Women seeking fertility treatment could one day be offered donor eggs grown from the tissue of an aborted foetus, researchers said yesterday."You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."
In an experiment that raises the prospect of babies with "unborn mothers", ovarian tissue was removed from seven dead foetuses and kept alive in a laboratory for four weeks.
The egg-producing follicles in the tissue continued to develop normally but did not reach the stage at which they released a healthy egg cell.
One of the scientists working on the experiment said the study could help solve the worldwide shortage of donor eggs for fertility treatment and medical research.
If the Baathists had followed the classic insurgency doctrines preached by masters such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, they would have kept a low profile, spreading agitation and propaganda while the U.S. occupation forces waned in strength. They should have waited for a struggling, post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi central government to try to take control in the region before striking. Instead of a weak, fledgling democratic Iraqi regime, the Baathists are facing a seriously aroused U.S. liberation force still at the height of its power and competence.
In the classic first stage of an insurgency, the rebels build on public discontent to create local covert sanctuaries and muster their strength. They engage in hit-and-run attacks to show the population that they exist, but they try not to draw undue attention to their activities. The high-profile attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi allies in recent weeks are more like the second stage of a classic insurgency, in which the guerrillas have established a base of public support and have covert sanctuaries among the general population. The Baathists have neither. They remain unpopular, a residual cancer, operating only in the region where they have some civilian support. And they have many enthusiastic enemies among the civilian population, backed up by American firepower that is increasingly in search of retribution. This is not the way to start a popular revolution.
Any successful revolution needs a popular cause. The Baathists want the Americans out of Iraq. But if there is a popular sentiment in Iraq that trumps a desire to see an eventual U.S. withdrawal, it is the desire of the vast majority of people to have seen the last of the Baath Party. Again, this is not a promising building block for a popular liberation front.
The salient attribute of any culture is originality and its legacies. Genius, no matter how rare, is a human universal. It sends into the world new perception and new experience, inspiring duplication: Out of Israel came monotheism, out of Greece philosophy, out of Arab civilization science and poetry, out of England the Magna Carta, out of France the Enlightenment. What has been the genius of Palestinian originality, what has been the contribution of the evolving culture of Palestinian sectarianism? On the international scene: airplane hijackings and the murder of American diplomats in the 1970s, Olympic slaughterings and shipboard murders in the 1980s. And toward the Jews of the Holy Land, beginning in the 1920s and continuing until this morning, terror, terror, terror, terror.
But the most ingeniously barbarous Palestinian societal invention, surpassing any other in imaginative novelty, is the recruiting of children to blow themselves up with the aim of destroying as many Jews as possible in the most crowded sites accessible. These are not so much acts of anti-history as they are, remarkably, instances of anti-instinct. The drive to live is inherent: The very mite crawling on this sheet as I write hastens to flee the point of my pen. The child who has been taught to die and to kill from kindergarten on, via song and slogan in praise of bloodletting, represents an inconceivable cultural ideal. And it is a cultural grotesquerie that Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a pediatrician entrusted by his vocation with the healing of children, is in fact a major recruiter of young suicide bombers. (When his wife was asked by a neighbor why her husband did not outfit his own teenage son in a bomber's vest, the good doctor instantly sent the boy abroad.)
Confronted by this orgiastic deluge of fanaticism and death, there are some who would apply the term psychopathological. But it is metaphysics, not Freud, that is at stake: the life force traduced, cultism raised to a sinister spiritualism--not because the "martyrs" are said to earn paradise, but because extraordinary transformations of humane understanding are hounded into being. A Palestinian ethos of figment and fantasy has successfully infiltrated the West, particularly among intellectuals, who are always seduced by novelty. We live now with an anti-history wherein cause and effect are reversed, protection against attack is equated with the brutality of attack, existential issues are demoted or ignored--"cycle of violence" obfuscations all zealously embraced by the State Department and the European Union.
The Road Map permits no contradiction to the Palestinians' emerging nationhood. But if it is teachings and usages that characterize a nation, then what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches out of Bethlehem to be born?
When America's founders adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they based their action on certain "self-evident" truths, specifically, that men are endowed by God with inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted to secure these rights. From the very outset of the nation, therefore, its independence was based upon the tradition of natural law, which holds that there are objective rights of liberty and property, and that these rights in turn rest upon a higher moral law. The natural law is in sharp contrast to the opposing theory of legal positivism, which asserts that law is merely the will of the sovereign. In the real world of today, the will of the sovereign means the power of the state. The difference between these views of law is critical: if there is no "higher law," then there is no conceptual basis for arguing that any human law is unjust.
We live in an age in which the public is understandably captivated by the achievements of science and technology. Sometimes this attachment to science becomes excessive and results in attempts to apply scientific method to subjects that cannot be quantified or tested by the methods of experimental science. One of these subjects is the law. Ever since the late nineteenth century, a series of doctrines has appeared purporting to reduce law to an empirical or experimental discipline using, to the maximum extent possible, the methodology of science. These efforts have proceeded under a number of labels, including legal positivism, sociological jurisprudence, legal realism and, more recently, "law and economics." All of these variations are "positivist" in the sense that they tend to separate law from its moral sources.
In this cultural climate, natural law appears to many lawyers to be a throwback, an obsolete category that ought to be discarded altogether. If confronted with the term "natural law," a practicing lawyer today is likely to say that there is no such thing, or that it is a religious notion that has no place in legal analysis. On the other hand, if you mention "the rule of law," he will probably indicate that he knows what this refers to, that it is a good thing and that we ought to preserve it. And yet many if not all of the basic principles that we usually include under the rubric "rule of law" can be derived directly or indirectly from natural law sources. Today, unfortunately, the connection between natural law and the rule of law, which formerly was so close as to amount to virtual identity, is largely neglected by the law schools and the legal profession.
This is a great shame, because the defense of the rule of law becomes much more difficult when it is unhinged from its intellectual, historical and moral roots. As Professor Ellis Sandoz has argued in a recent paper, under the rule of law "there is an appeal to a higher standard of law and justice than the merely mortal or, at the least, than the enacted law of merely contemporary rulers."
The Supreme Court decision is not a political one, of course, but there are other laws and proposed laws that are political -- including in particular those relating to gay civil unions and marriages.
An appeals court in Ontario, Canada recently changed the definition of marriage to include "two people" rather than a man and a woman, and there are indications that the Canadian government will pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage across Canada in future months.
Conservatives reacting to Thursday's Supreme Court decision have argued that it could lead to a higher probability of legal sanctioning of gay marriage or gay civil unions.
Our latest poll shows great ambivalence on the issue of gay civil unions that have "some of the legal rights of married couples," although the percentage of the public favoring such arrangements has increased over the last three years:
Would you favor or oppose a law that would allow homosexual couples to legally form civil unions, giving them some of the legal rights of married couples?
Favor 49%
Oppose 49%
No opinion 2%
There are a few reasons why we think the Americans have no sense of irony. First, theirs is rather an optimistic culture, full of love of country and dewy-eyed self-belief and all the things that Europe's lost going through the war spindryer for the thousandth time. This is all faith-based - faith in God, faith in the goodness of humanity, etc - and irony can never coexist with faith, since the mere act of questioning causes the faith fairy to disappear. Second, they have a very giving register that, with a sense of irony, would be unsustainable (how can you wish a stranger a nice day with a straight face?). Third, because we think Canadian Alanis Morissette is American, and she proved some time ago, with her song Ironic, that she didn't know what irony meant (this is so ironic - first, because we think we're the more sophisticated and yet don't know the difference between America and Canada, second because America sees Canada as such a tedious sleeping partner, and yet Canada is subversively sending idiots into the global marketplace with American accents. Of course, I'm being ironic. Canadian accents are not the same as American ones!)
Anyone who doubts the power of ideas or the efficacy of a classical education should consider these words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." [...]
On the national holiday, let us take a brief history quiz. Ask your children these questions.
1. From where are the lines in the first paragraph above taken?
2. Who wrote them?
3. Fill in the blank. "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our _____, our ________, and our sacred _____."
4. What English philosopher most influenced Jefferson's writing of the Declaration?
5. Who was King of Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution?
6. What is the legislature of Great Britain called, on which our Congress is modeled?
7. True or False: Jefferson also wrote an influential pamphlet titled Common Sense.
8. True or False: The first government of the United States was the present Constitution.
9. Thomas Jefferson was the ___ President of the United States elected in ____.
10. Jefferson helped found which university?
If your children score below 70%, we have a lot of work to do as a nation.
Five summers ago, the lion of African Anglicanism roared. This week, it has bared its claws.
The summer of 1998 saw the every-ten-years Lambeth Conference of the worldwide Anglican communion absorbed with issues of human sexuality. At its meetings, African Anglicans led a campaign against the liberalizing of the church's teachings on homosexuality.
Joining in the African "roar" was Bishop John Rucyahana of Shyira, Rwanda, who issued this warning to the liberalizing contingent in Western Anglicanism: "We don't like your First World way of speaking ambiguous words and not being straight on the issues." Rucyahana and his colleagues were heard, and heeded: the conference passed a resolution (526 to 70, with 45 abstentions) that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture."
In the wake of Lambeth, liberals in American Anglicanism (the Episcopalian Church) resented this new voice of "African fundamentalism," while a conservative like bishop Jack Iker of Ft. Worth, Texas could observe with some satisfaction: "No longer does the United States or England speak for the Anglican Communion but the church in Africa and Asia does."
This week, one branch of African Anglicanism seems to be moving from rhetoric to action in the conservative cause. In a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of the Nigerian Church (Anglican Communion)—a church representing 17 million of Anglicanism's 70 million members—has threatened to break communion with the worldwide body over the same issue that dominated discussion at Lambeth: Williams has supported the appointment of the openly gay Dr. Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading, in England.
Said Nigerian Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola: "We cannot continue to be in communion with people who have taken a step outside the biblical boundaries."
There is not one "I'm sorry; please forgive me" in the whole book....My niece informs me that the word "sorry" appears on pages 66, 81, 233, 292, and 293; and the word "thanks" appears on pages 182, 185, 249, 262, and 285. She reports no sightings as yet of "forgive" or "thank you."
I do not recall an instance of "please" or "thank you" in the book.
I offer Ms. Rowling my sincere apologies for exaggerating the facts, and beg her forgiveness.
Candice S. Miller was riding high last week, flush with the glow of being a freshman Republican in the House of Representatives.
On Thursday, she dipped into Washington's famous pork barrel, when the House approved a military construction bill that included $9.6 million for a new health care center at a base in her Macomb County, Mich., district. Next, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, her party squeaked out a one-vote victory on the Medicare prescription drug benefit bill.
Then Representative Miller jetted off to Rome, to spend the early part of her July 4 recess talking with European leaders about hydrogen fuel and bioengineered foods as part of her first "Codel" --a taxpayer-financed trip abroad by a Congressional delegation.
"I feel very optimistic," she said shortly before she left.
Optimistic is not exactly the word one would use to describe Raul M. Grijalva these days. Resigned is more like it. Representative Grijalva, a freshman Democrat from Tucson, voted against the prescription drug bill, just as he voted against the repeal of the estate tax and every other piece of legislation Republicans have pushed through this year. For the July 4 recess, he is going home to Tucson, where he expects to tell constituents, "We're putting up a fight."
For Mrs. Miller, a self-described "George W. Bush Republican" from a middle-class neighborhood outside Detroit, and Mr. Grijalva, an unabashed liberal from one of the poorest corners of Tucson, the last week was not much different than any other since they joined Congress in January. These lawmakers, whose first year is being chronicled by The New York Times, represent a microcosm of life in the House, where the political reality these days is stark and simple: Republicans win and Democrats lose.
Is D.C. becoming a one-party town?
With the Republicans controlling all the levers of power -- 1600 Penn, both Hill chambers and the high court -- have Democrats slid into a state of near-irrelevancy?
That's debatable, to say the least, but it's hard to think of a time in the past half-century -- even during the Reagan years, they controlled the House -- when the Dems had less power inside the Beltway. The only Democratic weapon of any potency at the moment seems to be a Senate filibuster. And the party is not wildly optimistic about ousting Bush in '04.
Now the question is whether GOPers are cementing their hold on power by installing their folks in a sort of quasi-permanent government around these parts: the lobbying community.
On one level, Republicans aren't doing anything different than the Democrats did when they ruled Congress. You try to use your clout to soak up the available sources of big corporate cash, and you try to strong-arm the trade associations to support your legislative needs. The lobbying firms, in turn, realize that they need to hire folks (often former officials) with high-level entree to the party that controls the Hill machinery, including such basics as which bills get brought to the floor.
But the Republicans have gotten really, really good at this.
Most Americans aren't extremists, and they are not at war. The lovely paradox of 21st century America is that we seem to be
increasingly united by the celebration of our differences. That is what the Supreme Court acknowledged in its decisions on homosexuality and affirmative action last week.
"The court legitimized and endorsed a cultural consensus," says Paul Gewirtz, a professor of constitutional law at Yale University. That consensus walks a socially sensible but legally clumsy line between tolerance and outright acceptance. Scalia noted that many Americans might not be comfortable with an openly gay business partner, scoutmaster, schoolteacher or boarder. True enough, but most people would also say that what Tyron Garner and John G. Lawrence did in the privacy of their Texas bedroom is none of our business. The court's affirmative-action decision was just as pragmatic. Most Americans disapprove of specific, codified racial preferences, like the now famous 20 points granted minority applicants to the University of Michigan. But American life, happily, is no longer plain vanilla. Anything all-white--law-school classes, corporate suites or presidential Cabinets--is not merely aesthetically displeasing, as Clarence Thomas asserted in his dissenting opinion, it is also considered socially deficient, inappropriate, un-American. Our diversity is the wellspring of American creativity, one of our competitive advantages in a global economy.
There is also a consensus on abortion: tolerable during the first few months of pregnancy but with severe limits after that. In fact, the rationale for Roe v. Wade--the right to privacy--was cited in the gay-rights decision. That the court's controversial abortion decision is now being used as a template for privacy cases is remarkable. It means that Roe is probably settled for the foreseeable future.
The political implications of all this are, I suspect, good for both the Republic and George W. Bush. The Republic is always strengthened by a reassertion of sanity.
Conservatives are rejoicing. They see the United States already on a path of fundamental tax changes that will accelerate economic growth.
"Stealth tax reform," it has been called. That's because relatively few voters are aware of the significance of the changes in the system proposed by President Bush and incorporated in the three tax-cutting measures passed by a Republican-led Congress since he took office.
"George W. Bush is the first president to actively understand and embrace the fundamental core principles of tax reform," says Ernest Christian, a founder of the Center for Strategic Tax Reform in Washington. [...]
The next likely "baby step" is the revival of the Lifetime Savings Account proposed by Bush last January, and later dropped for fear it would distract from the White House goal of selling its main tax package. The radical measure would allow taxpayers to contribute up to $7,500 a year of after-tax income into an investment account where it could grow untaxed and be withdrawn tax-free later for retirement, education, or other purposes.
"That is coming back," says Chris Edwards, a fiscal expert at the Cato Institute in Washington. He sees it as having political appeal in an election year. And its revenue loss is small in the 10-year window used by Congress in looking at tax bills.
The measure would also move toward a consumption tax by easing the tax burden on money not spent, that is, savings.
Gov. George E. Pataki and the Republican machinery he controls are determined to rally a huge voter turnout for President Bush next year, in a bid meant to bring New York Republicans the sort of national stature that has eluded them since the days of Nelson A. Rockefeller.
But in an intriguing subplot, Mr. Pataki and his advisers appear to have all but abandoned plans to seriously challenge Senator Charles E. Schumer, a popular Democrat, mindful that it would mobilize the opposition and thus undermine Mr. Bush's prospects in New York. [...]
[R]epublicans say the sudden shift in the party's priorities reflects the surprising level of support that Mr. Bush has picked up in New York, a heavily Democratic state that no Republican presidential candidate has won since Ronald Reagan swept it in 1984.
A poll recently released by Marist College, for example, showed that 58 percent of voters who were surveyed in New York rated Mr. Bush's job performance as good or excellent.
But as much as anything else, the strategy also underscores another hard political reality that New York Republicans have been forced to reckon with: the early electoral strength of Mr. Schumer, who has already amassed nearly $15 million in his war chest and whose job-approval rating is at an impressive 58 percent in recent polls.
Etzioni's media profile faded in the late 1990s. The communitarian message didn't feel so fresh, and some of its policies seemed downright creepy. Despite Etzioni's embrace of Buberian "dialogue," his presentations felt more like monologues: No matter what the subject, "balancing rights and responsibilities" was always the answer. In 1994 the Guardian asked, "Is Etzioni just a Jerry Falwell in cap and gown? Could communitarianism be a thinking person's Moral Majority?" Etzioni dutifully records that the movement's media citations peak in the mid-1990s. "By the late 1990s, there were more and more days, then weeks, when no one called. Invitations to speak and to attend conferences ceased to pose scheduling problems; there were no longer any who wanted me to be in two places at the same time."
Much of the difficulty had to do with his "third way" communitarian message. The political blood-sport of the Clinton era made Etzioni's plea for nonpartisanship sound naïve, if not disingenuous. If Clinton could gut welfare while simultaneously praising communitarianism ("You are my inspiration," Clinton told Etzioni one New Year's Eve), maybe the movement was more style than substance. Were communitarian ideas merely protective coloration for politicians of the left and right? Was a movement admired by Bill Bennett, Dick Morris and George W. Bush itself worth admiring?
And the more closely people considered Etzioni's proposals, the more it became apparent that many were either stunningly obvious ("If the advocates of civil rights and those of public safety would stop butting heads, we would see all kind of ways to advance our security while minimizing intrusions on our liberty") or absurdly utopian (a "megalogue" on values between members of a super "community of communities"). Wish-and-make-it-so public policy.
I think the reason communitarianism never had the impact of, say, neoconservativism has to do with its message as well as its method of
implementing its ideas. Communitarianism speaks the language of reform, not revolution. It seeks to temper the primacy of the individual, to tame the logic of the market, to alleviate our reliance on government and its laws. It is more "liberalism rightly understood" than an ideology in its own right. Etzioni is less a prophet for a new idea than a publicist for a worthy, but not particularly novel, point of view.
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent," George Orwell wrote in 1949. He was referring to the recently assassinated Mohandas Gandhi, but these days the same test might well apply to himself, for in the 53 years since his death Orwell has become a secular saint, acclaimed by the political left and right and many in between, revered as a seer and truth-teller, honored for his moral courage, his razor-sharp intellect and his diamond-hard prose.
"The first saint of our age," as social historian Noel Annan once described him, "quirky, fierce, independent and beholden to none."
Somewhere along the way, however, amid all of the hero worship, the real man -- the idiosyncratic, squeaky-voiced, tubercular Englishman who dressed like a pauper, rolled his own cigarettes, chased after women and practiced a wobbly but sincere brand of socialism -- seems to have gotten lost, and perhaps the real writer has as well. Orwell has suffered the famous author's ultimate fate: He is revered and invoked more than he is read. [...]
But even while the orgy of praise and hagiography gathers steam, let's pause for a moment to remember the man himself, starting with all of the flaws that made him human. Based upon his self-critical writings and the accounts of those who knew him, Orwell was a strange and difficult person who had few friends, mistrusted foreigners and harbored a streak of self-righteousness. The characters in his novels are stiff and unconvincing, his portraits of women are one-dimensional and bear the distinct odor of unrepentant misogyny, and his occasional references to Jews are uncomfortable at best. And, oh yes, let's not forget this: As a prophet he was almost always wrong; 1984, as we now know, looked nothing like "Nineteen
Eighty-Four."
Again and again in interviews, leading conservatives drew favorable contrasts with the first President George Bush, who endured a debilitating primary challenge from Patrick J. Buchanan, contributing to his defeat by Bill Clinton.
"It's night and day," said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group. "Every group that this president has kept faith with, the previous president double-crossed."
David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: "In the first Bush administration, the conservatives were asked to be
spectators--and it was hoped that they would applaud the action in the field. In this one, they have a president who wants them to be part of the team."
Mr. Bush's effort to tend to the conservative wing of his party has emerged as a crucial part of his early campaign preparations.
The Bush campaign has begun sending a representative to a meeting of conservative leaders that takes place in Washington every Wednesday, joining
a delegation of as many as eight administration officials.
Party officials say Mr. Bush's advisers--starting with Karl Rove, his senior political adviser, and Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager--are now in regular contact with about 60 conservative leaders across the nation, discussing issues of concern to the White House and the re-election campaign.
Mr. Bush has named Ralph Reed, who first rose to prominence as executive director the Christian Coalition, as a senior member of his campaign team. Beyond that, Mr. Rove and Mr. Mehlman are viewed by conservatives as advocates for their point of view in the White House.
Asked about efforts to mobilize conservative support, Mr. Mehlman responded: "Ultimately good policy is good politics. This is a president who has strongly pushed numerous policies that appealed to a lot of different groups--including conservatives."
Many conservatives say Mr. Bush's alliance with their wing of the Republican Party is as solid as that enjoyed by Ronald Reagan. Some suggest it is even stronger.
The Pentagon is puzzling over how many resisters there are, how well they are organized and how they can be stopped.
Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, confirmed Friday to replace war commander Gen. Tommy Franks as head of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate that there are three main groups causing the violence:
**Leftover cells from Saddam's Baath party in a triangle bounded by Baghdad, Ramadi and Tikrit.
**Anti-American fundamentalist Islamists, including some foreigners.
* A criminal element including some of the 100,000 prisoners Saddam freed from jail before the war.
I am sitting here tying to think of when I became race-conscious. And I can't. Maybe I never did - another of my numerous failings. I've gone all the way back to childhood, to the kitchen behind the shoe store on Texas Avenue in Shreveport. And I can't find that one decisive moment, that loss of innocence recorded in portentous tones in one Southern novel after another.
Now, roughly ages later, I sit and read a Supreme Court decision that says race matters after all. It matters so much that you need a certain number of this race and that race in law school classes in order to, yes, break down artificial racial categories. You've got to discriminate in order to end discrimination. It may be the funniest Supreme Court decision I've ever read, if unintentionally so.
What's more, you need a certain number of black students in law schools in order to form a "critical mass," whatever that is, but it doesn't take as many Hispanic students to do so, and it takes even fewer American Indians. I give up. Here is still another foreign language. Only this one doesn't make sense, as if it were written for some purely abstract world that exists out in space, or only in law books.
It's all so much hocus-pocus to me, like the idea of race itself so long ago on Texas Avenue. I sit here reading Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion, and I'm puzzled. I can't get my mind around it. I laugh out loud here and there, and think: Shoot, I knew better than that when I was 6 years old.
Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes, "My kids are normal kids. They go to the mall and pass out recall petitions".
And, on a recent "Tonight" show, Schwarzenegger facetiously remarked to Jay Leno, "There is no money over there (in Iraq). There's no leadership – pretty much like California." Rapper Snoop Dogg was also on the program and promptly dubbed Schwarzenegger "The Notorious GOP" in good fun.
Watch out Governor Davis! Auh-nuld might indeed be gearing up to "terminate" your political career in the state of California. Clearly,
Schwarzenegger is testing the political waters at this juncture.
Almost anyone interested in the rise of Christian conservatism (to use a nonpejorative term) as a cultural and political concept in the United States will quickly discover that although Protestant fundamentalism is indeed an identifiable movement in American history, it was numerically superseded by the late 1950s by what is now called "evangelicalism." Evangelicals believe as ardently as Protestant fundamentalists in the need to propagate the gospel, but they were determined to break out of precisely the enclave mentality into which the fundamentalists had chosen to retreat from the 1920s onwards. Strong Religion refers a few times to Bob Jones University, certainly a bastion of American fundamentalist thinking, but overlooks the important point that Bob Jones, Sr., virtually excommunicated evangelist Billy Graham from fundamentalism in 1957 because Graham wanted evangelicals to work with any Christian church that would accept them.
This fact is important to understand because the evangelical, not the fundamentalist, brand of Christianity seems to be expanding faster than any other religious movement in the world today, including Islam. (It is worth noting that fundamentalist Protestant Christians generally oppose strongly the Pentecostalist or charismatic experience, which is at the heart of much of the Christian growth in the developing world.) The evangelical Christian phenomenon in the southern hemisphere has been thoughtfully examined by Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom. Jenkins argues that the southward expansion of Christianity in Africa and Latin America will have more profound consequences globally than the ongoing phenomenon of Islamism.
Although perhaps uncomfortable with going into what particular Christian groups believe, the authors of Strong Religion are certainly aware that it is the evangelicals who are expanding their influence both in the United States and around the world, whereas those Christian groups that have sought to accommodate secularism are in decline. Interesting statistics cited in the book for the United States include the rise of Southern Baptists from 10 million in 1960 to 17 million in 2000, a fourfold increase in the adherents to American Pentecostal denominations, and a massive decline in the Episcopal Church from about 3.5 million in 1960 to 2 million in 2000. The Southern Baptists and the Pentecostals have been much more supportive of positions such as biblical inerrancy than the Episcopalians, many of whom appear to have abandoned much of the historical Protestant orthodoxy.
Strong Religion is undoubtedly correct in noting that it is their response to modernity that generally determines whether fundamentalist groups prosper or wither. But how helpful is the book's definition of fundamentalism as "an aggressive, enclave-based movement with absolutist, reactive, and inerrantist tendencies"? This strongly negative depiction does not capture the nuances of modern religious groups.
In Indonesia, for example, the Islamic revivalist movement Nudhat'ul-Ulama is both pro-democracy and pro-pluralism. But it is probably also in favor of "inerrancy" in the Islamic context, thus fitting at least one of the authors' criteria for a fundamentalist group.
Or take the role of religious revivalists elsewhere in the developing world. In Guatemala, many sociologists have observed that communities where Pentecostalism is strong usually manifest what German sociologist Max Weber a century ago defined as "the Protestant ethic": self-discipline, frugality, hard work, and saving. A similar pattern can be seen in China today, where there may be more than 60 million Protestant Christians (compared with 700,000 in 1949). Some Chinese sociologists have noted the "coincidence" that the most significantly Christianized city, Wenzhou, where some 14 percent of the population is now Christian, is also one of China's top performers in domestic commerce and foreign trade.
"The self-deprecating charm of Joe Lieberman--you have got to start with that," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist. "And Bob Graham's resume. Al Sharpton's one-liners! No one has better one-liners than Al Sharpton. Howard Dean's ability to excite activists and new people." [...]
[J]ohn Edwards, the North Carolina senator, may seem a little too young and slight to be Leader of the Free World; in White House circles, he is mockingly known as the "Breck Girl." But it is not hard to find Democrats who would like to bottle his charm and personable campaign style. John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, may not seem as if he would be happy eating corndogs in the jostling crowd at the State Fair in Des Moines. But leave the congeniality to the resume-challenged Mr. Edwards: Mr. Kerry has a war record that any candidate would love--two tours in Vietnam that brought him a few medals, and a tour back home leading the opposition to the war.
Mr. Lieberman's campaign is introducing many Americans to the customs of the observant Jew, such as not working on Saturday. It also appears to have awarded him the franchise on the moral and ethical issues. The penchant of Senator Bob Graham to keep detailed notebooks chronicling the most mundane of chores--think: got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head--may give Democrats pause. But Mr. Graham, as a former member of the Senate intelligence committee, has authority in his challenges to Mr. Bush's efforts to protect the nation from terrorism. Better than that, he is from Florida.
Is there any candidate who can boast more legislative experience and ties to traditional sources of Democratic support than Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the former House minority leader? (Of course, that could be his big weakness as well.) Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, may seem ideologically out of step with a lot of voters, but he has already shown his ability to draw a lot of new people into the system.
Fatah
Out of the desire of the Palestinian political factions on the higher national interests of the Palestinian people in this critical period of our national struggle and stressing the high importance of the national Palestinian unity in our ability to struggle, steadfast to our achieve our fair goals and not to give any chance to harm it on the basis of sticking to the national rights of our people, adopted by the national Palestinian councils of the P.L.O. and the Arab summits, U.N., nonallied and African summits and friends and honorable people in the world, and the full commitment for the continuous struggle to achieve it on top of it the right of our people to return and self-determination and establishing the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capital on all lands occupied in the year 1967 and in response to all the Arab efforts and the Quartet, we declare for all the countries and lovers of peace and freedom in the world our following initiative:
Cessation of all military operations in accordance with the Egyptian initiative.
At the same time we call upon all the states and peoples and governments worldwide and especially those interested in achieving peace, security and stability in the area to (urge) the Israeli side to implement the following:
First, the immediate stop of all acts of Israeli violence against our people, including stopping assassinations, arrests, deportation, massacres against our communities, cities, villages, refugee camps and to stop the incursions and destruction of the buildings, the economic infrastructure, the official and public institutions, (destruction) of agricultural lands and lands confiscation, and to stop the Judeaizing measures.
Second, to lift the closure from the Palestinian people and its legitimate elected leadership.
Third, to release all the prisoners and detainees from the Israeli prisons.
Fourth, not to harm the Islamic and Christian holy places, especially the Haram al-Sharif, the Church of the Nativity and the al-Ibrahimi Mosque.
Fifth, immediate stop of confiscating of lands and building settlements and expansion in the existing settlements as an introduction to removing them and to remove the separation walls.
Sixth, begin the immediate withdrawal of the occupation forces to where they were before Sept. 28, 2000 and to implement the road map plan to quickly send the international monitors to supervise its implementation according to the international legitimate resolutions and to establish a just and lasting and comprehensive peace in the area."
Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Out of our desire for the unity of our Palestinian ranks at this dangerous phase which our people and our cause are going through, and in order to protect our national unity achieved by the intifada and the resistance and documented by the blood of the martyrs, and as the contribution from us to consolidating Palestinian national dialogue on the basis of adherence to the rights of our people, and in order to protect our internal front from the danger of schism and confrontation, and in order to block the enemy from having any excuse to wreck it, and in an assertion of the legitimate right to resist the occupation as a strategic choice until the end of the Zionist occupation of our land and until we achieve all our national rights, and in response to efforts by many in the Palestinian and Arab arena who care about the unity of the Palestinian national ranks, we declare the following initiative:
A. Suspension of the military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months, effective today, in return for the following conditions:
1. An immediate cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression against our Palestinian people including incursions, destruction, closures and sieges on cities, villages and refugee camps, including the siege imposed on President Yasir Arafat, house demolitions, leveling of agricultural land and assaults against land, property and Christian and Islamic holy sites, especially the holy Al Aksa Mosque. In addition, the immediate cessation of all individual assassination operations, massacres, collective measures, all arrests and deportations against our people, leaders, cadres and fighters.
2. The release of all prisoners and detainees, Palestinian and Arab, from occupation prisons without condition or restriction and the return to their homes first and foremost of those who have spent long periods and those with lengthy sentences, women, children, the sick and elderly.
B. In the event that the enemy does not act according to these conditions and commitments, or violates any of them, we see ourselves unencumbered by this initiative and we hold the enemy responsible for the consequences.
So, the junior senator from Massachusetts has finally come up with a winning line. "Vote for me," says John Kerry. "I'm easily fooled." This appears to be the implication of his claim to have been "misled" by the Bush administration in the matter of WMD. And, considering the way in which Democratic Party activists generally portray the president as a fool and an ignoramus, one might as well go the whole distance and suggest a catchy line for the campaign: "Kerry. Duped by a Dope."
Given that Kerry once went all the way to Vietnam under some kind of misapprehension about a war for democracy and launched a political career on the basis of what he finally learned when it was much too late, one might be tempted to discern a pattern here. But that temptation should probably be
discarded. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was fabricated out of whole cloth (by a Democratic president, building on the legacy of another JFK from Massachusetts), and not even the most Stalinized of the Vietnamese leadership ever ran a regime, or proposed an ideology, as vile as that of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh in 1945 modeled his declaration of independence on the words of Thomas Jefferson, appealed for American help against France, and might have got it if FDR had lived. Uncle Ho shared in the delusion that there could be an anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial empire. If that is indeed a delusion.?
Multi Templi Scotia, the Scottish branch of the order, now includes people of all denominations. James Ritchie, Grand Herald of the order, said he would welcome both improved relations with the Catholic Church and an apology to the Islamic world for the Crusades. 'I would be in favour of anything that gives us greater understanding of different religions and people,' he said.
Any attempt to issue an official apology for the crusades will, however, be fraught with political difficulties, not least because of the different beliefs of members of the order in different countries.
The grand commander of the US order, James Carey, was a rear-admiral in the US Navy during the first Gulf war. He served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, father of the present President Bush, and has been an outspoken supporter of the current administration in this year's war against Iraq.
During this entire crisis tired voices of convention have misunderstood the nature of this war and the temporary presence of Americans in exotic places like the Asiatic provinces of the former Soviet Union, the Gulf, or Kurdistan. Instead of seeing such deployments in their proper context of ad hoc military efficacy and reaction to 9/11, they have instead shrilly alleged some sinister conspiracy to harness the world's oil through the use of permanent military deployment abroad and perpetual war.
Fools! The real danger is not that we are interventionists, but rather are on the verge of a weird insularity not seen since the 1920s - a paradox of still being engaged abroad but not in the usual manner of the past. The American Street is in a strangely revolutionary - read "fed-up" - mood. It is growing distant from Europe. It is angry with the Arab world especially, and it is tired with South Korea - and most whiny nations that either take billions of dollars in direct American aid or ankle-bite under the aegis of American arms.
The result is while hothouse analysts in Paris and spoiled teenagers in Seoul with Reeboks and football jerseys damn America the imperialist, the United States they knew is changing right before their eyes in ways that they might not like in the next decade - but that will in fact relieve most Americans. [...]
The real global story is not "anti-Americanism," but perhaps a growing American weariness with strident allies and the braggadocio of pathetic Middle Eastern despotisms. If I were a functionary of the European Union, I would either have an emergency meeting right now to explore ways of stemming a rising, grassroots tide of Middle America's anger against Europe or alternatively allot 400 or 500 billion Euros per annum for its own unilateral and collective defense. We in America are waiting for sober Europeans to question their current frightening leadership that came of age in 1968, but now shrug that the Schroeders, Fischers, and Villepins may not be so aberrant after all. The EU, remember, is now being asked by Mr. Abbas on the West Bank to stop subsidizing Hamas.
So in response, what should we do?
Keep quieter and carry a far bigger stick.
What conclusions, then, may we reach regarding Taft's overall importance for the history of U.S. foreign relations? As the revisionists have pointed out, he was remarkably prescient on many of the problems inherent in a highly interventionist foreign policy: unprecedented accretion of power in the hands of the executive branch of government, curtailment of civil liberties at home, the charge of "imperialism" arising from American influence abroad, and most importantly the danger of what Paul Kennedy referred to as "imperial overstretch"-the extension of overseas commitments beyond the ability of a nation to meet them. Even his contemporary critics, such as John P. Armstrong, admitted that the senator played an important role as a check on the internationalism of the Truman administration, raising difficult questions about particular policies even if only to be voted down. Indeed, in the wake of the Vietnam War many liberals, including (most ironically) Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., proved willing to embrace many of Taft's positions on foreign affairs.
But while it certainly would not do to reject Taft's importance out of hand, it is equally erroneous to claim that he offered a coherent alternative paradigm for the conduct of foreign affairs. Republican party platforms in the late 1940s and early 1950s to a large extent echoed the interventionism of their Democratic counterparts. The reason for this was twofold: first of all, Taft never felt comfortable enough with the subject to put the sort of effort into foreign policy as he did into, say, domestic economic matters; and secondly his intense partisanship led him to view foreign affairs as little more than a stick with which to beat the Democrats. Thus to some he appeared as merely a mindless "isolationist," while others failed to recognize any consistent viewpoint whatsoever.
It is probably a mistake, however, to place all the blame for this on Taft. The late 1940s and early 1950s were, after all, a period of America Triumphant, a time when almost all Americans believed in the role of the United States as leader of the free world, and very few questioned the wisdom of extensive overseas commitments. Taft himself seemed to accept these premises in his book, A Foreign Policy for Americans (though in it he often hedged about how to best follow through on them). Therefore even if he had mapped out a clear and coherent plan for foreign affairs derived from his core principles, it is unlikely that he would have found much support for it. It was when he was being most consistent and true to his principles, such as when he opposed the North Atlantic Treaty, that he appeared to be the most out of step with the times. It was not, therefore, until the 1960s and the doubts raised by the Vietnam War that a serious reevaluation of Taft's foreign policy was possible. And indeed, as policymakers of the post-Cold War era struggle with the issue of foreign affairs, perhaps it is time for another such reconsideration.
France's exhaustion with its unions has found its voice in a 21-year-old student, Sabine Herold, who is challenging the silent majority to revolt against the strikes crippling her country and causing havoc for British travellers.
With schools and government offices closed yesterday, Channel ferries halted, and airlines cancelling most of their flights to and from France, Mlle Herold called the union members 'reactionary egotists'
They "claim to defend public services but are just defending their own interests", she said.
With her pale blue mascara and long eyelashes, she makes an unlikely Joan of Arc. But her words have found an echo in large protests by students and parents against repeated strikes by teachers and threats to disrupt this summer's exam schedule.
She has also become an emblem for the many in French society who believe that economic reforms are long overdue. She blames President Jacques Chirac for caving in repeatedly during his career to union pressure. The many British travellers who have been affected by the strikes in France can only hope her campaign succeeds.
If we had our way this Tuesday, most beer-drinking Canadians would spend Canada Day ogling Shania Twain while sharing a brewski with Pierre Trudeau in Quebec -- home to Canada's sexiest people -- before closing out the festivities with sex on a beach in the Maritimes, a new poll shows.
'Not enough Americans are rolling up their sleeves as active citizens and as a result, they are watching their country be hijacked by giant corporations and their political allies in Washington,' he says. 'With 9/11, the politicians have seen a political advantage. We are moving away from democracy and into a plutocracy. This is an extremely serious condition.'
Call it a leadership disorder. In Nader's mind, Bush's wartime presidency and his quixotic war on terror are responsible for an era of eroded civil liberties and the reckless build-up of the munitions and defence industries. Government corruption and distortion of the truth, Nader feels, are taking place on the most serious level possible. 'The president has lied to the American people,' he exclaims. 'We were misled, or worse, about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, his ties to al-Qaeda, his threat to the rest of the world. This is an impeachable offence. Now the president is emphasising the 'liberation of the Iraqi people' because that's the only reason left. Everything else has been shown to have been phoney. More people are getting killed and injured every day while his propaganda enriches corporations and the president's friends, not to mention his re-election campaign. But as long as he beats the drum of war and struts as a wartime president, he's able to camouflage what is essentially a losing presidency and inoculate himself from impeachment.'
To hear Nader tell it, the White House is in the grip of big-money contributors and conservative ideologues. And Bush's prime motivation for launching an invasion of Iraq is the same one that many observers suspect prompted the first Gulf War: oil. [...]
Furthermore, Nader believes that the US -- and, perhaps, the UK -- teeters on the brink of its own regime change. 'There has to come a time when people say 'Are you exaggerating the war on terrorism? Are you exaggerating the terrorist threat?' Iraq? It's in Bush's interests to keep saying that there are terrorist cells here and there. But no Democrat has asked if there are al-Qaeda cells all over the United States and if they are suicidal and they are funded and they hate us, why hasn't anything happened?' he says. 'If whistle-blowers start leaving the Pentagon or the CIA, he is going to be in serious trouble. If Tony Blair gets in more serious trouble, then the trouble is going to spill over here. They are one step away from serious political disaster. That step is if the parents of the troops killed over in Iraq convene for a news conference and accuse them [Blair and Bush] of costing their sons' lives, they'll be in serious trouble.'
Airlines these days fill little more than half the seats on their planes, leaving hundreds of the world's aircraft sitting idle.
America's automakers have the capacity to build 2 million more cars each year than people buy.
And in 2001 and 2002, the nation's paper-making heartland - concentrated in Wisconsin - decommissioned 104 paper-milling machines, each the length of a football field.
From greasy tool-making machinery to high-speed fiber-optic data lines, the United States has mothballed more industrial equipment this year than it has since 1982.
The shuttered offices and factories - some mutely awaiting an upturn and others closed for good - are a legacy of the longest economic expansion in post-World War II America. The giddy years of the late '90s,before the boom abruptly turned to a bust, left the economy saddled with more capacity than the marketplace can absorb.
And in the view of economists, the years of over-investment are now impeding a broad-based economic revival.
"If you have 26 percent of the capacity of the economy sitting idle, it is hard to sell to your board or your bank that you need to invest in new capacity," said Charles W. McMillion, chief economist of MBG Information Service, a forecasting firm in Washington, D.C.
Many will brand [evangelist Franklin] Graham as intolerant and divisive for his words, but they should also consider his work before trying to banish him from the Muslim world. It is work that has not only alleviated human suffering but also has given Christians and Muslims the chance to rub elbows rather than cross swords.
In the summer of 1999 in a boggy field on the Albanian coast, I saw a dozen Samaritan's Purse staffers build and run a small tent town for 2,000 mostly Muslim refugees who had fled ethnic violence in Kosovo. In less than two months' time they worked like characters in a fast-forward video erecting tents, digging latrines, installing a water system and starting a bakery.
For many of these refugees, the Serbs were the only people calling themselves Christians they had ever known, and it was these same Christians who had terrorized them and driven them from their homes. It's no wonder they were a little perplexed that a Christian organization was now coming to their aid.
Samaritan's Purse relief workers came from all walks of American life -- college students and professors, nurses, doctors, retired military, even a short-order cook. They lived in tents alongside the refugees, ate the same food, used the same pit latrines and provided a humane haven from the oppression the Albanians had known for more than 10 years.
The refugees had the freedom to worship any way they wanted, and Samaritan's Purse training materials even proscribed how staffers should dress and act in order to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities.
In a world where everything old is new again, the kickball craze probably shouldn't surprise anyone. The rubbery smell of the red ball has the power to take adults back to simpler times on grade school playgrounds. But unlike freeze tag or Big Wheels, kickball seems to translate to adulthood with surprising ease.
More than 1,100 people participate in organized leagues in the Twin Cities area. The Midwest Unconventional Sports Association (MUSA) and the Cities
Sports Connection (CSC) have nearly 400 players each. Edina, Plymouth, Apple Valley, St. Louis Park and other city leagues make up the balance. The World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA), which has 6,000 players nationwide, is starting a Twin Cities league. [...]
The sun is sinking. The swimming pool near the kickball field closes and three kids weave their bikes along the sidewalk, trying to ride without hands. When they spot the game, they wheel into the grass to watch. A player kicks a high foul ball, and it spins into the street. A city bus nearly flattens it as it bounces crazily down the slope.
The pleasure of diving for pennies, telling knock-knock jokes or catching lightning bugs might fade as kids grow up and go to work. But the urge to reach back to those days, and the desire to have simple, sheer fun, is still alive -- and kicking.
Scandals involving the sexual abuse of under-age boys by homosexual priests have rocked the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, defenders of homosexuality argue that youth organizations such as the Boy Scouts should be forced to include homosexuals among their adult leaders. Similarly, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a homosexual activist organization that targets schools, has spearheaded the formation of "Gay-Straight Alliances" among students. GLSEN encourages homosexual teachers-even in the youngest grades-to be open about their sexuality, as a way of providing role models to "gay" students. In addition, laws or policies banning employment discrimination based on "sexual orientation" usually make no exception for those who work with children or youth.
Many parents have become concerned that children may be molested, encouraged to become sexually active, or even "recruited" into adopting a homosexual identity and lifestyle. Gay activists dismiss such concerns-in part, by strenuously insisting that there is no connection between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children.
However, despite efforts by homosexual activists to distance the gay lifestyle from pedophilia, there remains a disturbing connection between the two. This is because, by definition, male homosexuals are sexually attracted to other males. While many homosexuals may not seek young sexual partners, the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners. In this paper we will consider the following evidence linking homosexuality to pedophilia:
Pedophiles are invariably males: Almost all sex crimes against children are committed by men.
Significant numbers of victims are males: Up to one-third of all sex crimes against children are committed against boys (as opposed to girls).
The 10 percent fallacy: Studies indicate that, contrary to the inaccurate but widely accepted claims of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, homosexuals comprise between 1 to 3 percent of the population.
Homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses: Individuals from the 1 to 3 percent of the population that is sexually attracted to the same sex are committing up to one-third of the sex crimes against children.
Some homosexual activists defend the historic connection between homosexuality and pedophilia: Such activists consider the defense of "boy-lovers" to be a legitimate gay rights issue.
Pedophile themes abound in homosexual literary culture: Gay fiction as well as serious academic treatises promote "intergenerational intimacy."
In chapter 1 about the 1950s, I wrote about my early sexual experiences, experiences that I see as an enrichment. Today, an experience like that in the park could easily lead to a complaint by parents to the police because of paedophilia, and the relevant young man would be in trouble. But why?
He didn't do me any harm. On the contrary, he showed me something that was incomprehensibly exciting and I could feel and touch it, but today we are ready to interfere with complete teams of professionals. By interfering in such an irritating and grown-up way in the world of children, we make an enormous problem of something that for a child is no problem at all and is only exciting.
In the end, one must believe one of two things about the offenders: Either they were born with a sexual "orientation" toward molesting children; or somehow, just maybe, the experience of being molested themselves affected their future sexual feelings. If one holds to the "orientation" view, one faces the serious problem of explaining away as "coincidence" a broadly shared experience of childhood or adolescent molestation--one out of proportion to the general population. But if, on the other hand, sexual predators are made, not born, a currently forbidden hypothesis suggests itself: that other "sexualities," too, may be affected by experience.
Today, the few researchers and clinicians who dare touch this subject are treated as professional lepers. Think only of the calumny that has come the way of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), which provides counseling to homosexual men and women who believe that sexual "orientation" is susceptible to change. Public opprobrium has also been the fate incurred by groups like Courage, a ministry to homosexuals from the perspective of traditional Catholic teaching. There is no doubt that the experience of groups like these--similar to those of the few writers who have dared dissent from the contemporary secular articles of faith about homosexuality--has had a chilling effect on public discussion, including discussion that could help identify, diagnose, and treat offenders in the future.
And here is where a contemporary secular taboo--that of questioning the ideology of "orientation"--crashes head-on into the greater public good. What the priest scandals demonstrate beyond argument is that what we need, right now, is in-depth study of the victim-to-perpetrator causal chain. We need answers to questions that, properly understood, will help prevent other boys from being preyed upon in the future--for example, why some children who are abused do not go on to become abusers themselves; why others become compulsive offenders whose victims number as high as the hundreds; and how institutions of all sorts might better screen and thwart and help the adults tempted by this profound evil. Today, however, because the ideology of "orientation" has effectively foreclosed discussion of just these issues, there is a tragically short supply of such theoretical and clinical exploration--and likely an even shorter supply of personal will and fortitude among potential researchers. As the JAMA article cited earlier noted suggestively--in a review, recall, of the clinical literature on the sexual abuse of boys--"No longitudinal studies examined the causal relationship between abuse and gender role or sexual orientation." There should be such studies. Interestingly, among the proposed reforms the bishops will discuss in Dallas, one promises that "we offer to cooperate with other churches, institutions of learning, and other interested organizations in conducting a major research study in this area"--namely, "the problem of the sexual abuse of children and young people in our society."
Such information would not only be useful to the bishops and the rest of the public in contemplating the matter of deterrence. It might also shed light on human sexuality more generally. In particular, it might help explain the prominence of the theme of man-boy seduction--which I have documented in two essays in these pages--in gay literature, journalism, and culture. It is now over 20 years since gay eminence grise Edmund White observed that "sex with minors" was one of two features of gay life "likely to outrage the straight community" (the other, he believed, was "sex in public places"). In the wake of the priest scandals, a few other gay voices have acknowledged just such a homosexual/heterosexual divide on the question of minors. As a writer for the Washington Blade put it with surprising candor, "These cases--where the 'victim' lies somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, and the 'abuser' may or may not also have a gay adult sexual life--prove far murkier than either the Catholic Church or many gay rights advocates seem willing to admit." But no gay writer has sounded a more poignant note than the unnamed man who wrote in a letter posted on Andrew Sullivan's website--which contribution Sullivan deserves credit for publishing: "I must disagree with your disavowal of any homosexual complicity in the Church scandal. . . . Until all queers are able to face the fact that we have created for ourselves a culture that values youth and beauty above all else, and to realize that this obsession creates, in at least some gay men, a deviant and abusive tendency toward sex with minors, we are doomed to continue to create victims as surely as the atrophied Church."
By early next March, Democrats will probably have settled on a nominee for president.
At that point, with no opposition in the primaries, President Bush's re-election campaign is expected to begin spending the massive amount of money it is raising to paint an unfavorable picture of the Democratic candidate in voters' minds and to establish the terms of the fall contest in a way that benefits the president.
It is almost certain that the Democrats will not have the money to respond. "They will be flat on their backs," said Scott Reed, an experienced Republican consultant who is not involved in the 2004 presidential race, "tired from an exhausting primary campaign, still at each other's throats and completely broke." [...]
But Mr. Bush is forgoing matching money, so there will be no limit to what he can spend. His campaign says it plans to raise $170 million, almost twice what Mr. Bush had in 2000 when he also refused matching money and faced stiff primary opposition, and many times more than any other candidate has ever spent. [...]
Because Mr. Bush plans to accept public financing for the general election campaign, he can use the money he is raising only between now and the Republican National Convention in New York in September 2004.
"It's a bonanza for them," said Tony Coelho, who for a time was Al Gore's campaign manager in the last presidential race. "There's no way they can spend this amount of money just for themselves."
Mr. Coelho said he expected the Bush campaign to contribute millions of excess dollars to Congressional campaign committees and state and local Republican parties to be used to improve the party's position in Congress. "What they want to do is not just target Bush's re-election but also make the Republican Party the majority party for the rest of the decade if not longer," he said.
So Alan Greenspan and his buddies on the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates again this week. Another quarter-point bone to the masses, for which we're to be eternally grateful. Pardon me, but I don't think so.
First off, it should have been a half-point cut. That would have sent an unequivocal message to the markets and the rest of us that this Fed gets it. Things are still dicey, so there's no time for fooling around.
By moving as conservatively as they did, Al and his pals sent quite the opposite message: that things are fine, just you wait. Well, for better than three years' worth of rate cuts, we've been waiting, and the Fed has been dithering. This latest cut only continued the trend, and was one of the big reasons why the Dow fell 98 points the day the Fed moved. Too little, too late.
What amazes me is despite the disappointment, few criticize Al himself. He's held in remarkably high regard almost everywhere. Wall Street loves him. Congressmen trip over themselves praising him. And even the Bush administration is afraid to say boo to him. Why? What has this guy done to warrant such unanimous love?
I'll tell you, in one word: nothing.
[W]hile pension reform is the urgent political issue of the moment in Germany, Austria, France and other countries, many experts see it as a harbinger of things to come, a sign of a demographic shift with important implications not only for the welfare of retirees but also for European societies as a whole. The crucial factor is age.
One study by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, predicts that the median age in the United States in 2050 will be 35.4, only a very slight increase from what it is now. In Europe, by contrast, it is expected to rise to 52.3 from 37.7.
The likely meaning of this "stunning difference," as the British weekly The Economist called the growing demographic disparity between Europe and the United States, is that American power--economic and military--will continue to grow relative to Europe's, which will also decline in comparison with other parts of the world like China, India and Latin America.
With its population not only aging but shrinking as well, Europe seems to face two broad possibilities: either it will have to make up the population shortfall by substantial increases in immigration, which would almost surely create new political tensions in countries where anti-immigrant parties have gained strength in recent years, or it will have to accept being older and smaller and therefore, as some have been warning, less influential in world affairs.
"The European countries are aging in a world that is becoming younger," Mr. Frey said in a telephone interview. "And in a global economy, they're not going to share in the energy and vitality that comes with a younger population." [...]
"In reality, a legal retirement age of 80 is what we should aim at," Erich Streissler, an Austrian economist, wrote in a newspaper article.
Europe has just entered a critical phase of its demographic evolution. Around the year 2000, the population began to generate "negative momentum": a tendency to decline owing to shrinking cohorts of young people that was brought on by low fertility (birthrate) over the past three decades. Currently, the effect of negative momentum on future population is small. However, each additional decade that fertility remains at its present low level will imply a further decline in the European Union (EU) of 25 to 40 million people, in the absence of offsetting effects from immigration or rising life expectancy. Governments in Europe are beginning to consider a range of policy options to address the negative implications of population decline and rapid aging. Social policies and labor laws aimed at halting the further increase in the mean age of childbearing--which contributes to low fertility--have substantial scope for affecting future demographic trends. They also have an additional health rationale because of the increasing health risks associated with childbearing in older women.
One would be hard pressed to disagree with the core argument of the book, which is directed at Muslims. It consists of two parts. First, don't blame the "Great Satan" for all your ills. Second, be inclusive and compassionate toward other human beings regardless of their faith, because that is what God has willed the believers to do. Many (but not all) of the problems facing the Muslim world are indeed self-inflicted, and blaming the West for all of them has set the Muslims back on the path to progress. Conspiracy theories dominate Muslim views of the West, which is believed to be plotting for the extermination of Islam while indulging in an orgy of sex and violence. It is too often the case that the lives of Muslims are cloaked with a fatalism based on a misunderstanding of God's will. [...]
He also mentions that the freedom of speech and religion in the US prior to September 11 had created an atmosphere that could be compared to that of Muslim Spain (Andalus) when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived side by side in peace. However, everything changed after the terror attacks, as the US came in the grip of hyper-group solidarity. Muslims could be arrested anywhere and held without charges indefinitely, merely for being Muslims. Many who were arrested had their beards shaven forcefully.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is losing its hard-won image as a force for stability in Asia as key thinkers in and around the Bush administration are beginning to view it as a dangerous and often reckless power that is fomenting fear and instability. If this change sweeps through the government leadership like other recent paradigm shifts - for instance, the quickly spreading view that Saudi Arabia no longer is a stable force in the Middle East but a corrupt and unpopular financier of terrorism - Sino-American relations will be headed for the rocks. That's bad news for the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the U.S. and other companies that have built their fortunes on it. [...]
The Chinese leadership has used its "partner" status in the world war on terrorism to crack down even further on religious, political and social movements. According to Al Santoli, editor of the American Foreign Policy Council's China Reform Monitor, "Beijing is using the war on terror as an excuse to imprison and execute political opponents and religious leaders," including underground Roman Catholic clergy, democracy activists and the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Even the State Department responded to this, at least expressing "deep concern" over the life sentence imposed on Wang Bingzhang last February, stressing that "the war on terrorism must not be misused to repress legitimate political grievances or dissent."
The sheer volume of evidence presents a damning indictment of the PRC as a fomenter of instability and fear, a purveyor of weapons of mass destruction to the world's most dangerous state-sponsors of terrorism, a supplier of nuclear-missile technology to the planet's most tense hot spots and a unilateral force committed to changing the world's political map. Analysts see Beijing pursuing a two-track strategy of sustained, low-level military pressure with positive inducements of trade, loans, development assistance and even security cooperation - which combined create a sense of fear and dependency on the part of China's neighbors. [...]
Beijing's "long-term strategic objective is to drive American bases and influence out of the Pacific region and to exercise hegemony over it," according to Australia-based sinologist Peter Zhang. "I wrote those words nearly four years ago," he said in a recent essay for the New Australian. "Since then events in the region have only strengthened my assessment."
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Usama bin Laden's right-hand man, was reported last night to be in custody in Iran along with several other top Al Qaeda leaders.
The Arabic news channel Al-Arabiyah said the fanatic Egyptian-born doctor is under arrest in Iran along with bin Laden's son Saad and Al Qaeda's infamous spokesman Abu Ghaith.
The report said they may be sent back to their home countries.
Al-Zawahiri has been sentenced to death in Egypt for his role in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
Canada's state religion is secularism, which proclaims that if there is a God, man could know nothing about It. Therefore, any viewpoint that contends otherwise should be dismissed as an absurdity, and above all permitted no role in the determination of public policy, because religion must be regarded as a purely "private" affair.
Claims of individuals to know anything as actually true, or morally good, should be disparaged, and school curricula must be designed to discourage such assumptions. Influence over children should be gradually taken away from parents and vested in the state. In particular, the ability of parents to imbue their children with any religious viewpoint should be thwarted through public education.
The purpose of human life is pleasure, the centre of all human endeavour is properly the self, and the chief vehicle for all human fulfillment and advance is the state. Finally, the source of all moral authority must be vested in what Plato called "the Guardians," which in our day would mean the professoriate, the luminaries of the liberal media, the educators, and the bureaucracy. Judges, the intelligentsia, commentators and assorted "experts," these are the priests and the prophets.
Such is the state religion of Canada. Its chief adversary is Christianity, and Christianity has no media voice. When The Report magazine folded, this was the real loss.
A new voice has emerged in the re-election campaign of President Bush, that of Dennis Miller, who is gaining a reputation as a conservative comic by attacking Democrats with biting humor.
Miller flew on Air Force One from San Francisco to Los Angeles with the president on Friday, and later gave a stand-up routine at a Bush fund-raiser in Los Angeles. [...]
Bush remained offstage until after Miller's often caustic comic performance during the fund-raiser that drew in $3.5 million, most of it in $2,000 checks from 1,600 people. [...]
"[Howard Dean can roll up his sleeves all he wants at public events, but as long as we see that heart tattoo with Neville Chamberlain's name on his right forearms, he's never going anywhere," Miller said.
FROM the moment George Bush moved into the White House, the search has been on for the man (or woman) who is pulling his strings. But now all are forgotten in the fuss about the most surprising suspect of all: Leo Strauss, a political philosopher who died in 1973 and produced a series of learned studies of political theorists (such as Xenophon's Socratic Discourse) that are variously described as seminal and utterly opaque. But his real talent was for teaching.
One reason why Strauss is so controversial is that a little selective quotation can be used to give his thinking a decidedly sinister tinge. Strauss emphasised both the fragility of democracy and the importance of intellectual elites. He was also a devotee of Plato, who famously argued that “philosopher kings” sometimes had to be willing to tell “noble lies” in order to keep the ignorant masses in line. The implication: Mr Wolfowitz and his fellow Straussians deliberately lied about Saddam Hussein's nukes to advance their political cause. This is stretching it. Strauss was critical of democracy in much the same way that Winston Churchill was: he believed (unlike Plato) that it was the worst political system apart from all the others. He focused on the weaknesses of liberal democracy—particularly its habit of underestimating the dangers of tyranny—precisely because he had seen the Weimar Republic destroyed at close hand.
The rise of the Straussians suggests that American conservatism has shifted its focus from liberty to virtue. Ronald Reagan was surrounded with free-marketers in Adam Smith ties. But Mr Bush is an intensely religious man who has no qualms about using big government to improve people's behaviour. Strauss was an agnostic, but he also stressed the cultivation of personal virtue, and his followers (perhaps traducing him, and certainly outraging Plato) have argued that organised religion is a necessary buttress of civilisation. Strauss's paternalist side would have warmed to the way that Mr Bush has expanded the Department of Education, has started promoting marriage through the Department of Health and Human Services and has toughened America's drug policies. Straussians such as Mr Walters (the current drug tsar) and Mr Kass (head of the council of bioethics) have helped to clothe Mr Bush's Christian instincts in the non-religious language of moral philosophy and practical policy.
The rise of the Straussians also illustrates an odd point about modern American conservatism. Despite all their bile about Old Europe, the American right has repeatedly found its inspiration in European thinkers. A few years ago, it was an Austrian libertarian called Friedrich Hayek. Now it is a German Jew who regarded ancient Greece as the fountain of all wisdom. With European constitution-makers seeking inspiration in the Philadelphia Convention, and American conservatives embracing European philosophical tracts, perhaps transatlantic relations aren't quite as bad as all that.
HOWARD DEAN admits that when he decided to run for president even his mother said it was preposterous. He meant nothing to anybody except his fellow Vermonters and a handful of health-care bores. Now, he is the Democrat to watch. He is selling himself as the embodiment of authenticity: an anti-politician who is not afraid to express outrage. And he is turning his sharp-edged personality into an asset, proof that he is not just another blow-dried mediocrity from the Beltway. The result is huge enthusiasm. “Howard Dean” bumper stickers are replacing “Peace Now” stickers on the nation's Volvos. In the first quarter of this year he raised more money in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Beverly Hills than Mr Kerry or Mr Lieberman.
Mr Dean is actually rather an odd champion for the party's Democratic wing. As governor of Vermont for 11 years the doctor-turned-politician was a pragmatic New Democrat in the Clinton mould. He resisted irresponsible spending increases, fought with the state's Progressive Party and vigorously upheld the right of Vermonters to carry concealed guns. He even defied a national trend by changing his mind in favour of the death penalty. He continues to sell himself as a “deficit hawk” and “balanced budget fiend” (the Bush fiscal policy, he says, is modelled on Argentina's). His health-care plan is much more market-driven than the Clinton administration's plan, and much cheaper than Dick Gephardt's ($88 billion compared with $214 billion). His views on the Middle East are pretty close to the Israeli lobby's. He is against medical marijuana laws and the anti-global-warming Kyoto protocol.
So would Mr Dean be able to repackage himself as a centrist if he won the nomination? Hardly. His views on guns count for little compared with his strident opposition to war in Iraq and his determination to repeal “every dime” of Mr Bush's tax cuts. For good or ill, Mr Dean has decided to climb on the back of the leftist tiger. He cannot climb off without being eaten alive. On Capitol Hill Democrats worry that a Dean candidacy will not only allow Mr Bush to sweep the electoral college but also to cull vulnerable Democrats in the conservative south and the middle-American heartland. What chance has a liberal north-easterner backed by money from Beverly Hills and Harvard Yard of helping the Democrats in vulnerable Senate seats in Arkansas, South Carolina and the two Dakotas?
Besides, Mr Dean does not have to win for his party to lose. His insurgency is already tugging other candidates to the left. Hardly a day goes past without the other front-runners producing some new piece of populist rhetoric. This week Mr Gephardt promised that as president he would use executive orders to countermand “any wrong thing that the Supreme Court does”. The problem for the Democrats is not just the man from Vermont but the rank-and-file rage that he embodies. Far too many Democrats are just too angry to think straight at the moment. And far too many would rather go down to glorious defeat than make the irritating compromises necessary for power.
A misleading rumor has circulated that Republican Jack Ryan, candidate for the U.S. Senate, is a Rockefeller Republican. Not so. [...]
Ryan is a conservative--at least as conservative as George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and in some ways more.
On the social issues Ryan is pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother (same as Bush and Reagan). On gay marriage or registry, if legislation were to create ''any special rights, I'm against it. . . . I'm against any special rights attached to someone's sexual orientation.'' On stem cell research he has the same position as Bush: favoring research on existing lines of stem cells, but creating life for experimentation is the wrong thing to do.
He favors the Bush tax cuts and Iraqi war, but what intrigues me is where he takes a rightward departure from the president. He says the
administration spends too much and cites $80 billion in corporate subsidies that can be cut. He points to a Cato study that criticizes the Advanced Technology program, where government does poorly what private business should do for itself. Next is a so-called Partnership for the Next Generation of Vehicles, a Commerce Department project that spends public dollars on automotive research, and another Commerce Department effort that attempts to advertise U.S. products. He says that if elected, he would hope to serve on the Appropriations Committee, where such boondoggles can be cut. Education Department expenditures could be pared, too, if school choice were implemented.
Ryan wants to reduce the capital gains tax to zero, abolish the Commerce Department's minority business development arm and focus resources instead to the education of minority youth on how to gain access to capital.
On foreign-defense policy, he believes our stake in Europe should be drastically reduced. The European countries spend about 1.5 percent of their gross national product on defense, he says. We spend 3 percent of our GNP on arms in part because ''we are subsidizing their defense.'' NATO countries' GNP is very close to our own.
THE POLITICAL STARS are suddenly aligned for President Bush for a smashing re-election victory in 2004. This doesn't guarantee he'll win. And it doesn't preclude anything of political significance changing the situation between today and Election Day 16 months from now. What it does mean, though, is that if all goes as expected--and that's a big "if"--Bush will be in an extremely strong position against his Democratic opponent.
The stars consist of six factors, all of which appear favorable to Bush at the moment. They are: an improving economy, a successful war, a big domestic triumph, a boatload of campaign money, an opposition party in disarray, an a discredited big media. [...]
Again, the caveats. Nothing is assured. One can imagine a Democratic ticket--Lieberman-Graham perhaps--that would be competitive. Political scientist Larry Sabato calculates the 2004 contest now with 278 electoral votes probable or leaning for Bush and 260 for the Democratic challenger. That's a Bush lead, but not a landslide. And, of course, it's only a projection. But you have to like Bush's chances a lot better than any Democrat's at the moment.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III is working on a proposal to expand the House of Representatives by two seats, giving the District of Columbia its long-sought vote in Congress while not upsetting the partisan balance of power there.
The Davis plan, which an aide said is months from being in final form, was hailed by city officials as a crucial step toward giving residents their rightful say in the nation's lawmaking, military actions and spending decisions. [...]
The Davis plan likely would give mostly Republican Utah, which lost a seat in the last round of redistricting, a fourth House seat, counterbalancing the presumably Democratic seat for the District, where the party holds an 11-1 registration edge. [...]
The size of the House of Representatives is set by law, not by the Constitution, and can be changed by Congress. The number of districts was increased to 437 after Alaska and Hawaii were added as states in the 1950s. Then in 1963 the number reverted to 435, where it has stood since.
I've long been a fan of Stanley Crouch, ever since I first saw him on Charlie Rose's show in the late 1980s or early 1990s. In his latest New York Daily News column, he praises Bush's outreach towards blacks, as he dedicated June Black Music Month at a White House event entitled Harlem's Song:
"If this event was indeed part of a grand strategy, Bush seems well on his way to redirecting the ethnic tone of the Republican Party in a way that may not automatically make black people feel friendly toward it but that could, over time, bring issues of importance to Afro-Americans to the front and put party affiliations in the back.
I thought about all of that walking around the White House as the rehearsals were going on. Integration was everywhere. It felt good to see the military personnel and all the guests representing the many faces of the nation just as much as they did under President Bill Clinton.
Further, with Bush's emphasis on educational policy, with his appointments of Rice and Powell, with his pledge to refurbish Frederick Douglass' home, with his $15 billion relief package for black Africa and with his recent admonishment that federal law enforcement agencies should not profile any ethnic community unless the issue of terrorism is at hand, this President is changing his party."
In an immediate application of its new protective approach to gay rights, the Supreme Court today vacated the sodomy conviction of a Kansas teenager who received a 17-year sentence for having oral sex with a younger boy. [...]
Matthew R. Limon had just turned 18 when he had consensual sex with a 14-year-old boy at the residential school for developmentally disabled youths where both were living.
Licentiousness, or rather the frenzy of liberty, has taken possession of us, and is throwing everything into confusion. How happy do I esteem it, that in all my writings I have always kept at a proper distance from that tempting extreme, and have maintained a due regard to magistracy and established government, suitably to the character of an historian and a philosopher!
To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.
-Simone Weil (1909-1943)
LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." - President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
FACT: [...] Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. [...]
LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." - President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.
FACT: [...] based on a document [...]
LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade." - CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.
FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s [...]
LIE #6: "We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States." - President Bush, Oct. 7.
FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles [...]
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons [...]
FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.
LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." - Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
FACT: [...] these stocks...were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder. [...]
LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." - President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.
FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers [...]
It feels surreal to be on an American naval base inside the territory of a Communist country. And it feels doubly strange -- like a parody of a David Lynch movie -- to cruise slowly by little town-house subdivisions, past batting cages and even by a rocky outcrop where high-school students spray-paint their names, then come suddenly upon a prison camp in the ''war on terror'' wreathed in razor wire.
Prisoners from the Afghan war first arrived at ''Gitmo,'' as locals call the base, in January 2002. The first 110 men were brought to a makeshift set of cages called Camp X-Ray and were made to kneel, shackled and blindfolded with special blacked-out goggles, while soldiers trained rifles on them, an image captured in the first news photographs of them. Then, last spring, they were all moved to a newer, larger facility, Camp Delta. Unlike X-Ray, Delta has running water, indoor toilets and plenty of unused capacity. (There are 680 prisoners housed there now, with room for about 1,000.) Soldiers call Camp Delta ''the Wire,'' and it has plenty of that -- rows of chain link and concertina. Rising behind them are plywood guard towers, some draped with American flags, and an array of lights for night.
At the camp's main gate, a 4-foot-by-8-foot sign attached at eye level says ''Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.'' This is the slogan of J.T.F./Guantanamo, the joint military task force -- 2,000 strong -- that runs the detention-and-interrogation operation. It is printed on handouts and official documents and signs and is constantly recited, soldier to soldier, at the camp's checkpoints. As I arrived at the main gate for the first time, I turned to the first lieutenant who was escorting me. ''Isn't that a little strange,'' I offered, ''a slogan about freedom on the gate of a prison camp?''
He looked at me flatly. ''Doesn't seem strange to me,'' he said. ''Does it seem strange to you?''
During Bush's six years as governor 150 men and two women were executed in Texas-a record unmatched by any other governor in modern American history. Each time a person was sentenced to death, Bush received from his legal counsel a document summarizing the facts of the case, usually on the morning of the day scheduled for the execution, and was then briefed on those facts by his counsel; based on this information Bush allowed the execution to proceed in all cases but one. The first fifty-seven of these summaries were prepared by Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer who went on to become the Texas secretary of state and a justice on the Texas supreme court. He is now the White House counsel.
Gonzales never intended his summaries to be made public. Almost all are marked CONFIDENTIAL and state, "The privileges claimed include, but are not limited to, claims of Attorney-Client Privilege, Attorney Work-Product Privilege, and the Internal Memorandum exception to the Texas Public Information Act." I obtained the summaries and related documents, which have never been published, after the Texas attorney general ruled that they were not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Public Information Act.
Gonzales's summaries were Bush's primary source of information in deciding whether someone would live or die. Each is only three to seven pages long and generally consists of little more than a brief description of the crime, a paragraph or two on the defendant's personal background, and a condensed legal history. Although the summaries rarely make a recommendation for or against execution, many have a clear prosecutorial bias, and all seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim. This assumption ignores one of the most basic reasons for clemency: the fact that the justice system makes mistakes.
A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.
So how about Abraham Lincoln as the defining capitalist figure for our age? [...]
Lincoln began life with high anticipations of glorious success. When he was young, he had a little boat, which he kept on the Ohio River. One day a pair of travelers asked him if he would row them to the middle of the river, where they could intercept a steamboat. Lincoln took them out, and as the men boarded the steamboat, they each threw a silver half-dollar into the bottom of his boat. ''You may think it was a very little thing,'' Lincoln later recalled, ''but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day. . . . The world seemed wider and fairer before me.''
He became a fervent believer in social mobility and came to see, as the historian Allen C. Guelzo has pointed out, that self-transformation is almost a moral responsibility for the aspiring American. [...]
In the land of the plow horses, wealth is acceptable because it is legitimized by the creed of social mobility, which in many ways originated with Lincoln and the Whig Party, of which he was a member for most of his career. According to this creed, affluence is admired because it is the product of hard work, and it does not corrupt because you continue to work even when you don't have to anymore. According to this creed, social mobility is the saving fire that redeems society. Social mobility opens up horizons because people can see wider opportunities and live transformed lives. Social mobility reduces class conflict because each person can build his own fortune, rather than taking from the fortunes of others. Social mobility unleashes creative energies and keeps everything new and dynamic. It compensates for inequality, because the family that is poor today may become richer tomorrow. It is the very essence of justice, because each person's destiny is somehow related to the amount of talent and effort he or she pours into life. The purpose of government is to ensure that there is, to use Lincoln's words, ''an open field and a fair chance'' so that everyone can compete in the race of life.
This is the sensible, steady and admirable ethic of American life. And people who hew to this ethic are still rewarded. If you get an education, get married and stay married, the odds are overwhelming that you will rise. If you migrate here from a developing country, and if you work hard, the odds are pretty good that you and your children will enjoy brighter and more open futures.
Embattled President Charles Taylor of Liberia appealed to the United States for help in rescuing his country from civil war today but said that he would not abandon power until an international military force arrived to guarantee peace.
In a radio address aired late this afternoon, Mr. Taylor said he wanted the United States to lift ``Liberia and Liberians out of this mess.'' He said he remained open to negotiations to end the bloody conflict.
His plea came a day after President Bush called on President Taylor to resign in the interest of halting a three-year rebel conflict that has fractured this West African country, spurred a regional refugee crisis and left hundreds dead.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority reached an agreement Friday for an IDF pullback in the Gaza Strip and a transferal of security control to the Palestinians, during a meeting between Palestinian Minister for Security Mohammed Dahlan and Israel's coordinator in the territories, Major General Amos Gilad.
No agreement was reached on a transfer of security control in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, but talks on the matter will take place in the coming week.
Officers in the field from both sides will meet Sunday to finalize details and the pullout from Gaza is estimated to begin as soon as Monday, sources in Jerusalem said.
Shortly after becoming the leader of the Labour Party, Blair said, "If you really want to understand what I'm all about, you have to take a look at a guy called John Macmurray. It's all there." Macmurray was a Christian socialist who after World War II became a pacifist and joined the Society of Friends. He emphasized social action and is sometimes credited with having invented communitarianism.
Macmurray rejected politics as it is traditionally understood, with its emphasis on conflict, competition, opposition groups, and partisanship. He regarded the family as the primary unit of society, and believed that people should come together to form communities based on friendship, love, and the Golden Rule. He argued that it is the job of citizens to heal rifts and build partnerships. [...]
A frequent paradox of communitarianism is that whereas more-traditional politicians, who are not averse to conflict, bind themselves firmly and fiercely to one party or team that helps them attain their goals, the peace-loving communitarian is often more or less alone, dreaming of an abstract community but lacking in the here and now an intimate group to help realize the vision. While other students at Oxford were banding together and issuing angry manifestos, Blair was charting his own course, and showing no signs of anger or alienation. He moved to London and trained to be a barrister; he had little interest in political office until he met his future wife, Cherie Booth, who had earlier in her life talked about becoming Britain's first woman Prime Minister. Both Cherie and Blair unsuccessfully sought a Labour Party nomination for Parliament in 1981; Blair won a seat in Parliament in 1983.
At first Blair went along with the Labour Party doctrines of the day-unilateral disarmament, the nationalization of industry, withdrawal from the European Community-without fervently believing in them. He gradually discovered his own style of politics, which almost always involves reconciling opposites: fiscal discipline with social spending, tough anti-crime policies with compassionate welfare support, the free market with government activism.
[T]he question comes down to this: Is there a point at which tax cuts work against regular Americans' self-interest? I think there is, and it can be articulated in two ways.
The first has to do with the hideous situation in the states. Virtually every state in the union is raising income or property taxes, cutting services to middle-income people, charging fees for things that were once free, and raising fees on things that were once cheap. They're doing this for the obvious reason that they're getting no help from the feds; and they're getting no help from the feds because the feds don't have any money because the feds keep passing tax cuts. In Connecticut, for example, conservative Gov. John Rowland (R) has been pushing $250 million in spending cuts -- and has just agreed to $250 million in tax increases (actually, a rollback of a local property-tax credit).
That's on top of the $650 million in tax increases agreed to in a February deficit-reduction plan. And even after all that, the state is left with a $300 million gap.
Connecticut is closer to the rule than the exception. An argument that the federal tax cuts are just forcing tax hikes on the other end is one that will make intuitive sense to people. It can put the White House on the defensive. And it appeals to Americans' self-interest: It explains to them that in exchange for their $400, they're getting hosed in other ways that probably add up to the same thing.
The second line of attack on the tax cuts will take more courage and imagination. It has to do with Democrats having the gumption to defend government.
The Supreme Court's reasoned, fundamentally fair majority rulings in two affirmative action cases -- and the acceptance by U.S. institutions, politicians and citizens of the binding validity of those rulings even as they debate them -- should provide a useful contrast to the American rogue superpower image that public opinion polls show is so rampant abroad right now.
They should at least raise the question for critics of whether a nation that emphasizes the importance of fairness, openness and legality at home -- as the United States does -- could long sustain brutal power politics and armed force as its chief instruments of policy abroad. Could the United States, or any other great power, really be John Locke at home and Thomas Hobbes abroad for very long?
I think not. Governments ultimately behave toward the rest of the world as they behave toward their own citizens. That was why Saddam Hussein was a grave international danger and why China's government still has far to go before attaining international legitimacy.
That is why the Bush administration must not think that dictators who may be momentarily useful in the war on terrorism can be counted on to promote democracy and liberty in their regions if given a little time and coaching. And finally, it is why President Bush has such limited opportunity to become world dictator (a goal often imputed to him abroad) when he and his government are under constant scrutiny and challenge at home.
So, here's my take...
The Passion is a stunning work of art. It is a devout, act of worship from Mel and his collaborators - in the way that Handel's Messiah and Notre Dame were artistic acts of worship in previous times.
Let's get the controversy out of the way right at the top. The film is faithful to the Gospel, particularly St. John. It is no more anti-Semitic than is the Gospel. There are at least two members of the Sanhedrin who come forward to protest on Jesus' behalf during the sham trial. The Romans are just as guilty of cruelty and hatred against Jesus in the film. And best of all is a final look right into the camera of Mary, holding her dead Son. She is looking at all of us with a kind of , "Look what you've done"/This is for you" expression. A cinematic Pieta worthy of Michelangelo.
Having seen the film now, I can only marvel that the attacks are pretty much demonic.
In perfect freedom, the Son become the goat become the Lamb of God is condemned by the lie in order to bear witness to the truth. The truth is that we are incapable of setting things right. The truth is that the more we try to set things right, the more we compound our guilt. It is not enough for God to take our part. God must take our place. All the blood of goats and lambs, all the innocent victims from the foundation of the world, all the acts of expiation and reparation ... all strengthen the grip of the great lie that we can set things right. The grip of that lie is broken by the greatest of lies, 'God is guilty!' ... God must die. It is a lie so monstrous that to suggest it invites instant annihilation--except that God accepts the verdict.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., son of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and no stranger to controversy, has stepped into the gossip pages again.
The Washington Post reports that Kennedy, while delivering a speech to a group of Young Democrats, was a tad more candid than his staff might have liked.
"I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life," Kennedy said shortly after presidential candidate Howard Dean addressed the crowd. One of those present told the Post that Kennedy then "droned on and on, frequently mentioning how much better the [Democratic presidential] candidates would sound the more we drank." The source added that he eventually "had to be stopped by a DNC volunteer."
A forthcoming article in The Washington Monthly shows that the foundations for one-party rule are being laid right now. [...]
Why isn't the ongoing transformation of U.S. politics--which may well put an end to serious two-party competition ? getting more attention? Most pundits, to the extent they acknowledge that anything is happening, downplay its importance. For example, last year an article in Business Week titled "The GOP's Wacky War on Dem Lobbyists" dismissed the K Street Project as "silly--and downright futile." In fact, the project is well on the way to achieving its goals.
Whatever the reason, there's a strange disconnect between most political commentary and the reality of the 2004 election. As in 2000, pundits focus mainly on images--John Kerry's furrowed brow, Mr. Bush in a flight suit--or on supposed personality traits. But it's the nexus of money and patronage that may well make the election a foregone conclusion.
[N]ow that Dean has boosted himself into top-tier status, news organizations are starting to take a second, and harder, look at some of his fudges and inconsistencies, including his apologies to some of the other Democratic candidates.
As the Baltimore Sun's Paul West observes: "He has not become the darling of the national media corps, which regards him as thin-skinned and prone to complain about tough reporting, sometimes even before an article has appeared in print."
Carl Leubsdorf writes in the Dallas Morning News that some top Democrats "fear a repetition of the electoral disasters" created by George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984, and that Dean has "gained a reputation for nastiness that could create problems."
By combining four therapies, the proposed “polypill” could eliminate 200,000 premature deaths a year in Britain alone. Aimed mostly at the over 55s, it would end the need for complex screening, and might be sold in supermarkets and pubs for less than £1 a day. [...]
“Those who can be identified as at risk are a minority. But a third of people over 55 who would otherwise suffer heart attack or stroke would benefit, and gain on average an extra 12 years of life.
“Chasing risk factors is a mistaken strategy. By giving this pill to everybody we can reverse the damage of a lifetime. We have been telling people to change their lifestyles, but the practical effect is small. In Western society the risk factors are high in us all, so everyone is at risk.”
Friends, family and fellow Hall of Famers gathered Monday to remember Larry Doby, 56 years after he became the American League's first black player.
Doby died last Wednesday at his home in Montclair after a long illness. He broke the AL's color barrier when he joined the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League.
Doby, who played 13 seasons in the major leagues and was selected for seven All-Star games, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.
During an afternoon memorial service at the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Montclair, Doby was remembered as a man of quiet dignity who never said an unkind word, even about those hostile to his joining the Indians. [...]
Lawrence Eugene Doby Sr. was born Dec. 13, 1923, in Camden, S.C., but he grew up in Paterson, N.J., then moved to Montclair 40 years ago, and has been adopted by New Jersey officials and institutions as one of their own.
After 300 years of Russian occupation, many urban Ukrainians had become Russianized, maybe speaking Russian in preference to Ukrainian, maybe adding a Russian ending to a last name. But the rural people remained staunchly nationalistic, and Stalin -- seeking to consolidate his power -- wanted to stamp out Ukrainian nationalism. He turned the famine -- which conveniently stopped at the border with Russia -- into an opportunity to force farmers to move to industrial jobs in the cities.
He also, the Ukrainian community says, intensified the famine into what they call the Holodomor, roughly translated as "famine-genocide," the "H" intentionally capitalized to emphasize a parallel with the Holocaust.
"My grandparents stayed on the farm and died of starvation. Two uncles died in prison," Kolomayets said. "The children of one of the uncles, a boy and a girl, 5 and 6, came to live with us. One day, my cousins went out looking for food and we never saw them again. My mother heard they had been killed and eaten."
Reporters other than Duranty -- principally Welsh journalist Gareth Jones and The Guardian's Muggeridge -- described scenes of great suffering. One such report told of grain stores (the Soviets exported grain to the West during the famine) guarded by armed Russian troops while Ukrainians died of starvation nearby. Jones wrote, "I walked alone through villages . . . everywhere was the cry, `There is no bread. We are dying.'"
Jones wrote his accounts only after he had gone home. Muggeridge smuggled his articles out to England in diplomatic pouches. In those pieces, he described peasants kneeling in the snow, begging for a crust of bread.
"Whatever I may do or think in the future," he wrote in his diary, "I must never pretend that I haven't seen this. Ideas will come and go, but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood."
Muggeridge's reports were discredited. He was fired, his reputation as a reporter slandered. Duranty chimed in on the vilification, and in an
August 1933 New York Times story called Muggeridge's and Jones' work "an exaggeration of malignant propaganda." At that time, Duranty
reportedly had told a British Foreign Office acquaintance that at least 10 million people had died.
The Australian government on Thursday branded multilateral forums such as the United Nations "ineffective and unfocused" and said its foreign policy will increasingly rely on "coalitions of the willing" like the one that waged war in Iraq.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also said that in Canberra's view, other nations' sovereignty was "not absolute."
The assertive new doctrine outlined by Downer came a day after Australia announced it would lead an international force of troops and police to restore order to the violence-wracked Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific.
Downer's speech reflected comments late last year by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia would be prepared to launch pre-emptive strikes against terror targets in Asia -- words that sparked outrage in Asia.
Downer's doctrine is likely to cause further unease among Australia's Asian neighbors. For example, Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim nation and longtime critic of Australia, has accused Howard of acting like a deputy sheriff to President Bush.
Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South, died Thursday. He was 100 and the longest-serving senator in history.
Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. after having been in poor health in recent weeks, his son Strom Thurmond Jr. said. He had been living in a newly renovated wing of a hospital in his hometown of Edgefield, S.C., since he returned to the state from Washington earlier this year.
"Surrounded by family, my father was resting comfortably, without pain, and in total peace," Thurmond Jr. said in a statement released by the hospital.
Forgive the partisan tone, but the Democratic Party is simply more in line with Jewish values today. Conservative Jews will protest, of course, and they could certainly cite some examples to bolster their case. Some Democrats have openly vilified the Jewish state to a degree that is simply absurd if not anti-Semitic. But issues like these are exceptions rather than the rule. On the whole, the Republican agenda is largely out of step with Judaism. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is filled with political Yiddishkeit.
Take abortion and sexual politics. There's a fair share of controversy over how permissive Judaism is of abortion, but nobody can question that Judaism allows for it in some circumstances. Yet Republicans aggressively pursue the repeal of Roe v. Wade and obstinately block exceptions in cases of rape or a danger to the mother's life from their attempts to restrict abortion. It's Democrats who seek to make the procedure "safe, legal, and rare."
The assertion that Jewish law allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy at will in no way reflects accepted -- or even seriously entertained -- rabbinic opinion. And if anything undermines basic tenets of Judaism, it is the notion that the Torah allows unfettered "access to reproductive services" -- i.e. Roe v. Wade-style abortion-on-demand.
To be sure, the Talmudic sources are clear that the life of a pregnancy-endangered Jewish mother takes precedence over that of her unborn child when there is no way to preserve both lives. And, while the matter is not free from controversy, there are respected rabbinic opinions that allow abortion when the pregnancy seriously jeopardizes the mother's health. But those narrow exceptions certainly do not translate into some unlimited mother's "right" to make whatever "choice" she may see fit about the child she carries.
And in the case of "partial birth abortion," the procedure approaches -- in fact, likely crosses -- the border between abortion and infanticide, where Jewish law does not even recognize a "life of the mother" exception.
Whatever Hadassah and its allies might wish were the case, the Torah clearly affords fetal life significant protection. There is absolutely no source in halacha, or Jewish religious law, for the contention that a mother may "choose" to terminate a pregnancy at will.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. [...]
Hatch on Tuesday surprised a Senate hearing on copyright issues with the suggestion that technology should be developed to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Net.
Hatch said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights," the Associated Press reported. He then suggested the technology would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
Early summer has brought a flurry of public discussion about a topic previously confined to political margins -- the possibility of impeaching President George W. Bush. The idea is still far from the national media echo chamber, but some rumblings are now audible as people begin to think about the almost unthinkable.
Howard Dean has been well-served by the rusty ritual of presidential contenders pausing from their campaign travels to go home and formally declare their candidacies.
Subtly but effectively, in yesterday's "announcement speech," Dean recast his candidacy from a protest campaign targeting his fellow Democrats at least as much as President Bush to a populist movement "to take our country back." [...]
While one speech doesn't define a campaign, Dean's announcement can rescue him from being the latest in a line of losing Democratic candidates whose appeal was based on their being intellectually and morally superior to their rivals and, implicitly, their fellow citizens as well. Starting out as refreshingly free from political cant, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, Eugene McCarthy and Adlai Stevenson all ended up appealing to affluent voters who saw politics as an expression of their cultural identities, not a way to improve their own lives and others'. With this announcement speech, Dean has the opportunity to reverse his predecessors' path and inspire at least a segment of those discontented voters whom he gracefully admits understand the nation's problems better than he did when he began his campaign.
Nearly a decade after Republicans launched a campaign to oust Democrats from top lobbying jobs in Washington, sometimes through intimidation and private threats, they are seizing a significant number of the most influential positions at trade associations and corporate government affairs offices -- and reaping big financial rewards.
Partly because of the "K Street Project" -- and partly because of GOP control of Congress and the presidency -- virtually every major company or trade association looking for new top-level representation is hiring or seeking to hire a prominent Republican politician or staffer, according to Republicans and Democrats tracking the situation.
This year, General Electric, Comcast, Citigroup and many other Fortune 500 companies have hired Bush administration officials and former GOP congressional advisers for top lobbying posts. A Republican National Committee official recently told a group of GOP lobbyists that 33 of 36 top-level Washington positions he is monitoring went to Republicans, according to someone who attended the meeting.
The trend could deeply influence Washington politics, policy and fundraising for years. Already in control of the White House and Congress, Republicans are tightening their grip on the largely unseen but vital world of big-time lobbying. Lobbyists for major trade groups not only represent clients' interests but also play key roles in political fundraising and often help shape legislation. [...]
