If you made up a story like this, no one would believe it. CouldnÂ’t possibly be true. But it is.
Bill Ayers, the unrepentent domestic terrorist who allegedly planned police station bombings and wanted to kill and injure as many officers as possible, now wants to be protected by police at the University of Illinois.
What is he afraid of? Violent protestors? From armed thugs? Hardly.
No, the cowardly professor is afraid of taking tough questions from the parents of his students.
Mark Thompson, parent of a University of Illinois student, was arrested last week and charged with “interfering with university affairs.” What was his crime? He handed Ayers two books — the Bible and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
We just hope the cops in Chicago have long memories.
#2
After a long hard study, say 20 seconds, the police department should issue a statement telling Ayers no due to budget cut. Sorry, reap what you sow!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/19/2009 17:05 Comments ||
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#3
We'll get back to you Billy Boy (Hey Malone, here's another request for the $hitcan).
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/19/2009 18:50 Comments ||
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#5
We just hope the cops in Chicago have long memories.
They don't need long memories. Professor Ayers is in the habit of calling for help whenever strangers ring his doorbell, it seems. At least there have been several news stories about such behaviour; perhaps the good professor assumes others are willing to treat those in authority like he did in his dewy youth.
#6
Nah, guys....I'm sure the Illinois boys can come up with something much more creative. Automatically tossing this request in the circular file would only come back later to bite them in the ass for not protecting this "fine citizen".
If I had this wonderful assignment to hand out, I'd assign some guy who loves garlic, and lots of it....and maybe is a little questionable on his deodorant and mouthwash usage......and is a touch gassy....occasionally picks his schnozz when he isn't blowing it loudly (allergies, sorry, can't be helped, they are really bad this time of year), and what is that on the bottom of his shoe, anyway, and please tell me he didn't track that onto the rug!?!?
In recent months, the Afghan government has been holding secret talks with some Taliban leaders, mediated by Saudi Arabia and supported by the British government.
In an article published by the Afghan website www.quqnoos.com, Afghan intellectual Haroun Mir, co-director of the Kabul-based think tank Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, examines the Saudi and British motives in holding these talks.
Following are some excerpts from the article, which was titled "The Motives Behind the Afghan Peace Talks": [1]
Following Defeat in Afghanistan, the Taliban Fled to Pakistan, and Received Assistance from Gulf Charities - And the U.S. Turned a Blind Eye
"The recent Saudi mediation efforts should be scrutinized by the U.S. before it endorses them, since the American interest in the region differs from that of Saudi Arabia and Britain.
"9/11 brought the U.S. to Afghanistan. Its initial objective of defeating the Taliban and eliminating the Al-Qaeda leadership was compromised by its underestimation of the importance of the foreign [Arab] support to the Taliban and overestimation of Pakistan's military cooperation in the war on terror.
"The Taliban, after being defeated by the American forces, escaped to Pakistan, where it found a safe haven. Additionally, it received financial assistance from a complex network of charities in the wealthy Gulf countries. President Bush, being busy with the war in Iraq, turned a blind eye to Pakistan's collaboration with the Taliban."
"The U.S.'s New Strategy of Hitting Terrorism at Its Source Has Frightened the Countries that Helped Create the Taliban"
"Recently, the U.S. military and intelligence services were able to convince the White House that terrorism could not be defeated in Afghanistan unless the U.S. wiped out its safe havens in Pakistan. Although Britain opposes any strikes against terrorist camps inside Pakistan, the U.S. military justifiably expanded its military operations across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. These operations have been positively assessed in Afghanistan.
"According to the Afghan Defense Ministry, the number of terrorist and insurgent attacks in Afghanistan has decreased by 40% since the U.S. started striking on Pakistani soil. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda terror network is [now] under increasing U.S. military pressure in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"The U.S.'s new strategy of hitting terrorism at its source has frightened the countries that helped create the Taliban in order to promote their political agenda in the region [namely, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia]."
Britain, with Its Two Million Pakistani Citizens, Fears Pakistan Collapsing - So It Prizes Stability in Pakistan, Opposes U.S. Strikes There, and Encourages Negotiations with the Taliban
"The prospect of Pakistan collapsing frightens the international community. Britain and Saudi Arabia are very concerned about the future of Pakistan, though for different reasons.
"Britain is home to more than two million Pakistanis. The London 7/7 attacks were planned and executed by British citizens of Pakistani origin, trained in the terrorist camps of Pakistan. Therefore, Britain greatly prizes stability in Pakistan, fearing that a collapse there would be too heavy a burden at home.
