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Editorial

Sanctioning Iran

I

n early June, Iran's deputy interior
minister for security, Mohammad
Baler Zolghadr, warned, "If the United
States attacked Iran, U.S. interests would be
in danger everywhere in the world."
It's a warning we shouldn't take lightly,
but the flip side is definitely true: If the
U.S. doesn't stop the Iranians from devel-
oping nuclear weapons, U.S. interests face
a great danger.
While the United Nations predictably
dithers about Iran, Iran's brazen threats
grow bolder and its nuclear threshold
grows closer. Reliable estimates are that
Iran will be able to deploy atomic bombs
within two years. Thankfully, our robust
military — whose Air Force held joint
exercises with Israel last week in the Negev
— is not the only weapon in our arsenal.
Instead of wringing our hands about Iran
getting nuclear weapons, it's time to wring
Iran. Financially, that is. And while we're at
it, it's time to use American economic clout
to try to restrain other rogue nations.
Critical to that effort is House Bill
4903, introduced by State Rep. Marty
Knollenberg. It would divest Michigan
pension funds from companies doing
business with terrorist countries. Thirty
states are considering similar legislation
and about a half-dozen have adopted it
in some form. After fine-tuning with the
state treasurer, other appropriate agencies

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and the Senate, Knollenberg's
bill, with its 63 co-sponsors in
the 110-member state House,
needs to arrive on the governor's
desk as soon as possible.
The same holds true of a
complementary bill to restrict
investment of surplus state
funds — let's hope we have
them soon — introduced by
Rep. Aldo Vagnozzi, and a resolu-
tion introduced by Rep. Coleman
Young II that requests our public
universities to also divest.
The Michigan House bills
target the two remaining members of
President Bush's "axis of evil" Iran and
North Korea, along with Syria and Sudan.
Iran and Syria support and facilitate ter-
rorism, flaunt international norms and aid
those who kill Americans in Iraq and else-
where. North Korea is led by an unstable
despot with nukes. Each of these nations
oppresses its people, but Sudan has gone
further, and lower, by engineering a hor-
rific genocide that has killed and devas-
tated millions.
While all of these nations deserve
international condemnation and action,
it is Iran and Sudan that rise to the top of
the list and where our actions can have
the most impact. It is encouraging to see
the "divest from terror" movement sweep

TERRITORIIES

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across the nation and focus on those coun-
tries which preach and practice genocide.
Those who know Iran say that the
Iranian people are big fans of the United
States. Popular opposition to President
Ahmadinjehad and the mullahs is high.
The people are sick of the restrictive theoc-
racy that stifles their freedoms and fails to
deliver economically while isolating their
country in the world arena. At the same
time, Iran is an oligarchy with competing
interests in the government and ruling
circles. Raising the economic pressure can
strengthen the regime's opponents and
make the price of Iran's nuclear adventure
too high for influential elements to support.
Businesses and governments who
invest in genocidal regimes need to be
given the stark choice of doing busi-

ness with the United States and the
other Western economies that drive the
world, or try to make their money in the
unstable rogue regimes which threaten
us. They shouldn't be able to have it both
ways.
Financial institutions that initially said
they couldn't develop sound investment
vehicles without terror-supporting busi-
nesses have done so in order to keep the
money in their coffers. Likewise, other
nations and businesses will reach for the
dollars if we brandish the economic stick.
Iranian threats to attack Israel,
American and Western interests around
the globe are deadly serious, as are the
threats from North Korea and Syria, and
the genocide in Sudan. Our resolve must
be just as serious. And the time is now II

time to contact us and for tak-
ing the time to let us know"
All very nice (except for
the run-on sentence and the
redundancy of the phrase
"happen again in the future").
But how about my dime? I had
given them proof of misfea-
sance and all I get is a lousy
thank you note? What kind of
model of corporate responsi-
bility is this?
I mentioned this exchange to my daugh-
ter. Her response: "Dad, when they got that
e-mail they thought, 'Here is the biggest
loser in America:"
Let them think what they will. There is a
principle involved here and that principle
is: I was right, you were wrong and where's
my damn dime?
My pride had been wounded. I used
to win bar bets by naming all 50 states

and their capitals in alphabetical order
in under a minute. I know every World
Series winner from 1903 on. I can reel
off the presidents so fast you'd think you
were being confronted by a two-legged
Wikipedia.
I wanted to ask these people if they
knew the name of their company rhymed
with "take a snooze" in the Noel Coward
lyric to "Mad Dogs and Englishmen." I
wanted them to feel my pain.
A few weeks later, I drove by this outlet
and saw that it was closed. Moved out.
Paper in the windows.
Well, I never wanted that to happen. But
as Ricky Nelson used to say on television
back in the '50s, "I don't mess around,
boy." Not with anything as important as
trivia.

Reality Check

Hands Off My Trivia

I

used to drop in at a coffee place near
my house from time to time. I liked
it because there was always a trivia
question chalked in above the order-
ing counter, and if you got it right they
knocked a dime off the price.
Journalists are demons at trivia games.
We accumulate so much worthless infor-
mation over the course of our careers that
we are walking discard bins.
And any way you look at it, a dime is a
dime.
This question was, "Which U.S. presi-
dent authorized the first national park?"
I knew that Yellowstone was created in
the 1870s and the president for most of
that decade was U.S. Grant, so that was my
answer. "Wrong," said the young woman at
the counter. "It was Teddy Roosevelt."
I told her I believed the answer was
incorrect, but she said it was the answer
that came through corporate information,

and that seemed to end the
discussion.
When I got home, I looked
it up and, sure enough, the
right answer was Grant.
Perhaps a normal individual
would have let it rest there.
But they had trivialized my
store of trivia and I demanded
satisfaction. Besides, as I have
already pointed out, a dime is
a dime.
So I looked up the company's Web page,
found customer service and fired off a
pleasant e-mail.
"Dear George came the reply three
days later. "I apologize that the store had
the incorrect answer while it obviously
doesn't help at this point I have changed
the materials that the store used to obtain
that answer so that it doesn't happen again
in the future. Thank you for taking the

George Cantor's e-mail address is

gcantor614@aol.com .

July 5 =. 2007

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