November 30, 2003
Bush has decided to repeal the steel tariffs that caught him so much criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. See my earlier comments on the tariff. Looks like the commies will have one less issue to riot about.
November 29, 2003
Turkey-day Photos
I'm still in San Antonio, but the first of three photo sets is already up.
Update: I'm back - and the rest of the photos are up. (The photos were selected and resized: full-size originals are here.)
November 25, 2003
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm leaving for a week to visit my parents over Thanksgiving. I leave you with a 1860's political cartoon that would probably be un-pc today. (Found here.)
No Comment
The County of Los Angeles has requested that equipment vendors avoid using the industry term "Master/Slave" in product descriptions and labelling.
November 24, 2003
"Wage slavery" and other falacies...
This post is mostly for my reference. I responded at a local forum in answer to some questions about the nature of wages and the effects of productivity improvements. I don’t have much experience debating economics (as opposed to capitalism) so suggestions are welcome…
What is a job?
A job is a contract between two parties, in which one party agrees to provide certain services on a certain schedule in exchange for payment from the other party. By definition, an employee agrees to do job for a particular wage by his own voluntary consent. This is opposed to slavery, in which a slave is forced to work without his consent or compensation.
What determines wages? Can't employers pay workers whatever they want?
A wage is the price an employer pays for the services his employee. While the two may negotiate any wage they come to mutual agreement on, the mutual self-interest of both and market forces intersect at a market-set price that represents the intersection of their interests. Disregarding non-economic factors, an employer wishes to wishes to pay his employee as little as possible. The maximum amount he will pay however, is the value of the marginal productivity a given worker provides. (The marginal productivity is the value per unit of time the worker provides to the employer.) If the worker refuses to work at or below his marginal productivity, then the employer will not hire him, since doing so will incur a loss. Conversely, disregarding non-economic factors, the employee wishes to be paid an infinite amount. The minimum wage he will actually accept is the marginal value of his labor. This can be measured in terms of the next-most useful value-producing activity the workers may engage in. For example, suppose that my marginal productivity as a programmer is $30 per hour. I will accept any job paying above $30 an hour, but no job below it, since I can find an employer paying that much in another computer or tech-related industry. A fast-food worker might have a marginal productivity of say, $6 an hour – the value per hour that his labor creates for the business. From the employer’s perspective, I create $40/hour of value, and the fast food workers creates $7 of value, so he will be willing to hire us. (Assuming that no one is willing to provide the same value for a lower wage.) However, if I only provide $20 of value, the employer will not hire me, because he would incur an hourly loss of $10 in doing so. Similarly, if the fast food worker only provides $5 of value, he would no be hired either because he would cause a loss of $1 for each hour he works.
Can government increase wages when employers don't pay enough?
Suppose that the government imposed a minimum wage of $8. Would the fast food worker who provides a value of $7 per hour now be paid $8? No, he would lose his job - because keeping him would mean a $1 loss for each hour he works to his employer. All minimum wage laws have a similar effect - they cause everyone with a marginal productivity below the minimum wage to lose their jobs - most often teenagers and the very poor. Wage caps (including progressive income taxes) have a similar effect - they lead the most productive individuals of our society to retire early or forgo new opportunities -- resulting in a lost opportunity for them, and for everyone who might have benefited from their ideas.
What if the government creates a job by paying an unemployed worker to do make-work such as digging holes in the ground?
Where would the money to pay for his wage come from? It would have to be taken by force from the remaining employed fast food workers and computer programmers of course. (The government could print the money, but the result would be similar to taxation.) So everyone will be paid less to pay for the government workers, but has a job been created? No - now the fast-food employer has $1 less to pay to his other $8 employees, so he must fire some of them or go out of business. Each new $7 government worker costs at least one $7 privately employed worker. This is always a social loss because by definition, the government worker is less productive. If he were not, then the private business would voluntarily employ workers to perform his job.
So, a minimum wage will cause everyone who produces less than the marginal productivity of the wage to lose their jobs, while each new government job cause at least one more productive privately-employed worker to lose his job.
So where does wealth come from, anyway?
