From television revealing that spaghetti grows on trees to advertisements for the left-handed burger, the tradition of April Fool's Day stories in the media has a weird and wonderful history.
Here are 10 of the top April Fool's Day pranks ever pulled off, as judged by the San Diego-based Museum of Hoaxes for their notoriety, absurdity, and number of people duped.
-- In 1957, a BBC television show announced that thanks to a mild winter and the virtual elimination of the spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. Footage of Swiss farmers pulling strands of spaghetti from trees prompted a barrage of calls from people wanting to know how to grow their own spaghetti at home.
-- In 1985, Sports Illustrated magazine published a story that a rookie baseball pitcher who could reportedly throw a ball at 270 kilometers per hour (168 miles per hour) was set to join the New York Mets. Finch was said to have mastered his skill -- pitching significantly faster than anyone else has ever managed -- in a Tibetan monastery. Mets fans' celebrations were short-lived.
-- Sweden in 1962 had only one television channel, which broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to receive color pictures by pulling a nylon stocking over the screen. In fact, they had to wait until 1970.
-- In 1996, American fast-food chain Taco Bell announced that it had bought Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, a historic symbol of American independence, from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell.
Outraged citizens called to express their anger before Taco Bell revealed the hoax. Then-White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale and said the Lincoln Memorial in Washington had also been sold and was to be renamed the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial after the automotive giant.
-- In 1977, British newspaper The Guardian published a seven-page supplement for the 10th anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semicolon-shaped islands. A series of articles described the geography and culture of the two main islands, named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse.
-- In 1992, US National Public Radio announced that Richard Nixon was running for president again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." They even had clips of Nixon announcing his candidacy. Listeners flooded the show with calls expressing their outrage. Nixon's voice actually turned out to be that of impersonator Rich Little.
-- In 1998, a newsletter titled New Mexicans for Science and Reason carried an article that the state of Alabama had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14159 to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.
-- Burger King, another American fast-food chain, published a full-page advertisement in USA Today in 1998 announcing the introduction of the "Left-Handed Whopper," specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new burger included the same ingredients as the original, but the condiments were rotated 180 degrees. The chain said it received thousands of requests for the new burger, as well as orders for the original "right-handed" version.
-- Discover Magazine announced in 1995 that a highly respected biologist, Aprile Pazzo (Italian for April Fool), had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. The creatures were described as having bony plates on their heads that became burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speed -- a technique they used to hunt penguins.
-- Noted British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on the radio in 1976 that at 9:47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event, in which Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, would cause a gravitational alignment that would reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment of the planetary alignment, they would experience a floating sensation. Hundreds of people called in to report feeling the sensation.
#1
My fave is that for one hour, and one hour only, sometime on April 1st, after listening to their complete message, suddenly the screen will change on zombo.com, taking you to Bill Gates personal website where you can download for free all Microsoft software, permanently registration free. It only lasts for an hour, so it is best to have a download accelerator so you can grab as much as possible. It is hosted by Microsoft, so there is no bandwidth limitation on the hundreds of people getting Vista, Office, and all the rest for free.
#2
One time I left a note for my boss to call a Mr. Lyon, who had left his number. Of course the number was to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. They thought my boss was trying to play a joke, and were pretty pissed.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
03/30/2007 17:05 Comments ||
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#3
Well, Fred is probably familiar with a few more. I'm sure he's stood up a HTCPCP server compliant with RFC 2324, for example. That's the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, you know. To quote it: "No options were given for decaffeinated coffee. What's the point?"
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/30/2007 18:32 Comments ||
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#4
He, he he. Some of my co-workers, back in the day, left a telephone message form for one of the NCOs, alleged to be from one Colonel Sanders. Yes, it was the number for the local KFC concession, and yes, that particular NCO was noted for being particularly gullible. And also, a bit of an ass-kisser.
I start to wonder whether it might not be time for us to get as nasty with other countries as they do with us.
As we wait anxiously to see what will happen to our 15 hostages - for that is what they are - in Teheran, we should feel undiluted rage at the behaviour of other countries and institutions towards us.
Mind you, when those third parties witness the drivelling weakness of the Foreign Office over the last week, and in particular the pathetic show put up by our Foreign Secretary - who must surely be just about the worst in our history - who can blame them?
There is no doubt the 15 were in international waters when captured, or that they were undertaking a United Nations mission in pursuit of upholding UN resolutions. Yet the best the UN itself can do is pass a weak-kneed resolution describing its grave concern, rather than a tougher one calling upon all nations to deplore Irans behaviour.
This is all the fault of Russia, to whom Mr Blair routinely cosies up, and whom the civilised world invites to its annual G8 summit meetings. Russia seems to think it isnt worth deploring the kidnap of our sailors, so we had better start to show Russia what we think of it: by uninviting it from the G8 this year, and every year until it learns some manners.