This trend worries Democrats, who say it gives Republicans both an unfair legislative and fundraising advantage. Former representative Tony Coehlo (D-Calif.), who aggressively targeted business in Congress in the 1980s, said Republicans are "going too far" by pressuring companies to hire Republicans only and threatening retribution to those who disobey.
"They've put the fear of God in these businesses and few of them are able to withstand it," Coehlo said. Indeed, several top officials at trade associations and corporate offices said privately that Republicans have created a culture in Washington in which companies fear hiring Democrats for top jobs, even if they are the most qualified.
Republicans have done this with a few, well-publicized warnings to companies they felt were too cozy with Democrats. The most famous and ominous warning came in 1998 from then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The two leaders held up a vote on intellectual property legislation in protest of the Electronics Industry Association's plan to hire a Democrat to run the group. The House ethics committee admonished DeLay for his tactics in the incident. It was a slap on the wrist by congressional ethics standards, and Republicans say that was a small price to pay for the fear it put in companies thinking about hiring a Democrat. [...]
Dan Mattoon -- who left the National Republican Congressional Committee a few years ago to partner with Democrat Tony Podesta to represent several corporations -- and his wife contributed $90,000 in the last election, with almost all of it going to GOP candidates.
"There is a recognition that Republicans are in a position to continue to control both houses of Congress for the next 10 years, and the K Street community should be reflective" of the party with power, Mattoon said.
A founding member of the SDP who appeared on George Orwell's list of communist sympathisers yesterday dismissed it as the work of a dying man whose mind was clouded by illness and bitterness about the Spanish Civil War.
Professor Norman Mackenzie, now 82 - and the only known surviving member of the 38 "crypto-communists and fellow travellers" who Orwell claimed should not be trusted - said the writer was gravely ill with TB and "losing his grip on himself" when he handed over the list to a murky Foreign Office propaganda unit in 1949. [...]
"Tubercular people often could get very strange towards the end. I'm an Orwell man, I agreed with him on the Soviet Union, but he went partly ga-ga I think. He let his dislike of the New Statesman crowd, of what he saw as leftish, dilettante, sentimental socialists who covered up for the Popular Front in Spain [after it became communist-controlled] get the better of him."
The fact that the magazine's editor was Kingsley Martin, who rejected Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's dispatches from Spain, where he survived being shot in the neck, may have been the root of his loathing. "[The list] represents everything he hated about the New Statesman - that it was full of fluffy-headed fellow travellers and that it was intellectually dishonest, which is probably true."
"James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Those words, translated from Aramaic, lit a fire under the archaeological community, when Biblical Archaeology Review announced last year that it had found a limestone burial box in a private collection from the first century AD with just such an inscription.
Because it was exceedingly uncommon to carve a brother's name into a burial box, and because some fancy mathematical analysis showed that while James, Joseph, and Jesus were fairly common names in the first century, the lottery-like lineup of a James who was a son of Joseph and brother of Jesus was a rare occasion, many concluded that this was the final resting place of the brother of the Jesus. [...]
One person closely watching the blow-by-blow in all this was Acadia Divinity College's professor Craig A. Evans (full disclosure: I took classes under him before he left Trinity Western University), who has his own book on ossuary inscriptions due out in the fall. Though he initially expressed relief that had taken a neutral position with regard to the inscription's authenticity, and thought that Shanks had "tons of egg" on his face, Evans quickly changed his mind as the story developed. As things stand now, of those who have closely examined the patina:
"We have four geologists?who think it is genuine, and one?who thinks it isn't... Shanks still thinks the inscription is genuine; he is calling for further testing... Rochelle Altman and others who all along claimed the ossuary was a fake do not want further testing. Interesting, eh?"
An American military operation to restore order in Liberia looked likely last night as President George W Bush called for peace in the war-torn West African republic.
He drew cheers and applause from an audience of businessmen, academics and African leaders when he called on Liberia's President Charles Taylor, an indicted war criminal, to stand down.
"President Taylor needs to step down so that his country can be spared further bloodshed," he said. [...]
With a US Navy amphibious assault ship, the USS Kearsarge, just off the Liberian coast carrying 1,200 marines, Mr Bush has the option of ordering a significant deployment to one of Africa's most chaotic countries.
Liberia has close historic and traditional links with America. It was founded in the early 19th century as Africa's first republic by freed slaves from the United States.
The United Nations AIDS agency (UNAIDS) has published a draft of a study, due out at the end of the month, which shows that condoms are ineffective in protecting against HIV an estimated 10 percent of the time. The admission from the UN, which is far lower than some studies which have shown larger than 50 percent failure rates, is a blow to population control activists which have aggressively marketed condoms in the Third World as nearly 100 percent effective.
The Boston Globe, which reviewed the draft report, demonstrates the false marketing of the population control advocacy group, Population Action International (PAI). A September 2002 report, ''Condoms Count,'' published by PAI, said, ''Public health experts around the globe agree that condoms block contact with bodily fluids that can carry the HIV virus and have nearly 100 percent effectiveness when used correctly and consistently.''
The report examined two decades of scientific literature on condoms, and UNAIDS says lead author Norman Hearst "makes a cogent argument that we should be talking about safer sex, not safe sex, with condoms."
Indeed, despite all the uncanny similarities between the two leaders, there are, of course many differences, not the least of which is that Blair is in many ways more right-wing. Mussolini, for example, founded Italy's welfare state. Presumably, most people would agree that such a move was fairly left-wing. Blair, on the other hand, is doing his best not just to hack away at the welfare state but also at workplace rights traditionally regarded by the left as sacred. Clause Four - the Labour Party's commitment to common ownership of the means of production - went years ago and Blair has forged an axis with the European Union's two Thatcherite leaders, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi, to make the labour market in Europe more flexible - making it, for example, easier to sack people.
While Blair has doggedly pursued Daily Mail-reading Sierra Man, Mussolini despised the middle classes above all (like all left-wingers, he called them the bourgeoisie) even more than communists, whom he called "state capitalists", because his view was that the middle classes were riddled with parasites. They lived, Mussolini sneered, "la vita comoda", the comfortable life.
Hello. My name is Tim and I'm a middle-class welfare recipient.
It's not an easy thing to own up to, but I can now admit it: Australian taxpayers subsidised more than 70 per cent of the cost of my tertiary education.
Even though I'm now out earning more than $60,000 a year, I will never pay back a cent of the cost of my tertiary education. My HECS fees were paid upfront and so I got a substantial additional discount from the Government.
My Melbourne University commerce/arts degree has proven very valuable in the employment market. I find it opens doors that are closed to my friends who went to other universities.
It has given me critical thinking skills and problem-solving abilities that have led to a succession of interesting, fulfilling jobs and to steady rises in my income. I own a house and have the capacity to save thousands of dollars a year, unlike many of my Generation X peers.
It hurts to admit it, but I have achieved this on a form of middle-class welfare: the old HECS tertiary education funding system. I call it welfare because I feel taxpayers basically paid me to get an elite education that is not universally available.
President Kennedy, inspired by a tumultuous welcome from more than a million of the inhabitants of this isolated and divided city, declared today he was proud to be "a Berliner."
He said his claim to being a Berliner was based on the fact that "all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin."
In a rousing speech to 150,000 West Berliners crowded before the City Hall, the President said anyone who thought "we can work with the Communists" should come to Berlin.
However, three hours later, in a less emotional setting, he reaffirmed his belief that the great powers that must work together "to preserve the human race."
There are two key reasons the prices of certain goods are falling, neither of which has to do with the money supply. First, all the equipment and information technology that companies invested in during the last 20 years--particularly during the late '90s--has dramatically increased productivity, enabling companies to produce the same amount of goods more cheaply than ever before. Second, that investment has led to excess capacity, meaning companies are able to produce more goods than the market can absorb. According to The Wall Street Journal, for example, the global-production capacity for automobiles stands at about 80 million per year, while global demand is about 60 million. Companies that overproduce tend to cut prices to move all their extra goods. [...]
The mantra repeated again and again in the Fed's "Preventing Deflation" paper is that the costs of overcompensating to avoid deflation are exceedingly low. As a practical matter, what the Fed means by overcompensating is that a central bank facing the risk of deflation should determine where interest rates should be based on that risk and then push them even lower. What's more, it should keep them low for longer than it otherwise would. In general, this will lead to a period of higher-than-desired inflation once the risk of deflation passes. But that extra inflation is relatively harmless, the thinking goes, and in any case a cost worth bearing when you consider the horrible alternative.
All of which assumes, of course, that falling prices are, in fact, a horrible alternative. As we've established, they're not--unless the falling prices reflect a contraction of the supply of money and credit. But no sentient central banker would ever allow that to happen. The Fed gets weekly data on the money stock--meaning, according to Meltzer, that it would require a "massive error on its part" to allow the money supply to shrink. "You couldn't do it without knowing about it," he says. But, even if that error somehow got made and prices began to fall as a result, it wouldn't be so hard to correct: You just start printing money and injecting it into the economy.
In fact, not only is deflation not a serious risk today, but its mirror image, inflation--and the rising interest rates that accompany it--is. Thanks primarily to a recent orgy of tax-cutting, the projected ten-year federal deficit now stands somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 trillion. Even more alarming, according to a report ordered by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill but subsequently suppressed by the Bush administration, is that the current value of the gap between all of the government's future liabilities and its future revenue is $44 trillion. Shortfalls like this are highly inflationary since they stimulate demand for goods and services in the short run, which raises prices, and because they often get paid for in the long run by printing money. Likewise, the dollar's recent decline--it has fallen by over 20 percent against the euro and almost 10 percent against the yen in roughly the past year--is also inflationary, since a weaker dollar raises the prices of imports.
In this context, the problem with "overcompensating"--that is, pushing short-term interest rates lower, and keeping them there longer, than you otherwise would--is that it compounds the inflationary pressure created by large federal deficits and the weakening dollar. That's especially problematic because inflation is very difficult to root out once it gets embedded in people's expectations: Consumers expect prices to rise quickly, so they bargain for higher wages; companies expect wages to rise, so they set higher prices.
The court has diverted us all from two basic truths. For conservatives, the more important one is that damage caused by racism is severe enough to require transitional but daring public investments in early child-rearing and primary education. That kind of heavy lifting requires civic unity. Enforcing diversity in the military, which conservatives defend, works only because generals can order soldiers to remedy their deficiencies, on the taxpayer's dime.
But for liberals, the important truth is that some racist damage can be repaired only by the damaged themselves, with clear moral signals from a cohesive and, yes, demanding society. That's a different kind of heavy lifting. To shirk it is to discount the dignity of racism's victims. When low expectations demoralize and demobilize the poor, conservatives have an excuse for providing virtually no public investments at all.
The court should have forced us back to basics. Instead, its diversity rationale delays introducing the only D-words that should matter in American education and public life: daring and dignity.
Wilhelm II was a juicy target. Before the war, Lord Northcliffe, the conservative British press lord, had regularly abused him as a warmonger and a menace. A grandson of Queen Victoria, the Kaiser had a prickly relationship with his British royal cousins and a tendency to shoot off his mouth about Germany's martial prowess and its right to a "place in the sun." He was also fond of discoursing on the danger of "the yellow peril" -- the growing power of Japan -- and the superiority of white northern European Protestants. One pundit dubbed him a German version of Theodore Roosevelt.
Prone to nervous breakdowns -- he suffered three in the five years preceding the war -- the Kaiser was extravagantly fond of gorgeous military uniforms, perhaps an attempt to achieve masculinity in spite of a withered arm. At his desk, he sat in a saddle because it made him feel like a warrior. His gaunt face, which featured haughtily curled mustaches, made him a hostile cartoonist's dream.
Soon the Kaiser, who had little more control over his armies than King George V of England had over the British Expeditionary Force, was being blamed for rapes and murders in Belgium and called a megalomaniac with a hunger to rule the world. From here it was only a short step to calling him "the Mad Dog of Europe" and "The Beast of Berlin."
The Palestinians are inching toward a cease-fire that could prove more durable than previous attempts if it leads to an easing of measures Israel has used to punish and prevent Palestinian attacks.
US and Israeli pressure is only one reason why Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has tried so hard in recent months to convince Hamas and other militant groups to lay down their arms.
Another is that Palestinians today are demanding an improvement in their situation more loudly than they are clamoring for attacks against Israel.
"We are looking for someone to ease our suffering," says longtime Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid. "And Hamas is just increasing it."
It is now commonplace to hear Palestinians say that nearly three years of intifada, or uprising, against Israel have yielded nothing but Israeli-imposed closures, restrictions, and checkpoints that make day-to-day living nearly intolerable.
Mr. Abbas's strategy, Palestinian analysts say, is to arrange a cease-fire in order to win from Israel an easing of the measures imposed in the name of security. "The priority for me," says Mr. Eid, "is to take off the checkpoints rather than to fix the borders of the Palestinian state."
Franklin had just given up his career as a printer when he began his work as an "electrician," fascinated by the small shocks you could make out of amber rods and glass jars. Electricity was not yet a serious science. Though everyone agreed that it was a phenomenon, no one was sure at first if it was a phenomenon like the hula hoop or a phenomenon like gravity. People played with it for fun. Then, in the seventeen-forties, the Leyden jar, an early capacitor, showed that an electrical charge could be held in place and made to pass through glass. Essentially, you could collect and store electricity; and in 1749 Franklin reported to the Royal Academy in London that he had created the first electric battery.
In his correspondence with the academy, he understood that he would inevitably be viewed as a provincial, and that it paid to play the clown a little. In the midst of his serious submissions, he also wrote to the academy, apropos the state of "American electricity," that "a turkey is to be killed for our dinners by the electrical shock, and roasted by the electrical jack, before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle, when the healths of all the famous electricians in England, France and Germany, are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical battery." The metropolis, while it mistrusts an upstart, forgives a lovable provincial eccentric. (Though he was being funny about the American enthusiasm for electricity, he wasn't entirely joking. He electrocuted at least one turkey, and boasted of how tender it was, a thing typical of the way he could turn a joke into a fact.)
Previously, it had been proposed that there were two different kinds of electricity, both fluid: one generated by glass and one generated by resin. Franklin, experimenting with varieties of electric shock, swiftly arrived at a fundamental insight: that electricity was a single fluid, and that what he was the first to call "positive" and "negative" charges came from having too much or too little of it. The importance of Franklin's theory, as the great historian of science I. Bernard Cohen has shown, was not only that it insisted on the conservation of charge but that it accepted "action at a distance": there didn't have to be holes for the charge to pass through, or invisible levers in the sky to send it along; electricity was just there, like gravity.
Many people, whatever theory they held, had noticed that lightning in the sky looked a lot like electricity in a jar, only there was more of it. In 1749, it seems, Franklin himself made a list of the resemblances, a list that reveals the tenor of his scientific mind, at once disarmingly particular and searching for unity: "Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. . . . Since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be made." The lightning experiment would be suggestive about the centrality of electricity in an essentially Newtonian world picture. The simpler the world picture, the less intricate the celestial mechanics, and the greater the play of universal forces, however bizarre their action. E pluribus unum applied-a motto that Franklin, once again running from the absurd to the solemn, took from a classical recipe for salad dressing.
Did he really do it?
INTERVIEWER
Could [The New Yorker editor, Harold Ross] develop a writer?
THURBER
Not really. It wasn't true what they often said of him-that he broke up writers like matches-but still he wasn't the man to develop a writer. He was an unread man. Well, he'd read Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi and several other books he told me about-medical books-and he took the Encyclopedia Brittanica to the bathroom with him. I think he was about up to H when he died. But still his effect on writers was considerable. When you first met him you couldn't believe he was the editor of The New Yorker and afterwards you couldn't believe that anyone else could have been. The main thing he was interested in was clarity. Someone once said of The New Yorker that it never contained a sentence that would puzzle an intelligent 14 year old or in any way affect her morals badly. Ross didn't like that, but nevertheless he was a purist and perfectionist and it had a tremendous effect on all of us: it kept us from being sloppy. When I first met him he asked me if I knew English. I thought he meant French or a foreign language. But he repeated, "Do you know English?" When I said I did he replied, "Goddamn it, nobody knows English." As Andy White mentioned in his obituary, Ross approached the English sentence as though it was an enemy, something that was going to throw him. He used to fuss for an hour over a comma. He'd call me in for lengthy discussions about the Thurber colon. And as for poetic license, he'd say, "Damn any license to get things wrong." In fact, Ross read so carefully that often he didn't get the sense of your story. I once said: "I wish you'd read my stories for pleasure, Ross." He replied he hadn't time for that. [...]
INTERVIEWER
Did he have much direct influence on your own work?
THURBER
After the seven years I spent in newspaper writing, it was more E. B. White who taught me about writing, how to clear up sloppy journalese. He was a strong influence and for a long time in the beginning I thought he might be too much of one. But at least he got me away from a rather curious style I was starting to perfect-tight journalese laced with heavy doses of Henry James.
INTERVIEWER
Henry James was a strong influence then?
THURBER
I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle-age.
INTERVIEWER
But there were things to be learned from him?
THURBER
Yes, but again he was an influence you had to get over. Especially if you wrote for The New Yorker. Harold Ross wouldn't have understood it. I once wrote a piece called The Beast and the Dingle which everybody took as a parody. Actually it was a conscious attempt to write the story as James would have written it. Ross looked at it and said: "Goddam it, this is too literary; I got only 15% of the allusions." My wife and I often tried to figure out which were the 15% he could have got.
Democratic lawmakers and aides said Wednesday there is growing interest in tapping Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Senate Democratic leader if Sen. Tom Daschle retires next year.
Sources said elevating Clinton - in the Senate for only two-and-a-half - would be the best way to raise the party's profile in the face of a popular president and at a time when both houses of Congress are ruled by Republicans.
For the former first lady, the powerful post could offer her a high-profile platform from which to pursue the White House in 2008, as many believe she wants to do.
"It makes perfect sense," said one source. "Some people may have a hard time with it but it would be a perfect fit."
The Supreme Court struck down a Texas law today that forbids homosexual sex, and reversed its own ruling in a similar Georgia case 17 years ago, thus invalidating antisodomy laws in the states that still have them.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 Texas decision, said that gay people "are entitled to respect for their private lives," adding that "the state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."
Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer agreed with Justice Kennedy. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sided with the majority in its decision, but in a separate opinion disagreed with some of Justice Kennedy's reasoning.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent and took the unusual step of reading it aloud from the bench this morning, saying "the court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," while adding that he personally has "nothing against homosexuals." Joining Justice Scalia's dissent were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Justice Scalia said he believed the ruling paved the way for homosexual marriages. "This reasoning leaves on shaky, pretty shaky, grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples," he wrote.
The court's actions today would also seem to overturn any law forbidding sodomy, no matter whether it deals with homosexual or heterosexual activity.
The Potter books and their British author, J.K. Rowling, have charmed everyone, apparently, by reviving the most ancient medium, words- on-paper, with the most basic technique: excellent stories, told with intelligence and taste.
So why, with all its enviable success, hasn't the Potter series been more influential among those who produce entertainment for young people? Why is children's media -- from the cartoon violence of the X-Men to the mindless potty-mouthing of Eminem -- still a swamp of silliness and worse? Why aren't there more Harry Potters?...
A new book from Johns Hopkins University Press, Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America's Children, compiles essays by writers, liberal and conservative, who dare to ask [if parents are to blame]...
"Are parents reluctant to exercise their responsibilities as adults?" the editors write. "Many seem to be fearful of being considered prudes by their peers."
The result of this massive abdication of authority, writes the researcher Kay Hymowitz, is a "race to the bottom" by entertainment producers whose product never passes through the censor of a parent's higher expectations and values. In the marketplace of kids' media nowadays, only kids are setting the standards....
[P]arents have to assert their own authority and impose their own standards on the market. Maybe then, miraculously, there will be more Harry Potters - and, delightfully, fewer Eminems.
The crowning accomplishment of liberalism and cultural Marxism in recent decades has not been in politics, but in the discrediting of efforts to conserve traditional culture. They have used moral suasion and legal coercion (see the Elks post) to persuade us that it is wicked to preserve and transmit culture by moral suasion.
Andrew Ferguson is pointing here to a loss of confidence so great that we do not teach our convictions even to our own children. Though I have no data, I would speculate that this loss of confidence coincides with an absence of religious faith. Without faith, how many generations can civilization survive?
Doctors fail to take nearly half the recommended steps for treating common illnesses such as high blood pressure and diabetes, suggesting that health care in the United States isn't nearly as good as many people thought, researchers say.
Treatment guidelines, many written by medical specialty organizations, outline recommended approaches to many common ailments, ranging from painkillers and exercise for arthritis to surgery for breast cancer.
However, the guidelines are often ignored, indicating that even people who have good insurance and doctors they like don't always get the best care, said Elizabeth McGlynn, a researcher with the Rand Corp. think-tank who led a study published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. [...]
The report, based on a review of medical records for 6,712 people in 12 cities, looked only at how often their doctors followed the rules, not whether they suffered any ill effects from the lapses.
Desperate to control the congressional embrace of prescription drug subsidies, the House Republican bill would apply means testing to catastrophic illnesses. That laudable effort, however, carries an unexpected consequence. The health insurance industry would have access to the income data of every senior citizen in America.
When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst.
"The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me". "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric," noted the newspaper.
"When I saw that, I couldn't believe it," said one retired senior diplomat. "But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible." [...]
Throughout his career, Ledeen has insisted that war and violence are integral parts of human nature and derided the notion that peace can be negotiated between two nations.
In one of my children's books, the lion is made fun of for "leading from behind" while searching for the monster of the story. Subtly, it is implied that cowardice is behind the move, and the lion loses and regains his voice with the ebb and flow of his courage and his position in the pack.
Yet I would argue "leading from behind" - or at least by walking beside, rather than in-front of your charges - is exactly what is needed for leaders of all kinds (corporate, governmental, community) in the new century.
This is hardly a new idea. The notion is referred to directly in the Tao te Ching, that 1000-year old classic of Chinese literature: "When a good leader is finished, the people think they did it themselves". That is, lead through empowerment of the people, rather than by undertaking all tasks yourself - or at least make it look that way, make people believe they are making the decisions, providing the solutions. [...]
I was once asked by a CEO, in a meeting with his executive, what kind of leadership would be necessary in the 21st century. My reply - met with blank stares from the gathered management team - was "Taoist leadership". I was referring to the quote I have already made from the Tao te Ching. The type of leadership we need from all quarters is "facilitative" leadership, "empowering" leadership, humble leadership, Taoist leadership. We need leadership from those who would build us up and stand aside, insisting that we take all the credit. We need leaders who truly understand the first principle of community development: "Work yourself out of a job". If a good leader does good work, they render themselves virtually obsolete: the workers, the community, the team becomes self-sufficient.
Yet few of today's leaders - particularly in government - would be willing to "hand the credit" to others; they all want their moment in the spotlight, their 15 minutes. Credit is necessary to their continuing success as politicians, bureaucrats. Indeed, we set the entire "system" up that way from the beginning: We believe in the heroic leader, we build hierarchical enterprises where "the boss" is the only public face of the enterprise, we clammer for "doorstop" interviews with the leader, the Minister, the head honcho, as the only one who can give us the pearls of wisdom we crave. We focus our media on the people, we subscribe to the twin cults of personality and celebrity.
South Korean prosecutors on Wednesday said that former president Kim Dae-jung's government paid $100m to secure North Korea's participation in the two countries' historic summit three years ago.
Two senior aides to Mr Kim were indicted in connection with the secret payment, following a 70-day investigation into the "cash-for-summit" scandal.
The findings threatened the credibility of Seoul's "sunshine" policy of engagement with North Korea and tarnished the reputation of Mr Kim, who won the Nobel peace prize for the summit.
"The government was involved in secret cash remittances [to North Korea], which were made through improper channels," said Song Doo-Hwan, the special prosector who led the probe.
Halfway through Norah Jones's concert on Tuesday night at the Beacon Theater, her five-member band left her alone onstage. She sat at the grand piano and played Duke Ellington's "Melancholia," singing her own lyrics about not missing a lover who had checked out. "Melancholia" is one of Ellington's slow, exotic songs with chord changes that make it too weird for standard repertory. And Ms. Jones's voice--bright, precise and drawling--did very well by it.
Then the band reappeared, and the concert--her first major theater concert in New York since winning five Grammys in February--became a crashing bore again, just as the first half had been. There was a sense in Ms. Jones's show--expressed in the songwriting, in the arrangements (such as they were) and in the basic elements of stagecraft--that the kids had taken over and weren't sure what to do with their power. If ever a singer and a band could benefit from the guidance of elders, it is this one.
For sure, one quality that makes the 24-year-old Ms. Jones so likable is her unpretentiousness. I don't think I've seen a headlining pop star who has sold 14 million copies worldwide of a first record seem less sure about what to say to her audience. But would she be betraying that likable personality by using more effective arrangements, some changes in key and tempo?
Perhaps we'll find out on her second album, but for now--during a three-night sold-out stand at the Beacon and the rest of a national tour--her job is to play the songs and the style of the first one, her Grammy-winning "Come Away With Me."
Korea currently faces some difficult decisions about reforming its National Pension System. As many readers know, the public pension system will come under increasing financial strain in the coming decades as the population ages rapidly; indeed, the OECD projects that Korea will age faster than any other industrialized country. While it is tempting to dismiss such concerns as being too distant, there is a strong case to act now. Delaying reform to future generations will only shift the burden of fixing the system, and then more drastic actions will be needed. The IMF urges the government to adopt gradual reform measures now to ensure a smooth transition to a financially sound pension system, and to ensure fairness across all generations of Koreans. [...]
There is widespread agreement that the finances of the National Pension Fund (NPF)in essence, the savings account of the NPS will deteriorate markedly in the coming decades as the Korean population ages. At present, the NPF runs an annual surplus equal to more than 2 percent of GDP, with accumulated assets of almost W100 trillion. However, these rosy numbers reflect the relative youth of Korea’s population. To conclude that all is well with the pension system would be a mistake. By the mid-2020s expenditures will exceed contributions, based on reasonable economic assumptions, and by the mid-2040s the financial resources of the NPF will be completely exhausted.
Ensuring the long-term solvency of the public pension system will inevitably require some combination of lower benefits and higher contributions.
Fertilizer that South Korea gives to North Korea is used to grow opium plants, said an organization of South Koreans who fled the North during the Korean War.
The group, called Iebukdominhoi, reported in its newsletter Donghwa Shinmun this week that a defector support organization in China said that Room 39 of the North's Labor Party, which specializes in earning hard currency, has been distributing the fertilizer given by the South. The paper said the fertilizer had gone to farms throughout at least four provinces - North Hamgyeong, South Hamgyeong, Jagang and Yanggang - and that North Korea authorities have mandated that at least 30 percent of the acreage on some farms be devoted to growing opium poppies. Those farms had staff that specialize in growing the poppies, the report said. [...]
North Korea started growing poppies in 1992 on the orders of former President Kim Il Sung. The project was called "Baikdoraji Saeop," which translates to "white balloon flower project." The current leader Kim Jong Il changed the name of the project in 1999 to "Piramidon Saeop" - the meaning of which is not quite clear.
Clarence Thomas, the only black judge on the United States Supreme Court, has triggered liberal anger by denouncing positive discrimination as a "cruel farce".
In his most personal remarks, Mr Thomas wrote that when some blacks are given a helping hand, "all are tarred as undeserving" whether or not they were actually qualified in their own right.
"When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin colour played a part in their advancement," he wrote. Maureen Dowd, a liberal pundit in the New York Times, called the judge "barking mad" in a commentary on his remarks.
"It's poignant really: it makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race," she wrote. "It's impossible not to be disgusted at someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder against himself."
An Iraqi scientist has led the CIA to nuclear materials buried in his backyard, Fox News has learned.
Mahdi Obeidi told U.S. agents in Iraq he was ordered in 1991 to hide documents and parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
"A box of parts and a bunch of documents were buried under the rose bushes in his backyard," one U.S. official told Fox News.
Obeidi also said he was told the materials should remain buried in the backyard of his Baghdad home until sanctions against Iraq ended, when they would be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon.
"This shows how hard a job it will be to find stuff when it's under people's rose bushes," the U.S. official added.
Obeidi told the CIA he was one of four Iraqi nuclear scientists told to hide such plans and parts. He did not know the identities of the other three and the CIA has so far been unable to locate them, a senior U.S. official told Fox News.
The continuing violence means that Iraq is not yet ready for the Middle Eastern Marshall Plan we were once so convinced that the Iraqis wanted. Let's remember that in order to implement the Marshall Plan, we destroyed Germany and dealt with the German populace ruthlessly. Had anyone in the former Nazi Reich mounted the kind of violent dissatisfaction with the pace of our charitable intentions that we're seeing in Iraq, they would have been arrested or wiped out, no questions asked.
Do we now want to shift gears toward a similarly draconian preparation for reconstruction in Iraq? Perhaps not, but the war is clearly not over, despite what Bush said during his patently silly amateur theatrics on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.
The Pentagon must, however reluctantly, send in not only additional Special Forces units (the only troops we have that are capable of handling this situation without alienating the Iraqi people) to pick apart the resistance machine, but also police troops to meet the public safety emergency, as well as extra engineering units to restore services quickly.
We were all supposed to be happy friends in Iraq by now. But our antagonist may have proved, once again, to be a damnably clever opponent. Before we get entirely swept up with finding people on our own side to blame (there will be ample time for that later), we ought to be about the business of devising new schemes to neutralize our foe - schemes even more imaginative than those admirable plans that brought us into Baghdad so quickly.
Until recently Dean was virtually unknown outside of New England. But he has been more successful than any Democratic candidate in improving the position from where he started a few months back. The former governor has proved himself to be a scintillating speaker. Tapping into liberal rage, he has given the party's activists the undiluted, uncut stuff in a way that brings them to their feet every time.
Speechifying is Dean's thing. Interviews and debates appear not to be.
Good Dean and Bad Dean were both on display this week. First Dean delivered what has to be one of the worst Sunday morning news show performances in recent memory. Then the next day he delivered one of his typically passionate and rousing speeches in his presidential announcement in Burlington, Vermont.
Dean actually gives the Rev. Al Sharpton a run for his money in the oratory department, but he has the added benefit of being seen as electable by many in the party.
According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
Tony Blair clashed angrily with Iain Duncan Smith yesterday as he accused the Conservative Party of supporting Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.
The Tories said the Prime Minister had deliberately misrepresented their policy after he claimed that the Opposition backed the idea of "associate membership". He said that would be the result of proposals by the Eurosceptic Tory MP David Heathcoat-Amory, a member of the convention that drew up a new EU blueprint.
During a Commons statement on last week's EU summit in Greece, Mr Blair said Mr Heathcoat-Amory's alternative draft treaty would mean redrawing the terms of Britain's EU membership. This policy, which he claimed was endorsed by the Tory front bench, would be "wholly inconsistent with Britain's present membership".
Rejecting calls for a referendum, he told Mr Duncan Smith: "That is the true dividing line. The reason that you want a referendum is so that you can say 'no', so that you can paralyse the EU, so that you can get out." Mr Duncan Smith told MPs: "The Conservative Party does not want Britain to leave the EU. We want to make it work."
It would greatly disappoint the warring armies of interest groups in Washington, salivating for a fight over the next Supreme Court vacancy. But there is a way out of such a debilitating battle, with all its ominous implications for the independence and reputation of the judiciary, if key players at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are willing to show some flexibility.
The path around such a knock-down, drag-out fight has been opened by Democratic senators who have urged President Bush to "consult" with Capitol Hill before deciding on his choice for the high court.
No one knows when there may be a vacancy to fill, but with the current term coming to an end, speculation is rife that Chief Justice William Rehnquist or Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, both in their seventies, may be ready to retire.
In anticipation of that possibility, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has written to Bush urging him to engage "in meaningful consultation with members of the Senate, including those in the other [Democratic] party, before deciding on nominees."
Leahy's proposal was quickly endorsed by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, who wrote the president that "should you be willing to convene a meeting of Senate leaders from both parties to begin a bipartisan process of consultation . . . we believe it is not necessary to have a divisive confirmation fight over a Supreme Court appointment."
Last week, when Democratic bigwigs from across the country assembled in St. Paul to take a look-see at the party's presidential aspirants, one buzzword trumped all the others. Optimism. Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, state committee functionaries, candidates--they were all so inflated with hope you worried that one of them might explode and set off a chain reaction. [...]
But insofar as the optimism on display this weekend was genuine, it may have sprung from a more elemental source: helpless, baseless rationalization. When things look as bad as they do for the Democrats right now, how likely is it that they'll get any worse?
Unfortunately for the Democrats, the answer may well be "pretty damn likely." Why? Well, look at the candidates. Of the six who spoke, none emerged as anything near a consensus favorite. That may not seem surprising. But by many accounts, it was Bill Clinton's impressive showing at this same meeting in the summer of 1991 that propelled him to the front of the '92 field.
But the Dems' lack of distinction hardly ends there. You can start by noting that the best orator among the participants, the Rev. Al Sharpton, is also the most unelectable. Sharpton was the funniest of the speakers as well, though in one sense his best jabs were at the essential unseriousness of the event. Asked how he would handle the federal deficit, Sharpton said he was uniquely qualified because "I've been in a deficit most of my life." The line that got the heartiest laughs: "Some people say, 'Al, can you win?' Well, Bush didn't win and he's president!"
If Sharpton were mounting a serious campaign for the nomination, he would not have been received so warmly. But he cozied up to the insiders
by effectively declaring his candidacy the front for a voter-registration drive.
This season more than ever before, I find myself spending so much time poking holes in strategic moves or personnel decisions and arguing with the damn game that I end up pissed off rather than entertained. And that's just plain wrong. Armed with so many statistics, and with the opinions formed by those numbers, and determined with each new frustrating skid in the season to dig further into the stats in search of answers, I often feel like one of those scientists who gets so lost in the mysteries of physics that she's no longer capable of recognizing what an everyday miracle this world really is.
And the bottom line is that baseball, despite its essential and attractive order and the fact that so many of its components can now be subjected to rigorous statistical evaluation, is still a largely unpredictable sport, a game in which intangibles and absurdity continue to play regular roles in the outcomes of games. You could pick virtually any great game in the history of baseball whose outcome was affected by anomalous events and obscure, mediocre--even lousy--players whose moment of glory could not have been predicted by any statistical formula or pool of data.
The players understand this better than the writers and the stats junkies do. To them there is virtually no mystery, bizarre occurrence, or unexpected event on a field that can't be explained with a shrug and the oldest clubhouse cliche in the book: "That's baseball."
There is a classic slogan in America that is probably as old as the country itself. You've heard it many times, and it goes like this: There are only two sure things in life - death and taxes.
Unless the fountain of youth is discovered or secret advances are made in human cloning, I think we still can count on passing from this earth at some point. However, the paying of taxes is not the certainty it once was. With each passing tax bill, more and more Americans no longer are paying income taxes. Thus, the question arises: Should these nontaxpayers have a say in what America does as a nation?
Three weeks after Republicans captured control of the government, Americans hold favorable views of the party and President Bush, but they are less enthusiastic about some of the policies Republicans are promoting, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. [...]
Mr. Bush's enthusiasm for his $1.25 trillion tax cut plan is...not entirely shared by the public. Two-thirds said they would have preferred the federal surplus be used to shore up Social Security and Medicare rather than finance a tax cut. With the surplus gone, 48 percent of those polled said they did not believe it was possible to both cut taxes and reduce the federal budget deficit; 42 percent said they believed it was possible. But the respondents were evenly divided about whether they preferred to focus on reducing the deficit or cutting taxes. [...]
Americans are also evenly divided about whether future retirees should be permitted to invest part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts, as is strongly supported by Mr. Bush and many Congressional Republicans. At the same time, more than half of the respondents said they did not expect the Social Security system to be able to pay them benefits owed by the time they retire.
As House Democrats pick a new leader for their fund-raising committee, black lawmakers are again protesting about being overlooked for key positions despite delivering millions of votes each year.
Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson (has been lobbying to replace Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But Jefferson's prospects of getting the plum assignment are anything but certain since the elevation earlier of this month of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to House minority leader. The job may go to Rep. Martin Frost, a Texan who challenged Pelosi for the leader's job before dropping out of the race. Frost has chaired the committee twice before.
Pelosi, the first woman to lead the party in either the House or Senate, also approached Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., about taking the job, but he declined, according to a Markey aide.
Jefferson would be the first black to chair the campaign committee. Many black Democrats are clearly frustrated that his appointment is not a done deal.
"It is time for diversity to show its head," said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. All 38 members of the caucus are Democrats. "We want to have input with the Democratic caucus of the House. We get frequently labeled as the base but the base is rarely heard from when it comes to decisions related to the DCCC."
When they faced off in a televised debate here last week, Suzanne Haik Terrell accused Senator Mary Landrieu of abandoning her Catholic faith because of her votes in favor of abortion. The comment--one of the strongest in-person attacks in recent memory--was virtually ignored by the media.
Perhaps that's because the charge is just one among dozens of harsh attacks traded in a race that is quickly becoming one of the most bitter of the 2002 election cycle. Maybe it's because Louisiana voters have heard similar sentiments before. In 1996, Archbishop Phillip Hannan said, if "a person actually believes in Catholic doctrine, then I don't see how they can vote for Landrieu without a feeling of sin." Or maybe the remark was overlooked because Landrieu's protest--she called it the "pit of politics"--was unconvincing. Landrieu, after all, has been playing victim on just about everything. When Terrell criticized her six years representing the Bayou state in the U.S. Senate, the incumbent responded pitifully. "Well, somebody thinks I'm doing a good job." And when Terrell spoke with pride about her three lovely daughters, Landrieu had had enough. "Ms. Terrell, who knows me quite well, fails to say that I also have two beautiful daughters." Oh, the indignity.
As for "Louisiana values"--Terrell used that phrase in the first sentence of the New Orleans debate, and returned to it several times over the next half-hour. "The people of Louisiana are extremely family-oriented and they have tremendous faith," she said, defining the term in an interview two days later. "It's a recognition of those things that are important--estate taxes and the tax structure, personal responsibility, raising children, the sanctity of life, guns, crime, and faith. Sixty percent of southern Louisiana is Catholic," she adds. Terrell insists that her opponent is out of touch with those values--voting with Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Tom Daschle more than 80 percent of the time.
That, of course, is fair to point out. And it certainly contrasts with Landrieu's attempt to portray her voting record as moderate Democrat, which it is not. (Her record has won her high marks from liberal groups like Americans for Democratic Action. That group said Landrieu voted with its agenda 95 percent of the time in 1999, 80 percent in 2000, and 85 percent in 2001; her scores for those same years from the American Conservative Union were 4, 16, and 28.) But is it appropriate to accuse your opponent of abandoning her faith?
"Maybe it's an inappropriate comment," says Terrell. "I don't know. But as a practicing Catholic, I just don't understand how she can reconcile being a Catholic with her support for federal funding of abortions on overseas military bases, or with distributing morning-after pills in school."
As easy as it is to write off Pedro the Lion as depressing, slit-your-wrist music, the sadness is only skin deep. Underneath the stories of failed politicians, marriages and families, there is something uplifting in [David] Bazan's songs, something redemptive and forgiving in all the sex and booze that color the tracks. Bazan confronts the denizens of 21st-century middle-class life and doesn't try to idealize their lives. In Bazan's songs, people have extramarital affairs in cheap motel rooms; they go to Grandma's house for tea and cake and leave their little brother wandering lost in the woods; they admit they like girls better when they shave their legs; they disappoint their parents; and they may not love Jesus every day. And it's OK. The people in Bazan's songs are real. They screw up and they may be unhappy, but listening to their stories is kind of like watching bad TV: Your own life, suddenly, doesn't seem so dire in comparison. [...]
Pedro the Lion has been a loud rock band at times and the outlet for Bazan's quieter musical side at others. But even at its most simplistic, the songs resonate with intensity. Control is the story of a failing marriage: The first song has a couple walking along the beach and one saying to the other, "I could never divorce you/ without a good reason/ though I may never have to/ it's good to have options." The next song, "Rapture," shows the husband in the throes of adultery: "This is how we multiply/ pity that it's not my wife." Later on the record are two more songs about infidelity, and the saga culminates with "Priests and Paramedics," where the wife kills the husband with a knife.
Not that Bazan is condoning unfaithfulness; he's merely acknowledging its existence and exploring the emotions and factors involved. Bazan is Christian and the fact that many of his songs are spiritually themed leads many to conclude that Pedro the Lion is more Christian rock than indie rock. But he's not preaching anything.
"The prevailing notion of Christian music is that the singer or the writer is attempting to present a message, and through that message, trying to convert people to their way of thinking," said Bazan. "I think that that just contradicts the purpose of what art is and what music is, in that I feel like it's art, and so that's not really what I'm trying to do. I think if I was to sit down and have a conversation about it, I'm not sure if they would categorize me personally as a Christian or not, but nonetheless I value the Bible and Jesus's teachings and whatnot, but how it interacts with the music is really kind of up to the moment of creativity and doesn't really have anything to do with me setting out to write about certain things or having an agenda or anything like that."
[A]s transatlantic tensions mount over Iraq and the "war on terrorism", the signs are that the EU's faltering attempts to get its own act together are in a state of serious crisis. It is only two weeks since Nato - the institutional embodiment of European-US relations for half a century - decided at its Prague summit to build new military capabilities that would allow it to meet the strategic challenges of the 21st century.
The main intention is to narrow the gap between the US and Europe - in big transport planes, modern ships, precision-guided weapons, hi-tech surveillance equipment and secure communications. This kit is intended for use either by the alliance or by the EU, if there is a conflict, say in the Balkans, in which the US does not wish to be involved. Eleven of the union's 15 members are also in Nato.
So the decision by Germany to slash its military spending comes as a grave if predictable blow to these already slow-moving efforts. If Europe's biggest country and economy cannot do more to help it punch above its weight, some gloomy analysts believe, then the whole project may simply be doomed. [...]
The figures show just how stark the contrast is: Germany spent 1.5% of its GDP on defence in 2001, compared with an average of European Nato members of about 2.1%. Britain and France spent 2.5% and 2.6% respectively while the US spent 3.2%. And after September 11 US spending was increased by a staggering $48bn dollars (£31bn) for 2003, more than any European annual defence budget.
For twenty years the fates of Marsalis and jazz music have appeared inextricably intertwined. He was a young newcomer on the New York scene at a time when jazz seemed dominated and diminished by rock-oriented "fusion," marginalized by outr? experimentation and electronics, and disconnected from the youth audience that has driven American popular culture since the postwar era. Extraordinarily gifted and fluent in both jazz and classical music, not to mention young, handsome, black, impassioned, and articulate, especially on the importance of jazz history and jazz masters, Marsalis was ideally equipped to lead a cultural-aesthetic movement suited to the time, a renaissance that raised public esteem for and the popular appeal of jazz through a return to the music's traditional values: jazz for the Reagan revolution. In 1990 Time magazine put him on the cover
and announced the dawn of "The New Jazz Age." Record companies rediscovered the music and revived long-dormant jazz lines, signing countless young musicians inspired by Marsalis, along with three of his five brothers (first his older brother, Branford, a celebrated tenor saxophonist; later Delfeayo, a trombonist; and eventually the youngest, Jason, a percussionist) and his father, Ellis (a respected educator and pianist in the family's native New Orleans). By the 1990s Wynton Marsalis had become an omnipresent spokesperson for his music and also one of its most prolific and highly decorated practitioners (he was the first jazz composer to win a Pulitzer Prize, for Blood on the Fields, his oratorio about slavery)?something of a counterpart to Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s. He took jazz up and over the hierarchical divide that had long isolated the music from the fine-arts establishment; the modest summer jazz program he created won a full constituency at Lincoln Center. In 1999, to mark the end of the century, Marsalis issued a total of fifteen CDs?about one new title every month.
In the following two years he did not release a single CD of new music. In fact, after two decades with Columbia Records, the prestigious and high-powered label historically associated with Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, Marsalis has no record contract with any company. Nor does his brother Branford, who just a few years ago was not only one of Columbia's recording stars but an executive consultant overseeing the artists-and-repertory direction of the label's jazz division. (Branford recently formed an independent record company.) Over the past few years Columbia has drastically reduced its roster of active jazz musicians, shifting its emphasis to reissues of old recordings. Atlantic folded its jazz catalogue into the operations of its parent company, Warner, and essentially gave up on developing new artists. Verve is a fraction of the size it was a decade ago. In addition, jazz clubs around the country have been struggling, and the attacks of September 11 hurt night life everywhere; New York's venerable Sweet Basil closed in the spring of 2001, after twenty-five years in operation, and later reopened as a youth-oriented world-music place. In the institutional arena, Carnegie Hall discontinued its in-house jazz orchestra at the end of the 2001-2002 season.
For this grim state of affairs in jazz Marsalis, the public face of the music and the evident master of its destiny, has been declared at least partly culpable. By leading jazz into the realm of unbending classicism, by applying the Great Man template to establish an iconography (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Coltrane), and by sanctifying a canon of their own choosing (Armstrong's "Hot Fives," Ellington's Blanton-Webster period, Parker's Savoy sessions, Coltrane's A Love Supreme), Marsalis and his adherents are said to have codified the music in a stifling orthodoxy and inhibited the revolutionary impulses that have always advanced jazz.
"They've done a lot to take the essence of jazz and distort it," the composer and pianist George Russell told The New York Times in 1998. "They've put a damper on the main ingredient of jazz, which is innovation."
A former executive with Columbia Records who has worked intimately with five Marsalises says, "For many people, Wynton has come to embody some retro ideology that is not really of the moment, you know?it's more museumlike in nature, a look back. I think as each day passes, Wynton does lose relevance as a shaper of musical direction. He's not quite the leader of a musical movement any longer. That doesn't mean he's not remarkable, or without considerable clout, or that he's not the leader of a cultural movement. But within the record industry the Marsalises are no longer seen as the top guys."
Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans.
That's the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians. Evangelicals have moved from the fringe to the mainstream, and that is particularly evident in this administration. It's impossible to understand President Bush without acknowledging the centrality of his faith. Indeed, there may be an element of messianic vision in the plan to invade Iraq and "remake" the Middle East. [...]
I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals' discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.
But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. And liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation.
Nor can Mr. Bush be claimed by the culture warriors of the Christian right, although he gave them John Ashcroft and occasionally throws them a steak. The president is not a bigot, or a pessimist.
The Rev. Don Wildmon, founding chairman of a mushrooming network of Christian radio stations, does not like National Public Radio.
"He detests the news that the public gets through NPR and believes it is slanted from a distinctly liberal and secular perspective," said Patrick Vaughn, general counsel for Mr. Wildmon's American Family Radio.
Here in Lake Charles, American Family Radio has silenced what its boss detests.
It knocked two NPR affiliate stations off the local airwaves last year, transforming this southwest Louisiana community of 95,000 people into the most populous place in the country where "All Things Considered" cannot be heard.
Every devoted radio listener has experienced it at some time or another--a favorite station changes its format. The effect is unsettling. Last year, National Public Radio listeners in Lake Charles, La., experienced something even more alarming.
Republican Sen. Rick Santorum has just announced a major change in the party's strategy in the Miguel Estrada confirmation fight. Santorum told reporters minutes ago that Republicans will file for cloture today, which will lead to a vote on Thursday.
So far, Republicans can count on just four Democratic votes in favor of Estrada, which will leave them short of the 60 votes needed to stop the Democratic filibuster. "We've sort of hit a wall now," Santorum said. "We haven't had anybody come forward in a week and a half, and at some point, you're going to have to change strategies to make this happen."
Santorum said the Republican strategy now "will be to put people on the record" through a cloture vote. Anticipating that Republicans will at first fail to reach 60 votes, Santorum added, "This will be one of many cloture votes."
"My guess is we will do another cloture vote next week and wait and see what happens," Santorum said. "If we're successful and pick up a vote, we may have some other options."
The Dig Tree is a gnarled coolibah that stands in the burnt heart of the outback, beside the warm, green water of Cooper's Creek. It is the most famous tree in Australia, on account of the cryptic instructions carved into its trunk and the part it played in that country's most notorious expedition.
In 1860, Robert Burke and William Wills set out to become the first white men to cross Australia, a historic south-north traverse from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Their eight-month journey took them through the Tibooburra region in October of that year, en route to a base camp on Cooper's Creek, and then into vast, desperate stretches of the interior. Burke and Wills were like the Lewis and Clark of Australia, famed icons of early outback exploration-although, by the time it was all over, they'd be-come legends for very different reasons.
"Burke and Wills-now they were some bloody tough bastards!" says the bartender, suddenly animated. "I hope they're still teaching the schoolchildren about our heritage."
The Franklin Lodge of Elks in New Hampshire faced a controversy about whether women should be allowed to be members. During the controversy, some of the male members made offensive statements about the women who were trying to get in....
Just two weeks ago, the New Hampshire supreme court affirmed the commission's decision, and held that the club was legally liable. And the court didn't just hold that the women were entitled under state law to be admitted to the club — it also upheld the decision to assess damages against the club for its members' "sexual harassment" of the women plaintiffs. Speech that offends fellow club members based on sex, and presumably also on "age, . . . race, creed, color, martial status, physical or mental disability or national origin" or "sexual orientation," is now legally punishable....
The total damages in the Elks case were $40,000, which amounted to over 25 percent of the club's yearly budget....
What about the First Amendment? Neither the commission nor the New Hampshire supreme court even mentioned it. It's as if the term "harassment" has become the universal solvent of constitutional rights....
The statements in the Elks case have no place in polite company. Under the First Amendment, though, the proper way to deal with such offensive speech is through moral suasion and social pressure, not through legal coercion.
Harassment law is a double-victory for the authoritarian left: it broadens the scope of legal coercion, making government stronger; and it inhibits moral suasion and social pressure by subjecting them to coercive punishment, thereby undermining cultural, moral, and religious norms and making civil society -- government's great competitor -- weaker.
It's curious the path the law has taken. Traditional rights to liberty and property, the basis for cooperation among free adults, have been assaulted. Meanwhile, new rights which undermine traditional institutions and moral norms are promoted. There may be no aspect of traditional liberty or property which is beyond infringement by a juridical process of "law" (due or not) -- but the right to kill unborn babies stands secure.
MORE: Law professor and blogger David Bernstein will soon be out with a book that looks good: You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Law.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is using all his negotiating skills these days trying to heal a breach inside the union movement over how to conduct political affairs in the 2004 elections. Roll Call reports that there will be a political committee meeting on Thursday attended by AFSCME President Gerald McEntee and SEIU President Andy Stern at which Sweeney will try to "mediate a nasty internal dispute" over a planned multi-million dollar political operation run by former AFL political director Steve Rosenthal.
McEntee left the board of the new tax-exempt 527 organization, Partnership for America’s Families, that was formed this year by Rosenthal to try to deal with the restriction imposed by the McCain-Feingold bill on using union money for political purposes. Rosenthal was hoping to raise $30 million from unions and other liberal donors for a massive get-out-the-vote program to help Democrats in 2004, when the fight erupted over how to best target minority voters.
Democratic Party officials are nervous that the split will hurt their campaigns next year, but are powerless to do anything to mend it. "It is very, very important for them to be united," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "I am very sorry there’s a split but I hope they can heal it and pull together."
Continuing to raise concerns over "The Passion," the Mel Gibson-directed film about the last days of Jesus Christ, the Anti-Defamation League of America (ADL) charged Tuesday that, based on a study of an early version of the screenplay, the project could be "replete with objectionable elements that would promote anti-Semitism."
The ADL embraced the findings of an interfaith committee of scholars that has raised objections to the unreleased film -- even though the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has distanced itself from the same group.
In its statement, the ADL contended that Gibson and his collaborators "must complement their artistic vision with sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews and Judaism. Absent such scholarly and theological understanding, productions such as 'The Passion' could likely falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews."
Last Sunday on "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert asked Howard Dean if he knew the size of the American military. "Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 or 2 million," the former governor of Vermont replied. (The correct answer is 1.4 million.)
Now, half a million is a fairly large margin of error for someone who comes from a state of 608,000 people. Especially if that someone wants to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Russert pointed this out, Dean - who evidently regarded the whole subject as a trick - snapped: "That's like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is."
Yeah, Rwanda, that dumb place. Nothing ever happens there.
Joe Lieberman headed west Tuesday, in search of California gold, ready to miss nearly a week's worth of votes on the most sweeping Medicare reform in 38 years so he can raise enough money to stay competitive in his White House bid.
In the broadest theological sense, Josh and other emissaries of Christ are answering Jesus' call in the Gospel According to Matthew, known as the Great Commission: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Since the Middle Ages, missionaries—revered by some, reviled by others—have been among history's great cross-cultural pollinators.
In the past century, as mainline Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. adopted a social gospel that stressed aiding the poor over preaching to the unenlightened, evangelizing at its purest fell to Evangelicals. Rare is the conservative Protestant church that doesn't send its teens off on short-term mission trips or play host to a stream of missionaries on home leave, their stories full of exotic places and changed hearts. Although they would never admit it, the returnees are Evangelicalism's paragons, making its philosophy of relentless outreach their lives' work. Says Beth Streeter, a Moraga, Calif., health-care consultant who left on a short mission trip to Egypt with her husband and two young children shortly after Sept. 11: "When you believe at your core that the love of Jesus Christ really is the best gift to humankind, you want to find ways and places for people to hear that for themselves. Sometimes it drives us places that can be awkward and uncomfortable."
Through the 1970s, the great missions fields were Latin America, where conservative Protestantism competed with Catholicism for the hearts of the poor, and (for the more daring) Africa and the Iron Curtain countries. Gradually, however, the focus shifted. A missions strategist named Ralph Winter suggested in 1974 that Christians turn their attention from areas already exposed to Christ to "unreached people groups" who had never heard the Gospel. The plan held special allure for those who read literally another verse in Matthew suggesting that when every nation is reached, the long-awaited end times can commence. In 1989 Argentine-born evangelist Luis Bush pointed out that 97% of the unevangelized lived in a "window" between the 10th and 40th latitudes. This immense global slice, he explained, was disproportionately poor; the majority of its inhabitants "enslaved" by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and, ultimately, by Satan.
In a later paper, Bush urged Christians, "Put on the full armor of God and fight with the weapons of spiritual warfare." (He has emphasized to Time that he did not mean military action.) Of Islam specifically, he wrote, "From its center in the 10/40 Window, Islam is reaching out energetically to all parts of the globe; in a similar strategy, we must penetrate (its) heart with the liberating truth of the gospel." Many mustered themselves to the Window. [...]
Evangelicals assert again and again that their message is based in love. They are far better informed and more actively concerned than the average American citizen about the Islamic world's material needs, and their desire to share Christ springs in the main from a similarly generous impulse. Claims that Christian aid groups engage in charity as a "cover" for proselytizing do a disservice to the sometimes heroic humanitarian efforts by workers who believe that Christians should heed not just Jesus' message of salvation but also his example as a feeder and a healer. Yet there should be no question that while most evangelical missionaries love Muslims, they hope to replace Islam. Some cringed at Graham's "evil and wicked" description, but their critique was more about tone than substance. A few would suggest that only parts of Islam, and not its whole, are misguided. But most would subscribe to Luis Bush's generalization about Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism: "Satan wants to keep people as miserable as possible for as long as possible."
Clearly, this ideology is at odds with President Bush's statements that Islam is a religion of peace, his visit to a Washington, D.C., mosque and his invitation to prominent Muslims to break their Ramadan fast at the White House. Sufficiently amplified, it could also presumably complicate American efforts to bolster moderate Islam in the Middle East. The Administration, however, does not see it that way. Government officials admit the existence of a few "cowboys," but by and large, says one, missionaries "are often helping people, and not simply because they want to convert them," and Muslims are happy for the aid. During discussion of Graham's role in Iraq, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International Development noted to a reporter for the Beliefnet website that the government could not in any case control private charitable organizations. And a senior Administration official told Time that given the President's close ties to the Christian right and his support of faith-based charity work, there was little chance the White House would discourage Christian aid organizations from going to Iraq.
The national debate over missionaries in Iraq has provoked a parallel discourse in the evangelical community, or rather, a new chapter in the ongoing dialogue about how best to deliver God's word. At a gathering called last month by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think tank, fervor and self-criticism mixed with a sense that Christianity's overtures to Muslims might be entering a critical stage. "If we don't get this right this time, we could become irrelevant," worried one participant. Another, Serge Duss of the Christian charity World Vision International, asserted that the current controversy is "merely a blip on the screen." The value of Christian missions would not be judged on the past few months but on the past half-century, during which, "because we love God and love our neighbor," they have been "in the forefront of providing not only humanitarian aid but development, child health care, sanitation and communications." At times, Duss said, "we have been able to be more overt about our Christian faith and at times not. And this," he added, "is where we need to be very wise."
The smoke won't settle soon, and don't expect the Gordons, Robby and Jeff, to be sharing Thanksgiving dinner or exchanging Christmas cards this year. In fact, they could be bumping heads in just a few weeks at Loudon, N.H., where - remember - Robby got his first Winston Cup win in the long-delayed finale to the 2001 season by punting Jeff out of the way in traffic over the final laps.
Robby certainly knows how to get Jeff's goat. At Loudon 18 months ago, Jeff was so angry that after the race he dropkicked Robby hard at the end of the backstretch in a rare display of anger. Again Sunday, Jeff was irate afterward with Robby, spending most of his post-race energy berating Robby.
"He should mind his own business,'' Robby said in response to Jeff's complaints that he shouldn't have passed teammate Kevin Harvick in a race back to the yellow flag at the 140-mile mark of the 220- mile race. ``Now Kevin may be mad at me ... but it is what it is.''
Harvick wanted to keep out of the verbal fray: "I think Jeff said it best,'' was all Harvick would offer after his third- place finish, after listening to Jeff Gordon rant.
My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a "Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator." This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro ...
The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But ... people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people....
Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills.
Tony Blair's personal unpopularity is seriously damaging Labour's poll rating for the first time, according to the results of this month's Guardian/ICM opinion poll.
The June ICM survey shows that the prime minister's popularity has fallen again, and Labour's lead over the Conservatives has plunged from 12 points last month to only four points now - its lowest level since the petrol crisis two and a half years ago.
Last fortnight's fudged euro decision, the botched reshuffle and the row over taxes have hit Labour. It share of the vote is down by three percentage points on the month, to 38%, while the Tories are up by five points, at 34%. The government's four-point lead is its smallest on the Guardian/ICM poll since 2000.
The poll also shows that the government's "not yet" statement on the single currency has proved disastrous for the pro-euro camp, and support for joining the eurozone has fallen to its lowest level since March 2001. According to the monthly ICM/Goldman Sachs tracker poll, support for the euro fell by nine percentage points to only 21%, after the statement by Mr Blair and the chancellor, Gordon Brown.
Labor's basic problem: It's up against a plain-spoken, tough-guy President who commands the affection of blue-collar workers. Democratic consultant Brian Lunde, an unabashed Bush admirer, compares the President's rank-and-file support to that of Ronald Reagan, who captured a six-pack bloc dubbed Reagan Democrats. "Once in a while, strong leadership and personal character traits can trump interest-group issues checklists," says Lunde.
Worried union leaders want to make sure that this flirtation with the GOP remains a fleeting infatuation. Otherwise, the political consequences could be devastating for Democrats. If Bush makes major inroads among working-class voters in 2004, it could tip the balance in swing states throughout the industrial heartland that Al Gore carried in 2000. Among them: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Polls show the President riding a wave of blue-collar popularity, particularly among whites. In Michigan, Bush receives a 63% favorable rating from white unionists and 59% from labor women, according to a May 18-22 EPIC/MRA poll. Among the families of white union members, the President leads an unnamed Democrat by 56% to 32%. Many working stiffs "still like Bush even if they have profound disagreements on [economic] policy," says Catholic University political scientist John Kenneth White. "It's values, stupid, and Democrats still don't get it."
"When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day," said Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
There is a harsh rule of thumb about male height, and it measures six feet and counting. As study after study has shown, tall men give
nearly all the orders, win most elections, monopolize girls and monopolies, and disproportionately splay their elongated limbs across the cushy unconfines of first-class cabins. By the simple act of striding into a room, taller than average men are accorded a host of positive attributes having little or nothing to do with height: a high IQ, talent, competence, trustworthiness, even kindness.
And men who are considerably shorter than the average American guy height of 5-foot-9 1/2? These poor little fellows are at elevated risk of dropping out of school, drinking heavily, dating sparsely, getting sick or depressed. They have a lower chance of marrying or fathering children than do taller men, and their salaries tend to be as modest as their stature. If they are out striving to make their mark, they are derided as "Little Napoleons." Call them whatever you please, and chances are you won't get called on it, for making fun of short men is one of the last acceptable prejudices.
Small wonder, then, that an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration has just recommended that the agency approve the use of genetically engineered human growth hormone for healthy children who are "idiopathically" short - that is, children who are at the bottom-most tail of growth curves, yet who, unlike a small subset of very short children, do not suffer from growth hormone deficiency. [...]
ARE we really willing to subject our kids to buttock or thigh injections three to six times a week, year after year, just so that the local Dudley Dursley will taunt them about their big ears and good grades, rather than their stature?
Hundreds of Yemeni troops backed by tanks and helicopters on Tuesday launched an operation in this mountainous region in south Yemen to net a group of fugitive Islamist extremists.
The sweep unfolding in Jabal Hatat, 120 kilometres (75 miles) northwest of the port city of Aden, was being led by Defence Minister General Abdullah Ali Eleiwah himself, a correspondent reported.
The assault is aimed at netting a group of around 80 extremists accused of having launched Saturday's attack on an army medical convoy that left seven wounded, a military official told journalists at the scene.
The extremists hidden out in the rugged and largely inaccessible region comprises elements from the Islamic Jihad group and the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, as well as sympathisers with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network, the official said.
I had just finished an interview at a public television station, and a staff member was kindly presenting me with a tape of the program, when I saw on a monitor a CNN report that Hamas had declared total war on Israel.
I laughed and said, "And how will that be different from what they've already been doing? Once you've spent a few years blowing up babies and schoolchildren and old people, how can you make your war more total than that?"
To my astonishment, she clucked her tongue and said, "It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the two sides."
I couldn't believe she actually meant that. "Israel hasn't been targeting helpless civilians," I said.
To which she contemptuously replied, "They just use the regular army to achieve the same result."
Then she picked up a phone and made a call, rudely turning her back on me. I was, apparently, no longer worthy of serious attention.
Her rudeness, of course, was entirely understandable -- the politically correct are above the rules of ordinary civility, once they have identified you as an unbeliever in their religion.
State Rep. Melinda Schwegmann announced Monday that she is switching her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican and will run for her former office of lieutenant governor in the October primary.
Addressing the House floor on the last day of the legislative session, the New Orleans representative said she "felt somewhat abandoned by many Democrats, while at the same time, I have been embraced and encouraged to run by numerous Republicans."
Schwegmann, who was lieutenant governor from 1992 to 1996, the first woman to hold that office, said she will expand upon the inroads the office has made in encouraging tourism and would be a champion for the state's senior citizens.
Anticipating a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court later this year, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee Tuesday passed what opponents
have called the "nuclear option" to end the Democrats' strategy of filibustering judicial nominees they do not have enough votes to defeat. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) predicted Democrats will be able to block the resolution, just as they have been successful in blocking the president's judicial nominees. [...]
The full Senate must vote on the resolution before it can take effect. Rules changes require only a simple majority - 51 votes - to pass, but opponents can filibuster the resolution under a special rule that would let only one-third of the senators block a vote on the proposal.
The voting pattern of the Rehnquist court over the last nine years "shows that the court acts as if composed of 4.68 ideal justices," says Dr. Lawrence Sirovich, a mathematician at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan whose day job is figuring out how the visual system works.
By another measure, "the decision space of the Rehnquist court requires only two dimensions for its description," he writes in the issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences being published today.
Nine independent thinkers who focus solely on the merits of cases might be expected to vote in all possible combinations over a long enough period. Dr. Sirovich's analyses indicate that the Supreme Court voting falls a long way from that pattern.
His first measure entails considering that if two members were twins who always voted the same way, the court would effectively have eight members, not nine. On a court with nine members, there are 512 possible voting patterns, or half that number if a vote is marked as being in the majority or not.
But the actual number of voting patterns is very much less, as if generated by a smaller number of wholly independent individuals.
Analyzing nearly 500 opinions issued since 1995 - the court membership has not changed since Justice Stephen G. Breyer joined it in 1994 - Dr. Sirovich calculates, based on information theory, that 4.68 ideal justices would have produced the same diversity of decision making.
By ideal, Dr. Sirovich means a justice whose voting is uncorrelated with any other's. His measure, thus, points up the high degree of correlation in the court's voting pattern.
Presumably by accident, somebody left a live prototype of President Bush's 2004 campaign site on the Web for a few hours today. (It's locked up behind a password now, so all links in this item are to snapshots Slate took earlier.) At least Chatterbox thinks it was a live prototype. An editorial by former Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker is headlined, "Placeholder for Mindy's Editorial," with the intriguing subhead, "Mindy's editorial on women." The editorial itself reads like radical feminist poetry:
"This is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this is the body this si th body asdf asdf sdf asdfsadf sadfsdfsdfsadf"
Other gems include a hot link, "See more Hispanic photos," underneath the caption to a photograph of Laura Bush reading to Hispanic children. (As her father-in-law would say, "Message: I care.")
"Legitimacy" is an intangible factor in foreign policy, but like so many intangibles it can have great practical significance. Neither this nor any future American administration wants to be regarded as behaving illegitimately when it goes to war; hence President George W. Bush sought U.N. support before the conflict. A perceived pattern of illegitimate behavior can limit the cooperation other countries are willing to offer and put sand in the gears of even a sole superpower. Nor are Americans likely to be comfortable consistently acting in ways that much of the world, and especially other like-minded peoples, deem illegitimate. [...]
In addressing the problem of legitimacy, a simple institutional legalism will not avail. If the United States seeks legitimation for its actions, and it should, it will have to earn that legitimacy the old-fashioned way. It must promote and appear to promote not only its own national interest narrowly conceived, but also the common interests of the liberal democratic world. Even if the Cold War alliances cannot be re-created, this quality of American leadership during the Cold War can and should be emulated today.
The problem of legitimacy, like most international problems, can never be definitively solved. Perhaps the best test of American foreign policy in the coming years will therefore be whether, through an active and generous diplomacy and through successful actions in the common interest, the United States can win the argument that it has acted in the common good more often than it loses it.
Cost-conscious shoppers have been seeing prices plunge on goods such as computers, blue jeans, sandals, and even Harry Potter card games. Bargains are evident from Circuit City to the local auto mile. And while food prices haven't fallen overall, alert buyers at this Stop & Shop can find hot deals from Aisle 1 to Aisle 10: half-price bottled water, discounted razors, and more.
Welcome to "I can get it for you cheaper" America. It's a phenomenon that has Alan Greenspan watching prices as closely as Mr. Tamres. The Federal Reserve chairman worries that tumbling prices on many goods - while they make shoppers happy - could lead to broader deflation that harms the economy. [...]
The low prices are having an affect on the way consumer expectations. The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers has found that consumers expect the inflation rate to average 2.6 percent annually for the next 10 years. "It's lowest since we started asking in the mid-1970s," says survey director Richard Curtin.
One of his continuing problems was what he called the “shadowy distaff presidency” run by Nancy Reagan. The president's wife had faith in the clairvoyant talents of a woman in San Francisco she called My Friend. From a study of Mr Reagan's horoscope the friend claimed to pick good days and bad days in the president's life. Mrs Reagan would in effect veto activities arranged by Mr Regan if they fell on bad days. Mr Regan described the vexing problem in his book “For the Record”:This is a uncharacteristically pedestrian obituary of a man who, had he ever been close to achieving anything, might have been a great tragic hero. But, much more importantly, does The Economist not realize that, in terms of making the modern world, the most important date since 1945 was October 12, 1986. On that date, to the consternation of leftists everywhere and against the wishes of many of his political and diplomatic advisers, President Reagan walked away from the table in Reykjavik and sealed the Soviet Union's doom.The president's schedule is the single most potent tool in the White House, because it determines what the most powerful man in the world is going to do and when he is going to do it. By humoring Mrs Reagan we gave her this tool, or, more accurately, gave it to an unknown woman in San Francisco who believed that the zodiac controls events and human behavior and that she could read the secrets of the future in the movement of the planets.The friend was particularly busy with advice when Mr Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev at summits at Geneva and Reykjavik. She prepared a horoscope of the Russian leader as well. Nothing much resulted from these meetings so perhaps, inadvertently, they were held on bad days. For Mr Regan anyway there must have been quite terrible days when he regretted taking the job. Until he had become chief of staff, his life had been one long much-praised path to good fortune.
There was always a risk that the convention would not design a particularly good constitution. What was harder to imagine was that the convention would produce a text which would worsen the very problems it had been instructed to address. This is what it has somehow contrived to do. In many ways the draft constitution, more than 200 pages long, makes the Union's constitutional architecture harder to understand than it was before. That is an incredible feat. Worse, it weaves perpetual constitutional revolution more securely into the Union's legal fabric. The draft, admittedly, gets one or two things right: it is not entirely devoid of sense (see article). But for the most part the text is sound on points that are relatively unimportant. Everything that is crucial it gets wrong.
The most important task for any constitution is to assign powers while ensuring that the officers and institutions exercising those powers are held in check, accountable to citizens. This central preoccupation is plain in the constitution of the United States. Europe's constitutional convention has barely troubled itself with the question.
The question remains: Why did his colleagues put up with it?
Younger labor historians in the 1970s and '80s "tended to be people with left sympathies, who felt the man had suffered enough," says Mr. Dubofsky. "So even the people whose work he had borrowed from freely did not want to say anything." [...]
"If you look at the whole of his body of work, a lot of historians think that my uncle's most important contributions are things that aren't being discussed at all in this," says Eric Foner. "He edited the writings of Frederick Douglass at a time when, believe it or not, nobody remembered him. He edited seven volumes of documents on the history of black labor in the United States, and collections of material from black political conventions in the 19th century. And he did all of it without research assistants or grants. This debate is not doing justice to his contributions to scholarship."
The New York Labor History Association has no plans to revoke the lifetime-achievement award it gave Foner in 1994, according to the group's president, Irwin Yellowitz, a professor emeritus of history at CUNY's City College. "I was on the board, and there was a discussion about the rumors that he had been cutting corners," he says. "But the decision was finally made that the award would be given in recognition of the body of work as a whole, even if it was not always of the very highest quality all throughout."
Voices rose in agreement and dissent. Hands gesticulated to make a point. At first glance, the 40 people in the Hebrew College classroom could all have been Talmudic scholars, arguing over the fine points of the tale of the sacrifice of Isaac.
But only about half of the heads sported kippahs, the skullcaps observant Jews wear, and 16 of the participants had never before studied Torah, the sacred Jewish text. Rather, they were Muslim scholars on a four-week mission to learn more about the United States' religious practices.
Hosted by Boston College's Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, the 16 academics spent one recent weekend, for example, attending Saturday services at Temple Shalom in Newton and heading the next day to the New Covenant Church in Mattapan, an African-American charismatic church.
Khaldun Malek, a participant from Malaysia reared on a steady diet of Walt Disney, ''Sesame Street,'' and ''The Brady Bunch,'' found the contrast simultaneously dizzying and edifying. ''America from looking at the outside is something you can easily grasp, but from the inside it's one of the most diverse countries that I have ever encountered,'' said Malek, a Muslim who teaches political theory at the University of Malaya.
The hypothesis of theism is that the Universe exists because there is a God who keeps it in being and that laws of nature operate because there is a God who brings it about that they do. He
brings it about that the laws of nature operate by sustaining in every object in the universe its liability to behave in accord with those laws. He keeps the Universe in being by making the laws such as to conserve the matter of the Universe, that is, by making it the case at each moment that what there was before continues to exist. The hypothesis is a hypothesis that a person brings about these things for some purpose. He acts directly on the Universe, as we act directly on our brains, guiding them to move our limbs (but the Universe is not his body-for he could at any moment destroy it, and act on another universe, or do without a universe). As we have seen, personal explanation and scientific explanation are the two ways we have of explaining the occurrence of phenomena.
Since there cannot be a scientific explanation of the existence of the Universe, either there is a personal explanation or there is no explanation at all. The hypothesis that there is a God is the hypothesis of the existence of the simplest kind of person which there could be. A person is a being with power to bring about effects, knowledge of how to do so, and freedom to make choices of which effects to bring about. God is by definition an omnipotent (that is, infinitely powerful), omniscient (that is, all-knowing), and perfectly free person; He is a person of infinite power, knowledge, and freedom; a person to whose power, knowledge, and freedom there are no limits except those of logic. The hypothesis that there exists a being with infinite degrees of the qualities essential to a being of that kind is the postulation of a very simple being. The hypothesis that there is such a God is a much simpler hypothesis than the hypothesis that there is a god who has such and such a limited power. It is simpler in just the same way that the hypothesis that some particle has zero mass or infinite velocity, is simpler than the hypothesis that it has of 0.32147 of some unit of mass or a velocity of 221,000 km/sec. A finite limitation cries out for an explanation of why there is just that particular limit, in a way that limitlessness does not.
That there should exist anything at all, let alone a universe as complex and as orderly as ours, is exceedingly strange. But if there is a God, it is not vastly unlikely that he should create such a universe. A universe such as ours is a thing of beauty, and a theatre in which men and other creatures can grow and work out their destiny. The orderliness of the Universe makes it a beautiful Universe, but, even more importantly, it makes it a Universe which men can learn to control and change. For only if there are simple laws of nature can men predict what will follow from what-and unless they can do that, they can never change anything. Only if men know that by sowing certain seeds, weeding and watering them, they will get corn, can they develop an agriculture. And men can only acquire that knowledge if there are easily graspable regularities of behavior in nature. So God has good reason to make an orderly Universe and, ex hypothesi, being omnipotent, he has the power to do so. So the hypothesis that there is a God makes the existence of the Universe much more to be expected than it would otherwise be, and it is a very simple hypothesis. Hence the arguments from the existence of the Universe and its conformity to simple natural laws are good arguments to an explanation of the phenomena, and provide substantial evidence for the existence of God.
[T]he ADL's Ken Jacobson defends his group's criticism of the film. "We have good reason to be seriously concerned about Gibson's plans to retell the Passion" he says in a letter to the New York Post, which last Thursday published a columnist's summary of the dispute. "Historically, the Passion-the story of the killing of Jesus-has resulted in the death of Jews."
Of course, the story of the killing of Jesus is told every year in thousands upon thousands of churches worldwide without any violence to Jews whatsoever, but the ADL seems more concerned about such questionable history as Oberammergau's Passion Play causing the Holocaust.
For his part, Gibson is no longer threatening to sue, and says critics should judge the film once it's actually in theaters. But will it offend Jews? "It's true that, as the Bible says, 'He came unto his own and his own received him not,'" he said. "I can't hide that." But he promises his film is"meant to inspire not offend. . . . My intention in bringing it to the screen is to create a lasting work of art and engender serious thought among audiences of diverse faith backgrounds. If the intense scrutiny during my 25 years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record."
Indeed, there is scientific validity to the adage, "red sky at night sailors? delight; red sky in the morning sailors take warning." This saying has very old roots. In the bible (Matthew 16:2-3), the following quote is attributed to Jesus: "When it is evening, ye say, fair weather: for the heaven is red. And in the morning, foul weather today for the heaven is red and lowering." There are also versions of this saying that refer to shepherds instead of sailors.
Two factors contribute to the cogency of this saying. The first is that weather systems generally travel from west to east in the mid latitudes. Because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, a rising sun in advance of an approaching weather system would illuminate the approaching mid- and high-level clouds to create a red sky in the morning. Alternatively, if the sun is setting as a weather system exits and high pressure is building, then the departing clouds would be illuminated. This would create a red sky at night with fair weather to follow.
"It's time to shift gears," [Dean] told me, "to become a more presidential candidate with an inclusive vision, not just a bomb thrower."... And the broader vision? "We've lost our sense of community," he told me. Not exactly a new theme. The Governor road-tested "community" at the Larkspur rally, and it wasn't nearly as much fun as the bomb throwing.
Most Americans would support the United States taking military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons despite growing public concern about the mounting number of U.S. military casualties in the aftermath of the war with Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
President Bush last week said the rest of the world should join the United States in declaring that it "will not tolerate" nuclear weapons in Iran -- a vow that most Americans appear willing to back with force. By 56 percent to 38 percent, the public endorsed the use of the military to block Iran from developing nuclear arms. [...]
Two in three -- 67 percent -- of those interviewed said they approve of the way Bush is dealing with Iraq. That's still a strong majority but down from 75 percent in late April, at the end of the conflict. Nearly as many -- 64 percent -- said the benefits of the war outweighed its cost, a drop from 70 percent in the late April survey.
Seven in 10 said they were concerned that the United States would become involved in a long and costly peacekeeping mission in Iraq, a figure unchanged in recent months.
All the signs are that a turning point has been reached in the Conservatives' electoral fortunes - and Labour is doing all it can to help us. After a botched reshuffle, confusion over huge constitutional changes at home and in Europe, and internal division on tuition fees and foundation hospitals, comes Haingate.
The importance of the debate on income tax should not be underestimated. It is the return of old Labour, filling the vacuum created by the absence of any ideological anchor for New Labour. Ministers and ex-ministers such as Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson and Stephen Byers now find themselves in the old Labour camp, again looking seriously at tax rises. It is the return of the same Kinnock-Smith agenda that failed to convince voters in the 1980s and 1990s.
This is the real agenda of the left. It is so bereft of ideas about how to solve the country's ongoing problems with schools and hospitals, and incapable of hard thinking or creative solutions, that it returns to tax and spend.
PREMISE: If only Israel cooperates and makes concessions the situation will improve.
Fact: While Palestinian leaders constantly demand concessions from Israel easing security controls, withdrawing from Palestinian-populated areas, releasing Palestinians involved in terrorism, dismantling settlements, and so on they never seem to give anything in exchange. Not a finger is lifted to stop the terrorism, much less any other compromises.
Premise: Israeli attacks on terrorists are counterproductive.
Fact: Given the Palestinian determination to keep fighting, Israeli actions are the only things that can effectively reduce the level of successful terrorism by weakening the terrorists, disrupting their activities and intimidating would-be participants. It is no instant or perfect solution, but it is the only strategy that may achieve anything.
Premise: Saddam Hussein's overthrow has created a chance for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Fact: The war in Iraq has had no perceptible effect on any aspect of this issue.
Premise: The United States is in a position to advance a new peace process.
Fact: While the US certainly has incentives to show it is trying to make progress, it exercises no useful leverage on the Palestinians. It has shown no ability to strengthen Abu Mazen or gain a cessation of terrorism. It cannot even get its European allies to stop trying to build up Arafat and
unconditionally subsidize the PA.
Premise: The road map will bring European and Arab states' policies closer to the US's.
Fact: European and Arab states tend to view the road map as a plan that will automatically bring an independent Palestinian state in two years regardless of what the Palestinian leadership does.
Jordan agrees to restore ambassador to Tel Aviv. DEBKAfile Washington sources quote Powell as advising king not to wait for Egypt which belongs to Old Middle East, while Jordan is the New Middle East.
EUROPE is prolonging starvation in Africa by refusing to allow the import of genetically modified foods, President Bush said
yesterday.
He urged Brussels to lift the ban and said it was the special responsibility of developed nations “to combat hunger and disease in desperate lands”.
Speaking before tomorrow’s EU-US summit in Washington, Mr Bush said that the ban, which costs American farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost exports, was unfounded and unscientific.
It prevented African farmers from importing the food technology, which could help to make crops resistant to disease while boosting yield, for fear that the produce would be cut out of overseas markets. “For the sake of a continent threatened by famine, I urge the European governments to end their opposition to biotechnolgy,” he said.
Europe’s opposition to GM foods has undermined confidence in the products in the developing world, particularly Africa. However, India has undertaken experiments with genetically modified cotton, and this month decided to feed “nutritionally enhanced” GM potatoes to
children.
In the past three years alone, 48 MiGs have crashed while on training flights. In most of the cases, the pilots have died. There have also been cases where the pilots have managed to bail out, but the fighter planes have plummeted into thickly-populated areas, killing innocent civilians. In the latest accident, a MiG-21 fighter jet crashed in Rajasthan, killing the pilot, in early June.
So immunized by a sense of deja vu, news editors of major Indian publications buried the Gadgil story - as they have subsequent accidents - in the inner pages. Two months later, two more IAF pilots, Naresh Dogra and A K Chauhan, were killed when their MiG-21 crashed into a tea estate in the east Indian state of West Bengal. It was the 22nd IAF crash that year. It took place within a week of a meeting convened by India's Defense Minister, George Fernandes, at the air headquarters in New Delhi to "get to the root of the problem" following the frequent crashes. The Indian public has not been told what happened at, or after, the meeting.
The universe just became a little less mysterious. Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the University of Florida have concluded that two of the most common types of galaxies in the universe are in reality different versions of the same thing.
In spite of their similar-sounding names, astronomers had for decades considered "dwarf elliptical" and "giant elliptical" galaxies to be unique.
The findings, which appear in this month's edition of The Astronomical Journal, fundamentally alter astronomers' understanding of these important components of the universe, making it easier to understand how galaxies form in the first place.
"This helps to simplify the universe because we replace two distinct galaxy types with one," said Alister Graham, a UF astronomer and lead author of the paper.
The United States will negotiate free trade agreements separately with Arab countries as a first step towards setting up a US-Middle East Free Trade Agreement (MEFTA) by 2013 that will include up to 20 of the region's nations.
"Our vision is to foster the revival of a prosperous region once again united by culture, commerce and goodwill among nations," said US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in a speech on the last day of the high-profile World Economic Forum meeting in this resort town on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea on Monday.
Zoellick and US Secretary of State Colin Powell met government ministers from Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)to discuss steps towards negotiating MEFTA, first announced by US President George W Bush on May 9. Powell told reporters that the effort would help create a more stable Middle East based on the strong links between trade and peace in the trouble region.
The declinists, to use the label given to them by the political scientist Samuel Huntington, aimed "to shake Reagan's America from a decade of rose-colored . . . torpor," in the approving phrase of the New York Times. Their thesis was that "imperial overstretch," a term coined by the historian Paul Kennedy, was causing the U.S. to spend too much on defense, thus sending the nation into an economic downturn that would eviscerate the very basis of its strength. A similar theme could be heard among the heralds of a new era of Japanese supremacy, brought about by the readiness of Japan's government to intervene in the marketplace. "Japan has, as I predicted it would, become the undisputed world economic champion," boasted the economist Clyde Prestowitz in 1989. William Pfaff, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, chimed in that America's relationship with Japan had taken on a "colonial
quality"--with America in the role of colony.
The forecasts of American decline or Japanese ascendance did not stand the test of even a very brief amount of time. Soon, the Soviet empire collapsed, followed by the Soviet Union itself, allowing, in no small measure, to Ronald Reagan's military expenditures and his "overstretched" foreign policy--that is, to the very things that the declinists had decried. Japan, meanwhile, fell into an economic tailspin from which it still, after more than a decade, shows few signs of escaping, while the U.S. economy grew enough to boost per capita income by more than 25%, widening the margin by which our prosperity outstrips that of the other industrialized countries. And just as America's political-military success came from spurning the counsel of the declinists, so its economic success flowed from ignoring those who propounded the Japanese model. The lighter hand of government in America's version of capitalism allowed our firms to adapt more readily than their Japanese or European counterparts to globalization and the revolution in information technology.
Unprecedented triumphs of U.S. policy and industry have unfolded during the 15 years since America ignored the summons to emerge from its "rose-colored torpor" and face up to a supposedly grimmer national reality. To boot, these years have also witnessed the triumph of American ideas all around the world. According to the authoritative tally of Freedom House, some 63% of the world's countries are now governed as electoral democracies, and a virtual global consensus has been reached on the validity of market economics as opposed to state planning.
Of course, new challenges have arisen, notably from terrorism and radical Islam, but these in turn have brought into view other facets of America's strength. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has scored two decisive military victories, each exceeding all forecasts of success and making mockery of the plentiful warnings of fiasco. They have served to demonstrate the extraordinary prowess and agility of American arms while also dispelling the notion that the country, has grown too soft to tolerate casualties in war.
Abroad, this astounding run of success has generated a discernible uptick in expressions of envy. At home, one reaction has been a revival of premonitory scenarios of gloom. Just as the declinists of the late 1980s took aim at the spirit of national self-confidence that had been engendered by President Reagan's upbeat rhetoric and the success of his economic and foreign policies, so today's Cassandras seek to rouse the public from the complacency of America's present vaunting status. They take aim at the very things--military mastery, the spread of democracy and markets--that others interpret as signs of American triumph. Will their warnings prove better founded than those of Messrs. Kennedy, Prestowitz and
Pfaff?
The Mob Project is the brainchild of a man publicly known only as Bill, who says he works in the "culture industry."
"The idea is mine, and I write the e-mails, but I don't think of myself as the leader of the mob," Bill wrote in an e-mail. "In my mind (the mob) is led by whoever forwards the e-mail around. People make the mob through whoever they know."
Bill has become more secretive about Mob Project plans since the first mob event was held in May.
That event drew six police officers and one paddy wagon, after one of the e-mail recipients (now officially known to the mob as "Squealy") alerted authorities to the impending arrival of the mob.
Due to that unwanted attention from law enforcement officials, Bill opted to keep the details of the second mob action a secret until the very last possible moment.
The e-mail invite instructed participants to synchronize their watches and be waiting at 7 p.m. in one of four specified bars at a particular spot (for example, near the framed prints of the elephant and the leopard in the midtown Holiday Inn's bar).
That evening, mob representatives sporting stylish headgear appeared in the bars and passed out slips of paper containing information on where the mob was to convene and what to do once they got there.
About 200 people then proceeded to Macy's. They rode the escalators to the ninth floor rug department, where they gathered around a large carpet on display.
"We were told to say we all lived together in a big old warehouse in the suburbs," said Jenni Valton, a participant. "We all explained to the salesman that we were looking for a love rug to play on, and that we only make purchases as a group."
After discussing the merits and drawbacks of the selected carpet for 10 minutes, the mob dispersed.
"It was all perfect," Bill said of the activity.
He refused to comment on plans for the next mob event, beyond confirming that there will be another action in July.
Some mob members said they believed the project could serve as an excellent trial run for political protests.
But most said they hoped the Mob Project didn't turn political.
"I've always wanted to be able to say 'I'm a member of the mob' and now I can," said Valton. "In this city, where people seem to need a logical reason for doing anything, it's great to just have some stupid fun."
[R]eaders in this country can perceive a political bandwagon being pushed. Despite all of the books' gestures to multiculturalism and gender equality, Harry Potter is a conservative....
It's no coincidence that Rowling herself is an honorary member of the British Weights and Measures Association - which defends the ounce and pint, and calls the metric system "a political philosophy".
What you see in the Middle East is not development. What you see in the Middle East is modernity. Modernity you can buy. If you have the money you can buy all the gadgets of the latest invention, but there is very little development. That is the distinction. But in Malaysia and Indonesia you see greater efforts for human resource development, a process that forces a country to be more open. The society is diversifying. Therefore there is room for participation, access and for give and take within the same Islamic society.
I once asked President Khatami of Iran, a Shi'ite, this hypothetical question: There are two men. One lives in a closed society. Every minute of his life
is prescribed. He has to follow the rules of Islam. He has to pray five times a day. He has to fast. He has to pay his alms - his zakat. He has to do everything prescribed by the law, government, regime and police.
There is another Muslim who lives in an open society, with all the choices to be bad. Yet he remains good. He prays five times a day. He fasts. He pays his alms and does everything that the religion requires of him. Which is the better Muslim? President Khatami clapped his knees and laughed. He said, "You from south-east Asia are better than many Muslims around here".
My point is that Islam can inspire you to become a good democrat. Islam can also inspire a society to become a democracy. It depends on various factors that have to somehow work in order to propel that process of democratisation forward. [...]
I think the Muslims are just like any other human beings, aspiring to move forward but frustrated by the present circumstances that they find
themselves in. I think you should feel sympathy with some of the problems they are facing.
[Professor Stephen Knight] claims the Robin Hood "myth" is reinvented when people feel they are being oppressed by their own version of the Sheriff of Nottingham. [...]
"The obsession with identifying the 'real Robin Hood' is futile and misguided. The name Robin Hood existed - Hood is not an uncommon name - but it's more likely the name gave rise to the character.
