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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | theconservative@usa.net | Number 70 |
http://www.wilderness-cry.net/tcn | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | theconservative@usa.net | Number 70 |
http://www.wilderness-cry.net/tcn | ||
28 December 2000
You can count on a lot of discussion from the state propaganda machines on the "Dot Com Massacre" in Boston this week, but there is one aspect of the murders that you won't hear.
According to the surviving eyewitness, the shooter killed the receptionist before blasting through a locked door to get at the rest of the victims. If Massachusetts didn't have some of the tightest gun control laws in the country, there may have been someone in that locked room that had a gun in their purse or desk or maybe a "detective special" clipped on their belt. If anyone in that room had been allowed by state laws to carry a gun to protect themselves, the receptionist and the shooter may have been the only ones killed. More than likely though, the shooter would have known that his co-workers were armed and would have never attempted anything so foolish.
Ted Kennedy and the rest of the Massachusetts liberals will ignore the facts though and use the headlines in their state media to call for an unconstitutional total disarming of the people. They haven't cared what the US Constitution said in the past, this isn't going to change that.
It has been shown with great consistency that areas with tight gun controls also have the higher rates of violent crime. The tight laws were not passed because of the high crime rates either, the rates have skyrocketed AFTER the laws were tightened and the good citizens were disarmed and made vulnerable.
Australia spent $500,000 to collect and destroy 640,381 personal firearms. One short year later homicides were up 3.2%, assaults were up 8.6%, armed robberies are up 44%, and in the state of Victoria, homicides with firearms are up 300%. If the theories of gun controllers had even an element of truth in them, these statistics would have all been negative and not positive. No hard data has been presented from any area in the world that supports gun control as a method of reducing violent crime. The truth is gun control contributes to violent crime.
[ TCN ]
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The slayings of seven people at an Internet company has prompted calls for restricted weapons access in a state that already has the toughest gun laws in the country.
Michael McDermott, 42, allegedly gunned down employees at Edgewater Technology Inc. in Wakefield with a semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun prosecutors say he didn't have permits for.
While authorities say they are not sure how McDermott obtained the weapons, some lawmakers are already pushing measures to further restrict access to guns.
One bill would limit gun purchases to one per month. Another would require the state to create a database to allow investigators to match bullets used in crimes to specific guns. Gov. Paul Cellucci said he would support both bills.
"As long as these tragedies persist we have to continue to look for ways to prevent them," said Democratic state Sen. Cheryl Jacques, chief sponsor of the state's 1998 gun control law.
That law prohibited the possession or sale of assault weapons made after September 1994. It also required prospective gun owners to undergo firearms training and subjected gun owners to more frequent licensing and higher licensing fees.
Rockland police Lt. Barry Ashton said McDermott had obtained a firearms identification card in Rockland, about 20 miles south of Boston, in April 1989.
The card, which expired last year, would have allowed him to purchase the rifle and shotgun. McDermott also could have obtained the guns outside the state or over the Internet, where a search of Web pages revealed hundreds of sites claiming to sell semiautomatic assault weapons.
Gun rights activists called for legislators to consider the facts before pushing through tougher restrictions.
TCN - I told you! AP was writing their article at the same time that I was writing mine.
Gov. Cellucci says, "As long as these tragedies persist we have to continue to look for ways to prevent them," but he won't look at PROVEN ways, just at those that are PC.
Gov. Cellucci, if you really want to bring these "tragedies" to a screeching halt, start hand gun safety classes for all high school students. Have trained gun safety officers giving free classes to anyone who will take them. Lobby insurance companies that offer homeowners' policies to state residents to give them a break on their premiums if they are gun owners and have had the safety training.
When every other person on the street has a weapon and knows how to use it safely you "tragedies" will be rare indeed. No number of laws or precautions can stop the occasional fruitcake from "going postal." But anyone that is the least bit rational is going to think twice before he takes on the whole city.