When not busy ordering the murders of his opponents, Vladimir Putin seems to enjoy hobnobbing with the leaders of civilised countries, so such a sanction would hurt.
We dont have the means to engage in gunboat diplomacy with Iran, and any special forces operation would be fraught with risks both for the hostages and their rescuers.
For the moment, ever-stricter sanctions on Iran seems the only answer. America is resolute about this. So too, oddly, is the worlds greatest sanction-busting nation, France. So the scope for tightening the economic ratchet on Iran, and the means to do so, look healthy.
However, we should be under no illusions about the effectiveness of such weapons.
Saddam Hussein, after all, was put under sanctions for years. Real hardship was caused to his people, but almost none at all to him and his ruling clique.
President Ahmadinejad of Iran has already threatened Britain about our involvement of third parties - that is, the UN - in the present dispute, showing his utter contempt for that organisation.
He would treat sanctions with similar disdain, happily cutting off the noses of his own people to spite their faces. And all the time, the threat he and his inherent instability pose to us all would never cease growing.
Whatever the immediate outcome of this crisis, Britain has some hard decisions to make. Is it worthwhile, any longer, to work through the United Nations?
So long as a morally warped nation like Putins Russia calls the shots in the Security Council, no.
We can make debating points about how odd it is that Putin deplores Islamic nutters when they attack his forces but is relaxed about them attacking ours, but in the end there is no point in bothering.
The UN showed itself to be weak with Saddam Hussein. It is no better now.
If we are going to continue to try to be a player in the Middle East, then we have to throw in our lot with the Americans, for no-one else makes the blindest bit of difference there.
#1
We may dismiss the statements by the British captives admitting fault as blatently false, coerced readings, but many around the world do not. That number will grow too - Goebbels understood that you can make most people believe even the most outrageous lie if you tell it often enough and strongly enough. Once enough people doubt the British position sanctions won't be enforcable. The West continues to be beaten in the propaganda war, which is one place we SHOULD hold all the advantages.
#2
I don't understand why the British don't simply remove their diplomatic personnel from Tehran and then give them an ultimatum: return the prisoners within 24 hours or your oil refinery will be nothing but a mass of twisted, smoking wreckage. And, after that, if you harm the first one of our soldiers we will destroy ever Iranian oil platform in the Gulf. The MMMs think they've got the upper hand. What they need to discover is that they've grabbed a lion by the tail and he's now VERY angry.
Posted by: Mac ||
03/30/2007 10:31 Comments ||
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#3
"I start to wonder whether it might not be time for us to get as nasty with other countries as they do with us."
You-- and we as well-- should never have STOPPED getting as nasty with other countries as they do with us.
The world overall would be a MUCH better place for everyone in it, if the Anglosphere did some serious ass-kicking instead of all this "civilized", diplomatic farting-around.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/30/2007 11:42 Comments ||
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#4
Well, at least SOME brits are getting it.
Hopefully more find that the UN and the EU path is the path to slow death and ruin.
#7
Notice what the writer thinks "getting nasty means: univiting Russia to G-8 meetings, deploring rather than expressing grave concern, unilaterally imposing stricter sanctions on Iran of the sort that the writer acknowledges only enriched Saddam Hussein at the expense of his people. The pivot of this piece is this one sentence paragraph:
We dont have the means to engage in gunboat diplomacy with Iran, and any special forces operation would be fraught with risks both for the hostages and their rescuers.
#8
They got a National Christmas Tree they can dim? Put every flag in the country at half mast?
Give Jimmy Carter a call. He can fill you in on all the details...
#9
It's pathetic when the British upper lip is stiffer than its ... er, backbone. Yes, backbone is the word I was looking for. Where's all their uppity toffee-nosed blather about "Soft Power" now? Power is a mailed fist, not some flaccid noodle.
Nowhere, nowhere has the West inflicted greater harm in return for what was done to it by Islam. Where's the punishment in that? If we're being stabbed, what use is it to only kick our attacker in the shins?
Damaging the West, and even just threatening it, should be rewarded with an order of magnitude greater retaliation. When ten Muslims die for every Westerner in whatever latest Islamic atrocity, maybe then we'll see some results. The actual number is probably more like two orders of magnitude but I'm willing to start slow.
And, please, do not try to use Iraq as an example of civilian casulties outnumbering that of our troops. Civilian Iraqis have been killed almost exclusively by their fellow Muslims. If someone has the actual civilian Iraqi death toll directly attributable to American troop actions, I'd love to see it. I'm confident it hovers somewhere well below 50% of our own losses.