"He represents resistance to local oppression - freedom and liberty in whatever shape you need it to take."
"The reality of the myth is that people believe in those values and might be guided by them."
The professor's book, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, describes how the core elements of the outlaw myth - links with nature, hostility to
oppressive authority, youthfulness, fun and games - have been interpreted over six centuries.
"The genuine Robin Hood is a world-wide figure of myth - he represents a utopian vision of liberty which tends to thrive especially in illiberal contexts like the late 17th Century, the early 19th Century and most recently, the 1980s."
To make ends meet, some states have removed thousands of low-income adults from Medicaid and reduced benefits for others. Many states have raised college tuition, cigarette taxes and other narrowly targeted fees. Six states have increased sales and income tax rates, and several more might do so this week.
But one thing has remained constant throughout the crisis: State spending keeps growing.
It went up 6.3% for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2002, and it's on track to rise about 5% in the 12 months that end June 30. The number of people on Medicaid, which pays for health care and nursing homes for the poor, remains at a near-record 40 million. That number is up 30% since 1998, the result of efforts to sign up people who qualify. And despite anecdotal reports of layoffs -- Oregon furloughed 130 state troopers, for example -- state governments have added 74,000 workers (an increase of 1.5%) in the past two years while the private sector has registered a net loss of 2.6 million jobs (a decline of 2.4%).
By almost any measure, state governments have suffered less than businesses and taxpayers during the economic downturn. Even so, nearly every state is struggling to balance its books.
And here I thought states' only problems were a slow economy and post-911 security costs.
In two split decisions, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that minority applicants may be given an edge when applying for admissions to universities, but limited how much a factor race can play in the selection of students.
The high court struck down a point system used by the University of Michigan, but did not go as far as opponents of affirmative action had wanted. The court approved a separate program used at the University of Michigan law school that gives race less prominence in the admissions decision-making process.
The Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.
The court divided in both cases. It upheld the law school program that sought a "critical mass" of minorities by a 5-4 vote, with O'Connor siding with the court's more liberal justices to decide the case.
The court split 6-3 in finding the undergraduate program unconstitutional. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion in the undergraduate case, joined by O'Connor and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.
Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.
At the top of the heap are the global multilaterals, the brass-plate institutions whose members include diplomats from the world's 190-plus nation-states. Examples are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations. They might look big and scary to street protesters, but once you peek behind the velvet curtains, it's dead obvious that they're stretched thin, put-upon, weak, fractious, crooked, and low in morale. They lack public legitimacy and democratic representation. Street opinion, the "second superpower," hates and fears them bitterly. The first superpower, the one with stealth bombers, can't stand them either. That's bad news for global multilaterals.
The second system involves international treaties and conventions. These vast, clotted webs of apparent consensus are too many, too messy, and too meager to manage a teeming, boisterous world. Often treaties are signed but never ratified. Many that are ratified aren't enforced. National leaders just plain lose track of all their accords. Consider environmental agreements, more than 200 of which have been promulgated in the past 40 years. Whatever the subject, the Bushites take positive pleasure in sweeping away clutter like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the International Criminal Court treaty, and whichever target of opportunity they choose to hit next.
The third arrangement is the coalition of the willing. More of these exist than you might think, including the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations, the Group of Eight, the Group of 20, and the weirdly named Group of 77 Plus China. Coalitions of the willing are barely coalitions, they're rarely willing, and they're never broad enough. Nafta has been good at dissolving trade barriers, but outside the gates of the Nafta consumer's club, Argentina collapsed while Brazil and Venezuela turned hard left. The top willing coalition, the European Union, is a golden exception to the norm, because it boasts an occasional accomplishment.
The fourth approach is to stage glamorous international powwows like the Rio Summit, Rio Plus Five, Rio Plus Ten, the Cairo summit on population, the Durban racism summit, the Copenhagen Social Summit, and, lately, nongovernmental countersummits like the World Social Forum. These massive blabfests are ritualized and wooden. They make proper noises, but they have no teeth, no budget, and no follow-through. They're good for consciousness-raising and for swapping business cards, but they have no effect on the awful crises they purport to address.
Outside the US, most people believe the planet recently suffered a massive, bomb-flinging breakdown in the new world order. The news is worse: There never was any order to break down.
Henderson created chaos on the field in a distinctive way. He was as unique off the field, renowned for not knowing teammates' names. Rockies coach Walt Weiss, an Oakland teammate, said, "If you were standing in front of your locker, he had a chance. He'd pick out a letter in your name, usually what your name started with. Like (Rich) Bordi and (Lance) Blankenship, he called them B. 'What's up today, B?' "
Fast-forward to Newark outfielder Piercy, whom Henderson calls "Burger Man." Does he know Piercy's name? "He calls me by my name," Piercy said. "So I'm not sure whether he wrote it down or somebody said it."
Rockies bench coach Jamie Quirk was Henderson's Oakland teammate for 3 ½ years. Asked whether Henderson knew Quirk's name, he said, "I can't say yes or no. I don't know. Rickey would say everything but your name, so you weren't sure if he knew your name.
" 'Hey, Dude. How's it going? Hey, big guy. Hey, man.' Anything but (your name), so you're thinking maybe he doesn't know. But maybe he did."
Quirk said that as a coach, he has run into Henderson at various times, and Henderson always greeted him by name.
Even though they were teammates, Quirk said he can't "say I really know him." And that's understandable, because Henderson typically was in his own orbit. Jay Alves, the Rockies public relations director, held that title with Oakland when Henderson was there.
Billy Beane's locker was next to Henderson's, Alves said. During one season, Beane was sent back to Class AAA and, Alves said, was in the minors at least six weeks. According to Alves, when Beane returned to Oakland and went back to his same locker, Henderson said, "Man, where you been?"
Henderson was Oakland's fourth-round pick in the 1976 draft. He went to high school in Oakland, Calif., and made it to the A's in June 1979, at age 20 - he made it to stay in 1980 - and in his first major league at-bat, doubled against Texas' John Henry Johnson.
The A's traded Henderson to the Yankees after the 1984 season, and the Yankees shipped Henderson back to Oakland in 1989. That was Weiss' second full season in the big leagues. He had grown up just north of New York and was amused to hear Henderson describe Manhattan.
"He said when he was playing for the Yankees, he lived in the city," Weiss recalled. " 'Yeah, I could look out my window, see the Entire State Building.' When he told me that, I was like, 'Man, that's awesome. You can see the whole thing?' "
If Henderson's teammates sometimes laughed at him, they also marveled at his natural athletic ability. Former A's manager Tony La Russa used to praise Weiss, third baseman Lansford and catcher Terry Steinbach for being "grinders." Henderson was anything but a grinder. Steinbach calls him "a thoroughbred" and Weiss, using the word in the most complimentary sense, said Henderson is "a freak."
In his opening comments, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that he had fought beside an African-American man in Vietnam. In answering a question, Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, noted that he had traveled to Africa. And several of the candidates, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, quoted the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., some weaving his words into their comments on more than one occasion.
It has been 15 years since Mr. Jackson ran for president, but he had advice for these Democrats. Before the candidates' forum, Mr. Jackson, who ran in 1984 and again in 1988, urged Democrats to pursue a "Southern strategy," and not to abandon the South to Mr. Bush, as he said the Democrats did in their 2000 loss.
"We must not write the South off, it is the key to the emancipation of the whole country and the preservation of the Union," Mr. Jackson said. "We must launch a new Southern strategy of reconciliation, shared economic security and hope and healing." [...]
In this ballroom, Mr. Jackson remains a rock star. He draws standing ovations. And his endorsement for president, which he says will come "no time soon," is a coveted prize. One sure sign of that: Only two candidates missed his forum, Senators John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida. Mr. Edwards had a scheduling conflict, his spokeswoman said. Mr. Graham had to take care of personal business in Miami, and had called Mr. Jackson to let him know that before the weekend, his spokesman, Jamal Simmons, said this morning.
One person he has not been invited to meet with over the last two and half years, Mr. Jackson said, is Mr. Bush.
We Americans are rightly amused by Belgium's claim to universal jurisdiction so that its courts can try violations of human rights anywhere in the world, having absolutely no relation to Belgium. For instance, Belgium recently opened an investigation of former President Bush, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and Gens. Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf for alleged crimes in the first Gulf War. But while we are scoffing, we ought to consider that our courts are engaged in the same judicial imperialism.
U.S. courts are deciding cases by citizens of Paraguay against another citizen of Paraguay for acts in Paraguay; claims by citizens of
Bosnia-Herzegovina against the leader of the Bosnian Serbs; and claims against the estate of a former Philippine president, although all plaintiffs and defendants were Philippine nationals and the alleged violations occurred entirely in the Philippines. Major American corporations, such as Texaco and Unocal, are being sued when they do business abroad, for the human-rights violations of host governments. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, has just upheld suits filed here against foreign nationals who assisted our government in the seizure of criminals abroad. We may expect soon suits against our allies for capturing and extraditing alleged terrorists.
How did we get to this state of affairs? Many American courts claim authority from the little-known Alien Tort Act: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." Early in my time on the federal appellate bench, I sat on a three-judge panel that heard Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic (1984), involving Israelis' claims against the Palestine Liberation Organization, Libya and others for a murderous attack launched in Israel. It seemed preposterous that we should decide the legality of an assault by foreigners against foreigners on foreign soil. My first thought was that the statute must be a modern excrescence. To my chagrin, it turned out to have been part of the first Judiciary Act of 1789.
There was an excrescence all right, but it was not the statute. It was what the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had made of it in Filartiga v. Pena-Irala (1980), the Paraguayan case. Torture, the court said, was a violation of customary international law and hence within the Alien Tort Act. Judge Roger Robb and I on different grounds rejected Filartiga's reasoning. Since then, most federal courts have chosen to follow Filartiga rather than Tel-Oren. Yet it is clear not only that Filartiga is wrong but that it is a serious incursion by courts into the domain of Congress, involving, as it does, the enactment of world-wide law by an unholy alliance of imperialistic judges and a leftish cadre of international law professors.
By his own admission, 30-year-old Karru Martinson is not what you'd call a manly man. He uses a $40 face cream, wears Bruno Magli shoes and custom-tailored shirts. His hair is always just so, thanks to three brands of shampoo and the precise application of three hair grooming products: Textureline Smoothing Serum, got2b styling glue and Suave Rave hairspray.
Mr. Martinson likes wine bars and enjoys shopping with his gal pals, who have come to trust his eye for color, his knack for seeing when a bag clashes with an outfit, and his understanding of why some women have 47 pairs of black shoes. ("Because they can!" he said.) He said his guy friends have long thought his consumer and grooming habits a little . . . different. But Mr. Martinson, who lives in Manhattan and works in finance, said he's not that different.
"From a personal perspective there was never any doubt what my sexual orientation was," he said. "I'm straight as an arrow."
So it was with a mixture of relief and mild embarrassment that Mr. Martinson was recently asked by a friend in marketing to be part of a focus group of "metrosexuals"--straight urban men willing, even eager, to embrace their feminine sides.
It is not just men who hit women. Women hit men, too. And the latest research shows that ignoring the role women play in domestic violence does both women and men a disservice.
There is little doubt that women get hurt more than men. She may slap him. But then he may hit her harder or more often.
By not understanding the mutual role they often play, women are at great risk for injury, new studies show.
Still, the newest findings challenge the feminist belief that "it is men only who cause violence," says psychologist Deborah Capaldi of the Oregon Social Learning Center. "That is a myth."
The number of women who hit first or hit back is "much greater than has been generally assumed," Capaldi says. She says she is surprised by the frequency of aggressive acts by women and by the number of men who are afraid of partners who assault them.
Capaldi and two other female researchers call for a re-evaluation of treatment programs nationwide. Such programs focus on men and ignore women. Men are court-ordered into some type of rehabilitation, and their women are told in support groups or shelters that they had nothing to do with the violence, Capaldi says.
LIBERATION is a danger to women’s health, official figures suggest. By the end of this century, men are likely to become the
longer-living sex.
The rise in alcohol consumption among young women and in smoking levels and stress experienced by the increasing number of working women is feared to have affected female life expectancy.
While the average life expectancy of men and women has risen over the past five years, the rate of improvement among women has declined. Should life expectancy trends continue and factors affecting lifestyle stay the same, men born this century may live longer than women, a think-tank has found.
Tony Leandro, secretary of the Continuous Mortality Investigation Bureau, whose findings are reported in The Journal, the leading insurance publication of the Chartered Insurance Institute, said: “If the trend continues, mortality rates for men and women will cross at some point in the future. You’re looking at some time at the end of this century.”
He explained that using statistics drawn up in 1999, a 35-year-old man could expect to live five years longer compared with predictions made 12 years earlier. However, he said that while women of the same age could also expect to live longer, they could not expect to be able to add as many years on to their lifespan as their male contemporaries.
“The male-female lifespan gap shrank from 4 ½ to three years in that period,” he said. “Subsequent studies have confirmed that this trend is
continuing.”
The factor with the greatest potential to fuel Dean's campaign may be Iraq. Certainly, much of Dean's momentum has come from his opposition to the war. In the runup to the US invasion, his outspoken antiwar stance won him media attention and many liberal activists' support. More recently, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, and US troops' difficulties in securing the peace have brought more debate - and ammunition.
To some extent, Dean's stance has polarized his party. Centrists have attacked him: This spring, the Democratic Leadership Council warned that he represented "the McGovern-Mondale wing [of the party], defined ... by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home." But other aspects of his candidacy don't fit the liberal mold: He supports a balanced budget and takes a states' rights position on gun control, spurring some liberal attacks.
To many, Dean's appeal has less to do with his positions than with his bluntness, and a willingness to challenge the administration. Even the enthusiasm he has sparked among many Democrats over the war can be interpreted as "less about the substance of the issue, and more that he was willing to be a contrarian,'" says Jeff Link, an aide to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who's hosting forums in the first caucus state. [...]
Rival campaigns acknowledge that Dean has tapped into a surprisingly strong vein of liberal rage, not only at President Bush's policies, but at Democrats' perceived timidity. But while this has given Dean short-term momentum, many see it as doomed to failure. "There's a lot of fury in [Dean's] presentation," says Jim Margolis, an adviser to Sen. John Kerry. "That can ... energize the base vote. I don't think it's a very good long-term strategy."
An American Predator drone aircraft firing Hellfire missiles destroyed a convoy last week that was believed to be carrying fugitive Iraqi leaders, and experts are trying to determine whether those killed might have included Saddam Hussein or his sons, United States government officials said today.
The officials said they had obtained intelligence indicating that senior Iraqi leaders were traveling in the convoy. They suggested that the intelligence might have come from an intercepted telephone conversation or an informant. The attack took place Wednesday near the Syrian border in western Iraq.
There was no evidence so far, the officials said, to support the idea that Mr. Hussein or his sons might have been killed in the raid, and some officials were doubtful that they were. But they said intelligence teams, including DNA experts, were at the site to review the wreckage and assess the evidence.
The fact that the sites we suspected of containing hidden weapons before the war turned out to have nothing in them is not very significant. American intelligence agencies never claimed to know exactly where or how the Iraqis were hiding what they had ? not in 1995, not in 1999 and not six months ago. It is very possible that the "missing" facilities, weaponized agents, precursor materials and even stored munitions all could still be hidden in places we never would have thought to look. This is exactly why, before the war, so few former weapons inspectors had confidence that a new round of United Nations inspections would find the items they were convinced Iraq was hiding.
Ambassador Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Iraq, spoke Sunday at the extraordinary meeting of the World Economic Forum, laying bare an agenda that stressed economic over political reform. [...]
The bulk of Bremer's 20 minute address...was devoted to economics. He talked in detail about the need in Iraq for new commercial codes, a simplified regulatory regime, a new antitrust authority, reform of the financial sector, higher standards of corporate governance, lower taxes, and"best practices in business ethics." [...]
The economics of reconstruction were evidently dear to the ambassador, who last worked in the State Department during the Reagan administration. "For the last 14 years I have been in business," he said. "We will succeed in transforming Iraq from a dead-end for business...into a country that is both free and economically prosperous."
The poet W.H. Auden once said that hanging out with scientists made him feel like a shabby curate. Or like a witch doctor at a
convention of neurosurgeons--I forget the exact wording. But I recalled the remark while watching a recent 60 Minutes segment on the Hubble Space Telescope in which Dr. Mario Livio, who heads up Hubble's science division, told reporter Ed Bradley that the images of the solar system produced by the telescope "are in some sense the most fantastic artworks of our time."
While it's doubtful that Dr. Livio is correct in his assessment--close up, the universe has an unfortunate tendency to look like bad psychedelia--it was fascinating to hear what he and the other scientists had to say. And I couldn't help comparing this with the boredom, verging on stupefaction, I'd experienced a month earlier while watching Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for The New York Times, interview the conceptual artist Matthew Barney on WNET (The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation With Matthew Barney). And this, mind you, coming from a person so unscientific that he was asked to give up chemistry, physics, biology and math in school. For the teachers' sake. They simply couldn't take it anymore.
Why is the conversation of "cutting-edge" artists so often dull and insipid?
According to a Harris poll out Wednesday, a majority of Americans still think the Bush administration was telling the truth before the war when it said it had hard evidence of WMD. A Knight Ridder poll released last weekend reports that a third of the populace believes the weapons have been discovered. A Fox News poll last week found that almost half of Americans believe that the administration was "intentionally misleading" about Iraq's weapons, but more than two-thirds think the war was justified anyway. A Gallup poll released Wednesday concludes that almost 9 out of 10 Americans still think Hussein had or was close to having WMD. [...]
The most striking thing about polls such as these isn't how many people believe or disbelieve some unproven factual assertion or prediction but how few give the only correct answer, which is "Don't know." In the Fox News poll, vast majorities expressed certitude one way or the other about the existence of WMD in Iraq, the likelihood of peace in the Middle East and so on. Those who voted "not sure" (an even more tempting cop-out than the pollsters' usual "don't know") rarely broke 20 percent and usually hovered around 10. Four-fifths or more were sure about everything.
As someone who manufactures opinions for a living, it is my job to be sure. And my standards for the ingredients of an opinion are necessarily low. There may be a few ancient pundits such as George Will who still follow the traditional guild practices: days in the library making notes on index cards, a half-dozen lunches at the club with key sources, an hour spent alone in silence with a martini and one's thoughts -- and only then does a perfectly modulated opinion take its lovely shape. Most of us have no time for that anymore. It's a quick surf around the 'Net, a flip of the coin and out pops an opinion, ready to go except perhaps for a bit of extra last-minute coarsening.
Still, even the most modern major generalist among the professional commentariat likes to have a little something in the way of knowledge as he or she scatters opinions like bird seed. The general public, or at least the part of it that deals with pollsters, is not so cowardly. Most people, it seems, will happily state a belief on a question of fact that nobody knows the answer to, then just as happily do a double back flip from that shaky platform into a pool of opinions about which they are "sure."
Pollsters themselves, and the media that report their findings deadpan, are partly responsible for this. Every news report about a poll result reinforces the impression that opinion untethered to reality is valid or even patriotic (and to be "not sure" is shameful). The modern pundit culture is also partly to blame, I suppose, with its emphasis on televised argumentation. Viewers do not always grasp the difference between low standards and no standards.
[U]nderneath the pretension of sunny, daring, nothing-can-stop-me happiness, chapter after chapter betrays the dank nihilism always driving these sinful Americans, driving them further and further in hopes that they might feel something-anything-in their drifting lives. Whether it's hopeful gamblers (greed); after-work stoners (sloth); 500 lbs.+ women who can no longer walk or wash themselves (gluttony); suburban parents who've traded affection for orgies (lust); or shirtless homosexuals who just want to dance, dance, dance, while their friends die around them (gay pride)-they all need to silence society's judgmental voices before any harsh truths can penetrate the stimulations and distractions with which they've anesthetized themselves.
Even in the final chapter, when Savage himself tries to commit in a single weekend all seven deadly sins, he does so with all the gusto of a contractual obligation to his publisher. And his odyssey culminates not in heady abandon or self-actualization, but in a wince-inducing scene of his own subjection to insult and humiliation from a bullying gigolo.
Savage's feeble caricature of the American founding might be easier to shrug off if it weren't so familiar. As he rightly points out, many conservatives-particularly traditionalists and those who see the American regime as low but solid-have bought into the myth that the founders infected America with the freedom "to go your own way," that "[o]ur bodies and minds and souls are our own, and we should be free to use and abuse and dispose of them as we see fit." Conservatives just don't celebrate this sentiment the way liberals and libertarians do.
But the same Thomas Jefferson who articulated the right to pursue happiness also said that we are "free from all but the moral law." He counseled that "[h]ealth, learning and virtue will insure your happiness," and in his Notes on the State of Virginia endorsed strict penalties for, among other things, the crime of sodomy. This connection between virtue and happiness is the real expression of the American mind, and of a liberty distinct from license.
Despite Dan Savage's wishful thinking, if the author of the Declaration were to return today, upon seeing this supposed "love letter to Thomas Jefferson" he would surely file for a restraining order, or at least a change of address.
Leading Muslim organizations say it's time for Americans to stop using the phrase "Judeo-Christian" when describing the values and character that define the United States.
Better choices, they say, are "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" or "Abrahamic," referring to Abraham, the patriarch held in common by the monotheistic big three religions.
The new language should be used "in all venues where we normally talk about Judeo-Christian values, starting with the media, academia, statements by politicians and comments made in churches, synagogues and other places," said Agha Saeed, founder and chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, a political group with headquarters in Fremont, Calif.
Others take offense, arguing that to alter the phrase "Judeo-Christian" is political correctness and revisionist history at its worst.
"A lot of the ideas that underpin civil liberties come from Judeo-Christian theology," said the Rev. Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, Colo., president of the National Association of Evangelicals. "What the Islamic community needs to make are positive contributions to culture and society so we can include them."
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said a "Judeo-Christian understanding of things like freedom of conscience and liberty" are embodied in the Constitution. "No offense intended," he said, "but Muslims weren't a part of that, even though they're part of the discussion now."
Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 biblical epic, "The King of Kings" offended American Jews by portraying the Jewish people - rather than the Romans - as responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. DeMille dismissed criticism, insisting that "if Jesus were alive today, these Jews I speak of might crucify him again."
But whether DeMille admitted it or not, the film did fuel anti-Semitism. Consider the following note, passed between two fourth-grade girls, that found its way into the files of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise: "Martha, I found out who killed our God. The Jews did it. I went to see King of Kings. It showed how the Jews killed him."
Now comes Mel Gibson, who insists Jews and Catholics will have nothing to worry about in his new, self-financed, $25-million film, "The Passion." It's true that the final script hasn't been made available, and there is currently no release date, or even distributor, for the film. Still, there are reasons for concern.
The passion of Christ - the crucifixion and hours leading up to it - has been used by bigots, including popes and kings, to inflame anti-Semitism through the ages. A belief that Jews were responsible for crucifying the son of God led Pope Innocent III to conclude in the early 13th century that Jews should be consigned to a state of "perpetual subservience" as wanderers and fugitives, and made to wear a mark on their clothing identifying them as Jews. His pronouncement reinforced widespread anti-Semitism that led over the centuries to millions of Jews being burned at the stake and murdered in pogroms throughout Christian Europe.
Any film about such a sensitive subject would set off alarm bells. [...]
Gibson's secrecy about his film stands in contrast with the handling of other controversial films. The producers of a recent drama about the young Hitler responded to criticism by soliciting input from responsible critics. They got good suggestions that made for a better film.
Events in Iran raise, for the manyeth time, a tension in fundamental conservative attitudes towards freedom struggles around the world. As a conservative, I feel two pulls.
One is Tory (often, though not exclusively, English), which might be summed up as "bloody natives." The classic 20th-century expressions were Evelyn Waugh's African novels, Scoop and the far meaner Black Mischief. The Tory attitude colors many of the ethnic observations in the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Circassians are brave, but thievish - that kind of thing). The Tory believes that the world is full of colorful and fascinating peoples who are, however, mostly incapable of good government and self-rule. [...]
Simultaneously, and as Americans, we believe "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them" (Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British North America). This is what our Founders believe. If they were wrong, the country sucks.
Toryism can lead to nihilism, and acquiescence in tyranny (the tyrant's plea, necessity). Americanism can lead to childish enthusiasm, and painful surprises.
Iraq returned to the world oil market Sunday, exporting its first crude oil since the U.S.-led invasion in a crucial step that will bring in revenue vital to rebuilding the country.
The export of crude from Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserves in the world, is a major step for the country, which is in desperate need of funding to repair battered infrastructure--including its oil facilities--and rebuild an economy devastated by more than 12 years of U.N. economic sanctions.
Turkish workers began loading 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude onto the Turkish tanker Ottoman Dignity in a ceremony attended by senior Iraqi, U.S. and Turkish oil officials at this Mediterranean oil terminal, at the end of a twin pipeline running from Iraq's northern oil fields.
The Ottoman Dignity will carry the oil to a Turkish refinery on the Aegean coast.
"This will mark the beginning of a new era and beginning of normalization," Mehmet Takiyuddin Bilgic, head of Turkey's pipeline company BOTAS, told The Associated Press.
The money from the sale will go to a U.S.-controlled fund for rebuilding efforts.
Some 8 million barrels of oil have been stored in southern Turkey since before the U.S.-led war began. Iraqi officials had said that the country could begin pumping fresh oil to Turkey as early as Sunday. But other Iraqi oil officials in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, said Sunday that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is still not ready to begin carrying crude.
Among the more prominent peculiarities of our politics in recent years is that something called ?bioethics? has become a key conservative priority. The bioethics movement has been around in America since at least the late 1960s, when the Hastings Center was created as the first bioethics think tank. Its task was to advance the study of the ethics of biology and medicine, and to examine the moral and social significance of new developments in genetics, psychopharmacology, reproductive medicine, and other new frontiers of biological science. The movement has since grown by leaps and bounds, and bioethics has developed into a profession, if not an industry.
Some American conservatives have long shared the concerns that animate bioethics. The pro-life movement has always worried deeply about the treatment of the unborn by scientists and doctors, and many conservatives have through the years been interested in various issues surrounding medical ethics, illicit drug-use, assisted suicide, and other social and cultural matters that have much to do with modern science. But it was not until fairly recently that bioethics emerged as a general and prominent category of concern for the American right.
That concern has been particularly influenced by worries about what has been dubbed the "Brave New World." This allusion to Aldous Huxley's famous book hints at a vision of a world reshaped by biotechnology: procreation replaced by manufacture, the pursuit of happiness replaced by drugs, and human nature remade into something lower and shallower, more easily satisfied but less capable of greatness and awe. This general vision has expressed itself in specific disquiet about reproductive technologies like cloning and genetic engineering; about the transformation of human embryos into research tools and raw materials; about psychoactive drugs and assorted enhancement technologies; and about a wide array of other attempts to fundamentally reshape human life through biology and medicine. American conservatives have begun to think hard about "where biotechnology may be taking us," as Leon Kass puts it, and what we might do about it.
The resulting intellectual and political activity has melded some of the interests of the pro-life movement with those of conservatives more concerned with the general culture and its institutions, and it has formed, through that combination, an altogether plausible conservative program. This trend, together with several sensational recent advances in biotechnology, has sent bioethics toward the top of the agenda of the American right. President Bush?s first prime-time address to the nation was about his new policy on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. Human cloning has been prominent on the congressional agenda for much of the past two years. And a substantial portion of the intellectual energy of the conservative movement has been devoted to the cause of a new bioethics.
And yet, the motives and methods of this movement present conservatives with a profound and complicated problem. Bioethics is necessarily focused on the deepest and most sensitive of human moral intuitions and taboos-those surrounding birth and death, sex and procreation, pleasure and pain, and the meaning of the body. At the same time, it is also directed toward policy, which in a liberal democracy rightly means that it must be an ethics of fully public argument. It is therefore in the business of public argument about taboos-of making the most private things more public, and shining bright lights on things long left in the dark. Herein lies the paradox of a conservative bioethics. Lifting the veil from society's most delicate implicit moral sentiments is hardly a conservative enterprise, and yet one form of doing just that has become a central conservative project. To succeed, a conservative bioethics must be alert to this deep difficulty and its consequences.
The essence of prayer does not consist in asking God for something but in opening our hearts to God, in speaking with Him, and living with Him in perpetual communion. Prayer is continual abandonment to God. Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want; it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life. Prayer is not asking, but union with God. Prayer is not a painful effort to gain from God help in the varying needs of our lives. Prayer is the desire to possess God Himself, the Source of all life. The true spirit of prayer does not consist in asking for blessings, but in receiving Him who is the giver of all blessings, and in living a life of fellowship with Him.
-Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889-1929)
President Bush meant to fall off his Segway.
Oh, I'm sure of it. What we've got here is a clever conspiracy -- a pre-emptive strike to save the oil industry from a technology that could sap its power.
Over the weekend, while on vacation, Bush looked like Chevy Chase doing a Gerald Ford imitation as he stepped onto the platform of a Segway personal transportation scooter and went flying right off.
The first U.S. president to try a Segway supposedly forgot to turn it on, so the gyroscopic stabilizers couldn't automatically balance him.
But maybe Bush wanted to fall. Maybe he understands in a way few do that society is on the verge of a debate that could mold the future of transportation, much like the debate 100 years ago when cars first suggested that horses weren't the only way to travel.
And if the future veers toward little two-wheeled electric-powered personal transporters, where does that leave ExxonMobil and Halliburton and the rest of the oil industry President Bush adores? Probably in the same sad league as the old Pennsylvania coal-mining companies, with Houston as the next Wilkes-Barre. [...]
Why would the Bush team want to derail the Segway? Well, the scooter is one of the most inspired pieces of technology this country has produced in years. It looks like it should be as unstable as a unicycle. But step on, and the smarts inside it keep you balanced. Lean forward and you go forward. Lean back and you go back. Twist a handle to turn. It is as intuitive to use as a coffee cup. [...]
Unlikely as Segway domination may seem, history shows it's possible. And if it happened, the oil industry could kiss its profits and power goodbye.
As another mass murder seems to snuff out the Aqaba summit's ray of hope, the unavoidable question screams out: When will this ever stop? At first glance, the road map now looks like a sick joke, a pathetic attempt to impose order on a conflict that has no end.
Yet within this chaos, a new structure is emerging that could well determine the sequence of events in the years to come, and their ultimate outcome for Israel. This structure is etched in invisible ink on the road map. Once described, it can be seen out in the open, but in practice it is Bush's and Sharon's secret plan. [...]
For Sharon, the road map's "independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" is not at the bottom of the slippery slope, but a brake that prevents precisely the slide that Begin fears. The deal Sharon is offering the Palestinians is a partial state in exchange for a partial peace. You don't want to renounce the "right of return" and accept Israel as a Jewish state? Fine, says Sharon, but for that all you get is a truncated state whose borders are controlled by Israel. Why would the Palestinians accept such a deal? Because they know that the only alternatives are the status quo, in which both sides bleed indefinitely, or making a full peace, neither of which they want.
Sharon's real objective is to get to the middle phase of the road map and park there until the Arab world is ready for peace, which may or may not ever happen. It is a reasonably comfortable place for a gradualist to be. Palestine may choose to be belligerent, but Israel will have a provisional border to defend and a state to hold accountable.
Freedom is not "just another word for nothing left to lose," as Janis Joplin sang before she drugged and drank herself to death. Actually, the word free in Old High German, as Gregory Beabout of Saint Louis University showed, stems from the Indo-European prijos (dear, beloved) and is related to the Sanskrit priyas (dear) and priya (wife, daughter).
The word free is also connected to the Old English frigu (love); Germans and Celts used it to mean neither controlled from outside the household nor enslaved, but benevolent toward and intimate with those inside. In Danish, I'm told, frie means "to make an offer of marriage," which should be done both through free choice and love. The etymology explains why the goddess Frigg was the Old Norse equivalent of Venus, the goddess of love in Roman mythology. Perhaps Fridays (the name derived from Frigg) are for lovers-and marriage is an act of freedom that promotes true love.
In the movie Braveheart, when William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson) under torture near the end yells "Freedom" and envisions his murdered wife, he is thinking as a Celt would have. [...]
The 1904 version of "America the Beautiful" proclaims, "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." Liberty, self-control, and the external control of law all work together to keep us from being enslaved by our temporary desires. Two centuries ago, the antonym to liberty that sprang to people's lips was not slavery but license. A free person stood in the middle of a spectrum, tugged by one mob to embrace libertinism or another mob to hug dictatorship and political slavery.
A century later, we've forgotten much of that. But if we want to maintain independence, we should dare to remember.
In 1993, the year Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" came out, legions of young, middle-class, well-educated women found in her lo-fi debut a kind of all-purpose autobiography, and a template - smart, deadpan, but also earnest - for making sense of their own experience. Within a year Ms. Phair went from being a 26-year-old singer-songwriter who had performed live some half-dozen times to the woman on the cover of Rolling Stone with the headline "Liz Phair: A Rock and Roll Star Is Born." The obvious question was: Would Ms. Phair be able to sustain her success?
Ten years later, having put out two albums, "Whip-Smart" (1994) and "whitechocolatespaceegg" (1998), that were both greeted with mixed praise, she is now releasing her fourth - the eponymously titled and much anticipated "Liz Phair." It is, Ms. Phair has suggested, her bid for center stage - the moment when she will finally make the leap from indie-rock quasi-stardom to teen-pop levels of superstardom.
Instead, she has committed an embarrassing form of career suicide.
Republican strategists see the 2004 election as their best opportunity in a generation to construct a durable governing majority, and they have set in motion a systematic and coordinated strategy designed to leverage President Bush's popularity and break the impasse that has dominated the country's politics since the mid-1990s.
The president himself established the ambitions behind the 2004 strategy earlier this year, when he authorized advisers to begin planning for a reelection campaign that began in earnest last week with a series of fundraising events. According to several GOP strategists, Bush told his team: Don't give me "a lonely victory." Said one top Bush adviser, "He said, 'I don't want what Nixon had. I don't want what Reagan had.' "
Democratic strategists are trying to put a rational gloss on what is a visceral, unplanned, and emotional state of mind. Democrats may or may not be behaving intelligently, but they are behaving sincerely. Their statements are not the product of some Dick Morris-style strategic plan. This stuff wasn't focus-grouped. The Democrats are letting their inner selves out for a romp.
And if you probe into the Democratic mind at the current moment, you sense that the rage, the passion, the fighting spirit are all fueled not only by opposition to Bush policies, but also by powerlessness.
Republicans have controlled the White House before, but up until now Democrats still had some alternative power center. Reagan had the presidency, but Democrats had the House and, part of the time, the Senate. Bush the elder faced a Democratic Congress. But now Democrats have nothing. Even the Supreme Court helped Republicans steal the last election, many Democrats feel. Republicans--to borrow political scientist Samuel Lubell's trope--have become the Sun party and Democrats have been reduced to being the Moon party. Many Democrats feel that George Bush is just running loose, transforming the national landscape and ruining the nation, and there is nothing they can do to stop him.
Wherever Democrats look, they sense their powerlessness. Even when they look to the media, they feel that conservatives have the upper hand. Conservatives think this is ludicrous. We may have Rush and Fox, conservatives say, but you have ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times. But liberals are sincere. They despair that a consortium of conservative think tanks, talk radio hosts, and Fox News--Hillary's vast right-wing conspiracy--has cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out.
When they look to the culture at large, many Democrats feel that the climate is so hostile to them they can't even speak up. During the war in Iraq, liberals claimed that millions of Americans were opposed to war, but were afraid to voice their opinions, lest the Cossacks come charging through their door. The actor Tim Robbins declared, "Every day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent. And the public, like so many relatives and friends that I saw this weekend, sit in mute opposition and fear." Again, conservatives regard this as ludicrous. Stand up and oppose the war, conservatives observe, and you'll probably win an Oscar, a National Magazine Award, and tenure at four dozen prestigious universities. But the liberals who made these complaints were sincerely expressing the way they perceive the world.
And when they look at Washington, they see a cohesive corporate juggernaut, effortlessly pushing its agenda and rolling over Democratic opposition. Again, this is not how Republicans perceive reality. Republicans admire President Bush a great deal, but most feel that, at least on domestic policy, the conservative agenda has been thwarted as much as it has been advanced. Bush passed two tax cuts, but on education he abandoned school choice and adopted a bill largely written by Ted Kennedy. On Medicare, the administration has abandoned real reform and embraced a bill also endorsed by Kennedy. On campaign finance, the president signed a bill promoted by his opponents. The faith-based initiatives are shrinking to near nothingness. Social Security reform has disappeared from the agenda for the time being. Domestic spending has increased.
Still, Democrats and liberals see the Bush presidency in maximalist terms. "President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday marked a watershed in American politics," wrote E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. "The rules of policymaking that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant." The headline on a recent Michael Kinsley column was "Capitalism's 'Deal' Falls Apart," arguing that the Bush administration had revoked the social contract that had up to now shaped American politics.
In short, when many liberals look at national affairs, they see a world in which their leaders are nice, pure-souled, but defenseless, and they see Republicans who are organized, devious, and relentless.
(1) Denial
(2) Anger
(3) Bargaining
(4) Depression
(5) Acceptance
A manifesto for an aggressive liberal response to terrorist attacks.
Paul Berman is one of our most brilliant writers on the impassioned and unpredictable life of ideas especially the doctrines that lead masses of people to try to change the world. The Terror War is nothing new or unprecedented. It is the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century-the battle between liberalism and its totalitarian enemies. Islam is not the cause of this war. Islam is the arena in which the war is presently being fought.
Berman shows how a genuine spiritual inspiration can be twisted into a fanatical demand for murder. He offers remarkable insights into the trends and conflicts influencing Islamic radicalism. He illuminates the surprising connections between very different political movements, and he reveals the several ways in which Islamic extremism resembles some all-too-familiar episodes in American and European experience. He is the historian of good intentions gone awry.
Berman draws on sources that range from Albert Camus's The Rebel to the Book of Revelations; from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to the Islamist scholar Sayyid Qutb's magisterial In the Shade of the Koran. Berman condemns the foreign policy "realism" of the political right, and he diagnoses the na?vet? of the political left. He calls for a "new radicalism" and a "liberal American interventionism" to promote democratic values throughout the world-a vigorous new politics of American liberalism. Berman's ability to shine a spotlight of history and philosophy on the present era makes him a peerless interpreter of today's events. This short book of original argument and dazzling prose will remain a guidepost for discussion for years to come.
Chapter Two begins: " 'What you don't learn from your mother, you learn from the world' is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya." And you think, well, isn't that just wonderfully diverse, and she heard it from an actual tribe in Kenya! Any tribesman in particular? Or did they all yell it out in unison as her motorcade passed by? Either way, it's the sort of soothing multicultural sentiment that separates enlightened Democrats from rabid redneck Clinton-haters, and that's all you need to know. So you put the book up on the shelf and never open it ever again.
The main victim of this approach is Bill Clinton. From the moment they met, she knew he "had a vitality that seemed to shoot out of his pores", but not a lot shoots out in these pages. One reason is that all the personal details Monica got to first in her interviews with Andrew Morton for Monica's Story: Bill and Hillary's song was I'll Be Seeing You, and so was Bill and Monica's. He gave Hillary Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass after their first date and he gave it to Monica after their first "date". The Leaves Of Grass quote that opens Monica's Story - "All these - all the meanness and agony without end, I sitting look out upon . . ." - would be much better for Hill's, but Monica's book came out first, and to be honest it captures Bill's oozing pores better than his wife's does.
Monica's Bill is the Lounge-Lizard-In-Chief: "He undressed me with his eyes." Hillary's Bill is a clunky wonk: "While I was challenging discrimination practices, Bill was in Miami working to ensure McGovern's nomination." Monica says, "The irony is that I had the first orgasm of the relationship." Hill's account reads like she's still waiting.
Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood co-founded the band Fountains of Wayne. Their new album, Welcome Interstate Managers, has just been released. The New York-based band released its self-titled debut album in late 1996. This interview first aired June 10, 1999.
Leave the Biker
Seems the further from town I go
The more I hate this place
He's got leather and big tattoos
And big scars all over his face
And I wonder if he ever has cried
Cause he couldn't get a date for the prom
He's got his arms around every man's dream
And crumbs in his beard from the seafood special
Oh can't you see my world is falling apart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
Now his friend leans over and says
Looks like we got us a fag
I wonder if that guy's read one word
That wasn't in a porno mag
And I wonder if he ever has cried
Cause his kitten got run over and died
He's got his arms around every man's dream
And crumbs in his beard from the seafood special
Oh can't you see my world is falling apart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
And I wonder if he ever has cried
Cause he couldn't get a date for the prom
He's got his arms around every man's dream
He crumbs in his beard from the seafood special
Oh can't you see my world is falling apart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
Baby please leave the biker
Leave the biker, break his heart
If present demographic trends and tight barriers against immigration remain in place, the proposed mighty new 25-nation European Union will record a net decline in population of 50 million people by 2050, parliamentarian Elisabeth Guigou is saying. The new Old Continent's workforce will be literally decimated, and its economy will probably stultify.
But no gasps of horror, no sharp intakes of breath pierce my drowsiness. The discussion quickly bypasses such unpleasant facts of life to revert to abstract debate on the powers of the European Parliament vs. those of national governments.
While Americans sponsor radical change in the Middle East and fight a war against global terrorism, Europeans move deeper into a challenging but essentially inward-looking exercise of continental redefinition. Like the Sicilian aristocrats in Lampedusa's The Leopard, they pursue change close to home so things will remain the same. Or so they think. [...]
As Guigou pointed out at last week's seminar, there are heavy costs in maintaining the status quo and disturbing long-term trends for those who would construct Europe as a global rival and counterweight to the United States.
One is negative population growth: Birthrates in major Western European countries have fallen to 1.5 children or fewer per woman. Legal immigration is severely restricted, largely to avoid exacerbating social tensions focused on Arab and African immigrant ghettos. Meanwhile, with higher birthrates and a flow of a million new immigrants a year, the U.S. population is growing.
After an admirable run of success, France, Germany and other nations in Western Europe face serious prospects of economic decline and social dislocation.
The hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq has been fruitless. The tax cut turns out to give no break whatsoever to millions of low-income taxpayers. In the view of some Democrats, President Bush has been lying about these and other matters, the way Lyndon B. Johnson lied about Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon about Watergate and Bill Clinton about his sex life. [...]
In fact, a review of the president's public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied on either subject. But more pertinent than whether the president told the literal truth is what factors he stressed and which ones he played down.
Certainly, a strong argument can be made that he exaggerated the danger posed by banned Iraqi weapons when he was trying to convince the country and Congress of the need for a pre-emptive strike and that he overemphasized the benefits to people of modest means when he was trying to sell his tax cut.
The U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein forced Iraq's neighbors to contemplate their weaknesses and lack of democracy, Arab leaders said Saturday in a debate that revealed fears about what Washington might have in store next for the region.
Iraq was among the main themes at the World Economic Forum, held for the first time in the Middle East, which joins influential CEOs and
entrepreneurs with politicians to discuss global issues.
More than 1,100 participants, including 11 heads of state or government and dozens of Cabinet ministers, attended the three-day meeting, which opened Saturday on the shores of the Dead Sea with the BBC-sponsored debate on Iraq.
In a speech, Jordan's King Abdullah II said much had changed since the last World Economic Forum meeting at its headquarters in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos.
"Then, we talked about the looming war in Iraq. Now, we talk about speeding up humanitarian outreach ... reconstruction ... and credible Iraqi government that represents all its people," Abdullah said.
"Then, we talked about winning a commitment to the road map to peace for Israel and Palestine. Now, we talk about making that commitment a reality; a comprehensive peace; two states, living side by side, in peace and stability.
Harry Byrd, Virginia Senator and a "conservative," on his 76th birthday quoted this definition of "conservative" and "liberal": "A conservative is one who is enamored of existing evils, and a liberal is one who wants to replace them with other evils."
If you've never seen a young woman in a staring contest with a 4 1/2-pound slab of red meat, it's a thing to behold.
Her nostrils flare. Her eyebrows twitch. She blinks. She exhales lightly though pursed lips. Then she picks up her serrated knife to begin sawing at her butterflied top sirloin, all 5,200-odd calories of it, cooked medium and sprawled on her dish like a catcher's mitt on home plate.
For its part, the steak is impassive.
Girl vs. Steak. That's a twist on the usual story line at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, fabled home of "The Free 72-ounce Steak." (That's "free" with an asterisk: It's only free if you finish it, plus the sides -- baked potato, salad, baby shrimp cocktail and dinner roll, in less than one hour.) [...]
Angela, who lives in Tulsa, does have a history you might call impulsive. She dropped out of high school and left home when she was 15. For a while she had blue hair. The name "Ned" is tattooed beneath her right knee. She married her husband Dennis, a co-worker in sales at the phone company, after dating him for two weeks.
And for four years, from ages 12 to 16, she was a vegetarian.
She got over that. Not long ago she polished off a 48-ounce steak without great difficulty -- a T-bone, but still.
Right now she is pumped. She's known about the Big Texan forever, and for years she's wanted to try the 72-ouncer. Today, as she and Dennis were headed to California on a motorcycle, she began seeing the billboards on the highway and bells went off. She'd do it today! Right now! And Dennis couldn't talk her out of it.
Alan Greenspan is this week likely to become the first central banker since the '50s to set US interest rates at 1 per cent.
In a remarkable illustration of the weakness of the world's largest economy, the Federal Reserve chairman is expected to cut rates on Wednesday for the 13th time since the technology bubble burst three years ago.
But the previous cuts have left Dr Greenspan with a dilemma. Interest rates are getting so low that their ability to stimulate growth is coming into question. Economists expect rates to fall by 25 or 50 basis points from 1.25 per cent. The cut will reduce rates to zero, or close to it in real terms, because inflation - excluding food and energy - is at 1 per cent.
In our quest for peace with the Palestinians, three imperatives unite Israelis: Terror must end, our borders must be secure, and the Palestinians must abandon the goal of destroying Israel. That is why we insist that the terror organizations be dismantled, that we not return to the indefensible 1967 lines and that the Palestinians give up their claim to a "right of return" -- a euphemism for destroying the Jewish state by flooding it with millions of Palestinians.
Genuine Palestinian peace partners will accept these elementary conditions for peace. But what will happen when Israel finds such partners? What kind of agreement can we reach?
We are told that Israel is faced with only two options: either continue to rule over millions of Palestinians or cede them full sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Yet both options are unacceptable.
Israel does not want to rule the Palestinians. The only reason our forces are deployed in Palestinian cities and towns is to prevent the savage terror attacks being launched from these places against us. As the terror subsides, we will be able to gradually withdraw those forces.
As for ceding full sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Gaza, this is doubly wrong. First, most of Judea and Samaria is barren and empty. The combined Palestinian and Jewish populations live on less than one-third of this territory. But the empty swaths of disputed land, comprising the heart of the Jewish ancestral homeland, are vital for Israel's security.
According to a report published over the weekend in the Los Angeles Times, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell toiled over final details of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to hand over control of the Gaza strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem to the new PA government, sources on all three sides said.
Under the deal, Israel would withdraw from an area more than four times the size of the area initially discussed in the U.S.-backed roadmap. The first stage called for an Israeli withdrawal focusing only on a small northern area of the Gaza Strip, and did not mention the West Bank city at all.
The trend-explaining industry has mostly framed the rise of P.B.R. as part of an alleged ''retro-chic'' movement. Of course, iterations of retro-chic (Fiestaware, cocktail music, etc.) have bubbled through the culture for a decade or more now. A subset ''white trash'' theory links P.B.R. to Levi's (whose sales have actually fallen) and trucker hats (a fad that was revealed and snuffed out almost simultaneously, when Ashton Kutcher wore one on his MTV show, ''Punk'd''). One zeitgeistmeister has even suggested that P.B.R. drinkers were inspired by the blue-collar heroes of 9/11.
A person who has put a lot of thought into P.B.R. is Alex Wipperfurth, of a San Francisco marketing boutique called Plan B, whose clients have included Napster and Doc Martens. He has a particular interest in brands whose identity is created not by their owners but by consumers. Plan B did a little consulting work for Pabst last year, and Wipperfurth includes P.B.R. in a book he's completing called ''Brand Hijack.'' To Wipperfurth, P.B.R., a long-withered brand, had few negative connotations. A false rumor that Pabst was about to go out of business (untrue) worked for some as a ''rallying cry.'' P.B.R.'s scarcity, and its cheapness, also helped make it an ''underground darling.''
The single key text in Neal Stewart's codification of the meaning of P.B.R. is the book ''No Logo,'' by the journalist Naomi Klein. Published in 2000, ''No Logo'' is about the incursion of brands and marketing into every sphere of public life, the bullying and rapacious mind-set that this trend represents and evidence of a grass-roots backlash against it, especially among young people. Klein's view is that this would feed a new wave of activists who targeted corporations. Stewart's view is that the book contains ''many good marketing ideas.'' He says it ''really articulated the feelings, the coming feelings, of the consumer out there: eventually people are gonna get sick of all this stuff'' -- all this marketing -- ''and say enough is enough.''
In these circumstances, the thinking goes, P.B.R. needs to stay neutral, ''always look and act the underdog'' and not worry about those who look down on the beer, presumably because they're snobs whose negative opinion only boosts its street cred. The Plan B analysis even says that P.B.R.'s embrace by punks, skaters and bike messengers make it a political, ''social protest'' brand. These ''lifestyle as dissent'' or ''consumption as protest'' constituencies are about freedom and rejecting middle-class mores, and ''P.B.R. is seen as a symbol and fellow dissenter.'' Eventually all of this sounds like satire, but the punch line is that it isn't really that far off from P.B.R.'s strategy.
In his bid for the presidency, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has gotten far by casting himself as a politician of compassion (Dr. Dean, who fought to provide health insurance to most every Vermont family) and candor (Candidate Dean, who opposed President Bush's war on Iraq and accused fellow party members of forsaking "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party").
To those who have followed Dean's career in Vermont, those selling points ring true. But those who have watched Dean closely at home have also seen a darker side of his candor, as Dean uttered off-the-cuff remarks that disparaged fellow politicians and made clear that he considered himself the intellectual superior of many people he met.
As Dean has entered the national stage, his tendency to place foot in mouth has gotten him into scrapes -- unusually severe ones, at least this early in the campaign -- with fellow Democratic contenders. He had to apologize to U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina after wrongly accusing him of waffling on the war in Iraq. He sought a private meeting with Rep. Richard A. Gephardt after attacking the Missouri Democrat's health care proposal. An aide to U.S. Sen. John Kerry accused Dean of displaying "a pathological recklessness with the facts."
It wasn't until this week, however, that Dean put his hubris plainly on display. At a business luncheon, Dean claimed to be the only major Democratic candidate with experience appointing judges. When someone pointed out that another candidate, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, had appointed judges while serving as governor of Florida, Dean dismissed him as a bit player.
J. Michael Bailey clicks on an audio recording of four men: Two are gay and two are straight. Can the audience guess which ones are gay just by listening to their voices? asks Mr. Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.
When the majority of those in the Stanford University lecture hall decide that a man with hissy s's and precise articulation is gay, the professor pronounces them correct. The lesson: You can determine a man's sexual orientation after simply listening to him talk for 20 seconds.
Sound like science?
It is billed that way in The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, a new book aimed at a popular audience and published by the prestigious National Academies Press. Mr. Bailey, who spoke at Stanford as part of a book tour that has also taken him to Emory University and the University of California at Los Angeles, is already widely known for his studies linking sexual orientation to genes. (His research on twins is mentioned in most introductory psychology texts.)
But his latest work has created a bigger buzz than most scholars hope to enjoy in their entire careers. Not only does he identify a set of interests and behaviors he says can be used to tell whether a man is gay, he ties homosexuality to transsexualism. The book is receiving praise and damnation in equal measures, and the controversy is quickly making the author one of the most talked-about sex and gender researchers in academe. [...]
It was during his visits to gay bars near his home that Mr. Bailey began to refine his research on gay men's femininity, and came to the conclusion that homosexuality and transsexuality are part of the same continuum.
Gay men have more feminine traits than straight men, he writes, including their interests in fashion and show tunes and their choice of occupations, including florist, waiter, and hair stylist. If a man is feminine, says Mr. Bailey, it is a key sign that he is gay. And if a man is gay, Mr. Bailey says he can tell a lot about what that man's childhood was like. He "played with dolls and loathed football" and "his best friends were girls," he writes in the book.
In fact, writes Mr. Bailey, some gay men are so feminine that they want to become women. He calls men who have sex changes for that reason "homosexual transsexuals." These people are typically very sexy and convincing as women, as well as extremely likely to work as escorts, or as waitresses, receptionists, and manicurists, he writes. They have trouble settling down with a mate because, like gay men, he says, they enjoy casual sex with several partners.
A considerably darker, more psychological book than its predecessors, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" occupies the same emotional and storytelling place in the Potter series as "The Empire Strikes Back" held in the first "Star Wars" trilogy. It provides a sort of fulcrum for the series, marking Harry's emergence from boyhood, and his newfound knowledge that an ancient prophecy holds the secret to Voldemort's obsession with him and his family. [...]
Because Harry is often in an irritable mood and spends much of the opening chapters brooding about his problems, "The Order of the Phoenix" gets off to a somewhat ponderous start.
There is also less humor in these pages than in the earlier books, and fewer Quidditch games; magic has become less of an art and more of a means of war. The benevolent headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore, is curiously absent - or distant - for large portions of the book, and so, for that matter, is Harry's Falstaffian friend, Hagrid, the school's gamekeeper. Instead, Harry and his pals, Ron and Hermione, must contend with the noxious omnipresence of Dolores Jane Umbridge, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and a government spy, who conceals beneath her fluffy pink cardigan the cold heart and bureaucratic soul of a Grand Inquisitor.
Harry finds himself subject to a series of alarming, Kafkaesque dreams - filled with long corridors and closed doors - while the grown-up members of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society organized by Dumbledore to combat Lord Voldemort, find themselves battling incompetence, denial and cover-ups by the Ministry of Magic. Dread hovers over the novel, as everyone awaits the next move of He Who Must Not Be Named and ponders the loyalties of others, like Ron's brother Percy; Sirius's petulant house elf, Kreacher; and the perennially nasty Potions professor, Snape.
What Ms. Rowling is trying to do in the novel's first half is to delineate both the increasingly grim world in which her characters find themselves after the return of Lord Voldemort in the series' previous installment (Year 4: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire") and the awkward emotional changes her characters are going through as they grow up, something rarely addressed by this sort of children's story, which usually leaves its heroes frozen in a single snapshot in time. The themes of self-sacrifice and betrayal sounded in previous volumes are amplified here. New light is shed on Harry's relationship with his awful Muggle (i.e., nonmagical) relatives the Dursleys, and as Ms. Rowling has said in recent interviews, a character close to Harry dies.
A top lieutenant to Saddam Hussein has told American interrogators that the Iraqi leader and his two sons survived the United States-led war in Iraq and that he himself had fled to Syria with the sons after the conflict, Defense Department officials said today.
The officials said they had not yet assessed the accuracy of the claims by the aide, Abid Hamad Mahmoud al-Tikriti, who was arrested in Iraq earlier this week. But they said that the United States regarded the information as having enormous potential significance, and that it had ignited an intense burst of clandestine American military activity aimed at capturing the sons, Uday and Qusay, and perhaps even Mr. Hussein himself.
A conviction among Mr. Hussein's loyalists that he is still alive, picked up by American intelligence intercepts, has emerged as a powerful motivating factor in the military resistance to United States forces in Iraq, according to American officials. If the account Mr. Mahmoud has provided to his interrogators is true, it would be the most authoritative confirmation that neither Mr. Hussein nor his sons were killed in American attacks in March and April. American officials would not say whether Mr. Mahmoud had revealed a link between the resistance and Mr. Hussein and his sons.
On the basis of those intercepts and other recently obtained evidence, American intelligence agencies have shifted their view, and now say that Mr. Hussein and at least one of his sons, Qusay, probably are still alive and still in Iraq. But Mr. Mahmoud's claim that he and the sons had spent time after the war in Syria before being expelled by Syrian authorities adds a new element to that working theory.
More Jews are moving to Germany than to any other country in the world, including Israel. This statement seldom fails to provoke gasps of astonishment among people whose knowledge of Germany is limited to the Holocaust. To them it seems a very strange and wonderful thing that the Jewish life which the Nazis tried with such grotesque thoroughness to extirpate should now be flowering anew on German soil.
This generous reaction is surely in the end the right one, but I must admit that my own reaction - when a colleague pointed out a news-agency report according to which 19,262 Jews moved to Germany last year from the former Soviet Union, compared with 18,878 who went to Israel and fewer than 10,000 who went to the United States - was less generous. During the six years I spent in Berlin in the 1990s, I found myself bombarded with information on Jewish subjects. The Holocaust was used, in the words of one German writer, as a kind of "moral club" with which to belabour the German public. The authorities paraded their own righteous treatment of Jews since the war, and so did some individual Germans who became wildly philo-Semitic, which led them to decorate their flats with Jewish symbols and to attend Hebrew classes. One especially preposterous German woman, prominent in every scheme to commemorate the Holocaust, even changed her name so that one could easily make the error of imagining her to be Jewish. The whole pro-Jewish thing seemed like a trendy, evasive, artificial, self-satisfied moral pose, as well as being 60 years too late.
It is true that the new German-Jewish life which is emerging will not be characterised by the profound knowledge of and reverence for German high culture which is still found among some elderly residents of Tel Aviv, but it will be enriched by Israeli influences. For the past few years, an increasing number of Israelis have been applying to regain the German passports to which Jews (and their descendants) deprived of German citizenship in the late 1930s are entitled under Article 116 of the German constitution. Applications are now running at a rate of about 200 to 250 a month. Only a minority of these Israelis expect to move to Germany, but a German passport is not perhaps quite as mal vu in Israel as it was as recently as 1996, when the then Israeli president, Ezer Weizman, said during a visit to Berlin that he could not comprehend how Jews could live in Germany after the Holocaust. They can live there and they do.
Germans are America's big ethnic secret. No people and no culture has contributed more to what the United States is and is becoming. In the nation's ethnic tangle, no root runs deeper than German America. As a scattered community only fitfully conscious of its own existence, none has more successfully pursued wealth, power and intellectual influence. And as a philosophical force in US politics - a whole political mindset - none has greater potency. Germany as a European state may have lost her way, the German language may struggle to keep its world grip, but the German spirit is alive and well and living in - and through - America: Bismarck's last laugh on modern history.
Yet from new Labour to the Tory Right, the British Establishment has fallen in love with the reincarnation of our former European enemy, even as our Europeanism sours. Across much of conservative Britain, an embrace with America is welcomed as a healthy, English-speaking alternative to the sinister advance of the Franco-German axis.
Why? It is understandable that the British do not feel towards America the visceral distrust that continental Europe arouses. Americans speak English. Their invasions have been peaceful. We remember the Mayflower, the Founding Fathers, and the familiar English surnames of almost all the Presidents until Roosevelt. We remember, too, that the United States did (after a slight hiccup) support us against Germany in both world wars, and we take vicarious pride in seeing another great English-speaking country - once ours - stride the globe: imperialism by proxy. We count the Americans as our cousins. These world-beaters are our kith and kin, are they not?
No, they are not. America's cousins are the Germans. This is true literally - in blood lineage - but also the personalities of the two nations. Modern America has become more Germanic than it is British. The New England aristocracies are pushed aside, Mittelamerika rides high, yet few notice and still fewer discuss the Teutonic phase the country is now entering. A common language - English - overlays deep cracks in the collective American psyche, blurring the outline of a vast community so submerged that its members have all but lost consciousness of what they have in common: an outlook.
The publication in 1975 of Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology provoked a great controversy. Our deepest intuitions of right and wrong, Wilson asserted on the first page of his book, are guided by the emotional control centers of the brain, which evolved by natural selection to help the human animal exploit opportunities and avoid threats in the natural environment. Ethics is a branch of biology. The publication last year of Wilson's Consilience renewed the controversy as he continued to argue for explaining ethics through the biology of the moral sentiments.
Wilson's critics have warned that his reductionistic explanation of human ethics as a mere expression of animal impulses promotes a degrading view of human life. Some of his Christian critics have explained this as an inevitable consequence of a scientific naturalism that denies God's moral law as the supernatural ground for our sense of right and wrong. And yet I think Wilson's position is much stronger than it might seem at first glance. Indeed, the full strength of Wilson's Darwinian ethics becomes clear only when it is seen as a form of ethical naturalism that belongs to a tradition of natural law reasoning that is compatible with Christian theology.
The biological character of the natural moral law is suggested by a famous remark by Domitius Ulpianus, an ancient Roman jurist: "Natural right is that which nature has taught all animals." As quoted at the beginning of Justinian's Institutes, this remark entered the tradition of natural law reasoning, and it was cited by Thomas Aquinas when he explained natural law as rooted in "natural inclinations" or "natural instincts" that human beings might share with other social animals. Adam Smith continued this tradition of thought in explaining ethics as expressing the moral sentiments of human nature. As influenced by Smith's ethical theory, Charles Darwin explained the moral emotions as manifesting a moral sense rooted in the biological nature of human beings as social animals. As influenced by both Smith and Darwin, Edward Westermarck defended a view of ethics as founded in moral emotions shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. Wilson recognizes that his biological theory of the moral sentiments belongs to a tradition of ethical naturalism that includes Smith, Darwin, and Westermarck. But he does not recognize the roots of that tradition in the natural law reasoning of Aquinas and other Christian philosophers.
Uncovering the common ground between Wilson and Aquinas should make it easier for Christians to come to terms with Wilson's expansive claims for scientific knowledge. Rather than completely rejecting Wilson's Darwinian view of ethics, Christians can adopt some of Wilson's reasoning to strengthen the case for natural law by finding support for it in Darwinian science.
Wilson's explanation of ethics as rooted in human biological nature is a crucial part of his larger project in striving for "consilience" in human knowledge. He adopts the term consilience for the idea that nature is governed by a seamless web of causal laws that cross the traditional disciplines of study. He appeals to "a belief in the unity of the sciences-a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." Against the fragmentation of knowledge into apparently unrelated do mains, Wilson argues for linking the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities in the common effort to explain everything through the universal laws of nature.
NO MATTER WHAT your religion or where you live, invite the PBS documentary "God and the Inner City" into your living room on Sunday night, June 22.
"God and the Inner City" tells the story of three faith-based social service groups: Boston's Ella J. Baker House, which works to prevent street violence and provides counseling and job training under the direction of charismatic Pentecostal minister Eugene Rivers; a Maryland branch of Teen Challenge, whose nationwide programs help substance abusers go drug-free and embrace Christianity in the process; and Philadelphia's Amachi program, a mentor program based in local churches but run by Big Brothers/Big Sisters, a national secular organization that takes children of incarcerated parents under its wing.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Friday that he is prepared to block any Supreme Court nominee who would not uphold the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.What do you think, two more elections before being the Democratic nominee is officially made a disability for election to the Presidency?
"I am prepared to filibuster, if necessary, any Supreme Court nominee who would turn back the clock on a woman's right to choose or the constitutional right to privacy, on civil rights and individual liberties and on the laws protecting workers and the environment," Kerry said in remarks via satellite at a meeting of Democratic party officials in St. Paul, Minn.
"The test is basic -- any person who thinks it's his or her job to push an extreme political agenda rather than to interpret the law should not be a Supreme Court justice." . . .
Kerry also has said if elected president he would only appoint judges who support Roe v. Wade, while his opponents for the nomination say they would not impose a litmus test on nominees.
"SINCE WE MUST REST AND PLAY, where can we do so better than here-in the suburbs of Jerusalem? It is lawful to rest our eyes in the moonlight-especially [since] we know where it comes from, that it is only sunlight at second hand."
C.S. Lewis didn't have movies specifically in mind when he put down these words in his classic essay on "Christianity and Culture," but his words well describe the collection of films contained below. Some movies are harmful, but good movies are second-hand sunlight, and to the discerning viewer-to the discerning family-they can be a vibrant and useful part of family life.
Containing some easy films and some more challenging (Lewis also said that "a little sense of labour is necessary to all perfect pleasures"), this list is designed to help families dig deeper in the vast film canon of the past 100 years. It attempts to reflect an emphasis on overall quality rather than the simple absence of offensive elements or presence of positive themes.
This list ignores two important categories: films aimed for the youngest children (say 3 and under), and films aimed at adults that may be deemed suitable for older kids (R-rated films such as Schindler's List). It favors movies with broad appeal, but recognizes that families with elementary-school children will look for different films than families with high-school-age kids. So the list is broken into three categories: 15 films for young children, 15 films more appropriate for older kids, and 20 films that we hope will split the difference.
This is by no means a list of the 50 best movies of all time, although many of these films would be serious contenders for that distinction. It is, however, a group of films selected because they will delight most viewers and show a pale reflection of the sunlight that is capable of challenging our minds, softening our hearts, bolstering our courage ... and yes, entertaining us along the way to Jerusalem.
Tony Blair conceded today that a European Union donation to help fight Aids, TB and malaria would fall short of the $1bn (E600m) pledged by the United States.
The prime minister had made a joint call with French president Jacques Chirac for the EU to match America's commitment to the UN's Global Health Fund, set up to fight the three killer diseases.
But speaking at the EU summit in Greece, he said the smaller of the 15 existing EU members and 10 countries joining next year were not prepared to commit the money for 2004 because of "budget problems".
Whenever I re-read F. A. Hayek's classic, The Road to Serfdom, I always take away an insight or two I had earlier overlooked or forgotten. For example, Hayek shows that asking too much of representative government ("democracy") can, ironically, push it toward totalitarianism.
The push comes from the fact that people disagree-the more specific the issue, the more likely the disagreement. Take central planning under representative government: Hayek points out that while getting a consensus on generalities is easy (say, that the objective should be to secure the "common welfare"), reaching agreement on the specific path to that goal is close to impossible. He writes, "It may be the unanimously expressed will of the people that its parliament should prepare a comprehensive economic plan, yet neither the people nor its representatives need therefore be able to agree on any particular plan.... [I]t is a superstition that there should be a majority view on everything".
Here is where the seeds of totalitarianism are planted. The endless wrangling in the legislature may prompt people to reconsider not central planning but representative government. "The inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people," Hayek writes, "will inevitably cause dissatisfaction with democratic institutions. Parliaments come to be regarded as 'talking shops,' unable or incompetent to carry out the tasks for which they have been chosen. The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be 'taken out of politics' and placed in the hands of experts-permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies".
RE: New Withholding Tables
In your paycheck dated 6/20/2003, you will notice that your net amount might be different than usual. The IRS has posted a "New Tax Withholding Table" effective May 28, 2003. Employers were ask to use these new tables as soon as they could work them into their payroll systems, but not later than July 1, 2003. This means employees will be getting more money in their paychecks due to the new tax law.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
[H]ow do we harness Iran for positive change in the region? The US administration has recently resorted to tough talk to dissuade Iran from supporting terrorism, developing nuclear weapons and meddling in Iraq. But threats alone will probably backfire, forcing moderates to close ranks with hardliners - as happened after President George W. Bush included Iran in his infamous "axis of evil" last year - or giving the mullahs the excuse to crush an emerging civil society.
A more sophisticated strategy of subtle but continued pressure on the Islamic regime, combined with a vociferous effort to encourage the
overwhelming opposition to clerical rule, could work. Indeed, the Bush administration has openly applauded the recent wave of student-led protests across Iran. Some maintain that such a strategy will endanger Iranian moderates by associating them with the US, a nation Iranians have mistrusted ever since the coup in 1953, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, that removed an elected government. But Iranian moderates have been in danger for some time as the ruling clerics have perfected the art of branding proponents of freedom as foreign stooges and rounding them up. The time to fear guilt by association has passed and the US will lose little by increasing its support for Iranian civil society as a whole. But it should do so openly, for the world to see.
If the US believes its troops fought for any worthwhile ideals in Iraq, it should pursue those ideals in Iran, albeit by peaceful means. After all, the country is poised for radical change. Seventy per cent of Iranians are under 30; they have more in common with the MTV generation than with their clerical rulers. They are among the more pro-American populations in the Muslim world and the US needs them if it is to rehabilitate its image in the region. For the sake of their future - and the emergence of pluralist civil societies in the Middle East - the US must act now.
As President, he kept pressure on the Soviets at a time when they were beginning to fail internally. He pushed for SDI, the strategic defense missile system that was rightly understood by the Soviets as both a financial challenge and an intimidating expression of the power of U.S. scientific innovation.
There are those who say it was all a bluff, that such a system could never have been and will never be successfully developed. Put that aside for a moment, and consider a more relevant fact: If it was a bluff, the Soviets didn't know it. And more to the point, Reagan as President had the credibility with the Soviets to make a serious threat. (And a particularly Reaganesque threat it was: he said not only would we build sdi, but we would also share it with them.) Reagan's actions toward the Soviets were matched by his constant rhetorical pounding of communism. He kept it up, for eight years, from "the evil empire" to "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," a constant attempt to use words to educate and inspire.
Margaret Thatcher said it best: he took words and sent them out to fight for us. He never stopped trying to persuade, to win the world over, to help it think about the nature of democracy and the nature of communism, and to consider which system it was that threatened the world's peace.
In doing all this--in insisting that, as the sign he kept on his desk in the Oval Office said, it can be done--he kept up the morale of the anticommunist West. And not only Americans. When Natan Sharansky was freed after nine years in the gulag, he went to the White House and asked Reagan never to stop his hard-line speeches. Sharansky said news of those speeches was passed from prisoner to prisoner in the forced-labor camps.
After eight years of Reagan and his constant efforts, the Soviet Union collapsed.
[Q:] You consider Colombia to be a very important example for the future of U.S. intervention in world affairs. Why should we be paying attention to that country?
[A:] I could have used the Philippines, I could have used Nepal. Colombia is important for two reasons here. First, we are deeply involved, yet no one is paying attention to it, which is an example of how we find ourselves in an imperial position in the world. There are many places where we are deeply involved that aren't even covered by the news media. The news media tends to interpret American imperialism solely through what's been in the headlines-Afghanistan first, now Iraq. Second and more specifically, the problems that Colombia presents are an exaggerated form of the kinds of problems that we are likely to face over the next ten or twenty years in managing our affairs around the world. North Korea and Iraq, the countries that have gotten the headlines recently, really have old-fashioned, Cold War, dinosaur-style regimes. So while these problems, North Korea and Iraq, will be with us for some years yet, they essentially already represent the past. Whereas Colombia is a sign of the future, in the sense that it has these guerilla organizations that are sort of centerless corporations split up into baronies and franchises, where it's hard to get your finger on the pulse. And it's very, very hard to defeat them, because you stamp out one element and there are all these other elements around the country. Colombia also represents how so much of terrorism around the world is interrelated with crime. The part of al Qaeda represented by Osama bin Laden is not an example of that. They are very utopian and ideological. But most of these groups that we're going to have to deal with have radical politics that are interrelated with crime.
Another reason why Colombia is so important, which I didn't have space to mention in the piece, is that we are constantly reading about these disputes between the State Department on the one hand and the Pentagon on the other. It's like they are these two poles of opposing bureaucracies. But when you get into the field, this totally dissolves, because any major U.S. program anywhere is an interrelationship between the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies. If the agencies don't work together seamlessly, the program itself doesn't work. Plan Colombia, which is the name of the whole gamut of foreign and military aid that we are providing to the Colombian government was, up until post-Saddam Iraq, the largest foreign interagency operation that the U.S. government had in the world. Plan Colombia represents billions of dollars of interagency cooperation. And interagency is really the only way we can ever operate into the future.
[Q:] You describe FARC, the main guerilla group in Colombia, as being "Karl Marx at the top and Adam Smith all the way down the command chain." Can you tell us what you mean by that?
[A:] Karl Marx means that the front that the group presents to the world is ideological, in this case left-wing/communist/socialist. But beneath that front it's all based on profits and crime. The FARC has lost its ideological edge and has kind of devolved into profit-making enterprises, involving kidnappings, drugs, and siphoning off oil-pipeline revenues.
Marching in Paris yesterday, Martine, a 49-year-old post office worker, could see her retirement plans slipping away before her eyes. She had no intention, she said, of working longer than her allotted 37.5 years.
"My husband's a teacher, he feels exactly the same. All our working lives we've been planning around that [retirement] date, and now suddenly we're not going to be able to stop. What do they expect us to do? Die on the job?"
Martine is not alone in her anger. The hot summer of Europe's discontent is being brought to the boil by the issue of state pensions as employees are ordered to work longer for less and to dig deeper into their pockets for the privilege of getting less back from the welfare kitty. [...]
At issue is the sustainability of pay-as-you-go state pension systems in which those in work pay the pensions of the retired rather than, as many fondly
imagine, putting a nest-egg away for their own retirement.
"You can either increase contributions, reduce pensions, or work longer, given the demographic developments in these pay-as-you-go systems," said Martine Durand, deputy director for labour and social affairs of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
"Increasing contributions is counter-productive in high-tax countries, reducing pensions is also politically unpopular. That just leaves raising
retirement ages."
But in France and Austria such a suggestion is politically risky, and in Germany the measure is not enough to sustain the system.
From Denmark to Italy the national pension system varies, but demographers, economists, and analysts are pretty much agreed that all face similar crises, a convergence encouraged by the single currency and the constraints on public spending enforced by the European Central Bank.
The issue is political dynamite.
Poor Gray Davis. California's constitutional deadline to pass a new budget came and went over the weekend, and there our embattled governor was, alone in the state Capitol with no legislators in sight, contemplating not success but disaster in the form of the seeming collapse of his budget strategy, a fast-moving recall signature drive and the looming prospect of the Terminator running against him.
Just a few weeks ago, a mega-deal seemed in the works, giving Davis and California a timely budget and giving some Republican legislators and the corporate community reforms of the malfunctioning workers'-compensation system and restrictions on lawsuits. But that all changed when Senate Republican leader Jim Brulte declared that he would punish any Republicans who voted for a tax increase by going all-out to defeat them in a Republican primary.
It was surprising because Brulte has a relatively moderate reputation, playing to reporters with off-the-record jests distancing himself from his party's more caveman tendencies. Yet there he was, scuttling a brewing budget deal by drawing a cavemanesque line in the sand on taxes that the business community did not. On the other hand, it's a sound strategy for Republicans because the more trouble Davis has getting a credible budget, the less likely it is that his anemic 21 percent approval rating goes up and the more likely it is that the voters fire him.
It's probable that the White House played a role in Brulte?s hard-line approach on taxes. The Weekly has learned that Brulte has been consulting with White House political guru Karl Rove on the Davis recall, which Brulte does not deny.
[The Catholic Church faces] a problem of spiritual leadership. "We're in month 18 of the most serious crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church," says Scott Appleby, a Notre Dame professor of religious history who addressed the bishops last year. "And we have yet to hear from leading figures in the church about how we should make moral, ethical, theological and spiritual sense of what happened."...
The truth may not protect bishops from lawsuits, but, as the New Testament says, it could make them free.
The bishops seem to hoping that we will forget their sins, or at least pretend they didn't happen. They hope for cheap grace. But real grace comes to the broken-hearted: "Rend your hearts, not your garments." St. James was said to have thick callouses on his knees, for he was always on them. That is a fitting stance for America's bishops today.
MORE: The Phoenix bishop (John Allen, National Catholic Reporter)
[M]any in the Vatican believe that the heart of the American crisis lies in bishops failing to do their jobs. It is conventional wisdom in Rome that the American bishops did not need a new charter and norms to combat sexual abuse, that the Code of Canon Law gave them every tool they needed if they had been serious about confronting this behavior. The problem was not law, but will....
Hence seen through Vatican eyes, the solution is not for America’s bishops to "pass the buck," whether to independent advocates or national boards, but to step up and do the job that bishops have been ordained to do for 2,000 years.
Air traffic control has become a flashpoint of the Bush administration's effort to contract out hundreds of thousands of federal jobs to the private sector.
Both the House and Senate voted last week to forbid further privatization of the air traffic system, after vigorous lobbying by the controllers' unions, supported by a group representing private pilots. Soon, negotiators for the two houses will iron out differences in the bill to which the measures were attached. The underlying bill authorizes the Federal Aviation Administration to spend money for the next few years; the House version is for $58.9 billion over four years, and the Senate version is for $43.5 billion over three years.
The administration is threatening to veto the bill over the privatization provision. On June 11, it announced that "restrictions are unnecessary and would hinder" the ability of the aviation agency to manage the air traffic control system. In May, the administration said that of 850,000 government jobs that it says could be handled by private contractors, it would like to open 15 percent of them to private-sector competition in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. Officials have said they would like to find some of those jobs at the F.A.A.
More than 200 airports, mostly small, already have "contract towers" with privately employed air traffic controllers, and as the aviation agency has bought new air traffic computers, it has bought maintenance contracts on some of that equipment from the vendors, rather than using its own technicians.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton declared that the air traffic function was "inherently governmental," but last year, the Bush administration reversed that position.
As most of the coverage quickly points out, recent Jordanian elections saw surprisingly few surprises. Having called off the popular vote first in 1997 and repeatedly thereafter, the Hashemite crown finally decided to roll the electoral dice and, in the end, came out all the stronger.
For a politically rocky region, this was democracy at its smoothest. A clear majority of the seats went to pro-government tribal candidates, thereby diluting what few opposition voices previously resided in parliament. Voter turnout topped 58 percent - a little lower than hoped, but still more than is typical, for example, in United States presidential elections. Jordan's Islamists added credibility to the electoral process. Rather than boycotting, as is typical, they opted to join the process, and much to the relief of the King, they scored only 17 out of 110 total seats, far fewer than expected.
With a brutal Israeli occupation continuing on one border, and a messy US occupation unfolding on another, Jordanian political parties might have decided to use the election season to air pent-up frustrations. But for the most part, they didn't. This was especially noteworthy since 60 percent of Jordanians are Palestinians and close to 90 percent of Jordanians opposed the US invasion of Iraq.
Happiest of all is King Abdullah. In one fell swoop, he reinforced the rubber-stampers he needs, and fortified the democratizer image he so cherishes. The elections were also a step forward for women. Six of the parliamentary seats were set aside for female candidates. Though none were directly voted into office, the top six candidates will be seated in the coming weeks. From a total 776 Jordanians competing for seats in parliament, 54 female candidates ran, the most ever. [...]
But by far the most important challenge lies immediately ahead. The next parliament is supposed to review every one of the "temporary laws" and have the option to accept or reject each. That the political deck has been stacked with pro-regime types raises legitimate skepticism over whether the newly elected parliament will do what is right: begin the across-the-board reversal of these anti-democratic laws. Also dubious for prospects of re-democratization in Jordan is the conservative and non-elected upper house, which has full veto power if the lower and elected parliamentarians step out of line.
Guess who is more backward than [India]? The French! They are behind us by 20 years to be precise! But it's not our conclusion.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said as much to Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani during their half-an-hour meeting.
HARRY POTTER is a “very angry” teenager who has his first relationship with a girl in the new book, the author J. K. Rowling says in an interview with The Times.
Her fans have waited three long years for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is 766 pages long and goes on sale at midnight tonight. In the interview, she talks frankly about fame and the wealth that she has gained through the books. [...]
Harry, who is now 15, has some excruciatingly embarrassing scenes in the new book. “He is very much in puberty,” she says. “I just think it is a very confusing time. Yes, he’s very confused in a boy way. He doesn’t understand how girls’ minds work.”
Apparently, though, Hermione has no shortage of advice for him on that subject. Rowling adds: “Harry, for the first time, does have a relationship of sorts. The emphasis is very much on ‘of sorts’ . . . That was really fun to write actually. I think you will find it painful. You should find it painful. It is painful but it was such fun to write. Poor Harry! What I put him through.”
A 9-year-old girl was married to a stray dog in a ceremony attended by more than 100 guests in a village in India's eastern state of Bengal as part of a ritual intended to ward off a bad omen, newspapers reported Thursday.
The girl, Karnamoni Handsa, had to be married quickly to break an evil spell, according to the beliefs of her Santhal tribe in the remote village of Khanyan, the Hindustan Times said.
Karnamoni's tooth had grown on her upper gum, which Santhals consider a bad omen.
Did you notice that when the Architect in The Matrix: Reloaded tells Neo about human evil, the faces of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler flash on video screens?
Did you catch CBS's mini-series, Hitler: The Rise of Evil, which implicitly compared the burning of the Reichstag and the suspension of Germany's constitution to the events of 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act?
Did you see the posters of the President with a little brush mustache held aloft by protesters in antiwar marches from San Francisco to London?
It's the latest incarnation of the Nazi meme - a word that rhymes with dream and describes an idea that spreads like a virus, regardless of whether it is true or false.
In the age of the Internet, when anyone with a computer can download a peace song accompanied by a slide show of Bush and Hitler in similar poses, or print out lists of their alleged similarities, the Bush-equals-Hitler meme has spread like SARS.
As it proceeds, Zakaria’s argument turns increasingly towards the condition of America and the damage that untrammeled democratization is doing, as he sees it, to American social and political institutions....
But, Zakaria argues, the law has lost its dignity now that the democratic idea has taken possession of it. In a country where all have access to the law, litigation becomes a scramble for profit, and lawyers become speculative businessmen for whom justice has no special value. Indeed, Zakaria finds the pressure of democratization to be a downward-directed force that lowers the social, cultural, and intellectual level of every institution, from church to newspaper, and from Senate to school.
In Orrin's review of Amitai Etzioni's autobiography, he points out a curious paradox in Etzioni's thought. Etzioni criticizes liberals for their unwillingness to verbally censure immoral behavior; but he also criticizes conservatives for their willingness to discriminate against the immoral. For instance, Etzioni thinks it would be wrong for a landlord to evict a sexually active gay AIDS carrier. (Etzioni quite unfairly, to my mind, accuses "social conservatives" of wanting to outlaw actions they don't like. In most cases, I believe, conservatives want only the right to be free in their own associations, which enables them to influence the immoral by withholding cooperation from them or even ostracizing them.) So Etzioni favors attempts at persuading the immoral to change, but opposes acting either coercively or non-coercively to induce them to change.
From an economist's point of view, Etzioni's approach seems designed for ineffectiveness. Talk doesn't change costs as seen by the decision-maker; talk is easily endured and easily avoided. On the other hand, eviction imposes real costs upon a tenant, and the threat of eviction might well change the behavior of our sexually active AIDS carrier. It is precisely this sort of effective response that liberals -- and Etzioni -- are most eager to rule out of bounds.
Few social attitudes have been under greater attack for the last forty years than moralism -- the idea that people should reward those who adhere to their moral principles and withhold rewards from those who don't. We associate moralism with the misery of Hester Prynne, and regard it as evil. But it is the only effective way, short of tyrannical coercion, to regularize human preferences and establish social norms. Without these regularities, conflict becomes routine; without shared norms, it is difficult to cooperatively resolve conflict. The destruction of moralism leads us to Hobbes's choice between coercive authority and an anarchy that makes life nasty, brutish, and short.
Curiously, the leading practitioners of moralism today are liberals. Liberals are not shy about urging smokers to put out their cigarettes, or about urging Christian fundamentalists to cease their denunciations of homosexual intercourse. Conservatives are generally too cowed or too well-mannered to argue for their own morality (though I think conservatives have become more assertive since Clinton and 9/11). Communitarians are good folk, but they seem to take some elements of the liberals' "public ideology" -- e.g. their assaults on moralism -- more seriously than even the liberals do. In doing so they may be inadvertently undermining the moral basis of community.
That the freedoms of speech and of the press are among the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained except by despotic governments. That any citizen may freely speak, write, and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; that the General Assembly shall not pass any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, nor the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.Notice that, even here, the right was not to free speech as we understand it, but only against prior restraint. After publication, the speaker was subject to punishment for what was said.
According to a correspondent from a newspaper based in Chongqing, China's largest municipality, a local news organization's president said, "Our reports on the Three Gorges must outperform outside competitors, win news awards and bring glory to Chongqing media." The president imposed a moratorium on reporting four aspects of the project: alluvial sediment buildup, the more than 100 cracks that have already appeared in the dam, pollution/environmental damage and the return of those who were displaced from the area by the project. The first three issues are not allowed because with the passage of time, China's science and technology will improve, so they can be solved. The last taboo is forbidden because of the threat that it poses to social unity and stability. Last, the president encouraged his staff to work assiduously, since positive news related to the project is quite difficult to find nowadays.
Huang Wanli, a pre-eminent water-resources engineering expert from Qinghua University in Beijing, whose predictions regarding the Sanmen Gorge of the Yellow River were proved to be dead-on, has written many times to urge officials not to overlook sediment in the bottom of Yangtze River. According to his study, each year some millions of tons of sediment move along the bottom of the river. When the dam halts the sediment's flow, it will accumulate at the bottom of the lake. To date nobody has dared to tackle that problem. Although the issue has been mentioned before in central government-controlled television broadcasts, its serious consequences were not mentioned.
Huang Shunxing, a member of the National People's Congress (NPC) and an agricultural and environmental protection expert, said the Chinese government acted single-mindedly on the Three Gorges project and willfully ignored dissenting voices from opponents of the project. He said that in 1992, in order to adopt the resolution to implement the project, the government established many restrictions at the time when the NPC was discussing and approving the construction, even refusing to look at even the most basic relevant data. Materials presented in support of the project weighed dozens of kilograms, yet only a few brochures contained objections and/or criticisms.
Among all the misunderstandings, the Shi'ites' overall strategy in Iraq seems to be the one that is really sound. Instead of just playing the demographic card - they comprise more than 60 percent of the population - a substantial part of the Shi'ite leadership is trying to accommodate the Americans. That's the case of crucial characters like Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), who returned to Iraq after 23 years of exile in Iran. Even while he relishes ironic commentaries on American "democrats" who "refuse the Iraqis to elect their own representatives", he wants no confrontation. In the face of calls in some quarters for various forms of jihad against the Americans, Hakim's reaction was extremely measured, considering Bremer's delaying of the election in Najaf, as Hakim's candidate had a very good chance of winning. [...]
There are no Desert Scorpion-style operations in Shi'ite country. Najaf and the whole Shi'ite south has met the American invasion and occupation with no resistance. Unlike the Sunni triangle around and north of Baghdad, there have been no attacks against the Americans. The extremely influential Shi'ite religious leaders congregated at al-Hawza have not adhered to the calls towards a guerrilla war against the invaders. On Friday prayers, there are no anti-American slogans.
Compare this with Baghdad and surrounding areas where US and Iraqi soldiers as well as civilians continue to come under deadly attack, all of which serve to steel the resolve of the Sunni Iraqi resistance against what is widely perceived as an insensitive and heavy-handed American approach. [...]
Shi'ites are fierce partisans of democracy and the principle of "one person, one vote". And as well as the Kurds, they also want federalism: this, by the way, is the official position of the SAIRI. Whatever American schemes are concocted to minimize Shi'ite participation in a future Iraqi government, they know that ultimately Shi'ites have the demographic majority in their favor. And on top of it there is the deliberate effort not to jeopardize the departure of the Americans - which they believe could happen in a year or two - by any kind of armed offensive. [...]
Will Iran and Iraq complement each other? The answer may hinge on the impact of the more than 3,000 Iraqi Shi'ite religious leaders who came back home from exile in Iran. If a separation between religion and politics successfully takes place in Iraq, the road is paved for a secular Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi regime being able to give the Iranian theocracy a democracy lesson.
This is the way the world might end: A genetically engineered pathogen is released, debris from an erupting "supervolcano" blocks the sun or scientists in the biggest "bioerror" of them all accidentally trigger a matter-squeezing "big bang."
The demise of civilization has been predicted since it began, but the odds of keeping Planet Earth alive and well are getting worse amid a breakneck pace of scientific advances, according to Martin Rees, Britain's honorary astronomer royal.
Rees calculates that the odds of an apocalyptic disaster striking Earth have risen to about 50 percent from 20 percent a hundred years ago.
The 60-year-old scientist, author of the recently published "Our Final Hour," says science is advancing in a far more unpredictable and potentially dangerous pattern than ever before.
He lists as mankind's biggest threats: nuclear terrorism, deadly engineered viruses, rogue machines and genetic engineering that could alter human character. All of those could result from innocent error or the action of a single malevolent individual.
