Dr. Jack Wheeler
OFFING HUGO
Out of the mouths of babes and crackpots� There's no doubt Pat Robertson has a penchant for saying manically crackpot things like warning the city of Orlando, Florida in 1998 that if it allowed a Gay Pride parade, God would punish the city by sending “earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.” The press has had a field day this week reciting past wacky Patisms in an attempt to deride his call for the assassination of Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. And yes, the point is well made that Christian ministers are not the sort of folks who should advocate such things. But what Pat said is nonetheless true. Of course, we or somebody, anybody, should knock off Chavez. Doing so would be one of the greatest contributions to peace and freedom in the world today.
THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE EAST’S FUTURE
There’s been a lot of talk recently predicting the break-up of Iraq back into its constituent pieces. The country was glued together by the British after World War I from three vilyets or provinces of the dismantled Ottoman Empire: Kurdish Mosul, Shia Basra, and Sunni Baghdad. Now it’s seems on the verge of becoming unglued. Last week in The Persian Ratchet , we discussed how the break-up of Iraq would shatter Iran. Let’s talk now how an Iraq break-up would rearrange borders across the entire Middle East. Like how it would precipitate the break-up of Saudi Arabia.
Chapter Five: THE LEADER
The leader of the strangers stood underneath the big ceiba tree he had slashed with his sword. He addressed the sub-chiefs assembled in front of him through the stranger who spoke Maya.“I come to you from the greatest king in the world, His Majesty Don Carlos of Spain. The mighty country of Spain lies on the other side of the Great Ocean, and we have crossed it to trade peacefully with you and to instruct you in the religion of the One True God.“His Majesty Dos Carlos commands us to come in peace, yet you attacked us and tried to kill us for no reason. We do not understand why you attacked us, but you must understand that if you try to attack us again we will kill you. You saw yesterday the power of our lightning-bearers. The lightning-bearers are still angry with you, and it is hard for us to control the death-fire they carry in their bellies…”Without warning, one of the huge metal tubes lined up on the edge of the square went off with an enormous explosion and belch of fire. No one was hurt, but just the same, Malinali fell to the ground terrified like all the sub-chiefs, who proceeded to call out to the strangers’ leader asking his forgiveness for their aggression and disobedience.
THE PERSIAN RATCHET
The war between Persia and the West is very ancient, well over a thousand years older than the war between Islam and Christianity.
Western Civilization originated in a strip of land 90 miles long and 30 miles wide along the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor (Turkey today) known as Ionia. The Greeks who settled there in the 9th and 8th centuries BC colonized such cities as Ephesus and Miletus, where the first philosophers in history (like Thales, 635-543 BC) offered natural explanations of the world rather than superstition and myth.
The founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great (576-529
FROGMARCHED INTO RAILROAD CITY
You saw the above-the-fold front page headlines, saw the prime time television news stories late last week about Adam Kidan being arrested by federal agents for wire fraud, right? What’s that? You never heard of Adam Kidan? Of course you haven’t because he’s a nobody. That’s why the feds politely called his lawyer and asked he show up at their offices in Florida at a convenient time for him. The fellow you read about on the front page and saw getting busted on national TV was Kidan’s business partner - someone the Washington Post and the New York Times have spent years demonizing, the infamous Jack Abramoff.
JEWISH COWBOYS
You’re a cowboy out in the Wild West. You and your fellow cowboys are surrounded by a horde of bloodthirsty Indians dressed in warpaint and issuing bloodcurdling whoops for your scalps. There’s a dozen of you versus two thousand of them. Even John Wayne would know it’s time to retreat.Especially if Wayne knew the Indians were from different tribes that hated each other, and by vamoosing, they’d start to fight among themselves, going at each others’ throats while you could get safely back to Fort Apache.Pretty much sums up the situation in Gaza.
