Apr. 20 - I couldn't post anything coherent about the tenth anniversary of the Murrah Building yesterday.

This image is permanently engraved on my memory. What could I or anyone say to make it better?

I didn't post anything about the events in Waco 12 years ago either. There isn't a heart-wrenching photo, but the 21 dead children also had lives that should never have ended so abruptly.

Someone once characterized the attack on Waco as the Clinton administration's response to the first bombing of the World Trade Centre. That seems about right.

If God is merciful he'll eventually help me forgive Janet Reno and Timothy McVeigh. Please.

10:51 I missed another very important anniversary yesterday - the 63rd of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Thanks to Kateland and her Remembrance of those who did not go gently into that good night - a timely reminder that sometimes fighting back is an end unto itself and that even when we go into dubious battle it must - no, it does - suffice.

That post is a must read. Let the photos tell the story.

The bombing of the Murrah Building and the Waco attacks mean something to us because they happened within our living memories, but the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is more important because we urgently need to remember why "Never Again" matters - we already have the genocides of Rwanda and Sudan in our living memory yet turn away too hastily and risk the repitition of of watching more genocides and why? because we are faint-hearted. Because we rely on others to make the hard calls, and when those others are the U.N., we have an easy out but that damned conscience thing ... it never heard of international law either.

We have forgotten so much these past decades. Never again.

Posted by: Debbye at 09:41 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 305 words, total size 2 kb.

Apr. 17 - Time Canada on Ann Coulter. Good read thus far (I'm only on page 3.)

(Via Neale News.)

Posted by: Debbye at 08:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

Apr. 16 - Great Granny Guns Would-Be Thief

Posted by: Debbye at 09:49 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

Neale News

Apr. 15 - I just have to note this moment in history. We have a good friend who is still a diehard Senators fan (he even wrote and published a book about them) and Mark has long bewailed the lack of support for the Expos, who consistently played better than their payroll warranted, so now there a cosmic merging of The Underappreciated and The Arcane as the legacy of the Expos and Senators combine to create the Nationals.

Great article in the Washington Times about the President's intense preparation before throwing the initial pitch including the fact that he warmed up before taking the mound. Guess only women who love baseball lovers would understand, but I just know he constantly peppered Laura with the all-important question: slider or a fastball?

The Times says "It was a fastball. A ball. High and inside to a phantom right-handed batter." Mark said the catcher called it a strike, and I made the error of observing that, sans batter and umpire, it can't be anything because without the latter, It ain't nothing until he calls it.

Mark replied smugly, "The catcher knows" which in itself is a bit of a switch as Mark rarely admits to pitcher error on a wild pitch because it's the catcher's job to catch whatever is thrown. So now a catcher is all-wise and all-knowing? (Of course, Mark was not only a pitcher but a southpaw to boot which are two strikes against his sanity.)

I'm a baseball fan, but I'm not as fanatic as certain people like someone sitting 10 feet away who reads baseball blogs but doesn't read mine ...

Charles Krathammer tries to figure out why he cares about 25 guys he doesn't even know:

It is one thing to root for your son's Little League team. After all, he is your kid, and you paid for his glove -- and uniform, helmet, bat, and, when he turns 9, cup. You have a stake in him, and by extension his team.

But what possible stake do grown men have in the fortunes of 25 perfect strangers, vagabond mercenaries paid obscene sums to play a game for half the year?

The whole thing is completely irrational. For me, this is no mere abstract question. I have been a baseball fan most of my life. I could excuse the early years, the Mantle-Maris era, as mere childish hero worship. But what excuse do I have now? Why should I care about these tobacco-spitting, crotch-adjusting multimillionaires who have never heard of me and would not care if I was dispatched to my maker by an exploding scoreboard?

[...]

Presto. It is 1975 all over again. I begin to care. I want them to win. Why? I have no idea. I begin following day games on the Internet. I've punched not one but two preset Nationals stations onto my car radio. I'm aghast. I'm actually invested in the day-to-day fortunes of 25 lugheads I never heard of until two weeks ago.

Apr. 16 - 08:34: Sorry, forgot link to Krauthammer's column. Fixed now.