By 2020, an instance of bioterror or bioerror will have killed a million people, Rees contends.
In our last issue we considered the article "How to Predict Everything" (Timothy Ferris, 7/12/99, The New Yorker), which describes how physicist John Gott proposes to compute prediction intervals for the future duration of any observed phenomenon. Gott's method hinges on the "Copernican assumption" that there is nothing special about the particular time of your observation, so with 95% confidence it occurs in the middle 95% of the lifetime. If the phenomenon is observed to have started A years ago, Gott infers that A represents between 1/40 (2.5%) and 39/40 (97.5%) of the total life. He therefore predicts that the remaining life will extend between A/39 and 39A years into the future. (Given Gott's assumptions, this is simple algebra: if A = (1/40)L where L is the total life, then the future life is L - A = 39A.) Gott has used the method to predict everything from the run of Broadway plays to the survival of the human species!
"Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition." Walker Percy's bold assertion offended a student I had just met, and she wanted to talk.
And so on a cold winter evening in the Poconos, I sat down with this Princeton University Ph.D. candidate who had joined several dozen graduate students for a weekend of reflection. Drawing from Cornell, Columbia, Rutgers, and Princeton, they were described to me in this way: "These are bright students, and they love God-but they typically don't know how to connect what they believe with their studies. Can you help?"
As I pondered how to approach the weekend, Walker Percy's insight about literature and life-that "bad books always lie"-came to mind, and I thought that I would start with a discussion of his argument. The thesis is true beyond the world of novels, echoing into every area of human existence. All across the curriculum, the view of the human condition sets the terms of the debate. What we believe about who we are-our origin, nature, and destiny-affects everything else.
She and I sat down for what turned out to be a three-hour conversation. Several years into her work, the focus of her study was early modern Japanese literature, Buddhist literature, she explained. And she was offended at Percy's argument, where he moves from "bad books always lie" to asking, tongue-in-cheek and yet with the deepest seriousness, "Have you read any good Marxist novels lately? Any good behaviorist novels lately? Any good Freudian novels lately? Any good Buddhist novels lately?" He points out why each worldview fails to provide the necessary grist for a good story. Audaciously, given the pluralizing and secularizing character of contemporary life, he then says that novels are dependent upon the Jewish and Christian view of human nature and history.
Percy saw the issues as a line in the sand: Either one worked out of the Jewish and Christian tradition, with its narrative-shaped understanding of the human condition, or one did not have what was required for a good story. In his own words, "Judeo-Christianity is about pilgrims who have something wrong with them and embark on a search to find a way out. This is also what novels are about."
When General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, declared his willingness on Wednesday to send troops to keep the peace in Iraq, he had much more on his mind than the security of the Middle East.
President Musharraf - who heads to the US later this week after visiting the UK, Germany and France - has launched a vigorous diplomatic campaign to ensure that Pakistan is not forgotten in the aftermath of the Gulf war.
In an interview in London, Gen Musharraf painted a picture of a strategically vital Pakistan at the heart of the Islamic world and with influence in central and south Asia, Afghanistan and the Gulf. "It's a nation of 140m and a nuclear state," he said. "These facts cannot be ignored."
Behind the bravado, however, lurks a worry that Washington's interest in its traditional regional ally is starting to wane. The US-led "war on
terrorism" is still focused on Afghanistan and the lawless border regions of northern Pakistan, but distractions are multiplying in Iraq, the Arab-Israeli conflict and North Korea. India, Pakistan's rival, is steadily improving its relations with the US and China.
The Rosenberg case still haunts American history, reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria.
Since Plato distrusted the testimony of the senses, it was probably inevitable that he should distrust also the instincts of ordinary, sense-oriented people. The thought of Aristotle, on the other hand, who insisted on commencing with the testimony of the senses, provided a justification for trusting those ordinary perceptions of ordinary people. The latter are those "common" citizens who share common impressions and instincts, such as the wetness of rain and a spontaneous disposition to come in out of it. Such folk may or may not entertain complicated theories about the nature of rain, though occasionally they do. They may or may not compose poems about the rain, though sometimes they do. What is important to both Aristotle and Chesterton, however, is that these common folk have a pretty good idea what rain is, and how it feels, and what it is capable of doing for the freshness of the air and the potatoes growing in the fields. The more observant and reflective among these common people may also detect that rain, like the sunshine, tends to fall alike on the just and the unjust. Likewise, if too much rain begins to fall, common folk will probably obey the impulse to construct a shelter or the command to build an ark.
Since he begins thought by using his five senses, an Aristotelian like Chesterton is inclined to have a soft place in his heart for these common people and their common trove of natural and inherited wisdom. He adopts the view that "the souls of all the ordinary hard-working and simple-minded people are quite as important as the souls of thinkers and truth-seekers." He tends to trust their outlook on reality over that of the abstract speculator, so lost in his inner thought that he forgets to come in out of the rain. Which is to say that the good Aristotelian, and most certainly Chesterton, cherishes a prior disposition to prefer the democratic impulses of culture. He feels more confidence in the tried-and-true experience of ordinary people than the theories of the experts. He will instinctively favor the legend told by the majority of people in the village over the book "written by the one man in the village who is mad." Like the Founder of his religion, Chesterton will pick a jury of twelve good men and true for the really important things in life, such as deciding whether an accused man will live or die.
This democratic instinct in Chesterton, for which he saw great justification in the thought of Aristotle, prompted him to place enhanced value on popular tradition, which he regarded as the proper extension of a democratic sympathy. He wrote:
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea."
Two Iranian women set themselves on fire Wednesday during a protest in Paris against a major raid at the offices of an Iranian opposition group, police said.
Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.
For Ariel Sharon, General Arik Sharon, peace is not a concept. It is a strategy. And Sharon has chosen peace as the strategy for achieving security for Israel. To his mind, pursuing this policy of peace is the only way to achieve real stability in the long run -- no matter how slowly it moves and how dangerous life in Israel may be at this stage.
Most politicians, even the best of them, fail to rise to historical challenges. They fail to make the kinds of decisions that will transform and improve their society. Most politicians are afraid. They are bureaucrats turned leaders, often plastic in style, who spend most of their day pushing proverbial papers around their desk, making certain not to irritate too many constituents in order to insure their reelection and the reelection of their party.
Few politicians will put their political career on the line to actually achieve the controversial goals in which they believe.
Sharon has done just that. We are privy to extraordinary political activity, which is also a rollercoaster.
Sharon is no longer an ideologue who believes in the right versus the left of Israel. He feels a responsibility for all Israel.
President Bush, the only Republican to capture the White House without Illinois electoral votes, is looking for help from a couple of Democratic friends.
Mayor Daley and Gov. Blagojevich, who have yet to endorse a fellow Democrat for the presidency, have been generous in their public comments about Bush. [...]
Hastert, with whom Daley has a close relationship, has been helpful to Daley in forging a relationship with the Bush White House.
Blagojevich, who had a solid Democratic voting record as a congressman and state legislator, has never been a shrill partisan and has many friends on the other side of the aisle. Republican National committeeman Bob Kjellander and Dallas Ingemunson, the state's deputy GOP chairman, have been helpful to Blagojevich in seeking help from the Bush administration. But as this state's first Democratic governor in three decades, Blagojevich is expected to go all-out for his party's ticket next year.
As part of his reach-out effort to Illinois Democrats, Bush last week invited Chicago Representatives Danny K. Davis, Rahm Emanuel, Bobby Rush and Luis Gutierrez to accompany him on Air Force One. Republican strategists recognize that to compete in Illinois, Bush must reach beyond his party's base. The images of Bush surrounded by these Chicago Democrats won't do him any harm in a Democratic town. Rep. William O. Lipinski, the dean of the city's congressional delegation, was also invited but couldn't make it.
If the GOP can't come up with a credible nominee for the Senate in Illinois, Bush may be spending even more time with Chicago Democrats. That's all right with Daley and Blagojevich.
America began with a charter, in fact with a series of charters. These charters were rather dry legal documents (which, by the way, our students have read) documents that a king would grant to a small number of people who wanted a better chance or a greater challenge than they could find back home in England doing the same, run-of-the-mill, expected things. The charter was a contract, then, full of promise, but wholly without spirit and life. It took courageous men and women, sometimes children, to give the document spirit and life. Well, you know the story from here. After these first bold pioneers, the Puritans and early Virginians, went to the new world and worked hard to build a new life in a new place and met with success, then others saw the possibilities. And many more came, generation after generation, until the multitudes of immigrants outgrew the original charters. They formed themselves into one people and discarded the narrow confines of the old charters in order to make one great charter founded upon the highest ideas of human dignity and freedom. That charter, of course, was the American Constitution.
American principles of freedom and self-government became the model for how a people ought to live together. Yet it took a foreign visitor to understand the magnitude of what the Americans had accomplished. That foreign visitor was Alexis de Tocqueville. Not only did Tocqueville explain the greatness of what the Americans had done, he also warned them of how their great achievements might be lost and undone by future generations. Specifically, Tocqueville applauded the pioneering spirit and hardiness of the early settlers. He also applauded the vast learning and wisdom and prudence of the authors of the Constitution. These men, by the way, had received a classical education. They knew their Greek and Roman history cold; they also studied the latest modern sciences, both natural science and political science. Tocqueville, the classically educated European who admired American democracy, was convinced that Americans would best preserve their liberty if they somehow combined their pioneering, can-do spirit with a love of the good and the beautiful and the true that came with a classical education (an education that heretofore only aristocrats had had the leisure and wealth to pursue).
What Tocqueville most feared about Americans was that their similarity, their equality, their sameness, their potential uniformity, their sometimes attachment to the practical over the theoretical, their seeming indifference to higher things of the mind, that all these and many other aspects of their character might lead to a stultifying mediocrity in their thought, a growing ignorance of their founding principles, and eventually a tyranny of the majority in their politics. He feared that Americans, lacking an aristocracy, would lose their taste for the good and the beautiful and the true that aristocracies had always upheld. Tocqueville, writing in the early nineteenth century, left it as an open question. Would Americans preserve their daring, their enterprising spirit--governed by a sense of the right and the true--or would they succumb to narrow envy, pettiness, and a tyranny of mediocrity in their government and their lives?
In a 1974 Christianity Today article marking the 700th anniversary of Aquinas's death, author Ronald Nash said some nice things about the deceased but ultimately judged his system of thought "unsuitable for a biblically centered Christian philosophy" and "beyond any hope of salvage." Norman Geisler disagreed with that assessment then, and he disagrees with it now. We asked Dr. Geisler, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and author of Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal (Baker, 1991), for his evaluation of the Angelic Doctor. [...]
[Q:] Why isn't Aquinas more popular with evangelicals?
[A:] Evangelicals have largely misinterpreted Aquinas, and they have placed on him views that he did not hold. Many people are concerned that he separated faith and reason, denied depravity (especially the effects of sin on the human mind), and stood for everything that "Roman Catholic" means to Protestants today. Let me take those concerns one by one.
Francis Schaeffer criticized Aquinas for giving rise to modern humanism and atheism by separating faith and reason. Aquinas would do cartwheels in his casket if he heard that!
He believed in the integration of faith and reason, not the separation. He made a distinction but no disjunction. Aquinas said that faith brings the highest kind of certainty and that reason, weak and fallen, cannot attain Christian faith.
Still, Aquinas held human reason in such high regard that some accuse him of denying depravity. He did not. He believed in original sin, he believed in the effects of sin on the mind, and he believed that the mind was so depraved that it could not know supernatural truths. God's revealed truths could be accepted only by faith. [...]
[Q:] What can thinkers engaged in today's theological and philosophical debates learn from Aquinas?
[A:] We can learn from him in the way he answered Muslim Aristotelianism. He answered it by fighting bad ideas with good ideas, by fighting the pen with the pen, not the sword. We're not going to win the battle of ideas by the sword. We're going to win the battle of ideas with ideas, better ones, more logical ones, more consistent ones.
Second, we can learn how important it is to understand the philosophy of the day. It's like 1 Chronicles 12:32 says, the men of Issachar "understood the times."
Aquinas studied the philosophy of the day, which was Aristotle. He understood it better than his opponents, and he could use it to refute opponents who misused it. We need to do the same thing in every field.
Aquinas is a tremendous example for us because, today, the basic battle is the battle for God. The only way we're going to defend the orthodox, historic view--held by Aquinas, Augustine, the Reformers, and the creeds and councils of the church, that God knows the future infallibly, that God is eternal and unchangeable, that God even exists--is to go back to Aquinas and his great arguments.
According to St. Thomas, the mind acts freely of itself, but its freedom exactly consists in finding a way out to liberty and the light of day; to reality and the land of the living. In the subjectivist, the pressure of the world forces the imagination inwards. In the Thomist, the energy of the mind forces the imagination outwards, but because the images it seeks are real things. All their romance and glamour, so to speak, lies in the fact that they are real things; things not to be found by staring inwards at the mind. The flower is a vision because it is not only a vision. Or, if you will, it is a vision because it is not a dream. This is for the poet the strangeness of stones and trees and solid things; they are strange because they are solid. I am putting it first in the poetical manner, and indeed it needs much more technical subtlety to put it in the philosophical manner. According to Aquinas, the object becomes a part of the mind; nay, according to Aquinas, the mind actually becomes the object. But, as one commentator acutely puts it, it only becomes the object and does not create the object. In other words, the object is an object; it can and does exist outside the mind, or in the absence of the mind. And therefore it enlarges the mind of which it becomes a part. The mind conquers a new province like an emperor; but only because the mind has answered the bell like a servant. The mind has opened the doors and windows, because it is the natural activity of what is inside the house to find out what is outside the house. If the mind is sufficient to itself, it is insufficient for itself. For this feeding upon fact is itself; as an organ it has an object which is objective; this eating of the strange strong meat of reality.
Note how this view avoids both pitfalls; the alternative abysses of impotence. The mind is not merely receptive, in the sense that it absorbs sensations like so much blotting-paper; on that sort of softness has been based all that cowardly materialism, which conceives man as wholly servile to his environment. On the other hand, the mind is not purely creative, in the sense that it paints pictures on the windows and then mistakes them for a landscape outside. But the mind is active, and its activity consists in following, so far as the will chooses to follow, the light outside that does really shine upon real landscapes. That is what gives the indefinably virile and even adventurous quality to this view of life; as compared with that which holds that material inferences pour in upon an utterly helpless mind, or that which holds that psychological influences pour out and create an entirely baseless phantasmagoria. In other words, the essence of the Thomist common sense is that two agencies are at work; reality and the recognition of reality; and their meeting is a sort of marriage. Indeed it is very truly a marriage, because it is fruitful; the only philosophy now in the world that really is fruitful. It produces practical results, precisely because it is the combination of an adventurous mind and a strange fact.
M. Maritain has used an admirable metaphor, in his book Theonas, when he says that the external fact fertilises the internal intelligence, as the bee fertilises the flower. Anyhow, upon that marriage, or whatever it may be called, the whole system of St. Thomas is founded; God made Man so that he was capable of coming in contact with reality; and those whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder.
Now, it is worthy of remark that it is the only working philosophy. Of nearly all other philosophies it is strictly true that their followers work in spite of them, or do not work at all. No sceptics work sceptically; no fatalists work fatalistically; all without exception work on the principle that it is possible to assume what it is not possible to believe. No materialist who thinks his mind was made up for him, by mud and blood and heredity, has any hesitation in making up his mind. No sceptic who believes that truth is subjective has any hesitation about treating it as objective.
Thus St. Thomas' work has a constructive quality absent from almost all cosmic systems after him. For he is already building a house, while the newer speculators are still at the stage of testing the rungs of a ladder, demonstrating the hopeless softness of the unbaked bricks, chemically analysing the spirit in the spirit-level, and generally quarrelling about whether they can even make the tools that will make the house. Aquinas is whole intellectual aeons ahead of them, over and above the common chronological sense of saying a man is in advance of his age; he is ages in advance of our age. For he has thrown out a bridge across the abyss of the first doubt, and found reality beyond and begun to build on it. Most modern philosophies are not philosophy but philosophic doubt; that is, doubt about whether there can be any philosophy. If we accept St. Thomas's fundamental act or argument in the acceptance of reality, the further deductions from it will be equally real; they will be things and not words. Unlike Kant and most of the Hegelians, he has a faith that is not merely a doubt about doubt. It is not merely what is commonly called a faith about faith; it is a faith about fact. From this point he can go forward, and deduce and develop and decide, like a man planning a city and sitting in a judgment-seat. But never since that time has any thinking man of that eminence thought that there is any real evidence for anything, not even the evidence of his senses, that was strong enough to bear the weight of a definite deduction.
The United States and the rest of the world diverge, each on its own trajectory, without any prospect of convergence on the foreseeable horizon. A divergence that can be reduced neither to just the choices of the leaders nor to their personalities nor to their diplomatic efforts, whether these smack of appeasement, posturing, or conflict. The separation between the Old and the New World has become a rift deepened by the significant 11th of September. But the United States' new strategy - preventative war and remodelling of the global map - reflects a democratic tradition essential to the Americans and distinct from the Old World. Without claiming to exhaust the subject, I shall isolate two aspects here which Europeans in their approach to the United States tend to be unaware of or to underestimate: fear and democratic passion. [...]
While the majority of Europeans don't believe for an instant that the Arabs are capable of democracy, Americans are persuaded to the contrary. The fact that certain people in the White House exploit this popular belief does not annul the conviction that it's real. When Americans claim to install a liberal democracy in Afghanistan or in Iraq, tomorrow in Saudi Arabia and in Iran, they are probably sincere; they judge that this is the natural destiny of all peoples, the condition for their economic prosperity and for the end of terrorism. That terrorism, nationalism, or religious passion may exist on their own, as alternative ideologies to liberal democracies, doesn't shake the democratic passion. So, the emblematic philosopher of conservatism, Francis Fukuyama who announced liberal democracy as the "end of history" already in 1989, believes that the national and religious uprisings since then do not invalidate his theory; there may be accidents along the way, but this theory remains in his eyes, and for a great many Americans, in particular for the conservatives now in power, the ultimate justification for their acts.
I'm not going to decide here between these two theories, democratic optimism vs. cultural fatalism; let us simply establish that they seriously divide the Western world. And that, as for the search for weapons of mass destruction, to reduce the American strategy to cynicism and imperialism amounts to a failure to recognize the depth of the transatlantic rift. Or to a projection on America of our history which is not theirs and our passions which they do not share.
It is equally impossible to claim that one is right and the other wrong; the one thing for certain is that the one commands power in the service of its ideology and the other doesnt. But beyond this disparity of power between the United States and their critics, two visions of history, and not mere temporary interests, conflict.
Tony Blair's enemies have behaved in a shocking manner over the liberation of Iraq and its elusive weapons of mass destruction. Opponents of the war predicted all manner of disasters - millions of refugees, famine, thousands of deaths in battle, and revolution on "the Arab street" throughout the region. None of these horrors happened. Instead, it is obvious that the coalition has indeed freed Iraqis from a monster and created a new reality in the Middle East - one which just might offer the region hope.
All that is unbearable to those who preferred the Saddam status quo. So they have used the missing weapons to turn on Mr Blair with self-righteous fury. They declare that the war was "a monumental blunder" (Robin Cook) and that we have been "duped" (Clare Short). This is opportunistic, irresponsible and self-serving rubbish. [...]
In December Saddam submitted a 12,000-page report on his weapons which was a tissue of old lies. It was quite clear that he was not taking his "final opportunity" to cooperate fully with the UN.
Was this a man to whom we should indefinitely have given the benefit of the doubt on such a dangerous matter? He had already invaded two neighbours, killed more than a million Muslims in his war with Iran, used chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurds of Halabja, and tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands more.
Slobodan Milosevic was a Sunday school teacher compared with Saddam Hussein. But we did not give him the benefit of the doubt over Kosovo, which we also invaded without a UN resolution - with the support of Mr Cook and Ms Short.
The United States should cease promoting a secular civil society as the only alternative to a Taliban-like theocracy in Iraq. We cannot quell the religious yearnings of millions of Iraqis merely by fostering democracy and capitalism.
The most effective way to counter a theocracy is to promote moderate, liberal religious institutions.
The 1st Amendment's separation of church and state is not a foreign policy tool; it's a peculiar American conception. Just because the American government is banned from promoting religion within the U.S. does not mean that it cannot promote it as part of a civil society in Iraq or Afghanistan. [...]
Favoring liberal Islam as an antidote to fundamentalist Islam is not to be confused with a related but different issue, whether Islam is compatible with democracy. I take it for granted that Iraq can and should have a democratic form of government. However, it should not treat religion as a threat but, potentially, as one mainstay. The current U.S. position ignores that potential.
The 13 points released by U.S. Central Command--that the rule of law be paramount, for instance, or that the role of women be respected--are fine, but they all speak only to secular issues. Whether deliberately or unwittingly, they reflect the concept of the "end of history"--that all ideologies are on their last legs as the world embraces the American version of democracy, human rights and the free market.
This idea, in turn, is an extension of the Enlightenment conceit that modernity is based on rational thinking. Irrational religion, then, belongs to history, and secularism--reason and science--will govern the future.
However, as we are learning all over the world, people have spiritual needs that cannot be addressed, let alone satisfied, by Enlightenment ideas. We see the explosive growth of Christianity in East Asia and Africa, a resurgence of religion in Russia and other former communist nations in Eastern Europe and a rise in Islam even in countries that had extensive secular, modern periods--most tellingly, in Turkey. People ask: Why are we cast into this world? Why are we born to die? What do we owe our children, our elderly parents and our friends and community?
Neither democracy nor capitalism speaks to these issues. Hence for the many millions of people there is religion, hard-line or moderate. Which one we should favor is clear, as long as we can get off our Enlightenment horse.
One central problem in the road map is that it asks each side to take steps toward peace before knowing how the critical issues--the fate of Palestinian refugees, borders, settlements, Jerusalem, water--will be resolved. This means that every step will be fitfully taken out of the fear that it will undermine one's leverage for the next one. The certain knowledge that the opposition on both sides will challenge their leaders' every step exacerbates the situation. The same kind of dynamic helped undermine the Oslo accords, which aimed to build confidence incrementally. Instead, it gave Israeli and Palestinian militants bountiful opportunities to undermine the process.
In many ways, the road map faces more obstacles than the Oslo agreements. Among the things going for it is that most Israelis and Palestinians have reconciled themselves to the two-state solution. But the growing perception on both sides that peace is ultimately impossible may become an insurmountable hurdle.
The failure of the Oslo process, after seven years of negotiations, has made Israelis and Palestinians even more impatient. In the early days of Oslo, when optimism prevailed, both sides were willing to accept mere promises. Today, meetings, conferences, handshakes and words are occasions for cynicism. Promises are dismissed. Only acts count--violent acts, it seems. [...]
Although progress toward peace will largely depend on the parties themselves, U.S. mediation, to be successful in this difficult environment, cannot be done on the cheap. Every step called for in the road map requires spending political capital abroad and at home, possibly at the expense of other issues.
Watching India and Israel nurturing a strategic partnership, I frequently wonder why Pakistan is merely sitting on the fence and not building entente cordiale with the Jewish state in order to maximize its own strategic advantage.
Pakistan is a county that I thought I knew, since it was once part of "British" India. But I no longer recognize the Pakistan of today. It is a place where Islamists are busy dragging the country back to the Seventh century. It is a country where the government has used Islamist groups to terrorize Indian-administered Kashmir. It is a land where democracy has been occasionally given a chance, and only for a limited duration. It is a place whose elites have long argued that democracy is a luxury, which only the Western-educated populace can and should enjoy, and that Pakistan will not be ready for democracy for a long time. The same type of elitist malady is inordinately manifested in Pakistan by its army, an institution that has sabotaged democracy throughout its existence as a nation since 1947.
So, why am I committing political heresy by suggesting the necessity of entente cordiale between a Muslim Pakistan and a Jewish Israel? In my judgment, such a development will be a good thing for Pakistan for two reasons. First, a move on the part of Pakistan to deal openly with the Jewish state will break many taboos - most of which self-created - by that South Asian state and also by its Muslim neighbors. Islamist groups of Pakistan will hold a number of demonstrations against it. Once they blow off their steam, they will learn to live with it. Second, as the India-Israel strategic partnership is evolving, Pakistan will find itself facing yet one more reason why the gap between its conventional military power with that of India"s will be further widened.
In recent years the United States, in its role as global super-nanny, has expressed concern about other states' potential aggression. One of them was China. Though that country never made President George W Bush's "axis of evil", it was seen as a rising potential threat, especially with regard to a possible invasion of Taiwan. But such a scenario has been over-hyped and is very unlikely, according to a newly released report.
"Taiwan Strait II: The Risk of War", released on June 6 by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based non-profit organization, finds that "there is still some way to go before China would feel itself ready to launch a major military assault. China is operating very much at the
psychological or political, rather than military, level of conflict." In fact, the most important conclusion is that "China has since 1995 displayed a clear preference for use of military coercion against Taiwan only in a very limited, modulated and non-lethal fashion".
This policy was reflected in then president Jiang Zemin's report to the 16th Communist Party Congress last November. In his White Paper on National Defense, Zemin stated the view that it would not be until the middle of the century that China would be a "strong" and "prosperous" country, thus China should, for the foreseeable future at least, avoid a direct and large-scale military confrontation with the United States over Taiwan. The White Paper's conclusions are similar to those of a report released on May 22 by the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Chinese Military Power, whose central finding was that China was at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability.
Similarly, the ICG report concluded that "if China did launch an invasion it might well, whatever its ballistic-missile capability, lack the military
capability to succeed, particularly if the US intervened, and even in the best-case scenario would not be able to subjugate Taiwan without large loss of life".
Even if China did manage to occupy Taiwan it would be a Pyrrhic victory, a case of being careful what you wish for, the report states. "Such use of force could certainly be expected to lead to recognition of Taiwan, even an occupied Taiwan, as an independent sovereign country by major powers such as the US and EU. The subsequent domestic repression in Taiwan over a protracted period under a China-installed regime would ensure a total breach between China and the developed world. Such a breach would bring a near total end to China's substantial exports to the developed world and produce massive unemployment in its costal cites at a time when domestic political stability is under severe strain."
In 1923, Joseph Conrad's wife Jessie published A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House. Her husband's preface begins like this:
"Of all the books produced since the remote ages by human talents and industry those only that treat of cooking are, from a moral point of view, above suspicion. The intention of every other piece of prose may be discussed and even mistrusted, but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind....
"Good cooking is a moral agent.... The Noble Red Man was a mighty hunter, but his wives had not mastered the art of conscientious cookery - and the consequences were deplorable. The Seven Nations around the Great Lakes and the Horse tribes of the plains were but one vast prey to raging dyspepsia... [and] the domestic life of their wigwams was clouded by the morose irritability which follows the consumption of ill-cooked food."...
Philip Larkin believed "Poetry is an affair of sanity" ... Cooking too is an affair of sanity - even literally so. Stella Bowen once knew a poet in Montparnasse who had suffered a nervous breakdown and been incarcerated in a clinic. After his release, he lived in a room overlooking the street, opposite a boulangerie. The poet dated his recovery from the moment when, gazing out of his window, he saw a woman going in to buy bread. He felt, he told Bowen, "unutterably envious of the interest she was taking in the choosing of a loaf"....
"The intimate influence of conscientious cookery," [Conrad] wrote, "promotes the serenity of mind, the graciousness of thought, and that indulgent view of our neighbour's failings which is the only genuine form of optimism. Those are its titles to our reverence."
Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves.
According to accounts in the last three months from some of the 32 Afghans and three Pakistanis in the weeks since their release, it was above all the uncertainty of their fate, combined with confinement in very small cells, sometimes only with Arabic speakers, that caused inmates to attempt suicide. One Pakistani interviewed this month said he tried to kill himself four times in 18 months.
An Afghan prisoner who spent 14 months at the camp, at the American naval base at Guantanamo, described in April what he called the uncertainty and fear. "Some were saying this is a prison for 150 years," said Suleiman Shah, 30, a former Taliban fighter from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan.
None of those interviewed complained of physical mistreatment. But the men said that for the first few months, they were kept in small wire-mesh cells, about 6 1/2 feet by 8 feet , in blocks of 10 or 20. The cells were covered by a wooden roof, but open at the sides to the elements.
"We slept, ate, prayed and went to the toilet in that small space," Mr. Shah said. Each man had two blankets and a prayer mat and slept and ate on the ground, he said.
The prisoners were taken out only once a week for a one-minute shower. "After four and a half months we complained and people stopped eating, so they said we could shower for five minutes and exercise once a week," Mr. Shah said. After that, he said, prisoners got to exercise for 10 minutes a week, walking around the inside of a cage 30 feet long.
A senior US senator says he has evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deliberately withheld crucial information from the UN arms inspectors deployed to Iraq. [...]
Senator Carl Levin is the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee which is reviewing the information provided by the CIA to the United Nations. [...]
He told reporters that if the public had known that information about alleged top weapons sites was not being shared, there would have been "greater
public demand that the inspection process continue".
"Why did the CIA say that they had provided detailed information to the UN inspectors on all of the high and medium suspect sites with the UN, when they had not? Did the CIA act in this way in order not to undermine administration policy? Was there another explanation for this?" he asked.
In the 12 years between the two wars the United States fought against Iraq, Saddam Hussein waged a bloody campaign to find and kill Iraqis spying for the CIA. With a combination of skill, luck and brutal efficiency, he largely succeeded, officials with knowledge of the CIA's struggles inside Iraq say.
From 1991 to 2003, Saddam's security forces killed hundreds of U.S.-linked Iraqi agents, intelligence sources say. Sometimes security
officials ferreted the spies out and executed them, and sometimes they made what amounted to lucky kills, executing spies along with non-spies during broader purges. [...]
The largest single loss of Iraqis helping U.S. intelligence occurred in August 1996. Saddam's security forces infiltrated a U.S.-backed coup
plot and rounded up 200 Iraqis on charges of participating in the plot and executed 80 of them immediately, according to reports published at the time. Iraqi forces then invaded sections of northern Iraq that were a base for the CIA-coordinated effort, rounding up still more suspects. After that, the CIA struggled painstakingly to rebuild its base of sources inside Iraq. [...]
Despite periodic efforts, U.S. intelligence had a hard time penetrating Saddam's inner circle. In the mid-1990s, according to former CIA
clandestine officer Robert Baer, in his book See No Evil, the agency "had no human sources inside or even near Saddam's circle -
none."
Iranian opposition figures and western diplomats were taken aback yesterday by a huge crackdown in France on a principal pillar of the opposition to the Tehran regime.
More than 1,300 police officers raided 13 addresses in the Paris region early yesterday in what the interior ministry called an "exceptional operation" against the People's Mojahedin of Iran.
In Vienna, where the UN nuclear watchdog is discussing Iran's alleged nuclear bomb project, opposition figures attacked the French move as a "despicable act" aimed at shoring up the Tehran regime as it confronts popular protest. [...]
Although the movement is on EU and US terrorist network lists, elements are known to be in close communication with the Bush
administration.
The attempts to reach a "truce" between the Palestinian groups and Israel reached its peak yesterday with the success of the Egyptian delegation in getting a silent approval from Hamas to halt its military operations.
This success came after the Egyptians discussed an "Israeli commitment" with American consent to halt the acts of assassinations for at least 6 months and the Israeli forces starting withdrawal from positions it had occupied after the eruption of the Intifada.
The America moves have intensified recently in more than one direction and channel.
ROBIN Cook’s anti-war stance over Iraq was destroyed last night by a bombshell Foreign Office memo.
It was published when Mr Cook was Foreign Secretary five years ago--and warned Saddam could have an “offensive biological weapons capability” in weeks.
Mr Cook now argues we should never have gone to war because Saddam was no threat.
But the 1998 dossier warned Iraq could develop mustard gas almost immediately and nerve agents in months.
And it said Saddam may have Scud missiles which could kill thousands if armed with a VX nerve agent warhead.
The memo was used to justify Allied planes bombing Iraq in 1998.
Our goal ... is that virtually every article in this magazine take seriously a theory that is widely considered un-obvious by our professors and our peers.
The rise of Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist Islamist movement, was in great part stimulated by the Palestinians’ disgust with the extortion, torture, murder, censorship, and other abuses afflicted on them by Yasir Arafat....
Wahhabism preaches an ultra-Puritanical way of life. Meanwhile the Saudi elite swims in whisky.... These mixed signals, or, more bluntly, these forms of hypocrisy, have a deranging effect on Saudi society. But they are also the essential source of Islamist extremism and terrorism.
Before the federal government became the pension plan of first resort for most Americans, the elderly relied upon two more traditional sources of support: accumulated wealth and their grown children. These twin pillars have for millennia been the mainstays upon which retirees depended, and our current system erodes them both. By pretending to serve as what it was never meant to be-an all-purpose, complete national system of social insurance-the Social Security system has long drained away funds from private pension plans and diminished the perceived necessity of savings. It has also created in the minds of the younger generations the perception that elderly parents are meant to be financially independent in their old age, safely collecting back the contributions they made over their working lives, plus a healthy return on investment-instead of depending, in part, on the support of their adult children.
The German social philosopher and economist Wilhelm Ropke saw that the growing importance of the state as the ordinary guarantor of well being for the individual must come at the expense of the family-the bedrock unit of any healthy society. He made that point with an anecdote:
"A short time ago, a member of the House of Commons movingly described her father's plight in order to prove how inadequate the welfare state still is. But this is no proof of the urgency of public help; it is merely an alarming sign of the disappearance of natural feelings in the welfare state. In fact, the lady in question received the only proper answer when another member of Parliament told her that she should be ashamed if her father was not adequately looked after by his own daughter. "
The state, by removing the financial impetus to family unity and rendering personal responsibility for one's family unnecessary, attacks two important virtues: loyalty and accountability. Such virtues, which some have called "social capital," are the very ground upon which a free society is built. Ropke, an architect of the postwar German economic "miracle," saw that the free market is an amazingly efficient producer of wealth and distributor of goods, which cannot be replaced by the state. (He was a student and lifelong friend of Ludwig von Mises.) But Ropke argued that the government had a larger role than simply playing "night watchman," protecting private property and enforcing contracts. For the market to survive, the state must take what minimal steps were necessary to insulate individuals from market failures, to promote the cohesion of the family, and to support the very virtues that make the market economy and a liberal society possible.
Following Ropke, a genuinely social conservative approach to reforming Social Security would aim to strengthen the family, encourage individual savings, and generally contribute to creating social capital-the non-economic, apolitical reserve of spontaneous order and co-operation that predates, underlies, and makes possible the survival of a free civil society. No society that refuses to save, indeed one that lives on an extended credit-card spree (as many Americans have been encouraged to do), can remain prosperous for long. It is sobering to recall the prone, bankrupt nation of Argentina was once-as late as the 1920s-almost as prosperous as the U.S. Reckless state spending that punished thrift helped impoverish that naturally rich country; can we avoid a similar fate?
Not until the monotheistic Protestant establishment emerged as an articulate political actor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America did secularism as a distinct worldview coalesce and enter into public discourse in Western countries. Even since then, the rumblings of religion are still manifest in various court cases, political parties, and social movements that attempt to merge state power with religious intent in almost all Western countries, not to mention the Third World. Secularism never fully completed its vision for a comprehensive ordering of political and social relations, and so the assumption that it a finished political project flies in the face of historical and sociological evidence.
Globalization actually engages Islam rather than denying its relevance. Within the new public spaces created by globalization, religious identities interact with modern ideas and technologies. For instance, the advent of the printing press, which arrived in the Islamic world centuries after it impacted Europe, tremendously changed the structure of Islamic education, the ways by which holy texts were read, and the conceptualization of the Muslim world. As globalization continues, new technologies have continued to change relations of authority and knowledge, "reconfiguring notions of self and society" while lending a certain consciousness to previously marginalized, subaltern voices within the religion. For instance, the telecommunications revolution and the Internet have generated new intellectual possibilities for Muslim scholars wishing to both reflect upon as well as criticize Islamic notions of the right and the good; ironically, it has also allowed lay scholars and ordinary citizens in Muslim states, from Egypt to Indonesia, to contest the intellectual productions of Muslim scholars and teachers and offer new, radical interpretations of Islam to a mass audience, which consequently has helped form the basis of the new Islamic movements. In these cases, transformations within Islam have only occurred by the constant imposition of modern values and capacities, products of secular thought and alleged opponents of religion, into the discourses of religion. Meanwhile, that Islam has grown more rapidly than any other major religion rests upon the strength of globalization; it would be difficult, for example, for the faith to spread if the free movements of peoples and ideas that globalization encourages did not exist. Ironically then, globalization, predicated and articulated through a secularist bias, strengthens Islam by furthering its range and extensive influence. This paradox constitutes simply one example of how the secular-religious divide actually breaks down into interdependence rather than xenophobic distance, and how similarly the globalization-Islam opposition collapses upon itself on further scrutiny.
Expressions of Islam function as "means of disciplining ambiguity, creating boundaries and constituting, producing and maintaining political identities." This also applies to expressions against Islam, especially for global chaos theorists and the intellectual borders they have drawn around globalization that necessarily exclude Islam. However, as this investigation demonstrated, global chaos views on Islam were inaccurate for their reliance upon simplified concepts and ideas that were hastily extracted from Islamic texts. Their blurring of the boundaries between Islam and radical fundamentalism hides the real distinctions that separate these two traditions. In turn, radical Islam finds itself as one small element of the Islamic revivalist trend, itself part of the global religious resurgence, which must be seen within the broader secular-religious divide. At every level of this conceptual chain, the relations with globalization constitute interdependence and mutual reinforcement rather than categorical denial and opposition.
Debates about Islam and its role within the world as it globalizes confront the question of secular modernity and how it interacts with religion and Islam in particular. Radical Islam, of course, conceptualizes itself in opposition to modernity. But most of the Islamic revivalists do not agree with them. The deeper critique here is that Islam, in all of its emergences and expressions, cannot merely be characterized as a "self-contained collective agent," one that seems to have a life of its own. It must be understood as a performative, discursive tradition, understood as an organized, socially significant historical narrative that interacts with globalization; it functions as one powerful voice among the choir of political and moral options. Islam does not operate as some nebulous, abstract variable; rather, actors that perform behaviors under its mantle reconstitute redirect, and reify it through adherence to their own peculiar geographic, strategic, political, and economic needs, ultimately contributing to their syncretic identities. Ultimately, Islam does have a place in globalization, as much as globalization has a place within Islam. Islam will not mindlessly contest globalization; it derives meaning from it, which some Muslims-such as the radical Islamists-might interpret as threatening, while others derive more peaceful visions. Regardless of this diversity, Islam will certainly not recede from globalization?s horizons. It is very much a part of its heritage and future, and therefore a crucial strand in the universe of possibilities that awaits the globalizing world.
The U.S. and Europe are battling over an ambitious global treaty to ban corruption, largely because Europe wants the pact to cover businesses and the U.S. wants it restricted to governments....
U.S. officials criticize the provisions Europeans seek as too vague, too unsettled legally or simply impractical. They especially object to European plans to include business corruption in the pact, saying that many practices viewed as corrupt in government aren't improper in business, and that business customs differ among countries. Giving a salesman a gift worth $200 may be customary in Asia, for instance, but could be considered a bribe ...
"It's problematic," says William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based trade group of large exporters. "People in other countries could sue American companies in court elsewhere claiming that [U.S. companies'] actions contravened the convention, even if that doesn't contravene U.S. law." People who lose business deals, he worries, could use the treaty to sue their rivals for alleged corrupt practices....
European negotiators say businesses sometimes make illicit payments among themselves and that those corrupt business practices should be barred. The pact would bar bribes paid from one business to another ...
Meanwhile, who is to enforce the treaty against governments? Is anyone going to hold Jacques Chirac responsible for the bribes he's received from FINA-Total-Elf?
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the European goal is to diminish the global private sector and impede globalization by making international trade risky and costly. How is it that the French manage to dominate the European Union so? Perhaps the best lack all conviction.
(AP) The former plaintiff known as "Jane Roe" in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion sought to have the case overturned in a motion filed Tuesday that asks the courts to consider new evidence that abortion hurts women.It doesn't really work like that.
Norma McCorvey, who joined the anti-abortion fight nearly 10 years ago and says she regrets her role in Roe v. Wade, said the Supreme Court's decision is no longer valid because scientific and anecdotal evidence that has come to light in the last 30 years has shown the negative effects of abortion.
"We're getting our babies back," a jubilant McCorvey said at a news conference while flanked by about 60 women, some who sobbed and held signs that read "I regret my abortion."
Apparently unsatisfied with picking fights with just Sen. John Kerry, Howard Dean has now turned his charm on another of his Democratic rivals, Florida Sen. Bob Graham.
Just a few days after Dean said he was the only major candidate who'd actually appointed judges as a governor – apparently forgetting Graham's two terms as Florida governor – politicsNH.com reports that Dean threw this bomb during an appearance in Bedford, N.H.: "Bob Graham is a wonderful, decent human being, but at this time he's in single digits in all the states you can't be in single digits. I have enormous respect for Bob Graham, but at this point he's not one of the top-tier candidates. I think that's widely recognized."
Dean later backtracked a bit, saying, "that's not to say he couldn't get to be one.''
Dean also called the Graham campaign to apologize for his comments, politicsNH.com reports. But Graham spokesman Jamal Simmons said Dean's comments were ill-advised.
[T]he major theme of Smil's book . . . is the difficulty of understanding the behavior of the biosphere on a global scale. Even the nonliving processes governing weather and climate are difficult to understand. The living processes governing the fertility of forests and oceans are even more difficult. As an example to illustrate the difficulties, I look at the effects on the biosphere of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is one of the subjects in Smil's book, but it is the reviewer, not the author, who is responsible for giving it emphasis here. As a result of the burning of coal and oil, the driving of cars, and other human activities, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at a rate of about half a percent per year.I have a real affection for the entire Dyson family, if for no other reason than the fact that Dyson Spheres are such a cool idea. I also agree with the admission that we don't even know what we don't know about the theory of climate change and, if we did understand the theory, we still wouldn't be able to measure the effects with any certainty. I like the way Dyson draws the distinction between naturalist and humanist, as it makes clear that humanist is the only rational position to take and allows me to say, in only this special case, that I am a humanist. Finally, I find the idea that nature and man have found a stable equilibrium in which each can correct the problems of the other, to be both intuitively attractive and philosophically congenial.
Everyone agrees that the increasing abundance of carbon dioxide has two important consequences. First, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, transparent to sunlight but partially opaque to the heat radiation that transports energy from the earth's surface into space. Second, carbon dioxide is an essential nutrient for plants on land and in the ocean. The increase in carbon dioxide causes changes, both in the transport of energy through the atmosphere and in the growth and reproduction of plants. Opinions differ on two crucial questions. Are the physical or the biological effects of carbon dioxide more important? Are the effects, either separately or together, beneficial or harmful? In his last two chapters, Smil summarizes the evidence bearing on these questions, but does not presume to answer them.
The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger. Also, local changes in rainfall, whether they are increases or decreases, are usually more important than changes in temperature. It is better to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" to describe the physical effects of carbon dioxide. . . .
Roughly speaking, half of the contiguous United States, not including Alaska and Hawaii, consists of mountains and deserts and parking lots and highways and buildings, and the other half is covered with plants and topsoil. Just to see how important an unmeasurable increase of topsoil may be, let us imagine that the increased root-to-shoot ratio of plants might cause an average net increase of topsoil biomass of one tenth of an inch per year over half the area of the contiguous United States. A simple calculation shows that the amount of carbon transferred from the atmosphere to the topsoil would be five billion tons per year. This amount is considerably more than the measured four-billion-ton annual increase of carbon in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the entire earth could be canceled out by an increase of topsoil biomass of a tenth of an inch per year over half of the contiguous United States. . . .
Another environmental danger that is even more poorly understood is the possible coming of a new ice age. A new ice age would mean the burial of half of North America and half of Europe under massive ice sheets. We know that there is a natural cycle that has been operating for the last eight hundred thousand years. The length of the cycle is a hundred thousand years. In each hundred-thousand-year period, there is an ice age that lasts about ninety thousand years and a warm interglacial period that lasts about ten thousand years. We are at present in a warm period that began twelve thousand years ago, so the onset of the next ice age is overdue. If human activities were not disturbing the climate, a new ice age might begin at any time within the next couple of thousand years, or might already have begun. We do not know how to answer the most important question: Does our burning of fossil fuels make the onset of the next ice age more likely or less likely? . . .
Since we are confronted with two plausible arguments leading to opposite conclusions, the only rational response is to admit our ignorance. Until the causes of ice ages are understood in detail, we cannot know whether the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing or decreasing the danger.
The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils.
Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits.
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's visit to the United States and his meeting with President George W Bush on June 24 are likely to lay the foundations for landmark changes in Pakistan's policies, including those on Israel, Kashmir, its nuclear program and the army. Sources in the Foreign Office familiar with the agenda say that key decisions likely to be agreed on by Musharraf and Bush at Camp David include the following:
* A clear road map for resolution of the Kashmir conflict in which the "Chanab" formula, which envisages the division of Kashmir along religious lines, is likely to be adopted. Thus, the Muslim-majority areas would be allowed to join Pakistan, while the areas where Hindus and Buddhists are in the majority would remain with India.
* A rollback in Pakistan's nuclear and missile program pursuant to the resolution of the Kashmir issue.
* Deployment of Pakistani troops in Iraq, subject to a financial deal to be agreed on by the US and Pakistan.
* Renewed assistance in Afghanistan to contain the burgeoning revival of the Taliban movement. Before the elections scheduled in Afghanistan later in the year, Pakistan will help the US to eliminate the power vacuum in the country by mediating talks with the various Afghan groups, including the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Taliban and other Pashtun factions.
* Cutbacks in the Pakistani armed forces. Pakistan has already laid off 300,000 personnel.
* Recognition for Israel. Initially, the two countries would establish "track II" diplomacy, and once the grounds were prepared, Pakistan would announce its recognition of the Israeli state. In return, the US would waiver US$1.8 billion in bilateral debt. The US has already written off $1 billion in return for Islamabad's support after the September 11 attacks and for its reversal of support for the Taliban.
French commentators are hinting that the American President might accomplish more by staying at home to deal with a crisis in race relations than by visiting Europe for what the French feel is a campaign tour to set bigger records than those made not long ago by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, French President.
Aside from entertaining children, storytelling is also fundamental to our society today. From stump speeches to policy releases to talkback radio, managerial statements, teaching, soap operas, interpersonal exchanges and even the news, we tell stories. To focus on one aspect of storytelling, what is the news but a story about the day? Every day many of us settle down with a newspaper or watch the evening news to read or hear a recounting of the events of the day.
News stories help us to make sense of what is happening, who is involved and sometimes why events have unfolded in a particular way. Stories about the world help us to understand our place in society, what is considered important by those in power, and appropriate behaviour in a range of situations. [...]
Storytelling can be thought of as a mapping of space that imposes coherence on ideas. Once stories become entrenched and repeated, that story becomes the story to the exclusion of alternative interpretations. This is particularly relevant when news stories are being examined because telling a story in a particular way can have measurable effects. Think of how a story about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard invoked ideas about how "we aren't those kind of people" and "they won't fit in here" which led to a government being able to make previously inconceivable decisions about refugee policy. So perhaps ABC critics should be anxious again.
Stories not only provide overt content but they also construct ways for us to think and in some cases allow us to think and articulate the unthinkable.
Unlike the student demonstrations four years ago, say analysts in Tehran, these protests are tapping into an unexpectedly fierce determination by thousands of ordinary Iranians - many of them young, and some families with children in tow - who are frustrated with the slow pace of political change in Iran.
In the past, unelected clerics led by Iran's conservative supreme leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, were the target of protests. That's true again, with the first-ever public chants calling for the ayatollah's hanging. But now the reform-minded President Mohamed Khatami - whose widespread popularity during six years in office is ebbing, as reforms are systematically blocked - is also a target.
"It's scary talking to these people [the protesters]," says a seasoned political analyst reached by phone in Tehran, who asked not to be named. "There is such a determination in their eyes and their behavior. They are fearless; they are ready for combat. It's like [urban] warfare."
"They say: 'This is just the beginning, we have started it, and we are going all the way to the end,' " the analyst says. "But if you carry on the
conversation, they have no idea about what the end should look like.... It is very dangerous."
The Christian-rock underground is now as much a steppingstone to mainstream success as any other music scene. Despite the image of Christian pop as soft and conformist, most of these bands work on the harder or more alternative edges of rock: punk, hardcore, grunge, new metal and indie-rock.
"What's interesting to me is that this is another fertile ground for development," said Tim Devine, the general manager of Columbia Records, who recently signed a Christian grunge band called Switchfoot to the label. "And other than the lyrics having a positive slant, it is not much different than other scenes that have burgeoned over the years, from the Seattle scene to the emo crowd." (Emo is a more confessional, expressive and pop-friendly variant of punk rock.)
For John Rubeli, a talent scout for Atlantic Records who signed P.O.D., a punk group from the Christian scene that cracked the Billboard Top 10, the strength of the movement is its national network of clubs.
"The whole thing about the Christian market is that all these bands are able to tour because youth groups and churches have the ability to put on shows," he said. "Like the old punk rock, you have an infrastructure that allows all these bands to play. Because much of it is in the suburbs, a lot of these kids going to the shows aren't even Christian kids, but their parents won't allow them to go to rock shows. So then they tell their moms that their friend Mike's youth group from church is putting on the show, and their parents can call Mike's mom to check. This is where I found P.O.D."
P.O.D. (which stands for Payable on Death), whose manager used to run a Christian rock club, is no anomaly. In the past year other acts from the Christian touring circuit have found mainstream success, among them Chevelle (which is on this year's Ozzfest, the summer hard-rock tour led by Ozzy Osbourne), Evanescence (whose album "Fallen" is No. 3 on the Billboard pop charts) and, the most popular of them all, Creed.
Beyond them many other bands on Christian-owned labels are bubbling just under the Billboard charts. Many are on the Seattle-based Tooth & Nail label, home to Anberlin as well as the Christian bands Further Seems Forever (whose original singer is now in Dashboard Confessional), Mae, Zao and Starflyer 59. All are being pursued by major labels. Other Tooth and Nail bands, like the Juliana Theory, MxPx and P.O.D., have already been signed by majors.
"When I talk to major labels and say that some of our bands are playing these Christian venues, they say that they've never heard of them," said Brandon Ebel, who owns and runs Tooth & Nail. "Then, when I tell them that 1,000 people are coming to the shows, they flip out." [...]
"I walked around the G.M.A.'s," said Mr. Christian, of Anberlin, referring to the Gospel Music Association's annual Nashville convention, "and I thought, `I would wonder if Jesus would be in any of these bands.' Why would he be here? God said, `Why send a doctor to those who are well; I'm going to send a doctor to the sick.' I guarantee you he would have been opening up for the Sex Pistols back in the day."
Nearly 10.6 million children were being raised by full-time stay-at-home moms last year, up 13 percent in a little less than a decade.
Experts credit the economic boom, the cultural influence of America's growing Hispanic population and the entry into parenthood of a generation of latchkey kids.
Iraq sits along a stretch of land once so productive that the whole region--which included present-day Syria, Iran and Jordan--was known as the Fertile Crescent. In ancient times, the area led the world in agriculture and technology. It's hard to reconcile that history with the reality of today, when the term "Infertile Crescent" would seem more appropriate.
The Fertile Crescent's current desperation stands as testament to the steepest downturn of local fortunes since the end of the last Ice Age. For 8,000 years Iraq and its neighbors led the world as the source of most things embodied in the term "civilization." Technology, ideas and power flowed outward from Iraq to Europe and eventually to America. Iraq's decline holds lessons the world should heed.
The region's ancient dominance didn't arise from any biological superiority of its people, just as America's dominance today has nothing to do with our own biology. Instead, Fertile Crescent peoples profited from an accident of biogeography: They had the good fortune to occupy the world's largest zone of Mediterranean climate, home to the largest number of wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Until 8500 BC, all the world's peoples obtained their food by gathering wild plants and hunting wild animals. Then the ancient Iraqis and other Fertile Crescent peoples began to develop farming and herding, domesticating wild wheat, barley, peas, sheep, goats, pigs and cows. Even today, these species remain the world's staple crops and livestock. Agriculture fueled a population explosion, and also generated food surpluses that could be used to feed full-time professional specialists, who no longer had to devote time to procuring their own food. [...]
Iraq's decline holds a broader significance. Many other countries today face similar crippling environmental problems, including the deforestation, overgrazing, erosion and salinization that brought down the Fertile Crescent. Other countries already crippled or nearly so by such problems include Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines and Indonesia.
You may well detect a similarity between this list of looming environmental disasters and the CIA's list of overseas trouble spots, places prone to civil wars and violent regime changes--places to which we often end up dispatching U.S. troops. Those two lists are related by cause and effect. When environmental damage makes people economically desperate, they are likely to suffer from poor health and short life spans, blame their governments, kill each other, end up with crazy leaders and seek to immigrate illegally to more favored landscapes.
U.S. stocks rose on Monday, sending the Dow to its highest close in 11 months after a report on New York state's manufacturing sector proved surprisingly strong and sparked hopes that the U.S. economy will recover later this year.
Stocks have rallied for more than three months, as investors shrugged off tepid economic data and bet on a rebound later this year. Since hitting a low for the year on March 11, the Standard & Poor's 500 index is up 26.2 percent.
Public artworks are often loathed by the public, but a sculpture in Sydney has aroused an unusual degree of antipathy. A group of self-styled art vigilantes is threatening to destroy the work unless the council dismantles it.
The group, which calls itself the Revolutionary Council for the Removal of Bad Art in Public Places, has set a three-month deadline for the offending sculpture to be whisked away. If the deadline is not met, it says, the work will be defaced or destroyed.
"We have blowtorches, angle grinders and bolt cutters, and we will use them if necessary," said a spokesman, Dave Jarvoo.
The work, Stones Against The Sky, is made up of seven steel poles crowned by large artificial stones. Sydneysiders call the work, in a plaza in front of an apartment block in King's Cross, the city's red-light district, "Poo on Sticks".
On a cloudless spring morning, among boarded-up row houses in North Philadelphia, the asphalt school yard at Wright Elementary is a blur of arriving children, many in uniforms getting a bit too tight and too short as the year draws to a close. Glasses propped on top of her head, hand on a child's shoulder, Wright's motherly principal, Anita Duke, rolls a rickety cart with a microphone and speaker into the yard for the morning announcements and starts another day. It's Duke's 29th year working in Philadelphia's public schools, her sixth at Wright, and it has been one of her best.
Despite her initial skepticism about Victory Schools, the New York City--based company assigned to manage Wright this year, Duke chose to give the firm a try, persuaded her wary staff to do the same and then hoped for the best. "We dumb-lucked out," she says. Of the three for-profits awarded contracts, Victory is the only one that has been given an additional school to run next year, and it also seems likely to manage some of the small high schools that Philadelphia schools chief Vallas would like to open in the next few years, replacing the district's massive, impersonal buildings.
Victory brought in stopwatches and scripts to teach reading, revolutionary rigidity for a school that had practiced a free-flowing literacy program that left lots of room for creativity. When some teachers fell behind the company's prescribed 20-lessons-a-month pace, Victory coaches visited their classrooms and co-taught lessons or gave demonstrations. While a backlash against such heavy-handed methods might have been expected, most of Wright's faculty instead express gratitude. Fourth-grade teacher Raynette Perry says, "I hate to admit it, but it works for my kids." Jacquelyn McPherson, Wright's guidance counselor and, as union representative, someone who could have led the revolt against such intrusion, says, "Finally! Teachers have wanted this kind of guidance for years!"
There have been some bumps along the way. The company's writing program calls for students to compose essays on core subjects in history and science, not just on personal experiences. But early in the year, Wright's teachers didn't have textbooks that incorporated the Pennsylvania state standards on which their students would be tested. Victory's staff worked with them to create three-ring binders of lessons on topics as diverse as ancient Rome and human-body cells. "Now we're no longer writing, 'I love my mom. The dog is big.' We're writing, 'There are many parts to a cell,'" Duke explains. "Educationally, it's more bang for your buck." Victory's quick response to the materials crunch was particularly heartening to the staff. "If the district were involved, that would have been an eight-month process," Duke says. "Victory went to Kinko's."
Victory also helped Duke reduce class size in lower grades from 24 in some rooms to 16, and it replaced interns who had performed administrative duties with three full-time teachers. In addition, the company brought high-quality training to Wright's faculty. Unlike many other school reformers, Victory didn't rely on what Duke calls "I train you today, you train her tomorrow" coaching on the cheap, but paid for 11 full-time coaches to work with its five schools.
Under its new contract with the district, Victory will get one more school and two more years to deliver gains. Lynn Spampinato, Victory's regional director in Philadelphia, plans to introduce a new math curriculum and expand the company's experiment in separating boys and girls in middle school. One thing she won't tinker with is Duke's leadership at Wright--a major force in the company's success there this year. "So often with school reform, if a principal isn't on board, you never accomplish a thing, no matter how good the plan is," Spampinato says. "By example, Anita showed her staff that change doesn't have to be so difficult. That was invaluable."
Schools chief Vallas learned some valuable lessons too. "The lesson is that we don't have to be ideological about school management," Vallas says. "It doesn't matter whether the cat is white or black, but whether the cat catches mice." Or raises scores.
NORTHAMPTON - A valiant little dog named Hobbes stood his ground, but he was no match for the bear that killed him Friday.
"My territorial one was going to tell the bear, 'This is my property and you have to go,'" Jennifer Whiting of Turkey Hill Road said Sunday.
At about 3:30 p.m. Friday, Whiting had just come home and let her two black toy poodles, Calvin and Hobbes, out into the front yard. While she was talking on the phone, the dogs began to bark.
She opened the front door to check on them, only to find a bear at the foot of the porch stairs, between her and the 7-pound dogs.
"It was a step away. I could have touched him," she said.
Whiting screamed at the bear and slammed the door, trying to scare it off. Calvin retreated out of sight from the large animal, but Hobbes stood still, barking at it furiously.
"(The bear) just picked Hobbes up like he was a baby cub and just took him away," Whiting said.
When Woodrow Wilson rallied the United States to "make the world safe for democracy," his critics pointed out that a true democrat would not need to look a continent away. After all, America itself was only a partial democracy. Blacks in the South had less political freedom than Russians under the tsar; women could not vote; and coal miners, steel workers and immigrant seamstresses faced violent repression if they tried to organize unions. Yet for Wilson, an idealist elected on an antiwar platform (who also claimed the dubious distinction of bringing Jim Crow to Washington, D.C.), the fight for democracy was to be waged in the European trenches, not on battlefields closer to home.
Today, the idea of exporting democracy around the world is alive and well. But four new books by leading political thinkers revisit the difficulties that we've had here in the United States in achieving a truly democratic politics. Taken together, they paint a picture of American democracy threatened by market-induced inequality and the vicissitudes of the global economy as well as the more timeless menaces of demagoguery and tyrannical majorities. And each study, in a different way, shows that invoking democratic cliches is far easier than building a politics that genuinely reflects democratic principles -- a lesson that many of today's more cynical would-be exporters of our democratic ideal might well take to heart. [...]
Each of these books is skeptical about the future of American democracy, but all are ruminative, dreamy and wide-ranging, preferring a meditative to a combative tone. Each one holds out a promise of American democracy ample and hale, hovering either in the past or in the future. Yet despite their considerably varied subjects and method, these books also share one important flaw. None of their authors seems to consider democracy an idea and a practice with inherently political content. None of them takes seriously a singular truth: that throughout history, from the American Revolution to the French Revolution to the expansion of the suffrage throughout Europe to the inclusion of women in the polity, democracy has been won only through sustained, even at times revolutionary, conflict. Any expansion of democracy requires that powerful elites relinquish political control, giving it over to the people who are ruled. Democracy is not simply a question of participation in organized groups, competition between political parties, transparent international politics or virtuoso leadership. It is a political idea, and as such it demands that people mobilize in opposition to existing inequalities.
In the words of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, democracy is by its nature a "fighting faith." These four books, despite their strengths, miss this key dimension of democratic politics. And so in their efforts to analyze the anemia of American democracy, they inadvertently seem to mirror the political inertia they deplore.
Not only is there the appearance (small, bald, totally unremarkable except for the crucifix tattooed on his neck) there is the ideology (veganism, Christianity, socialism, pacifism, celibacy and a nice green world free of cars). But it's more confusing than that - there is also the Moby who boasts about screwing around; and the Moby who likes to talk about sensible investment; and the Moby who is happy to use his songs in commercials to sell cars and make the world a dirtier place. [...]
"I think militancy is a desire to impose structure and order into what seems a very confusing and chaotic world. It gives you a really specific prism with which to view the world, and it instantly gives you a sense of community. If you're a Leeds supporter, instantly you're best friends with all the other Leeds supporters."
These days, he says, he distrusts all extremism. Tolerance is his new belief system. Take the war in Iraq. "It's almost too complicated to have a really strong opinion. I didn't trust anybody who was really pro-war or anti-war. Neither perspective made sense to me because there were so many good reasons not to go to war and there were good reasons to go to war." He is quite dogmatic in his insistence that things are never black and white. Tolerance could be his new militancy. [...]
There is something of the chameleon in Moby. When he speaks to an English newspaper he can somehow modify his chat for the market - hence the reference to Leeds. And when interviewed by a gay magazine he announced he was bisexual. He smiles. "Yeah, it's like the movie Zelig. He has this genetic trait where he is so eager to accommodate people he actually physically changes around them."
Is he aware of it when he does it? "Not really. Maybe it's a desire to make people comfortable. But also accommodating people makes them more inclined to like me." So does he prefer men or women? He looks at me, shocked. "I've never had sex with a man. There was one time when I was in a gay bar and I was involved in a very difficult heterosexual relationship and I was looking around and thinking to myself: 'You know what, if I put my mind to it I think I could learn to be gay.'" He calls himself naive.
Unfortunately, the Arab war against Israel is no more a territorial conflict than was al Qaeda's strike against America, and it can no more be resolved by the "road map" than anti-Americanism could be appeased by ceding part of the U.S. to an Islamist enclave.... Arab rulers did not object to Israel because it rendered the Palestinians homeless. Rather, they ensured that the Palestinians should remain homeless so that they could organize their politics around opposition to Israel....
Rantisi greeted the "road map" by organizing major attacks against Israel, which he calls "our land, not the land of the Jews." America can't hope to win its war against terror while ignoring some of its major perpetrators and propagandists.
It is understandably frustrating for friends of justice and liberty that the U.S., not to mention other nations, does not denounce the terrorists more vigorously. (I do not understand the geopolitical reasons that have prevented U.S. governments from doing so, but they must be weighty because officials of all ideologies have embraced a public diplomacy of equivocation.) It is also understandable that Jews, who have been betrayed so many times in the past, should fear betrayal once again. But it is worthwhile to step back and see that the roadmap is a step forward intellectually and politically; and that such steps must be taken if the situation is to be resolved without horrific loss of life.
MORE: The Secret Plan (Saul Singer, NRO, 6/16/2003)
At first glance, the roadmap now looks like a sick joke, a pathetic attempt to impose order on a conflict that has no end....
In style, the roadmap repeats all the mistakes of Oslo. In structure it makes one critical change: In Oslo, Palestinian statehood was to be the end result; in the roadmap, the state comes in the middle.
Sharon is a disciple of Ben-Gurion and ... the peace Sharon is talking about is not a full "solution" to the conflict, but a form of livable cold war....
The deal Sharon is offering the Palestinians is a partial state in exchange for a partial peace. You don't want to renounce the "right of return" and accept Israel as a Jewish state? Fine, says Sharon, but for that all you get is a truncated state whose borders are controlled by Israel. Why would the Palestinians accept such a deal? Because they know that the only alternatives are the status quo, in which both sides bleed indefinitely, or making a full peace, neither of which they want.
Sharon expressed recently, that 1. Occupation of Palestinians was a bad thing, 2. It was time to divide the land, 3. A Palestinian state was inevitable and 4. It would be contiguous. All this had been agreed upon last year.
Now the piece de resistance, an international force to separate the parties. Arafat has always wanted international monitors but not until recently did the world community take up the call for same with any conviction. Mark my words; it won't be long before it is a reality. The US will defeat the forces of terror in the territories and the ME generally. At the moment it is said, that of course, such a force can't be provided unless both sides agree. But America is working to put Mazen and Dahlan in a position to deal with the terrorists. How is this to happen?
For one thing the Roadmap provides for a Palestinian state to be recognized this year with provisional borders. Not, as you might think, a provisional state with provisional borders. This would open the way for Mazen to invite international forces into its territory to help crush the terrorists. Israel would not have to agree but would welcome them as long as they were restricted to the provisional borders.
Bit by bit, step by the step, the plan to which Sharon has agreed is unfolding.
Once this is all accomplished and the final issues are being "freely" negotiated, what, if anything, has been predetermined? Obviously the Palestinians won't be able to resort to violence to achieve their demands. Will Sharon be permitted to insist on a large part of the remaining territories and Jerusalem remaining with Israel? Or that there be no return or that the state be demilitarized etc. If Israel is really entitled to negotiate freely, the Palestinians have been snookered and the situation could go on for decades.
But perhaps that's too much to hope for. Time will tell.
Urged on by world leaders trying to salvage the U.S.-backed peace plan, Israeli and Palestinian officials met yesterday to broker a ceasefire but Hamas vowed to continue its fight and Israel said it would not stop targeting terrorists it considers "ticking bombs."
As sporadic violence continued, the two sides met to discuss a deal that would see Israeli forces pull out of northern Gaza if the Palestinian Authority agrees to take over and tackle radical groups such as Hamas that oppose any peace settlement.
The talks followed a week of violence that left more than 50 people dead in a series of Palestinian attacks and Israeli counter-strikes, and brought the peace road map proposed by the White House, European Union, United Nations and Russia to the brink of collapse.
"We have taken a decision that if Israel shows readiness to withdraw from any Palestinian territory, we will take security responsibility in this area," said Nabil Amr, the Palestinian Information Minister.
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
-Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics
Spengler's article (The neo-cons' Islamist conspiracy, June 5), has merit - by indicating, for our benefit, the sad return of religious thinking to buttress politics in the West. But I disagree with his major point that one cannot find something of Leo Strauss in the attitudes, strategies and goals of the so-called neo-conservatives driving American politics, most predominantly in the George W Bush administration and the major media that tolerate or promote this farce.
I am no expert on Strauss, but I am very close to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, with whom Strauss was enamored for nearly a decade.
[J]ohnson tries to explain the pass given Napoleon by artists and intellectuals—the fawning by Shelley, Keats, Hegel, Carlyle, Belloc, Chesterton, Hardy, and Shaw—as the precursor of the Left's modern-day worship of odious tyrants. Attraction to a brute was not compelled, as Johnson points out, by the alternative of a decadent and corrupt French monarchy. For all his loud embrace of "the popular will," Napoleon impoverished and got more Frenchmen killed than did half-a-dozen Bourbons, and he removed republicans only to install family hacks in their place. He certainly was as dictatorial as any monarch, and aped the worst excesses—both material and cultural—of the Old Regime.
So what accounts for those who professed beauty but worshipped evil? It was not merely the romantic naivete of artists and men of letters; a wide array of them from Beethoven to Coleridge quickly sized up Napoleon's atrocities in Spain and Switzerland. Here Johnson is not so explicit in his diagnosis, but implies something more deliberate: some intellectuals, cut off as they are from the practical life, are impatient with the clumsiness of republican government. They yearn for the enlightened autocrat, the philosopher-king who can by fiat do le peuple "good." As Napoleon put it, "The people must not be judge of its own rights." We still see this leftist attraction for the military in aspects of modern-day Clintonism, which, when thwarted by Congress, looked to implement its social agenda among the military, where it could be imposed rather than ratified.
Add also a warped system of values that puts a higher premium on artistic and literary sensitivity--brilliantly and cynically exploited by the mostly ignorant Napoleon--than on mundane and unheralded morality. A Shelley no more knew or cared about typhus in Cairo, frostbite at Moscow, or mass executions of Swiss farmers than does a Noam Chomsky about the thousands murdered in Cuba, or Dominque de Villepin about the one million victims of Saddam Hussein's three-decade reign of terror. For the armchair idealist it is the grand gesture alone that matters.
A leading Republican lawmaker said on Sunday U.S. forces may have to help "root out terrorism" in the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including taking aim at Hamas.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Richard Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said American forces might be part of an international force to help stop attacks by Hamas, the main group behind a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis, and other groups.
Hamas has said it would reject any peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Lugar said such a force could be used to quell Israeli and Palestinian disputes, "and, maybe even more important, to root out the terrorism that is at the heart of the problem."
Asked if that meant such troops would go after Hamas or other groups, he said, "That may be the conclusion."
"...It may not be just Hamas but clearly Hamas is right in the gunsights," he added.
President Bush on Sunday praised pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran, calling their protests a positive step toward freedom.
"This is the beginning of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran which I think is positive," Bush said.
Thousands of Iranians in Tehran protested against their conservative Islamic rulers for a fifth night on Saturday and smaller protests were reported in two other cities in the biggest anti-establishment demonstrations for months.
"I think that freedom is a powerful incentive," Bush told reporters after he attended church services during a weekend visit to Kennebunkport. "I believe that some day freedom will prevail everywhere because freedom is a powerful drive."
Disgraced in presidential office but redeemed in retirement as one of America's most popular politicians, Bill Clinton appears set to run for the only appointment that New Yorkers really care about - the mayor of their own city.
Amid furious rumours, encouraged by the multi-billionaire Republican incumbent, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the stage seems set for one of the most gripping mayoral races in the city's memory.
Advocates of liberty as the highest political virtue are regularly confronted by what I will call the libertarian accusation. When facing a staunch defense of liberty, especially economic freedom, conservatives and collectivists alike often nervously reply, "but isn't laissez faire just morally dangerous? Don't we need government to restrain powerful business interests? Isn't it the only way we can stop greed, pollution, and oppression?" In such cases liberty is simply identified as libertarianism, where unbridled freedom trumps all moral, legal, and civic limits.
The tendency to regard a passion for liberty as straightforward libertarianism is a serious confusion, a confusion not remedied by considering the state as the only possible restraint on bad behavior by the powerful. We are then left with the choice between letting everything go or massive state control. Ironically, in both cases the consequence is a form of social Darwinism where the powerful rule unchecked. In libertarian societies there are no constraints on the powerful; there is nothing to stop them from having their way. In collectivist, statist societies the powerful are the only ones who do the constraining and are themselves unconstrained. The fabric of constraint and rule of law is arbitrary. There are no public grounds given for the rule of law other than the will of those who rule. The result is the same as in libertarianism-the powerful have their way unfettered by social norm or legal rule.
Joel Hirsch, an Israeli biochemist at Tel Aviv University, has one more thing to worry about when he submits a scientific paper for publication: the possibility that scientists who disagree with his country's policies will shun his work. "My nightmare scenario is that the paper gets sent to a reviewer who might have an axe to grind about Israeli scientists," Hirsch says.
In the year since some British researchers called for a boycott of Israeli scientists, funding agencies have largely rejected such appeals. A subtler, possibly no less-damaging kind of boycott has surfaced, in which researchers express their outrage with the Israeli government by refusing to interact with Israeli scientists. As a result, when a talk is canceled, or a faculty member receives no reply from a European colleague, Israeli scientists can't help but think the worst. "I can't be sure if it was because I am Israeli," says Orly Reiner, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, about the cancellation of her invited talk at a research conference in France. [...]
The worst danger is not to individual Israeli scientists, boycott opponents say, but rather to the culture of open communication among researchers. Scientists like Segev, Marks, and Greenfield want scientific work to be judged on its merits, not on the basis of the researcher's citizenship. Any boycott or other action that puts such confidence in jeopardy has the potential to do lasting damage, the opponents say, not just to its intended target, but to the field of science itself.
The phrase, ''I could do that'' is often heard at modern art museums around the United States.
Some electricians working at the Dia:Beacon museum tried to prove it.
After viewing works by John Chamberlain, a creator of abstract sculptures who uses materials such as crushed automobile parts, a group of electricians created their own work and placed it alongside Chamberlain's.
About a week passed before anyone noticed the addition to the exhibit, featuring such works as ''Norma Jean Risen,'' ''Doom's Day Flotilla'' and ''The Privet.''
"I grew up believing Ethel and Julius were completely innocent," Robert Meeropol, who was 6 years old in 1953, says of the Rosenbergs, his parents. "By the time I completed law school in 1985, however, I realized that the evidence we had amassed did not actually prove my parents' innocence but rather only demonstrated that they had been framed."
After digesting newly released American decryptions of Soviet cables a decade later, Mr. Meeropol came to a revised conclusion. "While the transcriptions seemed inconclusive, they forced me to accept the possibility that my father had participated in an illegal and covert effort to help the Soviet Union defeat the Nazis," he writes in his new memoir, "An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey" (St. Martin's Press).
Of course, the Rosenbergs weren't executed for helping the Soviets defeat the Nazis, but as atom spies for helping Stalin end America's brief nuclear monopoly. They weren't charged with treason (the Russians were technically an ally in the mid-1940's) or even with actual spying. Rather, they were accused of conspiracy to commit espionage - including enlisting Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, through his wife, Ruth, to steal atomic secrets from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory where he was stationed as an Army machinist during World War II. Mr. Greenglass's chief contribution was to corroborate what the Soviets had already gleaned from other spies, which by 1949 enabled them to replicate the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (He confessed, testified against his sister and brother-in-law and was imprisoned for 10 years; Ruth testified, too, and was spared prosecution.)
As leverage against Julius, Ethel was also indicted on what, in retrospect, appears to have been flimsy evidence. The government didn't have to prove that anything of value was delivered to the Soviets, only that the participants acted to advance their goal.
"When you're dealing with a conspiracy, you don't have to be the kingpin, you have to participate," says James Kilsheimer, who helped prosecute the Rosenbergs. "You can't be partially guilty any more than you can be partially pregnant."
But to justify the death penalty, which was invoked to press the Rosenbergs to confess and implicate others, the government left the impression that the couple had handed America's mightiest weapon to the Soviets and precipitated the Korean War.
Records of the grand jury that voted the indictment remain sealed. But we now know the Soviet cables decoded before the trial provided no hard evidence of Ethel's complicity. And Mr. Greenglass has recently admitted that he lied about the most incriminating evidence against his sister. The government's strategy backfired. Ethel wouldn't budge. The Rosenbergs refused to confess and were convicted.
From their study of extensive Government files opened under the Freedom of Information Act, and from hundreds of interviews, Mr. Radosh, a historian who teaches at Queensborough and the Graduate Center of the City University of New Alan M. Dershowitz, who teaches at Harvard Law School, is the author of ''The Best Defense.'' York, and Miss Milton, a freelance writer and critic, have reached six major conclusions:
* Julius Rosenberg played a central role in the Soviet espionage ring and transmitted material that he believed contained important atomic secrets.
* Klaus Fuchs had already given those secrets to the Russians, but David Greenglass's amateurish sketches provided some confirmation of his information.
* Ethel Rosenberg was not deeply involved in her husband's espionage activities but she knew about them and may have typed the notes he passed on.
* The F.B.I. was aware of Mrs. Rosenberg's limited role but deliberately exaggerated it and insisted that Federal prosecutors demand the death penalty for her in order to increase the bureau's leverage on her husband to cooperate in its investigations.
* Some of the evidence against the Rosenbergs was highly questionable and probably false.
* Nearly all those involved - from the Soviet intelligence agency K.G.B. to the F.B.I. to some of the Rosenbergs' own ''defenders'' - were willing to see the Rosenbergs die so their case could be used to serve partisan interests.
On Tuesday, as part of a debate about the USA's position in the world, BBC2 will reveal the results of an internet poll to determine who is the greatest ever American. With two days to go, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King are doing OK. But both will struggle to catch the current favourite: Homer J Simpson.
It's testament to Simpson's standing that no-one seems surprised by his popularity. But ask yourself this: what do we really know of this noble man -- apart from his predilection for beer, pork chops and hamburgers? We know his favourite movie is Look Who's Oinking. But the real Homer Simpson remains a tantalising cypher; a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside the body of a 300lb, yellow, balding man.
Born in Springfield on May 10, 1955 (or May 12, 1956, depending on which episode you believe), Simpson was, by his own admission, an underachiever at high school. He never graduated -- though he returned in triumph to claim four awards at his high school reunion: Most Weight Gained, Most Hair Lost, Most Improved Odour and Person Who Travelled The Least Distance To Be Here.
But on Father's Day, it's worth remembering the valuable advice he has passed on to his son and heir Bart, revealing the three little sentences that have seen him through life: 'Cover for me'; 'Oh, good idea, boss!' and 'It was like that when I got here'. If only Abe Lincoln had been so concise.
Ray Bradbury is a master at spinning yarns about fantastic events and other worlds. But the tale the Waukegan native loves to tell over and over--at least 20 times at graduation commencements, by his estimate--is a true, down-to-earth story about his dad.
It was 50 years ago, and Bradbury was preparing to leave the country for nearly a year to write the screenplay for director John Huston's version of "Moby Dick."
"My dad came over to the house the day before we left for Europe," Bradbury said. "And he had the gold watch that belonged to my grandfather, and he took it out and gave it to me. And his eyes were wet.
"And I suddenly realized, 'My God, why do you have to be so old to realize how much your father loves you, hunh?' And I grabbed him, and I crushed him in my arms.
"So, I tell that story at graduations to young men and to their fathers there and say, 'For Christ sake, don't delay knowing your love for your father.' ... Because they're constantly saying they love their mother, but how rarely do they go and grab their dad and thank him for their lives?"
In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants. The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- perhaps more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the fascinating workings of the shadow economy by focusing on marijuana, one of the nation's largest cash crops; pornography, whose greatest beneficiaries include Fortune 100 companies; and illegal migrant workers, whose lot often resembles that of medieval serfs. All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past three decades, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with a deep-seated puritanism to create situations both preposterous and tragic. Through pot, porn, and migrants, Schlosser traces compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground. With intrepid reportage, rich history, and incisive argument, Schlosser illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.
In 1988, Joseph I. Lieberman took a calculated political risk. He was Connecticut's popular Democratic attorney general, but he decided to challenge the state's imperious U.S. senator, Republican Lowell P. Weicker Jr.
"Joe had been seen as retiring, a consensus-maker, an average public speaker, Lieberman Lite and so forth," recalled former Connecticut Democratic chairman John F. Droney Jr. "And Weicker was a large, physically imposing, bombastic, self-assured good speaker. Joe just tore him apart in this one big debate at the Old Statehouse, and Weicker was stunned. Joe would just not let up on him. He was like a terrier."
Aggressively attacking the liberal Weicker from the right and mocking him in humorous television commercials, Lieberman pulled off an upset victory. [...]
Lieberman's courtesy and thoughtfulness, his self-mocking humor, his adherence to the tenets of his Orthodox Jewish faith, all have given him an enviable image throughout his political career. "Joe wanted to be all things to all people. He never wanted anybody to dislike him," recalls Lorraine Guilmartin, who once presented Lieberman with a T-shirt that said "Mr. Goody Two Shoes" when he was majority leader of the Connecticut state Senate.
But Lieberman and his allies believe it is a profound misreading of his personality to mistake geniality for an inability to know -- and get -- what he wants. Throughout his career Lieberman has displayed a keen instinct for what will work, and the central message of his campaign for president is that he not only knows how to beat Bush, but also is the only Democrat who can do it.
And the reason, he said recently to a group of Democrats in Ames, Iowa, is that his record makes him uniquely able to challenge Bush on the issues where Republicans are seen as having the advantage next year. "I believe very strongly that I am the Democrat who can stand toe-to-toe with the president in the areas where many think he's strong -- the questions of security and values -- and then defeat him where we know he's weak, on the economy and his divisive, right-wing social agenda," Lieberman said.
The salad days of the neoconservatives, which began with the president's Axis-of-Evil address in January 2002 and lasted until the fall of Baghdad may be coming to an end. Indeed, it is likely the neoconservatives will never again enjoy the celebrity and cachet in which they reveled in their romp to war on Iraq.
While this is, admittedly, a prediction, it rests on reasonable assumptions. But why should neoconservatism, at the apparent apex of its influence, be on the edge of eclipse?
Answer: the high tide of neoconservatism may have passed because the high tide of American empire may have passed. "World War IV," the empire project, the great cause of the neocons, seems to have been suspended by the President of the United States.
While we still hear talk of "regime change" in Iran and North Korea, U.S. forces not tied down in occupation duties by the anarchy and chaos in Iraq, are returning home.
The first signal that the apogee of American hegemony in the Middle East has been reached came as U.S. soldiers and marines were completing their triumphant march into Baghdad. Suddenly, all the bellicosity toward Syria from neoconservatives and the Pentagon, stopped, apparently on the orders of the Commander in Chief.
In a rare admission of problems at the giant Three Gorges Dam in central China, officials said Thursday that cracks found in the dam could leak if not fixed.
The comments contrasted with government claims that the dam on the Yangtze river has been a success since its reservoir began to fill on June 1. The government says the water on Tuesday reached the depth necessary to allow ships to sail on the reservoir.
Inspectors have found about 80 cracks in the dam's surface, said Pan Jiazhong, head of the construction committee inspection group. He said that while they weren't a threat to safety, they could expand and cause leaking if not repaired.
"If water enters these cracks, there could be negative effects, so we are fixing them very carefully,'' Pan said at a news conference.
Chinese officials say the dam will control chronic flooding on the Yangtze and produce power needed by industry.
Critics say the dam is a waste of money and could worsen pollution by trapping sewage and industrial waste. They say an accident could cause a catastrophe in the densely populated area.
France owes this country exactly $21,685,135,571.48, the government figures - not counting interest, penalties or consideration of the suffering and indignity inflicted by slavery and colonization.
On the 200th anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture, who led fellow slaves to throw off their French colonial oppressors, Haiti is making a bicentennial spectacle of refusing to take no for an answer.
In one of the most colorful campaigns to galvanize Haitians in years, the country is awash in banners, bumper stickers, television ads and radio broadcasts demanding payback.
Haiti originally raised its $21.7 billion claim on April 7; 200 years to the day after Louverture died a captive in a French prison. Seven months after his death, Haitian slaves defeated French forces and proclaimed the world's first independent black republic.
France recognized Haiti's statehood 35 years later, after the country began paying 90 million francs in gold to compensate French landowners driven out by the revolution.
The reparations demand, Haitians say, is today's value for the 90 million gold francs Paris strong-armed from Haiti in the 19th century. Reparations for moral crimes have yet to be calculated, says the government spokesman.
And anyone reading newspapers aligned with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government, or listening to state-sponsored broadcasts, would think a check for the staggering sum was all but in the mail.
Former Gov. Howard Dean was victorious in a straw poll of Democratic activists at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention.
Dean beat eight competing Democrats in both categories -- delegates and alternates, and official guests.
John Kerry was second to Dean in the delegate count (126 to 33). Kerry also was second to Dean in the guest count (77 to 17).
Dean's combined total of 203 topped Kerry's combined total of 50.
Paper balloting took place on Friday and Saturday during the state convention. Dean's campaign spent a lot of energy organizing straw poll voting and other visible signs of support at the convention. Dean's convention speech also was well received. Dean, Kerry and Kucinich personally attended the convention.
America's tradition on Mother's Day is to give Mom a day off from the kitchen by dining out. Father's Day is a different story. It is the day to launch the summer barbecue season. It's Dad's day to cook, to stoke up the grill. [...]
In our house on Father's Day, what our father brought to the grill was truly a cut above the standard grilling fare. However, the real secrets were what he already knew before he even walked out the back door to light the grill.
These are not the usual "grilling secrets" that you relearn from the latest handbook to happy grilling.
* You already know to get the grill hot -- really hot. Right?
* You already know that you're not supposed to stick the barbecue fork or any other sharp instrument into the meat -- "just to test it." Right?
* You already know that continually pressing down on the meat to "cook it faster" is another bit of misplaced cobbler's work. Right?
* You already know to let the grilled meat rest for five minutes under foil so that the juices settle back into the steak, chop, hamburger, roast or whatever you have cooked. Don't rush caveman-style from the fire to the family with the meat smoking as you yell "Come and get it!" After all, the goal is not to look as if you risked your life to produce dinner. You're supposed to avoid overcooking yourself and the food and deliver a nice meal on a shiny platter.
No, our father's secrets came from knowing something about meat, which despite the tonnage that most American's grind, grill and garnish every year, heck, just on Father's Day alone, we don't know much about. What Dad knew was highly specialized knowledge. It wasn't just a secret of his success but the secret to the success of the customers who were consistently named "Best Burger" in Chicago or who won accolades for their thick juicy steaks.
But the real secret? Cooking on Father's Day was not just a ritual in our house. Dad was sharing something with us all that was wonderful and special: heart. That's what I hope to share with my family this Father's Day by making a nice dinner for everyone.
[The Rev. Shawn] Galyen, 31-year-old minister of the Georgetown University chapter of Chi Alpha, a Christian campus ministry, has been spreading the spirituality of Springfield by dedicating a chunk of the group's weekly meetings to discussion about "The Simpsons." Two of his Chi Alpha colleagues, the Rev. Scott Miller at Boston University and the Rev. Bryan Bessette at the University of New Hampshire, hold monthly "Simpsons" viewing sessions. [...]
One recent night, Mr. Bessette and about 20 students watched the episode "Bart Gets an F": Bart will have to repeat the fourth grade if he doesn't pass one last history test. He kneels by his bed and prays to a deity he calls Old-Timer: "I just need one more day to study, Lord. I need your help." When he wakes up the next morning, Springfield is blanketed in snow, and school is canceled. He studies all day for the test, only to receive a 59. In crying to his teacher, he makes an obscure historical reference, for which she awards him an extra point and a passing D-minus grade. Part of this D-minus belongs to God, Bart declares.
Mr. Bessette asked the students to compare Bart's prayer with "The Lord's Prayer." The students said Bart's offering lacked selflessness and a plea to help him resist enticements. "It was also too informal," said one student, Christopher Chartier. "While God wants you to talk to him like a friend, you have to respect him like a father."
Mr. Bessette also asked the students whether, as with Bart, it was possible to be sincere in the moment while not honestly seeking faith in everyday life. Arwen Temple replied that in moments of desperation, people who do not live a God-filled life seem to find religion. Mr. Bessette agreed: "Bart's a pretty good estimate of most people," he said.
In prayer we express deep penitence and contrition for our shortcomings, using sorrowful and self-accusing words. And this often in all sincerity. But, at other times, we are not really much disturbed about it; or, at least, not nearly so much as our heaped-up language would imply. What we imagine that we are achieving through this unreality I do not know. We shall not fool the All-wise; nor induce Him to believe that we are anything other, or better, than we actually are! Were it not saner to tell Him the truth, exactly as it is -- not that we are overwhelmed with sorrow for our sinfulness, if it is not so; but rather this, that, to all our other sinfulness, we have added this last and crowning sinfulness, that we are not much worried about it, or, at least, not nearly as much as we ought to be. Be pleased, in pity, to grant us such measure of sorrow for our failures as will lead us to a true repentance; and, through that, to a new way of life.
-A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), In the Secret Place of the Most High (1947)
Neoconservatives argued that the administration's success in Iraq -- measured not only by a quick victory but by the installation of a pro-Israel regime -- would lead to the resolution of the conflict in Israel. That has not happened at all. Instead, the United States, after a quick victory, has encountered profound difficulties in occupying Iraq.
It was these difficulties rather than the initial successes that finally led the Bush administration to intervene forcefully in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [...]
In a crucial June 24, 2002, speech, Bush put the onus for resolving the conflict entirely on the Palestinians: They had to replace their elected leader, Yasir Arafat, and end the armed intifada before the United States would support negotiations toward a Palestinian state. This March, on the eve of the Iraq War, Bush tried to appease his British and Spanish allies by reiterating his support for the road map. But he also suggested that he would welcome changes and amendments to the document, which was widely understood to be an invitation to the Sharon government to tamper with the document's timetable and requirements. After the war, when the quartet formally presented the road map to the Israelis and Palestinians, the United States was represented merely by its ambassador. And Bush continued to suggest that he would listen to Sharon's reservations about implementing the road map.