Chapter Four: STRANGERS
And so Malinali trudged through the forest and swamps to Pontochan, where Forearms sold her to the King and she moved into the palace - living in a palace again, but now as a slave and not a princess.Malinali became very appreciative of Ciuacuatl’s lessons, for with her skills at sewing, cooking, and medicine, she was assigned to the household staff and not put out into the maize or cacao fields for manual drudgery.Five winters passed. She became fluent in Maya, and learned how to do her work well and quietly, so as to be noticed as little as possible. She listened attentively, however, and began hearing talk of mysterious strangers who lived in gigantic war canoes. No one knew where they came from. Their skin was light and they had hair on their faces. Some wore metal on their bodies. Their canoes had carried them across the salt water from the south. They stopped at the mouth of the Pontochan River and talked to a group of Mayas but no one could understand what they were saying. They continued across the water to the north and were never seen again.
WHY WE HAVEN’T FOUND OSAMA
One of the most frequently asked questions we get at To The Point is: Where’s Osama? Why haven’t we found and killed him?We’ve gotten another flurry because of the recent claims that “mercs” or mercenaries, “professional soldiers for paramilitary corporations that attend the annual Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas” know where he is - a hidden valley called Dir in northwest Pakistan.I’ve known Col. Bob Brown, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune magazine for almost 30 years. We almost got ourselves blown up together in Afghanistan with the Mujahaddin back in the 1980s. I told Bob about this claim and he laughed his head off.“The last Soldier of Fortune convention we had was back in 2000,” he told me. “You should know, Wheeler, you were our keynote speaker! No one in the world is in touch with “mercs” more than me. They would have one simple word for these Elvis sightings of Osama: (expletive). The guy making this claim, Paul Williams, is an (expletive).” Bob doesn’t mince words.The claim that OBL has been in Dir “since he escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001” is laughable. Williams has, of course, never been remotely close to the place. I’ve been all over the area, from Peshawar through Dir to Chitral in the Hindu Kush, and know it would be easy to get him if he’s there. He’s not in Dir.Osama is in....
IS TAIWAN A POSSESSION OF THE UNITED STATES?
Communist China, the People’s Republic of China or PRC, never tires of denouncing Taiwan as a “renegade province” that belongs to it, and bitterly complaining that any attempt by any country anywhere in the world to treat Taiwan as a sovereign independent nation is a gross interference in China’s “internal affairs.” This claim is about to be publicly exposed as baseless - for it turns out that as a matter of international law, Taiwan is legally an overseas possession of the United States of America.
Chapter Three: SLAVE
Chapter Three: SLAVE After Teteotcingo’s funeral, Queen Cimatl asked to see her daughter. “Malinali, there is something you must know,” the Queen said. “A kingdom requires a king - and now Paynala no longer has one. So I have decided to marry the brother of my sister’s husband, Cohuixin. I must, you realize, always put the interests of Paynala and its people first.” Malinali was so stunned she lost her composure and blurted, “The Lizard-Man? You are going to marry the Lizard-Man!? (Cohuixin meant “lizard” - obviously Malinali was not very fond of him.) Mother - how can you insult our people, insult me - insult yourself! - and insult the memory of King Teteotcingo this way?” Queen Cimatl insouciantly responded. “It will soon be King Cohuixin - and he will be your king, and your father. The decision is done.” Malinali exploded. “You are only fooling yourself, Mother, if you think I will ever regard the Lizard-Man as my King - much less my Father!” Suddenly, though, the young Princess saw the image of her father in her mind, and thought, “My father would not lose his temper in such a situation - calm down and think clearly, Malinali - right now!”
BEAUTY, MYSTERY, AND STARVATION IN THE SAHARA
Up until recently, if you heard of the African country of Niger, you’d think of Yellowcake Joe Wilson and his CIA bimbo wife Valerie Plame with their phony scandal trying to get Karl Rove. By now, however, you may have heard that Niger faces famine after a prolonged drought and a locust plague of biblical proportions. In January 2003, I led a Trans-Sahara expedition across the entire length of Niger. I found it to be one of our world’s special places, of achingly lonely beauty, of fascinating and friendly peoples, and mysterious lost cities, hidden oases, and camel salt caravans.
