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Jewish World Review Oct. 17, 2005 / 14 Tishrei, 5766 Tribute to ElBaradei, or Slap at Great Satan? By James Lileks
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
What caused the Pakistan earthquakes? If you trust Venezuela's Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez, it was the free market. Adam Smith's invisible hand, flipping mankind the bird. The "world global capitalist model," Chavez insisted, " ... is destroying the world. The world is in danger. Never have there been such disasters, hurricanes, droughts, torrential rains. Incredible! The world is dangerously off balance."
By this theory, Gaia is mad at us because we cut down trees and buy sneakers. Gaia is peeved because people want to drive to work in offices heated by nuclear power. We should all push donkey carts up rutted roads and sit in the market all day waiting for someone to buy our withered tubers, so we in turn can buy a small piece of burlap soaked in sugar to feed our nine children. Gaia hates capitalism.
Chavez, of course, believes none of this; if he opposed this "unbalanced" world he'd cap his country's oil wells and command his people to burn dung. It's just the latest stick with which the internationalist left can thwap the pinata of the rich, free West. It gets Chavez closer to the day when college students, yearning to poke a thumb in dad's eye, dump the Che t-shirts for one with Hugo's mug.
But ask Chavez: Which killed more people in the Pakistan earthquake — the shrug of the earth, or oligarchy? Kickbacks and corruption are so endemic to societies like Pakistan that government projects might as well be made of crackers and Scotch tape. This isn't blaming the victim. It's blaming the victimizers.
The only bright spot: If Pakistan builds its nuclear weapons as well as its poor-people hospitals, the missiles will fall apart in a shower of bolts and sparkly isotopes 10 yards off the pad. But probably not. Priorities, you know.
If Chavez' opportunistic eco-twaddle smacks of the sort of religious eschatology you get from Pat Robertson, it should. The pious leftism of the international nomenklatura is a religion. The United States may not be the Great Satan, but it's the devil they know. The bureaucrats and the European Union's anointed are the priesthood — and the Nobel peace prize is the means of bestowing sainthood.
Which brings us to its latest recipient: ol' see-no-evil Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is like giving the surgeon general the Nobel for medicine after bird flu depopulates North America. Let's look at ElBaradei's highlight reel:
Completely whiffed the Libyan nuke program. Failed to notice that Iran had a secret nuclear program going for a fifth of a century. (You can hardly blame the U.N. types — it was secret, after all. I mean, it's not like you can barge in and say, "What's all this, then?") The IAEA also didn't have a clue about A.Q. Khan, the wannabe Bond villain who ran a nuclear Wal-Mart for rogue states. ElBaradei would have been better off sending Mr. Magoo to ferret out Khan's network; at least Magoo would have tripped over something.
As is the case with any stopped-clock technocrat, ElBaradei got one thing right: Iraq was not on the cusp of exploding a nuclear device. You remember the war-justifying lies of the president: We must "attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs" because an Iraq untrammeled by sanctions "would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in months, not years." Lies! Lies!
Well, ahem: Those were spoken to the nation by President Clinton in 1998, describing his justified, if unsuccessful, attempt at regime change. Clinton was correct — unless you think Saddam unbound would have called up ElBaradei and begged for forgiveness. Bless me for I have sinned. It has been six months since my last inspection.
Incidentally, some are worried that Chavez might want to buy nukes from Brazil, if it starts making them again. Surely that's just crazed right-wing nonsense — but if true, fear not! The Nobel prize-winner will be all over that like yellow on yellowcake. It is yellow, isn't it? That's not just a name? In any case, better you should worry about free markets causing tsunamis. Thus endeth the sermon. Go, and sin no more.
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JWR contributor James Lileks is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, James Lileks |
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