"Britain's knowledge of the Afghanistan and Pashtun tribal belt in Pakistan is outdated... The old Pashtun tribal structure vanished during the last three decades of conflict in Afghanistan. The current British effort of reaching out to the Taliban has already failed. Since the British forces moved to Helmand and began negotiating a secret truce with the Taliban, the situation in the province has only deteriorated further.
"The British enthusiasm to negotiate with the insurgents will only buy valuable time for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to regroup and expand their operations in the relatively stable provinces of Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"For the Saudis, the Pakistani Military Has Always Been a Vital Ally, Since It has Offered Its Conventional and Nuclear Arsenal as Protection for the [Saudi] Kingdom"
"For the Saudis, the Pakistani military has always been a vital ally, since it has offered its conventional and nuclear arsenal as protection for the Kingdom. In exchange, the Saudis have provided substantial financial assistance to the Pakistani military.
"Moreover, Riyadh believes that a radical Sunni movement such as the Taliban can serve as a natural foe in the region against Shi'ite Iran. Therefore, the Saudi kingdom was one of the three countries that recognized the Taliban's government in Kabul when it was established.
"The Saudis are not yet ready to disengage from their investment in the Taliban. A tolerant democracy in Afghanistan would contravene their conservative vision of Islam. In the recent decades, Riyadh has invested more money in religious madrassas than in the economic reconstruction of Afghanistan."
Saudi Arabia's Recent Involvement in the Afghanistan Peace Negotiations is Suspicious; "The New U.S. Administration Should Be Wary of Britain's and Saudi Arabia's Objective in the Region"
"The new U.S. administration should be wary of Britain's and Saudi Arabia's objective in the region, which is to save Pakistan at the cost of abandoning Afghanistan. While the rest of the world seems to have ceased caring about bringing the architects of 9/11 to justice, the U.S. government has a commitment to do so. In the process, it will save Afghanistan from the resurgence of the Taliban."
The first half-century of black Africa's independence was especially notorious for three reasons: coups, corrupt dictatorships and genocides.
Just seven years after Nigeria's independence in 1960, more than a million Igbos died of starvation or were slaughtered in the Biafran war in Nigeria; in the 1980s a million people died of starvation in Ethiopia as the government was busy buying weapons, and more than 20 000 Ndebele were slaughtered by the Zimbabwean army's Fifth Brigade.
In 1994, in just three months, a million Tutsis died in Rwanda at the hands of their Hutu compatriots and, more recently, up to four million Congolese people have died as an indirect result of 10 years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And in the Sudanese provinces of Darfur, massacres have claimed up to 300 000 people, a conflict for which the country's president Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
So many millions gone, deaths that could easily fill an encyclopedia, which is precisely the project that Abebe Zegeye, professor and chair of genocide and holocaust studies at Unisa, and Maurice Vambe, a professor at Unisa's English studies department, have undertaken. The two academics are writing the first African encyclopedia of genocide, a 600-page tome that is due to come out next year.
The pair's working definition of genocide is not the one the UN arrived at in 1948, which defines genocide as what happens when one ethnic group seeks to destroy another in part or in whole. "While this definition provides a broad framework within which to understand mass murder, it has to be expanded to accommodate the peculiarities of present-day crimes related to mass murder in Africa." They argue that "genocide must be explained first in terms of the number of bodies that lie dead, but also most importantly, in terms of the conditions that result directly or indirectly [in] the death of masses of people".
Vambe said rogue governments now know that killing 100 people, for example, will ignite the interest of the international community, so what governments do instead is create conditions that make it impossible for people to live or learn.
"These conditions could be hunger, choleraor failure to go school. We shouldn't focus on the outcome, but on the process of consciously denying people their rights."
Using this definition, the two scholars argue that the lives lost in Operation Murambatsvina, the Zimbabwean government'sbrutal 2005 crackdown on inhabitants of informal settlements, and the electoral violence of last year could be defined as genocide.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/19/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Colonialism doesn't look that bad in the hindsight?
#3
Ridiculous. Deliberate hijacking of a well understood term is almost always done to advance a social engineering agenda. Examples of terms that have been stolen and redefined include "torture", "gay", "democratic"....
#4
I disagree. Deliberately creating conditions in which most of the population die is the lazy method of genocide. Think, for instance, about the Warsaw Ghetto, which had three purposes: to separate the Jews from the general population, to provide an boundaried area to which Jews from elsewhere could be shipped, and to create conditions -- grossly inadequate food, fuel and medicine rations -- such that between 25% and 66% of the population would die of "natural causes", reducing the number that had to be subsequently processed in death camps. It worked, too: I'm sure y'all have seen some of the many photos of the old and young lying dead in doorway after doorway... except the ones who died in the streets because they hadn't the strength to get to a doorway.