Chapter Two: PRINCESS
Chapter Two: PRINCESS Malinali giggled. It was the kind of squeal and squeak that only a little girl who is deliriously happy can have. She was hiding behind a curtain in her father’s palace. “Ixkakuk! Ixkakuk!” her father called out, using his nickname for her, meaning Beautiful Goddess. “Where are you? I can’t find you!” He crept up to the curtain. “But when I do, I’m going to?” he grabbed the bulge in the curtain? “tickle you to death!” The little girl’s shrieks of mirth rang through the palace. King Teteotcingo released his grip, and Malinali raced away across the throne room laughing and yelling, her father chasing after her. The uproar reached the ears of Malinali’s mother, Queen Cimatl, in an adjoining chamber attended by her courtiers. She sighed disapprovingly. “You would think the King would have more important matters of state to attend to than to play with little girls.”
THE SAUDI CURSE
Saudi Arabia is a pre-eminent example of how God’s sense of humor is unfathomable to mere human beings. A tribe of primitive desert nomads who believe in an atavistic religion seize control of a vast sandy wasteland under which, completely unknown to them, contains more of the critical substance upon which modern civilization depends than anywhere else on earth. This makes the nomads impossibly rich without doing anything to earn their wealth, which they proceed to spend billions of disseminating around the world their religion which is dedicated to destroying the civilization that gave them their wealth. So now God is patiently waiting for us to get the joke and figure a way out of it.
SOVIET CELL PHONES AND SUITCASE NUKES
It’s a common debating trick to focus on one perceived error in your opponent’s argument, ignore all the other points, and pretend that if you can refute that one point every other point and therefore the entire argument is refuted. Thus I have gotten a lot of flack over my noting, in The Hiroshimic Imposture , that so-called Soviet suitcase nukes built in 1988 could not be set off with a cell phone as claimed because there were no cell phones back then. As Joe Farah kidded me in a Front Page interview, “The cell phone is 30 years old. I had a cell phone in 1988. Jack’s memory is a little faulty here.” I’m sure Joe is right - about his having a cell phone the size of a brick back then. The only guy I saw with one in those days was Ollie North. So yes, there were American cell phones. But Soviet cell phones? Nope, no such thing. The first cellular systems were introduced into Russia in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, using the analog NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) protocol.
WHY CHINA NEEDS TAIWAN TO SURVIVE
2008 is looming large on the world stage, and not just for us here in America-land. Yes, the year looks likely to see the most exciting presidential race in US history, one between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Condoleeza Rice, which Condi will win. (You can get a “Rice2008” bumper sticker at Rice2008 or T-shirt at AmericansForRice )And yes, the race will electrify the world and gain its rapt attention. Somehow, however, lots of folks in other places will also focus on events of far more personal importance to them - particularly in China and Taiwan. 2008 is the year of Communist China’s coming-out party, when it hosts the Beijing Olympics. The Chicoms intend to use the 2008 Beijing Olympics as did the Nazis in the 1936 Berlin Olympics - as a glorification of their rule and a demand that the world provide it with the prestige it so desperately craves.2008 is also the year of the next presidential election in Taiwan. After two terms, President Chen Shui-bian cannot run for re-election. How those contending to succeed him will conduct their campaigns may determine the survival of Taiwan - and of China. One campaign may prove critical, that of current Taiwan Prime Minister Frank Hsieh.
Chapter One: CASA COLORADA
We initiate this week a new feature in To The Point: the serialization of a novel I am writing entitled The Jade Steps. Every week from now on until completion, there will be a successive chapter. We begin today with Chapter One: Casa Colorada. This is a historical novel, the true story of one of history’s most remarkable and influential women. Her life sounds like a fairy tale, but it’s history, it actually happened. Her name was Malinali. The Jade Steps has a two-fold purpose. The first is to tell Malinali’s story, as fascinating as it is unknown. The second is to bring peace to the civil war raging in the soul of Mexico. I hope you all enjoy it. --- JW Chapter One: CASA COLORADA
D3 TERRORISTS
Let’s say a young white fellow is caught entering a New York subway station by a watchful policeman, who discovers 50 pounds of high explosives in his backpack. Upon interrogation, the fellow explains he was instructed to blow up the station by the Holy Cheendon, whose voice he hears in his head, because for doing so the Cheendon will send him to Paradise located in the Andromeda Galaxy.Such a fellow would not be a Moslem crazy, just plain crazy. But what if there is something specifically screwed up in his brain that’s making him crazy - and it is this same something that turns some Moslems into suicidal terrorists?
