European moral culture is a strange thing to behold. Europeans can work themselves into a veritable frenzy of moral outrage if Arnold Schwarzenegger refuses to keep a vicious old man responsible for multiple cold-blooded murders from being executed. Yet if, in some vile theocracy, a rape victim is stoned to death for the crime of having been raped, there’s nary a murmur. In fact, those same oh-so-moral governments will be cutting multimillion-dollar checks in developmental aid a day later… and the representatives of their state-capitalist defense companies will be shmoozing at the next arms show in that country after a month has passed.
Iran today began to extract its currency reserves from European banks. These represent an estimated US$25 to US$30 billion, which will probably find new harbors at Arab or Asian banks. The move indicates that Tehran is considering the threat of far-reaching sanctions - and the freezing of Iranian assets abroad - a probability. It would appear that investors all over the world followed their lead. After all, who wants to be caught with sensitive stock positions or buy orders over a weekend when another Near East conflict could turn hot?
Moscow and China have magnanimously offered to negotiate with Tehran on the matter of nuclear arms development. That is good. Because who is better equipped to discuss these matters than the people who sold the Iranians the equipment to begin with?
“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.”
--Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981
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