The wealth of any society equally the capacity to think of the productive men living it. Wealth is a value - a physical or intellectual good that an individual values as beneficial to his life. An object in reality has no intrinsic value until mental and physical labor is applied to it to make it a value to a man's life. Prices are an objective evaluation of the value men assign to a given good. Prices are determined by the marginal value of a given good, just as a wage is determined by the marginal productivity of an employee. The aggregate value judgments of individual consumers and producers determine prices and wages. This is why prices are the only objective value of a good, and why government imposed price and wage controls quickly lead to shortages and more controls -- it's impossible for a bureaucrat to know how much every consumer values every good, or how much ever employer values every employee.
What about economic growth?
Increases in the productivity in the production of a good come from the application of mental effort to the production of values. A profit (the difference between the value of a good to a consumer and the cost to produce it) is the reward of an entrepreneur for bringing about the new wealth he's created. In the absence of government coercion, profits can exist only as long as men continue to create new values - by creating new ones, or improving on existing ones.
Doesn't a more efficient product result in lost jobs for those who were replaced by automation or better processes?
When oil lamps replaced candles, the cost of producing affordable lighting greatly decreased. In the absence of a government monopoly, competing lamp-makers quickly started making their own lamps, which brought the price decrease to the consumer. In the process of transitioning from candles to laps, many thousands of candle-makers lost their jobs. Their protest must have been one of the first recorded anti-technology arguments. The new jobs gained in lamp-making did not in fact equal the lost jobs in candle-making, since making light fixtures required fewer people. However, oil lamps did greatly increase the prosperity of society, just as electric lighting did several hundred years later. How? Since consumers could buy cheaper lamps, they now had more money to spend on other things, good which increased the comfort of their live and created many more jobs than were lost. This is because the average worker could now create more value per unit of time. Meanwhile the light-fixture makers could now afford in invest in even better lighting.
The adoption of electricity had a similar effect - cheap lights caused many lamp-makers to lose their jobs, but created a huge new demand for electricity and increased productivity and the standard of living for everyone. Now only were more jobs created, but the jobs also paid more - because workers could now had a higher marginal productivity of labor.
Can government "soften the blow" when all these candle-makers lose their jobs?
In today's world, the government would probably try to subsidize the candle or lamp-makers when their chief product became outdated. What would that subsidy accomplish? It would save the candle-makers jobs - but it would cost the jobs of everyone who stood to benefit from the increase wealth that came from cheaper lights. In the short term, the candle-makers might benefit - but in the long term, they would lose too, since they would lose the new, higher paying jobs the could have making electric lights and the new products the cheaper lights would allow consumers to afford. Meanwhile, the Thomas Edisons, Graham Bells, Thomas Moore's, and Bill Gateses would be too busy working to pay off taxes to have the time or money for research. Of course, we know that all these inventors and entrepreneurs succeeded. But how many didn't because they had too many taxes to make that initial investment, or never got their initial break because of a minimum wage, or gave up before they even tried because the red tape was too much, or the taxes too high, or they knew that the old, outdated industry would use the government to tax and regulate them out of existence? The real tragedy is that we will never know.
What comes up....
Did you ever wonder about that story of a penny dropped from a skyscraper on a pedestrian's head?
(Yet more proof of my long-held theory that the today’s KKK is just a bunch of hicks politicians use to attack “extremism.”)
Jews and Political Radicalism
VodkaPundit: "I’ve always joked that Jews who don’t stay Jews end up as either communists or Objectivists."
How true. I have two compounding explanations for this: (a) For historical and cultural reasons, Jews are more educated and intellectual than the average citizen, so they are more included towards participating in two the dominant philosophical trends of our time: Marxism, and it’s opposite: Objectivism. They are also more intelligent than the public (for social rather than biological reasons I’d say) so they are more likely to seek and adopt the root of the philosophical tendencies they are exposed to. (b) A history of persecution and holding unpopular minority beliefs had led many former Jews towards more radical social solutions, especially utopian ones. Ironically, this led Jewish intellectuals to be some of the strongest supporters of the Weimar-era philosophical and political movements that brought about Fascism. It also created the utopian socialist vision that brought about the State of Israel, for better or worse.