Islam must be made to feel our pain. Bomb our trains, watch some revered shrine get demolished, preferrably at prayer time on Friday. Fly loaded passenger jets into our occupied skyscrapers and kiss goodbye a major metropolitan center in the MME (Muslim Middle East).
We must institute disproportionate retaliation if we are ever to have any hope of getting Islam's attention. Muslims must be taught to quake in petrifying fear of hearing about some new Islamic atrocity. The lot of them must be inspired to abandon their cities in anticipation of carpet bombing whenever another Islamic atrocity happens. They must be so inconvenienced and bedeviled that with each new terrorist attack they rush off to the nearest mosque and slit the Wahhabist imam's throat.
Once Muslims are feeling greater pain than we are, perhaps then we'll begin to see some changes. Until then, we are only rewarding their infantilism and savagery. Not too good of a policy, that.
ABSURDITY seems the only constant surrounding Muslim Australia's politics of muftidom. Last Sunday the Australian National Imams Council, a newly convened group of imams from across the country, considered the future of the position of mufti of Australia in response to the contention surrounding Taj Din al-Hilali. Of course, al-Hilali was appointed to that position by an entirely separate body: the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. Technically, the Imams Council can no more dissolve or affirm al-Hilali's title than it can appoint the Pope. But let us not be detained by such procedural trifles. Indications are that the federal body is relieved to be out of the process and most seem content with the new council stepping in, even if it makes sticklers for governance break out in a rash.
The early signs seem cautiously promising. The future of the office of mufti, for the first time, will be decided following a consultative process with Muslim communities. This will take about three months, at which point a subgroup of 15 imams - importantly, from across Australia - will determine what should happen. But most encouraging are the criteria for any new mufti, should one be appointed, that emerged from the weekend meeting.
That person "must be able to communicate in the English language and also be aware of the social, economic and political context of Australia", explained Mohamad Abdalla, speaking on the imams' behalf. They are looking for someone who is "absolutely careful in the statements that he makes".
In the meantime, the status quo prevails. Both John Howard and Kevin Rudd, probably sensing an opportunity for political mileage, are spinning this as a failure to deal with al-Hilali. But only the wilfully blind can fail to see that this outcome spells the end for al-Hilali as mufti of Australia. The specified criteria correspond precisely with the reasons for which al-Hilali is most regularly criticised. If the imams stick to it, it is inconceivable that he could remain.
The real question, though, is not whether al-Hilali's days as mufti are drawing to a close but whether he will be replaced. It is not so much a matter of who should be mufti as whether anyone should. The threshold question so often ignored in the media is whether the position should exist at all. There are many reasons it should not. Perhaps the most potent of these is that it is alien to the classical tradition of Islam to conceive of muftis in this way, as aspiring to some kind of office.
The best translation for mufti I have encountered is religio-legal consultant. For the bulk of Islamic history, muftis were private individuals with strong scholastic credentials from whom ordinary people sought advice about their real-life conundrums. Their function - like that of most Islamic theologians - was a private, even informal one. This reflects the fact that, at least in Sunni Islam, there is no church-like structure. One obtains prominence as an Islamic scholar really by a process of natural selection, not by any ordained religious order. There is no clergy. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an Islamic cleric.
As it happens, the idea of appointing a mufti of a geographical area, whether a city or country, is an Ottoman invention that did not find its full expression until the mid-16th century, almost a millennium into Islamic history. The Ottomans essentially created an ecclesiastical hierarchy that bears all the hallmarks of the Christian Church. Indeed, Ottoman decline accompanied the political ascendancy of the Christian West, and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the post-Ottoman Muslim world retained these clerical structures as a form of mimicry. Welcome to the Christianisation of Islam.
The shift from mufti as consultant to mufti as officer is a symptom of this. And there is little evidence it has brought any significant benefit. It has effectively reduced the mufti to a media figure and, correspondingly, has brought more contention than anything else.
At present, the Imams Council is a collaborative body, not a religious order. Its spokesman is not necessarily the most senior but, according to Abdalla, is the one "who can communicate on behalf of the Muslims in a way that is consistent with ... the Australian culture and values". That is precisely as it should be and it should go no further. The office of mufti has been one import from Christendom that Australian Islam could have done without.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
They are looking for someone who is "absolutely careful in the statements that he makes".
Translation: We need a guy who won't blow our cover by spouting off unexpectedly.
Where is any criticism of al-Hilali as being "un-Islamic" or some such genuine censure? All that's happening is a propaganda shift from agit-prop over to covert communication. Australia should not be fooled by this new layer of protective coloration. No matter how well you camouflage a turd, it still stinks.
GUANTANAMO Bay is not nice. It is not a hotel, but a prison to hold men suspected of working for the world's most lethal terrorists.