TINY ZIBB UPDATE
Not quite two years ago, in Terrorism and Tiny Zibbs, I discussed why one of the principal causes of Moslem terrorism is that so many Moslem men are afraid of women. This was made quite evident in a London Daily Telegraph poll of British Moslems conducted last week that stunned the British. 24% of British Moslems, it turns out, are sympathetic with the feelings and motives of the suicide bombers attacking London, and almost one-third believe that: “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Moslems should seek to bring it to an end.” The outrage this provoked caused most folks to overlook the poll’s internals, which showed that the great majority of those alienated British Moslems are men. Very few British Moslem women want to bring Western society to an end, for that society respects them as full human beings and gives them freedom to act as such. So all this soul-searching navel-gazing blather in the British liberal press agonizing over the failure of British society to cure Moslem alienation utterly misses the point - as liberals almost unfailingly do. The fault, the blame, the cause of Moslem terrorism, hatred, and alienation lie not with us in the West, but with the cultural defects of Moslems themselves - and specifically of Moslem men.
ROSCOE AND ROBERTS
Silent screams. Night sweats. Quiet desperation. The whispered dread of impending doom. Liberals are suffering all of these anxieties over soon-to-be Justice John Roberts - at least the smart ones are who know the stakes. Those stakes go far beyond Roe v. Wade. Smart liberals know the entire gigantic edifice of Federal bureaucratic control over our lives, which they have been painstakingly building since the 1930s, has as its foundation one thin reed of six Constitutional words tortured beyond recognition. Invest those words with normal recognizable meaning, and thousands of Federal laws and regulations are defunct. This is the conservatives’ and the libertarians’ dream, and the liberals’ nightmare. What keeps making the liberals sit bolt upright in bed is knowing there is nothing they can do to prevent their nightmare from coming true. To understand why, we need to talk about a farmer named Roscoe Filburn from Montgomery County, Ohio, who grew 23 acres of wheat back in the 1930s.
CHINA ARMAGEDDON
What do you suppose the reaction would be in the American, Chinese, and world press if a Major General in the US Army gave an official briefing at the Pentagon and stated:“If the Chinese attack Taiwan, we will have to respond with nuclear weapons. We Americans would then have to prepare ourselves for the destruction of all our cities east of Kansas City. Of course, the Chinese will have to accept that hundreds of Chinese cities will be destroyed by us.”Can you imagine the media feeding frenzy? Can you imagine the reaction at the White House? The general would be instantly cashiered and sent to a mental hospital for psychiatric treatment, while everyone in the Administration made every possible effort to repair the damage.So why didn’t this happen when a Major General in the Red Chinese People’s Liberation Army - who is also the Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at the Chinese National Defense University - said exactly this in reverse on July 15 in Beijing?
REAL LOCKBOX BECOMING REALITY
Four months ago, on March 16, I told you about The Real Lockbox - a real fix of Social Security being devised by Republicans in Congress, superior to President Bush’s and designed to drive Democrats up a defensive tree. I then promised I would update you on its progress - and now I can report it is fast becoming legislative reality.
THE HIROSHIMIC IMPOSTURE
So many of you have asked me about an alleged Al Qaeda plan called “American Hiroshima” - the multiple detonation of nukes smuggled in to the US - that I must respond, even though some very good friends of mine for whom I have high regard have been taken in by the fellow who’s making the claim.That would be Paul L. Williams, who has been peddling this stuff for a long time. The funniest example is Williams’ claim that “documents captured in Afghanistan show that Al Qaeda had plans to assemble nuclear weapons with fissile material purchased on the black market.” A nuclear scientist friend of mine with all the requisite Pentagon security clearances could not stop laughing when I discussed this with him.“I’ve seen those documents,” he told me, “and believe it or not, they are copied from an article in a science humor magazine called The Journal of Irreproducible Results. It was entitled “How to Build an Atom Bomb,” and these Al Qaeda-Taliban idiots didn’t know it was a put-on. It’s full of physics jargon and seems impressive - but when the article instructs you to make the shock wave focusing lens out of Playdough, you’ve got to be a retard not to get the gag. Living in an Afghan cave can do that to you.”
