VIRTUAL
EGALITARIANISM
The
UN's latest Human Development Report disapprovingly notes
that "the typical Internet user worldwide is male, under
35 years old, with a university education and high income,
urban based and English speaking. The literally well connected
have an overpowering advantage over the unconnected poor.''
Oh, for shame – that even a single aborigine is
denied access to America Online, while all us evil white males
are surfing the net at warp speed is surely a crime against
humanity. Certainly Louise Arbour and/or her successors at
The Hague will want to look into this.
GUTENBERG
IN BORNEO
The
utter nonsense spewed forth by these fulminating would-be
overseers of the Internet would be hilarious if it weren't
so dangerous. Translating that old canard about the U.S. exploiting
and hogging all the world 's wealth at the expense of the
Third World into the language of the Information Age, the
UN complains that: "North America, with less than 5 percent
of the world's population, has more computers than the rest
of the world combined and accounts for more than 50 percent
of all Internet users." We are piously informed that
poor deprived "South Asia, home to 23 percent of the
world's population accounts for less than 1 percent of Internet
users." Entirely aside from the fact that the computer
was invented and developed in North America, along with the
Internet – thank you, oh thank you, Al Gore! –
are we really obligated to feel guilty about this? Blaming
the West for the lack of Internet access in South Asia is
like berating Gutenberg for not having been born in Borneo.
A
SURREALISTIC SCENARIO
How
would installing state-of-the-art computers in every grass
hut in Indonesia change people's lives for the better? This
would put the vast illiterate majority in the somewhat humiliating
position of being able to order books from Amazon.com without
being able to read them. The utter absurdity of this surrealistic
scenario naturally won't deter our globalist bureaucrats from
their crusade to give every Hottentot his own personal web
page.
THE
GLOBALIST AGENDA
For
years, the UN and its wacky domestic lobby of World Federalists
and other assorted international do-gooders have been looking
for a way to impose a world tax. With Tony Blair already pledging
tens of thousands of British soldiers to a permanent standing
United Nations army, they will be needing lots of cash to
pay their "peacekeeping" centurions – to say
nothing of the army of bureaucrats and UN apparatchiks
who enjoy tax-free status as well as immunity from local laws.
No doubt their own "lengthy" emails will be tax-free
– for the good of humanity, naturally.
ON
THE BRINK
Meanwhile,
we are on the brink of war with China. Taiwan has virtually
declared its independence, formally repudiating the legal
fiction of "one China" and announcing that Taipei
will now insist all relations with Beijing be on "a state-to-state
basis." Emboldened by the example of separatist Kosovo,
where NATO functioned as the KLA's air force, the separatist
factions on Taiwan are making their bid for power – at
the risk of World War III. Committed to the unconditional
defense of the breakaway island province of China by the Taiwan
Relations Act, the mighty US government is now being led around
by the nose by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, whose intemperate
tirades could well drag us into a military confrontation with
China.
AN
ASIAN KOSOVO
According
to a variety of news sources, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin has
determined that "strong action" needs to be taken
relatively soon. The South
China Morning Post
[07/14/99] reports Jiang as saying: "We must initiate
a tough response against Lee Teng-hui's challenge. National
sovereignty and reunification are nonnegotiable principles.
We have no room for retreat." The Chinese government,
he said, would never allow Taiwan to become an "Asian
Kosovo."
WAR
CLOUDS, EAST AND WEST
The
smoke from the burning rubble of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade
had barely cleared, and already war clouds were beginning
to gather on the eastern horizon. If the European war was
the project of the "progressives" of the Clintonian
and "New Labor" persuasion, the Asian edition is
brought to you by the American Right. The same Republican
politicians who were inveighing against the war to "liberate"
Kosovo and wondering aloud why we were invading a sovereign
country, seem not to recognize the sovereignty of China (which,
unlike Yugoslavia, is a real country). GOP congressmen who
proved immune to the blandishments of the powerful Albanian
lobby show no such resistance to the Hate China Lobby.