But midway through May, sometime during or after Powell's disastrous trip to the region, Bush and the administration abruptly changed course. Bush came out strongly in favor of the road map. He recognized Abbas' authority even though Arafat remains Abbas' superior. He rejected Sharon's insistence that the Palestinians make concessions prior to the Israelis; instead, Bush insisted that the Israelis and Palestinians make parallel concessions. He also rejected Sharon's insistence that the Palestinian leadership not merely repudiate but also eradicate terrorist organizations before negotiations could take place. Bush successfully pressured Sharon to endorse the agreement and to get the Israeli cabinet to support it.
After a week of ferocious bloodshed, Israeli, Palestinian and American officials worked today to calm the region and salvage an international peace plan with a series of weekend meetings.
The main focus was a proposal for Israeli troops to pull back from volatile areas in the northern Gaza Strip and for Palestinian security forces to move in and take control.
Last week, as civil war engulfed their capital, thousands of desperate Liberians besieged the U.S. Embassy. "Take action now in Liberia to end war as they have in Iraq," implored one man, according to the Associated Press. "Send the Marines to guard us," cried a student. But the Marines stationed on the embassy roof did not venture onto Liberian soil. [...]
What are the lessons of America's abdication? First, that for all its Wilsonian rhetoric about global freedom, the Bush administration's overall human rights record is no better than that of its European allies. The White House may say it invaded Iraq to rescue a suffering people, but, in countries that lack oil and a strategic location, rescuing suffering people still falls into the reviled Clintonian category of "foreign policy as social work." Afghanistan, one might think, would have alerted the Bushies to the national security consequences of allowing poor, remote countries to descend into anarchy. Evidently not. Charles Taylor--surprise!--has harbored members of Al Qaeda, who use his diamond-smuggling operation to launder money.
Second, if the Bush administration isn't prepared to save countries like Liberia, perhaps its supporters could at least stop lecturing Europe about our morally superior foreign policy. Explaining his government's intervention in Cote d'Ivoire, France's much-loathed Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said recently, "France accepts its responsibilities." Can the Bush administration look at Liberia, America's brutalized, abandoned West African stepchild, and say the same?
France's Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on Saturday urged European firms to stand together to resist what she called an American "economic war".
Her remarks coincided with the opening of the Paris Air Show where European and American planemakers traditionally battle for airline orders, but which has been tainted this year by tensions over France's opposition to the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq.
"American industrialists are pursuing a logic of economic war," she was quoted as saying in an interview with Le Monde, which the paper said had been read and cleared by her office before publication.
"This attitude is not connected to the Iraq episode. Faced with this, European industry must regroup in order to be in a better position to resist," she added.
"Roadmap to peace" is ... [a] fatuous [saying].... If a cliché is to be insisted upon, I would choose "fight to the death" to describe the present tussle between Israel and Palestinian terrorism. Both cannot survive....
To Palestinians who want to have a state, and keep their terror militias, the kindest thing that can be said is: "Choose one." For their alternative is, to choose zero....
Mr. Sharon is thus doing Mr. Abbas a favour, which the exigencies of Palestinian politics prevent Mr. Abbas from acknowledging. The Israelis are removing on his behalf a domestic political competitor that he could not possibly remove himself....
Nor is Israel creating an impediment to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but rather removing a major impediment -- the organization that has vowed to sabotage them. The Sharon government is meanwhile proceeding with the dismantling of the first 14 "illegal" Jewish settlements, as per "roadmap" agreements. Far from choosing military over diplomatic tactics, Israel continues to use both, and in complementary ways.
Palestinians, Abbas included, are being walked toward a stark choice between terrorism and peace. The "roadmap to peace" shows Palestinians the alternative of a democratic Palestinian state obtained through peace. The "fight to the death" shows the alternative that awaits terrorists who do not embrace the roadmap: a war of annihilation.
This approach will, if pursued vigorously and consistently, sooner or later bring peace.
Looking back on the wreckage of 10 years of lost elections, Democrats in Congress know it's broke. The question is how to fix it.
As they look to next year's House races, various Democratic factions -- the moderate Blue Dogs, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific-American Caucus -- are joining to tackle such issues as President Bush's tax cut and changing priorities in the federal budget.
"We're much more unified than we were in the past," said Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Calif.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a fund-raising organization.
Matsui says Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who is House minority leader, is pulling the party together by taking steps such as appointing Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina conservative Democrat, as ranking member on the House Budget Committee. Matsui also credits the aggressive style of Steny Hoyer, the Democratic House whip from Maryland.
"I think we just needed a breath of fresh air, new leadership, and it's gotten the caucus to get in concert with one another," Matsui said.
Pelosi, in an interview, said the Republicans have actually helped her party find focus.
"One hundred percent of the Democrats voted against the Bush budget -- 100 percent," she said. "Almost 100 percent voted against the Bush tax cut. Our coming together is around issues, and the Republican proposals have been so outrageous that they've helped unify us, quite frankly."
It's not hard to understand why California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown is often mentioned as a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In many ways, her line of thinking mirrors both the Bush administration and recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent. A Christian black woman from the segregated South, Brown supports limits on abortion rights and corporate liability, routinely upholds the death penalty and opposes affirmative action.
As speculation surges about the rumored retirements of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor this summer, talk of potential replacements is on the rise, and Brown is among them.
"She has some real fans in Washington who are very impressed with what she's done on the California Supreme Court," said Gerald Uelman, a Santa Clara University School of Law scholar who follows both courts.
The first black woman to sit on California's highest court, Brown, 54, is one of the most conservative of the seven justices and a prolific opinion writer, authoring more opinions and dissents last term than any other justice. [...]
Some scholars suggest Bush would have a struggle to confirm Brown, given Senate Democrats' recent filibusters on two conservative federal appellate nominees.
"Her name is being circulated," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California legal scholar who has taken several cases to the U.S. Supreme Court this term.
"I think the question is: Does the Bush administration want to have a confirmation fight?"
A large swath of central Tehran turned into a combat zone overnight with running battles between demonstrators denouncing Iran's Islamic government and vigilantes and riot police officers determined to drive them off the streets.
What started as a small student march against the issue of university privatization on Tuesday has snowballed into violent nightly protests by demonstrators from across the social spectrum demanding more social, economic and political freedom.
The protests on Friday night were the largest and most violent to date, erupting on the campus of Shaheed Beheshti University in northern Tehran and clogging the two major highways leading to the dormitories of Tehran University.
"This is civil disobedience," said a 45-year-old man beside his car on Chamron Highway, where demonstrators ignited tires and even trees along the road. "We are standing up against them. We are resisting and protesting against the regime." [...]
As the first bonfires were lit and the traffic started to snarl, one driver yelled at a man who climbed out of his car and tried to direct traffic around a bonfire.
"Just be patient, we are trying to have a revolution," the man answered.
What is going on in Washington? What is the larger agenda behind the amazingly aggressive right wing moves coming from the White House? According to the people I’ve been talking to and the articles I’ve been reading, the right wing agenda has three main points, each of which has precedents in earlier Republican and Democratic Administrations but which have been pushed to a qualitatively new level by the W clique:
1) Fundamentally change the role of government. In the Nation a couple weeks ago, this was described as going back to President McKinley.[...]
2) Fundamentally shifting the burden of taxation from capital (including profits and all forms of “unearned” income) to consumption. The eventual goal is to eliminate all capital gains, inheritance, and corporate taxes, as well as the entire income tax.[...]
3) Fundamentally change the nature of international relations from a “trilateral” world in which multinational elites collaborated on creating an investment-friendly world into a US-dominated “new world order” in which narrow nationalist goals are achieved through unilateral and pre-emptive use of the US’s military power and everyone else is forced to accommodate Washington’s ability to “create facts on the ground.”
Researchers studying female sexuality have found that women, regardless of their sexual orientation, are aroused by erotic images of both men and women, contrasting sharply with male arousal patterns.
Does this suggest women are generally bisexual?
Cuban leader Fidel Castro seems to be losing all of his friends in the West.
In an anti-Western rant delivered in Havana late Wednesday, the septuagenarian Communist leader denounced the European Union, accusing it of adopting a "Nazi-fascist policy" against Cuba. The EU, formerly a reliable supporter of the Cuban leader, had decided to adopt diplomatic sanctions in response to Mr. Castro's brutal crackdown on dissidents and independent journalists in April. The EU said that it would be limiting its political and cultural contacts with Cuba.
In a three-hour speech, which was followed a day later by a government-ordered protest march in front of European embassies in the Cuban capital, Mr. Castro said the EU's policy "must have been written in a drunken state, if not with alcohol, in a state of Euro-centric drunkenness." He also called the Spanish and Italian prime ministers, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi "fascists" and "bandits."
Canada is also seeking greater pressure on Cuba, urging the Organization of American States to impose diplomatic sanctions to protest the regime's execution of three ferry hijackers this spring, and the jailing of high-profile independent journalists and political dissidents.
Both Canada and the EU have historically supported Cuba and opposed Washington's economic embargo against the island.
The Miguel Estrada saga has spilled into the controversy surrounding the proposed merger between Univision Communications Inc. and the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation.
It had to happen. The nation's dominant Spanish-language television network, which wants to devour the No. 1 Spanish-language radio network, makes a fortune from those tacky prime-time soaps. And the Miguel Estrada Story is the perfect telenovela.
After being nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Honduran native finds its easier to get out of a Third World country than to get Senate Democrats to treat him like a first-class citizen. He gets grilled on hot-button topics in the hopes that he'll say something Democrats can use against him. He doesn't, and then makes history by becoming the first appellate nominee to be filibustered. All the while, Democrats insist -- with straight faces -- that Estrada's treatment has nothing to do with ethnicity, even while liberal critics blast him as a "Hispanic Clarence Thomas" and others like Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., accuse him of not being "Hispanic enough."
When they're not busy trying to kneecap this Hispanic achiever, Democrats are raising a ruckus over the proposal to create the nation's largest Spanish-language radio and television company. Typical are the concerns of Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., who fears that the emerging behemoth would not provide a "balanced perspective or the full range of discourse on issues."
Translation: Democrats worry that the merger would give too much power to Univision's billionaire CEO Jerry Perenchio, a registered Republican.
Wind is the world's fastest-growing energy resource, and after a decade of federal and state subsidies kick-starting the industry, creating enough power for more than a million American families in 27 states to tap into the breeze when they flick on their light switches. The country's oldest turbines have been part of the landscape on the Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco, for two decades. And Texans zooming along I-10 west to El Paso top a slight rise to the sight of a vast field of turbines stretching across the mesa. But energy providers in the Northeast, with its lack of wide open spaces, have long been consigned to dependence on oil, coal and natural gas, with only the occasional small-scale wind project.
Then Jim Gordon got restless. The president of Cape Wind, Gordon is a quixotic sort of energy executive. At the age of 22, he put aside his dream of becoming Francis Ford Coppola and instead started a small company that designed and installed heat-recovery systems for hospitals and factories. Ten years later, after a change in regulatory law opened a niche for independent power producers, he pioneered the building of natural-gas-generated electric plants in New England, a region long captive to highly polluting coal and oil.
Gordon eventually developed seven power plants throughout New England and became a very wealthy man. But with too much ''creative juice,'' as he puts it, to rest on what he had already done, he went looking for the next challenge. Wind became his fixation.
''Imagine tapping into this inexhaustible supply of energy right here in our own state, lowering the cost of electricity, decreasing pollution, reducing reliance on foreign fuel,'' Gordon said recently as he paced his company's boardroom in downtown Boston. ''We're feeding oil cartels whose whims move our economy and our armies. With wind, we can free ourselves from that.'' [...]
''The Europeans are years ahead of us because they have had a consistent national policy to support wind power,'' Gordon said. Undaunted by the federal government's ambivalence toward alternative energy, Gordon sent his engineers out to find the perfect locale for a water-based wind farm. What they needed were fairly shallow waters, protection from the Atlantic's perfect storms, isolation from main shipping channels, easy access to the electrical grid and, of course, wind -- an annual average of 18 miles per hour. The ideal spot, it turned out, is smack in the middle of Nantucket Sound, in the federal waters of Horseshoe Shoal, less than seven miles from the Kennedy compound.
Cape codders tend to be vain about their environmental sensitivities, so you would think they'd cheer the coming of alternative energy. But supporting the construction of dozens of towering turbines visible from their beaches, boats and waterfront homes is a very different thing from avoiding tern nesting grounds or attending a lecture on shoreline erosion. Even before Gordon finished his analysis of the shoal's sands, a forceful and well-connected army of opposition had formed.
Of course, the culture of modern Europe is pervasively secular. And many on Europe's left reflexively identify religion with political reaction. "We don't like God," was the reported comment of one diplomat from France, which led the secularist forces that wanted no mention of the deity in the union's constitution. Indeed, as convention president, former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing of France, a practicing Catholic, almost single-handedly prevented any reference to God or Christianity in the text. But delegates from Germany, Italy, Portugal and Malta, among others, argued for inclusion.
Among those in the ambivalent middle was an Irish delegate to the constitutional convention who declared: "I am most firmly convinced that God is everywhere. I am very doubtful how apt a place Article Two in the constitution is for him to appear in." I tend to agree. Why mention God as a source of European values when most Europeans find theirs in economics? Such a gesture would be no more genuine than if the union were to print "In God We Trust" on the euro.
But the failure to acknowledge Europe's specifically Christian heritage is something else. At one point in the process, the preamble referred to the "humanism" of Greek and Roman civilization, then skipped without pause to the 18th-century Enlightenment. Those specific references to Europe's past have been cut, but the preamble still ignores Christianity's contribution to the core European values that the union is pledged to uphold: "the central role of the human person, and his inviolable and inalienable rights, and of respect for law." What kind of history is this? Surely it was Christianity that made the human person, as a child of God, central to European values. And it was the canon law of the Catholic Church, the oldest legal system in the West, that nurtured respect for law long before the rise of Europe's nation-states.
The right to euthanasia must exist in all hospitals, negotiators forming Belgium's new government said Friday in a move to counter opposition by some Catholic hospitals that have allegedly refused to permit assisted suicide on their premises. [...]
The chairman of the Flemish liberal VLD party, Karel De Gucht said euthanasia is the business of a doctor and a patient, and that hospitals should not interfere.
People swarm over the field inside a sports stadium. One cluster with rakes and shovels smoothes the ground while a pair of workers pulls a roller over it. Another cluster throws armloads of clothing into a waiting truck. At the side of the field, a vehicle-mounted loudspeaker sputters to life with lively Iraqi music. Outside the stadium, a street vendor pushes a cart with drinks and food. It feels like a community fair.
But look closer. The rakes-and-shovels crew is backfilling holes dug by Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, which used the stadium as a training ground. The cast-off clothes are uniforms, and some of the workers wear the military headgear as if it were a trophy. Elsewhere, workers squatting on their haunches sweep out dusty piles of trash from long-abused rooms of the stadium. Others patch walls, replace door frames and carry in cement sacks from trucks backed up to the door. [...]
Welcome to Task Force Neighborhood.
On Monday evening, May 12, Col. Gregg Martin, commander of the 130th Engineer Brigade, had received an assignment. Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, commander of V Corps, in charge of Army operations in Iraq, wanted to make an immediate difference in the lives of the people in Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods. Long neglected or actively repressed by Saddam's regime, they now were despairing because their trash was gathering uncollected in the streets, their police force had vanished, or was powerless to protect them from crime, drains were backing up, pure water was impossible to find and many other things were just going wrong while the governing occupation authorities promised much, but delivered little improvement. Wallace's assignment was for Martin, as the corp's engineer, to apply the Army's engineering capabilities to help solve some of the people's problems.
"I want this to be a neighborhood strike force," Wallace said. To counter the impression that the authorities favored talking over doing, "we need to get Americans working with the Iraqi people. This an offensive action. We have the maneuverability to go anywhere we want to go in Baghdad. We want to exploit that." He wanted the project to start Thursday, May 15.
A meeting was quickly scheduled for Tuesday to plan the first task-force action. Wednesday was devoted to further refinement and rehearsal of the plan with V Corps staff members.
"Everyone wanted to say, `we're moving too fast; we need more reconnaissance and planning,' " says Martin. He answered that the operation would suffer paralysis by analysis, and offered what he calls the example of Legos.
"If you give a set of Lego blocks to a group of engineers and another to a group of kids, the engineers will draw up plans and designs and spend a lot of time preparing to do the job. The kids will just jump in and start building things. We need to be like those kids," he said. Armed with that logic and reinforced by the corps commanding general's order for quick action, Martin carried the day.
The war in Iraq is once again dividing the Democratic Party, with Congressional leaders and presidential candidates struggling over how strongly to challenge President Bush about the failure so far to find biological or chemical weapons.
Many party leaders say they are hopeful that questions about the weapons can be turned into a powerful political issue. But others are concerned that it may backfire, given the strong public support for Mr. Bush's war policies, the public's apparent indifference to the absence of weapons and the prospect that such weapons could turn up any day.
Some Democrats asserted today that attacking Mr. Bush on the weapons question could undercut one of the president's greatest strengths going into next year's election, his success as commander in chief. Should no weapons be found, they said, Democrats could challenge Mr. Bush's credibility on issues beyond the Iraqi conflict.
Why did American educators abandon traditional history for social studies? In part, precisely because they were American. We have a tradition of believing that we are beyond tradition or history, before the Fall or outside time, as if the New World made us New Men. When our mood swings to bleakness, we take on the burden of our original national sins--from slavery to exploitation to the extermination of the passenger pigeon. That is equally unhistorical, a theology not of innocence but of damnation.
American present-mindedness and self-absorption finds an unlikely ally in determinist schools of historiography. If the world is moved by the slow grinding of tectonic plates, then the important events and great actors who once decorated history's pages must give way to the steady accretion of data. John Updike satirized this stance neatly in one of the minor characters in his novel "The Coup," a history professor who specialized in the continuity of postal service from the presidency of Millard Fillmore to that of Benjamin Harrison. As a result, he ignored the Civil War--much like the students Mrs. Bush mentioned.
Alternative models have always been available to teachers. The American character itself is mixed. When we have not ignored history, we have been obsessed with it. The founding generation was preoccupied with the example of the ancient world. After John Adams, the future second president, rode off to attend the Continental Congress, his wife, Abigail, wrote him that she asked their seven-year-old son, Johnny, the future sixth president, to read her a page or two of Roman history every day. John Adams approved: "The education of our children is never out of my mind. . . . Fix their attention upon great and solid objects, and their contempt upon little, frivolous and useless ones." Later leaders read about the founding fathers--young Lincoln read Parson Weems's biography of Washington. Theodore Roosevelt was himself a competent historian; Grant was a more than competent memoirist.
Help is available from the highest levels of the discipline. Mr. Updike's dull professor is in fact somewhat old-fashioned. Simon Schama's book on the French Revolution, "Citizens," was a sweeping narrative that dared to praise the revolutionaries who were well intentioned and condemn those who were murderous. Thanks to scholars like Bernard Bailyn, Edmund Morgan and Gordon Wood, the academic history of the American Revolution has been much more concerned with ideas and politics (what the revolutionaries themselves were concerned with) than with the postal service.
Yesterday in Kennebunkport, Maine, President Bush managed to tip over a Segway while attempting to ride it -- despite the fact that the recently invented motorized scooters are equipped with tilt sensors and five high-tech gyroscopes, which are supposed to prevent them from tipping over. So how did Bush manage to nearly fall flat on his face? After seeing photos of the gaffe today, I tried to find out by speaking to a number of Segway enthusiasts.
The possibilities were numerous [...]
The "I series" Segway that the president was using was a gift from the Bush daughters to their father, Ferguson said. Earlier yesterday morning, Segway inventor Dean Kamen had delivered two Segways to Bush Senior and Barbara Bush at the compound. Luckily Kamen, among the world's most accomplished inventors, left before having to witness the most powerful man in the world fall off an idiot-proof invention.
In any event, it's now clear that Middle Eastern policy isn't the only area in which Bush can be unbalanced from time to time.
[W]hat, if anything, should the federal government do about America's expanding waistlines? As Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest put it, "We live in a culture that supports sloth and gluttony. If the government is not willing to help them, who will?" [...]
Fortunately, AEI invited the always reasonable University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein to sort through the issues. Epstein first noted that, in general, we resort to the public health rationale when the government wants to stop an activity that can cause harm to third persons who cannot reasonably protect themselves. The classic case is forcibly quarantining someone who has a virulent disease. He then pointed out that it is a misnomer to call the increasing number of fat people an "epidemic," since being fat is not a communicable disease. With regard to nutrition labels, Epstein observed, "Most people pretty much know that eating ice cream is fattening."
So what's his solution? Instead of lawsuits, fat taxes, and endless lists of nutrition information, Epstein suggests that we allow employers, schools, insurers and so forth to "viciously discriminate against any person who is obese." He was joking about the "vicious" part, but his point is serious. First, this policy would impose the costs for being overweight on individuals, giving them stronger incentives to slim down. (I know from personal experience that such policies work. For example, I decided to quit smoking shortly after I got turned down for a job because I was a smoker.) Second, since most employers want a healthy workforce, it would give them an incentive to help employees control their weight, perhaps by doing things like restricting what's served in the company cafeteria, or offering exercise facilities.
Christian members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and religious leaders fear that a constitution that does not recognize the Judeo-Christian foundation of European identity is in fact a threat to Europe itself. Part of that fear stems from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, set to become a "first pillar of the constitution." The charter, similar to a Bill of Rights, is considered by many to be flawed and dangerous. While it isn't yet legally binding, if the constitution is ratified, the charter becomes European law. And because the charter is a "lowest common denominator" approach, critics understand that its practical effect is to reduce rights at the national level. In other words, the anti-God policies of the EU would become law in all the member nations...even those that still retain some fidelity to Christianity.
This sobering reality is illustrated by the current negotiations between Poland and the EU. Poland is a candidate nation seeking admittance to the EU without having to give up its legal protection for the unborn at the national level. As it stands now, Poland's pro-life laws could be overturned by EU mandate.
But Poland isn't alone in fearing for its sovereignty. Consider the recent skirmish between an incensed Greek government and the European Parliament and courts. The court examined a Greek provision that permits the monks of Mount Athos to remain a men-only monastic island, as it has been since 1045. The court officially pronounced the ban on women a violation of human rights. The parliament passed a resolution that judged any exclusion of women at Mount Athos to be in violation of community nondiscrimination and gender equality legislation, as well as the provisions relating to free movement of persons within the EU. The Greek government angrily responded by reminding the court and the parliament that when Greece joined the EU, protection of the monastic community was part of its accession treaty. Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos compared the all-male situation at Mount Athos to the Vatican-a city-state-represented by men alone.
Yet, the very fact that a nation must negotiate a prenuptial agreement before joining the EU in order to preserve its cultural identity and the sanctity of life reveals the peril that awaits any rights not so well-preserved in advance. [...]
Ambitious politicians, willing to sacrifice national sovereignty for a more powerful European state, are embracing anti-Christian policies in the name of inclusiveness and tolerance. At stake are democratic self-determination for nations and traditional cultural values and legal freedoms for Christians and others to practice their faith in peace and security.
The sweeping secularism of modern-day Europe has already led to serious confrontations with Christians, particularly Catholics. From prohibiting schools from serving hot cross buns (it might offend non-Christians) to European rules requiring churches to employ atheists (or be in violation of antidiscrimination laws) to an outrageous resolution entertained by the European Parliament denouncing the Catholic Church for gender bias, examples abound.
If the constitution is accepted, the centralizing power of the EU will threaten the national laws of all member countries. Some European nations have constitutions that acknowledge God, protect life, and defend the family. Others do not. Without an explicit reference to God and the Christian heritage of Europe-as religious leaders have requested-the proposed constitution will lack a vital framework for interpreting human rights, family law, and traditional values.
And perhaps that's exactly the point.
When you establish that the sovereignty of the people is unlimited, you create and leave to chance in human society a degree of power too large for itself and which is an evil no matter into which hands it is placed. Entrust it to one, to several, to all, you will equally find it an evil. You will lay the blame on the depositaries of this power, and depending on the circumstances, by turns you will accuse monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, mixed government, and the representative system. You will be wrong; it is the degree of force and not the depositaries of this force which must be charged. It is the weapon and not the arm you must deal with severely. There are maces too heavy for the hands of man.
The error of those who, in good faith with their love of liberty, have accorded to the sovereignty of the people a power without limits comes from the way in which their ideas in politics were formed. They have seen in history a small number of men, or even just one, in possession of an immense power which was doing much evil; but their wrath was directed against the possessors of the power and not the power itself. Instead of destroying it, they have thought but to move it. It was a scourge; they considered it a prize. They bestowed it upon the whole society. It inevitably passed from there to the majority, from the majority into the hands of a few men, and often into one hand alone; it has done just as much evil as before; and the examples, the objections, the arguments, and the facts against all political institutions have been repeated.
In a society founded upon the sovereignty of the people, it is certain that it becomes no one individual, no one class, to subject the rest to one's particular will; but it is false that the whole society possesses over its members a sovereignty without limits.
The universality of citizens is the sovereign, in this sense that no individual, no fraction, no partial association can arrogate to themselves sovereignty if it has not been delegated to them. But it does not follow from this that the universality of citizens, or those vested by them with sovereignty, may dispose sovereignly of the existence of individuals. To the contrary, there is a part of human existence which, of necessity, stays individual and independent, and which is of right outside of all social purview. Sovereignty exists only in a limited and relative way. Where individual independence and existence begin, the jurisdiction of this sovereignty stops. If society steps over this line, it becomes as guilty as the despot who has no qualification other than his exterminating blade; society may not go beyond its purview without proving to be a usurper, the majority, without proving to be a faction. The consent of the majority by no means suffices in all cases to legitimate acts; there exist some things which cannot be sanctioned; when any sort of authority commits such acts, it matters little from which source it emanates and it matters little whether it is called an individual or nation; it could be the entire nation minus the citizen it oppresses, and it would not be more legitimate for it. . . .
The citizens possess individual rights independent of all social or political authority, and every authority which violates these rights becomes illegitimate. The rights of the citizens are individual liberty, religious liberty, liberty of opinion, in which is included its publicity, the enjoyment of property, guarantee against all that is arbitrary. No authority may infringe upon these rights without tearing up its own title.
The Senate Finance Committee, after splintering over Medicare's future for years, approved legislation last night that would help all older Americans pay for prescription drugs while also expanding the role of private health plans in treating the nation's seniors.
Starting in three years, the measure would offer subsidies to help Medicare's 40 million recipients buy insurance for medicine or to obtain the same drug coverage through private health plans, such as preferred-provider networks. The private plans would include other coverage more generous than Medicare traditionally has provided, including extra preventive care and new limits on out-of-pocket expenditures for patients with especially big medical bills. [...]
The House plan would cost the same, but would design drug benefits differently. For one thing, higher-income Medicare recipients would pay more for medicine. The House plan also would set up greater price competition between the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program and private health plans, and it would create economic incentives not found in the Senate bill for patients to join private plans. [...]
In one of the most significant differences, the House plan would require people with incomes above $60,000 -- or couples making more than $120,000 -- to pay more before they could start receiving catastrophic coverage. "People who make $120,000 a couple in retirement should at least be expected to pay a couple more dollars out of their own pocket . . . so the programs can work well for all," said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.).
For those who have come to view France as the harbinger of a second Holocaust or the Islamic Republic of France, it is tempting to interpret this latest round of unionista chaos as the first stages of a violent revolution. But one does not need be a frog-loving Fifth Columnist to see a few bright sides to this depressingly familiar story.
First, is the existence of the reform proposal itself. Unlike some other countries you could name, France has recognized that its low rate of childbirth will cause its pay-as-you-go retirement system to go bankrupt if not reformed, and quick. Center-right Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a former government minister in charge of small business, wants to increase the amount of time state employees must work before receiving full retirement benefits from 37.5 years to 40 years, putting them on equal footing with private-sector workers by 2008. In 2012, that would be bumped up to 41 years; by 2020 it would be 42.
This sends a welcome message to France's umpteen million fonctionnaires: why the hell should people always be encouraged to work for the state? As it stands, college graduates have responded to decades of double-digit youth unemployment by fighting like wolverines for safe positions as teachers, librarians, and the like. The resulting bloat and societal schism has meant that people still talk about "the private sector" as if it's an exotic and slightly dangerous foreign country (as in, "Jean-Marc isn't showing much solidarity with the strikers." "Yeah, well, that's because he works in the private sector.")
Raffarin's common-sense proposal, as UPI points out, is being spurred on by the European Union. (Yes, that same famously bureaucratic body that has forced France to privatize state industries, allow more foreign competition and investment, open its borders, and adhere to something approaching fiscal discipline.) He has also been carefully laying the political groundwork for reform since coming to power last May, reports the Guardian's Jon Henley.
Another reason to be optimistic is that the population appears, at long last, to be getting at least slightly annoyed with the nonstop confrontation and inconvenience. Eight years ago, there was enormous popular support for a series of national strikes against the center-right government of Alain Juppe, who tried to ram through a similar pension proposal (plus other austerity measures) and was promptly booted out of office. "Striking workers from the state railway SNCF," writes Henley, "have said they no longer dare wear their uniform to go to rallies because of the insults it attracts, and one poll published yesterday suggested only 52 percent of the public backed the protest, against 66 percent a couple of weeks ago."
Chuck Jones, who departed last year at the age of 89, was a Hirschfeld fan. The admiration was mutual. Indeed, Hirschfeld once did the impossible—a caricature of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, two creatures Jones had immortalized in his animated cartoons. Like Al, Chuck showed his gifts early, but didn’t quite know what to do with them. His father, a Micawberesque speculator who failed in business after business but always believed that something would turn up, kept purchasing reams of stationery marked with the logos of his various enterprises. As each venture went belly-up, it furnished Chuck with all the drawing paper a boy could want.
Jones pere kept moving around Los Angeles, hoping that a new house would bring him luck. Many of those furnished rental homes came with shelves of books, so Chuck devoured the collected Dickens, Austen, Poe, Trollope, and Twain, along with rows of reference volumes. Novelist Ray Bradbury, his old friend, recalled, “Chuck always read the encyclopedia as if it were the latest best-seller. Whenever he called me up and asked, 'Did you know that when the engineers on the trans-Egyptian railway ran out of fuel they burned mummy cases?' I knew he’d been at the Britannica again.”
Hollywood was still in development during Chuck’s youth, and, when he wasn’t reading or sketching, he was peering through a fence, watching the Keystone Kops, Buster Keaton, or Charlie Chaplin inventing their comedy before the cameras. Their pratfalls, along with the literary classics, became the cornerstones of Jones’s art. “I have always begun with reality,” he once recollected. “It’s something I learned from that great exponent of reality, Charles Dickens. People thought of him as an inventor, but the fact is that all his great characters have their feet firmly grounded on the streets, and sometimes in the gutter. I’ve met my share of Mr. Bumbles and Bill Sykeses in London, and there are plenty of Veneerings and Uriah Heeps right here in Hollywood.” [...]
A certain perversity attended the birth of many Chuck Jones cartoons. He concocted the hilarious “Bully for Bugs” because a Warner Brothers executive stated that there was nothing funny about a bullfight. He created Pepé because no one thought of a skunk as the least bit amorous. And he encouraged Mel Blanc to imitate a mogul’s lisp for the voice of Daffy Duck. Fortunately Leon Schlesinger was deaf to his own speech defect. Watching the rushes for the first time he exclaimed, “Jeethuth Chritht, that’th a funny voithe! Where’d you get that voithe?”
This whimsical attitude influenced Jones’s finest efforts—and there are a slew of them. “What’s Opera, Doc,” which heads the Motion Picture Academy’s list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons, simultaneously parodies Wagner’s Ring cycle (page 105) and Disney’s Fantasia. The standard cartoon of the period used some 60 different views of the action. “What’s Opera, Doc” had 140 because, in Jones’s words, “Basically what I wanted to do was squeeze all 14 hours of the cycle into a single cartoon, and drop in the X Factor—Bugs Bunny. To do all that meant that I had to give Wagner his due: elaborate sets, melodramatic lighting and a lot of different viewpoints. Plus a cast of superstars. After all, when a major figure is being satirized, he demands an outsize lampoon.”
Literary critic Hugh Kenner pronounced the effort “Joycean.” Audiences, he wrote, “know that when the figure who casts huge shadows on orange cliffs turns out to be Elmer Fudd, they’re simultaneously regarding a Fuddy emulation of the demon through whom Fantasia dramatized Moussorgsky’s violent music, and watching one more Fuddian attempt at grandiosity, and coping with an inept impersonation of Siegfried, and engaged with yet another episode of 'Kill the wabbit!' That’s four layers at least.” Such musings made Chuck Jones nervous, but he allowed there was some substance to them: “I know it sounds pretentious, but our most effective sequences always had literary, and sometimes theological, foundations. And we used classical music whenever possible. That’s why these little films have endured when so many longer ones have become antiques. We were cartooning on the shoulders of the great.”
For six days, two terrified United Nations military observers phoned their superiors - as many as four times a day - begging to be evacuated from their remote outpost in northeastern Congo.
They were receiving death threats, they said. They were alone and unarmed in Mongbwalu, a former gold-mining town ruled by the cannibalistic Lendu tribal militias. A U.N. helicopter from the town of Bunia could have retrieved them in 35 minutes.
But the United Nations, handcuffed by its own rules and bureaucracy, never sent a chopper. On May 18, 10 days after the two peacekeepers made their first distress call, the United Nations finally flew some armed peacekeepers to Mongbwalu.
They found the mutilated bodies of Maj. Safwat al Oran, 37, of Jordan, and Capt. Siddon Davis Banda, 29, of Malawi.
Their decomposed corpses had been tossed into a canal and covered with dirt, according to those who saw the bodies. They were shot in the eyes. Their stomachs were split open and their hearts and livers were missing. One man's brain was gone....
Col. Daniel Vollot, the MONUC sector commander in Bunia, said ... that MONUC isn't responsible for the deaths of Banda and Oran.
"We can't feel guilty," said Vollot. "Certainly, if we had arrived two or three days before, they would be alive. It's difficult, but I don't feel guilty about that."
The village of Katoto was smouldering, and one house still burning, after the reported massacre of 121 people on Saturday during the latest Lendu attack. Bloodied mattresses lay scattered outside a looted mud hut. Throughout the attack the French troops stayed in their barracks. Their mandate did not permit them to venture outside Bunia, their commander said, nor to intervene in battles between armed groups.
TEHRAN, Friday, June 13 — A third night of student protests outside Tehran University's dormitories exploded into the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods early today, with large gangs of students fighting running street battles against vigilantes armed with sticks and chains. At one major intersection demonstrators hurled bricks at trucks of riot policemen who were rushing to lift barricades and douse fires protesters had ignited in the streets.Despite my optimistic tag, above, I don't think these demonstrations will bring down the government. But one of the lessons of the last fifteen years is that it is difficult to predict exactly when an unstable government will fall. These demonstrations do buttress my belief that the Iranian government is not stable and is doomed in the long run. One thing that will help is if we keep the heat on the government -- something we do by providing revolutionary programming and by having troops in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, it is in our interest for the government to be changed from inside the country. If Iraq is to be the new Germany, perhaps Iran can be the new Poland.
The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei," a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned.
"I've been lashed, jailed for having a satellite dish," said a student, underscoring the simmering social frustrations behind the riots. "It's time to stand up for what we want." . . .
Joining the students were some older government workers and even women dressed in the sweeping black cloaks favored in poorer neighborhoods. . . .
"We want more freedom," said one 34-year-old government worker, who gave his name as Mahmoud. "For 25 years we have lived without any freedom. We want social freedom, economic freedom and political freedom," Nevertheless, he said he doubted the demonstrations would bring down the government because they were random and lacked organization. . . .
The fall of the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, although both despised by Tehran, created a certain sense of vulnerability here. The United States now has troops stationed along Iran's east and west flanks, and the Bush administration last year lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as part of the "axis of evil."
In the last few weeks, senior American officials have called for a change in government in Iran, accusing it of trying to destabilize Iraq, undermining the Middle East peace effort, developing nuclear weapons in secret and sheltering Al Qaeda fugitives. Senior American officials have denied any plans for military action. . . .
The sudden appearance of thousands of protesters evidently contributed to a case of jitters among some circles in Iran's jigsaw puzzle of a government.
Persian-language broadcasts beamed into Iran, mostly from Los Angeles, worked to swell the protests by urging people to take to the streets. Although satellite dishes are illegal, the channels are widely seen in the middle-class neighborhoods that cut across the northern parts of the city. . . .
Many students familiar with events in Iraq are quick to voice support for American intervention here, although they are widely skeptical of the motives of the Bush administration.
"Of course it would be better if Iranians could liberate their country themselves," said Muhammad, 21, an engineering student. "But we have reached the point where we need a foreign force."
Others are appalled by such attitudes, warning that Iranians' generally positive attitude toward the United States would evaporate the moment the first Iranian was killed.
The first day of protests was unexpectedly set off by a government proposal to consider privatizing the universities. A few cellphone calls by protesters to a Los Angeles television station prompted the station to call on all Iranians to pour into the streets. Hundreds got into their cars and went down to see the demonstration, joining the students in their chants.
Brinkley's tenure at ABC unfortunately did not end happily. On Election Night 1996, apparently thinking he was not on the air, Brinkley reacted to Bill Clinton's victory speech by calling it "the worst thing I've ever heard." He characterized it as "goddamn nonsense" and said of Clinton, "He's a bore, and will always be a bore."This is a fine obituary of David Brinkley, but Orrin has flooded the zone, so I wouldn't ordinarily post it. I had not, however, heard before that his "doing a Kinsley" (making the mistake of telling the truth) about Clinton contributed to his leaving ABC.
Nothing if not astutely political, Clinton still accepted an invitation to appear on the Brinkley show the following Sunday morning. Brinkley apologized, but his career at ABC News was essentially over.
The European Central Bank has given a strong signal that it will cut interest rates again soon, publishing forecasts that reveal its economists expect a combination of slow growth and falling inflation.
Metallica are particularly unhappy about certain actions the U.S. military has taken in Iraq.
Not the ones that resulted in the collapse of Saddam Hussein's empire — the ones in which the band's music was played to extract information from terrified Iraqi prisoners who'd never been exposed to heavy metal.
Speaking to the press in Europe, drummer Lars Ulrich told the World Entertainment News Network that he strongly objects to the use of "Enter Sandman" as a device of coercion. "I feel horrible about this," he said. "No one in Iraq has ever done anything to hurt me, and I don't understand why we have to be implicated in that bullsh--."
Ulrich added that if the Army is intent on using loud music to break Saddam's supporters, they should find something really grating on the ears. "What about firing up some Venom or some of those Norwegian death metal bands?"
What does it say that European music is unendurable to the enemy? Perhaps though they war with the U.S., their more passionate disagreement is with European culture.
[T]here are two characteristic figures in Europe today: the deeply Europeanised anti-European and the deeply Americanised anti-American. We have all met him, the pinstriped Tory Eurosceptic who has a house in Tuscany, is an expert on French wines and knows a great deal more about Wagner operas than Chancellor Gerhard Schroder does. (This last may, admittedly, not be saying a great deal.) We have all met her, the ageing German anti-American peace campaigner, whose inspirations are Woodstock, Joan Baez and not the German Martin Luther but the American Martin Luther King....
There's a whole lot to be for in Europe today. Europe's horrible first half of the 20th century, from 1914 to Stalin's death in 1953, was characterised, between war, Holocaust and Gulag, by what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil". The past 50 years in western Europe, and the past 15 years (since the velvet revolutions of 1989) in central and much of eastern Europe (except the Balkans and parts of the former Soviet Union), have increasingly been characterised by what I would call the banality of the good.
It is the banality of the good that you see among the young Germans, Italians and now Poles and Russians making out in the cafes of Oxford, Madrid and Warsaw; the banality of the good that allows pinstriped Tory Eurosceptics to fly to the Dordogne for £4.99 and bejeaned anti-American demonstrators to join forces in Geneva for 8.50 euros; the banality of the good that has Europeans making love not war, while comparing notes, in Elf, about the latest American movie.
In 1981, after 38 years with NBC, Brinkley became host of ABC's ``This Week.'' He understood a fundamental truth about television talk shows: what one does on them one does in strangers' living rooms. So mind your manners; do not make a scene. Those thoughts guided Brinkley as he provided adult supervision to others on "This Week,'' the first hour-long Sunday morning interview program.
How anachronistic the maxim ``mind your manners'' seems in the harsh light cast by much of today's television. How serene, even proud, Brinkley was about becoming somewhat of an anachronism.
Evelyn Waugh's novel Scott-King's Modern Europe (1947) concludes on what can be called a Brinkleyesque note. The protagonist, Mr. Scott-King, a teacher at an English boys' school, is warned by the school's headmaster that the boys' parents are only interested in preparing their boys for the modern world.
"You can hardly blame them, can you?'' said the headmaster. "Oh, yes,'' Scott-King replied, ``I can and do,'' adding, "I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.''
Brinkley's backward-looking gentility made him regret, among much else, the passing of the days when it was unthinkable for a gentleman to wear other than a coat and tie when traveling by air. It is, then, an irony of the sort Brinkley savored that he was not merely present at the creation of television as a shaper of the modern world, he was among the creators of that phenomenon. Like the Founders of this fortunate Republic, Brinkley set standards of performance in his profession that still are both aspirations and reproaches to subsequent practitioners.
When we watch old-fashioned westerns today, it is almost a sure thing that we will comment on the unfortunate, naïve caricatures of Native Americans. Similarly, we often fuss and flinch over movies just a few decades old that portray women in the confines of stereotypes, brainless beauties who exist only to serve men as objects of affection, damsels in distress, trophies for heroes, or as a mindless Mom.
But Christians are often shocked and dismayed over the stereotype that won't go away: the villainous, judgmental, legalistic Christian determined to spoil the party.
One particular instance of a film's portrayal of Christians—from 1960—has recently made the news. Inherit the Wind recounts the story of the 1925 Scopes Trial and was recently shown in a sophomore biology class at Shawnee Mission East, a Kansas City high school. When parents learned that the school was showing what they argue is a flawed and anti-Christian film, they went to the school board. The matter is now in the hands of a school district special committee.
The church is frequently portrayed on the big screen in an unflattering light. God, on the other hand, usually gets a positive (if shallow) portrayal. And angels needn't worry about their reputation either: in It's a Wonderful Life they're shown as kind and helpful, if a bit sentimental, and in Wings of Desire they're powerful messengers of comfort and pilgrims haunted by questions about spiritual mysteries and death. But why does the cliche of the scowling, ranting Christian continue?
In hopes of offering some consolation for persecuted Christians of the silver screen, I asked Film Forum readers to dig up some examples of Christians portrayed properly. The result was rather surprising. So many names were suggested that they overwhelmed the mentions of unflattering portrayals. It's enough to make me wonder if the days of the stereotype are numbered—or if the stereotypes were ever enough to merit complaint in the first place. [...]
Our favorite portrayals of Christians in the movies are . . .
Prime Minister John Howard has sent shock waves across the Australian political landscape by scuttling rumors of his imminent retirement. And the outcome could be an early poll that will test Canberra's strained relationship with Asia.
After four years at the helm of the ruling Liberal-National Party coalition, Howard had been expected to step down as premier before the next election, which is scheduled to be called by November 2004. Instead, he will lead the conservative alliance into a torrid campaign that will be marred by internal leadership challenges and factional strains on both sides of the political divide. [...]
Almost any change in the political leadership would be good for Australia's on-again, off-again relationship with Asia, which has almost dropped off the agenda since Howard took over. A 2001 policy shift in effect downgraded the importance of regional ties by restoring the US-dominated Western security alliance as the core of Australia's diplomatic strategy.
Nurtured by a succession of Labor governments since the early 1970s, the Asia-first policy was also endorsed by the two Liberal coalitions that preceded Howard, and by Beazley when he was opposition leader. It led to the establishment of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) caucus, closer trade links with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and active participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).
The preoccupation with US ties, and especially Washington's forays into Afghanistan and Iraq, has weakened Canberra's diplomatic standing with predominantly Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as such traditional allies as the Philippines. At an economic level, the government has backed away from Labor's long-standing goal of securing ASEAN membership in favor of preferential trade accords: the US is the first target.
"By continuing to identify the United States as its preferred trading partner, the Howard government is relegating Australia's trade with Asia - the region that buys 55 percent of our exports," contended Craig Emerson, Labor's trade spokesman.
Last year, TMQ pointed out that Hillary Rodham Clinton was lying when she claimed to be the author of "It Takes a Village," which was actually penned by a ghostwriter named Barbara Feinman Todd. Specifically, TMQ noted last year, "Hillary's official U.S. Senate biography states, 'In 1997, she wrote the best-selling book It Takes a Village.' This is an outright lie. Wouldn't it be a nice gesture if official Senate biographies did not contain lies?" Clinton's current Senate biography repeats the lie that she wrote "It Takes a Village," while going on to assert that Clinton "also wrote 'Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids Letters to the First Pets.' Her latest book, 'An Invitation to the White House' was an immediate best seller … in addition, the Senator has authored numerous magazine and journal articles as well as op-ed pieces." All these statements are outright lies, as the other Hillary books were also ghosted, while staff members penned the "numerous magazine and journal articles" for which Clinton now claims authorship.
Comes now "Living History," another book "by" Hillary Clinton. Set aside whether this much-hyped marketing vehicle contains so much as a single sentence that rises above the level of statements of the obvious regarding events that have already been reported in excruciating detail. Once again, Clinton is presented as the author of what is actually a ghosted book. The world learned that Barbara Feinman Todd wrote "It Takes a Village," because the publisher inadvertently issued a press release announcing the true author; Hillary threw an ego fit and demanded that all reference to Todd's existence be removed from the book and its press materials, which was presented to the world as if it were the product solely of Clinton's late-night labors. This time around, the pages of "Living History" thank three people -- the much-admired former White House speech writer Alison Muscatine, veteran ghost Maryanne Vollers and researcher Ruby Shamir -- who are assumed to be the actual authors. But the cover and the frontispiece still boldly state, "by Hillary Rodham Clinton."
The all black, all male students of Hales Franciscan High School on the South Side lined the walls of their gymnasium chanting and stomping their feet. Joining in on this special occasion was a group of outsiders--well dressed men and women who waved flags and politely clapped.
The warm reception Wednesday was for Jack Ryan, who had come to the school to officially announce that he would be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. And Ryan was right at home in the inner city school at 4930 S. Cottage Grove Ave. He has taught English and law there for the past several years. [...]
For Ryan, 43, politics and education are second careers. A tall, thin Irish Catholic, still without any gray hair, Ryan retired from his seven-figure job at the prestigious investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2000, at the peak of the stock market-- and began teaching at Hales, a Catholic prep school near the Robert Taylor housing project.
Interviewing while visiting the school last February, he told a reporter that his goal was to give everyone a decent shot at an education which he admitted, "might sound quixotic."
Ryan said then that he favors school vouchers, and advocates tax credits or scholarships to help families gain access to a good education for their children. "We have to find some way to get families out of having to send a child to a broken down, failed school," he said. [...]
Every student interviewed said that Ryan was tough, but they seemed enthusiastic anyway.
"He was very strict," said Dewayne Ward, a graduating senior. "He had a set of rules. If you didn't follow the rules there would be consequences."
But Ward added, "He made sure class was fun. It was the way he interacted. He let you goof off a little," explaining that within the constraints he had set up, Ryan was not above smiling at wisecracks.
And Ward illustrated the balance between high expectations and teasing by recounting the way Ryan addressed the students. He said, "He called everyone men. He would say 'Good morning, men.'" [...]
One of the problems Ryan may face is distinguishing himself from Illinois? other Republican Ryans: Jim, the former state Attorney General who lost the race for governor in 2002, and George, whose tenure as governor was stained with scandal. For that reason the signs at the rally read only "Jack!"
Senator John Edwards got a few interesting remarks in edgewise vis a vis the Estrada filibuster:
"I think we need more Hispanics on the federal bench, but we should choose people because they have the right record, not just the right last name," Edwards said.
The right "record?" Let's stack up Mr. Edwards' legal record against Mr. Estrada's. And for good measure, let's throw in the offices each is up for.
There's bad news on the polling and signature front for embattled California Gov. Gray Davis, who's facing an effort by political
opponents to gather enough signatures to trigger a special recall election.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that almost half of California voters want Davis removed from office in a prospective recall election. The statewide poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, showed 48 percent of Californians would vote to remove him, while 41 percent said they'd continue to support him. Among likely voters, Davis' numbers are just as bad, with 51 percent saying they'd vote against him and 43 percent backing him.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that recall organizers are claiming they have 600,000 to 700,000 signatures – quickly approaching the 900,000 needed to trigger a recall vote. The organizers must gather the signatures by Sept. 2 to trigger the special election, which could take place as early as this fall or as late as March 2004, depending on when (and if) the recall signatures are submitted.
The Terminator mentioned the recall only indirectly, however. "This is really embarrassing. I just forgot our state governor's name, but I know that you will help me recall him."
On June 7, the National Post, a Canadian daily, published a rather amusing article by Jeet Heer, titled Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House. The aim of the author was to illuminate two issues occasionally argued in political media: first, the scurrilous claim by a group of neofascists that the neoconservatives are all ex-Trotskyists, and second, the very real evolution of certain ex-Trotskyists toward an interventionist position on the Iraq war. In the U.S., these are fringe topics discussed only in the most rarefied circles. In Canada, however, a labor and socialist party remains a major political force (the New Democrats), and politics in general has a more European (especially, and predictably, British) flavor. In the latter milieu, Trotskyism retains a relevance it has not had in the U.S. since the 1930s.
For example, I have written on the peculiar fact that French ex-prime minister Lionel Jospin is an ex-Trotskyist who was apparently infiltrated into his position (see my "Trotsky is Dead, Jospin's Opportunism Lives On," in the Wall Street Journal Europe, June 14, 2001). Fear of Trotskyist infiltration (partisans of the movement call it "entrism") is something of a bugaboo in French politics, but, then, in France Trotskyist parties gain millions of votes in national elections. The U.S. neofascists who have thrown this accusation around use the term "Trotskyist" the same way they use the term "neoconservative:" as a euphemism for "Jew."
And the fact is that many of the original generation of neoconservatives had a background of association with Trotskyism in its Shachtmanite
iteration--that is, they belonged to or sympathized with a trend in radical leftism that followed the principle of opposition to the Soviet betrayal of the revolution to its logical end. The Shachtmanites, in the 1960s, joined the AFL-CIO in its best Cold War period, and many became staunch Reaganites.
This path had been pioneered much earlier by two Trotskyists: James Burnham, who became a founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol, who worked on Encounter magazine. Burnham was joined at NR by Suzanne LaFollette, who, piquantly enough, retained some copyrights to Trotskyist material until her death. But they were not the only people on the right who remained, in some degree, sentimental about their left-wing past. Willmoore Kendall, for example, was, as I recall, a lifelong contributor to relief for Spanish radical leftist refugees living in France. Above all, Burnham and Kristol, in a certain sense, did not renounce their pasts. They acknowledged that they had evolved quite dramatically away from their earlier enthusiasms. But they did not apologize, did not grovel, did not crawl and beg forgiveness for having, at one time, been stirred by the figure of Trotsky.
That is, of course, insufficient for some people. There remain those for whom any taint of leftism is a permanent stain...
When people ask me what I think of the New Jersey Devils, I always say, I think they're pretty darn good. I don't think it matters that they play in a so-so arena near a highway. Or that they don't have big-name stars and get knocked for being in New Jersey. So they can't decide on a good place for a parade--so what? How many teams are raising another Stanley Cup?
I've been a fan of the Devils since they moved to New Jersey more than 20 years ago. I've seen them grow from a rinky-dink team to three-time Stanley Cup champions. Now people are making a fuss over a parade--to have it in the arena's parking lot like before, or somewhere else. I say, no parking lot. Just have the parade down Bloomfield Avenue, starting in Newark and passing through the towns where lots of Devils fans live. It's not Broadway, but you'd still get a lot of people who'd appreciate it.
On his first visit to Germany since the war in Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld revived the issue of Western European opposition to the conflict, suggesting it resulted from a lack of vision.
Rumsfeld said some Eastern European countries supported the Iraq war and the previous conflict in Afghanistan. And he asked rhetorically why it was that some of those small, struggling former communist countries were able to "make such outsized contributions to peace and security?"
"The key, I believe, is that even as they are busy looking inward and rebuilding their economies and societies, they have had the vision to
look outward as well, to find ways they can contribute to a more peaceful and secure world," he said.
"It suggests that the distinction between old and new in Europe today is really not a matter of age or size or even geography. It is really a matter of attitude - of the vision that countries bring to the trans-Atlantic relationship."
According to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani will lead India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2004 general elections. According to Advani, it will be Vajpayee.
With such confusing signals coming from the two titans, it's little surprise that the party been rocked in the past fortnight by a controversy that refuses to die down. [...]
In order to understand the scenario and its implications for Indian politics in the days to come, one needs a little perspective. The BJP is a Hindu fundamentalist party that was in its earlier incarnation called the Bhartiya Jana Sangh. Vajpayee helped found the original party almost half a century ago, but he has been at odds with it since early 1980s, while also remaining its unchallenged leader.
This contradiction has its genesis in the experiences of the mid-1970s. Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi declared an emergency (a sort of martial rule) in 1975, suspending all democratic freedoms, including freedom of expression and the right to life, to get around a court ruling depriving her of membership of parliament on account of electoral misconduct. She sent to jail most opposition leaders and many political activists, including some dissidents from her own party.
They were let out in 1977 for what was clearly going to be a sham election to satisfy world opinion, while the emergency continued. Out of jail, opposition leaders realized that they had just two options - unite, forgetting ideological positions to win the elections, or go back to jail. They chose the first option. And much to Indira Gandhi's consternation and surprise, they united overnight, helped also by the shared agony of a two-year jail stint. All parties merged their identities into a secular, socialist, democratic Janata Party.
The Janata party won the elections and a Congress faction leader, Morarji Desai, became prime minister, with Vajpayee taking the foreign affairs portfolio and Advani became information minister.
Though a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the fountainhead of Hindu fundamentalism, Vajpayee found his vision broadened. He spent most of his time traveling the world and learning the virtues of pluralism and secularism. He became the first Indian leader to open up to Pakistan, relax visa restrictions and so on. This made him the only Hindu fundamentalist leader popular among Muslims, who benefited the most from the relaxation in travel restrictions to Pakistan. He has regularly obtained Muslim votes since - the only Hindu fundamentalist leader to do so. Branded as a dove, despite his hardline Hindutva (the philosophy of Hindu domination of the sub-continent) background, he became acceptable to the secular parties as well.
But this also made him suspect in the eyes of his fanatical Hindu supporters. When Vajpayee founded the BJP after separating from the Janata Party after Mrs Gandhi came back to power in 1980, he described the party plank as Gandhian socialism. But both Gandhi and socialism are anathema to Hindutva. Indeed, Mahatma Gandhi had been killed by a Hindu fundamentalist, Nathu Ram Godse, who remains a Hindutva icon to this day, after Gandhi proposed peaceful relations with Pakistan.
The BJP didn't have any choice. Vajpayee was irreplaceable. No one had the gift of gab with which to enchant the masses. He was the only orator in the party. Advani could not even win his own elections and had to be brought to parliament through the backdoor of the Upper House, where members are nominated. The BJP and its mentor RSS had to even sideline more committed Hindutva leaders like Balraj Madhok when they started opposing Vajpayee. [...]
On his part, Vajpayee is no longer willing to merely lend his voice to be exploited by the party. He wants to win and win on his agenda. He has left socialism behind, but he wants to hold on to Gandhi and his vision of a secular India.
Our home might still be our castle, but as the 20th century came to an end it is clear that methods of design, construction and even acquisition of the American dream are dramatically different from how things were done a century ago. On the surface, it's easy to assume the differences are simply a matter of technology's foray into the home, and indeed a fair amount of our living environment is consumed by tokens of scientific achievement. But just as our homes are a reflection of ourselves, so too can our communities of homes be considered a reflection of our culture as a whole. Perhaps regrettably, tract housing and sprawling suburbs are among the century's most notable contributions to housing's legacy. But elements of housing we consider commonplace--grass yards, large windows and roomy backyards--were equally foreign concepts to all but the wealthiest of home buyers in the 19th century. Even the very fact 68 percent of Americans now own their home is startlingly different from the situation of less than 100 years ago.
To find out just how much the American home has changed over the century, we called on Chrysanthe Broikos, an associate curator at the National Building Museum; Carolyn Goldstein, whose book Do It Yourself examines home repair in the 20th century; David Shayt, an occupational history and hand tool specialist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History; Joel Tarr, a professor of history and politics at Carnegie Mellon University; and Bill Yeingst, a specialist in domestic life at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
While the sheer number of important changes to the housing industry during the 1900s could compose volumes, 15 milestones stand apart as having had the greatest impact on housing in the 20th century.
1. The Federally Guaranteed Mortgage...
Lopez: The current dilemma in California "has nothing to do with race," you say in Mexifornia. How so?
Hanson: Here in the Central Valley we have literally thousands of new immigrants of all races from southeast Asia, the Punjab, Armenia, and Mexico who arrived under lawful auspices, in numbers that do not overwhelm local facilities, and with the assumption that assimilation and acculturation alone promise success in their new country.
A multiracial society works. But a multicultural one — whose separatist identity transcends the enriching and diverse elements of food, fashion, entertainment, music, etc. — whether in Rwanda or the Balkans — does not, especially when new arrivals do not learn English, often appear as single males in the first wave, and are cynically exploited in unskilled and low-paying jobs and as a dependent collective constituency by self-appointed shepherds in the ethnic industry.
Lopez: What do you think will happen to California, if you had to make a guess? Any reason to be hopeful about the future?
Hanson: We know that when immigrants from Mexico — as in the case, for example, of Cuba — come legally, and with families intact, and are not followed by a steady cohort of illegal aliens. Within a generation or two they melt into the general fabric and America is better for their presence.
So the trick is to return to legal, controlled immigration, coupled with assimilation — the powerful engine of popular culture — and everything from Jennifer Lopez to Tiger Woods to Sammy Sosa will do the rest in creating shared appetites and habits.
Lopez: If Californians were to read Mexifornia in part as a call to action, what lesson would you want them to take from it? And those of us outside of California, too.
Hanson: Seek the truth, and shed the old fears of being called a "protectionist" by the free-market Right and a "racist" by the manipulative Left. Hand-in-glove, the two have conspired to create an alternative society of illegal aliens who are used by both groups, remain in the shadows of the law, and are fed the half-truths and excuses of "at least it is better than in Mexico" by the former, and "the borders crossed you, not you the borders" by the latter.
If we make the hard, tough decisions now, a number of positive consequences will result in the next two decades: a more united society here at home; pressure on Mexico from dissatisfied Mexicans without recourse who will force needed social and economic change there; improvement in the minimum wage and conditions for unskilled American citizens who need jobs here; and a revised school curriculum that emphasizes real knowledge rather than therapy.
Lopez: Are there people today thinking and talking realistically about immigration?
Hanson: Hardly. Instead, they mutter homilies and smile, and then go into the ballot booth and vent by voting for a number of ballot propositions — denying state aid to illegals, elimination of bilingual education, an end to affirmative action — that are quickly challenged and circumvented by elites in the judiciary, university, and government.
We live in an Orwellian state, where liberal Silicon Valley executives pick up day workers on El Camino Real in Atherton, drive them home for a few hours of trench work, and then dump them off on the street at 5 P.M., as if they are going to parachute back to Oaxaca — or conservative hoteliers, farmers, and contractors who employ for 30 years hardworking illegal aliens until their bodies give out at 50, then expect the state to provide with entitlements what the employer could not with retirement plans, lament the absence of a "work ethic" among the aliens' children — all as a preliminary to welcoming another cohort, as the tragic traffic in human capital continues in some sort of surreal life cycle.
Lopez: Why are conservatives and the Republican party so seemingly disorganized in California?
Hanson: Well, they mishandled Prop. 187 that ended state aid for illegals but was overturned by the courts. The populace voted overwhelmingly for it, but the Republican party crudely piggybacked the issue, when there was great opportunity to appeal to low-income legal residents and poor American citizens of all backgrounds who can't compete with illegal aliens wageworkers and need help and attention.
Then instead of turning to successful assimilated Mexican Americans whose hard work and success under prior protocols prove the present system is pathological, they simply panicked and caved in to the ethnic industry, as if millions would flock to "family values, anti-abortion, and religion" when the alternative was a more seductive and profitable victimhood. So now the Republicans appear as cynical trollers for the Hispanic vote without principles. Had they come out and said, "This is a tragedy for everyone involved. We are going to fix it and ensure aliens become the successful Mexican Americans that we all treasure, and to do that we need legality, proportionality, and assimilation — then a Gray Davis would never have had a chance, much less many in the legislature who somehow bankrupted the state in a mere eight years.
It's been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that religious clubs must have the same access to public school facilities as non-religious clubs.
But that ruling hasn't helped Barbara Wigg, who has filed a federal lawsuit against a South Dakota school district, charging her constitutional rights are being violated by not being allowed to lead an after-school religious club on school property - off the clock.
"I want to teach this and I don't know why I can't," Wigg said.
Wigg is an elementary school teacher of 19 years and currently teaches second and third grade at Laura B. Anderson Elementary School in the Sioux Falls (search) school district.
She is certified by the Missouri-based Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) to teach their Good News Clubs after-school Christian classes.
These ministries take place in neighborhood settings such as homes, backyards, schools and community centers and are designed to teach children ages five through 12 about the gospel and moral and character development. They are not school sponsored but often use school facilities.
According to CEF, as of August 2002, roughly one-third - 1,346 of the 4,759 such clubs - operated on public school grounds. As of April 2003, nearly 120,000 people participated in these groups nationwide. Good News Clubs Operate in five Sioux Falls elementary schools and meet for an hour once a week.
But the school district says it would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution to permit Wigg, or any of its teachers, to lead the classes.
Allowing that, the district argues, would give the impression that the school system favors a particular religion, since the teacher would be evangelizing on school property.
While often described as a secular nation, the United States is more correctly classified as an interfaith nation. Its founding principles acknowledge the presence of a Supreme Being from whom certain inalienable rights are received. This means that our government is based on the worldview that God exists. One could say that the existence of God is a first principle of our form of government: God is the one who endowed us with those inalienable rights. In a sense, the challenge to protect the human environment is not new at all, but rather was given to us by our Founding Fathers. Within the Declaration of Independence's reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" and the Constitution's hope of founding "a more perfect Union" is intertwined this mysterious concept of the grandeur of the human person and his or her ability to form a communion of persons conscious of God as the final destiny.
Therefore, the religious liberty that is the right of every person does not mean that government must be insulated from religious values. Quite the contrary. Government must not discourage, but rather it must encourage God-loving people to participate in the formulation of our nation's laws and policies. As has been previously alluded to, the religious believer is, in a real sense, the model citizen, because the religious believer is the one most likely to understand the importance of protecting the human environment from social alienation. In other words, the religious believer has the best standpoint from which to recognize the significance of creating an environment in which citizens are encouraged to generously give of themselves to each other according to a correct order of values established by the Creator.
Rather than expecting citizens to check their religious sensibilities at the door, society should highly regard participation from those who are fundamentally oriented toward the truth that each person must seek communion with God and neighbor. Among all citizens the religious believer stands out as a beacon most capable of guiding society to formulate policies that encourage an atmosphere conducive to the reason for human society's existence. One could say that the participation of the religious believer in the political process is our country's best hope of realizing the greatness of our foundation as a nation. As society comes to understand this, religious belief will no longer be seen as something that disqualifies a person for public service, but rather renders him or her more suitable.
The current environment in which religious believers are viewed with fear and skepticism prevents the greatness of our founding principles from being actualized. In order to truly form a more perfect union-the communion of persons-the human environment must be protected. Only then will the blessings of liberty, through which citizens enjoy the freedom to give the gift of self to others according to the order of creation, come to fruition. This is truly the essence of the culture of life. In reestablishing this culture, the religious believer must respond to the clarion call to protect and defend the human environment. This response must have personal and political components. True liberty-the freedom to act in the service of others-is necessary to allow this culture to flourish. Only by impressing this reality on citizens not religiously inclined and those who fear the reaches of big government can we answer their concerns regarding the religious believer's participation in politics.
[B]ourgeois liberalism with its ambition to ground everything in the unchecked initiative of the individual, conceived as little God, and the absolute liberty of property, business and pleasure, inevitably ends in statism. The rule of the Number [economic community, national or racial state] produces the omnipotence of the state. The indispensable condition for building a city out of liberties, beholden only to themselves, is that each member surrender his personal will to the General Will in a contract. which according to Rousseau gives birth to society. But since man in his material individuality is a part, not a whole, and since, further, in this system, the state takes the place of the genuine community, the individual is forced ultimately to transfer both his responsibilities and the care of his destiny to the artificial whole which has been superimposed upon him and to which he is bound mechanically. Of course his liberty will remain complete and unhampered, but in an illusory fashion and in a world of dreams. At the same time, he will exact from the state the satisfaction of his greeds and anarchistically reject the conditions of social life; not realizing that in this way society is driven to the insurrection of the parts against the whole, of which Auguste Comte used to speak, to the tragic isolation of each one in his own selfishness or helplessness. The very notion of the common good and the common work disappears.
Tom Foreman: You were trained as a sniper?
Dr. Ruth: We were all trained in the forerunner of the Israeli Defense Force, and for some reason that I can't explain I'm a very good sniper. I can put five bullets into this little red circle (makes circle with her fingers). I know how to throw hand grenades. I've never killed anybody. I was badly wounded.
Tom Foreman: There was a bomb that went off in the barracks.
Dr. Ruth: Yes.
Tom Foreman: Many of your friends were wounded as well?
Dr. Ruth: Yes and died. Boy you did your homework.
Tom Foreman: Do you think that some of those experiences of your life made you bolder? Many people comment that the thing that strikes them about you is that you so fiercely walk into any culture and you ask very intimate questions.
Dr. Ruth: I am what you call bold because the one thing that I've learned coming out of Nazi Germany is that I have to stand up and be counted for what I believe. And that's how people are listening to me, because they know it's not a put-on.
"Do you see any parallels between the security state that George Bush has created in America since 9/11 and the Gulag?" For a moment, the question struck me dumb. It had been put by a BBC radio interviewer, and we were on the air. It seemed impolitic to say, "What a ridiculous question," and I was too surprised to laugh. Finally I mumbled something about not having noticed that great a difference between daily life in George Bush's America and daily life in Bill Clinton's America, and left it at that. What I should have done was point out, tartly, that access to information is still far freer in America than it is in Britain, that immigrants are far better treated in America than in Britain, and that democracy remains a more open affair in America than in Britain. One always thinks of these things too late.
Yet in the days that followed, I did, rather surprisingly, have the opportunity to try out a few more answers. I was in London because a book I wrote about Soviet concentration camps had just been published there. For some, it seemed, the combination of that subject and my nationality offered the perfect opportunity to discuss the viciousness of contemporary American society. Several times I was asked if Guantanamo Bay should be considered a concentration camp. One reviewer, after saying a few neutral words about my book, complained that "the author has missed an opportunity to condemn human rights violations in her own country." Another interviewer asked whether people in America are often arrested for insulting the president on the Internet. [...]
This is the animus that George W. Bush personally inspires among what the British, among others, call the "chattering classes," in Europe as elsewhere. Recently, a Pew Research Center poll gave statistical backing to a phenomenon that many have observed anecdotally. Much of the world -- and Europe is no exception -- has a love-hate relationship with America. They consume our mass culture but simultaneously resent the impact of that mass culture on their own. They watch our television programs but are wary of importing them. On a host of issues, ranging from beliefs about the death penalty to preferred brands of sneakers, Europeans and Americans are actually growing closer, and the much-vaunted "values gap" is growing narrower. Yet when asked about it, Europeans often focus on what drives us apart.
Somehow -- and the Pew results support this too -- Bush has come to stand for the hate part of the love-hate relationship, symbolizing the downside of mass culture and the pushy side of our foreign policy, rather than the economic freedom and political openness that many admire. Largely this is because Bush, as a fully paid-up conservative, is at odds with Europe's left-leaning political elites, most of whom hate not only him but also the things with which he is associated, rightly or wrongly, such as a freer rein for the private sector. What they hate, in other words, is his domestic policy, more than his foreign policy.
A SYDNEY company is involved in a secret plan to collect tissue from aborted babies and export it for medical experiments.
The sensitive proposal, to harvest some of the 90,000 foetuses aborted in Australia each year has been condemned by pro-life groups for fostering an international trade in human body parts.
The Daily Telegraph has established that a Dutch bio-tech company, Crucell, working through a Sydney contract research organisation, Parexel International, has applied to the ethics committee of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide for access to foetal material.
It is believed to be the first proposed commercial collection of foetuses in Australia, but those behind the project were hoping to carry it out without the public knowing.
The tissue would be sent to Crucell's laboratories in the Netherlands and used to grow cell lines for research into vaccines for infectious diseases such as HIV and ebola.
The abortion doctors who collect the tissue stand to make money out of the project - they would be paid an "hourly rate" for their time.
Dear Mr. President:...
You, more than any other President in history, have chosen judges through an ideological prism. The White House’s reliance on ideology when it has come to selecting lower court nominees has led to conflict that has frustrated both of us....
The candidates I would advise you to consider are:
The Honorable Arlen Specter, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.
The Honorable Ann Williams, Judge, Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the Northern District of Illinois [and President Clinton to the Circuit Court].
The Honorable Edward Prado, Judge, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, nominated by you and unanimously confirmed by the 108th Senate.
The Honorable Michael Mukasey, Judge, Southern District of New York, nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
The Honorable Stanley Marcus, Judge, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, nominated by [President Clinton to Circuit Court and] President Ronald Reagan [to District Court].
All of these individuals appear to be legally excellent, ideologically moderate, and several of them would add diversity to the Court.... While I would need to do additional research on them and question them personally before announcing my unqualified support, my initial review of their records is promising.
Considering a black electorate that reliably voted for Democrats, he told his staffers about civil rights: "Don't expect any credit for what you do, or any real public relations gains, just do what is right and forget about it." Personally - as the tapes proved - he held unenlightened views of blacks. Politically, he believed he had little to gain in wooing them. But he rose above personal prejudice and political gain to do something approaching what was right. Unlike future presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, he supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964; as president he put $60m towards encouraging minority-owned businesses; and more schools were desegregated during his presidency than under any previous administration.
Though conservative businessmen paid for his campaigns, he viewed his presidential role as Keynesian and spent on deficit to relieve unemployment. In a time of economic crisis he cut taxes - 6m people paid no tax under his policy. And, his connections to industrial conglomerates notwithstanding, he created the Environmental Protection Agency and restricted offshore drilling for oil.
Nixon fancied himself as a conservative steward of the nation, like Benjamin Disraeli or Theodore Roosevelt. And, like them, he knew there was political advantage in solicitude towards the citizenry. By implementing moderate policies he won support at the margins of his constituency.
But Watergate killed these stirrings of Republican stewardship. The tapes shifted attention from Nixon's policies to his character. His subsequent downfall taught Republican analysts that competent government does not pay: instead, they counselled, court only the faithful and win others over by showing good character. Nixon's idea that a conservative president could gain votes by doing what was prudent for general welfare became a notion as quaint as hoop skirts.
Consequently, Mr Reagan radiated avuncularity while composing budgets that shovelled cash to the rich and made the US the world's biggest debtor. And genial George W. Bush is carrying this fiscal revolution further. No one believes his tax policy is an effective jobs bill, or that it benefits anyone as much as the well-off, although Mr Bush says otherwise. Wise heads may find this insistence insulting to Americans' intelligence; but without a revelation on the scale of Watergate, a people bewitched by apparent strength of character may not feel the injury until it is too late.
"I think people are sick of [killing]," said President George W Bush of the Israeli-Palestinian war. The contrary may be true. People may want the killing to continue for quite some time, as the Palestinian radical organizations suggest. A recurring theme in the history of war is that most of the killing typically occurs long after rational calculation would call for the surrender of the losing side.
Think of the Japanese after Okinawa, the Germans after the Battle of the Bulge, or the final phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Years War, or the Hundred Years War. Across epochs and cultures, blood has flown in proportion inverse to the hope of victory. Perhaps what the Middle East requires in order to achieve a peace settlement is not less killing, but more.
Mut der Verzweiflung, as the Germans call it, courage borne of desperation, arises not from the delusion that victory is possible, but rather from the conviction that death is preferable to surrender. Wars of this sort end long after one side has been defeated, namely when enough of the diehards have been killed.
I would devote more attention to fine details if I thought the large ones were generally understood. [...]
Let my reader now dwell on just one crucial, historical fact. It is the single biggest obstacle to obtaining any kind of peace between Israel and the Arabs: All the Arab states, with the arguable exception of Jordan, have consistently demanded a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees and all of their descendants -- to the patch you coloured in as Israel. They have confined the great majority of these people to refugee camps for more than half a century, at the expense of the United Nations. The children and grandchildren and now great grandchildren of these refugees have thus been kept from assimilating and making new lives elsewhere, as the ultimate demographic weapon against Israel.
The State of Israel was created in 1948, by the same UN, in the face of an invasion by the armies of all its Arab neighbours. Some three-quarters of the Arabs living in what became Israel fled -- mostly on instructions from their own leaders, who promised they would soon return. The number was between 600,000 and 700,000. At the same time, Jews dispersed throughout the Arab world -- some 860,000 of them, counted on their arrival in Israel -- fled their own homes and left most of their belongings to make new lives in Israel. Forget blame -- I am only saying look at both halves of the apple.
The Jews of Israel are five million today, plus a million-and-a-quarter Arabs, the descendants of those who did not leave and, in fact, flourished. The Palestinian diaspora -- descendants of those who did leave -- has been variously estimated at now five-plus million. And almost everyone now living in the "occupied territories" can claim at least one ancestor who lived within the Green Line to clinch his own right of return. If Israel can be forced to receive them, Israel ceases to be the only Jewish state and quickly becomes the 23rd member of the Arab League.
Surprise: Israel does not agree to commit suicide. Surprise: the Arabs will settle for nothing less. The diplomatic "road map" leaves this issue to be resolved "later."
A move by the House of Lords to outlaw sex in public toilets has been slammed as "blatantly homophobic" by gay rights campaigners.
Fourteen Labour peers rebelled against the Government to back a Tory amendment barring all forms of sexual activities in public loos by men and women.
But campaigners say the move is clearly aimed at stopping gay men from 'cottaging'.
Peter Tatchell, of gay human rights group OutRage!, said: "This new amendment is blatantly homophobic.
"By singling out public toilets it targets sex behaviour between gay men and ignores sex in other public places involving heterosexuals."
Leaders of an effort backed by the Bush administration to accelerate and improve teacher training say they have met with considerable resistance from organizations allied with teachers unions and education schools, including the sabotage of a proposed new teacher certification test.
The leaking of test questions, which the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence said led it to cancel a $1.2 million agreement with the testing company ACT Inc., marks the latest battle in a long war between the new organization and several established education groups. Those groups dispute the administration's contention that education schools are not doing a good job of producing qualified teachers.
Besides trying to develop a new way for college graduates to become certified teachers, the board wants to award a special Master Teacher certificate to experienced teachers based on a measurement of student improvement in their classes. That would put the board in competition with an organization supported by teachers unions, the Arlington-based National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which grants national certificates to teachers based on their knowledge and skills, as assessed by experts.
As proud as most Jews are of Lieberman, he's no longer a novelty and he's not bursting onto the scene on a national ticket. He's scrapping with eight other Democrats, some of whom have more appeal to Jewish liberals than the hawkish, values-oriented Lieberman does.
And he's running in a world beset by terrorism, Middle East violence, anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiment. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process sits at a delicate early stage. All that leads some Jews to wonder if it's the right time for a Jewish president.
"Things have gotten a lot more fraught than they were three years ago," says Alan Mittleman, a religion professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania and head of a three-year study of Jews in American public life. "Then, you could have said Lieberman was the de facto leader of the American Jewish community. I'm not sure anymore."
Jews are only about 4% of the U.S. electorate, but they have clout beyond their numbers. They are active fundraisers and contributors. In competitive states such as New Jersey, where they make up 12% of the electorate, they can be a pivotal voting bloc. Jews voted 4-to-1 for Democrats in the last three presidential elections, a ratio Republicans want to narrow in 2004.
Lieberman's pollster, Mark Penn, says Lieberman has a 93% approval rating among Jews. But only about half that percentage pick him when asked whom they'd vote for in a Democratic primary.
In Japan, politically unaccountable bureaucrats manipulate those who are politically accountable. Politicians do whatever the bureaucrats tell them to do.
There are numerous other examples illustrating this peculiar structure. Japan has a large number of mega-banks on the verge of bankruptcy. It is not an exaggeration to say that management failures were predominantly caused by the bureaucrats in the Finance Ministry who provided "administrative guidance" to incompetent managers, often themselves retired bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats paid special attention exclusively to the expansion of the banking system - reminding one of the World War II Imperial Navy leaders and their faith in battleship militarism. The Yamato was the biggest battleship in the world at the time and was ultimately blown to pieces by US air attacks in the sea near Okinawa. At present, Japanese mega-banks are, to varying degrees, the equivalents of the Yamato and have every chance of suffering the same fate.
And take a look at what the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education and Science are promoting. Widely known as "education reform", the policy can, on the contrary, be taken as "education destruction" in practice. It was agreed that there was too much pressure on primary-school students. So now, thanks to officious bureaucrats, Japanese primary education is being devastated. Teachers are forced to use 3 for the ratio for calculating the circumference of a circle instead of the previously used 3.14, a more correct approximation of pi. Making too much of English-language schooling produces children who are unable to speak, write and read proper Japanese or English. Similarly in higher education, universities are forced to merge and teaching and research plans are drawn up centrally, all in the interest of budgetary efficiency and "fairer", more uniform national standards. They
put an emphasis on the forced integration of a number of national and public universities and assess academic research plans submitted by teaching staff in order to draw up a budget. We are facing bureaucratically imposed educational totalitarianism. The study of philosophy or history, the basic issues in the humanities, is becoming impossible. Such subjects are "impractical".
Japan - after numerous failed efforts at reform - remains filled with politicians who are only interested in power and their ability to hand out concessions to stay in power. Bureaucrats rule. Japan is neither a democratic nor a liberal state. It is an autocratic state ruled by unaccountable bureaucrats manipulating unthinking politicians buying off a dwindling number of voters participating in elections.
What, gentle reader, are bureaucrats? Hired janitors who think they own the whole building. The French, being more given to speculation than we, have recently produced several students of bureaucracy, several authors who have studied the fonctionnaire as one studies other poisonous insects, and even tried to explain and account for his actions, his inhibitions. The result is not encouraging. One can sympathize with a tyrant, led on by some megalomania or some dream of ultimate benefit to the race or some decoration of his own personal glory; one can sympathize with the crook who does it for excitement, or the poor devil who steals to feed himself or his family; but for the rond-de-cuir who sits in an office devising, in perfect safety, some inane means of annoying others, one can have no tolerance.
[A]ccording to the medical profession, the experimental treatment had worked. Susan lived almost three months longer than the average patient with glioblastoma. Somewhere in some computer database, Susan's experimental regimen will be counted a success. She was a "responder." And therein lies the terrible truth behind the approval of "miracle drugs" on the basis of "tumor shrinkage" or "extended days." Susan's life was extended. But at what cost?
During those final months, we incurred expenses for four ambulance trips, two weeks in a critical care center, a full-time home health-care aide, a feeding tube and electronic monitor, home hospital equipment, occupational therapists, social workers and medication. My wife's treatment cost at least $200,000 (most of which, fortunately, was covered by insurance). I had to greatly curtail my work schedule and hire someone to handle the myriad bills.
I still hear the words of my wife's surgeon after her disastrous third surgery: "We have saved your wife's life. . . . We have given you the ability to spend more quality time with your loved one." And the words she scribbled on a notepad two weeks later: "depressed . . . no more . . . please."
Susan's last half hour was peaceful. We gave her morphine. Her eyes fluttered. I held her hand. Finally, her breathing stopped. On the table next to her were hundreds of pills, nutrition bottles, vials, needles. No longer needed.
The bigger the fish, the longer the story. That is why, nearly two weeks later, it still takes Ron Roland considerable time to recount his battle with a 1,152-pound bluefin tuna, the largest fish ever caught on rod-and-reel in the western Gulf of Mexico.
During the Memorial Day weekend, Roland and three more fishermen aboard the 50-foot Hatteras, Miss Cathy, were participants in the Baton Rouge Invitational out of Venice, La. They targeted blue marlin, wahoo, dorado and yellowfin tuna in near-perfect conditions but for many hours had missed their marks.
Most of their time was spent trolling around two deep-water production platforms, Ursa and Mars, both of which are traditional stops for Louisiana's sportfishing fleet. They dragged baits elsewhere, too, but caught nothing.
Around 10 a.m. Saturday morning, after spending the night offshore, they heard radio chatter about a rip line near another platform, Lena, 25 miles off the delta and on the way home. Boats already there had hooked a variety of fish, including a couple of blue marlin. With little to lose, they spooled up and sprinted north.
"There were chicken dolphin all over that rip," said Roland, who lives near Dallas and is a longtime friend of the boat's owners, brothers Paul and Michael Ippolito. Hours passed, and still no bites. The engines fell idle, and Roland figured that someone had called it quits.
Instead, Michael had spotted a violent surface commotion in the distance and was convinced it was caused by bluefin tuna, although Gulf fishermen rarely have encountered these giants since the 1980s.
Michael repositioned the boat, and his crew dropped six large lures into the wake.
"About 30 seconds later," Roland said, "the flat line screamed."
Standing under the merciless sun outside his office, surrounded by employees shouting angrily about pay, Jabbar Ali al-Leaby, the director general of the South Oil Company, lost the little patience he had left.
"Be satisfied with what you got," he told the men. "Do you know what I went through to get even this money for you?"
It was only three hours into the workday, but Mr. Leaby's frustrations started, as they do every morning, when he arrived around 8 to the lone refurbished office in a complex of buildings so thoroughly ransacked that birds dart through the upper stories. Employees of South Oil, Iraq's leading oil producer before the war, are now idle because looting has brought most of the company to a standstill.
"The other day, there was looting and sabotage at the North Rumaila field," Mr. Leaby said. "The day before that, at the Zubayr field. For three months, I've been talking, talking, talking about this, and I'm sick of it."
This is now the state of the Iraqi oil industry, custodian of the world's third largest oil reserves - an estimated 112 billion barrels - and the repository of hope for the United States-led alliance and the Iraqi people themselves. Money from oil, the Bush administration has said repeatedly, will drive Iraq's economic revival, which in turn will foster the country's political stability. Many Iraqis agree.
Yet from the vast Kirkuk oil field in the north to the patchwork of rich southern fields around Basra, Iraq's oil industry, once among the best-run and most smartly equipped in the world, is in tatters.
Looting, sabotage and the continued lack of security at oil facilities are the most recent problems the industry and its American overseers must address in order to get petroleum flowing again, especially for export.
Some Iraqis believe that the looting is deliberate sabotage by people still loyal to the Baath Party rule of Saddam Hussein. Whoever is behind the pilfering and destruction, they have compounded the problems accumulated over 12 years of United Nations sanctions. And the expertise needed to get the oil flowing again often resides with oilmen now tainted by their past association with Mr. Hussein.
For America, September 11 was a new Great Awakening. It realized, for the first time, that it was a globalized entity itself. It no longer had frontiers. Its boundaries were the world, for from whatever part of the world harbored its enemies, it could be attacked, and if such enemies possessed weapons of mass destruction, mortally attacked. For this reason America was obliged to construct a new strategic doctrine, replacing totally that of National Security Council paper 68 of 1950, which laid down the doctrine of containment. In a globalized world the United States now has to anticipate its enemies, search out and destroy their bases, and disarm states likely to aid them. I call this defensive imperialism. It is a novel kind, but embraces elements of all the old. Significantly, NSC 68 of 1950 specifically repudiates imperialism. Its replacement will necessarily embrace it in its new form. There are compelling reasons why the United States is uniquely endowed to exercise this kind of global authority.
First, America has the language of the twenty-first century. English is already the first world language in many respects, and this century will see its rapid extension and consolidation. As first the Greeks, then the Romans discovered, possession of a common language is the first vital and energizing step towards
embracing common norms of law, behavior, and culture. A more secure world will be legislated for, policed, and adjudicated in English. Second, America has, and will continue to acquire, the technology of the twenty-first century, its lead being widened by its success in providing the clearest climate of freedom in which inventors, pioneers, and entrepreneurs of all kinds can operate. In the nineteenth century, the great age of the formal empires, the imperialist thrust was backed by the industrial revolution, producing manufactured goods much cheaper and in far greater quantity than ever before. In 1800 it was Asia which produced the majority (57 percent) of world manufactured output, the West only 29 percent; by 1900 the West was producing 86 percent, Asia only 10 percent. Today, America's production of world wealth, both absolutely and relatively, is accelerating. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, it added $5 trillion to its annual GDP. By 2050 the US share of global output will constitute over a quarter of the world total and will be as much as three times as big as, for instance, the European Union.
Traditionally, successful imperialism has reflected high birth-rates and the ability to export large surplus populations. The climax of European imperialism in the nineteenth century coincided with the European population explosion. America has never exported people overseas. On the contrary, its growing power and wealth has reflected its ability to attract and absorb them. That continues. American now accepts more immigrants than the rest of the world put together. The amazing ability of groups like the Cubans, the Hong Kong Chinese, the Vietnamese, and other new arrivals to strike roots and create wealth is a key part of America's continuing success story. But America also has a high birth rate. Its population is now coming up to the 300 million mark. By 2050 it will be over 400 million. By contrast, Europe's population will shrink and the percentage of working age will fall rapidly. Population forecasts are notoriously unreliable and some predictions of what is likely to happen in Europe (and Japan) in this century are so alarming as to be discounted. But clearly there is a marked and growing contrast between Old Europe and Young America. And the combination of an accelerating technology and an expanding world-force will be irresistible in terms of economic and military power. [...]
One thing is clear: America is unlikely to cease to be an empire in the fundamental sense. It will not share its sovereignty with anyone. It will continue to promote international efforts of proven worth, like GATT, and to support military alliances like NATO where appropriate. But it will not allow the UN or any other organization to infringe on its natural right to defend itself as it sees fit. The new globalization of security will proceed with the UN if possible, without it if necessary. The empire for liberty is the dynamic of change.
Fifty years on, the Rosenbergs' trial and execution remains the most potent emblem of this gruesome period in US history. Jean-Paul Sartre described the execution as "a legal lynching that has covered a whole nation in blood". "When two innocents are sentenced to death, it is the whole world's business," he added.
And the world duly made the Rosenbergs their business. Before their execution, American embassies across the globe were flooded with petitions and letters; one protester was killed in the crush at a "Liberez les Rosenbergs" rally in the Place de la Concorde, Paris. The liberal consensus at the time was that they were both completely innocent. Investigations and revelations since the end of the cold war have revealed that Julius Rosenberg probably did pass secrets to the Soviet Union, although nothing remotely as serious as those relating to the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, Ethel was almost certainly innocent - sentenced to death on the accusation that she typed the spying notes, but in truth because she refused to testify against her husband.
Her brother, David Greenglass, whose testimony played a major role in sending her to the chair, has since admitted that he lied. He said that he gave false testimony because he feared that his own wife might be charged, and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to lie. "I don't know who typed it, frankly, and to this day I can't remember that the typing took place," said Greenglass, who was sentenced to 15 years and released from prison in 1960 for his part in the so-called "spy ring".
If the Rosenbergs' deaths were symbolic of America's political intolerance, the fate of Robert Meeropol, and that of his older brother, illustrated the precariousness of the lives of children whose parents were members of the Communist party.
Beloved Children,
I am sitting in the kitchen of the little house at Medfield, our second farm which is cut off by the ridge and a quarter-mile across the fields from our home place, where you are. I am writing a book. In it I am speaking to you. But I am also speaking to the world. To both I owe an accounting.
