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Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Vicksburg Post
THE VICKSBURG POST
EDITORIAL
Founded by John G. Cashman in 1883 Louis P. Cashman III, Editor & Publisher • Issued by Vicksburg Printing & Publishing Inc., Louis P. Cashman III, President Karen Gamble, managing editor | E-mail: kgamble@vicksburgpost.com | Tel: 601.636.4545 ext 123 | Letters to the editor: letters@vicksburgpost.com or The Vicksburg Post, P.O. Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182
JACK VIX SAYS: Polls close at 7 tonight.
OLD POST FILES 120 YEARS AGO: 1891 Pat Henry is nominated for district attorney for the 9th District. • Etta Hammer, who has been ill, is reported better.
110 YEARS AGO: 1901 The street railroad company sues V. Bonelli and J.B. Reid for $25,000 for alleged damages through a suit brought by the gentlemen to test the validity of a contract with the city. • Wade Quackenboss loses $34. Hughie Sims finds it and turns it over to the Vicksburg Evening Post and is given $10 for his honesty.
100 YEARS AGO: 1911 Hanna stars in the game in which Vicksburg beats Meridian, 9-4. Sparks pitches against Blackwood. • Pat Mulvihill of Natchez spends the day in Vicksburg.
90 YEARS AGO: 1921 Pauline Surhey is here form Oklahoma visiting her sister, Mrs. Wray Bowie. • B.W. Bowie and family go to Cincinnati and other points.
80 YEARS AGO: 1931 A Vicksburg Evening Post headline says that White is leading in the governor’s race by 20,000 votes. • Ernest Thomas accidentally shoots off his arm.
70 YEARS AGO: 1941 Friends in Vicksburg receive cards from Sen. and Mrs. John Culkin, now traveling in Canada. • Mr. and Mrs. Florian Nelson leave for a visit on the Gulf Coast. • Services are held for William T. Stanford.
60 YEARS AGO: 1951
OUR OPINION
Sen. John H. Culkin, dean of the Mississippi Senate, dies suddenly in a local hospital where he was convalescing from a recent illness.
Bankers
50 YEARS AGO: 1961 Annie Ray Jernigan is named Miss Mississippi of 1961. • Askew G. Ross dies. • Fred Astaire stars in “The Pleasure of His Company” at the Strand Theatre.
U.S. is too soft on white-collar crime The Federal Trade Commission made history last week, finalizing a settlement that will divide $108 million among almost half a million Americans who were cheated in mortgage transactions by Countrywide Home Loans. That’s the greatest number of consumers directly benefiting from an FTC settlement in the agency’s 97-year history. Countrywide operated “a business model based on deceit and corruption,” FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz told The New York Times. “It is astonishing that one single company could be responsible for overcharging more than 450,000 homeowners.” And what dreaded criminal punishment, you might well ask, befell those at the top of the chain of command overseeing this vast, purposely dishonest enterprise? None. The absence of criminal sanctions is the rule, not the exception, when it comes to the financial titans whose recklessness threw America into a brutal recession that continues to
damage families and ravage the nation two years after it officially ended. Last fall, three former senior Countrywide Financial executives, including co-founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo, settled civil fraud charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC had accused them of using secret inside information to profit from selling company stock. Mozilo admitted no guilt but agreed to pay fines and penalties of $67.5 million. That sounds like a lot until you consider that Countrywide is paying $20 million of it. More precisely, $20 million is being paid by Bank of America, which acquired the Countrywide name along with the tattered remains of the rest of the company in mid-2008. (Bank of America also is paying for the FTC settlement.) Even Mozilo’s remaining $47.5 million fine pales in comparison to the more than $520 million in compensation he drained out of Countrywide between 2000 and 2008.
40 YEARS AGO: 1971
But earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department decided against bringing criminal charges against Mr. Mozilo. Ditto for Richard S. Fuld Jr., the Lehman Brothers chief executive at the controls during the firm’s rocket-sled journey from top of the world to bottom of the ocean. The same for Joseph Cassano, who drove the financial products department of American International Group into the ground. The same again for senior executives at Goldman Sachs, which settled civil fraud charges out of court in 2010 with a $550 million fine and still managed to have $8.35 billion in profit for the year. If fines and penalties weren’t a sufficient deterrent when the potential rewards for fast dealing can be hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe jail time could be. If that requires rewriting white-collar crime statutes, so be it. Otherwise, not only does the punishment not fit the crime; it’s really no punishment at all.
Mr. and Mrs. James Hampton announce the birth of a son, John Edward, on July 21. • Services are held for Walter Fox. • Anthony Hall stars in “Atlantis” at the Joy Theatre.
30 YEARS AGO: 1981 Kyle Rogers of the Red Carpet Riding Club takes first place in the Buckaroo class, 9 and under, during an intraclub show. • Mrs. Delma Oakes Murphy dies. • Mr. and Mrs. Earl L. Fuson announce the birth of a daughter, Tabitha Sherrill, on July 29.
