[Oedipus to Creon:]
...When the sphinx...kept her deathwatch here,
why silent then, not a word to set our people free?
Not a word...
There was a riddle, not for some passer-by to solve,
It cried for a prophet! Where were you?
Did you rise to the crisis? Not a word.
You and your birds, your gods---nothing.
No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant.
I stopped the sphinx with no help from the birds.
The flight of my own intelligence hit the mark....
....We meet here during a crucial period in the history of our nation, and of the civilized world. Part of that history was written by others; the rest will be written by us. (Applause.)
Oedipus: "Ah woe! ah woe! ah woe! Woe for my misery! Where am I wondering in my utter woe? Where floats my voice in air? Dread power, where leadest Thou?
...On a September morning, threats that had gathered for years, in secret and far away, led to murder in our country on a massive scale. As a result, we must look at security in a new way, because our country is a battlefield in the first war of the 21st century. We learned a lesson..... (Applause.)
After 220 years, y'all should come up with some new rants to keep us interested.
I'm no more impressed by these claims than our Founders were.
"...A barbaric civilization, built on blind impulse and ambition, should fear to awaken a deeper destestation than could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies, chivalrous or religious, against which past revolutions have been directed...."
If we must use force, the United States and our coalition stand ready to help the citizens of a liberated Iraq. We will deliver medicine to the sick, and we are now moving into place nearly 3 million emergency rations to feed the hungry.
We'll make sure that Iraq's 55,000 food distribution sites, operating under the Oil For Food program, are stocked and open as soon as possible. The United States and Great Britain are providing tens of millions of dollars to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, and to such groups as the World Food Program and UNICEF, to provide emergency aid to the Iraqi people. and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before -- in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform-minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.
.. The nation of Iraq -- with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people -- is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom. (Applause.)
".....I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or ther vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made
I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewelry store to buy a pearl necklace--or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons---rid of my provincial squeamishness forever....."
.....Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Zbigniew Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.....
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -----The United States has designated three Chechen rebel groups "terrorist organizations," a step Moscow has been pressing Washington to take for more than a year.
U.S. officials said the three Chechen groups took part in the mass hostage-taking at the Dubrovka theater in Moscow last October, when 129 people were killed, mostly by gas injected by the Russian forces who ended the siege.
The officials said Russia had been pressing for the United States to designate Chechen groups as "terrorist organizations" but denied the timing was linked to U.S. attempts to win Russian support for its plans to invade Iraq.
They also alleged extensive contacts and mutual support between the Chechen groups, the deposed Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and bin Laden's al Qaeda organization in the 1990s.
They are the first Chechen groups added to the list, illustrating the harder line Washington has started to take against the Chechen movement.
But the officials said that the crackdown did not mean the United States considered all Chechen fighters as "terrorists" or that it was changing its support for a political solution in the mainly Muslim territory. ...The level of U.S. interest in Chechen events has fluctuated according to the state of relations with Moscow. ...
CITY 'ALIEN' POLICY ON TRIAL IN RAPE
NY Post
By PHILIP MESSING
February 27, 2003 -- EXCLUSIVE
A congressional committee wants to know whether city policy kept the suspects in a brutal Queens rape - illegal aliens with prior criminal records - from being deported before they committed the heinous attack. ...
Federal law recommends - but does not require - that local police report crimes committed by illegal aliens to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, sources said.
Hostettler is trying to determine whether a Koch-era executive order that affords illegal aliens emergency health care and other city services bars or discourages the NYPD from reporting such crimes.
The suspects attacked a woman and her boyfriend as they walked on a deserted bridge over Long Island railroad tracks not far from Shea Stadium, police said.
With the boyfriend incapacitated, the attackers gang-raped her. When the boyfriend came to, he used a cell phone to call cops.
Three of the suspects - José Hernandez-De Los Santos, Carlos Mora-Sabino and Juvenal Aurelio Zhinin-Quisphe - are illegal aliens with extensive records, police said.
But they were never deported. "And nobody seems to know why," a Capitol Hill source said.....
The Washington Times
Paul Craig Roberts
Do you remember those Information Technology (IT) jobs that were going to take the place in the "new economy" of those outsourced manufacturing jobs? Don't bother to retrain. The IT jobs are leaving, too.
