Why We Listen to Ahmadinejad

I have thought a lot about the events that unfolded a couple days ago in New York. If you have been living under a rock for the last week or so, then you may not have heard that Columbia University invited the President of Iran to speak there at the University.

Many many protests were made about it, and people were up in arms. I was rather distraught at the time, for the lack of grace that the American people showed this man. All we knew about him, before he was given the stage at Columbia, is what the media and our government had told us about him-- that he was dangerous, a lunatic, a madman with evil intentions.

Right or wrong, Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen has written a fantastic piece that articulates my thoughts precisely.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=85dc4876-2871-4fc8-8b23-676c1d135bee


Listen to Ahmadinejad
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The world is indebted to Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University. By allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address the university yesterday, Bollinger not only gave us a revealing look at the character of this dangerous man, he gave us a powerful demonstration of why censorship is foolish.

"It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas," Bollinger said in his opening remarks, "or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honour the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible."

Bollinger then moved from the abstract to the particular, citing evidence of a growing crackdown on dissent in Iran, including the public hanging of up to 30 people this summer. "Let's, then, be clear at the beginning, Mr. President," Bollinger said, turning to Ahmadinejad, "you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator."

When Ahmadinejad took the podium, he opened with a prayer to Allah for the return of the Mahdi and then complained that Bollinger's greeting was "unfriendly."
This was followed by a rambling story about the Almighty, angels, Adam and the prophets. Quotations from the Koran abounded. So did references to science, scientists and the nature of man.

It soon became apparent that what Ahmadinejad wished his audience to know is that science and theology are indivisible. "Science is a divine gift," he said repeatedly, "and therefore, it must remain pure. God is aware of all reality. All researchers and scholars are loved by God. So I hope there will be a day where these scholars and scientists will rule the world and God himself will arrive with Moses and Christ and Muhammad to rule the world and to take us toward justice."

Now, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a stupid man. He knew he was speaking a subway ride away from where the World Trade Center once stood. He knew most Americans believe him to be as fanatical and dangerous as the men who destroyed the twin towers. He knew the deeply unpopular president of the United States is seriously considering pounding much of Iran's infrastructure into rubble. And he knew his invitation to Columbia was an opportunity to speak directly to Americans that is not likely to come again. If ever there was a time to smile sweetly and say what the audience wanted to hear, it was then.

And yet, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chose to open his speech with a lengthy epistemological rumination of the sort that was popular in Europe during the era which we rather tellingly call the Dark Ages.

This man is a fanatic. A religious zealot. A bug-eyed lunatic. He could not have demonstrated this fact more plainly, not even if he had paraphrased the famous line of George H.W. Bush and declared to the audience, "Message: I'm nuts."

Ahmadinejad got slightly cagier -- very slightly -- when it came time to answer questions from a moderator. "Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state?" he was asked. "We love all nations," Ahmadinejad helpfully replied. "We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran, living peacefully, with security."

What about the Holocaust? "I am not saying that it didn't happen at all," Ahmadinejad responded. He merely wants more research because, as he reminded the audience several times, "I'm an academic, too."

And homosexuals? Persecution in Iran goes so far as torture and execution. What about that? Ahmadinejad's answer was so informative that I reprint the transcript verbatim.

Ahmadinejad: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."
(Audience laughs.)
Ahmadinejad: "We don't have that in our country."
(Audience boos.)
Ahmadinejad: "In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."
(Audience laughs.)

Among the protesters who gathered to denounce the Iranian president and the university that invited him to speak, one man held a sign that read: "A man of lies does not belong in a place of truth." It is tempting to agree, but it is at precisely moments like this that we need to remind ourselves of the words of John Stuart Mill.

"The peculiar evil of silencing an expression of an opinion is that it robs the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation," wrote the great champion of liberty. "If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity to exchange error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit -- the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

The "collision with error" is essential to truth's vitality, Mill insisted. Without it, "the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost or enfeebled." Unchallenged by falsehood, the truth will continue to be accepted by people but only "in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds." No longer will it be a "real and heartfelt conviction from reason or personal experience."

What happened two days ago at Columbia was a living demonstration of the wisdom of Mill's words. "Look at the reaction," a Columbia student named Ellen Miller told a reporter from Salon, gesturing to the mass of protesters around her. She, like many others, supported the university's invitation. "These groups would not have come together and come out like this and protested if there hadn't been this event on campus."

By inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University, Lee Bollinger created a "collision with error" that has given us all a "clearer perception and livelier impression of the truth." For that, and for the courage it took to do it, the world is in his debt.

