bit disingenuous to hear criticism from those who are happy to use oil but don’t want refineries in their backyards. Oil is critical, but it is not a magic commodity that somehow is immune from the laws of economics. In fact, it is precisely because oil is so critical to our economy that we must allow the free market to deliver it. Absent government interference in the oil markets, gas prices would rise or fall according to concrete realities affecting supply and demand. High prices would encourage conservation better than any environmental regulations. Entrepreneurs would race to develop viable alternate fuels if gas prices rose too much. Centralized government planning, on the other hand, cannot solve our energy dilemmas. The Nixon-era price controls on gasoline in the 1970s produced nothing but disastrous shortages. By contrast, the Reagan administration’s immediate deregulation of the oil industry resulted in an unprecedented boom in oil production and a dramatic reduction in prices. This is the lesson we must remember. What can Congress do to provide Americans with some relief at the pump? First it can suspend federal gas taxes, which would save consumers nearly 20 cents per gallon. In the long term, Congress must pass legislation like HR 4004, which I introduced earlier this month. HR 4004 takes a comprehensive approach by allowing offshore drilling, eliminating regulations that restrict refining, and suspending harmful tax rules that discourage domestic oil production. If we hope to have a stable, affordable supply of gas, we must allow the free market to operate. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
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In an article posted at the BBC News website, entitled “Domestic killings shock Swiss,” the author references Martin Boess, head of Switzerland's crime prevention unit, as blaming, “the Swiss army's policy of requiring Swiss men, who all have to do military service, to keep their guns and ammunition at home in case of an emergency call-up,” for the apparent increase in‘"family dramas" in which a man kills his wife, often his own children, and himself.” In his opinion — and a growing number of Swiss citizens' — the ease with which a weapon can be impulsively accessed is what supports the necessity for stricter gun control. Their argument: If weapons were stored outside the home, there probably wouldn’t have been 14 cases of family slaughter in the last 11 months. Another theory, proposed by Brigitte Schnegg, professor of gender politics at Berne University, suggests that there is a catalyst for predisposing a man to commit this type of crime: "Family problems are seen as a defeat for the man, it all has to do with male honour." While the two explanations for a rise in homicide/suicide certainly don’t contradict each other, there is no definitive correlation between owning a gun and being willing to use it for such a crime. In “More Gun Control, Please!” Larry Elder asks the following of those blaming guns in the home for acts of violence:“Why does Switzerland, a country that requires a military-style rifle, plus ammunition, in every home, enjoy a very low homicide rate?” As a matter of fact, according to Thomas Sowell in “Gun Control Myths: Gun Restrictions and Murder Rates,” statistics actually negate any positive correlation between owning a firearm and higher murder rates though the figures are often manipulated in order to support the call for gun control. Indeed, Israel, New Zealand, and Finland are known to have high rates of gun ownership and low rates of murder. Furthermore, in the U.S., white people own more guns than blacks, yet have lower murder rates. There are more people who possess weapons in rural areas, yet urban areas have higher rates of murder. Even more applicable to this particular situation,
In another article, “Gun Control Myths: The Case of England,” Sowell has this to say:
Finally, as for reducing the impulsivity associated with homicide/suicide, the following statistic found in the above Larry Elder piece is startling:
I propose that there is a third theory which might explain the reason for senseless homicide/suicide, senseless because a person of sane mind would understand that with courage and conviction, seemingly insurmountable problems can be overcome — just not as quickly as many in this culture of fast food and sitcom attention spans would want. Paul Craig Roberts, in “The Anti-Culture of the New Left Spawns Violence,” presents a very succinct answer to the question that should be asked in order to come up with the correct answer to this problem. Why did shootings unrelated to criminal gain become both thinkable and doable? Deranged, frustrated, disappointed and bitter people have been around forever, but motiveless killings are a new phenomenon in our culture. In order for a person to take out his frustrations and disappointments on innocents, he must escape a culture that inculcates traditional ideas of right and wrong, and thus be "liberated" from a sense of personal responsibility and morality. Moral relativism and the entangling web of the mundane trappings of our entitlement society have allowed these heinous acts of senseless violence to creep into our culture only to be explained away by a society that believes everyone is a victim and therefore not responsible for acts committed. No matter how it is rationalized, people kill people, guns don’t kill people. Nancy
Salvato
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©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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