Thursday, August 08, 2002

Israeli Turned Back at Temple Mount [AP World News] Apparently non-Muslims are still bared from entering. I don't understand why the Israelis haven't changed this policy. comment () trackback ()  8:42:55 PM     Zimbabwe Farmers Await Land Deadline [AP World News] Thousands of Zimbabwe's white farmers waited nervously on their farms Thursday night as the deadline approached for them to get off their land so it could be redistributed to the nation's blacks. This is most of the remaining farms. It's not clear yet what's going to happen, but if the farmers are indeed evicted then "Stalin" Mugabe will have succeeded in wiping out most of the food supply of southern Africa in only a couple of years. comment () trackback ()  8:37:20 PM     The "Mac" version of World War II Online that I mentioned yesterday turned out to be an OS X version. Unfortunately there's no way to tell that until you actually install it. What a silly way to waste time and bandwidth. comment () trackback ()  8:12:14 PM     A follow-up to my earlier post about Martin Schwimmer and the infamous Nigerian scam: it was indeed a joke. Whew! comment () trackback ()  2:05:37 PM     The Palestinian way of death. "When there is a suicide bombing we are happy for one or two hours, or maybe a day," says Fatma. "But after, we suffer for it from Israeli shelling and bulldozing. There must be another way, but I don't know what it is." [BBC News] There is indeed another way, but anyone who could be happy about indiscriminate murder is rather unlikely to ever see it. comment () trackback ()  1:53:26 PM     Background: Student rights. Schools have increasingly come to be seen as enclaves of official action that lies beyond the reach of normal protections for personal liberty and privacy. While administrators and many politicians insist such extraordinary power is necessary to exert discipline in schools and prevent Columbine-style killings, civil libertarians wonder what kind of participants in a free society will result from a generation raised in what amounts to an age-specific police state. There's also a school of thought that speculates that rare Columbine-style outbursts may even be fueled by the heightened tensions inherent in tight censorship and surveillance. [http://civilliberty.about.com/] comment () trackback ()  1:30:36 PM     Arise Sir Alan. It seems Britain's Labour government is quite keen to confer honorary knighthoods on men not usually regarded as being on the left from the United States. Earlier this year former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani was so honoured, and now it's the turn of Federal Reserve Chairman no less. [Samizdata.net] It's actual illegal for Alan Greenspan to accept unless Congress consents. However, the law in question is the US Constitution, so he will no doubt accept without anyone in power saying anything, and without Congress consenting. To do otherwise would suggest that the Constitution is still in effect, and the government certainly isn't going to allow such a dangerous precedent. comment () trackback ()  9:58:23 AM     It's time for civil libertarians to get real. [OpinionJournal] And here we have a matching display of Conservative hypocrisy. The Wall Street Journal claims that it's perfectly all right for the government to disappear people because the courts have ruled in favor of the government. Funny how this belief that the courts are always right doesn't extend to Roe v. Wade. comment () trackback ()  9:41:17 AM     Renewable energy? Not on my beachfront, say environmentalists. [OpinionJournal] Here's a nice display of Liberal hypocrisy. Rich elitist ecofreaks are all in favor of generating power using large numbers of windmills--except when the windmills would be built to close to their expensive summer houses. comment () trackback ()  9:35:17 AM     Lessons From History. By 1953, the English were effectively disarmed -- and compounding the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property. In the future, only the police were to use violence, and even they tended to be quite lenient toward violent criminals. In a 'coincidence' that will surprise few readers who are familiar with the work of criminologists like John Lott and Gary Kleck, English crime rates almost immediately began a steady rise, for the first time in 500 years. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is now 60 percent higher than in the United States. And it wasn't just crime in general: Gun crimes became far more common as well. [FirearmNews.com] A review of historian Joyce Malcolm's book, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. comment () trackback ()  9:11:01 AM

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