Yes, academics and other ideologues do many stupid and nasty things as they attempt to redefine the universe to match their preconceptions. This is not one of them.
#5
It is quite difficult to attach western logic and modern terms such as "genocide, independence, democracy" to events in Africa since the first white man set foot on the continent. One must attempt to eradicate from one's mind the notion that being a mere breath of time, western beliefs or views must somehow be to blame for the natural selection, tribalism, disease and famine that has gone on in Africa for tens of thousands of years. If anything, the white man has delayed and reduced the slaughter through his attempts at installing the rule of law, modern governance, religion, and medicine.
#6
If anything, the white man has delayed and reduced the slaughter through his attempts at installing the rule of law, modern governance, religion, and medicine.
And thus creating a spectacular population explosion (multiplied by 10 over a century), with the overflow flooding whitey's homeland(s). Isn't that funny, in some weird way?
#1
They want to bring pressure on Obama's Justice Department, now headed by former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, to release all of the evidence in their possession.
Yeah, well, good luck with that. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
Part of the problem with talking about the AIG fiasco is that there's just too much to get mad about. I'm furious that Obama and the Dems are pretending they were surprised about something they not only knew about for a long time but are responsible for in the first place. This is Chris Dodd's doing for pete's sake. I'm furious, as Larry Kudlow noted yesterday, that Geithner et al are using AIG as a political money laundering operation, bailing out Goldman Sachs and other firms by washing it through AIG. I'm mad about all sorts of things, some of which, alas, are necessary but no less infuriating. But I wouldn't let my anger push me to advocate rescinding constitutional norms or the rule of law to force Dems -- or anyone else's -- from office or take away their rights.
But Democrats are advocating using national rage to do precisely that viz a viz AIG. They're talking about bills of attainder. Retroactive laws. Punitive taxes (who was that Congresswoman who wanted to fine these executives "1,000%"?). I'm sure some of them are sincere just as I'm sure some of them are cynically deflecting attention and/or posing as populists. Whatever their motivations, we're a nation of laws. As Calvin Coolidge said, one with the law on his side is a majority. Those bonuses -- as bad as they might be -- are just one more toxic debt we took on when we decided to bailout AIG. In fact they're a tiny, tiny fraction of a fraction of debts we're taking on thanks to this mess and Obama's grand plans. But guess what? It's always going to be ugly when the government takes over an industry -- because government is very, very bad at taking over businesses.
It seems to me that if you think an "anything goes" business culture is a problem -- and it is -- an anything goes political culture is even worse. But that's where we're heading with this nonsense.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/19/2009 12:39 ||
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"Anything goes" in business involves risks undertaken knowingly and willingly, with gains or losses in prospect. So long as there's no fraud and there is sufficient transparency, "anything goes" is just the aggressive edge of the business spectrum - ya know, the one that historically produced marginal little things like petroleum from all over the world, airline transportation, personal computers, ......
So even the small camel's nose of Goldberg's distaste for high-stakes business under the tent helps lead to the disgraceful "populist" idiocy-fest with which the country has now further beclowned itself (following the November debacle). Question of degree.
Executive compensation and "anything goes" business practices, so long as they are legal, are not Goldberg's business, should he choose not to make it his business by investing, borrowing, or working in some relation to them. People - even non-idiots who basically understand freedom and economics - have to get over their bigotry and envy. If you wanna make a killing, go into a line of work where that can happen. Otherwise, shut up.
And what's the big deal about shredding the Constitution and dispensing with rule of law? A single SCOTUS justice can reassign roles and prerogatives of the branches of government ("lessee, I'm gonna take the treaty power from the executive, with advise and consent of the Senate, and just assign it to myself - yeah, that's the ticket!"), and the Beltway elites can abitrarily declare whole sections of basic law null and void (immigration) - so bills of attainder and de facto elimination of state govt. as in the porkulus bill should be considered routine.
#2
"Anything goes" in business involves risks undertaken knowingly and willingly, with gains or losses in prospect. So long as there's no fraud and there is sufficient transparency
------You lost me at knowingly, willingly, no fraud & sufficient transparency.
The financial crisis has been widely interpreted as proof of the need for extensive government regulation of banks, insurance companies and other capitalist institutions. The antics of politicians now that they have a greater role, however, are a vivid reminder of why they can't be trusted with such power.
These days, every politician assumes that because he has a driver's license and an ATM card, he must have all the necessary skills to run an automaker and operate a bank. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, for example, said Detroit should use its bailout money to become "a global, competitive leader in fuel efficiency."
Never mind that if we know anything from recent automotive history, it's that the Big Three's competitive advantage is in trucks and sport-utility vehicles. If they had spurned that segment during the decades of cheap gas, things would have been very different: They would have reached the brink of bankruptcy long before now. But Congress' idea of a sound business plan is to build cars that suit its grand ambitions rather than, say, the tastes of consumers.