PUT away your "Free David Hicks!" signs. Scrape the "Bring David Hicks home" stickers off your cars. As the man himself now admits, he did indeed help al-Qaida. To be specific, he did aid the terrorist group, which has so far killed more than 100 of your fellow Australians, directly or through proxies in Bali, and murdered thousands more civilians besides. And that's worth at least the five years in jail he's already served, wouldn't you think? Plus a few more.
But when did Hicks's deluded fans show any serious concern for what Hicks did, or prepared himself to do? Even now hear them claim that his confession in a plea bargain with US military prosecutors this week was meaningless -- something simply beaten out of him.
From the International Commission of Jurists' Glenn McGowan: "Who amongst us would not consider, in his shoes, pleading guilty just to escape a hellhole?"
From Liberty Victoria's Brian Walters: "After five years in shocking conditions . . . any ray of light showing a way out would be taken, and it has been."
From The Age: "Desperation drives the deal."
And from Greens leader Bob Brown: "His guilty plea is simply a plea for release for exit from the inhumane Guantanamo Bay gulag."
It is typical of the often hysterical excuses made for Hicks, and laced with anti-Americanism, that Brown equates Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Union's gulag -- equates the imprisonment of some 400 accused terrorists, many caught on the battlefield, with the imprisonment of 18 million civilians in conditions so brutal that a million or more died. So routine is this kind of exaggeration that even ABC reporters told of their surprise this week at seeing Hicks at his hearing looking fat, healthy, tanned and jokey, after all, rather than gaunt, pale and crushed.
But, yes, Guantanamo Bay is not nice. It is not a hotel, you see, but a prison to hold and question men suspected of working for the world's most lethal terrorists. And it's also true Hicks pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence -- as criminals often do here. But it doesn't follow that his plea is thus worthless.
First, the military commission trying him cannot accept it unless it is convinced it was made voluntarily. More importantly, Hicks would have pleaded guilty only if he thought the case against him was strong. And when you consider even the evidence already public you will see he did no more than admit to the blindingly obvious.
Here's what is not disputed by anyone. In 1999, Hicks joined Albania's Kosovo Liberation Army. He then converted to Islam and trained for two months in Pakistan with Lashkar-e-Toiba, an Islamist group known for terrorism. In a letter to his family in August 2000, he boasted he'd served in Kashmir, where Pakistani soldiers confront Indian troops, and "got to fire hundreds of bullets." In January 2001, he went to Afghanistan to join al-Qaida, which had already bombed US embassies and publicly demanded "all Muslims able to do so to kill Americans -- whether civilian or military".
He was to stay and train with al-Qaida for months more than any other Westerner, and told his family he'd become a "practical soldier", preparing for martyrdom. He hoped to ensure "Western-Jewish domination is finished, so we live under Muslim rule again".
This forced his father to at one stage admit: "He's a terrorist in our eyes and he's fighting against his own."
How committed was he? On September 11, 2001, Hicks was staying with a friend in Pakistan, and saw the al-Qaida attacks on television. The very next day he was back in Afghanistan, with his al-Qaida unit. Hicks says he returned just to get his clothes and leave. But in the two months before his capture, he'd served as an airport guard in Kandahar and gone, armed, to the front at Konduz to fight coalition soldiers there. Our own soldiers were then in the field.
Hicks denies he shot anyone. But did he support al-Qaida? Yes, he says. And yes, says the evidence.
Free David Hicks, you say? Free yourself, rather, of this mad need to free our foes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
D ***ng, forgot the source but I believe it was a Euro blog that had an article ascribing that Stalin may had eliminated 50 Milyuhn??? Soviets during the pre-WW2 Purges + Collectivizations, which goes far in [partially]helping to explain how the Nazis destroyed the pre-BARBAROSSA Red Army so quickly. Essentially Stalin killed off roughly 1/2 +/- of the pre-WW2 population of the Soviet Union , wid out Hitler having to invade anything???
#2
It is typical of the often hysterical excuses made for Hicks, and laced with anti-Americanism, that Brown equates Guantanamo Bay with the Soviet Union's gulag -- equates the imprisonment of some 400 accused terrorists, many caught on the battlefield, with the imprisonment of 18 million civilians in conditions so brutal that a million or more died.
Just another facet of the Bush-Hitler disinformation campaign led by the left. Their pathetic attempts to draw moral equivalency between America's Global War on Terrorism and history's most gruesome tyrants is rapidly becoming as treasonous as it is tiresome. Most astonishing of all is how they seek to absolve Islam of its genocidal obsession while simultaneously accusing America of the same. It is this sort of moral hypocrisy that makes the left more irrelevant with each passing day.
#4
How little those "liberals" care about those who are prisoners in Guantanamo!!! I mean in the Cuban jails of Guantanamo who make the American ones look like Club Med and whose inmates haven't killed or tried to enslave anyone.