By Walter E. Williams
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is comprised of 29 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. They've recently released a report titled "Towards Global Tax Cooperation" that should worry all of us.
The report concludes that low-tax nations are bad for the world economy and identified 35 nations who are guilty of "harmful tax competition." In OECD's view, harmful tax competition is when a nation has taxes so low that saving and investment is lured away from high-taxed OECD countries. The OECD demands that nations as diverse as Panama, Liberia and Bahrain -- as well as offshore financial centers in the Caribbean and the Pacific -- end their harmful tax practices.
In OECD's view, it's bad when Canadians move to the United States to escape high taxes or when a Frenchman invests his money overseas in order to avoid high taxes. The bottom-line agenda for the OECD is to establish a tax cartel where nations get together and collude on taxes.
Since the United States is a relatively low-tax nation, and benefits immensely from foreign saving and investment, you'd think we'd want no part of OECD's agenda -- but you'd be wrong. The Clinton-Gore administration thinks that Americans are undertaxed and we should be more like Sweden or France, where the government consumes up to 60 percent of the GDP. U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers approves of OECD's agenda, saying there's a "need to address globally the problem of harmful tax competition."
Summers sees the taxpayers' ability to protect their money as the "dark side to international capital mobility." Apparently, there are tax-hungry politicians in our country who share OECD's view that "globalization has, however, also had the negative effect of opening up new ways by which companies and individuals can minimize and avoid taxes. ... These actions induce potential distortions in the patterns of trade and investment, and reduce global welfare."
Dr. Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, along with Andrew Quinlan, a former senior staff member of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, have co-founded the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. The center's first mission is to publicize and attack OECD's anti-taxpayer agenda.
Mitchell and Quinlan argue that the "harmful tax competition" lament of OECD is really the welfare state talking. If high-tax nations face competition from low-tax nations, it threatens funding for their welfare state. They're forced to consider lowering taxes. That's precisely what many OECD nations did in the wake of our massive cuts in the marginal tax rate during the Reagan administration. On the other hand, if high-tax nations can force other nations to be high-tax as well, they can more easily get away with legislating even higher taxes to support their welfare states.
The way OECD plans to force nations practicing "harmful tax competition" to cease and desist is to use pressure through threats of one kind or another, such as economic sanctions, tariffs, quotas and other trade restrictions. Already, Bermuda, Cyprus, Malta, Mauritius, San Marino and the Cayman Islands have caved and promised they'll cooperate with OECD tax edicts.
Mitchell predicts that another victim to OECD's anti-taxpayer agenda will be financial privacy, but even more importantly, national sovereignty will be compromised. If OCED has its way and if we, or any other nation, want to enact pro-growth tax policy, such as elimination of death taxes or capital gains tax reduction, we'd have to first clear it with OECD's Paris or Brussels office.
You don't have to be an economist or rocket scientist to know that when there are attempts to eliminate competition of any sort, including tax competition, watch out and man the barricades.
[ Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. ]
By Henry Lamb
While President-elect George W. Bush will not have a shortage of advice about what he should do when he assumes the most powerful position in the world, relations with the United Nations is not likely to be high on the priority list. It should be.
Sen. Jesse Helms and Joe Biden crafted a "deal" which would pay the U.N. most of the so-called arrearage, the U.N. claims is owed by the United States, providing that the U.N. reduces the percentage of the U.N. budget the U.S. pays from 25 to 22 percent, for regular operations, and for peacekeeping operations, a reduction from 30 to 25 percent. The U.N. has refused to make these changes, and, now, Sen. Biden is looking for a compromise.
U.S.-U.N. relations must be re-evaluated from a much broader perspective than the amount of money the U.S. provides. The new administration, and the new Congress, should take a long hard look at what the United Nations is becoming. It is no longer a forum where sovereign nations meet to discuss their disputes; it is rapidly becoming a sovereign entity in its own right, with the power to compel once-sovereign nations to comply with policies crafted by the United Nations and its various subsidiary bodies.
