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Friday, August 09, 2002
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The Los Angeles Newton Users Group has a new weblog.
8:30:53 PM 
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UNC Sued For Assigning A Text on Islam to Freshmen. The Washington Post reports that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "finds itself besieged in federal court and across the airwaves by Christian evangelists and other conservatives" for assigning incoming freshmen a book about Islam. The Post reports that Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly "compared the assignment to teaching 'Mein Kampf' in 1941 and questioned the purpose of making freshmen study 'our enemy's religion.'" [kuro5hin.org]
O'Reilly has completely missed the point with his analogy. By 1941 it was too late, but if more people had read Mein Kampf in the 1930's, perhaps they would have stopped Hitler when he was still weak.
3:59:46 PM
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Hoppeism and the Bailout. The Bush administration is something of a caretaker-squatter in the management of international economics affairs, for example. It does not own the United States and has no strong reason to care about its long-term financial health. It does not own Uruguay and has no interest in its value, and neither does it much care whether the policies it imposes are actually good for that nation. As for the $1.5 billion that went flying out of the U.S. Treasury, it is not owned by anyone either. What good reason--other than economic honesty and good government and other such old-fashioned ideals--is there for the Bush administration not to bail out Uruguay? [Ludwig von Mises Institute]
The author offers a theory on why the Bush administration was willing to "defy their principles" and bail out Uruguay. The theory is reasonable enough, but I think the author is too kind in assuming that politicians actually have any principles.
11:45:56 AM
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A war for civilisation. What's the real long-term war aim of the United States? I'd say it's this -- to bring the Middle East within the civilised world. How do you do that? Tricky, but this we can say for certain: you'll never be able to manage it with the present crowd -- Saddam, the Ayatollahs, the House of Saud, Boy Assad, Mubarak, Yasser. When Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, warns the BBC that a US invasion of Iraq would 'threaten the whole stability of the Middle East', he's missing the point: that's the reason it's such a great idea. Suppose we buy in to Moussa's pitch and place stability above all other considerations. We get another 25 years of the Ayatollahs, another 35 years of the PLO and Hamas, another 40 years of the Baathists in Syria and Iraq, another 80 years of Saudi Wahabbism. What kind of Middle East are we likely to have at the end of all that? The region's in the state it's in because, uniquely in the non-democratic world, it's too stable. It's the stability of the cesspit. [The Spectator]
I don't agree with this reasoning, but this is the best arguement I've seen for why the US should invade Iraq. Most conservative arguements in favor of such an attack don't offer any more justification than, "because we don't like Saddam."
10:39:34 AM
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Miguel is finding out the real truth about broadband in the US. Greed, ignorance, and a lack of vision has kept prices for "broadband" too high, using the wrong technology, and horribly asynchronous. This is a demonstration case of the failure of our market economy to provide products people want, at prices even remotely resembleing cost, in a timely manner. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
Here's the socialist perspective on broadband. Meanwhile, in the real world, Global Crossing received approval of a plan to sell itself. Global Crossing went bankrupt from having too much bandwidth capacity available for too low a price.
9:45:08 AM
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Japanese Parliament Member Resigns [AP World News]
Not just any parliament member, but Makiko Tanaka--the former Foreign Minister who was fired after trying to clean up corruption in her ministry. This was the action that destroyed Prime Minister Koizumi's popularity. As it happens, Tanaka was accused of "misappropriating an undisclosed amount of public funds to pay staff who were not on her official payroll" after her public feud with the Prime Minister.
I find it rather suspicious that someone fired for taking on the infamous corruption of the Japanese government should be accused of corruption. That's not to say she's innocent--in fact, if she is she's probably the only member of Parliament who is. It's a bit hard to believe the timing is just a coincidence, though.
9:17:41 AM
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© Copyright
2006
Ken Hagler.
Last update:
2/14/2006; 6:51:39 PM.
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