#5
If I remember correctly, The Black Book of Communism, edited by Stephane Courtois, suggests figures of 20 million for the Soviet Union and about 65 milion for Communist China. He may be off a few million for the USSR, I don't know.
I just wish people wouldn't just blame Stalin. He was responsible, but he had lots of willing help.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/30/2007 7:51 Comments ||
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#6
Update...
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The prison sentence of an Australian detainee who pleaded guilty to a terrorism-related charge would be limited to seven years under terms of a plea bargain, a military judge at Guantanamo Bay said Friday.
The judge, Marine Corps. Col. Ralph Kohlmann, revealed the terms of the agreement at a hearing Friday on whether to accept David Hicks' guilty plea. It was not immediately clear whether the maximum sentence accounts for the five years Hicks has already spent at Guantanamo Bay. Under an agreement between the United States and Australia, Hicks will serve any sentence in Australia.
#4
In its haste to defeat the FLN, the French army had left a crucial hostage to political fortune. Military commanders had authorized army interrogators to use certain forms of torture to extract information from suspected terrorist detainees. This is not the place to debate the merits or demerits of torture in counterinsurgency operations--for the record, Galula himself considered it counterproductive. Nor was French opinion particularly sensitive to brutality per se; the FLN's own use of torture and outright butchery--Arab loyalists routinely had their tongues and testicles cut off and their eyes gouged out--had aroused little or no outrage. But, as with the incidents at Abu Ghraib 50 years later, news of the army practice gave domestic opponents of the war a weapon with which to discredit the entire enterprise.
It remains a consistent and curious pattern how Islamic torture and atrocities go entirely uncommented upon by those who simultaneously deplore the slightest abuse of power by their own nation's troops. For the Left, whose moral equivalency supposedly knows no bounds, this glaring exception exposes a deep and abiding hypocrisy.
It would seem that, no matter how much evidence to the contrary, the Left refuses to abandon its cherished notion that all interpersonal transaction must follow the Zero Sum Equation (i.e., whereby for someone to gain another must lose). This imbues the Left with a profound sense of guilt and self-hatred for their various socities' successes knowing, as they do, that all of this tremendous wealth was snatched from the hands of starving third world peasants who, in reality, could not produce the tiniest fraction of such treasure even if they had multiple lifetimes to do it in.
Undeterred by reason or logic, the Left continues to flog itself, and everyone else within range of their lash, over the West's stupendous success. That our troops should prevail in battle seems to them to be the ultimate outrage. Our foes are granted the most heinous and horrific liberties in order to thwart the hegemony of free market capitalism and its undeserved quality of life.
No hijacker, bomb vest murderer or car bomber can possibly commit an atrocity which exceeds that of the West's decadent life of luxury. The Left continues to adore the Noble Savage, even though one has never existed. It accords even the most brutal and unflinching barbarians a free hand in their savagery just so long as it is turned against the tides of progress. They do this depsite the fact that recent progress is all that allows such counterproductive individuals as themselves to survive. Much unlike in the not too distant past when such misfits were tied inside a sack filled with a dog, cat and rooster and then thrown off of the nearest bridge.
Rudy Giuliani is the real fiscal conservative in the 2008 presidential race. That's why I'm endorsing him for president.
Most Americans know that Mr. Giuliani turned around America's largest city. They know he cut crime and welfare in half; they know that he improved the quality of life from Times Square to Coney Island and everywhere in between. And they witnessed his Churchillian leadership following the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
Less well known is the mayor's fiscal record. Nonetheless, conservatives will find it impressive. He built New York's resurgence not just on fundamental police work, but also on a foundation of fiscal discipline. He cut taxes and the size of government and turned an inherited deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.
Mr. Giuliani entered office in 1994 with a $2.3 billion budget deficit handed to him by his predecessor, Mayor David Dinkins. Liberal conventional wisdom held that the only way to close the gap was to raise taxes while cutting back on basic city services such as sanitation. The new mayor rejected this advice--in fact, he famously threw the report recommending tax hikes in the trash! Instead, he set out to restore fiscal discipline to the "ungovernable city"--and achieved results that Reagan Republicans can applaud.
In his first budget address Mr. Giuliani explained that he would "cut taxes to attract jobs so our people can work." While lots of politicians make promises about cutting taxes Mr. Giuliani delivered, overcoming the initial resistance of the overwhelmingly Democratic City Council. He ultimately prevailed 23 times, including cuts in sales, personal income, commercial rent and hotel occupancy taxes. He understood that these taxes were not revenue producers, but counterproductive job killers.