Students of the United Nations know full well that originally, the institution was conceived to be a world government, to which all nations would be subservient. The original idea was for the United Nations to be the world's peacekeeper, by requiring all nations to turn over the bulk of their military might to the U.N., and maintaining only police power at the national level. As recently as 1961, the U.S. State Department supported this concept in its Publication 7277, "Freedom from War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World" (subscription required). The Cold War prevented this general and complete disarmament, until the Berlin Wall collapsed. The original objective -- world government -- is, once again, on the front burner at the United Nations.
Since 1991, the strategy for achieving world government has changed. To begin with, the very term "world government" has been abandoned. The term "global governance," is now in vogue. The difference between the two terms, however, is similar to the difference between rape and date-rape; one begins with seduction.
General and complete disarmament has lost much of its appeal, since the danger of global nuclear war has diminished. Now the global threat is environmental degradation of the planet. This new strategy has evolved over the last two decades, but shifted into high gear during the 1990s. The U.N. Conference on Environment and Development adopted its ambitious "Agenda 21," in 1992. It was heralded as a nonbinding blueprint to save the planet. Since then, many of the "nonbinding" provisions have been incorporated into international law through U.N. treaties.
The Framework Convention on Climate Change, with its subsequent Kyoto Protocol; the Convention on Biological Diversity; and the Convention to Combat Desertification are three treaties which go quite far toward giving the United Nations jurisdiction over all the land and natural resources on the entire planet.
While these three treaties were evolving in three different U.N. subsidiary bodies, other U.N. agencies worked on different aspects of the global governance agenda. The U.N. endorsed and partially funded the Commission on Global Governance, which published its plan to achieve global governance in 1995. The U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development began to implement Agenda 21 objectives through National Councils on Sustainable Development, using agencies of government to voluntarily impose policies through regulatory powers. The U.N. Commission on Water for the 21st Century was authorized to begin developing an international treaty on water use. Throughout the world, U.N. subsidiary bodies are working around the clock to implement individual components of a well-conceived, well-coordinated, well-funded plan to achieve a new kind of world government.
In the past, concerns such as these, when voiced, have been met by ridicule and claims of "black helicopterism" by those who promote world government. No more. At the recent Kyoto Protocol negotiations at the Hague, French President Jacques Chirac told the delegates that agreement on the Kyoto Protocol was essential, that it is a "component of an authentic global governance." Jacques Chirac cannot be included in the black-helicopter crowd.
The Millennium Declaration adopted by 160 heads of state and the U.N. General Assembly in September 2000, embraced virtually all the recommendations contained in the report of the Commission on Global Governance. Among those recommendations is the elimination of the veto and permanent member status in the U.N. Security Council. This recommendation is under active consideration. George W. Bush's new ambassador to the U.N. must be instructed not to let this happen.
Another recommendation is to provide the U.N. with adequate, independent funding, preferably through the so-called "Tobin Tax," a levy on foreign exchange. This would free the U.N. from dependence upon its member nations -- especially the United States -- for the money necessary to implement its agenda. George W. Bush's new ambassador to the U.N. must be instructed not to let this happen.
The idea of general and complete disarmament has not been completely abandoned; it has simply been recast in the language of a permanent peacekeeping force under the auspices of the U.N. secretary general. Already, nations are eager to supply troops and equipment to this effort. George W. Bush's new ambassador to the U.N. must be instructed not to let this happen.
Even more ambitious goals are now articulated publicly by U.N. agencies. The recommendation for U.N. regulation of multinational corporations is given new credence with the adoption of the final text of a new U.N. Convention on POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants), which will ban eight important chemicals and control four others.
No longer can the U.N.'s steady march toward global governance -- world government -- be discounted as the ranting of right-wing zealots. The question now is what should the new administration and the new Congress do about it?
The first step is to stop the denial, and recognize that the U.N. agenda is, in fact, an integrated, deliberate effort to achieve the world government it has long coveted. The next step is to prevent it.
