Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

February 5, 2007 By Fausta

Fools’ paradise, and today’s items

Via Linda, Fool’s Paradise – Mass Slaughter in Our Public Schools: The Terrorists’ Chilling Plan

Via Theodore’s World, Global Incident Map

America After The Next Attack

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‘The Bush rally’ thrills Wall Street

Despite the gloom and doom we heard in last year’s elections, a torrent of upbeat economic reports show the Bush economy is alive and well, and it is likely headed for a healthier performance in 2007.

Last week’s report from the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis must have come as a shock to President Bush’s Democratic critics when it showed the economy racing along at a brisk 3.5 percent annual growth rate in the last three months of 2006. For the year, the economy grew at a stronger than expected 3.4 percent, propelled by falling oil and gas prices, higher wage and job growth, increased consumer purchasing power and even an uptick in housing sales.

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The future Nagger in Chief raises her fists in her characteristic anger and yells at you what she knows will be best for you

Hillary’s Dark Energy Agenda

Clinton’s remarks are the first time that a nationally known Democrat has openly called for the government seizure of an industry since President Harry Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry in 1952. The U.S. Supreme Court slapped back Truman’s takeover in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. et al. v. Sawyer. (Like Senator Clinton, Truman also championed a national health-care scheme.)

While other politicians have suggested establishing an alternative energy fund, Clinton is the first to advocate funding it by taking the earnings of a publicly held American company.

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Via Larwyn,
Iran: No Bombs, No Appeasement.

“That’s only true if we say so” — our self-absorbed media culture I’ll be reading “Hitchens’s review of Frank Rich’s book later today.

The fence near Edwards’s manse sends him a message.

Not suitable for work, especially if you listen to the Mark Levin radio link Olbermann Left Limp After On Air Smack Down. Olbermann decided to name Levin “the worst person in the world”. Turns out Keith picked on the wrong guy.

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In a lighter mode,
Darren‘s freezing in Richmond.
Because of that lack of global warming, Gerard went to Costco. I’ve been to Costco twice in my life and will try to avoid a third time.

Today’s Princeton Global Warming Update
It was 6F when I got up at 6:30Am today. The sun came out and now it’s 8F
It’s so cold (How cold is it?) I’m wearing one of these, even when it’s not really flattering:

Time to wear these:

Ugly boots, yes. Warm, definitely yes.

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Update: Superbowl Commercials 2007, via Kim.

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Filed Under: Democrats, economy, Global Warming, Iran, Iraq, politics, Princeton, radio, shoes, terrorism, Wall Street Journal

December 23, 2006 By Fausta

The Che myth

Michelle Malkin blogs that Target’s pulled the Che CD case but still carries the Che Calendar.

Nothing shows what an ignoramus you are like having a Che Calendar hanging on your wall.

Yesterday I was talking to Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the WSJ, and I asked her, what book would she recommend for a quick primer on Che? Mary’s choice is The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, published by The Independent Institute. I read the whole book (67 pages of text) in one sitting last evening.

As it turns out, Alvaro had an epiphany because of Che’s image hanging on a wall (page 2):

A few years later, I spent a semester studying at an American university. Che Guevara made a new attempt to seduce me. This time, my friends were mostly politically active Puerto Ricans who wanted their land to be independent.

It never ceases to amuse me how many independentistas come to the continental USA for college. But I digress.

One of them hung a poster of Che Guevara on his wall and, next to it, a picture of “Comrade Gonzalo”, the genocidal leader of Shinning Path, Peru’s Maoist organization.

And that’s another thing: the rich Marxists. When I was at the University of Puerto Rico, one of the most Marxist guys around drove a convertible Jaguar. Now, when you realize that a Jaguar in Puerto Rico at that time cost twice what it cost in the continental USA, you really appreciate the meaning of the word irony. Alvaro continues (emphasis added),

As I came into the room one afternoon and this couple [Che and “Comrade Gonzalo”] faced me from the wall, I was paralyzed. It suddenly downed on me why my South American friend from boarding school had never been quite able to persuade me to take up Che.

There it was, pure and simple: just like Abimael Guzman, Che was the negation of what I most seemed to long for in this complicated word – freedom and peace. I must have vaguely sensed this at school, but now, for the first time, I was able to fully grasp a precious truth: one should never be confused by the many variations of that species: the tyrant. Stalinist Che Guevara and Maoist Abimael Guzman belonged to different camps and represented contrasting attitudes to life – the former being the quintessential pinup, the latter a bizarre recluse – but what they had in common, their lust for totalitarian power, was much more important than their differences.