It is a terrible book. It is terrible in what it tells about men. If anything, it is more terrible in what it tells about the world in which you live. It is about what the world calls the Hiss-Chambers Case, or even more simply, the Hiss Case. It is about a spy case. All the props of an espionage case are there--foreign agents, household traitors, stolen documents, microfilm, furtive meetings, secret hideaways, phony names, an informer, investigations, trials, official justice.
But if the Hiss Case were only this, it would not be worth my writing about or your reading about. It would be another fat folder in the sad files of the police, another crime drama in which the props would be mistaken for the play (as many people have consistently mistaken them). It would not be what alone gave it meaning, what the mass of men and women instinctively sensed it to be, often without quite knowing why. It would not be what, at the very beginning, I was moved to call it: "a tragedy of history."
For it was more than human tragedy. Much more than Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers was on trial in the trials of Alger Hiss. Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts.
At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case. On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time--Communism and Freedom--came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men. Indeed, it would have been hard, in a world still only dimly aware of what the conflict is about, to find two other men who knew so clearly. Both had been schooled in the same view of history (the Marxist view). Both were trained by the same party in the same selfless, semisoldierly discipline. Neither would nor could yield without betraying, not himself, but his faith; and the different character of these faiths was shown by the different conduct of the two men toward each other throughout the struggle. For, with dark certitude, both knew, almost from the beginning, that the Great Case could end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending figures, just as the history of our times (both men had been taught) can end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.
But this destruction is not the tragedy. The nature of tragedy is itself misunderstood. Part of the world supposes that the tragedy in the Hiss Case lies in the acts of disloyalty revealed. Part believes that the tragedy lies in the fact that an able, intelligent man, Alger Hiss, was cut short in the course of a brilliant public career. Some find it tragic that Whittaker Chambers, of his own will, gave up a $30,000-a-year job and a secure future to haunt for the rest of his days the ruins of his life. These are shocking facts, criminal facts, disturbing facts: they are not tragic.
Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy--not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. That is why this terrible book is also a book of hope For it is about the struggle of the human soul--of more than one human soul. It is in this sense that the Hiss Case is a tragedy. This is its meaning beyond the headlines, the revelations, the shame and suffering of the people involved. But this tragedy will have been for nothing unless men understand it rightly, and from it the world takes hope and heart to begin its own tragic struggle with the evil that besets it from within and from without, unless it faces the fact that the world, the whole world, is sick unto death and that, among other things, this Case has turned a finger of fierce light into the suddenly opened and reeking body of our time.
Dahlan gave an excellent five-minute synopsis of the situation, and concluded by saying to Bush: "There are some things we can do and some things we cannot. We will do our best. But we will need help."
Mofaz burst in at the end of Dahlan's presentation and said: "Well, they won't be getting any help from us; they have their own security service."
You could see that Bush was irritated, says the participant, and he turned on Mofaz angrily: "Their own security service? But you have destroyed their security service."
Mofaz shook his head and said: "I do not think that we can help them, Mr. President," - to which Bush said: "Oh, but I think that you can. And I think that you will."
Then Bush turned to Abbas ... and said: "Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps you could give an overview of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza." Abbas outlined the increasingly dire situation of the territories, saying that the humanitarian crisis was deepening, and that while recent actions of the finance minister had eased the problems, the insertion of new funding was necessary.
Sharon then interrupted and said: "The insertion of new funding must be dependent on your good behavior."
Bush was again visibly irritated: "You should release their money as soon as possible. This will help the situation."
Sharon shook his head: "We have to deal with security first, and we will condition the release of their monies on this alone."
Bush peered at Sharon: "But it is their money ..."
Sharon said: "Nevertheless, Mr. President ..." and Bush interrupted him: "It is their money, give it to them."
After that meeting, Bush turned to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and said, "We have a problem with Sharon I can see, but I like that young man [Dahlan] and I think their prime minister is incapable of lying. I hope that they will be successful. We can work with them."
Now, I admit Bush is pretty good at this. But sooner or later, this kind of cleverness tends to backfire. My hopes are not high.
Today, the Soviet threat (and its identity with socialism) now appears to have been grossly exaggerated. Indeed, the Cold War itself can be seen as an historical hiatus--a ritually choreographed standoff that afforded the American ruling class with both protection from dissent and an organizing principle for its retrograde foreign and domestic policies, while it provided the Soviet Union with a rationale for the Communist Party?s unquestioned rule at home and in Eastern Europe. In short, this time of fear and conformity was a godsend for the rulers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. [...]
The difference between ritual Cold War tensions and the terrors of the new era--real and faux--is all too clear. Now we confront a true enemy, an unpredictable, amorphous, almost intangible seething mass of freelancers, many of them highly educated and civilized, others feral, but all acting out of rage against the new American Empire. These popular forces confront American-style capitalism spontaneously, through non-governmental groups that ignore national boundaries. And they operate with little institutional control. Unlike the old enemy, the new one mounts deadly terrorist attacks on symbols of American military and commercial power, is secretly and informally organized, and is widely dispersed. As such it offers few clear targets for political or military engagement.
This situation threatens the social stability that post-industrial capitalism requires to function smoothly. And it offers the opportunity for megalomaniacal right-wingers to promote their militarist policies and dreams of world domination--as the Bush administration?s actions show all too well. For all of democratic society, and especially for the left, this new (and certainly transitory) stage of history is costly and frightening. It is the price we pay for 50 years of political and intellectual stagnation, a time when the political dynamic of capitalism was sidetracked by the Cold War. As a lifelong socialist, and one-time Communist, the movement of history has always concerned me. And as a pathological optimist, I have always
viewed American history as tending inexorably, if fitfully, toward a more inclusive democracy. Like many Americans who experienced the 20th century, I see history moving forward, driven by the progressive interaction between capitalist and socialist principles.
Still, by equating opposition to corporate domination of public life with disloyalty, our country?s rulers disoriented the left, stifled public discussion of the most basic public policy issues, and transformed the left into a plethora of single-issue movements. This removed the progressive dialectic of opposing principles from our political culture and steadily narrowed the difference between the major parties. Without vigorous debate over alternative values and principles the left has receded from view, and our political system has been converted to one focused on personality, appearance, and the ability to raise money for trivial, brain-numbing television and radio commercials.
In short, it has become more and more difficult for working people, or associations who represent their interests, to participate meaningfully in national affairs. And as working people are excluded from this process, fewer and fewer bother to vote.
With differences between the major parties or their candidates disappearing, and with the left--and the socialist ideas that shaped it--absent from popular discourse, more and more citizens retreat into private life, ignorant of the impact of public policies on their lives.
The granite body of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) is lying chopped into 125 pieces in a forest somewhere south-east of Berlin but its exact whereabouts is being kept a close secret by the city's post-Communist rulers.
The pieces are the remains of a 60ft-high statue of the former Soviet leader that dominated the city's grim, tower-block-flanked Lenin Square for 21 years until it was torn down in a fit of ideological cleansing after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Lenin statue's remains have been kept under wraps ever since for fear that souvenir hunters might raid the tomb and sell its parts on the black market.
Had it not been for the runaway success of the film Good bye Lenin!, which is showing to packed houses in Germany, that might have been the end of Berlin's association with the first hero of the Soviet Union. However, the city is now considering resurrecting his statue.
Good bye Lenin!, directed by Wolfgang Becker, takes a nostalgic yet satirical look at the collapse of East Germany. It attracted 3.44 million cinemagoers during the first month of its release, making it one of the most successful German films on record.
A central leitmotiv in the film is the Lenin monument's removal. The statue is first shown at its East Berlin location standing next to a huge Coca-Cola sign - to demonstrate that the Wall has fallen. Then the giant edifice is uprooted and spirited away by helicopter.
The powerful image, a symbol of the West's wilful destruction of East Germany's identity, has sparked a debate in Berlin over whether to restore it to its former position in what is now called United Nations Square.
[T]he death of France ... is an increasingly plausible possibility ...
Frontpage Symposium has put together a distinguished panel to deal with this phenomenon.... [W]e have the pleasure to be joined by Jean-Francois Revel ... Charles Kupchan ... Guy Milliere ... Alain Madelin ... Toni Kamins ... and Yves Roucaute....
Madelin: I hope it's still possible to change the situation, but it would be necessary to act now. Within a few years it will be too late....
France would like to build Europe to make of it a kind of rival of the United States. The other European countries do not share this vision of Europe....
Milliere: France is declining fast, demographically speaking and economically speaking. France does not serve its own interest: as a part of the West, if it was the case, she would have to be on the side of the West, and so on the side of the United States.
France behaves more and more as if she does belong to the West anymore and as though she is the leader of the third world. Doing this, France has nothing to win, maybe just second-rate contracts and an ephemeral popularity among all the frustrated in the world. France will win only one thing, and for a short time, peace inside France: it will avoid riots among Muslims living in France now....
Kamins: There are similarities between France's historical relationship with its Jews and its relationship with its Muslims....
The Muslims in France are regarded with fear, suspicion, and hatred....
Interlocutor: The more I study the history of France in the 20th century, the more I come to the conclusion that the psyche of the French people might justifiably warrant an entire psychiatric conference.
Throughout the entire 20th century, the French seemed to spend most of their time desperately craving being crushed by some kind of foreign totalitarian power. Their dreams, obviously, were shattered by the Americans, who rescued them from the Nazis and subsequently protected them from the Soviets. But now the French have cleverly figured it all out: to be taken over by Islam from within....
Milliere: I think you're right, France is a very sick country. Many French still dream about the time when France was the main power in the Western world. It has been over for three centuries now, and so they are full of envy when they think about the countries that became more powerful than France after the death of Louis XIVth. Great Britain first, then the United States. For the French, the United States has no past, no legitimacy, no culture and if they are the first power in the world it's really unfair....
For years, France has searched to create alliances against the United States.... The French dream to see the United States defeated. Just by envy. Just because France is very socialist and hates wealth and creativity....
The French love leaders that give them the appearance of strength, even if it brings them to disaster, and in front of a strong enemy, they surrender very easily. They surrendered to the Nazis in six days; they have already surrendered to radical Muslims thirty years ago.
The people I meet in France are not ready to fight: they say "soon our women will have to wear scarves, that's life"...
Madelin: It's more necessary than ever to explain to French people why anti-Americanism is stupid. America is our ally and France will be saved only if it stays the ally of the United States....
Roucaute: It's not really the fault of the French people; they receive very bad information and almost all the books they can find in bookstores are anti-American. It's the fault of the politicians who have no courage and explain nothing. It's the fault of journalists who prefer Islam to America because the majority of them have been leftists in the sixties when they were young....
Jean-Francois Revel: France is the prey of an anti-American obsession. For the French, Americans are the enemy they have to hate in every circumstance. They have to hate Americans because Americans are successful, because Americans are powerful, because the French prefer resentment to achievement. They are so obsessed by their hatred of the United States they do not see anymore the real dangers confronting France. It's a very dangerous situation. I do not know how we could go out of this situation. I honestly don?t know if it is even still possible....
Milliere: France has to pay a price for sacrificing freedom and the greatest protector of it.... America would help its French friend if it made it pay a price.
The ultimate problem for Europe -- for though the problem is most advanced in France, it is Europe-wide -- is to find the will to care about the future. Too many Europeans care only about the present. When a problem arises, the goal becomes to put it off, hopefully onto the next generation. None of these problems are beyond solution. But there is no desire to solve them. Europe has become simultaneously nihilist and narcissist: its desire is to sleep comfortably, and to drift into a gentle death ...
Milliere is right that if the U.S. were well disposed to France, then a dose of "tough love" to expose the truth and punish irresponsibility would be a kindness. But I don't think the U.S. can afford to put France's fate at the top of our foreign policy agenda: we have more pressing concerns. Our concerns may be best served by letting those who want to die, sleep. France is going to have to help herself.
MORE:
Is Europe a Province of Islam? The Danger is Called Dhimmitude (Sandro Magister, Express Online)
By signaling that he is prepared to cut interest rates once again, Alan Greenspan has entered what many analysts consider to be dangerous territory in one of the most difficult battles he has fought as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Greenspan has used his rhetorical power in recent weeks to full effect, saying that he was inclined to take out "insurance" against a new downturn
and the prospect of a sustained fall in prices, known as deflation. This hint of another cut in the short-term rate that the Fed controls has helped drive down long-term rates in the financial markets and reduced the cost of buying houses, factory equipment and many other engines of economic growth.
Before this month ends, however, Mr. Greenspan will have to switch from words to action, and he faces a dilemma in doing so.
If the Fed does reduce short-term rates--it would be the 13th cut since the start of 2001--they will fall to the lowest level since the 1950's. Rates would then be near a point where the $1 trillion money market industry had almost no room to earn profits, potentially disrupting financial markets and making it harder for some companies to borrow.
But if the Fed stands pat, it will do what Mr. Greenspan usually takes great strides to avoid doing: surprise the market. Mortgage and other interest rates would probably jump, and with the European Central Bank having cut its benchmark rate last Thursday by half a percentage point, the exchange value of the dollar might rebound somewhat, hurting American manufacturers that compete against foreign companies.
To the alarm of state conservation officials, the first confirmed Asian bighead carp has been caught in Chicago.
A surprised fisherman pulled the 38-pound fish out of the lagoon in McKinley Park, at Pershing and Damen.
State and federal agencies are spending millions in an effort to keep the dreaded Asian carp from getting into Lake Michigan and then the other Great Lakes.
The McKinley Park lagoon isn't connected to the lake. "But if somebody put it there, they could easily put it in Lake Michigan," said Tom Trudeau, fisheries program administrator for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
"Where else have the carp been put? If they survive and reproduce [in the lake], it neutralizes all the efforts to try and keep them out of the Great Lakes."
Trudeau speculated that the fish was dropped into the McKinley Park lagoon in keeping with the custom, practiced by some Asians, "that for every fish you eat, you release one."
Ockham?s Razor is one of the most important epistemic principles. It states that if you have to choose from some number of competing theories, choose the simplest theory because it is most likely to be true.
Suppose, for example, that the newspaper, which is delivered daily to your doorstep, is missing this morning. There are a number of possible explanations. The delivery person could be ill, the newspaper plant may have shut down, or outer space aliens may have stolen it for the purpose of spying on Earthlings. The obvious choice among these three possibilities is the first. The second and third choices seem increasingly unacceptable. But why? If the choice is mine, what is there to prevent me from accepting the alien theory?
The answer is that the alien theory is too complicated. The illness theory requires me to believe in the presence of a virus, something I already believe in for other reasons. The alien theory, in contrast, requires me to believe in something that I have no other reason to acknowledge. This is to say that the alien theory asks me to adopt more assumptions than does the illness theory.
One might still wonder why added assumptions constitute a problem. After all, it is not as though we are short on brain space. In fact, neuroscientists believe that vast portions of our brains go entirely unused during our lives. My interest in creativity and originality might lead me to take pride in developing a more complicated theory.
But this would be a mistake. Complication is not something to take pride in because it necessarily increases the risk of error. Each and every belief is a liability insofar as it carries the possibility that it may not be true. The more assumptions you adopt, therefore, the more likely it is that you have unknowingly committed yourself to a falsehood. Falsehood is the great enemy of intelligence. To live intelligently, we must minimize the risk of error as much as we can.
In 1989, I was in Warsaw. I was approaching a hotel that contained one of the few shops in which you could buy anything of quality, for foreign currency, as gifts for friends. Outside the hotel was a group of Romany women, one of whom approached me and asked for 20 zloties; a miniscule amount. So, without a second thought, I gave it to her. In gratitude, she offered to tell my fortune without charge. This all seemed a pleasingly exotic diversion to me, and I reasoned to myself (for at that stage I was still reasoning) that I could handle myself in the middle of the day outside a well-populated open-air coffee shop, against - if it turned out to be against - a woman half my size.
What happened then was a remarkable example of psychological games played by experienced players at the expense of a fool. The short summary is: they talked me into trusting them enough to show them the money I was carrying - in the interests of telling my fortune, of course. And soon it dawned on me that I had been conned and robbed....
I entered the hotel and said to the doorman: "You know what is going on here and you have a responsibility to warn or protect those who don't. Why don't you?"
"Once, I used to chase them away," he replied. "But I was warned that one night I would find a knife in my back. I've got to live and it's not my affair. If anyone's stupid enough to be taken in by a group of gypsies, that's their problem."
"But I'm not Polish," I protested. "I don't know anything about gypsies."
"Everyone in Europe knows about them."
"But I'm from Australia." At that, he softened. The doorman recognised in me that rare thing: a person innocent of relevant prejudices and therefore ready to be taken for a ride.
The next day, I was talking to a sociologist friend about the incident and he said: "It's funny. We spend a great deal of our time trying to disabuse our students of their standard stereotypes and prejudices. Yet, if you'd just had the normal prejudices of a Polish peasant, you'd never have got into this mess."...
"Dare to know", have courage to use your own reason (rather than accepting prejudice), was how the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant characterised the Enlightenment.
But the Enlightenment didn't have it all its own way. Compare Kant with his conservative Anglo-Irish contemporary Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France: "Prejudice is of ready application in an emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature."
When we have become gods, when our powers are unlimited and we are all omniscient at zero cost, then prejudice will be banished. Until then, we all must rely on it. The effort to discredit prejudice is merely a kind of intellectual bullying, a public con game, used by opportunists to promote their own prejudices by stealth. The victims are persuaded to give up their own prejudices, while the con artists keep and use their own, just as the Warsaw gypsies kept their own cash but persuaded Mr. Krygier to give up his.
Let's admit it: we conservatives are gullible rubes. We've let liberals con us out of our prejudices for decades, and squawked not while they acted freely on their own.
Therefore stand tall, I say, and show the world your reasonable prejudices. Be not afraid!
The real question is not why Senator Clinton put up with [Bill], but why she continues to put up with humiliating questions about her marriage and personal life after so many years of scrutiny, mockery and investigation?
An equally real question would be, when the media will ask Mrs. Clinton a probing question?
A politician's wife who only a few years ago seemed to have been dealt out of the game, Mrs. Clinton now seems like the winning player in her husband's favorite card game, hearts. She started with the jack of diamonds, then couldn't dodge the queen of spades. As her many political enemies watch aghast as she moves inexorably from the Senate floor to the television studios dotting her book tour, Mrs. Clinton appears to be sweeping up every trick.
A loose-fitting shirt hid the scar and concave area that former Senator Edward W. Brooke spoke of as he moved his hand across the space from his right armpit to the center of his chest. In his 83 years, life has held plenty of unexpected turns for Mr. Brooke, the Massachusetts Republican who in 1966 became the first African-American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
But his current journey, Mr. Brooke said, has been among the most shocking.
"When the doctor told me," he said at his home on a horse and cattle farm 45 miles southwest of Washington, "all I could say was: `Me? Come on.' "
Last September, Mr. Brooke was told he had breast cancer. Less than two weeks later he underwent a double mastectomy. After struggling with how to share his experience with even his family and closest friends, he is now speaking publicly for the first time, to bring attention to a disease that many men assume they cannot get.
While breast cancer in men is rare, a higher percentage of men than women die of the disease because it is typically detected at a much later stage. All men have some breast tissue, even if it is not noticeable. The small amount of breast tissue that exists in men may be more apparent if it swells at puberty or later in life.
Cancer researchers estimate that breast cancer will be diagnosed in 1,500 men this year and that roughly 400 of them will eventually die of the illness. Of the approximately 211,000 new cases of breast cancer that will be diagnosed this year in women, an estimated 40,000 will lead to death.
I could pack this article with lies and, legally speaking, you couldn't touch me. I could make up statistics, distort my research, trumpet misleading claims, or tell you that I drive a 2002 Lexus sedan with 18,000 miles on it, when in fact I drive a 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon with 118,000 miles. Now, I have not in fact filled this article with lies, because I am a stand-up guy. Take my word for it. But the point is that, unless I commit libel or fraud, lying is legal.
Why? Because empowering the courts to act as roving truth commissions would overburden the legal system and chill public discourse. Centuries of hard experience with inquisitions and censorship boards and speech codes have proved that vigorous, uninhibited public debate is the only reliable way to sort truth from falsehood. The cure for bad speech is more speech. This is the great paradox at the heart of the First Amendment: To learn truth, allow lies.
All well and good. But there is that fraud exception. If I claim that my 1990 Cavalier wagon is a 2002 Lexus sedan during a conversation in which I happen to be selling you my car, I have left the First Amendment behind. I have committed an illegal act, and no one would assert otherwise. That is because my claim, in this particular context, would be "commercial speech": speech that, as David C. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, put it recently in an interview, is "directed at consumers describing the price or type of goods or services for the purposes of inducing a sale."
Also well and good. But what if, instead of misrepresenting my car, I try to raise its price with ads or articles claiming -- falsely or tendentiously -- that old cars are safer and more reliable than new cars? Am I committing fraud? Or am I stirring controversial ideas into the public debate? Or both?
If you think the answer is obvious, there is a seat waiting for you on the Supreme Court. This month, in the case of Nike v. Kasky, the Court will rule on a corporate-speech case that is as difficult as it is important.
In 1998, a new term hit the political scene. According to two of the most powerful leaders in the developed world, US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the "Third Way" was the ideology of the future. Their declarations, and a series of subsequent Third Way summits, evoked strong responses from political parties in all parts of the ideological spectrum. For a while, momentum began to build behind the phrase. But five years on, the Third Way movement seems largely to have lapsed, at least as measured by media and academic interest in the past three years.
It is possible to distil five ideas that encapsulate the core of Third Way thinking: transcending the distinction between left and right; advancing equality of opportunity; employing mutual responsibility; strengthening communities; and embracing globalisation. [...]
If one accepts that the theory of the Third Way was relevant to modern social democratic parties, then there are two possible reasons why it might have slipped from prominence in recent years. One is that it explained too much - and has now been accepted by the majority of social democratic parties in the developed world. The alternative is that it explained too little, and has declined because policymakers have realised that it does not provide guidance on the most difficult choices to be made in government. [...]
The mere fact that the Third Way arose in the late-1990s makes it difficult to see how it could have affected the move to the right by many social democratic parties over the previous two decades. Indeed, it seems more likely that the electoral success of conservative political parties in Britain, the US and Germany during the 1980s was a much more significant factor in a transition that had begun even before the collapse of Eastern European state socialism in 1989-90. But likewise, critics of the left are wrong to say that the Third Way has declined because of its rejection of their values.
Most mainstream policymakers in social democratic parties today sit comfortably within the scope of the Third Way. Yet so would many conservative policymakers, and therein lies the rub. [...]
For many policymakers, the very generality of the Third Way has meant that it does little to help them choose between competing proposals. As Ralf Dahrendorf, Director of the London School of Economics, has argued, the Third Way is a politics that speaks of the need for hard choices but then avoids them by trying to please everybody.
A long time ago, a friend and I were reading a description of the area we lived in at the time and marveled at the inaccuracy of it. Marveled probably isn't the right word, hooted and laughed was more like it. I don't remember what the article was about, but I remember the intended descriptor and our reactions with crystal clarity, and I had what, for a young fellow in his later teen years, amounts to a profound insight into the nature of journalism. I'm not only proud that I attained the thought at such a young age, I've been saying it ever since: if you want to fully grasp the tenuous nature of human understanding, read an out-of-town journalist's take on your situation and its people, and you will never again trust the profession. The lies aren't in the reporter. They're in the system of reporting itself. It's a lazy and inaccurate business even when the individual isn't a lazy and inaccurate man.
I've had enough experience as a reporter to lead me to believe in pack behavior and packaged ideas even in the soi-disant independent press. I went to Huntsville to report on the execution of a black convicted criminal, one bad dude named Gary Graham. I found a bored group of people milling about, spitting on the lawn and telling fat girl jokes while the on-air media from well-paid television studios were making up a scene of breathtaking protest action. They were, to a man, fabricating the situation surrounding us. I have never been able to tell if this surprising lack of credible research was something they did as a matter of course in order to gain viewers or they really couldn't tell what was happening. But I do know they didn't even put forth a minimal amount of effort. When I heard the news that New York Times columnist Rick Bragg was caught showing up for only two hours in the locations he covered, the snarky part of my brain whispered "What, was he doing an in depth report?"
Here's why.
I distinctly remember one on-air news reporter from a far away state who was covering Gary Graham’s execution. He got out of a van, asked another one of the reporters assembled if anything was going on in a tone that suggested this was the most boring thing he'd ever done in his life. He then made up a story that sounded as if he had been there all day picking the brains of the people in the crowd, when in reality he'd just finished fixing his well sprayed hair and stretching his legs from the long drive. The total time this well coifed newsman spent gathering information on the people present, from the time he got out of the van to the time he started telling everyone about the nature of the protesting crowd in front of the Huntsville prison, was maybe sixty seconds. And it only took him that long because the cameraman was fumbling with something. I wasn't surprised by that time, though, because of my early exposure to the works of journalism. Rick Bragg may very well be a disgrace to his profession, but I can't keep it out of my mind that he stayed an hour and fifty-nine minutes longer than our friend the television reporter did.
Sullivan and his readers and the world at-large are learning the wrong lesson from the Jayson Blair imbroglio. The truth is a bit more scandalous, and in a way a bit more pedestrian than they've been led to believe. The turgid reality is that the most important kind of reporting, the kind which goes beyond a merely technical recitation of facts, is a very hard and highly subjective business. Reporters from large and distinguished papers don't seem to be any more able to look through the veil of image and reality than reporters and writers from small or independent media. They may also find it harder to peer through the haze of human understanding: after all, reporters like David Barstow are people with good jobs, good salaries and friends who are in the business. It's very easy to fall into the habit of checking your facts against what other people in the business already think. Even in places where there is a simple comradeship, the instinct will always be to repeat what everyone in the newsroom knows as opposed to blazing new trails or seeing for yourself. In places with gladiator/leader editors like Howell Raines the regularly powerful human incentives to conformity are vastly multiplied, to the point where there is always pressure to think and say the right thing at the right time.
What this means in practice is that you arrive at a place expecting to see what you already know. The journalists and reporters and "on-air personalities" at the Graham execution already knew the protestors were worked up and indignant, and it fit the program bill, so what if they didn't seem all that agitated when they got out of the van? Heck, they would be in a tizzy any second, wouldn't they? No sense in waiting around for a spark of life to report the inevitable, reasons the reporter. After all, he's been made to drive all the way to some godawful place in Texas to report, and he's just human, and everyone knows the protestors are indignant and hyped, so...
And pretty soon it seems senseless waiting around to see anything, you might as well just report it anyway. Blair just went one step further and took what he already knew into the realm of whole fabric fiction instead of going through the motions of reporting at the scene like the Huntsville news crew. The most important lesson—and the most damning indictment—to learn about the Blair scandal at the New York Times is how short the leap was into making up contacts. The most astute observations on the nature of the protest I went to came offhand from an old lady wobbling back to her apartment: "These people are bored and looking for something to do on the weekend." In little more than a dozen words she explained more about the true nature of the gathered pack than all the journalists and news anchors gathered. Something is certainly wrong with journalism when a truth obvious to bystanders is hidden from our best and brightest.
There are two types of people who do well in dictatorships: those who make themselves politically indispensable, doing whatever bit of wickedness the dictatorship requires, and those who make themselves economically indispensable, keeping the trains and refineries running smoothly. Dathar Khashab, the chain-smoking, overalls-wearing 58-year-old director general of the Daura oil refinery near Baghdad, falls into the latter category.
Under Saddam Hussein, Khashab rose through the ranks of the oil industry, excelling at a series of jobs. He first started working at Daura in 1968 as a junior engineer in the maintenance department. After it was bombed by American planes during the first gulf war, he oversaw its reconstruction. In March, he became the refinery's director general.
Despite the political crudity of Saddam Hussein's government, its oil industry had a reputation for being stocked with well-educated professionals who were able to maintain a constant flow of oil despite international sanctions and nearly constant warfare. Of course, top managers were also members of the Baath Party, the political instrument that Hussein used to pull Iraq into tyranny.
This is not a good time to be a Baathist. L. Paul Bremer III, who oversees the American occupation, recently told reporters in Baghdad that he was taking measures ''to extirpate Baathists and Baathism from Iraq forever,'' declaring, ''We have and will aggressively move to seek to identify these people and remove them from office.''
But the only way an engineer or doctor or professor under Hussein's government was able to rise in the system was to join the Baath Party. Khashab, for example, claims to have joined when he became the refinery's assistant director general last year; his promotion, he says, required it. This may be true, though it may not; Iraq is filled with Baathists who say now that they never wanted to be Baathists.
These people present a thorny problem for Bremer and other leaders of the American occupation. During the war, American soldiers tried to kill Baathists wherever possible, or at least to detain them. But now, throughout broken-down Iraq, the American soldiers are discovering that many of the people who know how to make the trains run on time, or run at all, are, like Khashab, Baathists. What should be done with them?
This question is acutely felt at Iraq's refineries, because postwar social stability depends to a large degree on reliable supplies of gasoline and propane. And in May, social stability, like gasoline and propane, were in considerably short supply. The situation at the Daura refinery was particularly worrisome, because it supplies the capital with most of its gas. If Daura falters, Baghdad falters; they are conjoined twins, needing each other to survive. Once the U.S. military realized this, the protection of Daura became a priority. In early May, the job of protecting and overseeing Daura was handed to Tom Hough, a 28-year-old captain in the 82nd Airborne Division whose principal occupations are bass fishing, deer hunting and, he says, ''jumping out of planes and killing people.''
Hough knew nothing about oil, gas or how to run a refinery, yet this was not unusual. The occupation of Iraq was turning into the military equivalent of improvisational theater. According to the plan drawn up in Washington before the invasion, the postwar administration of installations like Daura was supposed to fall to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, run by Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general, but in the looting-filled aftermath of the invasion, ORHA emerged as a case study in haplessness.
When Hough arrived, Daura was limping along at about 30 percent capacity. Its workers were being paid little, and only sporadically, and there was the risk of a riot if that didn't change soon. S.U.V.'s and tankers belonging to the refinery were regularly being hijacked or simply disappearing. (Crooked managers drove off with a showroom's worth of vehicles.) And that was the least bad news. The worst bad news was that the refinery's postwar management was the same as its prewar management -- and that meant Baathists. Hough's first task was to figure out what to do with Khashab.
As always, it's a mistake to think of a battleground as something that can just be tidied up. What conflict hasn't produced decades' worth of hazardous war souvenirs? You can still occasionally dig up the rusting bullets of our 19th-century Civil War in the mountains of the Southeast. There remain regions in France still marked by the chemical poisons of World War I. The land mines placed in wars, small and large, continue to maim the innocent in Asia and Africa. And in Japan, the destructive effects of World War II's ultimate radioactive weapon may have been repaired, but they have certainly not been forgotten.
Should DU bullets be classified in this company? Rationally, of course, there's no comparing anti-tank munitions with the legacy of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, "Fat Man" and "Little Boy." Some remnant tons of slightly radioactive metal should barely flicker on the environmental threat meter. If the rest of the world would just be more rational, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
That kind of exasperated reasoning approaches the position of the Pentagon and, in fact, many independent scientists. Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society is downright sarcastic on the question: "I always figured it would be a lot better to be shot with a uranium bullet than a dum-dum - it should make a good clean hole. Physicists don't spend much time worrying about natural uranium, and DU is even less radioactive by about 40 percent." [...]
So what is it about DU bullets that makes our military swoon? Depleted uranium is a byproduct of weapons processing. Remove the lighter, more radioactive isotopes for bomb production and you're left with something like the world's heaviest rock. DU is almost twice as dense as lead. It was this big-bad-stone-in-a-slingshot potential that first attracted weapons scientists.
But then they discovered something even better. Other metals, from tungsten to steel, flatten on impact. But the uranium heats, peeling back from the bullet's point. In effect, it self-sharpens, meaning that it can tear into armored tanks with unparalleled force. As Naughton said: "We don't want to fight even. Nobody goes into a war and wants to be even with the enemy. We want to be ahead, and DU gives us that advantage."
It also means we can end battles quickly, surely a good thing. If by doing that, DU bullets save lives and if the radiation is a minor issue, it's fair to ask why other people dislike them so much. [...]
In the 12 years of testing, they've found no such poisoning, no radiation-linked cancers, no patterns of uranium-sparked disease. U.N. studies conducted in Kosovo and Bosnia came up similarly empty on health effects.
I went to Rhodesia because I wanted to see the last true outpost of colonialism in Africa, the final gasp of the British Empire that had done so much to shape the modern world. True, it had now rebelled against the mother country and was a pariah state; but it was still recognizably British in all but name. As Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the short-lived and ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, once described himself, he was "half-Polish, half-Jewish, one hundred percent British."
Until my arrival at Bulawayo Airport, the British Empire had been for me principally a philatelic phenomenon. When I was young, Britain's still-astonishing assortment of far-flung territories--from British Honduras and British Guiana to British North Borneo, Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland--each issued beautiful engraved stamps, with the queen's profile in the right upper corner, looking serenely down upon exotic creatures such as orangutans or frigate birds, or upon natives (as we still called and thought of them) going about their natively tasks, tapping rubber or climbing coconut palms. To my childish mind, any political entity that issued such desirable stamps must have been a power for good.
And my father--a communist by conviction--also encouraged me to read the works of G.A. Henty, late-19th-century adventure stories, extolling the exploits of empire builders, who by bravery, sterling character, superior intelligence and force majeure overcame the resistance of such spirited but doomed peoples as the Zulu and the Fuzzy-Wuzzies. Henty might seem an odd choice for a communist to give his son, but Marx himself was an imperialist of a kind, believing that European colonialism was an instrument of progress toward History's happy denouement; only at a later stage, after it had performed its progressive work, was empire to be condemned.
Condemned Rhodesia most certainly was, loudly and insistently, as if it were the greatest threat to world peace and the security of the planet. By the time I arrived, it had no friends, only enemies. Even South Africa, the regional colossus, with which Rhodesia shared a long border and which might have been expected to be sympathetic, was highly ambivalent toward it, for South Africa sought to ingratiate itself with other nations by being less than wholehearted in its economic cooperation with the government of Ian Smith.
I expected to find on my arrival, therefore, a country in crisis and decay. Instead, I found a country that was, to all appearances, thriving: Its roads were well maintained, its transport system functioning, its towns and cities clean and manifesting a municipal pride long gone from England. There were no electricity cuts or shortages of basic food commodities. The large hospital in which I was to work, while stark and somewhat lacking in comforts, was extremely clean and ran with exemplary efficiency. The staff, mostly black except for its most senior members, had a vibrant esprit de corps, and the hospital, as I discovered, had a reputation for miles around for the best of medical care. The rural poor would make immense and touching efforts to reach it: they arrived covered in the dust of their long journeys. The African nationalist leader and foe of the government Joshua Nkomo was a patient there and trusted the care implicitly: for medical ethics transcended all political antagonisms. [...]
After several years in Africa, I concluded that the colonial enterprise had been fundamentally wrong and mistaken, even when, as was often the case in its final stages, it was benevolently intended. The good it did was ephemeral; the harm, lasting. The powerful can change the powerless, it is true; but not in any way they choose. The unpredictability of humans is the revenge of the powerless. What emerges politically from the colonial enterprise is often something worse, or at least more vicious because better equipped, than what existed before. Good intentions are certainly no guarantee of good results.
I finished last week's column (a listing of negative events in America during my lifetime) with the suggestion that some day I might write a similar column about positive events.
As a matter of fact, many wonderful things have happened here since I was born. So, by popular demand, I'll list a few of them. And, just offhand, I'm guessing my "positive" list won't be the same as yours.
* Prohibition repealed.
* Social Security enacted.
* United States enters World War II.
* Reconstruction of Japan and Germany.
* A Roman Catholic is elected president.
* The U.S. Supreme Court applies the Constitution -- in particular the Bill of Rights -- to all American citizens.
* Rosa Parks starts the civil rights movement.
* The women's movement begins and takes hold.
* Baby boomers start a movement of their own; many become hippies and flower children.
Close on the heels of Indian National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra's call for an India-United States-Israel strategic alliance, comes the confirmation that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will visit India within the next few weeks. Some observers in New Delhi consider Mishra's call, made at the annual dinner of the American Jewish Committee, as a curtain raiser for the Sharon visit. What they seem to ignore is that the India-US-Israel strategic alliance has moved beyond last call to center stage and that the plan for Sharon's visit is some 15 months old. [...]
Mishra drummed up US support for the plan, finding a responsive audience for his skewed and cynical views on terrorism in the American Jewish Committee. Only a "core" consisting of democracies such as India, Israel and the US can deal with terrorism, he maintained. The alliance of the three would have the political and moral authority to make bold decisions in extreme cases of terrorist provocation, he claimed, adding that they would not waste time in defining terrorism or arguing about its causes. "Distinctions sought to be made between freedom fighters and terrorists propagate a bizarre logic," he spouted. "Another fallacy propagated is that terrorism can only be eradicated by addressing the root causes." He repeated the pet themes of India, the US and Israel being "prime targets of terrorism", having a "common enemy" and requiring "joint action".
His comments were underpinned by those of India's Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani, who, in an interview given to Fox News on July 9, 2002, said, "Terrorism in so far we have seen it on September 11 or December 13 has a common source and that common source has described the US, Israel and India as its three main enemies." December 13, 2001 was the date on which the Indian parliament was attacked by terrorists. Advani implied that the three countries therefore have a common cause and could forge a common front against terrorism.
The India-Israeli alliance strengthens US strategic designs for India and the region. India holds a very prominent place in the September 20, 2002 National Security Strategy of the US, "a policy document that bears the personal stamp of President [George W] Bush," according to Robert D Blackwill, outgoing US ambassador to India. The document states, "The United States has undertaken a transformation in its bilateral relationship with India. We are the two largest democracies. We share an interest in fighting terrorism and in creating a strategically stable Asia. We start with a view of India as a growing world power with which we have common strategic interests."
The movement to replace just re-elected Democrat Gray Davis as governor of California is beginning to look like a runaway train with nobody at the controls. The state's voters may go to the polls this fall to decide whether Gov. Davis shall be removed, would then probably vote him out and, on the same ballot, select his successor. Nobody can predict that successor, or even whether the winner would be a Republican or Democrat.
While bipartisan establishment politicians remain in denial, realists now are taking the recall movement seriously. Dave Galliard, a Sacramento-based political consultant seeking signatures for recall petitions, says 520,000 voters have signed. He is aiming for 1.2 million, providing insurance that the required 897,000 valid names are collected. If this is done by July 18, an election must be held in September or October. Gov. Davis, at 21 percent approval in a recent private labor union poll, cannot be expected to survive.
That is not what President Bush's strategists want to hear. They fear the recall could elect a popular Democrat to replace the weakened Davis, making it more difficult for Bush to carry the state that would ensure his re-election. They cannot stop the train at this point, however. The recall movement has characteristics of anti-establishment resentment that in 1978 passed the famous Proposition 13 tax cut.
Seven months after winning a second term against neophyte Republican candidate Bill Simon, Davis has lost support from everybody except organized labor.
Nutritionists have long said that any fad diet can shed weight quickly, but the pounds are soon regained. Now two studies in a prestigious medical journal have caused a media maelstrom. They show that the Atkins regimen can shed weight quickly . . . but the pounds are soon regained. Fad diets still don't work.
Both studies appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), with each randomly dividing subjects into two groups. In each study, one group was told to reduce caloric intake while the other wasn't expressly told to cut calories, but rather instructed to keep carbohydrate intake extremely low as dictated by the late Dr. Robert Atkins's books.
One, conducted at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital, lasted six months, comprised subjects with an initial average weight of about 215 pounds. The other was conducted at three different centers, lasted 12 months, and comprised subjects with an initial average weight of about 290 pounds.
The six-month study found that Atkins dieters lost weight at about twice the rate as the higher-carb group — for two months. Thereafter neither group lost much weight. By the end of six months, the Atkins dieters, however, had still managed to keep off about twice as much weight as the higher-carb group — for what it was worth. The average loss was a mere 13 pounds from that original 290.
Further, the 12-month study indicates even that was probably a doomed effort. Here again, the Atkins group lost considerably more weight for the first half year. But thereafter not only did it begin packing the pounds back on, it did so faster than the higher-carb group. Ultimately, concluded the researchers, "the differences were not significant at the end one of year."
Reporters who read only the press releases presented articles such as AP's, "Pair of Studies Vindicate Atkins Diet," while others who actually bothered to read the studies themselves — or at least the conclusions — came up with stories leading to quite different headlines, such as Reuters "Atkins Diet May Be No Better Than Just Cutting Fat."
"The probable explanation" for the early weight loss, said the chief researcher of the 12-month study (Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania), is that it "gives people a framework to eat fewer calories, since most of the choices in this culture are carbohydrate driven." He told me: "You're left eating a lot of fat, and you get tired of that." So the Atkins plan is merely a low-calorie diet in disguise.
Soon though, Atkins dieters become so starved for carbohydrates that they either start cheating or quit the plan altogether. In fact, both studies were plagued by high dropout rates from all sets of dieters. The only weight-control regimens that work for life require both eating in moderation and exercise.
More than a decade of extensive crime data collection matched with new technology may soon allow police to predict to a surprising degree of accuracy the number and type of crimes that will occur in a given neighborhood one month in advance.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University plan to release software later this summer that, according to computer models, can forecast the number and types of crimes that will occur within a 10-block area, with a 20 percent error rate. [...]
With models similar to those used in macroeconomics to warn of recession or inflation, Gorr said researchers matched criminal reports, 911 calls on shots fired, and census data along with a mishmash of yellow page listings and seasonal variations to predict crime numbers.
Because there are stable and affluent white, Hispanic, black and Asian neighborhoods, Gorr said, race is not used in the prediction model and race is not a reliable indicator of crime. Poverty levels and the number of single-mother households, which are included in the prediction model, do occur more frequently in some minority neighborhoods, he said.
After running 36,000 separate forecasts for the month ahead based on a decade's worth of crime data, researchers successfully predicted how many burglaries, arsons, aggravated assaults and car thefts and other crimes would take place in the next month in a 10-block area, Gorr said.
"It's surprising that it worked at all and the 20 percent error area was impressive,'' Gorr said. The new system also forecast crimes that would not likely have been anticipated using traditional crime mapping, he said.
Opponents of US hegemony have been looking hard to see the ogre bleed....
Burgeoning US defiance of international law, and the ease with which US-led troops conquered Iraq, have reinforced fears that America has begun to see itself as a Gulliver that is free, at last, for global power play.
For Emmanuel Todd there’s no cause for concern. America’s decline is ... in the making.
“There is no reason to panic and to condemn the emergence of an American empire which — a decade after the end of the Soviet empire — is actually in a process of decomposition,” the French historian and anthropologist says in his latest book After the Empire ...
If the US is dangerous, he goes on, that is not because it is powerful but because it is losing its grip on power.
America’s resurgent militarism is nothing but the spasms of a crumbling giant.
The US, according to Todd, has reached a point where it needs the world more than the world needs it.
Its faltering economy is dependent on foreign capital, resulting in a trade deficit that more than quadrupled during the 1990s.
“In the period from 1990 to 2000, the [US] trade deficit went up from $100 billion to $450 billion,” explains Todd.
“To pay for this deficit, the US needs to import an equal amount of foreign capital,” he explains.
Implicit in the complacent arguments of the anti-Americans is the recognition that America is peaceable, honest, and generous, unlike past imperialists. Their arguments and vituperation, therefore, amount to no more than academic parlor games.
"He doesn't need a consultant to tell him how to dress like an alpha male," said his friend Ivan Schlager. "He is a damn alpha male."
It is more complex than that, though. With Kerry it often is. Yes, his message is the hard-line "stronger, safer, more secure America." But there's another part of his message, and it borders on the sentimental. "We have to get back to dreaming again," he told Democratic activists in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Echoing Robert F. Kennedy, he often closes with the line, "I'm running for president of the United States because I really believe it is time for this country to ask again, 'Why not?' "
In a series beginning today, The Washington Post will examine all nine Democratic presidential candidates: their campaign messages, the roots of their ambition, their ability to connect with voters. On all three counts, Kerry is nuanced and often misconstrued. What makes him compelling as a person makes him vulnerable to opponents who say he lacks clarity as a candidate.
Kerry's complexity has been an issue since his national debut in 1971. He became famous for a war within himself: He had fought in Vietnam and came, reluctantly, to believe the war was wrong. As spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" The senators were awed by the young man's poise and by his Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts. He was a hero. Complexity worked the first time around.
It is much tougher now, as he presents himself as both a dreamer and a realist, an old liberal and a new Democrat, for the war in Iraq and yet troubled by it. While other White House hopefuls lined up for or against Iraq, Kerry voted for the war and then criticized the president for failing at diplomacy.
"It's the natural reluctance of a soldier to put young Americans in harm's way," said fellow Vietnam veteran and former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.).
But Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of Kerry's competitors, accused him of being "ambivalent" when the country needed leadership. Republican strategist Richard Galen said, "People who were disappointed by the Gore campaign sniff another Gore coming because he doesn't have any clear message."
Deep below the Franco-Swiss border lies a giant cavern big enough to house Canterbury Cathedral, and grand enough to be part of the greatest scientific experiment on Earth. At the weekend, engineers began the delicate task of preparing the snow-white cavern for the giant machine that will take up residence in its subterranean home.
If all goes to plan, the Atlas instrument - five storeys high and weighing 7,000 tonnes - will lead the search for the holy grail of physics, an elusive subatomic phenomenon formally called the Higgs boson, but nicknamed the "God particle".
The theoreticians have for years predicted the existence of the Higgs but no instrument has yet been able to find it. If scientists do detect it, the discovery could answer one of the biggest questions in science; why do we, and all other matter in the Universe, exist? [...]
The search for the Higgs, Dr [Jim] Virdee[, a project scientist on the compact muon solenoid (CMS) detector,] said, was part of a wider quest to find a single, unified explanation for all the forces of nature, whether they operated at the level of the atomic nucleus, or at the level of stars, planets and galaxies.
"This quest to get to an understanding of the unified theory is the underpinning of most of science, if not all of science," he added. "Our notions of space and time will change, our notions of fundamental forces will change, just like the revolution that took place at the beginning of the last century [with Einstein]." [...]
Although Dr [Roger Cashmore, Cern's director of research] and his colleagues cringe when they hear anyone talk of the God particle, they are effusive on its possible discovery.
"What the Higgs does is give you a mechanism for generating a mass. It would be spectacularly good to find the Higgs," he said. "To get the mechanism or the underlying theory how this will work would be an enormous step forward. But let's leave God out of it."
The expectation of change on the court is based, in part, on its record-breaking stability in recent years; no one has stepped down since President Bill Clinton appointed Stephen G. Breyer in 1994, providing for the longest period without a turnover since the 1820's.
The three oldest judges are Republicans, and White House officials say that two of them--Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is 78, and Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, who is 73--would be the most likely to retire, given the knowledge that a Republican president would pick their replacements.
More than one vacancy this summer would add even more urgency to the campaigns, and Justice O'Connor's frequent position as a swing vote could intensify a battle over her successor. [...]
Administration officials say that the White House has compiled dossiers on dozens of potential nominees, but that the list of genuine candidates is far smaller, fewer than 10. So far, the discussions have focused on providing possible nominees for different circumstances, depending on who resigns.
In almost all the possibilities, officials said, Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel and a longtime legal adviser to Mr. Bush, would be a candidate. Mr. Gonzales would be the first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court. Mr. Bush's top aides, notably Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, are described as well aware that this would provide a political advantage for both him and the Republican Party, which has been aggressively courting Hispanic voters.
But social conservatives, an important component of Mr. Bush's political coalition, have expressed increasing wariness about Mr. Gonzales. Many say he reminds them of Justice David J. Souter, who was named to the court by President Bush's father, and who they say had been sold to them as a solid conservative vote but turned out otherwise.
WITH REPUBLICANS controlling the House, the Senate and the presidency, Democrats on Capitol Hill feel isolated.
"We might as well get in a bus and go to some motel like the Texas legislators," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont. "We literally have been locked out of the process." [...]
From the president's tax cut to last week's House approval of a ban on late-term abortions, the East Bay Democrats watching the rapid change cannot affect the outcome.
When the margin was close, moderates like Tauscher had leverage to try to broker bipartisan compromises -- as she put it, "to find some rational common ground."
That's over. "The majority takes the view that it's their way or the highway," Tauscher said. "For the first time, I feel deeply concerned about the trough that we're in." [...]
It may be a long time before Democrats are heard from again.
"In the current environment," said John Lawrence, a [George] Miller aide since the congressman's 1974 election, "it's like going into the woods and screaming."
BRITAIN is facing the prospect of co-ordinated strikes that could paralyse the public services as the country?s biggest union prepares to go to war against the Government.
Unison, which has 1.3 million members across the public sector, is threatening to create a permanent strike fund and adopt continental tactics designed to bypass laws banning secondary action. [...]
It will be the first time a union with members across different areas of the public sector has attempted to coordinate industrial action. Unison represents employees in local government, health care, further and higher education, schools, housing associations and police support staff.
In a move which would shake the Labour Party to its core, the union is also preparing to create a new political fund which could be used to support other parties, including the far-left Socialist Alliance.
Gradually, that which had become the basic thought form of modern people became the almost totally accepted viewpoint, an almost monolithic consensus. And as it came to the majority of people through art, music, drama, theology, and the mass media, values died. As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence.
Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city--to live one's life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and ever-increasing prosperity--a life made up of things, things, and more things--a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.
For several generations the fragmented concept of knowledge and life which had become dominant was taught to the young by many of the professors in universities around the world. All too often when the students of the early sixties asked their parents and others, "Why be educated?" they were told, in words if not by implication, "Because statistically an educated man makes so much more money a year." And when they asked, "Why make more money?" they were told, "So that you can send your children to the university." According to this kind of spoken or implied answer, there was no meaning for man, and no meaning for education.
Much of the mass media popularized these concepts, pouring them out in an endless stream so that a whole generation from its birth has been injected with the teaching that reason leads to pessimism in regard to a meaning of life and with reference to any fixed values.
This had been that generation's atmosphere. It had no personal memory of the days when Christianity had more influence on the consensus.
The work ethic, which had meaning within the Christian framework, now became ugly as the Christian base was removed. Work became an end in itself--with no reason to work and no values to determine what to do with the products of one's work. [...]
Humanism, man beginning only from himself, had destroyed the old basis of values, and could find no way to generate with certainty any new values. In the resulting vacuum the impoverished values of personal peace and affluence had come to stand supreme.
Instead of being as realistic about eros as they are about thanatos, conservatives in the West have opted to be parties of frumpish women and 'family values' drawn from the wilder shores of religious mania. Instead of being known to delight in Donatello's 'David' and Canova's 'The Three Graces', conservatives have preferred to associate themselves even with dismal churches that were increasingly pursuing socialist, homosexualist and feminist agendas. The twentieth century saw a magnificent eruption of love songs, oral sex, increasingly beautiful and wasp-waisted women, and fashions to die for. Yet, hostile to eugenics (forever trying to distance themselves from anything supposedly 'tainted' by Nazism), American conservatives positively raced to imprison even dull women who declined to continue with unwanted and disastrous pregnancies. While twelve-year-olds experimented with sex (usually most responsibly when IQ was adequate), conservatives insisted on trying to control under-age sexuality by such crude methods as withdrawing free contraception, banning sex education and consigning even the most affectionate and harmless lovers of adoring girls under sixteen to long jail sentences. Ortega y Gasset was not perhaps the right man to break the dreary association between conservatism and prohibitionistic prudery - for he was small, finely strung and intensely private. Yet it is strange that he could not see the need for a range of entirely new marital and family contracts and sex practices to harness awakened Western sensuality and love of beauty and provide the backbone of a seriously anti-statist and thriving Europe based on viable and wanted families having realistic marriage contracts. Ortega could see that fascistic nationalism was the wrong path and that unvarnished individualism would not be enough; but his preference for a dynamic European superstate shows too little respect for the more basic human social energies that come from intelligent love and sex. Given his
own intelligence, idealism and special concern for the West, Ortega's defence can only be that later conservatives have done no better.
The chairman of the Hispanic caucus of the Democratic National Committee said yesterday that there is a "disconnect" in the party regarding the minority vote and accused it of scrapping a $1.5 million plan to attract Hispanics. Alvaro Cifuentes, who also chastised the DNC leadership for failure to hire Hispanics, announced a three-day summit for party Hispanics in September that will be "completely funded on our own, separate from the DNC."
"There is obviously a problem in the party with Hispanic and Latino issues," Mr. Cifuentes said. "We've been trying for the past two years to address them." The DNC did not return calls for comment. The $1.5 million "Hispanic Project" was to be a vast, annual effort that included a get-out-the-vote campaign, recruitment of Hispanic candidates and establishment of satellite offices in key states. Some caucus members insist the plan is still being put together, although they declined to offer details. The summit is a result of indifference from the party's leadership, Mr. Cifuentes said. It is to be held in Albuquerque, N.M. "We aren't waiting around for anybody to put an agenda together anymore," he said. The dilemma is "an interesting problem," said Steven Ybarra, a caucus member who leads the Pacific region for the DNC. "Terry McAuliffe made a pledge to make sure that the voters who were critical were turned out and that we would have the proper resources to make that happen in 2004," Mr. Ybarra said, in reference to the DNC chairman. "And none of that happened." "It will make the job in 2004 all the tougher," Mr. Ybarra added. The "job" entails overtaking Republican gains in luring the Hispanic vote, which has become a Republican Party mandate.
Sen. Norm Coleman, one of only three Jewish Republicans in Congress, makes an unorthodox sales pitch to recruit Jews to vote for President Bush.
"Compassionate conservatism is a Jewish ethic," the Minnesota senator tells Jewish audiences in an effort to reverse nearly a century-long trend of Jewish support for Democrats.
In the 2000 presidential election, Bush won only 19 percent of the Jewish vote, according to exit polls. But recent surveys show that Republicans could pick up gains among Jewish voters.
"What I hope to get is more support for George W. Bush," Coleman said in an interview. "He's uniquely situated to significantly expand the percentage of votes he gets from the Jewish community."
That vote could be important in next year's presidential election, even though Jews make up only about 2 percent of the population. That's because they are concentrated in several competitive states, such as Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
"If you get another 10 to 15 percent of the Jewish vote, that could be enough in a close election to tip a lot of those big states," said Steve Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.
At the moment, Bush is fighting to deflate the standards he created on the eve of the Iraq war when he said there is "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." The president has been struggling to explain why, after more than two months of searching, no weapons have been found -- even suggesting the discovery of two trailers that could have been used to make biological weapons meant "we found the weapons of mass destruction."This is a weak article that adds little new to well-trod ground. Milbank confuses being underestimated with setting the bar low, which are related but distinct, and makes the odd argument that, by being a leader of fraternity life at Yale, W overcame the low expectations set for legacy admittees. But the point excerpted above is important. The President's foes have set the terms of the debate so that, if we discover only a fraction of the wmd's that Hans Blix and the French agree Saddam had, the whole issue goes away. The President may be a master at setting the bar low, but he is helped immeasurably by the extent to which his enemies still underestimate him.
Still, there is little sign that this will pose a political problem for Bush, because polls show that the discovery of forbidden weapons is not a priority for Americans. And after weeks of retroactively lowering expectations and a chorus of criticism from Democrats, some Republicans believe even the discovery of a small quantity of weapons would vindicate Bush. "They have so set this up, and the Democrats are out on such a limb, that if we have this stuff, it will be just amazing," Bond said.
It was almost a century ago that the German sociologist Max Weber published his influential essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it, Weber argued that modern capitalism was "born from the spirit of Christian asceticism" in its specifically Protestant form--in other words, there was a link between the self-denying ethos of the Protestant sects and the behavior patterns associated with capitalism, above all hard work.
Many scholars have built careers out of criticizing Weber's thesis. Yet the experience of Western Europe in the past quarter-century offers an unexpected confirmation of it. To put it bluntly, we are witnessing the decline and fall of the Protestant work ethic in Europe. This represents the stunning triumph of secularization in Western Europe--the simultaneous decline of both Protestantism and its unique work ethic.
Just as Weber's 1904 visit to the United States convinced him that his thesis was right, anyone visiting New York today would have a similar experience. For in the pious, industrious United States, the Protestant work ethic is alive and well. Its death is a peculiarly European phenomenon--and has grim implications for the future of the European Union on the eve of its eastward expansion, perhaps most economically disastrous for the "new" Europe.
Many economists have missed this vindication of Weber because they are focused on measures of productivity, like output per hour worked. On that basis, the Western European economies have spent most of the past half-century spectacularly catching up with the United States.
But what the productivity numbers don't reveal is the dramatic divergence over two decades between the amount of time Americans work and the amount of time Western Europeans work. By American standards, Western Europeans are astonishingly idle. [...]
Why have West Europeans opted for shorter working days, weeks, months, years and lives? This is where Weber's thesis comes up trumps: the countries where the least work is done in Europe turn out to be those that were once predominantly Protestant. While the overwhelmingly Catholic French and Italians work about 15 to 20 percent fewer hours a year than Americans, the more Protestant Germans and Dutch and the wholly Protestant Norwegians work 25 to 30 percent less.
What clinches the Weber thesis is that Northern Europe's declines in working hours coincide almost exactly with steep declines in religious observance. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, less than 10 percent of the population now attend church at least once a month, a dramatic decline since the 1960's. (Only in Catholic Italy and Ireland do more than a third of the population go to church on a monthly basis.) In the recent Gallup Millennium Survey of religious attitudes, 49 percent of Danes, 52 percent of Norwegians and 55 percent of Swedes said God did not matter to them. In North America, by comparison, 82 percent of respondents said God was "very important."
So the decline of work in Northern Europe has occurred more or less simultaneously with the decline of Protestantism. Quod erat demonstrandum indeed!
Three Palestinian gunmen slipped into an army post near the Gaza border Sunday, killing four Israelis before being killed themselves in the first deadly attack since last week's Mideast peace summit....
The gunmen, all in their early 20s, had been disguised as Israeli soldiers. A leaflet giving their names indicated each was from one of the three Palestinian militant groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade -- that took joint responsibility for the attack....
The shooting underscored the determination of militants to derail the so-called "road map" to Mideast peace, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005.
With luck, Bush's diplomacy will expose the split in Palestinian ranks, and the malicious desires of the terror faction, so clearly that even Europeans acknowledge it. Israel's commitment to a Palestinian state locates the unreasonableness on one side only, and the carrot of a Palestinian state will help encourage moderate Palestinians to show that Arafat doesn't speak for all. If the terrorists can be widely acknowledged as the roadblock to peace, it becomes diplomatically feasible to kill or imprison them beginning with Arafat. This would be the critical step forward, for there can be no resolution to the conflict until the terrorists are destroyed.
If Israel/Palestine were isolated from the rest of the world, this resolution might happen quickly and straightforwardly. But they are not. Outside forces are eager to defend and strengthen the terrorists, and perhaps are willing to widen the conflict. It is those links between Israel/Palestine and larger global conflicts that makes the situation so dangerous. No Israeli or U.S. government has been willing to destroy the terrorists for fear of wider geopolitical repercussions.
I don't have a good feel for what those repercussions would be; but I am convinced that destroying the terrorists is the only possible step forward, and therefore must be taken, no matter how difficult. But I acknowledge that steps have to be taken first to minimize the damaging consequences. The destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime helped to minimize consequences. I hope that this promotion of a moderate Palestinian alternative is another such step.
A commentator I admire greatly, David Warren, argues that the situation is hopeless. Any genuine effort against the terrorists will lead to a catastrophic blow-up:
I have previously described the peace plan President Bush is now advancing as the "road map to hell", and I did not do so lightly....
Here ... is a bitter truth, especially unpalatable to those with small and compressive minds, who want to blame a person, a party, a class, even a people, for everything wrong in the world. Now it happens there is something wrong that has grown so large that it cannot possibly be ignored, and yet also cannot be fixed by any conceivable exertion of human will. In politics and diplomacy, such a problem typically resolves itself in a large conflagration....
Israel/Palestine is a proxy battle; the fuse but not the bomb. Mr. Bush's thinking is: "Put out the fuse and we may then disarm the bomb at our leisure." But he's too late; even Clinton was too late....
The whole Palestinian society is in the hands of terrorists, and it doesn't matter how many individual Palestinians approve or disapprove. Those who may actually want peace with Israel have neither the leadership nor the physical means to defeat Hamas, Islami Jihad, Hizbollah, Fatah, or even their dancing-master, Yasser Arafat. And nothing short of a Palestinian civil war could possibly remove them.
That is the fuse, but the bomb must also be considered. The entire Arab world, and most of the Muslim beyond it, is too deeply and emotionally invested in that proxy war against Israel, to embrace what must be done to avoid the catastrophe, which I fear lies ahead. As we now learn, even King Abdullah of Jordan very nearly withdrew as host of the summit between Ariel Sharon, Mr. Abbas, and Mr. Bush. He is the best-disposed of all the Arab leaders towards a permanent peace acknowledging Israel's existence, within whatever borders and terms can be agreed. The political heat from below and around was nearly too much, even for him. It must quickly become too much....
As the pressure rises, from Washington and elsewhere, to do the impossible, the point of combustion must be reached....
The more peace is sought, the more war becomes inevitable; and yet peace must be sought.
We all have dreams-things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true.
For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading-Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita-their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.
Nafisi's account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi's class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of "the Great Satan," she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.
Azar Nafisi's luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women's lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice.
You felons are the first to murder God,
Carve out an idol not resembling Him,
Hailed by sweet names and gruesome as no other,
And hurl the best you have into its jaws.
You call it your own way and will not rest
In torrid frenzy running, till all venal
And base alike, instead of God's red blood,
The pus of idols courses through your veins.
A brilliant physicist -- compared to Beethoven, Sir Isaac Newton and Nobel-prize winning scientist John Nash of A Beautiful Mind fame -- won the legal right yesterday to refuse anti-psychotic drugs while detained in a psychiatric ward.
The Supreme Court of Canada, in a 6-3 decision, ruled Scott Starson can determine his own destiny as long as he is capable of understanding the consequences of his actions.
"The enforced injection of mind-altering drugs against the respondent's will is highly offensive to his dignity and autonomy and it to be avoided unless it is demonstrated that he lacked the capacity to make his own decision," Justice John Major wrote for the majority.
Mr. Starson -- who prefers to be called Professor Starson even though he is not one -- maintains he would rather spend the rest of his life institutionalized than take mind-numbing medication that prevented him from pursuing his passion of writing scientific papers.
"Professor Starson values his ability to work as a physicist above all other factors," wrote Justice Major.
"Professor Starson preferred his altered state to what he viewed as the boredom of normalcy."
Mr. Starson's mother, Jeanne Stevens, said the ruling amounts to a lifesentence for her son, whom she said will never get better now that hecannot be forced to take medication.
Intelligence products are not gospel, and they should not be treated as such. For most questions, intelligence assessments are a combination of some secret material and a whole lot of ordinary analysis. To make sense of the data, an analyst will have to pick and order the information using assumptions and methodologies any thoughtful policy analyst would normally use. This is not some arcane exercise. And there are good reasons to believe that any number of experienced policymakers will be as good at this as the intelligence official - or better.
There is something else going on. Opponents of the war - most of whom probably never had a good word to say about the CIA - are rushing to defend "the sanctity" of the intelligence process in an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the war and call into question a president's judgment that, in the years ahead, "the community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now - a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists." But since this was the assessment of President Clinton in a February 1998 speech at the Pentagon, Bush critics have a larger task in front of them than just going after the current administration.
There is no question that U.S. credibility is at stake in accounting for Iraq's weapons programs. Failure to find them would complicate a president's ability to rally support for taking action in similar situations in the future.
But like the conduct of the early days of the war itself, the fact that things have not turned out precisely as some might have predicted doesn't mean failure, incompetence or, worse, duplicity. It simply means we have been engaged in a struggle with a clever and deceptive enemy.
BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.
Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.
The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter...
"The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children--toddlers up to pre-adolescents--whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace."
Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said: "It seems as if we have hit a nerve here. We are supposedly talking about a bill that would make it easier to get checks, and the Republicans are clearly embarrassed that there are a whole lot of people, in fact 12 million children, whose families are not going to get checks."
That embarrassment, however, does not appear to have seeped into the chambers of House Republican leaders, where officials say they have no intention of rubber-stamping the Senate bill. House leaders say they will provide refunds of the $400-per-child increased credit to families making $10,500 to $26,625 only as part of a much broader tax-cut bill. They want to make the child credit permanent for 25 million wealthier families, as well, and to drop the Senate provision that would pay for the cut by raising customs fees.
As a result, the House bill could cost up to $100 billion over the next 10 years, while the Senate bill is projected to have no cost to the Treasury. The rival bills ensure many weeks of wrangling between the two chambers, which would probably prevent the 6.5 million families from getting refund checks at the same time as middle-income families.
The difference in approaches between House and Senate Republicans illustrates what Representative Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, says is a split in the party's thinking on the subject. One group of Republicans, he said, thinks the party cannot win the contest over the political perception of the tax credit issue, and should just approve it and move on.
A second group, he said, feels strongly that Democrats have been misrepresenting the issue to the public, and wants at least to have a debate over the tax credits before the bill is passed. This group, he said, includes him and other House conservatives who are not comfortable with giving increased government checks to people who do not owe federal income tax.
"Probably, as in most things in Congress, the political pressure will win out," said Mr. Portman, chairman of the House Republican leadership group. "But I still don't think we've explained this enough. This is not a tax issue - it's a government transfer payment to people who do not pay income taxes."
People who would benefit from the Senate bill do not pay federal income taxes, though most pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. For many, the $400-per-child check they would receive under the bill would come on top of the existing $600 child credit and the earned income tax credit, which can be several thousand dollars a year depending on income and the number of children.
Although cash refunds to low-income working people who do not pay taxes were first approved under a Republican administration in 1975, and were increased again under the Bush administration in 2001, many Republicans now argue that further payments would be too much.
"For the first time in a long time, Arabs want U.S. policy to succeed," said a Saudi analyst with close ties to the kingdom's ruling family. "You'll see tremendous cooperation from the Arab states on this, because they saw a commitment from President Bush."
In Egypt, government officials have already started a low-key public relations campaign in support of Mr. Abbas, despite the criticism he has encountered from many Palestinians and other Arabs.
The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, in an interview published on Friday in the official daily newspaper Al Ahram, said Mr. Bush's support for a Palestinian state has created a real opportunity for regional peace.
"There is a time for everything," he said. "The armed intifada has reached the point where it cannot further achieve its objective, and it will be exploited against the Palestinian people and their rights."
Mr. Maher was also careful to praise the intifada, or uprising, that has roiled the Palestinian territories and Israel for nearly three years. And in an interview published today in the Saudi newspaper Al Riyadh, he added the requisite criticism of Israel.
Palestinian militants cannot be reined in, Mr. Maher said, while Israel "insists on maintaining the policy of invasion and killing and destruction."
Almost all of the priceless items feared stolen from the Baghdad Museum when it was ransacked by looters have been found safe in a secret vault, the U.S.-led administration for Iraq said on Saturday.
While British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken a pounding on the Iraq war, President Bush has worked to harvest a political dividend from it, hoping to help brush aside deepening questions over deposed President Saddam Hussein's arms programs.
The war's outcome changed the dynamics and the thinking of leaders in the Middle East, which offered Bush an opportunity to seize the moment and step up his involvement in trying to forge a comprehensive peace between the Israelis and the Arabs.
Thus Bush became the toiling peacemaker in a week that found Blair on the defensive and under investigation by Parliament over the veracity of prewar claims about Saddam's still-unfound arsenal.
During a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East, Bush cemented ties with Eastern European nations allied with the United States against Iraq, mended fences with Russia and China and put into play the most far-reaching Middle East peace initiative of his presidency.
Exuberant on the way home, Bush even had Air Force One fly directly over Iraq's capital as he pointed out landmarks to aides.
"I'm the master of low expectations," he had told reporters traveling with him on the trip.
The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, is pressing Congress to enact the biggest overhaul of the federal civil service system in a quarter-century.
In the name of reshaping the federal bureaucracy to better counter global terrorism, administration officials are seeking the authority to rewrite long-standing pay and personnel rules governing 746,000 civilian employees at the Department of Defense. The powers would be similar to those won by the administration last year in a contentious battle over the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, which has about 180,000 employees.
Administration officials say the current personnel system is too restrictive, giving managers little flexibility to create a modern workforce. They want to tie pay to performance, discipline bad workers without lengthy appeals, hire employees more quickly and limit union bargaining rights over workplace conditions. Confined to these agencies alone, the changes would affect more than 45 percent of the government's 2 million civilian employees. But few analysts expect the changes to stop with defense-related agencies. [...]
The civil service system dates to the Pendleton Act of 1883, which replaced the "spoils system" of doling out jobs through political patronage with a merit-based system. More changes followed, with the biggest overhaul in recent decades coming under President Jimmy Carter. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 did away with the Civil Service Commission and divided its responsibilities chiefly among three agencies: The Merit Systems Protection Board hears employee appeals; the Federal Labor Relations Authority deals with labor-management relations; and the Office of Personnel Management sets policies to create a level playing field in hiring and pay for all federal civilian workers.
Although some government officials and scholars have called for further changes to make it easier to reward good workers and get rid of poor performers, presidents and most lawmakers over the past 25 years have shown little interest in spending political capital on such arcane and complicated issues. In eight years of promoting "reinventing government," the Clinton administration never found a way to sell major civil service legislation on Capitol Hill, particularly with federal employee unions resistant to major proposals.
Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Pressured by Democrats to create a Department of Homeland Security, Bush eventually embraced the idea. But the president insisted on freedom from many civil service constraints to effectively merge 22 disparate agencies. In April, Rumsfeld asked for similar authority, arguing that Defense needed a more "flexible" workforce to fight terrorism.
It is not hard to spot a culture's gods--they are what people swear by, the stories that need no explanation. Living and working in Boston has given me the opportunity to ask scores of first-year students why they came to Harvard, the academic equivalent of the New Jerusalem. In all but a handful of cases, their answer, delivered with both awe and delight, is "Because I got in." I've asked the same question of students at many other schools, and they almost always answer with a story. They talk about a particularly strong department or sports team, a generous scholarship or a great professor, being close enough to home or just far enough away. But students at Harvard don't tell these stories. Harvard is its own story, and they're simply grateful to be part of it. And if you ask students nearly anywhere why they are in college at all, they look just as dumbfounded as their Harvard peers. For the American middle class, college is its own story, self-evident and self-justifying.
I certainly don't deny the advantages, or the delights, of having a college education. My wife spends her days in the laboratory and the classroom, and some of my happiest times have been spent in libraries, listening in on two millennia's worth of the scholars' grand conversation. The Apostle Paul himself studied with one of the greatest teachers of his day, and he had picked up enough Greek culture to know how to give a speech on Athens's Mars Hill, the Harvard of the ancient world.
But Paul did not come to Mars Hill to join its story; he came to present another and better story. I can't help wondering whether, for many graduates leaving Boston this month, the scope of their ambitions and the shape of their lives will continue to be determined by where they "get in." They will buy the biggest house they can afford, send their children to the best schools they can find, and take the highest-paying job they can get (to pay for their children's college education, of course). It all will make perfect sense, because it all will fit in the only story Americans have left, the only religion in which our culture still believes.
There is another story, though, that can't be entirely dismissed. In this story, wisdom looks like foolishness (and vice versa), infants have an edge on the educated, and the earth belongs to the meek, not the merit scholars. The one who was last in the class becomes both salutatorian and valedictorian, the one who welcomes us into the feast and the one who bids farewell to the world we thought we knew. He tells a story of a strange banquet whose unexpected guests "get in" through no fault, or merit, of their own. His story, full of upset expectations and undeserved gifts, squares no more easily with the American college dream than a camel squeezes through the eye of a needle. And the outcome of the Class of 2003's ultimate graduation day will depend on which story they finally decide is true.
It is one of my oddest experiences that I have never been able to find any one who would tell me what the net social value of compulsory universal literacy actually comes to when the balance of advantage and disadvantage is drawn, or wherein that value consists.? The few Socratic questions which on occasion I have put to persons presumably able to tell me have always gone by the board.? These persons seemed to think, like Protagoras on the teaching of virtue, that the thing was so self-evident and simple that I should know all about it without being told; but in the hardness of my head or heart I still do not find it so.? Universal literacy helps business by extending the reach of advertising and increasing its force; and also in other ways.? Beyond that I see nothing on the credit side.? On the debit side, it enables scoundrels to beset, dishevel and debauch such intelligence as is in the power of the vast majority of mankind to exercise.? There can be no doubt of this, for the evidence of it is daily spread wide before us on all sides.? More than this, it makes many articulate who should not be so, and otherwise would not be so.? It enables mediocrity and submediocrity to run rampant, to the detriment of both intelligence and taste.? In a word, it puts into people's hands an instrument which very few can use, but which everyone supposes himself fully able to use; and the mischief thus wrought is very great.? My observations leave me no chance of doubt about the side on which the balance of social advantage lies, but I do not by any means insist that it does lie there.
"We could not declare war on Egypt and Saudi Arabia, so we made war on Iraq." These words belong to a prominent intellectual close to the Bush administration. They were formulated as a provocation at a gathering of Americans and Europeans in Washington last month. But they reflect the deep intellectual and political gulf that exists between Europe and the US.
Europeans have failed to take on board the political revolution that has taken place across the Atlantic in the past few years, a radicalism confirmed by the attacks of September 11 2001 and victory in Iraq. A combination of deep frustration and great ambitions has transformed the way Americans now look at the world.
For Americans, the only way they can protect themselves is to change the world by imposing democracy wherever it does not yet exist, starting with the Middle East. Peace will not bring democracy; it is democracy that will bring peace.
What we are witnessing in action is the coming together of revolutionary military means and revolutionary ideas with Iraq as the ideal testing-ground. With its natural wealth, established middle class and strong state, the country offered real hope beyond a cruel, despotic regime. It was a good place to start the remaking of the Middle East and would serve as a model, or perhaps a lesson, for other Arab nations.
To describe current American thinking as "muscular Wilsonianism" is to miss the point. The Bush administration's foreign policy is less a refinement of traditional liberal internationalism than a new ideology. It is best described as democratic bolshevism. Its origins lie in President Ronald Reagan's success in confronting the Soviet Union but it was brought to life by the emotional shock of September 11. Why not use democracy to defeat terrorism as it was used to defeat communism?
Never trust a government that does not trust its own people. The former dissident Nathan Sharansky's celebrated formula about the Soviet Union has been endorsed by the neo- conservative intellectuals in and around the Bush administration. Despotism feeds terrorism. Autocracies must be turned, if not into liberal democracies, into regimes that respect the rule of law, without rampant corruption, where the army is not used to protect the regime from its people.
Yet there is a large gap between the global role the US wants to play and the price it is willing to pay. During the cold war, the US was, essentially, an imperial power without being imperialist. Today's America has become imperialist but Americans have not turned into imperialists. They lack the appetite for further military adventures or for the lengthy deployment of US troops abroad. They do not seem to have the imperial instincts of their British forefathers. They do not enjoy what they are doing.
GORDON BROWN insisted that Tony Blair pursue his social agenda when he sacrificed his leadership ambitions in 1994, it was revealed last night.
Details of part of the deal between the two men when Mr Blair became the new Labour leadership candidate after the death of John Smith were contained in a briefing note drawn up by aides of both men after Mr Brown made the decision to step aside in favour of his old friend. It gave Mr Blair a clear run in the leadership election. [...]
The penultimate paragraph reads: ?In his Wales and Luton speeches, Gordon has spelled out the fairness agenda--social justice, employment opportunities and skills--which he believes should be the centrepiece of Labour?s programme and Tony has guaranteed this will be pursued and that the party?s economic and social policies should be further developed on this basis.?
"The Americans are doing wonderfully. We want them to stay forever," I hear.
I am not surprised. It is exactly like I thought. When I was in Iraq before the war, the reported feelings were that while the people of Iraq did not like Saddam, they would fight for their country and were against the war.
As I said then, the people wanted the war to come so they could be liberated from Saddam but were not free to talk. The same situation with a different twist exists today.
It is not widely reported, nor fashionable to say the Americans are loved and wanted in Iraq, but in fact as they were wanted before the war, they are wanted now.
"We hope they stay forever" is the true feeling of the silent majority in Iraq, contrary to what is reported.
The logic is very simple -- the Iraqis do not trust their leaders. Faced with a very complicated situation of a 60 percent Shiite majority, a former police state, Iran at their doorstep trying with all its might to destabilize their country, and desperately relieved and happy to be finally liberated from nearly 30 years of Saddam, they want the United States to stay.
The greatest fear of the man on the street is that the Americans will tire and leave. "We pray that they stay and stay forever" is the feeling of the vast majority, but they look both ways before they say it.
Amid all the political rhetoric about saving taxpayers money, we seem to have forgotten how governments actually function. President Bush says federal tax cuts now totaling more than $1.5 trillion will put money back in the bank accounts of average Americans, but to understand what governors are going through is to understand why that isn't really true. For a lot of Americans, the president's tax cut won't end up being a tax cut at all; it's really just a tax shift.
Here's how it works. The tax cut will choke off revenue to the federal government, which is precisely what conservatives want it to do. Their thinking is that the less money Washington has, the less it will waste. This means Congress can't increase financing for the mandates it's been heaping onto the states for 40 years. For instance, Congress shares with states the cost of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, which gobbles up huge chunks of state budgets. Since Washington hasn't seen fit to provide elderly patients with a prescription drug plan, that, too, falls to the states. So does the overwhelming share of special education for disabled children, another federal program. And let's not forget more recent mandates -- Bush's ''No Child Left Behind'' law and increased spending on homeland security -- that the feds have passed on to governors with minimal assistance.
Bush's tax cut does include $20 billion in aid to the states, a provision that passed only because Senate moderates demanded it. Half of that money will be divided among the states over the next two years to help close budget shortfalls. That's helpful, but it's hardly salvation. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, states are facing about $100 billion in deficits right now.
Unlike the president, who can run up deficits at will, governors are legally bound to pass balanced budgets. So in order to finance programs like special education and Medicaid while their budgets implode, governors must pull money from universities, parks and highways. ''The budget meetings are extremely depressing,'' Michigan's new Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, told me during a recent visit to Washington. ''We've got to contemplate cutting burial services for indigents, or cutting after-school programs for at-risk kids, or cutting programs even for talented and gifted children. These are Hobbesian choices.''
Rather than raise taxes, a lot of governors, like Doyle and Granholm, adhere to what might be called ''Florio's Law.'' During the last recession, some governors, most visibly New Jersey's Jim Florio, tried to raise taxes and were soundly bounced from office. The lesson that a lot of politicians, especially Democrats, took away from that period is that you can weather almost anything but a major tax increase.
Instead, desperate governors are slashing the aid that flows from each state to the cities and towns where people actually live. And this is the hidden effect of the Bush tax agenda -- beyond the expanding deficits and favoritism toward the wealthy -- that a lot of taxpayers don't yet seem to grasp. If Bush and Congress cut taxes, and your governor doesn't raise them, then the buck ultimately stops with your mayor, who has to find ways to pay the police and firefighters, paint schools and pave roads. That'll mean higher property taxes or fees on services like garbage collection, or maybe the town will decide it's time to reassess the value of your house. Either way, you're likely to be paying someone else the money you no longer send to Washington.
There is a legitimate conservative theory at work here -- if anyone in the administration had the courage to own up to it. Conservatives believe that it's simply fairer to have people taxed by their local governments than by Washington. This way, the people who pay for the services are the ones using them. As an intellectual point, this makes a lot of sense: if you live in Illinois, you may end up paying more money for your local police force, but that's better than giving it to Congress so they can use it to pay for cops in Florida.
The $350 billion tax cut President Bush signed last week is a three-dimensional victory, yet another manifestation of the Rove-Bush strategy: win now, win later, and win even by policies that fail in their own terms. Unlike his father, who chose to ride out his recession by not acting to stimulate the economy, and who was seen as out of touch as a result, George W. has won big now by showing that he is not just a foreign-policy President. True, there is not much stimulus in the tax cut, but there is enough for Bush to take credit if the recovery predicted for later this year and 2004 actually occurs. Democrats taking solace from the fact that the particulars of the tax cut are unpopular betray the short-range tactical outlook that disables their party against the future-focused GOP. The improved economy will be universally popular, and then so will the tax cuts that supposedly brought it on.
Leo Strauss believed in the intrinsic dignity of the political. He believed in and defended liberal democracy; although he was not blind to its flaws, he felt it was the best form of government that could be realized, "the last best hope." He was an enemy of any regime that aspired to global domination. He despised utopianism - in our time, Nazism and Communism - which is predicated on the denial of a fundamental and even noble feature of human nature: love of one's own. His heroes were Churchill and Lincoln. He was not an observant Jew, but he loved the Jewish people and he saw the establishment of Israel as essential to their survival.
To me, what characterized him above all else was his total lack of vanity and self-importance. As a result, he had no interest in honors within the academy, and was completely unsuited to political ambition. His own earliest passion, he confessed, was to spend his life raising rabbits (Flemish Giants) and reading Plato.
He was first and foremost a teacher. He did not seek to mold people in his own image. Rather, he was devoted to helping young people see the world as it is, in all its misery and splendor. The objects of his teaching were the Great Books, those works generally recognized as the foundation of a liberal education. But that alone was not a sufficient reason for reading them.
He began where good teachers should begin, from his students' received opinions, in order to scrutinize their foundation. At that time, as is still true today, academia leaned to the left; hence such questioning required an examination of the left's tenets. Had the prevailing beliefs been different, they too would have been subject to his skeptical inquiry.
Among the received opinions of the time was an unquestioned faith in progress and science combined with a queasiness regarding any kind of
moral judgment, or "relativism." Many young people were confused, without a compass, with nothing substantial to admire. My father's turning them to the Great Books was thus motivated not merely by aesthetic or antiquarian interest, but by a search for an understanding of mankind's present predicament: what were its sources and what, if any, were the alternatives? The latter he found in the writings of the ancient Greeks.
Furthermore, he insistently confronted his students with the question of the "good life." For him, the choice boiled down to the life in accordance with Revelation or the life according to Reason - Jerusalem versus Athens. The vitality of Western tradition, he felt, lay in the invigorating tension between the two.
My father saw reading not as a passive exercise but as taking part in an active dialogue with the great minds of the past. One had to read with great care, great respect, and try, as he always said, to "understand the author as he understood himself." Today this task, admittedly difficult and demanding, is dismissed in fashionable academia as impossible. Rather, we are told, each reader inevitably constructs his own text over which the author has no control, and the writer's intentions are irrelevant.
The fact is that Leo Strauss also recognized a multiplicity of readers, but he had enough faith in his authors to assume that they, too, recognized that they would have a diverse readership. Some of their readers, the ancients realized, would want only to find their own views and prejudices confirmed; others might be willing to open themselves to new, perhaps unconventional or unpopular, ideas. I personally think my father's rediscovery of the art of writing for different kinds of readers will be his most lasting legacy.
Strauss was not an elitist--but he was a lover of excellence. He believed in the cultivation of the mind, and sought to restore respect for its manifestation in the ambition for honor and nobility in the soul, which he understood to be not only compatible with but essential to democracy. On the occasion of Winston Churchill's death, he told his class that "We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence." Strauss also shared Churchill's famous praise of democracy as the worst regime except for all the others that have been tried from time to time. Although he regarded modern democracy as flawed, it is, Strauss suggested, the form of government best suited to the protection and enjoyment of human liberty, and therefore should be defended wholeheartedly.
Strauss may have been a religious doubter, but he showed time and again that the question of the truth of religion seemed to have been left unsettled by the greatest figures in the history of political philosophy, and that therefore religious teachings, which concern man's highest and deepest longings, must be studied with care and an open mind. He loved the Hebrew Bible and sought to show that it was rich in wisdom about the human condition. He saw that religion could be either salutary or destructive, depending on the circumstances and the religious teaching in question. And he certainly believed that in our day religion could play a positive role in counteracting the tendency of liberal democracy to indiscriminately break down custom and convention.
Finally, Strauss was not a proponent of American empire--but he did teach the importance of American strength in defense of liberty. Writing in the midst of the Cold War, as a refugee from Nazi Germany and as a student of tyranny, Strauss insisted that totalitarians of the left and the right posed a profound threat to liberal democracy--a threat that
liberal democrats tended to underestimate because of their habit of supposing that all individuals and nations are as open to reason and persuasion as liberal democrats consider themselves to be. Strauss encouraged liberal democracies to be strong in defending themselves and forceful in conducting a foreign policy in accord with their principles.
Strauss was no ordinary liberal democrat, but he was a staunch friend of liberal democracy. The urgency of defending liberal democracy by encouraging its virtues, combating its vices, and never losing sight of its enemies is the great political lesson that those of his students who became neoconservatives embraced. To be sure, Strauss seemed to prefer
the classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle to modern political philosophy. He was a proud Jew and took the claims of religion with utmost seriousness while keeping his distance from organized religion. He dwelled at length on liberal democracy's undemocratic and illiberal tendencies, in part because he loved the truth and in part because he was devoted to America's well-being. He was the kind of friend who makes one better by constantly exhibiting, through example and argument, the look of excellence. Not always an easy sort of friend, but the sort of friend, you would think, whom true liberals in every time and place would appreciate.
The current stock market rally represents an impressive showing of the immediate impact of pro-growth tax cuts--the same cuts
that Democratic critics argued would provide no short-run benefits. All of the major indexes are up more than 20 percent since they began pricing-in the tax cut, and they are already recapitalizing American business.
Few people understand that the 11,000-odd publicly owned U.S. companies desperately needed a rising stock market to rebuild their credit quality and funding capabilities in order to expand operations, invest, produce more, and hire new workers. In the last three years, capital and wealth were destroyed in the stock market, a development that caused a credit crunch, corporate contraction, and a rise in unemployment. But the new tax cuts on personal incomes, investor dividends, capital gains, and business equipment expensing--along with a steady increase in the money supply and a waning of uncertainty--are combining to give investors plenty of reasons to buy shares and replenish business capital.
Yes, there are millions of small companies that are privately held, and therefore might seem to be outside this recapitalizing and refunding process. But the credit improvement that the big fish enjoy will work down to the smaller fish. When attitudes toward big business improve, everyone in the lending community is in a better frame of mind. The lending will be there for the smaller firms, and also for the highest-risk start-up ventures that were shut down in recent years.
Under the old law, $100 of corporate profit paid out as a dividend to successful earners netted only $40 of new investable capital, after tax. Today, under the new law, the next $100 of profit will generate an extra $55 of private-investment capital, after tax. The reduced government tax bite on investment income (including capital gains) leaves more new cash to be plowed back into the economy to produce new technology and equipment, new factories and office buildings, and new jobs at higher salaries.
In no uncertain terms, this stock market surge signals the beginning of true economic recovery. And the good news is only beginning to pile up.
On the one hand, President George W. Bush is urging the world to embrace the wonders of biotech. On the other hand, Bush is urging Americans to forgo those wonders.
Meanwhile, Democrats are forming an opposition. And so a conflict of visions is emerging, a conflict with implications for the 2004 presidential election - and vast implications for the 21st century.
On Wednesday, Bush launched into a discussion of the "long-term problem of hunger in Africa," declaring the need to apply "the latest developments of science." Indeed, technology has made food more abundant. Yields for American corn growers, for example, have risen from 29 bushels per acre in 1900 to 134 bushels per acre in 1998, according to the University of Minnesota.
But the president had a particular kind of science in mind: Genetically Modified Organisms - a science that could further accelerate U.S. ag exports, which totaled $51 billion last year. As Bush argued, "By widening the use of new high-yield bio-crops ... we can dramatically increase productivity and feed more people across the continent." And yet, he continued, "Our partners in Europe are impeding this effort. They have blocked all new bio-crops because of unfounded, unscientific fears."
Indeed, Europeans are opposed to what they deride as "Frankenfoods." But so are many Americans. The non-engineered "natural foods" industry is a $7.8-billion enterprise in the United States, growing at 22 percent a year, according to ABC News.
Yet while Bush has gone on offense in one biotech sector, he is on the defensive in another sector. On the same day that the president spoke, one of his leading would-be challengers spoke, too. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) unveiled an ambitious approach to health care, focusing more on Big Science than on Big Government. Noting that chronic diseases afflict 100 million Americans, Lieberman proposed a $15-billion-a-year research program. The heart of his pitch was a new Health Advanced Research Projects Agency, deliberately modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA, among breakthroughs, established the Internet in the late '60s.