BLAME-AMERICA-FIRST CONSERVATIVES
It was Jeane Kirkpatrick at the 1984 Republican Convention in Dallas who identified the Liberal Democrat compulsion to “blame America first.” In any confrontation between America and any other country or disaffected group, liberals could be trusted to say it was their own country’s fault. This compulsion seems to be a defining characteristic of liberals to this day, from Baghdad Jim McDermott (D-WA) to Dick Turban Durbin (D-IL) to Howard Dean and Teddy Kennedy. What’s not widely recognized is how this compulsion has infected the brains of certain conservatives.A case in point is how Pat Buchanan and his American Conservative magazine are swooning, along with the New York Times and the Liberal Media, over a new book - Dying to Win -- by a goofy University of Chicago professor named Robert Pape.
THE LOST LIBERTY HOTEL
Let’s face the meaning of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Kelo vs. City of New London decision: We have a fascist judicial system in place of a Constitution. We no longer have a Constitution, it has ceased to exist. In justifying their abolition of private property rights, John Paul Stevens writing for the majority of Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and himself - the Fascist Five - pronounced that “Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community.”Taking him at his word, a New Hampshire businessman named Logan Darrow Clements sent a written request last week to city officials of the town of Weare, seeking their approval to build a hotel at 34 Cilley Hill Road. Such approval would entail eminent domain condemnation proceedings authorizing the seizure of the private home currently at this address. The owner of the home is Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
BUBBLES OF INSANITY
When you’re scuba-diving, you’re in another reality. You’re totally in the moment, absorbed and fascinated by a world utterly removed from that above the surface. But the pressure of this world drives gasses you’re breathing like nitrogen into your tissues, and if you return to the surface too quickly, bubbles of nitrogen come out of solution like an opened champagne bottle, into your bloodstream and can blow up your brain.Returning to “civilization” from an African safari can have similar effects. Immersed in a world utterly removed from the outside, blissfully unaware of any “news” occurring anywhere as you watch a lioness play with her cubs or a lady elephant tease a big bull in heat, causing him to chase after her dragging his 40 pound “fifth leg” in desperation - you need to decompress and slowly return to reality.I ignored this advice and am suffering the consequences. One day I was in a tent in the Serengeti. The next day I was in London with bubbles of the world’s insanity exploding inside my head.
FREEDOMS BIRTHDAY
[This was originally in To The Point for last year, July 4, 2004. It is just as apt for 2005.] July 4th is Freedom’s Birthday. My suggestion is, amidst the fireworks and barbeques and flag-waving fun - all of which is great - that you take the time to feel good about America. Put aside your worries and concerns, your frustrations and fears about what’s wrong with America. For one day, forget the negative - put it all in a zip-lock bag, hide it in the back of the freezer, and pretend it doesn’t exist. One reason is that for all your worries about America’s culture and morality - you and all your fellow conservatives can feel good about your country. Liberals can’t. One of the defining characteristics of leftie-liberals is an inability to feel truly proud of their country - proud to the bone. You cannot be a liberal without feeling apologetic and embarrassed over being an American. You cannot be a conservative without lacking any such embarrassment or compulsion to apologize at all. Being an American is simply the coolest thing in the world. Wherever I have traveled in the world - it’s over 180 countries now - whenever someone asks me, “Where are you from?”, it’s always such a thrill to answer, “America - I’m an American.”