November 23, 2003
Sold Brides Endure And (Barely) Survive: To flee oppression, many North Korean women escape to marry Chinese men. Here are two tales of desperation.
Bin Laden in Iran
Fox News analyst Mansoor Ijaz:
...
Iran's provision of safe harbor, finances and logistical support for al-Qaida is a measure to counter the possibility that U.S. action in that region could result in democracies on both sides of the country, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ijaz said a warlord who controls Afghanistan's western provinces, Gulbuddin Hektmayer, is working with al-Qaida on a plan to bring a large army of Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops into Afghanistan during the winter months to attack U.S. interests and to try to take control of the entire country.
Iran does not want to see us succeed in building a democracy in Afghanistan under any circumstances,' he said.
...
'But it was my judgment,' he said, 'that it was vitally important for the broader part of our government's decision-making apparatus to know exactly what it is that's going on there, because it's very clear that the Iranians are trying desperately to not only hang on to power, but to fuel the terrorist enterprise in that part of the world.'
"Economics for Real People" website
Collectrix.com is now hosting Economics for Real People, a new introduction to Austrian economics in the spirit of Economics of One Lesson. Other than excerpts, I haven’t read it yet, but from what I understand, it’s a great book.
More Leftist Nonsense...
Laurel mentions a panel at the University of Chicago's "Center for Gender Studies" pushing for unisex bathrooms. I found these lines both hilarious and revealing:
...
Nate Claxton, another panelist, knew people who had contracted bladder infections because choosing a gender bathroom bothered them so much that they did not go to the bathroom all day.
Hillary in '04?
Mike Mazza reports that Hillary's filed a report with the FEC for the presidential vote in '04. Could it be? I wouldn't put it past her. May God have mercy on us all.
New Battlestar Gallactica Series
Last year, I started watching 1979-era Battlestar Gallactica episodes on the SciFi channel. The show was pretty decent, and when I heard that a new series was being made, I was initially excited. Then I read the intro:
See if I still care to watch the show. Incidentally, that seems to be the theme of all the original movies and many shows the SciFi channel makes: empty, plotless and nihilistic shoot-em-ups where there are no good or bad guys, just hormone and violence crazed lunatics running around and bitching about how pathetic and primitive human beings are.
(There is some good stuff in the mix: Stargate SG1 is a great show, and Tremors isn't bad either. SG1 and Law and Order is pretty much the extent of the shows I watch on a regular basis.)
November 22, 2003
Glow in the dark fish!
The next miracle of genetic engineering has arrived: glow in the dark fish!
Eco-freaks are already moaning:
The Palestinian people does not exist.
I came across a revealing quote today:
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
It's by PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
North Korea
The United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union decided today to suspend construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea. The nuclear reactors being built for North Korea are extortion payments by western nations meant to delay plutonium production at North Korea’s other nuclear plants (built with western aid as well, of course.) The suspension comes several months after North Korea announced that it was building nukes aimed at annihilating the United States because Bush called it “evil.” Not to worry, the suspension is only for a year, after which our government will resume helping North Korea develop the technology aimed at our destruction.
Meanwhile, aid shipments to support North Korea’s army are continuing by the west. CNN explains why a nice little communist dictatorship like North Korea is in such dire straights:
Not everyone is lining up to support everyone's favorite dictator – “Japan suspended food aid after relations soured over the North Korean government's handling of conflicts between the sides, especially the kidnappings of Japanese citizens to train North Korean spies.” How dare they think that the kidnapping and torture of their citizens and a few ballistic missiles lobbed at them justifies taking aid from millions of starting Korean soldier..err farmers. North Korea has responded by demanding that it is Japan that is responsible for atrocities because “all the crimes committed by Japan [before WWII] were war crimes and the most hideous human rights abuses which should be punished irrespective of the then domestic law or the statute of limitation.”