Knowledge work can be done anywhere there are educated people. These days that's just about everywhere: the Philippines, India, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, Costa Rica, and South Africa. Outsourcing of "new economy" jobs is exploding.
A recent article in the Feb. 3 Business Week describes "dazzling new technology parks" on the outskirts of India's major cities where U.S. companies such as Bank of America, Texas Instruments, pharmaceutical companies, Intel, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Hewlet Packard, American Express, Dell Computer, Eastman Kodak, IBM, GE, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Fluor Corp, Electronic Data Services, Citibank, Boeing, mortgage lenders, Massachusetts General Hospital, and even architectural firms hire Indians to do knowledge jobs that Americans did three years ago.
In Bangalore, Indian radiologists interpret CT scans for Massachusetts General Hospital, and Indian engineers design third-generation mobile-phone chips for Texas Instruments. Other Indians process claims for major U.S. insurance companies and home loans for U.S. mortgage companies. Indian molecular biologists conduct research for pharmaceutical companies. Indians analyze financial data for Wall Street, conduct R&D for U.S. high-tech companies, and design software for Microsoft.
The competition for U.S. knowledge workers is tough. India has 520,000 IT engineers, and starting salaries are $5,000. Five years from now, Indian service exports will add $57 billion annually to the U.S. and European trade deficits, and 4 million IT jobs will have been moved to India.
The same thing is happening in China, a country with which the U.S. is expected to have a $125 billion trade deficit this year due largely to outsourcing. Microsoft alone is spending $1.15 billion for R&D and outsourcing in India and China over the next three years. In Microsoft's Beijing research facility, one-third of the Chinese programmers have Ph.D.s from U.S. universities at U.S. taxpayers' expense.
Filipinos prepare Procter & Gamble's tax returns and crunch numbers for audits conducted by U.S. accounting firms. Architectural work ranging from home design to multibillion-dollar petrochemical plants is outsourced to Hungary, India, and the Philippines.
The U.S. gave away its agricultural knowledge, its education, its technology, its manufacturing jobs and is now giving away its IT jobs. The displaced manufacturing workers did not move to the promised greener pastures. What reason is there to believe that the displaced engineers, Wall Street analysts, accountants, scientists, and other knowledge workers will do any better when their careers are outsourced?
Business Week asked Harvard University globalist advocate Robert Lawrence what happens if America loses its knowledge jobs on top of its manufacturing jobs. His answer was not reassuring. He has no evidence — just faith — that globalization will make us better off.
What is going on when American policymakers and elites gamble with the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans on faith? Business Week is correct when it says "economists haven't begun to fathom the implications" for America of globalization. But it is already obvious who the winners and losers are.
The winners are the foreigners with IT educations who live in countries where both the standard and cost of living are very low. The losers are IT employees in the U.S. where both the standard and cost of living is very high. Filipino engineers working for American firms at salaries of $3,000 annually, and Chinese and Indians working for $5,000 to $10,000 annually are unbeatable competition. For American university students struggling to prepare for high-tech careers, the good times are over before they begin.
While jobs leave America and incomes fall, the eligibility of illegal aliens for U.S. Social Security and Medicaid benefits is a powerful magnet pulling in poor foreigners by the droves. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act did not end benefits for PRUCOL aliens, those who entered illegally and "permanently reside under color of law." People collect benefits who have never paid in. And it is American citizens, downsized and outsourced, who are saddled with the burden.
As most everyone knows, Social Security is in dire straits. But its funding problem has not deterred the Bush administration from drafting a treaty with Mexico that will give the Mexican government $345 billion in Social Security payments for Mexicans who have worked legally and illegally in the U.S.
Let's hope the Bush administration is correct and that we are not starting a 30-year war in the Middle East by invading Iraq. Otherwise, the combination of war, job and income loss, unprecedented trade deficits, and the creation of Social Security entitlements for foreign nationals will break the U.S. long before another generation passes.
Before the U.S. can reconstruct the world, it must cease deconstructing itself. For that task, the country will need a champion.
Which brings up an interesting question really, why did we need all of this? We kicked out the Brits, why did we need to formalize a government? The very act limited a person's freedoms. What was the whole idea behind it? A way to create security by pulling together as one?
Congrats .. I think you now hold the record for the longest, one man thread.