20 YEARS AGO: 1991 A skull found in northwest Madison Parish is identified as that of a parish man missing since mid-July. • Jasmine Octavia Patrice Brown celebrates her second birthday.
10 YEARS AGO: 2001 Catherine L. Hoffman dies. • A candle is found burning among diapers at Walmart SuperCenter, and the fire is being investigated as an attempted arson.
VOICE YOUR OPINION Letters to the editor are published under the following guidelines: Expressions from readers on topics of current or general interest are welcomed. • Letters must be original, not copies or letters sent to others, and must include the name, address and signature of the writer. • Letters must avoid defamatory or abusive statements. • Preference will be given to typed letters of 300 or fewer words. • The Vicksburg Post does not print anonymous letters and reserves the right to edit all letters submitted. • Letters in the column do not represent the views of The Vicksburg Post.
MODERATELY CONFUSED by Jeff Stahler
More than lives lost at Norwegian camp massacre Last Tuesday, I read a New York Times online report about a press conference held by Geir Lippestad, the defense lawyer for admitted Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. I found one of Lippestad’s statements of interest, and saved it for future reference. Little did I know it would apparently disappear from the news website. The statement was: “Asked if the rampage was aimed at the Labor Party or at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Lippestad said: ‘This was an attack on the Labor Party.’” The lawyer’s statement is the first credible assessment of motive, and as such it is a significant piece of the story. So why did The New York Times cut it from the final version of the story online and in Wednesday’s newspaper? The answer, I think, has much to do with how Lippestad’s opinion fails to accelerate the rush of Times insta-spin, and could even slow what looks like a swift-moving drive to limit free speech about Islamization in the West. The “updated” Times report that omits Lippestad’s statement now features comments from Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s foreign minister. Sure, Store’s comments are sig-
DIANA
The statement was: “Asked if the rampage was aimed at the Labor Party or at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Lippestad said: ‘This was an attack on the Labor Party.’”
WEST nificant, but why they obliterated the defense lawyer’s statement, I don’t know. But I can guess. Lippestad believes his client was attacking the Labor Party, not Muslim immigrants. The final version, minus Lippestad’s comment, reports on an official, post-attack event: the foreign minister’s visit to the World Islamic Mission, a large Oslo mosque, “to express solidarity,” as the Times explains, with Norwegian Muslims. Over the weekend, Store visited a church as well, but the Times doesn’t mention that. The overall patina to the mosque event then, certainly minus Lippestad’s assessment, becomes one of Muslim aggrievement — an artificial creation given that the major-
ity of Breivik’s victims are most likely non-Muslim. Such aggrievement, however, fits the Times’ antianti-jihad narrative to date, also dovetailing with machinations on the Left. We may assume Norway’s Labor Party, like all parties on the European Left, draws votes from a majority of Norway’s Muslims for its support of Islamic immigration and the cultural, legal and financial accommodations that follow. Indeed, it’s the resulting pattern of Islamization across Europe that drove what has been absurdly glorified as Breivik’s 1,500-page “manifesto.” After I checked out the nine times my own name appears — all in cut-and-pasted essays by the Norwegian blogger Fjordman
— I learned via counterterrorism expert Jarrett Brachman that the “manifesto” is partly plagiarized from the Unabomber. Jawa Report has now identified multiple other plagiarized sources throughout the first 350 pages (and counting). This means the myth of the “manifesto” as some magnum opus of counter-jihad written by the killer over many years is a phony. Still, I’ll wager it’s pure Breivik where the “manifesto” notes his fave TV shows, from “Vampire Diaries” to “Dexter.” “Dexter” is about a police forensics expert/serial killer. “Quite hilarious,” wrote Breivik, who killed Labor Party campers wearing a police uniform. But watch such tripe become a catalyst for a clampdown. The Times reports: “While many in Norway do not want Mr. Breivik’s actions to affect politics here, Mr. Store said that was inevitable, too. Politics, once the mourning period passed, was the way to deal with the issues raised by the killings, he said. “‘What kind of statements and actions can lead to this?’ he said. ‘How can we have an inclusiveness that brings all views inside the
camp of democracy while drawing lines in the sand about incitement and hatred?’” Uh-oh. I know what “statements” the foreign minister means — and it’s not the saying of Muhammad, “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.” Store means the histories, analysis and reportage related to Islam copied into the phony “manifesto.” These, in the spin that Lippestad’s assessment doesn’t quite match, “led” to the massacre — not the madness or evil of a drugged-up killer. Forgive my cynicism, but I don’t see how else to interpret the omission of highly relevant news, the projection of Muslim victimization, and the apparent elevation of a criminal lunatic’s pseudo-thesis to a means to silence “politically incorrect” critiques of Islam. Which is in itself a kind of tragedy. The cynics and manipulators, eager for political advantage, fail to see the attack for what it was: a shattering blow to all of civilized society. •
Diana West can be contacted at dianawest@ verizon.net