The Glorious Leader himself is sticking to his usual line: “This shows that it is only right for us to increase the nuclear deterrent force.” Wow, this guy can’t go wrong. He threatens to build nukes, and gets free nuclear plants. The more millions he starves to death, the more aid he gets for his military. He kidnaps and tortures Japanese citizens and he gets media sympathy for Japanese century war crimes. The more he shows the world what totalitarianism is really about, the more sympathy, pity and aid he gets. There’s never been a better time to be a communist dictator.
November 21, 2003
November 18, 2003
New Photos
With the coming of winter, I've added a third "space heater" to my room and posted new shots of me at work. If you haven't seen my photo gallery at all, you should go to photos.rationalmind.net...now.
I also wrote an autobiography for my about page. What do you think?
November 16, 2003
In the first 15 days of November, I had 1008 unique search engine hits from Google, contributing to most of my 38,181 hits and 4,258 visits. Here are the top 8 queries:
- jewish racism
- cultural misunderstanding
- html compression
- george bush award for excellence in public service
- middle east terrorism
- victorian morality
- arguments for fox hunting
- prostitution and religion
U.S. takes hard line on Greenpeace
Looks like the FBI is finally prosecuting eco-terrorist organizations for being the criminal conspiracies they are.
Kabbalah is NOT a New Age movement...riiiight
I was browsing the web, when I came across the "Kabbalah Centre." It's basically Madonna's attempt to make some money from the New Age movement. I was sure that this was a new age deal when the first thing the video on the homepage said is “Kabbalah is NOT a New Age movement.” The web site is actually very well designed, and sells all sort of neat stuff, like a $36 piece of string (“The Red String protects us from the influences of the Evil Eye”) and $20 t-shirt with mystical "ego-conquering" powers (“Simply focus your eyes on the letters, then visualize destroying your ego.”)
Anyway, Rabbi Madonna has some advice for doctors:
I gotta get me some of that kabbalaic T3 ego-conquering power, baby, yeah!
November 15, 2003
No Comment
Trade is not a zero-sum game
The Bush administration is getting a lot of heat for the steel tariffs Bush agreed to impose on foreign steel importers, and rightly so. In granting the tariffs, Bush betrayed his alleged free-trade principles in a pragmatic move that is costing him much more than he bargained for. I hope not only for Bush’s sake, but much more for the sake of the economy that my income depends on, that he sticks to his principles on free trade. (And on national security, if that’s not asking too much.)
While the case against steel tariffs should be obvious, the bigger lesson is lost on the nations and organizations (such as WTO) threatening “retaliatory” tariffs. Their assumption is that trade is a zero-sum game, where the tariffs of one nation somehow “steal” the wealth of another. In retaliation, they threaten their own tariffs, won’t return the stolen wealth, but are supposed to put a stop to the leakage of any more. This is mercantilist nonsense, of course. Just like trade between any two individuals within a country, international trade is a case of voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. Tariffs imposed by any nation harm the producers of foreign exports in addition to the consumers within that nation. This applies equally to “first-strike” tariffs as well as to retaliatory tariffs. While retaliatory tariffs are a politically effective move because they can be targeted at politically nimble exporters to generate opposition within the “enemy” nation, the proper policy of any free country is to establish unconditional, unilateral, and permanent free trade. (With the exception of countries that pose a military threat, that is.)
As an aside, it is often argued that American steel manufacturers should get special treatment because European steel manufacturers get massive aid from the government. People fail to realize that European taxpayers are in effect paying for a large chunk of the steel we import from Europe. High American tariffs on imported steel are in effect a wealth transfer directly from the pockets of European taxpayers into the vault of the U.S. treasury dept, which has gained $650 million of hard-earned European money from imported steel tariffs since March 2002. On the down side, $680 million has been lost by American consumers due to the higher price of steel at home.
In a related note, check out Bruce Bartlett's latest article, which explains why “the existence of a surplus or deficit may tell us exactly the opposite of what the mercantilists believed. Deficits may be a sign of strength, while surpluses are a sign of weakness.”
Why Online Voting is a Good Idea
Much debate has been raised recently about the wisdom of online and electronic voting. Much of it has been confused by ignorance and fear of technology. As an “amateur expert” in computer technology and information security, I can say with confidence that electronic voting systems are inherently more secure, accurate, and less tolerant of tampering than any paper-based system could ever be.
