30 April 2004

It you got it from the UN, it's not a good idea

A scary report that points out the the Oil for Food program is effectively still in operation. It was handed off to the Coalition which has now handed it off to an Iraqi ministry. However, it’s still a centrally run bureaucracy that distributes food that is the main source of food for 60% of Iraqis. The report points out four major negatives from this:

  • People who don’t have to work for a living are a lot more likely to cause mischief
  • Local agriculture will struggle against the free food
  • It’s going to be corrupt and when someone is finally caught it will be a major agitprop opportunity for the wreckers.
  • It will be particularly vulnerable to security issues.

Not an encouraging picture.

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Florida decides private property is passé

[source, source, source]

Florida’s constitution allows governments to take your land for a public purpose, such as a road or school, as long as you receive a fair price.

But legislation — which could be approved this week — would allow a city or county to take an individual’s land, with fair compensation, and sell it to a private developer for a shopping center or office building.

Proponents claim that this ability won’t be abused. That seems reasonable - when has government power ever been abused for the benefit of the well connected?

UPDATE: The bill has been withdrawn for this year. But the sponsor says it’ll be back…

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It was a cold winter in New York...

[source, source]

The vast majority of the United Nations’ oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.

The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.

Was Hillary Clinton working there? Maybe they should check Annan’s closets.

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The heart of hope is still beating...

[source, source]

It was just a throwaway line, an aside in a speech to some fellow American Muslims that Muqtedar Khan considered a surefire crowd-pleaser. But when he criticized President Bush over the war on Iraq, Khan was surprised by the response.

“I was booed. They were shouting and booing at me,” said Khan, a political scientist at Adrian College in Michigan. “A man came and told me, `If you think the war in Iraq is not moral then I’m sorry to say you have no idea what morality is.”’

Only people like this in the Ummah can save Islam from the scrap heap of history.

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