UPDATE III: ALL The Victims of September 11

Iraq, Jihad, Just War, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, War

The “SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 VICTIMS” is a site dedicated to America’s victims of the September 11, 2001 assault. It is profoundly moving (even if the hyperlinks to each individual profile do not display). The list, however, is woefully incomplete. All told, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians have died due to the actions the American state took to avenge the murder of those who perished in the WORLD TRADE CENTER, on AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHTS 11 and 77, on UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHTS 175 and 93, and in the PENTAGON.

On 10.11.06, I made a point of clarifying a study in The Lancet detailing the direct and indirect casualties of our invasion of Iraq:

“In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: heart attack, stroke and chronic illness. Since Iraq became another neocon object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence, according to the report.”

Moreover, “since March 2003, Iraqis have suffered from an excess of deaths, if you will.”

The relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months. But ‘the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion.

In 2006, The Lancet cited a figure of 650,000 Iraqis, over and above the mortality rate during the Saddam era. Among these deceased Iraqis were thousands of individuals who had died because, since the invasion, the incidence of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, stress and displacement-related deaths, deaths associated with a lack of health care and potable water, etc had increased twofold, at least.

The total figure is now out of date.

Tomorrow, Sept. 11, think of our casualties—and of those innocent lives we shattered to avenge our dead.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): NEED TO KNOW. “September 9, 2011: 9/11, ten years later” is a PBS program that offered decent 9/11 programing.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): “9/11” by Nebojsa Malic of the “Gray Falcon” fame.

UPDATE III (Sept. 19): THE RECKONING: AMERICA AND THE WORLD A DECADE AFTER 9/11.

Freedom Fighters Vs. Freedom Deniers; Truth Vs. Untruth

Conservatism, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Pseudo-intellectualism

If economic historian Tom Woods and XM radio host Mike Church made it onto Freedom Watch’s often-misnamed Freedom-Fighters panel, I would be inclined to tune in more often. These men have fidelity to truth and reality. It was on display during an appearance on Judge Napoliaton’s Fox Business show.

More often than not, I switch off. Sure, the occasional freedom fighter finds his way onto the segment, but the Freedom Fighters Panel is set-up, in general, in the mold followed by every other cable and network show. It’s positively postmodernist. Present the public with two competing “perspectives” or worldviews. By doing so, you mislead Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber into thinking that indeed there are two realities, and that he may decide which one is more compelling.

The truth is that truth is immutable; it is not relative. There is, moreover, too little truth in media. Truth cannot afford to be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

Gasbag Gasparino/Nancy Skinner/Caroline Heldman/Tara Dowdell/—these Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

Except, that—although I know nothing about the Dewey Decimal Classification—I believe that in a library, Holocaust denying literature would not be classified under history. If I am correct in this last assumption, why classify the reality defying bunk spewed by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, “Charlie” Rangel, and other assorted TV mouths, as versions of the truth? For that is what the panel format suggests.

Naturally, the dueling “perspectives,” political-panel format is quite compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC, and other progressive media outlets.

The Republican Reagan Epiphany

Ann Coulter, Democrats, Political Philosophy, Pseudoscience, Republicans, Ron Paul, States' Rights

“Southerners are extremely patriotic,” said Ann Coulter on Fox News Business, while explaining the phenomenon of a Southern Democrat (like Rick Perry), who has always been far more conservative than the northern Republican. “[Southern Democrats] were not going to remain with the party of George McGovern,” observed Coulter, who is, arguably, the Republican Party’s most powerful and most devoted pundit.

That’s a little deceptive. Is it at all possible that the much-maligned Southern Democrat has found it hard to join the party of Abraham Lincoln? Perish the thought!

Ann Coulter says, correctly—and at last—that Ronald Reagan should not be held up as “the touchstone for every [other Republican] candidate.” If only Ms. Coulter was capable of arriving at a similar epiphany about Lincoln, but that would demand too much by way of philosophical integrity.

UPDATED: Euro-Bondage & The Next Tier of Tyrants

Constitution, Debt, Democracy, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Nationhood, Political Economy

The following is excerpted from “Euro-Bondage & The Next Tier of Tyrants,” my new WND.COM column:

“On Wednesday, Sept 7, patriotic Germans received bad news. A group of jurists and economists had petitioned the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Their case was that Germany’s ‘participation in the euro rescue fund packages’ undermined the democratic and property rights of German citizens, as elected officials had little say in these deals.

The high court rejected these arguments, although it did crack a Teutonic joke: Presiding judge Andreas Vosskuhle recommended that, in the future, the people’s representatives get more involved in deciding how the money of constituents is distributed.

The contagion of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe has been exacerbated by the financial collectivism imposed by the Eurozone and the wider European Union (EU), whereby the more productive member-states foot the bill for their profligate neighbors. The latter “PIGS” states are Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.

And now Italy; it is teetering because of the Italian government’s liabilities—compounded, as in Greece, by the insatiable demands of an ever-accreting oinks sector.

A world perfected by global central planners is one in which wealth consumers live at the expense of wealth creators; where the rich are coerced into paying for the poor, the North for the South.

In this increasingly centralized dispensation, financier-cum-philanthropist George Soros holds sway. Soros has generally acted against the sovereign coin, and as a proxy for centralized power and bankers.

Just last year, Soros attempted to muscle Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel into printing and inflating her country’s currency—perhaps not to Weimar-Republic levels, but to Obama banana-republic standards …”

Read the complete column, “Euro-Bondage & The Next Tier of Tyrants,” now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

UPDATE: Americans have just heard their insufferable president propose $400 billion more in deficit-spending, to be paid for not by cuts to government but by a future, slowdown in the rate of the growth of government, over ten years.

How bad are American federal policy makers? Put it this way: The European Central Bank is more prudent than the Federal Reserve Bank, by far: It has raised interest rates over the last few years. Moreover, as bad as the Eurozone’s bailout culture has become, debtor countries have been forced to commit to austerity measures as a condition of bailout. Any parallels in the US?

Another point in favor of the Europeans: the EU is more likely to dissolve than these United States.