Let’s examine some arguments against online voting, as the most commonly attacked version of electronic voting:
No paper trail:
Obviously, this is true by the definition of electronic voting. However just because there is no paper trail, does not mean that there is no electronic trail. In fact, digital trails are much longer lasting and much harder to erase then the physical version. For example, right now, I can retrieve information deleted and overwritten on my hard drive months ago. I can tell you exactly who has been to my website in the last year, what operating system, browser, and ISP they use, and which city they live in. With a warrant, the police could easily turn than into a name. Likewise, electronic and online voting systems can keep records than no one without physical access to the voting server, much more time than an election night, and very advanced expertise could alter. Yes, it is possible, but punching a few extra holes in ballots or simply “misplacing” a few thousand ballots from an opposition-party district is far easier.
E-voting systems can be hacked:
Any online computer system can be hacked -- in theory. But that hasn’t stopped banks from creating a nationwide electronic network. Even if you don’t use online banking, all your funds can be accessed remotely from any other bank or ATM machine in America. Yet despite trillions of dollars held in virtual savings accounts there has never been a case of a banking system being hacked. Yes, many people have impersonated identities to steal funds, but the 512-bit security keys the banking system uses is for all practical purposes impregnable. Compare that to picking a lock on a ballot box and punching a few extra holes in paper.
The identity of online voters can’t be confirmed:
Perhaps, but can the officials at your local election center confirm your identity? They can check your ID, but that can easily be faked. What if they’re the ones rigging the scam? Clearly, physical elections are no more secure to identity fraud than virtual ones. Compare the thick, outdated books currently used by election offices to state-wide databases that are automatically kept in sync for your latest information, and automatically scan for any anomalies or patterns better than a going through thick old books could do in a million years. Millions of digital-certificates that securely identity one’s identity to a third party are used by businesses today to conduction millions if not billions in transaction, and could surely be adapted for voting.
Lost data if the system crashes:
What is the a bank’s computer system crashes? Banks use a variety of means secure their data in case of a hardware or software failure. Transaction logging allows computer system to immediately recover lost data. “Hot” backup centers allow credit card processing centers to immediately recover from a failure without any lost data even if one of their facilities is completely vaporized. Certainly, something like this can be rigged for voting system.
Lost anonymity of voters:
Privacy is a real concern with distributed electronic systems, but one that can be effectively addressed. It is possible to “anonymize” votes immediately after they are received and the voters identity confirmed. As long as the system is designed with privacy and security in mind, this is not a major risk.
Besides the above arguments, consider that because electronic system store information digitally, in one and zeros, there can be no doubt as to which way a particular vote went. Voting results could be obtained immediately, and recounts and contested election dramas would be a thing of the past. More importantly, the largely non-voting technologically-savvy but politically apathetic generation would vote in much larger numbers. This in itself is not guaranteed to result in better politicians being elected, but more scrutiny of just who is getting elected will.
November 14, 2003
Opposing Online Sales Taxes is futile and counter-productive
Mike has published an editorial in the Batt deriding the proposed tax on Internet sales. His argument is that “if the government break[s] the barrier of taxation into the realm of the Internet, there is no reason for them to stop… Rather than seek new areas to tax or increase old ones, the government needs to cut back its current spending and programs.”
Mike fails to point out that consumers already pay taxes on the Internet whenever purchasing from online vendors based in state. (Or at least they are legally required to.) However, the bigger hole in his argument is that there is no essential difference between online and traditional sales. Any argument for or against sales taxes applies equally to both traditional and online sales. Given this fact, any attempt to carve out an exception for online taxes is bound to fail in the long run, just as any attempt to defend hunting on the grounds that they animals don’t suffer when they die is bound to fall apart.
The fatal flaw in both cases is that in arguing that the Internet should be *excluded* from sales taxes one implicitly acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with sales taxes per se. This turns the question of taxation into merely a question whether online commerce deserves any special treatment over traditional commerce. It does not.