THE MOONLIGHT SYMPHONY
MORU ROCKS, SERENGETI PLAINS, TANZANIA, AFRICA. It is at night that Africa becomes most alive - especially when there’s a full moon. The most restful night’s sleep one can have, it seems, is when you are lulled by the cackling whine of hyenas, the incessant barking of zebras, the coughing of lions, the grunting of hippos, the bellowing of Cape buffalo, the stomach rumblings of elephants, the flutter of Guinea fowl roosting in the trees, and the soft chirp of the tiny Scopes owl. The Moonlight Symphony of the Serengeti. I’m writing this on the veranda of my tent overlooking a grassy plain and trees along a nearby stream. Herds of zebra and wildebeest are grazing, a few giraffe are munching on a huge umbrella acacia tree, and two elephants are happily stripping the bark off a yellow fever tree with their tusks for an afternoon snack. It is a peaceful and restful scene. In the distance is a rock outcropping that’s the home of a pride of 11 lions, a mommy with four cubs, two other females, and two males with gorgeous golden manes. They’re sleeping off last night’s repast of a young wildebeest. Predators on the Serengeti do not prey on themselves. Two prides of lions, say, may occasionally compete for territory, but they never attempt to survive upon the other, and it would never occur to them to do so. Only man has the capacity to choose to prey on his fellow man. In our time there have been three great predations upon civilization: Nazism, Communism, and Islamism. The first was defeated entirely, and that by military force. The Soviet version of the second was defeated by a combination of military threat and guile. The Chinese version remains. The struggle continues with the third. There is a lesson to be learned here in the Serengeti about how to conduct this struggle.
BAGHDAD MEMES
One of the most provocative, brilliant, fascinating, erudite, yet ultimately silliest books of recent times is Jared Diamond’s best-selling Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book is Diamond’s long attempt to answer a question put to him by a primitive tribesman in New Guinea, essentially, “Why do you guys in the West have such prosperity why we are still knee deep in pig poop?”As a learned and persuasive hard-core environmental determinist, Diamond’s answer is: The West (whose inhabitants are two-digit IQ morons compared to the natural brain power of New Guinea natives) is the most culturally and technologically successful civilization in history because Mesopotamia (where Western Civilization originated) had wild animals and grasses conducive to domestication 9,000 years ago.See what I mean by silly? For a determinist like Diamond, thought processes are irrelevant to the fate of human societies. He has no appreciation nor understanding of how cultural values and practices drive the success or failure of civilizations. Proof of this is that the word “meme” does not appear once in the book’s 480 pages.
TYRANNY AND THE BOOGIEMAN OF ISLAM
As you can see, this woman is not Chinese. She’s European, a Celt. Although she looks young, she’s 4,000 years old, born before 2,000 BC - in what is now China. It turns out European Caucasians got to China before the Chinese. The lady is known as the Beauty of Loulan, where her mummy was found in the ruins of an ancient city on the eastern edge of the Takla Makan Desert. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of mummified remains from such ruins (many with blonde or red hair), and using DNA analysis, have determined that Caucasians populated the entire area, geographically known as the Tarim Basin, for a thousand years before Han Chinese arrived. The Chinese Communists hate this research and are trying to suppress it - for it supports the claim of the Uighur people who live in the Tarim Basin (the Chicoms call it Xinjiang Province) that the region does not belong to China and never has.
BOLIVIA’S ROAD TO NOWHERE
Remember this map in Bye-Bye Bolivia last April? A favorite protest tactic of Evo Morales’ socialist mobs is to block roads leading to Bolivia’s capital, La Paz. This may backfire big time. Serious candidates for the world’s scariest roads are the thin ribbons of asphalt that plunge off the Bolivian highlands to the lowlands. There are only two, and since the lowlands produce most of Bolivia’s wealth, they are the lifelines to all those protesting folk way up there in the Andes. So don’t be surprised if the guys in the lowlands, the targets of Morales’ demands to nationalize and expropriate their wealth, blow the roads and destroy those two thin lifelines. They won’t do it themselves. Brazilian Intelligence - ABIN (Agencia Brasileira de Inteligencia Nacional) - will do it for them.
THE FIVE-STEP JET LAG SOLUTION
It’s summer, which means summer vacation, which means for some of you buzzing off to a distant time zone and getting wigged out on jet lag. For business travelers, jet lag can translate loss of mental acuity into loss of an important deal. For government folk, it can translate into failed negotiations or embarrassing misstatements to a foreign press. I’ve used a five-step jet lag avoidance method for some years now. I’ve given it to a number of corporate CEOs, diplomats, Capitol Hill staffers, Congressmen and Senators. They tell me it works. It works for me. Here it is and I trust it will work for you.