Lieberman aims for similar breakthroughs in health and is willing to reverse federal policy to achieve them. As he said, "On the first day I am privileged to enter the Oval Office, I will rescind the ban on stem cell research." He declared that the current government "ban" on such embryo-based research - really a partial ban, promulgated in August 2001 - is inhibiting research gains on a variety of ills.
The Democratic mayors of two small Eastern Shore towns appeared with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. at the State House yesterday to announce that they are switching parties.
Easton Mayor Robert Willey and Denton Mayor Victoria Goldsborough said they felt more comfortable with Republican Party philosophies.
"I am coming back home," said Goldsborough, 56. "Thirty-eight years ago, I was a registered Republican, but I changed 26 years ago because I couldn't vote in the Democratic primary. This party is moving and shaking, and I just want to be in it."
Every morning for two years, Samira Makhlouf removed her Islamic-style head scarf before entering her public school in the southeastern French city of Lyon.
When she donned a modest black bandanna, she was sent home. Finally, in frustration, the Algerian-born student dropped out at age 16, finishing high school by correspondence.
"Removing my head scarf was like tearing something away," said Makhlouf, now a 22-year-old theology student at Lyon University. "I felt my rights were being abridged. There were students who wore all black and were part of a satanic sect, but nobody bothered them."
Since then, the controversy over veils, as the French call head scarves, has become more heated. Calls are growing to ban veils in public schools, and the issue is dividing many camps, from politicians to feminists, as well as France's estimated 5 million Muslims.
"The problem is not so much the growing number of veils but their significance," Francois Baroin, vice president of the ruling Union for the Parliamentary Majority, told Le Figaro magazine.
In France -- home to Europe's largest Muslim population -- the controversy reflects widespread fear of growing Islamic fundamentalism. It also pits France's fiercely secular credo against European Union human rights laws pertaining to freedom of religion.
A recent poll found that more than one-third of French people want to ban Muslim women from wearing head scarves anywhere in public, and 49 percent believe the scarves should be forbidden in schools. [...]
"The government must intervene," said Juliette Minces, a sociologist who has written a number of books on the veil and Islam. "Teachers have a hard time with these girls who come to school wearing the veil, who refuse to attend gym or biology courses, or won't read Voltaire because he was a nonbeliever."
A Florida judge ruled yesterday that a Muslim woman cannot obscure her face with a veil in her driver's license photo.
Ruling that Sultaana Freeman's religious freedom would not be infringed, Circuit Judge Janet Thorpe said the state "has a compelling interest in protecting the public from criminal activities and security threats," and that photo identification "is essential to promote that interest."
Freeman, 35, obtained a license in 2001 that showed only her eyes through a slit in her veil. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the state demanded she have a new photo showing her face uncovered. She refused, Florida revoked her license and she sued.
The American Civil Liberties Union took up her case. But Assistant Attorney General Jason Vail successfully argued that Islamic law permits women to expose their faces if it serves a public good, and that Freeman could be photographed with only women present.
Some of the most important research on the resource curse has been done by bank economists. In a pioneering 1988 book issued as a World Bank
Research publication, "Oil Windfalls: Blessing or Curse?," Alan H. Gelb, chief economist for the bank's African regional office, found that contrary to assumptions popular at the time, oil wealth had made conditions in most countries worse. And Paul Collier, an Oxford University economics professor who now heads the bank's development research group, has demonstrated repeatedly that oil, gas and mining wealth has fueled brutal civil wars. Advocacy groups have used these findings to urge the bank to stop supporting oil and gas projects. [...]
Terry Lynn Karl, a political science professor at Stanford University and author of "The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States" (University of California, 1997), argues that Chad would be better off without the pipeline.
"Revenues flowing through incapable or corrupt structures will give you perverse outcomes," she said at the Washington conference. Not only is the money going to be put to bad use, she predicted, but encouraging dependence on natural resources also tends to result in corruption and a single-industry economy: "When the crisis comes, it's much worse than it would have been otherwise."
(ENI) Christian leaders in the Holy Land have called on the Palestinian Authority not to make Islam the official religion of a future independent Palestinian state. The leaders oppose Article Six of a draft constitution prepared by the Constitution Committee of the Palestinian Authority which states: "Islam shall be the official religion of the state. The monotheistic religions shall be respected."I'm all for a Palestinian State, and I'm willing to believe that, having watched Israel so closely, the Palestinian people will want a modern, liberalish democracy. But, come on, the state's going to be run by Yasir Arafat and a bunch of terrorists. Is there any chance it's not going to be a brutal, thuggish kleptocracy? And, by the way, Lebanon?
The Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, Riah Abu Al-Assal, said he has already taken the matter up with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "I want to assure you that we have written already to the Palestinian Authority. I have already met with President Arafat," he said.
The bishop said he would also be discussing the issue with Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who headed the committee that produced the draft constitution. "There is a way out of this. I know that the majority are Muslims in Palestine but it did not mean that Islam [should] be the religion of Palestine. Palestine needs to be the most democratic state in the Middle East, I hope and pray."
Al-Assal said he also wanted the Palestinian Authority to adopt a model that would allow political representation for Christians as well as Muslims at the highest levels of office, citing Lebanon as an example. "You can copy the example. In Lebanon, the president is Maronite [Christian] and the prime minister is Sunni [Muslim], if we need to address the issue from a religious point of view," he said.
Take a look at how Americans and Canadians responded to this statement in an Environic survey: "The father of the family must be the master of his own house." In 1992, 42 per cent of Americans said the statement was true, compared with 26 per cent of Canadians. In 2000, 49 per cent of Americans agreed with it, compared with 18 per cent of Canadians. Mr. Adams calls it the most astonishing polling result he has ever encountered.
Neil Nevitte, the University of Toronto political scientist who for 20 years has tracked values in Western Europe, the United States and Canada, credits Canada's egalitarian family structures with helping to create young Canadians' ideology of tolerance, social justice and ecological concern.
Today's 20s are indeed the children of those who voted for successive 1960s' and 1970s' governments that enacted multiculturalism, decided the state had no place in the nation's bedrooms, crafted the Charter to elevate individual rights into Canada's supreme law and balance them against the rights of the collective, created the social programs that have allowed the great majority to grow up secure, healthy and well-educated, and wove tolerance and respect for diversity into the schools, courts and law books.
If a ride on the Toronto subway is a trip through 100 languages and the world's entire set of skin colours, it is because Canadians of older generations opened more widely the doors to the country.
If francophone Quebec has been transformed into a vibrant, multi-ethnic society that looks confidently out on the world rather than protectively in on itself, it is because pure laine Quebeckers--the parents and grandparents of today's young adults--helped that change take place.
If Canadians in their 20s overwhelmingly say yes to homosexuals being allowed to marry in law, it is because they were raised in Canadian families and educated in Canadian schools that assigned premium value to tolerance and social inclusiveness and independent thinking.
So 20s are really just a stronger version of the people who raised them, in a trend that promises even more tolerant generations to come. The real split in values and attitudes, the CRIC-Globe survey found, was with their grandparents who were, in almost every area, the least open to change.
"The Charter was not created to reflect Canada; but the Charter did create a new Canadian generation that reflects the Charter," says Queen's University political scientist Matthew Mendelsohn, who helped design the CRIC-Globe and Mail poll.
"It's tough to build a country to match a dream," Pierre Trudeau is once reported to have said.
In fact, that appears to be what Canadians are succeeding in doing.
"It may turn out to be an anachronism," says Mr. Adams of Environics. In a world of six billion people, he says, a society defined by idealism, egalitarianism, personal fulfilment, tolerance and diversity "may be a dream that fails."
The world has become a greener place in the past two decades as a result of climate change, according to a major study published today.So, to sum up, the greenhouse effect may not be real, but if it is, it's good.
As the climate has warmed, the Earth has become more lush and rich with vegetation, notably in the Amazon rainforests, according to a study jointly funded by the US space agency Nasa and the US Department of Energy.
The research, published today in the journal Science, describes how global warming has allowed plants to flourish where climatic conditions previously limited growth.
In general, where temperatures restricted plant growth, it became warmer; where sunlight was needed, clouds dissipated; and where it was too dry, it rained more. . . .
The past two decades have been the warmest recorded, but whether this is due to long-term trends - the greenhouse effect - or short-term trends is unclear: there were three intense El Nino events, in 1982-83, 1987-88 and 1997-98; changes in tropical cloudiness and monsoon dynamics; and an almost 10 per cent rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Two conclusions follow from this discussion. First, the effects of religiousness on individual morality are contingent on images of Gods as conscious, morally concerned beings; religiousness based on impersonal or amoral Gods will not influence moral choices. Second, participation in religious rites and rituals will have little or no independent effect on morality.
Recently, I conducted an elaborate research study to test those conclusions, based on data for the United States and 33 other nations. The results were consistent and overwhelmingly supportive. In each of 27 nations within Christendom, the greater the importance people placed on God, the less likely they were to approve of buying goods they knew to be stolen, of someone failing to report that they had accidentally damaged an auto in a parking lot, or of smoking marijuana. The correlations were as high in Protestant as in Roman Catholic nations and where average levels of church attendance were high or low. Indeed, participation in Sunday services (a measure of ritual activity) was only weakly related to moral attitudes, and those correlations disappeared or became very small when the God "effects" were removed through regression analysis. That is, God matters; ritual doesn't.
The findings are similar for Muslim nations, where the importance placed on Allah is very strongly correlated with morality, but mosque attendance is of no significance. In India, too, concern for the Gods matters, but temple attendance has no detectable effect on morality. But in Japan, where the Gods are conceived of as many, small, and not particularly interested in human moral behavior, religion is irrelevant to moral outlooks -- concern about the God(s), visits to temples, prayer and meditation, all are without any moral effects.
Nor are there God or temple effects on morality in China. However, in China prayer does matter, but in the wrong direction! That is, the more often they pray, the more tolerant the Chinese are of immorality. I suggest that result is due to the fact that, in China, "prayer" seldom implies a longstanding, deeply felt relationship with a God, but merely involves requests for favors from various divinities of small scope. As such, praying tends to reflect a quite self-centered and self-serving activity, consistent with rapidly shifting from one God to another on the basis of results, or even taking a stick to the statue of a God who fails. Seen in that light, a question about prayer is likely to select those somewhat lacking in terms of a social conscience.
My results show that, in and of themselves, rites and rituals have little or no impact on the major effect universally attributed to religion -- conformity to the moral order. Thus, it seems necessary to amend the "law" linking religion and morality as follows: Images of Gods as conscious, powerful, morally concerned beings function to sustain the moral order.
Clearly, Durkheim made a major error when he dismissed Gods as mere religious epiphenomena. Unfortunately, his error had severe, widespread, and long-lasting consequences, for it quickly became the exclusive sociological view that religion consists of rites and ritual, and that those exist only because their latent function is to integrate societies and to thereby lend sacred sanctions to the norms. In retrospect, it seems remarkable that such a notion gained such rapid acceptance and went unchallenged for so long. Stripped of its functionalist jargon, the basic argument seems to have been that, since "we" know there are no Gods, they can't be the real object of religion -- the truism that things are real to the extent that people define them as real failed to make any headway in this area of social science.
So then, let us finally be done with the claim that religion is all about ritual. Gods are the fundamental feature of religions. That holds even for Godless religions, their lack of Gods explaining the inability of such faiths to attract substantial followings. Moreover, it was not the "wisdom of the East" that gave rise to science, nor did Zen meditation turn people's hearts against slavery. By the same token, science was not the work of Western secularists or even deists; it was entirely the work of devout believers in an active, conscious, creator God. And it was faith in the goodness of that same God and in the mission of Jesus that led other devout Christians to end slavery, first in medieval Europe and then again in the New World.
In those ways at least, Western civilization really was God-given.
Sammy Sosa, Martha Stewart and Howell Raines may have had bad weeks, but in the world of imaginary campaign polls, the Clintons didn't fare too well either.
A Marist poll conducted in New York on May 12 (but not released until June 5) showed that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani would beat Hillary Clinton in a Senate race, 56 percent to 39 percent. Of course Hillary is not up again until 2006, and most believe that Rudy is more interested in running for governor in 2006 as a stepping stone to the White House in 2008. Nonetheless, it shows that HRC has some vulnerabilities in her home state.
On the question that former President Clinton raised about amending the Constitution to allow presidents to run more than twice, only 20 percent agree with him while 75 percent disagree. The survey by Opinion Dynamics for Fox also showed President Bush trouncing former President Bill Clinton, 53 percent to 32 percent if that election were actually held now.
Teenage sexual activity is an issue of wide-spread national concern. Although teen sexual activity has declined in recent years, the overall rate is still high. In 1997, approximately 48 percent of American teenagers of high-school age were or had been sexually active.
The problems associated with teen sexual activity are well-known. Every day, 8,000 teen-agers in the United States become infected by a sexually transmitted disease. This year, nearly 3 million teens will become infected. Overall, roughly one-quarter of the nation's sexually active teens have been infected by a sexually transmitted disease (STD).
The problems of pregnancy and out-of-wedlock childbearing are also severe. In 2000, some 240,000 children were born to girls aged 18 or younger. Nearly all these teenage mothers were unmarried. These mothers and their children have an extremely high probability of long-term poverty and welfare dependence. Less widely known are the psychological and emotional problems associated with teenage sexual activity. The present study examines the linkage between teenage sexual activity and emotional health. The findings show that:
"When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly less likely to be happy and more likely to feel depressed.
When compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly more likely to attempt suicide."
Thus, in addition to its role in promoting teen pregnancy and the current epidemic of STDs, early sexual activity is a substantial factor in undermining the emotional well-being of American teenagers.
President Bush held two Middle East summits this week. The first, with the Arab states, was an abject failure. The second, with the prime ministers of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, was merely a troubling echo of another abject failure, the Oslo handshake of 1993. [...]
In 1993, it bought supposed recognition, a supposed end to violence and a supposed end to incitement by recognizing the PLO, bringing Arafat and his terrorists out of Tunis, planting them in the heart of Palestine, giving them control of all the major Palestinian cities, outfitting his army with Israeli rifles, etc.
In 2003 the rug was sold again, this time fetching Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state with contiguous borders in which Israeli settlements are uprooted. This might be the outline of the final settlement. But these were concessions given away before the negotiations even began.
The unilateral surrender of Israel continues.
Now, forcing the unilateral surrender of Israel might be a policy, if it promised peace.
This recording was made when Dexter Gordon was in his mid-30s - when his influence on the tenor-sax sounds of both Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane were still fresh, and his majestic mix of Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins was in its irresistible prime. [...]
Superb playing partners include Bud Powell, Freddie Hubbard, Philly Joe Jones and Billy Higgins, and if the leader can occasionally sound a little typecast with his imperious, big-tenor bravura, it's still irresistible and undated jazz music.
With the tabloid headlines about her marriage, the Sunday prime-time interview with Barbara Walters and the promise of a cover story in Time magazine, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today rode the wave of an extravagant publicity campaign that befits the publication of a book for which she was paid $8 million.
But in many ways, the Clintons' friends said today, it is not only a memoir by a former first lady that is being rolled out.
It is also the Clintons themselves, embarking on the latest chapter in a public life that has made them an object of admiration, scorn and puzzlement since the former governor of Arkansas ran for president in 1992, and sold them as a "buy one get one free" team of public servants.
Mrs. Clinton is dealing with an issue, her husband's infidelity, which she has until now rarely addressed in public, and which her own advisers viewed as a hindrance to a public career that they would like to see end back in the White House. And by design or not, her book arrives at a time when her husband appears to be ending a self-imposed moratorium and taking more of a hand in national Democratic politics.
The Clintons spent much of the first 30 months of the Bush presidency keeping a low profile and trying to avoid the storms that engulfed Mr. Clinton's presidency, his friends said today. But that period is now coming to an end, as they try in different ways to assert their presence in American politics, and embark on promoting books for which they were paid advances totaling close to $20 million. Mr. Clinton's memoir is to be published in 2004.
Not incidentally, the personal nature of Mrs. Clinton's book suggests they are about to define a new period in a relationship that has long been a source of gossipy speculation and that even their closest friends describe as enigmatic.
It's well accepted throughout the Muslim world that the decay of Muslim civilization began 500 years ago because religious scholars stopped reinterpreting Islamic law. Part of today's debate is who can legitimately participate. Many say the complexities of contemporary society demand it go far beyond religious scholars. "If you want to apply sharia to banking, you have to understand banking," Alkebsi says.
Many argue that women must be part of the process. Some are working with women in the US and abroad to reinterpret their role according to the Koran.
"One concept I teach from the Koran is that each individual is God's representative on earth," says Sharifa Alkateeb, head of the North American Council for Muslim Women. "That implies moral agency and ownership of her own thought processes; awareness of community; the ability to criticize any level of control, from the family to government. That concept is fundamentally democratic, and it can revamp society."
Reinterpretation is a huge task and also requires winning over the people. "In Islamic countries, people want more freedom, but at the same time, the vast majority want to live according to God's laws, which they believe bring them happiness in this world and the next," says Seyyed Hossein Nasr, author of "Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization."
They need to be convinced that democracy does not mean taking God's sovereignty and giving it to humans. "If in a democracy you have a parliament that passes laws which do not oppose those divine laws, there would not be a problem," he adds. "What would happen in the US if the Congress one day passed laws that negated the Ten Commandments?"
This is why it is so crucial that the democratic movement include moderate Islamists. And Iraq is a test. "It's very important we build real democracy in Iraq, and the key to success is being inclusive of all groups," Masmoudi says. "Secularism isn't popular because of Saddam Hussein. If we impose it, it will backfire."
But he doesn't think the majority will vote for theocracy either. "What they want is a moderate, progressive interpretation of Islam, a democratic state that respects the will of the majority and protects the rights of the minority. It's extremely important, because if we don't succeed ... democracy will lose credibility."
During the 1992 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush dismissed his Democratic challengers: "They criticise our country and say we are less than Germany and slightly better than Sri Lanka. My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos."
A couple of years ago, the American people may have believed that of Mr Bush's dog, but not his son. When George W. Bush came to office he was considered not just a neophyte, but an ignoramus. On the way to the White House, Mr Bush had flunked questions on the leaders of Pakistan, Chechnya and elsewhere, struggled to tell the difference between Slovenia and Slovakia and called the Greeks "Grecians".
But all that now seems like another man at another time. Over the past week, the US president has appeared as a self-assured diplomat. Reminiscent of Richard Nixon flying home from Beijing 30 years ago, the irrepressible Mr Bush took what for him was the highly unusual step of inviting reporters into the conference room on Air Force One to sum up an "historic trip".
He described how he guided Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, out into the garden to chat
informally rather than stick to the roundtable talks indoors.
"What I wanted to do is to observe the interplay between the two; did they have the capacity to relax in each other's presence for starters? And I felt
they did," Mr Bush said on the way from the Aqaba summit to Thursday's rallying of the US troops at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar.
As with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, so with the leaders in the Middle East: Mr Bush's "style of statecraft", as his aides call it, is personal, and he reads the body language. "My instincts were such that, this is a guy I can trust," Mr Bush said of the rapport he struck up with Mr Putin. "I've spent enough time with Ariel Sharon to know he's the kind of guy when he says something, he means it. I'm getting the same sense about prime minister Abbas."
In Sharm el-Sheikh, Mr Bush strolled into a meeting with a group of Arab leaders without the support of his staff and came out 90 minutes later slapping the Middle East royalty on the back. [...]
The president, of course, can still fluff his lines. The longest word of the trip - contiguous - proved to be a big problem. On Tuesday, he said "continuous" by mistake; on Wednesday, it took him three attempts to get out "contiguity" without choking on the middle syllable.
Demographics is destiny. Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do....
In 200 years, French and German will be spoken exclusively in hell.... The chattering classes have nothing to say about the most unique and significant change in our times. Yet the great political and economic shifts of modern times are demographic in origin. Three examples suffice:
1) The great trans-Atlantic rift. Europeans are pacifists, not merely in the Persian Gulf, but on their own Balkans doorstep. If they cannot be bothered to reproduce, why should any European soldier sacrifice himself for future generations that never will be born?
2) The shift in global capital flows to the United States: old people lend money to young people. The aging populations of Europe and Japan lend money to younger people in the US.
3) The deflation danger....
Little enough has been said about the "how" but almost nothing about the "why" of Europe's demographic suicide.... Have the Europeans taken to heart existentialism's complaint that man is alone in a chaotic universe in which life has no ultimate meeting, and that man responds to the anxiety about death by embracing death?
Detest as I might the whole existentialist tribe, there is a grain of truth here, and it bears on a parallel development, that is, the death of European Christianity. Fifty-three percent of Americans say that religion is very important in their lives, compared with 16 percent, 14 percent and 13 percent respectively of the British, French and Germans, according to a 1997 University of Michigan survey....
All religion, [the German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), an existentialist of sorts,] argued, responds to man's anxiety in the face of death (against which philosophy is like a child stuffing his fingers in his ears and shouting, "I can't hear you!").... But tribes and nations anticipate their own extinction just as individuals anticipate their own death, he added: "The love of the nations for their own nationhood is sweet and pregnant with the presentiment of death." Each nation, he wrote, knows that some day other peoples will occupy their lands, and their language and culture will be interred in dusty books.
The early Christian Church encountered a great extinction of peoples and their cultures through the rise and fall of the Alexandrine and Roman empires. Who now remembers the Lusitani, the Illyrians, the Sicani, the Quadians, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepidians, Herulians, Pannonians and a thousand other tribes of Roman times? As nations faced extinction, individuals within these nations came face to face with their own mortality. Christianity offered an answer: the Church called individuals out of the nations and offered them salvation in the form of a life beyond the grave.... (The Jews, who think of themselves as an eternal people, were having none of it)....
Christianity made possible the assimilation of thousands of doomed tribes into what became European nations. Something similar is at work in Africa, the only place in the world where Christianity enjoys rapid growth....
For today's Europeans, there is no consolation, neither the old pagan continuity of national culture, nor the Christian continuity into the hereafter. The French know that Victor Hugo, Gauloise cigarettes, Chateau Lafitte and Impressionist painters one day will become a matter of antiquarian curiosity. The Germans know that no one but bored schoolboys will read Goethe two centuries hence, like Pindar. They have no ambition but to die quietly, no concerns except for those amusements which might reduce boredom and anxiety en route to the grave. They have no passions except hatred born of envy. They hate America, a new kind of universality that succeeded where the old Christian empire failed. They hate Israel, which makes the Jewish people appear all the more eternal in stark contrast to Europe's morbid temporality. They will pass out of history unmourned even by themselves.
The European Central Bank on Thursday cut interest rates by half a point to 2 per cent, their lowest level since the second world war, amid growing gloom at the state of the eurozone's economy.
Amid fears of deflation in Germany, short-term interest rates in the country have fallen to their lowest level since 1875, when records began. [...]
The bank is expected to lower its GDP growth forecast for this year from 1 per cent to about 0.7 per cent or less after the eurozone economy ground to a halt in the first quarter and shows signs of contracting in the second.
Economists said the ECB had left the door "wide open" to further cuts and economic data continues to disappoint.
Ken Wattret, economist at BNP Paribas, said: "It has lost faith in its forecast recovery. It has always been just around the corner - but never appears."
Holger Schmieding, economist at Bank of America, said the ECB was likely to cut again in September, as the surging euro would trigger more revisions to inflation and growth forecasts.
Mr Duisenberg dismissed talk of eurozone deflation, insisting it was not a meaningful concept in a currency union.
But economists warned that deflation, a sustained fall in prices, was a serious risk in Germany and a threat to the region.
Gwyn Hacche at HSBC said: "If deflation happens in Germany - a third of the eurozone - some of the smaller countries - the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium - will also be under threat."
In a 3-2 vote, the Mt. Diablo school board on May 27 decided against offering a pre-honors English course for freshmen. Board president Gary Eberhart and trustees Bill Leal and April Treece voted against the course, saying they did not agree with separating students based on academic abilities. Trustees Dick Allen and Linda Mayo supported the proposed class, which would have been an elective for students seeking more advanced instruction.
Parents and students upset about that decision, showed up at the board meeting June 3 to speak during the public comment period, asking for reconsideration of the class. Sandy Walters, a Concord parent, said the district should provide courses that meet the needs of both remedial and advanced students.
"We need to give students as diverse options as possible," she said.
Chris Stieger-Maguire and her daughter Megan, a Pleasant Hill Middle School eighth-grader in the district's Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, also advocated for the class.
"It's important to consider the needs of GATE and high-achieving students," Stieger-Maguire said.
She stressed that a pre-honors freshmen English class could serve as an introduction to honors or advanced-placement classes offered to juniors and seniors. Some students who might not feel comfortable taking such classes could gain confidence by trying out an advanced class as ninth-graders, she said.
And Megan bluntly told the board she is often bored in her classes. A voracious reader, she said she would like to be able to take a class that discusses more than just plots and characters. Many of her classmates, Megan said, feel the same way.
"I have watched as other students have lost interest in school because they are not challenged," she said.
Pleasant Hill parent Lauren Unruh and daughter Julie said some bored advanced students are disruptive if not challenged.
"It's basically a fallacy that kids who are little faster are going to make a class better," Unruh said. "I have experience with gifted failures. A significant amount of intelligent kids drop out of school because they think it's stupid."
She said bright kids often feel isolated in basic classes, yet thrive when they are grouped with students who enjoy intellectual stimulation. And Julie said advanced students can sometimes intimidate students who don't catch on quickly, by rushing the teacher and implying that the material is easy.
So, having knocked Saddam from power, it turns out that America may have done so for the wrong reasons. But imagine this, a scenario a thoughtful antiwar friend posed to me before the war: Your neighbor, you have good reason to believe but cannot definitively prove, has purchased weapons that could be used against your family. You further believe, based on his history of violence, that he's prone to using them. (He's been arrested on a few aggravated assault charges over the years.) Would your going over and killing him be immoral, given your thin evidence? Possibly. But what if, upon having dispatched him, you find in his home grotesque evidence that he was a serial murderer, and that his victims had included his own family--meaning his capacity for violence is much deeper than even you suspected. You may initially feel guilt for having attacked him for the wrong reasons. But in the end, you have killed a vile murderer who would otherwise have escaped justice, perhaps to kill again. Are you a dangerous vigilante, or a hero?
This question isn't easy. Western ideas of justice are based on the presumption of innocence, so it must not be suggested lightly that governments be overthrown because we merely suspect them of wrongdoing.
As the U.S. media still digests the shock and lessons of the Jayson Blair affair at The New York Times, a far older and far worse journalistic wrong may soon be posthumously righted. The Pulitzer Prize board is reviewing the award it gave to New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty more than 70 years ago for his shamefully -- and knowingly -- false coverage of the great Ukrainian famine. [...]
Writing 40 years later in his classic memoirs "Chronicles of Wasted Time," [British journalist Malcolm] Muggeridge concluded that Duranty was a sociopath without a grain of professional integrity or human decency to his name. He described Duranty as "a little, sharp-witted, energetic man" who liked "to hint at aristocratic connections and classical learning, of which, I must say, he produced little evidence. One of his legs had been amputated after a train accident, but he was very agile at getting about with an artificial one."
Duranty may well have been blackmailed or bribed or both by the Soviets, but Muggeridge concluded that his real motive in lying outright about what he knew to be true and helping the Soviets in their unprecedented, astonishingly successful cover-up was a far simpler one: He loved and revered Stalin precisely because he was so colossally murderous and cruel.
"He admired Stalin and the regime precisely because they were so strong and ruthless. 'I put my money on Stalin' was one of his favorite sayings.'" Indeed, Muggeridge related that in one conversation they had, Duranty even admitted to him that he knew there was a catastrophic food shortage, even famine in Ukraine and that he knew the Soviet authorities were prepared to kill large numbers of people there to keep control.
As Muggeridge described the conversation, "But, he said, banging the sides of the sofa, remember that you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs -- another favorite saying. They'll win, he went on; they're bound to win. If necessary, they'll harness the peasants to the ploughs but I tell you they'll get the harvest in and feed the people that matter. The people that mattered were the men in the Kremlin and their underlings. ... The others were just serfs, reserves of the proletariat, as Stalin called them. Some would die, surely, perhaps, quite a lot, but there were enough, and to spare."
An appalled and a fascinated Muggeridge listened to all this and later recalled, "I had the feeling, listening to this outburst, that in thus justifying Soviet brutality and ruthlessness, Duranty was in someway getting his own back for being small, and losing a leg, and not having the aristocratic lineage ... he claimed to have. ... Duranty was a little browbeaten boy looking up admiringly at a big bully."
In his own lifetime -- he lived to the age of 73, though he died broke and forgotten -- Duranty was never called to account. Indeed, as Muggeridge also noted, "He came to be accepted as the great Russian expert in America, and played a major part in shaping President Roosevelt's policies" towards the Soviet Union.
The Pulitzer Prize board's re-evaluation of Duranty's award therefore comes late in the day, to put it mildly, but it is still a welcome, indeed necessary gesture towards American journalistic integrity and to the hecatombs of dead whose cries were hushed.
A Penn State expert on global business issues urges the international business community to pay attention to four major issues with regard to global trends in population if it wishes to operate on the world stage: population growth, aging, immigration and urbanization.
"The world population distribution has been, and will continue, to shift more toward the less-developed nations of the world, while the more-developed nations will continue to see their populations increasingly marginalized in comparison to the rest of the world," said Fariborz Ghadar, director of the Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State. [...]
As the relative size of a nation's population shifts compared to the rest of the world, so will its age distribution. While across the board nations will become older due to advances in medicine, Ghadar said the relative size of their working populations will see dramatic alterations.
Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Mid-East will experience "youth bulges" in their demographics in which a growth spurt in population causes problems with employment and resource allocation within a country.
"This does however serve to increase the relative size of the working population and in turn increase the potential for economic growth. In other areas, specifically Western Europe and Japan, their aging population will soon prove to be a massive liability. Declining birthrates and the increasing maturity of these nations will combine to up the costs in the fields of health care and pension funds, while at the same time reducing the relative size of the working population. As a result, national productivity will drop and so then will the governments’ ability to meet the social contract they have established with their citizenry," said Ghadar. In addition to his role as executive director of the Center for Global Business Studies, Ghadar is considered by many of his peers to be the leader on research investigating the growing new field known as global tectonics--multifunctional business issues that will shape economies in the future.
"Immigration can help to relieve some of the woes created by a disproportionate age distribution within a country. The U.S. will be able to maintain its global population standing not by its own fertility, but by its relative open immigration policy, and the same applies for Canada, Australia and New Zealand," said Ghadar.
He points out that legal and illegal immigrants now account for more than 15 percent of the population in more than 50 countries, and this number will only grow in time. More developed countries and their aging work force need to replace their retirees with immigrant labor if they wish to prolong their economic vitality and avoid labor shortages.
Europe and Japan, Ghadar predicts, will have the toughest time with this process due to the dilemma they face with protecting their national borders and firming up their cultural identity, while at the same time facing the harsh reality that their populations can no longer meet the needs of their industries. For the less-developed countries, emigration will be a double-edged sword in that while it will relieve significant amounts of pressure on unemployment and infrastructure requirements, it also will deprive these nations of their best and brightest.
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the
war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.
SEOUL, South Korea - The United States agreed Thursday to dismantle its bases and withdraw American troops from positions they have occupied for decades near the tense Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea from communist North Korea.
The troops will eventually be moved to "hub bases" at least 75 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone, according to a joint statement after two days of talks between U.S. and South Korean officials. Even after the redeployment, however, U.S. troops will continue to train north of Seoul and close to the DMZ, the statement said.
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, long mentioned as a potential Republican candidate for governor, told Esquire magazine for its July issue: "Yes, I would love to be governor of California ... If the state needs me, and if there's no one I think is better, then I will run."
With Democratic Gov. Gray Davis facing a recall campaign that could result in a special gubernatorial election as early as fall, Schwarzenegger's political ambitions could be speeded up.
The Web site of the Democratic National Committee links Internet users to the sites of 279 political and advocacy organizations, labor unions, religious groups and government agencies.
The list, divided into 28 categories, includes everything from the Willie Valasquez Institute to the Oneida Indian Nation to the National Association of Social Workers.
But the DNC is resisting adding a 280th link.
For almost a year, an organization dedicated to electing Democrats to national, state and local offices has been pressing the national party to add its Web site to the DNC's list of linkable sites. The problem is, the organization is dedicated to electing Democrats who oppose abortion rights.
So far, the DNC, whose quadrennial platform in 2000 included a plank affirming the party's support for a woman's right to have an abortion, has refused to respond to the query by the group known as Democrats for Life of America.
In the past month, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has written to DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe urging the party to add the Democrats for Life link to its Web site. In addition, 17 House Democrats wrote to McAuliffe
defending the anti-abortion-rights group.
In their May 14 letter, the House Members said the DNC's refusal to add the Web link amounted to "ostracism" of loyal Democrats and contradicted the party?s abortion plank in the 2000 platform, which said in part, "We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue."
"Actions speak louder than words," the 17 House lawmakers wrote.
But the DNC apparently does not know how to respond.
It's long been speculated that if push came to shove, Sen. John Kerry could tap his wife's massive fortune to help fund his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. But, in fact, under federal campaign finance law, Kerry is barred from accepting more than $2,000 from his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, the heiress to her late husband John Heinz' eponymous ketchup fortune that's been estimated to be worth at least $550 million.
The story re-emerged on Wednesday when the AP reported that Kerry's campaign had determined that they could not use "any" of Teresa Heinz Kerry's fortune. The campaign later disputed that story, saying all they were doing was following a law that they'd understood all along.
Federal law forbids Kerry from using any assets that are solely in his wife's name - and that is the lion's share of the couple's money. Kerry himself is worth a measly $700,000 to $2.4 million, according to the
most recent Senate financial disclosure forms. (Kerry also owns a painting worth $250,000 to $500,000 and bank accounts worth between $50,000 and $100,000.)
Kerry spokesman Robert Gibbs tells CBS News that the campaign has never planned to tap into the Heinz fortune because of the restrictions. But, Gibbs said, Kerry plans to decide in the fall whether to self-finance using either his own funds or assets that the couple own together. Kerry would be allowed to use 50 percent of the value of any jointly held assets, the Globe reports.
The big question is what assets the Kerrys actually own jointly. The campaign has refused to say what assets the couple owns together, or how much those assets might be worth, the Boston Globe reports. But there are definitely some joint assets out there. The Globe reports that during the 1996 Senate race, Kerry used the joint assets as collateral for last-minute loans to pay for ads.
The AP did some digging and found that of the five houses (read: estates or mansions) where the couple spends time, four are owned solely by Mrs. Heinz Kerry. The one exception is the Louisburg Square manse on Beacon Hill that the couple bought together when they married in 1995. The Boston Globe estimates that the house is worth $7 million. The other four properties - Georgetown, Sun Valley, Nantucket and Pittsburgh - are worth tens of millions of dollars.
All tournament long, Justine Henin-Hardenne has had a lot of crowd support because she's from Belgium, a French speaking country. It's not a surprise that much of the crowd was for Henin-Hardenne today. In addition, I think a lot of people wanted to see someone other than Serena Williams in the final.
However, I thought the crowd at times showed very poor taste toward Serena. There were a couple of occasions when the linesperson didn't call the ball out and Serena stopped in the middle of a point to circle the mark and the chair umpire confirmed that the ball was out. Therefore, Serena was completely in the right but the crowd reacted negatively toward her. After that, they proceeded to cheer when Serena would miss the first serve, which in tennis is completely inappropriate.
Dear Prudence,
I have been married for six years. I have a nice man for a husband and a wonderful child. But of course, I am not satisfied with my life. I say this because I married my husband when I was barely 19 after dating him for only a couple of months. I had doubts about the marriage before we were married, but I am a people-pleaser and don't like to hurt anyone's feelings. However, after six years of being a "pleaser" to my spouse, I find that my ideas about life have drastically changed. I am no longer the immature 19-year-old who needs a man to care for her. I am going back to school to get my degree so I never have to depend on anyone to take care of me or my child. I am very independent and starting to feel so smothered at home that I feel as though I'm going crazy.The more I pull away from him, the more he clings to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to him, and when he touches me I cringe. I do everything I can to avoid kissing him. He is a very good-looking man, but I feel a brotherly kind of love for him. I suppose I should try counseling, but how can someone teach me to be attracted to him again? I don't want to hurt him, but I feel he deserves someone who loves him. He has such low self-esteem that telling him what I have just told you would crush him. I am afraid to tell him (that's the people-pleaser in me), yet I'm afraid to live my entire life wondering what my life COULD have been. I am very sad and confused about what to do with this relationship. I am living a lie. Please help me. I very much value your opinion. I will be waiting to hear from you.
--Little Lost Sheep
Dear Lit,
How very sad for you. While Prudie doubts that many people-pleasers would go the wedding route to avoid hurting someone's feelings, the consequences remain. What you need to do now is take action so you don't spend another six years feeling miserable but afraid to wound your husband. Because it sounds as though you've not yet given counseling a try, that would be a useful opening salvo in straightening out your life and finding out from whence comes your need to please everyone. Maybe you and your husband can go to counseling together; maybe separately. A qualified couples' counselor will know. There's a chance that your husband could change a few behaviors and that you could arrive at a workable modus operandi. There is, too, the chance that therapy will allow you to leave the marriage without a ton of guilt, if that's your decision. Do bear in mind that people recover from all kinds of hurt.
--Prudie, explorationally
Bok Ku Lee is not my real name, but one I've adopted to protect my family.
For a number of years I served as head of the technical department at a munitions complex that made missile guidance systems and related electronic devices for North Korea's military. I was one of 100,000 or so scientific and professional people involved in the regime's weapons of mass destruction industry.
While I made enough money to modestly feed my family, I witnessed mass starvation and oppression of those less fortunate, and unspeakable abuses of power and lifestyle excesses by senior political officials of the regime. As did everyone, I lived in constant fear of being sent to the gulag for the slightest indiscretion.
Nonetheless, I was trusted with some of the regime's biggest secrets. While serving, I was sent to Iran to test launch one of our missiles with a new guidance system for the then-ruling Ayatollah Khomeini. I consulted with colleagues who were sent to serve on an operational war basis for Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, and others who were sent to other countries to sell, service and install such missile systems. I ordered, supervised and monitored the
foreign purchases of electronic and guidance material--90% of which came from Japanese suppliers. I worked with some of the 60 or so Russian scientists who had been "cherry picked" by the regime to work in Pyongyang's nuclear, atomic, chemical and biological warfare programs--and who continue to work there.
Yet, like most of my fellow countrymen, I longed for the day when I could escape the Stalinist prison my country had become. [...]
The time has come for South Korea and the U.S. to encourage the defection of thousands like me who are prepared to tell the world what they know and whose departure will deprive the regime of skills it needs to survive. Such mass defections will occur if the defectors are given a reasonable prospect for safe harbor outside of North Korea. At the same time, Seoul should end its barbarous "sunshine policy," which sentences fellow Koreans to slavery because giving
them freedom would cost too much money.
In short, the time has come to recognize that a policy of promoting democracy, insisting and ensuring that humanitarian aid actually go to the hungry rather than the regime, and encouraging mass defections, will cause the repeat in North Korea of what happened when East Germans defected to Austria through Hungary, thereby triggering the implosion of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. This is a real and likely prospect for the oppressed people of my country and for world security.
The House voted last night to ban a series of procedures that critics call "partial birth" abortion, handing abortion opponents their biggest legislative win in more than a decade.
President Bush -- unlike his predecessor -- has promised to sign the bill, which passed the Senate earlier this year in a slightly different form. Senate and House members plan to resolve those differences, and the measure could become law within weeks.
That will not end the fight, however. Abortion rights activists have vowed to challenge the measure in court, noting that three years ago the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Nebraska. [...]
Congress has approved the ban twice before, but President Bill Clinton vetoed it each time. Supporters set the bill aside three years ago when the Supreme Court, voting 5 to 4, ruled that Nebraska's law on partial birth abortions was unconstitutional because it did not define the procedure clearly enough and failed to provide an exception for the mother's health.
Authors of the House bill said they addressed the court's concerns by including a more specific description of partial-birth abortion as well as language saying the procedure is never medically essential, making a health exception unnecessary.
The New York Times Thursday announced the resignations of Howell Raines, executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, managing editor. The two were widely blamed for a reporting scandal that damaged the company's flagship newspaper.
Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor of The New York Times, has been named interim executive editor. No one will be named interim managing editor.
The more the Senate rushes to do everything by a simple majority "as the easy way out of sticky situations," [former Senator Dan] Quayle warned in September 2000, "the more the Senate becomes just another cog in a legislative machine."...
But Senate prerogatives would be brushed aside by GOP leader Bill Frist, prodded by his right-wing caucus including predecessor Trent Lott, to, largely by a party-line fiat, end the right to filibuster judicial nominations....
New Mexico's Pete Domenici lambasts Democrats for blocking a couple judicial nominations but says "it will be very difficult for me to change the filibuster rule. I always thought the filibuster rule protected the minority." John McCain agrees.
And listen to a bona fide conservative, Mississippi's other senator, Republican Thad Cochran, an ardent supporter of all the Bush judicial nominations. "It's very important that one faction or one party not be able to ride roughshod over the minority and impose its will. The Senate is not the House." He says he flatly opposes changing the filibuster rule....
Lawmakers should carefully read a letter sent to the Senate this week by Robert Caro, the acclaimed biographer of Lyndon Johnson. "The nation's Founders depended on the Senate's members to stand up to a popular and powerful President," this scholar writes. "In the case of judicial appointments, the Founders specifically mandated the Senate to play an active role." The proposed filibuster changes, he notes, have profound consequences: "Senators should realize that they are dealing not with the particular dispute of the moment, but with the fundamental character of the Senate of the United States, and with the deeper issue of the balance between majority and minority rights."
Ultimately the law of unintended consequences would kick in. One day Democrats will control both the White House and the Senate; these passion-of-the-moment right wingers then would rue the day they brushed aside the Senate's ability to debate, deliberate and delay.
Nevertheless, in filibustering Republican judicial nominees Democrats have "gone nuclear," and "nuclear" retaliation is called for. The best way to do this is in the budget. Republicans can simply shut down New Deal and Great Society socialist-style programs that subsidize Democratic constituencies and state governments and promote dependency upon government by individuals, while proposing cooperative, "compassionate conservative" alternatives that provide a social safety net while making recipients dependent upon their fellow citizens rather than government. Republicans can say: you Democrats can have the judiciary your way or the budget, but not both. Thus would some sort of policy equality be restored, and incentives created for equitable compromise.
I understand that politically, this cannot happen until after the 2004 elections. But now is the time to start preparing the public by emphasizing the radical nature of the Democratic filibusters, which have overturned more than 200 years of custom and threaten to depopulate the judiciary.
Dutch police are hunting a man who sends hate letters to families who have three or more children.
The sender starts his letters with "No congratulations", and insults the parents by calling them anti-social and egotistic.
He signs his letters as Dr Malthus from Volthe, which police believe is a reference to the 18th century English philosopher Thomas Malthus - who warned against overpopulation.
A police spokesman told Dagblad Rivierenland: "He asks the parents why they don't adopt a child, if they absolutely want to have children, because Holland is already too full."
There's nothing like a punchy headline (see above, for instance) to get an article some attention. A recent long piece in the Harvard Business Review shockingly labeled "IT Doesn't Matter" has garnered the magazine more buzz than at any time since the Jack Welch affair. The article has been approvingly cited in the New York Times, analyzed in Wall Street reports, and e-mailed around the world. But without such a dramatic and reckless title I doubt the article would have been much noticed. It's a sloppy mix of ersatz history, conventional wisdom, moderate insight, and unsupportable assertion. And it is dangerously wrong.
Author Nicholas Carr's main point is that information technology is nothing more than the infrastructure of modern business, similar to railroads, electricity, or the internal combustion engine--advances that have become too commonplace for any company to wangle a strategic advantage from them. Once-innovative technology becomes merely a necessary cost. "IT management," writes Carr, "should, frankly, become boring." He thinks today's main risk is not underusing IT but overspending on it.
Carr misunderstands what information technology is. He thinks it's merely a bunch of networks and computers. He notes, properly, that the price of those has plummeted and that companies bought way too much in recent years. He's also right that the hardware infrastructure of business is rapidly becoming commoditized and, even more important, standardized. Computers and networks per se are just infrastructure. However, they are only the boring part of the IT equation.
One of the article's most glaring flaws is its complete disregard for the centrality of software. Any human knowledge or information can be mediated and managed by software. Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy, says that Carr doesn't put enough emphasis on this, the "I" in IT. "We have definitely hit an inflection point where suddenly the least expensive technologies are the most powerful ones--like Intel's microprocessors," Fitzgerald says. "But the source of competitive advantage in business is what you do with the information that technology gives you access to. How do you apply that to some particular business problem?" To say IT doesn't matter is tantamount to saying that companies have enough information about their operations, customers, and employees. I have never heard a company make such a claim.
A senior Iraqi officer on active service within the country's military provided British intelligence last August with the information that Iraq could fire chemical or biological warheads within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order, according to senior Whitehall officials.
The claim, contained in the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, has become the chief test of whether ministers "duped" the British public over the need for war.
Whitehall officials in two departments said last night the evidence of the 45-minute capability had come from a serving Iraqi officer with a record for providing reliable data over years. The information was analysed by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee and immediately distributed to some cabinet ministers at the end of August, a few weeks before the compilation of the government's WMD dossier.
A political maelstrom has erupted over the proposed merger of the nation's two largest Spanish-language broadcasters, encumbering the billion-dollar deal with questions of race, censorship and media bias.
Lawmakers, celebrity lawyers and lobbyists, and public relations experts are drawing up sides in the battle between Los Angeles-based Univision and the Spanish Broadcasting System.
"I don't think I've ever seen anything like this in a media merger," said John Dunbar, a telecommunications expert for the Center for Public Integrity. The issues at hand are not commercial, he said. "It is 100 percent political."
Univision wants to swallow up the Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., the nation's largest Spanish-language radio company, with 53 stations in 15 U.S. markets. The merged company would control 70 percent of Spanish-language advertising dollars in the U.S.
Radio rival Spanish Broadcasting System says the merger would go beyond a business deal. The company and its supporters, including a roster of high-ranking Democratic officials such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Edward Kennedy and Tom Daschle, claim the merger is a cover for a more insidious takeover: Domination of the Spanish-speaking media by conservative, non-Hispanic owners, who would then operate the equivalent of Fox News for the Spanish-speaking world.
"Democrats are looking at this and thinking, 'You are going to turn all our Hispanic Democrats into Republicans,'" Dunbar said.
Taxpayers in Spain, Portugal, southern Italy, Ireland, and Greece--countries with large agricultural sectors--tend to back Europe's farm-support program because they get more from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) than they give. But the rest of the EU, led by Britain and Germany, which pay in more than they take out, are clamoring for change. So are farmers from the orchards of New Zealand to the cattle ranches of Argentina who want greater access to Europe's heavily protected markets. And poor countries complain that subsidies for products like sugar help keep them poor.
Total agricultural support as a percent of GDP, 2001
Country %
Australia 0.3%
Canada 0.7%
U.S. 0.9%
Japan 1.4%
European Union 1.4%
Source: OECD; Christophe Hochede
All told, EU taxpayers spent $135 billion--in CAP funds, price supports, and other forms of assistance--aiding the region's farmers in 2001. That equals 1.4% of Europe's GDP, a substantially larger proportion than in the U.S. or Australia, and more than a third of the world's agricultural subsidies. Next year the program will be expanded even further to embrace the first wave of new members from former Warsaw Pact countries. But, Hochede's rationale notwithstanding, it still doesn't add up to self-sufficiency: Europe pays farmers $1.7 billion not to farm, in order to avoid surpluses, at the same time it imports all kinds of agricultural goods.
In April, the U.S. and the Cairns Group of Asian and Latin American farming nations blamed EU intransigence for the collapse of WTO negotiations that were supposed to settle on guidelines for cuts in agricultural tariffs and subsidies. One can gasp at the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's lecturing about agricultural protectionism less than a year after approving a $190 billion support bill for U.S. farmers. But most neutral observers agree that the EU was the principal villain for failing to offer significant tariff reductions. "At the moment there's nothing on the table from the Europeans that provides a basis for negotiation," says Mark Vaile, Trade Minister of Australia, which heads the Cairns Group and which has gone a long way toward a free-market agricultural policy.
[D]emocrats have perfected myriad ways to lose. Just as they estranged moderate voters in 1972, when George McGovern went down to a resounding defeat, they also failed to rally their core supporters in the debacles of 1994 and 2002, the first of which turned Congress over to the Republicans, the second of which gave it to them again. In 1994, the backlash against the Democrats' failure to enact health insurance was augmented by union members' discontent with the Democrats' success at enacting NAFTA.
Thanks to Mr Blair's commitment to hold a referendum before joining the single currency, there has been a kind of armed truce between the government and the anti-European press. Each has known that they might one day come to blows over the euro. But as long as Gordon Brown was Keeper of the Five Tests, it has seemed a fairly distant prospect, even as the chancellor's verdict, to be delivered on June 9th, draws near.
However, this informal non-aggression pact has had two important consequences. The first is that it probably lulled the government into thinking that some of the heat had gone out of Europe as an issue, particularly as even the Tories no longer seemed very keen to talk about it. The second is that it convinced Mr Blair that he must do everything to avoid his European policy being again exposed to the loose cannon of referendum politics.
Once a referendum was conceded on anything to do with Europe, Mr Blair reasoned, the Europhobic press could be relied on to poison the argument so thoroughly that even the most moderately integrationist proposal would stand little chance of gaining support. Promising a vote on the euro was a mistake not to be repeated. It followed that if Britain was to play a positive role in designing a new constitution for the European Union the best thing was to pretend that nothing very important was going on in Brussels. The national interest was therefore perfectly safe in ministerial hands.
Given the kind of coverage that the latest draft of the constitution has been getting this week??Death knell for democracy?, screamed the Daily Mail; ?The end of our nation?, bellowed the Sun? it was entirely understandable, if naive, that Mr Blair should have hoped that this ruse might work. Even without this level of hysteria, it would still be clear to most people who can be bothered to look at the thing that the government is being economical with the truth in describing the constitution as a mere ?tidying up? of existing treaties. And having enthusiastically conjured up referendums to decide on everything from Scottish and Welsh devolution to whether or not Hartlepool would like to be run by a mayor, to many it also seems a bit rich now to be talking sonorously about upholding the principles of parliamentary democracy.
A document that wants to reflect a pluralist Europe and offend no one, the draft acknowledges a "spiritual impulse always present in [Europe's] heritage." But that ecumenical, almost New Age-y note did not satisfy Christian Democrats who had pushed for an explicit nod to God; or religious E.U. states, current and future, including Italy and Poland; or, of course, the Catholic Church. "Enlightenment wasn't born out of nowhere. It came out of Christianity," says Vatican diplomat Achille Cardinal Silvestrini. "They make a point of talking about roots. If you're going to do that, you have to talk about them all." Monsignor Noel Treanor, who represents the bishops' lobby in Brussels, says Giscard's revisionism should be revised once more "out of a sense of historical exactitude."
Europe's past may be a reason for God's inclusion, but its present suggests He may not belong. Even a Vatican official notes: "If you look at modern-day Europe, it's not a society based on Christianity."
Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
It's the birthday of sex expert "Dr. Ruth," Ruth Westheimer , born Karola Ruth Siegel in Frankfurt, Germany (1928) to Orthodox Jewish parents. The Nazis came to power, and in 1939 her family decided to flee Germany. But her grandmother refused to go, so Ruth was sent to safety at a Swiss school. She never saw her family again. After the war she moved to Palestine, joined the underground movement fighting for a Jewish state, and trained as a sniper.
Tony Blair failed today to quiet the roar of criticism over his insistence that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, with the opposition leader declaring that "nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying."
In a raucous House of Commons session punctuated by both catcalls and cheers, Blair passionately defended his prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had been hiding a dangerous arsenal, calling charges that his Labor government cooked the intelligence books "completely and totally untrue."
Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative Party leader, accused Blair of "equivocating" and argued that "the whole credibility of his government rests on clearing up these charges." Smith also launched a new line of attack, dismissing as "disgraceful" claims by senior Labor Party officials to the Times of London that "rogue elements" in the intelligence services were using "skullduggery" to cast doubt on Blair's case for war against Iraq.
Blair has been under fierce pressure here in recent days, in part from members of his own party, since fresh doubts surfaced about his case that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. More than 70 Labor members in the House of Commons have signed a petition demanding that Blair publish his evidence, with one, Malcolm Savidge, calling the issue "potentially more serious than Watergate." A key Commons committee, brushing aside Blair's objections, approved an investigation late Tuesday.
In a very real sense, the war over Iraq is still being fought here, in marked contrast to the United States, where neither political party has used the failure to find dangerous weapons as a major issue against President Bush.
Fueled by hostile press coverage -- the Sunday Mirror, for example, has denounced Blair's earlier claims on Iraq as "rubbish" -- the charges seem to have struck a deep chord in Britain, where Blair struggled far more than Bush to galvanize support for the war. A poll published in the Daily Telegraph says 44 percent of the public here feels misled on the weapons issue.
In the packed, high-ceilinged Commons chamber, Blair dismissed the criticism as politically motivated, recalling that some critics had predicted that Iraq "was going to be my Vietnam," with hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed.
"Some people resent the fact that it was right to go to conflict. . . . Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that," Blair said.
Dearest readers:
Many of you on the East Coast were in transit this morning when President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and "Palestinian" Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas delivered their respective speeches in Jordan regarding a forthcoming Palestinian state. Those of you on the West Coast were likely asleep.
As part of our going the extra mile, JWR is reproducing the speeches in full sans any "spin" that you will inevitably hear on the radio or watch on TV.
JWR does not hide its position on this issue and we hope our readers will take a minute - even a few words -- to please let the President know how YOU feel.
E-mail links are included in each transcript.
In gratitude and friendship --- and with prayers for the Ultimate Salvation,
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky,
Editor in Chief
JewishWorldReview.com
President Bush's speech
Prime Minister Sharon's speech
"Palestinian" Prime Minister Abbas's speech
The House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, said today that the House would not consider a Democratic measure to provide an increased tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families who did not receive it in the new tax law.
Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, said the increased tax credits would be approved only if they were part of a broader tax-cut package, possibly including permanent repeal of the estate tax or making state sales taxes deductible. A package of that size would require 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and Democratic opposition to big new tax cuts would make such passage almost impossible. [...]
Like Mr. DeLay, many Senate Republicans would prefer to consider the child credits as part of a more expensive bill that would cut other taxes. One such bill, introduced today by the chief Senate tax writer, Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Finance Committee, would extend the credit to both minimum-wage families and to far wealthier married couples. While the child credit is now phased out for couples making more than $110,000, Mr. Grassley's bill would begin the phase-out at $150,000.
The White House, which had stayed on the sidelines since President Bush signed the tax law last week, today extended support to Mr. Grassley's bill.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, acknowledging tirades and tears over her husband's affair with?Monica Lewinsky, says former President Clinton lied to her about the relationship until the weekend before he admitted as much to a grand jury.
The New York senator vividly describes her pain over the betrayal in?Living History, her new memoir covering her eight years in the White House. A copy of the book, which goes on sale Monday, was obtained by The Associated Press.
"The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York," she writes.
She says she accepted her husband's story at first -- that he had befriended the White House intern when she asked for job-hunting help, "had talked to her a few times" -- and that the relationship had been horribly misconstrued.
"For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents."
Mr. Abbas is the most important reason there is renewed hope for progress in the Middle East. He has stated clearly that the violence of the past 32 months has been a betrayal of Palestinian national aspirations and that the only solution is a negotiated one leading to two states living side by side. Mr. Arafat failed his people by encouraging that violence. He is now likely to try to trip up Mr. Abbas to show his continuing importance. Unfortunately, the Egyptian foreign minister recently stated his government's allegiance to Mr. Arafat. And no Arab leader has directly condemned suicide bombings or their sponsors. Syria and its client state, Lebanon, did not even join yesterday's gathering. [...]
All of this, in addition to Mr. Bush's suddenly increased involvement, suggests a basis for guarded optimism.
A "designer" cooking oil developed at McGill University may help people lower their cholesterol levels and, in some cases, shed extra pounds, new research suggests.
The product -- a blend of plant sterols and extracts from olive, flaxseed, coconut and tropical oils -- can be used in place of other cooking oils and tastes just fine, said Peter Jones, a professor at McGill's School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition who is spearheading the project.
The oil is made of "medium chain" fats that are well-recognized for ramping up the body's metabolism. The oil is directed toward the liver and burned as energy, rather than being stored in the body as fat, Prof. Jones explained.
"If you enhance energy, then it means you're burning calories that you'd otherwise be packing on to your tummy tire," he said.
Dubbed functional oil, the product has been tested in two clinical trials on humans. The researchers found it reduced cholesterol levels by more than 13%. By comparison, olive oil -- widely considered the best cholesterol fighter -- reduces cholesterol levels by about 4.5%.
Men who took part in the study lost an average of one pound per month, but women did not experience a significant amount of weight loss.
The speed of the war in Iraq and the prevailing belief that the Iraqi people are better off as a result have modestly improved the image of America. But in most countries, opinions of the U.S. are markedly lower than they were a year ago. The war has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era – the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance.Now, I believe that it is possible for one man with a strongly held view to be right, while everyone else is wrong. But if you believe that society, reasoning together, can derive a strong moral code not based on a Diety, and that thereafter that morality will be generally accepted and followed, doesn't that require that society agree?
While the postwar poll paints a mostly negative picture of the image of America, its people and policies, the broader Pew Global Attitudes survey shows wide support for the fundamental economic and political values that the U.S. has long promoted. Globalization, the free market model and democratic ideals are accepted in all corners of the world. Most notably, the 44-nation survey found strong democratic aspirations in most of the Muslim publics surveyed. The postwar update confirms that these aspirations remain intact despite the war and its attendant controversies.
The new survey shows, however, [Does "however" now mean, "it follows logically"] that public confidence in the United Nations is a major victim of the conflict in Iraq. Positive ratings for the world body have tumbled in nearly every country for which benchmark measures are available. Majorities or pluralities in most countries believe that the war in Iraq showed the U.N. to be not so important any more. The idea that the U.N. is less relevant is much more prevalent now than it was just before the war, and is shared by people in countries that backed the war, the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as in nations that opposed it, notably France and Germany. [In other news, world population has not completely lost its mind. By the way, isn't this what George Bush predicted if the UN failed to act in Iraq?]
In addition, majorities in five of seven NATO countries surveyed support a more independent relationship with the U.S. on diplomatic and security affairs. Fully three-quarters in France (76%), and solid majorities in Turkey (62%), Spain (62%), Italy (61%) and Germany (57%) believe Western Europe should take a more independent approach than it has in the past. [Die, NATO, die.]
The British and Americans disagree – narrow majorities in both countries want the partnership between the U.S. and Western Europe to remain as close as ever. But the percentage of Americans favoring continued close ties with Western Europe has fallen – from 62% before the war to 53% in the current survey. In fact, the American people have cooled on France and Germany as much as the French and Germans have cooled on the U.S. [Which, undoubtedly, the French are obsessing over because they so value international cooperation.] . . .
In addition, the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world. Negative views of the U.S. among Muslims, which had been largely limited to countries in the Middle East, have spread to Muslim populations in Indonesia and Nigeria. Since last summer, favorable ratings for the U.S. have fallen from 61% to 15% in Indonesia and from 71% to 38% among Muslims in Nigeria.
In the wake of the war, a growing percentage of Muslims see serious threats to Islam. . . . [Hm, we're more feared than loved. Frankly, I though this was now our policy goal.]
Support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism also has fallen in most Muslim publics. Equally significant, solid majorities in the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia and Jordan – and nearly half of those in Morocco and Pakistan – say they have at least some confidence in Osama bin Laden to "do the right thing regarding world affairs." Fully 71% of Palestinians say they have confidence in bin Laden in this regard. . . . [UPDATE. World population may be losing its mind, after all.]
There also is widespread disappointment among Muslims that Iraq did not put up more of a fight against the U.S. and its allies. Overwhelming majorities in Morocco (93%), Jordan (91%), Lebanon (82%), Turkey (82%), Indonesia (82%), and the Palestinian Authority (81%) say they are disappointed the Iraqi military put up so little resistance. Many others around the world share that view, including people in South Korea (58%), Brazil (50%) and Russia (45%). [An accompanying chart says that 17% of Israeli's share that view. I can't figure out if that is Israeli Arabs and leftists, or just a wish the Iraqi military had agreed to be slaughtered.]
Still, even in countries that staunchly opposed the war many people believe that Iraqis will be better off now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power. . . .
U.S. policies toward the Middle East come under considerable criticism in the new poll. In 20 of 21 populations surveyed – Americans are the only exception – pluralities or majorities believe the United States favors Israel over the Palestinians too much. This opinion is shared in Israel; 47% of Israelis believe that the U.S. favors Israel too much, while 38% say the policy is fair and 11% think the U.S. favors the Palestinians too much.
But Israel is the only country, aside from the U.S., in which a majority says that U.S. policies lead to more stability in the region. Most Muslim populations think U.S. policies bring less stability to the Middle East, while people elsewhere are divided in their evaluations of the impact of U.S. policies. [Stability in the middle east is highly overrated.]
More broadly, the postwar survey asked people their views on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. By wide margins, most Muslim populations doubt that a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people are met. Eight-in-ten residents of the Palestinian Authority express this opinion. But Arabs in Israel, who voice the same criticisms of U.S. policy in the Middle East as do other Muslims, generally believe that a way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that Palestinian rights and needs are addressed. In fact, Arabs in Israel are nearly as likely as Jews to hold that opinion (62% of Arabs, 68% of Jews). . . .
Despite soaring anti-Americanism and substantial support for Osama bin Laden, there is considerable appetite in the Muslim world for democratic freedoms. The broader, 44-nation survey shows that people in Muslim countries place a high value on freedom of expression, freedom of the press, multi-party systems and equal treatment under the law. . . .
The postwar update finds that in most Muslim populations, large majorities continue to believe that Western-style democracy can work in their countries. . . .
The major survey also shows that the free market model has been embraced by people almost everywhere, whether in Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, or Asia. Majorities in 33 of the 44 nations surveyed feel that people are better off in a free-market economy, even if that leads to disparities in wealth and income. [Hey, I thought the poor would rather everyone be poor rather than average wealth grow.] . . .
Americans are much more likely than Europeans to believe that most people who fail in life have themselves to blame, rather than society. Yet [?] there are profound differences in the way Americans and people in other countries – especially Western Europeans – view such fundamental issues as the limits of personal freedom and the role of government in helping the poor. Americans are more individualistic and favor a less compassionate government than do Europeans and others. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) believe success is not outside of their control. Except for Canadians (63%), most of the world disagrees. Among 44 nations surveyed, the U.S. has one of the highest percentages of people who think that most people who fail in life have themselves to blame, rather than society.
Accordingly, Americans care more about personal freedom than government assurances of social justice. Fully 58% of Americans say it is more important to have the freedom to pursue personal goals without government interference, while just 34% say it is more important for government to guarantee that no one is in need. In most other nations, majorities embrace the opposite view. And while most Americans support a social safety net, they are less strongly committed than other peoples to their government taking care of citizens who cannot take care of themselves. [Why, that's what that conservative extremist George Bush believes. What are the chances?] . . .
Beyond their common desire for democracy and free markets, people in emerging nations also generally acknowledge and accept globalization. People worldwide have become aware of the impact of increasing interconnectedness on their countries and their own lives. Majorities in 41 of 44 countries surveyed say that international trade and business contacts have increased in the past 5 years. . . .
[P]eople generally have a negative view of anti-globalization protesters. The French give higher ratings to multinational corporations than to the protesters. And in Italy, site of a major clash in 2001 between police and anti-globalization forces in Genoa, the public by nearly two-to-one (51%-27%) says the protesters are having a bad influence on the country.. . .
In that context, Western Europeans take a much dimmer view of foreign workers from Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East and North Africa, than they do of foreign workers from other European Union countries. This is especially the case in Germany, where 59% say Middle Easterners and North Africans who come to work in Germany are bad for the country; 53% say that about foreign workers from Eastern Europe.
This European concern about foreign influence and sovereignty also is seen in other ways. There are still sizable minorities of people in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy who think that there are parts of other countries that really belong to them. This sentiment has not diminished – and in some cases has risen dramatically – since the end of the Cold War. Fully 63% of Russians believe that "there are parts of neighboring countries that really belong to Russia." In 1991, just 22% agreed with that statement. Broad majorities in the Philippines, India, Lebanon, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, South Korea and Turkey also feel that parts of other nations rightfully belong to their country.
As was the case in 1991, the American public has a more favorable view of ethnic and racial minorities than do Western European publics. African Americans and Hispanics are viewed much more positively in the U.S. than are Turks in Germany, North Africans in France, and Albanians in Italy. . . .
Homosexuality and the centrality of religion to personal morality divide the peoples of the world. Majorities in most countries say it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person. But Canadians and Europeans – both in the West and the East – take the secular view that it is possible to be moral without believing in God. Opinion in the United States is closer to that in most developing countries, where agreement is nearly universal that personal morality is linked to belief in God. . . .
US and British experts have discovered that Iraq was developing a banned missile, capable of reaching Israel and other parts of the Middle East, the Times reported Wednesday, quoting "senior government sources".
The right-of-centre newspaper said it understood British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has called for patience in the search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, has been told that rocket motors for the missiles have been found.
Sources told the paper that in the past few weeks weapons experts discovered that the Abu Ghraib military base near Baghdad was developing a weapon with a range of about 960 kilometres (600 miles).
Under limits set by the UN Security Council, Iraq was allowed to missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometres only, The Times said.
Who is the most influential historian among young people? Filmmaker Ken Burns? Could it be the Democrats' court historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.? Biographer David McCullough? How about the late Stephen Ambrose, whose triumphant view of American history has brought alive such colorful characters as Meriwether Lewis, Crazy Horse, and George Custer?
Though an argument exists for any one of these men (even the ones who lack the proper academic credentials), a strong case could also be made for a decidedly less establishment figure: Howard Zinn. [...]
History is too complicated to find a perfect fit within any theory. For the true believer, this inconvenience can be overcome. When fact and theory clash, the ideologue chooses theory. To the true believer, ideology is truth. Time and again, A People's History of the United States opts to mold the facts to fit the theory, leaving the reader to wonder what "people" he is referring to in the book's title. Dishonest people? Left-wing people? Delusional people?
For instance, Zinn claims that "George Washington was the richest man in America." He wasn't, but it makes for a good story. Perhaps the wealthiest man being rewarded with the run of the government is too compelling a concept for a Marxist to discard--even when it isn't true. Whatever the reason for the inclusion of this falsehood, it's one that can be easily disproved. Despite having substantial debts owed to British moneylenders in the late 1760s and early 1770s, as well as having to borrow money to travel to New York upon his election to the presidency, George Washington certainly rose to accumulate great wealth in his lifetime--even if he was chronically cash-poor. His last will and testament estimates his accumulated wealth at $530,000. That certainly qualified him as rich, but clearly there were men of greater means roaming America during his lifetime. Robert Morris, who eventually lost his wealth, was the Founding era's wealthiest merchant. Moses Brown, whose family's name graces an Ivy League university, was another contemporary of Washington's whose wealth in that era exceeded that of the nation's first president. Zinn is wrong.
"When the Scottsboro case unfolded in the 1930s in Alabama," Zinn writes, "it was the Communist party that had become associated with the defense of these young black men imprisoned, in the early years of the Depression, by southern injustice." Perhaps the Party had become "associated" with the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, but in reality the Communists merely used the embattled youngsters. Richard Gid Powers points out in Not Without Honor that the Communists had raised $250,000 for the Scottsboro Boys’ defense, but had put-up a scant $12,000 for two appeals. At the time, a black columnist quoted a candid Party official who stated, "we don't give a damn about the Scottsboro boys. If they burn it doesn't make any difference. We are only interested in one thing, how we can use the Scottsboro case to bring the Communist movement to the people and win them over to Communism." One might see an analogous situation in Zinn's view of history. He is only interested in it so long as it serves as a weapon of socialist ideology.
"Unemployment grew in the Reagan years," Zinn claims. Statistics show otherwise. Reagan inherited an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent in his first month in office. By January of 1989, the rate had declined to 5.4 percent. Had the Reagan presidency ended in 1982 when unemployment rates exceeded 10 percent, Zinn would have a point. But for the remainder of Reagan's presidency, unemployment declined precipitously. While Zinn teaches history and not mathematics, one needn't be a math whiz to figure out that 5.4 percent is less than 7.5 percent. Despite unleashing an economy that created nearly 20 million new jobs during his tenure, Reagan continues to be smeared by historians--and it's not hard to figure out why. Reagan's free market polices were anathema to Marxists like Zinn. Upset at the pleasant way things turned out--Reagan's policies unleashed an economy that continuously grew from the fall of 1982 until the summer of 1990--historians have preferred to rewrite history.
These are but a few of Howard Zinn’s errors, which curiously seem to always bolster the left-of-center position. No error goes against the grain of the author's general thesis. Every author makes mistakes. Zinn, it seems, would make less of them if he relied on his mind rather than his ideology to do his thinking.
By now one might be thinking: On what evidence does Zinn base his varied proclamations? One can only guess. Despite its scholarly pretensions, the book contains not a single source citation. While a student in Professor Zinn's classes at Boston University or Spelman College might have received an "F" for turning in a paper without documentation, Zinn’s footnote-free book is standard reading in scores of college courses across the country.
A wave of strikes from France to Austria left much of Western Europe crippled today, as protesting workers shut down subway systems, ports, trains, toll roads, and airlines. [...]
As is customary in France, the labor dispute is the bailiwick of the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who today showed no sign of backing down on his plan to overhaul the pension system.
"This is about the survival of the republic," Mr. Raffarin said during a session of the French parliament.
The unions are rebelling against the government's proposal to require workers to pay into the state pension fund for 40 years, up from 37.5 years now, before they qualify for retirement benefits.
"The current proposals will weaken the system and increase inequalities," said Bernard Thibault, the head of the powerful union, CGT, in an interview with the online edition of the French daily, Liberation.
Labor leaders in Austria voiced similar complaints about the government's plan to reduce pensions by 11 percent. Officials there also showed no willingness to compromise, saying that with shaky public finances and an aging population, they had no choice but to make drastic cuts.
"We are all living longer; there are fewer children," said the education and science minister, Elisabeth Gehrer, on Austrian state radio. "You can't strike against demographic developments like that."
It was not surprising that President Bush would get tough with the Israelis and Palestinians and demand that both get their houses in order. What was surprising, because of an extraordinary mistake by Egyptian television, was that Mr. Bush would be caught unawares on camera today speaking about the Middle East with more bluntness, emotion and religious fervor than had been heard before.
Anyone who has regularly watched Mr. Bush in speeches and news conferences could tell in an instant that he had no idea that his remarks to five moderate Arab leaders were being broadcast for public consumption. He was colloquial, and referred to "Almighty God."
By late afternoon, Mr. Bush's aides acknowledged that the president had not known the cameras were rolling as he spoke. Subsequently, White House transcribers scrambled to record his comments from network tapes.
Speaking the direct language of a politician willing to take a dangerous gamble--as long as the others were, too--Mr. Bush made his comments just after he had spent 90 minutes in an unscheduled meeting with the five Arab leaders, with only interpreters present. [...]
Mr. Bush won good reviews on his performance from Arab leaders, who expressed relief and gratitude that he had at last come to their region. His goal today was to enlist support of the Arab leaders behind Mr. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, whom he wants to promote as the leader of the Palestinians over the administration's nemesis, Yasir Arafat. In one moment caught by an Egyptian TV camera, Mr. Bush and Mr. Abbas could be seen smiling and talking to each other off to the side of the other leaders and officials.
"By the time the lunch was over, they looked like they were old pals from a long time ago," said a high-ranking Saudi official. "The ability of the president to move from different personalities to different types of people--if it was never tested before, it was certainly tested today." The president, the Saudi official said, had shown his "seriousness" about the process.
The loopiest aspect of the Group of 8 conclave in èvian is the notion that global leaders are confronting the challenges of the 21st century in the absence of the nation that may well dominate the century.
That's right: China. [...]
No, Hu Jintao is no Gorbachev.
He's more like a Franco, a Pinochet, a Park. And, knock wood, the China he rules will follow Spain, Chile and South Korea in fostering the educated middle class that will lead it to democracy.
Although he is generally deemed a moderate--if not liberal--cadre on political matters, President Hu Jintao issued a remarkably tough message on defense and armaments at a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo meeting in late May.
During this special Politburo "study session" on military matters, the president and party chief pointed out that China must "achieve a leap-forward style development in defense and army modernization." Hu hinted that much greater funding would be devoted to upgrading the arsenal of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) because, he said, economic progress "need to be safeguarded by a strong national defense."
Hu put the most emphasis on boosting the PLA's information technology (IT) and electronics capabilities. He called these capabilities "a major contributor to new transformations in the world's armies." The 60-year-old president, who is also one of three vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC), vowed that "China will ceaselessly strengthen its national defense and military modernization."
What is behind the party and army leadership's redoubled zeal in beefing up PLA weaponry?
A key factor was the dazzling display of American firepower in the Iraqi theater. Even before the start of the war, Beijing had dispatched a considerable number of military and intelligence experts to the Middle East with the purpose of watching the Allied Forces in action from up close. Since early April, military academies have run marathon series of seminars on what the PLA could learn from American tactics and equipment. This was behind the Politburo's decision to--in the words of the official Xinhua news agency--"borrow from the experience of new military developments in the world."
At the bottom of The Federalist's defense of the proposed Constitution is a view of human nature which may best be described as realistic. The authors of The Federalist rejected the popular Enlightenment view that man was basically good, and corrupted only from without by faulty institutions such monarchy or mercantilism. Overthrow these institutions, it was widely believed, and men can live together in harmony with little or government. Although Publius agreed that these institutions were flawed, the authors of The Federalist held that the causes of human quarrelling could not be blamed simply on external conditions. The roots of discord and faction are "sown in the nature of man" (No. 10). Thus, in answer to the question, "Why has government been instituted at all?" Publius replied: "Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without restraint" (No. 15). Since no arrangement of the social order could ever make men good, government, with its ultimate threat of coercion, would always be necessary.
Americans, blessed by Providence with the most favorable external conditions (No. 2), must learn that man is no better in the New World than in the Old. Publius is one of the first to deny "the myth of American exceptionalism." Americans, he warns, have no claim to "an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape" (No. 6). To believe otherwise is to indulge in "the deceitful dream of a golden age."
But if men are not good, neither does Publius regard them as simply evil. In one of the longest statements on human nature in The Federalist, Publius suggests that human nature partakes of both the admirable and the base and that republican government would be indefensible if men were simply degenerate.
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government, and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another (No. 55).
Yet although republican government "presupposes" a certain capacity for virtue, elsewhere in The Federalist Publius makes it clear that republican government cannot rely on morality for its preservation. All too often, these "better motives" fail just when they become most necessary. Moreover, the promotion of virtue by the national government would require a degree of political interference in private matters inconsistent with republican liberty.
Instead, The Federalist seeks to ground republican government on the most reliable aspect of human nature: self-interest. By self-interest, Publius means that most men, if left alone, will naturally seek to satisfy their own interests and desires, rather than look to the well being of the whole. In a society such as the one Publius hopes to shape, this means that most men will seek a comfortable material existence. Although some men will continue to pursue the more aristocratic desires for glory and power, Publius understands that the desire for material well-being is the modern democratic passion par excellence. Publius does not condemn any of these selfish impulses, or even try to moderate them. For The Federalist is confident that improvements and discoveries in "the new science of politics" (No. 9) will enable them to channel these desires toward the public good.
The Anti-Federalists claimed to be the true federalists because they were the true republicans. Consequently, we begin with their account of republican government and its relation to federalism.
The Anti-Federalists believed that to maintain the spirit of republican government, which was the best defense against tyranny, individuals needed to know one another, be familiar with their governments, and have some direct experience in government. Only then would the citizenry possess a genuine love of country, which is the essence of republican, or civic, virtue.
The Anti-Federalists espoused the then traditional view of republican government, reflected in the first state constitutions, which emphasized the legislative branch of government. With the first federal constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the states, through their legislatures, retained effective control of federal men and federal measures. The delegates to Congress were chosen by the state legislatures and were subject to being recalled. The federal power to raise taxes and armies not only required a vote of nine states, but, even after such a vote, it depended on state requisitions, which meant that the federal government depended on the good will of the states to execute the law.
In stark contrast, the Constitution proposed by the Federal Convention in 1787 provided the basis for a strong national government. Elections to the House of Representatives were by the people directly, not the states, and the federal powers over taxes and the raising of armies were completely independent dent of the state governments. This new form of federalism necessarily produced a new form of republicanism, the "large republic." Furthermore, Publius did not shrink from providing a positive argument in support of it." Federalist 10 justified the new form of republicanism, not only as the price of union but as the republican remedy to the disease of majority faction, or majority tyranny.
Because the Federalists saw a major danger not from the aggrandizing of the ruling few, but from the tyranny of the majority, they sought to restrain the influence of that majority in order to secure individual rights and the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. Such restraint was to be achieved through a large extended sphere, i.e. the constituencies of the federal government. These would be larger and more diverse than the constituencies of the states, and so would make majority tyranny more difficult, since more negotiation and compromise would be needed for any single faction to become part of a majority. In addition, the increased competition for office would produce better representatives and a more effective administration throughout the government.
Perhaps because he took republican government for granted, as a given in America, Publius understood it to require only that offices of government be filled directly or indirectly by popular vote. Furthermore, the representation of the people was satisfied by the fact of election, regardless of the contrast between the wealth and influence of the elected and the electorate.
To the Anti-Federalists, the people would not be free for long if all they could do was vote for a representative whom they would not know and who would be very different from them.
Because the Anti-Federalists emphasized participation in government, they argued that a small territory and a basically homogeneous population were necessary for a notion of the "public good" to be agreed upon. The Anti- Federalists did not insist that every citizen exercise legislative power. But they did emphasize representation of the people in the legislatures and on juries. By "representation" they meant that the number of people in a legislative district must be small enough and the number of districts large enough so that the citizens will know the people they are voting for and be able to elect one of their own-one of the "middling class." This latter phrase referred to the large number of farmers of modest means. A substantial representation of this agricultural middle class was possible even in the large states and necessary for the character of the governors to reflect the governed. Under the proposed constitution, argued the Anti-Federalists, this kind of representation would be impossible at the federal level, where the districts would contain at least 30,000 people.
Likewise, by participating in local jury trials, in civil as well as criminal cases, the people in their states acquired a knowledge of the laws and the operation of government, and thereby, argued the Anti-Federalists, they become more responsible citizens. It was feared that this responsibility would be lost when cases were appealed to the proposed national supreme court, which had jurisdiction on appeal over all questions of law and fact.
Since the Anti-Federalists believed that republican government was possible in the states but not in one single government for the entire country, only a confederacy, that is, a federal republic, could safeguard the nation's freedom. They understood such a form of government to have a limited purpose, primarily common defense. Hence, those who became Anti-Federalists originally favored limited amendments to the Articles of Confederation, rather than an entirely new constitution. When a new constitution became inevitable, they hoped to limit the transfer of political power from the states to the national government. They claimed to be the true republicans and the true federalists because they understood republican government to require a closely knit people attached to their government. They sought to grant only so much power to the federal government as was absolutely necessary to provide for defense. In this way, the distribution of governmental power, as between the nation and the states, would correspond to the distribution of representation. And while the Anti-Federalists did argue for an increase in the federal representation, that by itself would not have satisfied the requirement of republican government, as they saw it, since the people would always be more substantially represented in their state governments. According to the Anti-Federalists, the Federalists were not federalists but consolidationists; and the ultimate effect of the Constitution would be to reduce the states to mere administrative units, thereby eliminating republican liberty. [...]
The Anti-Federalists lost the ratification debate because they failed to present a clear and convincing account of a constitutional plan that stood between the Articles of Confederation, which they acknowledged was unable to provide for the requirements of union, and the Constitution proposed by the Federal Convention, which they feared would produce a consolidation of power. And yet the periodic and contemporary constitutional debates over federalism, over the extent of legislative and executive power, and over individual rights and judicial review reflect the different conceptions of republican government that were developed in the founding dialogue over the Consituation.
Any strict construction of federal power has much in common with Anti- Federalist constitutionalism. During the founding debate, opponents of a strong national government wanted to amend the Constitution; after ratification, Anti-Federalists had no choice but to interpret the Constitution to require limited federal government. The contemporary controversies over abortion, pornography, and sexual practices among consenting adults, and the issues surrounding the religion clauses of the First Amendment reveal disagreements over the scope of individual rights, on the one hand, and the legitimacy of government maintenance of community manners and morals on the other. These controversies resemble the founding debate over republican licanism, where the Federalists focused on the security of individual rights and the Anti-Federalists expressed a greater concern for the character of republican citizenship, maintained in part through religion. Through such debates, Anti-Federal constitutionalism, as applied to governmental structure and to moral qualities necessary for free government, thus remains an important part of our constitutional polity.
In an effort to win back hearts in the United States, France has commissioned a little schtick from one of America's best-known comedians: Woody Allen.
"I don't want to freedom kiss my wife," says Allen says in a new ad spot. "I want to French kiss her."
The backlash is serious business. By some accounts the drop in American tourism has cost France $500 million. Levitte says the issue is bigger than boycotts of champagne.
A mass grave containing the remains of 200 Kurdish children has been discovered in the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk.
The Kurdish newspaper Taakhi said the communal grave was found close to Debs, in Kirkuk, on May 30.
The paper said the remains of the child victims were the repression of the Kurdish uprising in 1991.
It said dolls were even found buried with the children.
In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths.
We, as young conservatives, believe:
That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
That the genius of the Constitution--the division of powers--is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;
That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;
That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies;
That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and
That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?
Liberty Tree Memorial planted in honor of those who lost their lives in the tragic events on September 11, 2001.Information on the plaque led me to the Elm Research Institute, which is dedicated to reestablishing six varieties of American Elm resistent to Dutch Elm Disease. It seems like a good cause and I think the tie to 9/11 is entirely appropriate.
The American Liberty elm was named after "The Liberty Tree -- Our Country's First Symbol of Freedom." On August 14, 1765, Boston awakened to discover two effigies suspended from an elm tree in protest of the hated Stamp Act. From that day forward it became known as "The Liberty Tree." It stood in silent witness to countless meetings and celebrations, and became the rallying place for the Sons of Liberty. In August 1775, as a last act of violence prior to their evacuation of Boston, British soldiers cut it down because it bore the name "Liberty."
Among the European visitors whose observations of early American life found a ready audience was a young emigre who consorted with the leading scholars,
jurists, and literati of his day. Unaccountably neglected for over a century, Francis Lieber (1798-1872), one of the first university-trained German scholars to migrate to America, served as a bridge between the intellectual and political cultures of Germany, England, and America. While cultivating an astonishing range of activities and interests, Lieber helped lay the foundation of academic political science in America and promoted its practical application to public affairs. His theory of institutional liberty, which attributes the rise of civil liberty to the development of an increasingly integrated complex of self-governing institutions, may be his most original contribution to the political science literature. [...]
[A] major dimension of Lieber's thought is theological. Repeated references to God, creation, and Christianity sprinkle the >Manual of Political Ethics and, more casually, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government. Far from being incidental to the life of society, Christianity holds a central place that justifies the inclusion of religious instruction in public colleges: "The Christian religion is interwoven with all the institutions which surround us and in which we have our social being. The Christian religion has found its way into a thousand laws, and has generated a thousand others. It can no more be excluded than the common law, or our language."
Lieber, a professing Episcopalian, adhered to a dynamic view of divine creation, believing that humanity is providentially designed for a higher destiny. A pervading theocentricity is typical of Lieber's academic writing. While discussing the importance of "calmness of mind" and trust in politics, Lieber casually added: "Great and calm souls look upon their God, who when He created the rivers and the sea, knew that man would invent bridges, boats, and sails; who when he called the earth into existence and placed man upon it, knew that the plough would be contrived in due time."
It was Lieber's firm conclusion that human nature reaches its fullest amplitude of expression in a state of civilized interdependence-in cultural maturity-rather than primitive isolation. He focused on the dynamic interplay of man's individuality and his sociality, involving the conjugal union, the family, language, and the institution of property, to explain the rise and progress of civilization. "Man was either made to be stationary or for civilization; a medium is not imaginable. . . . Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state, because adapted to and effected by his nature." Lieber attributed cultural and developmental differences primarily to tractable historical influences and as a rule was wary of invidious racial or biological comparisons. [...]
Lieber identified three major characteristics of the development of the modern era. The first is "national polity" or the nation-state. The second is "the general endeavor to define more clearly, and to extend more widely, human rights and civil liberty." The third is the simultaneous flowering of many leading nations, rather than a single imperial hegemon, under the aegis of international law and "in the bonds of one common moving civilization." Significantly, he believed that "there will be no obliteration of nationalities" in this commonwealth of nations. Internationalization is merely the latest manifestation of an "all-pervading law of interdependence."
Each of these themes converges in Lieber's theory of institutional liberty.
Institutional Liberty
Lieber apparently dropped both hamarchy and autarchy from his political lexicon by the time he wrote On Civil Liberty and Self-Government, substituting the terms "self-government" and "absolutism." He wrote that "there is no formula by which liberty can be solved, nor are there laws by which liberty can be decreed, without other aids." These prerequisites may be acquired only through practice. "How then is real and essential self-government, in the service of liberty, to be obtained and to be perpetuated? There is no other means than by a vast system of institutions, whose number supports the whole, as the many pillars support the rotunda of our capitol."
Lieber defined institution as "a system or body of usages, laws, or regulations of extensive and recurring operation, containing within itself an organism by which it effects its own independent action, continuance, and generally its own farther development. Its object is to generate, effect, regulate, or sanction a succession of acts, transactions, or productions of a peculiar kind or class." Self-government is one of its chief properties. It "insures perpetuity, and renders development possible." Otherwise, history "sinks to mere anecdotal chronology. . . . Impulsiveness without institutions, enthusiasm without an organism, may produce a brilliant period indeed, but it is generally like the light of a meteor. That period of Portuguese history which is inscribed with the names of Prince Henry the Navigator, Camoens, and Albuquerque is raiant with brilliant deeds, but how short a day between long and dreary nights!"
Lieber extended this idea to include entire systems of institutions. Much of his magnum opus is devoted to a comprehensive list of what he considered to be the constituents of civil liberty. This lengthy section is introduced by a chapter entitled "Anglican Liberty".
Lieber's characterization of these civil liberties reinforces his view that they depend upon well-articulated and firmly established political and social institutions. The following partial list drawn from "Anglican and Gallican Liberty" and On Civil Liberty and Self-Government is organized simply for the sake of convenience.
Briefly, the following are protected: persons generally; public and private communication; free production and exchange; religion or worship; lawful opposition to the administration; the minority against the majority; aliens and foreigners; freedom of the people to adopt the government they think best; free choice of residence; freedom of emigration and immigration; and the rights of petition, assembly, bearing arms, and resisting unlawful authority or unlawful demands.
The following are prohibited: extra-governmental power, domination by the central government, unconsented legislation, quartering soldiers in private homes without consent of Parliament, and dictation by one or many.
Finally, the institutional safeguards of liberty include popular control over public funds, self-taxation, judicial review, trial by jury, trial by common courts, due process, publicity concerning political and judicial activities, submission of the army to the legislature, the parliamentary veto, responsibility of ministers and other officers, dependence of the executive on legislative appropriations, restraints on the war-making and peace-making power, independence of the judiciary, the common law principle of precedent, and supremacy of the law.
In summing up these principles and institutions, it appears that they are guarantees of the security of individual property, of personal liberty, and individual humanity, of the security of society against the assaults or interference of public power, of the certainty with which public opinion shall become public will in an organic way, and protection of the minority. Many of these have originated, nearly all of them have first been developed, in England. . . .