Posted by: Debbye at 07:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 565 words, total size 4 kb.

Apr. 15 - David Bay Chalmers Jr. of Bayoil U.S.A. was charged yesterday in Iraq Oil Sales by Hussein Aides.:

In an indictment, federal authorities in New York said David Bay Chalmers Jr., a Houston oil businessman, and his company, Bayoil U.S.A., made millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the Iraqi government while trading oil under the $65 billion aid program.

Separate charges were brought against Tongsun Park, a millionaire South Korean businessman, for acting as an unregistered lobbyist for Iraq in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the United States to set up and shape the United Nations program. The criminal complaint said Mr. Park received at least $2 million in secret payments from Mr. Hussein's government for serving as a liaison between Iraqi and United Nations officials.

Mr. Park was at the center of a lobbying scandal in the 1970's, when he was accused of paying bribes to lawmakers in Washington to secure support for loans to South Korea.

[...]

The authorities not only charged that Bayoil made illegal payments to secure Iraqi oil, but also that it conspired to artificially lower the price Iraq received, depriving the Iraqi people of money for sorely needed items. The charges also disclosed new information about an alleged plan to pay senior United Nations officials to influence the course of the program.

Catherine M. Recker, a lawyer for Mr. Chalmers, said the Bayoil defendants and the company would plead not guilty and "vigorously dispute" the criminal charges.

According to federal authorities and the complaint against Mr. Park, he was a partner in the lobbying effort with Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American businessman who pleaded guilty in January to illegal lobbying for Iraq.

Mr. Vincent, who is cooperating with federal investigators, said Iraqi officials signed agreements in 1996 to pay him and Mr. Park $15 million for their lobbying, the complaint says.

One of their tasks was "to take care of" a high-ranking United Nations official, which Mr. Vincent understood to mean to pay bribes, the complaint says. The authorities did not identify or bring charges against the United Nations official. (Emphasis added)

[...]

David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, said the complaint alleges that Mr. Park intended to bribe the official, but does not show that the official received any bribe.

The complaint also charges that Mr. Park met with a second unnamed senior United Nations official, once in a restaurant in Manhattan. After that, Mr. Park said he invested $1 million he had been paid by Iraq in a Canadian company belonging to the son of the second United Nations official, the complaint says.

Mr. Kelley declined to say whether the officials were still actively serving at the world organization. He said, however, that the investigation was "broad and large" and that his office would "wring the towel dry" in pursuing United Nations officials. (Emphasis added.)

A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil USA Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each be sentenced to as long as 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines, and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.

The federal complaint against Park charges that he received a total of $2 million in cash from Iraq, including a fee to "take care" of an unnamed U.N. official. It also states that Park invested $1 million in Iraqi money in a Canadian company owned by the son of another unknown, "high-ranking" U.N. official. Park could face as long as five years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000 or twice the value of profits he earned as a result of his alleged activities. (Emphasis added.)

The Telegraph (UK) has a fairly terse article on the arrests.

Thus far I've only found coverage of the arrests in The Globe and Mail which covers the arrest but as of 5:41 a.m. didn't report the allegations of a Canadian connection but does report that U.N. officials may be connected to these arrests:

The reference in the complaint against Mr. Park to two mystery high-ranking UN officials sparked widespread speculation in UN corridors of possible names.

Mr. Kelley, pressed repeatedly by reporters at a news conference to say whether U.N. officials had actually received money tied to Mr. Park, would say only that that issue was not part of the indictment.

The U.N. is claiming that the Americans and British were perfectly aware of the violations of the sanctions but refused to order their ships in the Persian Gulf to stop oil tankers heading for Turkish and Jordanian ports with illicit Iraqi oil. I have read reports that trucks loaded with illegally purchased oil from Iraq went to Turkey and Jordan (that became common knowledge after Operation Iraqi Freedom and the public learned just how corrupt OFF - or Oil for Palaces - really was) but I don't understand why oil headed for Jordan or Turkey would use rather lengthy sea lanes when they border Iraq and could drive it in.