When he left office after eight years, New Yorkers had saved over $9 billion, while enjoying their lowest tax burden in decades. The private sector, which had been hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs in the years before he took office, produced over 423,000 new jobs. Meanwhile the unemployment rate was cut in half. Businesses responded to Mr. Giuliani's reforms by returning to the center of city life.
So when he talks about his belief in supply-side economics, its not just theory, it's a plan he has already succeeded at putting into action. He's seen the results of supply-side economics first hand--higher revenues from lower taxes.
Controlling government spending is another pledge often made by politicians. Conservative voters now know to be skeptical of such claims. But Mr. Giuliani has a record they can have confidence in. His first budget cut spending for the first time in the city since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s--and over the course of his administration he controlled the city's spending while federal government spending grew by over 40% and average state spending ballooned by over 60%. Mr. Giuliani always made fiscal discipline a priority: instructing city commissioners to cut agency budgets even when the deficits had turned to surpluses.
Mr. Giuliani set out to cut the size of city government, insisting that New York should live within its means. New Yorkers saw their quality of life improve with more effective delivery of services while the bureaucratic ranks were being thinned by nearly 20,000--a near 20% decrease in city headcount, excluding police officers and teachers. He increased the number of cops and teachers because he understood that public safety and quality education are what we expect in return for our tax dollars, not partisan job protection or union featherbedding. As mayor, he proved that government can be smaller and smarter--more efficient and more effective.
Rudy Giuliani can unite the Republican Party and restore our traditional claim as the party of fiscal conservatism. He has already proven he can stand up to liberal special interest groups and achieve tax cuts, even with a Democrat-controlled City Council. That's the kind of leadership we need in Washington. That's the kind of leadership that will inspire the next generation of the Reagan Revolution. And that's why America's Mayor should be America's next president.
#1
Rudy gets good grades on the fiscal side, on national security issues and on affirmative action.
His stance on gay marriage (for it), gun control (for restrictive measures), abortion (govt should fund it), illegal immigrants (modified amnesty), are a bit harder to deal with.
"Our bill calls for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq so that we can focus more fully on the real war on terror, which is in Afghanistan."
-- Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 8
The Senate and the House have both passed bills for ending the Iraq War, or at least liquidating the American involvement in it. The resolutions, approved by the barest majorities, were underpinned by one unmistakable theme: wrong war, wrong place, distracting us from the real war that is elsewhere.
Where? In Afghanistan. The emphasis on Afghanistan echoed across the Democratic aisle in Congress from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee to former admiral and now Rep. Joe Sestak. It is a staple of the three leading Democratic candidates for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. It is the constant refrain of their last presidential candidate, John Kerry, and of their current party leader, Howard Dean, who complains "we don't have enough troops in Afghanistan. That's where the real war on terror is."
Of all the arguments for pulling out of Iraq, its comparative unimportance vis- a-vis Afghanistan is the least serious. And not just because this argument assumes that the world's one superpower, which spends more on defense every year than the rest of the world combined, does not have the capacity to fight an insurgency in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan. But because it assumes that Afghanistan is strategically more important than Iraq.
Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer -- a Martian -- and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources, no industrial and no technological infrastructure. The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure which, though suffering decay in the later Saddam years, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e. wrong) hands. Add to that the fact that its strategic location would give its rulers inordinate influence over the entire Persian Gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf states. Then ask your Martian: Which is the more important battle? He would not even understand why you are asking the question.
Al-Qaeda has provided the answer many times. Osama bin Laden, the one whose presence in Afghanistan presumably makes it the central front in the war on terror, has been explicit that "the most serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War that is raging in Iraq." Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has declared that Iraq "is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era.''
And it's not just what al-Qaeda says, it's what al-Qaeda does. Where are they funneling the worldwide recruits for jihad? Where do all the deranged suicidists who want to die for Allah gravitate? It's no longer Afghanistan, but Iraq. That's because they recognize the greater prize.
The Democratic insistence on the primacy of Afghanistan makes no strategic sense. Instead, it reflects a sensibility. They would rather support the Afghan War because its origins are cleaner, the casus belli clearer, the moral texture of the enterprise more comfortable. Afghanistan is a war of righteous revenge and restitution, law enforcement on the grandest of scales. As senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden put it, "If there was a totally just war since World War II, it is the war in Afghanistan.''
If our resources are so stretched that we have to choose one front, the Martian would choose Iraq. But that is because, unlike a majority of Democratic senators, he did not vote four years earlier to authorize the war in Iraq, a vote for which many have a guilty conscience to be now soothed retroactively by pulling out and fighting the "totally just war."