Excluding online sales from taxation in effect amounts to giving special favors to a particular industry, and as such, is unjustified. Its exactly equivalent to giving tax breaks to politically nimble industries. In fact, that is exactly what is happening. Online-based companies are lining politician’s pockets and lobbying Washington in a hopeless attempt to carve out an exception for their industry. Because there is no rational reason why the tax law should apply to one group and not another, their effort is bound to fail. Besides, income taxes collected by the IRS, not sales taxes or the state tax agencies actually represent the most heinous and destructive form of taxation.
I say this as a partner of a web hosting service that has a lot to lose by the imposition of e-taxes – the service has a very low margin, and I’d rather close our doors than pay the accounting costs of charging taxes for the tiny transactions we deal with, since our current business is entirely under the table. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of similar micro - e-tailers who exist only because running a small business on the internet carries little or no bureaucratic overhead. Even a 1% tax would carry enough regulatory baggage to either shut them down, or discourage new ventures from ever starting up.
In short, if any protest against taxation is going to succeed, it will not be by carving out exclusions to popular or powerful industries. One must attack the root of the disease – the collectivist premise that theft is justified for the “common good.” If you wish to keep more of what you make, I suggest that you start by questioning the moral premise of taxation, not by jumping on the libertarian “less" or republican “more efficient” government bandwagons.
The Drexel U. philosophy club's campaign against Objectivism is just getting started. Check out this masterpiece of modern philosophy:
There were a number of positive replies to the original article as well.
Updates
I realized that my JavaScript quote include had some debug code that broke it. It should now work. In fact, you can see it in action @ Keenan’s new blog AbsoluteReason.com
You can still submit your favorite quotes to my database. I’ve only gotten one good quote and a few dozen insults so far. I get the distinct impression that most of my readers absolutely loath my views, which is somewhat puzzling. Don’t you people have an anti-war or Howard Dean rally to attend? I think this may be explained by the 80/20 rule.
November 13, 2003
MT-Blacklist
If you have a Movable Type blog, there is a high probability that you have been hit with a recent deluge of comment spam. To keep those spammers out, I highly recommend MT-Blacklist as a simple and effective solution. I understand that spammers are actively avoiding even trying to post to blogs with this plugin in order to avoid being blacklisted (the plugin can share your blacklist with other enabled blogs.)
(If you are hosting a Movable Type blog at one of my domains, and have ever given me your MT password, your blogs have already been immunized and deloused.)
November 12, 2003
Are You an Austrian?
Check out the "Are You an Austrian?" quiz at the Mises Inst. I scored 94/100 (96, if I hadn't misread a question.)
Not surprisingly, the two questions I got "wrong" are the Mises Institutes' take on "market anarchism" and pacificism. Ex: "A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas." and "Security [ie: the military], like any good desired by individuals in society, can and is provided by the market economy, which is to say, by individuals organizing themselves voluntarily within the matrix of private property and exchange." (Emphasis mine)
Last time I checked, Ludwig von Mises himself was no anarchist. Which brings up the question – is Austrian economics defined by what the actual Austrians thought, or what Rothbard’s anarchist followers believe?
November 11, 2003
Truth on Campus
Laurel mentioned a story about "a group of students at Stanford University in California [who are] demanding the ouster of the editor of the school's student paper because it published an ad with pictures of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks." The story inspired be to make the below image, which I recommend you add to your own website and link to http://campustruth.org
Here is the code:
<img src="http://rationalmind.net/images/ProIsrael1.gif" alt="The Truth About Israel" width="160" height="105" border="0">
November 10, 2003
I was browsing Google News today, and came across this editorial. The best part:
I don’t know about Drexel, but I went to a number of philosophy and agnostic club meetings at A&M. The usual format is usually as such: a speaker, usually a professor, wows the audience with an unintelligible attempt to prove that X is a “social construct” using enough logical calculus to make even a math major cry for mercy. Afterwards, the members (who have no clue what was just said, but feel enlightened already) gather into a circle and utter pronouncements such as “I get physically sick at seeing the suffering of others” (direct quote) at which point all the other members wow and feel even more enlightened. If there are enough upperclassmen who haven’t dropped out yet, the members usually proceed to one of the local bars and proceed to reach new levels of self-actualization with the aid of large volumes of booze, but without the aid of “judgement” or “reason.”