Sacrifice for Liberty in the 21st Century and Beyond

When we think of people sacrificing their lives in the name of Liberty, what usually comes to mind is somebody in a military uniform of some kind, dying on foreign soil in some complicated conflict over who knows what. I would like to assert, however, that there has not been a sacrifice in the name of Liberty in this manner in a long, long while. You might say, "We hear of people dying every week over in Iraq and Afghanistan." I ask you, who's liberty did they die for? As far as I can tell, the deaths of the soldiers in the Middle East are in the name of Empire, not Liberty. I can't even tell you when the last legitimate American death in the name of Liberty might have been.

On Thursday, July 26th, 2007, on American soil in the Mojave Desert, three Americans died for Liberty. They deserve our respect, and our gratitude. Their names were Eric Blackwell (38), Glen May (45) and Todd Ivens (33).

These men wore no military uniforms, and they didn't fight on foreign soil. Instead,they built spaceships. They died for Liberty, because they died while building spaceships for a private company, rather than for the government.

You may not see the heroism in their deaths. You may not appreciate their sacrifice. You may not understand the importance of their work. Allow me to give you a bit of the background on the company these men worked for, and died for.

Scaled Composites, formerly Rutan Aircraft Factory, is a private company, based on the dream of famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan. Since 1982, Rutan and his company have been designing, building and testing experimental aircraft. In 2003, they unveiled their plans to put the first privately funded manned spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, in space, in hopes of winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize. In 2004, they achieved that goal with human spaceflights for SpaceShipOne. All of this was achieved with no government involvement, except for the permits they gave out for the flights.

It was while working on a rocket test for SpaceShipTwo that the explosion occurred on July 26th. Until SpaceShipOne, there was no liberty in space. The U.S. Government's space program, NASA, has long held the monopoly on spaceflight and exploration. SpaceShipOne gave hope for the future, that the common man might one day reach for the stars, literally. It was to further that cause that these three heroes died. It was certainly a tragic death, and one that we wish could have been avoided. The men, however, will not be forgotten. They will be remembered in the hearts of those who love Liberty, for their unbridled pioneering spirit that refused to be kept on the ground. Godspeed gentlemen.

And to those at Scaled Composites who mourn the tragic passing of their esteemed colleagues, I exhort you to keep reaching for the stars and never give up. It may be that you hold the keys to Freedom for future generations. Press on, and light up the skies in the name of Liberty.

"... den var are da handcuffs, Darlink?"

Ordinarily I don't follow celebrity news... at all. I think it's an incredible waste of brain power as well as being a generally life-shortening activity. But here is a real head-scratcher and I just couldn't resist.

This guy -------->
is a complete nutter. And in case you don't recognize the picture, that's Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, "Prince" Frederic Von Anhalt. He says he's a prince because some german princess adopted him. As far as I know, that hasn't been confirmed.

Not so long ago he was asserting that Anna Nicole Smith's baby was his, which was later found to be a false claim, thanks to DNA testing revealing who the real father was. Now this morning he was found sitting naked in his Rolls Royce. His story? He says he was mugged by 3 women who flagged him down on the side of the road. He stopped and they mugged him at gunpoint and then handcuffed him to the steering wheel. The problem with this story? No handcuffs were found at the scene.

Just when you think Hollywood was as wacky as it is going to get...
FULL STORY

US 'ignored' UK rendition protest

Of course we did. Apparently we don't give a rat's behind WHAT anybody thinks anymore. We do what we want, when we want, and nobody is going to tell us otherwise. And you've got the Bush Administration to thank for that. This is quickly going to turn into a "biggest kid on the block" contest. It's not going to be pretty when some of the other powers decide they don't like us calling the shots anymore. Somebody needs to put some responsibility back in place, quick. This kind of stuff just makes me shake my head. I genuinely am ashamed.

British concerns do not "appear materially to affect" US actions in its "war on terror", the UK's intelligence and security committee has said.

Read the whole BBC story here.

Bush Pushes Peace in Mid-East: Why it's a Good Thing

Over the last couple of days, we've been getting from many sources, such as the Los Angeles Times and others, that Bush is now ramping up a plan to push hard for a Middle-East Peace process. Of course this is a good thing, just for the simple reason that peace is always good (except for a government's defense budget).