BACK TO AFRICA
It’s very easy to get bitten by the African bug, the one that compels you to keep coming back to the most primeval place on our planet. I took this picture in the Serengeti in 1971, I’ve been going back to Africa every chance I got ever since, and by the time you read this I’ll be there again. Africa has been a lot in the news this week. The G8 forgiving billions in debt by African countries; Little Bobby Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s depraved dictator, bulldozing thousands of poor people’s homes into rubble for not supporting him; President Bush hosting his counterparts from five African countries in the White House. One of them was Festus Mogae of Botswana. Bush hailed Botswana as an African model of democracy, and you have to give Mogae credit for this. What comes up for me, however, is the war the Botswana government has been waging against the last remaining cultural link humanity has with its original lifestyle, with our ancestors who birthed the human race, the Bushmen.
SEND SWAYR TO THE WHITE HOUSE
I received this terrific idea from TTPer Chris Landrum from Kennewick, Washington. It was in response to the No Apology article last week, describing how a number of folks at State and the Pentagon are sick and tired of our kowtowing groveling constant apologies to Moslems. Inspired by John Wayne’s famous line as Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon - “Never apologize, son, it’s a sign of weakness” - these folks even sent a DVD of SWAYR to the White House. Chris Landrum’s idea is to have a SWAYR to the White House campaign - hundreds, hopefully thousands, of Americans ordering the movie at Amazon and having it sent to President Bush at the White House, together with a letter demanding No More Apologies to Moslems. Want to participate? It’s easy:
THE BEST SHOW ON C-SPAN
Here are two Chris Cox bottom lines. Bar none, no one Congress is more dedicated to capitalist free market freedom than him; bar none, no one in Congress is smarter.Now you may reply that being the smartest man in Congress is like being the tallest building in Topeka. But Chris would be the tallest skyscraper in just about any city. That’s why the Senate Banking Committee hearings on his nomination to run the Security & Exchange Commission are going to be so entertaining, a C-Span show you won’t want to miss.There are a fair number of bright people in the House, and a fair number of really stupid people in the Senate (we’re talking ratios here - there are some amazingly dumb Congressmen and some very bright Senators). The disparity is because it costs so much more to run for a state-wide Senate seat; thus the majority of Senators are millionaires who inherited their money (like Teddy Kennedy), or made it through a particular idiot-savant expertise (like Jon Corzine) which they think makes them an expert on everything.With few exceptions, every Senator’s ego vastly exceeds their brain-power. Arrogance, power, and stupidity is not a good combination, which is why the Senate is so dysfunctional. They love to prate and pose and pontificate and act so insufferably important in front of television cameras during their hearings. Which is why it’ll be so much fun to watch Chris take them apart.
THE EMP ANNOYANCE
When Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, held a well-publicized hearing on a specific new type of terrorist threat last April, a lot of folks got scared. It turns out the threat is marginal. Instead of being called the EMP Terror, it should be called the EMP Annoyance.EMP stands for Electro-Magnetic Pulse, caused by a nuclear bomb exploding not on or near the surface but high in the atmosphere. Kyl claims it’s the easiest way for America to be defeated by its enemies.An EMP attack from a single Scud missile, launched by a Nuclear Iran from a freighter in international waters, would have according to Senator Kyl, “irreversible effects on the country's ability to support any large fraction of its present human population. Those who survived would find themselves transported back to the United States of the 1880s.”I suppose this is what happens when politicians, well-meaning and patriotic (for let there be no doubt - John Kyl is one of the good guys on Capitol Hill) yet who know very little science get scared of a threat they don’t understand. (Again: Kyl is very bright - he was a Phi Beta Kappa in college and a smart lawyer - but he has no scientific background.)His staffers also didn’t do their homework - for it turns out that there already has been an EMP attack on an American city, and nothing much happened.
