Wednesday, March 5, 2003

Smuggling threatens corner shops. Bootleg tobacco and alcohol cost UK corner shops more than £20,000 each last year, putting many in peril, research says. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] I think it's safe to say that cutting the ridiculously high taxes that make smuggling profitable was never even considered. In fact, the article doesn't even mention taxes--it blames smuggling on a recent government decision to let people bring more cigarettes and alcohol into the country. Talk about missing the point! comment () trackback ()  7:36:16 PM     Arts degrees 'reduce earnings'. Graduates in arts subjects make less on average than A-level leavers, a study shows. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] Graduates in these subjects - including history, English and sociology - could expect to make between 2% and 10% less than those who quit education at 18, researchers at Warwick University found. No doubt the average is skewed by people who can get others to pay them for studies of things which anyone with two working brain cells already knew. comment () trackback ()  7:23:16 PM     US prepares to use toxic gases in Iraq. The US is preparing to use the toxic riot-control agents CS gas and pepper spray in Iraq in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoking the first split in the Anglo-US alliance. "Calmative" gases, similar to the one that killed 120 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege last year, could also be employed. The convention bans the use of these toxic agents in battle, not least because they risk causing an escalation to full chemical warfare. This applies even though they can be used in civil disturbances at home: both CS gas and pepper spray are available for use by UK police forces. The US Marine Corps confirmed last week that both had already been shipped to the Gulf. [Independent.co.uk] The irony is getting rather thick. comment () trackback ()  12:01:15 PM     Charlie Reese - The Last One - before our boys go in and Mr. Reese shuts up, he writes a final column about the horrors of war. OK, this is my last anti-war column. The president's going to go, and I have a rule that when Americans go into combat, I don't criticize the war they're in. I'll raise hell trying to stop them from going to war, but once they're in it, I support them. So I want you to do me, and yourself, a favor. Buy or rent two videos. One is "Black Hawk Down," the story of the Rangers' battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, and the other is "We Were Soldiers," the story of the battle in Drang Valley in Vietnam. Both are very good films, both are based on true stories, and both give as reasonably accurate a picture of war as you can get without making the audience throw up in their popcorn. ... Maybe you think that after Saddam Hussein is gone, everyone will live happily ever after, but I'm here to tell you that it will be the same. Nothing will change. No liberal democracy is going to bloom in the ancient desert of old Babylonia. No American will be able to say "I'm safer and freer now" because those young people died in Iraq. No Iraqi standing in the rubble is going to say, "Gee, I'm glad the Americans got rid of Saddam by destroying my home and my family." All this war is going to accomplish is to add to the world's store of misery -- more death, more wounded, more destruction, more debt, more poverty, more hatred, more profits for the merchants of death, more pollution and more terrorism. ... And I haven't even mentioned the suffering that will be inflicted on the Iraqis -- their young boys, their children, mothers, fathers and grandfathers. You saw how Americans ran terrified from the collapse of the towers in New York. Imagine what it's like to be in a city that is being bombarded with 2,000-pound bombs, cruise missiles, artillery and Gatling guns. Imagine trying to save your children in such a mad inferno. Imagine what it would be like to see your children torn into ragged, bloody chunks of meat by shrapnel, or burned into a twisted piece of charcoal, with wet, yellow intestines leaking out. It's pure hell to be the collateral damage. But sit back and enjoy your war. It's what you want. [End the War on Freedom] comment () trackback ()  9:11:01 AM     Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com - Libertarianism in the Age of Empire - A speech Mr. Raimondo gave to the Libertarian Party of Illiois on March first. Freedom in Our Time! A short history of the Libertarian Party, which has been anti-war since Vietnam. He proposes that the party join the current antiwar movement in a big way. Bravo! [smith2004] [End the War on Freedom] comment () trackback ()  9:01:57 AM

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