Maybe Annan was thinking of Syria, a member of the U.N. Security Council, but, again, the oil was not transported by sea but by pipeline, two of which were turned off when U.S. troops got to them. Maybe he just forgot.

11:30 - Glenn Reynolds has lots of links on the arrests.

Apr. 16 - 10:05: FoxNews has no additional information on U.N. Official No. 1 and Official No. 2.

Posted by: Debbye at 10:19 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 1004 words, total size 7 kb.

Aprl. 14 - David Brooks has a straight-forward style that I really love. He uses words like "squishier" and phrases like "arcane fudges" that cut across the blather of nuance - which is basically the art of saying nothing but to say it well - and makes his points squarely and unequivocally.

Today's column is a gem (Loudly, With a Big Stick.) In the course of explaining why John Bolton will make a terrific Ambassador to the U.N., (he's there to represent the U.S.A., remember?) he explains why Americans will never accept some lofty world government and, at the risk of breaking a great many trans-nationalist hearts, exposes the primary reasons why people who love liberty and self-rule would never accept it either.

We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.

Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.

Second, we will never accept global governance because it inevitably devolves into corruption. The panoply of U.N. scandals flows from a single source: the lack of democratic accountability. These supranational organizations exist in their own insular, self-indulgent aerie.

We will never accept global governance, third, because we love our Constitution and will never grant any other law supremacy over it. Like most peoples (Europeans are the exception), we will never allow transnational organizations to overrule our own laws, regulations and precedents. We think our Constitution is superior to the sloppy authority granted to, say, the International Criminal Court.

Fourth, we understand that these mushy international organizations liberate the barbaric and handcuff the civilized. Bodies like the U.N. can toss hapless resolutions at the Milosevics, the Saddams or the butchers of Darfur, but they can do nothing to restrain them. Meanwhile, the forces of decency can be paralyzed as they wait for "the international community."

Fifth, we know that when push comes to shove, all the grand talk about international norms is often just a cover for opposing the global elite's bêtes noires of the moment - usually the U.S. or Israel. We will never grant legitimacy to forums that are so often manipulated for partisan ends.

Sometimes it takes sharp elbows to assert independence. But this is certain: We will never be so seduced by vapid pieties about global cooperation that we'll join a system that is both unworkable and undemocratic.

With a terrific sense of contrast, Wrethard examines the French disenchantment with the EU Constitution taking a Guardian article as his base line and expands it into a post that parallels the Brooks column which, although they pursue different paths, come to similar conclusions about the sense of what it is to be a "nationality."

He calls passage of the EU Constitution a "Faustian bargain"

{French] People are beginning to understand the document before them but the political salesmen are determined to offer any combination of rebates, coupons, special offers and financing to get the final signature on the contract of sale. Stephen Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" speaks of the belated remorse that so often follows Faustian bargains, though like as not there will be no reprieve from the consequences of this deal.

Although Wretchard explains a great many economic and political reasons why the French might reject the EU Constitution, I believe the answer may be far more basic: they don't want to stop being that indefinable thing that makes them unique which would happen were they to relinquish self-rule.

I think the French (as are the British, Dutch, and most especially the Eastern European countries who are unwilling to trade Soviet dominance for French dominance) are actually expressing a yearning they dare not admit to because it would make them just like us Yanks: love of country, love of those intrinsic matters that define them as unique, and love of being (don't laugh) French.

[Note the final paragraph in the Guardian article! They feel they need to cheat to win, which is most definitely not a sign of confidence.]

Posted by: Debbye at 07:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 786 words, total size 5 kb.

Apr. 14 - Neo-Nazi Wolfgang Droege was shot and killed last night in east Toronto.

My only comment is that this guy only got 3 years for trying to overthrow the government of Dominica, but got 13 years for cocaine possession and weapons possession in Alabama. Something is wrong with that! Dominica sounds rather interesting; the website I googled says

Dominica was the last of the Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans, due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining in the eastern Caribbean.

I know the KuKluxKlan has tried to project a new image and that there are always fools who will be taken in by their b.s., but to me they are always the Democratic Rifle Club that was formed shortly after the Civil War and used murderous means to intimidate and deny enfranchised African-Americans their legally constituted civil rights. (Only one google reference. What do they teach in schools these days?)