THE INDO-CHINA CON
These two Tibetan lamas blowing their tunchen horns, are calling the Buddhist faithful to prayer atop the Stok monastery in a remote Himalayan region called Ladakh. The river below is the Upper Indus. On the other side of the mountains in the distance is China - for Ladakh is in India, that part of Tibet that escaped seizure by the Communist Chinese. I took this picture in 1993. The Chicoms’ courtship of India has been much in the news lately, with India usually portrayed as swooning over Beijing’s attention and flattery. Dire predictions are being made of India being suckered into a strategic Sino-Indo alliance with China the dominant partner. Analyses are being issued celebrating India jilting the US in favor of China, causing the “souring of the India-US honeymoon.” Don’t believe it. For all those worried or elated about China’s bonding with India to America’s detriment, here’s the reality without the filters and blinders: It is India that is playing China like a fiddle, not the other way around.
NO APOLOGY
The consensus of film critics is that three of the four best Western movies ever made were those starring John Wayne: Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), and The Searchers (1956). (The fourth is Gary Cooper’s 1952 High Noon.) Many critics consider The Searchers to be one of the greatest movies, period, and has been the subject of numerous academic seminars. It is a lesser known John Wayne Western, however, that contains an important lesson for our relations with the Moslem world.Directed by John Ford, made in 1948, entitled She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, it stars Wayne as Capt. Nathan Brittles as a retiring Cavalry officer facing an Indian attack (The New York Times’ review at the time called Wayne’s performance “Oscar-caliber”). The memorable line is the advice he gives to a junior officer. It’s listed by Guinness as one of the top 100 film quotes of all time:
Never apologize, son. It’s a sign of weakness.It turns out that there is a growing number of aficionados of “SWAYR” who have bought the DVD at Amazon and taken this line to heart. What’s interesting about them is that they work at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Bush White House.
COMMENCEMENT
Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends: It’s funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you’ve all reached the finish line: college, goodbye, we’re outta here. Yet of course, “commencement” means a beginning, not an end. But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things. So I’ll start by talking about Clark Gable movies. If you’ve heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago. His most famous movie was of course Gone With The Wind. He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy. It’s a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost. Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs. Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget. Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it. Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says: There goes the only man I ever respected. He’s what every boy dreams he’ll grow up to be - and wishes he had been when he’s an old man.
HOW JOHN WAYNE SAVED THE MARINES
Today is John Wayne’s 98th birthday. He was born on May 26, 1907 in Winterset, Iowa, weighing 13 pounds. His birthplace is a museum, and a few years ago I took my son Brandon to visit it. There was a guest book, opened to a page with the entry, in the entrant’s handwriting, Name: Ronald Reagan. Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington DC. To celebrate the birthday of a truly great American, let me tell you how John Wayne saved the Marine Corps from being disbanded after World War II.
MEXICAN NAZIS
Two weeks ago on May 14, a small group of folks staged a peaceful rally in Baldwin Park, a predominantly Hispanic Los Angeles suburb. It was to demand the removal of a monument to anti-white racist hatred and bigotry, which is on public property and was erected by the city council at taxpayer expense. Here is one of its inscriptions: 
They, of course, are the hated “Anglos,” the white European-Americans who “stole” the land from Mexico - who stole it from Spain who stole it from Indian tribes such as the Chumash (not the Aztecs, whose empire was in central Mexico, 2,000 miles away from LA), who stole it from other Indian tribes like the Shoshone. The rally was met by a far larger, violent counter-demonstration led by an organization of Mexican Nazis who call themselves Reconquistas. These are people who want to “reconquer” the entire American Southwest ceded to the US in 1848 and have it become part of Mexico again. One of the Reconquista chants was “Go back to Europe, go back to England, Gringos.” Another was, “Viva (long live) Zarqawi, the Gringo Killer,” in praise of arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s killing American soldiers in Iraq. I first wrote about the Reconquistas two years ago in America’s Curse. Since then, they have become ever more explicitly and virulently pro-terrorist. The Baldwin Park incident this month is simply the latest example of how impossibly dangerous Mexican illegal immigration has become to America’s national security.