But you do not decide where to fight on the basis of history; you decide on the basis of strategic realities of the ground. You can argue about our role in creating this new front and question whether it was worth taking that risk in order to topple Saddam Hussein. But you cannot reasonably argue that in 2007 Iraq is not the most critical strategic front in the war on terror. There's no escaping its centrality. Nostalgia for the "good war'' in Afghanistan is perhaps useful in encouraging anti-war Democrats to increase funding that is really needed there. But it is not an argument for abandoning Iraq.
#1
Joe Biden put it, "If there was a totally just war since World War II, it is the war in Afghanistan.''
Joe, the only reason we went into Afghanistan was because AQ was there. No other reason to be there. We've been killing AQ by the thousands in Iraq all this time. Even the Iraqi are feed up with them and have joined us killing AQ.
For the Donks, it's never been about 'good' or 'right'. It's been about POWER. If, in the end, that means selling out America, they'll do it.
#2
Pelosi is brain dead. Shiites are using Iraq as a springboad against the Arabian Peninsula. US retreat will deliver a territorial present to the Ayatollahs.
#6
1. WH4439, the government spends $10 billion on lunch.
2. It's a procurement issue. What this has to do with betraying the country is obtuse at best.
3. Invoking Halliburton is sooooo 2003. Try something fresh, okay?
Posted by: Jonathan ||
03/30/2007 11:00 Comments ||
Top||
#8
The amount of questionable or unsupported charges to the U.S. by contractors for Iraq reconstruction may wind up exceeding the $10 billion found so far by auditors
Stop reading DailyKKKos and use your brain. Lemme translate it for you: If the charges cannot be supported by contractors, they will not get paid.
#9
So WH, you would deny our troops in combat zones food, water, fuel, clean uniforms and a modicum of comfort just to satiate your lust for conspiracy theories? Funny how you had 8 years (1995-2003) to blow the lid off the Halliburton conspiracy, but oops, Bosnia and Kosovo was a Bill and Hillary (never ending) production.
DoD bidding is an open process. Get you and your patchouli soaked friends together and underbid Halliburton. Hell, make a buck in the process. We won't hold it against you. Really.
Posted by: ed ||
03/30/2007 11:21 Comments ||
Top||
#10
So WH, you would deny our troops in combat zones food, water, fuel, clean uniforms and a modicum of comfort just to satiate your lust for conspiracy theories?
Spot on. I've noticed that almost everyone that invokes Halliburton as a bogeyman doesn't have a clue what they actually do.
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education.
The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front. Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling and environmental protection. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.
Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. This was the by-no-means-surprising result of a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran.
The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb. That plan failed at some point -- an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.
Another item on the Iranian president's wish list is the annihilation of Israel. But that will take a bit longer. In the meantime, just to make sure it doesn't get out of practice, the regime had 15 British soldiers kidnapped a few days ago. But it's still all the Americans' fault -- that much is obvious.
Inherently evil
We've known just what they're like for a long time. The 19th-century German author Karl May taught us about the American Wild West, and Karl Marx warned us about unbridled capitalism. Besides, we've all been there at least once -- on vacation, of course. Be it in California or Florida (that's where you get the best deals on rental cars, you know), we can see right through the Americans. For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.
Worst of all, the Americans won the war in 1945. (Well, with German help, of course -- from Einstein and his ilk.) There are some Germans who will never forgive the Americans for VE Day, when they defeated Hitler. After all, Nazism was just an accident, whereas Americans are inherently evil. Just look at President Bush, the man who, as some of SPIEGEL ONLINE's readers steadfastly believe, "is worse than Hitler." Now that gives us a chance to kill two birds with one stone. If Bush is the new Hitler, then we Germans have finally unloaded the Führer on to someone else. In fact, we won't even have to posthumously revoke his German citizenship, as politicians in Lower Saxony recently proposed. No one can hold a candle to our talent for symbolism!
Anti-Americanism is the wonder drug of German politics. If no one believes what you're saying, take a swing at the Yanks and you'll be shooting your way back up to the top of the opinion polls in no time. And on the practical side, you can be the head of the Social Democratic Party and endear yourself to the party's hardcore with a load of anti-American nonsense, and still get invited back to Washington -- just look at Gerhard Schröder. In fact, you could, like leading German politicians in the debate over the planned American missile shield in Europe, be accused of having "an almost unbelievable lack of knowledge" by a former NATO general, and even that wouldn't matter. It's all about what you believe, not what you know.
Anti-Americanism is hypocrisy at its finest. You can spend your evening catching the latest episode of "24" and then complain about Guantanamo the next morning. You can claim that the Americans have themselves to blame for terrorism, while at the same time calling for tougher restrictions on Muslim immigration to Germany. You can call the American president a mass murderer and book a flight to New York the next day. You can lament the average American's supposed lack of culture and savvy and meanwhile send off for the documents for the Green Card lottery.