I've filed this under the "Canada" category because I don't have one for "Sick Bastards Who Finally Died and Went to Hell" and under USA because I don't have one for "I don't believe in hate speech laws but I do affirm my right to get in your face and call you out when you preach that kind of crap."

Posted by: Debbye at 06:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 325 words, total size 2 kb.

Apr. 10 - The 2005 world championship game between the Canadian and American women's hockey teams was scoreless in regulation and overtime so the matter was settled in what the writer refers to as a "questionable way" to win and what others of us (on our mild days) call "unsporting and fraking ugly" -- a stupid shootout.

Canada had won 8 consectuive titles and the U.S. had a run of silver until this championship tournament.

There was one cool note in the story:

Kazakhstan upset Russia 2-1 in the relegation game, sending the Russians to the second-tier or world women's B championship in 2007.

Posted by: Debbye at 05:42 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

Apr. 6 - Here's one example of how the CBC chooses to present facts: U.S. will demand passports from Canadians.

"Demand!" Yeah, those nasty friggin' Yankees!

WASHINGTON - In response to a new rule requiring most Canadians to carry passports for entry into the U.S., Public Security Minister Anne McLellan said Americans may also have to carry the document to enter Canada.

"Our system has really always worked on the basis of reciprocity," McLellan said outside the House of Commons.

"And therefore we will review our requirements for American citizens and we're going to do that in collaboration with the United States.

"There's no point in either of us going off in a direction without working together to determine how best we can facilitate the flow – a free flow – and movement of low-risk individuals."

McLellan's comments come as the U.S. State Department announced that by 2007, most Canadians will need a passport to enter the United States.

And by 2008, most Americans who visit Canada won't be able to re-enter their country without a passport.

The new rules will still allow Canadians to enter the United States without being fingerprinted. The U.S. demands a fingerprint from all other foreign visitors now.

The tighter security will be implemented first between the U.S. and Caribbean countries, then along the U.S.-Mexican border and finally between the U.S. and Canada.

It is likely to start at airports, then spread to land crossings.

(Link via Neale News.)

12:11 Here is the link to the 2005 Report of the Auditor-General of Canada on National Security which reads much like the last report, come to think of it. It appears there has been no improvement in passport checks either (although the fees were raised citing the addition of security features as the reason.)

Posted by: Debbye at 08:42 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 381 words, total size 3 kb.

Apr. 5 - Americans re-entering the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, Panama and Bermuda will require a passport or other valid travel document and Canadians will require a passport to enter the U.S. These new procedures are to be phased in by 2008. This is to be announced at a press briefing this afternoon.

The announcement of the briefing at the Dept. of State web page notes that

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 mandated that the U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security and State develop and implement a plan to require U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to present a passport or other appropriate secure identity and citizenship document when entering the United States. This is a change from prior travel requirements. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative will implement this law.

According to House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) who introduced the legislation, it is intended "to address the use of a driver's license as a form of identification to a federal official" by "establishing a uniform rule for all states that temporary driverÂ’s licenses for foreign visitors expire when their visa terms expire, and establishing tough rules for confirming identity before temporary driverÂ’s licenses are issued."

The argument that passing this legislation puts responsibility for immigration control on the states isn't really valid as there are already requirements to prove age and driving ability before licenses are granted so proof of status would be only another requirement; besides, each license already has a date of expiry, but I dislike bills which are promoted under the guise of fighting terrorism when their real intent is to deal with another, unaddressed issue.

Posted by: Debbye at 01:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 307 words, total size 2 kb.

Apr. 3 - This may be the definitive essay on Terri Schiavo, the rule of law, and why I too love America.

Excellent read which defies excerpting and reminds us of not only who we are but how we have become so.

13:26 - There have been some new polls on the Schiavo case that posed the issues much more honestly with unsurprising (for me) results (via Michelle Malkin.)

Apr. 4 - 07:07: Jeff Jacoby agrees with Tuning Spork's conclusions.

Posted by: Debbye at 12:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 86 words, total size 1 kb.