Month: March 2003

Salon.Com – Bush Is Like a Klansman

Whatever will we do once Salon.Com finally shutters its site (after the requisite party at my place that is). I mean, how will journalism go on without rambling nonsense by Anne Lamott like this,

I am going to pray for George Bush’s heart to change, so that he begins to want to be a part of the human family. . . . He’s family. I hate this, because he is a dangerous member of the family, like a Klansman.

Apparently Salon.Com’s goal is to make Al Sharpton’s anti-Bush rhetoric look moderate in comparison.

Source:

Good Friday world. Anne Lamott, Salon.Com, March 28, 2003.

Kenya Requests $800 Million In Aid to Cover Corruption

In March the new government of Kenya reported that its treasury had all but been drained by the former government of Daniel Arap Moi and that the country would need $800 million in aid from the international community.

The incoming National Rainbow Coalition thought the government deficit would be in the neighborhood of $400 million, but Kenya’s Finance Minister David Mwiraria told the BBC that it would end up being closer to $850 million, forcing the African nation to ask for money from international donors.

Mwiraria claims any Kenyan need for such aid would only be for the short term, but whether or not the National Rainbow Coalition will be able to tackle Kenya’s widespread corruption remains to be seen.

Source:

Kenya needs $800m of aid. The BBC, March 11, 2003.

But, You Always Have a Choice (the Winer Doctrine of Surrender to Evil)

One other thing about Dave Winer — does he think before he writes stuff like the Winer doctrine,

Then I came up with a new doctrine. It goes like this. If you have a choice, you have no excuse going to war. You can only go to war if you have no choice. I’m sorry Dubya. Let’s just put the tanks in reverse and bring the boys home. Say we’re sorry and ask for forgiveness. It’ll be a lot easier than playing it out. This war is just plain wrong.

But this is absurd since you always have a choice short of war. The United States did not have to enter World War II. It had plenty of other choices short of war even in the face of Pearl Harbor.

Gandhi certainly agreed with Winer and believed that even though Nazism was evil that fighting a war against Germany even to protect the Jews was wrong (Gandhi urged Jews to choose instead to sway Hitler with nonviolent resistance).

Where this sort of thinking leads you is Rwanda where Kofi Annan and the Clinton administration had plenty of warnings about the genocide that was coming but chose the easy way out rather than risk the political ramifications of having to intervene in Rwanda.

Winer’s doctrine is not some high minded philosophical approach, but one that leads straight to pacificism (which is always an available choice) and a surrender to evil.

The Really Important Post-War Iraq Debate Begins

According to the BBC, American and British firms are already fighting the next big war in Iraq. When the U.S. and U.K. rebuild Iraq, will it get a GSM or CDMA cellular network.

California Republican Darrell Issa is reportedly not happy that U.S. funds might be used to build a European-style GSM infrastructure rather than a CDMA network which prevails in the United States.

Source:

Iraq war sparks wireless row. BBC, March 28, 2003.

Anti-French Nonsense Reaches Appropriate Climax

This Yahoo! story discusses how the Air Force One menu recently featured “Freedom Toast” — French toast being verboten because of France’s refusal to agree to war against Iraq.

There’s just one problem — French toast doesn’t have anything to do with France. Instead, the invention of French toast is widely credited to Joseph French, an American colonist who supposedly first served his recipe in 1724 in Albany, New York.

Morons.

Life Expectancy in United States Hits New High

The Centers for Disease Control reported this month that life expectancy in the United States reached a new high of 77.2 years.

For men, average life expectance is now at 74.4 years, and for women at 79.8 years. Broken down by race, the average life expectancy for whites is 77.7 years and for blacks 72.2 years.

Statistician Elizabeth Arias who was the lead author of the CDC’s study of life expectancy told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that changes in behavior played a major role in increasing life expectancies,

For instance, the decline in smoking — from 50 percent of the population in the 1950s to about 25 percent now — has a lot to do with decreases in heart disease and cancer.

Source:

Life expectancy climbs to record high in America. M.A.J. McKenna, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 15, 2003.