But there is one particular reason why this talk of peace talks is good news for us, and the world. It means President Bush knows he's beat on Iraq. If you've been following the news from Washington over the last two weeks, you know that the Democrats and even the Republicans in Congress have had it with this war in Iraq, and smelling blood, they've poised themselves to go for the jugular. Time's up, and they want Bush's head over this thing before the President leaves office. And this new angle that the President is taking on a Mid-East peace process all of a sudden, will allow him to claim diplomatic victory and pull troops out of Iraq without looking like he's giving in to the demands of the Congress he disdains.

So here's how it will play out. Congress succeeds in building enough pressure to put the squeeze on the President, requiring him to give in to their demands to pull troops out on a time line. Bush knows he's a sitting duck and makes a move to begin diplomatically and cooperatively handing over military control to the Iraqis. There will be concessions made to the insurgents, but depending on how good the planners are at playing this, it will end with Bush claiming he ended the war in Iraq and accomplished whatever he wants to accomplish. We may even see a Berlin-esque wall through Baghdad. Who knows. But one thing is for certain, he will not admit defeat.

Make no mistake, however. This, in my opinion, seals the deal for a victory in the Presidential election for the democrats. There are still plenty of months left to change things, I suppose, but I think we better get used to the idea of having either a black president or a woman president. Neither one, of course, is a bad thing in and of itself. It is the individuals who will fill that role that scares me, regardless of ethnicity or gender.

Why Can't We Talk to North Korea?

That's a good question, and here's an article with a pretty good answer that makes sense (at least to me).

Excerpt:

"[F]or decades, North Korea has been trying to engage the United States in direct military dialogue aimed at winning one of its regime’s key policy goals: a permanent peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War....

...There was no immediate U.S. response to the North Korean proposal on Friday.

But Washington had previously rejected such a proposal, objecting any talks that would exclude its ally South Korea and China.

China fought on the North Korean side during the war, while the United States led U.N. forces on the South Korean side....

...U.S. and South Korean officials envisioned four-way peace talks involving all major participants of the Korean War: the United States, China and the two Koreas. But North Korea prefers direct talks with the United States in a ploy experts say is aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul."

Here is the story in its entirety, from The New York Times.

No Respect for the Jury Process in Nebraska

State law in Nebraska (and other states for that matter) allows judges to ban words which they think may influence the thinking of the jury, and ultimately their convictions. CNN reports that Judge Jeffre Cheuvront has done just that in a rape case that has already been tried once, where the jury was unable to reach a verdict. So on the second go-round, Cheuvront banned the use of the words "rape" and "victim."

We will not, however, be able to see how such a trial would play out just yet, due to the fact that Cheuvront has declared a mistrial before it had ever gotten started. His reasoning for the mistrial? Apparently the alleged victim, Ms. Tory Bowen, publicly petitioned the court via a website and encouraged supporters to gather outside the courthouse in protest of the word ban.

So they have quite the muddled mess on their hands out in Lincoln, Nebraska. The trial itself seems like a farce to me. Apparently Ms. Bowen got so drunk one night in 2004 that she could not fight off the advances of the accused, Mr. Pamir Safi, who admittedly had sexual relations with Ms. Bowen, under conditions that Mr. Safi claims was consensual.

At issue, first and foremost it would seem, is the very definition of "rape." Ms. Bowen claims she was raped because Mr. Safi, she says, knew she was too drunk to make any sort of consensual decision. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Safi acted dishonorably, but criminally? That, evidently, is the question. But before they even get into that question, there needs to be the freedom to discuss it. That freedom is precisely what Judge Cheuvront has taken away, as well as the right to protest peacefully for that right.

It is a jury's duty to hear testimony and decide for themselves if what they hear is true, and if it warrants a declaration of guilt for the accused. If a judge is permitted ban the use of words the witnesses can use, it seems to me that the judge is potentially obstructing true testimony. If it is the testimony of the accused that she was raped, then she ought to have the freedom to say just that. She should be granted the right to point to the accused in a court of law, before a jury of her peers, and state very clearly "That man raped me." It is then the jury's job to decide if she really was raped, based on the representation of the attorneys and the consideration of the evidence.

To deny the jury its right and duty to decide based on the actual testimonies is simply injustice, as well as disrespect for jury process and the individual jurors themselves.

The Big Dig: Digging into the Pockets of Bostonians

The Rueters article leads with the headline, U.S. looks for lessons in Boston's Big Dig. But the problem is, they may be learning the wrong lessons, in my opinion.

The tone that the article sets looks to be drawing the conclusion that taking on the projects of burying congested and tangled highway systems, or stretches of roadways, is a good idea, but we just need to learn to do it better. Never mind the fact that 15 years and billions of dollars in tax-payer funds have been eaten up by the Big Dig, and we have a wrongful death suit filed due to a chunk of cement that dropped off the ceiling of the tunnel, crushing a car and the woman driving it. But at least we have parks. With trees. Trees are good.