THE
ASIA-LATIONISTS
These
"Asia-lationists" are caught in a logical contradiction,
and will soon either go over to the camp of the globalists
or else become consistent noninterventionists. If the Balkans
are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier,
as Bismarck once put it – and as Patrick J. Buchanan
was fond of reminding us during the Kosovo war – then
it is fair to ask: are the Straits of Taiwan worth the bones
of a single American GI? In the name of a foreign policy that
eschews foreign entanglements and respects the principle of
national sovereignty, the answer must be: no, no, a thousand
times no.
THE
OMINOUS PARALLELS
What
is our legitimate interest in Taiwan? The principle
of national self-determination? But we do not even recognize
Taiwan as a separate country. As the crisis reached a new
level today, nervous State Department officials reiterated
their long-standing support for a "one China" policy.
As in Kosovo, the US is being drawn into giving military support
to a separatist revolution without recognizing its political
legitimacy.
RAMBUNCTIOUS
"ALLIES"
US
officials are clearly none too pleased with President Lee's
outbursts, and will make every effort to rein in their rambunctious
satellite. But President Lee of the self-proclaimed Republic
of China (ROC) may prove less domesticated than even Hashim
Thraci, the self-proclaimed "President" of Kosovo.
A
GREATER TAIWAN
The
myth of "poor little Taiwan," the passive victim
of the Beijing bullies, ought to be thoroughly debunked by
the ROC's expansionist designs on the disputed Spratly Islands,
in the South China Sea. As if to provoke Beijing, and to underscore
the ferocity of the new Taiwanese nationalism, the
ROC Foreign Ministry has chosen this moment (July 13) to announce
to a disbelieving world that Taiwan claims sovereignty over
those much-disputed islands. The ROC Foreign Ministry denounced
both the Malaysian and Philippine claims to the islands and
declared that the Spratlys and the entire South China Sea
belong to Taiwan "legally, historically, geographically,
[and] in reality." Is the United States not only the
guarantor of Taiwan's independence, but also the defender
of its mini-empire of the northern Pacific? Here again the
parallels with Kosovo are eerily specific: as in the case
of the Kosovars, who long for a Greater Albania, the US government
is now becoming the architect of a Greater Taiwan, extending
not only to the Spratlys but also including the entire South
China Sea.
THE
PRATHER REPORT
Wen
Ho Lee, the Taiwan-born computer scientist who purportedly
stole nuclear secrets on behalf of China, may finally be charged
– but not with espionage. According to Clinton administration
officials, who fired Lee from his job at Los Alamos National
Laboratory last April, the FBI "mishandled" the
case. Since a successful prosecution is unlikely, Justice
Department officials are looking into charging him with "computer
crime," in the words of one official. According to
the Prather Report, written by nuclear weapons expert
Dr. Gordon Prather and issued by Jack Kemp, Wen Ho Lee downloaded
files into his own personal computer, but there is no evidence
that he turned these over to Chinese agents or to anyone else.
Lee's work at Los Alamos was a direct outgrowth of the administration's
signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, never
approved by the Senate, which proposed to get around the problem
of how to test nuclear weapons without actually setting them
off by setting up a computer simulation program. This is the
work Lee was engaged in at Los Alamos. This entailed getting
all the data into one computer LAN, or local area network:
Lee's great "crime" is that he transferred data
outside that network. Lee claims that his computer was, in
fact, secure, and that at any rate none of the downloaded
files were classified. Somehow, we are expected to believe
that this is the biggest breach of national security
"since the Rosenbergs."
A
QUESTION OF RACE
It
is the difference between treason and carelessness. This crucial
difference would be as clear as day if only Wen Ho Lee were
not Chinese-American, albeit Taiwan-born. Would a similarly
lax Caucasian scientist find himself the object of a national
hate campaign?
A
PAWN IN THE GAME
On
the basis of almost no evidence, Wen Ho Lee has been persecuted,
slandered, and reviled as a traitor – and now they are
backing down from filing any really meaningful charges, while
still doing as much damage to his career and reputation as
possible. Abandoned by the Clintonites, demonized by the Republicans,
his career ruined, and his freedom in jeopardy, he is a pawn
in the game. Nothing symbolizes the ugliness of war hysteria,
its utter indifference to any concept of truth or justice,
than the tragic fate of Wen Ho Lee.
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