But Northern Trust didn't ask for federal help--it was conscripted into the bailout. It happens to be managing its money well enough to be making a profit and repaying the taxpayers.
And did anyone notice that after Earth, Wind and Fire did the Northern Trust gig, it performed at a White House dinner? Why is it OK for President Barack Obama to host "lavish events" that are financed by taxpayers but outrageous for a bank to use mostly private funds to entertain valued customers?
Then there is the insurance giant American International Group, which unleashed bubbling torrents of outrage when it paid large bonuses to hundreds of employees. Angry lawmakers have no idea what these workers should be paid, except that it should be a lot less.
Of course, some taxpayers feel that members of Congress should forfeit their salaries in years when they fail to balance the budget. But our leaders' contempt for failure applies only to the private sector.
They demand that the bonuses be rescinded and, failing that, threaten to tax them away, at proposed rates as high as 100 percent. "Let the recipients of these large and unseemly bonuses be warned--if you don't return it on your own, we'll do it for you," thundered Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
No one in the lynch mob wants to admit that the amount is piddling from the point of view of taxpayers. It adds up to less than 1 percent of the $170 billion the government has poured into AIG. The prevailing reaction amounts to swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.
AIG could have refused to make the payments, but only by violating contracts it had made with employees. Officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entertained this option, reports The Washington Post, only to realize that the spurned staffers would have sued and gotten not only the payments but "punitive damages that would make the ultimate cost perhaps two or three times as high as the bonuses themselves."
Refusing to pay would also have driven away any top employees with alternatives--which would tend to be the better people, who might just be useful in restoring the company to health. Congress' approach brings to mind the sardonic workplace sign: "The floggings will continue until morale improves."
Expropriating property from people who did nothing more than accept money they were legally due sounds uncannily like a bill of attainder--a legislative measure declaring someone guilty of a crime, and imposing punishment, without trial. This weapon was expressly forbidden by the framers of the Constitution because it is fundamentally unfair, at odds with the rule of law and driven by mass hysteria rather than dispassionate fact-finding.
Once upon a time, those were considered bad things.
#1
The real sin is getting into a $170 Billion hole and expecting us to bail them out.
Throughout this discussion never forget that AIG was responsible for conceiving the Credit Default Swap and the regulations surrounding them. They were warned from the beginning that these contracts were very volitile and needed reserves held against them. But that would have lessened profits.
So after showing criminal disregard for the risks they took, they now demand to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Actually the bonuses are important since awarding them would mean these white collar criminals have done nothing wrong. It is not the S165 million. It is the symbolism.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/19/2009 11:40 Comments ||
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"Nothing more" than "legally due" is BS. AIG is a criminal enterprise, as far as I'm concerned. From the 26 February 2009 AIG paper titled "AIG: Is the Risk Systemic," p. 3 "The failure of AIG would cause turmoil in the U.S. economy and global markets, and have multiple and potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences." That's a terroristic threat, IMO. Sic the DHS on 'em.
#3
If anyone is really interested in the nitty-gritty details of how the whole kittin-kaboodle financial crisis originated then I suggest you get this book and start reading. You may have to take notes along the way since it is very technical in structured finance and derivative theory but also spot on. AIG comes off as the Enron of the 21st century.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
03/19/2009 13:08 Comments ||
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#4
I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.
I guess that is called an oxymoron or at least some kind of moron.
#5
That's a terroristic threat, IMO. Sic the DHS on 'em.
No, unfortunately it's simply a statement of fact. Deutsche Bank and others used AIG and credit default swaps to whitewash their balance sheets and circumvent regulatory capital requirements.
If AIG had failed formally, it would have required DB, Royal Bank of Scotland and the others to restate their balance sheets officially all at the same time. At which point they would all have been required not only to stop lending but also to dump their own equities and all assets they held onto the market to raise capital.
In such a scenario those assets would be worth very little with the result that the whole international banking system would have come crashing down, within days not weeks. With the result that the 30s depression would be remembered fondly as good times.
For instance, credit cards would be cancelled for the vast majority of consumers. We've become used to instant credit, so most consumers don't read the agreements that allow banks to jerk that credit very very quickly. Ditto for home equity loans etc. Meanwhile there would be a run on the banks as consumers attempted to withdraw savings and electronically deposited paychecks only to meet with withdrawl limits or outright refusal.
It wouldn't take long until shops closed doors, followed immediately by the supply chain companies that stock their shelves.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Bill Ayers' famous quip may come back to haunt him. There is no statute of limitations on murder charges.