But it looks like big spending is the name of the urban development game these days. Big projects are already being discussed for other big cities like Seattle, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. No surprise really, when we're talking about trimming 15 minutes off our busy schedules for the commute home. I mean, hey, maybe that 15 minutes is where we can finally squeeze in that family time that has been missing from our lives for the last several decades.

Think you Know About Scopes? Think Again!

In Liberty Papers No. 2 (also published at Strike-the-Root.com), I made mention of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, as an example of how government controlled education can go bad. Most people think they know about this trial, but what they really know is the media depiction of the trial, including the Hollywood version Inherit the Wind, which, as entertaining as it is, doesn't even come close to depicting what happened in Tennessee in 1925.

Rick Barry, writing for AiG, brings us up to speed on what we don't know about the Scopes Monkey Trial.

"How well do you know the facts about the 1925 Scopes trial, one of America’s most famous trials of the past century? Is your knowledge based mostly on the Hollywood depiction of the “monkey” trial, or is it based on the actual accounts as recorded in the transcripts and other historical accounts?"

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n3/monkeying-with-the-media

Let's stop letting the media make monkeys out of us, and get down to the real facts!

Take the Heat or Get out of the Kitchen?

"It would be a travesty for him to go off to prison. The president will take some heat for it. So what? He takes heat for everything."

That's what former Ambassador Richard Carlson says, according to BBC, about the possibility of a Presidential pardon for his friend Scooter Libby, who has now had his appeal for a delayed sentence shot down by a panel of three judges. The judgment on the appeal comes after the judges pronounced that there was not any "substantial question" raised by the appeal.

We should see shortly, whether or not President Bush decides to grant his loyal White House staffer the coveted pardon. And with conservatives largely in agreement for giving him that pardon, I'd put my money on Libby walking away from his ordeal a free man.

The man perjured himself under oath, and obstructed justice during the investigation and trial in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. The truth probably would have incriminated the White House in the incident, and the blame may have gone right to the top, or very close to it. But old Scooter is taking one for the team, and I'll be highly surprised if he ends up taking it too hard. If the pardon doesn't come, he'll be serving 30 months in the slammer, or some ritzy Club Fed mock-up of prison anyway.

Bradley Harowitz is a Dangerous Man

Irish writer Oscar Wilde once said, "All great ideas are dangerous." I don't know if he was right or not. As a lover of Liberty, I'm not inclined to come down on ideas at all, but there is one man and his ideas that I've recently read about that makes me a little edgy.

Bradley Harowitz is the head of technology development at YAHOO! and is responsible for building innovative search technologies. Sounds harmless enough, right? Sitting around coming up with ideas on how to access information quicker and better sounds like a great thing to spend money on. Just look at the interworld thingama-jiggy we have today. Without people like Harowitz, it wouldn't be possible.

What happens, though, when Bradley wants to bring his search engines to the real world? That's exactly what he's proposing here, in his BBC column today. Here's the example he gives:

"Imagine this scenario: I am in a supermarket and I pick up a can of tomatoes and I place it in the shopping trolley. Immediately my mobile phone flashes green to indicate to me that it is a good buy. I go down the aisle and choose a bottle of wine but this time my phone flashes red to suggest I reconsider.

This is only possible when we have a universal resolver for every entity in the world.

What do I mean by universal resolver?

On the internet we have something called DNS - the Domain Name System.

When I type in yahoo.com there's a service set up in multiple distributed servers around the world which helps "resolve" the mnemonic "yahoo.com" (easy to remember!) to a numerical IP address (hard to remember!) which machines can understand.

The service translates yahoo.com into a specific IP address so I don't get mistakenly sent to another website.

We do that very well for resolving domain names but we don't do it very well in the real world for resolving entities.

What do we mean by entity? Frankly almost anything qualifies: a person, a place or a thing, real world and digital objects, even concepts or ideas."

You think we have problems with Internet Stalking now? Just wait until we have Harowitz giving the world the ability to find anything, anywhere, anytime.

Admittedly, Harowitz points out that we already have this technology in place, with companies like Amazon tagging everything in their inventory with unique numbers. Books and CDs are one thing. But people?? Throw in the RFID tag scare and we've got a scenario that not even Equality 7-2521 could fathom. Ok, I'm beginning to hear echoes of my grandfather's voice... "The boy's got an overactive imagination!" Though I'm not sure if it's me he's referring to, or Bradley Harowitz.