I had experienced firsthand Shining Path’s campaign of terror against the very poor peasants in whose name it purported to act. Like millions of Peruvians, I had personally been affected in different ways by this unlikely reincarnation of Cambodia’s Pol Pot in the middle of the Andes. Seeing Che Guevara next to Guzman on a chic campus wall brought to light the ugly truth about the Argentine hero of the Cuban Revolution, but, more importantly, it inspired the poignant realization that all those prepared to use force to take life and property from their fellow men are soul mates whatever the ideological or moral subterfuge used to conceal their real motives. “Really, you should rip that off. You have no idea,” I said to my friend, and I left the room quite disturbed.

Many years later, when I had the chance to encounter numerous other disguises for tyranny, some on the left but others on the right, I focused on that image from university as the starting point of a larger reflection. The conclusion I reached continues to haunt me today: there are myriad forms of oppression, some much more subtle than others, sometimes adorned with the theme of social justice and at other times obscured by the language of security, and recognizing and denouncing the deceitful psychological mechanisms with which the enemies of liberty attempt to bamboozle us into voluntary servitude is one of the urgent tasks of our times.

I highly recommend The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty

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Filed Under: books, Che Guevara, Cuba, Latin America, Target, trends, Wall Street Journal

December 22, 2006 By Fausta

Dershowitz, Che, and today’s items

Alan Dershowitz asks Why won’t Carter debate his book?

When Larry King referred to my review several times to challenge Carter, Carter first said I hadn’t read the book and then blustered, “You know, I think it’s a waste of my time and yours to quote professor Dershowitz. He’s so obviously biased, Larry, and it’s not worth my time to waste it on commenting on him.” (He never did answer King’s questions.)

The next week Carter wrote a series of op-eds bemoaning the reception his book had received. He wrote that his “most troubling experience” had been “the rejection of [his] offers to speak” at “university campuses with high Jewish enrollment.” The fact is that Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz had invited Carter to come to Brandeis to debate me, and Carter refused. The reason Carter gave was this: “There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine.”

As Carter knows, I’ve been to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, many times — certainly more times than Carter has been there — and I’ve written three books dealing with the subject of Middle Eastern history, politics, and the peace process. The real reason Carter won’t debate me is that I would correct his factual errors. It’s not that I know too little; it’s that I know too much.

Nor is Carter the unbiased observer of the Middle East that he claims to be. He has accepted money and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan , saying in 2001: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed’s rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed’s personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who “were the people who killed the Jews in Europe” during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11. Carter’s acceptance of money from this biased group casts real doubt on his objectivity and creates an obvious conflict of interest.

Carter’s refusal to debate wouldn’t be so strange if it weren’t for the fact that he claims that he wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be thrilled to have the opportunity to debate. Authors should be accountable for their ideas and their facts. Books shouldn’t be like chapel, delivered from on high and believed on faith.

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Irwin, Echuta, and Val emailed on this: Target Pulls che guevara CD Case from Stores
Here’s why it matters: WSJ (by subscription only)

Guevara is not just a dead white guy from a well-to-do family who terrorized a racially mixed nation and executed hundreds of thousands of innocents in the late 1950s and 1960s. He is also a symbol of the totalitarian regime that persists in Cuba, which still practices his ideology of intolerance, hatred and repression. It is not the torture and killing alone that make the tragedy. That only describes the methodology. Guevara’s wider goal – to forcibly strip a population of its soul and spirit – is what is truly frightening and deplorable. Christians, who celebrate the birth of their Savior on Monday, have particularly suffered under Guevara’s dream of revolution, which has lasted since 1959.

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Cinnammon thanks a serviceman at Christmas.
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A few articles from Maria
Why radical Islam – and why now?

Bust the joint up

Updates from Germany–War on homeschooling

The world in 2007

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Support Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Juan Compean of the Fabens, Texas Border Patrol Station
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Update: Don’t miss also AP whitewashes Ahmadinejad (again)

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Filed Under: Che Guevara, Islam, Israel, Jimmy Carter, terrorism, Wall Street Journal

December 20, 2006 By Fausta

Joe needed to whiiiiiine…

Joe Rago is an assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal, and today he’s whiiining:The Blog Mob: “Written by fools to be read by imbeciles.”

Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring.

Joe needs to open the on line edition of his own newspaper, who has the excellent Best of the Web.

Yesterday Best of the Web linked to the never-boring Dan, who happened to do a little investigative reporting of his own…

Newsbusters fisks Joe.
(technorati tags Wall Street Journal blogs)
Digg!

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Filed Under: blogs, Wall Street Journal

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