Not a day passes in Germany when someone isn't making the wildest claims, hurling the vilest insults or spreading the most outlandish conspiracy theories about the United States. But there's no risk involved and it all serves mainly to boost the German feeling of self-righteousness.
Not so safe
Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant. Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women's underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, the American historian who in his 1996 book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" deprived the Germans of the belief that they didn't know what was going on back in the day, is currently studying the history of genocides in the 20th century. One of the things he has noticed is that the politicians or military leaders who planned genocides and had them carried out rarely concealed their intentions in advance. Whether the victims were Hereros, Armenians, kulaks, Jews or later Bosnians, the perpetrators generally believed that they were justified and had no reason to hide their murderous intentions.
Today, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talks about a world without Israel while dreaming of an atom bomb, it seems obvious that we -- as Germans of all people -- should be putting two and two together. Why shouldn't Ahmadinejad mean what he says? But we Germans only know what we believe.
The Americans are more dangerous than the ayatollahs? Perhaps the Americans should take the Germans at their word for a change. It's high time for a new round of re-education. The last one obviously didn't do the job.
Claus Christian Malzahn is SPIEGEL ONLINE's Berlin bureau chief.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/30/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Well, in all honesty, it was America and not Iran that bombed the living shit out of Germany during that last round of European unpleasantness. That plus the embarrasment of having to surrender and what such is bound to make them just a tad squirrely.
Still, there's no explaining Europe's congenital blindness with respect to Iran and the overall threat of Islam. Its sorry to say that they probably just haven't had enough major Islamic atrocities committed on their soil yet. I'm truly glad that it only took one dose for America to wake up, although it sure looks like we're about to hit the snooze button.
Iran certainly seems as if it's becoming the epicenter for round three in the MME (Muslim Middle East). If crippling Iran's nuclear weapons program weren't such a critical priority it sure would be amusing to let the mullahs start squeezing Europe's plums for a while. Somehow, the continent needs to be startled out of its torpor. Too bad that it will likely take a terrorist mushroom cloud rising over one of their capitals before that happens.
#3
I'm fairly stunned that anyone associated with Der Spiegel could write this. The German media bears a heavy responsibility for the delusional opinions of Germans. Fortunately the Germans aren't even fearsome enough in the field to take care of themselves against primitive Central Asians, but their debility can also be a burden for us. Would be nice to get the hell out of the airbases and hospitals there - move them to a more respectable and able ally's soil somewhat to the east, perhaps.
Yes, Zenster, we plastered 'em pretty good over 60 years ago. When the slanderous idiocy of their "leaders" or media or populace annoy me, at least I can turn to the warm-and-fuzzy of that fact for solace ....
Yeah, of course to them Bush is more evil, because Hitler was one of their own. Stalin, Saddam, Melosovic, Mao! To nationals, long dead dictators always seem more cuddly and than those who were being oppressed by them. No surprise there, memories fade. Everyone hates outsiders.
I just can't figure out why so many Americans turned on Bush. I'm surprised how well the democratic/MSM propoganda influenced people so strongly.
I'm also surprised how long it took the Bush administrator to start countering it, way too late.
#7
It's crap like this that gets me to thinking that maybe we were a little too gentle with them in 1945.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/30/2007 6:13 Comments ||
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#8
I was just in Germany, they were very polite and hospitable, no mention of Americanism vs the World at all... I was not allowed to buy myself a drink.
The Germans have it in them to be tought as shit, they just need to be reminded that they're national passtime was ,at one time, war.
#9
The last time I was in Germany was 1984 and the Germans were very nice. I would like to go bakc someday and show my son what beer really taste like.
#10
What's up with the sudden down on anti-Americanism theme? Yesterday the Boston Globe had and article about this. Today Der Spiegel. They've been popping up everywhere like mushrooms in the wet, warm shade. Do these represent a realization by the gate-keepers of major newspapers that snuggling in bed with infidel head choppers provides poor long term job security and 401K benefits? Or is this some sort of attempt to move away from the lunatic fringe to win back the peasants' votes and subscriptions?
#11
Germany's soul has been rotting from various moral cancers for decades. Still, I prefer this version of Germany over the autocratic and militaristic version from WWI or the genocidal and imperialistic version from WWII. But as part of an America-hating, pro-socialist Euro bloc which protects thuggish states like Iran, they may potentially do as much harm to world security.
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.
PUT away your "Free David Hicks!" signs. Scrape the "Bring David Hicks home" stickers off your cars. As the man himself now admits, he did indeed help al-Qaida. To be specific, he did aid the terrorist group, which has so far killed more than 100 of your fellow Australians, directly or through proxies in Bali, and murdered thousands more civilians besides. And that's worth at least the five years in jail he's already served, wouldn't you think? Plus a few more. 
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education.