This does not mean that the United States should withdraw from the international community. Quite the contrary. It means that the new administration has a unique opportunity to lead the world away from global socialism, toward a world of freedom. The rest of the world wants what America has -- prosperity. Prosperity was not bestowed on the United States by the United Nations. Nor can prosperity be bestowed upon the rest of the world by the United Nations. Prosperity arises only from the creation of wealth, not from the redistribution of it.
America's greatest gift to the world is not our wealth; it is our desire to share with the rest of the world the principles of freedom which made it possible for our nation to create its wealth. At the beginning of a new century, a new administration and a new Congress have the opportunity to share those principles with the world, but it cannot be done by acquiescing to the global governance agenda advanced by the United Nations.
The new administration, through all its appointees to all the various U.N. agencies, should insist that U.N. conferences be nothing more than a forum for sovereign nations to discuss their differences and share ideas. The United Nations must not become a global EPA, or a global police force, or a global banking institution, or a global welfare agency.
The United Nations is, and forever should be, nothing more than a global debating society; or it should follow the path of the failed League of Nations into the dustbin of history.
[ WND ]
The Department of Defense announced December 27 that it would award $8.6 million in Fiscal 2001 funds to support research into technologies that will advance the development of high-energy-laser weapons. The recipients were selected by the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office, a new organization formed in June 2000 to manage a DoD-wide program to revitalize high-energy-laser science and technology research.
The Pentagon said the announcement by Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology Delores Etter was the result of a highly competitive review of 56 proposals submitted by a diverse set of contractor organizations and academic institutions. The proposals were evaluated by a U.S. government team comprising technical experts from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the military Services, and Defense agencies. The team selected 19 proposals for funding. Project awards are being presented to the following investigators and organizations:
-- Alexander A. Betin from Raytheon, El Segundo, Calif.
-- Gon-Yen Shen from Raytheon, Danbury, Conn. (2 projects)
-- Lloyd C. Brown from General Atomics, San Diego, Calif.
-- Charles Clendening from TRW, Redondo Beach, Calif.
-- Stephen C. Gottschalk from STI Optronics, Bellevue, Wash.
-- Olga Kocharovskaya from Texas Engineering Experiment Station, College Station, Texas
-- George R. Neil from the Department of Energy's Jefferson Laboratory, Newport News, Va.
-- Rodney Petr from Science Research Laboratory, Somerville, Mass.
-- David N. Plummer from Logicon, Albuquerque, N.M.
-- Thomas Price from Xinetics, Devens, Mass.
-- Fred Rigby from SAIC, Albuquerque, N.M.
-- Wolfgang Rudolf from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
-- John Russell from the Directed Energy Professional Society, Albuquerque, N.M.
-- Richard Schlecht from Lasergenics, San Jose, Calif.
-- Peter Vorobieff from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
-- Robert E. Waldo from TRW, Redondo Beach, Calif.
-- Michael Wickham from TRW, Redondo Beach, Calif.
-- Luis E. Zapata from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
The selected projects will explore physics and technology in a wide range of areas relevant to high-energy-laser weapons, including chemical lasers, solid-state lasers, free-electron lasers, adaptive optics, and the interaction of laser beams with target materials.
[ US DoD ]
TCN-With all of these people and their research teams working on our latest weapons research, it should be easy to get all of the data to the Chinese and Russian military machines. Of course if this technology is to be part of the SDI program, the Russians will insist on approving it first anyway.
When I worked in military weapons during the Nixon administration the navy wouldn't even let the army know what they were working on. The security was so tight that even in the middle of Cape Kennedy you sometimes had the privilege of looking down the barrel of a .45 when you entered a building before the guard had a chance to check your clearance badge. Now the Pentagon publishes a list of who is working on what and where they are doing it! I wonder if they also included job applications when they faxed the announcement to Beijing.
Even with the lack of secrecy, I am glad to see some money being spent on weapons research. Research in new weapons technology should be a major factor in every defense budget.
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