Right to Privacy

And here we are again discussing the individual's right to privacy. How much privacy do we have a right to, and when? Complete privacy, if we wish, and all the time? That would be absurd I'm sure you'll agree. We certainly do not have the right to complete privacy when going out into public, say to the mall or to school or the workplace, meaning we cannot walk in anonymously, wearing a mask and expect to deal with people in a normal fashion. And so we arrive at degrees of privacy. At the store and so forth, we have a right to a certain amount of privacy. The people around us do not have the right to access my bank account information, for example. But they do have the right, I would think, to look face to face at the person that has entered their establishment.

And therein lies the problem. The internet has become more than a collection of information, or a giant digital reference section of the collected world's libraries. It has evolved into so much more. The world wide web is now an international community of people, sharing ideas, engaging in commerce, creating, destroying, building new cultures even. And in such a place, the question lies open still, how much privacy are you really entitled to, when dealing with other individuals in such a manner. Today when you access the internet, you can no longer say, "but I'm in the privacy of my own home. I should be given complete privacy if I desire."

This most certainly is not the case anymore. You have gone much outside your living room, outside your house, outside your country in many cases and are dealing with more human beings in the blink of an eye than our grandparents dealt with their entire lives.

It's a complex problem. How do we create the correct balance of privacy and disclosure? What IS the correct balance? And who should have a say in how much of my information is open to the world? I don't want to be tagged! Is anyone else feeling helpless at this point? And why is Morpheus ringing in my head??

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Perhaps I'm being a bit melodramatic, but really... where does it end? What I don't want to happen is to have the next conversation about the internet go something like this,

"What is the internet? Control. The internet is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this." [holds up a Duracell battery]

Grand Political Theater

For the first time in a long time, Bush is saying something I agree with. He has criticized the Democrats in Congress for engaging in "Grand Political Theater," and for once he's right. Of course in this particular case, he was referring to the all the threats of a vote of no confidence in his Attorney General, Antonio Gonzales, and all the mess surrounding Gonzo's firings of numerous individuals in his Department of so-called Justice.

And now the investigation has widened to once again bring into play illegal domestic wire-tapping without warrants. For you folks that don't know exactly what that means, it means that President Bush's Administration thinks they have the right by law to wire-tap and listen into private telephone conversations of American citizens without any sort of warrant or recourse. In other words, according to Mr. Bush, you have no right to privacy. Period.

What's worse, the Department of Justice refuses to dole out justice at all, in this case. And so with the two issues of domestic wire-tapping combined with the mishandling of the DoJ firings, the Congress Democrats have lined up the firing squad against Gonzo.

Bush's defense for his appointed Attorney General? An accusation of "grand political theater." He couldn't be more correct when describing what's going on in Congress. The problem is Mr. Bush thinks the stage belongs only to the Democrats. He fails to realize or at least admit that the he himself is the one standing at the center of this three-ring circus.


Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, all three dancing to the tune that the Great Ringmaster plays. In the first ring, to the left, you have legislators spraying each other in the face with seltzer water like so many clowns, arguing about this and that, falling all over each other, complete with kicks to the seat of the pants. But when was the last time they actually accomplished anything worthwhile?

In the second ring, to the right, you have a combination high-wire act and trapeze artist, narrowly avoiding a great fall during a harrowing Senate Oversight hearing, but ultimately landing in the safety net of "I don't recall."

And at Center Ring, the Ringmaster himself presides over the big Elephant show with all the pomp and grandeur of a Barnum & Bailey Big Top. He smartly cracks his whip to the media with trite comments that put the audience at ease about the tent being on fire and burning down all around them. Who are the audience you ask? You have but to look around you. You will likely see your neighbors, your friends, your family, and perhaps you yourself sit on the edge of your seat, holding your breath, in awe of this spectacle. You nervously watch, with the occasional chuckle, knowing all the while that something is amiss, but the entertainment is just so enthralling. You can't look away.

And here we sit, glowing hot bits of the red, white, and blue Circus Tent floating away in a swirl around us. It burns our eyes, but we can't tear ourselves from the entertainment of this Three Ring Circus. Time passes, but there's always a new act just beginning in the next ring. Up next, in the center ring, the clowns from the Legislative Ring will battle it out to see who becomes the next Ringmaster.

As for me, I've lost my appetite for this show. I've sat by long enough, watching the delicate stitching of this old tent burn away. Somebody, please help me grab some water and lets try to slow down this inferno. Maybe one day, enough people will turn their back on this show to put this fire out.