Arafat’s Looted Billions
CBS has some interesting revelations about Arafat’s finances. According to the story, he embezzled 1 to 3 billion dollars and directed it to his secret accounts in Israel and the Cayman islands. His wife receives a $100,000/month stipend for a lavish Paris mansion. He has looted billions from money that Israel gives to support the PLO, as well as the aid given by the US and other sources. He “financed a vast patronage system” to support his regime. He maintained “a system of monopolies in commodities -- like flour and cement -- that Arafat handed out to his cronies, who then turned around and fleeced the public.” The story just gets better and better: “The PLO's former treasurer told us he saw Saddam Hussein hand Arafat a $50 million check for supporting him during the first Gulf War. And there were other large gifts from the KGB and the Saudis.”
What the article doesn’t mention, is that Arafat’s corruption has been pointed out by Palestinians before: however they were harassed, imprisoned, or usually murdered before the western media paid it any attention. It was only the mass public revolt by the Palestinian public (How many papers printed that story?) that forced him to appoint an honest finance minister.
I was surprised to learn that among the billions looted by Arafat were millions in tax funds that Israel gave to support the PLO according to the Oslo accord. I don’t have any words to describe how atrocious and inexcusable it is for the Israeli government to agree to finance its own destruction by money stolen from the very citizens it exists to protect.
November 09, 2003
No Comment
"Driving only in first gear, not only do you prevent the Ferrari expressing its full power, but gradually you wear it out and thereby ruin a masterpiece of technology," Father Giordano Muraro wrote in the magazine Vita Pastorale.
November 08, 2003
New Photo Album
I'm spending the day creating a new gallery for my photo album. With 3,200 images taking up 880MB of space, this is truly a monumental task. You can keep track of my progress here.
Update: My new album is finished! What do you think of the theme?
Random quote generator
Do you like the quotes you see on my website? Would you like to add my random quote generator to your site? You can do so in a number of ways:- As a JavaScript include (easiest method): Paste the following text into your html:
<script language="Javascript" SRC="http://rationalmind.net/david/random.php?format=js"></script>
- As XML: Use this URL: http://rationalmind.net/david/random.php?format=xml
- As text: http://rationalmind.net/david/random.php
November 05, 2003
New Essay on Capitalism
Last Wednesday, I presented a talk on capitalism for the A&M Objectivism Club. My speech was fairly awful, but afterwards, I converted my outline into an essay to add to this site. After finishing the first part, I noticed an unread copy of "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" sitting on my bookshelf – one of a dozen books I bought for my recent birthday. I decided to hold off writing the last part until I finished it, but that will take at least two weeks because I’m participating in the business school’s CASE competition. Big bucks and lucrative job offers are at stake, so not much bloggin’ this week, I’m afraid. However, if you’re interested in a design for an enterprise-level email marketing system, let me know.
November 04, 2003
Al-Qa'ida website hosted in Houston, TX
Did you know that Al-Qa'ida has an official website? Unfortunately for Al-Qa'ida, its former webmaster met an untimely demise in Saudi Arabia last month, but their website has been up and down since then under various domains. The site is no joke: "Al Qaeda is said to use this site as a means of communicating with their cells."
I did a little background checking on the web servers providing the hosting and DNS services. Three locations came up: Madinah, Saudi Arabia, Ashburn, VA, and Houston, TX. I'm suprised they didn't just host it in NYC.
For a sample of the content, check out this Free Republic post. Needless to say, a number of web servers in Ashburn, Houston, and Saudi Arabia were hacked last month under not-so mysterious circumstances.
(See for yourself: do a WHOIS on islamray.org and faroq.org)
Update: Wired reports that "[The Al-Qa'ida] site is familiar with certain hosting companies, exploiting their security problems and cracking confidential passwords." I've never heard of a "site" that could hack, but I can't say whether the web hosts in question knew which sites they were (are?) hosting. If you're wondering whether terrorist groups really have the balls to host their websites in America, I suggest you check out this tutorial on how to shut down a Hamas website.