Thus modern liberty-that is, institutional liberty-consists in "practical provisions and political contrivances." Herein lies the difference between medieval and modern liberty. Medieval rulers isolated political independence by chartering freedom. In modern times, governments are chartered by the people themselves. Modern liberty requires an integration of these principles and institutions in custom and public consciousness so that they enjoy the protection of public opinion. As D. J. McCord, Jr., remarked in his review of Lieber's Manual of Political Ethics: "The progress of civilization, in all christian countries at least, has created a public opinion, which now protects the personal liberty of men in a greater degree than formerly, regardless of the form of government."
The chapter on "American Liberty" adds the following to the list of Anglican liberties: republicanism, federalism, separation of church and state, political equality, popular elections, separation of powers, judicial review, impeachment, a written constitution, freedom of navigable rivers, and several others.
Lieber maintained that these liberties were still in a "nascent stage" on the European continent, which had gone through "periods of absorbing and life-destroying centralization." Instead, a prudential balance of local and central initiative is required. It resolves the age-old dilemma of unity and diversity-the problem of the One and the Many-through a fluid mixture of what he called individualism and socialism, reason and tradition. Human nature and society should be regarded as both singular and plural:
Two elements constitute all human progress, historical development and abstract reasoning. It results from the very nature of man, whom God has made an individual and a social being. His historical development results from the continuity of society. Without it, without traditional knowledge and institutions, without education, man would no longer be man; without individual reasoning, without bold abstraction, there would be no advancement. Now, single men, entire societies, whole periods, will incline more to the one or to the other element, and both present themselves occasionally in individuals and entire epochs as caricatures. One-sidedness is to be shunned in this as in all other cases. . . .
Institutional self-government is distinguished by its tenacity, assimilative power, and transmissible character. It can be successfully exported. But it increases only slowly and it depends on the conscientious willingness of citizens to obey lawful exercises of authority. It is threatened by "sejunction" (schism) if local interests begin to dominate, as in the Netherlands after it had won independence, and it may perish if the institutions themselves become corrupted or degenerate. Lieber also recognized that evil institutions may thrive for a time, and lamented the malignant growth of slavery as a threat to American liberty.
At the opposite pole from institutional liberty is the fusion of legislative and executive functions that Lieber called, variously, "the power," "Caesarism," and "Rousseauism." He examined the perplexing notion of an "elected despot" in two chapters on "Imperatorial Sovereignty" and found the ultimate form of this "democratic absolutism" in the Bonapartist claim that the emperor is the embodiment of the general will. In this ultimate expression of Gallican liberty, Lieber, echoing Edmund Burke, clearly had in mind the French Revolution and its aftermath.
Serves 4 to 5
1 1/2 pounds jumbo shrimp (8 to 10 per pound), shelled and deveined, with tails left intact
2 tablespoons salt, plus more to taste
4 cups ice water
3 to 4 sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained and patted dry
3 large cloves garlic
3 tightly packed tablespoons fresh Italian parsley leaves
1 tightly packed tablespoon fresh coriander leaves
1/8 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1 large lime, cut into 8 wedges
1. In a bowl, combine the shrimp with the 2 tablespoons salt and the ice water. Refrigerate 20 minutes, but no more. Meanwhile, mince together the tomatoes, garlic, parsley, and coriander. Turn into a medium bowl and stir in the hot pepper and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil.
2. Drain, rinse, and pat the shrimp dry. Toss them with the tomato mixture. Keep cold.
3. Cook the shrimp on a lightly oiled, medium-hot grill, sprinkling with salt and pepper, about 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until pink and just firm. Alternatively, film a large skillet or griddle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and heat over medium heat. Saute the shrimp, sprinkling with salt and pepper, about 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until pink and just firm. Pile all the seasonings atop the shrimp after you turn them.
4. Turn the shrimp onto a serving platter, along with the seasonings. Serve hot or warm, with the lime wedges. Squeeze a little lime over the shrimp just before eating.
Already derided as the laziest nation in Europe, Portugal did nothing to invigorate its reputation yesterday when a member of Parliament launched a nationwide campaign to promote the afternoon nap.
"It is a tradition of our Mediterranean culture," insisted Jose Miguel Medeiros, a Socialist MP, in an interview with state radio.
Mr. Medeiros, who recently co-founded the Portuguese Association for Friends of Napping, wants afternoon naps to be adopted by the country's labour codes. While the afternoon nap has been a tradition in many Mediterranean and Latin American countries, it is quickly fading. Many businesses close for three hours at lunchtime in Portugal's small towns and villages, but the big cities have dispensed with the nap.
However, in places where the nap is still in existence, businesses tend to open earlier in the morning and close later. This is seen by Mr. Medeiros and his supporters as a bad sign, and their organization is vigorously campaigning against a recent move to shorten lunch breaks, which has made naps virtually impossible.
"The Teammates" is a love story. It revolves around the deep affection and eternal respect that endured among four men across 67 years. They were baseball players, and their names are Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Dominic DiMaggio and the always larger-than-life Ted Williams. Thinking that Halberstam's book is just about baseball, though, is like thinking that "Moby Dick" is a fishing novel.
"There was an element of dependence that these men had on one another that was both wonderful, charming and innocent in a way I don't think is possible for athletes today. There was a sweetness to them." Halberstam said. "The huge sums of money, free agency and the inherent immodesty of the age we live in makes it impossible now."
The story revolves around a trip, car trip, in October 2001. It was a few weeks after 9/11 and DiMaggio, Joe's younger brother, wanted to go to Florida to see his old pal Williams one last time before the ailing and failing Splendid Splinter died.
Dom's wife, Emily, didn't want him to fly. A decision was made that he and Pesky, two old ballplayers in their eighth decade of a wonderful life, would drive. Emily granted her permission after a friend of Dom's, Dick Flavin, offered to be the wheel man. From Boston to Hernando, Fla., with a stop in Philadelphia, they never listened to the car radio. They told stories, made memory come alive and realized again that their friendship and love for one another were worth more than any acclaim or fortune that modern era players attain.
"There is a modesty to these men that is unusual today," Halberstam said. "They know how lucky they were to play with each other, to haveeach other."
There is a tendency on the part of many theists to assume that the burden of proof is on the nontheist when it comes to the issue of morality ... — the assumption of the theist being that no morality is possible in the absence of some form of "higher" law....
For the question can still be raised as to how it is possible for human beings to behave morally, agree on moral rules and laws, and generally cooperate with each other in the absence of any divine impetus in this direction. After all, haven't modern philosophers, in particular analytical philosophers, argued that moral statements are basically emotional utterances without a rational base? And haven't they split "is" irrevocably from "ought" so that no foundation is even possible?...
From whence do moral values come?
Let's imagine for a moment that we have the earth, lifeless and dead, floating in a lifeless and dead universe.... Richard Taylor in his book, Good and Evil, has argued effectively that a "distinction between good and evil could not even theoretically be drawn in a world that we imagined to be devoid of all life."...
Enter Adam. Adam is a man who is fully human. He has deficiencies, and hence needs. He has longings and desires. He can experience pain and pleasure and often avoids the former and seeks the latter. Things matter to him. He can ask of a given thing, "Is this for me or against me?" and come to some determination.
At this point, and only at this point, do good and evil appear. Furthermore, as Taylor argues, "the judgments of this solitary being concerning good and evil are as ABSOLUTE as any judgment can be. Such a being is, indeed, the measure of all things: of good things as good and of bad things as bad. . . . No distinction can be made, in terms of this being, between what is merely good for HIM and what is good ABSOLUTELY; there is no higher standard of goodness. For what could it be?"
Doesn't it refute Jeff's case for social evolution that we still argue today, and in the same words, about the issues debated by Adam, Eve, and the Serpent?
[M]ost of the Democrats running for president want to stay out of the line of fire between the party's factions. This week, for example, the liberal Campaign for America's Future is hosting a conference in Washington whose speakers are not confined to candidates of the left. Yes, Dean, Carol Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton will be there. But so will Kerry, Sen. John Edwards and (by video link) Gephardt.
Kerry and Edwards will probably not mention that they also have friends and advisers in the DLC, as does Sen. Joe Lieberman's centrist candidacy. But this scrambling of factions is the essential fact of the 2004 primary contest.
That makes it harder than it used to be to distinguish the strategies of the left and the right. Consider this quotation: "The interest group dynamic has been a problem these last 20 years. The party's whole has seemed to be less than its parts."
This thought comes not from Reed or From but from Eric Hauser, a former top lieutenant in Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential run and a liberal who is working with the Campaign for America's Future. Hauser says he is not knocking the groups. Republicans depend just as much on their own interest groups as Democrats do on theirs. But the GOP, he says, has been more successful up to now in "projecting its collective interests as a national agenda."
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, says Republicans understood better than Democrats the value of "passionate" grass-roots groups that "give space to political leaders to find their voices." Because conservatives spent years building loyalty in the ranks, President Bush has been able to keep his party's conservative base mobilized while moderating his public message whenever doing so was politically useful.
The contest for the 2004 Democratic nomination cannot be understood apart from two factors. One is the intense opposition to Bush at the Democratic grass roots. The other is the widely held sense that the party's older strategies and internal arguments are inadequate to its current problems. Candidates can't win if they address only one of these concerns. But addressing both at the same time will require a political magic that Democrats haven't seen yet.
President Bush, who today begins his first high-profile effort at Middle East peacemaking, is convinced that Israel must accept a Palestinian state to ensure its survival, according to current and former aides who have heard him discuss the subject. But they say he has shown little interest in the details of the complex disputes in the region and remains skeptical of intervening deeply in the negotiating process.
Bush often has a viscerally negative reaction when officials try to delve deeply into issues -- such as the final borders of Israel and a Palestinian state, or the status of Jerusalem -- that are central to the conflict, according to people who have participated in discussions with the president. President Bill Clinton at the end of his term debated those questions at length with Israelis and Palestinians, but Bush dismisses them as "all those old issues," two participants in interagency debates said.
The president has baffled some of his aides with comments they thought minimized the obstacles toward the two-state solution he talks about. For instance, the president has told aides that the Israelis are wasting their money on expanding settlements in the West Bank because ultimately those projects will become housing developments for Palestinians.
Some aides suggest this is a naive view of the settlement issue, noting that experts on both sides of the issue believe unchecked expansion of the settlements would make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Other Bush advisers say the president's comments simply reflected his determination to create a Palestinian state.
(1) No Child Left Behind:
Conservatives wailed and liberals crowed when the final bill was a bloated mess. But George W. Bush had won. The bill, though more expensive than it should have been, gave him the only thing that mattered: testing & vouchers--testing to demonstrate that even middle class public schools are not educating children effectively and vouchers (though for now they just alllow kids in failing schools to switch to better public schools) so that the concept of choice is established in the law. Ted Kennedy realized this almost immediately, though too late, complained briefly, and then wisely shut up before people could realize he'd been had.
(2) Iraq:
Neocons and other hawks spent months bitching and moaning about how the President was waffling over war with Iraq and they, like opponents of the war, fixated on every jot and tittle of ever UN resolution that came down the pike, as if any of them mattered. They didn't. All that mattered was when the President addressed the UN in September 2002 and told the gathered nations to sign on for the war or prove themselves irrelevant.
They chose the latter course and we commenced the war. So much for the details of the various resolutions. The import of this is that useful negotiations are only those that get you to the result you want. If they aren't getting you there you have to be ready to walk away from the table. The willingness to do so is what makes the particulars of the process truly meaningless.
(3) The Second Tax Cut:
The last three American president--Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton--all raised taxes when confronted by rising budget deficits. George W. Bush cut them. End of story. The bill that finally emerged hardly resembled the original proposal he'd made, but Mr. Bush had won just by effecting this historic reversal on taxes.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Damascus last month, sources here say, Syrian President Bashar Assad asked him a blunt question: "Where is our road map?"
That's a welcome sign, if Assad is indeed signaling that he wants to negotiate a settlement of the interlocking issues of Syria, Israel and Lebanon. Opening a Syrian track could add momentum to the fledgling peace process, which takes a symbolic step forward tomorrow when President Bush meets in Aqaba, Jordan, with the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers.
For the cautious Assad, just talking about a road map is a step in the right direction. Until now, his public comments have mostly been a reprise of the hard-line rhetoric of his father, the late President Hafez Assad. But he needs to embrace the full legacy of his father, who for all his tough talk came within inches of closing a peace deal with Israel in 2000, a few months before his death. Assad realizes that Syria needs change -- and that it needs the stability of a peace agreement to implement reforms. The Syrian president also understands political reality: More than 100,000 U.S. troops are just across the border in Iraq, and American pressure has prodded Israelis and Palestinians into endorsing their road map to peace. If Syria wants to play in this game, it must start soon. But the young Syrian president is worried that a failed peace effort could add to his political problems in volatile Syria. That's where smart American policy can help.
"The U.S. should support Assad in implementing these big changes," advises Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in an interview here. "American assistance is indispensable."
In an essay written by Habermas, co-signed by Derrida and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper on Saturday, the two philosophers called on the "avant-garde" core of European states to return to European enlightenment values....
Habermas identified five attributes he said Europeans share: the neutrality of authority, embodied in the separation of church and state, trust in politics rather than the capitalist market, an ethos of solidarity in the fight for social justice, high esteem for international law and the rights of the individual and support for the organizational and leading role of the state.
Germany's thinker de rigueur wrote that Europe's core states could put an end to Europe's stagnancy, sooner or later drawing in the remaining states which would be unable to resist. Separatism, however, had to be avoided. "The avant-garde core Europe cannot consolidate into a miniature Europe but, as so often, must be the locomotive."
Thank goodness, our enemies are incompetent.
UPDATE:
By the way, the blogosphere recently discussed Habermas and his "Frankfurt School" of cultural Marxists. I recommend starting at either Porphyrogenitus or FrontPage Magazine.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay harshly criticized China's leaders on Monday in a speech calling for a U.S. free trade agreement with Taiwan.
The Texas Republican said Beijing should give up its goal of regaining control over Taiwan because the United States would not allow "a thriving economy to be swallowed up by a dictatorship."
"The PRC (People's Republic of China), in my opinion, is a backward, corrupt anachronism, run by decrepit tyrants ... clinging to a dying regime," DeLay said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute.
"The notion that these oppressive and dangerous men could convince the United States that their murderous ideology should be imposed on a free and independent Taiwan is absurd," he said.
DeLay said he was trying to persuade the Bush administration to begin free trade talks with Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province. He said the House of Representatives could "at the right time" vote on a resolution calling for negotiations to begin.
Two protesters have reportedly been taken into custody by Seattle police during a demonstration by several hundred people who are protesting a meeting by a police association.
Northwest Cable News reports the two people were placed on the ground and put into temporary, plastic handcuffs.
According to Seattle Police, a large crowd of about 50 people got out of hand around 8:30 p.m. SPD used pepper spray.
Representatives of about 250 police and federal security agencies are meeting in Seattle with the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit. This week's training seminar is called "Criminal Intelligence and the War on Terrorism." [...]
"We felt an opportunity to shine a spotlight on this extremely behind-the-scenes, secretive organization was extremely important," said organizer Luma Nichol of the Freedom Socialist Party.
Among the activists' concerns are post-9/11 laws such as the USA Patriot Act, which gives the government new powers to use wiretaps, electronic surveillance and other information gathering. Opponents say it violates civil liberties; supporters say it has helped fight terrorism.
"They are using government resources, they should be subject to the freedom of information act in every state," said Mickey Gendler, ACLU Committee Chair. [...]
Spokespersons with the FBI and the Seattle Police Department did not immediately return calls Sunday seeking comment on the activists' plans.
Both organizations are listed as seminar co-hosts, along with the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the Washington State Patrol, the state Gambling Commission, the King County sheriff and prosecutor's offices, the Seattle Police Department, and a handful of city and county police agencies.
Topics to be addressed at the LEIU seminar include international terrorism, bioterrorism, threat assessment, hate groups and "criminal protest groups," according to an LEIU news release.
I WAS FORTUNATE last week in being able to gather round the dinner table in my London flat a group of economists, media folk, geopoliticians, and foreign policy types to review where the world is, and where it is going. Whereas the heads of state convened in Evian today are bound by the stilted scripts prepared by their sherpas, my dinner companions, protected by the Chatham House rules (that forbid naming names) always in force in my home, could be completely candid. [...]
Talk then turned to the world's other leading economies. Japan is so deeply mired in recession and so resistant to reform that no extended comment was deemed necessary. Until the government gets the banks to write off the loans that everyone knows will never be repaid, they won't be in a position to make the new loans that might spur new investment and economic growth.
Germany is considered a basket case, its economy shrinking and its population declining to the point where it will be "economically irrelevant," in the words of one observer, within the next several decades. All of which is made worse by a soaring euro that is reducing the international competitiveness of Germany's already high-cost industries.
France is somewhat better off, partly because the one-size-fits-all interest rate set by the European Central Bank suits it better than it does Germany, partly because the exchange rates prevailing when the euro was adopted were more favorable to France than to Germany, and partly because the French simply ignore many of the growth-strangling rules that the more orderly Germans obey to the letter. In short, France's black economy provides a source of flexibility and growth not enjoyed by its German allies.
Finally, there's the United Kingdom. The consensus view is that the chancellor has got it wrong. His optimistic forecast ignores the noticeable slowdown in consumer demand, and the productivity-draining effects of the massive increase in taxes and the swelling of the public sector. Indeed, all of the jobs growth in the British economy now comes in the public sector, and consists of piling administrators on top of already-useless administrators.
Worse still is the effect that the new European constitution will have on Britain. The bureaucracy's ability to ensnare Britain in red tape will increase as the European court puts flesh on the bones of the constitution and its call for "worker dignity," stronger unions, and an enlarged welfare state. The U.K. economy will pay the price, and soon--or such was the view offered as the pudding was served.
And so to bed.
The CIA has internal documents that make clear Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is alive and hiding in greater Baghdad, protected by an underground resistance network of tribesmen and former Baath officials, administration officials told United Press International.
"There is a resistance network and it is stronger than we originally thought," one administration source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Saddam is moving around inside Iraq and he's got a lot of support," another U.S. government official said.
He added: "A lot of what is being reported in the press as `looting' is in fact sabotage by Baath party stay-behind groups."
The underground Baath resistance is made up of former party officials who are funded with money looted from the Iraqi treasury, this source said.
"There is credible evidence that Saddam is still alive and being sheltered," said former CIA chief Vince Cannistraro.
A CIA spokesman did not respond to requests for comment by UPI.
A short year and a half ago America was astride the world like a moral colossus. Virtually the entire world united behind us in our grim search for justice against Al Qaeda.
The final bit of good news is that the dollar is likely to remain "under downward pressure," according to White House adviser turned consultant Larry Lindsey. The American trade deficit is at record levels, and low interest rates and a shaky stock market make it less attractive for foreigners to hold dollar assets. The cheaper dollar, equivalent to the stimulative effect of a 1.5 percentage point cut in interest rates, according to the Fed's models, should stimulate exports and make imports increasingly costly, both of which will give the labor market a fillip. And in this best of all possible worlds, the presence of excess capacity and intense competition should prevent the dollar's decline from triggering domestic inflation.
Meanwhile, euroland watches as the Chinese keep the renminbi pegged to the dollar, and the Japanese intervene to drive down the yen, at least temporarily. That is forcing euroland to absorb virtually the entire impact of the dollar's fall, threatening to throw the region into recession.
Whether that prospect will finally force Germany and France to implement the economic reforms that successive American presidents have been urging upon them is uncertain. Intrusive regulation, rewards for staying out of work, penalties for creating jobs, and stifling taxes are deeply embedded in those nations' welfare states. The falling dollar might, just might, provide the impetus for economic regime change that the first D-Day provided for political change almost 60 years ago.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, lashing out at his chief rival for the hearts of New Hampshire's Democratic primary voters, charged Saturday that Sen. John Kerry was becoming a copycat.
"I appreciate Sen. Kerry saying we don't need Bush Lite, and we don't," Dean told about 1,000 people attending a forum on rural issues in Lake Placid. "But, Sen. Kerry, we don't want Dean Lite, either."
Early in the campaign for the Democratic nomination to run against President Bush next year, the liberal Dean often introduced himself as representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."
Before his speech, Dean told reporters that he had heard about fellow Democratic hopeful Kerry's speech to the forum and the warning by the senator from Massachusetts that Democrats had to stop acting like Republicans.
"I heard he did a great job giving my speech," Dean said. [...]
Former President Clinton and other party leaders earlier had appealed to the candidates to go easy on each other. Dean departed from that script.
Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into supporting the Iraq war.
A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts" - after the New York hotel where the US secretary of state was staying before making a crucial speech to the UN security council earlier this year - is described by an official of one Nato country as "extremely useful".
The description is used in a paper seen by the Guardian as part of an effort among Nato allies to "rein in some of the less acceptable policies of the Bush administration".
Mr Straw yesterday denied he had had a private meeting with Mr Powell on February 4, the eve of the security council meeting where Mr Powell gave a dramatic presentation of intelligence material purporting to reveal hard evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons.
The foreign secretary said he did not arrive in New York until the day of the crucial security council meeting.
Diplomatic sources remain adamant...
Like so many Iraqis these days, Chedha al Awsi feels betrayed and confused.
On a computer screen before her, poorly recorded footage shows half a dozen laughing soldiers of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard as they beat and kick civilian men kneeling on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs.
There is a glitch in the recording, then the screen shows soldiers tying dynamite to the chests of their prisoners and blowing them up, one by one. Pieces of human flesh and bone fly in all directions. Al Awsi jolts in her seat, her face distorted by a grimace of pain.
For much of the rest of the world, the gruesome crimes of Hussein's rule are familiar, if tragic, knowledge. But for al Awsi and for millions of her fellow citizens, they are shocking news.
"You just suddenly realize that you didn't know what was happening. I feel deceived," said al Awsi, a 31-year-old office manager at a private trading company, her eyes glued to the computer screen.
He may not be able to seek another presidential term himself. But increasingly, it seems, Bill Clinton is becoming a force in the 2004 campaign.
After being sidelined in 2000 by a vice president wanting to distance himself from his mentor's moral failings, Mr. Clinton is taking an increasingly active role in the current presidential race. He's strategizing with party leaders at closed-door meetings, and offering advice - both public and private - to candidates.
Meanwhile, Democratic hopefuls are invoking his name on the stump with growing frequency, as they contrast the lost jobs and slow economic growth under President Bush with the boom years of the 1990s.
Many campaigns freely admit to seeking out Clinton's political counsel, calling him an invaluable resource. "If Yoda's in the neighborhood, you might as well give him a call," says David Axelrod, an adviser to Sen. John Edwards.
Other analysts say he's most useful as a role model: "Every one of these campaigns sits down at a certain point and says, 'How would Clinton have handled this?'" says another Democratic campaign strategist.
In some ways, it's not surprising that the former president's star is shining brighter these days. The scandals that dogged his tenure are fading with time - Monica Lewinsky recently hosted a reality show on FOX. And Clinton stands as an inspiration to his party, with his defeat of George Bush Sr. a touchstone, as well as a kind of playbook, for current campaigns.
The members of the European Convention seem to have a self-esteem problem, because they felt it necessary to make sure everyone was Officially Grateful, within the body of the Constitution itself, for their efforts. They seem to have calculated that they wouldn't get any props unless gratitude towards them was Constitutionally mandated....
We hear all these reassurances that the member-states retain their sovereignty, but then there is this: The Member-States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardize the attainment of the objectives set out in this Constitution....
Limits are associated with the exercise of the rights of the people rather than the powers of the government in this Constitution....
Article I-10 then gives away the game, and demonstrates which entity has the sovereign position here. Assurances in public statements and media reports to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not the individual member-states, but the Union ("The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union's Institutions in exercising competencies conferred on it, shall have primacy over the law of the Member States").
I find it interesting that "Institutions" is capitalized, and that the legitimate source of law in this Union is rather vague ... These institutions could be anything. It could be a cabal of bureaucrats - and usually is....
In other words, the Union shall have power over only two things: domestic policy and foreign policy....
[I]t says in no uncertain terms that "Member-States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign policy and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with all the acts adopted by the Union in this area."... A Constitution that mandates what your attitude will be (unreserved support in a spirit of solidarity) is, well, I'm going to say it: Totalitarian in nature.
In the comments to a recent post ("SELF-LOATHING NEVER WORKS"), Jeff Guinn suggested that we can be optimistic about Europe despite their secularism, because "maybe they will see what works, and emulate it." I responded, somewhat facetiously, that "seeing what works, and emulating it is a gift of the Holy Spirit." But I ask here in all seriousness: Doesn't the empirical evidence suggest that "seeing what works and emulating it" is precisely what Europe's secular elite is most unwilling to do? Might this not be connected to their secularism?
In Catholic theology, there is a profound conviction that all truth comes, ultimately, from God. This does not mean that atheists cannot find truth, for God is active in every heart and has implanted the desire for truth and love onto every heart. Atheists may believe they reject God, but they never do so entirely. But on this same Catholic view, openness to the truth is an outward correlate of an openness to Truth, i.e. to God whose spirit is the Spirit of Truth. There is a virtuous circle by which openness to Truth makes one more likely to find concrete truths, and vice versa the discovery of concrete truths leads one towards God; conversely there is a vicious circle in which as one rejects God one finds it ever more difficult to grasp even the most ordinary truths. Secularism blinds.
Most of you, no doubt, will regard the European elite's blindness and its secularism as mere coincidences. I see them as one more data point.
Valery Giscard d'Estaing, president of the European Convention, is refusing to budge on his demand for voting powers of medium-sized and small countries to be diluted in his new draft constitution.
The former French president's proposals would cut the voting weights of countries such as Spain and Poland as well as many smaller member states. The issue is emerging as the biggest obstacle facing Mr Giscard d'Estaing as he races to finish the draft constitution by the June 20 deadline.
"If we stick with Nice, the constitutional part of the convention is pointless," he said on Saturday as members of his 105-member convention discussed the first draft of the treaty. He believes the complex voting arrangements agreed at Nice give disproportionate power to medium and small countries. For instance, Spain and Poland, each with a population about 40m, will have 27 votes compared with the the 29 votes of Britain and France with populations near 60m.
Mr Giscard d'Estaing's hopes of pushing through his reforms have been seriously dented by the decision of Britain to sign a joint letter with Spain, Poland and six smaller nations saying that the Nice compromise should be maintained.
It is thought that Tony Blair, British prime minister, made the move to encourage smaller member states to support him in his top priority for the constitution: creating an EU president to chair the European Council.
It all means that the most sensitive work facing Mr Giscard d'Estaing - sharing out power in the EU - remains deadlocked with time rapidly running out.
The equality of representation in the Senate is another point, which, being evidently the result of compromise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right, that among a people thoroughly incorporated into one nation, every district ought to have a PROPORTIONAL share in the government, and that among independent and sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an EQUAL share in the common councils, it does not appear to be without some reason that in a compound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mixture of the principles of proportional and equal representation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.'' A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America. A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.
In this spirit it may be remarked, that the equal vote allowed to each State is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual States, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty. So far the equality ought to be no less acceptable to the large than to the small States; since they are not less solicitous to guard, by every possible expedient, against an improper consolidation of the States into one simple republic.
Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of the Senate is, the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence, first, of a majority of the people, and then, of a majority of the States. It must be acknowledged that this complicated check on legislation may in some instances be injurious as well as beneficial; and that the peculiar defense which it involves in favor of the smaller States, would be more rational, if any interests common to them, and distinct from those of the other States, would otherwise be exposed to peculiar danger. But as the larger States will always be able, by their power over the supplies, to defeat unreasonable exertions of this prerogative of the lesser States, and as the faculty and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most liable, it is not impossible that this part of the Constitution may be more convenient in practice than it appears to many in contemplation.
That deal -with the Democrats and moderates in [the President's] own party - looks like typical legislative compromise, but is actually a move of incredible political acumen: The "sunset" provision, under which the tax cut automatically lapses unless expressly extended by new legislation, makes taxes a front-and-center issue of the 2004 election.
Now Bush can send refund checks of $400 for each child to 25 million households this summer, slash the tax on dividends and capital gains to 15 percent and reduce tax rates on all three brackets - all effective immediately - and still be able to base his re-election campaign on the need to preserve his tax cuts.
The president can run for re-election with an economy stimulated by his tax cuts and still have the issue to use in the '04 contest.
With the tax cuts slated to expire in the opening years of the next presidential term, every Democratic candidate will have to answer the question: "Will you support extending the Bush tax cut?"
A "no" will be required to win enough primary votes to get the nomination. But a "yes" will be necessary to prevail in the general election. Bush has put the Democrats in an impossible position.
A new confidence is sweeping through Japan. This is because Japan is back in the No. 1 slot -- as the world's most advanced deflation economy....
Tokyo's policy makers are starting to believe, once again, in the supremacy of the Japanese model -- that Japan has attained a stable "deflation equilibrium" and that it remains to be seen whether other G7 countries can manage a transition as stable and smooth as Japan's. Viewed from Tokyo, Europe's rhetoric of denial or America's table-thumping insistence that "deflation will not happen here" is little more than deja vu. Japan has been there, done that.
As a result, Tokyo's confidence in excusing its lack of action is growing. Asked about nonperforming loans and excess employment, a typical response is "Japan has fewer than China." Asked about asset deflation and policy rigidity, the quip is "Better than Germany." Asked about corporate governance, they'll answer "better than America -- our managers may be incompetent but they are not crooks."...
In Japan there is a strong national consensus that, yes, the belt needs to be tightened. A case in point: Japan's labor unions have been actively lobbying for wage cuts and longer working hours for the past two years. And Japan's pensioners have accepted cuts in benefits while workers and firms agreed to pay increased contributions. The result will be, of course, a reduced standard of living at first, but it will also help raise the competitive position of Japanese firms....
Make no mistake -- Tokyo's policy elite is growing increasingly confident in the success of the Japanese model. Deflation has been accepted as an inevitable reality poised to persist for another decade. The combination of global technological progress, industrial societies' aging and the emergence of China and India has been studied in detail. The conclusion is that price deflation across all sectors of industrialized economies is poised to persist. This fatalistic view of the world is the mainstream view among many of Japan's policy elite. The net effect is that Japan's top policy priority is to redistribute the benefits and costs of deflation, rather than promote new growth. From the outside, this may look like inaction, but from the inside it has been very hard work, with bureaucrats and politicians working overtime to contain the damage done by deflation.
Viewed from this perspective, the Japanese ruling elite has done an outstanding job. Despite an unprecedented destruction of wealth caused by the collapse in the stock and real estate markets -- almost one generation of wealth accumulation has been wiped-out -- Japan has successfully avoided a great depression. More importantly, Japan has remained free of foreign debt and never once lost the status of being the world's largest net creditor.
Japan will keep its treasured status of creditor to the world. The increasingly elderly Japanese can find no good investments in Japan, so they'll continue loaning their savings out to foreigners. And Japan will slowly, but proudly, descend, like the setting sun that adorns their flag.
UPDATE:
The Statism Trap (Arnold Kling, TechCentralStation, 5/28/2003)
There are many conceivable explanations for Japan's economic woes. For example, as Australia's Ken Henry succinctly pointed out, the aging of Japan's population was bound to reduce its growth rate....
However, I think that the most convincing overall explanation for Japan's long decline is that its centralized, bureaucratic industrial policy ran out of steam. Brink Lindsey, in his book Against the Dead Hand, writes that even at its peak, Japan was a "deformed 'dual economy' - a vibrant and dynamic international sector that all the world envied and feared, and a much larger, but largely stagnant, domestic sector that the world all but ignored."...
[W]here statism falls apart is in its inability to cut its losses when the government makes a bad bet. The difference with the private sector is that the government is almost totally incapable of winnowing out losers. In the long run, heavy government involvement inevitably leads to suffocation, as "zombie" businesses backed by the government suck all of the oxygen out of the economy. That is what Japan has been experiencing for the past decade.
Americans ... express a pride in themselves and their country that is too often lacking on the other side of the Atlantic. Europe's worst enemy is Europe itself ...
How can we command respect if we do not respect ourselves, if we constantly depict ourselves, in literature and the media, in the darkest colors? The truth is that Europeans do not like themselves or at least not enough to overcome their disgust ...
[C]ontemporary Europe did not come into existence as the United States did, with an enthusiastic vision of a new birth of history. It arose out of weariness with slaughter. It took the total disaster of the twentieth century to bring Europe to virtue. Without the world wars and their procession of horrors, there would never have arisen today's longing for peace, which is now confused with the longing for rest.
We may have become wise, but the wisdom is that of a sated brute, weary with slaughter, resigned to modest projects. European democracy resembles a rest cure that its once turbulent peoples have taken after losing their taste for battle.
We no longer love history; it is a minefield from which we struggled to escape after 1945 and again in 1989. But history continues to be made without us.... When a crisis erupts, we do our utmost to delay. We temper our indignation with cynicism and treat the aggressor and his victim as equals, as though, in light of our own disenchantments, nothing made any difference.... America mobilizes and acts. Europe snickers and stands by-a fearful colossus suffering from its great size, losing strength as it expands territory, Europe has become the Pontius Pilate of nations....
We delight in casting all our sins onto this ideal scapegoat, because everything that goes wrong in the world can be laid at Washington's door. In the imagination of many intellectuals and political leaders, America plays the role the Jews once did in National Socialist demonology. Yet we do nothing to free ourselves from American domination. Quite the contrary. We persist in our refusal to grow up and assume our responsibilities. We would rather complain than act, cursing Uncle Sam while throwing ourselves into his arms at the slightest trouble....
Europe and America are linked to one another. They embody two divergent conceptions of the Enlightenment, two outcomes of emancipation inaugurated in the eighteenth century. There is skepticism and the art of living on one side, and optimism and religiosity on the other. The first leads to failure to act, the second to adventurism....
Reason demands that we convert European-American rivalry into emulation ... They both have much to learn from one another about audacity and wisdom: how to temper American hubris with European moderation and European moderation with American dynamism....
We Europeans ... can easily denounce the ambiguities of the melting pot and the ravages of communitarianism, and we can reject a world made in the image of American society. But then we have to offer in its place something more than mockery and reproof.... We are far from doing so. We lag far behind the Americans, out of breath. We still imitate their mistakes after they have devised remedies. Some Europeans place their hope in a theory of reverse genesis. America, the offspring of the Old World that has surpassed its progenitor, would witness the birth of a new Europe that would then put the United States in its place. For now, since geopolitics is the contemporary form of fortune telling, this is nothing but wishful thinking. The bitter truth is that Europe lags behind our transatlantic cousin in almost every area. But our possibilities are enormous if we enact a genuine intellectual revolution.... Europe holds its own cards. Either it will build a counterforce endowed with credible political and military tools or it will be vassalized, willingly. In the latter case, an aging and declining Old World will reduce itself to being a luxurious vacation resort, coveted by predators, and always prepared to abdicate its freedom for a little more calm and a little more comfort.
As a conservative, I think America has already found a pretty good mean between sluggishness and audacity, and would not want to dilute it with European "moderation." But this is a fine essay, the first sign I have seen of humility and truth-seeking from the European left. It is very heartening. Still, it is a letdown when, in the final paragraph, he places his faith in that fever-dream of the intellectuals, an "intellectual revolution." What Europe needs is a spiritual revolution, a revolution in desire, a revolution of the heart. European wisdom will begin, if it ever does, with fear of the Lord.
[T]his is where doubts about Labour's productivity agenda surface. Some are generic to democratic government, in that policies to raise productivity are often politically unattractive. Partly, this is because strong productivity growth relies on the exit of the inefficient and outmoded. Partly, it is because productivity boosting policies conflict with other objectives or upset influential interest groups. Under the present government, this has clearly undermined attempts to invest effectively in transport infrastructure or to reform planning restrictions, measures recommended to the Treasury by the McKinsey Institute in its diagnosis of Britain's productivity problem.
Other problems are more specific to the Labour party, whose instincts are often the opposite of what is required to promote strong productivity
performance according to endogenous growth theory. These include a reluctance to accept that government regulation potentially acts both as a disincentive to innovative effort and as a barrier to entry, a failure to acknowledge that economies with large public sectors financed by direct taxation suffer a significant growth handicap, a faith in monolithic state provision of public services - which undermines their potential contribution to private sector productivity because of the prevalence of principal-agent problems - and a reluctance to take cost-benefit analysis seriously in the public sector. Indeed, according to figures compiled by the Office of National Statistics, productivity in the public sector has been falling in the recent past. This implies that private sector productivity performance faces the double whammy of ever less adequate public services together with higher direct taxes raised to finance an inexorable rise in public expenditure.
None of this is to deny that the Treasury cares deeply about productivity and has tried hard to raise the UK's performance. It has access to much better economic theory than was available 25 years ago and has tried conscientiously to heed some of its messages. The lesson seems to be that improving productivity growth is much harder than is commonly supposed, especially under the auspices of a Labour party that does not really understand microeconomics and cares too much about the short-term reaction of focus groups.
LIKE the weather in Sacramento, the attempt to recall Gov. Gray Davis is getting hot.
And the governor is starting to sweat.
With the unveiling of "Taxpayers Against the Recall,'' the initially quixotic attempt to unseat Davis achieved its first goal: It forced the governor to confront it.
The "Taxpayers'' are a pro-Davis coalition of a public safety union and a teachers union, joined by environmentalists and some religious leaders of a Democratic bent.
If you're thinking that these are not generally people who march under the banner of "taxpayers'' -- many being by profession tax-receivers -- you're right. The name is camouflage. [...]
Dan Terry, president of the California Professional Firefighters union and a leader of the anti-recall group says Davis is not directing its activities.
Said Republican political consultant Sal Russo, a recall leader: "If you believe that Gray Davis is not involved in this, then you should not be a reporter.''
JACQUES Chirac barely concealed his fury last night as he walked into an ambush by America and Britain over Iraq.
The French president was furious as Tony Blair and US leader George Bush hijacked his prestigious G8 summit and put weapons of mass destruction at the top of the agenda.
Seething Mr Chirac greeted Mr Bush with a frosty smile, a short handshake and a curt word of welcome to Evian in the shadow of the French Alps. [...]
Mr Chirac had planned to use the summit of the world?s most powerful industrial nations to embarrass the US over issues such as the environment and pollution.
But in a carefully planned pincer movement Mr Blair and Mr Bush stoked the campaign against rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and ?dirty bombs?.
Mr Blair said as he flew into France: ?We must state clearly that the spread of WMD and international terrorism is a pre-eminent threat to international security.
?This will be fleshed out in an action plan, in particular against radioactive source security. More stringent controls are needed on legitimate sources such as X-ray machines to stop them falling into the hands of terrorists.?
The US and its allies in the Iraq war on Sunday launched an initiative to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in a move set to become a test of the transatlantic relationship.
As leaders of the world's biggest industrialised nations met in France for a summit aimed at boosting confidence in the global economy, President George W. Bush injected a surprise element into what had been expected to be an informal discussion on WMD. US and UK officials brushed aside growing concern about the failure to find significant evidence of WMD in Iraq and said they were seeking an international agreement to intercept ships and aeroplanes suspected of carrying shipments of arms or nuclear, chemical and biological cargo.
The move came as Mr Bush issued a strong warning to North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions, as tensions rose in east Asia following a naval clash between the two Korean states.
British officials say there is broad consensus within the Group of Eight industrialised nations about the need to agree an "action plan" on Monday to combat the spread of WMD.
However, Mr Bush's new plan - the so-called Proliferation Security Initiative - appeared to have taken France, the G8 hosts, by surprise. It looked set to test the willingness of France and Germany, which strongly opposed the Iraq war - to work with Washington.
For months, while his rivals in Washington looked on with a mixture of growing contempt and sheer incredulity, Howard Dean went off on the Democratic Party. Energized by the reception to his antiwar stance, Vermont's former governor ran around Iowa and New Hampshire, pounding his Democratic presidential rivals for their total lack of backbone -- not just on the war but on tax cuts and education, too. They would say whatever they had to say to get elected, Dean said, and for that reason he dubbed them, collectively, ''Bush Lite.''
His signature line, borrowed from the late Paul Wellstone, an icon of the left, drew thunderous applause from liberal activists. ''I'm Howard Dean,'' he shouted, ''and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party!'' It was like a coded message that beaten-down liberals could understand viscerally: it was time for Democrats to stop being afraid to act like Democrats. Dean, a doctor who barely registered in polls last fall, closed in on John Kerry in New Hampshire, and in Iowa, he was clearly the king of every beige ballroom he entered.
Then, finally, the party's centrist establishment started hitting back. At the first Democratic presidential debate, in Columbia, S.C., Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, repeated his charge that Dean was unfit to serve as commander in chief. ''I don't need any lectures in courage from Howard Dean,'' Kerry snapped.
Bob Graham, casting himself as the very antithesis to Dean, used Dean's own line against him. ''My name is Bob Graham,'' he said, ''I come from the electable wing of the Democratic Party.'' Dean, smiling uneasily throughout the debate, looked like a guy who had been bad-mouthing his ex-girlfriend and all of her friends, only to run smack into them at a party.
A week or so later, the Democratic Leadership Council, the group that helped catapult Bill Clinton into the presidency, took the unusual step of attacking Dean eight months before the first caucus vote is to be cast. ''What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration,'' the group's top two officials wrote in a scathing memo to other Democrats. ''That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one.''
Howard Dean is the guy who has dictated the theme of this early campaign season. Once written off as a little man from a little state, Dean has expertly framed the 2004 nomination fight as a choice between white-hot liberal rage on one side and the room-temperature promise of ''electability'' on the other. ''Democrats are furious at their own party,'' Dean says. ''They feel like the party's leaders have taken a pass.''
Washington Democrats, meanwhile, are convinced that the only way to unseat George W. Bush is to sound as tough as Patton and as mainstream as Wal-Mart. ''The premise of the Dean campaign is that if you stand up for America's role in the world, you're not a real Democrat,'' says Bruce Reed, a former adviser to Clinton and the president of the D.L.C. ''He's dead wrong about that. And if he convinces the party of it, it'll be a disaster for the party and for the country.''
Neither side of this debate would seem to hold much promise for Democrats. Dean, who has only recently experienced a conversion to born-again liberalism, must know that the left is better at turning out martyrs than presidents. For the last 35 years, the left has rallied behind a series of liberal insurgents -- and not once have they celebrated on Inauguration Day.
The bad news for Dean's rivals, however, is that Democratic protest candidates have proved very effective at indelibly soiling whatever image the party is trying to convey at the moment. And you have to wonder if the other candidates, ensconced in Washington, have any real grasp of the grass-roots revolt that is fueling Dean's momentum. It's not surprising that the party's leaders feel like shoving Dean's stethoscope down his throat when he says they only care about sounding electable. What's harder to understand is why they seem so determined to prove him right.
[A] growing number of Americans who are not Jewish by any conventional definition — by traditional or the Reform movement's patrilineal standards — describe themselves as in some way Jewish.I once attended one of my wife's conversion classes with her. During a discussion of circumscision, one man asked what was done if the convert was already circumscised. The teacher said that they made a small symbolic prick just big enough to draw blood. The man asked, with more hope in his voice than I've heard expressed in one small sentence either before or since, "you mean, from a finger?"
In a postmodern and very American way that may alter the definition of Jewishness, many conclude that joining the faith no longer requires crossing the threshold of formal conversion, but is instead becoming a matter of simple self-identification. This even though traditionalists, those in the Conservative and Orthodox movements, oppose identification without conversion.
"People living as Jews without converting far outnumber the amount of people who convert to Judaism," said Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, a San Francisco-based group conducting demographic research on Jews.
"It's part of a phenomenon in American religion in general, where people taste and live certain lives to see if they fit," said Mr. Tobin, author of "Opening the Gates: How Pro-Active Conversion Can Revitalize the Jewish Community" (Jossey-Bass, 1999). . . .
While there have always been people identifying as Jewish though they were not, the twin circumstances of intermarriage and acceptance of Jews in American society have led to such an increase in recent years that the population is becoming quantifiable. A 1990 study, the National Jewish Population Survey, found 55,000 people who described themselves as Jewish but were not born into the faith and had not converted — essentially 1 percent of the American Jewish population.
The number is thought to have grown since then, said Steve Bayme, national director of contemporary Jewish life at the American Jewish Committee. "Today the boundary between being a Jew and a non-Jew is incredibly open and porous," Mr. Bayme said. As a result, current studies provide more ways for respondents to explain unconventional connections with Judaism.
The trend is bound to become a controversial issue as the size of the American Jewish population, as traditionally defined, shrinks because of intermarriage and a low birthrate. It may also lead to significant transformation in Jewish self-concept, which has long been based on parentage or formal conversion. . . .
A watershed break came in 1983, when the Reform movement's rabbis adopted a resolution permitting Jewishness to be conferred not just through conversion or birth to a Jewish mother, but also through birth to a Jewish father as long as the child is educated in Judaism and no other religion, and undergoes Jewish rites of passage.
In practice, however, Reform Judaism, the faith's largest denomination, often does not abide by even those specifics. "We don't focus on seeing who's Jewish and who's not," said Dru Greenwood, director of outreach and synagogue community for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the synagogue organization of the Reform movement. "We put our focus on welcoming people who want to live a Jewish life and be part of the Jewish community."
For the biblical Ruth, joining the Hebrews involved pledging, "Wherever you go, I will go, your people shall be my people, and your God my God." That pledge is now typically recited in conversion to Judaism. But Micah Berul has no plans to make it.
Mr. Berul's father was Jewish, and his mother is Catholic. As he was growing up, he says, he observed the major holidays of both religions, in "a secular way." When he was 17 his father died, and he began attending a Conservative synagogue to say the mourner's Kaddish, reading the unfamiliar Hebrew in English transliteration. A few months later he was considering conversion but, he says, did not want to have a drop of blood drawn from his penis as part of the required symbolic brit milah. . . .
"I feel Jewish, and since there's a segment of the Jewish world which views me as such, I feel confident saying I am," said Mr. Berul, a labor lawyer who is moving from Brooklyn to Berkeley, Calif.
In Berkeley there is a synagogue, Congregation Kehillah, that recognizes as Jewish all who say they are, and permits all ritual roles to anyone who wishes.
"For us this became a way to match the reality of life in our congregation, which does not regard discrimination as a good thing," said David Cooper, rabbi of the synagogue, which is affiliated with the small Jewish Renewal movement. . . .
Experts are split on whether the trend promises positive things for American Jews, through expanded numbers, or negative things, as the definition of "who is a Jew" becomes increasingly blurred.
"As a Jew myself, I don't know what this trend portends," said Professor Cohen, of Harvard. "Jewishness and Jewish society will certainly be different in a generation or two.
"It's unsettling, it's threatening, it certainly makes one wonder and worry about what this all means, but we simply have to allow that the vast majority of people act in ways far more consonant with their American values than their Jewish ones."
There is a quote from Emerson which Bobby Kennedy was fond of and it is worth applying here to Williams: "If one good man plants himself upon his convictions, the whole world will come round." That seemed to fit Ted Williams handsomely. In his 60s and 70s, it was the world which had come round to him. A younger generation of reporters which had not been caught up in the sturm and drang of another era, accepted him on his terms, (which was what an earlier generation probably should have done) and had the good sense to listen to him, for he had a lot of say and was highly intelligent. They finally sensed somehow that whatever else, Ted Williams was an American original, and we would not see, given the changes in our society, his like again.
If he had begun to mellow, he still remained skeptical of the media, or as he liked to call writers, "knights of the keyboard." If good things had happened, then his memory was still long. But my intermediary for that interview was Bobby Knight, who having had his own problems with the media, was the perfect ambassador for me. [...]
The night before I went to see him, I had gone to a dinner party among the powerful in New York -- nothing but Wall Street and media heavies where the usual degree of one-upmanship was in play. I had bided my time in terms of ego games, but then had announced late in the evening, near coffee, that I was going to interview Ted Williams the next day. For a wonderful half-hour, I owned the room, and I could easily have auctioned off the job as my assistant to all sorts of Wall Street tycoons who were quite willing to come along for the occasion.
Days like this, with men who loom so large from your childhood, are not always that wonderful; we are prone to disappointment. That someone was a wonderful baseball, football or basketball player when you were a boy does not meant he is necessarily a wonderful interview 46 years later. But this was different.
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidian determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities. Its right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters. On the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 28th, 1960, as I took a seat behind third base, a uniformed groundkeeper was treading the top of this wall, picking batting-practice home runs out of the screen, like a mushroom gatherer seen in Wordsworthian perspective on the verge of a cliff. The day was overcast, chill, and uninspirational. The Boston team was the worst in twenty-seven seasons. A jangling medley of incompetent youth and aging competence, the Red Sox were finishing in seventh place only because the Kansas City Athletics had locked them out of the cellar. They were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles, a much nimbler blend of May and December, who had been dumped from pennant contention a week before by the insatiable Yankees. I, and 10,453 others, had shown up primarily because this was the Red Sox's last home game of the season, and therefore the last time in all eternity that their regular left fielder, known to the headlines as ''Ted, Kid, Splinter, Thumper, TW, and most cloyingly, MisTer Wonderful,'' would play in Boston. ''What Will We Do Without Ted? Hub Fans Ask?'' ran the headline on a newspaper being read by a bulb-nosed cigar smoker a few rows away. Williams' retirement had been announced, doubted (he had been threatening retirement for years), confirmed by Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox owner, and at last widely accepted as the sad but probable truth. He was forty-two and had redeemed his abysmal season of 1959 with a - considering his advanced age - fine one. He had been giving away his gloves and bats and had grudgingly consented to a sentimental ceremony today. This was not necessarily his last game; the Red Sox were scheduled to travel to New York and wind up the season with three games there.
I arrived early. The Orioles were hitting fungos on the field. The day before, they had spitefully smothered the Red Sox, 17-4, and neither their faces nor their drab gray visiting-team uniforms seemed very gracious. I wondered who had invited them to the party. Between our heads and the lowering clouds a frenzied organ was thundering through, with an appositeness perhaps accidental, ''You maaaade me love you, I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it ...''
The affair between Boston and Ted Williams was no mere summer romance; it was a marriage composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It fell into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and Nestor.
First, there was the now legendary epoch when the young bridegroom came out of the West and announced, ''All I want out of life is when I walk down the street folks will say, `There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.''' The dowagers of local journalism attempted to give elementary deportment lessons to this child who spake as a god, and to their horror were themselves rebuked. Thus began the long exchange of backbiting, bat-flipping, booing, and spitting that has distinguished Williams' public relations. The spitting incidents of 1957 and 1958 and the similar dockside courtesies that Williams has now and then extended to the grandstand should be judged against this background: the left-field stands at Fenway for twenty years have held a large number of customers who have bought their way in primarily for the privilege of showering abuse on Williams. Greatness necessarily attracts debunkers, but in Williams' case the hostility has been systematic and unappeasable. His basic offense against the fans has been to wish they weren't there. Seeking a perfectionist's vacuum, he has quixotically desired to sever the game from the ground of paid spectatorship and publicity that supports it. Hence his refusal to tip his cap to the crowd or turn the other cheek to newsmen. It has been a costly theory - it has probably cost him, among other evidences of good will, two Most Valuable Player awards, which are voted by reporters - but he has held to it. While his critics, oral and literary, remained beyond the reach of his discipline, the opposing pitchers were accessible, and he spanked them to the tune of .406 in 1941. He slumped to .356 in 1942 and went off to war.
In 1946, Williams returned from three years as a Marine pilot to the second of his baseball avatars, that of Achilles, the hero of incomparable prowess and beauty who nevertheless was to be found sulking in his tent while the Trojans (mostly Yankees) fought through to the ships. Yawkey, a timber and mining maharajah, had surrounded his central jewel with many gems of slightly lesser water, such as Bobby Doerr, Dom DiMaggio, Rudy York, Birdie Tebbetts, and Johnny Pesky. Throughout the late forties, the Red Sox were the best paper team in baseball, yet they had little three-dimensional to show for it, and if this was a tragedy, Williams was Hamlet. A succinct review of the indictment - and a fair sample of appreciative sports-page prose - appeared the very day of Williams' valedictory, in a column by Huck Finnegan in the Boston American (no sentimentalist, Huck):
''Williams' career, in contrast [to Babe Ruth's], has been a series of failures except for his averages. He flopped in the only World Series he ever played in (1946) when he batted only .200. He flopped in the playoff game with Cleveland in 1948. He flopped in the final game of the 1949 season with the pennant hinging on the outcome (Yanks 5, Sox 3). He flopped in 1950 when he returned to the lineup after a two-month absence and ruined the morale of a club that seemed pennant-bound under Steve O'Neill. It has always been Williams' records first, the team second, and the Sox non-winning record is proof enough of that.''
There are answers to all of this, of course. The fatal weakness of the great Sox slugging teams was not-quite-good-enough pitching rather than Williams' failure to hit a home run every time he came to bat. Again, Williams' depressing effect on his teammates has never been proved. Despite ample coaching to the contrary, most insisted that they liked him. He has been generous with advice to any player who asked for it. In an increasingly combative baseball atmosphere, he continued to duck beanballs docilely. With umpires he was gracious to a fault. This courtesy itself annoyed his critics, whom there was no pleasing. And against the ten crucial games (the seven World Series games with the St. Louis Cardinals, the 1948 playoff game with the Cleveland Indians, and the two-game series with the Yankees at the end of the 1949 season, when one victory would have given the Red Sox the pennant) that make up the Achilles' heel of Williams' record, a mass of statistics can be set showing that day in and day out he was no slouch in the clutch. The correspondence columns of the Boston papers now and then suffer a sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness.
Whatever residue of truth remains of the Finnegan charge those of us who love Williams must transmute as best we can, in our own personal crucibles. [...]
The afternoon grew so glowering that in the sixth inning the arc lights were turned on - always a wan sight in the daytime, like the burning headlights of a funeral procession. Aided by the gloom, Fisher was slicing through the Sox rookies, and Williams did not come to bat in the seventh. He was second up in the eighth. This was almost certainly his last time to come to the plate in Fenway Park, and instead of merely cheering, as we had at his three previous appearances, we stood, all of us, and applauded. I had never before heard pure applause in a ballpark. No calling, no whistling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute after minute, burst after burst, crowding and running together in continuous succession like the pushes of surf at the edge of the sand, It was a sombre and considered tumult. There was not a boo in it. It seemed to renew itself out of a shifting set of memories as the Kid, the Marine, the veteran of feuds and failures and injuries, the friend of children, and the enduring old pro evolved down the bright tunnel of twenty-two summers toward this moment. At last, the umpire signalled for Fisher to pitch; with the other players, he had been frozen in position. Only Williams had moved during the ovation, switching his bat impatiently, ignoring everything except his cherished task. Fisher wound up, and the applause sank into a hush.
Understand that we were a crowd of rational people. We knew that a home run cannot be produced at will; the right pitch must be perfectly met and luck must ride with the ball. Three innings before, we had seen a brave effort fail. The air was soggy, the season was exhausted. Nevertheless, there will always lurk, around the corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
Fisher, after his unsettling wait, was low with the first pitch. He put the second one over, and Williams swung mightily and missed. The crowd grunted, seeing that classic swing, so long and smooth and quick, exposed. Fisher threw the third time, Williams swung again, and there it was. The ball climbed on a diagonal line into the vast volume of air over center field. From my angle, behind third base, the ball seemed less an object in flight than the tip of a towering, motionless construct, like the Eiffel Tower or the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was in the books while it was still in the sky. Brandt ran back to the deepest corner of the outfield grass, the ball descended beyond his reach and struck in the crotch where the bullpen met the wall, bounced chunkily, and vanished.
Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs - hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted ''We want Ted'' for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he refused. Gods do not answer letters.
Now comes Medicare, a much harder issue. The administration has produced no draft legislation, just a "framework." The idea is to use the leverage of the demand for a prescription drug benefit to make Medicare more like the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Seniors would be offered a choice: 1965 Medicare with a drug benefit or an array of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs), with varying drug benefits. There would be more options than under the 1997 law encouraging HMOs, which has had disappointing results: HMOs closed up shop in many states and are unavailable in most rural areas; only about 15 percent of seniors are enrolled in them. [Bill] Thomas, who pushed a stand-alone prescription drug benefit through the House in June 2002, is aiming for a mid-June markup in committee. There's little doubt that Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay can round up majorities on the floor. [...]
One problem: The tax cut required only 51 votes for passage, but Medicare may require 60. Some Democrats are opposed to having private insurers in the program on the grounds that it would amount to a retreat from 1965 Medicare's one-tier structure, which they hope will someday be a model for a national health insurance system. But other Democrats seem more interested in getting a generous prescription drug benefit and may be willing to accept more private options in exchange. Sen. Edward Kennedy could play a major role here in either passing or stopping a bill.
There is a political calculation for Democrats, as well. In the 2002 elections, they didn't get the mileage they had hoped from the prescription-drug issue because the Republican House passed a bill and the Democratic Senate failed to do so. Now, if the Republican House passes a bill, and if a Senate majority is frustrated by a filibuster, Republicans will be able to say that obstructionist Democrats denied seniors a prescription drug benefit.
[T]he GM food-African starvation issue is becoming one of the great moral dilemmas of the early 21st century. US President George Bush, prior to his current visit to Europe for the G8 summit, accused European nations of impeding US efforts to reduce hunger in Africa by opposing the use of GM crops. 'Our partners in Europe have blocked all new bio-crops because of unfounded, unscientific fears,' Bush said. 'This has caused many African nations to avoid investing in bio-technologies for fear that their products will be shut out of European markets.'
The Bush case is either fuelled by Machiavellian concerns or deep humanitarian motives, depending on how you interpret the man who leads the world's most powerful nation.
The Zambian government, for one in Africa, believes the Bush case is entirely Machiavellian. It banned US GM maize from entering the country at the height of its own famine late last year. President Levy Mwanawasa said he would rather his citizens went hungry than have its indigenous maize contaminated by GM and risk losing future potential export markets in Europe because its crops had become GM-contaminated.
Now, following good rains, Zambia has banned food aid altogether because it has been undermining the local market by forcing prices down and discouraging Zambian farmers from producing.
Zambia is a classic case study of how complex the food problem is in Africa and why simplistic and emotive solutions like those of Texan US presidents, Boomtown Rats bandsmen and others should be treated with scepticism.
Zambia, like certain other African countries such as Angola and Zimbabwe, has such widespread good soils, such abundant supplies of fresh water and such a benign climate that it should, given sound social, economic and political strategies supported by wisely and carefully targeted aid, be able to feed the whole of Africa by itself.
It had through the 1960s, 70s and 80s one of Africa's more pleasant presidents in the shape of Kenneth Kaunda. Unfortunately, Kaunda had faith in what can only be described as economics of the madhouse. At one time he called in the Maharishi Yogi to transform the economy, but more critically from the early 1970s onwards he set the controlled price at which the Zambian Agriculture Board compulsorily purchased maize and other staples from farmers below the cost of production.
The consequence was disaster. Commercial farmers stopped producing maize and turned to products whose prices were not controlled, such as strawberries, carnations and cattle, for export. Peasant farmers ceased producing more than was necessary for daily sustenance. Meanwhile, Chinese labourers building a railway across Zambia were producing three crops a year, including individual giant cabbages of world record dimensions, to feed themselves and marvelling that any country on earth could be so fertile.
The World Food Programme stepped in and for nearly three decades supplied 50% or more of Zambia's food needs. Zambia's failure to build adequate storage facilities for grains and the collapse of road transport systems and roads themselves that that had brought milk and other fresh produce from distant rural areas to Lusaka and the Copperbelt contributed to the decline. Only now is Zambia really tackling the surmountable obstacles that have prevented it from becoming one of the world's breadbaskets. Irrigation canals are at last being dug and simple treadle pumps, not dependent on electricity, are being distributed to peasant farmers who have been entirely neglected since independence three decades ago.
Even in Ethiopia the cat's cradle of issues is not as simple as at first sight. Our compassion, our urges to find ways to help people help themselves, finish in dead ends if we try to flatten realities under the weight of self-indulgent moralising.
The tricky fact is that much of Ethiopia, where some four million people are currently on the verge of starvation, is currently as fecund and green as any cropland on earth. The UN's newly released report on the Ethiopian food emergency reads: 'This lush landscape hides a famine that, although widely attributed to last year's drought, is the result of structural deficiencies, scarcity of land, overpopulation and lack of development.' There lie a multitude of sins that no amount of food aid, genetically modified or otherwise, can assuage.
One of the most fundamental causes of Ethiopia's recurrent famine was the herding of the peasantry into vast collective villages, resulting in a collapse in traditional agricultural production and folk knowledge, by the country's former murderous Stalinist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, currently living in luxury on a farm in Zimbabwe where he is protected by President Robert Mugabe.
The succession of mistakes, becoming a swirling vicious circle, that began with Mariam have been manifested most recently in so-called New Variant Famine, in which the HIV/Aids pandemic speeds up recurrent disaster. Ethiopia's leaders have failed to tackle HIV/Aids with sufficient resources and energy. More than two million people are infected. As the numbers rise so the number of able-bodied agriculturalists is reduced and the number of food-dependent, non- productive individuals grow.
'Aid [to Ethiopia] in the short term might have saved lives, but in the long term it seems things are getting worse,' Berahanu Nega, director of the Addis Ababa-based Ethiopian Economic Association, told the UN's IRIN news organisation. 'I sometimes wonder what a country like mine would look like if there were no foreign aid. For sure, one of the things I think would happen is that government would be much more responsive to its own citizens.' The link between state and society is seriously severed in countries like Ethiopia because of donors.
'The six million that were starving in the last famine are now a permanent food-insecure population in this country, even under good weather conditions. What used to be an emergency has become a permanent feature. Something must have gone seriously wrong, but unfortunately that discussion is not yet taking place.
'It is embarrassing for us as Ethiopians. At the end of the day, it is our crisis that we have failed to address. The food crisis is entirely our own. It is the way we handle our economy, our policies as a society, it is something we have to come to terms with.'
Social-services advocates usually make two arguments against the idea of promoting marriage among poor single-parent families. First, they charge, poor urban communities, where such families disproportionately reside, suffer from a chronic shortage of "marriageable" males-the men are usually young, feckless, and hostile to the idea of marriage. Even those who are potential "husband" material in such communities are chronically unemployed, making so little money that they wouldn't raise the economic status of the mothers of their children even if they were to marry them. Second, the advocates say, marriages entered into because of a pregnancy or birth are likely to be much less stable than typical marriages. Given these realities, the advocates conclude, marriage promotion among the poor would be futile.
The first two arguments are pure bunk, as a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. The study, based on data from the "Fragile Families" database maintained by Princeton and Columbia researchers, estimates the economic and social situations of 225,000 children, extrapolating from interviews with 4,700 families-most of them headed by unwed parents. The study finds that more than 70 percent of the unmarried parents maintain a stable romantic relationship at the time of their child's birth (just under 50 percent are cohabiting). What's more, a full 82 percent of the fathers are employed at the time of their child's birth, and two-thirds of the dads have graduated high school. On average, the men are 25 years old and have worked for 50 weeks in the year before the birth of their baby. Only 2 percent are in any way violent, and just 12 percent have problems with drugs or alcohol. [...]
The Heritage study comes on the heels of a study from last year that sinks the advocates' second argument. The Urban Institute found that 70 percent of marriages entered into because of a child's birth or impending birth still endured 12 years later-not much worse than the figure for more traditional marriages where the ceremony occurred before pregnancy (85 percent). "Shotgun" marriages are less fragile than many believe.
Samuel Armas, a chattering, brown-eyed 3 1/2-year-old, has no idea what "fetus" means. Nor does he realize that he was one of the most celebrated in medical history.
AT A MERE 21 weeks of gestational age-long before it was time to leave his mother's womb-Samuel underwent a bold and experimental surgical procedure to close a hole at the bottom of his spinal cord, the telltale characteristic of myelomeningocele, or spina bifida. Samuel's parents, Julie and Alex, could have terminated Julie's pregnancy at 15 weeks when they learned about their son's condition, which can result in lifelong physical and mental disabilities. But the Armases do not believe in abortion. Instead, in August 1999, they drove 250 miles from their home in Villa Rica, Ga., to Nashville, Tenn., where Dr. Joseph Bruner, of Vanderbilt University, performed a surgery bordering on the fantastical. Bruner cut into Julie's abdomen, lifted her balloonlike uterus out of her body, made an incision in the taut muscle, removed the fetus, sewed up the spinal defect and tucked him back inside. Fifteen weeks later Samuel Armas "came out screaming," says Julie.
That scream became a rallying cry for fetal-rights groups, which seized on a stunning photograph of Samuel's tiny hand emerging from his mother's uterus during surgery. Since then, anti-abortion activists have posted the image on dozens of Web sites to show just how real human fetuses are-even those that aren't yet viable. And that's just fine with the Armases. "We're very glad it's gotten visibility," says Alex. "That wasn't our fetus, that was Samuel."
[Q:] In your article you describe how vulnerable the Saudi oil infrastructure is to attack. How worried should we be about the kind of attack that you mention? And can you describe what kind of shape an attack might take?
[A:] Well, here's my theory. Of course, I'm not an expert, I'm not an engineer. I've read stuff on the vulnerabilities of Saudi oil, tightly held studies. And what the engineers worry about is, What could be done if there was a strong support system behind the planners, or if people inside the oil industry were co-opted; what sort of damage could they do? Externally, a truck bomb at the gate would do minimal damage. But, if an employee who knew the system could place explosives, could hit a couple key places, including the redundant systems, then you could take 25 percent of Saudi oil off the market for a long period of time. That's the worst-case scenario.
With respect to the attacks last Monday on the compounds in Riyadh, there is more and more evidence that I am hearing (and it's not confirmed yet) that this was done with internal support from the National Guard. So, if they can do this to the compounds-a military operation with all these suicide bombers and multiple car bombs-why couldn't these same groups hit the oil industry and really do serious damage? I'm quite sure at this point that the Saudis have got security all over that system at the sensitive points. If it were just bin Laden on the outside, the risk isn't that much. But when you have internal support and operatives, then it worries me. [...]
[Q:] Can the American and global dependency on Saudi oil be changed? If so, how do we do it?
[A:] It's got to be changed. Just look at the environmental motivations to change it. And the increase in our dependence on oil can only make matters worse, because oil unfortunately sits in the most unstable parts of the world: Venezuela, Nigeria, Chad, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Even Russia's not particularly stable. When our future is in the hands of parts of the world that are spinning out of control, it worries me.
[Q:] What would be your first thoughts in terms of how we go about making the change?
[A:] I would start with, for one, taxing carbon-based energy sources. We have a huge gas problem in the United States; I'd start taxing those sources in order to force down consumption. Then I'd use incentives and start investigating practical alternatives-fuel cells, wind energy. Pumping more oil is just not going to do it. Alaska's going to last us for, what, sixty days of oil consumption? I think that's wishful thinking. Once we back away from this dependence on foreign oil or oil at all, we can have a more independent foreign policy.
[Q:] One of the things that you mention in your article is the surplus oil that the Saudis sent to the U.S. after September 11. Was that part of an agreement with the U.S.? Did the Saudis do this of their own volition? How did that decision come about?
[A:] There's an extremely close relationship between the White House and the king of Saudi Arabia, along with the oil minister and the ambassador. You can call the ambassador up and say, "Look, we're forecasting a shortage in the world oil market because of speculation. Can you pump more?" In every crisis, the Saudis have come through. Let's be frank about it-they were our best allies in the Middle East. They banked this oil-2-3 million barrels-at a very high cost, they never got reimbursed for it, and they were always there. The Iran-Iraq war, they were there. When the Iraqis overran Kuwait, they were there. Strikes in Venezuela, they came through and pumped more oil. They had their own interests, but they also protected our markets as well.
[Q:] Were they being financially compensated for pumping more oil?
[A:] We pay market prices. But the point is that it's all based on supply and demand, and by increasing the supply, they keep down the price. It's something the Saudis have paid out of their pockets. We've never reimbursed them for this surplus capacity. We built it in the sixties and seventies; but when they nationalized Aramco they paid for it, they bought it back. We can't simply just sit down and say, "These guys have always been against us and the Wahhabi fundamentalists have been sent by the royal family to destroy the West"-that's when it veers off into right-wing theory.
After struggling with the data, which is quite varied, for about six months, I discovered that sexual offenders re-offense records are actually much worse than those of many other violent criminals and much worse than is often reported. They commit on average about 13 felonies before they are caught. Such is the case because often the victims do not come forward, and when the offender is a member of the victim’s family (as is frequently the case), there is all too often family pressure to keep mum.This is a perfectly sensible discussion and the problem of repeat sexual offenders should be the perfect Communitarian issue. To summarize (and Communitarian's would disagree with my summary), Communitarianism is an attempt to repackage the left for a center-right world. They do this by using the vocabulary of community and individual responsibility for the greater good and suggest that at times the good of the community should outweigh the rights of the individual. The problem is that, when push comes to shove, they are not willing to actually limit individual actions. And so when a sex offender writes in to protest against sex offender registration laws, Etzioni is sympathetic.
Finally, I found that Megan's Laws are often considered too weak. What is a parent to do when they are told that a sex offender has moved in next door? Prohibit their kids from playing outside? Hang around at all times? Indeed some 18 states have adopted a much more extreme approach: various versions of the Sexual Violent Predator Act (also known as "Stephanie's Law"). Accordingly, sexual offenders who have completed their jail terms are locked up indefinitely in mental hospitals, allegedly to cure them, though very few are ever actually cured.
My discussion of Megan's Laws led to a lengthy response by someone who has been there -- on the receiving end. I somewhat agree with what this person has to say. Hence, I call attention to what 18 states are doing under the Sexual Predator Act, which passed Supreme Court muster. Once a sex offender completes his sentence they lock them up in state mental hospitals under the pretext that this is not punishment, but treatment, which is an extreme measure. Instead, I favor setting up a village for sex offenders.
"Punish France, isolate Germany, forgive Russia" is how his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is alleged to have described it -- and this does, more or less, seem to be the plan....
Even Colin Powell has talked publicly about punishing France, as if France were not a longtime political ally that has become temporarily hostile but a recalcitrant teenager.
But then it's also pretty condescending to forgive the Russians because they are unserious, or to refuse to speak to the German chancellor because he's odious. And it's a strange way to go about winning support in countries that are run by democratically elected leaders. What seems to be missing, in both the Bush administration's prewar and postwar European diplomacy, is any sense that we are speaking not to a handful of unpleasant individuals but to entire countries. There is a carelessness about the language being tossed around Washington, as if no one here cares anymore about who might be listening. Besides, what does "punish France" actually mean? Punish all of the French -- even the pro-American French? In diplomacy, how you say something is as important as what you do, if not more so.
Instead of dreaming up ways to be rude to Gerhard and offensive to Jacques, the president should concentrate on the people who are going to elect their successors. He should talk over the heads of the European chattering classes who have opposed him and speak directly to the television audiences that are listening around the world every time he so much as clears his throat.
What is Bush's approach accomplishing? It is making Chirac and Schroeder look irrelevant, and showing that we think of them as, in Applebaum's phrase, teenagers. As their citizens realize that Chirac and Schroeder are inconsequential and held in contempt by foreign leaders, they increasingly tend to view their own leaders with contempt. And this creates great pressure on Chirac and Schroeder to change their behavior. For more than anything else, they are playing for appearances: they want, very much, to be important and relevant, and respected by their own citizens. To obtain those appearances, they will trade substance (such as an end to UN sanctions and release of Iraqi oil money).
Why does Russia get forgiven? Because its government is much less responsive to public opinion. There we must deal directly with Putin; grudges would only get in our way. That Russia's leadership is hostile to us doesn't change this calculus. The forgiveness is in public, but in private we remember.
Had we addressed French and German citizens in an effort to persuade, we would have been asserting by our actions that the opinions of the French and German governments was important. We would have lost the lever that scorn gives over the actions of Chirac and Schroeder. And we would have gained nothing, because the European public was not ready to listen.
The truth is that persuasion is not leadership. Minds change rarely and with great difficulty. Good leaders don't change minds, they enlist pre-disposed minds in a cause, and work around opposed minds. George Bush is a leader.
There were few tears for Iman Salih Mutlak at her wake. She is a hero to some--a martyr who tried to kill U.S. soldiers with grenades, then died in a hail of their bullets--but her family feels nothing but shame.
Their rage comes not because of her planned attack, but because the 22-year-old woman left the house alone and without permission from her father--thereby besmirching the honor of her tribe.
''When she left the house, she lost her innocence,'' said her 71-year-old father, Salih Mutlak. ''Had she returned home, I would have killed her myself and drunk her blood.''
The tribal laws that have ruled the villages of Iraq for centuries say a man can take the life of a daughter or sister if he feels she has betrayed the family's honor. In this deeply conservative culture, Iman Salih Mutlak did just that by going out without permission.
So the family says nothing about how she really died. To hide their shame, they maintain she died during surgery to remove her appendix. [...]
To some in Baqubah, Mutlak is a martyr--a hero in their struggle against the Americans. Since Saddam Hussein's ouster, U.S. soldiers have repeatedly come under attack in Iraq. Just last week, at least nine Americans died, five of them in attacks or ambushes, and two dozen were wounded.
The family is worried about retribution. ''We are afraid of the Americans,'' her father said. ''We are afraid they would kill us.''
Her older sister, Salwa, said Mutlak was an unhappy loner with no friends, and possibly mentally disturbed.
''If she had brains, she wouldn't have attacked a tank,'' said Salwa Mutlak, 30, who exhibited a cold sadness at her death.
CENTRAL PARK looks greener this spring than it has in recent memory. Is this my imagination or the result of scientifically verifiable causes, like rain? I prefer to think that nature is making a bigger effort than usual this year to celebrate a very special occasion: the 150th anniversary of Central Park's birth.
Where else on earth has nature's floral bounty been appreciated by so many? Where else, this side of Eden, have animal, vegetable and mineral variety been more densely combined to such voluptuous effect?
Nowhere that I know of. This is worth a rousing cheer. Though perhaps a contemplative moment is more in keeping with the spirit of our great urban oasis. How about a round of applause for contemplative moments, then? Let's meditate until we're blue in the face, our lungs give out and our hands are raw from clapping. We've got all eternity to hold our peace.
I suspect that when good New Yorkers die, they go to Central Park. We, the living, go there to rehearse. Or perhaps to become more worthy of life in paradise. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the park along with Calvert Vaux in 1857, would not have quarreled with this hopeful interpretation.
Official professions to the contrary, many self-described American intellectual conservatives have a thinly veiled disdain for philosophy and the arts. Even among academics indifference to what lies beyond broad ideas and popular culture is common. The ruling assumption of the now dominant strains of intellectual conservatism seems to be that the crux of social well-being is politics: bad politicians ruin society; good politicians set it right. Nothing fascinates conservatives more than presidential politics. For social problems to be effectively remedied and for worthy objectives to be achieved, "our" candidate must win the next election, our people man the government.?
Many supposedly intellectual conservatives seem to consider ideas and culture from afar, as it were, feeling no deep personal need for or intimate connection with them. Some are in a way attracted to the arts or even to philosophical speculation, but see no significant and immediate connection between these and the life of practice. Ideas and the arts are mainly pleasant diversions. Many others have only slight interest in philosophy and culture for their own sake. More or less consciously, they tend to assess either thought or imagination from the point of view of whether it advances or undermines the political cause that they assume to be incontestable. Does the book, lecture, play, movie, or song help or hinder the cause? Although such works may enlighten or entertain, they do not strike these individuals as having intrinsic and independent authority. Works of thought and imagination are for them not intriguing and potentially unsettling forces that might trigger painful self-examination and unpredictably reconstitute one's own accustomed views; making sense of them is not so much a matter of soul-searching as of locating them on the political spectrum.?
One might explain these reactions as instances of the social decline now widely bemoaned. Schools, families, and other institutions have not conveyed the excitement of ideas and the higher arts, leaving the young largely "tone-deaf" and unaware of their deeper appeal and formative influence on civilization. For persons not strongly drawn to them in the first place, the element of sheer decadence in the dominant intellectual and cultural life of today has only reinforced existing prejudices.?
A related explanation for truncated conservative approaches to thought and imagination is the spread of an ideological frame of mind. In this century leftist ideology has been the most influential. It has been often extreme and has caused great human suffering. But the left has no monopoly on ideology. Even the best of ideas can start to separate from the changeability and complexity of real life and harden into reflexive and reductionistic propositions.?
There is a sense in which ideology?as well as party programs, slogans, etc.?is not only inevitable but legitimate: to advance practical objectives it is frequently necessary, especially in politics, to summarize and codify ideas in order to mobilize support and exhort to action. Ideology in that sense is not necessarily incompatible with humane purposes. Neither is there anything inherently objectionable about the popularization of difficult ideas. The full import of sound philosophy may be apparent only to relatively few, but those insights need to be communicated beyond the circle of learned experts. What is complex must be made simple. In the process of transmission there is a danger that thought will harden into ideology, but good popularizers will try, by means of well-chosen concrete illustrations, for example, not to turn ideas into abstract and sweeping generalizations that ignore the texture of real life.
The health of society requires that elites be continuously reminded by genuine intellectuals and artists not to mistake ideology for eternal verities. If that indispensable task is not performed or if the reminders are not heeded, undue influence will fall to the more inventive and ambitious ideologues. Their politically charged formulations may start to acquire a life of their own. In the absence of a vital intellectual and aesthetical culture that challenges and breaks up the encrustation's of ideology, such persons may gather unto themselves large new responsibilities unsuited to their preparation and temperament. They may start acting the role of arbiters of goodness, truth, and beauty, perhaps establish themselves as authorities in the universities. Trying to meet the expectations that traditionally surround such roles, ideologues may acquire greater subtlety, but the affected disciplines and institutions are damaged by the association. [...]
Great works of art or thought may discuss or depict politics, and they always present a point of view, but their primary inspiration is never merely political passion. They transcend the concerns of particular historical situations. They throw light on the human condition, sometimes on the reality of politics, but they do not preach and exhort. Art and didacticism are incompatible, as are philosophy and propaganda. Still, as illuminating, orienting statements, the great works of art or thought always carry implications or have consequences for practical politics, however indirect and unanticipated. They are typically a reaction against life going wrong and present a vision of new possibilities. By affecting how people imagine or think about the world, these works affect political attitudes.?
It is objected perhaps that most people are rarely exposed to high culture?and do not even want to be. Only a small minority becomes familiar with the great works of art or thought and is substantially influenced by them. It may be said of some of these works, in fact, that in particular generations only a handful of persons, perhaps only one or two, can be said really to have absorbed them. How, then, could they have any impact on society in general??
The answer is that the elite culture-including works that are fully accessible to but a few-is transmitted to others by those who have felt its power. Individuals inspired by a great work apply and diversify its vision in their own artistic or intellectual efforts, spreading it to new audiences at different levels of refinement. The transformative power of the great work eventually affects the sensibilities, dreams, or thoughts of all, even if it does so very indirectly and in watered-down form. The perspectives of the seminal works eventually find their way into the general culture-schools, newspapers, movies, television soap operas, novels, and, not least, the imagery of advertising.?
Those who enter our minds and imaginations are in a position to make particular ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences seem inviting or repulsive. They can affect our notions of what to admire, what to fear, what to scorn, and what to laugh at, and they can incline us to action that corresponds to these responses.?
Especially over time, the power of all the politicians in the nation's capital is dwarfed by the power of those who influence us through teaching, writing, preaching, art, and entertainment. Even if the latter group represents a variety of viewpoints, a particular cultural and intellectual ethos tends to predominate that can be traced back to ground-breaking works of art and thought. In our own time, egalitarian pressures and masscommunication have produced a perhaps more thoroughgoing likemindedness than seen before. Behind what counts as moral sensibility today, for example, who but the ignorant and dull-witted could fail to discern the deep and brilliant, if deleterious, influence of the thought and imagination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau?
Whatever the dominant fundamental mind-set that artists and intellectuals have cultivated, it has planted in us certain expectations and desires. It has prepared the ground for or built obstacles to political action of a certain type. Politicians who run afoul of the prevailing sensibilities and ideas of their time risk their political lives. In other words, they are at the mercy of a power that is not of their own making. Only marginally can they change the "rules of the game that are determined deep within the consciousness of a people.?
[W]hy is it that the worst extremes of jingoism and racialism have to be tolerated when they come from an Irishman? Why is astatement like "My country right or wrong" reprehensible if applied to England and worthy of respect if applied to Ireland (or for that matter to India)? For there is no doubt that some such convention exists and that "enlightened" opinion in England can swallow even the most blatant nationalism so long as it is not British nationalism. Poems like "Rule, Britannia!" or "Ye Mariners of England" would be taken seriously if one inserted at the right places the name of some foreign country, as one can see by the respect accorded to various French and Russian war poets to-day.
So far as Ireland goes, the basic reason is probably England's bad conscience. It is difficult to object to Irish nationalism without seeming to condone centuries of English tyranny and exploitation. In particular, the incident with which Mr. O'Casey's book ends, the summary execution of some twenty or thirty rebels who ought to have been treated as prisoners of war, was a crime and a mistake. Therefore anything that is said about it has to pass unchallenged, and Yeats's poem on the subject, which makes a sort of theme song for Mr. O'Casey's book, has to be accepted uncriticised as a great poem. Actually it is not one of Yeats's better poems. But how can an Englishman, conscious that his country was in the wrong on that and many other occasions, say anything of the kind? So literary judgment is perverted by political sympathy, and Mr. O'Casey and others like him are able to remain
almost immune from criticism. It seems time to revise our attitude, for there is no real reason why Cromwell's massacres should cause us to mistake a bad or indifferent book for a good one.
[Hugo] Grotius was a great believer in choice and human freedom, and in the freedom of each state to make its own laws. For these beliefs, he was convicted of heresy and sent to prison in a gloomy castle. But he was permitted to receive books, which his wife would deliver and cart away in a large trunk.
One day, the outgoing trunk had an extra occupant: Grotius himself. He managed to get on a boat to France, where he spent the next five years in exile and wrote his great work, On The Law Of War And Peace.
The book has been hugely influential for many reasons: for its insistence that war is just only if it responds to a conspicuous and serious act of aggression; for its insistence that even then, the party in the wrong must be treated in accordance with strict moral laws; for its insistence that killing of innocent civilians is morally wrong, even though the formal international law of that time did permit it; for its insistence that a stable and moral peace should be the long-term goal of international relations.
But the work's greatest contribution lies in its conception of relations among states. For Grotius, each state has sovereignty: the right to give itself laws and control its destiny. This is not just a fact, but a moral norm that expresses something deep about human freedom, something for which Grotius was prepared to risk imprisonment and worse.
Second, however, the world contains interactions between nations, which are mediated not just by concerns for expediency and safety but by moral considerations. Moral laws bind all nations in their dealings with one another, whether these laws have been turned into enforceable international law or not.
Why should this be? Because, third, the world contains, most fundamentally, individual human beings, who are needy and trying to flourish. The moral duties to support human well-being bind us all into what Grotius calls 'international society'.
The norms of this society begin with the idea of humans as creatures who are both rational and social, and who need to find a way to live together. Certain ways of behaving support that conception (for example, abiding by treaties that one has made), and others do not (killing civilians in wartime).
According to Grotius, then, when international law limits America in some of its plans, Americans are not wrong to feel constrained. But Grotius would insist that the more fundamental identity we have is as members of a moral world of human beings.
National sovereignty also is limited internally by morality. If a nation commits certain very bad acts against its own population, such as torture and mass murder, another nation may intervene - what we now call 'humanitarian intervention' - to help the people. National sovereignty's importance derives from its value to people and their freedom; it cannot be invoked to justify genocide and torture.
Grotius was also a radical in his thought about material need. He saw that a lasting peace among nations requires thinking about how all citizens of the world can get the things they need to live.
He held that when any person anywhere is in extreme need, that person has a right to food and other necessities of life (he explicitly mentions medical care). He even says that the needy person owns the surplus that the rich are squandering, if he needs it and they don't.
Grotius' vision was not the way the world was seen in his own day. But by insisting on the power of this vision, he created a climate of opinion in which that vision increasingly became real. [...]
Grotius had seen a side of human conduct that he called 'bestial'. He argued that in such a world, it is all the more important to proclaim and abide by principles of which a decent society can be proud and to work tirelessly to produce a world in which such principles increasingly hold sway. He warned people in power that if they imitate wild beasts, they may forget to be human.
Grotius' own life also takes its stand against the course of despairing detachment, a great temptation in this time as in his own. He conspicuously does not say: 'These times are bestial, so we right-thinking people had better check out.'
Instead, living in exile, he created a norm of cooperation and moral order that continues to inspire, and to determine the course of some world events, even if not all.
Those who feel a deep moral sadness about the current conduct of the US, as its leadership shows contempt for this vision of a multilateral world, could do worse than to follow Grotius' example.
Moral norms do not cease to exist because current leaders do not believe in them. We may refine them and further develop them, in the hope that once again, sooner or later, their day will dawn.
"Well," said Pooh, we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we'd be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really."
One might say that the reader who has grasped the full significance of this passage has seen to the bottom of both Winnie-the-Pooh and its author. Yes, one might say that. But "one" would thereby be branded a simpleton, a theory-starved dunce. "Grasped the full significance"? "Seen to the bottom"? Not very likely.
Pooh, it's true, manages, through byzantine byways that I will track below, to body forth the key principles of Deconstruction with uncanny fidelity. And that fact, given the apparent temporal priority of Milne over Derrida, would seem to prove the timeless pertinence of the latter's approach to textuality. Yet what is the le?on of Derrida, that consummate rhetor of the iterable and the dehiscent, if not that clear sight, the grasping of significance, and even historical precedence (to say nothing of timeless truth) are all illusions, effects of that very diff?rance that constitutes the only legitimate object of critical scrutiny?
I wonder how many of you went for my feint that we might learn something here about the author of Winnie-the-Pooh. C'est pour rire. Pooh Bear, at least, knows better: "I sometimes wonder if it's true/ That who is what and what is who."
After all, J Hillis Miller has pointed out that "there is not any 'Shakespeare himself'," and Derrida once observed that "there is not, strictly speaking, a text whose author or subject is Jean-Jacques Rousseau". It's fairly clear, then, that Miller is right when he characterises every author as merely "an effect of the text."
"AA Milne" himself or itself concedes the point in the preface to When We Were Very Young : "You may wonder sometimes who is supposed to be saying the verses. Is it the Author, that strange but uninteresting person, or is it Christopher Robin, or some other boy or girl, or Nurse, or Hoo?... you will have to decide for yourselves."
As for "the reader", spare me! The term elides difference, at-tempts to inscribe on a bubbling bouillabaisse of potentialities one model of a stolid, passive, tabula rasa receptor. Grant yourself a "reader" and you automatically become a writer - worse, a communicator with a plain message that "the reader" will supposedly open like some ersatz telegram announcing that he has been declared a finalist in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.
Now that we've dispensed with both author and reader, you will be interested to learn that I'm going to go right on discussing them.
TONY Blair has a mountain to climb to persuade the British public to join the euro.
A Sunday Mirror poll has revealed that 60 per cent of voters would reject the euro in a referendum - even if the PM and his sceptic Chancellor Gordon Brown say the economy is right.
In fact almost one in three voters want to pull out of the European Union altogether. [...]
RESULTS OF SUNDAY MIRROR SURVEY IN DETAIL
Do you think Britain should stay in the European Union?
YES 60% NO 31% DON'T KNOW 9%
If Blair and Brown say time is right, would you want to join euro?
NO 60% YES 33% DON'T KNOW 7%
When do you think there should be a referendum on the euro?
BEFORE ELECTION 39% NOW 32%?AFTER ELECTION 13% NEVER 11% DON'T KNOW 5%
* Poll conducted by ICM Research among a random sample of 502 adults by phone on May 30-31
Painting a bleak picture of lower productivity and birthrates in the nation's future, the annual white paper on the national lifestyle was submitted to the Cabinet by Financial Services Minister Heizo Takenaka on Friday.
The paper, which focuses on life under a deflationary economy, singled out the growing number of "freeters''-young, unskilled part-time workers, such as convenience store clerks-as a particular source of concern.
According to the report, the number of these underemployed workers soared from 1.83 million in 1990, to 4.17 million in 2001. Consequently, one in five people in the 15 to 34 age group-excluding homemakers and students with part-time jobs-is a freeter.
In addition to decreasing overall productivity, more young people adopting a freeter lifestyle means fewer marriages and thus fewer offspring, according to the paper.
