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Liberty and Power

  • Jan 30, 2004

    INSIDE IRAN: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

    by Liberty and Power

    Last night, Ted Koppel's"Nightline," which was born in the days of the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration, presented an extraordinary look inside Iran. The country is basically fractured in two. Real political power is held by 12 appointed clerics and jurists, the"Guardian Council," which exercises"rigid Islamic control" and which recently

  • Jan 29, 2004

    INTRODUCING MYSELF

    by Liberty and Power

    I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to Liberty and Power, for while I have posted to online forums and left a few comments on other people's blogs, I’ve yet to establish one of my own. I am an academic psychologist. A quick description of my research interests would be that I do theoretical psychology, with a developmental bias; I am also becoming gradually more interested in the history of psychology. My hobby is music history (jazz and R&B, in particular).

    Though I've

  • Jan 29, 2004

    FOREIGN POLICY AND THE CASH NEXUS

    by Liberty and Power

    According to this exclusive ABC News report, it appears that oil contracts were awarded to quite a few individuals by the regime of Saddam Hussein from 1997 until 2003," conducted under the aegis of the United Nations' oil-for-food program, which was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods." A document found among the files of the Iraqi Oil Ministry in Baghdad lists

  • Jan 29, 2004

    Is it Over Already?

    by Liberty and Power

    For those of us political junkies in the world this is a special time of the year. It's sort of like pennant fever for baseball fans as we watch the presidential campaign unfold before us (with understandable terror at the chosen policies of Democratic and Republican candidates for libertarians).

    However media pundits, the same folks who told us that Dean was only a few inconvenient elections away from being the nominee, are now saying that it's already a two person race. Gregg Easterbro

  • Jan 29, 2004

    New Hampshire Non Sequitur

    by Liberty and Power

    The news media continue their unrelenting propaganda on behalf of the “democratic process.” In reporting the results of the New Hampshire primary, one cable TV news reader noted that Wesley Clark had beaten John Edwards for third place by about 800 votes, demonstrating once again, he said, that “every vote counts.” And exactly how does it demonstrate that? All it tells me is that any person in New Hampshire who cast more than 800 votes that night might have made a difference in who placed third
  • Jan 29, 2004

    REMEMBER TUCHMAN'S WARNING: "BAD INTELLIGENCE" DIDN'T MAKE ANYONE DO ANYTHING

    by Liberty and Power

    There is an important distortion and a significant piece of misdirection that is now occurring with regard to David Kay's recent statements and the purported"intelligence failures" about Iraq's non-existent WMD threat. This editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune captures the issue very accurately:

    Kay paints a picture of Iraq falling apart from 1998 onward: Saddam Hussein was in la la land, writing ba
  • Jan 29, 2004

    DEAR MS. NOONAN AND MR. GIBSON (AND ASSORTED OTHERS)

    by Liberty and Power

    Please forgive me for presuming to write to you about a matter of weighty religious significance, when religion is not a subject I consider myself at all expert in. In addition, this particular matter involves complex historical conflicts, as well as a long history of horrifically destructive discrimination and mass murder, subjects I am certain you are both all too familiar with, especially after the debate that has gone on for many months now.

    And I myself would not want to be the pe

  • Jan 28, 2004

    QUOTE OF THE DAY

    by Liberty and Power

    Thanks to Chris Coyne, graduate student extraordinaire at George Mason's Economics department, I give you my quote of the day:

    "The immense majority strives after a greater and better supply of food, clothes, homes, and other material amenities. In calling a rise in the masses' standard of living progress and improvement, economists do not espouse a mean materialism. They simply establish the fact that people ar

  • Jan 28, 2004

    The Bloodletting Begins

    by Liberty and Power

    I'm no fan of The Undertaker (though he is reasonably pro-free enterprise for a Democrat), but it's amusing to watch the right wing slip into full attack mode now that he's the presumptive nominee. Where just weeks ago it was Howard Dean sporting horns and tail, it's now John Kerry who's a threat to democracy, morally bankrupt, poorly shaven, and regularly takes from the"give a penny, take a penny" cup, but rarely gives.

  • Jan 28, 2004

    Denial, and then more denial

    by Liberty and Power

    It's been fun this week to watch the Bush administration handle David Kay's painfully blunt assessment of the WMD situation in Iraq. While Dick Cheney continues to flatly deny reality in front of conservative groups, Powell and Bush have been trying to have it both ways in the mainstream press by simply arguing that the intelligence suggested WMD was a problem without flatly denying the weapons don't exist. All this silliness hit new heights at a news conference with Polish president Aleksan
  • Jan 28, 2004

    EYES WIDE SHUT

    by Liberty and Power

    [Cross-posted at In a Blog's Stead]

    Today's Opelika-Auburn News contains a piece from the Mississippi Press of Pascagoula discussing the Jose Padilla and Guantanamo Bay cases. The piece affirms that"the right to counsel is sacred and should be granted to every American citizen," but notes that"not all the detainees are American citizens," and concludes:"In no way are they entitled -- nor should they be -- to legal r
  • Jan 28, 2004

    THE HUTTON REPORT

    by Liberty and Power

    I don't know how many readers follow events in the UK and in particular the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly. Today saw the publication of his report (although readers of The Sun newspaper were able to read a leaked summary of its findings over breakfast this morning). For news and comment visit the newspaper websites to which I linked in my previous post and also BBC News and ITV News online.