Marc Rich: American Hero

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 02 Mar 2001 13:00:00 GMT

A Suspended Blue Ocean

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish
That swim.

The planets are the white whales
I sometimes hitch a ride on,

And the sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves

Into my heart and upon
My skin.

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful Game."

(The Subject Tonight Is Love - 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, Versions by Daniel Ladinsky)

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been including lots of Hafiz poems lately. For this my thanks go to Joseph Riley, who's been posting them to the Hafiz Yahoo Group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hafiz. Mr. Riley includes a beautiful picture and a some mellow midi sounds with each poem. A very joyful addition to my morning.

World New York is back! Probably has been for a while, but I just noticed. I uncommented the link from my links page, where it's been sitting since they stopped publication last year.

Rob Moody at LewRockwell.com - Marc Rich: American Hero: unlike Klinton, who committed hordes of real crimes with real victims, Marc Rich did nothing wrong except to violate laws with no right to be. For that we should applaud him. [grabbe]

After giving Clinton a pass on treason, mass murder, rape (he was asked only one question about it), kidnapping (Elian), bribery, theft, perjury, obstruction of justice and embarrassment of the nation as no one could have ever imagined, the liberals in the media have finally had it with him (conveniently, once he's out of office and no longer useful to them).
...
At the hearing, Rep. Christopher Shays [Nothing is worse than a Republican pantywaist like Shays. RM] scorched Quinn: "Mr. Rich traded with Libya when we had the embargo; he traded with Iran when we had the U.S. hostages being held captive; he traded during the 12 years with Iraq when we had our conflict; he traded grain with the Soviet Union when we had an embargo; he traded with South Africa with the apartheid government when we had that embargo..."
You mean Rich actually traded with people? He helped commodities reach their highest, best use and did so peacefully, leaving both parties wealthier than before? Off with his head!
...
Sure, Marc Rich bought a pardon; after all, they were for sale. But he never should have been charged with a crime.

Camille Paglia at Salon - The Bush look: GW gets upstaged by his advisors, a new nickname for Slick Hilly, Herr Rudy's newest Brookly Museum of Art nonsense, Streisand and Kristofferson in "A Star is Born".

Speaking of stupidity, how 'bout them New York voters? They sure got themselves a plug nickle when they swept Flora Flimflam -- er, I mean Hillary Rodham Clinton -- into office. How could anyone be surprised at Sen. Hillary's mendacity and venality when those traits were perfectly obvious during most of her tenure as first lady? The shameless Democrat partisans in the major media (notably at the New York Times) need their consciences hosed down for their silence when carpetbagger Hillary was forced down the throats of New York state Democrats, who were fascistically denied an open primary where they could have supported the smart, savvy, experienced Rep. Nita Lowey.
...
...Hillary's feeble self-defense or the utter supineness of the Washington press corps, which seemed unable to pursue any logical line of questioning. American journalists are a sad, cringing, overpaid lot compared to their British brethren, who would have drawn and quartered any government official who had left so blazing a trail of scandal as has Hillary Clinton.
The prize for silver-tongued satire goes to Christopher Buckley for his hilarious send-up of Hillary's press conference in this week's Wall Street Journal:

Finally let me say that I was as surprised as anyone when I was informed that I have a brother named Hugh Rodham ... While I did grow up in a household with numerous other people, I was never informed that I had brothers. It was never discussed. If it was, I was not present.

Richard Stallman at ZDNet - The GNU GPL and the American Way: This is a copy of the ejounral article I linked to on 2/23. Worth a look if you haven't read it yet. Classic RMS. [cafe]

Sun has released version 1.3.0_2 of JDK 1.3 for Windows, Linux (x86), and Solaris. This is a bug fix release. [cafe]

ICANN - Proposed Revisions to VeriSign Agreements: Changes in the domain registration system are in the works. Of interest to many is the fact that this new "agreement" may force you to relinquish a .org domain if you are not a "non-profit organization", whatever that is. The Slashdot post claims that this means non-profit corporation. There's a link on the page for public comments. And there are plenty of Slashdot comments. [/.]

The net result of this would be a .org registry returned, after some appropriate transition period, to its originally intended function as a registry operated by and for non-profit organizations.

Dave Winer's DaveNet - Me and Microsoft: Dave hopes that Microsoft doesn't embrace and extend SOAP. The little guys can still use XML-RPC if they do, but wouldn't it be better to have a world where everybody's computer can talk to everybody else's computer?

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair