TWO Saudis arrested after the Najaf attack in Iraq that killed leading Shiite cleric Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim were picked up after sending an e-mail saying "mission accomplished: the dog is dead", The Times reported today quoting a source close to the Iraqi inquiry.
The men were grabbed by a crowd and taken to the nearest police station after being seen sending the e-mail from an Internet cafe, the source said.
"I'm a bit hesitant to talk about all this," he said. "I don't know what the impact will be. But I'm only doing it because it might help
somebody -- and to say that there is no such thing as casual crystal meth use!"
Mr. Wainwright, who is gay and has been out since he was a teenager, was not always convinced of that. Methamphetamine is one of a number of drugs -- including ecstasy, cocaine, K (or ketamine, an anesthetic) and alcohol -- to which he has turned over the years to bolster his confidence and to propel his quests for anonymous sex. Despite creating a body of work whose central theme is the search for true love, he has never been in a serious relationship, a consequence, he says, of having been raped by a man he picked up in London when he was 14.
Typically in recent years, he would get high, go online to discover willing partners and arrange meetings. Eventually Mr. Wainwright found himself drawn to a subterranean world that he described in the most lurid terms as a "gay hell."
"I'm not talking about a bar in the meatpacking district," he said.
Mr. Wainwright believes that crystal meth presents specific dangers -- and specific temptations -- for homosexual men, and that its use is a menace to their community. "Years of sexual insecurity, the low-grade discrimination you suffer, the need to belong -- speed takes care of all that in one second," he said. "It was a world where people are going so crazy that they're not making sense any more. If you wanted safe sex, you were a nerd, uncool. I was one of the nerds who did have safe sex, thank God. But I'm still mentally shattered by the whole experience."
"For years, and I mean thousands of years, the gay man's mind has been treated as perverted, clandestine and dirty," he went on, "and speed reinforces and glamorizes that as an ideal. And with drugs, what's more dangerous is more sexually exciting. On that drug I had really horrible thoughts that turned me on. I had a few of those real gay lost weekends, where everything goes out the window, where you want to make pornos or you want to have sex with children. I mean, your mind is just completely ravaged."
The attack, which killed scores of Iraqis, including the prominent cleric Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim--and which came less than a week after a bomb went off at the home of Mr. Hakim's uncle, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Said al-Hakim -- has convulsed the Shiite community. That should be of vital concern to the United States, whose fortunes in Iraq will rise or fall with the political sentiments of the Shiites, who make up at least 60 percent of Iraq's population.
These bombings were undoubtedly intended to terrorize Iraq's clerical establishment and to snuff out the growing dialogue between mainstream Shiites and Americans. Both ayatollahs had been talking directly to American officials and favored democracy. Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim controlled the only effective Shiite paramilitary force, but had chosen not to direct it against the occupation. This had angered Shiite extremists, notably the young cleric Moktada al-Sadr, leader of a violent faction known as the Sadriyyin.
There is already a lot of finger-pointing, but it may never be totally clear who planned the two bombings: the Sadriyyin, fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, Baath Party loyalists or agents of Iran's hard-core mullahs. Some American officials and Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, quickly blamed anti-American Sunnis.
This may well be true, but it is important to note that the Baath Party loyalists and Sunni fundamentalists, at least until now, have kept their distance from the Shiite south, killing "collaborationists" and American G.I.'s only in the Sunni regions. Killing Americans in the south wouldn't be hard ? many operate there with light security ? and could be the best way to derail the United States' post-Saddam planning. Nor, according to Pentagon officials, have the jihadists coming over the Syrian and Iranian borders tried to attack Americans in the
He built a court system that became a model for the nation. He wrestled with ways to prevent crime, not just punish the criminal. He was a pioneer in the field of criminal psychology.
When he died in 1935, a Chicago Daily News editorial writer predicted that "the interesting thing about Judge [Harry] Olson's life and works is that no one can now write their epilogue, because the full fruit of the man's life may be borne in the future."
Nearly 70 years later, the epilogue has been written. And unfortunately for the judge's memory, some of that fruit is clearly rotten.
A new book paints a dark view of Olson, suggesting that he and other American proponents of the now discredited pseudo-science of eugenics helped fuel one of the most horrific nightmares of modern times.
In War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, award-winning investigative author Edwin Black connects the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes to the American eugenics movement, a crusade for selective breeding that led to the forced sterilization of nearly 70,000 Americans deemed "unfit."
A best-selling writer on the Holocaust, Black does not blame Olson and his colleagues for the Nazi atrocities. But he does argue that they hatched the quest to create a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master race here in the United States.
He points the finger at top scholars of the era, political leaders, self-styled reformers and the wealthy industrialists who funded it all.
"What we have here is corporate philanthropy engaged in ethnic cleansing," Black said.
And Olson's role was to help craft a U.S. sterilization law. It would be imitated by Nazi Germany--a feat Olson viewed with pride before his death in 1935.
"It was Judge Olson who helped proliferate and propagate these bizarre theories into every jurisdiction--local, state and national . . . and overseas," Black said. "He was a major mover in some of the most far-reaching persecution, oppression and genocidal campaigns the world has ever seen."
Despite Olson's prominence in the eugenics movement, he is a minor character in Black?s book, published by Four Walls Eight Windows and due out Sept. 7.
So the Sun-Times decided to take a look at Olson, poring over yellowed newspaper clippings, moldy letters and personal papers once stored in an Indiana chicken coop and musty documents on file at the Chicago Municipal Reference Library.
Was Olson a malicious race theorist or a would-be reformer with bizarre ideas about the mentally ill, caught up in a movement that spiraled out of control?
Barry Mehler, director of the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris State University, said he believes it is pointless to try to discern Olson's true motives, arguing that they are irrelevant to what he must ultimately be judged on.
"By the damage that was done to tens of thousands of victims in the United States, who were sterilized, by the millions of victims worldwide," Mehler said. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"You don't judge people by their intentions. You judge people by the outcomes."
In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.
Most startling is that little is being done to correct the imbalances. All of the major players — schools, education colleges and researchers — largely ignore the gender gap. Instead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. "Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,' " says Rockville, Md., child psychologist Neil Hoffman. "Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem." [...]
One fact explains why educators are ignoring boys' needs: You can't address a problem that you don't admit exists. The U.S. Department of Education concedes that no serious research is available comparing different instructional methods that might help boys. In fact, many education researchers are hostile toward research aimed at exploring gender differences in learning.
Last April, when Kenneth Dragseth, superintendent of schools in Edina, Minn., presented a paper describing his district's gender gap at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Chicago, he says the reception ranged from chilly to hostile. Female education researchers in the audience questioned whether helping boys would mean hurting girls.
Their attitude follows years of lobbying by groups such as the American Association of University Women, which alerted educators to the fact that girls were being shortchanged academically in the fields of math and science. The extra attention helped focus schools on girls' difficulties, but it has made it too easy for educators to overlook the problems of boys. Among them:
--Boys and girls learn differently. The best research on boy-girl learning differences is produced more by accident than by design. The lack of data in this field can hurt girls as much as boys. For instance, as part of an ongoing 20-year dyslexia study focusing on Connecticut schools, Yale neuroscientist and pediatrician Sally Shaywitz discovered that schools were identifying four times as many dyslexic boys as girls. Yet when her team entered schools to screen children, it diagnosed just as many dyslexic girls as boys. Shaywitz found that the mostly female teaching staff was quicker to identify rambunctious boys than quiet girls.
"I don't mind being superior, education-wise, to someone I'm dating,'' said Leann Gould, 23, a first-year law student at Northeastern, where women command a 64 percent majority of the law school's freshmen class.
"But I am concerned about finding a man who would accept this,'' she added.
For Northeastern sophomore Liz Schwartz, 19, a nation of less-educated men is not such a bad thing.
"There would be more opportunities for (women) if the guys weren't as qualified,'' she said.
Statewide, female students command a 57.5 percent majority among private and public colleges, according to the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
Even in schools that have traditionally attracted more men - males comprised 66 percent of MIT's undergrads a decade ago - women are gaining ground. Today, women make up 41 percent of MIT's undergrads, and they outnumber men in 15 of the school's 22 undergraduate majors.
Some schools with large female majorities are aggressively working to level the gender imbalance. BU, for instance, says it is "giving more weight'' in admissions to SAT scores - where men traditionally score higher - and redesigning its brochures from ones that show mostly women to images that are more mixed.
A master historian's excavations into the past unearth a world that is unexpected and compelling.
The most famous character in eighteenth-century Paris, apart from the public hangman, was "Le Grand Thomas," a tooth puller who operated on the Pont-Neuf. A gigantic man seated high above the surrounding supplicants, he commanded instructions to his assistants and the "toothaches seemed to expire at his feet."
George Washington was not so lucky. He was
inaugurated as president in 1789 with one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid. The Father of His Country had sets of false teeth that were made of everything but wood, from elephant ivory and walrus tusk to the teeth of a fellow human.
With characteristic learning and bracing insight, Robert Darnton shows us that the Enlightenment had false teeth too?that it was not the Father of Our Modern World, responsible for all its advances and transgressions. In restoring the Enlightenment to human scale, Darnton locates its real significance as a movement, a cause, a campaign to change minds and reform institutions. So too with the French Revolution, another icon of the eighteenth century: Darnton explores its origins in the gossip, songs, and broadsides that formed the political nervous system of Paris in the Old Regime.
Figures that we think we know--Voltaire, Franklin, Jefferson, Rousseau, Condorcet--emerge here afresh, their vitality (if not their teeth) intact. Was the leader of the Girondists, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, a dedicated revolutionary or a police spy? Darnton shows the past to be an unruly place, sometimes confounding to the present, always unexpected, compelling, and rewarding.
IT'S NOT EVERY DAY that a professor issues a public apology to his students for leading them astray intellectually. But in his most recent book, "The Moment of Complexity" (Chicago), Mark C. Taylor, a distinguished professor of humanities at Williams College, does just that.Here is Richard Posner on deconstruction:
Nearly 20 years ago, Taylor established himself as a preeminent American practitioner of deconstruction with his book "Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology." But in "The Moment of Complexity," which appears this week in paperback, he claims he will no longer teach students the paralyzing deconstructive conceit that "all they have to look forward to is the endless struggle to undo systems and structures that cannot be undone." Deconstruction, an unregenerate product of the Cold War, is addicted to futility, Taylor writes.
Orthodox language theory regards all these impediments to perfect conceptual transfer, or "intersubjectivity," as impurities or corruptions that nomally, if not always, can be overcome. And this is the point against which decontruction mounts its theoretical assault: it insists that to regard those properties of signifiers that impede communication as secondary is arbitrary and culture-bound rather than, as the orthodox theorists suppose, logical or "natural." It is just as logical, just as natural, deconstruction insists, to subordinate the communicative function of discourse to the communication-impeding effects of the signifiers that the speaker or writer uses, and thus to attend to the "play of the signifiers," which is to say to the relations between the signifiers and other concepts besides the one intended to be signified. The practitioner of deconstruction may take an ostensibly serious prose passage and immediately get hiung up on the first word, which may be an unintended pun or a homonym or a false cognate or may contain a subordinate meaning (perhaps deeply buried in its root) at war with the surface meaning. Or he may become fascinated with the shape of the letters or the visual pattern that they make on the page. Or he may juxtapose passages that are unrelated at the level of commuication, in order to jar the reader out of his conventional response and into attending to the play of the signifiers. Or he may treat an earlier writing as a commentary on a later one. Moreover, consistent with his program of forcing attention to the noncommunicative aspect of language, the deconstructionist will insist on the problematic character of regarding an author as "present" in his text in the same way tat we suppose a speaker to be present in his utterance. He will point out that writing, by its permanence (relative to speech), can outlive the communicative occasion that brought it forth by outliving the author, the readers whom the author intended to address, and its original linguistic and cultural context. [Emphasis added.]Posner, Richard, Law and Literature, A Misunderstood Relation (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1988), at 212-213.
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination shifts into a more intense phase this Labor Day weekend, with some party leaders worried about the strength of their field of candidates and fearful of what they view as President Bush's huge advantage going into next year's election.
Many prominent Democrats said that Mr. Bush might be vulnerable, given problems with the economy, and continued American fatalities in Iraq. But they said he could be unseated only by an aggressive, partisan challenge that built on Democratic anger lingering from the 2000 election, and by a nominee who somehow managed to survive a complicated nominating fight that was pulling their party to the left.
Iraqis involved in the talks said the force could consist of thousands of Iraqis already screened by the various political parties for prior affiliations with Saddam Hussein's government. Iraqi officials said such a militia could ultimately take control of Iraqi cities from American soldiers.
Some Iraqi leaders said a force of several thousand men, most of them with military experience, could be ready in little more than a month.
"The situation has changed, and there is a new receptiveness to the idea," said Mudhar Shahkawt, a prominent Iraqi exile who took part in the discussions today. "This force could move inside the cities and allow coalition forces to withdraw to places outside." [...]
The discussions about an all-Iraqi security force followed the devastating car bombing in the holy city of Najaf on Friday, when 82 people were killed and 95 were listed as wounded. Prominent among the dead was Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, one of the most revered leaders of the world's 120 millions Shiite Muslims and a political moderate who had showed himself willing to deal with the American occupiers.
The attack, coupled with the repeated assaults on Americans and Iraqis here, has prompted leaders of several political parties to declare that they have lost confidence in the ability of the Americans to protect their leaders and sacred places.
Today, they began to demand that Iraqis become more involved in security. Indeed, some political leaders said they might be unable to keep their own followers from moving against their enemies, especially if the attacks continued.
"The knife is at our neck," Said Nael Musawi, a Shiite religious leader, told a group of American soldiers guarding the gate of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad, as thousands of demonstrators swirled about them. "I don't know how much longer I can control my people."
In practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing. The mayor of Aachen was assassinated on March 25, 1945, on Himmler's orders. This was not a nice thing to do, but it happened before the May 7 Nazi surrender at Reims. It's hardly surprising that Berlin sought to undermine the American occupation before the war was over. And as the U.S. Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, points out, the killing was 'probably the Werwolf's most sensational achievement.'I've seen and heard accounts of the German Werwolves, trained to resist the occupation, that are more sympathetic to the Administration's account, including a story on NPR yesterday, but frankly I don't care. The lesson I take from this is that, in this limited area, there is a price to pay for not bombing your enemy to the edge of existence, in not decimating his army and in not executing the top officials of his government. In not, that is, making it evident to the meanest intelligence and the most fanatical believer, that he has been beaten. I agree with the Administration in making this trade off, which, among other things, certainly lowered our combat deaths. But now the bill is due and we're going to be paying it for a while.
Indeed, the organization merits but two passing mentions in Occupation of Germany, which dwells far more on how docile the Germans were once the Americans rolled in—and fraternization between former enemies was a bigger problem for the military than confrontation. Although Gen. Eisenhower had been worrying about guerrilla warfare as early as August 1944, little materialized. There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. In fact, the far greater problem for the occupying forces was the misbehavior of desperate displaced persons, who accounted for much of the crime in the American zone.
Running baseball teams for nearly a quarter-century has convinced Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino to emblazon one overriding principle in his formula for success.Despite the triumph of evil, this was a great game to be at. Being at the Park was as much fun as ever, my son gets more and more from the game with each one he attends and the Sox kept it close until the end. This was a particularly good game for Boston's favorite sport, second guessing the manager. Arroyo looked good and should have been kept in. Pedro should have been yanked earlier. Embree makes you nervous just walking to the mound.
'You need pitching, pitching, and more pitching,' Lucchino has said from Day 1 of spring training.
What he got yesterday was something else altogether. While his widely feared offense continued to rip apart opposing pitchers like so much confetti, several of Lucchino's hurlers, including the pep-less Pedro Martinez, served as little more than party favors for the Yankees, who romped to a 10-7 victory before 34,350 at Fenway Park.
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination shifts into a more intense phase this Labor Day weekend, with some party leaders worried about the strength of their field of candidates and fearful of what they view as President Bush's huge advantage going into next year's election.There is so much here. Does anyone other than the Times, for example, still take advice from Walter Mondale, the only man ever to lose elections in all fifty states? There is also a lot that's not here. Has the Times not noticed that popular attention is being drained into California, making it even harder for the Democrats to make progress against the President and changing the traditional rule that people focus on the primary races after Labor Day? Why not mention the President's belief that August is a wasted month during which he doesn't bother to make policy speeches or counter attacks against him? Couldn't they spare a sentence for the effect on the Senate if Edwards has decided to give up a long-shot senate reelection for no shot at the presidency?
Many prominent Democrats said that Mr. Bush might be vulnerable, given problems with the economy, and continued American fatalities in Iraq. But they said he could be unseated only by an aggressive, partisan challenge that built on Democratic anger lingering from the 2000 election, and by a nominee who somehow managed to survive a complicated nominating fight that was pulling their party to the left.
'It's going to be tough,' said Walter F. Mondale, the former vice president who lost his challenge to Ronald Reagan in 1984. 'You're trying to beat an incumbent who has all this money, and who has got the field all to himself, while all this infighting is going on in the Democratic Party.' . . .
"I think it is a weak field," said John Meyer, 41, an architect from Henniker, who said he was waiting to see if Gen. Wesley K. Clark would enter the race. "A lot of them are lackluster candidates." . . .
But many Democrats express reservations about both these New Englanders, and that is reflected in the failure of either to draw the institutional party support that typically rallies around a perceived winner. Some Democrats worry that Dr. Dean would prove an easy mark for Mr. Bush, given his liberal views and his lack of any experience in foreign affairs; others warn that Mr. Kerry is an awkward public figure who has run a timorous campaign. . . .
Associates of General Clark have said he has told them that he will probably join the race. But aides to most of the other candidates say he is too late to have a good shot, and they view him more as competing for a second spot on the ticket. . . .
Though the Labor Day weekend is a traditional demarcation point in American campaigns, the Democrats have spent much of the past eight months making policy speeches, raising money, nailing down supporters and traveling to states like Iowa, South Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and, of course, here in New Hampshire. But they are now preparing to move into a significantly more intense and higher profile part of the race. . . .
What is increasingly clear, several Democrats said, is that primary voters are not likely to choose someone who is promising to run a nuanced campaign against Mr. Bush. Dr. Dean has set the tone on that, as he made clear again today. . . .
One prominent Democrat said that while Mr. Bush was "eminently beatable," the Democratic nominating process seemed nowhere near producing someone who could do the job. "The trouble in 2004 is not that Bush is going to be strong, but rather than we are going to be weak," this official said.
An 11-year-old boy in Greece is to stand trial after falling off his bike during a race.
The boy on the eastern Aegean Sea island of Chios has been ordered to stand trial on October 13 for allegedly violating eight articles of the penal code and one traffic violation for falling off his bicycle during an annual race. [...]
The island's prosecutor said the boy fell because he was "not driving carefully and with constant rapt attention" and ordered him to appear in juvenile court.
Teachers and administrators at Cole Middle School are challenging the traditional methods of teaching by offering its student body a choice in how they learn.
When the bell rang at the start of this school year, 40% of the sixth- through eighth-grade student body were not only checking out who they would be sitting with in home room, but also who they would be sitting with in almost every class, until they graduate the eighth grade.
Beginning last December, students and parents were disseminated information about academies and asked to choose the one of three they thought was the best fit.
Two smaller academies, a Science and Technology academy and an Oral Written and Visual Arts academy, each contain 20% of the student body.
The remaining 60% of the students are in the Liberal Arts academy, so named in keeping with the "looping" theme, but basically a traditional learning option.
Looping is the name for the process that puts students with the same teacher for certain subjects year after year.
If all goes as planned, sixth-graders just starting at Cole will be the first group to graduate from the eighth grade having spent their entire middle school education not only with the same students but for the most part, with the same teachers.
A man believed to be an al-Qaida operative, found with 11 surface-to-air missiles, has been arrested in Iraq by U.S. troops and has acknowledged that he had been training with Ansar al-Islam fighters to use the weapons against American forces, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
The arrest marks the first time the U.S.-led coalition has apprehended someone believed to be a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network who is operating in Iraq.
The unnamed suspect was captured during an Aug. 20 raid in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the capital, along with two other unnamed men, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. At least one of the other two men was believed to be a member of the extremist group Ansar al-Islam, the official said.
Intelligence officials said they found the suspected al-Qaida member's account, given during interrogation, "credible."
A day after meeting with tribal gambling interests, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Friday reported receiving a $500,000 campaign donation from a tribe -- the second six-figure contribution he has taken from Indians for the Oct. 7 recall election.
But it remains a matter of legal interpretation whether the $500,000 check Bustamante received Thursday from the Pechanga Band of Mission Indians and other large contributions he has received were proper donations under state campaign finance rules.
The state's Fair Political Practices Commission issued a statement late Thursday questioning the Democrat's practice of collecting large donations in an old campaign account for his recall efforts.
Seizing on what some believe is a loophole in the new Proposition 34 campaign finance laws, Bustamante has collected $1.1 million in the past week from Indian tribes and unions in his 2002 lieutenant governor's account, which he plans to transfer to the committee raising money for his recall bid.
Friday, August 29, 2003 12:15 PM EST
Rate Your Music and YACCS are down due to a server failure.
Services are expected to return to normal in 24 - 48 hours.
Thanks,
Hossein Sharifi
Following an impassioned appeal from Africa, the World Trade Organization on Saturday sealed a deal to allow poor countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs for killer diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
"All people of good will and good conscience will be very happy today with the decision that the WTO members have made," said Kenyan Ambassador Amina Chawahir Mohamed. "It's especially good news for the people of Africa who desperately need access to affordable medicine."
The United States has been trying to protect the interests of drug companies, which feared they could lose control of patent rights. U.S. concessions this week broke an eight-month deadlock on the issue.
The final breakthrough followed a meeting Friday during which representatives of many African countries pleaded with other diplomats to stop trying to win last-minute advantages for their own nations. [...]
But groups campaigning to give poor people better access to lifesaving drugs criticized the agreement.
"Today's deal was designed to offer comfort to the U.S. and the Western pharmaceutical industry," said Ellen 't Hoen of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders. "Unfortunately it offers little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to drive up the price of medicines."
Fundamentalism makes life simpler, dividing the world neatly into jihadi and infidel, homeland and axis of evil. "Religion is a kind of technology," as Jessica Stern puts it in "Terror in the Name of God." "It is terribly seductive in its ability to soothe and explain, but it is also dangerous."
Religious violence springs from a desire to find a clear purpose in the confusion of a world dominated by American capitalism. Fundamentalism fills the "God-shaped hole" (Sartre's phrase) in secular modernity. Terrorist groups emerge in response to sociopolitical grievances, using religion to enlist desperate individuals who justify murder in the guise of martyrdom. Believers sublimate feelings of rage and hopelessness in the blissful experience of a divine-sanctioned mandate to avenge the perceived oppressor. Terrorism is less a military target than a powerful idea. [...]
For all its horrors, terrorism is comprehensible. Fundamentalism provides an insidiously seductive story that gives anomie an outlet. In the view of extremists, a New World Order has "created an engine of modernity that is stealing the identity of the oppressed." Religious terror strives to attack the industrialized world both physically and psychologically. The latter is more dangerous.
"Perhaps the most truly evil aspect of religious terrorism is that it aims at destroying moral distinctions themselves," Stern concludes. "Its goal is to confuse not only its sympathizers, but those who aim to fight it." The hardest battle is against the creep of spiritual dread. In that battle, through its explanatory power and lucid insight, Stern's book provides a valuable psychic shield.
We tend to assume that the people of the past were (more or less) like us, but in fact their spiritual lives were rather different. In particular, they evolved two ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge, which scholars have called mythos and logos. Both were essential; they were regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth, and each had its special area of competence. Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind. Myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. The mythos of a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal. It was also rooted in what we would call the unconscious mind. The various mythological stories, which were not intended to be taken literally, were an ancient form of psychology. When people told stories about heroes who descended into the underworld, struggled through labyrinths, or fought with monsters, they were bringing to light the obscure regions of the subconscious realm, which is not accessible to purely rational investigation, but which has a profound effect upon our experience and behavior. Because of the dearth of myth in our modern society, we have had to evolve the science of psychoanalysis to help us to deal with our inner world.
Myth could not be demonstrated by rational proof; its insights were more intuitive, similar to those of art, music, poetry, or sculpture. Myth only became a reality when it was embodied in cult, rituals, and ceremonies which worked aesthetically upon worshippers, evoking within them a sense of sacred significance and enabling them to apprehend the deeper currents of existence. Myth and cult were so inseparable that it is a matter of scholarly debate which came first: the mythical narrative or the rituals attached to it. Myth was also associated with mysticism, the descent into the psyche by means of structured disciplines of focus and concentration which have been evolved in all cultures as a means of acquiring intuitive insight. Without a cult or mystical practice, the myths of religion would make no sense. They would remain abstract and seem incredible, in rather the same way as a musical score remains opaque to most of us and needs to be interpreted instrumentally before we can appreciate its beauty.
In the premodern world, people had a different view of history. They were less interested than we are in what actually happened, but more concerned with the meaning of an event. Historical incidents were not seen as unique occurrences, set in a far-off time, but were thought to be external manifestations of constant, timeless realities. Hence history would tend to repeat itself, because there was nothing new under the sun. Historical narratives tried to bring out this eternal dimension. Thus, we do not know what really occurred when the ancient Israelites escaped from Egypt and passed through the Sea of Reeds. The story has been deliberately written as a myth, and linked with other stories about rites of passage, immersion in the deep, and gods splitting a sea in two to create a new reality. Jews experience this myth every year in the rituals of the Passover Seder, which brings this strange story into their own lives and helps them to make it their own. One could say that unless an historical event is mythologized in this way, and liberated from the past in an inspiring cult, it cannot be religious. To ask whether the Exodus from Egypt took place exactly as recounted in the Bible or to demand historical and scientific evidence to prove that it is factually true is to mistake the nature and purpose of this story. It is to confuse mythos with logos.
Logos was equally important. Logos was the rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world. We may have lost the sense of mythos in the West today, but we are very familiar with logos, which is the basis of our society. Unlike myth, logos must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external realities if it is to be effective. It must work efficiently in the mundane world. We use this logical, discursive reasoning when we have to make things happen, get something done, or persuade other people to adopt a particular course of action. Logos is practical. Unlike myth, which looks back to the beginnings and to the foundations, logos forges ahead and tries to find something new: to elaborate on old insights, achieve a greater control over our environment, discover something fresh, and invent something novel.
In the premodern world, both mythos and logos were regarded as indispensable. Each would be impoverished without the other. Yet the two were essentially distinct, and it was held to be dangerous to confuse mythical and rational discourse. They had separate jobs to do. Myth was not reasonable; its narratives were not supposed to be demonstrated empirically. It provided the context of meaning that made our practical activities worthwhile. You were not supposed to make mythos the basis of a pragmatic policy. If you did so, the results could be disastrous, because what worked well in the inner world of the psyche was not readily applicable to the affairs of the external world. When, for example, Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade in 1095, his plan belonged to the realm of logos. He wanted the knights of Europe to stop fighting one another and tearing the fabric of Western Christendom apart, and to expend their energies instead in a war in the Middle East and so extend the power of his church. But when this military expedition became entangled with folk mythology, biblical lore, and apocalyptic fantasies, the result was catastrophic, practically, militarily, and morally. Throughout the long crusading project, it remained true that whenever logos was ascendant, the Crusaders prospered. They performed well on the battlefield, created viable colonies in the Middle East, and learned to relate more positively with the local population. When, however, Crusaders started making a mythical or mystical vision the basis of their policies, they were usually defeated and committed terrible atrocities.
Logos had its limitations too. It could not assuage human pain or sorrow. Rational arguments could make no sense of tragedy. Logos could not answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. A scientist could make things work more efficiently and discover wonderful new facts about the physical universe, but he could not explain the meaning of life. That was the preserve of myth and cult.
By the eighteenth century, however, the people of Europe and America had achieved such astonishing success in science and technology that they began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious. It is also true that the new world they were creating contradicted the dynamic of the old mythical spirituality. Our religious experience in the modern world has changed, and because an increasing number of people regard scientific rationalism alone as true, they have often tried to turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalists have also made this attempt. This confusion has led to more problems.
We need to understand how our world has changed. The first part of this book will, therefore, go back to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when the people of Western Europe had begun to develop their new science. We will also examine the mythical piety of the premodern agrarian civilization, so that we can see how the old forms of faith worked. It is becoming very difficult to be conventionally religious in the brave new world. Modernization has always been a painful process. People feel alienated and lost when fundamental changes in their society make the world strange and unrecognizable. We will trace the impact of modernity upon the Christians of Europe and America, upon the Jewish people, and upon the Muslims of Egypt and Iran. We shall then be in a position to see what the fundamentalists were trying to do when they started to create this new form of faith toward the end of the nineteenth century.
Fundamentalists feel that they are battling against forces that threaten their most sacred values. During a war it is very difficult for combatants to appreciate one another's position. We shall find that modernization has led to a polarization of society, but sometimes, to prevent an escalation of the conflict, we must try to understand the pain and perceptions of the other side. Those of us--myself included--who relish the freedoms and achievements of modernity find it hard to comprehend the distress these cause religious fundamentalists. Yet modernization is often experienced not as a liberation but as an aggressive assault.
Tolkien wrote in an oft-quoted letter to a close friend in 1953 that "The Lord of the Rings" is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. And Tolkien was a devout and practicing Catholic throughout most of his life. According to his son Michael, Roman Catholicism "pervaded all his thinking, beliefs and everything else."...
My personal favorite [Christian symbol] is the Elvish Lembas, translated as the "way bread" or "life bread." Even one piece of the bread can sustain a person for a day. Tolkien wrote that it "fed the will," and certainly without it, neither Frodo nor Sam would have made the journey across Mordor and up Mount Doom....
When Gandalf faces the Balrog, he not only accepts death, but he names his master, the Secret Fire. According to what Tolkien told a friend, the Secret Fire was the Holy Spirit....
True myth, [Tolkien held], drew its inspiration from the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ. Tolkien wrote in his academic essay, "On Fairy-Stories," that to reject the Christ story is to lead to either sadness or wrath.
Christians will take this as evidence for the truth of Christian doctrine; unbelievers will argue that it may be a chance correlation. But at some point, the evidence piles up.
"In religion,'' George Gray challenges a contestant on TV's ''Weakest Link'' game show, ''what is the third book in the Old Testament of the King James Bible?''
The player replies, ''Revelations.''
That's wrong on two counts. The third book of the Bible is actually Leviticus, which chronicles the laws and rituals overseen by the priestly Levites. Less obvious, however, is the mistake in saying ''Revelations,'' because the Bible contains no such book.
Instead, the final book of the New Testament is titled ''Revelation,'' without an ''s.'' This error has appeared frequently in print, from a Chicago Tribune quotation on ''the apocalyptic messages that are found in Revelations'' to Maureen Dowd's New York Times mention of ''a musical based on the Book of Revelations.''
Bible experts consider that kind of mistake a shibboleth, from a story in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) about using words as a test. In the 12th chapter of Judges, the conquering Gileadites are able to identify their enemies, the conquered Ephraimites, by making them say the word shibboleth, meaning ''ear of corn.'' Because of language differences, the Ephraimites pronounce it ''sibboleth'' and are immediately executed.
Today the penalties for mispronunciation tend to be less severe, although a shibboleth still acts to identify outsiders.
IT took a while for Britain to wake up to Helen Mirren, to afford her the respect and affection that it now does. The voracious wild child who burst on to the theatre scene with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Sixties, then starred in such arty fare as Ken Russell's Savage Messiah (1972) or Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973), didn't enjoy the instant rapport with audiences of, say, Kate Winslet. There was something too wilfully maverick about her, something self-contained. On screen she would dare everything -- not least nudity -- but didn't belong to anyone. Helen Mirren was always her own woman.
But the first series of crime drama Prime Suspect (1991) took her into prime time and the public's consciousness in a way none of her films had. As the no-nonsense, short-tempered loner DCI Jane Tennison, she was playing her age, early-40s, without the faintest pretence to glamour or sweetness – and thereby won a legion of fans, both adoring males and women who saw her as a feminist icon. This time the critical plaudits she'd always had for her work seemed to make more waves -- not least the Oscar nominations for The Madness Of King George (1994) and Gosford Park (2001). And when, in June, she was made a Dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, Mirren's place as one of the country's most celebrated -- and now most loved -- actresses was assured. [...]
She was born Ilyena Lydia Mironoff, granddaughter of a White Russian general who came to England to buy arms for the Russo-Japanese war, then found himself stranded (or, as Mirren contemporises it, he and his family became asylum-seekers) when the Russian revolution started behind him. Her father was two years old.
First, we must admit that the church's current record is dismal. Divorce statistics inside the church are indistinguishable from those outside.
Second, we need to repent for allowing the Zeitgeist of expressive individualism to permeate the way many of our churches relate to marriage, divorce, and remarriage.
Third, we need to restore the community context of marriage. A married couple is more than the sum of its parts. It is a thread in a community fabric. Societies are built out of people who are loyal to one another and who work and sacrifice for the common good. Expressive individualism is a poor foundation for a society, and marriages so conceived do not build loyalties or give us practice in sacrificial service. Marriages and families are schools for service.
Fourth, we need to recover the sense of human limitation inherent in marriage and family life. This is the beautiful biblical picture: a two-gendered, complementary couple improving on and channeling nature, but neither conquering it nor twisting it. [...]
Fifth, churches must help their members recover the link between marriage and procreation. In the 1970s, the evangelical subculture rightly affirmed the delights of marital sex through popular books like The Total Woman and Intended for Pleasure. ("Fundies in their undies!" joked church historian Martin Marty in response.) Unfortunately, even in the church, the procreative dimension of sex has been sidelined by economic pressures, cultural ideals, and technological fixes. Churches need to celebrate the fact that every marriage is procreative by design.
Sixth, churches must continue to help their members learn the practical skills associated with all of the challenges of married life. [...]
The truth about marriage is embedded in nature, and nature has a way of reasserting itself. Inevitably, the Big Yellow Taxi factor will come into play: People will long for what once was. The challenge to the church is to be a countercultural outpost, modeling marriage as it should be for the world. Those with an impoverished understanding of marriage will be able to grasp it only when they see the real thing.
It's time to start the revolution.
A 20th person has been taken into custody in connection with an investigation into a possible al-Qaeda sleeper cell in the Toronto area, Canadian officials said yesterday.
The United States economy has changed significantly since the September 11 attacks, in a thoroughly unpleasant direction. While Gross Domestic Product has risen by 4.6 percent (in real terms) from the third quarter of 2001, government consumption has risen by 8.2 percent, while private fixed asset investment has declined. As always, disaster has tended to "Sovietize" the economy, increasing the share of output absorbed by products and services that nobody wants. [...]
The September 11 attacks brought a major re-orientation to the U.S. economy. Some of it was reflected in public spending. Airport security was federalized, a new Department of Homeland Security was created, military reserves were called up, defense spending rose, and an airline bailout fund was created (the last being off-balance-sheet as far as the federal government was concerned.)
Other diversions of resources occurred in the private sector. Property insurance premiums rose, for the same or lesser amount of coverage. Airline charges rose, to cover the new security costs. New "security construction" was undertaken to make businesses more secure against terrorist attacks.
Still further costs of the attacks are not reflected in economic data at all. As anyone who has flown in the last year will tell you, the average check-in time for flights originating in the U.S. has lengthened by 30-60 minutes. For passengers, this is completely lost time, accompanied by a considerable amount of aggravation, yet it is not reflected in published data.
The Immigration and Naturalization Services has tightened up its controls, and introduced many new procedures, requiring students coming to the U.S., for example, to file a new application annually, rather than simply one for the course of study as a whole. As a consequence of this, and of tightened enforcement, students validly attempting to attend U.S. colleges are being sent back to their home country, at enormous deadweight cost to them and their families. Again this is not reflected in official economic statistics -- INS inefficiency, and that of the colleges, of course greatly increases this cost burden.
In all three ways, therefore, the disaster of September 11 has diverted resources to items people don't want. This is not the same as diverting them to the public sector. A Medicare prescription drug provision, for example, would provide senior citizens with goods they undoubtedly do want -- prescription drugs -- albeit in a manner that may be inefficient and economically damaging. Conversely, higher insurance premiums do not provide customers with any services they are not already getting, they merely increase the costs of those services. Disasters thus reduce the efficiency of the economy; they increase expenditure on services and goods that provide no additional value to their consumers, while apparently increasing economic activity.
Once their productive capacity [is] enhanced, countries...normally find it easier to sustain the burdens of paying for large-scale armaments in peacetime and of maintaining and supplying large armies and fleets in wartime. It sounds crudely mercantilistic to express it this way, but wealth is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a portion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically--by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars--it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all--a dilemma which becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.
Talk of impending failure in Iraq may sound like whinging when it comes from those who opposed the war, but last week the unspeakable seven-letter F-word was uttered by one of the bastions of US neo-conservative hawkery.
Under the headline "Do what it takes in Iraq", an editorial in the Weekly Standard called for a huge commitment of more troops, more money and more civilian workers to fend off disaster.
"Make no mistake," the magazine said. "The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq ... the future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the United States hopes to accomplish."
Unfortunately for President Bush, this is true. He has left no face-saving escape route for himself or his country.
The neo-conservative solution is to devote to Iraq whatever it takes and for as long as it takes, for a whole generation if necessary. The Weekly Standard wants an immediate allocation of $60bn (£38.4bn) for reconstruction. If the Bush administration is serious, "then this is the necessary down payment," it said, while the official Washington line has been that reconstruction will be funded by Iraq's (still largely non-existent) oil revenue.
Only total commitment on a scale not seen since the end of the second world war can ensure US success in Iraq, the Weekly Standard insisted, but the problem for George Bush is that he can't give that commitment, at least not if he values his presidency.
What then should we do in Iraq? Clearly the imperial role is impossible, blocked equally by moral and psychological constraints, and by international and more especially domestic political calculations. An inept, indecisive imperialism is the worst of all options, with the possible exception of subjecting Iraq to the tangled but ferocious politics of the U.N. The best course surely is the one that is working in Afghanistan--to hand over, as soon as possible, to a genuine Iraqi government. In Iraq as in Afghanistan, a period of discreet support would be necessary, but the task would probably be easier in Iraq. Here again care must be taken. Premature democratization--holding elections and transferring power, in a country which has had no experience of such things for decades, can only lead to disaster, as in Algeria. Democracy is the best and therefore the most difficult of all forms of government. The Iraqis certainly have the capacity to develop democratic institutions, but they must do so in their own way, at their own pace. This can only be done by an Iraqi government.
Fortunately, the nucleus of such a government is already available, in the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi. In the northern free zone during the '90s they played a constructive role, and might at that time even have achieved the liberation of Iraq had we not failed at crucial moments to support them. Despite a continuing lack of support amounting at times to sabotage, they continue to acquit themselves well in Iraq, and there can be no reasonable doubt that of all the possible Iraqi candidates they are the best in terms alike of experience, reliability, and good will. It took years, not months, to create democracies in the former Axis countries, and this was achieved in the final analysis not by Americans but by people in those countries, with American encouragement, help and support. Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress deserve no less.
The issue in Iraq is...not whether the U.S. should stay or leave. It is instead the extent to which the U.S. should engage in "nation-building" there. As his critics remember, and his friends, too, George W. Bush campaigned against the whole idea of nation-building by Americans abroad.
What he has been trying to do comes perilously close to what he rightly campaigned against. Not nation-building, by the U.S., but a concentrated U.S. effort to enable nation-building to take place within Iraq, and Afghanistan, and soon elsewhere. I compared it myself, a year ago, to one of the labours of Hercules -- the cleaning of the Augean stables. He is trying to create the conditions for the "river of democracy" to wash through the Middle East; just as President Reagan before him tried to create those conditions for Eastern Europe.
The American role in Iraq should thus be limited to providing security, for the transition to an Iraqi government much more acceptable to Iraqis and to the world, than the horrific government that preceded it.
The Canal Hotel turned out to be a perfect microcosm of the UN: a group of naive internationalists refusing to take the murkier characters prowling the corridors at face value and concerned only to keep the US at arm’s length. Yet for Kofi Annan, the French, the Democratic party and the world’s media, the self-inflicted insanity of what happened to the UN in Baghdad apparently demonstrates the need for Washington to hand over more control of Iraq to the blue helmets because ‘they’ve got far more experience in these kinds of situations’. The UN’s track record at nation-building varies according to the strength of the local obstructionist. Mr Vieira de Mello did such a good job transforming East Timor from the brutalised province of a Muslim dictatorship to a functioning infidel democracy that whoever makes Osama bin Laden’s audio tapes these days added it to his list of grievances against the West. But the dapper diplomat did a less impressive job in Cambodia, where Hun Sen decided to hijack the state, King Sihanouk strung along, and the UN colluded in the subversion of its political settlement.
If Kofi got his hands on Iraq, as world opinion so devoutly wants, the Cambodian scenario would be more relevant than the East Timorese. The most determined obstructionists in this case would be Iraq’s Arab neighbours: Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and co. don’t care whether the country winds up under another Baathist psychotic or a rent-a-rant mullah, or even a restored Hashemite as long as he’s at least minimally repressive. But they object very strongly to the idea of the Iraqi people living in liberty under a representative government with a free press, etc., because that’s not the kind of thing they want catching on. Putting the UN in charge of Iraq is a vote for ‘stability’ in the Middle East — the fetid cesspit stability of the Assads and Ayatollahs that, as argued in this space many times, is the principal ‘root cause’ of the region’s problems.
That’s why I’d rather the Americans stayed in control.
The future conqueror of almost all the known world, who acceded to his father's throne at age 18 and died of fever aged just 33, claimed descent from the immortal Hercules. His mother, Olympias, stoked her son's god-complex by claiming she was impregnated not by Alexander's father, Philip II of Macedonia, but by a giant serpent.
All these myths collide in "Alexander the Great," an exhibition now showing at Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park, which displays a number of representations of the great leader (statues, busts and coinage) in company of which he would doubtless have approved -- an extensive pantheon of classical gods and heroes.
Alexander was certainly divinely good-looking. Three images (one a nearly contemporaneous head of a statue, the others two Imperial Roman copies of third-century B.C. originals) clearly represent the same face over a period of time. The first is a beautiful boy with a head of curls; the next a youth with a resolute, firmly set chin; the third a mature man, his face filled out slightly though not a whit less handsome for it.
But Alexander's reputation didn't rest on his looks. At age 6 he is said to have received Persian envoys during his father's absence; at age 13 he began to study under Aristotle; at 16 he served as his father's regent; and, while still a teenager, in a wager with his father he subdued and rode a wild horse that no one had been able to handle. (The steed, named Bucephalus, became Alexander's warhorse.)
That was merely Alexander's grooming for greatness, and the beginning of the legend.
One of the most striking features in artificially selecting for docility among wild animals is that, along with far less aggression, you also get a suite of other changes, including a reduction in skull, jaw and tooth size. In genetics, this is called pleiotropy. Selecting for one trait may generate additional, unintended changes.
The most famous study on selective breeding for passivity began in 1959 by Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Siberia. It continues today under the direction of Lyudmila N. Trut. Silver foxes were bred for friendliness toward humans, defined by a graduating series of criteria, from the animal allowing itself to be approached, to being hand fed, to being petted, to proactively seeking human contact. In only 35 generations the researchers produced tail-wagging, hand-licking, peaceful foxes. What they also created were foxes with smaller skulls, jaws and teeth than their wild ancestors.
The Russian scientists believe that in selecting for docility, they inadvertently selected for paedomorphism--the retention of juvenile features into adulthood--such as curly tails and floppy ears found in wild pups but not in wild adults, a delayed onset of the fear response to unknown stimuli, and lower levels of aggression. The selection process led to a significant decrease in levels of stress-related hormones such as corticosteroids, which are produced by the adrenal glands during the fight-or-flight response, as well as a significant increase in levels of serotonin, thought to play a leading role in the inhibition of aggression. The Russian scientists were also able to accomplish what no breeder had ever achieved before--a lengthened breeding season.
Like the foxes, humans have become more agreeable as we've become more domesticated. [...]
A plausible evolutionary hypothesis suggests itself: limited resources led to the selection for within-group cooperation and between-group competition in humans, resulting in within-group amity and between-group enmity.
We know about past levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because researchers have been able to recover bubbles of ancient air trapped in ice. These bubbles reveal past temperatures and concentrations of gases in the air. They show that when the world was at its coldest, carbon dioxide levels in the air were low; and when it got warmer, they rose.
But they reveal something more startling. The changes between these two situations were not smooth and gradual. They were extremely quick. It is almost, Watson said, as if the planet has a rather crude thermostat, with just two settings -- ice age, and not ice age.
Put another way, there appear to have been two "stable states" for the planet's climate system. Once one of them broke down, the entire system switched within a few centuries to the other. [...]
None of this is proved. But whatever the precise mechanism, Watson said, we are left with the worrying fact that, in the past 2 million years or so, the world had two stable climatic states -- anchored at 190 ppm and 280 ppm of carbon dioxide. Why worrying? Because, Watson said, we have now slipped the anchors. By burning fossil fuels, we have forced up carbon dioxide levels to 370 ppm today. That is probably higher than for millions of years. And the level is still rising by almost 20 ppm a decade.
The question now is: How will the planet respond? Until now, climate scientists have mostly expected that a gradual rise in greenhouse gases will cause a gradual increase in temperatures. Now there are two other possibilities. The planet might find a way to keep temperatures down. Or it might make another jump -- to perhaps a third "stable state" about which we as yet know nothing.
How might that happen? Peter Cox of the British government's meteorological service, said that within 50 years, rainforests and their soils could begin to dry out and die as warming gathers pace. That would release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and accelerate warming. Others predict changes in the ocean circulation systems that reduce the oceans' abilities to absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Nothing is certain in this. Climate scientists are being forced to acknowledge how little they know about how the planet works. But that ignorance, they say, should make us more worried rather than less.
Iraqi police have arrested four men in connection with the bombing of Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim shrine, and all have links to al-Qaida, a senior police official told The Associated Press on Saturday.
The official, who said the death toll in the bombing had risen to 107, said the four arrested men - two Iraqis and two Saudis - were caught shortly after the car bombing on Friday.
The bombing killed one of the most important Shiite clerics in Iraq, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who had been cooperating with the American occupation force.
The police official, who led the initial investigation and interrogation of the captives, said the prisoners told of other plots to kill political and religious leaders and to damage vital installations such as power plants, water supplies and oil pipelines.
The police official said the men arrested after the attack claimed the recent bombings were designed to keep Iraq in a state of chaos so that police and American forces would be unable to focus attention on the country's porous borders, across which suspected foreign fighters are said to be infiltrating.
The Justice Department plans to go to court to defend a federal law that bans protesters from blocking access to abortion clinics, a move that is angering some opponents of abortion who have been strong supporters of Attorney General John Ashcroft.
A federal judge in Houston, in a little-noticed decision, declared this month that part of the 1994 law, known as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, is unconstitutional because it exceeds the power of Congress to regulate commerce. The decision freed a man who had rammed a van through the front door of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Houston in a protest over abortion.
Anti-abortion leaders called the Texas decision an affirmation of the First Amendment rights of protesters. [...]
"It's very surprising, given the attorney general's stated position in support of the right to life," Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, said in an interview.
"Pro-life people expect John Ashcroft to be just and fair and act in the interests of the right to life whenever possible," said Ms. Parro, whose group is based in Texas. "If the Justice Department is standing up for this law, that is not going to give people confidence that John Aschroft is looking out for the babies. This will cause disappointment."
Mr. Ashcroft's stance on the clinic protection law became an issue at his Senate confirmation hearing in 2001. Critics said they were concerned that his strong opposition to abortion would color his enforcement decisions on abortion-related issues.
Mr. Ashcroft acknowledged at the hearing that he believed that the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion was "wrongly decided" and that he was personally opposed to abortion. But he added, "I well understand that the role of attorney general is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it."
Representative Bill Janklow, who served four terms as governor of South Dakota before winning election to Congress last year, was charged in his home state today with second-degree manslaughter because of a traffic fatality there two weeks ago.
That felony charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, threatens to end a long and distinguished career that has made Mr. Janklow, a 63-year-old Republican, one of the most prominent politicians in the state's history. Before the accident, South Dakota Republicans were urging him to run next year for the Senate seat held by the minority leader, Tom Daschle. [...]
The prosecutor in the case, William J. Ellingson, the Moody County state's attorney, ruled out a charge of vehicular homicide, more serious than the manslaughter charge, after tests determined that no drugs or alcohol had been involved. In similar cases, Mr. Ellingson said, the manslaughter count has resulted in successful prosecutions.
The award-winners were a mixed bag. Missy 'Misdemeanor' Elliott, the female rapper who had a leading eight nominations going into the show, walked away with a moonman for best hip-hop video and the coveted video of the year award, beating out crowd favorite, Johnny Cash, as well as 50 Cent, Timberlake and Eminem.
Cash, who many were predicting would sweep the awards, was unable to make an appearance because he was hospitalized, and won only one award, for cinematography. His video of the Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt” was seen as a swan song for the 71-year-old crooner.
When Timberlake beat Cash for the best male video, he expressed shock over the decision.
“This is a travesty. I demand a recount,” he said. “My grandfather raised me on Johnny Cash....I think he deserves this more than any of us in here tonight."
Until now, the Americans have enjoyed relative stability among the country's Shiite and Kurdish populations, in the south and north, as they have battled a ferocious insurgency in the central part of the country.
The killing of Ayatollah Hakim, by stirring up the country's Shiite population, threatens to spread the chaos. Much will depend, it seemed today, on whom the Shiites blame for Ayatollah Hakim's death: remnants of Mr. Hussein's government, composed mainly of Sunni Arabs, or radical members of their own religious group.
The Governing Council, a group of Iraqis representing the tapestry of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups, has long been seen as a central piece in the American plan to nurture democratic government here.
But in recent weeks, American officials have expressed frustration over what they describe as the reluctance of the 25-member Council to seize the reins of political power. The Iraqis, meanwhile, have complained that the Americans, while talking about democracy, have refused to turn over power where it matters.
A kind of paralysis has resulted, according to both Iraqis and American officials, with the Governing Council taking little action in its first six weeks. "On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home," said an aide on the Council. "We don't get a lot done."
As they have done on several previous occasions, American officials stood back today and waited for the Iraqis to act, reluctant to upstage them. "The Iraqi interim government is in control of the situation," said a spokesman for the Coalition Public Authority, the American branch of the government. "We have issued a statement, and that is all we have for now."
The studied reluctance by American officials and military officers to move in place of the Iraqis appeared risky. Shiites, accounting for 60 percent of the population, are deeply divided between moderates and radicals; those divisions are now likely to grow. At the same time, the entire Shiite population is suspicious that Sunnis loyal to Saddam Hussein may be behind the killing, Iraqi analysts said. All these tensions could quickly lead to further violence.
[W]e have some commentary by playwright Arthur Miller. In it he compares his play The Crucible to Senator McCarthy.
Miller himself commented […]
“They would say to me, ‘this is all fraudulent - there never were any witches, but there are Communists’,” he said.
“I could only say that in 1692, if you had stood on the main street of Salem, Massachusetts, and said ‘there are no witches’, I wouldn’t want to be your insurance man.”
I know that cultural / literary figures today are expected to be almost completely disconnected from reality, but this is delusional even for the glitterati. If someone had said “there are no witches” back in 1692 (and I suspect that some did) it would have been true but politically incorrect. The analogy for McCarthy would have been for someone to announce in 1950 that there were no Communists and had it have been true and politcally incorrect. Miller seems to think that the only thing stopping people from admitting that Communists didn’t exist was fear of the political consquences, not the billions of people oppressed by Communists. Just who Miller thinks was running the USSR, Eastern Europe and China at the time isn’t clear. I’ve heard plenty of apologists for Communism but never before one who denied the very existence of it.
A deal to provide cut-price copies of life-saving drugs for the world's poorest people was on the brink of collapse yesterday in Geneva, after developing countries objected to a last-minute compromise worked out to pacify the US pharmaceuticals industry.
A marathon session of negotiations ended early yesterday morning with no deal amid bitter recriminations and accusations of sabotage. [...]
The compromise hammered out by the US and four key developing countries was supposed to be ratified by all 146 members of the WTO on Thursday night. But when the Philippines indicated it was unhappy with the requirements on developing countries to prevent smuggling, dissent swelled among developing countries, with 20 indicating they had problems with the draft deal.
In the fervid atmosphere following the collapse of talks at midnight, some trade envoys accused development lobby groups of stirring up developing countries to sabotage the deal at the last minute. Kenya, one of the four developing countries which cut the original deal with the US, held up talks for six hours until its Geneva representative was overruled by Nairobi.
ANAHEIM -- Standing at the gates of Disneyland, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said Friday that as governor he would propose an amendment to the California State Constitution to deal with what he called a burgeoning epidemic of obesity.
"Look at all these fat people," Bustamante said, gesturing to the lines waiting to enter Disneyland. "Californians are too fat. According to doctors I have spoken with, one-third of all Californians weigh too much, and ultimately those fat people will die. That will end up costing the state money that we don't have, and will threaten our pristine Californian environment as we have to dig wider and wider graves."
Bustamante unveiled a proposed new amendment to the state constitution, to be submitted to voters at the same time as the current recall question, that would cut gravity in half. "What we are proposing," Bustamante explained, "is to decrease what scientists call the 'acceleration of gravity' to 16 feet per second per second from 32 feet per second squared. This will cure our state weight problem in one fell swoop. We have been forced to take this action by the criminal neglect of the Bush Administration."
Bustamante went on to explain that fat Californians drive up gasoline prices because the added weight of having fat people in the car increases fuel consumption. He said that his proposal "will improve our health, reduce gasoline usage, reduce fuel prices, help our ailing aeronautical industry and should increase by 10% the number of games won by our California sports teams, except for the Clippers." Bustamante also claimed that last years electricity shortages were exacerbated because "fat people need more air conditioning."
Bustamante ended by noting that "The law of gravity is a cruel law, which I know well as it imposes its heaviest burden on our poor Latino communities. The people of California deserve to weigh less and I won't rest until they do. Our slogan is No on the recall, Yes on Bustamante, No to gravity."
Charging that international oil companies are manipulating the gasoline market, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante said Thursday that as governor he would work to bring the industry under state regulation in an effort to control gas prices.
Bustamante, who compared the behavior of oil companies to deception in the electricity industry, proposed amending the California Constitution to define gasoline as a public utility and subjecting gas prices to approval by the state Public Utilities Commission. [...]
Hawaii approved a price cap on gasoline that is set to take effect in July, but no state regulates the oil industry as Bustamante proposes. Oil companies would likely challenge the new law as a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.
"Gasoline -- and the business of selling gasoline -- is part of interstate commerce that belongs to Congress to regulate, if at all," said Anthony Sabino, an associate law professor at St. John's University's Peter J. Tobin College of Business in New York. "With all due respect to Mr. Bustamante, he is either very ignorant of the law, or he's getting incredibly bad advice from his advisors, or it's a publicity stunt."
"Four legs good, two legs bad" becomes the mantra of the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." "U.S. good, Europe bad" might be the mantra of many an American businessman.
For though the antiquities of Rome, the pubs of Dublin and the boulevards of Paris enchant Americans, old Europe tends not to charm economically or politically in the United States.
The European economy is seen as hugely inferior to the American one: less competitive, more expensive, less flexible, more statist. America leads; Europe does not follow: it is pulled along -- by the higher growth of the United States.
Politically, meanwhile, Europe is seen as the home of uncommitted and the plain wrong. The "old Europe" of France and Germany, to use U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's disparaging term, opposed attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq while Britain stepped forward. Europe laughed at Reagan and his "tear down this wall" message to Mikail Gorbachev. Look what happened.
And Reagan's supply-side economics? Twenty years on it is the economics rather than the laughter that has lasted.
Spending by wage-earner households fell 6 percent in July in real terms from a year earlier for the largest monthly contraction in nine years and reversing the previous month's 0.4 percent increase, the government said Friday.
Average monthly household spending came to 326,772 yen, the Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said in a preliminary report.
Their average monthly income, including summer bonuses, dropped 1.1 percent in real terms to 575,142 yen, falling for the 16th consecutive month. Disposable income declined a real 1.7 percent to 479,433 yen. [...]
The key gauge of consumer prices in Tokyo edged down 0.3 percent in August from a year earlier for a record 47 consecutive months of decline, the government said in a preliminary report Friday.
Teaching the American Revolution presents a prime opportunity to instruct your students in the ways that religion shaped the American past. [...]
The second approach--and my favorite--involves introducing students to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. This celebrated (and admirably brief and accessible) treatise was the eighteenth-century equivalent of a runaway bestseller. Published in January of 1776, it became an overnight sensation--a pamphlet pored over by people in the privacy of their homes and read aloud in taverns and other public gathering places everywhere in British North America. In short, a wide range of colonials, literate as well as illiterate, felt the force of Paine's arguments for breaking with Britain, and what he wrote persuaded enough undecided men and women to embolden the Continental Congress to endorse the Declaration of Independence by July of 1776.
Why did Common Sense succeed so brilliantly as a piece of political propaganda? Among other reasons, because it is a kind of secular sermon, an extraordinarily adroit mingling of religion and politics. Look at the opening paragraphs ("Time makes more converts than reason.") in which Paine casts the decision to support the cause of rebellion as a matter of feeling rather than thought, as a process akin to that of evangelical conversion. Review his assault on monarchy, which boils down to the proposition that all kings are blasphemous usurpers who claim a sovereign authority over other human beings that rightfully belongs only to God. Notice, too, how vehemently Paine insists that the Jews of the Old Testament rejected monarchical government--the obvious conclusion being that God's new "chosen people" in America should follow that example. Consider his assertion that the colonies are an asylum of religious liberty, implying that Americans must pass from argument to arms to protect freedom of conscience for religious dissenters. And, finally, don't miss how often the cadences of Common Sense echo and even reiterate the language of the Bible.
Ironically, Thomas Paine was anything but an orthodox Christian. Although bred to Quakerism in England during his youth, he had shed that religious influence years before writing Common Sense and later proudly proclaimed his deistical views in a pamphlet entitled The Age of Reason--which prompted pious Protestants, even as late as the twentieth century, to denounce him as a "dirty little atheist." But even if Paine was less than sincere--indeed, entirely disingenuous--in invoking the evangelical sentiments that suffuse Common Sense, he had an intuitive grasp of religious appeals that would move his American audience to political action. In other words, while Common Sense is not a reliable guide to Paine's private religious opinions, its enthusiastic reception in America tells us a great deal about the religious views of his audience.
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our Nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.
Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation, and it can also be the standard around which we rally. On the battlefield of energy we can win for our Nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.
In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous tool on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our Nation.
The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. [...]
[T]he solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our Nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.
You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world's highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.
I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our Nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act.
We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.
Twelve hours from now I will speak again in Kansas City, to expand and to explain further our energy program. Just as the search for solutions to our energy shortages has now led us to a new awareness of our Nation's deeper problems, so our willingness to work for those solutions in energy can strengthen us to attack those deeper problems.
I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of America. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 1980's. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made 3 years ago, and I intend to keep them.
Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.
I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation.
In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.
Thank you and good night.
MARY ALICE WILLIAMS, guest anchor: Hare Krishna. The name conjures up saffron-robed devotees and 1970s songs. But where are they today? They have their own congregations now, a new temple in which to worship, and help from unlikely strangers. Lucky Severson found one vital Krishna community at the Stone Center of the Latter Day Saints.
LUCKY SEVERSON: About 60 miles south of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple, along the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, at the very epicenter of Mormondom, there is one edifice that is distinctly not Mormon. For a split second, you might wonder if you were in a far away country, like India. What you have here is the very first traditional Hare Krishna Temple built in the U.S.A.
Ten years ago when the Hare Krishna first proposed building a temple on a hill in a county that was over 95 percent Mormon, you could imagine the overall reaction here. It could best be described as disbelief. [...]
As his wife Vie looks on, Caru Das entertains a group of curious senior citizens. The Temple has become one of the most popular attractions in Utah County.
CARU DAS (President, Hare Krishna Temple, Utah): The first words coming out of many of our visitors' mouths when they come through the doors is: How did you guys get to be here? What are you doing here? How did this happen?
SEVERSON: It happened after [Dr. Stan Green, a radiologist, and a Stake President, which is a Mormon position above bishop] dropped by to check out the strange folk with ponytails, who had come to the area in the mid 1970s after learning that people here are exceptionally religious. The two men became good friends, and that led to offers of help from the neighbors and a $25,000 check from the Mormon Church -- otherwise known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, or LDS for short. It is not the first time the LDS Church has contributed to other religions within Utah.
Dr. GREEN (State President, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints): And I'm not sure they could do all of this if they had to pay for everything, and yet certainly they deserve a place to worship just like I deserve a place to worship.
CARU DAS: You know, we think of ourselves as the little brother in the area. And the LDS Church, metaphorically speaking, as the big brother, comes up, pats you on the back, and says good work, you know, we're glad you're here. Keep it up, and here's something to help out, and that was great for us.
Last year, the now-defunct Partisan Review held a conference on the 50th anniversary of its seminal "Our Country, Our Culture" conference. The 1952 event marked a sea change among many American intellectuals who had begun to sense some of the deep attractions of American life and were finding ways to back out of the reflexive scorn for their country and their culture that had long been the identity badge of the American Left. In the year following 9/11, a similar re-discovery seemed to be in progress. At the opening dinner, I found myself at a dinner table with Gerald Weissmann, distinguished physician, biomedical researcher, and eloquent man of letters. I knew him, however, only by reputation and had never turned a page in The Woods Hole Cantata, Darwin's Audubon, or any of his other discursive books on the shoreline between science and literature. Perilous, those chance conversations with luminaries you know to be luminous but about whose actual work you are as ignorant as a sea cucumber.
We chatted about a project whose origins lay in that earlier rapprochement between America and the Left: the Library of America (LOA). Edmund Wilson in 1958 called on the United States to follow the example of the French, who had their Pleiade editions of great French writers. Americans had been notoriously more fickle towards their best writers. Not only had Moby Dick sunk to the cold depths of obscurity but, scandalously, William Faulkner's works at one point had all gone out of print. Here was a noble cause: gather the best American prose and poetry and publish it in uniform, reasonably priced editions that would stay in print for as long as the Republic would stand.
Wilson didn't live to see the realization of his dream, which came in 1979 with the help of the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. LOA was seen by many as a victory of Wilson's dream over a rival scheme favored by the Modern Language Association, but the series soon went in directions that Wilson never could have imagined.
I observed to Weissmann that the Library of America had started well but in recent years it had begun to pad its list more and more with writers of little real distinction. Some, like Kate Chopin, had been added to please the feminists. Some, like Zora Neale Hurston, appeared to be diversity hires. Nathanael West, author of The Day of the Locusts and Miss Lonelyhearts? Gay icon, I guess. A volume of John Muir's writings registers the environmentalist sympathies of our age. And then there is Gertrude Stein, who merits two volumes. Stein is a writer whose entire range lies between monotonic and moronic. Weissmann murmured in stern disapproval, and our conversation died away.
A week later I read in Darwin's Audubon Weissmann's tribute to a remarkable mind, "Gertrude Stein and the Ctenophore." Stein, he says, "changed forever the way we read the English language."
A drop in President Bush's poll numbers has increased speculation about New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton jumping into the 2004 Democratic presidential race - a notion the former first lady rejected Friday.
"I am absolutely ruling it out,'' Clinton said during a visit to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, N.Y. She had insisted in recent months that she will not consider entering the race for president this year even if that is what some Democrats want.
Fueling the speculation has been talk of a fall visit to Iowa, site of the nomination's kickoff caucuses Jan. 19, but no confirmation yet from her staff on whether Clinton will go.
A meeting of her fund-raising team next month is expected to include at least some discussion of presidential politics - more likely the 2008 race, according to some familiar with planning for the session.
And, there is her own campaign Web site, which includes a section called "Hill Notes'' - a sampling of supportive e-mail messages assembled by her staff. On a recent day, seven of the first 10 messages urged a presidential run, or alluded to the possibility.
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Two of the three top candidates seeking to replace Gov. Gray Davis in the recall election took their cases to moneyed Indian tribes Thursday, promising to support more gambling and less government intrusion on tribal lands in California.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock drew standing ovations after their remarks to the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, according to members who attended the closed-door session at the downtown Hyatt Regency Sacramento. [...]
"In terms of Hewlett-Packard or any other industry group in California, we don't put a limitation on any of them," Bustamante said. "We don't say, 'You can only sell so many computers' or 'You can only have so many franchises.' What we do is let the market determine a lot of what is needed." [...]
New campaign laws limit donors to giving no more than $21,200 per replacement candidate in the recall campaign.
Through a loophole in election law, however, Bustamante can raise larger amounts by funneling them through his 2002 campaign account. Last week, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation used that loophole to donate $300,000. Bustamante has said the campaign could cost him $15 million.
A new type of thinking machine that could completely change how people interact with computers is being developed at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories.
Over the past five years, a team led by Sandia cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe has been working on creating intelligent machines: computers that can accurately infer intent, remember prior experiences with users, and allow users to call upon simulated experts to help them analyze problems and make decisions.
Forsythe's team was originally trying to create a "synthetic human" -- software capable of thinking like a person -- for use in national defense.
The thinking software was to create profiles of specific political leaders or entire populations. Once programmed, the synthetic human(s) could, along with analytic tools, predict potential responses to various hypothetical situations.
But along the way, the experiment took a different turn.
Forsythe needed help with the software, and asked some of the programmers in Sandia's robot lab for assistance. The robotics researchers immediately saw that the technology could be used to develop intelligent machines, and the research's focus quickly morphed from creating computerized people to creating computers that can help people by acting more like them.
A US-trained scientist at Shanghai Second Medical University, Dr Huizhen Sheng, has published a peer-reviewed article in an international journal based in China describing how she created 400 embryos by injecting human DNA into the eggs of New Zealand rabbits. One hundred of these survived for several days.
Sheng says she won't be implanting these embryos in human surrogate mothers to create carrot-loving babies with floppy ears and big front teeth. Her interest is extracting embryonic stem cells - ultimately to work miracles such as getting Christopher Reeve to walk again, curing juvenile diabetes or reversing Parkinson's disease.
Her overseas colleagues were a tad sceptical about her work, but very interested. If her results are verified, they will mark a significant advance in cloning technology. [...]
None of the cloning experts interviewed by various newspapers overseas had ethical qualms about the hybrid embryos.
On the contrary, Robin Lovell-Badge, of Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, said he was impressed.
Harvard University cloning expert Douglas Melton said "I'm glad to see it published, as it will encourage others to try it." [...]
Not even two years ago, a tiny American biotech company, Advanced Cell Technology, set alarm bells ringing around the world when it claimed it had cloned a handful of human embryos. The ensuing controversy made front-page news, with abundant chatter about "standing on the threshold of a brave new world". [...]
It has taken less than two years to habituate ourselves to regarding human embryos as pharmaceutical fodder.
Now we've reached the point where scientists play at the ghastly fantasies of The Island of Dr Moreau and no one blinks.
Until yesterday, when the Port Authority released its raw historical records from Sept. 11, the two men were remembered from glimpses as the north tower of the World Trade Center was heaving toward collapse. One was short, the other tall. They carried a crowbar, a flashlight and walkie talkies. Beyond that, say some who survived that day, the smoke had blurred their faces and hair and clothes into gray.The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has released to the press transcripts of emergency calls made on 9/11.
With their tools, the two men — Frank De Martini, an architect, and Pablo Ortiz, a construction inspector — attacked the lethal web of obstacles that trapped people who had survived the impact of the plane but could not get to an exit.
At least 50 people stuck on the 88th and 89th floors of the north tower were able to walk out of the building because Mr. De Martini, Mr. Ortiz and others tore away rubble, broke down doors and answered calls for help. Everyone above the 91st floor died.
June machine tool consumption up 3 percent"A single instance does not constitute a trend", but the industrial market has been moribund for the last couple of years and any sign of an uptick is good news. Mr. Moore is exactly right to put the emphasis on the expensing provisions of the administration's tax bill -- business can now expense (immediately write off) a much greater amount of capital investment than they could last year. This amounts to a tax subsidy for business investment that, along with low interest rates, should result in industry buying a lot of machines, making a lot of stuff more efficiently and keeping inflation down.
June U.S. machine tool consumption totaled $244.55 million, according to AMTDA, the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association, and AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTC program, was up 67.1% from May and up 3.3% from the total of $236.79 million reported for June 2002. With a year-to-date total of $952.86 million, 2003 is down 17.9% compared to the same period in 2002.
These numbers and all data in this report are based on the totals of actual data reported by companies participating in the USMTC program.
'June orders were up 3 percent from June 2002, the first growth in a monthly year-on-year comparison since November 2000,' noted Albert W. Moore, AMT President. 'A single instance does not constitute a trend but a trend must have a starting point. Thanks to the expensing provisions in President Bush's jobs and economic growth tax relief bill this year is looking more promising.'
At least 17 people, including a top Shiite cleric, have been killed in an explosion in the holy Shiite city of Najaf.
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the spiritual leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was among those killed, Ahmed Chalabi, a member of Iraq's U.S.-backed governing council told the Arabic language network.
An attempt was made on the life of his nephew, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, in the same city Sunday. A bomb exploded outside the nephew's home and office, killing two bodyguards and his driver. Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim suffered light injuries and was moved to a safe house. He is one of four top leaders of the Hawza, the clerics that direct much of Shiite life around the world.
Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, 64, was based in Iran for much of Saddam Hussein's rule, and was seen as a key figure in Shiite politics in Iraq. He was killed Friday as he was leaving the gold-domed Imam Ali mosque after leading Friday prayers. [...]
After coming back to Iraq, al-Hakim said he would not remake Iraq in Iran's image.
"We don't want an extremist Islam," he said.
"We Muslims have to live together. We have to build security for our new society," al-Hakim said in May. "We want a democratic government,
representing the Iraqi nation, the Iraqi people, the Muslims, Christians and all the minorities."
But his initial opposition to the U.S. occupation of country was well known. He boycotted the first U.S.-backed meeting of Iraqi groups in April.
Later, however, SCIRI softened its position. Al-Hakim's brother, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, is a member of Iraq's new Governing Council.
[S]ince the early 1990s the Cossacks have been busy reviving their culture. Their influence growing, they are now demanding federal status and land rights and believe it is a battle they can win. [...]
As they parade proudly past their ataman in full festival dress, the Cossacks certainly look like a formidable force. At the gateway to the Caucasus in the troubled Russian south, these nationalist-minded men cast themselves as modern-day defenders of Russia's borders and her Orthodox faith.
The Cossacks' own past is chequered but Ataman Nikolai Gankin from Kamchatka in the Far East believes their revival and the revival of Russia, will go hand in hand.
"The Cossacks today are at the vanguard of our people," he says. "Our souls ache for Russia and her fate. We must be united as Cossacks to stop our country being torn apart."
Most Cossacks these days are careful to keep within the law. In their historic heartland around Rostov-on-Don, pogroms are a thing of the past. However, in neighbouring Krasnodar region, relations with a Turkic minority remain tense.
The Cossacks believe the rugged steppe of the south is theirs, steeped in the blood of their ancestors. Anyone is welcome to live there, they say, as long as it is by Cossack laws. Some, like the burly Viktor Demyanenko, remain ready to fight those they see as intruders.
"The Russian nation is being diluted," Mr Demyanenko declares as large beads of sweat roll from his brow. "There are no Russians left at all in some villages! The foreigners are like weed, like locusts destroying everything in their path. So sometimes we have to jump in and scare them a bit."
In 1957, the American Bar Assn. erected a memorial to acknowledge the influence of the Magna Carta on our Constitution and
American law.
The memorial, a classical, open-stone rotunda that shelters a pillar of English granite inscribed with the words, "To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of Freedom Under Law," sits on the banks of the Thames in Runnymede, England, where the Magna Carta was sealed in June 1215 by King John.
Recent photos of the 5,280-pound monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments and 14 other texts that attest to the bond God has to our laws and liberties and placed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building by Chief Justice Roy Moore reminded me of the memorial at
Runnymede.
The Magna Carta Memorial does not mention God as Moore's courthouse memorial does but the document it honors vociferously does. Like our own foundational charter of freedom, the Declaration of Independence, its preamble acknowledges God as the ultimate source of human law and liberty.
The preamble of that Great Charter of English Liberties concludes, "Know ye that we, unto the honour of Almighty God, and for the salvation
of the souls of our progenitors and successors, Kings of England, to the advancement of holy Church, and amendment of our Realm, of our mere and free will, have given and granted these liberties following, to be kept in our kingdom of England for ever."
The Declaration of Independence also establishes the tie between human rights, laws, liberty and God. It begins with an appeal to "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" a people. Then it asserts, "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."
The Magna Carta Memorial has stood in Runnymede for nearly five decades. Moore's monument stands to be removed from public view, on the order of Alabama's Supreme Court, "as soon as practicable."
1. Coaches try to change motion and batting stances of young players. They should leave 'em alone.
2. I call this night baseball heaven, playing when it's cool. Guys now don't know how it was. Now it's like falling into a mint of money.
3. Pete Rose is the toughest hitting in the game today. He gets a piece of the ball. I love him, he plays hard, like I did when I pitched.
4. All the young hitters try to hit home runs all the time. There's no more squeeze or drag bunting.
5. Millionaires took over and changed the game completely.
6. Pitchers today have arm trouble because they sit on the bench and don't work enough.
Senate Democrats are opposing [Alabama Attorney General Bill] Pryor for the content of his beliefs about abortion, a political sin made doubly abominable in the view of Schumer because they are so sincerely and deeply held.
Is Schumer therefore anti-Christian or anti-Catholic? No. But the net effect of Schumer's "deeply held views'' litmus test, now slavishly followed by his fellow Senate Democrats, is to disqualify from the bench anyone whose personal views of abortion coincide with those of traditional Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
This test is not a religious test. It's an ideological test -- that has the obvious effect of excluding from the bench tens of millions of believers who
suffer from "very, very deeply held views.''
The Schumer test is thus not a violation of the Article Six prohibition against religious tests for office. It is simply a clever way to get to the sameresult.
Do you approve or disapprove of a federal court decision ordering an Alabama court to remove a monument to the Ten Commandmentsfrom public display in its building?
Approve
19
Disapprove
77
No opinion
4
2003 Aug 25-26
Mikaela Ziegler, 7, and her 4-year-old sister, Annika, were selling refreshments Wednesday afternoon near the State Fairgrounds when a woman approached them. But she wasn't there to buy.Government -- making life miserable for millennia.
'She said, 'You can't sell pop unless you have a license,' ' Mikaela said.
That's how it came to be that an inspector with St. Paul's Office of License, Inspections and Environmental Protection shut down Mikaela and Annika's pop stand. . . .
"I don't think that was right," [Mikaela] said, "Cause you should be able to just sell stuff without having something that you don't know you're supposed to be having."
Deftly, he delivered a challenge to Hutton that was almost an affront. His words had an apparent ring of nobility when he said that if the BBC's allegation that he knowingly lied had been true, it would have "merited my resignation". "This was an attack that not only went to the heart of the office of prime minister but an attack on how our intelligence services operated ... and on the country as a whole."
Yet on reflection, this resignation remark holds a knife to the throat of Lord Hutton - "Back me or sack me." It suggests, none too subtly, that if this inquiry finds the BBC in the right and Downing Street in the wrong, Hutton will have prime ministerial blood on his hands. That's the kind of thing that gives unelected judges the constitutional heebie-jeebies. How else could this be interpreted? Blair spoke in the past tense - "it would have merited my resignation" - as if the inquiry was already done and dusted, the conclusion foregone and any danger to himself long past. It might have been more politic to assume Lord Hutton still has to make up his mind about that, even if the evidence is swinging Blair's way.
One thing was clear from the back-to-back evidence yesterday of the prime minister and the chairman of the BBC, Gavyn Davies. The ferocity of the enmity between the two sides remains unabated, a pair of stags with antlers fatally locked. The battle is still on and it has not been cooled one iota by the still perplexing death that brought all this to a crisis.
There was a laugh among the press when Blair described a private telephone call with Davies, a last-ditch attempt to make peace at the top. His "compromise" proposal? That the BBC should admit their story was wrong, and the government would admit the BBC had the right to broadcast it!
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 has changed totally in the past few weeks. At the beginning of the summer, Hillary could comfortably deny having national presidential ambitions because the comfortable conventional wisdom was that it didn't really matter who the Democratic candidate would be, because President Bush had a lock on re-election. (I'm sure that the thought has never crossed her mind that it would be better for her if Bush won in 2004, leaving her a clear field in 2008.)
But now! With Bush looking more vulnerable because there are not enough jobs at home and not enough peace abroad, Sen. Clinton has to check some numbers. If a Democrat, say Kerry, defeats Bush next November and then runs for re-election in 2008, then her next chance to run would probably be in 2012, when she will be 65 years old. And who knows what the world will look like then?
For the record, our new senator has said she was not interested in the presidency. So has former Vice President Al Gore, who might be rethinking his own future. Not for the record, though, Hillary and her advisers, including her husband the ex-president, her money men and pollsters, will meet shortly after Labor Day - Sept. 6, I hear - to discuss whether she should go for it. It is a decision that has to be made earlier rather than later because of November and December filing deadlines for the early primary elections that will almost certainly (and very quickly) identify the 2004 Democratic nominee.
McClintock is about as unlikely a "darling" as you'll find in California politics. He's not telegenic--he is seemingly incapable of cracking a smile on television, or even batting an eyelash for that matter. Nor is he well liked within the upper echelons of his party. Last fall, McClintock ran for state controller. Though he was the lone Republican and in a position to win his race, the California Republican party instead gave more than $1 million to Gary Mendoza, the GOP candidate for insurance commissioner, and nearly $350,000 to Republican state senator Bruce McPherson, who was running for lieutenant governor. McPherson lost by 550,000 votes; Mendoza, by 350,000 votes. McClintock fell a mere 17,000 votes short of victory.
Now, nearly 10 months after that election, McClintock has turned the tables on the Republican establishment. He doesn't have enough support to lead the recall field--take McClintock's best showing (12 percent, according to the Los Angeles Times), add half-to-two-thirds of the support from the now-departed Bill Simon, and at best McClintock runs at 15-20 percent. That's not enough to win, but it could condemn Arnold Schwarzenegger to a second-place finish and hand the race to Bustamante.
McClintock's appeal is that he's a conservative non-Arnold. Just listen to the voiceover on his newly released TV ad: "We must have a governor who knows every inch of this state government, and who stands willing to challenge the spending lobby that controls it." That's as much as shot at Schwarzenegger's credentials as it is at Democrats' lack of thrift. McClintock's ad also says: "California used to be the Golden State. Taxes were low. Jobs were plentiful. Tom McClintock was there." That's an appeal to older conservatives who voted for Proposition 13 back in 1978 and probably know little about Arnold's movies.
Indeed, much of the McClintock strategy is based on the premise that voters will choose a feisty legislator instead of a conciliatory actor/activist. If elected, McClintock has promised to slash bureaucracy, place a cap on state spending and outsource government services. He's promised to balance the state budget through executive fiat and ballot initiative, if need be. Them is fighting' words, in Sacramento.
We speak with Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie about the state of the party, including how this year's Republican races are shaping up. Laura's guest is Ed Gillespie.
Pauline Hanson irrupted on to the Australian political scene in the early 1990s, giving voice to blue-collar Australians who resented the immense social changes that had been brought about without their consent. They felt that the world of ice-cold tubes and meat pies was under threat, economically and culturally, from the world of kir and sun-dried tomatoes, a world in which the mainstream politicians, of whatever political stripe, increasingly lived and moved and took their being. When Hanson spoke in crude terms of the dangers of Asian immigration (a return to the yellow peril) and of the feckless Aborigines, she immediately won 22 per cent of the vote in her native Queensland. The proletarian lava had suddenly broken through the bourgeois crust.
From an outsider’s point of view, Hanson’s crime seems to have been relatively trivial. She registered her party — One Nation — without the number of members required by law, claiming that mere supporters at meetings were members. It is even possible that she failed to understand the law, rather than that she broke it deliberately, for the one thing upon which all educated Australians agree is her stupidity. Her one lasting achievement so far is to have bestowed upon Australian English the catchphrase ‘Please explain’‚ which she asked whenever anyone used a word of more than two syllables, such as ‘xenophobic’.
Having thus registered her party illegally, she and her co-founder, David Ettridge, who was also sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, accepted a subsidy of A$500,000 from the public purse to fund her election campaign (election campaigns are publicly funded in Australia). Although she subsequently paid the money back by raising it from her supporters, she was nevertheless charged with fraud. There are also charges pending that she used A$20,000 for her own private purposes.
Hanson had never been convicted of anything before, and it was swiftly pointed out in newspaper editorials and letters pages that killers have been known to receive lesser sentences. On the other hand, a former convict was reported as saying that since Hanson had asked for longer sentences, it was only right that she should receive one. And the only Aborigine in the Australian senate requested that Hanson be given special protection, because the prison to which she had been sent was full of the very Asians and Aborigines whose immigration and conduct she had so vociferously condemned. Truly, the whirligig of time brings in its revenges.
More Taliban fighters were killed on Thursday as a major operation by Afghan soldiers backed by U.S.-led forces and aircraft to find hundreds of guerrillas entered its fourth day, officials and news reports said.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency quoted Afghan Colonel Qudratullah as saying he saw around 40 bodies on the battlefield in the Tangi Chinaran area of Dai Chopan district, part of Zabul province where the fighting has raged.
Afghan officials had already claimed 70 Taliban losses in the first three days of fighting, as Afghan soldiers and small groups of U.S.-led special forces searched for up to 1,000 militants. [...]
While estimates vary, it could be the largest concentration of Taliban fighters since the hardline Islamic regime was ousted late in 2001, raising concerns that the movement has rallied support to undermine the U.S.-backed central government.
Zabul governor Hafizullah told Reuters that at least four Taliban had been killed by around midday, before the heaviest clashes began.
Asked about reports that the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar may be among the fighters, he replied:
"I cannot tell you about that. I am not sure. I have not seen him with my own eyes."
The NAACP filed a federal complaint against Florida's education department Thursday, seeking to stop use of statewide assessment tests until the achievement gap between minority and white students is eliminated.
In the following decades, Palestinians paid a mounting price for rejecting the UN settlement of 1947.
Finally, suffering greater abuse from their Arab brothers than from Jewish denial of their rights, the Palestinian leadership indicated its willingness to take a page of history from the Israelis and settle their differences by diplomacy.
The world applauded. America opened its doors to the Palestinian leadership. The seal of approval came with the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Yasser Arafat and his Israeli counterparts, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
But then Palestinians allowed themselves to be overtaken by fanaticism. George Santayana defined it as "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
For Palestinians, there can be no progress through blaming Israeli bigots for fuelling the spiral of violence, since the smoke of death suffocates all dialogue. Following 9/11, the demand on the Palestinian leadership has been unambiguous: to end violence whatever the excuse, and work with the international community to reach its goal.
Palestinians have to choose. And, having arrived at the fork in their road, the world watches with dismay their inability, or unwillingness, to end their dance with death and affirm life unconditionally.
Palestinian authorities said Thursday they froze the bank accounts of nine Islamic charities to investigate whether the organizations funnel money to militants - the Palestinians' most striking action yet in a U.S.-sought clampdown on armed groups.
R&L: The concept of natural law underpins the analysis in your latest book What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide. What is the natural law?
Budziszewski: Our subject is called natural law because it has the qualities of all law. Law has rightly been defined as an ordinance of reason, for the common good, made by the one who has care of the community, and promulgated. Consider the natural law against murder. It is not an arbitrary whim, but a rule that the mind can grasp as right. It serves not some special interest, but the universal good. Its author has care of the universe, for he (God) created it. And it is not a secret rule, for God has so arranged his creation that every rational being knows about it.
Our subject is called natural law because it is built into the design of human nature and woven into the fabric of the normal human mind. Another reason for calling it natural is that we rightly take it to be about what really is—a rule like the prohibition of murder reflects not a mere illusion or projection, but genuine knowledge. It expresses the actual moral character of a certain kind of act. [...]
R&L: What are the promises and perils of advancing a natural-law argument in the context of public policy disputes?
Budziszewski: The natural-law tradition maintains that the foundational principles of morality are “the same for all, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge”—in other words, they are not only right for everyone, but at some level known to everyone. If this is true, then the task of debate about morality is not so much teaching people what they have no clue about, but bringing to the surface the latent moral knowledge or suppressed moral knowledge that they have already. There is an art to this; people often have strong motives not to allow that knowledge to come to the surface, and they may feel defensive. One has to get past evasions and self-deceptions, and it is more difficult to do this in the public square than in private conversation. Even so, certain basic moral knowledge is “down there,” and our public statements can make contact with it. When this is done well, the defensiveness of the listeners is disarmed, and they reflect, “Of course. I never thought of that before, but somehow I knew it all along.” [...]
R&L: What role, if any, does natural law play in determining the substance of the laws that govern a particular society? What happens if natural law is banished from the legal process?
Budziszewski: Try to think of a law that is not based on a moral idea; you will not be able to do it. The law requiring taxes is based on the moral idea that people should be made to pay for the benefits that they receive. The law punishing violations of contract is based on the moral idea that people should keep their promises. The law punishing murder is based on the moral ideas that innocent blood should not be shed, that private individuals should not take the law into their own hands, and that individuals should be held responsible for their deeds. If we refuse to allow discussion of morality when making laws, laws will still be based on moral ideas, but they will be more likely to be based on false ones.
R&L: How does individual liberty function under the natural law?
Budziszewski: Natural law and natural rights work together. I have a duty not to murder you; you have a right to your life. I have a duty not to steal from you; you have a right to use the property that results from the productive use of your gifts. If we all have a duty to seek God, then we must all have the liberty to seek him.
The correlation of liberties and duties may seem nothing more than common sense, but that is what natural law is: Common moral sense, cleansed of evasions, elevated and brought into systematic order. Unfortunately, the contemporary way of thinking about liberty denies common moral sense. For example in 1992, when the United States Supreme Court declared that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” it was propounding a universal moral right not to recognize the universal moral laws on which all rights depend. Such so-called liberty has infinite breadth but zero depth. A right is a power to make a moral claim upon me. If I could “define” your claims into nonexistence—as the Court said I could “define” the unborn child’s—that power would be destroyed, and true liberty would be destroyed along with it.
If Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” theory is right, France is on the front line. With at least six and maybe eight million Muslims living in its territory among a total population of 60 million, France is the most “islamized” Western country. Seeing France’s inability to adapt to globalization or to the aging of its population, it could be bad news for the world that the French are the first to be forced to facilitate the emergence of a “modern” Islam.
As nearly every Western country absorbs a fast growing Muslim minority, every Westerner should look closely at France. A French failure to integrate Muslims could lead to a general European and Western failure. Those who don’t believe in the clash of civilizations might at least see a clash between traditional Islamic values and Western republican values. This raises the question of the compatibility of Islam with secular democracy (separation of church and state) and human rights (especially the rights of women and of non-Muslims).
All Muslims do not interpret the Koran identically and do not practice the same forms of Islam. But which Islam is going to win in Western countries? Even if they do not say it openly, more and more French citizens fear an Islamist victory that could lead to religious and civil war. The vote in favour of Jean-Marie Le Pen is emblematic of this fear. Locally, votes in favour of the National Front are linked to the proportion of Muslim immigrants in the population.
[T]alk of loving the Americans was the exception. The rule was the assertion that the occupying powers are unfairly promoting the interests of Iraq's Shiite muslims and fomenting sectarian discord.
"They are causing the disputes between Sunni and Shiite," said Samir Mohammed Mahmoud, a retired official of Iraq's Finance Ministry. He said he regretted that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led administration running Iraq, had not found a way to hold elections to establish the Governing Council, a group of 25 Iraqis the US selected through closed-door consultations. "The Americans provided the Shiite with the opportunity to take a large part of the [Governing] Council."
Shiites hold 13 of the council's seats. Many Shiite leaders say that they should get the power that they deserve in the new Iraq. Shiite Muslims constitute some 60 percent of Iraq's population, and have long been politically repressed.
As a result, Mr. Mahmoud argued, "no one agrees with this [Governing] Council, not even the Arab countries." The 22-member Arab League has refused to recognize the council, although some Arab states have indicated a willingness to work with the group without extending any formal approval.
"The British government came and occupied us in the 1920s," Mahmoud elaborated. "They used policies to separate Shiite and Sunni - it seems the Americans are using the same idea now."
"We've gotten over this thing of Sunni and Shiite," added a white-bearded, white-robed gentleman who declined to give his name but said he held a doctorate. "[The Americans] want us to be more and more divided."
"The Governing Council doesn't represent all Iraqi people; it's a sectarian council. Especially the Sunni [members] - they are exiles, they came in on American tanks," he continued.
Idling for months, the economy finally shifted into a higher gear in the second quarter as consumers and businesses bought more and the federal government ramped up military spending on the Iraq war. The improvement reinforced the belief that the economy will pick up speed through the rest of the year.
The broadest measure of the economy's performance, gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the April to June quarter, according to revised figures released Thursday by the Commerce Department.
That was faster than the 2.4 percent growth rate first estimated a month ago and came after two straight quarters of lackluster economic growth. GDP, which measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States, increased at just a 1.4 percent pace in the final quarter of 2002 and the first three months of this year.
''The economy is rolling forward now with considerable momentum and there's no reason to think we won't have strong economic growth through the rest of the year,'' said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock.
A United Nations committee has ruled Canada shirked its international responsibilities when it deported a convicted killer to the United States in 1998 even though he faced a death sentence.
In a decision experts say is a giant step forward for human rights, the U.N. Human Rights Committee dismissed Canada's arguments that its decision to deport Roger Judge didn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Charter of Rights.
The U.N. ruling, issued last week, said countries such as Canada that have abolished the death penalty are obliged to protect life in all circumstances.
"They may not remove, either by deportation or extradition, individuals from their jurisdiction if it may be reasonably anticipated they will be sentenced to death," the committee, said.
Doctors have grown a new penis on a Russian boy's arm after he lost his old one in a bizarre accident.
The 16-year-old, named only as Malik, lost his penis after receiving an electric shock while urinating on an electric wire.
An out-of-court settlement has been reached in the case of a North Texas man who woke up from bladder surgery only to find that doctors had amputated his penis without permission, lawyers said on Thursday.
Terms of the out-of-court settlement were not disclosed but Hurshell Ralls, 67, had been seeking over $5 million in a civil suit he filed in Wichita Falls, Texas, against the two doctors who removed his penis. They did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement. [...]
Ralls' attorney Steve Briley said that his client was having surgery in 1999 to remove a cancerous bladder, which would likely include the removal of his prostate gland. [...]
Ralls and his wife have not been able to recover from the anger and shock they felt after the surgery, his attorney said.
"Mr. Ralls was not informed that he was going to wake up and not have a penis," Briley said.
This is the Age of Entitlement. I do not mean entitlement only in the sense of the belief that one is entitled to a government handout. I also mean entitlement in the simpler sense of the belief that one deserves to get exactly what one wants - regardless of the law and despite the public good.
Four examples drawn from recent legal controversies illustrate this point....
I went to bat for the Recording Industry Association of America.... In response, I received numerous emails from individuals who hold the belief that they have an entitlement to free music on the web....
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and his followers have insisted on Justice Moore's supposed entitlement to keep the huge, stone rendition of the Ten Commandments he personally had installed in his courthouse....
Fortunately, the Entitlement Era may be coming to a close. With more and more institutions inclined to call lawbreaking just what it is ... entitlement is under siege. Lawbreaking is lawbreaking no matter who the perpetrator is - whether a church, or a state Supreme Court justice, or a college student - and increasingly, some have come to insist on that very truth.
The news from Iraq is mostly bad, and criticism of President Bush from Democrats is relentless. But nearly two-thirds — 63% — of Americans say the war in Iraq was worth fighting, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows. (Related: Full poll results)
That is not to say, however, that they are fully satisfied with the way things are going.
Overall, 54% say the president does not have a clear plan for the postwar effort to bring stability and democracy to the country. [...]
Fifty-seven percent say they believe the war in Iraq is part of the overall war on terrorism. Bush has repeatedly made that argument, and the poll suggests his message is getting through.
Bush's handling of the Iraq situation is approved by 57%, down slightly from 60% a month ago; 66% approve of his handling of terrorism in general.
And 59% approve of the job he is doing overall, a range he has maintained for more than a month, regardless of the ups and downs of the news from Iraq.
On the same day that Arnold Schwarzenegger received the endorsement of 20 state Assembly Republicans in his bid to become governor of California, a decades-old interview resurfaced in which the actor copped to a number of titillating high jinks and kinky sexual acts during his years as a bodybuilder.
Just as Schwarzenegger was making the radio talk show rounds Wednesday to clarify his positions on several issues, the interview in the August 1977 issue of Oui magazine appeared on the Smoking Gun Web site, which was linked to via the political/celebrity gossip Web site the Drudge Report.
In the five-page interview with writer Peter Manso, Schwarzenegger admitted to smoking "grass and hash," hanging out with "entertainers, hookers and bar owners" during his early years in Venice, Calif., and participating in a group-sex encounter with a single female and several fellow bodybuilders from Gold's Gym, Schwarzenegger's early stomping ground.
"Having chicks around is the kind of thing that breaks up the intense training," he said, according to the reprint of the interview.
Schwarzenegger brushed off the story, saying only that he had things other than politics on his mind all those years ago.
"I haven't lived my life to be a politician," he said during a radio talk show.
(24) Marianne Moore loved Christy Mathewson. No woman of quality has ever preferred football to baseball.
1. Granted
2. Granted
3. Cheerleaders...God's gift to men.
4. Granted
5. Given some of the people who've sang that song, not a plus for baseball
6. Football has also had The Purple People Eaters and the Steel Curtain
7. Not entirely true.
8. I might give you that.
9. Baseball also has Don Zimmer who dresses in a satin jacket.
10. The Redskins haven't had someone who could kick in eight seasons
11. Billy Martin was better than anything in football on this score
12. Nor should he have been ashamed.
13. That was a good Lasorda line
14. Hah! Major leaguers don't chew any more because "It's bad for you!" Hardly manly
15. No experience with pro football in that context
16. Ditto
17. Ditto
18. Ditto
19. Generalization and unfair given steriods in baseball
20. I'm Canadian, there's no such thing as cold weather
21. And 150 of them tend to be meaningless. Every football game counts
22. Granted
23. Anyone who quotes Adolph Hitler or George Carlin automatically loses an argument :-)
24. Many women in Wisconsin would disagree
25. This is true, baseball books are generally better. They also tend to be more maudlin.
26. True
27. True
28. That's true.
29. Screams of anguish! Soldier Field? Notre Dame Stadium? I could name several more easily. A lot of people consider Fenway to be a piece of crap
30. I can dig that.
31. This is a good argument. I'm not convinced because the skill set is so different, but is a good argument.
32. I played football...the face mask is useful.
33. True. Outside of RBs, WRs and QBs, I doubt many football players would be recognized
34. I almost laughed out loud at this one. Many of baseball's early owners were men who were at best ethically challenged. Today? I can
begin and end a conversation with Peter D'Angelos in Baltimore. Today, most baseball teams are owned by corporations so they can conveniently duck a charge into the character of a single person or family.
35. Pete Rose? That's rich.
36. So is any army. And?
37. QB ratings are a clear formula.
38. granted
39. There are a lot of stats in baseball that are useless. Most in fact are.
40. the DH is the death of real baseball
41. Bah.
42. The Fudge Hammer...No jokes about that one.
43. Sigh.
44. Wild cards serve what purpose in baseball? To expand the number of teams? And they want to expand it further? Stones...glass walls...
45. That's plain silly.
46. That bothers me as well.
47. Pass interference bothers me as well.
48. Agreed to a point
49. Half truth.
50. I hate instant replay. Is that computerized ump system any better?
51. That means football is more manly.
52. Absolutely untrue.
53. And they miss a great tradition.
54. Not true.
55. Not really true.
56. True to a point.
57. True. NFL refs should be full-time
58. And there are no reps in baseball?
59. See 51
60. Not true
61. Compared to changing the height of the pitcher's mound? The strike zone (which no one knows what it is even if its defined officially)?
62. Sigh, no long-lived football players? Jerry Rice? I could go on...
63. True
64. Actually it means fall has arrived
65. Ha ha, right
66. Neither is a winner here.
67. I doubt baseball is that clean
68. Agreed
69. That was funny in the 1940s.
70. The only people who praise Fenway are the ones who don't sit in the small seats...and that's from Boston sports writers
71. Ref. Homer Simpson: I never knew baseball was so boring without alcohol.
72. And?
73. Somewhat true
74. This means nothing
75. False
76. Real dances have been banned for years. And football lost something with that.
77. Some rules are bad.
78. And?
79. Not true.
80. Stupid managers don't exist in baseball?
81. True
82. And?
83. Ty Cobb.
83. Hello? Ref. Whining by Roger Clemens
84. True
85. Whatever
86. True
87. There's plenty of humour in football.
88. Funny.
89. Different sports, different methods. Do apples taste like oranges?
90. See 89.
91. No experience with football stadiums...one baseball stadium. I wasn't that impressed
92. True
93. I'll take his word for it. Isn't he in baseball?
94. Ha ha, because they're up in the luxury boxes eating food no baseball fan can afford at the park.
95. Could be.
96. And who cares until September?
97. So?
98. The manliness issue again. Let's see a baseball player get hit by another baseball player and not go on the 15 DL.
99. Whatever.
Since its release in the winter of 1965, the lyrics of the song "People Get Ready" by the Chicago group The Impressions have sunk into collective American consciousness, a civil rights anthem for the struggle that continues today in America and elsewhere.
The song, written by Curtis Mayfield, was long thought to have been inspired by the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream of an America where children will be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
In fact, "People Get Ready" was penned a year or two before the historic march on Washington, according to Cook County Commissioner Jerry "The Iceman" Butler, a former member of the Impressions.
Mayfield, who didn't attend the 1963 march, never minded that people thought it was because it was inspired by the same issues that launched the march, Butler said.
"When we started performing back in the 1950s around town here, it was right after Emmett Till was slain," Butler said, referring to the 14-year-old black Chicago boy who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after he reportedly whistled at a white woman.
"All of those things impacted on us because we were Till's age. . . . Then we got involved in terms of being aware of what was happening in the
South, in particular, and in our neighborhoods in general. All of that, I think, influenced his writings," Butler said.
Mayfield's song--the first successful gospel-influenced song to become a crossover hit on the Billboard charts--is laced with spiritual and biblical language.
People get ready, there's a train comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
You don't need no ticket you just thank the lord
People get ready, there's a train to Jordan
Picking up passengers coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board them
There's hope for all among those loved the most
There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner whom would hurt all mankind
Just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there is no hiding place against the kingdoms throne
People get ready there's a train comin'
You don't need no baggage, just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
You don't need no ticket you just thank the lord
Wednesday, Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., nixed a run against Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who Republicans are hoping to knock off in 2004. "This is not the time to abandon the job I have," Huckabee said at a news conference yesterday.
Huckabee’s decision is interesting since he is term-limited when his term expires in 2006 and he could have run for the Senate while sitting as
governor. Perhaps he’s setting his sights on taking on first-term Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., in 2008.
Meantime, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who was widely expected to seriously challenge Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid, decided Monday he’ll stay in the House. "There is no doubt in my mind that I could defeat the existing senator on Election Day, but my decision has nothing to do with Sen. Harry Reid," Gibbons said at a news conference.
Other Republicans abandoning Senate bids in 2004 include: former college basketball coach Dale Brown against Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., against Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. (although Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., did decide to run); and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., against Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., is still waiting to hear if he’ll have a formidable GOP challenger. There’s talk about former Rep. John Thune, R-S.D. - who lost a 2002 Senate race by 524 votes - taking him on.
The head of the UN nuclear agency accused the United States in a German magazine interview of effectively breaking a ban on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through its research into so-called "mini-nukes."
Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the German weekly Stern, in its upcoming Thursday edition, that double standards were being used.
"Double standards are being used here. The US government insists that other countries do not possess nuclear weapons.
"On the other hand they are perfecting their own arsenal. I do not think that corresponds with the treaty they signed."
Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority's scapegoat-in-chief, so deeply abhors the prospect of a Palestinian civil war that he cannot bring himself to attack Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Chin up, Mr Abbas: civil war is the sine qua non of nationhood. Permit me to try to sell you on the merits of having a civil war of your very own. Think of a civil war not as a luxury, but as an investment.
It is unpopular these days to draw attention to the merits of violence, particularly the sort that inevitably entails "collateral damage", that is, the slaughter of innocents. Progress supposedly brings us non-violent conflict resolution. Au contraire. The faster the world changes, the more people find themselves left behind, and the more people are left behind, the more diehards are willing to fight to the death.
Real nations, as opposed to romantic visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists. They need the sort of people who show up on time, pay dues to a respectable political party and get along (if grudgingly) with the neighbors. Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.
The truth, Mr Abbas, is that no one will take you seriously until you have your own civil war. [...]
If you let your lawn go to seed or let your dog bark all night, your neighbors will become impatient and compel you to take action. The same applies to civil wars. If you don't do it yourself, the neighbors may do it for you, and end up damaging your property.
It's no use to say, "They can't get all of us!" They don't need to get all of you. Consider that the American criminal justice system has incarcerated or otherwise controlled one out of every three black Americans between the ages of 20 and 30. That is nothing less than the ruin of a generation, but it correlates to a big decline in the rate of commission of violent crimes.
If America is willing to exterminate large numbers of its own discontented population, don't expect any compunction when it comes to you. In a war of attrition, the side with more resources and more killing capacity always wins. If you make yourself sufficiently obnoxious, the Americans will take the leash of the Israelis and let them sort you out, however long it takes.
Iranian political analysts are unanimous in predicting that not only are the conservatives determined not to allow the next unicameral house be controlled by the reformists (as is the case now), they also want an end to the present political chaos caused by the endless feuds between the system's two opposed concepts of theocracy based of one man's absolute rule versus a republicanism mixed with a "tolerant religion", as defined by Khatami.
In the view of the analysts, the recent harsh crackdown on political dissidents and the independent press, which is close to the reformists, by the judiciary, a power that is directly controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei and which serves as the conservatives' political and police arms, is a clear indication of the hardliners' plans in that direction.
At the same time, the analysts say, the government's unprecedented firm stand in facing up to the conservatives is aimed at recovering at least part of the popularity that it has lost with its base, made up mostly of young voters, because of its dramatic failure in delivering the reforms that it had promised on the one hand and Khatami's continued bowing to the conservatives on the other.
To "punish" the reformers, Iranians who in all recent presidential and parliamentary elections had massively voted for Khatami and the reformers, deserted the polls in the last city and village council elections, offering Tehran municipality to the conservatives.
"The reformists' big mistake from the outset was that the political system of the Islamic Republic, based on the absolute rule of one person, is anything but democratic in the Western terminology of the concept," Dr Qasem Sho'leh Sa'di, a lawyer and outspoken political dissident speaking for the neo-reformists told Asia Times Online.
Contrary to the official reformists who insist on reforming Iran's constitution, the neo-reformers want drastic changes to the system, replacing the present theocracy with a secular democracy.
The introduction to the General Accounting Office (GAO) "high-risk" list of federal agencies engaged in dubious accounting practices provided by Comptroller General of the United States David Walker reads in part: "The high-risk status reports are provided at the start of each new Congress. This update should help the Congress and the administration in carrying out their responsibilities, while improving government for the benefit of the American people." In other words, the purpose of the "high-risk" list is to provide helpful information to Congress about management of government agencies and departments.
But, even though the status reports are well into their second decade, one is hard-pressed to find in them detailed information that might in fact be useful to Congress in appropriating funds. Nowhere is this more evident than in financial management of the agencies and departments, about which this magazine has reported with care for nearly five years.
To provide a sense of how government bureaucrats are handling the people's money the GAO has provided an upbeat, yet sobering, breakdown. In 2001 there were 23 departments or agencies on the high-risk list. Two years later the number has increased to 25. The good news is that the Social Security Administration's (SSA) supplemental-security-income program and the Department of Justice's asset-forfeiture program have been removed from the list.
However, four new designations have been added, including the Department of Homeland Security, the disability programs at the SSA and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, federal real property and deteriorating facilities, and the Medicaid program. And, although it will come as no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with the problems plaguing corporate pensions, months after the official "high risk" was made public, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) was added to the list, raising the total yet another notch to 26. [...]
[W]alker again has raised the issue of the apparent inability of federal agencies properly and accurately to account for funds entrusted to them by taxpayers.
Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon adviser and architect of the U.S. war to topple Saddam Hussein, said the United States had made mistakes in Iraq and that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as fast as possible.
In an interview with the Le Figaro daily newspaper to be published Thursday, Perle defended the U.S.-led war in Iraq and restated his belief that France had been wrong to lead international opposition to the conflict.
"Of course, we haven't done everything right," said Perle, according to the French text of the interview. "Mistakes have been made and there will be others.
"Our principal mistake, in my opinion, was that we didn't manage to work closely with the Iraqis before the war, so that there was an Iraqi opposition capable of taking charge immediately," he said.
"Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible," he added.
Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed for next year by the White House and Senate Republicans. From the perspective of those who are pro-children, it's loaded with bad news. Not only does the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually cut $200 million from the president's very own (and relentlessly touted) No Child Left Behind Act.
We're talking about a real cut -- $200 million less than is being spent on this already underfunded initiative.
The proposed cuts, according to Congressional officials who have studied the budget proposal, would eliminate a high school dropout prevention program, would prevent more than 32,000 children with limited proficiency in English from participating in federally supported English instruction programs, would drastically cut high school equivalency and college assistance for migrant children, and would end the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship program.
The proposal would also cut more than 20,000 teachers from professional training programs, despite Mr. Bush's promise that teachers would "get the training they need to raise educational standards." And it would completely eliminate training for teachers in computer technology.
Among those who are steaming over the proposal is Senator Edward Kennedy, one of a number of Democrats who gave the president the kind of good-faith, high-profile, bipartisan support that was crucial to the passage of No Child Left Behind.
Poor countries already have the right to manufacture copycat versions of brand-name medicines in the event of a health emergency by issuing what is called a compulsory license. But the poorest nations have no factories to produce such medicine. The pending trade agreement solves that problem by allowing these countries to import the generic drugs from developing nations like Brazil or India under the compulsory license.
Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry group for research-based American pharmaceutical companies, said there would be no comment until a final deal was reached. But officials who have met with American pharmaceutical executives said that the companies would not lobby against the agreement.
Ambassador Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, was credited today by several officials with persuading the American pharmaceutical industry, as well as the White House, that a compromise had to be reached before the trade talks start on Sept. 10.
In the last few days, the United States struck an accord with a crucial group of developing countries--including Brazil and India, which are large producers of generic drugs, and South Africa and Kenya--raising the odds for a full agreement by the 146 members of the trade organization.
In exchange for these new assurances sought by the pharmaceutical industry, the United States dropped its demand that the agreement cover only a few diseases and that it limit the number of countries eligible to import the generic drugs, several diplomats said.
Instead, the United States has successfully lobbied more than 20 developed nations to agree to voluntarily opt out of using this agreement to import generic medicines, several officials said.
"This is better than what the United States originally wanted and doesn't limit the scope of diseases," said Nelson Ndirangu, a member of the Kenya delegation to the World Trade Organization.
But several nongovernmental organizations said the compromise did not go far enough to ensure that generic versions of medicine could be produced and exported wherever they were needed.
The row over the boulder-sized version of the so-called "Ten Commandments," and as to whether they should be exhibited in such massive shape on public property, misses the opportunity to consider these top-10 divine ordinances and their relationship to original intent. Judge Roy Moore is clearly, as well as a fool and a publicity-hound, a man who identifies the Mount Sinai orders to Moses with a certain interpretation of Protestantism. But we may ask ourselves why any sect, however primitive, would want to base itself on such vague pre-Christian desert morality (assuming Moses to be pre-Christian).
The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them. I am the lord thy god and thou shalt have no other ... no graven images ... no taking of my name in vain: surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect. The ensuing order to set aside a holy day is scarcely a moral or ethical one, unless you assume that other days are somehow profane. (The Rev. Ian Paisley, I remember, used to refuse interviewers for Sunday newspapers even after it was pointed out to him that it's the Monday edition that is prepared on Sunday.) Whereas a day of rest, as prefigured in the opening passages of Genesis, is no more than organized labor might have demanded, perhaps during the arduous days of unpaid pyramid erection.
So the first four commandments have almost nothing to do with moral conduct and cannot in any case be enforced by law unless the state forbids certain sorts of art all week, including religious and iconographic art—and all activity on the Sabbath (which the words of the fourth commandment do not actually require). [...]
It's obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time. I wonder what would happen if secularists were now to insist that the verses of the Bible that actually recommend enslavement, mutilation, stoning, and mass murder of civilians be incised on the walls of, say, public libraries? There are many more than 10 commandments in the Old Testament, and I live for the day when Americans are obliged to observe all of them, including the ox-goring and witch-burning ones. (Who is Judge Moore to pick and choose?) Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.
A . . . recent [Haaretz] profile (August 8) is of Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi. Benvenisti was once an old-style Labor Zionist who served in the 1960s as Teddy Kollek's deputy and in the 1980s became a muse of sorts for the New York Times's Tom Friedman. Hanegbi, a much less accomplished figure, was with Uri Avnery a leader in the ultra-Left Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) until he found the group too moderate for his views.Victory is the only option (Caroline B. Glick, Jurusalem Post, 8/22/03)
What unites Benvenisti and Hanegbi is that they have separately concluded that the two-state solution can't work. Many other Israelis, disillusioned with Oslo, have also come to this view, but not quite in the same way. For Benvenisti and Hanegbi, it isn't a Palestinian state that's a problem. It's a Jewish one. 'Israel as a Jewish state can no longer exist here,' says Hanegbi. Says Benvenisti: 'This country will not tolerate a border in its midst.' . . .
Probably by chance, on the same day the Benvenisti-Hanegbi profile appeared, Haaretz carried a long feature by Daniel Gavron on the so-called Uganda scheme, which was debated at the sixth Zionist conference 100 years ago. Headlined 'Nowhere in Africa,' after the recent film about a German-Jewish family that escaped from the Nazis to Kenya, Gavron's article asks 'whether [the scheme's] rejection by the seventh congress was a fatal historical error."
The article is a mostly competent piece of journalism. It covers the historic ground well. It also leaves little doubt that a Jewish state had no chance of establishing itself, much less succeeding, on the Uasin Gishu plateau in East Africa - or anywhere else on the continent, for that matter. Nor is it likely that even a temporary African haven would have saved large numbers of Jews from the Holocaust. Few had the foresight to leave Germany and Eastern Europe while it was still possible to get out. A dusty outpost in Africa would hardly have been an enticing destination.
"Even the land of Israel and Jerusalem," Gavron writes, "were only just powerful enough magnets to attract a sufficient number of Jews to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state." . . .
What's interesting, then, about the Uganda article isn't what it says but the fact that it was written at all. It suggests an incredible fragility of belief in the Zionist enterprise as it came to be - and a negative belief at that. Are we here because it is, in some meaningful sense, our home? Not at all. We're here because it was the only workable and least-bad solution to an urgent refugee problem. Nowadays, however, perhaps it's not the ideal solution.
Of course I may be extrapolating too much. And Gavron and Haaretz are hardly typically Israeli. But Benvenisti touches on something very deep when he says that Israel's conflict is not between two national movements but between "a society of immigrants and a society of natives." It suggests that Jews no more belong here than they would have in Uganda. It suggests that Jews remain, at best, refugees. It suggests the Zionist enterprise is colonialist. And it means that the Jewish state is as illegitimate as it is doomed.
"In the end," says Hanegbi, "the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel." The only solution is to abandon the idea of a Jewish state - "the mad dream," he calls it - to mix with our Arab neighbors in mixed cities and mixed neighborhoods and mixed families, and to "take part in the democratization of the Middle East." Let's stop trying to be Jews, counsels Benvenisti, and let's stop trying to build a "Jewish state." We're "neo-Canaanites" now.
The one move that the Abbas-Dahlan (Arafat) junta has made since ascending to international celebrity is the PA's sponsorship of the hudna [ceasefire]. Over the past two months, every time that they were asked about their moves to dismantle the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terror organizations, they pointed to the hudna and said that this was all that was necessary to bring peace. Initially, Israel decried the hudna as a farce. But once Hamas and its friends in Islamic Jihad and the PA announced its implementation six weeks ago, the government immediately began to play ball.Those of us old enough to remember when Art Buchwald was funny -- or to remember him at all -- will remember a column he wrote towards the end of every year imagining the meetings in which the most disastrous decisions of the year had been made. In that spirit, let's imagine the meeting leading to Israel's establisment: "Hm, we have a population of wretched, oppressed Jews who have been locked up in Europe's ghettos and shtetls for the last 1500 years. What should we do with them." "Obviously, send them off to a desert in the midst of a sea of rabid antisemites." One senses that this looked generous only in comparison to the Holocaust.
The media also got taken in by the hudna. The day after 20 Israeli children and their parents were disemboweled and scorched in Jerusalem, the question that dominated the papers was: Is the hudna over? Even after Hamas announced yesterday the hudna was off, Israeli commentators continued to ask whether Hamas was serious about "restarting" its terrorist slaughter. . . .
A decision to kill, deport, or arrest Arafat and try him for crimes against humanity in an Israeli court of law would be an immediate catalyst for a military operation that would in fact bring this country victory and the security that would ensue. Why is this? Because the only way to win a war is to identify who the enemy is. After 10 years of lying to ourselves, the blood on the streets of our capital city calls out the truth. Hamas and Islamic Jihad could never operate if it weren't for the PA and Arafat and his new straw men Abbas and Dahlan. The longer our leaders dither and deceive us, the longer our army officers will believe that their work is meaningless and the longer our lives will be at the mercy of our enemies.
Our future lies in the hands of our leaders. Victory is the only option. What will it take for them to find the will to lead us to it?
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, who is the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has been telling anyone who is willing to listen that "the Jews" are to blame for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners!
The Jews? How did Cardinal Rodriguez ever come up with this ridiculous idea? Here is his "logic." He begins by asserting that the Vatican is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. It follows, therefore, that "the Jews" had to get even with the Catholic Church, while at the same time deflecting attention away from Israeli injustices against the Palestinians.
The Jews managed to do this by arranging for the media which they, of course, control to give disproportionate attention to the Vatican sex scandal. Listen to Rodriguez's own words:
"It certainly makes me think that in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago.
"Why? I think it's also for these motives: What is the church that has received Arafat the most times and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the State of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?"
Rodriguez then goes on to compare the Jewish-controlled media with "Hitler," because they are "protagonists of what I do not hesitate to define as a persecution against the Church."
When asked whether he wanted to reconsider his attack, Rodriguez replied: "I don't repent sometimes it is necessary to shake things up."
B'nai Brith Canada today announced the launch of a campaign to inform members of Toronto's Jewish community about the activities of "Jews for Jesus."
Calling it the "Proud to be Jewish" Campaign," B'nai Brith's goal is to warn members of the Toronto Jewish community about the presence and methods of the missionary group and to advise them of their rights.
"This isn't about free speech," said Rochelle Wilner, president of B'nai Brith Canada.
"Targeted missionizing, especially when done in a manner calculated to deceive the unsuspecting, is offensive to our community. Christianity is not a branch of Judaism it's a different religion altogether, and any attempt to portray it as anything but a different religion is subterfuge.
"The term 'Jews for Jesus' makes about as much sense as 'Baptists for Buddha' or 'Catholics for Krishna,'" she said.
An American soldier stands at the side of an Iraqi highway, puts his AK-47 on fully automatic and pulls the trigger.
Within seconds the assault rifle has blasted out 30 rounds. Puffs of dust dance in the air as the bullets smack into the scrubland dirt. Test fire complete.
U.S. troops in Iraq may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but they're certainly getting their hands on the country's stock of Kalashnikovs and, they say, they need them. [...]
In Humvees, on tanks but never openly on base U.S. soldiers are carrying the Cold War-era weapon, first developed in the Soviet Union but now mass produced around the world.
The AK is favored by many of the world's fighters, from child soldiers in Africa to rebel movements around the world, because it is light, durable and known to jam less frequently.
Now U.S. troops who have picked up AKs on raids or confiscated them at checkpoints are putting the rifles to use and they like what they see.
Some complain that standard U.S. military M16 and M4 rifles jam too easily in Iraq's dusty environment. Many say the AK has better ''knockdown'' power and can kill with fewer shots.
''The kind of war we are in now ... you want to be able to stop the enemy quick,'' said Sgt. 1st Class Tracy S. McCarson of Newport News, Va., an army scout, who carries an AK in his Humvee.
A federal judge told lawyers for runaway Democratic senators today that he believes their lawsuit seeking voting rights and free speech protections is all but totally frivolous, but he agreed to leave the final decision to a three-judge panel.
U.S. District Judge George P. Kazen said he believes Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's push for mid-decade congressional redistricting is wrong and a waste of taxpayer money. However, Kazen also criticized the Democratic senators for fleeing to Albuquerque, N.M., to break the Senate's quorum.
"We're almost like the Middle East. We've got these two camps over here, and it's total victory or total surrender," Kazen said.
Kazen refused to grant the Democrats' request for a restraining order to prevent the Senate sergeant-at-arms from arresting them in case there is another special session. Kazen also urged Perry not to call a session until the three-judge panel hears the Democrats' lawsuit in about two weeks.
"Let's chill out for awhile. Let's stop spending the taxpayers money for awhile," Kazen said.
The self-exiled Democrats had hoped to find a friendly judge by filing the lawsuit in Laredo. Kazen was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter. But the judge made it clear from the start of today's hearing that the only reason he was not throwing the case out was that federal case law requires voting rights questions to be answered by a three-judge panel unless the lawsuit is wholly frivolous or fictitious.
"The agreement we've made is your lawsuit is not wholly frivolous," Kazen told Renea Hicks, a lawyer representing the Democrats.
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger made his clearest statements to date on abortion and other social issues on talk shows Wednesday, after weeks of criticism for not spelling out his views for voters in the California recall.
He said he favors legalizing marijuana for medical purposes and protecting a woman's right to abortion, but is against gay marriage and granting drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. He said illegal immigrants already in the country should stay here, but he said it was a federal issue and a spokesman said he wasn't proposing an amnesty program. [...]
Schwarzenegger described himself as "pro-choice" but said he did not support late-stage procedures described as "partial-birth" abortions.
Asked whether he is in favor of parental notification when minors seek abortions, he replied, "I am. But in some cases when there is abuse in the family or problems in the family, then the courts should decide."
Schwarzenegger said he supports domestic partnerships but not gay marriage.
A man accused of licking a woman's feet in a Bellingham grocery store was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to assault just before his trial was to begin.
Raymond Dublin, 36, formerly of Providence, R.I., pleaded guilty Tuesday at Uxbridge District Court to charges of assault and battery and lewd and lascivious behavior.
His attorney asked for a sentence of two years of counseling, but Judge Paul Losapio said counseling wasn't sufficient for Dublin, a two-time convicted sex offender who just completed a one-year sentence on similar foot-licking charges at a Woonsocket, R.I., supermarket.
"I don't know what type of counseling someone could undergo for this kind of behavior," he said.
Dublin was charged with sneaking up behind a woman at the Bellingham Save-A-Lot supermarket and licking her feet and toes in June 2002.
The candidates vying to be California's next Governor have only been campaigning for a few weeks, but we've already seen front runners lose their lead in the polls - only to move back up again.
An exclusive Eyewitness News poll conducted by Survey USA, shows Arnold Schwarzenegger has a wide lead again, with support of 45-percent of registered voters. Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante has 29-percent.
Our exclusive survey could come as a surprise to some. It only counts registered voters who say they will cast a ballot October 7. The poll is based on 591 California residents who say they are certain to vote Oct. 7.
Though the Republican vote is splintered Arnold Schwarzenegger would win office today even though Cruz Bustamante is winning endorsements.
The numbers are reversing since August 11th survey.
Tom McClintock and Peter Uberroth top the rest of the field and the survey could give Governor Gray Davis some concern. If the recall election were today, he would be ousted by 64-percent of the vote with only a 35-percent vote of confidence.
This fall marks the first year when neighborhood public schools feel the brunt of a new national experiment in accountability - and the impact on parents may be even greater than that on students and their teachers.
One result: more choices for parents. This fall, parents of 54 million students nationwide will see more comparative data about public schools than has been available, even to top administrators.
Parents will know which schools have highly qualified teachers, and which do not. They will know which schools are making "adequate yearly progress" toward state standards, and which are not.
The question is: What to do with the new information?
If parents act on new insights by moving their kids to different schools - ones that aren't deemed "in need of improvement," for example - it could have big implications not just for the future of their children but also for the shape of school reforms nationwide.
Already, charter schools, sought after by many parents for innovative approaches, house 685,000 students.
The No Child Left Behind Act, which President Bush once dubbed "the cornerstone of my administration," adds new choices. It requires that all groups of students - whatever their race, ethnicity, poverty level, English proficiency, or disability - demonstrate "adequate yearly progress." If not, parents have options, which begin to kick in this year.
For parents in the least successful of US schools, the choice may be to leave the neighborhood school or to tap into some $2 billion in federal funds to buy academic help, such as tutoring or after-school program.
"The new law says that choices should not depend on your ZIP code or your personal wealth. The goal now is to make choice a permanent part of public education for every student, and we're definitely moving in that direction," says Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona Superintendent of Education and CEO of the Education Leaders Council, an education reform advocacy group. But she adds that school districts are still far from complying with the laws provisions, and are especially lax in informing parents that services are available. "Last year, only about $40 million of the $2 billion in funds available were accessed by parents. This is a huge potential market of intervention for students.... We are not tapping it adequately."
Most of the nation's 15,000 school districts are still calculating which schools fall into the "need of improvement" category. They are then required by law to inform parents of this option, to offer alternative placements for children who want to move, and to help with transportation to get them there.
The State Department has cut off funding for an AIDS program benefiting African and Asian refugees, saying it believes a group taking part in the program supports involuntary abortions and sterilization in China.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Wednesday funds were offered to six of seven groups that received money from the department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
But the consortium of groups turned down the funding after the department excluded the seventh group, Marie Stopes International.
"We offered this funding to six of them, in order to continue supporting the good work that they've done on prevention and response to HIV/AIDS in refugee settings,'' Reeker said. "It was the consortium's decision not to accept the funding.''
Marie Stopes International was excluded because of its partnership in China with the United Nations Population Fund, a group the Bush administration said last year had violated a 1985 law against supporting forced abortion or sterilization.
The debate over educational funding and administration is an old one. Writing to his friend Tacitus almost two thousand years ago, the Roman lawyer Pliny the Younger described his plan to establish a secondary school in his home town, but added that he had decided to pay only one third of the total cost.
I would promise the whole amount were I not afraid that someday my gift might be abused for someone's selfish purposes, as I see happen in many places where teachers' salaries are paid from public funds. There is only one remedy to meet this evil: if the appointment of teachers is left entirely to the parents, and they are conscientious about making a wise choice through their obligation to contribute to the cost. (Pliny, 1969, p. 277-283)
Over the last decade, proposals for introducing a degree of parental choice and inter-school competition into education have abounded, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. In some cases, such plans are already in place. With few exceptions, though, current choice programs pose barriers to the entry of new schools and to the exit of unpopular ones, exclude religious and/or profit-making institutions, restrict admissions and staffing policies, and otherwise control the supply and demand for education. Though private schooling exists in most industrialized countries, there is only limited competition at the primary and secondary levels. The comparatively heavy burden of tuition, when compared to the "free" status of tax-supported schools, greatly limits the clientele for private education. This in turn keeps the density of private institutions to a much lower level than if government did not provide schools. As a result, there is no nation currently offering a truly free and competitive market in education.
The Case Against
As market-inspired reform has gained in popularity, it has been subjected to a great deal of criticism. Attacks have been directed at the possible ill-effects of parental- choice, of for-profit schools, and of market systems as a whole. The most often heard argument against a market is that parents cannot be expected to make sound educational choices for their children, and must instead leave the key decisions to experts. A significant number of parents, it is assumed, would either fail to inform themselves about competing schools, or would base their choices on the "wrong" criteria. This contention has been directed at the population as a whole (Carnegie Foundation, 1992; Wells & Crain, 1992), and also at specific groups such as the poor or the poorly-educated (Payne, 1993; Levin, 1991; Kozol, 1992). A related criticism is that racial and economic isolation might be increased if families selected their schools based on race, ethnicity, or social status (Cookson, 1994; Kozol, 1992).
On the supply side, skeptics argue that for-profit schools with bold promises, flashy advertising, and special programs would lure customers away from academically superior institutions (Krashinsky, 1986). Murnane (1983), and others have noted the possibility of fraud in voucher systems, in which corrupt principals could offer kick-backs to parents who chose their institutions. Profit-making schools are also expected by some critics to reject difficult-to-educate children, e.g. those with disabilities or serious discipline problems. According to Shanker and Rosenberg (1992), these children would be more expensive to teach and hence would either be expelled more readily or refused admission entirely.
All these objections have in common the idea that education is fundamentally different from other human exchanges, and that as a result, the natural checks and balances of the market would fail to operate as they normally do. There is a second line of argument that takes the opposite position, namely, that an educational market would fail precisely because it would operate in the same way as other markets (Krashinsky, 1986). Education, so the argument goes, benefits not only the students and their families, but their fellow citizens as well. These indirect benefits are said to include social harmony, political stability, and a thriving economy. According to Levin (1991), public school systems are capable of producing the aforementioned benefits, while a competitive market of private schools could either not produce them at all, or do so only at prohibitive regulatory expense.
The remaining criticisms are based on the results of "limited choice" or "public school choice" programs, which place many restrictions on schools and families, and generally do not allow the participation of private or parochial schools. Smith and Meier (1995), for example, argue that since programs allowing parents to choose from among different public schools have failed to substantially increase student learning, the same should be expected of an unregulated market. The experience with heavily regulated parental choice in the Netherlands (Brown, 1992; Elmore, 1990) is also cited in arguments against the effectiveness of competition. In the United States, comparisons between existing public and private schools have led Cookson (1994) to conclude that a market would not improve education. The same author also reasons that since private schools have rarely been included in choice programs, there is insufficient evidence to support free market educational reform.
The Case in Favor
Virtually all of the criticisms discussed above have been disputed by proponents of parental choice. Members of the minority groups assumed to be incompetent or uninterested in their children's education are foremost in defending their ability and prerogative to choose. State representative Polly Williams (1994), herself an African-American single parent, championed a private school choice plan in Milwaukee Wisconsin on the grounds that public schooling had failed the urban community and that competitive private provision offered a superior education. Similar arguments have been made by Native- American educator Ben Chavis (1994). Empirical studies have shown that poor parents with limited formal education, from Massachusetts (Fossey, 1994) to the mountain villages of Nepal (Pande, 1977), can and do choose schools on rational grounds (see also U.S. Dept. of Education, 1995; Martinez et al, 1994).
Arguments that racial segregation would increase under a free market have been challenged from two different perspectives. The late James Coleman (1990) observed that racial segregation within the American public school system was greater than that among private schools. So, while the percentage of African-American students in the public sector is greater than the percentage in the private sector, public schools are more likely to be all-white or all-black than their private counterparts. Opposing the very essence of the segregation claim are educators such as Derrick Bell (1987), who believe that the freedom to create separate schools for African Americans would be a boon rather than a hardship.
The assertion that private schools might defraud parents is commonly countered with the argument that such problems exist everywhere, including public schools. The cases of East St. Louis (Schmidt, 1995) and Washington D.C. are notorious examples. Rinehart and Lee (1991) note that a competitive market would at least exert pressure on a school to deal honestly and fairly with parents in order to maintain a healthy reputation, while the public monopoly offers educators no such incentive. Along the same lines, John Coons (1991) has observed that public schooling has not engendered the external benefits of social harmony and effective democracy assumed by its defenders. The American experience of Protestant bias in the education of immigrants at the turn of the century, as well as government-enforced racial segregation, are presented as evidence of this claim. Coons also contends that by removing the coercive element from school selection and allowing parents to choose for themselves, the goal of effective democracy would be strengthened.
To resolve the issue of difficult-to-educate children, Myron Lieberman (1991), investigated the current practices among private institutions. He found that rather than focusing on easy-to-educate students, the single largest group of for-profit schools actually serves the disabled. Studies have also suggested that urban private schools are able to maintain a higher level of discipline than their public counterparts with few if any admissions requirements, and only infrequent student expulsions (Blum, 1985).
For the supporter of free markets, objections based on public school choice programs are seen as misguided. To function effectively markets require significant competition, the lure of profit-making, and a minimum of restrictions on buyers and sellers. Few if any of these criteria hold among existing choice programs (OECD, 1994), and as a result it is argued that they cannot be expected to show any significant benefits (Lieberman, 1989).
The above rebuttals aside, the economic case for an educational market rests on two main presumptions: that monopoly control of education leads to coercion, indifference to the needs of families, and stagnation in the form and content of instruction, while competition and the profit motive would lead to greater quality and efficiency. The first case has been made at both national and school levels. While inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending in U.S. public schools tripled between 1959/60 and the present (U. S. Department of Education, 1993), test scores either held constant or declined (Sowell, 1993; Boaz, 1991). Comparisons between public school administrations and those of the private Catholic sector have shown the public bureaucracy to employ as many as thirty times the number of administrators per-pupil (Boaz, 1991). On a school by school basis, Eric Hanushek (1986; 1989) studied correlations between spending and student achievement only to find that the relationship was not statistically significant. Similar results have been reported by Childs & Shakeshaft (1986). Because of the absence of any truly competitive market in education, little direct contemporary evidence is available to demonstrate its effects on efficiency or achievement. In those cases where a limited degree of competition does exist, however, Hoffer et al. (1990), Borland and Howsen (1993), and others have found small but significant positive effects. Outside the field of education, the superiority of markets to monopolies is widely accepted, and Winston (1993) has demonstrated that reductions in regulation are generally associated with lower prices and better services for consumers, and even yield higher revenues for producers.
The Present Work
As can be gleaned from the arguments cited above, the debate over a market in education has drawn almost entirely from the limited body of contemporary evidence. With the exception of E.G. West's (1994) analysis of 19th century England, the historical evidence regarding market vs. monopoly provision in education has been largely ignored. Education, however, is not a recent invention. Two and a half thousand years of schooling, from the informal to the regimented, from complete parental freedom to totalitarian domination, have preceded current practice. The study of educational history thus offers a wealth of insights into the effects of monetary incentives and centralized administration on the actions of parents and educators.
The next section looks at the educational experiences of four historical periods and places: classical Greece, Germany at the Reformation, England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and France after the Revolution. This selection is a more or less representative sample from a larger survey of the subject currently in progress. The most valuable lessons these histories have to teach us concern the relationship between school governance and school quality. In particular, they highlight the differences between markets and centralized bureaucratic school systems on three important measures of school performance: how well they respond to and satisfy the demands of parents and students (e.g. through innovation and diversity in curriculum), the degree to which they benefit their students directly (e.g. higher literacy, job/life skills), and their indirect benefits to the rest of society (e.g. thriving economy, social harmony). [...]
Having described the history of schooling in these four different contexts, it is useful to see what commonalities present themselves. In particular, it is fruitful to look back at the three measures of quality listed in the introduction, namely: responsiveness and innovation, direct benefits, and indirect benefits.
There is no question that competitive educational markets have been more responsive to the needs and demands of parents than centrally controlled, subsidized systems. This has held true whether the monolithic systems have been run and paid for by governments, as was most commonly the case, or by religious societies. In Athens, changing public demand resulted in changes to the elementary curriculum, and even led to the creation of secondary education. Spartan schooling, both due to implicit features of its organization and to the explicit wishes of its rulers, kept all innovation and progress at bay for hundreds of years. In pre- reformation Germany, it was the small private school that was first to offer instruction in the vernacular, both to adults and children. The state-run schools fostered by Luther and Melanchthon often ignored the wishes of the public, insisting on a classical course of studies useless to the common man. The same was true of England's endowed grammar schools. English Dame schools, by contrast, taught only what parents were willing to pay for, even attracting families away from the subsidized schools run by religious societies. For centuries, the most sophisticated and modern instruction in England was to be had at private secondary schools, which introduced the sciences, practical engineering and surveying techniques, naval skills, and living foreign languages. Before they were squeezed out of existence by tax-subsidized public schooling, there was simply nothing that could compare to them. In France, monitorial schools led the way in pedagogical innovation and in meeting public demands--so much so that other schools were forced to adopt their methods in order to avoid losing pupils.
In looking at the direct benefits bestowed on students by different approaches to educational organization, the clearest distinction to be found is between the practical and the pointless. Privately financed and operated schools have tended to offer programs of practical benefit to their clients, while centralized systems have taught only those subjects chosen by their founders or administrators--in most cases subjects of little value to the average member of the public. While private schools have consistently taught literacy in the vernacular of their clients for thousands of years, this has only rarely been the case in state or charity-run schools. When it was finally taught by the religious societies in England, they often deliberately omitted teaching writing. Similarly, practical training in mathematics and science has been ignored by bureaucratic school systems until quite recently, while their history dates back to the 5th century B.C. in private schools.
Perhaps the most glaring contradiction between the beliefs of modern public school advocates and the historical evidence is in the area of indirect or social benefits (also called positive externalities). Defenders of public schooling argue that only it can preserve social harmony and a sound economy, while a competitive educational market would lead to social strife and presumably economic deterioration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Government-run schools have in fact been far more coercive, and far more likely to lead to social discord than their private counterparts. Tying themselves to a single religion or ideology, public schools have often alienated all those who did not share the chosen views. When French monitorial schools encouraged the intermingling of children of different social classes, and respecting intellectual merit no matter what its source, they were actually criticized for it by the ruling powers of public schooling. When English law forbade non-conformists to teach, they taught nonetheless, privately and illegally, and generally admitted students irrespective of their religion. Because private schools allowed families the option of pursuing the particular kind of education they value, conflicts were avoided.
Whenever the state chooses one world view over all others, it places its own people into conflict with one another. This has been happening for centuries, and it continues to happen today.
What do you suppose the phrase "you have to admire their courage -- and their realism" applies to? Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan? Protesters in Iran? Nope, it applies to Republican governors who are willing to raise taxes. So said Washington Post columnist David Broder last Wednesday.
In a classic example of how not to think outside the box, Broder praised South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Alabama Governor Bob Riley who, unlike President Bush, "have chosen a different -- and more difficult -- course." When both were in Congress, they, presumably, took the easier path of opposing tax increases.
1 Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2 If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3 Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4 Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful.
5 Avoid running at all times.
6 Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.
Last Saturday night, in the sparsely populated eastern hill country of Tennessee, more than 160,000 people gathered in this small town to watch cars race around a tiny oval. It was another sold-out event for Nascar, a sports juggernaut that now rivals the NFL in popular appeal.
It's a curious thing, Nascar's massive success. In an age of watered-down appeals to the lowest common denominator and concern about offending tender sensibilities, Nascar revels in its throwback authenticity. Races showcase muscular patriotism, grease-filled masculinity, fast cars and the unembarrassed invocation of God. All that goes down very well in the Bible Belt, where Nascar has its roots. But the remarkable growth of the sport has taken Nascar to places that squirm when too many American flags are flown. Even the green-minded Pacific Northwest is a strong television market for this gas-guzzling spectacle.
Nascar's growth has created challenges as the heirs of moonshiners start to mingle with urban wine sippers. While the good-ol'-boy concept has worked so far, Nascar frets about its image. One official says there's pressure to make the annual banquet--held in foreign territory (Manhattan)--"hipper." In addition, Nascar has shed smaller, Southeastern venues in favor of races in places like Chicago, Las Vegas and California. It's even talking about building a track near New York City.
"For me, leaving some of the smaller tracks, where the fans were closer to the action and there's more history, is a loss," says Robert Johnson, dean of the Lee College of Engineering at UNC-Charlotte, home to a motor-sports engineering program that attracts students from around the nation. "But at the same time, this is a sport, despite its incredible growth, that still provides access to the stars. It's hard to meet a pro football player, but these drivers are accessible, and they'll talk to you."
Still, it's not just the intimate aura of the sport. Nascar's growth coincides with a larger trend: The reincorporation of the South into the broader American idea. And to that end, Nascar finds itself rubbing off on the broader culture as much as it is trying to adapt to its broader fan base.
The legend of Junior Johnson! In this legend, here is a country boy, Junior Johnson, who learns to drive by running whiskey for his father, Johnson, Senior, one of the biggest copper-still operators of all time, up in Ingle Hollow, near North Wilkesboro, in northwestern North Caro- lina, and grows up to be a famous stock car racing driver, rich, grossing $100,000 in 1963, for example, respected, solid, idolized in his hometown and throughout the rural South. There is all this about how good old boys would wake up in the middle of the night in the apple shacks and hear a supercharged Oldsmobile engine roaring over Brushy Mountain and say, "Listen at him-there he goes!" although that part is doubtful, since some nights there were so many good old boys taking off down the road in supercharged automobiles out of Wilkes County, and running loads to Charlotte, Salisbury, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, or wherever, it would be pretty hard to pick out one. It was Junior Johnson specifically, however, who was famous for the "bootleg turn" or "about-face," in which, if the Alcohol Tax agents had a roadblock up for you or were too close behind, you threw the car up into second gear, cocked the wheel, stepped on the accelerator and made the car's rear end skid around in a complete 180-degree arc, a complete about-face, and tore on back up the road exactly the way you came from. God! The Alcohol Tax agents used to burn over Junior Johnson. Practically every good old boy in town in Wilkesboro, the county seat, got to know the agents by sight in a very short titne. They would rag them practically to their faces on the sub- ject of Junior Johnson, so that it got to be an obsession. Finally, one night they had Junior trapped on the road up toward the bridge around Millersville, there's no way out of there, they had the barricades up and they could hear this souped-up car roaring around the bend, and here it comes-but suddenly they can hear a siren and see a red light flashing in the grille, so they think it's another agent, and boy, they run out like ants and pull those barrels and boards and sawhorses out of the way, and then-GgghEzzzzzzzhhhhhhggggggzzzzzzzeeeeeong! -gawdam! there he goes again, it was him, Junior Johnson! with a gawdam agent's si-reen and a red light in his grille!
I wasn't in the South five minutes before people started making oaths, having visions, telling these hulking great stories, all on the subject of Junior Johnson. At the Greensboro, North Carolina, Airport there was one good old boy who vowed he would have eaten "a bucket of it" if that would have kept Junior Johnson from switching from a Dodge racer to a Ford. Hell yes, and after that-God-almighty, remember that 1963 Chevrolet of Junior's? Whatever happened to that car? A couple of more good old boys join in. A good old boy, I ought to explain, is a generic term in the rural South referring to a man, of any age, but more often young than not, who fits in with the status system of the region. It usually means he has a good sense of humor and enjoys ironic jokes, is tolerant and easygoing enough to get along in long conversations at places like on the corner, and has a reasonable amount of physical courage. The term is usually heard in some such form as: "Lud? He's a good old boy from over at Crozet." These good old boys in the airport, by the way, were in their twenties, except for one fellow who was a cabdriver and was about forty-five, I would say. Except for the cabdriver, they all wore neo-Brummellian clothes such as Lacoste tennis shirts, Slim Jim pants, windbreakers with the collars turned up, "fast" shoes of the winkle-picker genre, and so on. I mention these details just by way of pointing out that very few grits, Iron Boy overalls, clodhoppers or hats with ventilation holes up near the crown enter into this story. Anyway, these good old boys are talking about Junior Johnson and how he has switched to Ford. This they unani- mously regard as some kind of betrayal on Johnson's part. Ford, it seems, they regard as the car symbolizing the established power struc- ture. Dodge is kind of a middle ground. Dodge is at least a challenger, not a ruler. But the Junior Johnson they like to remember is the Junior Johnson of 1963, who took on the whole field of NASCAR ( National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) Grand National racing with a Chevrolet. All the other drivers, the drivers driving Fords, Mercurys, Plymouths, Dodges, had millions, literally millions when it is all added up, millions of dollars in backing from the Ford and Chrysler Cor- porations. Junior Johnson took them all on in a Chevrolet without one cent of backing from Detroit. Chevrolet had pulled out of stock car racing. Yet every race it was the same. It was never a question of whether anybody was going to outrun Junior Johnson. It was just a question of whether he was going to win or his car was going to break down, since, for one thing, half the time he had to make his own racing parts. God! Junior Johnson was like Robin Hood or Jesse James or Little David or something. Every time that Chevrolet, No. 3, appeared on the track, wild curdled yells, "Rebel" yells, they still have those, would rise up. At Daytona, at Atlanta, at Charlotte, at Darlington, South Carolina; Bristol, Tennessee; Martinsville, Virginia-Junior Johnson!
And then the good old boys get to talking about whatever happened to that Chevrolet of Junior's, and the cabdriver says he knows. He says Junior Johnson is using that car to run liquor out of Wilkes County. What does he mean? For Junior Johnson ever to go near another load of bootleg whiskey again-he would have to be insane. He has this huge racing income. He has two other businesses, a whole automated chicken farm with 42,000 chickens, a road-grading business -but the cabdriver says he has this dream Junior is still roaring down from Wilkes County, down through the clay cuts, with the Atlas Arc Lip jars full in the back of that Chevrolet. It is in Junior's blood-and then at this point he puts his right hand up in front of him as if he is groping through fog, and his eyeballs glaze over and he looks out in the distance and he describes Junior Johnson roaring over the ridges of Wilkes County as if it is the ghost of Zapata he is describing, bound- ing over the Sierras on a white horse to rouse the peasants.
A stubborn notion! A crazy notion! Yet Junior Johnson has followers who need to keep him, symbolically, riding through nighttime like a demon. Madness! But Junior Johnson is one of the last of those sports stars who is not just an ace at the game itself, but a hero a whole people or class of people can identify with. Other, older examples are the way Jack Dempsey stirred up the Irish or the way Joe Louis stirred up the Negroes. Junior Johnson is a modern figure. He is only thirty-three years old and still racing. He should be compared to two other sports heroes whose cultural impact is not too well known. One is Antonino Rocca, the professional wrestler, whose triumphs mean so much to New York City's Puerto Ricans that he can fill Madison Square Garden, despite the fact that everybody, the Puerto Ricans included, knows that wrestling is nothing but a crude form of folk theatre. The other is Ingemar Johanssen, who had a tremendous meaning to the Swedish masses-they were tired of that old king who played tennis all the time and all his friends who keep on drinking Cointreau behind the screen of socialism. Junior Johnson is a modern hero, all involved with car culture and car symbolism in the South. A wild new thing-
Wild-gone wild, Fireball Roberts' Ford spins out on the first turn at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, spinning, spinning, the spin seems almost like slow motion-and then it smashes into the wooden guard- rail. It lies up there with the frame bent. Roberts is all right. There is a new layer of asphalt on the track, it is like glass, the cars keep spin- ning off the first turn. Ned Jarrett spins, smashes through the wood. "Now, boys, this ice ain't gonna get one goddamn bit better, so you can either line up and qualify or pack up and go home-"
It is high time for a basic shift in approach: We must let Iraqis run most operations and openly take responsibility for them.
Once that happens, if there is not enough work, water or electricity to go around, Iraqis no longer will be able to blame us. If a water main or an oil pipeline blows up, it will be their own new government that is undermined, rather than U.S. forces and credibility.
The only matters that should remain under our control are the production and acquisition of weapons and the creation of a military force. This we can do from a small number of heavily fortified encampments outside of the major cities.
This radical change, critics may say, will allow the Baath party to reassert itself. As I see it, we should be willing to live with such a side effect during a transition period, just as we allowed many Nazi officials to keep running German ministries and factories after World War II -- for a while. Moreover, de-Baathification should be left to the Iraqis. If they refuse, they will live with the consequences.
Some may say that such a policy will lead to a Taliban-like Shiite government in the country's south. We should not be scared by such predictions. As long as we make it clear that if Iraqis host terrorists we will deal with them the same way we dealt with the Taliban, then they will be most unlikely to embark on such a course. And if the Iraqis are willing to put up with such a rigid, regimented life, that is their choice. Actually, given that many Iraqis, especially in parts of the country other than the south, oppose such fundamentalism, there will be plenty of opportunities for secular and religiously moderate Iraqis -- rather than Americans -- to confront the Shiites.
And what about the growing number of foreign terrorists? They did not come to fight a truly Iraqi government -- only our handpicked one. If they tried to tangle with a homegrown government, the Iraqis would run them out of town.
Two years ago, Dallas police officers, U.S. postal authorities, and the Justice Department announced the arrests of 100 people in a global Internet child pornography ring. More than 250,000 people from 60 countries were paid subscribers, netting organizers more than $1 million a month. The bust has led to the arrests of hundreds of suspects around the world.
But comparatively few arrests have been made in Canada, even though police have the names of over two thousand suspects. Many understaffed police units have not followed up on the names and credit card numbers of the 2,300 Canadians who downloaded images advertised as child porn. Child porn generates $3 billion annually in online sales, according to a report by Internet Filters Review.
Robert Matthews of Ontario's police unit investigating child porn told the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, "Canadians produce as much or more child pornography, per capita, as any other developed country." [...]
Many Christian groups are calling for action. But they are finding inertia hard to overcome. Many Canadians consider graphic sexual content involving minors as a matter of free expression.
Dramatic subtlety has become an oxymoron in book marketing and among the reviewers who serve it, so it is not surprising that the prestigious journals that review literature didn't see anything to link these two new books. They should have.
Paul Johnson's concise and closely argued Napoleon is a biography of only 199 pages about the man who conquered most of Europe during the early years of the 19th century. It is part of the highly regarded "Penguin Lives Series" of the world's great men and women.
And, at 667 pages, Anne Applebaum's powerful and magisterial Gulag: A History isn't short at all. It is a detailed and deeply moving look at one of the 20th century's great evils, the vast network of Soviet concentration camps known as the Gulag where millions of men and women suffered, were starved and forced to do slave labor in the decades between 1917 and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.
The first of these books is set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and is about one man; the other encompasses much of the 20th century and tells the stories of millions. But in truth the two works tell us much about the same thing: the origins of modern dictatorships and the evils unleashed on the world by those dictatorships. [...]
How do the Gulag and Napoleon connect? In several ways. First, because it was Napoleon who set up the apparatus of state necessary to tyranny. Second, because of his example of ruthlessness. As Johnson points out, Napoleon's minister of police, Joseph Fouch?, "operated the world's first secret police," the prototype of the Gestapo under Adolf Hitler and in the U.S.S.R. of the secret police, known under various acronyms as the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, MVD and KGB. But under whatever name, it was the Soviet secret police who were responsible for much of the horror perpetrated in the U.S.S.R.
Napoleon's taste for mass slaughter, too, portends that of the Soviet Union. Millions died in Bonaparte's military adventures - Johnson estimates the number at between 4 million and 5 million. At Jaffa during his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon ordered the slaughter of 4,500 prisoners. The mass killing was done by bayonet or by drowning to save ammunition.
In April 1940, the NKVD murdered more than 20,000 Polish officers at Katyn on Stalin's explicit orders, shooting each man in the back of the head, Applebaum reminds us. Then he covered it up, with subsequent help in doing so from his new ally Franklin Roosevelt, claiming that the Germans committed the massacre. It wasn't until 1991 that Boris Yeltsin admitted Soviet responsibility.
Johnson sees Napoleon as the prototype of much that has happened since his death. But, behind Bonaparte, Johnson names the French Revolution as the source of Napoleon's own lawlessness and contempt for life and tradition. Napoleon fulfilled the revolution's "example and teaching," Johnson argues. What was that example and teaching? "The revolution was a lesson in the power of evil to replace idealism, and Bonaparte was its ideal pupil. Moreover, the revolution left behind itself a huge engine: administrative and legal machinery to repress the individual such as the monarch of the ancien r?gime never dreamed of; centralized power to organize national resources that no previous state had ever possessed; an absolute concentration of authority ... that had never been known before; and a universal teaching that such concentration expressed the general will of the people."
Richard Ziser, ex-chair of the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, has become the first GOPer to enter the fray following Rep. Jim Gibbons' (R-02) decision not to run against Sen. Harry Reid (D). Other possible GOPers who said they my run included Sec/State Dean Heller, Treas. Brian Krolicki, LG Lorraine Hunt and Realtor Jack Woodcock (AP, 8/27).
Ralston Report's Ralston writes on "all these trial balloons floating by musers and poseurs alike." Ralston takes a "quick look at" the GOP "constitutional officers, who get mentioned" as Reid challengers "just because they have run statewide."
AG Brian Sandoval "would never leave so soon after being elected to his first term. He has patience."
Heller "wanted Gibbons' congressional seat. The most viable. He is really looking at it. Has personal considerations -- four kids, including one just starting college -- in four schools. Very supportive spouse. Will decide within two months. Won't run to lose just to acquire more name recognition. Will see if party" in NV and DC "will support him."
The characters that spilled out of Kirby's pen are not confined to the DC books or to the astonishing run that Marvel Comics had in the 1960's. In some cases Kirby pasted his characters over photo collages, furthering the Pop Art homage paid to him by Roy Lichtenstein. He also made a template in the 1940's by creating Captain America with Joe Simon.
In "The Great Comic Book Heroes," Jules Feiffer summarized the appeal of Kirby's 1940 comic books, a style that took on a smooth and magnetic elan: "Muscles stretched magically, foreshortened shockingly. Legs were never less than four feet apart when a punch was thrown. Every panel was a population explosion--casts of thousands: all fighting, leaping, falling, crawling."
Mr. Chabon agreed with Mr. Feiffer's assessment. "He could make the comics panel seem too small to contain the stories he was telling," he said. "What I loved about him then, and continue to admire about him now, was that sense of the inexhaustibility of his imagination in every issue of whatever comic he happened to be working on. He worked all over the place his entire career and would just fill each one with 15 great ideas for a story and just push them all into the same book together. And then the next issue would come out, and he'd have 15 more."
Three members of a suburban Virginia group that federal prosecutors say was training to wage Islamic war abroad, notably in India, have pleaded guilty to weapons charges, and administration officials said today that they planned to expand their investigation into the group. [...]
One of the three who pleaded guilty on Monday, Yong Ki Kwan, admitted to a federal judge that he had trained with firearms at the camp of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan in preparation for a possible mission abroad on behalf of an Islamic political cause.
Another defendant who pleaded guilty, Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, acknowledged visiting the camp. His lawyer, Thomas Abbenante of Washington, said in a statement that Mr. Hasan regretted his actions, which were out of character and the result of "youthful indiscretion and his being persuaded by the preaching of a misguided Islamic cleric," an apparent reference to Mr. Timini.
The third defendant who pleaded guilty on Monday, Donald T. Surratt, did not travel to Pakistan but admitted having transported weapons used in terrorist training.
The guilty pleas were especially satisfying to the Justice Department because a federal judge had criticized the indictments as weak and sought to release some of the defendants on bail. At the time of the June indictment, many experts in civil liberties denounced the investigation as harassment of Muslims who simply liked to play paintball together.
As Israel-Palestinian mutual military and political violence increases, we are likely to see the most visible consequences of this within Palestinian society. The tensions between President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas are the most obvious, but not the only, signs of this. Two prevailing Palestinian power structures are slowly falling apart - the one established 40 years ago when Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and others in the mid-1960s founded Fatah and quickly took control of the Palestinian national movement after the 1967 war debacle, and the more recent self-governing Palestinian National Authority that was established after the 1993 Oslo accords, also dominated by Fatah and its partners. Both these Palestinian leaderships are slowly collapsing in a heap of unfulfilled expectations and self-inflicted incompetence.
These problems are not the sole making of the Palestinians. Israel has been miserly and inconsistent in agreeing to a fair and comprehensive peace based on ending its colonization of occupied Palestinian lands. It has consistently made progress toward a negotiated two-state solution dependent primarily on Israel’s a priori demand for ironclad security, rather than the more politically realistic attempt to fulfill Palestinian and Israeli security requirements simultaneously.
The United States is also an erratic third-party mediator. Its occasional dramatic gesture (President George W. Bush’s June trip to the region) is negated by two chronic failures: It has not used its power to push both sides to implement the peace-making dynamics that it has fostered and, more often than not, it lands closer to the Israeli than the Palestinian side on key controversies (e.g.: Washington just signed a $9 billion loan guarantees foreign aid package with Israel without carrying through on its recent threat to deduct from it part of the cost of Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank; and it has been much more explicitly understanding of Israel’s security concerns and right to retaliate and protect itself than it has been of the corresponding Palestinian viewpoint). The other “Quartet” sponsors of the current “road map” peace plan - Russia, the EU, the UN - seem to have washed their hands of the matter or are on an extended political vacation.
The US and Israel gambled when they pressured the Palestinians to name Abbas as prime minister. His impossible mission comprised the American-Israeli demand to crack down on Palestinian terror and legitimate armed resistance against Israel and the Palestinian popular demand to end the Israeli occupation. Abbas has not satisfied any of his four key constituencies - the Palestinians under occupation, the other 4 million Palestinian refugees abroad, the Israelis, and Washington.
Abbas will struggle now to dig himself out of this hole, where his failure to deliver translates quickly into irrelevance and oblivion. The Americans and Israelis hand-picked him in haste, and will drop him just as swiftly if he proves useless to them.
Dean leads Kerry 38 percent to 17 percent in the Zogby International poll of likely primary voters conducted this week. Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, led in New Hampshire earlier this year, with a 26 percent to 13 percent advantage in February. The two candidates were essentially tied in a poll by Zogby in June.
Judge Roy Moore, the publicity-seeker who put the 2.5-ton Ten Commandments in the Alabama state courthouse, declared Monday that he could disobey the direct order of a federal judge because "judges do not make laws, they interpret them." Since, Moore continued, an interpretation can be wrong, therefore he may defy a judicial order. So presumably Judge Moore also thinks that if he sentences a man to prison, the man can declare that the interpretation might be wrong and walk free? It's exactly the same logic.
Moore further said that the First Amendment precept, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion," does not apply to him because "I am not Congress." Drag this incompetent lunatic out of the court quickly, please. Anyone with entry-level knowledge of Constitutional law knows that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was intended to extend the Bill of Rights to state governments; that a 1937 Supreme Court decision specifically declared that the First Amendment binds state officials like Judge Moore.
It is common knowledge that the militant Pakistani organization Sipah-e-Sahaba, that is accused of targeted killing of Shi'ites, has for years been financed by the Wahhabi rulers of Saudi Arabia. Iran is said to be financing Tehrike-Nifaze-Fiqhe-Jafria, a militant Shi'ite organization in Pakistan. These two organizations have kept fanning the flames of growing Shi'ite-Sunni enmity in Pakistan.
As for the Arab world, renowned US-based Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr says, "A great deal of money and effort has been spent in the last few years to fan the fire of hatred between Shi'ites and Sunnis in the Persian Gulf region, with obvious political and economic fruits for the powers-to-be."
It was not too long ago that Arabs conferred "near-unanimous legitimacy" to Saddam's invasion of Iran in the 1980s on the specious plea that the growing Shi'ite power in the neighborhood was a danger to the Sunni Arab rulers of the Gulf region. The eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, that did more than anything else to widen the Shi'ite-Sunni divide, was supported to the hilt by the Western powers.
It is this unholy alliance of secular Arab nationalism of Saddam's Iraq, the Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia and Western imperialism with its massive media resources that has created the present perception of a vast Shi'ite-Sunni divide. It is not for nothing that the Western media seldom mention an Iraqi as Muslim. There are no Muslims in Iraq, only Shi'ites, Sunnis or Kurds; just as there were no Muslims in Kosovo, only ethnic Albanians.
The fact that the widely predicted Shi'ite backlash against the decades-long Sunni domination of Iraq has not materialized may mean that the imperialist project of divide and rule has not succeeded in that country, at least so far. Now it is for Shi'ites and Sunnis in other parts of the world to build on the Iraqi example and seek to bridge the gulf separating the two sects to promote harmony and peace undeterred by the bigotry of extremists and the machinations of imperialist powers.
The White House collaborated heavily with corporations in developing President Bush's energy policy but repeatedly refused to give congressional investigators details of the meetings, according to a federal report issued yesterday.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in the report that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham privately discussed the formulation of Bush's policy "with chief executive officers of petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical and natural gas companies, among others."
An energy task force, led by Vice President Cheney, relied for outside advice primarily on "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists," while seeking limited input from academic experts, environmentalists and policy groups, the GAO said.
John Hinckley, 48, has been confined to secure wards in St Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington for more than 20 years after being found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity, but could soon be released without supervision.
After making several visits, accompanied by psychiatric staff, to bowling alleys, bookshops, cinemas and the beach over the past three years, Hinckley has applied for 10 unsupervised visits to his parents' home in Virginia, including five overnight stays.
In court documents, Hinckley's lawyer, Barry Levine, stated: "It is undisputed that Mr Hinckley's psychosis and depression have been in full remission and that he has shown no symptoms thereof for over a decade.
"Mr Hinckley does not pose a risk of danger to himself or others now or in the reasonable future." [...]
Several of Hinckley's day trips around Washington have been with Leslie deVeau, a former patient at St Elizabeth's who was found not guilty by reason of insanity of the murder of her 10-year-old daughter, Erin, in 1982. [...]
Previous applications for release were withdrawn due to Hinckley's obsession with the actress Jodie Foster. In 1987, he was discovered with 20 photos of Foster, with whom he had become fixated after seeing her in the film Taxi Driver.
He was also found to have corresponded with the serial killer Ted Bundy and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1985.
As the Legislature ended its second special session on congressional redistricting today, all the players in the partisan standoff geared up to take their battle to a Laredo courtroom on Wednesday.
But within hours of the session's end, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a ruling that raised new questions about whether the courts will have any authority to settle the dispute.
The ruling found that the Senate did not need pre-clearance from the Justice Department to get rid of an internal rule that requires two-thirds of senators to sign off on any legislation.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had waived that rule to clear the way for a new congressional map that would likely give Republicans a majority in the state's 32-member congressional delegation. The map is supported by a majority of state senators, but not two-thirds.
Senate Democrats - who left the state to break the Senate's quorum and kill the map - sued in federal court, saying Dewhurst had violated the federal Voting Rights Act by changing the chamber's rules to draw a new map that will affect minority voters.
"Our analysis indicates that the practice in question is an internal legislative parliamentary rule or practice - not a change affecting voting - and therefore is not subject to the preclearance requirement," Joseph Rich, chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil rights division wrote to state officials.
Federal law requires changes to voting patterns or districts in southern states to be considered by the Justice Department before taking effect to ensure that minorities' voting rights are protected.
In Germany, a nonprofit organization makes a child's right to vote the centerpiece of its agenda. The German Family Association says giving children the right to vote would force politicians to pay more attention to the younger generation and lead to policies that could reverse the country's dropping birth rate.
Politicians in the Middle East and the United States agree on one thing: The occupation of Iraq will shape how America is viewed in the infamous "Arab street." But any examination of public opinion in the region should begin by discarding this misleading cliche.
The Arab street is inaccurate, disrespectful and obstructive to U.S. efforts to engage the Middle East. There is no monolithic Arab street stewing with a singular hatred of the United States; the populations of 18 different countries and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories do not think as one group.
It suggests a mob mentality; even when France is frustrating we don't decry the "French street." It is simply hypocritical to talk of public opinion at home and ethnic streets overseas.
Defenders say the term emphasizes the gap between Arab dictators and their citizens. But it is precisely those rulers who advance the impression that the "street" may erupt at any moment (even as they control information and limit expression). This is the most dangerous part of perpetuating the "street" fiction: It feeds the scare tactics of dictators in the Middle East.
Some of the very people who are attacking the Patriot Act on civil libertarian grounds are raising questions as to whether Attorney General John Ashcroft has the right to lobby in its favor.
Here's an idea for a new slogan: Free speech -- Ashcroft need not apply.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Ashcroft that speeches he delivered in U.S. cites to boost the besieged Patriot Act appeared to conflict with congressional rules regarding "publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." Conyers objected to Ashcroft's goal of setting the record straight on the USA Patriot Act -- that is, correcting the anti-Patriot Act propaganda -- and suggested that Ashcroft "desist from further speaking engagements" until he could establish that what he was doing was legit. (DOJ attorneys disagree with Conyers' interpretation.)
In a press release, the American Civil Liberties Union "questioned" the Department of Justice's "use of public money to counter broad public concern about the expansive surveillance powers of the law."
Note that both Conyers and the ACLU object to Ashcroft speaking out. If he had agreed with them, if he were not a dissident on their issue, apparently there would be no problem.
Many in the West think, or used to think, that the problem of violence in the Middle East lay within Islam itself. Jihad and Islam were, and are, seen as the same thing. There is no doubt that there is a strain of violence within Muslim culture, as there was a strain of violence within medieval culture, and within many tribal cultures. And my studies convince me that some elements of the legal tradition in Islam held by some particular writers can work to validate atavistic violence: the death penalty for apostasy, the prohibitions against blasphemy, the (otherwise normally appropriate) constraints on certain sexual activities, the approval of slavery, and the sometime legal degradation of religious minorities.
But what the recent bombing attacks in Israel and Baghdad show is that the enemy in the Middle East is not Islam, or at least the mainline tradition of Islam, but Fascism. The Baathists are overt Fascists, but so are Hamas and Hezbollah. Sometimes this brutal strain of Fascism wears an Islamic mask, but it is still in its essence the same kind of Fascist totalitarianism that ruined Europe, the same kind of Fascist/Communist totalitarianism that ruined Russia and China, and wounded Africa and Latin America. It is the Fascism that made the Holocaust in Europe and would do so again in the Middle East if it could.
The mask it wears, however, is important. In Germany, Fascism wore the mask of maintaining a rich cultural tradition, and seemed more valid because generations of intellectuals had accepted Social Darwinism. In Russia, Communism wore the mask of humanitarian concern for the worker and the poor, and it seemed more valid because generations of intellectuals had accepted the class dichotomies of Fabian Socialism and Progressivism. In the Middle East, Fascist terrorism tries to wear the mask of Islam, and it seems more valid to many because of its surface connection to a deeply held faith.
To hear the gubernatorial candidates talk about it, you'd think California has become a Third World nation, a Bangladesh where people wear a lot of spandex. As the would-be governors pitch their wares for the Oct. 7 recall, they tell the same bedtime story: How the California dream has turned into a nightmare.
Yet their gloomy scenarios may be a bit melodramatic, even by California standards. True, the state is facing a serious budget problem and, like the rest of the nation, is struggling to pull itself out of an economic hole.
But the economy here is doing better than many states, and California still has some built-in strengths that others don't. Successes like Electronic Arts or Lockheed Corp. - busy building 100 C-17 military cargo planes in Long Beach - were created by a hothouse of growth ingredients that only California can serve up: a pool of educated workers, prestigious universities, great weather, entrepreneurial vigor, and a walletfull of venture capital.
It's the formula generating a $1.36 trillion economy - the fifth largest in the world. It draws 40 percent of the nation's venture capital to the state and has helped create an explosive housing market as well as awaken the slumbering high-tech industry.
It's gathering momentum despite the continued effects from the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a national economic downturn, the impact of the SARS epidemic on state travel and business, and the effects of the Iraq war.
"The Americans said they came ... to liberate Iraq from the former regime and promised to help us stand up again and reconstruct the country," says Salah al-Ezzi, a doctor who presides over one of Iraq's many tribes from a verdant, palm-fringed yard in a village an hour outside of central Baghdad. Four months later, he continues, Iraqis instead face arrests and checkpoints. "They don't pay any respect to the people," he says of the Americans.
Dr. Ezzi's views may be partly the product of impatience. It has been a year and eight months since the US toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and general elections there are still 10 months away. It took US occupation authorities in post-World War II Japan more than a year and a half to hold elections. Postwar Germany was occupied by the allies in June 1945, with the first zone elections in 1946, and the first West German parliamentary vote held only in August 1949. [...]
Council member Mowaffak al-Rubaie says the US is pushing too fast toward a democratic system. "I personally feel the Americans are rushing us toward democracy," says Dr. Rubaie ruing the absence of a "democratic culture" in the country. [...]
Rubaie credits Bremer and his colleagues for appointing the members of the Council in a way that reflects Iraq's sectarian and ethnic diversity. "Show me one component of the Iraqi community that is not represented here," Rubaie says.
Others aren't so pleased. "You're dissecting the country," says Mudhar Showkat, a senior member of the Iraqi National Congress, a group formed in exile that has advocated speedy elections and a quick return to Iraqi sovereignty. He argues that the allocation of seats according to background sets a dangerous precedent. "You're building up something that will lead to a clash as it did in Lebanon," he warns, citing a country where complex formulas for apportioning power devolved into years of civil war.
When California lawmakers voted in 1999 to approve legislation giving state employees more generous retirement benefits and opening the door to a round of big increases in local government pensions, only a handful of legislators opposed the bill.
One of them was then-Assemblyman Tom McClintock.
A couple of years later, when both houses of the Legislature overwhelmingly approved a rich new contract for state prison guards, giving them a 35 percent increase over five years, there was even less resistance. Just one lawmaker voted no. It was McClintock, who was by then a state senator.
Both bills became law and today stand as monuments to the worst excesses of the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis. They also could be exhibits A and B in McClintock's campaign for governor in the recall election, vivid examples of how things would be different if he won on Oct. 7.
"Governor McClintock could have stopped both of those, and would have," the Ventura County Republican told me in a recent interview.
The pension bill is costing taxpayers more than $500 million a year, with the ripple effects on local government probably at least that big and still growing. The tab for the prison guards' contract, when fully implemented, has been estimated at upwards of $600 million annually by the non-partisan legislative analyst. Alone the two actions account for more than 10 percent of the structural gap between spending and revenues in the state budget.
McClintock, 47, believes that bills such as those are only the start of the problem. He has cast himself as the one candidate capable of taking on what he calls the "spending lobby" of interest groups, a loose and ever-changing coalition of public employee unions and advocates for the services they provide.
President Bush defended his policy on Iraq today, declaring that the United States had struck a blow against terrorism in overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein. And Mr. Bush said the United States might carry out other pre-emptive strikes.
"No nation can be neutral in the struggle between civilization and chaos,'' Mr. Bush told members of the American Legion gathered in St. Louis for the group's convention.
"We've adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war,'' Mr. Bush said, to loud applause. "We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them in their camps or caves or wherever they hide, before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens.''
"We will do everything in our power to deny terrorists weapons of mass destruction before they can commit murder on an unimaginable scale,'' Mr. Bush said. "The security of this nation, and our friends, requires decisive action, and with a broad coalition, we're taking that action around the globe. We are on the offensive against terror, and we will stay on the offensive against terror.''
The president also repeated his vision of a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel. But he added, "A Palestinian state will never be built on the foundation of violence,'' and he said organizations that helped to finance Middle East terrorism under the guise of charitable giving must be thwarted.
A PAGE-ONE Washington Post article summed up this week's conventional wisdom perfectly: "The president no longer enjoys the aura of invincibility that surrounded him only a few months ago . . . Democrats especially have re-evaluated his presidency and concluded that, on the issues now dominating the political debate, Bush does not have the upper hand."
Only one problem: The article by Dan Balz and Dana Milbank was published a year ago - on Aug. 11, 2002.
Its thesis was that President Bush's standing had faded after 9/11, that he was vulnerable, and that the White House was getting scared.
It's déjà vu all over again. [...]
The August madness of 2002 is not exactly the same as the current hysteria. Bush's polls are worse; 9/11 is almost two years in the past, and the post-war situation in Iraq is nervous-making and difficult.
But it's August. August means Bush and his staff have gone on vacation - they're working, and fund-raising, but they are not generally speaking playing offense.
They'll be back, with bells on, after Labor Day - as they were last year, when Bush went to New York on the anniversary of 9/11 and then, the very next day, confronted the United Nations with the necessity of challenging Iraq's defiance.
Meantime, let's get serious.
[L]et me unmince a few words about one of the local sacred cows, a cow I have tended carefully over the last decade. We don't have a faculty taught core. It's more so than elsewhere, and maybe it's better designed than elsewhere, but it's not truly faculty taught. Our humanities core was cut--I was there, my friends--because the faculty involved no longer wished to teach it. They don't believe in teaching students about values. According to what many of them write, they're not really clear whether they have any values themselves. They're not sure what they want to teach (although they'd certainly like to teach it in Paris rather than Chicago). The social sciences core is sometimes thought to be a little healthier intellectually--that's the shibboleth of me and my fellow social scientists--but still a good half the social science faculty avoid teaching in it. The reality of the curricular wars here is that many faculty would like to settle into the fatuous routine of lecture courses, disguised as very-much-needed surveys, in which they can do less work. Most faculty here secretly think it a waste of time for eminent academics with planet-wide reputations like theirs to be at the same time teaching somewhat randomly chosen elite 18-year-olds how to write a paragraph of prose. Surely somebody else can do that.
The clerics who hold sway over Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority are locked in a violent power struggle pitting the older, established ayatollahs counseling patience with the occupation against a younger, more militant faction itching to found an Islamic state. [...]
The tense standoff, as described by clerics from both factions, is playing out among the twisting alleyways of this holy seat, a battle for the leadership of Iraq's Shiite community, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's population of about 25 million.
In one corner sit the senior ayatollahs clustered around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, all betting that it is only a matter of time before the United States delivers a democratic state that the Shiites can dominate through sheer numbers.
Arrayed against them are more activist opponents of the American-led occupation who back Moktada al-Sadr and who believe that Shiites should aggressively pursue an Islamic state modeled on clerical rule in Iran.
"It goes back in history to two distinct lines in Muslim and particularly Shiite thought," said Sheik Shaibani, a 33-year-old cleric who runs the Islamic court in Najaf in defiance of the elder clergy.
"There are those who say you must undertake jihad in times of oppression, and those who say we must stay silent until the reappearance of the Mahdi," he said, referring to the Shiite savior.
Although not calling for an outright holy war, the young clerics hint at the possibility.
In the winter of 1989, a son was born to Rabbi and Mrs. Baruch Rabinowitz of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. The child, Nota Shlomo, was born with Down Syndrome.
In the years that followed, Rabbi Avraham Pam, dean of Brooklyn's Mesivta Torah Vodaath, one of America's premiere institutions of higher Jewish learning and one of this generation's greatest Torah luminaries, developed a deep attachment to the child. He also agreed to act as Nota Shlomo's sandak, godfather
When Nota Shlomo was past the age of four, his father began taking him to shul (synagogue) on Shabbes (Sabbath) at the rabbinical school. Nota Shlomo did not disturb the praying; instead, he would circle the perimeter of the Torah Vodaath sanctuary with quick steps, again and again. Someone suggested that perhaps this was not in keeping with k'vod hatefilla (respect for prayer). Rabbi Pam disagreed. "Perhaps this is his way of praying," he said, for he perceived that Nota Shlomo possessed a lofty neshoma (soul). "If it's not really disturbing, we should not stop him."
Sometimes during prayer, Nota Shlomo would place himself to the right of the aron kodesh (holy ark) with a Tehillim (Psalms) in hand and shake to and fro, lift both his hands upward and make sounds as if he was praying. Rabbi Pam mentioned this in a public address, and commented that one cannot know what such a child accomplished with his "prayer." Similarly, when Nota Shlomo hurried to open the aron kodesh prior to the Torah reading, Rabbi Pam remarked that, certainly it was of great significance for the congregation that he was the one performing this honor, though what Heavenly ramifications this has is beyond us.
A REUTERS cameraman was deliberately killed by US troops after he filmed them digging a mass grave, his brother claims.
[N]azmi Dana said: "The US troops killed my brother in cold blood.
"Mazen told me by phone a few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by US troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks.
"US forces knowingly killed him to prevent him from airing his finding."
IBD: How exactly is immigration changing California?
[Victor Davis] Hanson: It used to be done in a way that was legal and measured, and allowed the natural process of assimilation to work pretty well.
But since about 1975, the number of the people who are coming has grown. And we, the host country, have given up on assimilation and allowed separatism to occur in our schools. The result is that we are creating an amoral apartheid society. [...]
IBD: Is assimilation in fact occurring?
Hanson: It is. I make that clear in my book. There is a powerful engine for that in popular culture, whether it is the Williams sisters or Tiger Woods or Jennifer Lopez. People of all different races are intermarrying. They have the same taste in television and in movies.
But the schools are promoting a multicultural separatist ideology — whether it's bilingual education or separate graduation ceremonies. We are in a race between the powers of assimilation and the powers of separatism.
That is the issue at the heart of it. We just need people to come in from Mexico in a little smaller numbers and through a legal process, so we can assimilate them legally.
IBD: Many free-market economists say the benefits of mass immigration outweigh the costs. What do you think?
Hanson: One thing I've noticed is that each side tries to produce statistics that refute the other. It's hard to adjudicate which body of evidence is correct.
My feeling is that the contribution of unskilled labor to the overall GDP of the U.S. is rather small. But it's very important to localized sectors like restaurants, building and agriculture within the Southwest.
It's a sad commentary on California when you have a 9% unemployment rate in many counties and the employers are saying nobody will work and they have to bring in people from Mexico. [...]
IBD: So this is primarily a matter of changing the political process?
Hanson: It has to start with a dialogue. Those on the open borders-corporate-libertarian side have precluded debate by demonizing people as nativist, protectionist or Neanderthal. They work hand in glove with the racial left, which demonizes people as racist. Between the two, they have precluded almost all debate on it.
IBD: Do we need stuff like English-only laws?
Hanson: We've never needed them before. We just need to revert back to what we used to do: encourage them to learn English.
Latinos aren't wealthy - most families earn less than $40,000 a year - but they are staunchly optimistic. Sixty percent think the economy will be better in a year. Almost 75% believe their children's lives will be better than their own.
The majority put assimilation ahead of diversity - 51.2% hope for greater assimilation. Less than 40% support "keeping [their] own culture, even if it means staying somewhat separate from the rest of American society."
Neither are Latinos inclined to see themselves as victims. Asked about the main barrier to success in the U.S., a large plurality listed language.
Almost 70% could think of no instance in the past year in which they suffered ethnic or racial discrimination. Just 3.7% regard bias as the most important problem they face.
Fully 85.5% say that affirmative action should be based more on need than on race. Among potential Democratic primary voters, the Rev. Al Sharpton got just 1.8%.
Politically, a majority of Latinos call themselves conservative or moderate, and this is evident in their social and economic views. Fifty-six percent favor government vouchers for private or church schools. A similar number support tax cuts for individuals and businesses. Less than 7% want to raise taxes to increase government spending. Although twice as many Latinos identify with the Democratic Party as with the GOP, these are unmistakably Republican positions. [...]
Seen through the prism of this poll, Hispanics appear to be less a group of disaffected minority voters than a fairly typical community of Catholic immigrants. A generation ago, the Republicans converted working-class Italian-, Polish- and Irish-Americans into Reagan Democrats. This year, they will be trying to repeat the act, in Spanish.
In his latest book, For the Glory of God, Stark maintains that the extraordinary scientific and mathematical achievements of Newton and his contemporaries were in fact a direct consequence of their Christian beliefs. The so-called European Scientific Revolution, therefore, was a coherent rational development, driven by faith, and grew directly out of the strenuously rational theology of the medieval Church. [...]
Stark's argument is driven by the belief that "whether we like it or not, people acting for the glory of God have been a dramatic force for cultural change." It is hard to see why he should consider this view to be provocative. Most of us would concede that strong conviction drives those who aspire to alter the world in which they live. The case Stark goes on to make, however, is deliberately contentious. He claims that both enlightenment and bigotry are undertaken "for the glory of God." There is also something calculatedly obtuse about Stark's insistence that we ought to applaud the Church for its motivating rationality, while he freely admits that the officials of the established churches of the day were responsible for vigorously persecuting those who held beliefs incompatible with doctrine. Similarly, his apologetic claims that the witch-hunts resulted in far fewer deaths than conventionally claimed by historians and that the Church "strenuously opposed" slavery long before abolitionism seem perverse on the basis of the wealth of information now assembled by historians, and woefully under-documented compared with tables and statistics he produces elsewhere.
I fear that this book has been deliberately pitched at those who would dearly like to believe that the unifying thread through European and North American progress toward modernity has been and remains an explicitly Christian set of beliefs. I base this conclusion on a section that Stark tucks into the discussion of the emergence of science and which is headed "Evolution and Religion." Here he argues with characteristic directness that the hostility of Christianity to evolutionary theory derives from shortcomings within that theory, rather than from any more general difficulty the church may have had historically with science. Darwinism, he maintains, is not actually a theory at all but rather a set of surmises. Problems with evolutionary theory have been "hushed up." A recent survey of biologists found that 45 percent "acknowledged that the process of evolution is guided by God." In spite of his many disclaimers, stressing the even-handedness and sociological rigor of his approach, Stark appears here himself to adopt the skeptical position of the creationists.
Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last. I have finally slipped free of any form of state control. Transport, health, education, the day at work, the evening at play - the Government's great, big, dirty paw no longer messes with my day-to-day existence and my life now rattles happily along, on smooth, privately-run, rails.
Everything turns up on time. Everyone I deal with is polite. If anything goes wrong, it's only ever my fault. And, what's more, this pampered world costs less than the battered version that the state provides.
The final breaking of the bonds came when I did my back in last weekend playing tennis.
This engaging encounter with a controversial journalist exposes the twentieth century's idolatries, ideologies, and pretenses, and why they crumble after an encounter with Christ. This documentary follows Muggeridge - who embraced Catholicism in his eightieth year - to his English country estate, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum where he is immortalized, and to the Holy Land.
Sunday August 24, 7:00 PM
Tuesday August 26, 1:00 PM
Friday August 29, 3:00 AM
San Francisco's New College of California is offering something for the socially conscious this fall that they'd never get marching in the streets: a college degree in activism.
For $5,500 to $6,000 a semester, the 32-year-old Mission District school is offering bachelor's and master's humanities degrees with a concentration in "activism and social change." While schools from Vermont to Santa Cruz boast versions of do-gooding curricula, degrees in activism are hard to come by.
"Students can shape their own (activist) program at other schools," said Michael Baer, senior vice president at the American Council on Education and former provost at Northeastern University. "But to have it all together -- the theoretical and the practical -- under one roof and labeled as such is somewhat rare."
Almost as rare is New College's eclectic lineup of activist instructors, a progressive all-star team that includes tree-sitting environmentalist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, "ecofeminist witch" and author Starhawk and San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly.
Baer called the program instructors at the 800-student school accomplished and "as competent as any you'd see at a similar-sized school. The difference is, at at a larger school, you'd be exposed to wider array of different perspectives."
If humanists do indeed bring non-scientific criteria to bear when judging scientific theories, it might be objected that they do not do so in the name of humanism. If humanism is nothing more than a rational secularism, then there isn't any extra humanist ingredient against which scientific theories can be judged. However, the difficulty with this objection is precisely that it only works by setting up an equivalence between humanism and rational secularism. It is true that some people see humanism this way, but many people do not.
What then is this possible extra ingredient, properly humanist, against which the merits of scientific theories might be judged? The answer is that it is the constellation of ideas which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. These ideas include: that human beings are free, rational agents; that they are, in various ways, the source of morality; that human dignity and flourishing are important; and that there are significant common bonds between people, which unite them across biological, social and geographical boundaries. These ideas - and variations on them - are espoused in numerous humanist writings (just type 'humanism' into Google - and read at your leisure). However, the claim is not that all humanists accept all these ideas. It is rather that they are representative of a discernible and significant thread in humanist thought. Or, more strongly, it is at least arguable that if a person has no sympathy at all with these kinds of ideas, then they are not a humanist. As Kurtz and Wilson put it, in their Humanist Manifesto II: "Views that merely reject theism are not equivalent to humanism. They lack commitment to the positive belief in the possibilities of human progress and to the values central to it."
What evidence is there then that these kinds of ideas might be involved in the judgements that humanists make about scientific theories? Let's take, as an example, the article by Kenan Malik, "Materialism, Mechanism and the Human Mind", which appeared in the Autumn 2001 edition of New Humanist magazine. In this article, Malik argues that human beings are "exceptional" in that they "cannot be understood solely as natural beings". In pursuing his argument, Malik attacks "mechanistic" explanations, which reduce human beings, and the human mind, to the equivalent of sophisticated machines. He argues that this view is flawed in that it fails to recognise that humans are conscious, capable of purpose and agency. According to Malik, human beings are, in a sense, outside nature, able to work out how to overcome the constraints of biological and physical laws. In his words: "Our evolutionary heritage certainly shapes the way that humans approach the world. But it does not limit it, as it does for all other animals."
It is quite hard to make sense of this argument. For starters, the idea that the evolutionary heritage of human beings does not limit the way we approach the world is highly questionable. For example, it's hard to see how we can rule out the possibility that had our brains evolved differently, then puzzles that presently seem intractable (for example, the fact that there seems to be something that it is like to be a human being) would have long ago been solved.
But, more significantly, the whole idea that human beings are somehow outside nature is slightly odd. It seems here to amount to the claim that things like consciousness, agency and free will are real - though non-physical - and that they are, in principle, beyond scientific, or at least mechanistic, explanation. But the trouble is that Malik, in this article at least, does not argue for this position. He merely repeats what everybody already knows - that it certainly seems that we all have inner lives (and everything that entails), and it's a bit of a puzzle.
So what's at stake here? Why not draw less hard and fast conclusions about the proper domain of scientific explanation? Perhaps part of the story has to do with the spectre of anti-humanism, which seems to be in the background of all scientific attempts to get to grips with the stuff of human existence. [...]
The important point is that Malik is grappling with a tension that lies right at the heart of humanism. If a person is serious about science then they cannot, without fear of contradiction, embrace a doctrine which requires, as humanism might, that human beings have free will or that the stuff of consciousness is non-physical and causally efficacious. To escape the possibility of contradiction by asserting the truth of the kind of science or philosophy which is, in principle, anti-reductionist in its approach to humans is to allow ideology to govern scientific and philosophical commitments.
With California's recall election scheduled for Oct. 7, Gov. Gray Davis is facing the prospect of losing his own gig. His detractors say it's the budget woes, but the underlying issue is an image problem: Gray Davis is a profoundly un-funky man.
For better or worse, Davis represents the present-day face of the Democratic Party in America -- apparently humorless, wonkish, staid and distant. The party of John F. Kennedy and Jesse Jackson has turned an embarrassed cheek to its own charismatic past, preferring in recent years to cast itself as efficient, businesslike and not in any way associated with the radical longhairs some of its members may have been during the dreaded 1960s.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, once considered your father's Grand Old (and hopelessly out-of-touch) Party, are addressing middle America in their own language, which is to say, their popular culture. George Bush drives a pickup truck, hams it up with Ozzy Osbourne and speaks about world affairs in simple, homely terms so "the boys back home in Lubbock" can understand.
Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., says he's convinced he could unseat Democratic Sen. Harry Reid next year though he hasn't decided whether to try.
The four-term congressman said he intends to announce by the end of the month whether he'll run against the second-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate.
"We're very close to making a decision. We are getting the right information that we need to have," Gibbons said in an interview this week.
"One of the questions is whether or not we have the base of support and the resources to win the race," he said.
"My belief is that it would be a very winnable race. We could do it," he told The Associated Press.
Yasser Arafat appointed a new national security adviser Monday, an apparent bid to reassert control over the Palestinian security forces and undermine his prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.
Arafat is locked in a struggle over control of the Palestinian security forces with Abbas, who has Washington's backing and is under pressure to crack down on Palestinian militants following a Hamas suicide bombing last week. The bombing and Israel's fierce response has thrown the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan into turmoil.
“Anti-Americanism in France is always a magnet for the worst,” Bernard-Henri Lévy said one evening in July. He was sitting in the study of his apartment on the leafy Boulevard Saint-Germain, and even for a casual meeting he wore, as he has done in public for thirty years, an elegant uniform of black suit and open white shirt, the collar lapping over his lapels. B.H.L., as everyone calls him, who remains one of the central media figures in France, has had a great critical success with a book entitled “Qui A Tué Daniel Pearl?” (“Who Killed Daniel Pearl?”), which is, in a way, the most vivid and intensely realized of all the “pro-American” texts. It is an inquiry into the kidnapping and murder in Pakistan last year of the Wall Street Journal reporter, and will be published next month in English by Melville House Books. Unapologetically personal, the book recounts B.H.L.’s own investigation in Pakistan and India, and also in America, with sidelights on his previous campaigns in Bosnia and Bangladesh. One reason for its success in France is that it is written almost in the tone of what the French call a polar, a noirish police thriller, full of one-sentence paragraphs and portentous cliff-hangers (“He was the man who knew too much. But what did he know?”). It also attempts, on a deeper level, to paint a character portrait of the man who did kill Danny Pearl, or, at least, arranged his kidnapping: Omar Sheikh, the Islamist who was convicted in Pakistan last year. Like Mohammed Atta, he turns out to be not a barefoot wild-eyed Mahdi but a child of the West, London-raised and educated—the New Naipaulian Man, lost between two cultures, enraged at the West and mesmerized by a fantasy of Islam, only now armed with a total ideology and an A-bomb.
On a third level, “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?” is a demonstration piece, a deliberate embrace by a French intellectual of an American journalist, and a book that insists that the death of an American journalist (and one who worked for the Wall Street Journal, at that) was as important for France as for America. B.H.L.’s purely political, or forensic, conclusion is that it is naïve to speak of Al Qaeda as an independent terrorist organization. At most a band of Yemenis and Saudis, the Al Qaeda of American imagination and fears—the octopus of terrorism capable of bringing tall buildings down in a single morning—is largely controlled by the Pakistani secret service, he says, and he concludes that Pearl was kidnapped and murdered with its knowledge. Pearl was killed, B.H.L. believes, because he had come to understand too much about all of this, and particularly about “the great taboo”: that the Pakistani atomic bomb was built and is controlled by radical Islamists who intend to use it someday. (He writes that Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, the cleric whom Pearl had set out to interview when he was kidnapped, far from being a minor figure, is one of Osama bin Laden’s mentors and tutors and has a network in place in the United States. John Allen Muhammad, the Washington sniper, Lévy claims, in a detail that, if not unknown, is unpublicized in the United States, had transferred from the Nation of Islam to Gilani’s sect shortly before he began his killing spree.)
The essential conclusion of this central Parisian thinker and writer is, therefore, not that the American government ought to be more conciliatory toward the Islamic fundamentalists but that our analysis of the situation and its risks is not nearly radical enough. “I am strongly anti-anti-American, but I opposed the war in Iraq, because of what I’d seen in Pakistan,” Lévy said. “Iraq was a false target, a mistaken target. Saddam, yes, is a terrible butcher, and we can only be glad that he is gone. But he is a twentieth-century butcher--an old-fashioned secular tyrant, who made an easy but irrelevant target. His boasting about having weapons of mass destruction and then being unable to really build them or keep them is typical--he’s just a gangster, who lived by fear and for money. Saddam has almost nothing to do with the real threat. We were attacking an Iraq that was already largely disarmed. Meanwhile, in some Pakistani bazaar someone, as we speak, is trading a Russian miniaturized nuclear weapon.”
The relentless first-person address of Lévy’s new book has been mocked--“Tin-Tin in Pakistan”--but its egocentrism feels earned, and even admirable. There are three kinds of writers addicted to the first person: the kind whose “I” remains a pillar of self-reliance, supporting the text (Camus and Bruce Chatwin are both masters of this sort); the kind whose “I”s magically become “you”s (Montaigne, Thurber); and then a third, rarer kind (Mailer, Malraux), whose insistent “I”s somehow become an extended and inclusive “we,” and who, through sheer lack of embarrassment about their own self-dramatization, end up enacting the dream life of their generation. B.H.L. is, or has become, in his last three books, a writer of that kind, and of that stature.
“The real issue, which the Americans don’t see, is that the Arab Islamist threat is partly manageable,” he went on. “One can see solutions, if not easy ones, to the Israeli-Palestinian question, to the Saudi problem. The Asian Islamist threat, though, is of an entirely different dimension. There are far more people, they are far more desperate, and they have a tradition of national action. And they have a bomb. Even North Korea is less dangerous than Pakistan--a Stalinist country with a defunct ideology and a bomb is infinitely less dangerous than a country with a bomb and a new ideology in the full vigor of its first birth. That is the real nexus of the terrorism, and fussing in the desert doesn’t even begin to address it.
“The French opposition to the war was opportunist in part, rational in part, but mostly rooted in a desire not to know. What dominates France is not the presence of some anti-Americanism but an enormous absence--the absence of any belief aside from a handful of corporatist reflexes. This whole business with the intermittents is typical: it’s corporatism pursued to the point of professional suicide. All that we have to replace it with is the idea of Europe; so far, we have overcome romantic nationalism, but we have nothing left to replace it with.”
To say that Western culture is superior is not to say that any particular person living in the West is superior to any person living elsewhere. That would be ridiculous. But it is equally ridiculous to deny that the moral standards, customs and beliefs of the West contribute to fairer and far more humane societies than are found elsewhere.
We are now engaged in a mission to remake the Middle East -- to introduce democracy, the rule of law and religious pluralism. But as we undertake this task, which would be extremely difficult under the best of circumstances, we are hampered by the fact that a sizeable minority of our own people does not believe at all that our way is better. They, in fact, regard the very suggestion as obscene. Any shortcomings of more primitive societies, when they are acknowledged at all, are blamed on others, usually on us.
Feminists who are quick to file lawsuits for even the smallest slight in this country are strangely reluctant to make common cause with women in nations like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Why? Is it because championing those women would imply that Western society -- which feminists have so long derided as sexist -- is far better than any others when it comes to the treatment of women?
Is it really arrogance, as the liberals would have it, to believe that the system and the culture we've inherited is superior to others? Or is it ingratitude to deny it?
The other day I chanced to meet
An angry man upon the street--
A man of wrath, a man of war,
A man who truculently bore
Over his shoulder, like a lance,
A banner labeled “Tolerance.”
And when I asked him why he strode
Thus scowling down the human road,
Scowling, he answered, “I am he
Who champions total liberty--
Intolerance being, ma’am, a state
No tolerant man can tolerate.
“When I meet rogues,” he cried, “who choose
To cherish oppositional views,
Lady, like this, and in this manner,
I lay about me with my banner
Till they cry mercy, ma’am.” His blows
Rained proudly on prospective foes.
Fearful, I turned and left him there
Still muttering, as he thrashed the air,
“Let the Intolerant beware!”
Churchwell: What has been the most interesting company to write about in your case development?
Egawa: All the companies on which we developed cases are very interesting, and it is difficult to choose one. But if I have to choose one, I would say I enjoyed the case on Nissan Motor, the auto manufacturer that had been turned around by Carlos Ghosn. Ghosn was sent from Renault, the French auto company, which acquired management control of Nissan in March 1999. At the time Nissan had been in deep financial distress and had no choice but seek a foreign partner. Ghosn, who had never worked in Japan but had extensive experiences in other parts of the world, motivated the middle management at Nissan and transformed the culture of the company, leading to the dramatic recovery of its performance. What struck me most from this case was the power of the great leader. It was fascinating to learn that all the reforms Ghosn implemented were originally proposed by the middle managers who had been working for Nissan for twenty years, and that they were instrumental in the transformation process. The same group of people who had been working for an under-performing company can produce outstanding results if they have the right leader.
Two prominent Lebanese pan-Arabists have fled to France to avoid paying the mobs they hired for pro-Saddam demonstrations in Beirut last winter.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is getting ready to throw his muscle behind muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California governor's race now that longtime pal Bill Simon is out, sources told The Post yesterday.
"Rudy will support him, and if it helps him [to campaign with Giuliani], I think we'll do it," said a source close to Giuliani, who's on a quick trip to Australia and will be back Friday.
Giuliani is expected to consult with Simon then and try to convince him to also enlist in Arnie's army. [...]
Giuliani, who became "America's Mayor" after leading New York City through 9/11, has become one of the Republican Party's top assets, recruited by candidates across the country for help in their races.
France expressed objections to placing Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the European Union (EU)'s list of "terror organizations", according to an Israeli report on Monday.
Israel's Yediot Aharonot website reported that diplomatic advisor to French President Jacques Chirac, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, told the Israeli ambassador in France, Nissim Zvilli, during a weekend meeting, that there is no evidence that these two organizations are "terror groups."
"If we find that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are indeed terror groups opposed to peace, we may have to change the EU's stand," Gordo conveyed. "However, we mustn't limit ourselves to one, clear cut, position."
MoveOn.org is raising money to support the 11 Democratic Texas state senators who’ve been camped out in New Mexico for almost a month to delay a vote on a GOP congressional redistricting plan.
MoveOn, which was formed to oppose the Clinton impeachment but has since morphed into an all-purpose lefty activist group, has raised more than $850,000 toward its $1 million goal in its "Defend Democracy" fundraising drive. The money will be used to help pay the mounting expense of the Democrats, who’ve been in Albuquerque since July 28 in order to deny the Texas Senate quorum in a special session called by Republican Gov. Rick Perry. [...]
MoveOn’s cash will certainly help the 11 Democrats, who have been staying a hotel for almost a month. A Texas political consultant working with MoveOn says 27,000 people have given money so far, including 2,000 Texans, the AP reports.
In discussing his pay as headmaster of the elite St. Paul's prep school, Bishop Craig Anderson is fond of invoking a biblical maxim: Of those to whom much is given, much is expected.
The Episcopal clergyman has been given much. Last year Mr. Anderson, whose official title is "rector," made $524,000 in salary, benefits and deferred compensation -- more than most college presidents. That doesn't include the seven-bedroom, 14,062-square-foot mansion that St. Paul's provides for him or the $32,000 stipend for his wife to assist in his official duties.
That compensation package has sparked an ugly fight at this genteel boarding school ...
Critics have attacked the school's vice rector, Sharon Hennessy, for her $316,400 in total compensation and the perks of her position, including a stipend for her spouse, membership in the upscale Canyon Ranch spa and an annual two-week summer sojourn on the French Riviera....
The 61-year-old rector says he's "baffled" by the complaints....
Since they joined St. Paul's, Mr. Anderson's total compensation has more than doubled; Ms. Hennessy's has gone up 79%. The school underwrites the rector's membership in a golf club in Maine and pays for business-class travel with his wife to raise funds from alumni in Europe and Asia. As part of his total compensation, St. Paul's also paid $25,000 a year for his daughter to attend the University of Chicago.
Do conservative women look for different qualities of masculinity in men than liberal women do? Is sex appeal not so much in the eye, but in a point of view? [...]
The American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank, devotes the current issue of the American Enterprise magazine to the sexual differences between Democrats and Republicans, lauding the Bush administration in a cover story: "Real Men, They're Back"
Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of National Review, recalls the formulation of the Democrats as the "mommy party" and the Republicans as the "daddy party" and declares that men like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have made it "daddy party time" in the nation's capital.
This formulation echoes George Lakoff, professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, who argues that modern conservatives speak to people in terms of "the strict father morality," and liberals act like the "nurturant parent."
In his configuration, "conservatives have left liberals in the dust" because their arguments frame the issues in a more compelling way. The father teaches right and wrong, self-discipline and self-reliance while preserving the safety net of "compassionate conservatism."
What were the intellectual moves that made faith impossible for modern man? It is important to understand that these moves were made by people who believed in God, not by atheists. They came later in the Enlightenment history and founded the basis of their atheism on the mistaken theism of the early Enlightenment.
Modernity began with Descartes and his grounding of the certainty of existence on the thought of the individual. Clear and certain ideas could be obtained via this thought. The emphasis on certitude is the key. In the thought of John Locke, who was a defender of the faith, certainty was a moral imperative and it was thus immoral to make religious statements that were irrational. He was prompted to think thus by the excesses of the religious enthusiasts of his day who were fond of claiming as a revelation from God their own religious ideas, as so often still happens in or own day. While I sympathise with this thinking as regards undisciplined claims on the authority of God, it set up a false alternative between certain knowledge and faith. If we entertain beliefs that cannot be rationally upheld then we are morally corrupt and socially pernicious: we take the stand that "anything goes". Locke held that believers should be challenged to validate their beliefs according to a particular tradition of rationality. This assertion neglected the rationality of theologians which had guided theology from the beginning. Locke's move opened the way for a positivist critique of faith.
It did not take long for Continental philosophers like Diderot to use this critique to the devastation of belief. Many educated, especially scientifically educated, men and women in the West reside in this critique that makes even a step towards the church impossible. To acquiesce in any religious belief is to let down the side and demean oneself. If there is no valid reason for believing that God exists then to believe so is reprehensible and to open the way to antinomianism. It is ironic that the rationality that was thought to be a property of God became God's demise.
Part of our problem in this is that Christianity has been confused with a theism that is more the product of early Enlightenment thought in which God became and object in the universe. This identification broke the nexus between God and the tradition of scripture, liturgy, practice and thought that was a mark of the medieval church. God was perceived to be an immaterial entity that could nevertheless interact with the material world. Such a construction produced obvious problems with the theology of creation and was a sitting duck for a rationality that demanded validation. While fundamentalism strived to believe in such a god no matter what, liberalism let this god go but was left with trying to fulfil the assumed religious needs of humanity. Thus human subjectivity replaced God. It is obvious that both fundamentalism and liberalism are products of Enlightenment thought. This is why the present-day church must look beyond the 17thC to search out those rich traditions that bear witness to a reality that is not so easily disposed of by human reason and which informs and confronts our living.
If the church is to become an authentic voice in our time it must confront the false alternatives that have come down to us from the Enlightenment and write a theology that is faithful to the early church. This can be done in the face of our changed thought about mechanism in the world because God is not a part of that mechanism. Any god that is part of the world is world, and a god of the world is an idol. This conception is faithful to the creation narratives in that God is distinct from creation.
If modernity produced fundamentalism that is irrational and the liberal church that has nothing to say, post-modernity must produce the post-liberal church that finds its life in close contact with those rich texts and practices that produced the cultural coherence of the past. It is the loss of this coherence that lays waste our cities and our citizens.
The process of secularisation has proceeded to the point that the church has now no voice in public life other than as the moral guardian beset by a sea of relative values. Again the irony; the quest for certainty has finally found its expression in the absence of all certainty.
A senior Shia cleric was the target of a bombing in the central Iraqi city of Najaf yesterday that killed three guards and wounded 10 people, the latest in a string of attacks at the weekend that underscored the deteriorating security situation in Iraq.
Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most senior Shia clerics, escaped with cuts to the neck.
Ayatollah Hakim recently told the Financial Times that the measures taken by US-led occupation forces against supporters of the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein were not strong enough, and called for the transfer of more decision-making in security and other fields to Iraqis.
A spokesman for Sciri, the leading Shia Muslim political group, said last night it had begun an investigation into the bombing, and suspected it was the work of loyalists of the former regime.
US-led forces have a very limited presence in Najaf, which is a scholastic city revered as the burial place of Imam Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed.
The bombing came on a weekend when ethnic clashes between Turkomen and Kurds broke out in the northern city of Kirkuk, leading to several fatalities.
Sho Yano's mother hands him his lunch for school in a brown paper bag--a turkey sandwich and cookies included.
''You don't need any bones today? No bones?'' Kyung Yano asks her quiet, spectacle-wearing 12-year-old, who shakes his head ''no'' as they head out their apartment door. She wants to make sure he isn't supposed to take his samples of spinal bones and a human skull to class, where he's learning about human anatomy.
That class isn't at the local junior high, but at the University of Chicago, where Sho is a first-year medical school student--and the youngest person ever to attend one of the university's professional schools. [...]
If he weren't also getting his Ph.D. along with his medical degree--thus, pushing his age at graduation to 19 or 20--he'd also be on course to become the youngest person to graduate from any medical school. According to Guinness World Records, a 17-year-old graduated from medical school in New York in 1995.
For his part, Sho is utterly uninterested in setting records. He also shuns the labels often used to describe him--''prodigy'' and ''little genius'' among them.
Yes, he has an IQ over 200. And yes, he graduated in three years from Chicago's Loyola University, summa cum laude. But for him, going to school is about learning as much as he can. [...]
Born in Portland, Ore., Sho spent most of his early years in California, where his father, Katsura, now runs the American subsidiary of a Japanese shipping company. Sho lives in the university's family housing with his mother, who originally came to this country from Korea to study art history, and his 7-year-old sister Sayuri, a talented student in her own right who wants to be a cardiologist.
A senior American diplomat said President Bush, viewing the situation "like a businessman," had decided that investing more reconstruction money here now could lead to an earlier exit for American forces and save money in the long run. The United States currently spends $11 billion a year on its military forces in Afghanistan and $900 million on reconstruction aid. [...]
Under the new initiative, American reconstruction aid is expected to double, to $1.8 billion a year, officials said. A dozen senior American government officials would work as advisers to Afghan government ministers. Up to 70 staff positions would be added to the embassy in Kabul, where virtually the entire senior staff is being replaced.
The proposals are likely to be well received in Congress, given the widespread criticism there that the aid effort so far has been inadequate, officials said. [On Sunday, a White House spokesman declined to comment on the reports.]
United Nations officials say Afghanistan is entering what is arguably the most critical period since the fall of the Taliban in December 2001. National elections are to be held next June, and American officials are eager for the moderate government of President Hamid Karzai to fare well.
Visible progress must be shown in reconstruction, disarmament and security, particularly in the south, if a Taliban insurgency is to be curbed and any semblance of a fair election held, United Nations officials said.
For anyone who says a Jew can't make it as a big-time athlete, Martin Abramowitz has an answer. Well, 141 answers, in actuality. The Newton, Mass.-based fan has created a baseball card set encapsulating every Jew who ever laced up a pair of spikes and stepped between the lines, going back to the days before pitching mounds and mitts.
Even the most ardent Jewish baseball fan will probably pause to utter a lengthy "uhhhhhh" after naming Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg and, maybe, Shawn Green. But Abramowitz's 141-card set has them all: Lipman Pike, Andy Cohen, Harry "The Horse" Danning, and Ken Holtzman get their due. [...]
The card set, known as "American Jews in America's Game," was born in Abramowitz's kitchen when he had a baseball epiphany. "I collect vintage Jewish baseball player cards," says Abramowitz, who is planning director for Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies when he isn't collecting cards or sitting at Fenway Park.
"So we were sitting at the table one day and [my son] Jacob was looking at his Ken Griffey Jr. and Michael Jordan cards and I was looking at my cards and I said I could never have a complete set because about 40 of these guys never had cards.
"He was half paying attention and he said, 'Make 'em yourself.' And he took out a piece of paper and scribbled a logo with a baseball and a Jewish star." [...]
The set is now distributed by the AJHS and can be ordered at www.ajhs.org. It will also be sold at the Hall of Fame, incidentally.
It is clear by now that France never deserved Disneyland. It has never embraced it. Politicians and intellectuals still hold it up as an exemplar of the debased American culture.
Jean Baudrillard, the country's pre-eminent philosopher, wrote a book recently in which he ranted about "Disneyisation" and the "Disney Connection" of global corporations moulding the world into a single image. Disneyland is an easy target for politicians such as the former minister and presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who calls it a setting for "mass schizophrenia".
But the French are hypocrites over Disney. They appear to despise it and yet, since its construction, theme parks have become big business in France. There is now Vulcania, a volcano park in the Auvergne; Micropolis, an ant-themed park in Aveyron; Pescalis, a fishing park in Niort, not to mention countless new water ride parks around the country.
Evangelicals, dismissed as a vociferous minority by senior liberals during the Jeffrey John affair, are now poised to take over the Church of England.
A new study suggests that, if current trends continue, evangelicals will make up more than half of all Sunday church worshippers in 10 years' time, up from about a third now.
As they grow quickly, Liberals and Anglo-Catholics continue to decline, says Dr Peter Brierley, a former government statistician who heads Christian Research.
Moreover, all but a tiny proportion of the new breed of evangelicals will be theologically conservative, viewing sex outside marriage, including homosexuality, as outlawed by Scripture.
According to the new analysis, they are consolidating their grip on the Church's income, contributing a significant amount of money to church funds.
Also, half of all ordinands training to be the next generation of clergy are attending evangelical colleges.
The combined effect could be to provide the evangelical wing of the Church with an unprecedented power base as long as their numbers are reflected in the membership of the General Synod and the Church's leadership in future years.
Dr Brierley's projections are expected to alarm liberals, who have portrayed them as fringe fundamentalists whose influence is out of proportion to their numbers. His analysis indicates that, based on several national surveys by Christian Research, about 35 per cent of churchgoers in 1998 were evangelicals and that proportion could rise to half by 2010.
Of this, he estimates, just eight per cent will be "broad" or "liberal" evangelicals, who are relaxed over issues such as homosexuality. The remainder will be mainstream or charismatic hard-liners.
Another survey, detailed in this year's Religious Trends handbook, indicates that the total giving of evangelical churches is already about 40 per cent of the Church's national income.
TALIBAN fighters ambushed a truck full of government soldiers in the southern province of Zabul, killing several, the provincial governor and a Taliban spokesman said yesterday.
The sides gave differing death tolls from Saturday’s attack. Mohammed Hanif, a Taliban spokesman who contacted the Associated Press by satellite telephone, said 12 government soldiers were killed and that no Taliban fighters had died. Governor Hafizullah Khan said five soldiers and three Taliban were killed. [...]
Hanif said the bodies of the dead government soldiers were left behind, but Taliban attackers took 17 automatic rifles from the vehicle before leaving the scene.
He said Abdul Rahim, a former Taliban commander of the border region of Spinboldak, led the attack. Rahim is one of several former Taliban being sought by the Afghan government. In talks with neighbour Pakistan, the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai has expressed concern that Rahim and other former Taliban have found refuge in Pakistan’s conservative tribal regions.
Attacks against the government soldiers and police have been stepped up in recent weeks. Dozens of police have been ambushed or their police stations attacked by suspected Taliban.
There are reports from former Tal iban that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s leader, has reorganised his religious militia, appointing military commanders to areas of control. Rahim is well-known in the southeastern regions of Afghanistan.
U.S. jets pounded a Taliban mountain hideout Monday, killing at least 14 insurgents in the deadliest air assault since rebels launched a series of strikes against Afghan government targets, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
Sweeping through the rugged mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, scores of Afghan militia and U.S.-led coalition special forces hunted down suspected Taliban fighters, who in recent weeks have been waging attacks on police officials and government convoys. [...]
The Afghan administration has complained to Pakistan -- a U.S. ally in the war on terror -- that Taliban leaders appear to have found refuge in its lawless tribal regions. Pakistan has deployed its troops there but the border regions are long and porous and lined with rugged mountains in which to hide.
Eager to have more Iraqis take responsibility for their country's security, American officials here are planning to ferry as many as 28,000 Iraqis to Eastern Europe for an intensive police training course. . . .28,000 thousand Iraqis armed with pistols v. Europe. Anyone willing to take Europe?
The Iraqi police force has been given a largely warm reception by the Iraqi people, although it has been weakened by a lack of equipment, especially guns. In the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniya, for instance, only a fraction of the city's 2,500 police officers have guns. American marines overseeing the police have been forced to pair officers with guns with those who have none.
Mr. Kerik, acknowledging the equipment shortage, said that a shipment of 50,000 9-millimeter pistols would arrive shortly, and that 100,000 more would arrive next year.
With war and death on his mind, Spc. Barry Page was baptized Sunday in the Tigris River by an Army chaplain at the sprawling U.S. military headquarters on the fabled river's banks.The quintessential American story.
A Southern Baptist working as a military policeman, Page said he decided to 'reannounce his life to Christ' in the birthplace of civilization.
'I realized death is walking in this place,' said the 22-year-old from Houston, his uniform and boots soaking wet. 'It can be any of us. Next time it could be me.'
The temperature was 120 as Page and three other soldiers waited outside one of Saddam Hussein's palatial complexes to take their turn in the water. The baptism took place behind the palace, where the river waters surround an artificial island overgrown with palm trees.
'This ground has a historical, biblical meaning,' Page said. 'I can say I was in the same waters. I'm glad I found peace with God.'
Each of the soldiers took careful steps into the arms of Army chaplain Capt. Xuan Tran, of the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment. Waist deep in the river, Tran briefly submerged the soldiers, recited a verse from the Bible, and proclaimed 'Amen' three times.
Come sundown, an endless forest of pine trees casts long, spindly shadows on the highways in this town that, locals like to say, has more churches per capita than any other on the face of the earth.
The scent of pine pervades every block here in DeRidder, where 76 churches minister to a population of 9,000. Mixed with the smell of smoke from trash burnings, there is a brooding, mystical air to the town, as if hermits and knights might pop out of the woods any moment and walk casually into J.C. Penney's.
On this stage where the Christian faith pervades daily life as thoroughly as sunshine and human speech, and pride in old Southern heroes is undimmed, the attention of pastors, churchgoers, children, and even the unbaptized was fixed last week on one man, Roy Moore.
The Alabama judge's highly visible crusade to keep a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the state judicial building appears to have won the admiration of almost everyone in town. "I think the judge is doing a good thing," says Gregory Jones, pastor of the Church of God In Christ, a Pentecostal denomination. "The Ten Commandments are the basis of our good judgment and belong in the courts."
Although the monument's removal as ordered by a federal judge now appears likely, and Judge Moore has been suspended, his determination has energized many Christians far and near, especially in the so-called Bible Belt of the South.
The variety of responses here to Moore's crusade, say experts, indicates a growing complexity in passion and point of view among conservative Christians across the country, even at a moment when many believe their values are being challenged more than ever before. What remains to be seen is whether the "last stand" of Judge Moore's monument will galvanize renewed efforts by conservative Christians to affirm the Ten Commandments' role in national life.
All the indicators, from the sagging economy to the increase in newly released ex-cons on the street, had led many criminologists to predict the crime rate would go up. But it's not - at least according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), released Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It found that violent crime and property crime are at a low not seen since 1973.
In 2002, there were 23 violent crimes per 1,000 people, compared with 25 victimizations per 1,000 people in 2001. A decade ago, the victimization rate was twice as high, meaning there's been a 54 percent drop in violent crime since 1993.
While everyone applauds the new figures, they're also wary. They worry that hidden in the good news are harbingers of problems ahead. Top on the list of concerns is complacency, followed by budget cuts. The deficit crunch has prompted local towns and big cities alike to scale back on crime prevention and reduction programs - key factors in the decade-long decline of everything from attempted robbery to rape.
But beyond the concern, some criminologists are willing to venture a theory - not proven, or provable - that might explain this surprising drop. Call it the Sept. 11 effect.
"The only thing that I can think of that can be seen as contributing to a downward trend is some sense of cohesion that's emerging as a result of the terrorist threat or the terrorist reality," says Alfred Blumstein, a noted criminologist from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Other than that, I don't see much that should be contributing to this decline."
In South Dakota, recent political races have indeed become bare-knuckle affairs.
Few elections were nastier than one that ended here last fall when Daschle's protege, Sen. Tim Johnson, beat Republican rival John Thune by 524 votes in a contest in which more than $6 million was spent. Nationally, it was a rare bright spot for Democrats. Locally, the race still is heavily disputed and allegations of vote-buying remain prevalent.
All of that, not to mention Daschle's lightning-rod post as the leader of his party in the Senate, sets the stage for an even more contentious race. His is one of at least four seats Republicans believe they stand a chance of winning in the 2004 congressional election season, a period that even some Democrats fear may be bleak.
Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative Washington group that is weighing in on the South Dakota race, puts it this way:
''There are two Tom Daschles: the Tom Daschle with a very liberal voting record who has become part of the Washington establishment and the Tom Daschle that masquerades as a prairie state populist, pumping gas for people during his August recess.''
For the next 15 months, Moore added, ''Daschle is target No. 1.''
Who will run against Daschle is unknown. But the South Dakota political landscape became unexpectedly more complicated during this month's congressional break, when legislators traditionally leave Washington to spend time in their home districts.
The state's only House member, Republican Bill Janklow, had not ruled out challenging Daschle. But now he may face criminal charges for his role in a fatal traffic accident Aug. 16. And Thune, a former congressman who narrowly lost the Senate seat last year, has not said whether he will challenge Daschle, fill Janklow's seat if it becomes open or sit out the 2004 election season entirely.
LAMB: OK, then go to the politicized version. What are the things that would be required in a society for them to say, OK, we`ll stop the terrorism?
BERMAN: Well, I mean, the goal of the terrorism, as conceived of by the followers of this kind of thinking -- the goal of the terrorism is to advance the notion of jihad, which is the struggle for Islam, as conceived in this version, and the goal plainly -- I mean, the goal is at different levels. At one level, it`s -- it`s really to destroy the kinds of societies that are not upholding the principles of this version of Islamism.
LAMB: Those principles are?
BERMAN: Those principles -- well, the principles of this kind of Islam -- let me explain further that I`m saying -- other people would answer this question by saying that the goals of this kind of terrorism are specific political goals, that the goals are to force Israel to withdraw its settlements or to force the United States to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia or to force certain other specific kinds of political issues. But that`s not actually how I understand the movement. My understanding of the movement is really that the goals are much larger, much more revolutionary than that, that if those relatively small things were the goals, they could be approached in a rather different way.
The goal really is to -- is to make a revolution all over the world. And the reason I speak about totalitarianism and why I`m interested in Camus and the philosophers of totalitarianism, theorists about totalitarianism from 50 years ago or so, is this, that I think that the radical Islamist movement is a totalitarian movement in a 20-century style, that -- my theory is this, that after World War I, a whole series of extremely revolutionary movements arose, and they arose for the purpose of overthrowing what I think of as the essentially liberal doctrines -- not liberal in the right-wing, left-wing version, but liberal in the sense of -- the liberal doctrines of -- of Western culture.
And by the liberal doctrines, I mean the notion of the separation of church and state, the notion that there should be a difference between the private and the public, the difference between the government and the society, the difference between the government and -- and economics, the notion that in one`s own mind, we can think in different -- in different categories at the same time, that in part of your mind you could be religious, and in another part of your mind, you can be scientific or rationalist. It`s the notion that -- that a society -- the liberal idea is the notion that a society based on those ideas will -- will progress. You can offer progress for -- for all mankind everywhere. This had been a large governing idea throughout the 19th century. And it wasn`t in practice everywhere, but people subscribed to this idea and had a great faith in it. There was some reason to have a faith in it.
World War I came along, and the idea came to seem preposterous because World War I was so horrible, so industrialist -- industrially murderous that -- that people who were thinking in those old terms of the liberal optimism in the 19th century were unable to conceive it -- conceive of it, unable to explain it. And as a result, in the years after the war, a series of movements arose which were rebellions against the old liberal idea. Each of those movements had the same idea, which was to overthrow liberal civilization and replace it with a civilization of a different sort, rock-like, granite, without any separation of spheres, a single sphere, permanent, unchanging, eternal, governed by a leader with a single organization or a single party and -- and like that.
LAMB: Name the -- just for examples, the leaders and the countries you`re talking about.
BERMAN: Right. The first of these movements was Lenin`s, and the movement was Bolshevism or the Communist Party, and then Lenin to Stalin. The next of them was Mussolini, who founded the fascist movement in Italy a very few years later. Franco, with the fascist movement of Spain, Hitler with the Nazi movement in Germany, the Iron Guard in Romania, the extreme right in France, and so forth, through almost every country in -- through every country in Europe and many countries around the world. And each of these movements was different from each of the others.
At the time, if anybody had said to you there`s something in common between the Bolshevism of Lenin and the Fascism of Mussolini, they would have said that`s -- that`s preposterous. Those movements are opposite. But from our perspective now, looking back on them, we should be able to see that all of those movements had a lot in common. And what they had in common was this urge to rebel against liberal civilization, the principles of liberal separation of spheres, replace that with a rock-like, granite society, the permanent, unchanging society with the single party, the single leader, and so forth.
So each of those movements had, in this respect, the same idea. They all arose in the years -- in the immediate years after World War I. They -- those movements all arose in Europe. But at the same time, the same inspiration spread to the Muslim world, and it spread into the Muslim world in -- a kind of Muslim totalitarianism arose which had all of the main principles of totalitarianism in Europe. It arose in the 1920s and `30s. It had different strands. One of those strands is the one that was finally given a theoretical shape by Said Qutb in his commentary on the Quran. Another of those strands is the one that finally evolved into the Ba`ath Party of Saddam Hussein. But these different strands really had a lot in common.
But in any case, they had the same idea as each of the European totalitarian movements, which was to effect a revolution in the world everywhere, not just to effect a few more -- a few local reforms, not just to -- not just to make a few political demands on someone, maybe be a little rough about it, but to advance one`s cause in a reformist or small fashion, not just to get a slightly bigger slice of the pie, but instead to make a complete revolution that was going to change thoroughly the whole of mankind.
LAMB: So Lenin and Mussolini and Hitler and others all had the same goal as the Islamists do?
BERMAN: In this deepest of ways...
LAMB: In the big -- in the overall...
BERMAN: In the -- in the overall, deepest of ways, they have the same goal. In all other ways, once we leave the very deepest level, they each had different goals and -- and one opposite from the other, and they -- one fought wars with the other, and each one was different. But at the very deepest way, it was all the same.
And this deepest way was to overthrow liberal civilization, replace it with a different kind of modernity, which was -- that is to say, a different kind of modern society, benefiting from science and technological advance but which, unlike liberal society, was going to be solid, without any internal divisions, without any feelings of skepticism or doubt, a society that would be absolutely perfect, without cracks or contradictions, a society therefore that would last forever, or as the Nazis would say, a thousand years.
Maybe it's time to admit the obvious. We don't really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal. Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood. Instead, what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves.
Human beings are capable of drawing amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shaping their lives around them. In the Washington, D.C., area Democratic lawyers tend to live in suburban Maryland, and Republican lawyers tend to live in suburban Virginia. If you asked a Democratic lawyer to move from her $750,000 house in Bethesda, Maryland, to a $750,000 house in Great Falls, Virginia, she'd look at you as if you had just asked her to buy a pickup truck with a gun rack and to shove chewing tobacco in her kid's mouth. In Manhattan the owner of a $3 million SoHo loft would feel out of place moving into a $3 million Fifth Avenue apartment. A West Hollywood interior decorator would feel dislocated if you asked him to move to Orange County. In Georgia a barista from Athens would probably not fit in serving coffee in Americus.
It is a common complaint that every place is starting to look the same. But in the information age, the late writer James Chapin once told me, every place becomes more like itself. People are less often tied down to factories and mills, and they can search for places to live on the basis of cultural affinity. Once they find a town in which people share their values, they flock there, and reinforce whatever was distinctive about the town in the first place. Once Boulder, Colorado, became known as congenial to politically progressive mountain bikers, half the politically progressive mountain bikers in the country (it seems) moved there; they made the place so culturally pure that it has become practically a parody of itself.
But people love it. Make no mistake-we are increasing our happiness by segmenting off so rigorously. We are finding places where we are comfortable and where we feel we can flourish. But the choices we make toward that end lead to the very opposite of diversity. The United States might be a diverse nation when considered as a whole, but block by block and institution by institution it is a relatively homogeneous nation.
Rocket-propelled grenades were fired at statues of two Turkomen heroes as ethnic fighting spread to the northern city of Kirkuk and police tried to maintain order in a nearby town.
Gunfire echoed through Kirkuk Saturday night, and squads of police were stationed at each of the statues after the attacks. There was no indication of who was shooting or any sign of U.S. forces.
"We're worried about the situation, but we are working with city leaders and officials to resolve it," said Lt. Jonathan Hopkins of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
Earlier, Kirkuk Mayor Abdul Rahman Mustafa, a Kurd, told the AP two people were killed and several were wounded. He did not identify the victims' by ethnicity.
According to both CNN-Turk television and private NTV television in Ankara, Turkey, hundreds of Turkomen, carrying blue Turkomen flags, marched on the governor's office. Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported two Turkomen were shot and killed and 11 wounded by Patriotic Union of Kurdistan forces.
The violence in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, followed fighting between Turkomen and Kurds on Friday in nearby Tuz Kharmato. Iraqi police killed two Turkomen tribesmen and wounded two others in Tuz Kharmato after they arrived to quell ethnic fighting, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, 4th Infantry Division spokeswoman.
Certain to be one of the most controversial books of the year, In Praise of Nepotism is a learned, lively, and provocative look at a practice we all deplore - except when we're involved in it ourselves.
Nepotism, the favored treatment of one's relatives, is a custom with infinitely more practitioners than defenders - especially in this country, where it is considered antidemocratic and almost un-American. Nepotism offends our sense of fair play and our meritocratic creed that we are supposed to earn what we get - not have it handed to us on a proverbial silver platter. For more than two centuries, a campaign has been waged against it in the name of fairness and equality in the courts, the legislatures, and in the public and private arenas - a campaign that has been only partly successful. For, far from disappearing, the practice has become so resurgent in recent years that we can now speak of a "new nepotism." In settings ranging from politics, business, and professional life to sports, the arts, and Hollywood, the children of famous and highly successful people have chosen to follow in their parents' career footsteps in a fashion and in numbers impossible to ignore. George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jr., and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are only the tip of the iceberg that is an accelerating trend toward dynasticism and family "branding" in the heart of the American elite. Many see this as a deplorable development, to which Adam Bellow replies, Not so fast.
In this timely work (surprisingly, the first book ever devoted to nepotism), Adam Bellow brings fresh perspectives and vast learning and research to bear on this misunderstood and stigmatized practice. Drawing on the insights of modern evolutionary theory, he shows how nepotism is rooted in our very biological nature, as the glue that binds together not only insect and animal societies but, for most of the world and for most of history, human societies as well. Drawing on the disciplines of biology, anthropology, history, and social and political theory, Bellow surveys the natural history of nepotism from its evolutionary origins to its practice in primitive tribes, clans, and kingdoms to its role in the great societies of the world. These include the ancient Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the democratic and capitalistic societies of the past two centuries, with extended consideration of the American experience. Along the way, he provides fascinating (and freshly considered) portraits of such famous and/or infamous figures as Abraham, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Benjamin Franklin, and such families as the Borgias, the Rothschilds, the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, and the Bushes.
In his final chapter, Bellow argues that nepotism comes down to the bonds between children and parents, the transmission of family legacies, the cycle of generosity and gratitude that knits our whole society together. And since it is not going away anytime soon, he makes the case for dealing with nepotism openly and treating it as an art that can be practiced well or badly. In Praise of Nepotism is a book that will ruffle feathers, create controversy, and open and change minds.
Once smitten, it should be impossible to fall out of love with America. Who could fall out of love with that New York adrenaline rush, or the clutter of the 7 Train as it grinds on stilts of iron from Manhattan out to Queens through the scents and sounds of 160 first languages? Who could fall out of love with the mighty desert when a lilac dawn fades out the constellations in its vast sky? Who could fall out of love with the muscular industry of America's real capital, Chicago, 'city of big shoulders', as the poet Carl Sandburg described it? It was insurgent Chicago that first captured my heart for America as a visiting teenager in 1970.
Now it's time to leave the United States as a supposed adult, having been a resident and correspondent for exactly as long as Tony Blair has been Prime Minister - I was appointed that May morning in 1997 that brought Britain's Conservative night to an end. Blair's love for America seems to have deepened since; but love is both the strongest and most brittle of sentiments, and mine has depreciated. I still love that adrenaline rush, the desert light, those big shoulders; but something else has happened to America during my six years to invoke that bitter love song by a great American, BB King, 'The Thrill is Gone': 'And now that it's all over / All I can do is wish you well...'
I arrived in an America regarded by the world as 'cool'. One can never be sure whether a President defines the country or vice versa, but this was Bill Clinton's America. [...]
Meanwhile out in the world, intervention by the US was either welcomed by the persecuted of Haiti and Kosovo or else craved by (but culpably denied) those in Bosnia and Rwanda - as a force of deliverance, not of empire.
Everywhere you turn, pundits are predicting biblical-scale disaster. In many scenarios, mankind is the culprit, unleashing atmospheric carbon dioxide, genetically engineered organisms, or runaway nanobots to exact a bitter revenge for scientific meddling. But even if human deployment of technology proves benign, Mother Nature will assert her primacy through virulent pathogens, killer asteroids, marauding comets, exploding supernovas, and other such happenstances of mass destruction.
Fringe thinking? Hardly. Sober PhDs are behind these thoughts. Citing the hazard of genetically engineered viruses, eminent astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years." Martin Rees, the knighted British astronomer, agrees; he gives us a 50-50 chance. Serious thinkers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, and Bill Joy, who wrote Wired's own 2000 article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," warn of techno-calamity. Stephen Petranek, editor in chief of the science monthly Discover, crisscrosses the world lecturing on "15 Major Risks to the World and Life as We Know It." University of Maryland arms-control scholar John Steinbruner is lobbying organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Medical Association to establish an international review board with the power to ban research into the Pandora's box of biomedicine. [...]
At a time of global unease, worst-case scenarios have a certain appeal, not unlike reality TV. And it's only natural to focus on danger; if nature hadn't programmed human beings to be wary, the species might not have gotten this far. But a little perspective is in order. Let's review the various doomsday theories, from least threatening to most. If the end is inevitable, at least there won't be any surprises.
Complete eight hours of volunteer community work a month or be evicted.
That's the ultimatum being given to hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, unemployed residents of public housing complexes across the nation and in metro Detroit as part of a new federal law that takes effect Oct. 1.
Aimed at improving impoverished neighborhoods and introducing nonworkers to career possibilities, the law exempts students, people with a disability, seniors, those working full-time and mothers participating in welfare-to-work programs.
Those affected will be required to work in churches, schools or with other nonprofit groups as part of the 1998 Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act. [...]
Betty Ward, deputy director of the Port Huron Housing commission in St. Clair County, said: "I think it's going to be a nightmare to track and enforce."
Like Stennis in Detroit, Ward said she is hopeful that her office will not have to evict residents. But the potential is there.
"One way to get out of it, for residents, is to get a job." Ward said.
The Indian-born and English-educated Ibn Warraq, 57, is among the most prominent and outspoken Muslim apostates alive today. His 1995 book "Why I Am Not a Muslim'' was an impassioned polemic against almost 1,400 years of Muslim dogma and its effect on the Islamic world. The more recent collections he has edited–"What the Koran Really Says'' (2002) and this year's "Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out''–present less confrontational, more scholarly lines of attack.
Still, Warraq (the name is a pseudonym) aims to skewer the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of a faith that commands the allegiance of a billion people–as well as the hypocrisies of those Western defenders of Islam who would not tolerate its strictures in their own cultures.
To his admirers in the West and in the Muslim world, Warraq is a latter-day Voltaire who may herald an Islamic enlightenment. "He wants to open it up for people who are born into a religion they can't leave,'' says Patricia Crone, a scholar of Islam at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.
To his critics, Warraq is an intolerant pseudo-scholar whose bitter polemics set back the very possibility of modernizing the faith. "If you already know what Islamophobes and Orientalists believe, this author has nothing original to add,'' says Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic law at UCLA and the author most recently of "The Place of Tolerance in Islam'' (2002). "It's good propaganda, but not good scholarship.'' [...]
Warraq is particularly critical of Noah Feldman, the NYU law professor whom the US government has enlisted to assist in the drafting of Iraq's new constitution. If Feldman's new book "After Jihad'' is any indication of what that document will look like, Warraq is concerned.
"How can Feldman believe there is any compatibility at all between Islamist movements and democratic principles?'' he asks. "They are democrats only in that they will use elections to take power. One man, one vote, one time. The first people who suffer are women, and after that non-Muslims. The level of denial from Western liberals renders me speechless.''
Khaled Abou El Fadl, who attempts to use traditional canons of interpretation to bring out the tolerant and democratic aspects of the Koran, contends that democracy and Islam are both "defined in the first instance by their underlying moral values.''
One can only hope that El Fadl is right. But Warraq emphasizes that essential aspects of democracy, such as freedom of speech and freedom of belief, are best exemplified in Islam by those thinkers and writers it calls apostates.
Though he has little regard for Warraq's work, El Fadl himself recognizes the crucial importance of apostates and other religious dissidents. "The freethinkers pushed the limits of orthodoxy, and they were a point of attachment for many Muslims later on,'' he says. ``If all you had was orthodoxy all the time, Islamic civilization wouldn't have existed over 1,000 years. They dragged people along kicking and screaming.''
Although national conservative groups at first remained aloof from the bid to oust California Gov. Gray Davis, their leaders increasingly view the recall as an opportunity to generate momentum heading into next year's congressional and presidential voting.
"It will set a tone for next year," said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a leading conservative strategist. [...]
But anti-tax and anti-spending conservative organizations are considering a role in the recall campaign. Schwarzenegger's camp has been negotiating for support from the Club for Growth, a leading conservative political action committee, as well as the large network of groups that revolve around Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform organization.
Norquist said that for Schwarzenegger, the key to gaining broader conservative support will be hardening his stand against new taxes. At a news conference Wednesday, Schwarzenegger came out strongly against taxes as a means to solve the state's budget shortfall but said he could not rule out tax increases to meet emergencies such as earthquakes.
Norquist is pressing Schwarzenegger to sign a pledge the group promotes that commits politicians not to support any net increase in taxes. "I think over the next week or so we'll see whether Arnold succeeds or fails in nailing down that he is not going to raise taxes," Norquist said. "Should he do that, then I think you will see a coming together around his campaign, and then you will see both Republicans and conservatives getting excited in California and nationally."
McClintock and Simon, until he withdrew from the race, had been criticizing Schwarzenegger for not signing the pledge. Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh seemed to denigrate the anti-tax pledge in an interview with Fox News last week, saying, "We're not going to play into any particular interest group who wants to just whipsaw us." [...]
Yet Steve Moore, president of the Club for Growth, said many conservatives were still in a "wait-and-see mode" about Schwarzenegger.
"We want to believe in this guy ... [but] he does have this one kind of annoying habit of trying to appease everybody, and I don't know if he can get away with that," Moore said.
The new administration of this oil-rich city says it is determined to obliterate the legacy of the former ruling Baath party.
Perhaps it has more reason to do so than any local administration in the country.
For three decades, Kirkuk was subjected to oppressive and occasionally bloody policy of ethnic cleansing.
Tens of thousands of families were uprooted and their land and belongings confiscated.
Diehard supporters of the deposed leader Saddam Hussein filled senior positions and they made sure that only the Baathists were allowed to stay in the city and work in its sprawling oil installations.
Kirkuk is a mosaic of ethnic and religious minorities and many thought it would pose a real problem for the US-led occupation troops to administer.
But Kirkuk is now one of the most peaceful cities in Iraq. It has an elected council and a functioning police force and judicial system.
The most improbable item in science fiction movies is not the hardware — the faster-than-light travel, the tractor beams, the levitation — but the people. Strangely, they always look and behave just like us. Yet the one safe prediction about the far future is that humans will be a lot further along in their evolution.
Last week population geneticists, rummaging in DNA's ever-fascinating attic, set dates on two important changes in the human form.
Dr. Alan R. Rogers of the University of Utah figured out that the ancestral human population had acquired black skin, as a protection against the sun, at least 1.2 million years ago, and therefore that it must have shed its fur some time before this date.
Clothing came long after we were naked. Dr. Mark Stoneking, of the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, managed to address this question by calculating when the human body louse (which lives only in clothing, not hair) evolved from the human head louse. That proud event in human history dates to between 72,000 and 42,000 years ago, Dr. Stoneking reported
So where do we go from here? Have we attained perfection and ceased to evolve?
IT was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
It was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.
The sound was behind me instead of before,
A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As of one who utterly couldn’t care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.
I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretence
It was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.
Defrocked priest John Geoghan, a central figure in the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal, was killed on Saturday by a fellow-inmate in the prison where he was serving a sentence for child rape, a state prisons official said.
"There was an incident involving John Geoghan and another inmate around noon on Saturday. Geoghan sustained serious injury and was brought to Leominster Hospital where we was pronounced dead shortly before 2 p.m.," said Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. [...]
The Archdiocese of Boston, where Geoghan had served as a priest in many parishes, described his death as "tragic."
"The Archdiocese of Boston offers its prayers for the repose of John's soul and extends its prayers and consolation to his beloved sister Catherine at this time of personal loss," said Christopher Coyne, a spokesman for the Archdiocese.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents many young men who say they were molested by Geoghan, said he was shocked and surprised to hear of Geoghan's death.
"My clients would rather have seen John Geoghan be punished in a way seen fit by society," he said. "They would have rather seen him endure the rigors of two more trials and endure the pain of more prison sentences."
Occasionally adolescent high jinks affect the history of thought. Consider the episode recounted by Augustine in his Confessions. "There was a pear tree near our vineyard, loaded with a fruit that was attractive neither to look at nor to taste. Late one night a band of ruffians, myself included, went off to shake down the fruit and carry it away.... We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs." Augustine agonized at length about the sheer perversity of his motives. "Could I enjoy doing wrong for no other reason than that it was wrong?" Certainly, "it was not the pears that my unhappy soul desired. I had plenty of my own, better than those, and I only picked them so that I might steal. For no sooner had I picked them than I threw them away, and tasted nothing in them but my own sin, which I relished and enjoyed. If any part of one of those pears passed my lips, it was the sin that gave it flavor." And so a boyish escapade became a primary text of Christian thinking about sin.
For what became known as the Augustinian view, sin was a subjective experience, a self-satisfied pride that allowed the sinner to take pleasure in acts that actually alienated him from God, the source of all being. To be sure, sin had a social dimension, too. Stealing the pears by himself, Augustine wrote, "would have been no fun and I should not have done it." The desire to have "partners in sin" made it harder to exercise moral responsibility, "because we are ashamed to hold back when others say `Come on! Let's do it!'" But at bottom the Augustinian conception of sin was more psychological than social: it was an elusive but innate perversity -- a tendency toward estrangement from all creation -- rooted in every human soul, which could only be transcended with the aid of divine grace.
Of course there have always been other ways of thinking about sin. The chief alternative to Augustine's inward emphasis was the notion that evil is a palpable entity outside the self, one that could (and often did) take material and even fleshly form. The purest form of this belief in Augustine's time was the Manichaean heresy. Augustine had been a Manichee himself for ten years, and much of the intellectual drive of his autobiography arises from his struggle to free himself from the Manichees' materialist conception of evil by developing a subtler one. But subtlety never translated easily into the idioms of popular Christianity, which imagined sin embodied in either an actual devil or a demonized other -- the witch, the infidel, above all the Jew. Though theologians condemned the Manichaean heresy, the Manichaean tendency to divide the world into a virtuous "us" and a sinful "them" flourished in Christian tradition, animating absolutisms, inspiring crusades, and consigning the other to flames in the next world and sometimes in this one.
Still, Augustinian ideas survived, too. They sustained the doctrine of original sin, which despite its sometimes devastating impact on the human psyche at least preserved an emphasis on the universality of human corruption, refusing to isolate sin in particular groups of offenders. For centuries, when Christians thought seriously about sin, they turned to Augustinian tradition. The English Puritans who settled North America, for example, were nothing if not serious about sin. They insisted on a covenant of grace, not of works. This meant that the performance of apparently moral acts was mere mummery without a regenerate heart. The key to salvation was not morality, it was piety -- the spiritual state that resulted from an intense inner search for union with the deity.
This was precisely the sort of struggle that Augustine described, and it was at the core of American Puritanism. Oscillating between an exalted experience of divine grace and a deep sense of human depravity (including one's own), the Augustinian strain of piety dissolved the comforting delusion that evil could be situated outside the self. The attempt to live virtuously required constant questioning of one's own motives, constant awareness of one's own capacity to confuse self-interest with self-sacrifice. Sin was fleeting, insubstantial, evanescent -- but ever-present, in the hearts of the pious as well as the prodigal.
John J. Geoghan, the former priest and convicted child molester killed in a Massachusetts prison Saturday, was followed into his cell just after lunch by a fellow inmate who bound and gagged him before strangling him with a bed sheet, according to a union representative for prison guards.
The attacker, whom authorities identified as Joseph L. Druce, jammed the electronically operated cell door to prevent guards from opening it. He tied Geoghan's hands behind his back with a sheet and gagged him. He then repeatedly jumped from the bed in the cell onto Geoghan's motionless body and beat the defrocked priest with his fists. [...]
Druce, 37, was immediately isolated and will be charged with murder, investigators said. Massachusetts does not have a death penalty, so it is unclear what additional punishment he could receive since he is serving a life sentence for strangling a man in 1988. He also was convicted while in prison of attempting an anthrax scare by sending envelopes filled with white powder and covered in Swastikas to about 30 Jewish lawyers nationwide in 2001.
The Worcester County district attorney's office said that Druce was born Darrin Smiledge but changed his name while in prison. Druce's father, Dana Smiledge, told the Boston Globe that his son hated Jews and blacks and had a grudge against gays.
Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!
Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,
There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.
Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold,
Threaten the soul with infinite loss;
Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold,
Points to the refuge, the mighty cross.
Dark is the stain that we cannot hide.
What can we do to wash it away?
Look! There is flowing a crimson tide,
Brighter than snow you may be today.
Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace,
Freely bestowed on all who believe!
You that are longing to see His face,
Will you this moment His grace receive?
Interviewer: When you're here on Sunday do you plan to talk about some Oregon specific issues?
Howard Dean: Well I'm certainly going to talk about the Healthy Forests Initiative, which the president is plugging.... Because the president tried to use the forest fires to justify cutting a lot of old growth timber and he went too far....
Interviewer: Let me ask you about one other issue that is unique to Oregon and that is physician-assisted suicide.... In general where do you stand on physician-assisted suicide and Oregon's vote on that issue?
Howard Dean: ... I think this a very private, personal decision and I think individual physicians and patients have the right to make that private decision. I am very amused by the Right Wing--including the president and administration--who talk about liberty but then decide they're going to scrutinize everyone's behavior and tell them what they can and cannot do. There can't be a much more personal decision an individual makes than how to die and I think that is a personal decision left to individuals, their physicians and families.
Speaking to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, Abdel Aziz Rantisi called the action "a theft of Muslim money by the Americans" and said the frozen money doesn't belong to Hamas.
"Hamas does not have any money in the U.S., Europe or even in the Arab states. President Bush has become Islam's biggest enemy," Rantisi said in the interview.
On Friday, the United States froze the assets of six Hamas leaders, including Rantisi, an aide to Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the group's spiritual leader. The United States also froze the assets of five European-based organizations that it said raise money for the radical Palestinian group.
Bush said he ordered the assets frozen because Hamas claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide attack on a packed bus in Jerusalem that killed 20 people, including six children.
Hamas has vowed revenge for an Israeli helicopter attack on Thursday that killed Ismail Abu Shanab, one of its most senior figures. Rantisi survived an Israeli rocket attack on his car in June.
The FBI and U.S. Homeland Security investigators appeared last night to have largely shut down a computer virus attack that may have originated with a computer in British Columbia.
Worried the so-called "Sobig" worm may have been programmed to attack key computer networks yesterday afternoon, U.S. and Canadian officials managed to shut down 19 of the 20 computers thought to have been targeted.
Republican Bill Simon dropped out of the gubernatorial recall race Saturday amid calls from party leaders to consolidate support behind fewer candidates, a campaign official said. [...]
Simon's move leaves three leading Republicans among the 135 candidates on the ballot to replace Davis Oct. 7: front-runner Arnold Schwarzenegger, former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth and state Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks. Simon's name will still appear on the ballot.
ISRAEL and Palestinian militants busied themselves yesterday preparing mutual mayhem following the termination of a ceasefire that had held for six weeks.
Hamas spokesmen vowed that "rivers of blood" would flow in Israeli cities following a helicopter attack in Gaza that killed the organisation's third-ranking leader, Ismail Abu Shanab. All Palestinian militant organisations said they would renew attacks on Israel.
Israeli officials said Abu Shanab's targeted assassination was only the first of a series approved by the security cabinet following a bus bombing in Jerusalem on Tuesday that killed 20 people, including six children.
The officials also said Israel was contemplating a massive incursion into the Gaza Strip, similar to the takeover of Palestinian cities in the West Bank last year. [...]
Israel was not an official party to the unilateral ceasefire, but it suspended its more aggressive actions, such as targeted assassinations and large-scale incursions. It did, however, continue to arrest "ticking bombs", militants whom it said were planning attacks against Israel. In two such arrests earlier this month, four militants were killed when they opened fire, killing one soldier. In retaliation, Islamic militants staged two suicide bombings, killing three Israelis.
Because of the relatively low number of fatalities and the desire not to undermine the ceasefire, Israel did not respond to the suicide attacks as it once would have.
The "rules of the game" changed sharply in a third tit-for-tat flare up, when the Israeli killing of a single Islamic Jihad military leader in Hebron last week was followed by the Jerusalem bus bombing. Within hours, the Israeli Government decided to make its own changes to the rules with a massive crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including political leaders, regardless of what happens to the Abbas administration.
Gone is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), to be replaced by the BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
The man whose shifting loyalties redefined the state House of Representatives this year may be at it again.
Rep. Mike Decker's switch to the Democratic Party in January deadlocked the House and resulted in a historic co-speaker-led coalition. But in recent days, he has been talking to people about rejoining the GOP.
Decker would only confirm that he's thinking about switching back. [...]
Legislators say that under the House rules a shift to a 61-59 Republican majority would not lead to another speaker vote or a change in committee assignments for the rest of the session.
But it could make the difference for Decker's political career. Until this year, Decker had served nine terms as a Republican in a heavily Republican district.
The question for Decker is, will Republicans accept him back?
Try as they may, parents, teachers, and gender facilitators have not been successful in rooting out male behavior they regard as harmful. An "equity facilitator" tried to persuade a group of nine-year-old boys in a Baltimore public school to accept the idea of playing with baby dolls. According to one observer, "Their reaction was so hostile, the teacher had trouble keeping order." And then there was Jimmy. At age 11, this San Francisco sixth grader was made to contribute a square to a class quilt "celebrating women we admire." He chose to honor tennis player Monica Seles who, in 1993, was stabbed on the court by a deranged fan of Steffi Graf. Jimmy handed in a muslin square festooned with a tennis racket and a bloody dagger. His square may be unique in the history of quilting, but his teacher did not appreciate its originality and rejected it.
American classrooms are full of Jimmys. Efforts to change boys like Jimmy or my son and his bonfire companions will be difficult if not impossible. Nature is obdurate on some matters. While environment and socialization do play a significant role, scientists are beginning to pinpoint the precise biological correlates to many typical gender differences. A 2001 special issue of Scientific American reviewed the growing evidence that children's play preferences are, in large part, hormonally determined. Researchers confirmed what parents experience all the time: Even with counter-conditioning, boys and girls gravitate toward very different toys. The entire anthropological record offers not a single example of a society where females have better spatial reasoning skills and males better verbal skills, where females are fixated on objects and men on feelings, or where males are physically docile and females aggressive.
In the face of what we know, it is altogether unreasonable to deny the biological basis for distinctive male and female preferences and abilities. Does this mean biology is destiny? As anthropologist Lionel Tiger says, "biology is not destiny, but it is good statistical probability." There is still room for equity. A fair and just society offers equality of opportunity to all. But it cannot promise, and should not try to enforce, sameness. The natural differences between men and women suggest there will never be mathematical parity in all fields; far more men than women will choose to be mechanics, engineers, or soldiers. Early childhood education, family medicine, and social work will continue to be dominated by women. Boys will prefer bonfires to diaries and any teacher who requires them to contribute squares to a quilt should brace herself for insensitive images of monsters, dangerous animals, and weaponry. The male tendency to be competitive, risk-loving, more narrowly focused, and less concerned with feelings has consequences in the real world. It could explain why there are more males at the extremes of success and failure: more male CEOs, more males in maximum security prisons.
Of course, boys' natural masculinity must be tempered. Social theorist Hannah Arendt is believed to have said that every year civilization is invaded by millions of tiny barbarians-they are called children. All societies confront the problem of civilizing their children, particularly the male ones. History teaches that masculinity constrained by morality is powerful and constructive; it also teaches that masculinity without ethics is dangerous and destructive.
Howard Dean has rocketed to the front of the Democratic presidential pack with his angry, outsider style and his overt appeals to the anti-war left. But even as the former Vermont governor galvanizes the party's left flank, many liberals are voicing concern over his stances on some of their most cherished issues.
Many single-issue activists who work on Middle East peace, gun control and drug policy reform - including some who say they were initially attracted to Dean - are becoming increasingly vocal in opposing him. Some are speaking about a "reassessment" on the left and warn darkly that Dean's stands are already costing him support among core Democrats.
"Howard Dean could be the worst of both worlds for progressives," said Norman Solomon, a columnist and figure on the left on the West Coast. "He's not a true progressive, but he's been tarred as being this kind of Birkenstock leftist. What's the payoff here?"
Until not long ago Japan was criticized -- or praised -- for its extraordinarily high savings rate, depending on how one looked at it. The United States, for one, pointed out that Japan was saving too much and investing too little, and called for steps to stimulate domestic demand and boost consumer spending. How times change. Japan is no longer a nation of overeager savers.
Statistics show that more and more Japanese households are dipping into their savings to cover living expenses. Reduced income and extended unemployment are some of the immediate reasons. A private study predicts that the savings rate will amount to almost nothing by the late 2010s if it continues to fall at the current pace. [...]
The falling savings rate is also an ominous sign for the debt-ridden central and local governments. Currently the money to buy public bonds originates mostly from people's savings. If savings continue to dwindle, more money will have to be borrowed from abroad. Japan is still the world's largest creditor, but it is also the most heavily indebted of industrialized nations. If the debt keeps on expanding as fast as it does now, the nation's international credit standing will eventually suffer a serious blow.
There is already a real possibility that should investors lose confidence in government bonds, interest rates would begin to soar, putting a heavy drag on the economy. Indeed, the day of reckoning may well come in the not so distant future if government debt continues to rise rapidly in parallel with a chronic decline in the savings rate.
The number of suicides in Japan last year exceeded 30,000 for the fifth consecutive year. That's more than three times the number of deaths from traffic accidents. The high incidence of suicide is attributed mainly to the prolonged economic slump. This situation demands efforts in various fields to implement specific preventive measures, including improvements in mental health care.
The annual number of suicides in Japan used to average about 20,000. In 1998, though, the figure began soaring past 30,000. It remained nearly level for a while and then rose further last year for the first time in three years. Now suicide ranks as the sixth leading cause of death among Japanese people. For people in their 20s and 30s, it is the leading cause of death.
Another characteristic of the current trend is that suicide is increasing among middle-aged men. According to statistics compiled by the National Police Agency, the number of suicides motivated by economic difficulty rose to a record high 8,000 people last year. Background factors included unemployment, restructuring and debts.
In addition to those who commit suicide, there are about 10 times more people who attempt suicide.
Early in March, intelligence agents searching the western deserts of Pakistan thought they had finally tracked down the world's most wanted man. A convoy was spotted racing along one of the remote smugglers' routes which winds down from southern Afghanistan, through the sand dunes of Pakistani Baluchistan and into Iran. American intelligence agents had a tip that Osama bin Laden was in the group.
They seemed to have reason to be optimistic. Five days earlier Pakistani officers had scored the biggest success so far in the hunt for Bin Laden and his al-Qaida deputies. In a midnight raid they had arrested a ragged-looking Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the Pakistani Kuwaiti who was regarded as the third most senior figure in Bin Laden's network, a man described by the jubilant authorities in Islamabad as a "kingpin of al-Qaida."
Mohammad had been pinpointed when he made a satellite telephone call, which US military electronic eavesdropping tracked to Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan. A computer and lists of phone numbers were recovered after his arrest, amounting to what the Pakistani interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, called an "arsenal" of information.
That new information encouraged investigators to focus their attention on the sparsely populated deserts of Baluchistan. Within a few days they had spotted the convoy.
A major operation was mounted by Pakistani soldiers and US troops. There were reports of heavy gun battles around the Afghan border town of Spin Majid, with up to nine of the men in the convoy killed.
Baluchistan's interior minister appeared on television to announce that two of Bin Laden's sons had been captured. Then one Pakistani journalist broke the sensational news that Bin Laden himself had been caught.
Within hours, it became clear that he had not. In fact, several sources now say the intelligence tip was faulty: Bin Laden was never even in the convoy.
Those with knowledge of the operation have told the Guardian that two of the Saudi-born millionaire's sons had been led by Afghan warlords in the previous days down the same route, a well-trodden drug smugglers' path, and across into Iran. By the time the operation took place, there were still convoys of drug smugglers on the trail but the sons were gone.
"In the end it was just another flop," said Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who has met Bin Laden three times and studied al-Qaida in detail.
Warren Buffett, the legendary investor whose taste for hamburgers and life in Omaha, Nebraska gives him a reputation for Middle American eccentricity in the world of high finance, is just another colorless gray-pinstriper when compared with his father: Rep. Howard Buffett (R-NE), who half a century ago was perhaps the most radical and principled Republican member of Congress.
The Buffetts were pillars of Omaha. Howard Buffett was a stockbroker, "gentle and sweet-natured," in the words of Warren's biographer Roger Lowenstein. His politics, though, were to "the right of God," cracked one local banker.
Buffett was elected to Congress in 1942 with a pledge to keep FDR from "fasten [ing] the chains of political servitude around America's neck." He marked himself an oddball by returning a pay raise to the Treasury and by subjecting each piece of legislation to a simple test: "Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?"
Very few House bills passed Howard Buffett's test.
In four non-consecutive terms representing Omaha in the U.S. House of Representatives, the radical backbench Republican compiled an almost purely libertarian record. He opposed whatever New Deal alphabet-soup agencies and Fair Deal bureaucracies emerged from the black lagoon of the Potomac. As the historian Joseph Stromberg has written, "the only [current] member of Congress who bears comparison with Buffett is Ron Paul," the Texas Republican and courageous naysayer.
Buffett was also a strict isolationist, denouncing NATO, conscription, the Marshall Plan ("Operation Rathole"), and the incipient Cold War, which he believed would enchain Americans in "the shackles of regimentation and coercion...in the name of stopping communism."
I keep hearing this chant, variously phrased: "The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality and the American Constitution and government." In saying this, people are essentially crediting Moses with the invention of ethics, democracy and civil rights, a claim that is of course absurd. But its absurdity is eclipsed by its injustice, for there is another lawmaker who is far more important to us, whose ideas and actions lie far more at the foundation of American government, and whose own Ten Commandments were distributed at large and influencing the greatest civilizations of the West--Greece and Rome--for well over half a millennia before the laws of Moses were anything near a universal social influence. In fact, by the time the Ten Commandments of Moses had any real chance of being the foundation of anything in Western society, democracy and civil rights had all but died out, never to rise again until the ideals of our true hero, the real man to whom we owe all reverence, were rediscovered and implemented in what we now call "modern democratic principles."
The man I am talking about is Solon the Athenian. Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E., and lived until approximately 558, but the date in his life of greatest importance to us is the year he was elected to create a constitution for Athens, 594 B.C.E. How important is this man? Let's examine what we owe to him, in comparison with the legendary author (or at last, in legend, the transmitter) of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Solon is the founder of Western democracy and the first man in history to articulate ideas of equal rights for all citizens, and though he did not go nearly as far in the latter as we have come today, Moses can claim no connection to either. Solon was the first man in Western history to publicly record a civil constitution in writing. No one in Hebrew history did anything of the kind, least of all Moses. Solon advocated not only the right but even the duty of every citizen to bear arms in the defense of the state--to him we owe the 2nd Amendment. Nothing about that is to be found in the Ten Commandments of Moses. Solon set up laws defending the principles and importance of private property, state encouragement of economic trades and crafts, and a strong middle class--the ideals which lie at the heart of American prosperity, yet which cannot be credited at all to Moses.
Solon is the first man in history to eliminate birth as a basis for government office, and to create democratic assemblies open to all male citizens, such that no law could be passed without the majority vote of all. The notion of letting women into full political rights would not arise in any culture until that of modern Europe, but democracy never gets a single word in the Bible. Solon invented the right of appeal and trial by jury, whereby an assembly of citizens chosen at random, without regard for office or wealth or birth, gave all legal verdicts. Moses can claim nothing as fundamental as these developments, which are absolutely essential to modern society. The concept of taking a government official to court for malfeasance we owe to Solon. We read nothing of the kind about Moses. The idea of allowing foreigners who have mastered a useful trade to immigrate and become citizens is also an original invention of Solon--indeed, the modern concept of citizenship itself is largely indebted to him. There is nothing like this in the Bible. And like our own George Washington, Solon declined the offer to become ruler in his country, giving it a Constitution instead--unlike Moses who gave laws yet continued to reign. And Solon's selfless creation of the Athenian constitution set the course which led to the rise of the first universal democracy in the United States, and it was to Solon's Athens, not the Bible, that our Founding Fathers looked for guidance in constructing a new State. Moses can claim no responsibility for this. If we had Solon and no Moses, we would very likely still be where we are today. But if we had Moses and no Solon, democracy might never have existed at all.
So much for being the impetus behind our Constitution. The Ten Commandments of Moses have no connection with that, while the Constitution of Solon has everything to do with it. [...]
Let us now turn to the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60), which run as follows:
1. Trust good character more than promises.
2. Do not speak falsely.
3. Do good things.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
9. Honor the gods.
10. Have regard for your parents.
Unlike the Commandments of Moses, none of these is outdated or antithetical to modern moral or political thought. Every one could be taken up by anyone today, of any creed--except perhaps only one.
IT IS not a little remarkable that in every case reported by ancient history, in which government has been established with deliberation and consent, the task of framing it has not been committed to an assembly of men, but has been performed by some individual citizen of preeminent wisdom and approved integrity.
Minos, we learn, was the primitive founder of the government of Crete, as Zaleucus was of that of the Locrians. Theseus first, and after him Draco and Solon, instituted the government of Athens. Lycurgus was the lawgiver of Sparta. The foundation of the original government of Rome was laid by Romulus, and the work completed by two of his elective successors, Numa and Tullius Hostilius. On the abolition of royalty the consular administration was substituted by Brutus, who stepped forward with a project for such a reform, which, he alleged, had been prepared by Tullius Hostilius, and to which his address obtained the assent and ratification of the senate and people. This remark is applicable to confederate governments also. Amphictyon, we are told, was the author of that which bore his name. The Achaean league received its first birth from Achaeus, and its second from Aratus.
What degree of agency these reputed lawgivers might have in their respective establishments, or how far they might be clothed with the legitimate authority of the people, cannot in every instance be ascertained. In some, however, the proceeding was strictly regular. Draco appears to have been intrusted by the people of Athens with indefinite powers to reform its government and laws. And Solon, according to Plutarch, was in a manner compelled, by the universal suffrage of his fellow-citizens, to take upon him the sole and absolute power of new-modeling the constitution. The proceedings under Lycurgus were less regular; but as far as the advocates for a regular reform could prevail, they all turned their eyes towards the single efforts of that celebrated patriot and sage, instead of seeking to bring about a revolution by the intervention of a deliberative body of citizens.
Whence could it have proceeded, that a people, jealous as the Greeks were of their liberty, should so far abandon the rules of caution as to place their destiny in the hands of a single citizen? Whence could it have proceeded, that the Athenians, a people who would not suffer an army to be commanded by fewer than ten generals, and who required no other proof of danger to their liberties than the illustrious merit of a fellow-citizen, should consider one illustrious citizen as a more eligible depositary of the fortunes of themselves and their posterity, than a select body of citizens, from whose common deliberations more wisdom, as well as more safety, might have been expected? These questions cannot be fully answered, without supposing that the fears of discord and disunion among a number of counsellors exceeded the apprehension of treachery or incapacity in a single individual. History informs us, likewise, of the difficulties with which these celebrated reformers had to contend, as well as the expedients which they were obliged to employ in order to carry their reforms into effect. Solon, who seems to have indulged a more temporizing policy, confessed that he had not given to his countrymen the government best suited to their happiness, but most tolerable to their prejudices. And Lycurgus, more true to his object, was under the necessity of mixing a portion of violence with the authority of superstition, and of securing his final success by a voluntary renunciation, first of his country, and then of his life. If these lessons teach us, on one hand, to admire the improvement made by America on the ancient mode of preparing and establishing regular plans of government, they serve not less, on the other, to admonish us of the hazards and difficulties incident to such experiments, and of the great imprudence of unnecessarily multiplying them.
Massachusetts and others among the founding thirteen states, while protecting the full religious liberty of citizens under their new constitutions after Independence, maintained an established church and entrusted important moral and educational tasks to church communities with state support, direct or indirect. Virginia, too, agreed that the protection of morals and education in republican habits was indispensable to the survival and well-being of republican government. However, abuses of religious freedom led three leading Virginians to draw an exceedingly bright line between the state and not only the church but even religion more generally. This line was defined by four major documents: George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779), James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785), and again his Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1785).
Three features of this decade-long struggle deserve note. First, Virginia trod this path almost alone among the founding states. Second, the extraordinary passion of Jefferson and Madison on this point was bitterly resisted by many in Virginia, as well as in other states, and in practice it proved nearly impossible to observe completely. The dependence of the republic upon the concepts and habits inculcated by Jewish and Christian religions proved to be too conspicuous to ignore. As Presidents, for example, both Jefferson and Madison expended considerable effort to show their personal support for religious worship and to nurture religious activities. The actual practice of the early republic exhibited many accommodations between the state and religious citizens in multiple warm and friendly ways that sharply distinguished the American way from the rigorous hostility Maritain had known in France. While the American Republic had no established church, the American state took a positive and benign attitude toward the full, free, and quite visibly public exercise of religion, not least at major state functions and national celebrations. Moreover, the religion shown in such public exercises was not just "religion in general," but quite distinctively Protestant Christianity, albeit, typically, in a fairly nondenominational form. And this public choice was not a matter of mere reflex, without argument on its behalf. Public figures and public documents widely asserted that this particular stream of religion was of decisive importance in the history of liberty, and indispensable to its survival.
But the third feature of these founding documents is even more striking and profound. For it is quite stunning that the four documents in question depend for their intelligibility and their credibility upon a distinctively Jewish and Christian view of man's relation to God. The hinge of the argument in each document is a fact of Jewish and Christian faith: that each individual conscience stands in the presence of its Creator. Further, by virtue of having been created from nothing, each individual owes a primordial duty to her or his Creator. This duty is of so intimate a nature that no other person can perform it in that individual's place. It is an inalienable duty, which can be taken up by no other.
This particular religious view is held by only two religions. It is not found in Buddhism nor in Hinduism; not in animism nor in pantheism; not in the religions of the ancient Greeks or Romans; nor in the religions of the Incas or the Mayans; and not even in that one other religion which also recognized a Creator separate from the created world, Islam.
These other world religions are satisfied by outward obeisance. Do your duty, and no one inquires into what your secret thoughts may be. Since only outward ritual acts were demanded, not even the great Greek or Roman philosophers worried over the assent of conscience to the worship of the gods. By contrast, Jews and Christians trembled if asked to make outward obeisance to idols, for they recognized in that act a terrible sin of idolatry.
Only Judaism and Christianity among all world religions developed, and still nourish and celebrate, the three central concepts necessary to the American conception of rights. Only they hold to the doctrine that there is a Creator (and Governor of the universe); that each individual owes a personal accounting at the time of Judgment to this Creator, a Judgment that is prior to all claims of civil society or state; and that this inalienable relation between each individual and his Creator occurs in the depths of conscience and reason, and is not reached merely by external bows, bended knees, pilgrimages, or other ritual observances.
When a truck packed with explosives blew up outside the United Nations compound in Baghdad and killed at least 23 people, much of the world recoiled in shock, horrified anyone would attack an organization known everywhere for its good works.
Everywhere, that is, except in Iraq, where there is deep ambivalence toward the world body.
For many Iraqis, the United Nations was synonymous with economic hardship - responsible for much of the everyday misery here.
The crippling international sanctions imposed by the world body after Iraq invaded Kuwait 12 years ago have been blamed for everything from high infant mortality rates to a ban on ice cream.
Geoff Keele, a spokesman for UNICEF who has worked in Iraq since June 2002, said under the previous government, the state press - the only source of information for people - would condemn the United Nations regularly, blaming it for the lack of quality health care.
"So there are people who are out there who do feel that the United Nations is to blame for a lot of the situations they find themselves in right now in this country,'' Keele said.
Many Iraqis couldn't separate U.N. humanitarian programs from the political measures meted out by its member states. For them, the same organization that tried to fund schools and bring in rice and flour under the Oil for Food Program was also the instrument that laid the groundwork for the 1991 Gulf War.
The 12 years of sanctions that followed did nothing to diminish the United Nations' image as a lackey for the United States.
"When you talk to me about the United Nations, what comes to mind is a political organization,'' said Moaid Al Rawi, 27, in his electrical appliance store in downtown Baghdad. "I don't consider their humanitarian contribution to be so great for us here. But don't get me wrong,'' he quickly added, "no one agrees with what happened.''
If critics can show that the administration overplayed the al Qaeda-Saddam connection, they will undermine not only an important rationale for removing the Iraqi dictator, but the broader, arguably more important case for the war--that the conflict in Iraq was one battle in the worldwide war on terror.
What, then, did the Bush administration say about this relationship before the war? Which parts of that case, if any, have been invalidated by the intelligence gathered in the months following the conflict? What is this new "evidence," cited by Gore and others, that reveals the administration's arguments to have been embellished? Finally, what if any new evidence has emerged that bolsters the Bush administration's prewar case?
The answer to that last question is simple: lots. The CIA has confirmed, in interviews with detainees and informants it finds highly credible, that al Qaeda's Number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, met with Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad in 1992 and 1998. More disturbing, according to an administration official familiar with briefings the CIA has given President Bush, the Agency has "irrefutable evidence" that the Iraqi regime paid Zawahiri $300,000 in 1998, around the time his Islamic Jihad was merging with al Qaeda. "It's a lock," says this source. Other administration officials are a bit more circumspect, noting that the intelligence may have come from a single source. Still, four sources spread across the national security hierarchy have confirmed the payment.
In interviews conducted over the past six weeks with uniformed officers on the ground in Iraq, intelligence officials, and senior security strategists, several things became clear. Contrary to the claims of its critics, the Bush administration has consistently underplayed the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Evidence of these links existed before the war. In making its public case against the Iraq regime, the Bush administration used only a fraction of the intelligence it had accumulated documenting such collaboration. The intelligence has, in most cases, gotten stronger since the end of the war. And through interrogations of high-ranking Iraqi officials, documents from the regime, and further interrogation of al Qaeda detainees, a clearer picture of the links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein is emerging.
A disquieting new tone has sneaked into my routine telephone conversations with moderate Muslim leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. "Washington's bungling in Iraq worries me so much that I can't sleep anymore; it's damaging my health; it's a scary time," an internationally well-connected Arab-American Bush supporter told me Friday morning.
He begged me not to use his name because, he said, "expressing pro-administration sentiments has become dangerous. Even Arab-American Republicans will call you a traitor if you back Bush." So I'll call this contact Mahmoud. Like Bassam Tibi, a reform-minded Muslim scholar teaching at Goettingen University in Germany, Mahmoud stated, "Iraq is on its way to become another (Taliban-run) Afghanistan, only with lower mountains."
Syrian-born Tibi, a social scientist and ardent proponent of a modernized Islam compatible with Western values, said, his voice shaking with worry, "America's sworn enemies are pouring into Iraq from all sides because the borders are not properly controlled. Iraq has become the new domain for Muslim fanatics."
Added Mahmoud, "When I telephone contacts in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Yemen and Jordan, I keep hearing the same story over and over again: the story of hundreds and hundreds of men seemingly disappearing without a trace. You don't have to be a genius to figure our where they have gone - to Iraq."
Arnold Schwarzenegger stopped at a sidewalk cafe here in Surf City to chat today with a few local business owners, then strolled along Main Street. More than 1,000 people rushed to the scene to watch.
They climbed trees. They stood atop cars, lined balconies, stopped downtown traffic and nearly overwhelmed his security detail.
It was the first time Schwarzenegger took his celebrity gubernatorial campaign to the streets, and bedlam erupted.
Even before his appearance today, Republican leaders had begun pressuring other GOP candidates running in the state's Oct. 7 recall election to drop out and clear the field for the actor. That campaign intensified after the response Schwarzenegger received here.
The Lincoln Club of Orange County, one of California's most influential Republican groups, today endorsed Schwarzenegger and urged his three prominent GOP rivals -- Bill Simon, Tom McClintock and Peter Ueberroth -- to give up their campaigns.
Gov. Gray Davis edged closer to abandoning his me-or-nothing strategy against the recall, as key Democrats rallied behind the backup candidacy of Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to hedge against losing power in Sacramento.
Bustamante picked up several major endorsements, including the backing of the state's Democratic congressional delegation and a vote of support from the powerful California Teachers Assn. Both groups also urged a "no" vote on efforts to oust Davis. A similar move by state Democratic legislators is expected next week.
In brief comments to The Times after a fund-raising event in San Francisco, Davis said: "Cruz Bustamante is a good and decent person, and I believe his involvement in the race will bring out more voters who will vote against the recall."
"I know some of my aides were of a different view initially," Davis added. "But I believe the excitement of his candidacy will actually attract more people to polls who will vote 'no.' "
Those words stopped short of endorsing Bustamante, but moved Davis closer to aligning himself with the emerging position of the state Democratic Party establishment
In a boost to her flagging campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Carol Moseley Braun is expected to pick up her first major endorsements next week from the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus.
The endorsements, first reported in Friday's editions of the Chicago Sun-Times, will be announced Tuesday in Washington by leaders of the groups, according to a source with Braun's campaign.
With 12 days left before the first gubernatorial recall forum, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger remains the only holdout among the top replacement candidates.
The six others have agreed to participate in the Sept. 3 event, sponsored by the Times, KTVU and KQED-FM. The program will be broadcast live from the Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek.
Sean Walsh, the actor's spokesman, said the campaign was reviewing several debate offers.
On a sweltering day in June 1997, a gay pride parade passed down Market Street, San Francisco. Among the thousands marching was Joan - then Jonathan - Roughgarden, a theoretical ecologist and marine biologist of some repute. A few months later, at 52, she underwent a sex change to become a transgendered woman. But that day was a turning point of a different sort. "I was looking at all these people and realising that my discipline said they weren't possible," she recalls. "Homosexuality is not supposed to exist, according to biology."
She did not know what the future held for her, but she resolved that if she managed to keep her job as a biology professor at Stanford University she would explore how widespread variation in gender and sexuality was in the animal kingdom. In the event she was forced to give up some administrative responsibilities and started to catalogue homosexuality in other species.
What she found astounded her. Studies document same-sex courtship rituals and mating in more than 300 species. Still more species have multiple genders, or exhibit gender reversal and hermaphroditism. Yet no one had collated them, no one had sought to explain this phenomenon. "Biologists know there is a problem there, they know there is a lot of same-sex sexuality, and it is in the back of everyone's mind that we are going to have to deal with it at some point," she says.
The problem is that dealing with it means challenging the master text in biology: Darwin's theory of evolution. Or more precisely, the part on the selection of sexual characteristics. In her book Evolution's Rainbow, due out next March, Roughgarden asserts that Darwin's theory is "false and inadequate" and that there is no patching it up.
Her main point of contention is over Darwin's notion that females select males for show, because their showy secondary sexual characteristics - the peacock's tail, for instance - reflect good genes. Because eggs are supposed to be costly to produce and sperm cheap, this in turn has led to the stereotypical - and, she believes, erroneous - depiction of males as promiscuous and females as coy and discerning. That false message has been picked up by evolutionary biologists, says Roughgarden, but you only have to look at animal societies to see that it is not true. [...]
The second part of her theory is that females do not choose males for their genes, as Darwin taught, but to avoid "deadbeat dads". She says females manage male power by selecting for good fathers rather than good sperm. This, she believes, creates a marketplace for reproductive opportunity.
Humans can be trained to crave food in response to abstract prompts just like Pavlov's dogs, reveals new research.
But whereas Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to drool at the sound of a bell, Jay Gottfried and colleagues at University College London, UK, trained humans to yearn for vanilla ice cream and peanut butter at the sight of fractal-based computer images.
Importantly, the team also showed that the human brain can put a "brake" on the powerful desire for certain foods once the appetite has been sated. This system to turn the "delectable into the distasteful" may be crucial in regulating behaviour, they say. Detecting faults in this system might in future help shed light on compulsive eating disorders and substance addictions, speculates Gottfried, a neurologist.
"If food cravings in general are being triggered by environmental cues associated with food, [compulsive eaters] could have a disturbance in the way the brain puts a brake on the system," he told New Scientist.
Summers wants Harvard to regard itself as a single sovereign entity rather than as an archipelago of loosely affiliated institutions. He wants to change the undergraduate curriculum so that students focus less on ''ways of knowing'' and more on actual knowledge. He wants to raise quantitative kinds of knowledge to something like parity with traditionally humanistic kinds of knowledge. He wants to make the university more directly engaged with problems in education and public health, and he wants the professions that deal with those problems to achieve the same status as the more lordly ones of law, business and medicine. And he wants to assert certain traditional verities, or rather open an intellectual space in which such verities can at least be posited. ''The idea that we should be open to all ideas,'' he said when I saw him in mid-July, ''is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.''
Summers insists that he does not aspire to the role of public sage that presidents of Ivy League universities occupied until about 50 years ago. But it is simply a fact that by virtue of occupying the most commanding heights of the culture, Harvard has traditionally exercised enormous influence. If undergrad inorganic chemistry is now going to be taken to be as much a staple as political philosophy at Harvard, then your children may be more scientifically literate (and less philosophically literate) than you are.
Even if Summers were a guileful and calculating figure with a hidden agenda of drastic change, he would have a tough row to hoe. But he's not: he's a blunt and overbearing figure with an overt agenda of drastic change. It should come as no surprise that Larry Summers is not quite as popular a figure as his gracious predecessor was. One of Summers's oldest friends on the faculty said to me: ''There are a lot of people on other parts of the campus I've met who just despise him. The level of the intensity of their dislike for him is just shocking.'' [...]
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks took place soon after Summers took office and inflected his presidency in ways that could scarcely have been anticipated. While much of the university world took the view that the United States must in some important way have been responsible for the attacks, Summers says that he felt called to speak up for patriotic values. At a speech at the Kennedy School in late October, he chided the school's dean for failing to include a uniformed officer among those the school was honoring for public service. ''There are still many people who, when they think of police, think too quickly of Chicago in 1968 and too slowly of the people who risk their lives every day to keep streets safe in America's major cities,'' Summers told his audience. He seemed to be lecturing his own university and kindred institutions in public. In the ensuing months, Summers tried to raise the status of the R.O.T.C. on campus: he demanded the reversal of a policy that had prevented students from listing R.O.T.C. service in the yearbook and made a point of addressing the R.O.T.C. graduation ceremony at the end of the year. And then last September, he threw down another ideological gauntlet when he claimed, in a speech that was front-page news all over the country, that ''serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.'' And he did not shy from observing that this group included scholars at Harvard and elsewhere who had called on Harvard to divest its portfolio of companies that did business in Israel.
Between patriotism, R.O.T.C., anti-anti-Semitism and much hard talk about grade inflation, Summers quickly gained a reputation as the spokesman for mainstream values as against the consensual leftism of the elite campus. The conservative Weekly Standard called him its ''favorite university president,'' while The Wall Street Journal editorial page spoke in similarly glowing terms -- not a form of adulation normally considered desirable for Ivy League presidents. It was really an astounding situation: the equivalent of Alan Greenspan taking on corporate malfeasance. Summers seemed to have embarked on a crusade for which many people -- and not only conservatives -- had long been waiting. Indeed, one of Summers's oldest friends at Harvard, the economist Dale Jorgenson, said that Summers ''feels that universities in general have forgotten that they're part of the nation'' and wants to restore a sense of ''moral clarity'' to campus discourse.
Summers himself bridles at the suggestion that he is trying to speak against the grain of the institution he leads or to somehow bring it to heel. He declines the title of ''cultural conservative,'' not only because it would get him into a lot of trouble but also because, he said, those who march under that banner tend to ''have views about the one right way, which tends to be a white European male way.'' Summers really is not that kind of ideologue; it is rather that he is an unabashedly mainstream figure in a highly progressive culture. And the discomfort he causes has not persuaded him to stop. In the spring of 2002, he attended a discussion about globalization with the faculty of the Graduate School of Education. ''They were going in the direction that globalization pointed to the need for more education directed at multicultural understanding,'' he said. ''And I said that I thought globalization meant global competition, and that it made the basic capacity to read and do arithmetic more important.'' I asked Summers what the response had been. ''It was,'' he said dryly, ''seen as a distinctive perspective.''
People inside Harvard are less preoccupied with Summers's musings on the Kulturkampf than they are with his plans to reshape the undergraduate curriculum.
As law enforcement officials and legislators from Arizona, Utah and Canada gather in St. George, Utah, today for a summit on polygamy, proponents of multiple marriage are facing their worst crisis since the state of Arizona raided the enclave of Short Creek, now Colorado City, 50 years ago. [...]
The issue of polygamy has been in the spotlight in recent years because of the nationally publicized trial and conviction for child rape of polygamist Tom Green, the attention that anti-polygamist groups drew during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and a recent best- selling book, Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.
But Rodney Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who represents the polygamist groups in Colorado City, Hildale and Bountiful, British Columbia, said that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are getting a bum rap.
In a letter sent Thursday to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Parker wrote that the young women are not forced into marriage.
"They enter those relationships voluntarily with the consent of their parents and extended family. . . . Although their model of marriage by revelation runs counter to traditional notions of romantic love and marriage, the model works for them because they have confidence in it," Parker wrote.
A recently discovered letter confirms that Pope Urban VIII was concerned that the case brought against Galileo Galilei be speedily resolved given the astronomer's frail health.
The letter was discovered days ago by historian Francesco Beretta, professor of the history of Christianity of the German University of Freiburg. He found it in the archives of the former Holy Office, now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [...]
In a past interview with ZENIT, Cardinal Poupard said that "of course, Galileo suffered much; but the historical truth is that he was condemned only to 'formalem carcerem' -- a kind of house arrest. Several judges refused to endorse the sentence, and the Pope at the time did not sign it."
"Galileo was able to continue to work in his science and died on Jan. 8, 1642, in his home in Arcetri, near Florence," the cardinal added. "Viviani, who stayed with him during his illness, testified that he died with philosophical and Christian firmness, at 77 years of age."
The Vatican commission that served to rehabilitate Galileo stated that "the abjuration of the Copernican system by the scientist was due essentially to his religious personality, which tried to obey the Church even if the latter was in error. Galileo did not want to be a heretic; he did not want to be exposed to eternal damnation and therefore accepted the abjuration so as not to sin," Archbishop Amato said.
Following the commission's investigation and the Holy Father's rehabilitation of the famous astronomer, Galileo's case can be considered closed, the archbishop said.
This episode, he concluded, has taught us not to highlight "the opposition but rather the harmony that must reign" between reason and faith, "the two wings with which the Christian can fly to God," as "John Paul II has synthesized it in the encyclical 'Fides et Ratio.'"
Arthur Koestler, an iconoclastic thinker who could always be counted on for a catchy title, called his history of cosmology "The Sleepwalkers." The way mankind lurched and stumbled toward the truth reminded him "more of a sleepwalker's performance than an electronic brain's."
Obsessions and fixations were as common as brilliant chains of reasoning, and every step forward seemed to be countered by two steps sideways and a half step back.
The most erratic of the somnambulists on this zigzag trail was the man often called the father of modern science, Galileo. Far from being the selfless hero of popular legend who championed scientific truth over blind religious faith, he comes off in Koestler's book, published in 1959, as a vainglorious self-promoter spoiling for a fight.
The primary reason he was hauled before the Inquisition, Koestler argued, was not for teaching Copernicus's view that Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun, but for offending so many of his sympathizers -- and, most important, for insisting that Copernicanism was not just a theory, but an indisputable truth.
Admirers have called her one of the country's best and brightest and the President's secret weapon. At a June 4 meeting with Jordanian, Palestinian Authority, and Israeli leaders, President Bush called her "my personal representative" and said she would work closely with the parties to help bring about peace. Her significance in shaping American foreign policy is hard to overstate.
Known affectionately inside the White House as the Warrior Princess, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice often speaks for the President on foreign policy and is one of his closest confidants. From her northwest corner office of the West Wing, she is responsible for sharpening and presenting the arguments of the administration's often rambunctious National Security Council.
Before her current stint, she had overseen decisions in corporate boardrooms, managed a multimillion-dollar budget at Stanford University, and negotiated key deals for the first President Bush.
Rice's keen intellect, steely unflappability, and Southern charm have served her well. Those qualities, her family and friends told Christianity Today, arise from something deep within her. "Her faith is absolutely fundamental to who she is," says Randy Bean, executive producer of special television projects at Stanford and a longtime friend. "It's part of her fiber." [...]
Rice enrolled in a course on international politics. The instructor was Josef Korbel. The former Czech diplomat and political refugee fascinated Rice. She would later describe Korbel as "one of the most central figures in my life, next to my parents." Korbel and his family, whose Jewish background came to light much later, escaped both Nazis and communists. The U.S. government granted Korbel political asylum, and the University of Denver hired him to start an international politics program.
Rice and Korbel's daughter, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, are probably that program's most famous alumni. Both Rice and Albright, despite their differences, acquired Korbel's unshakable commitment to the American ideals of freedom and democracy. Rice, like many foreign policy experts of the Cold War era, was attracted to the views of scholar Hans Morgenthau, a leading advocate of balance-of-power realism in relations between nations.
But in time, Rice's own view would shift toward the values-driven model that the Bush White House embraces. "Power matters," Rice told National Review in 1999. "But there can be no absence of moral content in American foreign policy, and, furthermore, the American people wouldn't accept such an absence. Europeans giggle at this and say we're naïve and so on, but we're not Europeans, we're Americans-and we have different principles."
Let's start with foreign policy. The Bush administration's response to September 11 was ambitious and unambiguous. It seemed to have bipartisan support for a while. No longer. Bush's Democratic opponent in 2004 looks likely to oppose fundamentally the Bush Doctrine and its most prominent instantiation so far, the war in Iraq. So we will have a Reagan-Mondale degree of difference on foreign policy, made more consequential by the fact that we are at the genesis of a new foreign policy era. The implications of September 11 for American foreign policy, the basic choices as to America's role in the world, will be on the table. They will not be resolved in November 2004 once and for all--things never are. But they may well be resolved for a generation.
At home, the entire federal judiciary is at stake. Again, it's not that every Bush appointee will be a Scalia, or every Democrat a Souter (oops)--but no one doubts that the (unfortunately) ever more powerful courts will look radically different by 2008 if Bush or a Democrat is president. Indeed, in thinking of the judiciary, one is reminded of the court-packing effort following the election of 1936. Issues of the size and role of government will of course be nowhere near so dramatically posed in 2004 as they were then--though the contrast between a Bush administration proud of its tax cuts and a Democratic opponent pledged to roll many of them back is not trivial.
But even more striking is the divide over social and cultural issues. Bush is no aggressive culture warrior. But he is pretty unambiguously on the pro-life, anti-gay-marriage, worried-about-Brave-New-World, pro-religion-in-the-public-sphere side of the culture divide. The Democratic candidate is likely to pretty unambiguously embody a secular, progressivist, liberationist worldview. The partisan divide between religious and secular voters has been growing, and in 2004 it might well be the widest in modern American history. The losing side won't surrender, and the winner won't have an entirely free hand to make policy. But who wins will matter a lot.
Lawyers seeking removal of a Ten Commandments monument from a judicial building's rotunda told a federal judge Friday they would not press to have the state's chief justice held in contempt for refusing to move it.
The lawyers also said they would not seek to have the state fined, telling U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson on a conference call that they were convinced the monument would be out of the state building by next week despite the resistance of Chief Justice Roy Moore.
"Our concern all along has been compliance with the constitution. Once the monument has been removed, our concerns will have been addressed," said attorney Ayesha Khan, who participated in the call.
After Thompson's deadline had passed, Moore's eight associate justices on the state's high court on Thursday ordered the granite marker taken out of the rotunda. But court officials were still trying to determine where it might go in the building -- it weighs 5,300 pounds -- and if the area would allow proper security.
We've all heard these ten commands many times. As familiarity may breed contempt, it's worth hearing them once more, a little differently. The following is a summary of the version that appears in Deuteronomy 5 (the other, slightly different version is found in Exodus 20):
God identifies himself by what he has done. He brought his people out of Egypt. They are to have no other gods. He is invisible. They must not try to make an image of God or express him in terms of heavenly bodies or earthly creatures. Any idol of God would be pitifully inadequate and dangerously misleading. Instead, God wishes to be known by his passion for his people: his jealousy for their love, his hatred of their wickedness and his lasting commitment to their well being.
God's name is utterly holy. It sums up his personality and purpose. It is a serious thing to abuse God's name, by taking it lightly or using it to endorse empty promises.
The Sabbath day is to be kept holy. It is a day when the whole community-including servants, animals, visitors and strangers-has time and space to rest and reflect.
Children are to honor their parents. Families are to be bonded by obedience as well as affection. Elderly parents are to be provided for by their children. Soundly built families make a strong and stable society.
Human life, marriage, possessions and reputations are all to be respected. In particular, jealousy is to be tackled at source-in the heart. A neighbor is any fellow human being-not just a person who lives nearby. Another person's partner and possessions are not negotiable. Don't even think it! (Andrew Knowles, The Bible Guide: An All-in-one Introduction to the Book of Books [Augsburg: 2001], 95-96.)
These are, above all, the commandments of a God who loves his people. He makes a covenant with them, freely, on his own initiative. To live by these commandments is to respond rightly to God's prior grace. It is to live as part of a covenant community with that loving God.
Long before it became, through the mediation of Christianity, the moral property of Gentiles, the Decalogue was the law code and constitutional center of a theocratic state-the Hebrew nation formed at Sinai. Long before Christian theologians grappled with its relationship, as the "old covenant," with the "new covenant" in Christ, the rabbis treasured, interpreted, and applied it in a kaleidoscope of ways.
Because it represents the responsibilities of a covenant, the Decalogue was probably not divided (as some imagine) into two tablets, each containing five commandments. Rather, there would have been one complete record for each partner in the covenant-symbolizing that this is a mutual relationship. Not only did the commandments come from a loving God, they enjoined love in return. Jesus made this clear when, faced by the Pharisees' question, he summarized all the commandments in two: Love to God and love to neighbor (Matt 22:34-40).
Toby Usnik, a Times spokesman, said he didn't know the cause of the problem, which hit the company at around noon EDT Friday. Employees, including the paper's reporters and editors, were instructed within an hour to turn off their PCs.
[N]othing about this historic recall drive is engraved into stone, not even the election date. What's true one day may be untrue the next, simply because another 24 hours have passed. And the evolutionary changes are nearly impossible to predict because no one has wandered down this particular political path before and all electoral models are inapplicable.
The following observations, are, therefore, merely snapshots that could be completely invalidated by the intervention of still another unforeseen factor. With that caveat, here's where we stand after a week of major moves by principal figures:
--Schwarzenegger's critical need is for Bill Simon, last year's GOP challenger to Davis, to decide that with only a few points of voter support (4 percent in the latest poll), he'd be foolish to continue wasting his money and that he should throw his support to the leading Republican. If Simon continues to the end, he and state Sen. Tom McClintock could siphon off enough conservative votes to thwart Schwarzenegger. [...]
--If it does become a two-person contest, the critical number to win is probably about 40 percent, given that the other 133 candidates will naturally soak up a substantial number of votes, albeit a few at a time. Bustamante, with little ability to garner Republican support, may need 90 percent of the Democratic votes to hit 40 percent. Schwarzenegger might need just 70 percent of Republicans if he can continue to make inroads with independents and Democrats. The two are roughly tied now at around 25 percent each, so the ability to claim moderate voters will be crucial to both.
The reaction to yesterday's tragedy could have been written in advance.
Americans will tell us that this proves how "desperate" Saddam's "dead-enders" have become -- as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying U.S. rule in Iraq. The truth -- however many of Saddam's old regime hands are involved -- is that the Iraqi resistance organization now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime. Increasingly, the Shiites are becoming involved in anti-American actions.
Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness upon Saddam's former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Saudi "terrorists," al-Qaida "terrorists," pro-Syrian "terrorists," pro-Iranian "terrorists" -- any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: that our occupation has spawned a real home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on Earth.
In order to understand better the gravity of this problem, I recently spoke to retired US Marine Lieutenant-Colonel James G Zumwalt.
Since 1994, Zumwalt has made 10 visits to the DPRK in an effort to help bridge the differences between the US and the DPRK. A veteran of the US-Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, Zumwalt now acts as a private consultant to foreign and domestic clients in exploring and accessing investment opportunities in global markets, especially those in emerging economies such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China, where he has successfully brokered infrastructure agreements. In 1991, then US president George H W Bush appointed Zumwalt senior adviser to the assistant secretary of state on human rights and humanitarian affairs. In that role, he conducted investigations into human rights violations in various countries. He received a Juris Doctorate degree from Villanova University in 1979 and the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa from Mercy College in New York in 1991. [...]
Nash: Do you believe that there is any hope for a peaceful resolution to the current hostilities, or has the dispute already carried too far?
Zumwalt: Sadly, I do not believe a peaceful - and, more importantly, successful - resolution of differences between the US and North Korea is possible, absent a triggering event within North Korea that brings forward an enlightened regime willing to act more responsibly domestically as well as internationally. And, due to the tight and brutal control the current regime exercises over its people, I put a very low likelihood on such a change occurring internally. [...]
I think that any sort of "permanent solution" to the North Korean nuclear problem is simply not possible with a Kim Jong-il-led government or, for that matter, with any other similarly configured government without Kim Jong-il at its head. [...]
It is important too for us to decide the exact parameters upon which such a "permanent solution" is to rest. What I have outlined so far is strictly a permanent solution based on the inner parameters, ie, the WMD issue. But a decision must be made as to whether a permanent solution is to include the outer parameters, ie, should it address as well the brutal treatment of the North Korean people by its leadership? This is strictly a moral determination we must make. We know Pyongyang has already allowed 2 million of its citizens to die of famine, choosing to dedicate its limited financial assets to the development of its WMD program rather than agricultural reform. We know in North Korea, where rugged mountains leave only 20 percent of the land available for agriculture, some farmers are ordered to replace food crops, so critical in a country where nine percent of its population has died of famine, with poppies, so critical in a country where drug trafficking is a growing business to generate cash for military purposes. In Pyongyang we have a government with a long-established track record of total irresponsibility in caring for its citizenry. Do we have any moral obligation to help an enslaved people cast off their yoke of suppression or do we turn a blind eye, allowing millions more North Koreans to die quietly from their government's acts of omission and commission - all at the price of hoping to resolve the WMD threat posed at the outside world? More than six decades ago, England's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, decided to negotiate with [Adolf] Hitler - a dictator of the same ilk as Kim Jong-il. Chamberlain returned to England, heralding he had achieved "peace in our time". History proved him wrong and the peace short-lived. Do we now buy peace in our time by accepting similar false promises from Kim Jong-il, knowing we are dooming the North Korean people to a life of continued hardship and suffering?
For this reason, before we embark upon any effort to achieve a permanent solution on the peninsula, we must first decide upon the parameters to be met. [...]
Nash: What can the US expect if it does become engaged in military conflict with North Korea?
Zumwalt: [...] A first strike by the US military would take the form of simultaneous hits against a series of tactical targets, along the DMZ and scattered elsewhere around the country. These targets will include military headquarters that have been dug deep underground in Pyongyang and elsewhere. Their destruction will disrupt all North Korean command, control and communications. As was Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il too will become a target of opportunity. The back of the North Korean military will be broken in a matter of weeks, if not days, as the army becomes totally disorganized and nonfunctional. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for it to launch an effective counterattack. Many North Korean soldiers will seek escape routes into the mountains and China. The country will totally collapse in less time than did Iraq.
The majority Shi'ite backlash against the traditional dominance of the Sunni minority in Iraq that the United States hoped would bail it out of the Iraqi quagmire has not materialized. Instead, two of the main Shi'ite and Sunni leaders, known to have mass support in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr and Ahmed Kubeisi respectively, have come together to oppose the US occupation.
Expectations of a Sunni-Shi'ite showdown in Iraq take on some credibility when one looks at the situation in Pakistan, where the two groups have been involved in sectarian violence for many years, although in this case the Shi'ites constitute the minority. Only last month, the Muslim sectarian divide claimed scores of lives in several incidents in Pakistan. Afghanistan, too, has a history of sectarian troubles, with the Taliban in particular coming down hard on Shi'ites.
On the other hand, in India, Muslims, the second largest Islamic community in the world after Indonesia, seldom quarrel on sectarian lines. Similarly, in other countries with Muslim communities, there is little evidence of Shi'ite-Sunni violence. Indeed, in recent years there has been significant cooperation between the two groups in Lebanon.
With the US, or at lest a section of its administration, seriously considering the creation of separate Shi'ite states around southern Saudi Arabian and Iraqi oil fields - that would be small enough to be run as protectorates - the Islamic world would face a major challenge in reconciling Shi'ite-Sunni ideological differences in a hurry.
And even if such a hare-brained idea was not implemented, the very real possibility of a Shi'ite fundamentalist regime a la Iran eventually rising in Iraq on the ashes of the secular Sunni-led administration of Saddam has the potential to overturn the delicate sectarian balance of power in the Arab, if not the Muslim world. Which raises the question, will the world Muslim ummah (community) be able to rise to the challenge?
Mr. Sharon must realize that there is no alternative to Mr. Abbas, who is committed to a peaceful two-state solution. If Mr. Abbas is forced from power, it will probably be awhile before anyone else will step forward. That could be the end of the road map -- and the road -- for quite some time.
Attorney General John Ashcroft faced sharp criticism today from Democrats and others over his decision to give more than a dozen speeches around the country in defense of anti-terrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.
Mr. Conyers said that the speeches in defense of the USA Patriot Act, as the antiterrorism law is known, appeared to conflict with Congressional restrictions preventing the use of Justice Department money for "publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." He said they might also violate the Anti-Lobbying Act and its restrictions on grass-roots lobbying on legislative matters.
From the detritus of Wednesday's terror will arise a new grim acceptance that despite all our brilliantly rapid military victories we are not yet finished in this war for civilization, and that there are a group of killers -- whether Baathists, al Qaedists, West Bank murderers, or Iranian and Saudi terrorists-who shall give no quarter. We should never forget that. In the euphoria of the three-week victory many of us rightly still worried that under the new restrictive protocols of postmodern warfare the age-old laws of conflict were for a time being forgotten: The ease of postbellum occupation is in proportion to the level of punishment inflicted on the enemy.
American investigators looking into the suicide bombing of the United Nations compound on Tuesday are focusing on the possibility that the attackers were assisted by Iraqi security guards who worked there, a senior American official here said today.
The official said all of the guards at the compound were agents of the Iraqi secret services, to whom they reported on United Nations activities before the war. The United Nations continued to employ them after the war was over, the official said. [...]
"We believe the U.N.'s security was seriously compromised," the official said, adding that "we have serious concerns about the placement of the vehicle" and the timing of the attack. The bomb exploded directly under the third-floor office of the United Nations coordinator for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, while he was meeting with a prominent American human rights advocate, Arthur C. Helton. Both men were killed, along with several top aides to Mr. Vieira de Mello. [...]
The American official said investigators were trying to determine which, if any, of the guards failed to report to work the day of the attack. Even before the war, the government of Saddam Hussein was widely known to assign intelligence agents to guard and guide foreigners visiting or living in the country.
Suspicions have focused on the guards rather than other local United Nations personnel because their links to Mr. Hussein's security service were close. Under the former government, they had to report to the security service once a week on the activities of United Nations personnel, western officials said.
Even so, United Nations administrators retained the guards after Mr. Hussein's government was removed. American officials said earlier this week that the administrators had also turned down an American offer to provide greater security around the building.
One of the prime minister's closest advisers issued a private warning that it would be wrong for Tony Blair to claim Iraq's banned weapons programme showed Saddam Hussein presented an "imminent threat" to the west or even his Arab neighbours.
In a message that goes to the heart of the government's case for war, the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, raised serious doubts about the nature of September's Downing Street dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.
"We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat," Mr Powell wrote on September 17, a week before the document was finally published.
His remarks urging caution contrasted with the chilling language used by Mr Blair in a passionate speech in the Commons as he launched the dossier a week later.
He described Iraq's prog-ramme for weapons of mass destruction as "active, detailed, and growing ... It is up and running now".
With a pedigree linking many of the greatest names in the field, the Riemann Hypothesis runs like a river through vast swaths of seemingly distinct mathematical territory. Andrew Wiles himself has compared a proof of this proposition to what it meant for the 18th century when a solution to the longitude problem was found. With longitude licked, explorers could navigate freely around the physical world; so too, if Riemann is resolved, mathematicians will be able to navigate more fluidly across their domain. Its import extends into areas as diverse as number theory, geometry, logic, probability theory and even quantum physics.
The Riemann Hypothesis is a proposal about prime numbers, the atomic elements of the number system. Primeness is one of the most essential concepts in mathematics, for primes - 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and so on - are numbers that cannot be broken into any smaller elements. All other integers can be built up by multiplication of these basic units. So, for example, 6 is built up from 2 x 3, 15 from 3 x 5, 49 from 7 x 7. In his book The Riemann Hypothesis, science writer Karl Sabbagh makes an analogy between numbers and molecules. All of the vast plethora of molecules that inhabit our world, everything from salt and ammonia to hemoglobin, are made up of the basic elements of the periodic table - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on. As Sabbagh notes, the primes may be seen as the periodic table of the number system. Yet where the elements follow a clear pattern, the primes seem to be distributed randomly.
To mathematicians, randomness is anathema. As du Sautoy writes, they "can't bear to admit that there might not be an explanation for the way nature has picked the primes." That would be like "listening to white noise"; what mathematicians crave above all else is harmony. They want, they need, they demand a pattern behind the apparent chaos. Du Sautoy quotes the great French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincare: "The scientist does not study nature because it is useful, he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living."
For many mathematicians life would not be worth living if the organization of the primes did not ultimately conform to some beautiful underlying order. The Riemann Hypothesis proposes what that order might be.
Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.
Yet slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.
Of course, data-driven meetings are nothing new. Years before today's slideware, presentations at companies such as IBM and in the military used bullet lists shown by overhead projectors. But the format has become ubiquitous under PowerPoint, which was created in 1984 and later acquired by Microsoft. PowerPoint's pushy style seeks to set up a speaker's dominance over the audience. The speaker, after all, is making power points with bullets to followers. Could any metaphor be worse? Voicemail menu systems? Billboards? Television? Stalin?
Why believe in the multiverse? The "pro" camp has essentially two kinds of arguments.
One-the good kind-is that the existence of other universes is logically implied by the theories that best explain features of our own universe. For instance, measurements of the cosmic background radiation (the echo left over from the big bang) indicate that the space we live in is infinite and that matter is spread randomly throughout it. Therefore, all possible arrangements of matter must exist out there somewhere-including exact and inexact replicas of our own world and the beings in it. The idea is a bit like that of monkeys in front of typewriters eventually typing out all of Shakespeare: Quantum theory says that nature is discrete, so the visible universe we inhabit is characterized by a finite amount of information; if space is infinite, this informational pattern is bound to repeat at vast enough distances. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that there should be an exact copy of you around 10 to the 10 to the 28th light-years away.
A more extravagant kind of multiverse is entailed by the theory of "chaotic inflation." Proposed by Andrei Linde to explain why our universe looks the way it does-big, uniform, and flat-inflation theory also predicts that big bangs should be a fairly routine occurrence, giving rise to an eternal network of universes tied together by impassable "wormholes." These universes, according to the theory, would have different physical characteristics. This kind of multiverse has become the bane of natural theologians.
Here's why. One reason for believing in God is that our own universe seems improbably fine-tuned for life. It's as though a cosmic designer had carefully adjusted the physical laws to ensure that beings like us would eventually shimmer onto the scene. But if our universe is one among a vast ensemble of universes with randomly varying physical constants, then it is only to be expected that a few of these universes should be life-fostering. Add to this the fact that if we exist at all, we are bound to find ourselves in a universe that is congenial to us-the so-called "anthropic principle"-and the presumed fine-tuning of our universe seems wholly unremarkable. No need to invoke the God hypothesis to answer the question, why are we here?
But some thinkers want to turn this reasoning around. They insist that other universes must exist precisely to make certain conceptual mysteries go away. This is the second kind of argument for the multiverse-the bad kind, since it has nothing to do with empirical observation.
If you ask the average American Conservative subscriber about the kids today, he will probably put down his cigar and complain, “They’re a bunch of knee-jerk liberals still brainwashed by the communist propaganda that worked so well on their parents. They’re against invading Iraq because ‘all war is bad.’ They’re against Israel because when it comes to light skin versus dark skin, the latter is always right, and they’re pro-immigration for exactly the same reasons.” I’d like to argue, but he’s right.
I should know. I run a $10 million corporation called VICE that has been deep inside the heads of 18-30s for the past 10 years. According to the Cassandra Report (a trend-spotting “cool hunter” that charges corporations tens of thousands of dollars to tell them what’s hip), our magazine is the number one read for women aged 19-24 and for men aged 25-30. That’s better than Maxim, Jane, or even the New Yorker. Since the Cassandra Report was made public, our magazine has branched out into retail (stores in Toronto, Los Angeles, and New York), film (four in production including director Spike Jonze’s next picture), and TV (on Showtime). We are a successful company that has made its money recognizing cool, and the one thing that has been painfully clear to us over the years is that it is not cool to be conservative. In fact, the majority of our readership (white, straight, middle-class, American) is only totally positive about one thing: being white, straight, middle-class, and American is wack—or, at least, it was wack.
Call me a blind optimist, but I see a light at the end of the anti-American tunnel, a new trend of young people tired of being lied to for the sake of the “greater good.” The New York Times dubbed them “Hipublicans.” Demographics expert Michael Adams labels them “Social Hedonists,” and when our magazine did a feature on them we called them “The New Conservatives.” We did the piece because it became impossible to ignore a difference in the reactions to some of our more right-wing reporting. A new group was emerging, and the vitriolic “You dudes are all Nazis” letters were being replaced by ones saying “You dudes are finally telling the truth.”
The problem with SoBig is that it does not exploit a flaw in Microsoft Windows. If it did, we could patch the flaw and stop it. Instead it exploits flaws in human nature and the internet's email system. SoBig only works in Windows, but there's no reason why it couldn't be adapted to any other system.
SoBig is a mass-mailing worm program. It arrives as an email attachment called thank_you.pif, wicked_scr.scr, or something similar. If you run the attachment by double-clicking it, the virus installs itself, searches a range of files for email addresses, starts its own email server, and then sends out lots of copies of itself.
It looks as though the virus writer started the current attack by spamming a large number of addresses. From there, the spread of SoBig depends on people being gullible enough to open an unsolicited attachment. There is apparently no shortage of gullible people. [...]
You can find out if your PC is infected with SoBig.F by searching for afile called winppr32.exe. While you are at it, search for the
previous version, winssk32.exe, too. You can remove it by running a free program such as McAfee's Stinger or Norman's SoBigFix or by updating and running your usual anti-virus software.
Better still, delete SoBig email on the server, without even downloading it to your inbox. Mailwasher is a free Windows program that makes this simple. It is particularly suitable for people who collect their email in batches.
The White House imposed steel tariffs, which are capped at 30 percent and exempt developing countries, in March 2002. On Sept. 18, the International Trade Commission will give its 18-month review of the three-year tariff safeguard. By law, President Bush can only revoke the safeguard under two criteria: The industry is not adjusting to global competition; the industry no longer needs the safeguard. Neither of these two criteria are applicable. The fact that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled against the tariffs is not one of those criteria. (At any rate, the WTO usually allows countries about 15 months to become compliant with its rulings, which is roughly equivalent to the period left for the tariffs.) Therefore, the president should allow the industry to benefit from the full term of the safeguard.
Most major steel producers outside of the United States benefit from a range of measures to protect against free-market pressure, such as subsidies, "special access" to loans, special purchasing agreements, quotas, tariffs. Before the United States implemented the tariffs, it had one of the most open markets for steel imports, with foreign products claiming, according to 1999 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, about 30 percent of the U.S. market, compared to 16 percent and 9 percent for the European Union and Japan, respectively.
These protections have caused a worldwide steel glut and made U.S. steel investments in labor and equipment redundant. Since steel production is so capital intensive, the cost has been considerable. About 45,000 steelworkers have lost their jobs since 1997. The administration has correctly stated that U.S. steel producers must face foreign competition -- fair or not -- but should be given a chance through the safeguard to consolidate. [...]
The steel industry has invested about $3.6 billion since March of last year to consolidate and restructure, demonstrating the industry is adjusting to global competition. But workers and steel companies need the next 18 months to further adjust. Mr. Bush should carefully consider the facts, and maintain the safeguard for its allotted time.
A MAJOR DEVELOPMENT in post-Soviet affairs recently occurred when Heidar Aliyev, the ailing octogenarian leader of oil-rich Azerbaijan, ceded authority to his son Ilham. Although the dynastic aspect of this transition is less notorious than Saddam Hussein's clan or Syria's Assad family, it is nonetheless a regionally significant event. Surrounded by Russia, Turkey, and Iran, a bumpy transition period in Azerbaijan poses a grave challenge to Western policy planning.
Azerbaijan is a less repressive society than many of the other ex-Soviet republics. It has a vocal political opposition and an independent media--both of which are virtually nonexistent in the other "Stans." But these bright spots belie the nation's authoritarian infrastructure. Corruption permeates the system, and many core democratic concepts, such as the rule of law, are little more than fanciful phrases. While the handover signals a transitional phase in Azerbaijan's administrative development, will progress and stability inevitably proceed under family rule? [...]
The most prominent anti-Aliyev politicians have united to form an organization called the Opposition Coordinating Center (MKM), in preparation for Azerbaijan's October 15 presidential election. Pooling resources in the hope that there will be a free and fair campaign seems an intelligent move, yet no single candidate has been chosen. All of the MKM's luminaries have registered to run, each believing themselves to be best-qualified for representing "democratic forces."
It's also worth noting that Ilham's appointment produced only one mass protest. Although MKM officials made the excuse that coordinating a public demonstration takes time, in the past, anti-Aliyev rallies were quickly organized. The muted response suggests there is tension and even possible discord within MKM ranks.
The anti-Aliyev movement is hampered by history, too. Several of its figures were involved with running Azerbaijan during the early, chaotic independence period. Deprivations that were caused by the Soviet Union's downfall, along with the previously mentioned Nagorno-Karabakh crisis and maladministration, tarnished many reputations. As the Azerbaijani version of John Q. Public sees it, Heidar Baba came in and stabilized matters after his opponents nearly ran things into the ground.
As the German saying goes, there was only one thing the Communists accomplished in their part of the country - driving out God. More than a dozen years after reunification, the Easterners are as godless as before, according to new survey commissioned by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is close to the opposition Christian Democratic Union.
Only 20 percent of the Easterners believe in a personal God and 24 percent in some sort of higher power; in the West, the corresponding figures are 30 and 40 percent, giving the Transcendent a substantial majority. Almost 60 percent of the Easterners - but only 23 percent of the Westerners -- told pollsters they never prayed. [...]
These results show the enduring success of the systematic persecution of Christianity in more than four decades of Communist rule in what until 1990 was called the German Democratic Republic. Christians were rarely allowed to attend university; they were forbidden to attain senior ranks in the civil serve, become military officers or executives in the usually state-owned enterprises.
Many fled, and of those who stayed behind, a majority dropped the faith of their fathers and mothers. As irony will have it, though, churches provided a safe haven for the predominantly secular opposition groups that toppled Communism peacefully in the fall of 1989.
Still, although 39 percent of the Easterners claim that they are "not at all religious" - compared with a mere 13 percent of the Westerners - church officials report that those who remained faithful tend to be more active in their congregations and attend services more diligently than their Western cousins.
In some parts of Eastern Germany, especially Saxony, ministers are observing an increase in the number of regular worshipers, though not members. But for the time being, this seems to have little impact on the attitudes of the general public. Of the Easterners, a whopping 70 percent reject the Christian worldview that man is God's creation. On the other hand, 57 percent of the Westerners believe this. [...]
While a majority of today's Germans still approves of Christian symbols, such as crucifixes, in public places, and the reference to the name of God in the preamble of their country's constitution, the young are drifting away from their ancestral faith.
Sadly, the report remarks, Western and Eastern Germans, aged 16-24, are drawing closer in unbelief. Only 61 percent of young Western and Eastern Germans can recite the Lord's Prayer; only 30 percent consider themselves religious. The standard-bearers of the specifically Christian faith, the report notes, are the middle and older generation in the former West Germany.
The BBC hosted a unique global television debate about America's place in the world with 10 other national broadcasters.
As part of the What The World Thinks of America programme, 11,000 people in the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, South Korea, Jordan, Australia, Canada, Israel, Brazil and the US responded to a poll asking their views and opinions on America.
The respondents were asked about their general attitudes towards America and US President George Bush.
The poll also posed a range of other questions on America's foreign policy, military power, cultural influences and economic might.
It's not only valid to wonder what Jean Chretien is up to in these crumbling days of his prime ministership, it's the duty of Liberals to do so.
Here's a guy whose political career is in its death throes.
How he will be remembered is already decided by his 40-plus extraordinary years as a politician.
So why is he behaving as he is - with petulance, vanity, even irrationality?
A case in point is this week's ongoing gathering in North Bay of Liberal caucus members who are in varying degrees of emotional turmoil over Chretien's insistence on supporting gay marriages.
Instead of letting the question be debated (and dodged) in Parliament, he has slithered out on a limb and endorses homosexual marriages on the basis of human rights - not "unions" or partnerships which already exist, but formal marriage.
He insists he believes it is the right thing to do, and has raised the hackles of the Catholic church, with the Pope taking oblique swipes at him, not to mention elements of his caucus and the public.
Is it dementia, vindictiveness, mischief that motivates him?
The struggling euro fell to fresh four-month lows against both the dollar and yen Thursday, as an onslaught of positive data out of the U.S. forced the single currency below the key psychological level of $1.10 for the first time since April 29.
Surprising strength in jobs data and a much better than expected reading of manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve district turned overnight weakness in the euro into a full-blown selloff during the New York session. The currency lost nearly two cents and over three yen since late New York trade on Wednesday, forcing market participants to revisit their currency targets, at least in the near term and surprising many seasoned foreign exchange observers.
Indeed, just a few days ago, some strategists were confidently predicting strong euro support around $1.1050 would hold firm and that the single currency was in little danger of sliding below the $1.10 line. Now, it seems, the persistent strength in U.S. data - and such weakness in the euro zone - has unnerved investors who had been holding long euro positions to such an extent that they've simply started to liquidate them.
Pope Pius XII, accused by some historians and Jewish leaders of not speaking out against the Holocaust, expressed strong anti-Nazi views in private talks with diplomats, a Catholic magazine said Thursday, citing a newly released document. . . .Picture Cardinal Pacelli lecturing Ambassador Kennedy unsuccessfully about the evils of Nazism. Then smile.
Pacelli, then Vatican secretary of state, gave Kennedy a report denouncing Nazism because it attacked 'the fundamental principle of the freedom of the practice of religion,' Gallagher wrote, quoting from the report.
Pacelli also reportedly told Kennedy that the church felt 'at times powerless and isolated in its daily struggle against all sorts of political excesses from the Bolsheviks to the new pagans arising from the 'Aryan' generations.'
He assured the ambassador that any political compromise with the Nazis was 'out of the question.' . . .
Gallagher also found a report filed the year Pacelli became pope. In it, the U.S. consul general in Berlin, Alfred W. Klieforth, described a three-hour meeting in 1937 with the future pope. Pacelli, the diplomat wrote, "regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person."
Klieforth further noted that the cardinal "did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, in spite of appearances, and he fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand."
The counterfeit of freedom consists in the idea of personal and communal liberation from morality, responsibility and truth. It is what our nation’s founders expressly distinguished from liberty and condemned as “license.” The so-called freedom celebrated today by so many of our opinion-shaping elites in education, entertainment and the media is simply the license to do whatever one pleases. This false conception of freedom – false because disordered, disordered because detached from moral truth and civic responsibility – shackles those in its grip no less powerfully than did the chattel slavery of old. Enslavement to one’s own appetites and passions is no less brutal a form of bondage for being a slavery of the soul. It is no less tragic, indeed, it is in certain respects immeasurably more tragic, for being self-imposed. It is ironic, is it not, that people who celebrate slavery to appetite and passion call this bondage “freedom”?
Counterfeit freedom is worse than fraudulent. It is the mortal enemy of the real thing. Counterfeit freedom can provide no rational account or defense of its own normative claims. It speaks the language of rights, but in abandoning the ground of moral duty it provides no rational basis for anyone to respect the rights of others or to demand of others respect for one’s own rights. Rights without duties are meaningless. Where moral truth as the ground of duties is thrown overboard, the language of rights is so much idle chatter fit only for Hollywood cocktail parties and faculty lounges. Hadley Arkes, the great contemporary theorist of natural rights, has observed in relation to the movement for unfettered abortion that those who demand liberation from the moral law have talked themselves out of the moral premises of their own rights and liberties. If freedom is to be honored and respected, it must be because human freedom is what is required by the laws of nature and nature’s God; it cannot be because there are no laws of nature and there is no God.
[T]he United Nations now faces a major test. The Anglo-Americans have no choice; they own the war, and they own the aftermath. They have an obligation to their original decision to take military action, to their dead troops, and to their wider strategic goal of implanting a stable and prosperous democracy in the heart of the Arab world. They must stay the course -- whatever the exigencies of the U.S. election timetable.
The United Nations is different. Not only does the United Nations as an institution have a choice -- whether to scuttle or to remain half in bed with the Anglo-Americans and increasingly responsible for the stabilization of Iraq - it also has a decision-making process that puts an onus of choice on France, Russia and China as veto-wielding powers. They agreed that the U.N. staff should return to Baghdad, and to that extent they share in the responsibility to respond to their slaughter.
The issue is plain enough. Do these three great powers, and through them the United Nations as a whole, recognize that the suicide bombers of Baghdad who killed the U.N. staff are now the common enemy of humanity, and join to hunt them down? Or do they take refuge in their earlier pedantries, backing Resolution 1441 to require Saddam to carry out his various obligations, but ducking the military resolve to enforce it?
In the dulcet tones of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, or the brisk self-contradictions of his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, one can already hear the footsteps of appeasement, of blaming the Americans, of identifying some supposedly righteous force of Iraqi resistance to the occupier.
None of this can change the raw fact. The United Nations has been attacked. The international community is honor bound to rally to its defense and to haul the men behind the attackers to justice.
Al-Majid is the king of spades and No. 5 in the deck of cards issued by the military of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis.
He served as a general, presidential adviser, a member of Saddam's inner circle, commander of the Baath Party Regional Command, member of the Revolutionary Command Council, and head of the Central Workers Bureau.
He had been coordinating the resistance in southern Iraq during the war, according to the coalition, and had been the de facto governor of Kuwait after Iraq invaded that country in 1990. (Profile)
In a surprising message received by Israeli diplomats in Washington, Saudi Arabia asked for evidence of its financial support of the Hamas terrorist organization. Saudi officials have stated repeatedly that they do not fund Hamas, but Israeli documents provide evidence to refute this claim. Israeli officials said the direct Saudi request was made in order to improve the kingdom's standing in the United States.
According to a report today in Maariv, the Saudi request was relayed to the Israeli Embassy in Washington in the past few days. The Saudis asked for evidence tying government officials and/or Saudi businessmen to financial support for Hamas in order that they could act against the funding, the report said.
Israeli officials said the message they received was only an "initial signal" and tied it to the growing wave of investigations and reports in the United States suggesting a Saudi connection to global terrorism.
Bush-Cheney '04 today unveiled its complete campaign Web site at www.GeorgeWBush.com. Issue-specific action centers enable supporters to easily write news editors, call talk radio shows, and email friends and family about the issues that are important to them. They can also register to vote, order an absentee ballot, and contribute to the President's campaign quickly and easily online.
The new features include:
* Bush Team Leader Action Center: Volunteer to help the President's campaign in your local area, write news editors, call your local radio shows and more at http://www.GeorgeWBush.com/GetActive.
* Photo Album: Photo galleries of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, First Lady Laura Bush, and Mrs. Lynne Cheney feature photos that are easily forwarded to friends and family at http://www.GeorgeWBush.com/News/PhotoAlbum.aspx.
* Free screen savers, and computer wallpapers: At home or work get your computer and Web site decked out in the latest from Bush-Cheney '04 with screensavers, wallpapers and banners at http://www.GeorgeWBush.com/WStuff/Downloads.aspx.
Check out these great new features and more at http://www.GeorgeWBush.com!
A Danish pizzeria owner who refused to sell pizzas to Germans or Frenchmen because of their governments' stance on the war in Iraq is to go to prison.
An appeal court upheld the conviction yesterday of Niels-Aage Bjerre for discrimination and his fine of £500. He said he would refuse to pay and will instead spend eight days in jail.
"I will not pay the fine but I'll do the time instead," said Bjerre. "It is a matter of principle."
He has closed his pizzeria, on the Danish holiday island of Fanoe rather than be forced to serve German and French nationals....
His boycott would end only "if the governments of France and Germany change their attitude toward the United States and support Washington wholeheartedly," he added.
Borrowing from Plato and Aristotle, [Carnes Lord's book The Modern Prince] warns that "the people" can be a fickle lot and that often their will and the rule of law are at odds with each other. It is precisely to temper the passions of the people that we resort to representative rather than direct democracy. Such a form of government, in turn, imposes an obligation on our elected leaders--not merely to follow public opinion but to shape it.
This argument is at the heart of "The Modern Prince." The book is in many ways a call to action, much as Machiavelli's original was an exhortation to the Medici princes to drive out the "barbarians" and unify Italy. It is also an attempt to re-create Machiavelli's handbook in modern form and to place its lessons, together with some new ones, in our age. [...]
It might seem odd, or even worrying, to exhort democratic leaders to hew to the lessons of a man whose name has become synonymous with a cynically amoral approach to governing. And indeed, Mr. Lord does not shy from prescriptions that could well alarm ardent democrats. The preface begins with a kind of declaration of first principles: "The theory of democracy tells us that the people rule. In practice, we have leaders who rule the people in a manner not altogether different from the princes and potentates of times past."
The statement is descriptive, but it has a normative force: Leaders rule that way--and they should. The alternative is drift, directionlessness and decline. At times, Mr. Lord's affection for forceful leadership is taken a step too far, as with his full-throated praise of Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore, but on the whole his emphasis is sound. [...]
Mr. Lord's understanding of the workings of government, both ancient and modern, is profound, and his ability to assimilate the two makes "The Modern Prince" indispensable. The book may never acquire the notoriety of its predecessor, but as a handbook for leaders it deserves to become an instant classic.
FROM THE TIME of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and foremost, the rule of the people. This view of democracy as a process of selecting governments, articulated by scholars ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Joseph Schumpeter to Robert Dahl, is now widely used by social scientists. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington explains why:
Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of political systems.
This definition also accords with the commonsense view of the term. If a country holds competitive, multiparty elections, we call it democratic. When public participation in politics is increased, for example through the enfranchisement of women, it is seen as more democratic. Of course elections must be open and fair, and this requires some protections for freedom of speech and assembly. But to go beyond this minimalist definition and label a country democratic only if it guarantees a comprehensive catalog of social, political, economic, and religious rights turns the word democracy into a badge of honor rather than a descriptive category. After all, Sweden has an economic system that many argue curtails individual property rights, France until recently had a state monopoly on television, and England has an established religion. But they are all clearly and identifiably democracies. To have democracy mean, subjectively, "a good government" renders it analytically useless.
Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government, but rather government's goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual's autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source -- state, church, or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. It is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks, that emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it rests on the tradition, beginning with the Romans, of the rule of law. Constitutional liberalism developed in Western Europe and the United States as a defense of the individual's right to life and property, and freedom of religion and speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of each branch of government, equality under the law, impartial courts and tribunals, and separation of church and state. Its canonical figures include the poet John Milton, the jurist William Blackstone, statesmen such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Baron de Montesquieu, John Stuart Mill, and Isaiah Berlin. In almost all of its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or "inalienable") rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting its own powers, that secures them. Thus in 1215 at Runnymede, England's barons forced the king to abide by the settled and customary law of the land. In the American colonies these laws were made explicit, and in 1638 the town of Hartford adopted the first written constitution in modern history. In the 1970s, Western nations codified standards of behavior for regimes across the globe. The Magna Carta, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the American Constitution, and the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.
SINCE 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact both have existed in the past and persist in the present. Until the twentieth century, most countries in Western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democracies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had little power. In 1830 Great Britain, in some ways the most democratic European nation, allowed barely 2 percent of its population to vote for one house of Parliament; that figure rose to 7 percent after 1867 and reached around 40 percent in the 1880s. Only in the late 1940s did most Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. But one hundred years earlier, by the late 1840s, most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism -- the rule of law, private property rights, and increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The "Western model" is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.
The throwing motion required to make a ball curve puts added stress on the elbow as pitchers try to snap the arm down to give the ball the added necessary spin. That motion can cause cartilage damage and the condition known as Little League elbow.
"The kids do have softer tissue in their elbows that damages more easily," Micheli said.
Many major league pitchers now wish they had waited to start throwing fancy pitches.
"I was probably 13 or 14 when I started throwing breaking balls," Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez said as he sat in front of his locker at Fenway, occasionally glancing at the Little League World Series on the clubhouse TV. "You don't develop the velocity you have to develop if you start too early. [My arm] used to get more sore than normal. It's not good for young kids because you might hurt your elbow."
Martinez, who has won three Cy Young Awards for being the league's best pitcher, even stopped throwing curveballs for a while in his career. "I quit throwing breaking balls," he said. "Then I learned again after a certain time in the minor leagues."
Dr. James Andrews, who has treated many professional pitchers at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., recommends that kids learn to throw a curveball "when they begin to shave. At that point, their maturity is such that it can best handle the stress."
A study last year by the American Sports Medicine Institute showed that another factor in arm injuries to younger players was the amount of pitches thrown -- regardless of the type. The study recommended that players 11 and 12 years old -- the ages for Little Leaguers -- throw only 75 pitches per game and no more than 100 per week, 1,000 per season, and 3,000 per year.
Little League rules regulate the number of times a pitcher may throw in a week, but not the number of pitches. Some other youth leagues such as the Bay State Baseball Tournament of Champions, which has competition in the 11-12 age group, "strongly discourage" the use of curveballs.
Funeral home chain OGF, which holds about a quarter of the market, said it had counted 2,600 more deaths in the first three weeks of August than in same period of last year. It estimated that figure meant that more than 10,000 people died nationwide.
On Monday, Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei said it was "plausible'' that as many as 5,000 people had died during the heat wave--the largest such government estimate until Thursday.
Health workers said one of the reasons why the death toll was so high was that families abandoned their elderly relatives alone at home while they went away for August vacations.
Chirac said the crisis had shed light "on the solitude of many of our aged or handicapped citizens'' and promised to propose measures this autumn to better care for them, although he did not say what the measures would be. [...]
Chirac called the heat wave "exceptional.'' The heat wave was the longest and hottest to ever hit France, with temperatures that topped 104. He noted that ``many fragile people died alone in their homes.''
Doctors say heat stroke and dehydration were often the cause of death.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-Mark Twain
Carter was notoriously reticent with journalists. Being a gentleman, he agreed to an interview for Ken Burns's Jazz, but being Benny he gave him almost nothing to use. Off mic, he was generous with his time and wisdom; on mic, he seemed to find too many complexities lurking behind every question, inclining him toward monosyllabic responses. I once tried to get him to concede his contribution as musician, arranger, composer, bandleader. "I don't know. And I'm not being modest," he said: "Contribution to what-to my livelihood?" Yet he enabled Morroe Berger, Edward Berger, and James Patrick to write the recently revised two volumes of Benny Carter: A Life in American Music, an essential work of jazz scholarship.
Here's a short version. Along with Johnny Hodges, he established the alto saxophone as a major instrument, forging a style as timeless in 1985 ("Lover Man") as in 1933 ("Krazy Kapers"). He was also an exceptional clarinetist ("Dee Blues," 1930) and trumpeter ("More Than You Know," 1939). By 1930, he was in the vanguard of big-band composers, helping to codify what would become swing's style and substance. He tore away the baroque ornamentation of dance bands, streamlined rhythm, and established a parity between composition and improvisation in such classics as "Blues in My Heart," "Symphony in Riffs," "When Lights Are Low," "Lonesome Nights," and his payoff hit, "Sleep." His three years in Europe before the war permanently changed the face of European jazz. Unlike many contemporaries he greeted Charlie Parker as an innovator and not a threat; his bands gave a big hand up to J.J. Johnson, Max Roach, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, and Miles Davis. He crashed Hollywood's racial barriers as the first African American to score top films and TV. Sixty years ago Carter said, "Every year more and more people turn from the European culture to the American. That's why swing and dance music in general continue to improve so consistently."
If jazz must have a king, the present ruler is Sonny Rollins. In case anyone doubted his eminence, the rainy season abated for his August 9 concert in the Central Park SummerStage series. He appeared without a pianist, not that he needed one. He was on such a tear that he may not have needed the Afro-percussionist or the trombonist or the bassist or the drummer, though all augmented a rhythmic fury that allowed him to sustain his opening 90-minute set with three tunes.
Arnold Schwarzenegger came out from behind the curtain today to put some muscle in a campaign that until now was based on sheer celebrity, calling for a constitutional cap on state spending and making clear his distaste for new taxes.
Facing a horde of cameras and reporters from as far away as China, Mr. Schwarzenegger, 56, was flanked by his advisers, Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, and George P. Shultz, former secretary of state. Using humor and a few specifics, the former Mr. Olympia tried to dispel any perception that he is a movie star on a vanity project.
Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican candidate, said one of his priorities, should he be elected to replace Gov. Gray Davis, would be to rein in state spending. He said he would appoint an outside auditor, John Cogan, the economist and Mr. Shultz's colleague, to look at state finances.
"We must have a constitutional spending cap and must immediately attack operating deficits head on," Mr. Schwarzenegger told a ballroom packed with reporters at the Westin Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.
"Does that mean we are going to make cuts?" he said. "Yes. Does this mean education is on the table? No. Does this mean I am willing to raise taxes? No. Additional taxes are the last burden we need to put on the backs of the citizens and businesses of California." [...]
"I feel the people of California have been punished enough," Mr. Schwarzenegger said. "From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they're taxed. When they go get a coffee, they're taxed. When they get in their car, they're taxed. When they go to the gas station, they're taxed. When they go to lunch, they're taxed. This goes on all day long. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax."
The bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday raises two principal questions. The first, couched in media language, asks: "Is Iraq becoming another Vietnam?" The second, a policy-maker's question and the more important, asks: "Are there enough coalition troops to pacify the country and, if not, how many more are needed?"
The answer to the first question is comparatively easy to give. No, Iraq is not becoming another Vietnam, nor is it likely to turn into one. The situations are quite different, much as alarmists would like to draw similarities. Many factors differentiate the nature of the disorders, including terrain, politics and the strategic location of the trouble spot. [...]
[T]he opposition, so far as it can be identified, does not resemble the VC in organisation, leadership or experience. [...]
[T]he Ba'ath party, so far as it survived, is a minority, not a mass organisation. In recent times, it has been associated with defeat, not victory, and its leadership has either been destroyed or is in hiding. [...]
The Kurdish north is undisturbed. The Shia south is largely untroubled, despite sporadic attacks on the British. It is in the Sunni centre, around Baghdad, that the murders and bombings are taking place. They are directed against the Americans, but it remains unclear by whom.
Some of the insurgents are die-hard supporters of Saddam, some are local Islamists, and some are foreign fundamentalists connected more or less closely with al-Qa'eda.
In South America, Colombia is only now beginning to win its fight against narco-trafficking terror groups. Next door, Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez is resisting a recall vote against his autocratic presidency and allowing Colombian guerrillas to train in his country's territory. Meanwhile, Brazil and Argentina are seeking to undermine the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas in favor of advancing their own customs union, Mercosur.
In Central America, chaotic Guatemala is on the verge of electing a former right-wing dictator. Nicaragua's fledgling democratic institutions are dissolving amid disputes between corrupt party leaders. And international drug gangs are overpowering the isthmus's pitifully inadequate police forces.
According to the polling firm Latinobar-metro, Latin Americans have become increasingly disillusioned with democracy and capitalism. Half-implemented reforms don't allow full citizen participation in politics or markets. Few countries, except Chile, enjoy checks and balances to keep their governments honest or a rule of law to protect the majority against minority privilege. On average, Latin American economies have been shrinking for almost three years.
Although Latin America's well being is not necessarily the responsibility of the United States, Washington wields tremendous influence, and the adoption of electoral democracy and free markets as political and economic models owe a great deal to U.S. leadership and persuasion in the 1980s.
But just as elections and limited market openings got a toehold in the region (except in Cuba), Washington diverted resources for those programs to support reconstruction in Eastern Europe and Russia after the fall of Communism.
The bombing has also created a crucial challenge for Abbas, seriously undermining his cease-fire strategy, particularly as he was meeting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza when Tuesday's bomb exploded.
"They're spitting in his face," says Mr. Alpher. "If he still says it's raining, it's over for him. He's got to demonstrate he can do something - the question is what?"
Wednesday, Abbas responded by cutting all ties to militant groups and ordering the arrests of those responsible. Elias Zananiri, a spokesman for the Palestinian security minister Mohammed Dahlan, says Abbas "blames [the militants] for damaging interests of Palestinian people," and emphasizes that the prime minister is serious.
"When I say the security forces will take measures against the perpetrators of this attack, I certainly don't mean they'll be drinking a cup of coffee with them," says Mr. Zananiri.
, a defiant U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) vowed that those behind the deadly blast would not succeed in driving the world body out of the country.
"We will persevere. We will continue. It is essential work," Annan told reporters in Stockholm, Sweden, where he stopped on route to U.N. headquarters in New York. "We will not be intimidated."
"We have been in Iraq for 12 years and we have never been attacked," Annan said. He said now the United Nations would reevaluate its security measures.
U.N. operations in Iraq were suspended, and Iraqi employees were told to stay home. Foreign workers were directed to stay in their lodgings that are scattered in many small hotels around the capital.
Unlike U.S. occupation forces, the United Nations had been welcomed by many Iraqis. Bremer said the blast had forced an overall security review, and that coalition officials would meet Friday with all diplomatic missions in Iraq to help them assess security.
The staggering number of deaths in France is finally drawing the nation's attention to who died and how. The details lead not through some place decimated by an awful plague but through the brick and concrete of the nation's biggest cities. The government estimates that the heat killed perhaps 5,000 people. The largest undertaker, General Funeral Services, said today that the number could be more than twice that.
The victims were generally found inside apartments or houses or hotels. In virtually every case, there was no air-conditioner. "Among the elderly, there's a lot of anonymity," said Bernard Mazeyrie, the managing director of OGF, the parent company of General Funeral Services. "Paris is a city with a lot of anonymity."
Mr. Mazeyrie's company, a subsidiary of the largest American funeral home chain, Service Corporation International of Houston, has been so overwhelmed that 165 bodies lie in an immense refrigerated hall at Rungis, Paris's big fruit and vegetable market, awaiting funerals.
Outside, weeping families clustered around parked cars this morning while waiting to enter an area, carpeted and with potted hemlocks, to make arrangements for the bodies of their loved ones.
With temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, Mr. Mazeyrie said that "particularly elderly people, people living in hotels and alone, were the victims, often of cardiac arrest." Four of every five elderly victims, he estimated, "died because of the heat."
Mr. Mazeyrie said many elderly people were left behind by vacationing families. Some, he said, informed of the death of relatives, postponed funerals, not to interrupt the Aug. 15 holiday weekend, and left the bodies in the refrigerated hall. Today 10 families came to Rungis to bury their dead; on Thursday and Friday about 50 more were expected to.
The city sent out crews to gather up bodies, but the bodies were often so bloated and disfigured by the heat that firemen had to be called to do the work. Mr. Mazeyrie's company employs roughly 6,000 people in France, half of them in Paris, and brought workers from outlying regions to the capital to deal with the crisis.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on a one-day visit to Colombia, said today that the United States would support Colombia in resuming a policy that allows Colombian fighter pilots to shoot down planes suspected of ferrying drugs or force them to land. [...]
The announcement was timed as part of a visit to Colombia by Mr. Rumsfeld, who arrived in Bogota, the capital, this morning under tight security to underscore American support for President Alvaro Uribe.
The Uribe government has received $2.5 billion from Washington, largely in military aid, since 2000 as it battles leftist rebels and drug traffickers. Colombia is likely to get $700 million more this year.
The Colombian drug trade, which supplies most of the cocaine entering the United States, has been increasingly tied to both the leftist insurgency and right-wing paramilitary groups. To move the drug, traffickers have often relied on private aircraft. [...]
Under the new policy, coordinates from United States and Colombian radar stations will be passed on to Colombian crews flying Cessna Citation surveillance planes. The surveillance planes will then direct Colombian Air Force jets toward the suspect aircraft.
The surveillance planes will have at least one bilingual observer, most likely an American, to maintain contact with radar operators and Colombian Air Force commanders, American officials said. The pilots have also undergone extensive language training.
[W]ithout the '62 Mets, where would the 2003 Tigers be?
If it weren't for those '62 Mets and their legendary 40-120 record, think how many people out there would be calling the 2003 Tigers the worst team in modern history. And they wouldn't much want to hear about those 1935 Braves or 1932 Red Sox or '69 Padres.
But the great thing about this world we live in now is, we don't have to argue about this. We have computers. And they've got all the answers, right?
So we convinced the inventors of the best computer-simulation baseball game around, the geniuses at Diamond Mind Baseball, to simulate a seven-game "World Series" between Ol' Casey's '62 Mets and these 2003 Tigers.
We gave the Tigers home-field advantage -- based on the results of this year's All-Star Game, of course. We brought the Polo Grounds back to life (on a minimal budget, too), so the Mets could go home again. And because baseball in 1962 was a slightly different animal than baseball in 2003, Diamond Mind averaged out playing conditions over the last 48 years to make this fair. [...]
[N]ot surprisingly...a sensational and dramatic series...went right down to the final hitter in Game 7.
Former basketball coach Dale Brown says he is reconsidering whether to run for office in North Dakota next year.
The Minot native and former longtime LSU men's basketball coach earlier this year decided against running for Congress against Democrat Byron Dorgan in 2004.
Brown said Monday that because former Gov. Ed Schafer, a Republican, is not interested in making a U.S Senate run, Republicans from across the country are urging him to run against Dorgan.
Brown said he expects to make a decision within a few weeks. "I owe them not to prolong this," he said of fellow Republicans.
A member of Iraq's Governing Council says the Council had warned U.S. authorities that Saddam Hussein loyalists and Muslim militants had met to plan a major attack on a "soft target" in Baghdad.
Ahmad Chalabi, one of 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Council, told a news conference on Wednesday that on August 14 the Council received intelligence that a meeting had been held at which Saddam supporters and militants discussed an attack either against the headquarters of an Iraqi political party or the United Nations.
"It specifically said that this attack would take place using a truck to be detonated either through a suicide mechanism or through electronic detonation," Chalabi said, adding that the information had been passed on to the Americans in Iraq.
Fresh from Austria, a socialist country, Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to become a Republican after listening to "the debates of Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon when they were debating for the presidential race," or so he told television talk show host Bill O'Reilly in May 2001.
" Hubert Humphrey spoke about things I heard in Austria under socialism."
But there was no presidential debate in 1968. Although Humphrey challenged Nixon to a debate, Nixon, who won the election, demurred.
In the latest sign that the North Korean nuclear crisis might be on the verge of settlement, Russia has embarked on a joint, 10-day naval exercise with South Korea and Japan. In addition, this Saturday, 30,000 Russian soldiers will carry out a drill simulating a response to a massive flow of North Korean refugees that might take place as a result of a war or a collapse of Kim Jong-il's regime.
The significance of these events, both reported in Tuesday's New York Times, is potentially staggering. Russia (which has long been one of North Korea's chief allies and suppliers) has never taken part in naval exercises with South Korea and Japan (which have long been North Korea's chief foes). Add to that the border drill--which suggests that Russia is figuring out how to deal with, but not necessarily to prevent, the possibility of Kim's downfall--and the "Dear Leader" of Pyongyang must be getting a tad nervous.
These developments come on the eve of six-power talks concerning North Korea's nuclear-weapons program, to take place Aug. 25-27 in Beijing, involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan, and Russia.
In previous multilateral negotiations—for that matter, throughout its half-century history—North Korea has played other, larger powers off one another, often quite shrewdly. A "shrimp among whales," a nation founded on guerrilla tactics at the height of the Cold War, North Korea sees this sort of manipulation as essential to survival.
The importance of Russia's unprecedented involvement in this week's military exercises--the signal that it appears quite pointedly to be sending--is that Kim Jong-il will no longer, or at least not so easily, be able to play this game. At this negotiation, on this issue, Russia stands aligned with all the other foreign powers.
The governor described the 2001 energy crisis, which saw Californians experience power blackouts and soaring utility bills, as something foisted on the state by Enron and other greedy energy suppliers. However, Davis glossed over and distorted his refusal early in the crisis to allow utilities to sign long-term supply contracts that would have protected them and their customers from soaring spot market power prices. That refusal has been singled out by even the most objective critics as Davis' chief failure -- one magnified a half-year later when he sought long-term contracts at much-higher prices. [...]
He took much the same tack on the budget, saying only that "I could have been tougher in holding down spending when we had a big surplus" and quickly adding that the $8 billion in extra spending that he and lawmakers of both parties sanctioned in 2000 was to finance vitally needed health and education services. "I make no apology for that," Davis said, adding that it was "preposterous" that he had concealed the size of the state budget deficit when he was running for re-election last year.
The record differs markedly from Davis' self-serving version. When the state experienced a $12 billion windfall in 2000, Davis publicly declared that he would stoutly resist pressure from either party to spend it because it likely would be a one-time phenomenon, stemming from a flurry of stock market activity in the volatile high-tech industry. If the money were to be committed to ongoing spending or permanent tax cuts, Davis said then, the state could face massive deficits as future revenues returned to normal levels.
In fact, however, Davis and lawmakers quickly agreed to spend about $8 billion of the windfall on ongoing programs -- tax cuts, education and health care primarily -- and when revenues did return to normal, the state had an $8 billion "structural deficit" that was papered over with bookkeeping gimmicks and loans in the ensuing three years. It leaves the state with an immense ongoing deficit and equally massive debts.
Homosexuals are somewhere between one percent and six percent of the male population in the U.S.--the demographic data isn't very reliable. Their existence is an embarrassing anomaly for Darwinism. From the standpoint of Darwinian fitness--i.e., the propagation of
descendents--male homosexuality represents a huge loss in reproductive capacity. Genetic mathematics suggests it should go extinct.
At various times and places--for example, ancient Greece, some New Guinea tribes, elite English public schools, and the more violent American prisons--widespread homosexual behavior has been an accepted part of the culture. In almost all these cases, older and/or more masculine males use younger and/or less masculine males as female substitutes. They turn to women almost as soon as they become available.
But that's not at all what's happening on Castro St. and Christopher St. Instead, we see males with lifelong homosexual orientations and, typically, with as strong an urge to give pleasure to as take it from another man--especially if he is highly masculine.
For at least a decade, many male homosexuals (but, interestingly, few lesbians) have been arguing that their sexual orientation has biological roots. However, they've been reluctant for both political and personal reasons to mention the best evidence: most of them were effeminate little boys.
My friend J. Michael Bailey, the chairman of the psychology department at Northwestern University, is probably the leading researcher into sexual orientation in America. He notes that many gay men are loath to admit they were effeminate boys partly because, as can be seen in the many "Men Seeking Men" personal ads that specify "no sissies," gays find effeminate men much less sexually attractive than masculine men.
Still, the evidence is clear. In his highly-readable new book The Man Who Would Be Queen, Professor Bailey summarizes 30 studies that asked gay and straight men to rate their agreement with statements like "As a child I often felt that I had more in common with girls than boys." He found that the average adult gay man was a more feminine boy than 90 percent of straight men.
Likewise, Richard Green of UCLA followed into adulthood a group of effeminate boys and a control group of masculine boys. He found massive differences in the likelihood they would become homosexuals.
This suggests that male homosexuality is not just a sexual preference, or even a sexual orientation, but part of a larger personality structure in place long before puberty.
It's about time Canada became America's universal scapegoat, as the United States is already and has been for decades the scapegoat foranything Canada doesn't like.
Canada is a threat to all we hold dear. Consider that millions of Americans cannot subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket -- the product TMQ desires more than anything in life -- because they cannot or do not get the satellite signal of the Rupert Murdoch-owned DirecTV, which holds a monopoly over Sunday Ticket. Yet in Canada, anyone may subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket over cable. That's right, Canadians have much better access to the viewing of NFL games than Americans do.
Plus in Canada, marijuana is close to legal. Same-gender marriage is recognized. So all these gay married Canadians are sitting around smoking pot and watching NFL Sunday Ticket -- enjoying total access to games made possible by the tax dollars of Americans! -- while in the United States, you can only drink beer, marry someone of the opposite sex and watch whatever awful woofer game your local network affiliate has chosen for you.
How long are Americans going to stand for this? If I were you, Canada, I'd drop the smug routine. The Army has to come home from Iraq someday,and it's going to be looking for something to do.
Plus, here is the news that absolutely made TMQ's week. During the blackout, there was looting in Toronto and Ottawa, while in New York City and Detroit, civic order was maintained. New Yorkers and Detroiters patiently abided by the law while Canadians engaged in pillaging! Time for our neighbor to the north to take a look in the mirror, it would seem.
MORE religion should be taught in schools to lift the nation's ethics and values, according to Governor-General Michael Jeffery. Australia's new viceroy suggested schools should teach the core beliefs of "faith, hope and love".
He said the reduction or elimination of religion in schools had had a negative impact on society.
Maj-Gen Jeffrey has ignited a debate about the role of church and state, with some bodies critical of his opinions in one of his first public forays.
"The challenge for our community is to try to live by the simple, lasting values the great religions teach," Maj-Gen Jeffrey said in a speech to religious affairs reporters.
"(The challenge) is to instil in our children and our grandchildren the notion that society benefits if we live an ethically good life, including the recognition that with rights go obligations; to each other, to our communities and to our nation."
During the 1990s, the UN was associated in the minds of the Saddam regime with a ruthless embargo and sanctions - but not necessarily by ordinary Iraqis, many of whom managed to survive thanks to the UN oil for food program. Snubbed and bypassed by the Bush administration's war adventure, the UN in post-Saddam Iraq was fulfilling basically a humanitarian mission. This included a concerted effort to demonstrate to long-suffering Iraqis that the UN was independent - and not part of the occupation force. But in this framework the mission of the UN special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was in itself much broader and ambitious. Although without any formal power, the 55-year-old Brazilian diplomat who is arguably the UN's number one troubleshooter - he was also UN under secretary general and a UN high commissioner for human rights - was acting as a de facto privileged go-between, squeezed by the American proconsular regime under L Paul Bremer on one side and Iraqi political and religious leaders on the other. As the only player trusted by both sides, he was trying to bridge the gap between the unbridgeable - the American-imposed agenda for normalization and the Iraqi desire of "democracy now". [...]
Perhaps a clue to the UN Baghdad bombing can be found in a communique by the Abu Hafs al-Misri Brigades, posted last Friday on the Arabic online Global Islamic Media - which has already published many al-Qaeda statements - but unconfirmed by any other source. The communique claims responsibility for the recent power blackouts in eastern North America, and lists a dozen "benefits of this strike" which, according to them, cost "only US$7,000". The fifth benefit is described as "a message delivered to the United Nations against Islam, whose headquarters is in New York". The communique becomes even more interesting when cross-referenced with an audiotape broadcast by Abu Dhabi-based al-Arabiyah on Sunday and again on Monday, in which an Afghan-based, so-called al-Qaeda spokesman, Abdul Rahman al-Nadji, says that bin Laden and former Taliban supremo Mullah Omar are alive and urging all Muslims to fight a jihad against the Americans in Iraq.
Al-Nadji - who has never been identified before as an al-Qaeda spokesman - congratulates "our brothers in Iraq for their valiant struggle against the occupation, which we support and urge them to continue." If the tape is authentic, this would confirm that al-Qaeda is indeed supporting the Iraqi resistance, but not controlling it.
If the al-Misri Brigades communique is authentic, this would mean that al-Qaeda might have been involved in delivering a "message" to the UN in Iraq. Wherever lies the responsibility for what happened in Baghdad - indigenous Iraqi guerrillas, global jihad, or an alliance of both - the fact is that the US way out of the quagmire via the UN now lies under the rubble.
I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear [of religion] myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. [...] My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world.
The Sobig e-mail virus that caused havoc two months ago has reappeared in a virulent new form, according to e-mail service provider MessageLabs.
The company has given the virus a high-level alert statusbecause of its rapid spread.
The new worm, code-named W32/Sobig.F-mm, appeared Monday, according to the company. All copies came from the United States. So far, the worm has been active in the United States, Denmark and Norway. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it has also spread to Asia-Pacific.
MessageLabs on Tuesday reported that 21 percent of cases were in the United Kingdom. The Sophos Web site indicated that the antivirus company had received "many reports of this worm from the wild."
"Initial analysis would suggest that Sobig.F is a mass-e-mailing virus that is spreading very vigorously. Sobig.F appears to be polymorphic in nature. The address is also spoofed and may not indicate the true identity of the sender," a MessageLabs statement said.
The sender appears to be someone from a recognized domain name, such as ibm.com, zdnet.com or microsoft.com. The subject line typically says "Re: Details," "Resume" or "Thank you."
#18.) Colgate University
Sen. Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas admits his accent is about as flat as the prairie outside his family farm. That is why, perhaps, he often receives quizzical looks when working on his latest Capitol Hill assignment: speaking Spanish.
"I do butcher a number of words," he says. "A Kansas Midwestern accent doesn't always have the easiest time with some of these rapid Spanish phrases."
With Congress in recess, Senator Brownback and a spate of GOP leaders are spending free time printing vocabulary on flashcards and muttering in the backseats of cars, conjugating verbs in low mumbles.
The reason: Spanish is increasingly important to their party's survival. So they're flocking to Spanish classes to communicate, if only rudimentarily, with constit-uents - in an effort to reach into Hispanic homes and relay political concerns.
Feeling comfortable at Hispanic functions - and confident with a smattering of phrases - has spurred congressional Republicans' most ambitious effort to date at mastering the Spanish tongue. Part of that attempt is Spanish on the Hill, a 10-week course held Wednesday mornings while Congress is in session. This summer saw its largest GOP contingency yet. [...]
[F]or Republicans, language lessons seem especially important, as the ability to tap growing minority groups goes to the very future of their party.
"The Republican Party has been pretty homogeneous and white for a long time, and they are realizing that they are going to have to adapt to changing circumstances to stay in power," says F. Chris Garcia, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico. [...]
"Hispanics generally appreciate any effort to show respect for their culture, and using Spanish is a way to honor that culture," says Garcia. "But it's going to take ... sustained actions on policy issues."
And that, he adds, is the real dilemma - for while phonemes come easily, softening its stance on policy issues could shake the traditional Republican base.
It's one of the more extraordinary spectacles a political scientist, or journalist, let alone a professional politician, could encounter. George Bush is running his
campaign from the same fringe position as the one he has adopted for his presidency.
This is a hard-right administration offering virtually no concessions to the soothing niceties that might make it more electorally attractive to voters who are not Republicans. Its tax policy is grotesquely loaded against the masses and in favour of the rich. Its bias on the environment unfailingly comes out on the side of the big commercial interests. It is daily tearing up tracts of policy and practice that protected the basic rights of people snared in the justice system. It is the hardest right administration since Herbert Hoover's from a very different era. And, which is the point, delights in being so. There is no apology or cover-up.
The target and the nature of the attack in the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad Tuesday bore the marks of Islamic militant groups like al-Qaida.
At least 20 UN workers and Iraqis were killed, including the chief UN official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
As he toured the wreckage of the hotel that housed UN headquarters in Baghdad, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing, and noted attackers used "an enormous amount of explosives." Kerik is in Baghdad to rebuild the Iraqi police force. [...]
Mohammed Salah, a Cairo-based journalist who closely follows Muslim extremism, said Tuesday's attack on the UN headquarters was likely the work of Islamic militants who see Iraq as the next base for jihad, or holy war, against the Americans.
"Maybe it is al-Qaida, maybe another organization," Salah said. "In the last few months there have been many attacks in different countries. In my opinion, most are not al-Qaida but are other organizations persuaded by bin Laden and his ideas."
He said these groups would perceive the United Nations as a target because they believe it gives in to American pressure.
True freedom, the freedom that liberates, is grounded in truth and ordered to truth and, therefore, to virtue. A free person is enslaved neither to the sheer will of another nor to his own appetites and passions. A free person lives uprightly, fulfilling his obligations to family, community, nation and God. By contrast, a person given over to his appetites and passions, a person who scoffs at truth and chooses to live, whether openly or secretly, in defiance of the moral law is not free. He is simply a different kind of slave.
The counterfeit of freedom consists in the idea of personal and communal liberation from morality, responsibility and truth. It is what our nation's founders expressly distinguished from liberty and condemned as "license." The so-called freedom celebrated today by so many of our opinion-shaping elites in education, entertainment and the media is simply the license to do whatever one pleases. This false conception of freedom - false because disordered, disordered because detached from moral truth and civic responsibility - shackles those in its grip no less powerfully than did the chattel slavery of old. Enslavement to one's own appetites and passions is no less brutal a form of bondage for being a slavery of the soul. It is no less tragic, indeed, it is in certain respects immeasurably more tragic, for being self-imposed. It is ironic, is it not, that people who celebrate slavery to appetite and passion call this bondage "freedom"?
Counterfeit freedom is worse than fraudulent. It is the mortal enemy of the real thing. Counterfeit freedom can provide no rational account or defense of its own normative claims. It speaks the language of rights, but in abandoning the ground of moral duty it provides no rational basis for anyone to respect the rights of others or to demand of others respect for one's own rights. Rights without duties are meaningless. Where moral truth as the ground of duties is thrown overboard, the language of rights is so much idle chatter fit only for Hollywood cocktail parties and faculty lounges. Hadley Arkes, the great contemporary theorist of natural rights, has observed in relation to the movement for unfettered abortion that those who demand liberation from the moral law have talked themselves out of the moral premises of their own rights and liberties. If freedom is to be honored and respected, it must be because human freedom is what is required by the laws of nature and nature's God; it cannot be because there are no laws of nature and there is no God.
A dedicated student who dreams of going to college, Lillian struggles to come up with the fees that all secondary school students in Uganda are required to pay. For Lillian - who, like some of her other classmates agreed to be interviewed on the condition that her last name not be used - the tuition comes to about $30 a month. Recently, some of the cousins with whom she has been living since her uncle's death have begun pressuring her to raise money by selling herself.
"They say, `Why don't you find a sponsor?' " she said, dressed in her dark blue school uniform and looking very young. "I know what they mean. They want me to do what so many girls do and get a sugar daddy. You give him what he wants, and he gives you what you want." [...]
At first she rejected outright suggestions by her cousins that she find a man to solve her financial woes. But the more she talked about it, the more her resolve seemed to weaken.
If she did have sex, she said, it would not be about love, because marriage would end her education.
And she would try to remember everything the club had taught her. She would use a condom and hope that the man would be kind. "If it was a single man who wasn't married, if he had good character, maybe I'd consider it," she said. "It would be for my future."
Iraq now is already like Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive. The Americans could have left Vietnam any time - but this would have meant to lose face, in an Asian sense, and to admit defeat: ultimately, this is what happened when that last helicopter abandoned the US Embassy in Saigon in April 1975. Even if they had any intention of doing it, which they don't, the White House and the Pentagon - although they have declared victory - simply cannot leave Iraq. They know that as soon as the US leaves, a democratically elected, Shi'ite-dominated, anti-American Iraqi government will come into power - as an anti-American communist government took over Vietnam. If the US remains in Iraq for "years" - as the Pentagon would have it - there's only one question: how many body bags does it take for the US public to demand a withdrawal?
The Iraqi resistance's attacks are being conducted by small, mostly well-trained groups who generally manage to escape without losses. They follow classic Giap thought: to demoralize American soldiers and at the same time increase the already unbearable distress suffered by the population, thus nourishing resentment against the occupying power. Asia Times Online has learned of many former high-ranking army officials - now unemployed - who have been called to join the resistance: they answer that sooner or later they will "if the Americans continue to humiliate us". Others are financing small guerrilla groups to the tune of thousands of dollars. The reward for someone launching a rocket against an US fighting vehicle is about US$350 - enough for many to buy what is now the rage in Baghdad's at least partly free market: a color TV with satellite dish.
In Vietnam, the resistance was organized by the Party. In Iraq, it is organized by the tribes. Tribal chiefs - practically all of them loyal to Saddam - are about to reach the deadline of the "grace period" that they conceded to the Americans. The resistance can count either on former Ba'ath Party and army officials, as well as on unemployed youngsters following the appeal of Sunni clerics, their own tribal chiefs and, more broadly, Arab patriotism.
The resistance can potentially count on almost 600,000 individuals who have been demobilized by the American proconsular regime. With more than 20 years of war, virtually all the male population in Iraq has been militarized. More than 7 million weapons were distributed by Saddam Hussein's regime. Millions of rockets and mortars were abandoned when the regime collapsed. Organized armed struggle in Iraq - in the Giap sense - may still be in its infancy, but the results are increasingly devastating. The "popular war" is getting bolder: surface-to-air missiles launched against military transport planes; sabotage of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline. US Central Command admits there may be as many as 25 attacks a day.
These Sunni Iraqi mujahideen - the counterparts of the Sunni Afghan mujahideen now fighting the anti-American jihad in Afghanistan - can count on the active complicity of the local population, just like in Vietnam. It's all becoming a "popular war" in the sense that people in any given neighborhood will know who organized an attack, but obviously they won't tell the invaders about it. But what about Saddam's tapes inciting a jihad against the Americans? Saddam is no Ho Chi Minh - a legitimate leader of a national-liberation struggle. There is not a lot of Saddam nostalgia in Iraq. And former army officials are not nostalgic either - or over-optimistic, for that matter, about the success of the guerrillas. They know that the Iraqi people once again will be the greatest victims - as the Americans are obsessed with their own, not the Iraqi people's, security. But these former officials are ready to join the resistance anyway. [...]
The Iraqi resistance should be underestimated by Washington at its own peril. It is learning fast, on the ground, the lessons of Vietnam - where the communists, in a protracted war, won against the ultimate war machine, Giap would say, because of three factors: decentralization, mass mobilization and mobile military tactics. Giap has articulated a set of political, organizational and technical maneuvers to counterbalance the awesome US war machine that can be applied by resistance forces everywhere in the world, and especially in Iraq.
U.S. home builders broke ground on new houses in July at their fastest pace in almost 20 years, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday in a report showing rising mortgage rates have yet to slow the housing market.
The Fox News Network is suing Al Franken, the political satirist, for using the phrase "fair and balanced" in the title of his new book. In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.
Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.
During the nearly quarter-century of his soft exile, no nation tried to bring Mr. Amin to justice. A few years ago, after Spain's government went after Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Human Rights Watch did bring up Mr. Amin's case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, but to no avail. Under international law, any nation, including Saudi Arabia, could have and should have prosecuted Mr. Amin.
But, as Reed Brody, special counsel for prosecutions at Human Rights Watch, says, "If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000, you get political asylum." Mr. Brody keeps a melancholy map on his wall of other tyrants gone free: Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay, lives in Brazil; Haiti's Raoul Cedras is in Panama; Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia is in Zimbabwe; Hissene Habre of Chad lives in Senegal.
Possible Democratic candidates for Edwards's Senate seat -- particularly Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to President Clinton who lost to Senator Elizabeth Dole last year -- have been seeking a decision by Edwards, or at least a green light for them to raise money, as [Florida Senator Bob] Graham has signaled. But Edwards is biding his time. Analysts say the longer he waits, the more he risks not only the good will of state Democrats, but the national Democratic Party's future support, since party leaders do not want Edwards's hedging to hurt their chances of winning control of the US Senate next year.
"He needs to decide by October, certainly -- he knows that we can't lose this place in the Senate," said former state representative Dan Blue, a Tar Heel Democrat who is also considering a run for Edwards's seat.
But Blue, an Edwards supporter, also said he was sympathetic and sensitive to Edwards's concerns.
"He needs to win something next year," Blue said. "Otherwise, it's out of sight, out of mind."
U.S. spending on power-distribution equipment fell by $2.5 billion, or 40 percent, from 1975 to 2000 as electricity use more than tripled, according to the Edison Electric Institute.
Idi Amin Dada, who has died in Saudi Arabia, presided over a decade-long reign of terror in Uganda that encompassed mass murder and torture and left in ruins a country once described by Winston Churchill as the Pearl of Africa.
Throughout the 1970s Amin, a former trainee cook in the King’s African Rifles, was constantly in the spotlight, hurling outlandish insults at world leaders and flaunting his brutal powers.
If the truth be told, Fleet Street and Scotland’s press initially loved the flamboyant Ugandan tyrant. His buffoonery made good copy. As well as declaring himself Emperor of Uganda and awarding himself the VC (Victorious Cross) and CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire), he also styled himself “the last king of Scotland”. He wore a kilt and tartan forage cap, symbols of a love affair with Scotland that began when Willie Cochrane, pipe major of the King’s African Rifles, taught Amin to play the bagpipes.
When British-Uganda relations were at an all-time low, he proposed marriage to Princess Anne as a way of repairing relations. He asked the Queen to send him “her 25-year-old knickers” in celebration of her silver anniversary on the throne.
But it is for his butchery rather than his clowning that Amin must be remembered. While nobody knows how many Ugandans were killed at his behest during his 1971-79 dictatorship, international human rights groups estimate the toll at between 300,000 and 500,000 out of a population of 12 million. He expelled 50,000 Ugandan Asians to Britain and Canada.
The official killers came from the chillingly named Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau. They mainly comprised men from Amin’s own tribe, the Kakwa of northwestern Uganda near the Sudan border. Most died because Amin, who promoted himself to field marshal, and his acolytes despised their origins or because they wanted their women, cars, houses and money.
Amin’s victims were either shot or bludgeoned to death. Many condemned men were forced to smash the skulls of fellow prisoners with sledgehammers. They, in turn, were similarly dispatched by others lined up behind them. Nicholas Moore, Reuters chief correspondent in East Africa, was arrested by Amin and shared a blood-caked prison cell with men who were dragged away to be killed in this way nearby. Describing the sound of each execution, Moore said it was “a curious noise, as of an egg being broken”.
Amin’s sadism was not taken seriously until it affected the countries that had helped him to power, Britain and Israel.
When historians in the future are asked what was the most important development of the early 21st century in Latin America, they may cite something that is not making headlines anywhere nowadays: the gradual steps by Portuguese-speaking Brazil to adopt Spanish as a second language.
It sounds trivial, but Brazil -- which accounts for more than 50 percent of South America's economy, territory and population -- has always lived in relative isolation from its Spanish-speaking neighbors.
In part because of language, Brazilians have always read different books, watched different movies and seen different TV shows than most of their fellow Latin Americans. Even today, after more than a decade of unprecedented South American integration, Brazil remains an inward-looking giant.
But things are beginning to change. Last week, while the region's attention focused on the Brazilian Congress' preliminary approval of a crucial pension reform bill, Brazilian legislators were debating another measure that could prove even more important in the long term: the adoption of Spanish as a required language for Brazil's 43.5 million students in elementary and high schools.
[I]f Dr Kay's recent predictions about uncovering the secrets of Saddam's various weapons of mass destruction programmes prove to be correct, then the painstakinginvestigation currently being undertaken by Lord Hutton into whether the British Government exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam would be rendered irrelevant.
Certainly many of the discoveries now being made by the survey team would come as no surprise to Dr Kelly who, irrespective of the doubts he expressed about the Iraqis' ability to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam giving the order, was under no illusion about the wider threat posed by the Iraqi leader's clandestine programmes.
Indeed, the reason that Susan Watts, Newsnight's science editor, and other BBC reporters such as Andrew Gilligan were in contact with Dr Kelly in the first place was that, because of the work he had undertaken as a member of Dr Kay's United Nations weapons teams in Iraq in the 1990s, he was well-acquainted with all aspects of Saddam's weapons programmes.
As Miss Watts made clear in her evidence to Lord Hutton last week, Dr Kelly "thought very definitely that there were [Iraqi] weapons programmes and that if there were to be any evidence of this, it might well be a lengthy process to find that evidence and a process of putting together pieces of information, and that that process was really only beginning".
The fundamental purpose of the work now being carried out by Dr Kay's survey team in Iraq is to complete the process to which Dr Kelly was referring, namely to bring to a close the painstaking weapons inspection process that was launched following the 1991 Gulf war - in which Dr Kelly played an important role but which, because of Saddam's various attempts to obstruct the process, was never completed.
Despite having to work in onerous conditions, Dr Kay and his inspection teams remain confident that they will be able to provide convincing evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons programmes.
When asked during a recent interview with the American NBC television network whether he would find evidence on Saddam's biological, nuclear and chemical weapons programmes, Dr Kay replied: "I think we will have a very strong case on all of those. I think we'll have a strong case on missiles as well."
The women of this village call Francise Akacha "the terrorist." His breath fumes with the local alcoholic brew. Greasy food droppings hang off his mustache and stain his oily pants and torn shirt.
He's always the first one in line for the village feast, tucking into a buffet carefully prepared by the women of the village like he's diving into the ocean, no restraint. He's too skinny and has, as the women point out, terrible taste in clothes. His latest hat is a visor styled from shabby paper stolen off a local cigarette billboard.
But for all of his undesirable traits, Akacha has a surprisingly desirable job: He's paid to have sexual relations with the widows and unmarried women of this village. He's known as "the cleanser," one of hundreds of thousands of men in rural villages across Africa who sleep with women after their husbands die to dispel what villagers believe are evil spirits.
As tradition holds, they must sleep with the cleanser to be allowed to attend their husbands' funerals or be inherited by their husbands' brother or relative, another controversial custom that aid workers said is causing the spread of HIV-AIDS. Unmarried women who lose a parent or child must also sleep with the ritual cleanser. [...]
Areas that still practice the tradition have the highest rates of the disease, and health workers say the custom must be stopped. It's a striking example of how HIV-AIDS is forcing Africans to question and change traditions as the disease ravages the continent. [...]
A cleanser is typically the village drunkard or someone considered not very bright. The job is seen as low class but essential to "purifying" women.
Though the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq were tactically dissimilar and of varying levels of intensity, the post-war social, cultural, and political factors at play are very similar. The most relevant and foundational similarity between the two countries is their creation: each was cobbled together from amongst a plethora of local, autonomous/tribal regions into reluctant wholes in the form of what the conquering country felt to be a modern nation-state. And for both, since their involuntary birth, this fact has hampered their development, as well as posing a deep, historical puzzle for, first, Great Britain and, now, the United States, in their efforts at "nation building."
This predicament - if only in the name of thoroughness - must eventually elicit a series of important questions from the concerned observer, some of which might be:
-What are the inherent weaknesses of the "nation-state" model?
-When Washington uses the phrase "nation building," what does this really imply?
-Is the so-called "nation-state" a viable model for Afghanistan and Iraq?
The United States may be uncovering a troublesome truth in its latest global endeavors: the fact that the nation-state is not a universal model for all regions and peoples of the world, and, in some cases, it may even obstruct the development of the very stability and select economic development the United States is seeking through its operations - especially in areas with a concentration of ethnic diversity like in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and much of Central Asia where state-sized regions more readily stabilize under a sub-network of autonomous zones defined by some obvious feature, whether it be ethnic, linguistic or geographical. The dominant US polity has always assumed that the keys to American success are the keys to global success, that what works for them will work for others. This belief has led many in the US leadership to think that concepts like democracy and free market capitalism can be smoothly exported to other regions and environments and have the same effect that they had in 18th and 19th century America. This widely held belief is shared by the Bush administration and has been explicitly stated in its 2002 National Security Strategy.
When Pope Gregory I refined the list of seven deadly sins toward the end of the 6th century, he never guessed that one day they'd become ice cream flavors.
But 1,400 years later, people can lick gluttony off a stick while they ponder that particular sin and its infamous brethren - anger, pride, envy, sloth, lust, and greed.
Clerics aren't too happy about the sins being trivialized, especially of late in Europe, where the gimmicky ice cream originates. They also have to contend with a group of chefs in France, who earlier this year petitioned Pope John Paul II to take gluttony off the list - or, rather, to change the current word used in French to describe the sin because its meaning has changed.
All the hoopla lends itself to the idea that the deadlies don't have the fearsome reputation they once did. Even those who are religious often have to be reminded of what's on the list. But at the same time - maybe thanks to all the reality TV - analyzing human nature is more interesting than ever, and these historic vices present a good place to start. Popular culture takes a stab at exploring them every few years, through an MTV special, or a movie (1995's grisly "Seven"), or, more commonly, a book. This month, a more thoughtful approach to the deadly seven will commence when the first in a series of palm-sized volumes on the sins is published by Oxford University Press.
BRITAIN is demanding a halt to the flood of asylum seekers swamping the nation, a shock Sun poll reveals today.
It shows voters believe the Government has failed Britain in EVERY key element of its vow to curb illegal immigration.
The overwhelming majority of voters - 82 per cent - say its policies are not tough enough.
And 84 per cent believe that the flood of arrivals is now out of control.
Disturbingly, 78 per cent reckon the Government is trying to cover up the full scale of the crisis.
The survey exposes mounting anger across the nation and reveals that the issue will top the agenda at the next General Election.
More than eight out of ten people quizzed (82 per cent) think Prime Minister Tony Blair has failed to act effectively to stop tens of thousands of migrants arriving - and staying - without visas.
And there are fears that Britain has been changed permanently - for the worse. [...]
Asked how Britain has changed in the last 50 years, only one in three (32 per cent) told pollsters YouGov it has been for the better.
More than half (54 per cent) say it has changed for the worse, losing "something of our traditional character".
Capitalism, it is usually assumed, flowered around the same time as the Enlightenment-the eighteenth century-and, like the Enlightenment, entailed a diminution of organized religion. In fact, the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was the main locus for the first flowerings of capitalism. Max Weber located the origin of capitalism in modern Protestant cities, but today's historians find capitalism much earlier than that in rural areas, where monasteries, especially those of the Cistercians, began to rationalize economic life.
It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings. [...]
The economic historian David Landes, who describes himself as an unbeliever, points out that the main factors in this great economic achievement of Western civilization are mainly religious:
--the joy in discovery that arises from each individual being an imago Dei called to be a creator;
--the religious value attached to hard and good manual work;
--the theological separation of the Creator from the creature, such that nature is subordinated to man, not surrounded with taboos;
--the Jewish and Christian sense of linear, not cyclical, time and, therefore, of progress; and
--respect for the market.
As the world enters the third millennium, we may hope that the church, after some generations of loss of nerve, rediscovers its old confidence in the economic order. Few things would help more in raising up all the world's poor out of poverty. The church could lead the way in setting forth a religious and moral vision worthy of a global world, in which all live under a universally recognizable rule of law, and every individual's gifts are nourished for the good of all.
I believe this is what the pope has in mind when he speaks of a "civilization of love." Capitalism must [be] infused by that humble gift of love called caritas, described by Dante as "the Love that moves the Sun and all the stars." This is the love that holds families, associations, and nations together. The current tendency of many to base the spirit of capitalism on sheer materialism is a certain road to economic decline. Honesty, trust, teamwork, and respect for the law are gifts of the spirit. They cannot be bought.
A great and increasing part of the arable land of Europe passed into the hands of highly disciplined men committed to a doctrine of hard work. They were literate. They knew how to keep accounts. Above all, perhaps, they worked to a daily timetable and an accurate annual calendar--something quite alien to the farmers and landowners they replaced. Thus their cultivation of the land was organized, systematic, persistent. And, as owners, they escaped the accidents of deaths, minorities, administration by hapless widows, enforced sales, or transfer of ownership by crime, treason and folly. They brought continuity of exploitation. They produced surpluses and invested them in the form of drainage, clearances, livestock and seed...they determined the whole future of Europe; they were the foundation of world primacy.
If your children attend a public or private university in this country, they will be taught that President Roosevelt "saved" capitalism from itself with his New Deal legislative program in the 1930s. They will also be taught as unquestionable truth that the Federalists rescued the fledgling national economy from imminent collapse during the decade following the War of Independence (1780s), a decade ominously described by statist historians (are there any other kind?) as "the critical period." They learn that these years were a tumultuous and tragic follow-up to the Revolution. Without a strong central authority, the country was convulsed and confused by violent internal rebellion, economic stagnation, the petty rule of "bad men" (i.e. local-minded and self-interested), and national weakness in the face of predatory commercial rivals. Into this despairing void, stepped a shining band of broad-minded, far-seeing, disinterested, nationalist leaders who realized the impotent and inept government of the Confederation had not the powers to deal with the crisis or guide the country into the regulated, centrally managed future. Consequently, they led a constitutional revolution which discarded the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a broad charter of national power, falsely described as federal, that by taxing, regulating, and promoting (i.e. subsidies!) rescued the economy and laid the solid foundation for America's future growth and prosperity. Students graduate thinking that were it not for the federal Constitution, we would all be sitting on the front porch of our cabin spitting tobacco, drinking home-made whiskey, and kicking our dog Blue.
The prevailing historical interpretation of the country under the Articles of Confederation is an example of the harm that has resulted from the ignorance of economics among generations of historians. Let us consider the work of Richard B. Morris, the Columbia University historian, whose book The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789 (1987) is considered the standard history of that decade. Morris ascribes the postwar depression (1784-88) to four causes: the "dumping" of low-cost British goods upon the American market (imagine the gall of those sneaky Brits; you beat 'em in war and then they do this to us?); the closing of the British West Indies and other foreign markets to American goods; an unregulated money supply (it is not clear if Morris thinks the problem was too much, or not enough, money; apparently, he seems to think that only the Solons and Greenspans destined to run the federal government knew the right amount); and the lack of a national government with national taxing and regulatory powers (the horror, the horror).
For Morris, the calling of a constitutional convention was a necessity recognized by nearly all. "Businessmen, mechanics, and artisans witnessed a Confederation government incapable of controlling the money supply, of paying interest on the public debt, or of regulating and encouraging foreign and domestic commerce. Little wonder that these groups recognized the grim necessity for setting up a stronger central government."
The economy was beginning to thrive again in 1788, the year the Constitution was ratified, and Morris naturally awards credit to the new government for the change. "The ratification of the federal Constitution seems to have laid a basis for economic recovery." It never occurs to him that the recession was bound to end sometime, or that its end was due to causes unrelated to the creation of a new national authority.
Our best guides to the critical decade of the 1780s are two of the few American historians who understand economics and are true liberals-William Graham Sumner and Murray Rothbard. Although Sumner was a nationalist and antidemocrat who favored the new constitution for other reasons, he understands as well as Rothbard that the depression of the 1780s was not due to the lack of a powerful central government. Both explain that after the war, there was a great pent-up demand for British goods, which were preferred to all others, including domestic, both for their quality and their cheapness.
There was also an abundance of specie in the country, due to French and British disbursements, the Havana trade, and French and Dutch hard-money loans. However, there was also a large quantity of paper money still afloat. As the paper money was serving as the principal circulating medium, the merchants shipped much of the nation's specie abroad to help pay for their large importations of capital and consumer goods. Lacking credit cards, the American consumer was soon "tapped out," and merchants found themselves holding large stocks of unsold merchandise.
At the same time, there were many manufacturers and mechanics whose businesses had been profitable only during the autarkic wartime conditions. Now that peace and commerce had resumed, they were in trouble. An additional negative factor was the British decision to place the Americans on the outside of their colonial system after the war. The Americans found the British West Indies closed to them, the North Atlantic fisheries forbidden, and the British home market tightly restricted. (Of course, the British hurt themselves by these restrictions, for the Americans could not buy from them if they could not sell to them; but they were acting according to the logic of mercantilism and probably revenge.) A final factor was the capital losses sustained and the debts incurred during the war. The capital losses had to be made up and the debts paid.
In summation, the Americans were suffering the natural aftereffects of a long war financed by debt and inflation, and exacerbated by the continuing circulation of inconvertible paper currency. As Sumner records, "misery was great throughout the country, owing to paper money and debt and the losses of the war." The postwar depression was a necessary period of hardship during which Americans readjusted to new trade patterns and economic realities, paid debts, and repaired the damage and neglect wrought by war. No government could have legislated or regulated away these facts of life.
Americans, flush with soaring hopes unleashed by the Revolution, wanted to believe otherwise, but there was no political substitute for hard work, reconstruction, self-denial, and patience. Regrettably, as is the case so often in our history, many sought political panaceas to escape economic realities. Mechanics and manufacturers petitioned their state legislatures for protective tariffs to exclude lower cost British-made goods. Ship builders and owners lobbied for navigation laws to exclude British shipping from American ports, and southern exporters and northern merchants pleaded for retaliatory legislation to force open closed British markets. Farmers demanded that paper money be issued and lent on the security of land. Only a few years after independence, Americans were trying to replicate the main features of the British colonial and mercantile system from which they had just freed themselves.
With his usual perspicuity, Sumner observes how the collapse in prices and the prostration of business following a period of currency inflation led to a movement for protective tariffs, setting a recurring pattern. Here was the first time, but by no means the last, "in which currency errors become intertwined with errors as to foreign trade, a junction which has run through all our history to the present moment [1876] and which has been productive of mischief."
Xiong Jinglun was lying in bed on the night of the raid, resting his frail, AIDS-weakened body when the shouting outside jarred him awake. The 51-year-old farmer struggled to his feet and shuffled out of his shack to investigate, but someone had cut off the electricity in the village, and it was difficult to see in the pitch dark.
Suddenly, several men wearing riot gear and military fatigues surrounded him, struck his head with a nightstick and knocked him to the ground, he recalled. Xiong begged them to stop hitting him, crying out that he was an old man, that he had AIDS. But he heard one of the assailants shout: "Beat them! Beat them even if they have AIDS!"
A few days earlier, residents of this AIDS-stricken Chinese village had staged a protest demanding better medical care, rolling two government vehicles into a ditch to vent their frustration. Now, local authorities here in central Henan province, about 425 miles northwest of Shanghai, were answering their appeal for help. But instead of doctors, they sent the police.
More than 500 officers, local officials and hired thugs stormed the muddy hamlet of 600 residents on the night of June 21, shouting threats, smashing windows and randomly pummeling people who got in their way, witnesses said. Police jailed 18 villagers and injured more than a dozen others, including an 8-year-old boy who tried to defend his sick mother.
"They beat me because I stepped outside," Xiong said, coughing and pointing out scars and bruises on his head, arms and legs. Like many villagers, he said was afraid the police would return. But he agreed to an interview, saying, "I'm going to die anyway."
The desperation of residents in Xiongqiao and the local government's blunt response has complicated China's bid for $100 million in aid from the U.N. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. AIDS activists have demanded human rights guarantees from the government as a condition for any funding. [...]
"If you give China money, then you should require they add these human rights protections," said Wan Yanhai, an AIDS activist who was detained briefly last year for distributing a government AIDS report. "If you don't stand with the AIDS activists and empower them, these funds may be corrupted. They may be used to hire thugs to beat people with AIDS."
As strong as President Bush seems today, he's not invincible. But there's only one way any Democratic candidate can defeat him in 2004. That's by asserting a clear sense of national purpose - by getting the big things right and by convincing Americans that he can provide our country better leadership than Bush can.
But there are any number of strategies that won't work for Democrats. [...]
Democrats won't win by polarizing the debate. Bush is a staunch conservative, not the moderate he claimed to be in the 2000 campaign. But Democrats who believe the way to counter his conservatism is by moving left to sharpen the contrast - to offer, in the words of failed presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, "a choice, not an echo" - are wrong.
A recent Gallup poll revealed that on social issues, 37 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, 23 percent as liberals. On economic issues, it's 43 percent conservatives, 15 percent liberals. Running to the short side of the field is not a winning strategy. [...]
As the campaign begins in earnest, Democrats need to remember that their party has had its greatest successes when it has championed great national purposes.
It means dedicating a presidency to fighting the war on terrorism and keeping our country safe. It also means building a strong, growing 21st-century economy that expands opportunity, creates jobs again, raises incomes and secures retirement - all the things Bush has failed to do.
Relieved at a quick bounceback from the nation's worst-ever power outage and bolstered by solid earnings and recent economic news, stocks posted a striking rally today.
The Dow burst through key resistance and ended above 9,412, its highest close since June of 2002. [...]
And it wasn't just the Dow in rally mode. The Nasdaq moved close to its July highs with a gain of 2% as techs surged, while the S&P 500 closed within a whisper of 1,000.
The renewed rally faces a few hurdles tomorrow, with several economic reports and a slew of earnings due out. But for today, things were pretty much all looking up. "We walked in here today expecting a little fallout from the blackout, but if there was any it didn?t last long," Seaport Securities President Ted Weisberg told CNBC. "We have clearly broken out of this trading range."
The Big Four. The Fab Four. The Ain't They A Swell Four. Call them what you want, but don't call them The Only Four.
The A's have the best young pitching rotation in the majors with Tim Hudson,
Barry Zito and Mark Mulder. Add newcomer Rich Harden, whose bite is as good as his hype so far, to the mix, and it's a high-quality quartet. [...]
So why don't the A's go with their strength on a daily basis? Why don't they use the old-fashioned, when-men-were-men four-man rotation? [...]
The last team with a quintessential four-man rotation was the last team with four 20-game winners, the 1971 Orioles. By then, four-man rotations were evolving into five-man rotations, though Baltimore manager Earl Weaver stayed loyal through much of the '70s. [...]
The game has changed, and so have pitchers, who aren't physically or mentally prepared to work as often as pitchers in past generations. Teams are afraid to risk injury to draftees who make millions in signing bonuses, so they apply strict pitch counts throughout the minor leagues, babying their prospects along the way.
By the time a starting pitcher reaches the majors, he's programmed to throw every five days, at the most, and is not always accustomed to reaching 100 pitches.
[Pitching coach Rick] Peterson is overly protective of his co-aces for a reason -- they're the strength of the organization -- and isn't silly enough to use them as a guinea pig for an experiment. He did extensive research last September, with help from Dr. James Andrews of the American Sports Medicine Institute, before using them on three days' for the playoffs. [...]
With a true four-man rotation, each pitcher would throw 40 or 41 times over 162 games.
"That's only five more starts," Zito said. "I think it could work, but that's one starting job times 30. That's a lot of lost jobs. I'd like to go back to when they used four-man rotations to look at their pitch counts and see what kind of off-speed stuff they were throwing and how often they were throwing it."
Any pretense that Gov. Gray Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante are united in their fight against the recall vanished Sunday when the lieutenant governor went on national television and accused Davis of undermining his bid to give voters a Democratic replacement if the recall succeeds.
"If some of the governor's minions would stop trying to undercut my efforts, I think we could have a very coalesced opportunity for Democrats," Bustamante, the only established Democrat on the recall replacement ballot, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think if he worked with me a little bit more, I think we could make sure that we had a good strategy for the people of California and to make sure that the Democratic Party kept hold of this position."
Later in the day, Bustamante's chief consultant charged that Davis aides are calling Indian tribal leaders and others to urge them not to support Bustamante.
"They're contacting potential supporters and contributors and telling them don't give (money) and don't support Bustamante's effort," said Richie Ross, Bustamante's consultant.
"They're trying to shut it down. We think that is selfish and irresponsible," he said. "They want it to be all or nothing, them or no one."
Separate as the British and American information universes have been until now, a process of convergence has begun that will continue until there is only a single Anglosphere information universe. In this, the differences between right and left (for example) become more important than the distinctions of national origin. This process is already foreshadowed in the leading edge of the information universe, which at this point in time is the blogosphere -- the world of the Web logs, or blogs.
Several interconnected and mutually reinforcing developments are driving this process. The first and most obvious is the advent of the Internet and World-Wide Web. This permits flat-rate worldwide communications, ready access to the press of all nations, and, most importantly, the ability to link documents. Two things about the blogosphere are of particular interest: the ability of almost anyone with basic computer literacy to start and run a blog, and the practice of embedding links to other documents of interest. [...]
The blogosphere is still miniscule compared to the audience for broadcast and print media. (Although reporters are more and more relying on the blogosphere for research and background, and more and more aware that the blogosphere has the power to expose quickly errors that previously could be buried.) However, its denizens are disproportionately young and disproportionately well-educated professionals. They will likely set the tone more and more for the coming generation. Furthermore, the rise of the blogosphere will likely affect Britain disproportionately to America. [...]
Full convergence is still some time away, but it is coming, as surely as today's younger blog-readers will move into positions of influence as time passes. The parallel information universes will be tied together with the thread of Internet linkage. The informational Anglosphere, in the sense of the entirety of written and recorded information in the English language, is gradually becoming fully accessible through Internet and Web, and accessible without regard to national boundaries.
At some point linkage will be so fluid and transparent, and indexing and search so effective, that documents will cease to be stand-alone artifacts, and the entire body of information in English (and for that matter, the entire body of information in other languages) will become in effect a single artifact, probably the most complex human artifact ever to emerge. Intra-Anglosphere national boundaries will become rather weak demarcation lines within the structure of that artifact. Linguistic boundaries, on the other hand, will remain significant decouplers for the foreseeable future, resulting in a number of such massive informational artifacts existing in parallel. It is these that will be the parallel information universes of the future.
Why this upturn in conservatism? One reason is a healthy desire to tweak the noses of people in authority. America's academic establishment is so solidly liberal that Naderites easily outnumber Republicans. The leftists who seized control of the universities in the 1960s have imposed their world-view on the young with awesome enthusiasm, bowdlerising text-books of anything that might be considered sexist or racist, imposing draconian speech codes and inventing pseudo-subjects such as women's studies. What better way of revolting against such illiberal claptrap than emulating the character in Mr Allen's film?
Another reason is September 11th, which not only produced a surge of patriotism but also widened the gap between students (who tended to see the attacks as examples of evil) and Vietnam-era professors (who agonised about what America must have done wrong). The Harvard Institute of Politics found two-thirds of students supporting the war in Iraq. Pro-war groups sprouted in such liberal campuses as Brandeis, Yale and Columbia. At Amherst College many students were noisily furious when 40 teachers paraded into the dining hall with anti-war slogans.
A third reason is that American conservatives devote a lot of energy to recruiting the young. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Young America's Foundation and the Federalist Society are out organising. Conservative foundations finance conservative newspapers and provide scholarships for right young things (one conservative impresario compares funding young conservatives to building a wine collection). The Heritage Foundation provides internships for 100 students a year.
In 2000, the Republicans discovered that they could no longer rely on their air superiority (ie, paid television advertising) to win elections. They needed troops on the ground. In 2002 College Republicans (together with gun activists) played the same sort of role in the party that trade unionists and blacks have long played in the Democratic Party. They boosted turn-out and harassed opponents. Norm Coleman, the new senator for Minnesota, attributes his victory to College Republicans.
These footsoldiers also represent the future of the Republican Party. One reason why Britain's Conservative Party is in such a sorry state is that the average age of its members is almost 70. The young conservatives who crowded into Washington this week suggest a sprightlier future for the Republicans.
An alternative to the Chomskian theory, is that language developed as a series of inventions. This was first suggested by the 18th-century philosopher Etienne Bonnot de Condillac. He argued that spoken language had developed out of gesture language (langage d'action) and that both were inventions arising initially from the simple association between action and object. The Condillac view, with some development, can be traced to the present day with the recent work of New Zealand psychologist Michael Corballis and others. The theory sees gesture language as arising originally among apes as sounds accompanying gestures, with these sounds gradually becoming coded into "words" as the new skill drove its own evolution. Subsequently, coded words developed into deliberate, complex communication. Evolutionary pressures promoted the development of an anatomy geared to speech - the larynx, vocal muscles and a specific part of the brain immediately next to that responsible for gestures.
This view, that spoken language was ultimately a cultural invention like tool-making, which then drove the biological evolution of the brain and vocal apparatus, seems obvious when you think of the development of different languages. [...]
So we have the paradox that over the period when our brain was growing most rapidly, our material cultural development, as measured by stone tools, advanced only marginally; then, over a million years later, when the culture of anatomically modern humans finally started to accelerate, artistically and technologically, our brains were actually getting smaller.
The additional piece of evidence that makes this paradox all the more significant is that brain size did not just leap between human species in a direct line of ascent towards ourselves. Over the period from 2.5 to 1.5m years ago, it turns out brains were growing more rapidly than at any time since, within all the different human species and also in Paranthropus species. The logical conclusion is that there must have been a unique new behaviour driving brain growth, shared between all species of humans and Paranthropus, with its origin, presumably, in their immediate shared walking ape ancestor.
So, what was driving rapid brain growth right at the beginning 2.5m years ago? The answer may have been staring us in the face. Namely, that not only were early humans and Paranthropus communicating but their ancestor, a walking ape, had started the trend in this very useful skill. Around 2.5m years ago the weather took a decided turn for the worse, becoming more variable and colder and dryer. The search for food became more taxing, and there would have been a real need to communicate more effectively and cope with the worsening environment in a cooperative way.
Speech, a complex system of oral communication, is the only inherited primate skill that would self-evidently benefit from a larger computer than that of a chimp. The near maximum in brain size achieved by 1.2m years ago indicates that those early ancestors could already have been talking perfectly well. It was all over bar the shouting. Our new Rolls Royce brain, developed to manipulate and organise complex symbolic aspects of speech internally, could now be turned to a variety of other tasks.
A course called "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation," scheduled this fall, has reignited a culture war at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. . . .Taking the Professor's description at face value, this sounds like a fascinating and useful course. Some minority groups in the US adopt self-images that are helpful to their success and assimilation, others fall into destructive self-images. Blacks have to constantly fight against a self-image that says that studying hard, working towards a goal and upward-mobility are essentially "white" traits. Gay men could have been wiped out by a culture that prided itself on anonymous promiscuity. A course that studies how these self-images form, how they are influenced and how they can be changed is interesting and important.
The professor says critics misunderstand the 'How to be Gay' class.
'It does not teach students to be homosexual,' Mr. Halperin says in an interview. 'Rather, it examines critically the odd notion that there are right and wrong ways to be gay, that homosexuality is not just a sexual practice or desire but a set of specific tastes in music, movies, and other cultural forms — a notion which is shared by straight and gay people alike.
'The reason these courses exist is not that homosexual teachers have hijacked the university for their own purposes; they exist because they convey the results of research which sheds genuinely new light on history, culture, society and thought.'
However, in a course description on the university's Web site, Mr. Halperin says: 'Just because you happen to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn how to become one. Gay men do some of that learning on their own, but often we learn how to be gay from others.'
Some members of the Green Party are reserving much of their anger for Democrats these days, and say they don’t care if another third-party run by Ralph Nader wrecks the Democrats' opportunity to replace President Bush in 2004.
"As the Democrats have retreated from their core constituencies, they have given the Republicans a real license to move into greater extremes," said national party media coordinator Scott McLarty, who accuses Democrats of betraying their so-called progressive ideals.
"[The Democratic Party] seems to be crumbling as a political force that means something to anybody, crumbling as a real force of opposition," he said. "That is what we mean when we say we are so strongly in favor of running a national candidate."
The dollar was close to its high point of the month on Monday as investors shrugged off Friday's muted session and focused on last week's US data suggesting continued signs of recovery.
With few data releases due for this week, investors are likely to consolidate dollar gains after last week's slew of upbeat reports. Retail sales and industrial production both surprised on the upside, and deflationary fears were eased by rising consumer prices. Along with improving growth, reported in the previous week, indications remained for a strengthening US currency.
The Bush administration, while preparing for talks soon with North Korea, is also stepping up military pressure with plans for a joint naval exercise next month to train for interdicting at sea arms and other materials being transported to and from the North.
Administration officials and Asian diplomats said that the exercise would be carried out in the Coral Sea off northeastern Australia in September and that it was officially described as directed at no one country. A principal intention, however, was to send a sharp signal to North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, they said.
The next round of talks with North Korea is planned for Aug. 27 in Beijing, with six nations taking part. The United States has been working with its allies to decide which items to present, from economic benefits to security guarantees, that would be provided if the North Korean government agreed to shut down its program verifiably and irreversibly.
Contemporary biologists who write for the general public usually have more to impart than scientific information. They have lessons to teach us about how to think of ourselves and our relation to the universe. This is not surprising, since biology is pervaded by Darwin's theory of evolution, and the significance of that theory for our self-understanding remains largely unassimilated.
It isn't just that evolution contradicts the Biblical story of the creation - which the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations don't take literally any more. Darwin's theory, as usually understood, is one of the most radically reductive scientific conceptions of all time, for it says that the appearance of purpose in the intricate design of living things and in their exquisite adaptation to their environments is an illusion: the whole plant and animal creation is a cosmic accident, or rather the result of a very long chain of accidents, explainable only in terms of the non-purposive laws of particle physics. That the process ever got started, with the formation of a suitable self-replicating molecule, seems to have depended on a chemical accident, though it is not possible at present to construct a realistic scenario that makes probable its occurrence in the time available since the earth began. And it seems radically contingent that, having begun, the process should have followed a path that included the appearance of vertebrates, mammals and ourselves. All this is obscured by the purposive-sounding Just-So stories by which evolution is often explained. [...]
The biological problem that is the focus of the dispute is set out most clearly in Eldredge's book: what modification of the conception of the evolutionary process is required by the fact that the fossil record does not support Darwin's belief that evolution proceeded gradually, and at a more or less constant rate? The fossil record is of course very patchy, but what it seems to reveal are species that come into existence, persist largely unchanged, often for millions of years, and then become extinct. It does not reveal long sequences of gradually changing ancestors of new species, linking them by minute intergenerational variation to predecessor species. Nor does it reveal the kind of gradual, cumulative intraspecies evolution that finally results in a difference great enough to constitute a new species.
Rather, the time required for the appearance of a new species is apparently very short by comparison with the time during which it then persists largely unchanged. A species that appears in the geological blink of an eye - say, ten thousand years, too short a time for any transitional stages to show up as fossils - may stay the same for five to ten million years after that. The process by which a new species is formed is apparently too fast to show up in the fossil record, but too slow to be observed in human experience. 'No utterly convincing case of true speciation (that is, involving sexually reproducing organisms) has as yet emanated from a genetics lab,' Eldredge writes.
He believes that these facts are incompatible with an unmodified version of Darwin's theory, because Darwin believed in gradualism: that evolution proceeds at a constant rate, with gradual variations within species (of the kind commonly produced by animal breeders) leading to differences and branching that eventually become so great that they turn into separate species. In a sense, Eldredge says, Darwin didn't believe in the reality of species, as discrete entities. What was real were individuals - and the gradually developing differences between them. Species, however, do seem in some sense real: their distinctness and internal uniformity both at a time and over time are striking. Eldredge and Gould coined the term 'punctuated equilibria' to describe their theory of this non-gradual evolutionary process whereby short bursts of rapid change are followed by long periods of stasis.
Now this might seem like the locus of a profound disagreement within evolutionary theory. What gives rise to new species, suddenly, if not the slow process of incremental change that Darwin envisioned? Does it mean that creative forces of some kind are at work, generating radically new forms of life through a process internal to the genetic material? That would certainly be incompatible with the reductionist outlook of the traditional theory of natural selection.
Eldredge thinks nothing of the kind, however.
Israel has relented on one of its core demands on the Palestinian leadership, backing away for now from its insistence that the men it regards as wanted terrorists be held under lock and key in Palestinian prisons, Israeli and Palestinian officials said today.
Instead, Israel has accepted in principle the assurances of Muhammad Dahlan, the Palestinian minister of security, that he will monitor the wanted men in the cities where they now live and prevent them from mounting attacks, the officials said.
That would represent a less aggressive strategy than the immediate "dismantlement" of terrorist infrastructure that Israel has sought. Bush administration officials had indicated that they would accept for now the milder Palestinian approach, which amounts to containment and, perhaps, assimilation into mainstream society.
Palestinian officials said the agreement cleared the way for an effective amnesty for wanted men who abandon violence.
H. W. Brands argues that too much reverence for the Founding Fathers is unhealthy—and that it's time to take them down a notch or two ...
Brands: One of the things that strikes me as mind-boggling is this timid reverence toward the Constitution.... The Founders were willing to make drastic changes in the governance of America, yet we're not willing to make even the smallest changes. That's what I would like people to think about when they think about the Founders. They were a group characterized by courage and boldness. I don't think they were any wiser than we are, but they were a whole lot more willing to take risks on behalf of what they believed in.
Atlantic: What do you think should be the mechanism for this rewriting of the Constitution? Are you imagining that it would be rewritten within the existing process of amendments?
Brands: Well, that would certainly be a start. If we were really in the spirit of the Founders, people would just get together and call an utterly extra-legal convention, because that's what the convention of 1787 was. They had no authorization to do anything.
Why has the United States been so successful in recent wars and encountered so much difficulty in securing its political aims after the shooting stopped? The obstacles in the way of establishing stable polities in Kabul and Baghdad were always considerable. It was never likely that the road to peace and stability in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan would be short or smooth. The nature of the American military operations in both countries, however, multiplied those obstacles instead of reducing them and greatly increased the chance of failing to achieve the political objectives that motivated both wars.
The reason for this fact lies partly in the vision of war that President Bush and his administration brought into office and have implemented in the past two wars. This vision focuses on destroying the enemy's armed forces and his ability to command them and control them. It does not focus on the problem of achieving political objectives. The advocates of a "new American way of war," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush chief among them, have attempted to simplify war into a targeting drill. They see the enemy as a target set and believe that when all or most of the targets have been hit, he will inevitably surrender and American goals will be achieved.
War is not that simple, however. From the standpoint of establishing a good peace it matters a great deal how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what the enemy‚s country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying. The U.S. has developed and implemented a method of warfare that can produce stunning military victories but does not necessarily accomplish the political goals for which the war was fought.
If these two wars represented merely isolated cases or aberrations from the mainstream of military and political developments in the U.S., then the study of this problem would be of primarily academic interest. That is not the case. The entire thrust of the current program of military
transformation of the U.S. armed forces, on the contrary, aims at the implementation and perfection of this sort of target-set mentality. Unless
the direction and nature of military transformation change dramatically, the American public should expect to see in the future many more wars in which U.S. armed forces triumph but the American political vision fails. [...]
The most important problem with these visions of war is not anything within them, but the fact that they leave out the most important component of war ? that which distinguishes it from organized but senseless violence. Neither ncw nor "shock and awe" provides a reliable recipe for translating the destruction of the enemy's ability to continue to fight into the accomplishment of the political objectives of the conflict.
Physics and mathematics are filled with prodigies who erupted with ideas in their 20s, only to spend the rest of their lives failing to replicate their early strokes of genius....
Armchair theorists have offered plenty of reasons why....
But earlier this summer, a brash new study claimed to discover the real culprit, and a rather unlikely one: marriage. In a paper for the Journal of Research in Personality, Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, declared that evolutionary psychology explains why male scientists, at least, lose steam as they age. Scientists achieve great things, he argued, because, like rams butting heads on the African veldt, they're attempting to woo mates and ensure their genetic heritage. Once they marry, their drive to achieve declines.
"We've evolved these big brains partly to attract mates," Kanazawa says. "And science is one part of what we do to attract mates."...
Half as many unmarried scientists made their major contribution in their late 50s as in their 20s. Married scientists, however, were only 4.25 percent as likely to hit it big in their 50s as in their 20s. For Kanazawa, it was proof that our evolutionary urges are governing our science.
George W. Bush's main fund-raisers and contributors expected a pep talk from the president when they were his guests for a barbecue at Crawford, Texas, last weekend but instead received a long and enthusiastic portrayal of U.S. capability to remove ''evil'' regimes.
In a speech that lasted close to an hour, President Bush described the use of American military power in Iraq as ''history-making.'' He said the use of smart weapons to ''decapitate'' any regime's tyrannical leadership was no ''blunt ax.'' Instead, it showed dictators that they ''can't hide'' from avenging Americans.
Donald H. Rumsfeld has won two wars and won them his way, overruling military traditionalists. But to the secretary of Defense, Afghanistan and Iraq were merely two battles in a larger crusade.
Even as he directs military operations around the world, Rumsfeld has seized a leading role in the national security debate in Washington, giving the Pentagon new clout in administration debates on foreign policy and intelligence.
He has set out to "transform" the military establishment. He wants everything to move more quickly, whether it's getting Marines to trouble spots or designing and delivering new weapons systems.
Pentagon officials would write fewer reports to Congress, get raises based on performance rather than seniority, and buy weapons and supplies at the best value for the dollar. And overseas troops would shift from Cold War garrisons in Europe to terrorism hot spots like East Asia and the Middle East.
All that at the age of 71, on the final lap of a long political career.
If Rumsfeld succeeds on all those fronts, he may enter the history books as one of the most powerful secretaries of Defense since the office was created -- as powerful as Robert S. McNamara, who remade the Pentagon in the 1960s. [...]
Rumsfeld is pugnacious, demanding, brusque and, to his rivals, infuriating. That, admirers say, is what makes him effective.
Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger collided with Rumsfeld almost 30 years ago, when Rumsfeld was on his first tour as Defense secretary under President Ford. Kissinger described the young Rumsfeld in his memoirs as "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly."
To quote "Rumsfeld's Rules," a collection of aphorisms the Defense secretary has compiled over half a century: "Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership."
Or, more succinctly: "If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it."
"Rumsfeld has a black belt in both proactivity and reactivity," said a former senior official. "[Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell is spending most of his time being reactive.... The result is that Rumsfeld often dominates. On a lot of issues, he's this administration's thought leader."
For a few hours one recent Saturday, Wilton "Bill" Blakely, a 13-year-old from North Carolina, was on top of the world. He was a member of an elite group of fewer than 120 people who could call themselves All-American Soap Box Derby world champions.
Bill had taken the triumphant ride back up Derby Downs race track in Akron, Ohio, where minutes before his gravity-powered racing car had coasted to victory. He was wearing the gold jacket that distinguished him as the champ. He posed with his trophy -- nearly as tall as he is -- on the hill where he won the race. But three hours later he was world champion no more. He was stripped of his title and the $2,500 college scholarship that went with it. He was asked to remove his jacket and hand it over to a derby official.
A post-race inspection had found that the teenager had doctored his racer -- he had cheated.
Such cheating, to one degree or another, is as old as the race. Despite the attempts that the All-American's board of trustees has made to portray the race as pure, wholesome fun, there's a dark side that reared its ugly head again in Akron last month. And an event that was finally making a comeback was tainted once again not only by cheating and but also by a failure to acknowledge that it goes on. [...]
In 1972, a man named Bob Lange decided his son would enter -- and win -- the All-American race. The car was designed by a research scientist in California. Lange flew a former world champion from Indiana to his home in Boulder, Colo., to act as a consultant, and he had the car tested in a wind tunnel. Lange's son won the race, but before the car could be examined, Lange spirited it out of Akron, raising ire and suspicion.
The next year Lange went through similar machinations to make sure the title of world champion stayed in the family. Lange even gave his nephew, Jimmy Gronen, an extra edge by installing a battery-operated magnet in the nose so that when the metal starting plate went into the ground he would automatically be propelled forward. Officials examining Gronen's racer found buttons on the steering wheel and headrest. An X-ray showed the wires and the battery. In front of a group of reporters in downtown Akron, the officials cut the car in half and exposed the illegal device.
When the lights went out on Thursday, Imani Kuumba was in an eyeglass shop on 116th Street in Harlem. She was also in a very different New York from the one she lived in when the last major blackout in 1977 turned her South Bronx neighborhood into a harrowing zone of plunder and mayhem.
In 1977, "it was complete chaos, just total chaos," Ms. Kuumba recalled. "They grabbed the flashlights and started looting." This time, the eyeglass-store owner and the other shopkeepers along 116th Street quickly ushered their customers onto the street and pulled down their iron gates.
The police showed up so fast, she said, "it was like they knew beforehand this was going to happen." And through the night, "the people took it in stride," she said. "They barbecued in the dark. They sang. They were listening to KISS and partying. I think they felt that this was just another event, something that occurs in New York, and it would be over soon."
Tall buildings have crumbled in New York since the last blackout. Drug scourges have come and gone. The economy has boomed and flattened and struggled to boom again. Millions of people have moved out and in and changed the face of the city forever.
Through it all, though, the blackout as metaphor for the civic psyche appears to have survived. And this time, Kenneth T. Jackson, the president of the New-York Historical Society, says he thinks it may be saying, "This is a city that seems to be under control."
In 1977, New York had reached an arson-scarred, drug-infested, economically challenged nadir. The blackout looting then was breathtakingly panoramic, often against a background of rock-throwing and flames. Today, the first snap of a blackout easily awakens fears of terrorist attacks. But this notwithstanding, Mr. Jackson said, "when we think of the city we think of the ordered city."
They were on the scene within hours of Tuesday’s devastating car bomb outside the five-star Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Dressed in blue boiler suits and wraparound sunglasses, a dozen Australian police officers picked their way through the twisted metal, mangled body parts and shattered glass which littered the hotel’s horseshoe-shaped forecourt.
Along with their Indonesian counterparts, they began the painstaking task of looking for clues as to who detonated the bomb that killed 10 people and injured around 140 others.
Four years ago such co-operation would have been unthinkable. Not only did Indonesia have a deep distrust of Australia, arising from Canberra’s intervention in the bloody separatist conflict in East Timor, it denied it had a terrorist problem at all.
But the wounds left by Australia’s prompt and muscular military intervention against pro-Jakarta, anti- independence militias in East Timor in 1999 have begun to heal.
And Indonesia’s president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has finally faced up to the threat posed by Islamic militants based in the sprawling archipelago.
In a speech to the nation’s top legislative body early this month, she admitted that home-grown terrorist groups posed “a terrifying threat” that had to be “cut off at the roots”.
Australia and Indonesia, despite lingering cultural, political and historical differences, have rarely been closer. [...]
The relationship began to improve, ironically, after the fireballs that engulfed the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in Bali last October, killing 202 people, 88 of them Australian.
Throughout the '90s, Rep. Johnny Isakson's relationship with the religious right was frosty, and when he cut an ad staking out his position on abortion in the 1996 Senate campaign, it turned downright frigid. For a while, the rap on Isakson was that he could do well in a statewide general election campaign but would have a hard time ever winning a Republican primary, because of opposition from religious conservatives.
That perception has changed. [...]
As Southeastern chairman of the Bush re-election campaign, Ralph Reed isn't taking sides in the Senate primary. But the former state GOP chairman and national director of the Christian Coalition credits Gov. Sonny Perdue's election with a change of attitude within the religious right.
"Sonny has given social conservatives a place at the table and an important role in the Republican majority that makes it less necessary for them to settle every other single score in the party," Reed said.
Although abortion is likely to remain the core issue for religious conservatives, the focus of their attention for the next election or so might be such recent developments as the U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared bans on homosexual activity unconstitutional and the appointment of an openly gay Episcopal bishop.
"There are a lot of things falling out now regarding the culture that have grabbed the attention of conservative Christians," Fields said.
Isakson has signed on as a co-sponsor of a House bill that would ban gay marriage. He isn't likely to be any further to the right on that issue than any of his Republican opponents, but the issue could have an inoculating effect nevertheless.
Keen said support by religious conservatives for the Bush administration, and the recent defeat in the Senate of judicial nominees supported by the religious right, are causing some intraparty differences to be put aside.
"You want people who'll support his policies," Keen said about the president, "and, if you're in the U.S. Senate, someone who'll confirm his nominees."
It's true that many Catholics oppose abortion. Three years ago, in Stenberg v. Carhart, all three Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court -- Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- voted to uphold a Nebraska ban on "partial-birth" abortions. A litmus test on that issue might have kept them off the court. But the test cuts both ways. The court's two Jews, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted to strike down the Nebraska law on the grounds that such abortions might be necessary to protect the woman's health. That's consistent with recent statements of Reform and Conservative Jewish doctrine. If you buy the argument made by Hatch and Sessions, Republicans who voted against Breyer and Ginsburg because of their statements about abortion were enforcing a litmus test against Jews. [...]
Anti-abortion activists opposed the elevation of Breyer and Ginsburg to the court. In 1999, Pat Buchanan wrote, "If the Republican Party were truly pro-life and anti-judicial activism, neither Justice Ginsberg [sic] nor Breyer would have been approved." This year, the Cardinal Newman Society, the foremost Catholic collegiate organization, called for protests at commencement addresses by Breyer and by journalist Steven Roberts -- who, the Society noted in a quotation from his wife Cokie, "is Jewish [and] more sympathetic to the pro-choice side."
Senior Republicans in the Senate likewise opposed the confirmations of Breyer and Ginsburg for abortion-related reasons. In 1993, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), voted against Ginsburg. At the time, the Associated Press reported that Nickles "said he was worried that her position that restricting abortion rights would be sex discrimination might lead her to limit the rights of states to put restrictions on abortion." In 1994, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., declared on the Senate floor that he would vote against Breyer in large part because Breyer's "views on abortion in general are questionable." Republicans subsequently elected Lott and Nickles to the two most powerful Senate posts.
Neither Lott nor Nickles brought up Judaism in their criticisms of Ginsburg or Breyer. But Democrats who voted against Pryor this year never brought up Catholicism, either. In a letter to The Washington Post earlier this month, C. Boyden Gray, who served as White House counsel to former president Bush and now chairs the group that ran the "Catholics need not apply" ads, failed to produce a single instance of a Democrat using the C-word. The religious-bias argument made by Hatch and his Republican colleagues doesn't require such explicitness. It merely requires that you oppose a judicial nominee because of his or her abortion views. If those views coincide with the doctrine of that nominee's faith, you're a bigot.
If Republicans believe that, they'd better start answering their own question. When they vote against judicial nominees who support abortion rights, are they saying that Reform and Conservative Jews need not apply?
Defending the protection of the state from federal jurisdiction in this case, Justice Moore testified, "The basic issue is whether we will still be able to acknowledge God under the First Amendment, or whether we will not be able to acknowledge God." But U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson would have none of that and ordered the monument removed.
Justice Moore took his case to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, protesting that "...Federal district courts have no jurisdiction or authority to prohibit the acknowledgment of God that is specifically recognized in the Constitution of Alabama," but Judge Ed Carnes upheld Thompson's ruling. Carnes wrote: "Any notion of high government officials' being above the law did not save [states' rights proponents] from having to obey federal court orders, and it will not save [Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore] from having to comply with the court order in this case. ... If necessary, the court order will be enforced. The rule of law will prevail."
Apparently, Judge Carnes relied on the same adulterated version of our Constitution used by Thompson. Our copy still says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," which applies to, well, Congress, not Chief Justice Moore, who was elected to state office by the people of the state of Alabama. The only parties in this case involved in "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion are the ACLU and their Leftjudiciary minions.
Chief Justice Moore has appealed the 11th Circuit Court ruling to the Supreme Court, declaring: "We must defend our rights and preserve our Constitution. ... To prohibit the acknowledgment of God upon Whom our justice system is established is to undermine our entire judicial system. We will defend this display in the judicial building vigorously. It is an acknowledgment of a sovereign, holy God Whose laws superintend those of man. We will not retreat from that position, because it is true."
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist has noted previously, "The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based upon bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned. ... The greatest injury of the 'wall' notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intention of the drafters of the Bill of Rights."
Ironically, in the Supreme Court, the Ten Commandments are etched in a marble relief above the Justices' bench, for indeed they are the moral foundation of American law. [...]
The foundational question all constitutional constructionists should be asking: On what legitimate constitutional grounds can a federal judge lodge demands, punishments and fines against chief judicial officers in the several states -- or does the federal bench now assume that the states are nothing more than administrative agencies of the central government -- rather than federally separated governments subject to their own constitutional sovereignty?
The twentieth anniversary of the death of Eric Hoffer, in May 1983, passed with very little notice of one of the most incisive thinkers of his time -- a man whose writings continue to have great relevance to our times.
How many people today even know of this remarkable man with no formal schooling, who spent his life in manual labor -- most of it as a
longshoreman -- and who wrote some of the most insightful commentary on our society and trends in the world?
You need only read one of his classics like The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements to realize that you are seeing the work of an intellectual giant.
I now teach at Emory University and have devoted my life to learning. Yet, looking back, I understand why it's so hard nowadays to convince young black males of the value of education.
I thought about that after reading two pieces in last Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the difficulty in motivating young males to strive to excel in school. The issue has mushroomed into a national debate, but in all the wrangling there is one vital point that often gets underplayed: As adults, we tend not to see what they see when they look out into the world we have made for them.
We still tell them they can be president, and they see that the top job is still reserved for rich white men. They also see that, with brilliant blacks
holding multiple college degrees, a mediocre white man of average intelligence (George W. Bush!) gets to run the world. And despite all the lofty declarations of equality, few people will seriously entertain a different ethnic choice.
I suspect that black males see that, among African-Americans who boast sterling college credentials, many still appear to be beaten down.
Moreover, there is an appalling paradox concerning higher education in America and black males that is virtually impossible for young people to overlook. That paradox is this: We say we cherish educational opportunity, but as the recent Michigan affirmative action battle demonstrates, what we say and do are different things. Nowadays, blacks entering the nation's top schools often are haunted by suspicion and nasty lawsuits that essentially challenge their right to be in school. [...]
[W]e need to examine this educational challenge from the vantage point of the people we seek to help -- young black males. If we do, we might realize that there is no lack of logic guiding them. We might also discover that they are, in fact, motivated -- not by what adults tell them is true but by what they see is so.
The mystery of the 2004 Democratic campaign isn't that a governor has caught on--that happens in most presidential years. The mystery is that there is only one governor in the field, and that he comes from such a tiny state. Usually, presidential fields are roughly split between governors and senators. And usually, the governors hail from large states (Bush, Reagan) or at least midsize ones (Carter, Dukakis). Even Mr. Clinton's Arkansas is four times the size of Vermont. Were there another governor in this year's Democratic pack, particularly one from a larger state, he would likely have exploited the same institutional advantages Mr. Dean has, and therefore detracted at least somewhat from the Vermonter's allure.
To understand why there is not, look at Bill Clinton's stewardship of the national Democratic Party. Any governor running for president in 2004 would have come of political age in the 1990s. And when Mr. Clinton took office in 1993, the states looked like a fertile source of eventual Democratic presidential contenders. Democrats controlled the governors' mansions in 28 states, including six of the 10 largest.
But the liberal taint of Mr. Clinton's first two years--on gays in the military, guns, and health care--decimated Democratic governors across the
country. By 1995, there were only 19, and only one in the nine largest states. Gone were heavyweights like Mario Cuomo, Ann Richards and Jim Florio, and numerous others who saw promising careers cut short. Several weeks after the 1994 disaster, Mr. Clinton invited a handful of Democratic governors to a private dinner and received an earful for having abandoned the center. Among the participants was Howard Dean, who told the Associated Press, "I can assure you there was no one at the table arguing the president should go to the left."
Mr. Clinton took their advice. And over the next few years, he capitalized on GOP radicalism to re-establish his moderate credentials and resuscitate the Democrats in Washington. By the time Mr. Clinton left office, the Democrats had regained three Senate seats and eight House ones. But in the states, where politics is generally less ideologically polarized, Republicans did not fall prey to the same overreach, and Democrats never recovered, ending the decade with even fewer governorships than they held in 1995.
So the 1990s, a productive decade for the Democratic Party in Washington, was an extremely unproductive one for Democratic governors.
Personal freedom pivots on two prepositions: freedom for and freedom from. Thirty or 40 years ago one might have said that women were most concerned about freedom from: from loneliness, economic worry, anxiety generally. Men wanted freedom for: travel, pleasure, adventure generally. Men may have been the greater fantasts. [...]
I recently read a biography of Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937), the German cultural impresario who, along with being an important patron of modernist art during its difficult early years, was also a figure on the edge of German politics. A man born to great wealth, Kessler, toward the end of his life, realized he had spread himself too thin. His explanation of why he did so is, I think, instructive in the light of the kind of personal freedom our own age so highly values without ever quite being able to achieve.
"But no one can live out all the personalities he contains," Kessler wrote in his diary, "which is why no person (aside from quite primitive ones) is entirely happy. The more complicated he is, the more souls he contains, the more personalities he can and must be in order to live out his life fully, the more unhappy he is, at least relatively. Only for the very superficial or very primitive is it possible to exhaust all the contents of one's soul in a short life span; for one must necessarily neglect a part of one's potential fulfillment."
For all his wealth, talent, connections, Kessler could not achieve the fulfillment for which he longed. Like so many other worshippers of freedom, before and after him, Kessler finally "drowned," in the phrase of Soren Kierkegaard, "in the sea of possibilities." The desire for fulfillment, for seeking an outlet for all one's potentialities, in the end comes to little more than another version of the search for personal freedom -- in this case, the freedom for complete self-development.
Personal freedom may, alas, ultimately be a fantasy. As soon as one thinks about one's happiness or one's freedom, one senses that one is neither happy nor free. Freedom may even be one of those words, happiness is another, that one has only to think about in a concentrated way and -- poof! -- it disappears.
My own lately arrived at, rather dour view is that there is no genuine freedom without constraint. Freedom is available, I have come to believe, only after one has lived through and conquered constraint.
I cannot think of a president who, once in office, so surprised both his critics and his followers as George W. Bush. True, people
expressed surprise at how adroit Reagan was as a political leader, particularly with the Congress, and how truly brilliant as a communicator. But George W. Bush as president had surprised everyone by the high quality of his speeches, and by the bold and ambitious agenda he has step by step organized, one stunning challenge after another. After the suicide attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, for instance, many who had earlier opposed him publicly thanked God that Bush (not Gore) had been elected the preceding year. The young Bush instantly became the voice of the best in the American spirit. He was prayerful and reverent. His public leadership was fearless and steely eyed. When he asked people for their prayers, people who had never met him before knew he meant it. Among evangelicals and others there are many highly active prayer groups, some of them worldwide, praying intensely for him daily.
The desire of G.W. to do the right thing, conscientiously, is palpable.
Never have Catholics had so solicitous a friend in the White House. Bush met early and often with the cardinals, usually without press attention. He also called into existence a lay Catholic "sounding board" led by the editor of the lay journal Crisis, Deal Hudson, to stay in almost daily contact with his top staff. No president has ever been stronger on "the culture of life," or a more consistent supporter of the vision set forth by John Paul II. So pro-Catholic are the president's ideas and sentiments that there are persistent rumors that, like his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, G. W. might also become a Catholic. These rumors probably have no substance but merely verbalize an impression: How could the president's express ideas be so Catholic unless...?
Many Europeans have a hard time sympathizing with the American Republican party. For in Europe they are so inured to statist modes of thinking that there is nothing like the Republican party. From my own experience, I can sympathize on this point. Only slowly, and over intense inner resistance, did I myself come to side more with Reagan's vision of the world than with the social-democratic Democrat-party ideas I had been educated in during my youth. For one thing, the Republican grasp of the dynamism of economic life is much closer to reality, and less statist and (yes) less corrupt. Republicans have a strong sense of community, but their community is the local communities, the "little platoons" written of by Edmund Burke, and families. These are what they reverence, not the state.
Show Democrats a problem, they look for a new state program -- always costly, usually inefficient, and probably counterproductive in the long run. Republicans look to see what people, pulling together in associations, can do for themselves.
For the Republicans, "liberty" is the powerful and dynamic social ideal. For the Democrats, "security" is the most powerful organizing tool. Crying "security," they seek to attract majorities, and to direct the flow of history toward the construction of an ever more watchful and solicitous state. The Democratic style suggests motherliness, the caring nanny. The Republican style suggests manliness and the valiant woman.
California's most distinctive social upheavals...are neither those of the working class nor those of the lumpens, but those that the broader, unanchored white middle class supports on Election Day. They've included tax revolts, like Howard Jarvis? Proposition 13, and somewhat veiled moves for racial separation, like last year's failed campaign for San Fernando Valley secession from Los Angeles. There have also been the Perotoid revolts against the state?s political class, which have led to term limits so severe that most state Assembly members are still learning how a bill becomes a law as they're being shown the door.
The recall circus into which the state has now plunged is the reductio ad absurdum of these middle-class eruptions. Though it began more simply, as Darrell Issa's new-age coup d'etat, it quickly took on all the symptoms of a classic California convulsion, in which the state's problem (supposedly, Gray Davis) and its solution (supposedly, Arnold Schwarzenegger) are characteristically misidentified. But in a state where television news coverage of politics and government is nonexistent and where the entertainment industry is covered (actually, hyped) constantly, the emergence of Arnold as the political savior of the month should come as no surprise.
The sheer abundance of fruitcake and exhibitionist candidates, the treatment of politics as tabloid entertainment, the touting of Schwarzenegger's "leadership" capacities (as evidenced by what? Conan's rescue of the princess?) and his quick embrace (according to the polls) by a quarter of the California electorate--all these seem to come straight out of Nathanael West's 1939 comic-grotesque novel of L.A.?s embittered and sensation-seeking lower-middle class, The Day of the Locust. "Their boredom becomes more and more terrible," West wrote of his anomic Angelenos. "They realize they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and watched the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them." How West was able to anticipate a typical Channel 7 newscast is anyone's guess.
West's novel ends with a deadly riot at a Hollywood premiere. A bit hyperbolic, that; when the Golden State?s white middle class riots, it normally happens at the ballot box. And so we get the California that votes against desegregated housing and for sending immigrants back to Mexico.
Which brings us up to October 7, Election Day, which may turn out to be one more Day of the Locust after all, with Gray Davis devoured by an angry mob.
The strongest challenger was definitely not going to compete. It was obvious. Nearly everyone knew it. So the other players made their preparations accordingly. Then, just before the start of the contest, Arnold Schwarzenegger stunned nearly everyone by announcing that he was in after all.
Sounds like the 2003 California governor's race. It also happened in the 1980 Mr. Olympia contest. Schwarzenegger had been retired from competitive bodybuilding for five years before coming back to win his seventh Mr. Olympia title, a record that still stands. (The canny Schwarzenegger always emphasizes his five Mr. Universe titles now but the most prestigious world championship is Mr. Olympia, a rather, well, Aryan-sounding name.) Scheduled to be a commentator at the event, Schwarzenegger surprised the field by showing up in Australia as a competitor instead.
Israeli intelligence has identified what are believed to be Iraqi weapons of mass destruction goods in Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, U.S. officials said.
The Israelis used a spy satellite to photograph several tractor-trailer loads of suspected weapons into the Bekaa Valley, where the Islamist terrorist group is based.
Shipments there began in early January and ended the first week of March.
According to Israeli intelligence, Saddam paid Syrian leader Bashar Assad $35 million to hide the weapons.
The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. [...]
When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals.
A second trait is a programmatic bent. Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn't do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative. His most ambitious program is his faith-based initiative. It would use government funds to expand social programs run by religious organizations. Many of them have been effective in fighting drug/alcohol addiction and helping lift people out of poverty. So far, the initiative has had only a small impact, its scope limited by Congress.
Another trait is a far more benign view of government than traditional conservatives have. Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) This means they support transfer payments that have a neutral or beneficial effect (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and oppose those that subsidize bad behavior (welfare). Mr. Bush wants to reform Social Security and Medicare but not shrink either.
Both Belloc and Chesterton knew, at least intellectually, that Muslims are really our brothers, even if they have been led astray. Belloc in particular repeatedly wrote in his superb book on the great heresies that though Islamic civilization is at the moment materially inferior, it remains spiritually strong, and that there is no compelling reason to believe such a material impotence will persist indefinitely. He admired this strength; though he had no love for the heresy animated by it. He reminded his readers that, hardly a hundred years before the founding of the American Republic, the Turks were threatening to overrun central Europe; that, in other words, men of the American Revolutionary generation in Europe felt the menace of the "Mohammedan" not unlike the way men of the 1950s felt the menace of the Communist. Chesterton, meanwhile, noted the spiritual strength of Islam with this striking insight:
A void is made in the heart of Islam which has to be filled up again and again by a mere repetition of the revolution that founded it. There are no sacraments; the only thing that can happen is a sort of apocalypse, as unique as the end of the world; so the apocalypse can only be repeated and the world end again and again. There are no priests; and this equality can only breed a multitude of lawless prophets almost as numerous as priests. The very dogma that there is only one Mohamet produces an endless procession of Mohamets.
Reading these two towering English Catholics illuminates the inky darkness into which stiff secularism has thrown us. That which has stirred the minds of men across the centuries, in our own civilization and others, and will do so yet until the crack of doom, is distant and impenetrable to us today.
"Cultures spring from religions," wrote Belloc, "ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the
universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it." This is like an alien language to the modern mind; but alien or no, it is a real and vital language, unlike the mere gibberish on offer elsewhere.
If you live pretty much anywhere in the Western world these days, you'll notice a certain kind of news item cropping up with quiet
regularity. The Irish Times had one last week.
As Liam Reid reported, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties has warned Catholic bishops that distributing the Vatican's latest statement on
homosexuality could lead to prosecution under the 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act, and a six-month jail term.
"The document itself may not violate the Act, but if you were to use the document to say that gays are evil, it is likely to give rise to hatred, which is against the Act," says Aisling Reidy, director of the ICCL. "The wording is very strong and certainly goes against the spirit of the
legislation."
The West today is following a secular-materialist philosophy, which it imposes on all other human beings--whether they like it or not.
Its Christian leaders in this example prefer to follow the supposedly liberal Western ideology and encourage the idea that a person should be allowed to act on whatever their sexual preference is, because that amounts to “personal freedom”, while in the process ignoring two millennia of Christian teachings and the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) which state the opposite.
Then, having trampled over centuries of doctrine, they go on to trample over the religious sensibilities of all their non-Western “brothers” and impose their decision by elevating one of their own Western homosexuals to the position of bishop of the Anglican Church. They are exploiting the poverty and vulnerability of their non-Western “brothers” by ignoring their more traditional views.
The African, Asian and Latin American branches of the Anglican Church are faced with the choice of acceding to their Western “brothers” (“It’s my way or the highway!”) or to accept the inevitable negative consequences.
So we learn an important lesson on the respect Westerners have for religion and how they deal with any religion that does not conform to their “liberal” ideology. After all, does that non-Westerner Jesus (peace be upon him) know more about Christianity than an American or British bishop?
If this is how they deal with their own religion, think what they will try (are already trying) to do with other religions such as Islam.
There is a most striking paradox in global population trends: on one hand we have had a rapid decline in fertility for over two decades in many developing countries - not to mention the already very low fertility in most of the highly developed nations; on the other hand we will almost certainly experience a further massive increase of the world population. Between now and the middle of the next century world population will most likely increase by some 3.68 billion people - all of these increase will be contributed by the developing countries.
From the 3.68 billion people that will be added to the world population between 1995 and 2050, Asia will contribute some 2 billion. Most of this growth will occur in the next three decades. Between 1995 and 2025 Asia's population will grow by 1.35 billion - between 2025 and 2050 the increase is projected to be just 658 million. Despite a projected increase in mortality due to AIDS, we cannot expect a significant slowing down of population growth in Africa. This continent will contribute 1.3 billion people to the world population between 1995 and the middle of the next century - almost twice as much as its current total population. Europe's population will almost certainly decline - by 27 million over the next 30 years and by another 64 million between 2025 and 2050.
Which countries, worldwide, will have the highest increase in population during the 100-year period between 1950 and 2050? If the 1996 UN medium variant population assessments and projections are accurate (and there is no reason to believe otherwise) India will lead the group with an increase of 1.18 billion people - significantly larger than that of China, which will have a population increase of "only" 962 million (see Table C1_3). The third largest contributor to world population growth between 1950 and 2050 will be Pakistan with an increase of 318 million people. The ranking of the other 7 countries is as follows: Nigeria (+306 million); Indonesia (+ 239 million); Ethiopia (+ 194 million); United States of America (+ 190 million); Brazil (+ 189 million); Bangladesh (+ 176 million) and Iran (+ 153 million).
There are several overwhelmingly Muslim populations with very high population growth rates, such as those of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. But none of them is projected to have such a massive absolute increase of the population as Pakistan. In 1950 Pakistan had a population of about 40 million people. Since then it has more than tripled and stood at 136 million in 1995. But the real population explosion in Pakistan will only come over the next few decades, because the country not only has a very young population, but also still an extremely high fertility - much higher, for instance, than in Bangladesh or Thailand. These large numbers of children and young adults will soon come into reproductive age and will produce a large number of offspring even if we assume, as in the UN medium variant, a rapid decline in average fertility to reproductive level (of 2.1 children per woman) by 2020. Pakistan's population will be about 357 million by 2050 (according to the UN medium variant projection) (see Figure C1_6).
Over the next decades the world population will inevitably age. This is an unavoidable consequence of large birth cohorts during the 1950s and 1960s and the rapid fertility decline since the 1970s. In 2025 the "baby boomers" of the 1950s and 60s will be between 65 and 75 years of age. These large aging cohorts are followed by the relatively small "baby bust" generations of the worldwide fertility decline.
While currently population aging is most serious in Europe and Japan, China will experience a dramatic increase in the proportion of elder people by the middle of the next century. This is largely due to the country's success in family planning, which rapidly reduced the relative size of birth cohorts since the 1970s.
Actor Rob Lowe, who played a top White House aide on television, has joined the real-life gubernatorial campaign of fellow star Arnold Schwarzenegger, a campaign spokeswoman said on Friday.This may seem like an odd line to draw, but I can't help feeling that we just took a sharp turn off Reality Avenue.
Lowe, a longtime Democratic activist whose attendance at the party's 1988 national convention led to a sex scandal, has accepted a volunteer post to organize celebrity supporters for Schwarzenegger, a Republican seeking to unseat Democratic California Gov. Gray Davis in a recall election this fall.
Lowe became the third high-profile addition to the Schwarzenegger campaign in as many days, following announcements that billionaire investor Warren Buffett -- another Democrat -- and former Secretary of State George Shultz had agreed to serve as co-chairs of the actor's Economic Recovery Council.
There were three most obvious shortcomings in these stations’ reporting. The first and most important was their inability to communicate the stance taken by the Iraqi people towards its regime. We did not see one Iraqi criticising the regime. Was this due to state censorship or to self-censorship due to fear of the regime and its oppression?
The second fault was any knowledge of the structure of the Iraqi opposition, its capabilities and internal relations. This was shown in their common assumption that the future of Iraq was being played out by the forces in the field – that is the Iraqi and allied forces. The third dimension is the lack of credibility of some reports, with battles described by a correspondent as fierce, while the same station later reported that they were merely short exchanges of fire. [...]
Despite these criticisms, the war showed the media’s importance in the Arab world, where freedom of expression has become a necessary priority. This in itself has made us more optimistic, as it shows the Arab masses will not remain bound to the dictates of their regimes or external forces. Intense and bulky doses of the war as fed to us by the media forced us to examine phrases such as “gaining victory over the infidels and gangs of international rogues,” as the Iraqi information minister put it, and “the liberation of Iraq” as the American president and his secretary of defence put it. All previous political assessments of Arab-Arab relations or Arab-international relations, and more importantly, the relations between the governing and the governed, should be reconsidered to pave the way for new premises that are scientific, modern and open to criticism and review.
Colorado Governor Bill Owens in April 2003 signed a bill that created the first publicly funded school-voucher plan since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Cleveland Scholarship Program last year. In May, the Colorado Education Association filed suit with a Denver district court to block the program, naming Gov. Owens as defendant. Now that action is winding its way through side motions. The main case may be heard as early as this fall.
The Colorado suit is like others brought by teachers unions against school-choice programs that dare to challenge the public-school monopoly. The union plaintiffs are joined by liberal interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, which fight legislatures that redirect public-education dollars when public schools fail to educate kids. The Institute for Justice, a conservative legal group that argued for Cleveland's voucher program before the U.S. high court, is defending COCP.
This suit, like other school-choice legal battles, also names individual families as plaintiffs and defendants--12 who want vouchers and five who don't. (More individual plaintiffs claim injury as taxpaying parents, but they often represent interest or faith groups. WORLD focused on the 17 families who filed on behalf of their minor children.)
Parties on each side of the suit have accused their opponents of using these families to peddle their agendas. But a closer look at six of the families blows that myth--and reveals that citizens on each side are separated not only by a wide economic gulf, but also by deeply held differences over proper public spending and the meaning of educational opportunity. [...]
According to 2000 census data, the average of median household incomes in zip codes where pro-voucher families live is $33,337 compared with $51,954 for families who don't want vouchers. Is the lawsuit, then, a battle between the "haves" and the "have-nots"? [...]
Plaintiff parent Alan DeLollis doesn't believe any publicly funded private education program will—or should—work: If parents choose education alternatives outside of public education, he said, that's their privilege and their right. "But they shouldn't be using public funds."
A senior producer for the City of Denver's Internet and television department, Mr. DeLollis is married to a public-school elementary teacher, Deborah Brennan. The couple lives off Denver's "Antique Row" in Platt Park, a trendy urban area where some homebuyers are fixing up houses built between 1910 and 1940. The DeLollises also own a mountain cabin in Fairplay, Colo.
Cameron DeLollis, 14, will start high school this year, majoring in cinematography at Denver School of the Arts (DSA), a public magnet school. Eleven percent of DSA students are low-income; 2003 CSAP test scores are high in reading and writing (75 to 95 percent of sixth- through 10th-graders scored at or above proficient), and lower in math (44 to 65 percent of students scored at or above proficient.)
Asked how long parents of children in failing public schools should wait for improvement before agitating for change, Mr. DeLollis remained firm in his support of public education: "I don't think that's a decision we should make. As a social contract, [citizens] have agreed to fund a public-school system and that's what we should do."
Meanwhile, Angelia Teague believes the social contract has failed her daughters. To anti-voucher parents, she had this to say: "I want what's best for my children just like you. I pay taxes, just like you. Why can't I use my tax money to prepare my children for their future? Knowledge can take my children places they otherwise wouldn't be able to go."
Most reports coming out of Iraq are built around the casualties of American soldiers in post-war attacks. Deaths and injuries among Iraqi civilians, however, rarely make it to the pages of U.S. newspapers, even when the Iraqis are killed in the same incident -- and even when major international newswires report these casualties.
In late July, for example, the major story out of Iraq was the killing of Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, and his grandson, Mustapha, in a raid on a house in the city of Mosul. But Western media missed a crucial aspect of the story.
Several reports of the sons' deaths mentioned that some Iraqis celebrated the news in a traditional Iraqi way: firing guns into the air. What was missing in the coverage was that many Iraqis lost their lives in the celebrations. Al Mu'tamar newspaper, published by the Iraqi National Conference -- the closest of American allies -- quoted medical and security sources in Baghdad citing that 31 civilians were killed and 76 injured as a result of the revelry gunfire. No U.S. media reported such news.
NPR encourages its journalistic staff to speak in public. But they are expected to hold to the same high standards when they appear in other media as they would in their regular duties on NPR. A number of NPR journalists appear in other media. Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr's essays first heard on NPR often appear as a weekly column for the Christian Science Monitor. Other NPR journalists are frequently asked to pen their observations for op-ed columns around the country.
Still other NPR journalists have regular duties on some of the national television talk shows. It's on television where the temptations and dangers of personal opinion seem the greatest, in my view. On television, the challenge is for NPR journalists to stay in their role as reporters and to avoid any punditry that might be viewed as personal opinion. NPR's Nina Totenberg and Tom Gjelten regularly appear on PBS where the discussions are often weighty and the tones are measured. PBS hosts often urge their guest to voice their opinions, but few NPR listeners find that problematic.
Some listeners find this more troublesome when it comes to Fox News and the regular presence of NPR's Juan Williams and Mara Liasson. That issue came to a head with reference to statements made by Liasson on Fox.
Last Oct. 3, Mara Liasson on Fox News Sunday commented on the arrival of Congressmen Bonior and McDermott in Baghdad prior to the start of the war: "These guys are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know resign." [...]
Bruce Drake as vice president of news is responsible for NPR's journalistic standards. He says:
"My guidelines are simple: an NPR News reporter should not say something on a television talk show, the Internet or a public speech that they could not say on-air for NPR in their own reporting. NPR listeners need to know that the journalists they hear on our air are committed to accuracy and fairness. Our listeners need to know that our journalists do not come to the stories they cover with an agenda, meaning that they must maintain a firewall between their private opinions and their professional performance."
Liasson realizes that her spoken words can't be retracted: "I certainly shouldn't have said it. I don't believe it is in any way representative of remarks I make anywhere, on Fox, PBS, NPR or in person about the news. I would encourage people to read the entire transcript from 10/3/02."
In a major boost for the ''road map'' peace plan, Israel has agreed to hand over an additional four West Bank cities to Palestinian control, Palestinian and Israeli officials said Friday.
Israel also announced that it will permit Yasser Arafat to travel to the Gaza Strip to visit the grave of his sister Yousra, who died earlier this week and was buried in Gaza City, Israel TV reported. It would be Arafat's first time leaving his besieged compound in Ramallah in more than a year and a half. [...]
Implementation of the road map peace plan has been held up in recent weeks in a dispute over the release of Palestinian prisoners and demands for a crackdown on Palestinian militants. In the meantime, a key truce by militants has been shaken by two suicide bombings this week that killed one person and other violence.
So far, Israel has returned to Palestinian control the West Bank town of Bethlehem and parts of the Gaza Strip.
Israel freed 73 Palestinian detainees on Friday, the second group in less than two weeks, though Palestinians dismissed the release as insufficient.
A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently. It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would have it. Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a "persuasion," one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect.
Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy. The fact that conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective, surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism. But Europeans, who think it absurd to look to the United States for lessons in political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility.
Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies.
The worst place to be was on the subway.
When the power failed in New York and across the Northeast today, subway cars lurched to a sudden halt and the stations turned inky black. The air thickened and passengers sat trapped on trains for as long as two hours, stuck below ground in hot tin cans. The only escape were stairs at the end of a dark dirt- and grease-covered tunnel, the place where the rats live.
When rescue workers and volunteers finally arrived at Josephine Balancer's car, the babysitter guided her two young charges out of the car and into the tunnel, all while carrying her own 15-month-old daughter in a stroller. She had been on the Broadway local, deep under midtown Manhattan, headed uptown to the Bronx. They picked their way along the filthy tunnel on a 15-minute trek to the station at Columbus Circle.
When they emerged into a city without power, they were met by a friendly hot dog vendor bearing bottles of water and paper towels, which they used to wash a thick slick of black grease from their arms and faces.
Late tonight, as some of the thousands of commuters who were stranded tried to sleep on newspapers they had laid out on the streets around Grand Central Station, the city remained gripped by darkness. There were no reports of disturbances amid a heavy police presence in the streets. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said authorities had called in every available police officer to deal with the emergency.
In the first hours of the power outage, across a city that somehow coped with the unthinkable nearly two years ago, people seemed almost happy to show New York's best side once more, under less fearsome conditions. Though traffic lights were out and sweat-soaked pedestrians streamed through the streets, car horns were not leaned on, brakes went unscreeched. When people waved, it was with all five fingers.
After years of labor peace under a friendly Democratic administration, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has chosen to take on the Bush administration over whether the Federal Aviation Administration can continue to contract out control towers at some smaller airports.
At first glance the boisterous duel seems to be over whether to continue unchanged a program that the union once tolerated. But beneath the surface, it represents a decision by the union and Senate Democrats to use the issue as a battleground for the Republican philosophy of privatizing functions now handled by government employees.
Union President John Carr said bluntly that he aims to head off any future plan to privatize other air traffic control functions.
"I'm not really comfortable leaving it up to ideologues when it's a matter of safety," Carr said.
Another political poll arrived the other day to remind us that Latinos are walking contradictions. Thank you, very much.
The New York Times and CBS poll said Latinos back big government and President George W. Bush, who is famously in favor of little government. It said Latinos want more government services and lower taxes. But tax cuts mean service cuts.
The poll said Latinos trust the Democrats to improve public education, but they also like the school vouchers Republicans would give their children to attend private schools. It said Latinos back affirmative action, as true liberals do, but they take the conservative side on abortion and gay marriages. [...]
What I find most interesting is the Latino affinity for President Bush.
The poll found they approved of his job performance 52 to 38 percent, while 54 percent agreed that he "cares about the needs and problems of people like yourself.'' By contrast, just 40 percent of Latinos had a favorable view of the Republican Party.
When an 86-year-old driver plowed through a farmers market at high speed in Santa Monica recently, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others, he reignited a smoldering debate over the need for stricter regulation of elderly drivers. It is a sensitive issue, pitting the desire of older Americans to remain mobile and independent against the public's need for safety on the roads. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to this dilemma. Experts say there is no surefire test to spot those apt to cause trouble behind the wheel and no alternative transportation in many parts of the country to serve those barred from driving.
Virtually everyone agrees that as people reach advanced age their reflexes slow, their vision deteriorates and their strength, agility and coordination may diminish. But plenty of old people retain their skills to an advanced age, and plenty of young people can be terrible drivers. Statistically, the elderly do not cause all that many deaths on the highways, partly because many limit their driving as their abilities diminish, avoiding highways or sticking to home after dark. Drivers 75 and older are more likely to be involved in collisions than middle-aged drivers and more likely to be held liable for causing injuries and property damage. But mostly they harm themselves and their passengers. Drivers younger than 30 are responsible for far more injuries and lives lost in the vehicles they hit. Teenagers remain the greatest menace. [...]
The privilege of driving should not lightly be denied to the elderly in a society built around the automobile. In the absence of any foolproof system of weeding out dangerous drivers, society will have to rely on the elderly to recognize their own limitations and on family members to engage in a friendly conspiracy to take away their keys.
About one in six people in the nation, or roughly 50 million residents, lives in a community governed by a homeowners association, from co-op buildings in New York City to suburban subdivisions. Formed to take care of the small tasks that fall through the cracks of municipal government, like picking up garbage and repainting curbs, some homeowners associations are asserting far broader powers, backed by local courts.
Cities and counties, which are reluctant to raise taxes to pay for services, have in many cases stepped aside, allowing associations to become de facto governments with increasing authority over daily life.
The growth of associations has created "a whole sector of people who don't use public services," said Evan McKenzie, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois in Chicago who has written widely about the subject. Homeowners who live in such communities, he added, "don't need local governments."
Homeowners associations collect dues, which finance a variety of things, including landscaping and playgrounds. The boards, composed of elected volunteers, dictate house paint colors, lawn-mowing schedules and parking policies for recreational vehicles. The boards can fine residents who break these rules and, in some cases, foreclose on homeowners who cannot afford the monthly dues.
While many homeowners say the codes preserve neighborhood harmony and property values, a growing and vocal group of opponents say the way association rules are enforced is actually tearing apart communities. "Homeowners associations are based on a negative attitude that you can't trust your own neighbor," said George Staropoli, a business broker in Phoenix who founded Citizens Against Private Government H.O.A.'s two years ago.
Grass-roots networks of critics, linked by the Internet, have formed to lobby state legislatures. Lawmakers in Arizona, California and Texas have proposed measures restricting the powers of homeowners associations to foreclose without due process.
In our effort to remove the stigma of having AIDS, have we created a culture of disease? We all see the ads for H.I.V. drugs. They
illustrate hot muscular men living life to the fullest thanks to modern science. Other ads show couples holding hands, sending the message that the road to true love and happiness is being H.I.V. positive.
Is that message: You're going to be O.K.? (Which is terrific.) Or is it: You want to be special? Get AIDS. H.I.V. equals popularity and acceptance.
(Which would be tragic.)
My heart goes out to all who have the infection. But while I pledge my energies and resources to the fight for a cure, quality care and justice, I still think we need to examine what we're teaching our gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and straight youth. In my opinion, the messages the drug companies are spreading are lies. The truth is that AIDS is not fun. It's not sexy or manageable. AIDS is a debilitating, deforming, terminal and
incurable disease. H.I.V. drugs can bring on heart, kidney and liver disease, as well as a host of daily discomforts.
Unlike the photos in the ads we see, most of my friends who are on drug cocktails are not having the time of their lives. They spend mornings in the bathroom throwing up or suffering from diarrhea. They spend afternoons at doctor's appointments, clinics and pharmacies. And they spend endless evenings planning their estates and trying to make ends meet because they are not well enough to support themselves and their new drug habit. And those are just the friends for whom the drugs work. For many women the cocktails are nothing but a drain on finance, internal organs and stamina.
Even if the drugs were as effective as advertised, should we be creating a community of drug dependency? We have done a terrific job removing the stigma of having AIDS. But in doing so we've failed to eliminate the disease. H.I.V. is an almost completely avoidable infection. You need to be compliant in some very specific behaviors to be at risk. In fact, if every person now infected vowed that the disease ended with him, we could wipe out the ballooning number of new infections.
Instead, we've sold our next generation into drug slavery and their destiny to medical researchers because we'd rather treat each other as sexual objects than as family.
A new statewide Field Poll released Friday shows that 58 percent of Californian voters now favor recalling Democratic Gov. Gray Davis (search), a seven point increase over the last Field Poll in July.
The news sent Democrats across the state into panic and deepened disillusionment with Davis' continued demands that party donors and special interest groups stick with him in his drive to defeat the Oct. 7 recall.
"It's really, really bad for him," a top statewide Democratic strategist told Fox News. "Because he's been leaning on people all week saying polls showing him in trouble are wrong. Well, what's he going to say now when almost every newspaper in the state on Friday will carry this poll?" [...]
Democrats say Davis has been betting that the media will pound actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is running for the governor's seat as a Republican, and that his image will suffer as the campaign drags on. Strategists also say Davis will appear in public as often as possible to remind Democrats that he's their leader in Sacramento and that the recall is an assault on the entire Democratic Party.
"He's going to say in very strong terms that the recall is part of a Republican attempt to achieve through recall what they haven't achieved in a regular election for years," said a Democratic member of Congress. "We are hoping that people in this state will begin to wake up and see this as a Republican grab for power."
Democratic strategists also said they decided against a public boost for Bustamante because that campaign isn't ready to step into the fray.
Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to http://www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)
The faith in the Virgin Birth reflects the way American Christianity is becoming less intellectual and more mystical over time. The percentage of Americans who believe in the Virgin Birth actually rose five points in the latest poll.
My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.
The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.
The basic tenet of all of Jewish life, history, culture and civilization appears in this week's Torah reading: "Hear O Israel the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is uniquely one." [...]
The ravages of nineteenth and twentieth century secularism gutted this core belief of Judaism for many Jews.
Blinded by the false light of the promise of a better world, vast numbers of Jews forsook "the L-rd is our G-d" for new slogans, Marxist, secularist, Bundist, nationalist and assimilationist in their outlook. But, now at the end of the bloodiest century in human history, when all of the ideologies and empires that began this century as all-powerful and progressive now lie in the ashbin of history, all of these slogans and certainties are mockingly hollow.
New "Judaisms" have arisen that somehow attempt to preserve the Jewish people --- Jewish history and purpose, without a belief in the divinity of the Torah and G-d of Israel. Thus, the "new" types of Judaism have abandoned "the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is uniquely one." Whether a Jewish society can long survive without the Sh'ma as its basic credo is certainly the basic question of our modern world.
All of Jewish history indicates that such a secular, non-observant, assimilationist form of Jewish life will lead only to the extinction of Jewish civilization that the proponents of "secular Judaism" are attempting to preserve. [...]
Every Jew, every human being, should consider what the purpose of life is. This basic question is the one that modern man, now so technologically and educationally advanced, must answer satisfactorily in order for life and society to progress.
President Bush was having lunch with troops at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station when Joe Hagin, his deputy chief of staff, told him of the massive blackout on the East Coast.
But unlike the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when news of another New York catastrophe sent Mr. Bush on an odyssey on Air Force One, today he continued his lunch and went ahead with plans to attend a $1 million political fund-raiser here this evening. Still, he spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone trying to sort out the damage and the cause of the power failure with his top national security aides.
By late afternoon California time, White House officials said the president had determined that terrorism had most likely not caused the blackout. So after more than four and a half hours of White House silence, Mr. Bush made what was intended to be a reassuring statement to a small group of reporters at the Grand Hyatt hotel here.
"One thing I think I can say for certain is that this was not a terrorist act," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush added that he had "been working with federal officials to make sure the response to this situation was quick and thorough, and I believe it has been."
Global warming will not be helped much by efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere, say two scientists who have studied the matter. Dr. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist from the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prof. Jan Veiser a geochemist at the University of Ottawa in Canada and Ruhr University in Germany, say that temperature variations are due more to cosmic forces than to the actions of man.
In a recent article published in GSA Today (the journal of the Geological Society of America) and described in Nature, Shaviv and Veiser tell of their studies illustrating a correlation between past cosmic ray flux -- the high-energy particles reaching us from stellar explosions -- and long-term climate variability, as recorded by oxygen isotopes trapped in rocks formed by ancient marine fossils. The level of cosmic ray activity reaching the earth and its atmosphere is reconstructed using another isotopic record in meteorites.
The study showed that peak periods of cosmic rays reaching the earth over the past 550 million years coincided with lower global temperatures, apparently due to the way that the cosmic rays promote low-level cloud formation (hence blocking out sun warming). No correlation was obtained, however, with the changing amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Gone are the hopes that Arnold Schwarzenegger would bring his own brand of free-market Austrian economics to California's troubled economy. The would-be tax terminator has chosen as his chief economics adviser a tax perpetuator -- Warren Buffett....
In introducing the 1991 re-release of Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" video series, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, "I come from Austria, a socialistic country . . . I felt I had to come to America, where government isn't always breathing down your neck or standing on your shoes."
Will the Buffet relationship trump the Friedman idea? I hope not, but Mr. Schwarzenegger will have to decide. Already his liberal friends are trying to push him left:
Schwarzenegger Adviser Buffett Hints Property Tax Is Too Low (Wall Street Journal, 8/15/2003)
Warren Buffett, the billionaire financial adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for California governor, strongly suggested in an interview that the state's property taxes need to be higher....
Mr. Buffett stopped short of saying he would urge Mr. Schwarzenegger to seek a reversal of Proposition 13 to increase property taxes -- a move that would almost certainly be attacked by many of Mr. Schwarzenegger's fellow Republicans. But he left little doubt that that is where he is leaning.
Labor leaders who have been Gov. Gray Davis' staunchest allies are having reservations about his ability to survive a recall election and will consider their options at an Aug. 26 convention that could decide his fate.
Those options could include supporting a replacement candidate on the Oct. 7 ballot, which will have 135 names. [...]
Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the 800,000-member Los Angeles federation, said labor officials are awaiting results of their latest polling.
"But if the polling comes back and says (Davis) is hopeless, then we have to figure out if our resources would be best spent promoting a candidate," Contreras said. [...]
"You don't win elections in Los Angeles without Miguel Contreras," Davis' wife, Sharon, said at the Los Angeles barbecue.
"If labor bolts on (Davis), he's dead meat," said Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at California State University, Sacramento.
Labor was the largest donor to Davis' re-election campaign last year, for which he raised a total of $78 million. The governor is reportedly seeking an additional $10 million from labor for the recall campaign.
O'Connor said the campaign will also rely heavily on "organized constituents" to turn out their voters and that a mixed message could impede that effort.
"It's very difficult, rhetorically, to say, 'We're really adamantly against this recall, but if you feel you must vote against us, we need to be prepared,' " O'Connor said.
If union officials shift to a backup candidate, O'Connor said, "I would view that as a tacit admission that the governor had gone down (in the polls), and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Election-Year Demagogy around the issue of homosexuality is nothing new in American politics: Ever since a legendary Southern politician named Pitchfork Ben Tillman defeated an opponent by labeling him a 'thespian,' dumping on same-sexers has been a staple of conservatives in both parties. Bill Clinton, however, has the distinction of being the first sitting president to endorse a specific piece of gay-bashing legislation as a campaign tactic.Leaving the merits of the issue to one side, gay marriage is a perfect example -- even better than the possible nomination of Howard Dean -- of the major problem their base poses for the Democrats this year. The Democrats know perfectly well that this issue is poison in the country at large. After all, Bill Clinton, boy genius, made clear to them that they had to get to the right side of this issue to neutralize it. He knew that, on the one hand, support for gay marriage would raise an unnecessary obstacle to the election of Democrats in red America and that, on the other hand, like other Democratic special interests, gays would give the party a pass. So he got the Defence of Marriage Act (gag) passed, got Democrats to vote for it and signed it. There's not a professional Democrat around who would argue that being pro-gay marriage will be a vote getter come November, '04. Yet, the logic of the Democratic primaries and the continued success of Governor Dean forces the candidates to, at best, fudge this issue and, as time goes on, become increasingly supportive of some recognition of gay unions. The candidates have no choice but to dig for primary gold, but come the convention they're going to find themselves in a hole.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a Republican bill that sailed through final Congressional passage last week with the president's blessing, was spawned by the strategic musings of Republican ideologue Bill Bennett, who urged his party to attack same-sex unions as a way of underscoring the alleged 'decadent liberal permissiveness' of the Democrats. Clinton's endorsement of DOMA undercut the opposition to it within his own party; two-thirds of House and Senate Democrats followed their president and voted for it.
"Oh, please! Gay weddings? Some witchy lesbian waves a stick over you on a beach somewhere. While a drag queen sings 'Evergreen.'"
Though some in the media may portray George W. Bush as a right-wing extremist, he is surprisingly vulnerable to a challenge from his right. Issues: his soaring deficits; his preferential option for the rich; his sellout of conservative principle to embrace big government; his failure to protect America's borders and control immigration; his cave-in on the assault-gun law; his concessions to the gay Log Cabin Republicans; his refusal to put a stop to race preferences and reverse discrimination; his free-trade zealotry, which has helped to kill one of every eight manufacturing jobs in the United States while creating jobs in China; and, potentially the most explosive, his "quagmire" in Iraq. If U.S. soldiers are still dying from sniper fire and ambushes in Iraq in September of 2004, Bush could be vulnerable to the campaign slogan "Support Our Troops-Bring Them Home Now!"
Continued casualties would also raise anew the questions of why we went into Iraq in the first place, who "cooked the books" on the intel, who misled us about the weapons of mass destruction. The President dismisses this as revisionist history. But after World War I-which produced Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism-the revisionist historians, who indicted the "merchants of death" and "British propagandists" who had "lied us into war," carried the day.
The Democrats are paralyzed in making a case against Bush on most populist issues because they agree with him on so many: war in Iraq, free trade, affirmative action, open borders, big government, amnesty for illegal aliens, foreign aid, gay rights.
Indeed, it has been the great success of Bush-Rove to talk the talk and affect the swagger of cowboy conservatives while occupying the center and the center-left and crowding out the moderate Democrats.
More than a decade ago, Schwarzenegger approached the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to help do research on his tainted lineage. As it turns out, Schwarzenegger Sr. joined the Nazis in 1941 where he served as a police officer. Perhaps with the foresight of a possible future political run, the actor immediately gave the Jewish organization a sizeable donation. Rabbi Marvin Hier, the head of the Wiesenthal Center, said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the actor donated almost a cool million of his own cash and helped raise millions more from other people.
"Smart politician that he is, Schwarzenegger has bought himself insurance against his father's Nazi Party affiliation in Austria," explains Newsweek's Martha Brant. "If money can buy a recall election, why can't it buy a clean family record?"
When Dick Gephardt attacked his free trade-backing rivals for president, Deb Hansen shouted her approval. She shook her fist and applauded when the Missouri Democrat blasted President Bush's tax cuts.
When he spoke in hushed tones about his son's recovery from cancer, she dabbed tears from her eyes. "I've never seen this much emotion from Gephardt," Hansen said after Gephardt and five other Democratic presidential candidates addressed her Iowa labor group. "It's a new face for him."
Gephardt is working hard to put a new face on his campaign. The old one hasn't been working. [...]
"What I saw was a Dick Gephardt I've never seen before. He's got the biggest health care plan and delivers a speech with a lot of fire," he said. `This is not Dick Gephardt of 1988 or 1994 — button-down Dick. This is a new guy."
Gephardt said he's the same guy, but more free to be himself. No longer is he campaigning for Iowa congressional candidates or calibrating his every word to avoid offending the Democratic House caucus.
Mr. Bustamante .... "solidified his reputation for all-over-the-map indecisiveness," says Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters. "He would not do well in debates."
Another example of how he got that reputation: In 1997, during Mr. Bustamante's tenure as Assembly speaker. Bill Lockyer, who was then the Democratic leader in the state Senate, and Curt Pringle, leader of the Assembly Republicans, had worked out an intricate bipartisan agreement on a budget issue. But they needed a sign of approval from Speaker Bustamante. For weeks he dithered and wouldn't provide it. Finally, Messrs. Lockyer and Pringle marched over to Mr. Bustamante's office to confront him. Reporters who observed the two men entering the speaker's office were startled to see Mr. Bustamante slowly backing out of a side door that provided access to a hall from his private office. When Mr. Bustamante spotted the reporters, he broke out into a sweat. He then sheepishly went back in.
A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction....
The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.
"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.
One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction....
George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."
But isn't Professor Glaser's belief that there are no WMD in Iraq a trifle premature? Presumably he jumped to this conclusion because he is a conservative. On the other hand, it seems the discovery of WMD would change the paper's conclusions, by showing that it was the liberals who "arrived at premature conclusions, and imposed simplistic cliches and stereotypes." Given that psychology is an empirical science, I imagine the authors will be quick to publish a revision in that case. David Kay, get on with it: your work is critical to the advance of psychological science!
A strong majority of the public disapproves of the Episcopal Church's decision to recognize the blessing of same-sex unions, and a larger share of churchgoing Americans would object if their own faith adopted a similar practice, according to a new Washington Post Poll.
So broad and deep is this opposition that nearly half of all Americans who regularly attend worship services say they would leave their current church if their minister blessed gay couples -- even if their denomination officially approved those ceremonies, the survey found.
As courts, companies and congregations across the nation consider what standing to give gay couples, the poll demonstrates strong public disapproval of any religious sanctioning of same-sex relationships. It underscores the sharp distinction most Americans make between relationships blessed by the church and those recognized by the law.
"Americans are saying, 'We're willing to move pretty far on this issue, we're much more tolerant than we used to be, but don't mix it up with religion and God,' " said Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. [...]
The poll also found, however, that public acceptance of same-sex civil unions is falling. Fewer than four in 10 -- 37 percent -- of all Americans say they would support a law allowing gay men and lesbians to form civil unions that would provide some of the rights and legal protections of marriage.
That is a precipitous, 12-point drop in support found in a Gallup Organization survey that posed the question in identical terms in May, before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against sodomy and Justice Antonin Scalia argued in his dissent that the court was on a slippery slope toward legalizing gay marriage.
The White House finds itself in the awkward position of playing spectator in a race that could alter Bush's political future. Though Rove cares so much about California that an associate calls the state "Karl's Ahab," the recall was driven by people at odds with the administration, such as Shawn Steel, who was pushed out by Bush allies as state Republican Party chairman. "It changes the fortune for the presidential campaign dramatically if we win," Steel said. [...]
Still, Schwarzenegger's decision to join the race, and early polls showing broad support, has buoyed the Bush campaign's hopes of a lift in 2004. "Schwarzenegger is the only candidate who has a chance to achieve what we wanted," one adviser said, adding that the two leading conservatives in the race, businessman Bill Simon and state Sen. Tom McClintock, have too much of a "hard edge" to add to Bush's appeal in the state.
Don't expect Bush to say that publicly, however. Bush aides believe that appearing to meddle would backfire and boost Democrats' efforts to link the California recall to the 2000 Florida recount. Still, California Republicans say, lawmakers and others tied to the White House have been putting what one called "heavy pressure" on Simon and McClintock to drop out -- and one GOP strategist close to the White House expects one or both to quit.
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson is either a desperate man prepared to say anything to stave off a humiliating political defeat, or he is telling us all something fundamental about the real purpose of the European currency, the euro.
Seven million Swedes go to the polls next month in a referendum on whether or not they should give up their traditional Swedish crown and join the euro, as the Social Democratic premier and his government recommend. Although the bulk of big business, the media, the political classes and elite opinion are in favor of joining the other 12 members of the eurozone, the latest opinion polls suggest they could lose the vote by as much as 10 percent to 12 percent.
So facing an uphill final lap of his campaign, Persson told a rally Saturday in the industrial town of Skelleftea some 600 miles north of Stockholm that Swedes should vote Yes to help counterbalance the economic supremacy of the United States.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's late decision to jump into the California recall election was made after weekend meetings to plan what was supposed to be a campaign for governor by Richard Riordan. The two men, non-conservatives and only nominal Republicans, are friends and political allies. But the multi-millionaire movie actor was disturbed by the demeanor of the multi-millionaire former mayor of Los Angeles.
As Schwarzenegger later related to associates, he was unpleasantly surprised by his old friend. In their private conversation, the 73-year-old Riordan duplicated his shaky performance in losing the 2002 Republican primary for governor. To Schwarzenegger, Riordan seemed so confused and disorganized he could not possibly be elected governor. That was the trigger to create the state's current uproarious scene, casting a long shadow on national politics.
TV commentator and author Arianna Huffington, who launched her campaign for governor with criticism of "fat cats" who fail to shoulder a fair share of taxes, paid no individual state income tax and just $771 in federal taxes during the last two years, her tax returns show.
Huffington, who released her tax returns for the last two years to The Times, lives in an 8,000-square-foot home in Brentwood above Sunset Boulevard that is valued at about $7 million. She socializes with many wealthy and prominent people.
But the returns show that at least for the last two years, her income was far outweighed by losses that she reported were incurred by Christabella Inc., the private corporation she owns and uses to manage her writing and lecturing business.
In announcing her candidacy last week, Huffington blamed California's fiscal crisis, in part, on the corrupting influence of special interest groups that have helped "corporate fat cats get away with not paying their fair share of taxes." [...]
The net result was an adjusted gross income of negative $2.67 million last year, the returns show. She owed no federal income tax beyond the self-employment tax paid to Social Security -- $771 over the two-year period.
Huffington's tax form lists $46,763 in contributions to charity in 2002. Those were not deductible because she had no taxable income.
The contributions include payments to three prominent private schools on Los Angeles' Westside -- the Archer School, Crossroads and New Roads. They also include payments of $6,675 to the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness and a related foundation.
The church, founded by John-Roger, describes itself as designed to "teach Soul Transcendence, which is becoming aware of yourself as a Soul and as one with God, not as a theory but as a living reality."
"I've been involved with John-Roger and the church for many years now," Huffington said. "He's a good friend, and I've gotten a lot of value from the work he has done."
Like any team, the Democrats have one old reliable play they love to run. And they'll keep running it as long as it works. It's called Pummel Pedro.
It's about hammering former Gov. Pete Wilson for promoting Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants. This play scores well with Latinos, theoretically, and drives them to the polls.
Democrats have dusted it off again because Wilson is a campaign co-chairman for Arnold Schwarzenegger. [...]
But do Davis and Democrats really want to resurrect the volatile issue of illegal immigration?
Schwarzenegger voted for Prop. 187, but so did 5.1 million other Californians. It passed with 59% of the vote.
A federal judge tossed out most provisions and Davis didn't put up any fight in the courts. Some parts wound up in federal welfare reform.
But Prop. 187 would pass again today, pollsters and strategists say. A 1999 Times poll found that 60% of registered voters would support another Prop. 187. Moreover, 75% of Republicans said they'd back it -- a sentiment that's bound to help Schwarzenegger, since the recall election could be tilted to the right by an unusually large turnout of GOP voters.
"The worst thing for Democrats to do is rerun Prop. 187," says political analyst Tony Quinn. "It helps Schwarzenegger where he needs the most help: among core Republicans."
Beyond that, Democrats shouldn't be demagoguing on illegal immigration -- or any immigration.
Dig into those deficit numbers -- in Sacramento and city halls -- and you'll find a lot of red ink flowing to services for immigrants, legal and illegal.
The south polar ice cap of Mars is receding, revealing frosty mountains, rifts and curious dark spots.
SITTING in on a social meeting of the New York City Atheists can be like walking through Times Square for the very first time.
A flurry of philosophical ideas assaults your senses. Arguments and theories dart into your cerebrum, voices swirl through the inner ear. When it's over, you need to blink hard, breathe deep and tell yourself to go to bed. You'll relive it later.
Two things, though, become clear about this fusion of unbelievers: they may not need God, but they need each other. And they need each other to disagree. [...]
On a recent Tuesday at a corner table at the back of Mustang Harry's, 352 Seventh Avenue in the garment district, 4 women and 14 men gathered.
Under a framed excerpt from Joyce's "Ulysses" (which bore three references to God), Kevin Jones, a computer systems analyst from Long Island who looked more like an ex-football player, had drifted into a debate with Kirsten Sorteberg and Jack Schweitzer, a feisty retired couple from the Upper West Side who looked more like they had tumbled in from a New Hampshire farm. Ms. Sorteberg wore a red, white and blue patchwork skirt and a T-shirt reading "Democracy Not Theocracy."
"I'm sure I don't believe in God," Mr. Jones said. "I'm not sure I like the term 'atheists.' "
"We could battle over this," Ms. Sorteberg replied.
"It gives into the fact that it's natural to believe in God."
"That's deep. That doesn't make sense to me."
"I like my term."
"What's that?"
"Healthy."
Ms. Sorteberg shrugged.
Mr. Bush recently said he believed Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a "good governor," but he is not expected to appear with the actor or to offer any sort of official endorsement.
For one thing, such a move might upset Bush's own conservative base, which opposes Mr. Schwarzenegger's stands on issues such as abortion and gay rights.
But it also would be of only questionable value to Schwarzenegger, whose approval rating with Democratic-leaning Californians is higher than the president's. If Bush appears personally involved in the recall, it could give credence to Democratic efforts to portray it as a White House-orchestrated coup. It could also allow Democrats to nationalize the election, making it less a contest between Gov. Gray Davis and challengers like Schwarzenegger than a clash between national Democrats and Republicans.
"It's important that the recall not become overly partisan or be about people outside of California," says Sal Russo, a Republican strategist. For the recall to succeed, he says, the focus must not shift to Bush - or to anyone other than Governor Davis.
One reason for Bush to step gingerly in California is that it's not entirely clear that a win by a Republican would be a positive for him. Given the state's budget problems, many GOP strategists argue Bush might be better off with Davis and the Democrats in power and taking the blame, rather than a Republican governor who could wind up even more unpopular.
But the California governorship would also give Bush a key organizational base for fundraising and campaign activity in 2004. If Schwarzenegger sweeps into office, bringing a wave of new voters with him - and if the state's budget situation improves as a result of either new policies or external forces - it could reap dividends for the president.
Feminists will howl, but this is the truth: Sometimes, girls are meant to sit on the sidelines.
I came to this un-p.c. conclusion many Kodachrome-colored years ago, as I sat in the family garage, watching with just a twinge of envy as my dad and younger brother prepared for the Cub Scout pinewood derby. This annual ritual, which begins every January in school gymnasiums and American Legion halls, is now a half-century-old. An estimated 40 million dads and sons have participated in the races while their wives and sisters cheered them on.
It's the simplest and purest of bonding experiences: a father, his boy, a kit containing one block of soft pinewood, four nails, and four tires, and their joined imaginations. The objective is to create a little wooden car that will start from an elevated standstill and race down a 32-inch plywood track. The track is an inclined ramp with wood strips down the center to guide the miniature cars.
There may be no fancy electronic gizmos or computer software involved, but the competition is as thrilling as any televised BattleBots match-up. Yes, there are always eager beaver dads who go overboard in an angst-ridden quest to build a winning speed demon. (There are even Internet sites that peddle winning secrets.) But generations of sons hold the warmest memories of the derby and the preparations leading up to it as precious time spent with the most important man in their lives.
It's the designing and building of the car, more than the racing of it, which is at the heart of the tradition.
Beichman rose to become city editor and assistant managing editor [of PM] and thus took part in a series of ferocious battles for control of the news coverage, amid vicious attacks from the communist press. One secretary disappeared and showed up later on the payroll of the New York office of the Soviet news agency Tass. At one point Ingersoll got permission from Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party of the United States, to fire a few of the more incompetent Communists, just to preserve the paper's credibility.
It was during this period that Beichman did the most amazing thing: He became a fellow traveler. This was during the Spanish Civil War, the so-called national front period, when leftists and Communists worked together against Franco. Arnold did publicity for an outfit he knew was a front group, supposedly raising money for the anti-fascists in Spain. Eventually he deduced that not some of the money but all the money being raised in the name of Spain was in fact going to the Communist Party.
During World War II, Beichman published the first American reports of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, having found a man who had escaped from the battles and could provide maps and a firsthand account. After the war, he interviewed Holocaust survivors as they landed in New York. He came across one beautiful young woman who had seen her five children killed but who had been kept around to serve the Nazi officers. Beichman innocently asked her how she could have preserved the will to live after her children's murder. "That's what I cannot forgive God for," she replied. "You still want to live no matter what. But I will never have children. That I know." [...]
In 1949, Stalin launched a peace campaign, and a group of 800 intellectuals gathered at the Waldorf Astoria to call for the United States to endorse Soviet foreign policy. Beichman, Sidney Hook, James Burnham, Mary McCarthy, Dwight McDonald, and others organized a counter-demonstration. Through his connections with the hotel service workers' union, Beichman got the anti-communist group members a suite at the Waldorf, and they successfully undermined the conference, with Hook and others embarrassing the Soviet delegation with uncomfortable questions and harsh arguments.
In the 1950s and '60s, Beichman was one of the New York intellectuals who worked to delegitimize communism. "A staunch anti-communism was the great moral-political imperative of our age," Diana Trilling once declared, which became the credo of Beichman's professional life. He headed the American Committee of the Congress of Cultural Freedom (refusing to accept what turned out to be the CIA money that eventually tainted the international branch of the congress). He fell in with the Partisan Review crowd and became friendly with Irving Kristol, whom he regards as his most important intellectual influence. [...]
Beichman wrote a book about the United Nations and-this being Columbia in the late 1960s-found himself again in the middle of the action. Knowing that he had been a student radical, some of the 1960s radicals came to him for advice. "What's your ideology?" Beichman asked, but of course they had none. Beichman was also appalled by the cowardice of much of the faculty, who hissed administrators trying, belatedly, to preserve order. "I remember warning Jacques Barzun," Beichman recounts. "They just didn't know what was going on under their noses, any more than the ancien regime knew before the Bastille. They didn't know how revolutions began."
Beichman went on to write a book called Nine Lies about America, defending the United States from the waves of anti-Americanism. During his book tour he found himself on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, along with the actor Jon Voight. Carson asked Voight what he thought of Beichman's pro-American arguments. "I'm frightened by America today," Voight responded. To which Beichman-by now an old pro at winning debates-turned to the audience and asked, "Is anybody else afraid of America?" to which the audience roared, "NO!"
THERE IS, however, one opinion - or better, one set of opinions - that one had to share with Hook in order to admire him much. This was his anti-communism and the policy conclusions that he drew from it. After the 1930s, anti-communism was probably the theme Hook most frequently took up. Hook?s writing was always intense, but when he wrote on anti-communism it could be with the urgency of someone calling life-saving instructions to a drowning victim. Such was the tone of his book from the early fifties, Heresy, Yes - Conspiracy, No, in which he argued that communism was not "an open and honestly avowed heresy but an international conspiracy centered in the Kremlin, in a state of undeclared war against democratic institutions." Hook was very seldom personal in his polemics but he could be stinging in his characterization of an antagonist's reasoning when the issue of communism came up. Thus, he blasted "Lillian Hellman, who in her book Scoundrel Time seems to have duped a generation of critics devoid of historical memory and critical common sense." Or again, he began his condemnatory review of a book by David Caute on the McCarthy period by noting, "It is a well known phenomenon that without containing a single falsehood, a description of an historical situation, personage or event can still be a lying account." Sometimes, in presenting a passage from anti-anti-communist authors, Hook could not resist inserting a "sic" or even a "sic!" in the quotation, as if reading such stuff was almost too much to bear.
Hook faithfully pursued what he saw as the policy consequences of his anti-communism. He supported the Cold War, rejected the New Left, and - most fatefully for his reputation - opposed allowing Communist Party members to hold teaching positions. All of this led to the common complaint that Hook was an obsessive anti-communist. Indeed, Arthur Schlesinger has claimed that Hook's "great error" was "in letting anti-communism take over his life." This judgment is unfair. Precisely what Hook did not do was allow his anti-communism, or any other single idea, to determine the whole of his thought. Many of the characteristic ideas that he continued to express prolifically to the end of his life had nothing to do with anti-communism. Nonetheless, anti-communism was a major theme in Hook's work, and the perception that he was overly preoccupied with it has had a negative impact on his reputation.
Allegedly obsessive anti-communism is not the only feature of Hook's work that has damaged his reputation. Hook was a polemicist, "probably the greatest polemicist of [the twentieth] century," as Edward Shils has written. And Hook's modal form of expression was the essay, rather than the book, and that often published in a nonacademic journal. His philosophical interests - Marxism, pragmatism, and public affairs - were considered marginal concerns in academic philosophy throughout much of his university career. For this reason, an article in the National Post (December 17, 2001) condemns the trajectory Hook's career took after the publication of one of his early books as follows: "unlike Hook's later and more polemical work, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx was a genuine original contribution to philosophy." In this way, Hook has often been seen as a politicized intellectual journalist rather than as a serious philosopher.
Recently, however, this judgment seems to be waning. Several developments suggest that Hook is beginning to receive serious consideration as something other than a street-fighting debater. One indication of this change was a symposium entitled "Sidney Hook Reconsidered: A Centennial Celebration," held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York last October. Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, originally published in 1933, is back in print for the first time in decades. And a much-needed representative sample of Hook's essays from throughout his career is now available, The Essential Essays: Sidney Hook on Pragmatism, Democracy and Freedom.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has hired Warren Buffett as his senior financial and economic adviser in his bid to replace Gray Davis if the governor loses the recall vote, the Republican actor's campaign announced Wednesday.
Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, is a billionaire investor legendary for his financial prowess. He is also a Democrat.
"What he will be doing is assembling other prominent business leaders and economists and setting up a team to address the issues facing California," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh.
Buffett said in a statement: "I have known Arnold for years and know he'll be a great governor. It is critical to the rest of the nation that California's economic crisis be solved, and I think Arnold will get that job done."
One of the great strengths of scientific practice is what can be called the "withering skepticism" that is usually applied to theoretical ideas, especially in physics. We subject hypotheses to observational tests and reject those that fail. It is a complicated process, with many ambiguities that arise because theory is almost always used to interpret measurements. Philosophers of science say that measurements are "theory laden," and they are. But good experimenters are irredeemable skeptics who thoroughly enjoy refuting the more speculative ideas of their theoretical colleagues. Through experience, they know how to exclude bias and make valid judgments that withstand the tests of time. Hypotheses that run this harrowing gauntlet and survive acquire a certain hardness--or reality--that mere fashions never achieve. This quality is what distinguishes science from the arts.
But many of today's practicing theorists seem to be unconcerned that their hypotheses should eventually confront objective, real-world observations. In a recent colloquium I attended, one young theorist presented a talk on his ideas about what had transpired before the Big Bang. When asked what observable consequences might obtain, he answered that there weren't any, for inflation washes away almost all preexisting features. Young theorists are encouraged in such reasoning by their senior colleagues, some of whom have recently become enamored of the possibility of operating time machines near cosmic strings or wormholes. Even granting the existence of cosmic strings, which is dubious, I have a difficult time imagining how anyone could ever mount an expedition to test those ideas.
I like to call this way of theorizing "Platonic physics," because implicit within it is Plato's famous admonition that the mathematical forms of experience are somehow more real than the fuzzy shadows they cast on the walls of our dingy material caves. And, in reaction to the seemingly insuperable problems of making measurements to test the increasingly abstract theories of today, some people have even begun to suggest that we relax our criteria for establishing scientific fact. Perhaps mathematical beauty, naturalness, or rigidity--that Nature couldn't possibly choose any other alternative--should suffice. Or maybe "computer experiments," as Stephen Wolfram intimated last year in A New Kind of Science, can replace measurements. According to a leading science historian, such a subtle but ultimately sweeping philosophical shift in theory justification may already be underway.
If so, I think it would be a terrible mistake. There would then be little to distinguish the practice of physics from, say, that of painting or printmaking--in which the criteria that distinguish the good from the bad are based largely on opinions of art critics and historians. There is something unique about scientific fact, and that uniqueness has much to do with the often tedious practice of making telling empirical observations. The primary criterion of good science must remain that it has been repeatedly tested by measurements--no matter how difficult they may prove to be--and found to be in excellent accord with them.
Without such a rigorous standard of truth, science will have little defense against the onslaughts of the creationists and postmodernists, for whom it is just one of many ways to grasp the world.
[I]f we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God.
For what sane man would suppose that Pythagoras, that god of philosophers, at whose name all the men of his times rose up to do solemn reverence -- who, I say, would have supposed that he would have brought forward so well grounded a theory? Certainly, if he taught a harmony of the spheres, and a revolution of the heavens to that sweet music, he wished to symbolize in a wise way the intimate relations of the spheres and their even revolution forever in accordance with the law of destiny. In this he seems to have followed the example of the poets -- or, what is almost the same thing, of the divine oracles -- by which no sacred and arcane mystery is ever revealed to vulgar ears without being somehow wrapped up and veiled. The greatest of Mother Nature's interpreters, Plato, has followed him, for he has told us that certain sirens have their respective seats on every one of the heavenly spheres and hold both gods and men fast bound by the wonder of their utterly harmonious song. And that universal interaction of all things, that lovely concord among them, which Pythagoras poetically symbolized as harmony, was splendidly and aptly represented by Homer's figure of the golden chain which Jove suspended from heaven? Hence Aristotle, the rival and perpetual detractor of Pythagoras and Plato, hoping to pave his way to glory over the ruins of the theories of such great men, imputed this symphony of the heavens, which has never been heard, and this music of the spheres to Pythagoras. But, O Father Pythagoras, if only destiny or chance had brought it about that your spirit had transmigrated into me, you would not now be lacking a ready advocate, however great the load of infamy you might bear.
And indeed why should not the heavenly bodies produce musical vibrations? Does it not seem probable to you, Aristotle? Certainly I find it hard to believe that your intelligences could have endured the sedentary task of revolving the heavens for so many aeons, unless the ineffable chanting of the stars had detained them when they would have departed, and persuaded them by its harmonies to delay. If you take that music out of heaven, you hand over those lovely intelligences of yours and their subsidiary gods to slavery, and you condemn them to the treadmill. Why, Atlas himself would have long ago dropped the sky off his shoulders to its destruction if, while he panted and sweated under such a weight, he had not been soothed by the sweet ecstasy of that song. And the Dolphin, tired of the stars, if he had not been consumed by the thought of how far the vocal orbs of heaven surpass the sweetness of Arion's lyre, would long ago have preferred his native ocean to the skies. Why, it is quite credible that the lark herself soars up into the clouds at dawn and that the nightingale passes the night in solitary trilling in order to harmonize their songs with that heavenly music to which they studiously listen.
Hence arose also that primeval story that the Muses dance day and night before Jove's altar; and hence comes that ancient attribution of skill with the lyre to Apollo. Hence reverend antiquity believed Harmonia to be the daughter of Jove and Electra, and at her marriage with Cadmus it was said that all heaven's chorus sang. What though no one on earth has ever heard that symphony of the stars? Is that ground for believing that everything beyond the moon's sphere is absolutely mute and numb with torpid silence? On the contrary, let us blame our own impotent ears, which cannot catch the songs or are unworthy to hear such sweet strains. But this celestial melody is not absolutely unheard; for who, O Aristotle, would think those 'goats? of yours would skip in the mid region of the air unless they cannot resist the impulse to dance when they so plainly hear the music of the neighboring heavens?
But Pythagoras alone of mortals is said to have heard this harmony -- unless he was a good genius or a denizen of the sky who perhaps was sent down by some ordinance of the gods to imbue the minds of men with divine knowledge and to recall them to righteousness. At least, he surely was a man who possessed every kind of virtue, who was worthy to consort with the gods themselves, whom he resembled, and to enjoy celestial society. And so I do not wonder that the gods, who loved him very much, permitted him to enter into the most mysterious secrets of nature.
Our impotence to hear this harmony seems to be a consequence of the insolence of the robber, Prometheus, which brought so many evils upon men, and at the same time deprived us of that felicity which we shall never be permitted to enjoy as long as we wallow in sin and are brutalized by our animal desires. For how can we, whose spirits, as Persius says, are warped earthward, and are defective in every, heavenly element, be sensitive to that celestial sound? If our hearts were as pure, as chaste, as snowy as Pythagoras' was, our ears would resound and be filled with that supremely lovely music of the wheeling stars. Then indeed all things would seem to return to the age of gold. Then we should be immune to pain, and we should enjoy the blessing of a peace that the gods themselves might envy.
Congress ... may not threaten the established principle that a judge's judicial acts cannot serve as a basis for his removal from office....
This principle [that federal judges may not be removed from office for their judicial acts] is not set forth in the Constitution, which does grant federal judges tenure during good behavior and protection against diminution in salary. But the principle was established just about two centuries ago in the trial of Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court by the Senate. Chase was one of those people who are intelligent and learned, but seriously lacking in judicial temperament. He showed marked partiality in at least one trial over which he presided, and regularly gave grand juries partisan federalist charges on current events.
For this the House of Representatives, at President Thomas Jefferson's instigation, impeached him, and he was tried before the Senate in 1805. That body heard fifty witnesses over a course of ten full days. The Jeffersonian Republicans had more than a two-thirds majority in the body, and if they had voted as a block Chase would have been convicted and removed from office. Happily, they did not vote as a block; the article on which the House managers obtained the most votes to convict was the one dealing with his charges to the grand jury; there the vote to convict was nineteen to fifteen, a simple majority but short of the requisite two-thirds vote needed to convict.
The significance of the outcome of the Chase trial cannot be overstated -- Chase's narrow escape from conviction in the Senate exemplified how close the development of an independent judiciary came to being stultified.... The political precedent set by Chase's acquittal has governed that day to this: a judge's judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment.
We are supposed to be governed by a rule of law, not of men. For this to work, everyone must submit to the law, including judges. And if they refuse, the rest of society and government should have a way to check their lawlessness. Presidents and Congressmen are subject both to elections and to impeachment or ejection. It is entirely appropriate that there should be a check against sitting judges.
What if five Supreme Court judges fancied themselves dictators and tried to impose a Nazi autocracy upon us? Would our only recourse be to wait for them to die? Since Justice Rehnquist presumably believes that judicial orders should be obeyed, should we submit to a Nazi dictatorship?
This hypothetical shows the limitations of Rehnquist's "principle." It is a question of drawing lines, not of principle; or, if you like, the principle of judicial independence competes with the principle of judicial submission to the law, and the two principles must be balanced by the Congress in deciding whether or not to impeach a judge for bad rulings.
In the past, judges have, for the most part, not crossed the line -- and when they did, as in Dred Scott, their opponents lacked the supermajorities needed to impeach. But the judiciary may degenerate, and public opinion may deliver the requisite two-thirds in the Senate. If so, let the bad judge be removed!
Gray Davis has never been anybody's "progressive." In a 1998 debate before his first election, Davis singled out the caning nation of Singapore as "a good starting place in terms of law and order." When pressed on the point by stunned reporters, he replied: "They don't fool around. There's virtually no crime. If you don't like it, you can get on a plane and go someplace else."
Unless they sentence you to death for drug trafficking, but never mind.
Movie star and now California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger was catapulted to fame in the late seventies when he was featured in the benchmark bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron. The filmmaker was lakes region resident George Butler. We'll talk with George about Arnold in his early days and what he thinks about the trajectory of Arnold's career. George has gone on to make other documentaries, including Pumping Iron II: The Women, In the Blood, and The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition.
While publicly congratulating themselves over the bust of an international arms dealer in an alleged plot to sell Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, top Justice Department officials are privately fuming over a premature news leak that may have blown a rare opportunity to penetrate Al Qaeda's arms-buying network, NEWSWEEK has learned.
THE FBI'S ARREST of London-based arms dealer Hemant Lakhani, 68, at a hotel room near Newark Liberty International Airport this week was supposed to be only an interim step in what officials hoped would be a far more meaningful long-term operation, law-enforcement sources said. The bureau's plan was to quickly flip Lakhani, a British citizen of Indian extraction, and then use him as an undercover informant who could lead agents to real-life Osama bin Laden operatives seeking sophisticated weapons.
But those plans went awry late Tuesday afternoon when the Feds learned that the BBC was about to broadcast a sensational report on Lakhani's arrest by one of its star correspondents, Tom Mangold. The BBC story, based on an apparent leak from a law-enforcement source, had some key details wrong. For one thing, it falsely claimed that the arms dealer's attempted sale of a shoulder-fired SA-18 missile and launder was part of a plot by terrorists to shoot down Air Force One-a target that never actually came up in the discussions.
But even so, U.S. law-enforcement sources tell NEWSWEEK, the damage was done. The FBI had to abort its plan to recruit Lakhani as an informant and instead charged him today in federal court in Newark, N.J., with weapons smuggling and with providing material support to terrorists. Also arrested in the case were two alleged confederates-a New York City jeweler and a Malaysian businessman-who were charged with conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transfer business.
Sex, it turned out, is the key to the social life of the bonobo. The first suggestion that the sexual behavior of bonobos is different had come from observations at European zoos. Wrapping their findings in Latin, primatologists Eduard Tratz and Heinz Heck reported in 1954 that the chimpanzees at Hellabrun mated more canum (like dogs) and bonobos more hominum (like people). In those days, face-to- face copulation was considered uniquely human, a cultural innovation that needed to be taught to preliterate people (hence the term "missionary position"). These early studies, written in German, were ignored by the international scientific establishment. The bonobo's humanlike sexuality needed to be rediscovered in the 1970s before it became accepted as characteristic of the species.
Bonobos become sexually aroused remarkably easily, and they express this excitement in a variety of mounting positions and genital contacts. Although chimpanzees virtually never adopt face-to-face positions, bonobos do so in one out of three copulations in the wild. Furthermore, the frontal orientation of the bonobo vulva and clitoris strongly suggest that the female genitalia are adapted for this position.
Another similarity with humans is increased female sexual receptivity. The tumescent phase of the female's genitals, resulting in a pink swelling that signals willingness to mate, covers a much longer part of estrus in bonobos than in chimpanzees. Instead of a few days out of her cycle, the female bonobo is almost continuously sexually attractive and active.
Perhaps the bonobo's most typical sexual pattern, undocumented in any other primate, is genito-genital rubbing (or GG rubbing) between adult females. One female facing another clings with arms and legs to a partner that, standing on both hands and feet, lifts her off the ground. The two females then rub their genital swellings laterally together, emitting grins and squeals that probably reflect orgasmic experiences. (Laboratory experiments on stump- tailed macaques have demonstrated that women are not the only female primates capable of physiological orgasm.)
Male bonobos, too, may engage in pseudocopulation but generally perform a variation. Standing back to back, one male briefly rubs his scrotum against the buttocks of another. They also practice so-called penis-fencing, in which two males hang face to face from a branch while rubbing their erect penises together.
If Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential aspirations melt like a dollop of Cheez Whiz in the sun, the trouble may well be traced to an incident in South Philadelphia on Monday.And people wonder why the President takes August off.
There, the Massachusetts Democrat went to Pat's Steaks and ordered a cheesesteak -- with Swiss cheese. If that weren't bad enough, the candidate asked photographers not to take his picture while he ate the sandwich; shutters clicked anyway, and Kerry was caught nibbling daintily at his sandwich -- another serious faux pas.
'It will doom his candidacy in Philadelphia,' predicted Craig LaBan, food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which broke the Sandwich Scandal. After all, Philly cheesesteaks come with Cheez Whiz, or occasionally American or provolone. But Swiss cheese? 'In Philadelphia, that's an alternative lifestyle,' LaBan explained.
And don't even mention Kerry's dainty bites. 'Obviously, Kerry's a high-class candidate, and he misread the etiquette,' LaBan said. 'Throwing fistfuls of steak into the gaping maw, fingers dripping -- that's the proper way.'
Hundreds of Rastafarians came together last month in Jamaica, the birthplace of the movement, for the weeklong Rastafari Global Reasoning 2003. The official motto for the worldwide meeting, which centered on planning for the future and calling for greater respect, was "Rastafari Family United for Progress and Development."
While Rastafari certainly maintains a sense of family, it is not a unified bloc. Several subgroups and varying beliefs vie for the soul of Rastafari. These differences in theology, lifestyle, and behaviors all fit within the broad umbrella of Rastafari because, at its heart, it is an Afro-Caribbean identity movement—not primarily a religion with clearly defined, universally accepted dogma and doctrines. However, a growing movement within Rastafari is calling Rastas away from their New Age beliefs and idolization of Haile Selassie I—and to a Trinitarian, orthodox Christian faith.
As Caribbean churches have recently become more welcoming of Rastafarians, reggae music, and Afrocentrism, a greater rapprochement between Rastas and Christians has developed. Growing numbers of Rastas have entered Christian churches and taken Jesus as their Savior while continuing a dreadlocked Rasta lifestyle. But if more Rastas are going to follow this path, their significant belief changes will have to be met with attitude changes in the Christian churches.
ARNOLD Schwarzenegger is terminating his political opponents not just in the polls but in the press - and some of them are trying to even up the odds. On Saturday, the day Schwarzenegger filed the paperwork for his gubernatorial run, bystanders noticed rival candidate Arianna Huffington waiting in her car for hours outside the Los Angeles County registrar's office. "She sat there and camped out, and as soon as Arnold's caravan pulled up, she hopped out of the car and got into the melee," says our spy. Huffington was able to get her picture taken and share the limelight, but while her rep admits that was the intention, he claims she only waited 15 minutes. Meanwhile, although Gov. Gray Davis criticized Schwarzenegger for announcing his candidacy on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show," insiders tell us Davis secretly called Leno and asked to appear on the program himself. "The governor was turned down - and he is not happy about it," says our source. Leno's reps did not return calls.
Q. Some make the argument that if Bush tries too hard to go on record as being against gay rights that he could turn off moderate swing voters who maybe don't feel passionately about the issue but they see it as maybe mean spirited or they just don't like that kind of rhetoric. Are you worried at all that some of those moderate voters won't vote for Bush?
A. No. Because the issue that is going to be in the headlines from now until the election next year is the issue of the definition of marriage. Very soon now there will be likely be a state Supreme Court ruling authorizing same-sex marriage. If the president is clear that he opposes same-sex marriage and he's willing to take legal steps to make sure it does not become the law in the United States, I can guarantee you he will win the election in a landslide if his Democratic opponent suggests something else. There is not a state in the union that has been willing to vote in favor of same-sex marriage -- including socially liberal California, which just voted on this three years ago. So no, I think the political risk on that issue resides with the Howard Deans of the world, not with President Bush.
Q. According to an article in the Washington Times, 4.5 to six million Christian conservatives didn't turn out on Election Day in 2000. What is the Campaign for Working Families going to do to try to keep that from happening again in 2004?
A. We do a number of get-out-the-vote efforts, as far as trying to help on voter registration drives and getting out voting guides to churches and so forth. But at the end of the day, the real difference in turnout is passion. And if the administration is aggressively defending the values of these voters, we won't have to do much to get them out. They will naturally come out to vote for the president. But if for some unexpected reason there wasn't anything going on or there were confusing messages being sent on some of these issues, then I think no matter what we did the turnout would end up being disappointing.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has violated Philadelphia’s highly cherished – although some might argue highly affected – cheese-steak ordering system at world-famous Pat’s Steaks.
An eagle-eyed Washington Post correspondent noticed on Monday that Kerry – he of the Swiss boarding schools, many mansions and Hermes ties – had the gumption to order his sandwich with Swiss cheese instead of the standard Cheez Whiz. [While picky eaters can get theirs with American or provolone cheese, asking for Swiss is like asking for a side order of human flesh.]
The Post’s Dana Milbank - who, we now assume wears those bow ties so he can devour cheese steaks at lunch every day without fear of dripping on his tie - found the Philadelphia Inquirer’s food critic, Craig LeBan, and asked about the political ramifications of Kerry’s gastronomical faux pas.
"It will doom his candidacy in Philadelphia," LeBan said.
The Post also critiqued Kerry’s eating style as "dainty."
They are unelected, privately funded and their meetings are by invitation only....
If there was a global godfather of this neo-conservative movement, it would be Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist and social theorist was a rival of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes' interventionist ideas came to dominate policy after World War II, while Hayek's drifted into the back rooms of history.
But he didn't give up: in 1947, he set up the Mont Pelerin Society, a secretive group that met annually to map out a neo-conservative counterattack against the growing socialist character of postwar economies....
In Australia, as elsewhere, they ply their trade by publishing "independent research" from a network of like-minded scholars whose reports invariably end up backing the neo-conservative world view. Staff and friendly scholars are paid to write newspaper articles which are submitted - usually free - to opinion pages.
By publishing reports that confirm their arguments, neo-conservative think tanks seek to mould public debate. But they also peddle influence, holding closed seminars and lectures ...
Hayek ... died in 1992, but not before Thatcher rewarded him with a visit to Buckingham Palace, where he was bestowed with a Companion of Honour - a tribute to the most successful, if unheralded, political puppet-master of the past century.
THE COLD WAR QUEEN remained frozen in facts that melted into fiction as she talked. Speaking last week before the National Association of Black Journalists, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "Let us be very clear about why we went to war against Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and the world. This was a regime that had pursued, had used, and possessed weapons of mass destruction." Rice did not dare tread upon the issues that were not clear. Her cocksure posture could not hide the fact that she made no other mention of weapons of mass destruction in her prepared remarks. The United States has yet to find any after nearly five months of war and occupation. This was after a war buildup where Bush officials boasted they were certain where the weapons were.
Just as significant is that there was not a single reference in her set speech about Saddam trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Before the war, Rice said, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The scary vision of mushroom clouds was repeated by Bush and General Tommy Franks, head of Central Command. Vice President Dick Cheney declared Saddam to be a "mortal threat" on his way to "nuclear blackmail."
In a question-and-answer session after her speech, Rice continued to assert that she was "certain to this day that this regime was a threat, that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon."
This is brazen, as Rice has yet to produce even a smoking gun. President Bush has already been shamed by his usage in his State of the Union address of the discredited claim that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa.
Müller notes that ... most of the discussion about the Union and its various aspects has been conducted in nineteenth century terms. Noticeably neither he, nor other European intellectuals mention the most important nineteenth century terms: democracy and liberty....
What the European Union has tried to do is abandon the inconvenient political ideas: liberty, constitutionalism, democracy, precisely defined rights and duties and relationship between the state and the individual, as well as more detailed ones like accountability. Instead, it aims to introduce a political structure which is largely managerial – greater efficiency and transparency rather than political accountability and definition of various responsibilities are the much discussed phenomena.
By refusing to define decision processes and allocate decision-making authority, the EU Constitution inevitably must allocate the authority to define how decisions will be made to some central authority -- the managers at the top of the hierarchy. Those managers inevitably obtain autocratic powers, of the sort by which Henry Ford ran Ford Motor Company. The whole approach echoes the 'scientific socialism' and 'scientific management' that was so widely admired in the 1910s and 1920s, and put into practice by the likes of Mussolini.
The new EU Constitution may be seen by future historians as the last gasp of an intensely conservative elite, seeking to preserve the era of command-and-control authority. But as corporate experience shows, managements who lag the times cause their institutions to fail and usually end up overthrown.
When it comes to elections, I am a single-issue voter: I support the most conservative candidate who has the most realistic chance of winning.
In the Republican California primary of 2002, that was Bill Simon.
In the recall election of 2003, that is Arnold Schwarzenegger. [...]
Time for the purists to check their passion at the door and focus on winning. A governor with whom I agree 75 percent of the time – or even 60 percent of the time – is far, far better than a governor with whom I never agree.
A vote for Tom McClintock, Bill Simon or Peter Ueberroth is a vote for Cruz Bustamante.
It really is that simple.
It is not the first time the Boston City Council has ventured into foreign policy. But this time, someone out there is actually taking notice.
Two weeks ago, the council unanimously passed a resolution to recognize the "Heritage and Freedom Flag" as the official symbol of Boston's Vietnamese-American community. That flag, with its yellow background and three red horizontal stripes, is also the old South Vietnamese flag.
And that has upset officials of the Vietnamese government, which the United States officially recognized, with full diplomatic relations, in 1995.
Officials of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington came to Boston last week to visit city councilors, to explain that the official Vietnamese flag is the one associated with what used to be called North Vietnam, a yellow star on a field of red. The Vietnamese officials argued that, if any Vietnamese flag is to be recognized at City Hall, it should be that one, because Saigon fell in April 1975 and relations between their nation and the United States have been cordial for years.
Flying the other flag is "disrespectful to the entire nation," said Bach Ngoc Chien, press attache of the Embassy of Vietnam.
"A small minority of Vietnamese-Americans who claim themselves representatives of the Vietnamese-American community living in Boston aim at sowing division, rekindling the past hatred and painful pages of the history between our two nations and among the Vietnamese themselves, running counter to the aspirations and interests of the two peoples," he said. "This could potentially set an undesirable precedent to other ethnic communities in Boston."
There is a very serious principle at risk in Justice Moore's grandstanding. The federal Constitution applies to the states, and the federal courts are its ultimate interpreter. Justice Moore's desire to ignore the Constitution's mandates on the separation of church and state has an uncomfortable resemblance to the arguments Gov. George Wallace made when he mounted his stand in the "schoolhouse door" to block blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama.
Justice Moore's disturbing crusade recently spread to Congress, where the House of Representatives attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would ban the use of federal funds to enforce the order to remove the Ten Commandments monument. The Senate must make sure that this lawless provision does not find its way into the final bill, and members of both houses of Congress should make clear that this sort of attack on federal judicial power is unacceptable.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, the nation's highest law enforcement officer, has a special duty to stand up, as his predecessors did in the civil rights era, for the authority of the federal courts. But Justice Moore can spare the nation a divisive constitutional showdown, and himself further embarrassment, by announcing that he will obey the law.
In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say.
"Iraq is the nexus where many issues are coming together--Islam versus democracy, the West versus the axis of evil, Arab nationalism versus some different types of political culture," said Barham Saleh, the prime minister of this Kurdish-controlled part of northern Iraq. "If the Americans succeed here, this will be a monumental blow to everything the terrorists stand for."
Recent intelligence suggests the militants are well organized. One returning group of fighters from the militant Ansar al-Islam organization captured in the Kurdish region two weeks ago consisted of five Iraqis, a Palestinian and a Tunisian.
Among their possessions were five forged Italian passports for a different group of militants they were apparently supposed to join, said Dana Ahmed Majid, the director of general security for the region.
Long gone are the bearded men in the short robes believed worn by the Prophet Muhammad that the Arabs who went to Afghanistan favored. Instead, the same practices that allowed the Sept. 11 attackers to blend into American society are evident.
According to a Gallup Poll conducted in late July, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who is third in line of succession to the presidency, is unknown to 41 percent of those polled. [...]
Of those who have heard of Hastert, many seem to approve. His ratings are 28 percent favorable and 12 percent unfavorable.
Public awareness of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wasn’t much higher as 34 percent of those polled had not heard of DeLay and 42 percent did not know of Pelosi. [...]
Although Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was not included in the Gallup survey, GOP charges that Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) was obstructing the president’s agenda appear to have had an impact.
Daschle, who is campaigning for reelection this year, has unfavorable ratings of 35 percent, exceeding his favorable rating of 31 percent. Twenty percent of respondents haven’t heard of him.
Mr. Clinton, who himself survived a recall effort of sorts, has over the past week become one of Mr. Davis's main strategic advisers, associates of the two men say.
Mr. Clinton met privately with Mr. Davis and his wife, Sharon, at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Chicago last week, offering a political tutorial on how Mr. Davis should beat back the effort to remove him. (Points 1, 2, and 3: act gubernatorial, make sure the fight is about the recall initiative and not about Mr. Davis, and do not get baited by the news media into a fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger, one participant said.)
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, desperately seeking a foothold in the race, last week attacked Dean from the other direction, portraying his rival as too liberal to win a general election. Lieberman echoed the arguments raised against Dean this spring by the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist Democratic group that Lieberman used to chair.
"I believe that kind of candidate could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come," Lieberman said. "It could be, really, a ticket to nowhere."
Lieberman's speech jabbed at Dean's weakest point: The fear that Dean could lead the party off a cliff in the general election may be the biggest hurdle he faces in the primary.
Privately, much of the Democratic establishment--elected officials, strategists, leaders of the most powerful interest groups--share Lieberman's conclusion. And as long as they do, it will be tough for Dean to attract much of the institutional support critical to surviving the tightly compressed primary calendar. Eventually, the anxiety among insiders might also spill over to average Democratic voters.
So, in the weeks ahead, the top priority facing Dean could be convincing the party leadership that he's not a sure loser against Bush. The terms of the argument between Dean and his critics are already emerging.
As many as 15 al Qaeda leaders and operatives are currently in Iran, but Tehran is dragging its feet in responding to requests from Arab governments to repatriate the accused terrorists for interrogation and trial, a senior Saudi official said yesterday.
Among the al Qaeda members being held in what Iranian officials describe as "safe houses" are Saad bin Laden, who was being groomed to succeed his father, Osama bin Laden, as al Qaeda's leader, and Saif Adel, an Egyptian described by U.S. officials as the terrorist network's security chief, said the Saudi counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified. [...]
The real question is which Iranian officials control them. Iranian intelligence officials and leaders of the radical Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have struck periodic alliances with al Qaeda over the years, while reformist Iranian officials have publicly denounced the idea of providing safe haven for bin Laden's fighters.
Saudi officials are trying to persuade Tehran to hand over the seven or eight Saudis among the al Qaeda members in Iran, the official said. The Egyptian and Algerian governments are also demanding that their citizens be turned over, he said. Kuwait has said it does not want Ghaith.
Orwell's most famous short work on the corruption of language is his essay Politics and the English Language, published in 1946 and now a standard in anthologies on writing. "The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes," he began, but each makes the other worse. "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks." This applies to the English language. Our language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
In such English, the images are always stale and the language always imprecise. "This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing." (He would have included, had he cared about the subject, religious writing as well.)
As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a pre-fabricated henhouse.
The words you need are to hand, and these "ready-made phrases . . . will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself." What he called "orthodoxy," by which he meant unthinkingly following the party line, whatever party you belonged to, "demands a vague and inflated language and particularly the use of stale and unrevealing metaphors." Orthodoxy requires such a style because it does not want people to see clearly, because if they saw clearly, they might dissent.
They might dissent because "political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." Orwell cited as examples the ways Western intellectuals excused the Soviet atrocities. "Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements." [...]
Politics and the English Language is a great and, given the status of the people he was attacking, courageous essay. Orwell was right as far as he went, but he did not go far enough, because he was not a Christian. He recognized good and evil but could not relate them to any transcendent order, and so could offer only a set of techniques to oppose people who held other views of good and evil. He objected to their calling the murder of political opponents "the elimination of unreliable elements," but had no reason to condemn those who were eliminating people they sincerely believed to be unreliable elements and thus could not condemn them for using those words to describe what they were doing.
Lewis had argued many of the same points before Orwell's essay appeared, most famously in The Abolition of Man (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945). The crucial difference in their arguments is that Orwell was a materialist and Lewis a Christian. As a Christian, Lewis saw the universe in a greater and a clearer light, and therefore saw more clearly the use of language in a fallen world. (This is an offensive claim, perhaps, but as Lewis wrote, "Christianity claims to give an account of facts - to tell you what the real universe is like," and if Christianity is true, "it is quite impossible that those who know this truth and those who don't should be equally well equipped for leading a good life."
It was against the degradation of language into an instrument of control that he fought. "Language is an instrument for communication," he wrote in a later work, Studies in Words. "The language which can with the greatest ease make the finest and most numerous distinctions of meaning is the best. It is better to have like and love than to have aimer for both." He fought against language in which proper distinctions were not made and false distinctions employed. He wished us to "become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are." He meant by "well used," skillfully used - because words are immensely potent instruments for evil as well as for good.
In The Abolition of Man, he argued that the danger to our language comes not first from political and economic causes but from a philosophical error, the rejection of the Tao, the fundamental and necessary, though unprovable, beliefs about right and wrong accepted by all cultures in all times. Among English artists, intellectuals, and political leaders as much as among as the Nazis they were fighting (Lewis was writing in 1943), "Traditional values are to be 'de-bunked' and mankind to be cut into some fresh shape. . . . The belief that we can invent 'ideologies' at pleasure, and the consequent treatment of mankind as mere specimens, preparations, begins to affect our very language. Once we killed bad men; now we liquidate unsocial elements. Virtue has become integration and diligence dynamism."
The process of corruption is hidden "by the use of the abstraction 'man'," he continued. The Tao teaches us what it is to be human, but reject the Tao and individual men are reduced to examples of "a mere abstract universal" that can be given any meaning you like. One can do to Man what one cannot do to the individual man or woman or child. Human nature becomes whatever those in power say it is.
The main question is this: where should we look for sources of a shared minimum that could serve as a framework for the tolerant coexistence of different cultures within a single civilization? It is not enough to take the set of imperatives, principles, or rules produced by the Euro-American world and mechanically declare them binding for all. If anyone is to apply these principles, identify with them, and follow them, those principles will have to appeal to something that has been present in him or her before, to some of his or her inherent qualities. Different cultures or spheres of civilization can share only what they perceive as genuine common ground, not something that some simply offer to or even force upon others. The rules of human coexistence on this Earth can work only if they grow out of the deepest experience of everyone, not just some. They have to be formulated so as to be in harmony with what all of us -- as human beings, not as members of a particular group -- have learned, experienced, and endured.
No unbiased person will have any trouble knowing where to look. If we examine the oldest moral canons, the commandments that prescribe human conduct and the rules of human coexistence, we find numerous essential similarities among them. It is often surprising to discover that virtually identical moral norms arise in different places and different times, largely independently of one other. Another important thing is that the moral foundations upon which different civilizations or cultures were built always had transcendental or metaphysical roots. It is scarcely possible to find a culture that does not derive from the conviction that a higher, mysterious order of the world exists beyond our reach, a higher intention that is the source of all things, a higher memory recording everything, a higher authority to which we are all accountable in one way or another. That order has had a thousand faces. Human history has known a vast array of gods and deities, religious and spiritual beliefs, rituals, and liturgies. Nevertheless, since time immemorial, the key to the existence of the human race, of nature, and of the universe, as well as the key to what is required of human responsibility, has always been found in what transcends humanity, in what stands above it. Humanity must respect that if the world is to survive, To this day, the point of departure has been present in all our archetypal notions and in our long-lost knowledge, despite the obvious estrangement from these values that modern civilization has brought with it. Yet, even as our respect for the mysteries of the world dwindles, we can see for ourselves again and again that such a lack of respect leads to ruin. All this clearly suggests where we should look for what united us: in an awareness of the transcendent.
I have no specific advice on how to revive this awareness which was once common to the whole human race, on how to retrieve it from the depths to which it has sunk, or how to do this in a way that is both appropriate for this era and at the same time universal, acceptable to all. Yet, when thinking about it, no matter where or in what context, I always -- without intending to -- come to the conclusion that this is precisely where we should begin the search for the means of coexistence on this planet, and for the salvation of the human race from the many dangers to its existence that civilization generates. We should seek new ways to restore the feeling for what transcends humanity, for what gives meaning to the world surrounding it, as well as to human life itself.
Dostoevsky wrote that if there were no God everything would be permitted. To put it simply, it seems to me that our present civilization, having lost the awareness that the world has a spirit, believes that anything is permitted. The only spirit that we recognize is our own.
However different the paths followed by different civilizations, we can find the same basic message at the core of most religions and cultures throughout history: people should revere God as a phenomenon that transcends them; they should revere one another; and they should not harm their fellow humans.
To my mind, reflecting on this message is the only way out of the crisis the world finds itself in today.
Political philosophers are right to posit a natural background that underlies construction of political systems, evolutionary psychologists say, but it required Darwin to finally to explain that background to us. A lucid attempt to spell out the implications [of] evolution for politics has now been published by Paul H. Rubin, a professor of economics and law at Emory University, in the form of Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom. Some of his conclusions are what anyone familiar with evolutionary psychology might suppose even without picking up the book. Others come as a surprise, and were unexpected even by Rubin himself. The book is both fascinating and unpredictable.
The scene of evolution is the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, the EEA, essentially the Pleistocene, the whole, long period lasting from 1.6 million years ago up until the shift to the Holocene with the invention of agriculture and large settlements 10,000 years ago. Our present intellectual constitution was achieved by about 50,000 years ago, or 40,000 before the Holocene. Keep in mind the immensity of this time scale: calculating at twenty years for a generation, there were 80,000 generations of humans and proto-humans in the Pleistocene, while there have been a mere 500 generations since agriculture and the ?rst cities. It was in the earlier, much longer period that selective pressures created genetically modern humans. These pressures might have pushed only very slightly in one direction over another. But a slight pressure over hundreds of thousands of generations-toward a taste for sweet, say, or a wariness of snakes-can deeply engrave psychological traits into the mind of any species.
Pleistocene evolution is often associated with the savannahs of East Africa, but human evolution occurred in many places out of Africa-in Europe, Asia, and the Near East. It was going on in the Ice Ages and during interglacial periods. The wide-ranging, hunter-gather species we became did not evolve in a single habitat, but adapted itself to all sorts of environmental extremes. Selective pressures would have been af?fected by climate, varying availability of foods, diseases, and predator threats. But beyond survival in natural habitats, each of our ancestors also faced threats and opportunities posed by other human and proto?human groups and individuals: we evolved to accommodate ourselves to each other, both as individuals in a group and as groups in relations of cooperation or aggression toward each another. It is all of these forces acting in concert that eventually produced the intensely social, robust, love-making, murderous, convivial, organizing, squabbling, friendly, upright walking, omnivorous, knowledge-seeking, arguing, clubby, raiding-party, language using, versatile species of primate we became: along the way to developing all of this, politics was born.
Rubin begins with that bracing idea that the often-coercive political control placed on human beings since the advent of cities is characteristic only of the Holocene. The human desire for freedom, he argues, is an older, deeper prehistoric adaptation: for most of their existence, human beings have experienced relative freedom from political coercion. Many readers will find Rubin's thesis counterintuitive: we tend to assume that political liberty is a recent development, having appeared for a while with the Greeks, only to be reborn in the eighteenth century, after millennia of despotisms, for the benefit of the modern world. This is a false assumption, a bias produced by the fact that what we know best is recorded history, those 500 generations since the advent of cities and writing.
Our more durable social and political preferences emerged in prehistory, during the 80,000 hunter-gather generations that took us from apes to humans. I stress here that Rubin is talking about hunter-gatherer political preferences as contingent givens; he is not in every case concerned whether those preferences should be honored. Moreover, when gathered together, these preferences do not form a deductive, logical, or empirically "neat" system, such as we find with the periodic table of elements, or the laws of Newtonian mechanics. Like evolved sensitivities to smells, tastes in food, or like the evolved morphology of the human skeleton, the catalogue of evolved political preferences does not display an order that makes analysis easy. The catalogue includes preferences, such as selfishness and altruism, that in many contexts are conceptually incompatible. It also includes preferences that are hard to disentangle from preferences produced by enculturation. The best anyone can do is to lay out putative Pleistocene political preferences with as much clarity as possible, in whatever irregular order they present themselves, however they happen to criss-cross, overlap, or contradict one another. This can only be done, as another naturalist, Aristotle, would shrug, with as much precisions as the subject matter allows. [...]
Darwinian Politics in its way exemplifes Kant's famous remark that "from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made." It is not, to play on Kant's metaphor, that no beautiful carving or piece of furniture can be produced from twisted wood; it is rather that whatever is finally created will only endure if it takes into account the grain, texture, natural joints, knotholes, strengths and weaknesses of the original material. Social constructionism in politics treats human nature as indeinitely plastic, a kind of fiberboard building material for utopian political theorists. Evolutionary psychology advises that political architects consider the intrinsic qualities of the wood before they build.
Steven Pinker uses the crooked-timber quotation in The Blank Slate to distinguish what he calls the Utopian Vision of human nature from the Tragic Vision. Pinker himself comes down firmly on the Tragic side, and includes as his intellectual company Hobbes, Burke, Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Madison, Hayek, Isaiah Berlin, Popper, and Richard Posner. Utopians include Rousseau and Marx, Godwin, Condorcet, Tom Paine, Earl Warren, and Ronald Dworkin.
A little more than a year ago, after a long legislative struggle, Congress passed the most sweeping international trade legislation in 15 years. After a nearly decade-long deadlock, Congress gave the president authority to negotiate new trade agreements. And just before this summer's recess, Congress overwhelmingly passed the first fruits of that authority: new free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore.
Unfortunately, implementation of the assistance for workers who lose their jobs because of international trade has not been as swift. If the displaced worker-adjustment provisions are not in place soon, the newfound consensus in favor of freer trade may rapidly erode.
Combining modern Internet technology with old-school groundwork, state Republican Party leaders are fanning out across the state and setting up shop in ten key cities (including Florence), in a bid to elect the state's first Republican governor in more than 35 years.
The statewide initiative, which party officials call "Team Kentucky," is a take on a similar strategy used in last year's statehouse and congressional races.
Organizing on a local level, the party will mobilize state, local and federal Republicans to promote its statewide ticket, headed this year by gubernatorial candidate Congressman Ernie Fletcher.
Team Kentucky will start with door-to-door and voter education efforts, culminating with a 72-hour campaign blitzkrieg of phone calls and advertising in the hours before Election Day on Nov. 4.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Reuters the Jewish human rights organization had received dozens of hate calls and letters prompted by a handful of private screenings and advance publicity about the movie. [...]
Representatives of the Anti-Defamation League saw the movie in a private screening and the League said on Monday that if it was released in its present form it could "fuel the hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism that many responsible churches have worked hard to repudiate." [...]
But Hier said the bigotry had already started, and that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had received hate mail from people who had seen or heard about the movie, and who accused Jews of killing God's son, praised Adolf Hitler and made veiled threats against the center and Jews collectively.
I was fortunate enough to have the services of my own personal spy at the convention. I will not imperil his career by giving his name, or quoting him in any way that might identify him; I only want to take one of his remarks as a starting point for some general ruminations about the state of the world and of my church.
The remark occurred in reply to an e-mail I sent in which I said I thought that Eugene Robinson, the "gay bishop" (though he will not actually be a bishop till consecrated, sometime later this year) had shown great selfishness in allowing his election to go ahead, knowing the damage it would cause in our church. My spy agreed, and added: "He espouses the heresy of Joachim of Flora." He then went on to sketch the outlines of that heresy for me. I was interested, and my interest led me to those cursory researches over the weekend.
Joachim of Flora (often written written "...of Fiore") died just about 800 years ago. He was a holy man, a monk and an ascetic, who in 1189 founded a monastic order, the Florians. This order became extinct in A.D. 1570. Joachim himself does not seem to have been considered a heretic in his own time, and the Florians never were, either. He was, however, an intellectual who wrote books. The theories he laid out in his books were taken up by others in the 13th century, and were stirred into the general stew of heresies that flourished at that time. "The heresy of Joachim" therefore is not strictly an accurate term; it should be "the heresy of those who claimed to be Joachim's intellectual disciples." Leaving that aside, what was this heresy, and why should anyone care about it 800 years later?
The argument of Joachim's three books elaborated the idea of the "Eternal Gospel" mentioned in Revelation 14.vi. As best I can understand it, he believed in an evolution of human consciousness through history. This evolution had three great phases, corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity.
The first phase was under the hand of the Father. In this phase, human beings were too spiritually dumb to do anything but obey. The text corresponding to this phase is the Old Testament, and this phase was carried forward by the Jews.
The second phase belonged to the Son, whose presence on earth ushered it in. (Or heralded it - I am not clear on this point. There seem to have been periods of transition.) Now men could study, reason, and interpret. Their basis for doing those things was the New Testament, and this phase of human history was supervised by the Catholic Church.
The third phase, which Joachim believed was imminent - he calculated, on the basis of certain Biblical prophecies, that it would arrive in 1260 - would belong to the Holy Ghost. In this last age there would be universal harmony on earth. (All this is supposed to happen within human history, before the Last Times.) Joachim seems to have thought that everyone would live in monasteries, with all goods in common. There would be no need of any scriptures or church, as the Holy Ghost would guide all hearts, and whatever men did would ipso facto be right.
The "Eternal Gospel" was the deep teaching, the one that underlies both Old and New Testaments, and even goes beyond both, supersedes both. It lies behind Scripture and needs to be teased out, gradually brought to light by the diligent researches of a tireless intellectual inquirer like Joachim. Once it has been teased out and propagated, of course, mankind will be ready for the Third Age.
Now you see why my friend thought of Bishop Robinson in this context. Away with all that fusty old scripture stuff! No more need for that! This is a new age, Joachim's Third Age, when we have attained sufficient wisdom that we can throw out all those stupid old prohibitions and sanctions. Our long spiritual apprenticeship is over. Our own hearts can guide us now; and whatever they guide us to, will be right! Fay ce que voudres! An even more obvious parallel - Paul Johnson notes it in the passage on Joachim in his History of Christianity - is with the historical theories of Karl Marx, though of course for Marx it was to be the state, not the church, that would "wither away" in a property-free reign of universal earthly bliss.
But what is important to observe in such a man [the Rationalist] (for it is characteristic) is not the decisions and actions he is inspired to make, but the source of his inspiration, his idea (and with him it will be a deliberate and conscious idea) of political activity. He believes, of course, in the open mind, the mind free from prejudice and its relic, habit. He believes that the unhindered human 'reason' (if only it can be brought to bear) is an infallible guide in political activity. Further, he believes in argument as the technique and operation of 'reason'; the truth of an opinion and the 'rational' ground (not the use) of an institution is all that matters to him. Consequently, much of his political activity consists in bringing the social, political, legal and institutional inheritance of his society before the tribunal of his intellect; and the rest is rational administration, 'reason' exercising an uncontrolled jurisdiction over the circumstances of the case. To the Rationalist, nothing is of value merely because it exists (and certainly not because it has existed for many generations), familiarity has no worth, and nothing is to be left standing for want of scrutiny. And his disposition makes both destruction and creation easier for him to understand and engage in, than acceptance or reform. To patch up, to repair (that is, to do anything which requires a patient knowledge of the material), he regards as waste of time: and he always prefers the invention of a new device to making use of a current and well-tried expedient. He does not recognize change unless it is a self-consciously induced change, and consequently he falls easily into the error of identifying the customary and the traditional with the changeless. This is aptly illustrated by the rationalist attitude towards a tradition of ideas. There is, of course, no question either of retaining or improving such a tradition, for both these involve an attitude of submission. It must be destroyed. And to fill its place the Rationalist puts something of his own making--an ideology, the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.
Having misidentified the primary cause of the heatwave as global warming, we then tend to make another mistake: we assume that as the weather gets warmer, we will get hotter and more people eventually will die in heatwaves. But, in fact, a global temperature increase does not mean that everything just becomes warmer; it will generally raise minimum temperatures much more than maximum temperatures.Nothing offends the Left more than wringing Chicken Little's neck and roasting her.
In both hemispheres and for all seasons, night temperatures have increased much more than day temperatures. Likewise, most warming has taken place in the winter rather than the summer. Finally, three quarters of the warming has taken place over the very cold areas of Siberia and Canada. All of these phenomena are - within limits - actually quite good for both agriculture and people.
The idea of comparing this with weapons of mass destruction is, to put it mildly, misleading. Yes, more people will die from heatwaves - but what is forgotten is that many more people will not die from cold spells. In the US, it is estimated that twice as many people die from cold as from heat, and in the UK it is estimated that about 9,000 fewer people would die each winter with global warming. But don't expect headlines in the next mild winter reading '9,000 not dead'.
In the strongest signal yet that retired US Army General Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander, is planning to join the Democratic presidential race, Clark told volunteers last week to step up their efforts and prepare for an announcement on Labor Day.So, General Clark is going to add a new dimension to the campaign by arguing that Iraq was botched and the Republicans can't be trusted on social security. I don't know why the other candidates haven't thought of that. But, if you asked people what were their two favorite things done by government this year, Iraq would be one and rebate checks would be two. Telling the voters that this makes them either evil or stupid may not be the vote getter the General is counting on. More to the point, isn't this the beginning of the race for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination? I'll go out on a limb and predict that Clark, from start to finish, never launches a nasty attack at any front-runner.
If Clark, 58, does take on the nine announced Democratic candidates, supporters say he would offer a strong voice on national security issues and sell himself as a newcomer untainted by the political process. . . .
Clark has begun to showcase his political instincts. Last week, in an interview with National Public Radio, he called Bush's decision to invade Iraq without international support "one of the greatest strategic blunders the American government has made since the end of the Cold War."
He has also moved beyond the realm of national security. Speaking on CNN, he recently blasted the Bush tax cuts, saying the growing deficit means "that the federal government can't do the kinds of things for America that Americans expect it to do. . . . That's things like taking care of our retirement security and Social Security."
"In each of the three polls we've done we've seen a lower rating for the party among Democrats," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, noting that registered Democrats are "very antagonistic to Bush. They really want a candidate to stand up to Bush."
The current thinking, according to strategists and those involved in the campaign, is that Bush remains personally popular among swing voters, even if they disagree with some of his policies. At a time of intense concern about national security, many voters are inclined to defer to the president, and still suspect that Democrats are weak on defense. Thus, they said, the party's candidates must zero in on weaknesses in the economy and the chaos in Bush's postwar Iraq policy, while persuading the electorate that they, too, are vigilant against terrorism.
The result has been many candidates competing for the mantle of Clintonian moderation.
But to many in the party's base, Bush's assertive tone and message call for a similar response. They yearn for a sharper line of attack and echo the Republicans in foreseeing a combative campaign with strict ideological dimensions.
President Bush is building the earliest, most aggressive campaign organization by an incumbent president since Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984. Bush is aiming to have such a strong head start that Democrats will have trouble catching up after they choose their nominee. [...]
What's behind Bush's strategy:
--There's plenty of money but no need to spend it now. Just 7% of what's coming in is going out, leaving the rest to blanket the nation with TV ads next year when voters are paying closer attention.
--The campaign has targeted for special attention 16-20 states that could go either way. The list will change as the race takes shape, but it includes states where Bush strategists expect to play defense (Arizona, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire) and states won in 2000 by Democrat Al Gore that they think they can carry next year (Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin). All 50 states will have county and precinct organizations.
--It is critical to keep core supporters energized and make sure they are recruiting more supporters. The GOP hopes to register 3 million new voters. Each state has a goal. There are 6 million "e-leaders" who signed up on the Internet and more than 325,000 "team leaders" accountable for organizing their communities.
Ralph Reed, Southeast regional chairman for Bush's campaign, says, "We're going to run as if this is going to be one of the closest elections in our lifetime."
"[Bob Graham] has given so many 30-second ads we wouldn't know what to do with them," said Chris Paulitz, spokesman for Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican who is running for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat. He pointed to Mr. Graham's support for a filibuster to block the confirmation of the first Hispanic federal appeals court judge and the senator's opposition to the Medicare bill that passed the Senate.
And then there are Mr. Graham's rhetorical attacks on President Bush, in which he questioned the president's honesty and suggested he should be impeached for misleading the nation into war.
"The people of Florida are starting to realize that the man running for president is not the same guy that was a two-term governor and a sitting senator that a broad cross-section of Floridians were voting for," said Paul Seago, political director for Bill McCollum, another Republican seeking the seat.
Last week's Mason-Dixon poll showed Mr. Graham with 53 percent job approval--down from 63 percent last year.
For his part, Mr. Edwards faces similar poll numbers and the same questions about votes and rhetoric. [...]
But few episodes more clearly show the divergence between the national and local audiences than when Mr. Edwards told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual convention last month he was "tired of Democrats walking away from President Bill Clinton, who did an extraordinary job of lifting up and reaching out to all of the American people."
Ferrell Blount, the new chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, said Mr. Edwards can expect to see that used in a campaign: "Bill Clinton--I don't know if I'd go so far to say despised, but he certainly is not a revered individual in the state."
Merle Black, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta who studies Southern politics, said both senators will see consequences at home, though Mr. Edwards will probably be more damaged.
"It's kind of a cultural norm in North Carolina to tend to the business at hand, and he's missed lots of votes," Mr. Black said. "His priorities during this last year have clearly been winning the Democratic presidential nomination."
As for Mr. Graham, Mr. Black said he believes the senator will forgo re-election.
Since Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race for governor last week, people have been trying to gauge his positions on issues facing the state.
The Austrian-born movie action hero has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans for not offering specific policies. On morning TV news shows Friday, Schwarzenegger at times appeared to dodge questions.
A review of interviews with Schwarzenegger over the last decade show that he has staked clear positions on some issues but managed to avoid taking stands on others. The review also finds that some of the stands the media has long attributed to him are not as clear as they seem. [...]
Appearing on Fox TV's "The O'Reilly Factor" in May 2001, Schwarzenegger made a strong defense of abortion rights.
"I disagree with George Bush about that," he said. "I'm for choice. The women should have the choice. The women should decide what they want to do with their bodies. I'm all for that."
With Schwarzenegger in the race, his campaign co-chairman, Pete Wilson, offered a more nuanced position in a Fox News report with Brit Hume on Friday.
"He probably feels, much as I do, he's not pro-abortion," Wilson said. "He's pro-choice. And there's a real difference."
He has also been outspoken on gay rights.
"I have no sexual standards in my head that say 'this is good' or 'this is bad,' " he told Cosmopolitan in a frequently quoted interview. " 'Homosexual'--that only means to me that he enjoys sex with a man and I enjoy sex with a woman. It's all legitimate to me."
Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that his views on social mores diverge from mainstream Republican values.
He said he hopes to lead his party in a more tolerant direction.
"You're going to lose until you become a party of inclusion, that you love the foreigner that comes in with no money as much as a gay person, as a lesbian person, as anyone else--someone that is uneducated, someone who's from the inner city," he told Talk magazine. [...]
Schwarzenegger has been much more talkative about violence in the media, which he says has gone overboard. A little restraint is in order, he told The Times in a 2000 interview, just before the action film "The 6th Day" premiered.
"We could say to all those marketing people, 'Look, we know that if you sell an R-rated movie to 12-year-olds, they will want to go and see it. But is it really good in the end for our country to let them in?' " he said. "Or should we come up with a system where we really don't let any kids in, whether they're with a parent or not? Because to me, that's bogus"
Lawyers who learn that a client is cooking the books or looting a company's till could snitch to authorities with a clear conscience under changes to lawyers' ethical rules approved narrowly Monday by the American Bar Association's policy-making board.
The board voted 218-201 to loosen restrictions on when lawyers can reveal suspected fraud by a client. The changes are a departure from the organization's traditional refusal to place society's concern over financial crimes above a lawyer's duty to keep client confidences.
The ABA rejected nearly identical changes two years ago, before revelations about alleged boardroom fraud and accounting flimflams at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and other companies. Then as now, debate was emotional over what opponents saw as a dimming of lawyers' fundamental mission to be trustworthy confidants and represent those who need help the most.
"Why do men cheat?" asked a TV news promo that showed a man and a woman in a passionate embrace. "A surprising new study says the answer might be in their genes." A cynic might say: And that's news? That's olds (to quote British novelist Terry Pratchett's brilliant satire of the news business, The Truth). True or not, the notion that men are "hard-wired" by evolution to spread their seed while women are predisposed to seek monogamous relationships has been around for years.
Many feminists have been highly critical of evolutionary psychology, which they see as validating gender stereotypes and upholding the status quo. The feminist denial of biological differences between men and women can certainly go to extremes; some even argue that the very idea of two sexes is just a cultural construct. Yet to some extent, the feminist critique is on target. Particularly by the time it trickles down into popular culture, the evolutionary view of male and female behavior can often be simplistic and divisive.
The new study, conducted by Bradley University psychologist David Schmitt and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is impressive in its scope: It involved 16,288 college students from 50 countries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Men and women were asked how many partners they would like to have in the next month. The average response from men was 1.87 and from women, 0.78; more than a quarter of men and just five percent of women said they wanted more than one partner in the next month. Over the next 10 years, men wanted an average of nearly six partners; women, just over two.
Since the greater male preference for sexual variety was found in every country included in the study, some evolutionary psychologists have hailed the Schmitt study as definitive, irrefutable evidence that these differences are indeed biological. [...]
One might argue that the universality of the sexual double standard suggests that it's rooted in biology. And to some extent, it is. For most of history, before reliable contraception existed, the cost of sex was much higher for women than for men; no wonder parents were more concerned about protecting the chastity of daughters. Men's uncertainty about their paternity also led to harsh restrictions on women's sexual behavior.
In 1972, on the basis of dubious data about toxicity to fish and migrating birds, the Environmental Protection Agency banned virtually all uses of the pesticide DDT, an inexpensive and effective pesticide once widely deployed to kill disease-carrying insects. Allowing political sentiment to trump science, regulators also cited the possibility that DDT posed a cancer risk for humans--an assertion based on studies showing an increased incidence of the illness in mice that were fed extremely high doses of the pesticide.
Not only did government regulators minimize scientific evidence of the safety and effectiveness of DDT, they also failed to appreciate the distinction between its large-scale use in agriculture and more limited application for controlling carriers of human disease. Although DDT can be a toxic substance, there is a big difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment--as American farmers did before it was banned--and applying it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects. A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison.
The regulators who banned DDT also failed to take into consideration the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, some of which are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. (While its longevity poses risks, they are minimized with targeted use.) Also, the need to spray other insecticides repeatedly drives up costs. For example, budget problems compelled Maryland this summer to turn down requests for spraying from communities badly infested with mosquitoes.
Given the long-term ineffectiveness of other pesticides, DDT remains the best alternative to fighting mosquitoes and the West Nile virus. It's worth recalling that DDT worked before, eradicating malaria from the United States. It's worth recalling, too, that since DDT was widely banned,
insect-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever have been on the rise worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that malaria kills about one million people annually, and that there are 300 million to 500 million new cases each year.
The study by Guillermina Jasso of New York University, Douglas Massey and Mark Rosenzweig of the University of Pennsylvania, and James Smith of the Rand Corporation showed the percentage of immigrants who are Catholic is nearly twice the percentage of Catholics in the United States.
The finding is striking since Hispanics are now the largest minority in the U.S., having recently surpassed African-Americans, while Filipinos are just a shade under the Chinese as the largest Asian community in the country.
The Catholic faith is represented in the study by 92 percent of immigrants from Poland, the homeland of Pope John Paul II; 86 percent from the Dominican Republic, and 82 percent from the Philippines.
Catholics from Mexico account for 78 percent, El Salvador with 63 percent, Vietnam with 53 percent, and Canada with 43 percent, the study said.
Overall, the immigrant population is broken down into the following: 42 percent Catholic, 19 percent Protestant, and 4 percent Eastern Orthodox. Immigrants professing to be Christians make up 65 percent of all immigrants--nearly two in three people who come to the U.S., according to a study of almost 1,000 adult immigrants in 1996.
About 23 percent of all American Hispanics are Protestants, according to a nationwide survey of 2,300 Latinos carried out as part of the recent Hispanic
Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust. Among those Hispanic Protestants, 85 percent belong to Evangelical churches like the Faith Community in West Covina.
Third generation American Latinos are significantly more likely to be Protestants (29 percent) than are first generation immigrants (15 percent). Yet, the percentage of Hispanics who are Protestant doesn't appear to have increased since the late 1980s, according to the HCAPL report, due to heavy immigration from highly Catholic Mexico. In recent decades, evangelical Protestantism is thriving in much of Latin America, especially among the poor, but it has yet to gain a large foothold in Mexico.
The encounter between Hispanics and conservative Protestant churches that laud this-worldly business enterprise has reopened a century-old debate inaugurated by the great German scholar Max Weber about the link between Calvinist Protestantism and the specifically American form of capitalism.
Extending Weber's theory, some observers believe that conversion to Protestantism will hasten the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants into the American middle class. [...]
Some Republican strategists anticipate that Hispanic conversions to Protestantism will help them gain a larger share of the Hispanic vote. They had long hoped that the traditionalist moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on abortion and the like would impel Hispanic Americans toward the GOP, but that doesn't seem to have yet happened in any large measure, perhaps in part due to the Catholic emphasis on social justice and help for the poor.
While evangelical Protestant churches offer similar moral messages, they tend to be more free market-oriented in their economic and political views.
Few mainline liberals understand that behind the rise of renewal activity is a genuine grassroots movement. Instead it is more comforting to imagine that a few wealthy conservative organizations-a conspiracy of outside agitators-have stirred up dissent. Jack Rogers, a recent moderator of the PCUSA (and in a former life one of the leaders of the movement to eliminate the term inerrancy from the faith statement of Fuller Theological Seminary), insists that the Confessing Church Movement "is not a grassroots movement" but "a tool of the conservative Presbyterian Lay Committee" designed to damage the denomination. The Information Project for United Methodists was founded to hunt for a conservative conspiracy in that church. Said Tex Sample, former professor at a Methodist seminary and an Information Project adviser, "I really want to know why these right-wing foundations are financing...these kind of wrongful attacks on the United Methodist Church."
All the evidence, however, indicates that the renewal movements spring not from any right-wing conspiracy of the wealthy but from widespread theological discontent among ordinary Christians. For years now, surveys have shown that the mainline laity are far more orthodox than their denominational leadership, as are the clergy in the local congregations. Because the movements spring from the sentiments of people in the pews, their impact may prove to be deeper than anyone suspects.
The renewal movement's effect on individual lives is impossible to gauge, but it has helped slow the losses of churches and members in the mainline denominations. Pastors who are evangelicals are more likely to introduce renewal movement programs into their congregations, and the results are showing up in indicators of congregational vigor. In Acts of Faith Stark and Finke showed that United Methodist congregations with evangelical pastors had rapidly rising attendance and expenditures. Although some congregations with evangelical pastors did decline, the rate was half that of congregations without evangelical pastors. The Methodist conferences with the largest proportion of evangelical pastors and churches-those in the South and Southeast-have actually started growing.
Before the 1960s, mainline denominations acted swiftly to cut off evangelical mobilization. But this time around, the evangelical renewal movements may be here to stay. One great irony is that theological pluralism -the very thing evangelicals decry-may be what has allowed them to remain. By defending pluralism, liberals have painted themselves into a corner. To move too aggressively against evangelicals would open them to charges of hypocrisy.
Instead, anecdotal evidence suggests that in many cases mainline leaders have opted to try to control the evangelical renewal movements for their ownpurposes. They often encourage the movements in programs of evangelism-all the while counseling them to concentrate on local churches rather than the national organization. In this way, mainline leaders hope to see denominational membership increase without challenging their control.
This is a risky strategy. Liberals are convinced that orthodoxy is, as one United Methodist group put it, a faith of "older people" who are
trying "to sanctify the dominant social attitudes of the time when they were young." The demographic river, however, runs in the opposite direction. McKinney and Finke, in their study "Reviving the Mainline" in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion last year, found that clergy supporting evangelical movements tend to be younger than average. The strongest support for the renewal movements is among clergy under age 40, while clergy nearing retirement are least supportive.
The two researchers conclude that if evangelicals remain in their denominations, time is on their side. Projected retirement patterns will
only increase support for the renewal movements. Even if all else fails, the evangelical insurgents may simply outlive the liberals. For the liberals-who have always believed that orthodox Christianity could never survive in the modern world-this might turn out to be the greatest irony of
all.
We had hoped to comment this morning on the meaning of the Episcopal debate over the nomination of the Rev. Gene Robinson to be bishop of the New Hampshire diocese. Why is it happening now? What does it portend? Is the Episcopal Church, as it often has before, signaling a significant change in the social fabric of American life?
That was before Robinson was ambushed, hours before the House of Bishops was to take the final vote on his nomination, by the most scurrilous smear: He was accused of linkage to a porn Web site and of inappropriately touching another man. [...]
The Weekly Standard is important in this. Executive Editor Fred Barnes gave the Robinson story a major boost -- after it was shopped to other news outlets that refused to bite -- when he posted information about the controversy on the magazine's Web site Monday. Barnes asserted that, "Episcopalian bishop-elect Gene Robinson has some curious affiliations," meaning the porn Web site.
No he doesn't, but Barnes does. He's not simply a journalist in this; he's a conservative Episcopalian of outspoken views who sits on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. It's a conservative group which believes that mainline Protestant churches "have thrown themselves into multiple, often leftist crusades -- radical forms of feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, multi-culturalism, revolutionary socialism, sexual liberation and so forth." The group vigorously opposes gay rights within the church.
Also fascinating is who funds the institute. The most prominent names on the list of contributors are Olin, Scaife and Bradley, the same folks who bankrolled the Clinton wars.
[O]n August 6, this whole illusionary edifice came crashing down: Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to help the Taliban. He also agreed to cooperate fully with the prosecution and waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence. In return, the government dismissed the other counts against Hawash.
How did his supporters take this stunning news? A media search turns up not a single mea culpa. Instead, they responded with denial and silence. "I don't know if I feel betrayed. I'm not dwelling on that now," said one of his staunchest sympathizers. "I want to hear directly from him before I believe it," said another. At the August 6 hearing, reports the Oregonian newspaper, "the throngs of friends and supporters who publicly protested on Hawash's behalf at previous hearings" were noticeably absent. Militant Islamic lobby groups lost their voice.
In short, while Hawash confessed to his crime, his supporters refused to admit their mistakes.
There are two lessons here. First, profiling can work. Alert neighbors reporting on militant Islamic-appearing activities brought Hawash to law enforcement's attention.
Second, sympathizers of terrorist suspects are entitled to express surprise and tell heartwarming stories about them. But shrill charges of racism, ignorant insistence on the suspects' innocence, and appalling comparisons to Nazi Germany impede the U.S. government's efforts to protect Americans.
On the afternoon of Sept. 10, 1999, as the Legislature was preparing to adjourn for the year, state Sen. Deborah Ortiz of Sacramento rose on the Senate floor and asked her colleagues to approve a measure to raise the pensions of state employees.
Speaking for less than 45 seconds, Ortiz mentioned first that the bill would give the Senate's own security staff the classification of peace officer, which would enhance their retirement benefits. She rattled off the new retirement formulas that the bill created for each group of state workers. And she said the legislation would allow state employees who had been in a less generous and less expensive retirement plan to jump to the state's top tier retirement program.
"It's got all the provisions that have been negotiated, and I ask for an aye vote," Ortiz concluded.
She got it. Without a word of debate, and not one question, the Senate quickly approved the bill, SB 400. The vote was 39-0. One member was absent.
The measure approved that day will cost taxpayers at least $10 billion over 20 years, plus uncounted billions for similar increases granted later at the local level. The legislation began a wave of public employee pension increases at a time when private sector employees were seeing their own retirement benefits shrink or disappear entirely. And the bill relied on a fundamentally flawed assumption -- that state employees, not the taxpayers, were entitled to the fruits of the long-running boom in the stock market.
That assumption turned the idea of a defined benefit pension plan on its head by guaranteeing employees benefits of a certain size when they retired and then also rewarding them for temporary gains in the retirement fund as if they had had their money at risk.
SB 400 was the brainchild of the California Public Employees Retirement System, known around the Capitol, and around the world, by the shorthand CalPERS. The details were negotiated behind closed doors by representatives of Gov. Gray Davis and the state employee labor unions. The agreement was added to the bill while it was in the Assembly, where, after a final round of amendments, it was quickly approved and sent to the Senate and then on to the governor for his signature.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware took a little suspense out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination today when he announced that he would not be a candidate.
"As I said I was going to do, I have taken a long and hard look at what it would take to win my party's nomination," said Mr. Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has been sharply critical of President Bush on a number of issues.
"My goal is to influence the direction of our country because I am deeply concerned that we are heading in the wrong direction at home and abroad," Mr. Biden said.
Herb Brooks, who coached the U.S. hockey team to the ``Miracle on Ice'' victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, died Monday in a car wreck, a state official said. He was 66.
Brooks coached the 1980 Olympic team that won the gold medal in Lake Placid, N.Y. He returned to lead the 2002 U.S. Olympic hockey team to a silver medal.
He was killed when his 2000 Toyota minivan rolled and he was ejected at a highway intersection north of the Twin Cities, according to the state official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Weather didn't appear to be a factor. [...]
In the historic U.S.-Soviet Union hockey matchup, Brooks told his players: "You're meant to be here. This moment is yours. You're meant to be here at this time.''
The U.S. team won 4-3 in a game often referred to as one of the greatest sports moments of the century.
Of 493 people statewide who say they are "certain" to vote, two-thirds say they will vote to recall Davis from office. And in the second question on the ballot, 51 percent say they will vote for Schwarzenegger, the actor turned candidate.
The next closest competitor is Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. Only 17 percent say they will cast their vote for him in October. Peter Ueberroth, Bill Simon, Tom McClintock and Arriana Huffington are all in the single digits. Only three percent say they are undecided.
According to 10News, Schwarzenegger's support comes from everywhere. His numbers only dip below 50 percent among older voters, African-Americans and Democrats. But, even with the Democrats, he edges out Bustamante 38 percent to 31 percent.
Schwarzenegger also outpolls Bustamante almost 2:1 among Latino voters.
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger voted for a 1994 ballot measure to deny social services to illegal immigrants, his campaign said Sunday -- offering the first glimpse of the actor's stand on a major policy issue.
The Republican has promoted himself as the candidate in California's gubernatorial recall who can best appeal to the state's politically and ethnically diverse electorate.
But Democrats were quick to jump on the disclosure as a chink in the action hero's armor.
The GOP-backed Proposition 187 to deny health care and public education to illegal immigrants was passed by a wide margin, although it was eventually ruled unconstitutional. It remains a contentious issue and a litmus test for some voters, particularly Hispanics, to gauge whether a candidate is immigrant-friendly.
Schwarzenegger campaign manager George Gorton said the Austrian-born actor's vote for the measure would not prevent him from reaching out to all voters.
"He has a lot of empathy for people who have come here for a better way of living, whether they have gotten here legally or illegally," Gorton said. "But he definitely feels that people should get here legally."
In a four-page letter to President Bush, the 11 Texas Senate Democrats who fled to New Mexico to break quorum appealed to President Bush to stop the GOP redistricting plans. Calling the initiative a “blatantly partisan and grossly unfair re-redistricting scheme,” the Texas senators reminded (on letterhead reading “The Texas 11”) the president of his past support of Hispanics and African Americans.
“Clearly you recognize the increasing significance of the Hispanic and African American vote in national elections because you sought our help in Texas.” The Senators said the president’s unwillingness to get involved conflicted with his administration’s diversity projects such as the Latino outreach programs and said, “With all due respect, Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways.”
The Democrats suggested that Karl Rove had orchestrated much of the scheme along with Bush’s successor, Gov. Rick Perry, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “Unfortunately, Mr. President, the actions of Congressman DeLay, Governor Perry, and Karl Rove reflect directly upon you and cast a shadow over your legacy here in our mutual home.”
The letter questioned the Republican Party’s motives behind the action and suggested future implications in national votes. The Texas senators insinuated that the redistricting plan could be “the first step in a national Republican plan to weaken or repeal the Voting Rights Act in 2006.”
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter has a 57 -- 27 percent approval rating among Pennsylvania voters, down from his 60 -- 21 percent approval February 21, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
In an early look at the 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Sen. Specter leads U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel, his possible Democratic challenger 53 -- 29 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
In a question where no other candidate is named, Pennsylvania voters say 46 -- 40 percent that Specter should be re-elected next year.
Voters approve 56 - 28 percent of the job Sen. Rick Santorum is doing and President George W. Bush gets a 60 -- 35 percent approval rating.
"Sen. Specter enters his race for re-election in solid shape with a 57 percent approval rating, neck and neck with his Republican Senate colleague and almost as high as President Bush, who will lead the GOP ticket. Even though his numbers are down at this early stage, there is no indication he is in any kind of trouble with the voters," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The most powerful woman in Washington's official life is Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser. She has President George W. Bush's ear on issues of war and peace and is the link between Bush and his hawkish advisers.
Despite some recent obvious failings in foreign policy, Rice appears to be destined for even bigger things. She is being mentioned as a possible successor to Secretary of State Colin Powell if Bush wins a second term. Her appointment would please the ultra conservative wing of the Republican Party.
There also has been speculation that Rice, 46, might run for governor of California in 2006 or beyond. She previously served as provost of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. [...]
Rice, who should have come forward earlier, became the fourth person to do a mea culpa for that flap. When interviewed on PBS' "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" that evening, a few hours after Bush had rushed to her defense, she declared: "I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode."
But, get this. She went on to say: "What I feel most responsible for is that this is detracting from the very strong case the president has been making" for war against Iraq. There was not a word there about any responsibility for misleading the American people and the world.
In the summer of 1851, when Hawthorne was 47 and had written all his major works including "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables," his wife went to visit her parents, taking their daughters, Una and baby Rose. She left their son, Julian, with his father in their home in Lenox, Mass. At 5, Julian was a babbling brook of ideas and emotions. The first thing he said after their departure, according to the story, was: "Father, isn't it nice to have baby gone? Because now I can shout and squeal just as loud as I please!"
For three weeks father and son lived alone (with the help of a housekeeper), and Hawthorne kept a diary of their daily activities. Habitually Hawthorne did not write fiction during the summer and so was able to devote himself to his son. The diary offers a portrait of Hawthorne in a lighter mode, delighted--although sometimes quietly exasperated--by the constant demands of the boy, but a generous family man with infinite patience and a deep appreciation of nature.
Here is Hawthorne climbing trees, scaling stones with his son and playfully wrestling with him. They take long walks in the Berkshire woods, indulge Julian's pet rabbit. Hawthorne rescues a cat from a cistern. Julian reveals a natural curiosity, asking why a rainbow is not called a sunbow. In the course of the book, the two become as close as a father and son can be.
One day on the way home from the post office, they sit down in a grove and Hawthorne reads a newspaper. "While thus engaged," he wrote, "a cavalier on horseback came along the road and saluted me in Spanish; to which I replied by touching my hat, and went on with the newspaper. But the cavalier renewed his salutation. I regarded him more attentively, and saw that it was Herman Melville!"
Melville lifts Julian up and puts him in the saddle, "and the little man was highly pleased, and sat on the horse with the freedom and the fearlessness of an old equestrian." Sometime later Julian confided to his father that he loved Mr. Melville as much as he loved him, his mother and his older sister. There goes another foreboding image from American literature.
"For many years I've been a great admirer of Hawthorne,' Mr. Auster said recently. "There is a deep affinity I have for his writing and also for him as a man. The more you penetrate the peripheral writings, the letters and diaries, you see this tremendous wit that was there from a very early age." Next year will be the 200th anniversary of Hawthorne's birth.
What no one knew in the days leading up to Schwarzenegger's announcement was precisely how the pieces were falling into place for the actor. He had started to doubt whether Riordan really had his heart in the race. And Feinstein's decision not to run removed from the field his most formidable opponent. (In the TIME/CNN poll, she edges out Schwarzenegger by 2 percentage points.) George Butler, a co-director of the Schwarzenegger film Pumping Iron, said that if Feinstein dropped out because she believed Schwarzenegger wasn't running, then she fell for the same tactic the bodybuilder used when he wanted to make his opponents believe he would stay out of the competition. "It looked to me like an old-time Arnold maneuver," Butler says. "What you're dealing with is one of the canniest operators who ever walked across the road in America."
But most important, advisers say, is the fact that Shriver's reluctance had softened. No one could understand better than a Kennedy the costs that politics could exact, so it made sense that she would come around slowly. The couple hasn't confided just how or when it happened. "What was widely publicized as her opposition to do this was wrong. She wasn't against it," says an adviser. "And she got to a place where she supported it." [...]
He has done things his own way on his own time. "One of his charms is that he sets everything he wants out on the table," says his friend Butler. But politics has a way of setting its own table. As Schwarzenegger was agonizing over whether to join the circus now or run a few years later as he had always planned, former Governor Wilson privately offered him a piece of advice he had got from Richard Nixon back in 1966, when Wilson was wrestling with a decision on entering a race. "Jesus, Pete," Nixon told him. "If you think you can win, you got to go now." For once, Schwarzenegger knew, the question wasn't whether to seize the moment--it was whether to let the moment seize him.
Impelled by a wave of corporate scandals, tax evasion and concerns over terrorism, government regulators and prosecutors have taken a variety of steps that seek to limit what some lawyers say is a core principle of their profession: the ability to protect their clients' confidences.
Many lawyers have reacted to the new restrictions by arguing that the lawyer-client privilege is not only a traditional tool in their arsenal but a critical one in the proper functioning of the legal system.
But even the American Bar Association seems prepared to cede some ground on the issue. The association, which began its annual meeting late last week in San Francisco, will consider changes to its model code of conduct, which state judiciaries draw on in defining lawyers' responsibilities. The changes would recommend permitting lawyers greater discretion to disclose client confidences, although lawyers would not be required to do so, as the regulators are insisting.
David Quillin, a surfer from Maryland's Eastern Shore, knows what cold seawater feels like: It makes exposed flesh feel like it's burning, sets hands and feet to tingling, numbs the body and, after repeated dunkings, produces a painful "ice cream" headache.
The 38-year-old architect expects all of this when he surfs the frigid waters off Ocean City in January. He didn't expect it in the middle of summer. But it's just what Quillin encountered when he paddled his board into the surf two weeks ago.
"I've never experienced it in my whole life," he recounted, "where the water right along shore could be that radically cold."
Quillin isn't alone in his observation. Surfers, lifeguards, anglers and others who regularly dip a toe into the Atlantic have noticed this summer that water that is typically bathwater-warm has occasionally become fjord-cold.
"During [most of] July, our water temperatures were, I would say, right around normal," said Capt. Butch Arbin, head of the Ocean City Beach Patrol. That's in the low 70s. About two weeks ago, he said, "there was a tremendous change in temperature, [dropping] as much as 10 degrees overnight." It was so cold Monday, Arbin said, that his guards pulled from the surf a teenage girl who was shaking uncontrollably and near hypothermia. (She thawed out in an ambulance.)
The unseasonable chill started easing this week, but beachgoers from as far afield as Virginia Beach, Nags Head, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Daytona Beach, Fla., have been curious about the precipitous drop. So many people have contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that William Tseng, an oceanographer at NOAA's Silver Spring headquarters, is investigating the phenomenon.
US military commanders operating in Saddam Hussein's hometown said yesterday they believe the fugitive president is probably close by -- relying on a shrinking circle of friends for his survival -- despite the huge risks of discovery. [...]
US forces have scoured this fertile valley for months in search of Hussein, launching raids on his associates and bodyguards that have netted scores of captures over the past few weeks.
Despite a $25 million reward offered by the US government and the participation of thousands of soldiers, Hussein, 67, has eluded American forces. But Hickey and others believe the area around Tikrit is Hussein's most likely refuge. Hussein was born in an impoverished village on Tikrit's outskirts, and drew his closest aides from the community.
"His regime was built around tribal loyalties and families who are from this area," Hickey said outside one of Hussein's former palaces in Tikrit where the brigade is encamped. "And they live within kilometers from where we're standing."
Asked his own views on the morality of homosexuality, the president himself bobbed and weaved, saying, "we are all sinners" and should "respect each individual."
When Rep. Janice Schakowsky railed that he had just called gays sinners and should apologize, the White House meekly retorted that President Bush "doesn't believe in casting stones. He believes we ought to treat one another with dignity and respect."
In the Big Tent, the only mortal sin is being judgmental.
In his answer, however, the president had carefully added, "I think a marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that."
This response was 100 percent political. An amendment to the U.S. Constitution to restrict marriage to a man and a woman is a wedge issue that can rip the Democratic Party apart. As long as President Bush sticks to his Briefing Book, he holds the commanding heights in what is likely to be the fiercest battle of the Culture War in 2004. [...]
With the Episcopal Church heading for schism, the Supreme Court discovering sodomy to be a constitutional right, President Bush maneuvering to back an amendment outlawing gay marriage, and the Pope denouncing homosexual unions as immoral and homosexual acts as deviant, there's no way this issue can be kept out of the campaign of 2004. Nor should it be.
But it does reveal a painful truth. America is again a house divided.
[M]en are very little governed by reason and logic; and this accounts for the fact that in an issue between the philosopher and a politician, the politician always wins. He may, nay, invariably does, have a worse case: but he regularly carries it, because he knows how men act and how they may be induced to act. He must know, for otherwise he could not be a politician; this instinctive knowledge is the primary essential qualification for his squalid trade.
In the labyrinth of any problem that confronts us, we must select the most promising paths; if we attempt to follow all at once we shall arrive nowhere.
--Nero Wolfe in "The League of Frightened Men"
When does detective fiction rise to literature? Answer: When the detective becomes more than a stock figure, and the intricacies of the plot become only background. People don't read about Sherlock Holmes to solve the cases.
In a great detective story, it is the central character that enthralls us. Someone we could watch forever. Like a Columbo, an Hercule Poirot, or the latest classic, Adrian Monk on the USA Network.
This newest object of our fascination is a total obsessive. He shrinks back from holding hands, or must sterilize everything in sight, or arrange his furniture just so. He is so frightened by things that don't frighten us. We are amused--and feel superior.
Yet his obsessiveness also makes Monk superior to us. His sensitivity is such that he can separate all the clutter and discern a central theme. He can separate the multiple threads in the fabric of a story, and spot the single one out of place.
Adrian Monk has a lot to teach us as an election year approaches and a war lingers. The political attacks on the White House are sure to increase. Many of those attacks will be misleading--threads that go nowhere.
See the big to-do over the Sixteen Words.
In a few unreconstructed Anglican churches the vicar still prays each week for the Queen in words identical to those used in the days of the first Elizabeth, ‘that under her we may be Godly and quietly governed; and grant unto her whole council, and to all that are in authority under her, that they may truly and indifferently minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of thy true religion and virtue’. These are all reflections of the invocations during the coronation service as the monarch is presented with the sword, ring, spurs, sceptre and crown, and reminded of the solemn duties which are the accompaniment of power. Nobody reading these things could doubt that the fundamental contract binding this country together is a Christian one, or imagine that it has no effect, even now. Others may manage without such a contract. They have different histories, different ways of keeping the sword in its sheath and remaining peaceful. But could we manage without our contract between Church and State? Or would its dissolution endanger us? Already there are many signs that the contract is breaking down, in the greater use of arbitrary power, increased disorder and declining trust between rulers and ruled.
That contract is governed by the belief that authority is only granted to those who hold it on condition that they exercise it according to a higher law which they cannot overrule or challenge. This is the secret English ideology. Here are the origins of the great ideas which, slowly growing in an uninvaded island, have brought about the unique combination of liberty and order for which we were once famous and which we passed on to a few other lucky nations. Law, which is divine in origin, is above power at all times. Actions are judged not only by the effects that they have now, but on an eternal measure, so that what we do here matters somewhere else and can be judged on some other scale apart from our own immediate advantage. The duty of the law, to discover what is right and just through precedent and reason, derives from this. So does the ability of the courts and of Parliament to question the absolute authority of the sovereign. And when the Reformation placed the Bible in the hands of every boy that drove the plough, the law became the property of the whole people, who obeyed it not because they were forced to but because they understood and shared the principles it embodied. Modern coronations are celebrations of our sovereignty over ourselves, as a free and Christian people.
What do the secularists offer as a substitute for this? What is the origin of the new Godless authority, and what restrains it from absolute, lawless power? The current government seems to think that the personal virtue of the Prime Minister, who appears to be a Christian of a very modern sort with a rather Marxist belief in the ‘hand of history’, should be enough to reassure us that we are in good hands. All other checks and balances, from the hereditary peers and the law lords to the old neutral Civil Service, are being ruthlessly reformed into equal-opportunity servants of party and state.After the case of Dr David Kelly and all that has followed, this is not terribly reassuring. Others might suggest that democracy itself is the rock on which our society is built. But democracy, without the restraint of law and tradition, easily turns into a tyranny of the majority. It has no special virtue of its own, and with its intolerance of minorities and its tendency to elective dictatorship and crowd-pleasing it often threatens liberty, without which democracy is not all that much use. The Thatcherites seemed to think that the market could replace religion, a folly that hastened their downfall and left them morally and culturally empty. As for the left-wing virtues of the egalitarian social conscience, unlike individual conscience this tends to lead people to think that their acts of power and war are justified, not restrained, by the higher good they serve. In many ways they are more autocratic--if they get the chance--then any mediaeval Christian monarch would have dared to be. History, they proclaim, will forgive them.
Well, perhaps it will, though it’s not clear whether such forgiveness is worth having and it depends quite a lot on who writes the history. But history is better at giving warnings than at giving absolution, and what it seems to show is that our liberties, laws and safety do have quite a lot to do with the existence of the Church of England by Law Established — and that a country whose parliament says its prayers and where bishops sit, whatever their private romantic inclinations, will be a better place to live than one which does not have these advantages.
The eighth chapter of Life on the Mississippi reads like a parable on education. Mark Twain gave it a cleverly appropriate title, "Perplexing Dreams." Urged on by Mr. Bixby, an experienced river boat pilot, the narrator and cub pilot has "managed to pack my head full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends." One day when the boy has learned most of the names, Mr. Bixby turns on him.
'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'
He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm.
By and by he said,-
'My boy, you've got to know the shape of the river perfectly. It is all there is left to steer by on a very dark night....You learn it with such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's in your head, and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'
With no time to adjust to his new task, the cub pilot learns a further factor: that the river's shape keeps changing.
Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every twenty-four hours.
How much comment belongs here? The classroom teacher might have a hard time with this secular American version of Pilgrim's Progress. How far need a teacher go to pick out the name writ large over the whole book: The River of Life? Mark Twain is content to keep the reader laughing at Twain's bedraggled self as a boy. For us here at this early morning meeting to cogitate about cores and traditions in the humanities, Mark Twain has provided a vivid metaphor for education itself. To gain initiation into the culture, you have to know the shape of things, not the names only. We shall come back to Mr. Bixby in the wheelhouse sputtering at his inept pupil.
All of us here are concerned with these cultural rites of passage not only because we may be professional educators, but primarily because we are citizens and parents. I envision the challenge that faces us in education as a two-headed dragon demanding daily human sacrifice to keep it placated and to prevent it from devouring the city. One awful head stands for the tens of millions of young minds all over the country waiting to receive nourishment, an almost sensible hunger for some form of knowledge that will make life possible and worth living. The second head rearing up with gaping jaws represents the other side of the same situation. It symbolizes the nearly one thousand hours each student and each teacher must spend in a classroom every year, time occupied by the long battle between boredom and alertness.
These two insatiable mouths must be fed. You know as well as I the enormous obstacles that stand in our way. For two centuries now, well meaning and convinced educationalists have been telling us to allow children to follow their natural proclivities. The great defender of childhood as the period of natural freedom, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, invented a term that should have opened our eyes long ago to his program. "The first education must be purely negative" (Emile, Book II). He means that we should withhold any systematic or formal education, including reading, until the age of twelve. We have practiced negative education so effectively that today many students are admitted to college still unschooled and have to educate themselves six years too late, when their memories are slowing down, their doubts increasing. Rousseau devised negative education theory for a very special, highly tractable, and imaginary pupil with a full-time tutor and other privileges. Carried on by progressive schools, the misbegotten scheme of negative education intersects another present danger-not a theory but a mood. For thirty years we have been living through a series of searing national traumas. Three major assassinations and the crises of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra affair may have left us disenchanted with the still fragile progress we have made toward true democracy and equal justice. Is it worth trying to maintain a rigorous universal education in an open, pluralistic society?
I shall not answer for others. Response must come primarily as a declaration of personal faith in chosen ideals. What I can insist on is a principle that operates as inexorably in a society as it does in physics. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not provide adequate knowledge to fill those hungry minds and empty schoolroom hours, something else will. That something else may well be deadening and corrupting-estrangement, anomie, idle vandalism, drugs, crime, suicide. These things cannot be said too often. In schools more than anywhere else, we can make an effort to establish the principle of equal opportunity by leveling everyone upward as far as possible. Family upbringing and college education quite properly tend to increase inequalities. Free public schools constitute our only major institution serving both all individuals and the national interest.
Yet think for a moment. No authoritative document sets out what high school students should know. Powerful legal suits challenge school boards for doing their duty. Can we blame state boards of education for wobbling? One readily available reference is the booklet, Academic Preparation for College: What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do, published by the College Board (1983). In science and mathematics, the booklet describes fairly well-defined content requirements. In the humanities (English, the arts, and foreign languages) the emphasis falls entirely on what I call "empty skills"-to read, to write, to analyze, to describe, to evaluate. To what specifics or content are these skills to be applied?
Silence. Not a single work of art or literature is mentioned. One could surmise that basic academic competencies can be acquired by working with any materials at all. Still, someone will decide on substance; too often the buck is passed down to the individual teacher, who must fill all roles-planner, helper, taskmaster, and final judge. We are here to reflect on the question, "Is there a core tradition in the humanities?" Our answers should do something to help embattled teachers trying to maintain standards and should help put substance back into the humanities-and do so for the majority of students, not exclusively for the college-bound who read the College Board booklet.
The core of the humanities, as I envision it, is shaped less like the proverbial onion than like a simplified orange with three large sections or segments fitted closely together. My analysis leans inevitably toward a definition of culture, a term we have had in English in its general sense for barely a hundred years.
1. Official rituals and ceremonies and celebrations; monuments like the Statue of Liberty; the flag; the national anthem; the pledge of allegiance. These elements are mostly associated with some form of public enactment.
2. A loose, shared store of stories (legendary and historic); folklore (including proverbs); ideas and concepts; historical and presumed facts. This common knowledge may remain unwritten and orally transmitted.
3. A collection of concrete, lasting works (images, buildings, music, writings in poetry and prose) considered significant or revealed or great or beautiful.
All I ask of this schematic division is to help us deal with questions of content in education. Segment two, the common fund of lore and knowledge, corresponds to all the names cub pilot Mark Twain learned-and did well to learn-in order to begin to know the river. Segment three, the lasting works and particularly books used in schools, provide Mr. Bixby's "shape of the river"-never beheld all at once, endlessly changing, yet a shape held in the mind to refer to under the most difficult conditions. Reading is the principal activity that allows us to move between these two segments, a kind of two-way membrane or circuitry that makes the connections between an amorphous mass of materials and a collection of recognized forms. Reading gains pertinence when it mediates between our available cultural knowledge and another realm loosely called literature.
Schools are concerned with all three segments of the humanistic orange. Fortunately I am not going to have to talk about the whole fruit. Recently my colleague E. D. Hirsch at the University of Virginia published a book called Cultural Literacy. This intelligent synthesis of history of education, developmental psychology, and recent research on perception, memory, and reading eloquently reaffirms the principles of universal education in a democratic society. He diagnoses our national illness as a condition based on misguided educational theory after Rousseau and on a faulty conception of pluralism that dismisses a common culture. What Hirsch establishes persuasively is a truism we shouldn't have to be shown again.
But we do.
He had two phrases he repeated so often they remained in a student's mind.
He would say, "History must be told." He explained in various ways that history is to a civilization what personal memory is to an individual an essential part of identity and a source of meaning.
He also said that the goal of education is the citizen. He defined the citizen in a radical and original way arising out of his own twentieth-century experience. He said that a citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-create his civilization.
In a democracy such as ours the goal must be to have as many people as possible grasp their civilization this way, because they participate in the governing function either directly or indirectly and because they help to create the moral and cultural tone of the social environment we all share.
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.
Hoffer's contact with the publishing world probably began in 1938, when he read an issue of Common Ground, a magazine then seeking to interpret America to immigrants. Hoffer put together his notes in the form of a long letter to the editor, Louis Adamic. In the Hoover Archives there is a 30-page article entitled "Tramps and Pioneers," which is probably the article that Hoffer sent. The reply came from Adamic's assistant, Margaret Anderson, who said they could not publish it. But she forwarded it to an editor at the publishing house Harper & Brothers. The editor there, Eugene Saxon, suggested to Hoffer that he write his autobiography and submit that. But Hoffer said he wasn't interested in personal writing. There his literary career might have ended but for continued encouragement from Margaret Anderson. Eventually he sent the longhand manuscript of The True Believer to her, and she typed it and sent it to Harper & Brothers. (Three holograph drafts of The True Believer are in the Archives.)
One editor at Harper & Brothers, Evan Thomas, the son of Norman Thomas, considered the book "an extremely cynical work" and opposed publication. But another, John Fischer, found it "an important piece of original thinking and I very much hope we can work out a contract." Published in March 1951, the book was dedicated to Margaret Anderson, "without whose goading finger which reached me across a continent, this book would not have been written." Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "Mr. Hoffer flings dogmatic judgments in all directions. . . . He also tosses off maxims and aphorisms with the aplomb of La Rochefoucauld himself.? One such aphorism, cited then and more recently, summarizes the thesis of The True Believer: "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves." [...]
The early notebooks show that he was at first contemplating a second volume of The True Believer. Of particular interest, in light of subsequent developments, are his reflections on Jews, Arab history, and developments in the Middle East. Hoffer was strongly pro-Israel and was more interested in the Jews and in their influence on history than his published work indicates. Four entries from these notebooks will give the reader a flavor:
* You must read more about early Islam. The Muslim fanaticism was perhaps of a different nature from Christian fanaticism. The conversion to Islam was altogether different from the conversion to Christianity. (1950)
* The Muslim sea of open mouths does not roar hatred but clamors for pride. [In Iran], Mossadegh's defiance of the world is manna and ambrosia to souls starved for pride. (1952)
* The central fact is that the Arabs do not want peace proposals. They don't want concessions. They want Israel destroyed. (1977)
* Sadat's assassination made many things clear. The almost unemotional reaction of the Egyptian masses, so unlike that at the death of Nasser, suggested that the Arabs are affected more deeply by the pride of Arabism cultivated by Nasser than by the Egyptian nationalism and idealism advanced by Sadat. Anti-Israeli policies will have a powerful appeal in the Middle East for the balance of the century. It will be suicidal for the Israelis to believe in the possibility of a deep popular change. (1981)
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.
A corollary of the principle that a trade surplus is not inherently good is that a trade deficit is not inherently bad. To demonstrate this point, consider the case of a country that imports capital and runs a trade deficit. The nation gains from importing capital if the rate of return from the use of the imported capital exceeds its cost. Then, while present consumption remains the same, future consumption--net of interest payments to foreigners--will be greater than what would have been the case had capital not been imported. This was precisely the case of the United States for much of the nineteenth century, when we experienced persistent trade deficits with the rest of the world because we had to import much of our investment capital from overseas. These trade deficits laid the basis for the highly productive American industrial economy of the twentieth century. They clearly were worthwhile.
The trade deficits of the 1980s, during the Reagan years, provide an interesting special case of the principle that trade deficits can work for the general good. U.S. defense spending was high during this period because of President Reagan's desire to face down--and close down--the Soviet empire. The results have been more than gratifying--yet in part, at least, the U.S. defense buildup was financed by imports of foreign savings. Clearly, the trade deficits that financed the U.S. military buildups constituted a worthwhile use of borrowed funds even if the U.S. defense buildup was not the sole cause of the demise of the Soviet state.
Imported savings, of course, can be used to finance present consumption, in which case the trade deficits can be viewed as less benign. When savings are imported solely to increase present consumption, society passes on interest payments to future generations without a sufficient income stream from investments to support or finance them. Present consumption increases at the expense of future consumption. This probably is the case of present U.S. trade deficits and explains why many U.S. citizens are opposed to them. Note, however, that what troubles here are considerations of intergenerational equity--shifting the burden of increased present consumption onto future generations--not vague and misleading notions of flagging U.S. power and influence, as modern mercantilists misguidedly allege. The U.S. trade deficit may be unfair to future generations, but it is not a sign of American decline.
How does Powell's Feb. 5 indictment look today? He has said several times since then that he stands by it, the State Department said last week. Here is an Associated Press review of major elements, based both on what was known in February and what has been learned since:
-Satellite photos: Powell presented satellite photos of industrial buildings, bunkers and trucks, and suggested they showed Iraqis moving prohibited missiles and weapons to hide them. At two sites, he said trucks were "decontamination vehicles" associated with chemical weapons.
These and other sites had undergone 500 recent inspections. Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix had said a day earlier that his experts found no contraband and no sign that items had been moved. Nothing has been reported found since. [...]
-Scuds, new missiles: Powell said "intelligence sources" indicated Iraq had a secret force of up to a few dozen prohibited Scud-type missiles. He said it also had a program to build 600-mile-range missiles, and had roofed a test facility to block the view of spy satellites.
No Scud-type missiles have been reported found. In the 1990s, U.N. inspectors had reported accounting for all but two. No program for long-range missiles has been uncovered. Powell did not note that U.N. teams were repeatedly inspecting missile facilities, including looking under that roof, and reporting no violations.
Colombians had never seen anything like it. Sitting in an ornate room in the presidential palace on a recent Saturday morning was their president and his entire Cabinet, answering citizens' questions during a live television broadcast.
Wearing a blue blazer, President Alvaro Uribe listened attentively as the questions, praise, and criticism poured in, scribbling notes and frequently prodding his ministers to give better answers to callers. He didn't stop until shortly after midnight the following day - 14 hours and 50 minutes after the event began. "In a country with so many problems, it's still early," said Uribe, moments before wishing a good night to his bleary-eyed ministers and whoever else was still watching.
One year into his presidency, Uribe's insatiable work appetite and resolve in trying to end a 39-year conflict, revive a languid economy, and restore faith in government are becoming the stuff of legend and lore in Colombia.
"He has rekindled credibility and hope in the government," said Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former government peace commissioner who has criticized Uribe's policies.
When Shining Path guerrillas marched into this tiny hamlet deep in Peru's Andean jungle a fortnight ago, Tito Salazar's mind filled with images of neighbors hacked to death by rebels 20 years ago.
Able to muster just five useless, rust-caked rifles between them, the poor coffee farmer and his fellow villagers in these lush foothills looked on helplessly this time as the 70-strong, well-armed group of rebels vowed they meant no harm.
"'We are no longer terrorists, we are now guerrillas,' they told us. 'We are not going to kill you like before,"' Salazar said. Two days later he was mourning his brother Uldarico, blown up by the notorious Maoist rebels a few miles away.
The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso in Spanish, is slowly regrouping after lying dormant for much of the past decade since the capture of its leader. The government relaxed its guard after its success against the group and became preoccupied with other problems, giving rebels an opening.
As the rebels regather, Peru's poor farmers are trying to make a comeback with their own call to arms.
The trouble is, they don't have any.
"What we need are guns. Without them we have had it," said Salazar.
"If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He's already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people."
-- Al Gore, Dec. 16, 1998
THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL race seems to be carrying the Democratic Party in a dangerous direction on the issues of the Iraq war and national security -- dangerous for the nation and risky for the party too. Some of the candidates are more off course than others. If they listen to former vice president Al Gore, who took it upon himself last week to suggest a theme of attack for the nine candidates, they will all go off the cliff.
Mr. Gore, who not so long ago was describing Iraq as a "virulent threat in a class by itself," validated just about every conspiratorial theory of the antiwar left. President Bush, in distorting evidence about the Iraqi threat, was pursuing policies "designed to benefit friends and supporters." The war was waged "at least partly in order to ensure our continued access to oil." And it occurred because "false impressions" precluded the nation from conducting a serious debate before the war.
This notion -- that we were all somehow bamboozled into war -- is part of Mr. Gore's larger conviction that Mr. Bush has put one over on the nation, and not just with regard to Iraq.
Canada is a secular nation. I love you for that, beautiful Canada. Secularism means great things. Churchy people of any brand have no say in government, and that's all she wrote.
It was nice and cozy while it lasted, but the Bush administration's honeymoon with Cuban-American exiles was never likely to endure.
Cuban exiles are steaming over the White House's failure to deliver on its promises of a beefed-up policy toward Cuba. In particular, they are angry over the recent repatriation of Cuban asylum seekers picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Now Miami's Spanish-language airwaves are buzzing with talk of Republican betrayal. When a group of Cubans was sent back after trying to make it to Miami on a raft crafted from a 1951 Chevy truck, that inspired DJs at popular radio station El Sol 95 to come up with a catchy song accusing President Bush of turning "into a rat, just like Clinton."
The song concludes with a chorus line: "All together, let's scream: Bush is betraying us." [...]
[W]ashington has so far rejected the calls for policy change.
In fact, the newly appointed State Department chief for Latin America, Roger Noriega, was quoted last week as saying any shift in immigration policy for Cubans could invite a massive stampede from the island, as occurred in 1994.
Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry's last great charge and inventor of the tank Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war.
Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography. Gretchen Craft Rubin gives readers, in a single volume, the kind of rounded view usually gained only by reading dozens of conventional biographies.
With penetrating insight and vivid anecdotes, Rubin makes Churchill accessible and meaningful to twenty-first-century readers with forty contrasting views of the man: he was an alcoholic, he was not; he was an anachronism, he was a visionary; he was a racist, he was a humanitarian; he was the most quotable man in the history of the English language, he was a bore.
In crisp, energetic language, Rubin creates a new form for presenting a great figure of history-and brings to full realization the depiction of a man too fabulous for any novelist to construct, too complicated for even the longest narrative to describe, and too valuable ever to be forgotten.
Another actor - named Ronald Reagan - erupted on the California political scene 37 years ago, and one of his legacies was the "Reagan Democrat." These were blue-collar, New Deal Democrats who suddenly found themselves voting for a conservative Republican. Reagan Democrats transformed California politics, not only catapulting Reagan into the governorship twice but also helping elect him president twice.
Schwarzenegger's largest effect may be to bring to the polls another new class of voters - people who would ordinarily be expected to vote Democratic, if they voted at all. These voters, though also blue-collar, are probably younger than the Reagan Democrats; they are definitely alienated from politics. One reason that polling on Schwarzenegger's candidacy has been difficult is that pollsters don't know whom to ask. Schwarzenegger's supporters may be "below-the-screen" voters, the same people who elected professional wrestler Jesse Ventura governor of Minnesota. [...]
Between 1966 - the year Reagan was elected governor - and 1994, the California Democratic Party lost six races for governor because Reagan Democrats crossed over in the voting booth. Not until the Reagan Democrat passed into history in the late 1990s did the Democrats again reassert themselves in California politics.
The newly emerging Arnold Democrat is as socially liberal to libertarian as the Reagan Democrat was socially conservative. He or she may well be an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. But one thing seems certain: The Arnold Democrat poses every bit as much of a threat to the California Democratic Party as the Reagan Democrat did decades ago.
Clearly, the primary engine behind Schwarzenegger's fortune, whatever its size, was a huge upswing in his movie earnings, beginning with "Twins," released by Universal Pictures in 1988. The comedy, the action star's first, is a testament to his business instinct.
In what was then a highly unusual deal, he decided to forgo any upfront fee in return for 15% of the studio's receipts - an arrangement that boosted his take to an enormous $30 million when the audiences bought in.
"Arnold bet on himself," said producer Tom Pollock, who ran Universal at the time. "If the movie went out and bombed, he would have made much less."
Schwarzenegger appears to have received a total of at least $300 million from his next 13 films, culminating with this year's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."
If much of that money went to taxes and agents' and lawyers' cuts, the balance nonetheless provided capital for the investments that have become a growing preoccupation.
Among Schwarzenegger's business credentials, according to his official Web site, is a degree in "business and international economics" from the University of Wisconsin, Superior.
Beth George, a spokeswoman for the university, said the star graduated through the school's extended degree program, in which he completed correspondence courses and some on-campus work in what she identified as a tailor-made major - "international marketing of fitness and business administration."
Under the program's rules, he was given credit (George declined to say how much) for prior life experience.
Some who have done business with Schwarzenegger maintain that his grasp of complex numbers and deal points is impressive.
"He's not a Terminator when it comes to how he handles complex situations. He's more an analyzer than a Terminator," said Cox Castle and Nicholson's Mario Camara, a Los Angeles real estate attorney who has negotiated with Schwarzenegger several times on behalf of developers with properties for sale.
Camara is one of several people who said Schwarzenegger tends to restrict his non-Hollywood dealings to those with whom he is familiar.
In Camara's words: "Arnold only does business with people that he's known for a while. It's a form of due diligence."
Thus, Schwarzenegger has remained involved with Jim Lorimer, a decades-long associate, with whom he operates Columbus' Fitness Expo.
"Our 28-year partnership was made on a handshake, and we've never had a contract," Lorimer said.
Miss Rice rarely plays on her upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama - a hotbed of racial strife in the Sixties, culminating in the fatal bombing of a black church. However, addressing the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas, she used that personal history to issue a direct challenge to all those critical of the Bush administration's ambitions in Iraq and beyond.
"Like many of you, I grew up around the home-grown terrorism of the 1960s. I remember the bombing of the church in Birmingham in 1963, because one of the little girls that died was a friend of mine," she said.
Black Americans should stand by others seeking freedom today, she went on, and shun the "condescending" argument that some races or nations were not interested in or ready for Western freedoms.
"We've heard that argument before. And we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it," she said. "That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."
[L]ast Wednesday night. I was invited to interview a rising progressive Iraqi Shiite cleric, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, at his home on the banks of the Tigris. It was the most exciting conversation I've had on three trips to postwar Iraq. I listened to Mr. Jamaleddine eloquently advocate separation of mosque and state and lay out a broad, liberal agenda for Iraq's majority Shiites. As we sat down for a meal of Iraqi fish and flat bread, he introduced me to a small, black-turbaned cleric who was staying as his houseguest.
"Mr. Friedman, this is Sayyid Hussein Khomeini" - the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution.
Mr. Khomeini told me he had left the Iranian spiritual center of Qum to meet with scholars in the Iraqi Shiite spiritual centers of Karbala and Najaf. He, too, is a progressive, he explained, and he intends to use the freedom that the U.S. invasion has created in Iraq to press for real democratic reform in Iran. Now I understand why his grandfather once threw him in jail for a week. He has Ayatollah Khomeini's fiery eyes and steely determination, but the soul of a Muslim liberal.
The 46-year-old Mr. Khomeini said he's currently advocating a national referendum in Iran to revoke the absolute religious and political powers that have been grabbed by Iran's clergy. But in other interviews here, he was quoted as saying that Iran's hard-line clerical rulers were "the world's worst dictatorship," who have been exploiting his grandfather's name and the name of Islam "to continue their tyrannical rule." He and Mr. Jamaleddine told me their first objective was to open Shiite seminaries and schools in Iraq to teach their ideas to the young generation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have no idea whether these are the only two liberal Shiite clerics in Iraq. People tell me they definitely are not. Either way, their willingness to express their ideas publicly is hugely important. It is, for my money, the most important reason we fought this war: If the West is going to avoid a war of armies with Islam, there has to be a war of ideas within Islam. The progressives have to take on both the religious totalitarians, like Osama bin Laden, and the secular totalitarians who exploit Islam as a cover, like Saddam Hussein. We cannot defeat their extremists, only they can. This war of ideas needs two things: a secure space for people to tell the truth and people with the courage to tell it. That's what these two young clerics represent, at least in potential. [...]
But if the U.S. does not create a secure environment and stable economy in Iraq, their voices will never get through.
A number of you have already asked about the upcoming "close encounter" with Mars, so I've checked into the story behind it. Here's the basic facts in Q&A format:
[Q:] Is it true that this will be the closest pass of Mars in 60,000 years?
[A:] Yes. Based on calculations of planetary orbits, it appears that on August 27 of this year, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been at any time since 57,538 BC, which is just shy of 60,000 years ago.
[Q:] So is this really "the best opportunity to observe Mars in 60,000 years"?
[A:] Technically yes, but in reality Mars passes almost as close to Earth about every 15-17 years, and the difference between this pass and other close passes is too little to really notice.
[Q:] Will the close pass affect Earth?
[A:] Remember that "close" is a relative term. Mars will pass 55.758 million kilometers (34.6 million miles) from Earth. That's still roughly 150 times farther away than the Moon. Other than being bright in the sky, this close pass of Mars will not have any effect on Earth whatsoever. (For example, the tidal effect of Mars at this distance is roughly a million times weaker than the tidal effect we feel from the Moon.)
[Q:] Is it worth observing?
[A:] Sure! Even if other close passes are just about as good, they come almost two decades apart. So this will be one of a handful of "best" opportunities to view Mars in your lifetime.
[Q:] How do I go about viewing Mars?
[A:] If you go out on a clear night right now, you can't miss it - Mars is the bright red object in your sky. Viewing will remain good through September, peaking on the August 27 close pass date. If you want to observe Mars through a small telescope, check out this article from Sky and Telescope: S&T Article
With one day left for candidates to qualify for the Oct. 7 recall election, former Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth said Friday he would run, while actor Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up the help of former Gov. Pete Wilson and a nod from President Bush. [...]
The film star's advisers, many of whom once worked in the Wilson administration, said the former GOP governor had signed on to co-chair the Schwarzenegger campaign.
Former Wilson advisers now on board include political consultant George Gorton, who ran Wilson's campaigns in 1990 and 1994; former press secretary Sean Walsh; and advertising consultant Don Sipple.
Wilson, the state's last Republican governor, brings a seasoned campaign team and status to Schwarzenegger's inaugural journey as a political candidate, particularly among fellow Republicans.
"Although Pete Wilson is radioactive with a lot of people, he still carries weight with Republican officeholders and activists," said John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont Mc-Kenna College.
"This is an all-out effort to make Schwarzenegger the Republican. He is now Conan the Republican."
"I am terribly scared of a Russian prison or Russian court for my son," Amina Khasanova was quoted as saying by Gazeta newspaper on Friday.
"At Guantanamo they treat him humanely, the conditions are fine."
Her son Andrei Bakhitov is one of eight Russian detainees, and the newspaper quoted a letter he wrote to his mother.
"I think that there is not even a health resort in Russia on the level of this place," the letter said.
A survey has confirmed the long-held belief that men spend much of their time day-dreaming about sex.
But the fast pace of modern life leaves them too tired for the real thing.
In fact, given the chance of an extra hour in bed, most working men say they would rather spend it asleep than having sex.
When Blair accepted the leadership after making a deal with Gordon Brown, he said to his party: “I will tell you what our task is. It is not just a programme for government. It is a mission of national renewal: a mission of hope, change and opportunity.”
A year later, in October 1995 at the party conference in Brighton, Blair effectively tried to create a new political party. He told conference: “The prize is immense. It is new Britain … New Labour, New Britain. The party renewed, the country reborn.”
Wilson, like Blair, wanted a reinvention of Britain, using science and technology to transform it. During the 1964 campaign he promised the “big idea” would be driven by people “with fire in their belly and humanity in their hearts”. [...]
Blair’s continuing appetite for reform can be paralleled with Wilson’s personal belief that he was a moderniser, intent on using a reformed Whitehall to stimulate economic growth based on applied science allied with an “applied” revision of ministerial government that included setting up a ministry of technology and a department of economic affairs.
Ministers now joke about the electronic bleepers controlled by Alastair Campbell and how much Blair’s spinmeister tries to keep everyone on-message, but Wilson during the 1966 election campaign began that style of control. All speeches that year had to be cleared with Number 10 “in order to co-ordinate the presentation of the government’s policies”. The text sounds like a prototype of the bible of spin.
Although Wilson never carried the ideological baggage associated with the classical ideal of socialism, he always thought it crucial to maintain links with the left. Blair does much the same thing. The annual party conference has seen Blair corner the power of the organised left, stifle criticism, turn the gathering into a yearly love-in of Labour in power, but at the same time moves are always made to pacify the activists and remind them that old Labour is still safe in the hands of New Labour.
As one MP claims: ‘‘This is where Blair’s hijacking of the party is at its most brilliant. Wilson had years of strife from the unions, everything from incomes policy to the battle over reform on union rights. Blair inherited a union movement that Thatcher had castrated. But rather than offer union rejuvenation, Blair has benefited in his six years in power from their lack of power. But just as the unions ultimately destroyed Wilson at the end of the 1960s, the unions can still make life difficult for Blair.’’
Speaking with voters in their districts in recent weeks, members of California's Democratic congressional delegation quickly sensed trouble: Gov. Gray Davis was in real danger of losing the recall.
So as state and national party leaders settled on a strategy of uniting behind Davis and keeping all other Democrats off the Oct. 7 ballot, many of the state's 33 congressional Democrats developed a strategy of their own: revolt.
In public criticism and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the House Democrats pushed hard for a backup Democratic candidate to be on the ballot. Instead, they got two -- Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi. Now the delegation is leading an effort to get the party to coalesce behind one of them in hopes of keeping the governor's office in Democratic hands. [...]
But perhaps more important, congressional Democrats don't have the same concerns about speaking out against Davis as their colleagues in state government, said Bruce Cain, a political-science professor at the University of California-Berkeley. State legislators have to worry that an angered Davis might veto their legislation. And all state elected officials have to worry about crossing powerful California unions backing the governor, Cain said.
Those unions focus their money and effort on state issues, not federal. The California Teachers Association, for example, contributed $3.2 million in 2002 to state candidates and groups. During the same period, the union gave just $55,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
John Bolton might be termed an old hand. The US under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, a Yale-educated lawyer, has held a string of senior posts in the state and justice departments. By any yardstick, he is an experienced if conservative-minded diplomat of some gravitas who, it must be assumed, knows what he is doing. But according to an official North Korean statement this week, Bolton is "human scum".
Even by Pyongyang's astringent rhetorical standards, this is strong stuff. It constituted a reply in kind to a stunningly splenetic tirade delivered by Bolton in Seoul three days earlier that amounted to a fierce, personal attack on Kim Jong-il.
North Korea's leader was a tyrannical despot and extortionist who "lives like royalty", Bolton said, while hundreds of thousands of his people were locked up and millions more endured a life of "hellish nightmare... scrounging the ground for food in abject poverty". For good measure, Bolton also attacked the UN for not facing up to its responsibilities - a familiar theme for students of the Iraq crisis.
It is quite likely that insomniacs, early-risers and other unorthodox music television viewers recently thought they were hallucinating. There they were, minding their own business, watching a few killer barbie girls vying for screen time with hyperkinetic heavy metal dudes - the usual music tv thing - when all of a sudden the whole pop scene imploded, revealing a barren landscape filled with people leading meagre existences. On screen, images of an obviously female trio tinkering about with microphones and a drum kit were followed by flashes of street scenes from Kabul reminiscent of a hastily shot amateur video. It is impossible to see just who these women are because all three of them are wearing burkas.
In this media age, the irony of it all is that Afghanistan's first pop group is actually faceless. "My mother wears a burka, my father wears it too, I have to wear a burka, the burka it is blue". These are just some of the lyrics performed by the band in broken English to the rhythm of a stubborn drumbeat. It is also the only bit of personal information given. But the burka - which Afghan women have been obliged to wear since the victory of the Taliban - is not the only veil in this video: in an industry where journalists are usually overwhelmed with more information than they know what to do with, this video also features a veil that blocks communication and has to be drawn back. The singers can't be reached by phone; only the most important people in Kabul have phones. And while there is an e-mail address by which the burka band can supposedly be reached in a rather roundabout way, my e-mail initially goes unanswered.
Then one day, an answer pops up in my in-box: "Yes, it's ironic," it reads. The writer goes on to say that the video was indeed intended to be a sort of play on the obligatory burka. "No never," is the answer given to the question as to whether some women are already wearing the burka like a costume in their day-to-day lives. And how does it feel to have passed such a milestone in setting up Afghanistan'??s first girl group? "Actually we did it just for fun and we are not real singers". This is certainly no chit-chat. The young woman fromKabul who doesn't want to be named for fear of reprisals - let's call her Faranaz - tells me in concise sentences that while officially it's no longer obligatory to wear the burka, many women still do; that it is still unthinkable for a women without a burka to appear on television; that she's heard of Madonna but as an amateur singer, can't pass any judgement on her. In fact, Faranaz's longest sentence is about fear: in it she says that while there is music in Afghanistan nowadays, a bomb exploded recently in the Paghman district killing two musicians and several guests at a party.
To find out more about the casting of the burka band, it was necessary to contact German voluntary overseas workers. Frank Fenstermacher from the band A Certain Frank explains that the idea arose during a
trip to the Panschir valley.
It began in Kabul as a joke, but with the help of a few German musicians Afghanistan's all-girl rock group "Burqa Band" was formed in the space of a day and has hit the airwaves and clubs in Germany.
All that remains of the ephemeral alliance of the Burqa and rock is an amateur video clip and a song remixed by Berlin DJ Barbara Morgenstern which has become a modest summer-time favourite.
The female trio appears on screen as three blue ghosts in a makeshift studio in Kabul; bound by their robes they nevertheless let it all hang out on the drums, electric bass and microphone.
"You give me all your love, you give me all your kisses, and then you touch my burqa, and don't know who it is..." the lead singer moans in halting but determined English.
"Burqa, burqa bluuueee" they sing, in ironic lyrics that still manage to tell the tale of how Afghan women were oppressed by the former Taliban regime.
State party officials said Mr. Schwarzenegger's bid to replace Governor Davis, who faces a recall election on Oct. 7, has had the instant effect of drawing star-struck volunteers to the party's doorstep. Mr. Schwarzenegger also got a favorable nod on Friday from President Bush, who said, "I think he'd be a good governor."
But conservatives like Lyn Nofziger, who worked for both Governor Reagan and President Reagan, approach Mr. Schwarzenegger with a certain level of suspicion about his Republican credentials.
"I think he faces a real difficult task," Mr. Nofziger said. "He still has to convince at least half of his party, and probably more than that, that he is the kind of leader that they want to follow."
The problem for Mr. Schwarzenegger is that he is perceived as a moderate in a party that still largely sees Ronald Reagan and his conservative revolution as its raison d'?tre. Mr. Schwarzenegger has expressed support for abortion rights, gay rights and some gun control. He is considered by many on the right as soft on immigration. During the impeachment of President Clinton, he was quoted as saying he was embarrassed to be a Republican. Last fall, he took a beating on conservative talk-radio shows for leading a ballot initiative that expanded state financing of after-school programs.
Conservatives point out that Mr. Schwarzenegger's vehicle for entering the state's political sweepstakes - the recall against Mr. Davis - was a grass-roots uprising among ordinary conservatives, made viable by the bank account of a millionaire conservative, Representative Darrell Issa of San Diego, who differs with many of Mr. Schwarzenegger's views. (Mr. Issa dropped out of the race on Thursday.)
"If he gets elected, and the recall is a convenient adjunct to his candidacy, then it is not going to work," said Mr. Khachigian, who was advising Mr. Issa. "He has to realize that this is a true rebellion. It is a Republican and conservative rebellion."
Mr. Schwarzenegger also steps into the political ring with virtually none of the preparation of Mr. Reagan.
When Mr. Reagan ran for governor in 1966, he had not only been a well-known actor, the host of a popular Sunday television show and a dashing figure around Los Angeles, but a visible Republican activist across the country.
Lou Cannon, whose new book, Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power, will be published next month, said Mr. Reagan's entry into elective politics was a foregone conclusion after the defeat of the Republican presidential nominee Barry M. Goldwater in 1964. As early as the 1950's, Mr. Cannon said, Mr. Reagan had been approached about running for Congress.
"After Goldwater got walloped, there weren't a lot of Republicans on the scene," Mr. Cannon said. "The only real question Reagan himself had was what office to run for, whether it should be governor. Reagan's focus had been on national issues."
In an atmosphere that hovered between carnival and chaos, Democratic leaders here today quarreled over how best to beat back the drive to recall Gov. Gray Davis.
Some Democrats, embodying the contortions their party is going through, said they were prepared to keep fighting the recall while still endorsing a Democrat to replace Mr. Davis.
His aides, along with some state and national Democratic leaders, insisted that the party should focus all its efforts on persuading Californians to reject the recall. They argued that endorsing another Democrat would amount to a vote of no confidence in Mr. Davis and further undercut his tenuous hold on power.
But the 33 members of state's Democratic Congressional delegation, led by Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, were said tonight to be likely to reject that argument in favor of a two-pronged strategy: to oppose the ouster of Mr. Davis while endorsing Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante to replace him.
And several other Democrats, in a clear sign of dwindling confidence in Mr. Davis's position, said they were prepared to follow that lead in an effort to try to block Republicans from gaining the governorship of the most populous state the year before a presidential election.
Not only did the findings deserve headlines, the Pew poll offered valuable details to aid much needed analysis. For example, some Muslim leaders blamed negative statements by conservative Christian leaders for the shift in perceptions of Islam. But the poll showed that white Catholics had shifted in their views as much as white evangelicals - and that people identified as "seculars," not the sort to be captivated by Pat Robertson or the Rev. Jerry Falwell, had shifted even more.
Less frequently noted in news reports was the finding that few Americans were distressed at political leaders' God-talk. In fact, the poll's sponsors point out, "nearly twice as many say there has been too little reference to religious faith and prayer by politicians (41 percent) than say there has been too much (21 percent)."
Almost two-thirds of the sample thought President Bush mentions his faith "about the right amount," compared with the 14 percent who said "too much."
But how do Americans react when faced not with a question about political leaders' use of religious references in general but with an actual example, like Attorney General John Ashcroft's declaration, "Unique among nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal"?
The poll asked whether respondents were "comfortable or uncomfortable" with that statement and three others. Half of the sample were told the source of each statement, and half were not. The only statement getting more "uncomfortable" (49 percent) than "comfortable" (44 percent) responses was "I have never believed the Constitution required our schools to be religion-free zones. . . ."
But among those informed that the source of this statement was President Bill Clinton, the reaction was quite different: 59 percent comfortable, 34 percent uncomfortable. [...]
Possibly the most intriguing finding to go largely unreported was what the pollsters called "an important and often overlooked fact of American politics: African-Americans and white evangelical Christians are remarkably similar in their views about the role of religion in politics, yet they come to sharply different partisan conclusions."
Two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants think that churches should weigh in on day-to-day social and political issues. An even higher percentage of black Protestants agree. Similar percentages of the two groups would like to see more religious leaders serving as advisers to elected officials.
African-American Protestants come second only to white evangelicals - and well ahead of other groups - in saying that they frequently rely on their religious beliefs in deciding how to vote. The two groups line up the same way in expressing reluctance to vote for an atheist for president and in viewing Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus. White evangelicals and African-Americans are the two groups whose views on gay marriage have remained virtually unchanged.
As with the mechanical habit of driving a car, the social habit of marriage needs to be internalized when young, and thereafter not thought about too much.
But that, of course, is the pre-postmodern way of doing things. We are all intellectuals today, encouraged to think about everything all the time - think, and analyze, and "deconstruct." Every man a philosopher, all worshippers at the Temple of Reason. Now, reason is certainly a very fine thing. I spent much of 2002 hobnobbing with mathematicians, and I think you will walk a long mile to find someone who has more respect for the power of reason than I have. However, there are regions of life, thought and behavior that are beyond reason's s cope, and ought to stay there.
It was, after all, the pursuit of pure reason that led to a crisis in philosophy 250 years ago, when the British empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and Hume took the "deconstruction" of everyday experience as far as it can be taken. The end point of this particular line of inquiry was reached by David Hume, who, after thinking long and hard about mind and matter, came to the conclusion that no such things could possibly exist. Hume then turned and laughed at himself, and at what he had accomplished by all that thinking:
"This sceptical doubt ... is a malady, which can never be radically cur'd, but must return upon us every moment, however we may chace it away ... Carelessness and in-attention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon them; and take it for granted, whatever may be the reader's opinion at this present moment, that an hour hence he will be persuaded there is both an external and an internal world..."
It would be nice if we could get back to that innocent state of society in which things like marriage were not thought about too much, just taken for granted with "carelessnes and in-attention." Innocence, unfortunately, is well-known to be a thing that, once lost, is impossible to recapture.
Or perhaps not. In the middle of writing out the above, and intending to proceed to a satisfyingly pessimistic conclusion, I happened to read the August 2003 Notices of the American Mathematical Society. That excellent journal has a review, by math professor Michael Harris, of a book titled Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, by Serbian-Canadian mathematician-philosopher-novelist Vladimir Tasic. (Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.)
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.
The Real IRA leader who masterminded the Omagh bombing faces life imprisonment after he was found guilty of directing terrorism.
Michael McKevitt is the first person to be convicted in the Republic of Ireland under legislation introduced weeks after the atrocity in the quiet County Tyrone market town that killed 29 people in 1998.
The star prosecution witness was a US truck company boss who came to Ireland on a girlfriend's whim and ended up falling in love with the country. As Dave Rupert's business faced ruin, he risked his life to infiltrate one of the world's most dangerous terrorist groups and is now the reason McKevitt is behind bars.
For years, he played two roles: the hardline republican sympathiser willing to use his US connections to further the terrorist cause, and an eagle-eyed double agent, tapping out every detail of his Irish friends' moves in coded emails to the FBI and British intelligence. Mr Rupert jokingly described himself as a "whore" who would work for anyone if the price was right, but he insisted it was moral conviction that drove him to spy on dissident republicans, and a heart-wrenching television documentary about the Omagh bombing that spurred him to testify against McKevitt.
His conscience is set to make him a very rich man. He collected a total of E750,000 ($1.86 million) from US and British security agencies and could make millions from a book about his experiences. But he has been in a witness protection scheme since he agreed to testify and will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
Uzair Paracha, 23, detained as a material witness since his March arrest in New York, waved and smiled to more than a dozen family members as he entered U.S. District Court in Manhattan for a brief appearance. He was held pending a bail hearing next week.
According to the criminal complaint, Paracha agreed to help the al-Qaida associate obtain documents that would let him enter the United States and help him obtain legal immigration status. The government has not released the associate's identity but say the man has remained overseas.
Anthony Ricco, Paracha's lawyer, said outside court that his client was manipulated into helping the associate and was looking forward to a trial to prove that he had no criminal intent.
He described Paracha as ''a very bright, but, I say, a very naive young man'' and added that he did not expect to contest that his client knew the associate was in al-Qaida.
''Having knowledge someone is in al-Qaida is not a criminal act,'' Ricco said. ''Many members of al-Qaida are not involved in criminal activity.''
Christian groups are proliferating so fast that they now outnumber official Buddhist organisations.
But to Mongolia's conservative Buddhist elite, such rapid growth is deeply troubling.
Some Christian groups now accuse the government of orchestrating a campaign to prevent them gaining new converts.
It is a charge which Mongolia's devoutly Buddhist Prime Minister Enkbayar strongly denies.
But he did acknowledge concern about the arrival of these new foreign religious groups in his once Buddhist country.
"Religious differences are very difficult to solve, because all religions express themselves in terms of ultimate truth," he said.
These young Mongolians have found their truth, and it lies in a new foreign god.
The question facing the country now is whether traditional Buddhism, in its critically weakened state, will withstand the foreign onslaught - or whether Christianity will peacefully succeed where communism so brutally failed.
The secret to a successful marriage can be found in a mathematical formula, according to American researchers, who believe they can use equations to predict a newlywed couple's chances for marital bliss.
Researchers at the University of Washington have devised two formulas that they say allows them to predict, with a 94% success rate, whether a new marriage will last. And all it takes is a 15-minute interview.
The formulas used to detect newlywed joy or disaster were publicly presented for the first time this week by mathematician Dr. James Murray, who spoke at the Mathematical Biology Conference at Dundee University in Scotland. [...]
Participants were asked to discuss contentious marital issues, such as money, sex or children. The couple's ability to discuss the issue was evaluated according to a mathematical scale that awarded positive points for good signals and negative points for bad signals.
Bad signals included rolling of the eyes, criticism or mockery of one's partner, as well as displays of coldness and negativity. Positive signs included displays of humour, positive vocal tone, smiles and affectionate gestures. [...]
The results of the observations were used to develop an equation for both husbands and wives and each couple was contacted every two years to ascertain the state of their marriage. Researchers say they were able to predict the success or failure of each couple with an accuracy of almost 94%. [...]
Our society is marriage-obsessed and naturally inclined to believe in marital perfection, said Julie Rak, an English professor and popular culture expert at the University of Alberta.
Ms. Rak said people often make decisions in their lives according to a formula our culture dictates, including when to get married, when to have kids and custom-based beliefs such monogamy and the search for one ideal partner.
"We learn from a very early age that there there is only one person in the world for us, which is mathematically ridiculous," Ms. Rak said.
"There are so many paradoxes around the idea of Jewish tradition," said Jonathan Rosen, an author who was for 10 years the culture editor of The Forward, the Jewish weekly, and is now working with Nextbook. "What is a Jewish book? For some people Jewish literature starts with Sholom Aleichem and ends with Philip Roth. The Forward was a Yiddish newspaper for general readership, and then it was in English. What does that mean? Tradition itself is full of abrupt transformations."
Nextbook, based in New York, will use literature to introduce the tradition - or at least the transformations - to people who have not shown a particular interest in either. It is distributing reading lists of 300 titles (more will follow), along with the books themselves, to public libraries.
There is also a lively Web site, nextbook.org, orchestrated by Blake Eskin, another author who used to work at The Forward. His models are online digests like Arts Journal (artsjournal.com) and Romenesko (poynter.org/medianews), aggregates of information on particular subjects. Drawing on a wide variety of publications and other sources - highbrow and low, left and right, Jewish and secular, domestic and
foreign - Mr. Eskin evokes the spirit of an earlier age, when the Jewish intelligentsia argued the world in coffeehouses or in living rooms. [...]
"We thought public libraries could be a nonthreatening gateway that Jews could easily enter to learn about themselves," said Arthur Fried, who helps run Keren Keshet-the Rainbow Foundation, established in a bequest by Zalman C. Bernstein. Bernstein, formerly Sanford C. Bernstein, accumulated a fortune on Wall Street and changed his name to Zalman as part of a late-in-life embrace of Orthodox Judaism.
"Some Jews don't want to enter through a synagogue or a Jewish community center or any of the regular channels," Mr. Fried said. Mr. Rosen was hired to help conceive Nextbook and a series of short books about historic Jewish figures and subjects, to be published by Schocken Books, an imprint of Alfred A. Knopf. The series will include Robert Pinsky writing on King David, Sherwin Nuland on Maimonides and Leon Wieseltier on messianism.
It used to be only the Taliban who so opposed kite flying that they ordered it banned. The extremist mullahs who ruled Afghanistan believed the sight of skies filled with small, paper kites was somehow un-Islamic. On the day the Taliban finally fled Kabul, the kites returned to the skies of the Afghan capital as a symbol of celebration.
Now, to the astonishment of many, the ban has re-emerged in Lahore, the steamy, liberal, cultural heart of Pakistan. Last month, Mian Aamer Mahmood, the head of the city council, ordered a three-month ban on kite flying. Illegal kite flyers, he warned, faced prosecution. The skies above the city's large parks have been empty ever since.
Mr Mahmood's officials insisted the ban was motivated purely by concerns of safety. Kite flying in Pakistan is frequently more a competition than a hobby. Flyers pit their kites against each other in skilled attempts to cut their rival's strings. Bets are occasionally laid, and to gain advantage most flyers buy string which has been specially soaked in a ground-glass and occasionally ground-metal paste that hardens to make the string slice like a knife. Some even use wire strings.
But in the crowded streets of Lahore's old city, the kite strings are as much a liability as an entertainment. City officials say at least 45 people have died of kite-related injuries in the past six months. Many of them were young boys whose wire strings hit electrical power lines, causing short circuits. Occasionally motorcyclists are garrotted by fallen wire strings and dozens of kite flyers sustain serious cuts to their fingers.
"A game should be a game and not a source of danger to the public," Mr Mahmood said. The temporary ban is intended to give city officials time to consider how to tackle the problem in the future.
A high-ranking al-Qaeda operative in custody disclosed that Iraq supplied the Islamist militant group with material to build chemical and biological weapons, the White House said today.
"A senior al-Qaeda terrorist, now detained, who had been responsible for al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, reports that al-Qaeda was intent on obtaining (weapons of mass destruction) assistance from Iraq," the White House said in a report.
The 25 page document was released as US President George W Bush holidayed at his Texas ranch.
The Bush administration cited links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Baath party regime as justification for attacking Iraq to oust Saddam. The administration also insisted Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons.
The report quoted the unnamed prisoner as saying al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden turned to Iraq after concluding his group could not produce chemical or biological weapons on its own in Afghanistan.
"Iraq agreed to provide chemical and biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda associates starting in December 2000," the report said.
More than 200 sailors, including many who served the Navy in the war in Iraq, were sworn in yesterday as U.S. citizens.
The sailors applied for citizenship under an executive order President Bush issued last year. Under the order, immigrants serving in the military since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks are eligible for naturalization immediately.
"When I look at you, I see myself," said Eduardo Aguirre, director of the federal Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who recalled that he came to America at age 15, a Cuban refugee in search of a better life.
Aguirre administered an oath of allegiance to 222 sailors in a ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, docked in Norfolk.The new citizens hail from 51 countries, Albania to Ukraine.
For Californians, the recent report from the Census Bureau was a shocker. From 1990 to 2000, the Census found, the number of Californians leaving the state was greater than the number of those arriving from other states - a first.
Even during the high-tech boom, people left. From 1995 to 2000, 1.4 million Americans moved to California. But 2.2 million left.
"Unprecedented" is how Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, described the trend to the Los Angeles Times. Sadly, we agree. And it's not a good thing.
California's image has long been built around it being a place of refuge for the creative, the restless, the underappreciated, the hard-working - a place where people, whatever their pasts, could remake themselves and create a better life.
During the 20th century, Americans from other states poured into California. And the once tiny, underpopulated farm state grew into a giant of 35 million people, with the fifth largest economy on Earth.
Now many of those who helped build the miracle are leaving.
A motorcade driving Gov. Gray Davis to Los Angeles was clocked going 94 mph by a California Highway Patrol officer who pursued the cars for five miles until
members of the governor's security detail identified themselves, sources said Friday.
The chase occurred Aug. 2 on a two-lane portion of California 46 in San Luis Obispo County known as "Blood Alley," because at least 29 people have died after traffic accidents there since 1998. Movie actor James Dean was killed on the same stretch in 1955.
A spokesman for Davis refused to comment on the incident, referring questions to Highway Patrol Commissioner D.O. "Spike" Helmick.
Helmick said he would not discuss issues relating to the governor's security. But he said that he had formally reprimanded an unidentified CHP sergeant in charge of the motorcade because traffic laws had been broken.
He said the motorcade had been carrying a "dignitary" but would not elaborate. Sources said the passenger was Davis.
CHP officials said motorcade officers must obey traffic laws, just like any other motorist, unless there is an emergency.
On Sept. 11, America paid a terrible price for not doing more to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in the late 1980's. It cannot afford to repeat that mistake.
Israeli politicians have begun gearing up for a battle of succession as Prime Minister Sharon struggles against a mounting wave of legal investigations and charges of corruption that could potentially drown his political career, perhaps in the coming months.
During the last two weeks, hardly a day has gone by without another serious blow to Sharon's image and standing. The prime minister is described by ministers, officials and close observers as increasingly preoccupied and short-tempered, as befits a man who, so goes the growing speculation among insiders, has begun to fear that the end is nigh.
The attorney general and the state comptroller, considered the government's guardians of public propriety, this week formally and scathingly declared that Sharon had acted "gravely" by disregarding a clear-cut conflict of interest between his official capacities and his personal interests in a real estate case. But that was the least of Sharon's problems. Two separate criminal investigations, involving illegal campaign financing and possible bribe-taking, are rapidly converging on Sharon's two sons, Gilad and Omri, and from there, according to authoritative police sources, on to the prime minister himself. Even if he emerges without a formal indictment, political analysts now say Sharon's tenure might soon buckle under the accumulated weight of the various investigations and charges against him.
Likud politicians seen as leading candidates to replace Sharon, should he be forced to resign, have begun discreetly but frantically cultivating the party's regulars, trying to position themselves for a possible fight for the throne in the very near future. Former prime minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though hurt by his unpopular economic austerity program, is still considered to be the frontrunner, especially if no new elections are called. Without new elections, a new prime minister must be drawn from the current Knesset, ruling out the popular Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. The main challenger to Netanyahu would then be Deputy Prime Minister and Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert, assuming he is not indicted himself.
I always say politicians are cowards, and they really are,'' Stephen Moore told me recently. ''We say we're going to run someone against them, and they start wetting their pants.''
Moore, the president of a group of zealous economic conservatives known as the Club for Growth, was talking about Arlen Specter, a giant of the United States Senate and the only Republican moderate in the Senate leadership. Specter is running for a fifth term next year in Pennsylvania, but he now finds himself facing an unexpected, potentially serious primary challenge from the party's right flank. That challenge, from a brash conservative congressman from industrial Allentown named Patrick Toomey, is being engineered by the Club for Growth, whose 10,000 members, most of them gray-suited bankers and businessmen, seem to be on a mission to banish taxes from the earth. Moore has vowed revenge on Republican incumbents who don't worship at his antitax altar -- he calls them ''Republicans in Name Only,'' or ''Rinos'' -- and unseating Specter, he says, is his top priority.
Although Specter is a powerful committee chairman and can count on the strong support of the White House, he is clearly anxious; he is already spending much of his time shaking hands back in Pennsylvania, and he has called some members of the club himself to plead his case. A few months ago, Specter even invited Moore over to his Capitol office for a chat. A masterly politician, Specter gave it all the charm he could muster, graciously showing Moore his trove of family photos before launching into a defense of his voting record, which, he rightly pointed out, is broadly more conservative than Toomey's, according to National Journal's ratings. Specter is, after all, the man who got Clarence Thomas confirmed, and he has long supported the balanced-budget amendment and, for that matter, the flat tax.
To Specter's astonishment, however, Moore, a nerdy 43-year-old economist with an affable, self-mocking laugh, didn't seem to care much about Specter's record. It was simple, Moore said: even though Specter eventually voted for President Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut, Moore could not forgive him for first voting to trim the president's original, bigger tax-cut proposal by $250 billion so that the money could be spent on education.
For his part, Specter came away from his meeting with Moore feeling somewhat bewildered by what was happening inside his own party. He took note when Moore later told a reporter that he wanted to beat Specter because having ''a major scalp on the wall'' would make the Club for Growth more intimidating to other Republicans. (Moore said the same thing to me when I interviewed him in his office, motioning to a spot near his desk, as if Specter's scalp might actually hang there someday.) ''I have been in public life since I became an assistant D.A. in 1959,'' Specter told me. ''And I've never heard talk like that.''
Nicknamed the "Sex in the City voters", single women are less likely to turn up to the polls than married women but more likely to vote Democrat if they do: a potentially rich source of votes if the Democrats can tap their concerns.
Previously the party's pollsters concentrated on the gap between men, who tend to vote Republican, and women, who are more likely to vote Democrat. But further examination shows that there is a greater difference between married and single women than between men and women.
George Bush has a one percentage point lead among married women in 2000, while single women went for the Democrat Al Gore by 31%.
The trouble is that while 62% of married women went to the polls in 2000, only 43% of singles did. Given how tight the race was three years ago, urging more singles to get to the ballot box will be a crucial issue for the Democrats.
"This split has always existed," said Kellyanne Conway, president of WomenTrend, an organisation which tracks women's attitudes and political concerns. [...]
"Sex in the City voters are looking for some of the security they are missing in their daily lives," Ms Conway said.
"They're not just concerned with military security, but kitchen table economic security and social security. The government is a partner or safety net when you are going it alone. For women without husbands, Uncle Sam and Big brother are their greatest protectors."
Once they get married and have children, however, things begin to change. "It's all about the four Ms," Ms Conway said. "Marriage, munchkins, mortgages and mutual funds. Once they have those they become a little bit more conservative and start to tilt towards the Republicans."
The explorer who discovered the Titanic beneath the Atlantic in 1985 is setting out on another underwater expedition to document Noah's flood. The Black Sea was originally a freshwater lake that in ancient times became inundated by the salty Mediterranean. Robert Ballard believes that this was a cataclysmic event that occurred about 7,500 years ago, and was possibly the deluge described in the Bible.
Ballard's critics are sceptical: they argue that the infiltration of the Black Sea was a gradual process that occurred much earlier and over a long period of time. They accuse Ballard of using Noah to sex up his material for maximum publicity.
Christian fundamentalists will expect great things of Ballard's expedition. American creationists, who believe that the book of Genesis gives a scientifically accurate account of the origins of life, have long discussed Noah's flood. Some have even led archaeological expeditions to Mount Ararat in Turkey, in the hope of unearthing the Ark, and proving the literal truth of scripture once and for all.
Other creationists are more cautious, pointing out that the Ark is unlikely to have survived the ravages of time. But all Christian fundamentalists are passionately convinced that the Bible describes a historical deluge that destroyed all life on earth.
The grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has made a stinging attack on the country's current Islamic system and rulers.
In an interview with the BBC Persian Service, Hossein Khomeini, a hojatoleslam - or middle ranking clergyman - accused the current rulers of oppressing the Iranian people and committing human rights abuses. [...]
Hojatoleslam Khomeini questioned the principle of velayat faqih, or Islamic jurisprudence, upon which the system is based.
He added that, if his grandfather were alive today, he would have opposed all of Iran's current leaders because of what he described as their excesses and wrongdoing.
These people, he alleged, did not even carry out their own Islamic beliefs.
They were guilty of oppressing the Iranian population, killing people or jailing them for no reason.
As for the reformists, he said, they were finished. [...]
His comments mark one of the clearest and strongest rejections of the Islamic system of government by an Iranian cleric.
They will be seen as particularly significant because they have been made by the grandson of the man whose name has become synonymous with Iran's Islamic Revolution.
Seven asteroids circling the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are being named for the astronauts who died in the space shuttle Columbia accident.
Astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark of NASA and Ilan Ramon of Israel died on Feb. 1 when Columbia broke up while returning to Earth from a 16-day orbital mission.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, proposed naming the asteroids for the astronauts. The plan was approved by the International Astronomical Union and announced on Wednesday by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Minor Planet Center, the official clearinghouse for asteroid data.
The named asteroids were discovered by former JPL astronomer Eleanor F. Helin in 2001 using the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. The objects range in size from 3.1 miles to 4.3 miles in diameter.
"Asteroids have been around for billions of years and will remain for billions more," Raymond Bambery, head of the JPL Near-Earth Asteroid Tracing Project, said in a statement. "I like to think that in the years, decades and millennia ahead people will look to the heavens, locate these seven celestial sentinels and remember the sacrifice made by the Columbia astronauts."
A senior Pentagon adviser has given details of a war strategy for invading North Korea and toppling its regime within 30 to 60 days, adding muscle to a lobbying campaign by U.S. hawks urging a pre-emptive military strike against Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.
Less than four months after the end of the Iraq war, the war drums in Washington have begun pounding again. A growing number of influential U.S. leaders are talking openly of military action against North Korea to destroy its nuclear-weapons program, and even those who prefer negotiations are warning of the mounting danger of war.
Some analysts predict that North Korea could test a nuclear warhead by the end of this year--an event that could cross the "red line" that would provoke a U.S. attack.
The Labour election victory in 1997 took place at a moment of great political opportunity. Thatcherism had been rejected by the electorate. But 18 years of Thatcherite rule had radically altered the social, economic and political terrain in British society. There was, therefore, a fundamental choice of direction for the incoming government.
One was to offer an alternative radical strategy to Thatcherism, attuned to the shifts that had occurred in the 1970s and 1980s; with equal social and political depth, but based on radically different principles. What Thatcherism seemed to have ruled out was another bout of Keynesian welfare-state social democracy. More significantly, Thatcherism had evolved a broad hegemonic basis for its authority, deep philosophical foundations, as well as an effective popular strategy. It was grounded in a radical remodelling of state and economy and a new neo-liberal common sense.
This was not likely to be reversed by a mere rotation of the electoral wheel of fortune. The historic opportunities for the left required imaginative thinking and decisive action in the early stages of taking power, signalling a new direction. The other choice was, of course, to adapt to Thatcherite, neo-liberal terrain. There were plenty of indications that this would be New Labour's preferred direction. And so it turned out. In a profound sense, New Labour has adapted to neo-liberal terrain - but in a distinctive way. [...]
New Labour has a long-term strategy, a "project": the transformation of social democracy into a particular variant of free market neo-liberalism. Thus New Labour has worked - both domestically and globally - to set the corporate economy free. It has renounced the attempts to graft wider social goals on to the corporate world. It has deregulated labour and other markets, maintained restrictive trade union legislation, and established weak and compliant regulatory regimes. It has "cosied up to business", favouring its interests in multiple ways. It has pursued a splendidly variable range of privatisations - sustaining the sell-off of critical public assets and stealthily opening doors for the corporate penetration of the public sector.
However, New Labour has adapted the fundamental neo-liberal programme to suit its conditions of governance - that of a social democratic government trying to govern in a neo-liberal direction while maintaining its traditional working-class and public sector middle-class support. It has modified the anti-statist stance of American-style neo-liberalism by a "reinvention of active government". "Entrepreneurial governance", its advocates advise, promotes competition between service providers, favours the shift from bureaucracy to "community", focuses not on inputs but on outcomes, redefines clients as consumers and prefers market mechanisms to administrative ones.
Far from breaking with neo-liberalism, "entrepreneurial governance" constitutes its continuation - but in a transformed way. The New Labour orthodoxy is that only the private sector is "efficient" in a measurable way. The public sector is, by definition, "inefficient" and out-of-date, partly because it has social objectives beyond economic efficiency and value-for-money. It can only save itself by becoming more like the market. This is the true meaning of "modernisation". Marketisation is now installed in every sphere of government. This silent revolution in "governance" seamlessly connects Thatcherism to New Labour.
The passing-off of market fundamentalism as the new common sense has helped to drive home the critical lesson which underpins the "reform" of the welfare state: the role of the state "nowadays" is not to support the less fortunate or powerful but to help individuals themselves to provide for all their social needs. Those who can must. The rest must be targeted, means-tested and kept to a minimum of provision lest the burden threaten "wealth creation".
The future of the universe is dim - astronomers say it is fading into darkness after studying 40,000 galaxies in the neighbourhood of the Milky Way. [...]
There have not been enough new stars turning on to replace all the old stars that die and switch off, says the study by Ben Panter and Prof Alan Heavens from Edinburgh University's Institute for Astronomy, and Prof Raul Jimenez of the University of Pennsylvania. [...]
"The age of star formation is drawing to a close," said Prof Heavens. "The number of new stars being formed in the galaxies we studied has been in decline for six billion years - roughly since the time our Sun came into being."
Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials.
The officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.
The administration officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel negotiations with the Iranian regime.
"They [the Pentagon officials] were talking to him [Ghorbanifar] about stuff which they weren't officially authorized to do," said a senior administration official. "It was only accidentally that certain parts of our government learned about it."
The official would not identify those "parts" of the government, but a former intelligence official confirmed they are the State Department, the CIA and the White House, itself.
The senior official and another administration source who confirmed that the meetings had taken place said that the ultimate policy objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservatives civilians inside the Pentagon is regime change in Iran. [...]
The senior administration official identified two of the Defense officials who met with Ghorbanifar as Harold Rhode, Feith's top Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office.
Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Feith's office, which drafted much of the administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile disdained by the CIA and State Department but groomed for leadership by the Pentagon.
Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, a neo-conservative who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid-1980s when he introduced Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a National Security Council aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-contra affair.
A former CIA officer who himself was involved in some aspects of the Iran-contra scandal said that current intelligence officers told him it was Ledeen who reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Feith's staff.
Ledeen, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an ardent advocate for regime change in Iran, would neither confirm nor deny that he arranged for the Ghorbanifar meetings. "I'm not going to comment on any private meetings with any private people," he said. "It's nobody's business."
Pentagon officials met over a three-day period in late 2001 with a long-discredited Iranian who was a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, Defense Department officials said Friday.
Manucher Ghorbanifar sat in on a series of meetings in Europe between two defense officials and two other Iranians who the Bush administration had been told had information useful to the United States in its then-fledgling global war on terrorism, a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. The meetings occurred not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said.
One of those two defense officials in the 2001 meetings also had another chance contact in 2003 with Ghorbanifar, the Pentagon source said late Friday. The 2003 meeting was unplanned and unscheduled, the source said.
Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at President Bush's Texas ranch that Pentagon officials met more than a year ago with Ghorbanifar, and referred to it as a single meeting.
Standing at Rumsfeld's side, Bush said, "We support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran" when he was asked if the meeting with Ghorbanifar was a good idea and if his administration wants a regime change in Iran.
Cockpit recordings show that hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 argued about whether to crash the plane into the Pennsylvania countryside on Sept. 11, 2001, in anticipation of a passenger insurrection, the widow of Minnesota native Tom Burnett Jr., a leader in the revolt, said Thursday.
But Deena Burnett, who has listened to the cockpit recorder twice and studied an FBI transcript of it, said the hijackers did not appear to be in agreement before passengers stormed the cockpit.
Deena Burnett, who has said little publicly until now about the contents of the flight recorder, made the disclosure in reaction to an Associated Press report stating that U.S. investigators now believe one hijacker instructed hijacker-pilot Ziad Jarrah to crash the plane before passengers took control. [...]
"While no one will ever know exactly what transpired in the final minutes of Flight 93, every shred of evidence indicates this plane crashed because of the heroic actions of the passengers," FBI spokeswoman Susan Whitson said Thursday.
Thirty-three passengers, seven crew members and the four hijackers died.
Tony Blair knows it is one of the most delicate of subjects. When asked about it he squirms and tries to change to a more comfortable line of inquiry. But quietly the Prime Minister is putting religion at the centre of the New Labour project, reflecting his own deeply felt beliefs that answers to most questions can be found in the Bible.
The Observer can reveal that Blair is to allow Christian organisations and other 'faith groups' a central role in policy-making in a decisive break with British traditions that religion and government should not mix.
The Prime Minister, who this weekend becomes the longest continually serving Labour Prime Minister in history, has set up a ministerial working group in the Home Office charged with injecting religious ideas 'across Whitehall'. One expert on the relationship between politics and religion described the move as a 'blow to secularism'.
Blair's move is believed to have the strong support of the two other leading Christian members of the Cabinet, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Paul Boateng, Chief Secretary of the Treasury. [...]
Some No 10 officials are concerned that the Government will fall victim to unfavourable comparisons with the Republican administration in America, where President Bush makes no secret of his religious faith and right-wing religious organisations have a powerful input into policy-making, particularly on sensitive issues such as abortion.
Abortion, once the country's primary means of birth control, is in steady decline in post-Soviet Russia, but the rate is still staggering: For every 10 births there are about 13 abortions, compared with roughly three in the United States. [...]
The Russian Health Ministry has proposed scaling back the liberal policy whereby women can cite a wide range of non-medical reasons - being unmarried, poor, already raising three kids - to obtain an abortion well into the second trimester of pregnancy.
The new proposal would still guarantee abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy to anyone. But after that, most women - including rape victims - would be turned away.
"Abortion should never in any society be the primary method of birth control," said Vladimir Kulakov, a leading gynecologist and head of the Scientific Center for Obstetrics and Gynecology, linked to the women's clinic where Abakarova works. [...]
Four years of economic growth have taken some of the financial bite out of starting a family. Birth rates are climbing, albeit slowly. Last year, there were 9.8 births for every 1,000 people compared to 9.1 the year before, according to government statistics.
But demographers still predict that by 2050, the world's largest country will have a population comparable to just over a quarter of the United States'.
Inmates at the state prison here say calm has replaced rampant drugs and violence since the arrival of a new warden seven years ago.
As well as starting more education and job training programs at Marion Correctional Institution, Warden Christine Money has drawn national attention for programs that allow inmates greater freedom to exercise religious beliefs.
Promise Keepers, a Christian men's group, will come to the prison about 45 miles north of Columbus on Aug. 12 for its first rally behind bars. [...]
"When I first got here in 1993, this place was unbelievable,'' said John Burroughs, from Lorain, who is serving a seven- to 25-year sentence for rape. "This was a very evil, dark prison. I was scared for my life.''
Since Money's arrival, drug offenses and violence against corrections officers and other inmates have almost disappeared, officials said. The prison also greatly reduced the number of grievances filed by inmates, which once averaged 100 a month. Last month, 12 were filed. [...]
[A]mericans United for Separation of Church and State has urged the prisons director to drop the Promise Keepers event. The Washington-based group has filed lawsuits challenging events that combine government and religion.
"Government officials should never be in a position of sponsoring what amounts to a high-tech tent revival,'' group spokesman Joe Conn said. ``It's clear they've gotten out on a legal limb. They need to come back in.''
The American Jewish Congress in New York also asked Wilkinson to withdraw support for Promise Keepers, saying the program seems to offer preferential treatment for inmates who participate.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is less concerned. Christine Link, the chapter's executive director, said religion behind bars is not a problem, so long as all faiths have equal opportunity.
You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have them commit more crimes and go back to prison?
But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.
So, how did the Penn study get perverted into evidence that InnerChange worked? Through one of the oldest tricks in the book, one almost guaranteed to make a success of any program: counting the winners and ignoring the losers. The technical term for this in statistics is "selection bias"; program managers know it as "creaming." Harvard public policy professor Anne Piehl, who reviewed the study before it was published, calls this instance of it "cooking the books."
Here's how the study got adulterated.
InnerChange started with 177 volunteer prisoners but only 75 of them "graduated." Graduation involved sticking with the program, not only in prison but after release. No one counted as a graduate, for example, unless he got a job. Naturally, the graduates did better than the control group. Anything that selects out from a group of ex-inmates those who hold jobs is going to look like a miracle cure, because getting a job is among the very best predictors of staying out of trouble. And inmates who stick with a demanding program of self-improvement through 16 months probably have more inner resources, and a stronger determination to turn their lives around, than the average inmate.
The InnerChange cheerleaders simply ignored the other 102 participants who dropped out, were kicked out, or got early parole and didn't finish. Naturally, the non-graduates did worse than the control group. If you select out the winners, you leave mostly losers.
Overall, the 177 entrants did a little bit worse than the controls. That result ought to discourage InnerChange's advocates, but it doesn't because they have just ignored the failure of the failures and focused on the success of the successes.
The newly formed Democratic political action committee Americans Coming Together (ACT) is launching a $75 million campaign to unseat President Bush. According to the Washington Post, Democratic leaders from five groups sealed the allegiance by raising more than $30 million.
Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily's List and ACT, said the aim of the organization is to initiate "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004."
Other founders include Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO and current president of Partnership for America's Families, who will be chief executive; Andrew Stern, president of Service Employees International Union; Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club; and Cecile Richards and Gina Glantz of America Votes.
Along with other liberal groups, the formation of ACT is a reaction to the Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches. "This is a real demonstration of the coming together of many people in this country who are upset about the extremism of the Republican Party," said Malcolm.
Billionaire financier George Soros reportedly gave $10 million to ACT and said, "The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction."
I stand here to defend Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, against a false accusation made on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times last Friday. The headline reads: "Pope Launches Global Campaign against Gays." The pope, of course, did no such thing....
[T]he Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that people of homosexual orientation should be treated with every respect and with compassion; but the catechism also teaches the truth about the nature of God's gift of human sexuality, a truth our bodies themselves proclaim and the lives of married couples attest to....
[W]hat does the printing of a false accusation against the pope in a major Chicago daily say about anti-Catholicism here?... I do not know their motivation. A bishop likes to presuppose good will, and what they did would find an echo in many places; but what I must say today is that a line has been crossed, and Chicago Catholics cannot ignore what has happened.
What magazines you read don't say that much about you. What says more about you: The ads that appear in the magazines you read. For instance: Modern women's magazines' editorial content consists of benign feel-good affirmations -- "Love your body!" or "Look great at any age!" or "Take charge at work!" -- but their advertising -- for weight-loss formulas, "age-defying" pseudo-ceuticals, and uncomfortable lingerie -- belies any intimation of post-feminist progress.
There are no surprises in this kind analysis: Weekly newsmagazines contain ads for fiber supplements. The New Yorker? Tiny appeals on behalf of the Poke Boat. And political magazines? Why, full-page explanations of "Honey: The Gourmet Medicine," of course.
But, aside for their shared weakness for dubious new-age health strategies, what else can the ad pages of political publications tell us about their readers?
The National Review reader is a sleep-deprived (or possibly bed-ridden)1, cigar-smoking2, America-First3 Catholic4 who believes in both free markets5 and limited government intervention6. Also into wresting7.
1. Memory Foam Ultra Mattress, Catholic Traditionalish Movement, Inc. ("If you cannot physically attend Catholic mass, the next best thing is… an internet website with around-the-clock video Latin mass."), Classified ad: "Earn $400 weekly assembling products in your home."
2.National Review 2003 Cruise, featuring "two late-night poolside 'smokers.'
3. Crafted with Pride in the USA ("The vote on the Singapore Trade Agreement is a surrogate for a much larger and more important question -- Will the US Congress vote to pit the American worker against the penny-wage labor of Asia?"
4. Ave Marie Mutual Funds ("You never have to sacrifice your religious beliefs to pursue your financial objectives.")
5. Cato Institute Books
6. Fannie Mae ("It's our belief that having a safe place to call home strengthens families, communities, and our nation as a whole."), Freddie Mac ("It may not be as well-known as Social Security, Head Start, or the National Institutes of Health, but the secondary mortgage market is every bit as successful.")
7. Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference ("Confirmed speakers include… Nobel Laurate Milton Friedman, Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes, Former WWF Champion Warrior…")
The Weekly Standard reader is a rabidly free-market lobbyist1 or government official2. (Possibly Dick Cheney, but probably not W.3)
1. Partnership to protect consumer credit warns of "the resulting bureaucratic nightmare of red tape," Real Estate Roundtable posits "Who pays for excessive lawsuits? We all do." Conservative Book Club
2. Sawyer Miller ("We specialize in creating highly effective communications targeting the most influential business leaders, beltway insiders, politicians and decision-makers.")
3. The Great Courses ("Discover how something as minute as a subatomic particle can be marvelously complex and interesting, yet rendered comprehensible.")
The New Republic reader is a moderately free-market1, literate2 policy wonk3. Doesn't get out much.4
1. Shell International ("We are also working to increase the supply of natural gas"), Hoover Institution advertorial (the post office is "train wreck waiting to happen" and should be privatized)
2. U of Chicago press, "Come to a reading" of The Book Against God
3. Legal Affairs, Cornell University degree in industrial and labor relations
4. ETS advertorial ("The public wants an educational system that works.")
The Nation reader is a sensitive1, bird-watching2, book-loving3 optimist4. Also into spanking5.
1. Bose QuietComfort 2 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones ("You can list to portable CD/DVD/MP3 players, home stereos, computers and in-flight entertainment systems -- or nothing at all."), Memory Foam Ultra Mattress
2. Micro Mono ("The Micro-Mono is perfect for any activities, like bird watching, concerts, and sports watching."), Carson SuperZoom Binoculars ("You never know where or when you may want them to take a closer look at the natural world.")
3. University of Chicago Press ("It's your world--understand it."), New Press
4. Classified: "Ex-Nation staffer looking for full-time position with benefits in Queens/NYC area"
5. Classified: "Find a partner into spanking!"
The Mother Jones reader is a lactose-intolerant1, impressionable2, wealthy (but guilt-ridden)3 lesbian4. Alternative demographic: Bushy-browed5 professional bike messenger6 and peace activist7. (Demographics may overlap.) All readers believe in human perfectability8. (Suckers.9)
1. Edensoy soymilk, Silk soymilk
2. Earth Justice ("Because the earth needs a good lawyer"), Blue Man group album
3. Pax World Funds ("Several months ago, the New York Times said, 'Nonviolence is no longer in fashion.' We disagree."), Citizen Funds
4.Classified: "Women who love women meet through [this] beautiful alternative."
5. Tweezerman tweezers ("The company with a heart")
6. Clif Bars, Hip-O Records reggae collection
7. Free Speech TV ("What democracy looks like.")
8. Humber College Business School ("For those who want to make a difference"), Naropa University ("at the intersection of academic excellence and contemplative practice"), Union Institute and University ("anti-bias and diversity education"), Lesley University Independent study programs for "entrepreneurs…artists…retirees, philosophers," New School, MBA in sustainable management from Presido World College
9. Honey, the Gourmet Medicine
Some $15 million in government grants were dolled out this spring, many of them to religious groups, to promote abstinence-only education. One group, Metro Atlanta Youth for Christ, received more than $360,000 to fund "Teen Moms," a program designed to pair pregnant teens with other women who will encourage them to stop having sex until they get married. The overall mission of the group: "to communicate the life-changing message of Jesus Christ to every young person."
That kind of funding, which raises the ire of critics who call it an infringement on separations between church and state, is just the tip of the iceberg. The grants, which will be followed up with more this fall, make up a fraction of the $135 million dollars the Bush administration poured into abstinence-only education in 2001. Much of the money goes to local groups such as Catholic Charities of Honolulu or the Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago.
Some in the Jewish community find the support for these abstinence-only programs problematic, not only because it may not work in curbing teen pregnancy or the spread of STDs, but because it may not reflect Jewish values.
On the surface, there seems little to complain about. Abstinence before marriage is the only foolproof way to prevent unwanted premarital pregnancy or avoid STDs. Jewish values certainly advocate that monogamous sex in marriage is the ideal. So why all the huff about abstinence-only programs.
I see I'm not the only one having a hard time getting straight answers from Secretary of State Kevin Shelley about the recall rules. Roll Call reports that a Shelley spokeswoman says it is "unclear whether a scheduled recall election would proceed if Davis resigns before it takes place." (Article is for paid subscribers only; I got the quote through Rick Hasens Election Law blog.) Shelley's office has also been painfully slow in answering questions I?ve had about how things will unfold, and up until now I've given them the benefit of the doubt, figuring they're new in the job and a little bit overwhelmed. But the longer this goes on the more I'm inclined to suspect that Shelley wants to keep things vague so he can make it up as he goes along-sort of a Democratic version of the post-election legal interpretations in Florida 2000. I don't think Davis is going to resign, but shouldn't Shelley know by now what the law says about the effect of a resignation in the face of a recall? And even if we observers think the law is unclear, shouldn't Shelley have an opinion, since that's where the process of sorting it out would begin?
Although the question has no practical significance, I don't agree with Rick and Fred that, were Davis to resign, Bustamante would remain governor if the majority voted against the recall. I agree with them on the important point, that the recall election would proceed even if Davis resigned. I also agree that Bustamante would become governor, to fill the vacancy. Here is the relevant section, Elections Code Section 11302:
If a vacancy occurs in an office after a recall petition is filed against the vacating officer, the recall election shall nevertheless proceed. The vacancy shall be filled as provided by law, but any person appointed to fill the vacancy shall hold office only until a successor is selected in accordance with Article 4 (commencing with Section 11360) [which appears to have been repealed] or Article 5 (commencing with Section 11380), and the successor qualifies for that office.
That language suggests to me that the "yes-no" recall question would become irrelevant. The governor after the election would be the person who received a plurality of votes in the replacement election. Of course, that could be Bustamante, but not be reason of his being lieutenant governor.
Indonesian and American officials have said Jemaah Islamiyah was probably responsible for the car-bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta on Tuesday that killed 16 people and wounded more than 150. There was some speculation among officials that the attack had been timed as a warning to the Indonesian government on the eve of the verdict, the first in the Bali case.
The verdict read to the court by the chief judge, I Made Karna, described the Bali attack as an "extraordinary crime" and a "crime against humanity."
Immediately after the verdict, Amrozi, who has smiled at many of his court appearances, swiveled in his chair to face the crowded courtroom. He flashed a wide toothy grin and stretched out both arms with a thumbs-up gesture. In brief interviews during the trial that began in mid-May, Amrozi had said he wanted to be a martyr, and he mounted little defense during the trial.
After the sentencing a lawyer for Amrozi said the defendant apologized to those who were not intended as targets. "He doesn't have anything personal against the Australians, for instance," the lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, said. "The targets were the Americans and the Jews."
In 2000, 74 percent of African-Americans identified themselves as Democrats. By last year, that number had dropped to 63 percent, according to a recent survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group devoted to African-American issues.
Those shifting away from the Democratic Party are not necessarily becoming Republicans. An overwhelming majority of blacks still vote Democratic. But an increasing number, especially those 18 to 35, are identifying themselves as independents. Some 24 percent of black adults now characterize themselves that way. Among those 35 and under, said David Bositis, a senior researcher at the Joint Center who conducted the survey, the figures are 30 percent to 35 percent, with men leaning more heavily independent than women.
For Democrats, the downside of weaker partisan ties is twofold. Unlike older blacks, many of whom vote consistently because they remember a time when they could not, younger blacks are more prone to sit out an election if no candidate grabs their interest. And even if they are not registered Republicans, younger blacks are more open to supporting Republican candidates and issues than older blacks. Sylvester Smith, 27, whose mother was a Democratic state legislator in Arkansas, is a policy adviser for minority affairs for Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican. [...]
The move by younger African-Americans away from strong partisan affiliation mirrors that of younger whites. But Mr. Bositis and others studying the issue argue that the shift in African-American behavior is more damaging for the Democratic Party because of its heavy dependence on black voters.
Cornell Belcher, a pollster who specializes in minority and youth constituencies, contends the message in the trends is clear. "This group really should be considered swing voters to be targeted specifically," he said. "But if you look at or listen to the typical political ads aimed at black voters, there is a huge disconnect with younger blacks."
When Michael L. Steele, a black Republican, ran for lieutenant governor of Maryland with Robert L. Erlich Jr. in 2002, he hired a consultant to design radio advertisements specifically for the state's major hip-hop radio stations. Tapping into frustration among black voters over the fact that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the Democratic candidate for governor, had chosen a white running mate, the radio spots used tag lines like, "Why must African-Americans always wait?"
Mr. Erlich and Mr. Steele won the election, ending a 36-year Democratic hold on the Statehouse. The team not only swung traditionally Democratic white voters, it also received 14 percent of the black vote, the largest percentage of African-American votes ever for a Republican ticket in Maryland. In Baltimore, one of the areas deluged with the hip-hop radio spots, the ticket won 30 percent of the black vote.
"Republicans took a pass on the civil rights agenda in the late 50's and early 60's, and it cost us," Mr. Steele, 44, said. "This is a door that has opened, and we can't let this pass." The Republican Party is pushing a series of political training seminars to groom nonwhite candidates.
Three different measures of economic activity -- productivity, retail sales, and jobless claims -- showed strong improvement yesterday, offering significant new evidence that the nation's economy is finally on the mend.
Prospects brightened on reports that second-quarter productivity growth surged and that July sales at the nation's big retailers exceeded initial forecasts, as consumers spent money put in their pockets by tax cuts and mortgage refinancings. The number of people who filed claims for unemployment benefits also fell below the critical 400,000 mark for a third week in a row as the pace of layoffs slowed.
The job market has yet to rebound, and there is no signal that businesses plan to begin hiring in large numbers. But these data indicate a clear turnaround from the gloomy forecasts being made early this year when Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, was raising fears of deflation and economists were talking about a double-dip recession.
Mr. Wilson, who had told the C.I.A. and the State Department after his visit that there was no basis for that report, said in the interview that he had "tried to avoid taking a victory lap" after his comments prompted the White House acknowledgments. But he had begun to speak out again, in television interviews including one on "Today" on NBC, "until such time as you got those lowlifes over there deciding they would take some whacks at my wife."
Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is known to friends as an energy industry analyst. In the interview, Mr. Wilson said he had no doubt that those who sought to bring his wife into the controversy intended to sound a warning to others who might take on the White House on the charged issue of whether intelligence about Iraq was reshaped or ignored to fit a political agenda.
Mr. Novak cited administration officials as saying Mr. Wilson was chosen for the Niger mission because of Ms. Plame's connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Wilson said his qualifications--as an Africa expert, a former ambassador to Gabon and the senior director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton--made him more than amply suited for the task.
A top Bush administration weapons investigator told Congress in closed testimony last week that he has uncovered solid information from interviews, documents, and physical evidence that Iraqi military forces were ordered to attack US troops with chemical weapons, but did not have the time or capability to follow through, according to senior defense and intelligence officials.
The alleged findings by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector now working for the United States, would buttress the administration's claim that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction -- a key component of President Bush's case for war that has since fallen into dispute.
Kay's report acknowledged that his team of 1,400 investigators had not yet found any such weapons, raising the possibility that Hussein either hid them, destroyed them, or was simply bluffing in his orders to the Republican Guard.
Kay told Congress his team is searching new sites almost daily, interviewing scientists and captured leaders, and sifting through thousands of pages of documents, officials said.
Ahmad Chalabi, my father, is here in Iraq, sitting on the Governing Council of Iraqi nationals that will help ours become a free country. Iraqis from all regions and religions line up daily to meet him at his home. They know his lifelong cause is democracy for all Iraqis, not just a chosen few. To them he is a good man, and an attractive leader.
Yet many in the Western media seem unable to mention my father's name without regurgitating a 14-year-old Jordanian libel that he wrongfully diverted assets of his own Petra Bank. The real story couldn't be more different. Petra Bank was seized and destroyed by those in the Jordanian establishment who'd become willing to do Saddam Hussein's bidding. That Jordan has branded my father as an "asset diverter" would be comic, were it not for what it says about that kingdom's servile complicity with Saddam.
In 1978, Ahmad Chalabi formed Petra Bank in Amman. It prospered, growing to be the second largest bank in Jordan. In the '80s, as a pillar of Jordan's banking system, he fought to obstruct Saddam's ability to finance his war with Iran, as well as his weapons programs. He warned about a grain-sales financing scheme, whereby Iraq obtained funds from the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank to finance arms purchases. He challenged the ways in which Jordan profited from arms sales to Iraq and angered Saddam by pressuring Jordan's Central Bank not to issue Iraq letters of credit on Saddam's terms.
In early 1989, Petra submitted its annual financial statement to the Central Bank, showing continuing asset growth--and nothing that would justify singling it out for military seizure. The authorities approved the financial accounts, just as they had in the past. Petra Bank, if left alone, would be prospering today. Instead, here is the sequence of events [...]
Jordan did all this for Saddam Hussein.
Coase, now a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Law School, published a groundbreaking paper in 1960, titled, "The Problem of Social Cost." Prior to this paper, virtually all economists accepted the idea of Pigouvian taxes and subsidies, named after another British economist, Arthur Pigou. Roughly, Pigou believed that any activities which create either positive or negative side-effects should be subsidized or taxed accordingly. These side-effects, which economists call "externalities," (as they are external to the intentions of the actor who created them) were thought to require either encouragement or discouragement from the government to reach their socially optimal levels....
What Coase discovered was that the Pigouvian view, although intuitively plausible, was in fact wrong, or at best, incomplete. If the people living near the paper mill could easily get together and bargain with the paper mill's owners, and if the owner of the outdoor cafe could easily get together and bargain with the owner of the baker, no taxes or subsidies would be necessary. Essentially, Coase's insight -- the Coase theorem -- was that externalities themselves are not so important; rather, transaction costs -- the costs of getting together to bargain -- are central to whether or not a situation will result in a socially optimal outcome. If transaction costs are zero, it does not matter if the owner of the paper mill is liable for damages, nor does the baker need to be rewarded through government subsidy to produce enough pleasing smells; in both cases, the result will be the same. The relevant parties will bargain with each other and achieve the best result....
So what does any of this have to do with war? Well, war is essentially a form of conflict, and the Coase theorem, at its most basic level, is a theory of conflict resolution. We would expect, according to the Coase theorem, that if transaction costs between the conflicted parties were low or non-existent, a mutually beneficial agreement could be reached. War is a negative-sum game -- a losing proposition for all parties involved -- and almost any conceivable resolution would leave everyone better off than the inevitable death and destruction that violent conflict brings. But as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sadly demonstrates, this theory does not seem to hold true. Why?
To answer this question, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen, in an upcoming academic article for the journal Public Choice, "A Road Map to Middle Eastern Peace? -- A Public Choice Perspective," examines the conflict from a game theoretic perspective. ...
Cowen concludes that, unfortunately, the Coase theorem doesn't help us much in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, other than explaining why an amicable agreement is so difficult to achieve. Rather than try to sculpt the facts to fit the theory, as many academics are known to do, Cowen humbly concedes that the Coase theorem does not seem to be "a good description of the real world."
Once you admit the possibility of evil -- the possibility that some people gain utility from others' pain -- then there is no reason why violence should be bargained away. It seems plain that Palestinian suicide-bombers are evil-spirited -- that they derive enough utility from dead and wounded Israelis to counterbalance the utility loss from their own deaths. So to accurately analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one would need a generalized Coase Theorem, in which evil-spiritedness is allowed. And this generalized Coase Theorem would show that in the presence of evil, the result of bargaining (an equilibrium, in game-theory terms) may well be continued murder. The reason is that continued murder enhances the utility of the evil-spirited, and the victims may not have enough to offer the evil-spirited to make up for the lost utility they would suffer by not murdering.
It is curious that Cowen does not offer the existence of evil as a possible resolution to the puzzle he has tangled with. Rather than acknowledge evil and generalize the Coase Theorem, he concludes, "The Chicago school is overly optimistic when it applies the Coase theorem to politics. The Coase theorem is a useful foil for figuring out why efficient political bargains are so problematic, but it is not a good description of the real world.... [T]he Coase theorem does not describe the world we live in." This would seem to be a message of analytical despair. Is it easier for academics to abandon hope in scientific fruitfulness than to acknowledge the existence of evil?
What we need is help understanding how people can be turned from evil toward good -- from a desire to inflict pain to at least indifference or, better yet, a desire to see good come to others. A generalized Coase Theorem would be a step torward analyzing ethical and spiritual decisions -- toward an economics of good and evil. To start such a field would be a contribution worthy of a great economist.
Is censorship ever justified? The obvious knee-jerk response must of course be an emphatic no. Just as commercial markets can't function effectively and efficiently without freely available information between buyers and sellers, so democracy cannot flourish without a free flow of facts, ideas, opinions, and beliefs. [...]
The real world is more difficult. There are two perplexing areas where censorship is routinely advocated and defended by those who claim to be the friends of democracy: they are security and the protection of public morals.
These are the two exceptions to the free flow of information and opinion that muddy the pursuit of absolute rights and freedoms, and that make the fight against censorship more an endless series of skirmishes than a single glorious war to be won.
The health of our democracies owes as much to past victories in the name of freedom of thought and expression as it does to the defeat of armies.
In later mediaeval societies - especially after the invention of the printing press - censorship was the blunt instrument used by temporal and spiritual powers alike to enforce and extend control. It was a necessary - and often more potent - instrument than physical force.
Now, the tide of democracy, accompanied by its philosophical and material emphasis on the rights of the individual, has rolled back the defence of censorship to those two issues of national security and public morality.
Of the two, the security issue - though complex - is easier to address. Clearly it would be absurd to allow real and potential enemies to threaten our society, by reckless publication, say, of information that would endanger national defence. [...]
The question of public morals is more difficult. How legitimate are they? If so, how are they to be circumscribed, and not encroach on areas where they are, in ascending order of danger, unnecessary, inappropriate and a threat to freedom?
The other matter, the protection of public morals, also creates blurred edges to any absolute defence against censorship. Pornography may be the cause of actual physical harm, in its making or by those who would mimic it. We all share a particular horror of harm done to children.
But even more than is the case with national security, we must constantly be on our guard to ensure that whatever safeguards we erect for these specific purposes are not hijacked by those who would be the moral police of innocent activities innocently pursued.
Christian Eisenbeiss has beer in his blood. So does Bernhard Sailer. Both are third-generation members of German brewing families, both love their work, and for now, both are brewing up heady profits. But if you had to choose which man represents the future of the troubled German beer industry, it would have to be the New York-born Eisenbeiss (his parents emigrated to the U.S.). He and his sister share a 48% stake in the company that sells more beer to Germans than anyone else--Holsten, on Germany's north coast. Eisenbeiss believes a modern brewer needs to be big--Holsten already serves up 1 billion liters a year--and international. Sailer and his brother, Dietrich, by contrast, own and operate the small but thriving Hofbrauhaus Traunstein in southern Germany, which brews 10 million liters of beer annually. For centuries, such local breweries have been the backbone of this most German of industries. But Sailer is not optimistic about the future of family-owned breweries. "Some don't have the money to continue, and others don't have a new generation willing to take over," he says.
Here comes the great German beer shakeout. At last count, the country had 1,279 breweries, or nearly 75% of all those in the E.U. But Sailer estimates, based on conversations with peers, that one-third of those in his home state, Bavaria, only manage to crank out beer because they subsidize production costs with income from their real-estate holdings. He's managed to survive by repositioning Traunstein as a trendy regional "premium" brew, and by partnering with several tiny brew-pubs.
For most German brewers, however, the rule seems to be get big or die. The problem begins with the fact that Germans, like most northern
Europeans, are getting older and drinking less beer. "The average has dropped from 140 liters per person in the early 1990s to 120 now," says Sailer.
"I figure it will hit 100 in the next 10 years." This takes its toll on the brewers.
President Bush claims that the economic slowdown and the war on terrorism have triggered the nation's fiscal woes. But they are only part of the story. According to the Congressional Budget Office, over the next two years, the Bush tax cuts enacted since 2001 will cost nearly three times as much as the fighting and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, reconstruction and relief after September 11, and homeland security combined. What's more, these tax cuts are scheduled to explode, totaling $2 trillion over the decade. And that's assuming the sunset provisions phasing them out are enacted. If, as seems likely, they are not, the 10-year budgetary costs of the tax cuts will rise by another $2 trillion.
The Administration argues that its tax cuts are necessary to stimulate growth in a sluggish economy. But this argument is specious. The economy may have needed a temporary infusion of additional demand during the past three years. But temporary tax cuts or spending hikes for hard-pressed working families, unemployed workers, and state governments would have stimulated demand much more effectively than tax cuts for the rich. The Administration has also made misleading comments about the size of the tax benefits people will receive from the 2003 tax package. Although the average tax cut is about $1,000, that's because the tax breaks for the richest Americans are so large. More than half of all American taxpayers will get a reduction of less than $120 per year over the next two years. More than a third of taxpayers will get nothing.
And those long-term "supply-side" growth benefits? Even the Republican-controlled Joint Committee on Taxation, using a variety of dynamic scoring assumptions, was forced to admit that these cuts are likely to reduce the economy's long-term growth. Why? Any positive business-investment incentives from lower taxes will be outweighed by the curtailing of national saving and investment caused by mammoth budget deficits. To the extent that larger deficits diminish domestic saving, they eat into productive investment. To the extent that larger deficits are funded by borrowing from the rest of the world, they raise the nation's foreign debt and drive future income into servicing this debt. Contrary to the claims of Administration ideologues, larger deficits mean lower future living standards.
The conservative political genes run deep in the John Howard household - the Prime Minister's youngest son, Richard, is interested in working for President George Bush's re-election campaign next year.
And just as George jnr followed his similarly named father into politics, and eventually the presidency, Richard John Winston Howard's prospective work experience in the United States has sparked speculation that a Howard political dynasty could be in the making.
Described yesterday by a family friend as "the most political of the children", Richard - like his father as a young man - is a passionate and extremely accomplished debater who is training for a life in law. [...]
"Like many young Australians, Richard wants to do work experience in the US," a spokesman said. "The Prime Minister hasn't made any representations on his behalf, and neither has his office."
A new survey of the nation's Hispanics finds they are far more optimistic about life in the United States and their children's prospects than are non-Latinos, despite the fact that many are much poorer and many do not intend to gain the full benefits of citizenship.
The New York Times/CBS News poll found that nearly 70 percent of foreign-born Hispanics say they identify more with the United States than with their country of origin. Still, many continue to send money to family members even though they rarely visit their home countries.
Sixty-four percent of Latinos said there was no specific instance when they felt discriminated against because of their ethnicity. Those who said they had had such an experience said it involved employment or a general sense of exclusion.
The finding was in sharp contrast to that of the poll's non-Hispanic blacks. Seventy-three percent of them said they had experienced discrimination, while 25 percent said they had not.
Much of the optimism expressed by Latinos appears to be related to the fact that most, 57 percent, said they were immigrants. Just 39 percent said they were born in the United States, making it clear that the expectation of better economic circumstances for themselves and their children was inherent in their decision to uproot their lives and come to the United States.
Like just about everyone in the media, I was stunned by Arnold Schwarzenegger's announcement Wednesday evening that he WILL be a candidate for governor of California after all. I really thought that if Ah-nold was going to become "The Running Man," he wouldn't have done it via a taped appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Kudos to Leno for getting the scoop, but why didn't Arnold opt for a live announcement and press conference with wall-to-wall coverage, held at a more deadline-friendly hour in a more serious venue?
But now I have a question for all the conservatives, in California and across the nation, who believe Schwarzenegger will make a fine candidate: If you think this actor's views should be taken seriously, then you must agree that the opinions of Sean Penn, George Clooney, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon should be heard and respected as well, right? Because if your answer is "no," that would mean you want to hear only from those Hollywood figures whose opinions agree with yours--which sounds rather un-American to me.
In a reversal, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California has concluded the party needs a candidate in the Oct. 7 recall election aimed at Gov. Gray Davis, party sources said Thursday.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Democratic House leader has joined in a series of conference calls in recent days with fellow Democratic lawmakers as and other officials seeking a consensus candidate.
Pelosi issued a statement Thursday calling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's decision to enter the race as a Republican an extension of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's "extreme Republican agenda ... using a familiar public face to promote poisonous policies that favor special interests over the public interest.
Gary Coleman is not just another pretty face. In his 25 years in Hollywood, he's learned some tough lessons about life, love, and money. The man's a hard-bitten showbiz veteran, with nerves of steel and a big brain filled with good old-fashioned common sense. Now, as California teeters on the edge of disaster, he's offering you this unique opportunity to put his ideas to the test. The Express is proud to be part of this historic moment, and we have assembled Gary's most powerful ideas into a platform that will inspire you with its wisdom and foresight.
Huffington also took the opportunity to take a swipe at his ex-wife, political independent Arianna Huffington, who announced her candidacy Wednesday, portraying herself as an unconventional candidate for unconventional times.
Huffington said, in effect, that he is being responsive to his children's needs while she is not.
"This week my children told me that they did not want their parents to run in this election -- either one of us. In consideration of my two young daughters, I have determined that entering the governor's race would not be in the best interests of my children," he said in a statement.
"Withdrawing from this potential race has been a difficult decision. However, my children come first."
The company formally acknowledged in late June that the heavy use of growth-stimulating antibiotics by the meat industry threatens human health. It advised its poultry suppliers to phase out the practice or face the prospect of losing the business of America's largest buyer of meat products. The warning is less firm for hogs and cattle, but those suppliers know they are on notice too. Mickey D is listening to his customers. "We would love to be a catalyst for change industrywide," McDonald's director for social responsibility affirmed.
Let's hear it also for the galaxy of civic-action groups, from the Union of Concerned Scientists to Environmental Defense, from the Humane Society to the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, who made this happen. A coalition of thirteen organizations put aside cultural and political differences to educate the McDonald's management. Some, like the Sierra Club, delivered the message by direct action, picketing Golden Arches outlets with signs like Get Food Off Drugs. Others, like Environmental Defense, pursued a lawyerly inside track, negotiating in "partnership" with the company's proclaimed commitment to social responsibility.
The victory at McDonald's is but one small piece in a much larger subject -- the politics of food -- but it demonstrates that people are not powerless against corporate behemoths, even the market leaders, if they find the right points of leverage. In an era when politics is paralyzed, unable or unwilling to advance government regulation of food and agriculture, some Americans have figured out how to achieve the next best thing -- consumer power that changes industry behavior, not by one purchase at a time but on a grand scale by targeting large brands in the middleman position. We'll see a lot more of this consumer jujitsu, because it works.
The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.
Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.
The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem. Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn't really happen with this war -- not the way it should have. And as a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way.
I'm convinced that one of the reasons that we didn't have a better public debate before the Iraq War started is because so many of the impressions that the majority of the country had back then turn out to have been completely wrong. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how these false impressions got into the public's mind, it might be healthy to take a hard look at the ones we now know were wrong and clear the air so that we can better see exactly where we are now and what changes might need to be made.
In any case, what we now know to have been false impressions include the following:
(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.
(2) Saddam was working closely with Osama Bin Laden and was actively supporting members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, giving them weapons and money and bases and training, so launching a war against Iraq would be a good way to stop Al Qaeda from attacking us again.
(3) Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs that he had made into weapons which they could use to kill millions of Americans. Therefore common sense alone dictated that we
should send our military into Iraq in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves against a grave threat.
(4) Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists. And since the only thing preventing Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal was access to enriched uranium, once
our spies found out that he had bought the enrichment technology he needed and was actively trying to buy uranium from Africa, we had very little time left. Therefore it seemed imperative during last Fall's election campaign to set aside less urgent issues like the economy and instead focus on the congressional resolution approving war against Iraq.
(5) Our GI's would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and Representative Democracy, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US soldiers would get bogged down in a guerrilla war.
(6) Even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and then contribute lots of money and soldiers to help out, so there wouldn't be that much risk
that US taxpayers would get stuck with a huge bill.
Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong. [...]
The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."
Rice has faced sharp criticism for allowing Bush to assert in Bush's January State of the Union that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa, and the journalists in Dallas questioned her actions Thursday.
Rice and other aides have defended themselves in part by pointing to the fact that doubts about the intelligence appeared in a footnote, written by the State Department, buried deep in a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate. That footnote was thus not read by Bush, Rice or other top aides, said a senior White House said last month.
But Rice said Thursday she had read the NIE "cover to cover, a couple of times."
She reiterated her remorse for the episode, saying that "whenever something like this happens to the president, I feel responsible because I am his national security adviser."
But she also repeated her contention that that element of the speech was not critical to Bush's case for war.
"The most appalling thing about this whole incident was that it for a two-week period had us discussing whether Saddam Hussein tried to get yellowcake in Africa, when of course the president did not go to war over whether Saddam Hussein tried to get yellowcake from Africa," she said.
Harry Truman warned that, when given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat imitating a Republican, voters would not hesitate to vote for the real thing. And, with his support for the Bush administration's agenda on foreign policy and trade -- fundamental issues not just for Democratic activists but for millions of disenchanted citizens who need to be drawn to the polls if the Democratic nominee is to prevail in November, 2004 -- Lieberman has positioned himself as the pale imitation of Bush that grassroots Democrats fear will depress turnout.
Journalists normally fret about negative campaigning and condemn attacks that dig out personal baggage in a candidate's background. Just as long as the candidate doesn't threaten a Democrat, apparently, since on this morning's Today Katie Couric didn't hesitate to beat Democratic operatives to the punch and remind viewers that Schwarzenegger's father was a Nazi. [...]
Couric to Sragow: "Let me ask you about his, his baggage, if you will. He's admitted smoking marijuana, using steroids during his body-building career. He's the son of a Nazi Party member. He said he was prejudiced before overcoming those feelings by working with the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles and the Dean of the Center said an investigation of Schwarzenegger's late father, conducted at the actor's request, found no evidence of war crimes. Through his publicist he's denied allegations published in Premiere magazine in March 2001, that he sexually harassed women and committed infidelity. All those things, are they gonna be front and center, Darry, if you, do you think in this campaign?"
Sragow: "I have to assume that those things are going to be brought up, not by Gray Davis, but by others and he's prepared to defend himself because he?s going to have to do that..."
For five years, Konzentrationslager Dachau, a short bicycle ride across the sodden moors northwest of Munich, was the site of the largest religious community in the world. Because many records were hurriedly burned as the American tanks approached in April 1945, the best estimate, based on clandestine lists kept by priest-prisoners in the work offices, is that 2,771 clergymen were interned at KZ Dachau — of whom at least 1,034 died in the camp. The 2,579 Catholic priests, lay brothers and seminarians came from 38 nations, from 134 dioceses and 29 religious orders and congregations. Their community included 109 Protestant, 30 Orthodox and two Moslem clergymen.
That figure, surprising as it might be, does not include the clergy or nuns shot or beheaded or tortured to death in squares and alleys and jails all over Europe. In the first 16 months of the war, 700 Polish priests died at the hands of the Nazis and 3,000 more were sent to concentration camps; more than half did not return. In Dachau, 868 Polish priests perished — 300 of them in medical experiments or by torture in the prison showers. In France, too, by February 1944, the Gestapo had arrested 162 priests, of whom 123 were shot or decapitated before ever reaching any camp. According to the International Tribunal at Nuremburg, 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen and 300 at Sachsenhausen, and there were hundreds of other camps and satellites in the network. Nor does the total figure of 2,771 take into consideration that one-quarter to one-third of those shipped to any camp often arrived dead. . . .
The German and Austrian clergy at Dachau (447) were for the most part men who realized that being a good Christian and a good Nazi were as irreconcilable as compassion and sadism. These men, being celibate, were freer than family men to take risks. They had run underground presses and underground railways to rescue retarded children from the euthanasia laws and Jews from deportation. Any priest was free to defy the Pulpit Law and speak out against the racism and paganism of the Third Reich, but except for the redoubtable Bishop Von Galen of Muenster it would be his final public word. German priests and pastors were exiled to Dachau for preaching love of neighbor, for insisting that Jesus was a Jew, for warning S.S. men that they could not abjure their faith to achieve promotion, for offering requiem Masses even for relatives of Communists. German religious were interned on trumped-up-charges of spiriting funds out of the country to their headquarters in Rome and, in much publicized cases, for seducing boys and girls. Two old priests were sent to Dachau for failing to give the Hitler salute when Hermann Goering and his entourage entered a Berlin restaurant. All the Gestapo needed was to present a paper to any priest: "Evidence confirmed by the State police shows that by his behavior he is endangering the stability and security of the State."
A "Wild West" political atmosphere unfolded at a frantic pace after the action film star and former Mr. Universe defied predictions of his own top advisers and said he would seek to terminate Davis's rule at the statehouse.
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, ostensibly Davis's deputy and the No. 2 state official, cited poor polls for Davis as a reason to run and said he hoped to raise up to $15 million to campaign.
"I think it is important that we have a serious Democrat on the ballot," he told reporters. "I am here to tell everyone to vote no on the recall and yes to Bustamante."
The answer lies at the back of the brain in an area called the cerebellum, which is involved in monitoring movements. Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle.
U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy has charged into the debate over same-sex marriage, criticizing the Vatican for its opposition to laws recognizing gay and lesbian couples.
A member of the country's most legendary Roman Catholic political family, representing the most Catholic state in the nation, Kennedy said he refuses to follow the Vatican's edict, issued last week, imploring Catholic lawmakers to oppose same-sex unions.
"I see the policy of opposing same-sex marriages or unions, whatever you call it, as bigotry or discrimination," Kennedy said yesterday in an interview.
"We are talking about the law here and whether the law is going to treat people equally here. I don't see where the church or anyone else dictates what the policy is going to be with respect to treating people equally," he said. [...]
It's not the first time Kennedy has clashed with the Catholic Church. In the past, he has bucked the church with his support for abortion rights and calling for the ordination of female priests. On the issue of gay rights, Kennedy said the church has strayed from its teachings. "The church has its doctrines. I don't agree with this doctrine. I don't agree with many others," he said.
Kennedy continued a short time later: "The very foundation of the church is about love," he said. "This notion of discrimination is so far afield of what Jesus' life was all about." Kennedy said his Catholic identity is important to him.
"The life of Jesus Christ influences my whole notion of public service," Kennedy said. "It's all about following the example of Jesus, of service, humility and love."
Kennedy continued: "I am speaking to you as someone who when I hear the Scripture, I get a very different message of what Jesus was teaching me than what the church seems to be representing."
A massive car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad today, killing at least seven people and wounding 52, hospital and rescue workers said. Two U.S. soldiers died in a gun battle in another part of the Iraqi capital.
The two soldiers of the 1st Armored Division were killed in the Al Rashid district of Baghdad Wednesday night, U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. reported. A translator with them was wounded.
Their deaths ended a four-day stretch in which the military said there had been no combat fatalities. The number of U.S. forces killed in combat since May 1, when President Bush declared major fighting over, now stands at 55. The military said it was withholding their names until family members were notified.
Shortly after the blast at the Jordanian Embassy, young Iraqi men stormed the gate and began destroying pictures of Jordanian King Abdullah II and his late father, King Hussein. They shouted anti-Jordanian chants, but were quickly dispersed by American forces and Iraqi police.
No matter how large a core group may be, it always consists of a minority of the people in an organization. Indeed, in most
organizations, it's unlikely that more than 5 percent of the people ever become members of a core group. Such groups vary dramatically from organization to organization. At the Body Shop, the core group is almost entirely composed of women; at Patagonia, it consists largely of mountain climbers. At most magazines I've known, either the production staff has core group status (in which case deadlines are sacrosanct and unchangeable) or the editorial staff does (in which case the magazine is exceptionally tolerant of last-minute changes).
In the best organizations, the core group members represent the unique values and knowledge that distinguish their companies from the rest. For example, only a few Coca-Cola executives have access to the vault where the secret syrup formula is kept. Of course, no one is worried that anyone will actually steal and use it. But the Coke formula has tremendous value as a talisman that separates Coca-Cola's core group from other members of the organization?and from the core groups of other companies. To have seen the Coke formula is truly to be part of a powerful and envied secret society.
Whatever the oil of anointment--whether it's seeing the Coke formula or getting invited to the CEO's house--the inner circle derives its power from the fact that life is too complicated without some such group to act as a symbolic lodestar. Think about it for a minute. The basic building block of organizations isn't the job, the team, the process, or even the share--it's the decision. People in organizations collectively make hundreds of thousands of decisions each day, usually without knowing exactly what the results will be. These decisions are made amid a maelstrom of competing
jurisdictions, commitments, desires, and needs, including each decision maker's own self-interest. We make sense of a particular decision by asking ourselves, consciously or not: "What would so-and-so think of this?" The organizational core group consists of the aggregate of all these individual so-and-sos. [...]
The core group can use its enormous power to shape the creativity, efficiency, and accountability of an organization for good as well as ill. There are many examples of organizations where the leaders make decisions better because they can draw on a well-functioning core group as a resource. This is not because the core group sets policy but simply because of the group's potential to establish an example for the rest of the organization. If the core group is going to be the means to move the organization forward, we need to know how to clarify its priorities.
A first step toward improving any core group involves reducing the level of distortion in the signals that are amplified. Politicians, diplomats, and psychiatrists have long been aware that they have to be exceedingly careful with even their most offhand remarks, because these can have huge effects on their listeners. Every U.S. president and treasury secretary quickly learns, for example, not to make casual remarks about currency exchange rates. And aristocrats have long practiced elaborate protocols for reducing misunderstandings when they interact with people of lesser status. A friend of mine once had dinner with England's Princess Margaret and a group of visiting Americans. A professional ambassador, Princess Margaret arrived at the gathering and quickly asked for a drink. She then lit a cigarette and immediately stubbed it out. She knew that her hosts would not feel free to drink or smoke until she had done so first.
Few business leaders have that instinct of noblesse oblige.
As U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, the Ace of Spades in the U.S. Army's deck of cards of wanted Iraqis, did a spectacular vanishing act. Many Iraqis believe their former leader, a lifelong dabbler in the occult, will never be found by coalition troops scouring the country. His trick, they say, is a magic stone that protects him from harm.
Mr. Hussein and his inner circle were obsessed with the dark arts: his son Uday even advertised on his own television channel for those with supernatural powers to come forward and serve the ruling family. In a country where decades of isolation and repression have cut people off from the modern world, belief in the occult is commonplace, and Iraqis regularly consult soothsayers to find stolen cars or tackle mental illness. Many believe Hussein has shrouded himself in his dark powers. [...]
Coalition leaders admit that a key to convincing Iraqis that the old regime is dead is capturing or killing the bogeyman who still casts a long shadow over Iraq.
The most commonly held view in Baghdad is that Hussein wore a "magic" stone around his neck, which warded off assassins' bullets.
"It's all true about the magic stone," says car dealer Mokhaled Mohammed, sitting in a cafe on Baghdad's upmarket Arasat Street. "First of all, he put it on a chicken and tried to shoot it. Then he put it on a cow, and the bullets went around it."
..."We do not believe this is appropriate," California controller Steve Westly said of the funds. "This is something we need to fix." New York State tax authorities also are examining the issue. It's unclear how many other states might be affected.
Exactly how much the strategy has cost cash-strapped California, where many of the banks have their headquarters, is unclear. Revenue officials said a sampling of tax returns from just a handful of banks showed that the maneuver trimmed those institutions' levies by a total of $46 million in 2000.
This coming Thursday is a very sad day for the Jewish people. It is known as Tishah B'av, and on this day it is customary to fast and, in general, to act as a mourner who has lost a very dear relative. You see, the Jewish people once had a special place where they could go to experience the divine presence of Hashem. That place was the holy Temple in the holy city of Jerusalem. Three times a year the Jews would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to witness for themselves God's place of dwelling here on earth. There they would pray to God and unite with one another. Then they would come home, bringing with them enough of a spiritual high to take them through to the next festival, when they would once again visit the Temple. It must have been an amazing experience, but, alas, in the year 70 C.E. all that was taken away from us when the Romans destroyed the Temple and exiled our ancestors to the four corners of the earth. Now, all that remains from that beautiful place is one wall -- the Western Wall.
To bring home the feeling of what we once had and what we subsequently lost, on Tishah B'av we read the book of Eichah (Lamentations), which was written by the prophet Jeremiah upon witnessing the destruction of the First Temple, almost five hundreds years earlier.
In the last two verses of the book of Eichah (5:21-22), Jeremiah beseeches the Almighty, "Bring us back to you, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as once before. For if you have rejected us entirely, your wrath has been exceedingly great upon us." [...]
Sometimes, God hits us and we don't like it. But we should try to remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah. And as the children of our Father in heaven, we should try to appreciate that it's better to hear that the answer is "no," than not to hear any answer at all.
May we all merit to see the time when Tishah B'av shall be changed from the saddest day of the year into the happiest day of the year, with the coming of Messiah. May this come speedily and in our day, amen.
Celebrities are already in the public eye, but some are saying they want to become public servants, too.
On Wednesday, Gary Coleman, the star of the 1980s sitcom, "Diff'rent Strokes," plunked down $3,500 in Alameda County and declared himself a candidate for governor of California. Current governor Gray Davis is facing a recall election Oct. 7.
The diminutive actor has been in and out of legal trouble since the popular show ended, and was recently on the E! series "Star Dates," where stars and singles mingle with mixed results.
American network TV has changed dramatically over the past decade — and so, it seems, has viewers' tolerance. Anyone who surfed the prime-time channels this past season and on through the summer will have felt a distinct swell in the number of affronts to what was once considered good taste.
During the 8 to 9 pm family hour, masturbation jokes abound — and they're a far cry from Seinfeld's brilliantly discreet "master of my domain." Fox's That '70s Show shows a male teenager milking a cow with astounding vigor — "Why are you so good at that?" asks his dad. On NBC's Friends, direct references to masturbation and "good old-fashioned American girl-on-girl action" are commonplace. At 9, Will & Grace gets down 'n' dirtier as naughty Karen gaily fires off double entendres ("Since Stan and I split, I've done nothing but touch my muffin") and guest star Minnie Driver skips such niceties when she reveals that she "shags like a banshee."
Network dramas sally forth with even more intense shock tactics--and no longer at the standard 10 pm watershed. This season on Fox's 24, which airs at 9 pm, viewers were exposed to extremely graphic torture scenes--including one in which Agent Jack Bauer literally had his heart stopped while he was slashed, burned and shocked by a taser. On ER, a surgeon had his arm sheared off by a propeller blade; in a later episode, a patient crouched in agony on a gurney as doctors removed a pink sex toy from his fundament.
On the Third Watch season finale on NBC, Alex Taylor was literally blown in two, surviving a blast just long enough to watch her legs go thump on the ground beside her. One method of murder on CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was death by meat-grinder, and a forensic clue on CSI: Miami was the trace of penile tissue trapped under a female victim's retainer. How much grosser can it get?
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is gearing up to run for governor in the Oct. 7 recall election, breaking ranks with other prominent Democrats who promised to support Gov. Gray Davis and stay off the ballot.
Bustamante, the first Hispanic to hold statewide office in California in more than a century, announced late Wednesday he was taking out candidacy papers Thursday.
The announcement marked the end of a good news-bad news day for Davis in which the unpredictable recall campaign took one dramatic twist after another.
The day began with Davis getting the good news that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the state's most popular politician, had rejected days of lobbying by fellow Democrats to put her name on the ballot as an alternative in case Davis is recalled.
It continued with Arnold Schwarzenegger stunning a national audience by announcing on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" that he would run for governor after his advisers had said for days that the movie star and Republican activist had all but decided not to run.
And it ended with Bustamante abandoning what had sounded like an unequivocal pledge not to get into the race when he made it last June.
"I will not participate in any way other than to urge voters to reject this expensive perversion of the recall process," Bustamante said at the time. "I will not attempt to advance my career at the expense of the people I was elected to serve. I do not intend to put my name on that ballot."
Q: Aren't you worried that, by putting your name on the ballot, you will split the Democratic vote, making it easier for a Republican to win?
A: I think, on the contrary, that what is irresponsible is to simply roll the dice and assume that the recall will be defeated, which goes not just against the current polls that we have but also against any kind of rational evaluation of what may happen in the next months. Because, simply, nobody knows, nobody can sit here today and say with any certainty that the recall will be defeated. Therefore, the Democratic strategists who came up with that strategy are willing to sacrifice millions of Californians, the fate of our schools, the fate of nursing homes, of health clinics, of community centers, just because they don't want to have an alternative on the ballot.
Q: Can you describe why you're no longer a conservative and when that realization struck you?
A: Well, it wasn't one lightning moment, it was a gradual process. First of all let me say that I have always been a moderate on social issues. Even during my Republican interregnum, I was pro-gay rights, pro-choice and pro-gun control -- so the transformation has been in terms of the role of government.
Educated Americans often say rather mournfully that Tony Blair expresses American values and goals better than the current US president. Whether this is what a British prime minister is elected for is, however, questionable. For while many US values may be virtuous in themselves, they can also be terrifying in their naivete.
This is above all true of "freedom". Mr Blair stressed this theme in his speech to the US Congress last month: "Ours are not western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship."
He then went on, like most Americans, to identify these values specifically with the US: "Don't ever apologise for your values. Tell the world why you're proud of America . . . What you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty." In a speech punctuated by an embarrassing number of standing ovations, no lines were more enthusiastically applauded. For this is the basic, boilerplate stuff of American political rhetoric.
But this vision of a simple, eternal, universal and universally accepted version of "freedom" is not true and never has been true, not only
internationally but within the US as well. Far from being straightforward and self-evident, the meaning of freedom has always been and remains ambiguous and contested. [...]
Americans need to profess absolute belief in their contradictory creed in part because a shared allegiance to it is one of the things holding their disparate society together.
In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth; and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.
[T]he people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation, which still I hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands.
-Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies ( 22 Mar. 1775)
If freedom entails responsibility, a fair proportion of mankind would prefer servitude; for it is far, far better to receive three meals a day and be told what to do than to take the consequences of one's own self-destructive choices. It is, moreover, a truth universally unacknowledged that freedom without understanding of what to do with it is a complete nightmare.
Such freedom is a nightmare, of course, not only for those who possess it, but for everyone around them. A man who does not know what to do with his freedom is like a box of fireworks into which a lighted match is thrown: he goes off in all directions at once. And such, multiplied by several millions, is modern society. The welfare state is - or has become - a giant organisation to shelter people from the natural consequences of their own disastrous choices, thus infantilising them and turning them into semi-dependants, to the great joy of their power-mad rulers.
Don't set the people free: many poor souls need institutions, but the ideologues and cost-cutters insist on giving them autonomy (Theodore Dalrymple, 12/14/02, The Spectator)
An amazing reunion took place in Tel Aviv the other day. After being separated for 52 years, 79-year-old Salima Moshe Nissim of the southern Iraqi city of Basra embraced her 83-year-old sister, Marcel Madar. Madar had immigrated to Israel in 1951, when more than 130,000 Jews fled Iraqi anti-Semitism. Nissim stayed behind. Now, finally, there she was in Israel, one of six aging Iraqi Jews flown there this week in a top-secret exodus coordinated by the U.S. Army, the Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency and New York's Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Twenty-eight other elderly, ailing Iraqi Jews remain behind for now, the final remnant of a great community that thrived in Mesopotamia - now known as Iraq - for more than 2,500 years. [...]
Iraq's Jewish community was not the only one to disappear from the Islamic world after 1948. Some 600,000 Jews fled homes in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iran.
You won't find any of these Arab Jews in refugee camps today. Most were almost immediately resettled in tiny Israel, where they've become part of the nation's life. When was the last time you heard of an Arab-born Jew getting on a Palestinian bus with a suicide bomb?
I say that because at about the time Jews left Arab lands, some 600,000 Palestinians fled the war the Arabs had launched against the newborn state of Israel. Rather than being resettled, most have been forced by their Arab brethren to fester in refugee camps around the Mideast. Palestinians say there are as many as 4 million such refugees today.
The answer to their woes is not a right of return to Israel, where they would destroy its character as a Jewish state. The answer is to learn from the Jews: Care for your brethren, resettle them, improve their lives, live in peace.
Seldom can we draw upon fiction and witchcraft to direct us through economic history. But in 1964, Henry Littlefield, a school teacher, published a study entitled The Wizard of Oz: A Parable on Populism. In this essay he presented L. Frank Baum's, The Wizard of Oz, as an allegory for late 19th century America. His description of this popular novel has echoes in today's US economy.
The story covers the 1890s, during which the US endured grinding deflation. Farming communities in the west, represented by the Scarecrow, saw their incomes and asset values collapse and the real cost of debts rise. This benefited the bankers in the east - in the guise of the Wicked Witch of the East. Throughout the period the gold standard was in operation, represented by the Yellow Brick Road. The supply of money was confined by the fixed availability of gold. According to Littlefield, Baum supported the Democratic pro-silver candidacy of the time and wove this theme into his tale. Dorothy was the US, Oz gold, the Tin Man industry and the Emerald City Washington. Perhaps the allegory was lost on Messrs Metro Goldwyn and Mayer - or maybe they employed artistic licence for visual effect. But in Baum's original story, Dorothy did not have ruby shoes but silver ones, representing the silver campaign.
In a National Democratic Convention debate on monetary policy at the time, William Jennings Bryan, a little-known Democrat, called for a move towards a silver standard. Silver would, he said, provide a more abundant reserve against which banks could produce money and ultimately reflate the
economy. Drastic times called for dramatic rhetoric. Bryan's manifesto earned him the Democratic presidential nomination that year as he
electioneered: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold".
Victory eluded Bryan in the 1897 election and the gold standard remained.
The media has been focusing obsessively on the relatively minor issue of how an incorrect assertion about Iraq's nuclear ambitions got into the president's State of the Union speech. In doing so, it has missed the much larger issue, which is that of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction. The inability to locate these weapons is vastly more consequential to American credibility than the fact that the White House staff failed to vet 16 words in a single speech. The missing weapons reflect a much more fundamental institutional intelligence failure.
The source of this failure does not lie in the political agenda of this administration. The Bush people are right in saying that their estimates of WMD stockpiles were no different from the conclusions of the Clinton administration. And the latter would say, if asked, that their assessment was drawn from Unscom, the U.N. weapons inspectors who operated in Iraq from 1991-98. The intelligence failure is thus ultimately traceable to Unscom, and deeply embedded in an intelligence process that in the 1990s was biased toward overestimation of threats.
Sharon has been building toward this moment since he became prime minister. First, by retaking the West Bank in the spring of 2002, he exploded the myth that the Palestinians could win a guerrilla war. Then he isolated and discredited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Finally, he pounded the Palestinians into exhaustion, forcing them to ask for a temporary truce.
None of this could have come to pass without the backing of the Israeli public - or the support of the Bush administration. The price of this support was signing up for the road map. Sharon - who doesn't necessarily want the Palestinian state the plan envisions - was ready to pay. He figured Abbas' check would bounce, and then he'd get a refund from the Americans.
Sharon seems to have been banking on a sure thing. Palestinian terror groups already are engaged in a recruiting drive and an effort to replenish their weapons, including stocks of crude mortars. Arafat is stridently calling Abbas' patriotism and manhood into question. It's just a matter of time before the Palestinians whip themselves into a delusional state of righteous indignation over Israeli crimes, real and imagined. Then the shooting starts - and Israel's intifadeh.
The campaign Sharon has planned will take its tactical cues from U.S. operations in Iraq. Rules of engagement will be the same. Leaders once considered immune - the chief of Hamas, the heads of Islamic Jihad in Damascus and perhaps Arafat himself - will get the Saddam Hussein treatment.
When the fighting stops, Sharon intends for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority to be as dead as the Iraqi Baath Party. Any future Palestinian government will have to conform to the criteria America has set for self-government in Baghdad: constitutional government and a full commitment to peace.
Last week, political gadfly Arianna Huffington gathered a few dozen friends and advisors in her Brentwood home to discuss the possibility of her entering the gubernatorial recall race. A few miles away, her former husband and failed senatorial candidate Michael Huffington was having similar conversations in his Brentwood home.
Meanwhile, political troops gathered at the Brentwood home of former Mayor Richard Riordan, after rumors built that former body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger would not run--a decision likely to be made after much consultation and discussion in his--all together now--Brentwood home.Thank heaven Bill Simon lives in the Palisades or you'd think something weird was going on here.
Why, it seems like only a matter of time before the curbsides of Sunset just west of the 405 are dotted with enterprising youth lounging beneath beach umbrellas and hawking Maps to the Homes of Those Contemplating Running for Governor in the Recall Race.
Which would have to include the childhood home of the man they're trying to unseat: Although he was born in New Jersey, Gray Davis was reared nowhere else but Brentwood.
When exactly did Brentwood become Hyannis Port west?
Q. Can you give a few examples of some of the interesting findings from the 2000 survey?
A. Because we are able to track daily, we are able to answer such questions as, "Did the Gore drop in vote intentions occur because of the first debate, or had it begun before the first debate?" The first advantage of this survey is that it lets you attribute findings to specific events. Rather than simply knowing that something occurred, we know approximately when it occurred and hence can draft some reasonable inferences about why it occurred.
We know, for example, that Gore started to drop before the first debate as a result of what appears to be a combination of factors. The petroleum reserve statement appeared to affect him adversely. The criticism of his going to Hollywood to raise money after his ticket had criticized Hollywood appeared to have an effect. And the traction of the news stories about the mother-in-law and the pharmaceutical price and the dog appeared to be gaining traction before the debate happened.
We also know -- and this is because we are in the field every day and we know who watched debates and who didn't -- that the effect of the first debate was felt on non-watchers as it affected Gore, not on watchers. Debate watchers continued to think that Gore had done a good job in the debate, and that persisted in the following week. The drop that Gore experienced as a result of the first debate was an effect on the non-watchers who were influenced by the media commentary about the debate, not among the watchers who would have been affected directly by the debate.
As a general point, the first set of interesting findings in the survey answered not the question, "Did Gore drop during that period?" but "When?" and "Why?" and "What was the relative impact of news and Republican advertising and the relative effect of debate watching as opposed to commentary about the debate?" [...]
Q. Were there any other interesting findings like that?
A. There are three sets of findings in the data set that are interesting in light of the communication and political science literature. There is a first clear effect produced by the conventions, largely produced by the second convention and largely produced in the form of Democrats recognizing that the economy was doing well and coming to accept that and giving Clinton-Gore some of the credit. So there was a priming effect as a result of the Democratic convention on a traditional, structural variable -- something that political scientists have believed makes an effect routinely turns out to make an effect only when you communicate about it. It was the communication at the convention about the economy that produced the effect. After that, because Gore didn't stress the economy, the effect dissipates. But there is one effect on people's perception of the economy. It's an effect on Democrats as a result of the Democratic convention. And it helps lead the Gore rebound out of the convention.
The second effect is... the perception that Gore's honesty collapses as a result of that set of variables we just discussed.
Then there's a third big effect in the data set, and it's an "issue effect." Coming out of the last debate, Gore begins to get traction on his claims about Social Security. That's a combination of an effect produced among debate watchers and among heavy broadcast news consumers. It appears to be a byproduct of the fact that [George W.] Bush did not appear on network news as much in the final week of the campaign as Gore did. Gore appeared more, in other words. And Gore hammered Bush on Social Security in those press interviews on national network evening news. The rebound effect occurs more strongly on Social Security -- that's rebound of Democrats coming back toward the traditional Democratic position on Social Security and independents gravitating toward the Gore position -- out of heavy news watchers and debate viewers in the final weeks.
A software engineer pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of aiding the Taliban, agreeing to testify against other suspects in exchange for the dropping of other terrorism charges.
Maher "Mike" Hawash, one of the so-called "Portland Seven," will serve at least seven years in federal prison under the deal, which was approved by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the United States and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism.
"You and the others in the group were prepared to take up arms, and die as martyrs if necessary, to defend the Taliban. Is this true?" U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Hawash during the hearing.
"Yes, your honor," Hawash replied.
"I think when you look at the lack of diversity in the newsrooms, when you look at the lack of diversity from the editors and those in power, then you see them as automatically dismissive of anything that is not like them, which is white males," said Sharpton.
"I think we've seen some very blatant racial insensitivity in the coverage of this race so far," said Sharpton, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Sharpton complained that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has been virtually anointed the hot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 - a case, he said, of a white-dominated media focusing on a middle-age white man.
Arnold Schwarzenegger ended the suspense Wednesday and said he would run in California's recall election, awarding Republicans his marquee value in their campaign to oust Gov. Gray Davis. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein ruled out a run, labeling the election "more and more like a carnival every day."
Schwarzenegger's announcement came as a surprise; advisers had said in recent days that was leaning against running in the Oct. 7 election.
Schwarzenegger made his announcement during a taping of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
"The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing," he said. "The man that is failing the people more than anyone is Gray Davis. He is failing them terribly, and this is why he needs to be recalled and this is why I am going to run for governor."
Political commentator Arianna Huffington declared Wednesday that she would run as an independent, one of the only other well-known names in the race so far. Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a moderate Republican, has said he would enter the race if Schwarzenegger did not.
Religious believers argue that faith isn't simply a private matter. It underlies the values and beliefs we bring to the public square. And they're 100 percent right. But the shield that guards our private religious beliefs from any and every political scrutiny doesn't follow those beliefs out into the public arena. Once our religiously rooted beliefs cross the membrane from the private to the public, they become no different from any other political beliefs. People are free to disagree with us and oppose us on that basis. That's not bigotry. That's democracy.
BERLIN –– Germany's jobless rate rose to 10.4 percent in July with 94,500 more people out of work than in the previous month amid stagnation in Europe's largest economy, according to government figures released Wednesday.
The unadjusted unemployment rate increased from 10.2 percent in June, with a total of 4.352 million people out of work, the Federal Labor Office said. Some 305,000 more Germans were without a job than in July last year, it added.
The German economy is in its third year of stagnation. It contracted slightly in the first quarter of this year following 0.2 percent growth last year and 0.6 percent expansion in 2001.
"While early economic indicators point to a forthcoming economic upswing, current indicators such as orders and industrial production show no turnaround yet," the labor office said in its statement. "Consequently, the labor market also has shown no fundamental improvement."
July's unemployment figures again showed the gap between western Germany and the struggling ex-communist east. While the jobless rate was 8.3 percent in the west, it was more than twice as high in the east, at 18.5 percent.
U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's campaign tactics in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination appears to be hurting him at home with voters.
His criticism of President George W. Bush's position on the Iraqi war has driven Graham's approval rating in Florida to a record low 47 percent, a new poll shows. A former two-term governor, Graham has enjoyed approval ratings consistently over 60 percent in the past 20 years.
The 66-year-old senator is campaigning nationally on his contention that he can defeat Bush for the state's 27 electoral votes, a state that decided the presidency in 2000.
But the survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. for several Florida newspapers and broadcasters, shows Bush would defeat Graham in his home state by a margin of 12 percentage points, 51 percent to 39 percent, if the election were held now.
I assume most people will say the leading cause of death in the African-American community is violent crime, cancer, AIDS or heart disease. The correct answer is abortion. The fact is that more African-American babies have been killed by abortion during the past 27 years than the total number of African-American deaths from all other causes combined.
In a 1992 Planned Parenthood report it was admitted that "abortion services have been deliberatively and systematically targeted toward African-Americans. A disproportionate number of the nation's abortion clinics are located in minority communities."
While African-Americans constitute roughly 12 percent of the population, 35 percent of all abortions are performed on African-American women. According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there have been about 13 million black babies killed by abortion in 27 years.
The real epidemic is the evil epidemic of abortion. The new Middle Passage in the greatest Holocaust in black history is the birth canal.
Arianna Huffington, political commentator and syndicated columnist, made it official this morning. She is running for governor of California.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a statement today that she will not run for governor.
In a well-publicized appearance on the "Today Show,'' Huffington said that she was entering into the race to prevent the Republicans from taking over the statehouse.
The stress of living in this economically hobbled nation can wear a body down. So Ruben Dieminger takes strong measures to boost his immune system.
Prying open a plastic container that holds a wriggling mass of small brown beetles, Mr. Dieminger shook about a dozen into a glass of lemon-flavored soft drink. Then he lifted the glass to his lips, and ... chug-a-bug.
"That's what I needed," he said.
Mr. Dieminger, 40 years old, is among a growing number of Argentines who maintain that there are times that everyone needs a dose of this Asian bug, known to scientists as ulomoides dermestoides and to laymen as the darkling beetle. According to beetle-eating proponents, secretions from the insect strengthen the body's defenses against cancer, AIDS, asthma and diabetes, among other ills....
Mr. Dieminger advises adherents to start by swallowing a single beetle and then building up their intake to 70 a day. The pea-sized bugs are eaten live.
Skeptics say bug-eating itself is a symptom of the decline of a once proud and prosperous nation.
The long-term stability of the region is threatened by a twin set of evils. One is rampant unemployment and the other the absence of opportunities for Arab youths to translate knowledge and talent into productive activities. Without prospects of a future, Arab youths remain trapped in despair....
In their recent book "Driven," Professors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School devise an incisive analytical framework based on four instinctive human drives -- to acquire, bond, learn and defend -- from which any other need can be then derived. Peace, success and prosperity are highly dependent upon a balanced satisfaction of all four drives. In the context of the Middle East, Arabs have consistently failed to satisfy the basic drive to acquire -- in terms of translating ability and knowledge into prosperity.
As a result, the Arab mind remains shaped by "this fear of finding nothing, of being useless, the sense of living in a void for purposes only of dying, which crops up nihilistically time and again", as David Pryce-Jones concludes "The Closed Circle."
Like John McCain in 2000, the Vermont governor has harnessed the Internet to raise funds quickly, cheaply and legally. But McCain's online fund-raising was catalyzed by a victory in the New Hampshire primary which he won the old-fashioned way, by media and pressing the flesh. Dean, on the other hand, used the Internet to grow from nothing into a full-fledged contender.
Capitalizing on the Democratic Party's pro-peace and pro-gay base...
The US service sector surprised experts with a fourth consecutive month of growth in July that helped fan hopes of a recovery, according to Institute for Supply Management data on Tuesday.
The ISM's index of non-manufacturing activity rose to 65.1 in July, from 60.6 in June. The new reading is the highest in the six years of the ISM non-manufacturing index, and countered most economists' expectations of a decline to 58.
However, the muted reaction of the US equities market reflected the short record of the index and investor focus on other parts of the economy, according to Richard Berner, chief US economist at Morgan Stanley.
Any reading above 50 suggests expansion in the sector, which encompasses a wide range of economic activity, from banking and retail to tourism and transport. The rise was attributed to the components of the index measuring new orders, backlogs of orders, inventories and imports. But there was only modest growth in the employment sub-index, suggesting employers continue to be reluctant to hire.
In politics, numbers can often be deceiving. Despite the fact the Senate is almost evenly split, 51 Republicans to 49 Democrats, few believe -- correctly or not -- that there is much chance the GOP will lose its majority next November. In the House, which is divided almost as evenly (229 Republicans to 206 Democrats, or 52.6 percent to 47.4 percent), Democrats are no closer to recapturing the majority than are their Senate brethren. And, despite the fact that the margin between the two parties in the House is closer than it was at any point during the 40-year Democratic reign, Republicans enjoyed an operational ruling majority even before their six-seat pickup in 2002.
In the Senate, once you get past the 51-49 split, both the numbers and the circumstances begin to work against Democrats. Not only do Democrats have more seats up than Republicans, but these 19 Democratic seats are far more vulnerable than the GOP 15. Of the Democratic seats, 10 are in states that George W. Bush carried in that razor-thin 2002 election, while only three of the 15 Republican seats are in states won by Al Gore. History tells us that presidential election returns are a very good, though admittedly not perfect, proxy for later Senate results, particularly in open seats where most turnovers occur.
Science under dictatorship becomes subordinated to the guiding philosophy of the dictatorship. Irrespective of other ideologic trappings, the guiding philosophic principle of recent dictatorships, including that of the Nazis, has been Hegelian in that what has been considered "rational utility" and corresponding doctrine and planning has replaced moral, ethical and religious values. Nazi propaganda was highly effective in perverting public opinion and public conscience, in a remarkably short time. In the medical profession this expressed itself in a rapid decline in standards of professional ethics. Medical science in Nazi Germany collaborated with this Hegelian trend particularly in the following enterprises: the mass extermination of the chronically sick in the interest of saving "useless" expenses to the community as a whole; the mass extermination of those considered socially disturbing or racially and ideologically unwanted; the individual, inconspicuous extermination of those considered disloyal within the ruling group; and the ruthless use of "human experimental material" for medico-military research.
This paper discusses the origins of these activities, as well as their consequences upon the body social, and the motivation of those participating in them.
Preparatory Propaganda
Even before the Nazis took open charge in Germany, a propaganda barrage was directed against the traditional compassionate nineteenth-century attitudes toward the chronically ill, and for the adoption of a utilitarian, Hegelian point of view. Sterilization and euthanasia of persons with chronic mental illnesses was discussed at a meeting of Bavarian psychiatrists in 1931. By 1936 extermination of the physically or socially unfit was so openly accepted that its practice was mentioned incidentally in an article published in an official German medical journal.
Lay opinion was not neglected in this campaign. Adults were propagandized by motion pictures, one of which, entitled "I Accuse," deals entirely with euthanasia. This film depicts the life history of a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis; in it her husband, a doctor, finally kills her to the accompaniment of soft piano music rendered by a sympathetic colleague in an adjoining room. Acceptance of this ideology was implanted even in the children. A widely used high-school mathematics text, "Mathematics in the Service of National Political Education," includes problems stated in distorted terms of the cost of caring for and rehabilitating the chronically sick and crippled, the criminal and the insane."
Euthanasia
The first direct order for euthanasia was issued by Hitler on September 1, 1939, and an organization was set up to execute the program. Dr. Karl Brandt headed the medical section, and Phillip Bouhler the administrative section. All state institutions were required to report on patients who had been ill five years or more and who were unable to work, by filling out questionnaires giving name, race, marital status, nationality, next of kin, whether regularly visited and by whom, who bore financial responsibility and so forth. The decision regarding which patients should be killed was made entirely on the basis of this brief information by expert consultants, most of whom were professors of psychiatry in the key universities. These consultants never saw the patients themselves. The thoroughness of their scrutiny can be appraised by the work of on expert, who between November 14 and December 1, 1940, evaluated 2109 questionnaires.
These questionnaires were collected by a "Realm's Work Committee of Institutions for Cure and Care." A parallel organization devoted exclusively to the killing of children was known by the similarly euphemistic name of "Realm's Committee for Scientific Approach to Severe Illness Due to Heredity and Constitution." The "Charitable Transport Company for the Sick" transported patients to the killing centers, and the "Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care" was in charge of collecting the cost of the killings from the relatives, without, however, informing them what the charges were for; in the death certificates the cause of death was falsified.
What these activities meant to the population at large was well expressed by a few hardy souls who dared to protest. A member of the court of appeals at Frankfurt-am-Main wrote in December, 1939:
There is constant discussion of the question of the destruction of socially unfit life--in the places where there are mental institutions, in neighboring towns, sometimes over a large area, throughout the Rhineland, for example. The people have come to recognize the vehicles in which the patients are taken from their original institution to the intermediate institution and from there to the liquidation institution. I am told that when they see these buses even the children call out: "They're taking some more people to be gassed." From Limburg it is reported that every day from one to three buses which shades drawn pass through on the way from Weilmunster to Hadmar, delivering inmates to the liquidation institution there. According to the stories the arrivals are immediately stripped to the skin, dressed in paper shirts, and forthwith taken to a gas chamber, where they are liquidated with hydro-cyanic acid gas and an added anesthetic. The bodies are reported to be moved to a combustion chamber by means of a conveyor belt, six bodies to a furnace. The resulting ashes are then distributed into six urns which are shipped to the families. The heavy smoke from the crematory building is said to be visible over Hadamar every day. There is talk, furthermore, that in some cases heads and other portions of the body are removed for anatomical examination. The people working at this liquidation job in the institutions are said to be assigned from other areas and are shunned completely by the populace. This personnel is described as frequenting the bars at night and drinking heavily. Quite apart from these overt incidents that exercise the imagination of the people, the are disquieted by the question of whether old folk who have worked hard all their lives and may merely have come into their dotage are also being liquidated. There is talk that the homes for the aged are to be cleaned out too. The people are said to be waiting for legislative regulation providing some orderly method that will insure especially that the aged feeble-minded are not included in the program.
Here one sees what "euthanasia" means in actual practice. According to the records, 275,000 people were put to death in these killing centers. Ghastly as this seems, it should be realized that this program was merely the entering wedge for exterminations for far greater scope in the political program for genocide of conquered nations and the racially unwanted. The methods used and personnel trained in the killing centers for the chronically sick became the nucleus of the much larger centers on the East, where the plan was to kill all Jews and Poles and to cut down the Russian population by 30,000,000. [...]
It is rather significant that the German people were considered by their Nazi leaders more ready to accept the exterminations of the sick than those for political reasons. It was for that reason that the first exterminations of the latter group were carried out under the guise of sickness. So-called "psychiatric experts" were dispatched to survey the inmates of camps with the specific order to pick out members of racial minorities and political offenders from occupied territories and to dispatch them to killing centers with specially made diagnoses such as that of "inveterate German hater" applied to a number of prisoners who had been active in the Czech underground.
Certain classes of patients with mental diseases who were capable of performing labor, particularly members of the armed forces suffering from psychopathy or neurosis, were sent to concentration camps to be worked to death, or to be reassigned to punishment battalions and to be exterminated in the process of removal of mine fields.
A large number of those marked for death for political or racial reasons were made available for "medical" experiments involving the use of involuntary human subjects. From 1942 on, such experiments carried out in concentration camps were openly presented at medical meetings. This program included "terminal human experiments," a term introduced by Dr. Rascher to denote an experiment so designed that its successful conclusion depended upon the test person's being put to death. [...]
Under all forms of dictatorship the dictating bodies or individuals claim that all that is done is being done for the best of the people as a whole, and that for that reason they look at health merely in terms of utility, efficiency and productivity. It is natural in such a setting that eventually Hegel's principle that "what is useful is good" wins out completely. The killing center is the reductio ad absurdum of all health planning based only on rational principles and economy and not on humane compassion and divine law. To be sure, American physicians are still far from the point of thinking of killing centers, but they have arrived at a danger point in thinking, at which likelihood of full rehabilitation is considered a factor that should determine the amount of time, effort and cost to be devoted to a particular type of patient on the part of the social body upon which this decision rests. At this point Americans should remember that the enormity of a euthanasia movement is present in their own midst. To the psychiatrist it is obvious that this represents the eruption of unconscious aggression on the part of certain administrators alluded to above, as well as on the part of relatives who have been understandably frustrated by the tragedy of illness in its close interaction upon their own lives. The hostility of a father erupting against his feebleminded son is understandable and should be considered from the psychiatric point of view, but it certainly should not influence social thinking. The development of effective analgesics and pain-relieving operations has taken even the last rationalization away from the supporters of euthanasia.
The case, therefore, that I should like to make is that American medicine must realize where it stands in its fundamental premises. There can be no doubt that in a subtle way the Hegelian premise of "what is useful is right" has infected society, including the medical portion. Physicians must return to the older premises, which were the emotional foundation and driving force of an amazingly successful quest to increase powers of healing if they are not held down to earth by the pernicious attitudes of an overdone practical realism.
What occurred in Germany may have been the inexorable historic progression that the Greek historians have described as the law of the fall of civilizations and that Toynbee has convincingly confirmed--namely, that there is a logical sequence from Koros to Hybris to Ate, which means from surfeit to disdainful arrogance to disaster, the surfeit being increased scientific and practical accomplishments, which, however, brought about an inclination to throw away the old motivations and values by disdainful arrogant pride in practical efficiency. Moral and physical disaster is the inevitable consequence.
In recent weeks, George W. Bush has started to come in for the first meaningful criticism from mainstream conservatives during his presidency. While nascent, it could become the only real barrier to his re-election next year unless dealt with quickly. [...]
Substantively, there was absolutely no reason for any conservative to support Nixon in 1972 except that he was better than George McGovern -- the most left-wing Democratic nominee since William Jennings Bryan.
No doubt, that is the same reason why most conservatives supported William Howard Taft against Bryan in 1908. But the result was that Taft signed into law the federal income tax and created a national bank for the United States (the Federal Reserve), two cherished liberal ideals that Bryan never could have accomplished. Only a Republican president could have rammed these measures through a Republican Congress.
Conservative dismay over Taft's liberal agenda led directly to massive Democratic gains in Congress in 1910 and his own loss in 1912. The same dismay over Nixon's liberal agenda led to massive Democratic gains and his ouster from office in 1974.
I am sorry to say that I see Bush traveling the same path. He has concluded that the Democrats are very likely to nominate a candidate so far to the left as to be unelectable. Howard Dean's ascension to the head of the Democratic pack supports this conclusion. But ironically, rather than making Bush feel more comfortable pursuing a conservative agenda, he continues to move left on domestic issues -- especially the budget-busting prescription drug subsidy bill.
Bush has also signed into law a campaign finance reform bill that most conservatives view as blatantly unconstitutional, endorsed an education bill written by Ted Kennedy and initiated more trade protectionism by any president since Nixon. But against these, Bush continually plays his trump card: the war against terrorism. And just as Nixon played the anticommunist card in terms of the Vietnam War, it has been enough to keep most Republican voters under control -- so far.
The only substantive difference between Nixon and Bush, in terms of policy, is that the latter cut taxes while the former raised them.
Shortly after the 25-member Governing Council was appointed in Iraq, the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, questioned the U.S.-appointed Council's legitimacy. "If this Council was elected," complained Mr. Moussa, "it would have gained much power and credibility."
I love that quote. I love it, first of all, for its bold, gutsy, shameless, world-class hypocrisy. Mr. Moussa presides over an Arab League in which not one of the 22 member states has a leader elected in a free and fair election. On top of it, before the war, Mr. Moussa did all he could to shield Saddam Hussein from attack, although Saddam had never held a real election in his life. Yet, there was Mr. Moussa questioning the new U.S.-appointed Iraqi Council, which, even in its infant form, is already the most representative government Iraq has ever had.
But I also love Mr. Moussa's comment for its unintended revolutionary message: "power and credibility" come from governments that are freely "elected." If only that were the motto of the Arab League. Alas, it is not, but it might be one day, and that brings me to the core question of this column: What has been the Arab reaction to Iraq?
The short answer is: Shock, denial, fear and some stirrings of change. [...]
The denial is closely related to the fears. Many Arab leaders and intellectuals seem to be torn between two fears about Iraq: fear that the U.S. will succeed in transforming Iraq into a constitutional, democratizing society, which would put pressure on every other Arab regime to change, and fear that the U.S. will fail and Iraq will collapse into ethnic violence that will suck in all the neighbors and look like Lebanon's civil war on steroids.
For now, though, a few governments are getting ahead of the curve, while most are still hiding behind it. Jordan's King Abdullah has been the most pro-active, pushing his conservative population down the path of economic reform, and is likely to begin experimenting soon with political reform as well.
All but one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates made extravagant bids for support from organized labor here tonight, calling for expanded health care coverage and some restrictions on free trade policies and denouncing the Bush administration for cutting funds to state governments.
The candidates squabbled over how ambitious health care programs should be and how restricted trade policies should be. But for the most part, they largely endorsed the views held by organized labor as they appeared at a 90-minute forum sponsored by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. [...]
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who has portrayed himself as the most centrist candidate, sought to stand out tonight as he refrained from offering unabashed endorsements of union positions.
At one point, the senator was booed when he said he would establish a pilot program to provide poor students with vouchers to attend private schools, a position strongly opposed by teacher unions.
"I'm going to speak the truth," Mr. Lieberman said. "I'm going say what I think is best for America regardless. This is an experiment. Try it for three to four years, limit it to poor children, don't take any money out of public school budgets."
First, let me say that I hope I'm wrong about this. But the way in which interest rates have behaved over the past month or so should be causing serious concern that the country has gotten itself into a fix that can't be remedied in any conventional way.
Since the Federal Reserve reduced interest rates in early June, the actual rates that people and businesses have to pay to borrow money have soared like a rocket. The interest rate on 30-year government bonds - which are no longer issued by Washington but still trade - has risen from around 4.20 percent to about 5.50 percent.
That has caused 30-year mortgages, for instance, to rise from an average in the very low 5 percent area to over 6 percent.
Why has this happened? That's a good question, and one for which nobody has an answer.
One thing that my sources and I have been worrying about is that foreigners, for a number of reasons, would suddenly find U.S. markets unattractive. If they pulled their money out, rates would automatically rise.
Or rates could be rising because investors think the U.S. Federal Reserve is being irresponsible in its handling of monetary policy. Certainly the federal budget deficit is already high enough to frighten many investors.
All those possibilities are worrisome. But something else is even more tricky: Interest rates could be rising because of the perception that the economy is improving.
Yes, we American Muslims will continue to challenge the Bush administrations’ proposal to wage war against Iraq. We think a regime change in Washington is as necessary as a regime change in Baghdad, but that is an intramural affair. Once the war is declared, make no mistake Mr. Saddam Hussain and Mr. Bin Laden, We are with America. We will fight with America and we will fight for America. We have a covenant with this nation, we see it as a divine commitment and we will not disobey the Quran (9:4) – we will fulfill our obligations as citizens to the land that opened its doors to us and promised us equality and dignity even though we have a different faith. I am sure Mr. Bin Laden, you can neither understand nor appreciate this willingness to accept and welcome the other.Obviously, I differ with Dr. Khan on many issues, but this is as nice a demonstration of the strength of the United States as I could hope for.
Sure at this moment out of anger, frustration and fear, some in America have momentarily forgotten their own values. I am confident that, God willing, this moment of shock and insecurity will pass and America will once again become the beacon of freedom, tolerance and acceptance that it was before September 11th. On that day Mr. Binladen, you not only killed 3000 innocent Americans, many of whom were also Muslims, but you signed the death warrants of many innocent people who will die in this war on terror and many more who will live but will suffer the consequences, the pain and the misery of war. Before September 11th, the US was giving aid to Afghanistan and was content to wait for the Iraqi people to free themselves and the rest of the world from their dictator. On that day you changed the rules of the game and Muslims in many places are suffering as a direct consequence.
When the Prophet Muhammad (saw) and his companions fought in the name of Islam, Allah made them victorious and glorified them in this world. They made Islam the currency of human civilization for over a millennium. You and your men on the other hand face nothing but defeat, global ridicule and contempt and run and hide like rats in caves and dungeons. You live in the dark. Your faith neither enlightens you nor enables you to live in the light and you have made Islam the currency of hate and violence.
Let me tell you that I would rather live in America under Ashcroft and Bush at their worst, than in any “Islamic state” established by ignorant, intolerant and murderous punks like you and Mullah Omar at their best. The US, patriot act not withstanding is still a more Islamic (just and tolerant) state than Afghanistan ever was under the Taliban.
They may be the world's closest thing to a truly stateless people: abducted 200 years ago into slavery, relegated in our time to near serfdom, and driven finally into exile by civil war.
Until recently, most had never flushed a toilet, flicked a light switch, climbed a flight of stairs or watched a TV. They had never talked on a telephone, cooked on a stove or ridden in a car, never held a pen or used a fork. Many have never crossed a paved road.
Now, they're coming to America.
They are the Bantus of Somalia, long the least fortunate people in one of the least fortunate nations on the least fortunate continent.
But suddenly, all Africa is talking about the luck of the Bantus.
Their identity, once a curse, has become their passport. The U.S. government has judged their future so hopeless that it has agreed to resettle about 13,000 from refugee camps in Kenya, where they fled in the early '90s to escape the Somali civil war. [...]
"We can't afford to have a concentration of people who don't speak English, who don't know our culture, and who need handouts," says John Lombardo, a block association president. "Buffalo is having tough times as it is."
The few Americans who know the Bantus, however, complain that they are being inaccurately portrayed as 21st-century cave men. "They're sub-Saharan subsistence farmers," says Kenneth Menkhaus, a Davidson College political scientist who has worked in Somalia. "They're not from the moon."
He says the Bantus are remarkable for their industry, adaptability and resilience; having survived so much, they'll have no trouble learning to use a can opener or brush their teeth.
But it's clear their resettlement will require the most ambitious and complex effort since the Hmong people of Laos arrived a quarter century ago, after losing their U.S.-supported fight against communist forces.
While it is commonly assumed that the moral atrocities associated with the Holocaust were the exclusive domain of Adolf Hitler and his loyal henchmen Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer, this was only the final act, as it were, of a narrative whose beginnings are traceable to the turn of the century. Indeed it would appear, as authors as diverse as Alexander Mitscherlich, Robert Jay Lifton, Michael Burleigh, and Wesley Smith have documented, that the path to medical evil was prepared "long before Nazism was even a cloud on the German horizon." One of the tragic legacies of social Darwinism, rooted in the presupposition of biological determinism, is that it assisted in giving justification--frequently couched in the language of "compassion"--to the elimination of lebensunwertes Leben, life that is unworthy of living, or, in the language of Darwinists, life that is simply unfit.
In addition to the ascendancy of biological determinism, an important step in legitimizing the killing of the weak, the infirm, the terminally ill, and the incompetent was the shift in ethos among medical doctors and psychiatrists several decades prior to WWII. Historian Robert Proctor has argued persuasively that the Nazi experiment was rooted in pre-1933 thinking about the essence of personhood, racial hygienics and survival economics and that physicians were instrumental both in pioneering research and in carrying out this program. In fact, Proctor is adamant that scientists and physicians were pioneers and not pawns in this process. By 1933, however, when political power was consolidated by National Socialists, resistance within the medical community was too late. Proctor notes, for example, that most of the fifteen-odd journals devoted to racial hygienics were established long before the rise of National Socialism.
Few accounts of this period are more thoroughly researched than Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance: "Euthanasia" in Germany ca. 1900-1945. Particularly important is Burleigh's discussion of psychiatric reform and medical utilitarianism during the Weimar period. During the years of WWI, it is estimated that over 140,000 people died in German psychiatric asylums . This would suggest that about 30% of the entire pre-war asylum population died as a result of hunger, disease or neglect. Following the war, evidence indicates that a shift in the moral climate had begun. In the Spring of 1920, the chairman of the German Psychiatric Association, Karl Bonhoeffer, testified before Association members at the GPA annual meeting that "we have witnessed a change in the concept of humanity"; moreover, in emphasizing the right of the healthy to stay alive, which is an inevitable result of periods of necessity, there is also a danger of going too far: a danger that the self-sacrificing subordination of the strong to the needs of the helpless and ill, which lies at the heart of any true concern for the sick, will give ground to the demand of the healthy to live.
According to Burleigh, Bonhoeffer went on in the 1930s to offer courses that trained those who in time would be authorized with implementing sterilization policies introduced by the National Socialists.
Already in the 1890s, the traditional view of medicine that physicians are not to harm but to cure was being questioned in some corners by a "right-to-die" ethos. Voluntary euthanasia was supported by a concept of negative human worth -- i.e., the combined notion that suffering negates human worth and the incurably ill and mentally defective place an enormous burden on families and surrounding communities. It is at this time that the expression "life unworthy of being lived" seems to have emerged and was the subject of heated debate by the time WWI had ended.
One notable "early" proponent of involuntary euthanasia was influential biologist and Darwinian social theorist Ernst Haeckel. In 1899 Haeckel published The Riddle of the Universe, which became one of the most widely read science books of the era. One of several influential voices contending for the utility of euthanasia, Haeckel combined the notion of euthanasia as an act of mercy with economic concerns that considerable money might thereby be saved.
Further justification for euthanasia in the pre-WWI era was provided by people such as social theorist Adolf Jost and Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. According to Ostwald, "in all circumstances suffering represents a restriction upon, and diminution of, the individual and capacity to perform in society of the person suffering." In his 1895 book Das Recht auf den Tod ("The Right to Death"), Jost set forth the argument--an argument almost forty years in advance of Nazi prescriptions--that the "right" to kill existed in the context of the higher rights possessed by the state, since all individuals belong to the social organism of the state. Furthermore, this was couched in terms of "compassion" and "relief" from one's suffering. Finally, the right to kill compassionately was predicated on biology, in accordance with the spirit of the age: the state must ensure that the social organism remains fit and healthy.
In 1933, with the accession of the National Socialists to power, two developments that had reached their critical mass were promptly codified into law. One was the long-discussed sterilization program, which had been debated but had not achieved majority support. The second was authorized euthanasia. The proposal, issued by the German Ministry of Justice, was reported on the front page of The New York Times and stated:
"It shall be made possible for physicians to end the tortures of incurable patients, upon request, in the interests of true humanity." Moreover, the Ministry ensured, "no life still valuable to the state will be wantonly destroyed."
Q: In this work on the Nazi doctors your focus on historical processes and psychological processes come together as you account for the way the medical profession participated in the extermination of the Jews at the Auschwitz camp. Let's talk a little about the psycho-historical principle of the Nazi regime and how it combined with the psychological processes within the doctors which you call "doubling."
A: One reason that I embarked on a study of Nazi doctors was that in this personal journey, I had the feeling increasingly that I did want to do a Holocaust study and that increasingly I wanted it to be of perpetrators, which I thought was more needed. I was involved with ideas about survivors but a lot of work had been done on them and very little on the psychology of perpetrators.
Q: So you moved from survivors to perpetrators.
A: That's right, in studying Nazi doctors. And when somebody, in fact, who had been my editor part of the time for my study of Hiroshima survivors called me up and said he had some interesting materials on a trial of doctors, it involved mainly doctors in Frankfurt, and wanted to show them to me, I really jumped at that opportunity to make that the beginning of a study of Nazi doctors, because they were revealed to me to have been very important in the killing process. And the way that I came to see it as I studied it more was that the Nazis, especially Hitler and his inner circle, really viewed their whole movement as mainly biological. One Nazi doctor whom I interviewed put it in words like this: "I joined the Nazi party the day after I heard a speech by Rudolph Hess in which he declared National Socialism was nothing but applied biology." And the applied biology for the Nazis was finding some way to heal or cure the Nordic race. The idea was, partly in Hitler's writings, the Nordic race was the only creative race, that could create culture. The other races could sustain it but not create it. And the Jewish "race" was a culture-destroying race. But the Jewish race had infected the Nordic race and something had to be done to get rid of that infection. So this is, in a sense, a biological kind of process and I called it in my work, a "biomedical vision" at the heart of Nazism. And that was a major reason why they focused so centrally on the doctors as a group, which Hitler emphasized very early on: doctors were especially important to the whole Nazi project. And it turned out to be that way, as I found in my work.
Q: And so this Nazi ideology lifted up the doctors but internally. Tell us a little about this process of "doubling" and how healers became killers at the Auschwitz camp.
A: One dimension was the large psycho-historical dimension we just talked about, that biomedical vision. But the other dimension was what you are raising now, the nitty-gritty way in which a doctor who is trained to heal instead becomes part of the killing mechanism. A lot of things made it happen, and there's a process that can be called "socialization to evil." Nazi doctors joined the party seeking the promise of revitalization that Hitler offered. That's joining the medical profession, which is a group of its own, and then the military, and then being sent to a camp -- all those were groups they became part of and were socialized to. The socialization to evil, I discovered, is all too easy to accomplish. These doctors had not killed anybody until they got to Auschwitz, so they weren't extraordinary killers to start with. They were ordinary people who in that way were socialized to evil.
A Philadelphia assistant district attorney is being hailed for her work prosecuting scam artists and identity thieves.
Mary-Ellen Walter got the "Prosecutor of the Year" award from the local chapter of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators for overall excellence -- particularly in gaining convictions in several high profile cases.
One was an identity-theft ring, another a crooked mover, and a third a guy who defrauded people out of their homes.
Nefertiti Randall schemed to steal people's personal information and then stole, with accomplices, about $250,000 in her victims' names.
Thanks to Mary-Ellen Walter, she'll pay for her crime with 37 months in prison.
Rickie Williams stole people's houses.
Thanks to Walter, he'll serve 10 to 20 years in jail.
Andrew Bassaner promised to move customers' furniture and instead swindled 200 people out of cash and household possessions.
Thanks to Walter, he'll spend 21 years on probation and serve a two- to four-year work-release sentence.
For her financial fraud-fighting efforts, Walter - a Philadelphia assistant district attorney - was named Prosecutor of the Year by the Delaware Valley chapter of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators.
She snagged second place in the association's International Prosecutor of the Year competition.
At The Associated Press' request, a dozen young people of varied backgrounds recently got together for an informal discussion about affirmative action. They were all attending the University of Maryland's Young Scholars Program, where exceptional high school students from around the country earn college credits. [...]
Joseph Green argued that, at most schools, race will be an issue only to a limited number of applicants who have fallen just short of a college's academic standards for admission.
"It only deals with a few people on the bubble and all it says to (both white and minority students) is that you should have worked harder,'' said Green, a white senior from Olney, Md.
Several minority students said they had already been debating internally whether to mention their race on college applications. As it happened, Camille Rivera-Garcia applied for a scholarship moments before joining the discussion.
When the application asked her ethnicity, Rivera-Garcia proudly filled in Hispanic. An hour later, she began having second thoughts.
"I'm thinking that maybe I'll change it,'' said Rivera-Garcia, a senior from Puerto Rico. "I want to be accepted for what I've accomplished, not just because I'm Hispanic.''
A black teenager, James Brounson, shared Rivera-Garcia's concern that white classmates in the future will automatically assume that the color of his skin got him into college.
Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man's primary responsibility -- and homosexuality as a white man's perversion. And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club's patrons still don't use them.
Wallace ticks off the grim statistics: blacks make up only 12 percent of the population in America, but they account for half of all new reported H.I.V. infections. While intravenous drug use is a large part of the problem, experts say that the leading cause of H.I.V. in black men is homosexual sex (some of which takes place in prison, where blacks disproportionately outnumber whites). According to the Centers for Disease Control, one-third of young urban black men who have sex with men in this country are H.I.V.-positive, and 90 percent of those are unaware of their infection.
We don't hear much about this aspect of the epidemic, mostly because the two communities most directly affected by it -- the black and gay communities -- have spent the better part of two decades eyeing each other through a haze of denial or studied disinterest. For African-Americans, facing and addressing the black AIDS crisis would require talking honestly and compassionately about homosexuality -- and that has proved remarkably difficult, whether it be in black churches, in black organizations or on inner-city playgrounds. The mainstream gay world, for its part, has spent 20 years largely fighting the epidemic among white, openly gay men, showing little sustained interest in reaching minorities who have sex with men and who refuse to call themselves gay. [...]
While William and many other DL men insist that they're strictly ''tops'' -- meaning they play the active, more stereotypically ''masculine'' role during sexual intercourse -- other DL guys proudly advertise themselves as ''masculine bottom brothas'' on their Internet profiles. They may play the stereotypically passive role during sex, they say, but they're just as much men, and just as aggressive, as DL tops. As one DL guy writes on his America Online profile, ''Just 'cause I am a bottom, don't take me for a bitch.''
Still, William says that many DL guys are in a never-ending search for the roughest, most masculine, ''straightest looking'' DL top. Both William and Christopher, who lost friends to AIDS, say they always use condoms. But as William explains: ''Part of the attraction to thugs is that they're careless and carefree. Putting on a condom doesn't fit in with that. A lot of DL guys aren't going to put on a condom, because that ruins the fantasy.'' It also shatters the denial -- stopping to put on a condom forces guys on the DL to acknowledge, on some level, that they're having sex with men. [...]
That behavior has public health implications. A few years ago, the epidemiological data started rolling in, showing increasing numbers of black women who weren't IV drug users becoming infected with H.I.V. While some were no doubt infected by men who were using drugs, experts say many were most likely infected by men on the Down Low. Suddenly, says Chris Bell, a 29-year-old H.I.V.-positive black man from Chicago who often speaks at colleges about sexuality and AIDS, DL guys were being demonized. They became the ''modern version of the highly sexually dangerous, irresponsible black man who doesn't care about anyone and just wants to get off.'' Bell and others say that while black men had been dying of AIDS for years, it wasn't until ''innocent'' black women became infected that the black community bothered to notice.
For white people, Bell said, ''DL life fit in perfectly with our society's simultaneous obsession and aversion to black male sexuality.'' But if the old stereotypes of black sexual aggression were resurrected, there was a significant shift: this time, white women were not cast as the innocent victims. Now it was black women and children. The resulting permutations confounded just about everyone, black and white, straight and gay. How should guys on the DL be regarded? Whose responsibility are they? Are they gay, straight or bisexual? If they are gay, why don't they just tough it up, come out and move to a big-city gay neighborhood like so many other gay men and lesbians? If they are straight, what are they doing having sex with guys in parks and bathhouses? If they are bisexual, why not just say that? Why, as the C.D.C.
reported, are black men who have sex with men more than twice as likely to keep their sexual practices a secret than whites? Most important to many, why can't these black men at least get tested for H.I.V.?
[N]O WONDER the Democrats are all over the map. So are their voters. Schizophrenia, angst, and fickleness define Democratic attitudes these days.
Take the new Franklin Pierce College poll. When 500 likely Democratic voters in the New Hampshire primary were asked if they personally supported military conflict in Iraq, a big number - 58 percent - opposed it, while just 30 percent favored it. But get this. When the poll asked, "Would you vote for a Democratic primary candidate who supported military conflict in Iraq," half said yes, they would still consider the candidate. Just 30 percent said no.
Meantime, anti-war candidate Howard Dean got support from only half of those who said they won't back a candidate who supported the war. Which means many anti-war votes are up for grabs. Or perhaps the war doesn't matter? [...]
In a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, almost half - 48% - of Democrats nationwide said they would be more likely to vote for a Democrat who opposes President Bush's economic agenda but agrees with the president on many national security issues. The rest - 41% - said they'd be more likely to vote for a Democrat who opposes most of Bush's economic agenda AND national security agenda. So a plurality can live with the pro-Bush position on the war.
Also in the poll, Democrats were evenly split at 46% over whether they disapproved or approved of the job President Bush is doing dealing with the war on terrorism. And half of Democrats say the U.S. should have taken military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. No, these Democrats aren't hawks, but neither are they doves. They're more like frogs, hard to pin down.
"For five years I worked at the agency that generates the GDP data (the Bureau of Economic Analysis) and have been looking at these reports for nearly thirty years, so I have some experience in evaluating these data. In general, I like what I see in this report. It is starting to look like a more balanced economic engine that, while not yet hitting on all cylinders, is rapidly headed in that direction. Consumer spending was strong, rising 3.4% in real terms. Housing rose 6.1%. Business spending is starting to turn back up. Business investment in equipment rose 7.4% and spending on business structures finally rose 4.8% following six straight quarterly drops. This upturn in private sector demand was partly met from inventories, which fell over the quarter and from imports, which rose sharply. The drop in inventories is likely temporary and I expect U.S. companies will be gearing up production over the second half of the year to meet stronger demand and to rebuild inventories. This should continue to spur capital investment and finally start to generate rising employment.
Inflation remains very subdued, with the GDP price index rising at an annual rate of only 1% in the second quarter. But prices do appear to be rising, so I think the deflation scare is ending. I expect the improvement in the economy will translate into higher company earnings, both from top line (revenue) growth as well as from lower costs. While not all large companies have reported second quarter earnings yet, of the 361 companies that have, 75% have met or beat earnings expectations, so we are getting some confirmation."
[R]iding up here, I saw this state could care less. I just saw Carolina license plates, Tiger paw license plates, they just can't wait for the kick-offs here at the end of the month. They just don't worry about the 60,100 textile jobs alone we have lost since NAFTA.... In the country itself, we don't make anything any more.
I had to make a talk on trade last week, and I looked it up and found out that at the end of World War II we had 40 percent of our workforce in manufacturing. And now we're down to 10 percent. We've got 10 percent of the country working and producing, and we've got the other 90 percent talking and eating. That's all they're doing.
Hollings seems, moreover, not to appreciate that non-manufacturing private sector workers, in order to receive an income, have to return value to the people paying them. These people are working, not just talking and eating, as politicians do.
But let the record show: Given a platform on his way out, Hollings used his precious time to insult his constituents for their love of football.
It involved a grandmother who runs a small resale shop. Her 9-year-old twin granddaughters were spending time with her at the store.
The girls washed the window with a squeegee. A photographer made a picture. And some moron at the Illinois Department of Labor saw the photo and was outraged. He sicced state inspectors on the grandmother.
In Illinois, it is illegal to pay a child younger than 16 for doing simple chores in a family business. They can't make a dollar washing the windows or from bagging groceries. They can't be paid with money or even candy.
In Illinois, kids must work for free.
Ted Bowen, the NDP caucus researcher who referred to U.S. president George Bush using the dismissive term 'shrub' in an internal government memo, has resigned. . . .And yet no American officials are dissing the Canadians. I wonder why?
While the memo itself seemed innocuous enough, it contained the subject line: 'Re: Petition to President Shrub.'
A post-script on the letter explained that 'shrub' was a dismissive nickname for Bush used by American writer and columnist Molly Ivins. . . .
The memo was the latest in a series of high-profile Canadian slights against Americans. Last year, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's former press secretary resigned after she was heard calling Bush a moron.
Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish also embarrassed Ottawa when she was overheard saying "Damn Americans, I hate those bastards.
The name is the same, and the bearing is strikingly similar to his famous grandfather. The words from the younger Ayatollah Khomeini's mouth, however, could hardly be more jolting, especially for those who remember Iran's explosive revolution, with its chants of ''Death to America.''
''America is the symbol of freedom,'' said Ayatollah Seyed Hassan Khomeini. ''The best example of freedom in our life now is America, especially its Constitution,'' he said, seated in the sprawling living room of his temporary Baghdad home, where he lives under armed protection.
Having slipped discreetly out of Iran in early July, Khomeini, 45, made his way to Baghdad, where he said he is continually at risk of assassination by Iranian security agents.
As Iraq's 16 million or so Shi'ite Muslims scramble for their first shot of power, Khomeini's words could have a major impact on their views. In interviews, many Shi'ites say they envision for the new Iraq an Islamic state similar to the one Ayatollah Khomeini brought to power with his 1979 revolution. Some of the Shi'ite leaders heading Iraq's new political parties have close ties to Iran's clerics.
The younger Ayatollah's arrival on the scene is already causing a stir in the Shi'ite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. The younger Khomeini is
determined that Iraq does not relive his grandfather's revolution.
''Religion has got to be separated from regimes, such as it is in America,'' said the younger Khomeini, smoking cigarettes through the
interview.
Corporate Social Responsibility is the new field that has united a variety of campaigning groups, including environmentalists, poverty campaigners, third world charities, and unions in a collective call for business to support their agenda. More unusual, it even has prominent supporters within the business community.Back in the 80's, I made my living litigating hostile takeovers. Each offer would go through a well-defined dynamic. The management of the target would denounce the offer. It was bad for shareholders, because it was too low. It was bad for the company, which would be broken up. It was bad for employees, who would be layed off. It was bad for the community, which would lose a major employer. It was bad, management would say, for the stakeholders, meaning all those who had an interest in the company continuing on. By and large, the stakeholders would agree. The employees, who might not theretofore have agreed with management about much of anything, would talk about how terrible it would be to have new management. The mayors of the home cities would talk about how devastating the loss of the company would be. The governors and legislators would threaten new legislation to prevent this immoral raid.
Charitable giving by business has a long history, although in the case of large corporations with a diffuse shareholding it carries the moral hazard of executives buying social respectability (in England, even knighthoods) with their shareholders' money. The morally, and socially, superior position would be for shareholders to receive their full dividends and themselves support charitable action.
However Corporate Social Responsibility is said to be about more than this; linked to the concept of 'Corporate Citizenship,' it calls for a company's whole actions to be carried out with an eye to their social impact; on the environment, employees, and 'communities' at home and globally.
How will America respond to militant Islam? Responses from Asia Times Online readers to my contention that radical Islam yet may defeat the West (Why radical Islam might defeat the West) of July 8 ranged from accusations of anti-Islamic bigotry to the claim that the West, if need arise, simply will kill a billion Muslims. Neo-conservative circles in Washington think neither of accommodating the claims of radical Islam nor of a war against Islam, but rather of an "Islamic Reformation".
How sloppily the neo-conservatives think about these matters, though, may be judged by an amusing exchange in the June issue of First Things, the closest the neo-conservatives have to a theological journal. Its editor, Father R J Neuhaus, rebutted the view of the neo-conservative Orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis, who wants Islam to admit that other religions offer a path to salvation. Wrote Neuhaus, "Troubling is the message that Islam, in order to become less of a threat to the world, must relativize its claim to possess the truth. That plays directly into the hands of Muslim rigorists who pose as the defenders of the uncompromised and uncompromisible truth and who call for death to the infidels. If Islam is to become tolerant and respectful of other religions, it must be as the result of a development that comes from within the truth of Islam, not as a result of relativizing or abandoning that truth."
Catholics, to be sure, have reason to worry about relativism. With church attendance in the European Catholic heartland at barely 5 percent, with the American church crushed by evidence of generalized pederasty, and the Latin American church eroded by Protestant missionaries, relativism is the last word Catholics wish to hear. Sectarian self-interest aside, Neuhaus has a point. Men do not wish to pray "to whom it may concern". They rather want the assurance of a true path to salvation. That is why radical Islam yet may defeat the West. [...]
Radical Islam confronts the diffident West with absolute belief in its possession of divine truth, and a reckless capacity for sacrifice beyond the capacity of the West to fathom. The Catholic church, traditional guardian of the traditions of the West, wants accommodation with Islam at any cost as Muslim immigrants slowly replace Europe's declining Christian population. The intellectual elite of the West exhibits open hostility to Western "colonialist" culture. It looks bleak for the West.
But Koranic criticism yet may turn out to be the worm in the foundation of radical Islam. Whence will come the impetus? An intriguing thought is that the same people who brought about the Christian Reformation, not to mention the founding of the US, might do the same for Islam. I refer to the radical wing of evangelical Protestantism, whom the intellectual caste of the West dismiss as stupid yokels. Protestant missionaries already have hollowed out the Catholic church in Latin America, its last great stronghold. Do not underestimate what role they may do in the Islamic world.
Amid talk he's being urged to jump back into the presidential race, Al Gore has arranged to speak out on Iraq to a large anti-war group at New York University on Thursday.
A Gore spokeswoman insisted, "Truly, honestly, he's not planning on getting back into the race," but the former vice president's speech to the organization MoveOn should only fuel the speculation.
It will be Gore's first speech on Iraq since he came out against the Bush administration's push toward war last September.
A MoveOn spokesman said Gore recently called the group and asked if he could address its members. He's set to speak to about 600 members at the Kimmel Center for University Life in Washington Square.
MoveOn, a national anti-war group that boasts 120,000 members in the New York City area, recently gave Democratic anti-war candidate Howard Dean a big boost by conducting an online poll that Dean won.
Just when you thought the California recall mess couldn't get any messier, one of the state's leading Democrats is threatening to up the ante.San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown warns that if Democratic Gov. Gray Davis is recalled, Democrats may retaliate by launching yet another recall.
"If it works for Republicans, all you've got to do is raise enough money," Brown told ABCNEWS. "I have enough money to have it work for
Democrats. And believe me, I think the Democrats will do it." [...]
It might not end in California, some political analysts say.
While the Progressive reforms were meant to empower the people against the moneyed interests, in practice the devices often have been hijacked by special-interest groups. It takes millions of dollars to push an initiative or a recall in California. The consensus among scholars of government today is that initiative and recall were bad ideas.
So let's toss in a heretical thought about yet another Progressive reform - the direct election of U.S. senators. Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea, either.
Before the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913, senators were chosen by the legislatures of their states. Direct election by the people was supposed to bypass the power of political machines, but - as we have seen in multimillion-dollar Senate campaigns -it probably increased the influence of money.
Having senators elected by legislatures provided a certain continuity in state and federal governments. If the Senate today were elected by state lawmakers, would Congress be as indifferent to the states' fiscal woes as it is? If, in voting for a state legislator, a voter were also indirectly picking a U.S. senator, would it provide more cohesion in politics?
That's idle speculation. No one would seriously suggest abolishing the direct election of senators - even though it might be yet another instance of good intentions gone awry.
New American freedoms include:
The freedom to be detained without charge [...]
The freedom to be tortured [...]
The freedom to be constantly interrogated [...]
The freedom to be left entirely alone [...]
The freedom of information [...]
The freedom to assassinate [...]
The freedom to retaliate against even helpful "volunteers". . . if they're Arabs in America [...]
The freedom to change the rules of justice in America [...]
The freedom to snoop and freedom to arrest pesky librarians [...]
The freedom to remove worker's rights [...]
The freedom to suffer without prescribed medication [...]
The freedom from global treaties [...]
And, finally, freedom from knowledge
Whether proposing token involvement in a peacekeeping force for Liberia or pushing multi-party talks with North Korea, the Bush administration's approach to global hot spots during the next 18 months is likely to offer a striking contrast to its muscular solutions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington's focus has already begun to shift from fighting high-stakes wars to developing exit strategies for U.S. troops. Instead of costly interventions, the United States is looking to manage new foreign crises through low-budget diplomacy.
The administration contends that there is no deliberate change. "Our actions fit the specific facts of each case - and each situation is different," a National Security Council official said.
Other officials say that Washington is merely back to traditional business, after a detour spurred by the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We're just getting back to the big agenda the administration outlined when it came into office - spreading democracy, expanding free trade and NATO, and funding for AIDS," a senior State Department official said.
Yet, barring another major attack, several factors will rein in foreign policy initiatives until the end of 2004, say U.S. officials and foreign policy experts.
The looming presidential campaign season is part of the reason.
"From this point on, the main foreign policy player is not the Pentagon or the State Department, it's Karl Rove in the White House," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. "Every foreign policy decision and initiative will be screened through the prism of the electoral process.
"The main battle for the White House now is with U.S. voters. Whatever is happening in the rest of the world is secondary," he said. [...]
Even in an era of globalization, the interventionist agenda of President Woodrow Wilson is just as controversial among Americans in the 21st century as it was eight decades ago, analysts say.
"Bush is confronting a basic reality about U.S. foreign policy. Wilsonians, whether neoconservatives on the right or internationalists on the left, are always writing checks that the American public does not want to honor," said Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Bush is sort of aware that while he can still count on strong support for interventions that are security related and necessary, he does not have infinite support for humanitarian intervention hither and yon," Mead said. [...]
In the face of a new crisis...Bush may not have to mobilize a large U.S. force or try to go it alone, because he has moved the international goal post after twice forming his own coalitions to carry out ambitious goals, analysts say.
"Bush doesn't need to be unilateral. He has pushed the international community to his position, proving the administration's claims about what exercising U.S. power would do," Mead said. "The result is that other leaders have come closer to him.
"Even the Germans looked into the abyss of a split with us and decided they didn't want to go there. Bush has won himself some breathing space," he said.
Yet the headstrong U.S. foreign policy of the last two years is today looking tamed and temperate, with the tone distinctly about compromise.
"It's striking if you freeze-frame the moment we're in today," Laipson said. "Here's the Bush administration compromising on how much it expects the Palestinians to crack down on terrorism, compromising a bit on the role of the U.N. in Iraq, compromising on peacekeeping in Africa.
"The administration has found itself drawn into a more mainstream expectation of what foreign policy is supposed to look like for a superpower in an era of globalization," she added. "Now we're doing things that the president once claimed to have disdain for two years ago."
PURE uranium oxide which could be used in the making of a "dirty nuclear bomb" capable of killing countless people is being offered for sale in a Basra souk for $250,000.
Senior American officials have confirmed that rampant looting was discovered by US marines arriving at the al-Tuwaitha nuclear site on April 7.
Melissa Fleming, a spokes woman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, says: "As many as 400 potentially lethal radioactive sources are still missing from the inventory at al-Tuwaitha."
When I was in Scandinavia last spring promoting "Nickel and Dimed," interviewers kept asking me to tell them about the "debate" my book had provoked in the United States. I had to confess that it had provoked no debate at all, at least none that I had heard of. In fact, when my book was adopted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a reading for all incoming students in 2003, the administration expressed its conviction that it was a "relatively tame selection," at least compared to last year's choice -- a collection of readings from the Koran. I was beginning to envy Michael Moore, whose publisher had cleverly boosted sales by attempting to suppress his book "Stupid White Men" in the wake of 9/11.
Then, early in July, I got a phone call from Matt Tepper, president of the student body at UNC-CH, inquiring as to what I thought would be a useful way to direct the incoming students' discussions of "Nickel and Dimed." I suggested that the students ought to apply the book's concerns to their own campus, where workers have been trying to organize against heavy administrative opposition. I sat back to wait for new students to arrive at the end of the summer so the controversy could begin.
I was getting into my new role as North Carolina's premier amateur philosopher and religious studies scholar, and hoping for some in-depth discussion of my own "anti-Christian bigotry," as one of the state legislators put it, no doubt referring to my description, in "Nickel and Dimed" of Jesus as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist." On the "vagrant" part, there can be no debate, and, although "guzzling" may be a bit overstated, Jesus was sufficiently associated with wine ("I am the true vine," etc.) to be confused with the Greek wine god Dionysius in the Hellenistic world -- a subject I have yearned to expound on for years.
As for Jesus being a socialist, I take it back. He was actually a little to the left of that, judging from his instruction to the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor. If that's what it takes to be a true Christian, believe me, it's a hell of a lot easier to be a socialist: You have to dedicate yourself to working for the poor, just as a Christian should, but at least you get to keep your stuff. The topic of Christian altruism v. socialist pragmatism could, I thought, entertain the rightwing radio talk show audiences for weeks.
Intervene with Caution By Ian Williams
In the recent Iraq war... one of the worst misdeeds that George W. Bush committed, in collaboration with Tony Blair, was to bring humanitarian intervention into disrepute. By invoking Saddam Hussein's tyranny as a pretext for attacking Iraq, as he did in his speech to the United Nations last September, the President reached fairly spectacular depths of hypocrisy, since it was his country, his party and indeed his father who had supported Saddam when he was perpetrating these crimes.
The philosopher Plato was right when he opined that democracy ultimately leads to anarchy and then tyranny. But he was wrong to dismiss anarchy which, arguably, is the happy medium between failed democracy and treacherous tyranny. The USA has begun its flirtation with anarchy. But anarchy, like democracy, is anathema to the ruling classes and can't be tolerated for any length of time. As a result, the ruling classes will create a crisis and will attempt to implement a society as described in Plato's Republic--an alternative to representative government. The USA will transition from anarchy to a Platonic tyranny sometime during the second term (2004-2008) of George Bush II.
That is, unless anarchy takes hold.
Anarchy would be a positive development for the USA and the world. In time it would erode the power of the public and private national institutions that are the oppressive tools of control for the wealthy and those who exercise political and military power. But the opponents of change have read their Plato too. And they know that Plato's answer to democracy, anarchy and tyranny was to design a Republic that would solidify the position of the ruling classes. Plato's Republic provides for a system which, among other things, depends on proper breeding and training of the ruling and ruled classes, placating the military leaders, and authoritarian and paternal control of the masses.
In Plato's Republic, leaders commune with the gods and find meaning in nature's movements that are invisible to the vast backwash of humanity. When the rulers speak, the ruled listen and obey without hesitation. All know their place in Plato's society. The USA is ripe for such a system and those who rule know it.
Is Howard Dean on his way to the Democratic presidential nomination? Could be. Today's Iowa Poll of Democratic caucus-goers shows the former Vermont governor has moved into first place in Iowa, knocking Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt from that long-held perch.
That's more great news for Dean, who's been enjoying a lot of that lately, and another hard blow to Gephardt, whose campaign seems flat. It's also bad news for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who is in
third place. Not because he's running third here, but because of what a first-place Dean finish in Iowa is going to mean to Kerry's chances in New Hampshire.
Consider the scenario this poll suggests: Dean upsets Gephardt in Iowa. That could knock Gephardt out of the race. (He's already had trouble raising money, and an Iowa defeat means a rejection by the very people who elevated him to national stature in1988.)
A caucus victory in Iowa is always worth a few points going into New Hampshire. Since Kerry and Dean are in a virtual tie in New Hampshire, an Iowa victory for Dean could push him over the top in the Granite State. Any candidate who wins both Iowa and New Hampshire is going to be hard to stop for the nomination.
When Richard Gephardt announced his "leadership team" of Iowa supporters a month ago he said, "I don't take one bit of support for granted," and touted what he called "a great team of folks behind me."
But in politics, a month can be painfully long, and if Gephardt looks behind him now he'll find that his leadership team is fading in a state deemed crucial to his presidential hopes.
Of the 34 "leadership" individuals listed until Friday on Gephardt's Iowa campaign Web site, 11 say that in fact they are either undecided in the presidential campaign or actively supporting one of Gephardt's rivals.
At least seven of those listed, including three mayors and a county supervisor, say they never intended to be counted among Gephardt supporters to begin with.
Among the 15 individuals who identified themselves as actual Gephardt supporters, several appeared to be wavering.
Hillary, she's the one. It's not exactly my place, as one who joined the vast right-wing conspiracy as soon as she advertised it, to endorse Sen. Clinton. But in recent polls among Democrats she
swamps the announced candidates if her name is included. She's been stumping the country with book signings, and is headed to California to save Gray Davis.
Since her health-care fiasco, too, she's learned something about triangulation. She did vote for the war resolution, and has been cautiously supportive since. Her husband, of course, recently said that when he left the presidency Iraq had unaccounted-for stocks of chemical and biological weapons, and dismissed as minor Democratic complaints about the 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union address.
At a confab of liberal lawyers last week, Mrs. Clinton made an intriguing comment that the depredations of the Bush administration "can no longer be observed from the sidelines." Onetime inside adviser Dick Morris has predicted she'll run this year if the Bush approval rating dips below 50%. It dropped to 56% in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, down from 62% in May. [...]
Watching Mr. Dean's surge in the primaries, Sen. Clinton may have to rethink her preference of delaying a presidential bid until 2008 to run against Gov. Jeb Bush or some other non-incumbent. By then it may be too late, not for her but for her party. A Dean candidacy would stamp Democrats more clearly than ever as a party that runs hoping for a sour economy at home and rooting for American humiliation in Iraq.
Day is dying in the west;
Heaven is touching earth with rest;
Wait and worship while the night
Sets the evening lamps alight
Through all the sky.
Refrain
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of Thee!
Heaven and earth are praising Thee,
O Lord most high!
Lord of life, beneath the dome
Of the universe, Thy home,
Gather us who seek Thy face
To the fold of Thy embrace,
For Thou art nigh.
Refrain
While the deepening shadows fall,
Heart of love enfolding all,
Through the glory and the grace
Of the stars that veil Thy face,
Our hearts ascend.
Refrain
When forever from our sight
Pass the stars, the day, the night,
Lord of angels, on our eyes
Let eternal morning rise
And shadows end.
Refrain
President Bush's headlong dive into the gay marriage question Wednesday squarely positioned the Republican Party against one of the nation's most emotional issues, anticipating a potential Massachusetts court ruling to sanction same-sex unions.
A decision is expected any day in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health that could find Massachusetts' marriage laws discriminate against gays and lesbians, ushering in same-sex marriage for the first time in U.S. history. [...]
Jim Pinkerton, a former political adviser to the first President George Bush, said the current president's comments reflect a calibrated political move.
"After an initial hesitation based on his own somewhat libertarian live-and-let-live instincts," Pinkerton said, "Bush has now decided to join the Republican herd and will probably sign on to an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment, figuring that it's a great wedge issue, especially if Democrats nominate Howard Dean."
Hope's influence has been ubiquitous, both as a stand-up comedian and as a comic actor. Without him as the prototype, there would be no Johnny Carson, Steve Martin or Bill Murray -- to say nothing of Maxwell Smart, Austin Powers, George Costanza, Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife and even M*A*S*H's Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, an idealist-become-cynic whose nonstop wisecracking outweighed the fact that he was Hope's antithesis in every other way (many of his quips were the work of Larry Gelbart, the creator of the series, who did his own tour of duty in Korea as Hope's head writer). Conan O'Brien, when announcing that his guests that night include a supermodel or leggy movie star, might lick his index fingers and use them to smooth his eyebrows, like Hope primping for what he's only been led to believe will be a romantic rendezvous (it's usually some sort of scheme, with him as the sucker). The host of Late Night also occasionally growls when an attractive female guest says something provocative, a variation on Hope's ejaculatory woof! And the premise of many of O'Brien's best sketches is either that he's sexually inadequate or that nobody thinks he's funny -- two more pages straight out of Hope's book, as O'Brien would be the first to admit.
Hope's other most adoring fan among fellow professionals is Woody Allen, who once admitted that "it's everything I can do at times not to imitate him," and has himself frequently been accused of being overly verbal in his approach to comedy. "It's hard to tell when I do," Allen said in 1973 while filming Sleeper, "because I'm so unlike him physically and in tone of voice, but once you know I do it, it's absolutely unmistakable." (Forget that Hope is funny-haha, and Allen often funny-weird. The real difference between them is that Allen, in his movies, is usually desperate for our approval, whereas Hope dared us to dislike him, confident that he was irresistible.) Allen has more or less credited Hope with inventing the one-liner, which I think is going a little too far. What Hope does seem to have originated, for better or worse, is the celebrity in-joke, a type of humor that assumes the audience is familiar with the foibles of the stars. (It resembles ethnic humor in presupposing such knowledge, but hasn't celebrity become a type of ethnicity? Many show business elders adored Ronald Reagan when he was President not because they agreed with his policies but because he was one of theirs.) Jokes about the famous flatter the rest of us, in making us feel like members of the clan. But no other brand of humor has a shorter shelf-life. [...]
What other comics have always admired about Hope isn't necessarily his material, but his mechanics -- the smoothness of his setups and payoffs. My favorite joke of his, in a way, is the one he opened with after being announced as the winner of the Hersholt award: "I don't know what to say," he admitted, seemingly humbled, then waited a beat. "I don't have writers for this kind of work." "Bob Hope is supposed to employ so many gagmen they are organizing a union," the film critic Otis Ferguson once remarked -- a joke that only sounds like one written for Hope. The new Bob Hope: My Life in Jokes, assembled by his daughter Linda, proves that Hope's humor doesn't really translate to the page. His gift, hardly a small one, was in delivering scripted material as if he were ad-libbing.
In the 1960s, Hope found himself on the wrong side of both a war and a generation gap. How did someone with such unerring timing so misjudge the cultural moment?
In the late 1950s, a new generation of comedians came to the fore: Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, and Shelly Berman to name a few. Their subject was social and political reality: what was happening behind the headlines, and in the bedrooms, boardrooms and backseats in our lives. While Bob Hope got laughs from sexual double entendres, the new comedians spoke about real relationships, which, because they were "real," included sexual situations. In making everyday experience the subject of humor, these comics gave Americans permission and a language to talk about what was bothering them. Time Magazine, mounting a defense of Bob Hope's humor and Bob Hope's world, dubbed them "sick comedians." Their "sicknik" humor, Time said, "represented a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world."
The world was changing and comedians were on the cusp of that change. In totalitarian states, people who question authority are often dismissed, hence marginalized, as having mental problems. But who or what was sick: comedians or society? As Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanist psychology, was soon to ask, what is a healthy reaction to racism, poverty, totalitarianism, and "the husband who wants his wife to remain a child?" Maslow's answer, written in "Toward A Psychology of Being," was: "It seems quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests against one's psychological bones, of one's true inner nature. What is sick then is not to protest when this crime is being committed."
Democratic Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina said Monday he will not seek re-election next year, ending a 55-year political career and giving Republicans a strong opportunity to pick up a Senate seat.
Episcopalian leaders today delayed a final vote on whether to accept the election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as their first openly gay bishop, following allegations that involved pornography and touching, a church spokesman said.
The announcement came shortly before the final vote was expected to take place at the Episcopal Church's General Convention.
Robinson, 56, who has lived with another man for 13 years, won a key vote yesterday among 835 priests and lay leaders in the convention's House of Deputies. This afternoon, his confirmation as a bishop in New Hampshire was expected to go before the convention's other legislative chamber, the House of Bishops. However, by mid-afternoon, officials said the House of Bishops would first meet in executive session and it was not clear if the public vote would come today.
Episcopal leaders delayed a vote today on whether to confirm the church's first openly gay bishop after allegations involving "touching" and "pornography" emerged against the clergyman, a church spokesman said.
A copy of an email obtained by Reuters that was sent to Vermont Bishop Thomas Ely from a man identified as David Lewis accused New Hampshire bishop-elect Gene Robinson of being a "skirt-chaser" who fondled him two years ago. "My personal experience with him is he does not maintain appropriate boundaries with men. I believe this is an alarming weakness of character that alone makes Gene unsuitable for the office of bishop," the note, dated yesterday, said.
THE CONTROVERSIAL gay Episcopal bishop-elect of New Hampshire is a founder of a group called Outright that supports gay, lesbian, or "questioning" young people 22-years-old or younger and
gets them together with older gay and lesbian role models. On its website, Outright had a link to a pornographic website--until the link became an issue in the fight at the Episcopal Church's national convention in Minneapolis over ratifying the election of the bishop-elect, Gene Robinson, by New Hampshire Episcopalians. The link, indeed all links, were removed from the website today.
At a panel earlier in the day, law students' mouths were literally agape with glee and surprise. Could this really be happening in front of their unworthy eyes, a panel of esteemed federal appellate judges talking like human beings, leaping out of the dense legalese of court opinions and, yes, publicly dissing the conservatives for views they call abominable and legally indefensible?...
Judge Robert Bork, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia? All hypocrites about their legal philosophy of wanting to interpret rather than make law, according to the panel.
President Bush? A teller of half-truths.
"We shouldn't sit back quietly . . . while they try to undo the laws of the last 50 years, the laws respecting human dignity and individual rights," Calabresi says. "Even Judge Bork, before he went completely off the deep end, said you cannot undo the New Deal." The judge lets out a heavy sigh. "I think part of their agenda is to create a constitutional right to discriminate. Think about that. A right to discriminate."
U.S. District Judge Louis Oberdorfer drove the point home.... "If you do it right, you people here will become law clerks and the law clerks will become judges and the assistant secretaries and you'll run the world." (Tip to RickV.)
Meanwhile:
Liberal legal elite plans comeback (MSNBC, 8/4/2003) (via PowerLine)
[Stephen] Reinhardt, who was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by President Carter in 1980, added, "Let’s be clear about another thing: 'moderate' and 'liberal' are not the same. ... We ought to restore a liberal, progressive philosophy this nation needs and our Constitution demands."
Endorsing same-sex marriage, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts said traditional heterosexual marriage was a "convenient mechanism to enforce conformity ... which is where I think the religious Right would like to keep it."
Citing the 50 percent divorce rate, Batts said, "We (gays and lesbians) could show heterosexuals who marry a whole lot if we were able to take on the institution of marriage and turn it into what we know it could be.... We can show them what marriage is really worth and what it means."
Intelligence agencies will never be infallible. We should be making it easier, not harder, for their imperfect agents to protect us.
Misguided and outdated rules imposed on the intelligence agencies in the name of civil liberties before 9/11 contributed to their failure to prevent the attacks. In particular, the so-called legal "wall" between intelligence and law enforcement agencies helped foster the notorious reluctance of the CIA and FBI to share information.
The PATRIOT Act opened the way for better information-sharing by largely dismantling this wall -- with the help of a decision last November by the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. The statute also extended to terrorism investigations some powers that prosecutors had long used in drug and organized-crime cases and updated anachronistic electronic surveillance rules to catch up with new communications technologies.
As for the dreaded "sneak-and-peek" provision (Section 213), the claims that it trashes the Fourth Amendment are far-fetched. Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have authorized such searches for decades in circumstances in which immediate notification might defeat the purpose of the surveillance, including all wiretaps. Section 213 codified a legal standard similar to that used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in Manhattan. While the Section 213 standard is more favorable to prosecutors than those used by some other courts, it is hardly a blank check: Notice may be delayed only for as long as "reasonable," and only when necessary to avoid endangering "life or physical safety," intimidation of witnesses, tampering with evidence, flight from prosecution, or "otherwise seriously jeopardizing an investigation or unduly delaying a trial."
The PATRIOT Act has also been blamed for detentions and other possible abuses that are completely unrelated to it. Consider the front-page New York Times article on July 21 hyping a leaked report to Congress by the Justice Department's inspector general. The article trumpeted (unproven) complaints by Arab and Muslim prisoners of "serious civil-rights and civil-liberties violations involving enforcement of... the USA PATRIOT Act." But these complaints -- mainly of beatings and verbal abuse by guards -- had nothing to do with enforcement of the PATRIOT Act. Its only relevance was that this report would not have been written at all but for Section 1001, which requires periodic reports to Congress of any and all civil-liberties complaints about Justice Department employees.
We need less media misinformation, less libertarian hysteria, and more judicious congressional oversight of the (unfortunately uncooperative) Justice Department. The PATRIOT Act's critics have pointed to precious little evidence that it is anything like the engine of McCarthyite witch-hunts they depict it to be. And while a few sections do pose some risk of overly intrusive FBI spying, there are worse things than that. One of them is being murdered by terrorists.
On his deathbed, Voltaire was asked to renounce the Devil. "This is no time for making new enemies," the Enlightenment philosophe is reported to have quipped. [...]
Perhaps because he regarded suffering as endemic to life, Schopenhauer worked hard to solve the riddle of humour. He argues that the essence of a joke lies in finding an object that can - at a stretch - be subsumed under a concept even though it differs greatly from the objects usually subsumed under that concept. We laugh involuntarily when we grasp the incongruity: when we see that the object does not really fit the concept after all.
To illustrate his theory, Schopenhauer tells a joke. A king laughs when he sees a peasant wearing light summer clothes in the depth of winter. "If you had put on what I have put on," says the peasant, "you would find it very warm." "What have you put on?" asks the perplexed king. "My entire wardrobe," the peasant replies. We laugh (if we laugh), says Schopen- hauer, because although the peasant's light summer outfit can be subsumed under the concept "an entire wardrobe", most wardrobes, and the king's in particular, are far more extensive.
Or consider Voltaire's deathbed joke. The object here is the Devil, and he can be subsumed under the concept of "not making new enemies". But we immediately see the incongruity, at least from a religious perspective. The Devil is the one being whom we might want to make our enemy, especially on our deathbed.
Animals are thus incapable of laughter, notwithstanding the panting sounds that chimps sometimes make, because they lack a faculty of reason. Unable to form concepts, they cannot identify incongruities between objects and the concepts under which they are subsumed. We laugh at a chimps' tea party because chimps are being visibly subsumed under the concept "human" and we see that this is incongruous. But they would not laugh if they saw Tarzan swinging from a tree.
The great thing about jokes, though, is that you can crack them, or find them funny, without understanding their conceptual underpinnings. This is perhaps just as well, or there would be even fewer stand-up comedians of Bob Hope's quality.
Senator John McCain and Representatives Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, all Republicans from Arizona, introduced bills in July that would grant permanent residency over several years to foreign workers who enter the country legally and to illegal workers already in the United States. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, also introduced a guest worker bill last month.
The measures have been criticized by liberal advocacy groups that contend that they do too little for immigrants and by conservative Republicans who say they go too far. White House officials say they have not taken a stance on the bills, and their proponents do not expect them to pass this year.
But critics on both sides of the political divide said the proposals were still significant because they constituted the first time Republicans in Congress had pushed aggressively for comprehensive changes in immigration laws since talks on the issue between President Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico collapsed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Fox had been working on a long-term strategy to regulate immigration flows from Mexico and legalize the status of millions of illegal immigrants already in this country. The plan appealed to Hispanics and to big businesses, important political constituencies for the Bush administration.
"To have Republicans stepping up and proposing these important but imperfect bills is something of a breakthrough," said Frank Sharry, who runs the National Immigration Forum, a policy group.
"To me, it's the post-9/11 signal that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when we're going to legalize more migration so that we can better regulate it," Mr. Sharry said.
The Supreme Court is looking beyond America's borders for guidance in handling cases on issues like the death penalty and gay rights, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday....
"Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change," Ginsburg said during a speech to the American Constitution Society, a liberal lawyers group holding its first convention.
Justices "are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives," said Ginsburg, who has supported a more global view of judicial decision making....
"While you are the American Constitution Society, your perspective on constitutional law should encompass the world," she told the group of judges, lawyers and students.
But I would dearly love to hear Justice Ginsburg explain why it's desirable that the U.S. -- and presumably all nations -- should have "a perspective on constitutional law" that "encompasses the world." It sounds as though she is advocating a global homogenization of law, rather than diversity of law. But diversity allows for innovation, experimentation, and learning. Countries can watch each other, mimic the most successful trials. This is how almost all empirical knowledge is acquired; and given the widespread disagreement over politics, it would seem that untested theorizing is not going to discover and create a consensus around the best legal arrangements. We need diversity in law if humanity's knowledge of legal arrangements is to advance, but Justice Ginsburg is advocating the end of experimentation. It is as if a cancer doctor were to pick a single drug candidate, say, "let's all unify around this one treatment regimen," and advocate the termination of all clinical trials, before there is agreement in the cancer community on what treatment is most effective.
In other news, a reader of How Appealing reports that "the biggest applause line in Senator Hillary Clinton's speech [to the ACS] was the charge 'there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy'."
Yes, and it gets stronger every time one of our patriotic Democrats (for let there be no doubt, I am not questioning their patriotism) advocates that we become Europe rather than America.
Legislators often stumble when they run for president. They come from a different world, and they have a hard time adjusting.
A presidential candidate is far better off putting things simply and starkly, even at the risk of oversimplifying, than to constantly try to explain the shades of gray that exist around any issue.
Legislators live in a grayish world, however, and they try to avoid absolutes. (If you take an absolute position, you might alienate someone whose vote you might someday need.)
Legislators live in a world of compromise and log-rolling, a world of "on the one hand" and "yet, on the other."
This can be fatal in a presidential campaign, however -- especially a primary campaign in which the field is crowded.
In a crowded field, a candidate has to leave voters with a clear impression. Otherwise, voters simply won't remember which one he is.
France is bracing itself for more strikes next month, fearing that they could reach the level of actions which paralysed the capital in 1995.
Unionists have promised to protest against plans by the French government to reform the welfare system.
At issue is a five-point programme which French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin says aims 'to modernise the welfare system'.
The system, which includes unemployment benefits, has been heavily in debt for years and is the next target of a government struggling to address some of the country's fundamental structural problems. [...]
Despite crippling public-sector strikes early last month and in May, the Parliament and the Senate passed a Bill last week to raise civil servants' contribution to the pension fund to the level fixed for the private sector.
Unionists went on vacation in June, but promised to resume their protests when they return.
Gov. Gray Davis, his fate on the line, is urging the state Supreme Court to postpone the historic Oct. 7 recall election until March 2 and allow his own name to be listed among his potential replacements.
Lawyers for the Democratic governor said Sunday that the Oct. 7 election date would block some people from voting because local election officials don't have time to set up enough voting places and because some counties may be using old voting equipment.
"We want the fairest possible election, and we want the preferences of voters vindicated. We want them to have their choice," said San Francisco attorney Michael Kahn. He said the lawsuit would be filed today.
"The election is operating under such a compressed timetable that it cannot be a fair election," said Kathleen M. Sullivan, a constitutional scholar and the dean of the Stanford University Law School, who helped prepare the suit. [...]
"The voters are entitled to have this election when it was certified," said Jonathan Wilcox, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who financed much of the recall campaign. "Democracy delayed is Democracy denied," he added.
Unlike what some hawkish policy makers in Washington might think, Iran is a totally different society from those of Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of history, social fabric and development, political aspirations and economic, industrial, scientific and military capabilities. As a result, the American experience in those countries on "regime change" is simply inapplicable to Iran. Despite the depth of social dissatisfaction with the status quo and a clear desire for a secular political system, as citizens of an ancient country now a regional power with claims to a higher international status, Iranians will not act according to any Washington-envisaged plan.
In particular, unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has a genuine popular pro-democracy movement with a clear, but yet to be achieved, demand for a democratic political system, whose roots can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century. Internal and external factors have since muted that movement during certain periods. However, social and economic necessities have made it reemerge in intervals.
Iran's first major popular movement for democracy resulted in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, which changed the Qajar Dynasty's despotic monarchy into a constitutional one. The subsequent suppression of that revolution and the restoration of despotism, although not in name, muted the movement until 1941, when Allied forces occupied Iran. Unintentionally, that development weakened the despotic Pahalvi Dynasty, the successor of the aforementioned. Such new political environment helped surface the movement one more time, which lasted until 1953 when an Anglo-American coup restored the Shah to power.
The pro-democracy movement reappeared in the early 1960s, only to be suppressed again in 1963 as the Shah consolidated his power. Social necessities helped its reemergence in 1976 in the form of an expanding popular movement with clear democratic demands. Thanks to three decades of suppression, the weakness of the political parties with democratic platforms enabled a faction of the dissatisfied clergy to gain the movement's leadership. Thus, the Shah's overthrow in 1979 did not bring about a democratic political system. Yet such demands remained a popular aspiration until 1981, when the ruling clergy resorted to a massive suppression of all opposition forces in its bid for consolidation. The profound social and economic developments of the 1980s and the 1990s created grounds for the reemergence of the democratic movement in the second half of the 1990s.
Tony Woodley, the new head of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, intends to make sure that Tony Blair suffers. His plan is to call a meeting of top union guns and instigate a new form of entryism that will select left-wing, union-friendly parliamentary candidates. After this, he will concentrate on ousting Blair from the union.
Woodley’s antipathy to Blair is such that he is to instigate a review of all 91 MPs on his payroll to determine which ones are ‘too close to the gaffer’ (a wonderfully evocative phrase, this, rarely heard since the high old days of the three-day week). Anyone whose loyalty is doubted could find that their union days are numbered. So Blair, who only last year opened the new Transport House, the union’s London HQ, faces the sack.
Although the nearest the Prime Minister ever came to manual work as a barrister was untying the red ribbon of his generously paid briefs, he is, still, ludicrously, a member of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and it is very valuable for him to remain so. The association helps finance his election to Parliament, as well as giving him something to talk about when he swings by his club, the Deaf Hill Working Men’s.
What does kicking the [Daniel] Pipes nomination under a Senate rug have to do with an eye-opening Pew poll? Pipes, a scholar and prolific author steeped in the history and languages of Islam, is a knowledgeable and trenchant voice on Middle Eastern affairs -- one of a handful of experts, incidentally, who, long before Sept. 11, identified the grave threat that militant Islam, or "Islamism," posed to the United States. An advocate of Islamic reform and modernization, Pipes is nothing like the "Islamaphobe," bigot, or bogeyman his most virulent detractors, led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), like to depict. In fact, when Pipes tells us "militant Islam is the problem, and moderate Islam is the solution," I'd say he's being not only reasonable, but also more than generous considering the absence, to date, of religious movements of moderation within Islam worth writing home about.
But back to the Pew poll, which indicates that more Americans may now be wondering why some of the flags flying over Islamic nations include scimitars. (And, if they're really paying attention, maybe also why CAIR tries to pass itself off as a mainstream group with, as Daniel Pipes noted in a recent JWR column, a chairman, Omar M. Ahmad, who says suicide bombers are not terrorists; an executive director, Nihad Awad, who supports Hamas; and a spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, who is not at all averse to an Islamic government in the United States.)
Just as more Americans are starting to understand that unreformed Islam and, by extension, the law (sharia) that flows from it, are indeed more likely to encourage violence than other religions, a serious scholar who has long applied himself to devising ways to defuse such deadly fanaticism is slowly being undermined and even marginalized in the United States Senate.
Video, in America, has always had an epic national resonance, and a poetic melancholy, that touches pungently on the life of the republic. TV is America, or it became America. But when? Was it during the 1960 presidential election, when John F Kennedy and Richard Milhouse Nixon debated with each other on television?
Or was it in 1974, when Nixon, the defeated 1960 candidate who went on to become Republican president in the late 1960s, was forced to resign after revelations about the illegal lengths his people were prepared to go to during his 1972 re-election campaign? Defending himself on TV with a sweating, monstrous, isolated face, Nixon, who had always been TV's candidate, revealed not just that this was a video age but that video was not the innocent thing it had seemed in the early days of network TV. It was not Bonanza and Bewitched. It was distant colour images of a helicopter taking off from the roof of the embassy in Saigon. It was, like the audio tapes Nixon made, an index of distance from the democratic: it was the death of the agora.
The essentials of video are the essentials of a decayed public life: the artefacts of conspiracy. The aesthetic of early video - black and white, violent and confessional, yet not confessional at all - is an aesthetic of paranoia.
It is, then, no coincidence that the most compelling and distinctive examples of early American video date from the Watergate era. And the
videotapes, transferred to disk and preserved as a cult rarity, do seem outrageously disconnected from what we now know as video art. Video installation is now such a universally accepted form, so integral to the culture of museums, that it can seem banal - is banal. There are so many cinema-scale projections and so few ideas. It is salutary to return to the monochrome intensity of 1974, to realise that video can be about something: can speak resonantly of history, politics and the self.
In early July, krypton 85 was detected in locations that suggested that this gas, produced when spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed into plutonium for nuclear weapons, may have emanated from a site other than North Korea's known reprocessing facility at Yongbyon....
[S]everal additional bombs' worth of plutonium could be available a few months from now. Add this to Pyongyang's breach of the 1994 Agreed Framework by its secret uranium-enrichment program, and its boast in April that it would sell weapons-grade plutonium to whomever it pleased (rogue states? terrorist groups?), and it is apparent that the world has weeks to months, at most, to deal with this issue ...
The only chance for a peaceful resolution of this crisis before North Korea moves clearly into the ranks of nuclear powers is for China to move decisively....
It is not reasonable to limit the use of force to a surgical strike destroying Yongbyon....
Massive air power is the key ... The key point is that the base infrastructure available in the region and the accessibility of North Korea from the sea should make it possible to generate around 4,000 sorties a day compared to the 800 a day that were so effective in Iraq....
The South Korean Army is well equipped to handle a counteroffensive into North Korea with help from perhaps two additional U.S. Army divisions, together with the above-mentioned Marine Expeditionary Force and dominant air power. We judge that the U.S. and South Korea could defeat North Korea decisively in 30 to 60 days with such a strategy. Importantly, there is "no doubt on the outcome" as the chairman of the JCS, Gen. Meyers, said at his reconfirmation hearing on July 26 to the Senate.
Of course, war is in the U.S. interest: it would remove the North Korean threat, take away China's option for secretive hostile action through a proxy state, liberate 23 million North Koreans, and re-unify Korea. The risks of war would fall on South Korea and, to a lesser extent, Japan, while the cost of losing its ally would fall on China. Thus, the buildup to war, especially the obtaining of Congressional authorization, might well motivate China and other regional powers to pressure North Korea into line. That sort of diplomatic triumph is just what George Bush would like in summer 2004.
But there is much work to be done to prepare the public for war.
While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election -- the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center -- something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.
There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him -- straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data. [...]
Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.
Some compare it to the hostility conservatives long harbored toward President Bill Clinton.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.
Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said. Powell has indicated to associates that a commitment made to his wife, rather than any dismay at the administration's foreign policy, is a key factor in his desire to limit his tenure to one presidential term.
Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration. Rice appears to have an edge because of her closeness to the president, though it is unclear whether she would be interested in running the State Department's vast bureaucracy. [...]
A dark-horse candidate for national security adviser is Steve Biegun, chief foreign affairs aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who is said to have impressed Bush when he served as executive secretary of the National Security Council early on in the administration.
There appear to be few obvious choices for a new CIA director. Armitage, known as a sharp manager willing to tackle tough projects, is viewed by some officials as the ideal replacement for Tenet. But Armitage has insisted to others that he will leave the administration on the same day as Powell, one of his closest friends.
Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a former CIA case officer, is considered a strong possibility, as is Wolfowitz if he is not tapped for secretary of state or national security adviser.
On the night of March 9, 1945, when the lead crews of the 21st Bomber Command returned from the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, Gen. Curtis LeMay was waiting for them in his headquarters on Guam. I was in Guam on temporary duty from Air Force headquarters in Washington, and LeMay had asked me to join him for the after-mission reports that evening.
LeMay was just as tough as his reputation. In many ways, he appeared to be brutal, but he was also the ablest commander of any I met during my three years of service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
That night, he'd sent out 334 B-29 bombers, seeking to inflict, as he put it, the maximum target destruction for the minimum loss of American lives. World War II was entering its final months, and the United States was beginning the last, devastating push for an unconditional Japanese surrender.
On that one night alone, LeMay's bombers burned to death 83,793 Japanese civilians and injured 40,918 more. The planes dropped firebombs and flew lower than they had in the past and therefore were both more accurate and more destructive.
They leveled a large part of Tokyo, which I had seen during a visit in 1937. It was a wooden city and burned like a match when it was firebombed.
That night's raid was only the first of 67. Night after night -- 66 more times -- crews were sent out over the skies of Japan.
Of course we didn't burn to death 83,000 people every night, but over a period of months American bombs inflicted extraordinary damage on a host of Japanese cities -- 900,000 killed, 1.3 million injured, more than half the population displaced.
The country was devastated. The degree of killing was extraordinary. Radio Tokyo compared the raids to the burning of Rome in the year 64.
LeMay was convinced that it was the right thing to do, and he told his superiors (from whom he had not asked for authority to conduct the March 9 raid), "If you want me to burn the rest of Japan, I can do that."
LeMay's position on war was clear: If you're going to fight, you should fight to win.
In the years afterward, he was quoted as saying, "If you're going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force." He also said: "All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."
[Fulgencio] Batista was indeed an unsavory character. He did oversee a corrupt administration in Cuba. He did undermine the halting democracy that the United States helped create after liberating Cuba from oppressive Spanish occupation at the turn of the century.
But Cuba and its U.S.-style constitution was also an economic powerhouse with potent social institutions and impressive accomplishments. A 1958 United Nations report ranked Cuba's vibrant free press eighth in the world, and first in Latin America. Despite its much smaller population, Cuba had 160 radio stations compared to the U. K.'s 62 and France's 50. It had 23 television stations compared to Mexico's 12 and Venezuela's 10. The tiny country supported 58 newspapers, fourth in Latin America behind populous Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Cuba once installed telephones at a rapid rate. No more. It once ranked first in Latin America, fifth in the world, in television sets per capita, and also ranked high in radios, automobiles, and many other consumer goods. No more. With the population increased and the housing stock degraded, more people suffer inadequate housing today than ever before, and sanitary conditions have become a scandal through much of the country.
The information-hungry populace in the Batista era was well-educated, as it remains. Student registration at primary schools in 1955 was 1,032 students per 10,000 inhabitants, higher than the figures for 1990 of 842. The registration rate for higher education was an impressive 38 per 10,000, about the same as it was 10 years later (34 per 10,000) and 15 years later (41 per 10,000). The country, in fact, had a long history of high literacy levels: At the turn of the 20th century, only 28% of those 10 and over couldn't read or write, not that different from the current figure, 100 years later, of 16%. [...]
Those who revile Batista often point to a decadent economy that relied on mafia-run casinos, prostitution and other demeaning jobs servicing tourists. Tourism was important under Batista - Havana was an east-coast alternative to Las Vegas, complete with the sex and gaming, and the same mafia owners - but never as important as tourism has become today. Cuba's once diversified economy is gone and Castro is now putting all of his hopes in attracting tourists.
To do this, Castro's Cuba now permits prostitution, it winks at sex tourism - tourist guide books even include sections on the country's once-taboo gay and bisexual scenes - and, as under Batista, the country unabashedly invests heavily in tourism.
The British abroad, at least where they congregate in large numbers, are loud, arrogant, coarse, drunken, vulgar, intimidating and stupid. They are, not to put too fine a point upon it, the scum of the earth. Endowed by nature with more than their fair share of ugliness, and completely lacking in dignity or self-respect, let alone respect for others, they contrive to arouse a Swiftian disgust in any impartial observer. Alas, this preternatural unattractiveness is not confined to those who have crawled from the lower depths of society: middle-class youth now believes it is politically virtuous as well as psychologically healthy to behave in a totally uninhibited fashion. Compared with the British abroad, the Germans are gentlemen.
Can anything be done about it? Clearly not in Britain, for the British have lost completely the ability to govern themselves. They are incapable of recognising, let alone of solving, the most obvious of the problems that beset them. They cannot see themselves as other people see them: if they could, they wouldn't be as they are. The cause is lost in Britain.
It is therefore the foreigners who must save us from ourselves. It is the only viable solution. I therefore suggest that the Spanish, Greeks and Turks form a pact to arrest and place in preventive detention a half of British tourists immediately on arrival. The fact of being a British tourist at a resort popular with British tourists should be sufficient warrant. If more formal charges are needed, conspiracy to vomit in public or to use threatening behaviour towards waiters and others should suffice. After all, if they weren't planning to behave badly, they would [not] have come in the first place: for no young Briton could enjoy himself without making himself obnoxious to others. Nuisance is nine-tenths of their pleasure.
Representative Richard A. Gephardt's push to win the endorsement of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which is important to his hopes of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, has been set back by his problems raising money and his low standing in some polls, many union leaders say.
Mr. Gephardt of Missouri has far more individual union endorsements than any of the other eight Democratic candidates. But to win the labor federation's endorsement, he needs the backing of unions representing two-thirds of its 13 million members.
"Two-thirds is a very tough and high mountain to climb," said Gerald W. McEntee, chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s political committee and president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "My own judgment is that right now, he doesn't have two-thirds. Can he reach the two-thirds? It's a possibility, but I think it's very challenging and difficult."
Securing the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s endorsement before the primaries could give Mr. Gephardt a major leg up, political experts say, because it would place at his disposal hundreds of union campaign workers already assigned to Congressional districts across the nation. [...]
Nine unions, including the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, and the Seafarers International Union, have already endorsed Mr. Gephardt. The unions that have endorsed him represented slightly more than one million members, and then Mr. Gephardt received a highly important endorsement Friday when the executive board of the Teamsters union, which has 1.4 million members, voted to support him.
Bret Caldwell, the Teamsters' communications director, said the union's president, James P. Hoffa, would officially announce the endorsement in Detroit next Saturday. Mr. Hoffa will fly with Mr. Gephardt to Iowa, the site of the first caucus, and New Hampshire, the site of the first primary, to speak on Mr. Gephardt's behalf.
An audio tape purportedly of top al Qaeda official Ayman al-Zawahri warned the United States on Sunday it would pay a high price if it harmed any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The voice on the tape, broadcast by the Dubai-based Arabic television Al Arabiya, also told the United States that the "real battle'' against it has not started yet.
"America has announced it will start putting on trial in front of military tribunals the Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and might sentence them to death...,'' said the voice, which Al Arabiya television identified as Zawahri's.
"I swear in the name of God that the crusader America will pay a dear price for any harm it inflicts on any of the Muslim detainees....''
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so angered by John Wayne's anti-communism that he plotted to have him murdered, according to a new biography of the Hollywood legend.
John Wayne: The Man behind the Myth, by British writer Michael Munn, says there were several attempts on the actor's life in the 1950s.
In one instance, the book says, two Russian hit men posing as FBI agents visited Wayne at his office in Hollywood - but were foiled by real agents who knew about the plot.
Mr Munn told BBC News Online that he pieced together the truth about the various attempts through interviews with Hollywood figures - including Orson Welles and Wayne himself - over the past 30 years.
Mr Munn said Stalin was enraged when he heard about Wayne's anti-communist activities in the late 1940s - when Hollywood blacklisted those perceived as Soviet sympathisers.
"Stalin decided Wayne had to die," Mr Munn says.
David Kelly, the British weapons expert at the centre of the Iraq dossier row, had amassed firm evidence to show that Saddam Hussein built and tested a "dirty bomb."
Designed to cause cancer and birth defects, the radiological weapon could have been used by terrorists to create panic and widespread contamination in a crowded city.
Kelly, who committed suicide last month, presented evidence of the bomb to the government in 1995 and recommended to Foreign Office officials that it feature in the government's intelligence dossier on Iraq. However, despite secret Iraqi documents being produced to prove its existence, it was not included.
In an interview with The Sunday Times in June, Kelly said the dirty bomb was originally built by Saddam for use against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war as a tactical weapon and an instrument of terror.
He said Iraq still "possessed the know-how and the materials to build a radiological weapon." The threat was potentially more serious than some other weapons of mass destruction, he said, because Iraq still retained the main ingredients - nuclear material and high explosives.
Asked why it had not formed part of the government's case against Iraq, Kelly said he did not know but said there were people in government who were skeptical about the potency of such a weapon.
For more than a century, the first weekend of August in Western Kentucky has signified the politics of the Fancy Farm picnic. This year, many predict that today's picnic will be only the beginning of the political attention Western Kentucky will receive during this year's governor's race.
That's because the region -- long a hotbed of registered Democrats -- is viewed as a wild card in the race. [...]
Over the last decade, Western Kentucky Democrats have re-elected Republican Ed Whitfield as their congressman, supported Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and voted for George W. Bush in 2000.
In state and local races, however, voters have largely stuck with Democrats.
But Republicans say they're hopeful this is the year the conservative trend reaches the governor's mansion. Republican registration in western counties has increased steadily each year.
In the past three months, for example, Marshall County gained 116 Republicans and lost 61 Democrats.
Murray businessman Robbie Rudolph, who ran for lieutenant governor this spring with Republican Rebecca Jackson, said many conservatives are changing parties because they've been energized by the growing prominence of the Republican Party in Kentucky.
The brothers Hussein were buried today here in their hometown 11 days after they were killed by American soldiers. The funeral touched off an outpouring of nostalgia for their fugitive father and was filled with angry calls to rid Iraq of its American occupiers.
Coming out of seclusion, more than 100 members of Saddam Hussein's family gathered in a parched cemetery here and laid the bodies of Uday and Qusay side by side, and then, to conclude an emotional ceremony, buried a third relative killed in the American raid, Qusay's 14-year-old son, Mustafa. A group of American soldiers kept watch at first, then slipped away.
The mourners, many of whom thrived under Saddam Hussein's brutal but patriarchal rule, asked God to judge Uday and Qusay as heroes killed in a glorious battle against a foreign invader, and draped each grave with an Iraqi flag.
"Oh God, welcome Uday and Qusay as martyrs on the day of judgment," a man intoned as the bodies of each were lowered into the ground. "Give them a soft place to rest in the earth, open the grave wider for them, and let each become your son."
The end of the ceremony, attended by as many as 200 people in all, set off a frenzy. Family and friends seemed to stop mourning the passing of the sons as they began chanting for the return of the father.
"Our blood, our souls, we'll sacrifice for Saddam!" the crowd roared, repeating the line.
When friends and family lined up in a traditional prayer to mark the end of the funeral, one of the members rose from his knees and exploded in anger, jabbing his finger at a small number of Americans standing by.
"Death to America!" he shouted, with murmurs of assent behind him. "Death to America!"
Four theses on a campaign that could use opportunities created by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in a creative way: a campaign to turn the administration of Iraq over to the United Nations:
1. A United Nations administration would be more likely to bring peace and stability to Iraq. [...]
2. Turning over control of Iraq to the UN would be in the best interests of Americans.
American soldiers continue to die every week in Iraq. American deaths since the end of formal hostilities will likely soon surpass those killed during the war itself. The consultative council appointed by US occupation forces appears to have little power or credibility among the population and Iraq appears to be a long way from genuine self-governance. It is unlikely that the Bush administration will be able to bring to power a new Iraqi regime that has the support of the majority of the Iraqi people.
The ongoing US occupation of Iraq, particularly the killings of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers, is resulting in the growth of anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab and Islamic world. This could increase the ranks of extremist groups like the terrorist al-Qaeda network, whose leaders are now more easily able to portray the United States as an imperialist power committed to the conquest and subjugation of Muslim peoples and the exploitation of the region's natural resources. This would be far more difficult to do, however, if Iraq were instead provisionally governed by an international regime under UN auspices.
The 150,000 American troops currently deployed in Iraq are causing a shortage of available personnel for other potential US military operations, ranging from peacekeeping operations in Liberia (which could help save that country from a humanitarian disaster) to challenging real threats to regional security (such as North Korea, which - unlike Iraq - really is developing weapons of mass destruction). In addition, the need for a large number of reservists to fill the ranks of US occupation forces are having a detrimental impact on many thousands of families and businesses back home that depend on them.
In addition, the US occupation is expensive. Currently, the American taxpayer is paying for more than 85 percent of the costs of the post-war occupation, peacekeeping, and administration in Iraq. Under UN leadership, US contributions would be no more than 20 percent, a major savings for the American taxpayer that would make available funding for badly needed social services at home, as well as tax relief and deficit reduction.
3. The United Nations could succeed in such an effort. [...]
4. Such a campaign is winnable. [...]
In addition to analyzing past clinical studies and designing their own, the group regularly discusses and dissects some of what might be called the accumulating folklore of the placebo. Take, for example, the tale of internal mammary ligation, a form of heart surgery now known to have been based on bogus assumptions about the body's circulatory system. Before being discredited, however, internal mammary ligation led to a 90 percent reduction of angina pain in one clinical trial-the same rate of improvement, incidentally, that resulted from the placebo surgery used in that trial.
And then there's the placebo's evil twin, the nocebo effect. After all, if an inert substance plus positive spin can have medical benefits, why shouldn't an inert substance plus negative spin induce distress? It has been reported, for example, that all 13 recruits to one Japanese clinical trial broke out in a rash when informed that the innocuous leaves being rubbed on their arms were poison ivy. Score that one for the nocebo.
The Harvard group's new $2.1 million study is one of the first of a wave of NIH-sponsored trials explicitly designed to address Hrobjartsson and Gotzsche's anti-placebo critique. It has a no-treatment arm in addition to two placebo arms and one verum arm. (Recruits who are randomized into the no-treatment arm can, if they like, be treated for free after the study ends with the verum under investigation.)
The no-treatment arm is not this trial's only innovation. Another goal is, as Kerr puts it, ''to crack open the black box of clinical trials.'' Throughout the study, patients will confer with practitioners about what it's like to receive medical treatment in the unusual setting of a clinical trial. Kerr and others in the group suspect that medical ritual influences clinical outcomes. In the ''interaction between the practitioner and the patient,'' Kerr told me, ''there are particular ways of talking and listening that may drive therapeutic change.'' By controlling the practitioner's approach to patients, she will be able to test this hypothesis.
Details of this study-it concerns a chronic condition-are still being ironed out, and cannot be made public at this time. More can be said about the clinical trial completed last June that involved 270 people who suffer from repetitive stress injury (RSI), including carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. That study has two verum arms (acupuncture and the drug Amitriptyline) and two placebo arms (sham acupuncture and a placebo pill).
In sham acupuncture, the needles are retracted back into their casing, never piercing the skin. Nevertheless sham acupuncture involves more patient/practitioner contact, more medical ritual, than merely swallowing a pill. If one of the placebos outperforms the other, that may yield information about the impact of ritual on healing. It would also suggest that there is something going on with placebo effects that cannot be ascribed to the natural history of disease.
Results of this study will be published in the fall, but preliminary reports confirm the placebo's power to generate paradox.
[T]he US congressional report seems to be adding insult to Saudi Arabia's injury. Since September 11 that country has been a target of Washington hawks' proposals for regime change as part of a plan to reshape the entire Middle East. Regardless of his intention, Bush's refusal to declassify the mentioned chapter will only create grounds for future leveling of unverifiable charges against Saudi Arabia, which could prepare US public opinion for a future regime change under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Within this context, the refusal could serve as a first step toward "dealing" with an old US ally, which the hawks consider as a strategically important state with uncertain future stability. Saudi Arabia's refusal to let the United States use its bases in a major way in their war on Iraq has probably qualified it as an "emerging rogue state" that Washington can afford to alienate now that it has access to oil-rich Iraq.
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Pryor, "Do you not understand that [your] statement . . . raises concerns of those who don't happen to be Christian, that you are asserting . . . a religious belief of your own, inconsistent with separation of church and state?" He also argued that "you have opened up a long series of questions related to the Establishment Clause. It is one thing to say that we have the freedom to practice. It is another thing to say that we condone by government action certain religious belief."
Ever since George Bush renounced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming two years ago, the industrialized world has been waiting patiently for signs that Americans are ready to focus on the pressing issue of climate change. Lately some American politicians have begun to take the matter more seriously, even if Mr. Bush has not.
Last week Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman extracted a pledge from their colleagues to hold a floor vote later this year on a promising and, by Senate standards, adventurous proposal for mandatory controls on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. Meanwhile, 10 Northeastern governors agreed to devise a regional strategy to reduce these same emissions, regardless of what Washington does. [...]
McCain-Lieberman is not likely to pass, absent an unexpected conversion on the issue by Mr. Bush and senior Republicans. But every senator will now be required to take a stand one way or the other on an issue of great public concern, an issue on which the world has spoken clearly but Congress has remained irresponsibly silent for too long.
If a person is married, believes in God, goes to church, reads the Bible, and prays, chances are he will vote Republican--and he is a core member of the dreaded Religious Right. If a person is unmarried, never goes to church, never reads the Bible, and never prays, he will likely vote Democratic--and he belongs to the not-so-dreaded Secular Left. Certainly there are religious Democrats and irreligious Republicans, but according to the research of social scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio ("Our Secularist Democratic Party," Public Interest, Fall 2002), the Democratic Party has become the political home of unbelievers. (See Rod Dreher’s article in this issue.)
Moreover, anti-Christian policies are far more entrenched in the Democratic Party than Christian policies are in the Republican. Republicans sometimes want to ignore abortion; Democrats want to promote it, and make it a litmus test. Despite their deep differences on other issues, all of the current Democratic presidential hopefuls made a pilgrimage to NARAL Pro-Choice America’s "celebration" of the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade to testify to their commitment to abortion. The Democrats have reinstituted the constitutionally banned religious test for federal positions. If a judge is a faithful Catholic or Evangelical, the Democrats will likely try to block his appointment as a federal judge, for fear that it would reduce the accessibility of abortion.
Pro-abortion forces have a strong, probably unshakeable grip on the Democratic Party; pro-life forces have a weaker grip on the Republican Party. Voting Republican might or might not advance the protection of the unborn; voting Democratic will inevitably lead to the further entrenchment of abortion in American society, even if the Democrat is a pro-lifer who survived the abortionists’ inquisitions. [...]
A vote for a Democrat today is almost always a vote for abortion and a vote to violate the consciences of those of us who oppose abortion. The effect of various fiscal polices on the poor are uncertain; the effect of abortion on human life is certain. Whatever can be said for or against Democratic economic policies from a Christian point of view, nothing can be said in favor of their abortion policy. They have favored abortion at every stage and at every opportunity; they see no problem with forcing Christians to pay for abortion through taxes and compulsory insurance coverage; they will force Christian institutions to accept abortion; they will silence those who protest abortion. When Democrats do not do these things, it is only because they are weak. When they are strong, what will restrain them?
A majority said they supported a bigger government providing more services, backed affirmative action and questioned whether the war in Iraq was worth the cost. By a 2-to-1 ratio, Hispanics said the Democratic Party was more likely to ensure a strong economy than Republicans, and 50 percent said Democrats were more likely to create jobs, compared with 20 percent who said the same about Republicans.
But the respondents identified with Republicans on a host of issues the party has emphasized over the past two years. They applauded tax cuts, calling them better economic policy than reducing deficits, and embraced the use of school vouchers. They were less likely than the population at large to support the legalization of homosexual relations between consenting adults. And 44 percent of Hispanics said abortion should not be legal, compared with 22 percent of non-Hispanics.
The Times/CBS News poll also found that among the general electorate, President Bush's job approval rating has dropped to 54 percent, a 13-point fall, since May, reflecting growing concerns about the economy and doubts about the war in Iraq. The last time Mr. Bush's job approval rating was at 54 percent was in February, before the war. [...]
Hispanics approved of Mr. Bush's job performance 52 to 38 percent, while 54 percent said that he "cares about the needs and problem of people like yourself." By contrast, just 40 percent of Hispanics said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, while 60 percent said they had a favorable view of Democrats.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told the San Jose Mercury News that having one Democratic candidate in the Oct. 7 recall election is crucial, but "we don't know" if it should be Davis.
"We have to be careful not to get divided and allow them to take California through this fluke recall election," Waters said of Republicans. "If (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein is talked into getting onto the ballot, I hope Gray Davis would step down."
Messages left for Waters' staff members were not immediately returned Saturday.
With an Aug. 9 candidate filing deadline approaching, Davis allies insisted the party remains united behind him, but a growing trickle of party leaders were suggesting otherwise.
Three other California congressional Democrats have urged Feinstein in recent days to run to replace Davis. The senator, who has said she does not intend to be a candidate, said she was flattered but declined further comment.
History may one day record that maybe the most honest speech about why we invaded Iraq was given by Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing the filing cabinets in an empty hallway just outside his office at No. 10 Downing Street.
The moment is recounted in Peter Stothard's terrific book "30 Days." Mr. Stothard, the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, was allowed to follow Mr. Blair around in the 30 days immediately before and after the start of the Iraq war. His book is a daily diary. On March 13, six days before the British Parliament would be asked to vote for war, Mr. Blair was stewing in his office, worrying about whether he would win the vote.
Mr. Blair knew the real and good reasons for ousting Saddam Hussein: First, he was a genocidal dictator, who aspired to acquire weapons of mass destruction ? even if he did not have them yet. And second, removing Saddam and building a more decent Iraq would help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive political track and send a message to all the neighboring regimes that Western governments were not going to just sit back and let them incubate suicide bombers and religious totalitarians, whose fanaticism threatened all open societies. These were the good reasons for the war, and Mr. Blair voiced some of them aloud that day.
As Mr. Stothard recalled the scene outside Mr. Blair's office: "the prime minister takes a walk out into the hall and stands, shaking out his limbs, between [his political adviser] Sally Morgan's door and a dark oil painting of Pitt the Younger. . . . Morgan is away from her desk. [Mr. Blair] looks into the empty interior as if the answer to the latest state of the vote count will emerge from her filing cabinets nonetheless. He comes back out, disappointed, and looks around him. `What amazes me,' [Mr. Blair says,] `is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don't get rid of [the Zimbabwean leader Robert] Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, let's get rid of them all. I don't because I can't, but when you can you should.' "
Alas, Mr. Blair never really made this case to his public. Why not? Because the British public never would have gone to war for the good reasons alone. Why not? Because the British public had not gone through 9/11 and did not really feel threatened, because it demanded a U.N. legal cover for any war and because it didn't like or trust George Bush.
''F--- Saddam. We're taking him out.'' Those were the words of the president, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies.
Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase.
A meeting between George W. Bush and the Rev. Jesse Jackson after the president addressed the National Urban League in Pittsburgh on Monday has black Republicans roiling with anger and incomprehension.
Sources familiar with the meeting say it was set up by White House political-strategy director Karl Rove, with no consultation with black conservatives or the Republican National Committee (RNC). "Such meetings wouldn't have been coordinated with the RNC," an RNC official said. "But it was well-known that the meeting with Jackson was going to take place."
RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie was standing behind the president when he was whisked away by the Secret Service for the private meeting with Jackson, a knowledgeable source tells Insight. "[Gillespie] was stunned when he learned what was going on."
Other sources dispute this account and say the White House was blindsided by Cummings, who requested a private audience to talk to the president about Liberia. "Out of respect for Cummings as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Bush agreed to meet with him. It was someone else who suggested to Cummings that he bring Jackson," one source told Insight. [...]
The African Methodist Episcopal Church plans to hold a major event in Dallas next week that is expected to draw an estimated 10,000 women involved in missionary work. "Here's a group that would be sympathetic to the president, especially to his faith-based initiatives," [A top black Republican Party insider] said. "They asked the president to give a speech, but haven't heard one word back."
"The Democrats' policies for the last 30-40 years have failed African-Americans and have failed the rest of the country," DeLay said. He also admitted that the Republicans have done a poor job communicating their commitment to the civil rights movement. Despite getting only 9 percent of the black vote in the last presidential election, DeLay is optimistic that the Republican Party is uniquely poised to communicate its ideas about racial equality and that these ideas will be the engine of progress.
Throughout the conversation, one key phrase kept repeating - "equal opportunity." This is the embryo of the Republican outreach agenda. For DeLay, equal opportunity doesn't mean embracing racial quotas or other policies that link victim status with skin color. Nor does it mean supporting bottomless entitlement programs that dispense money to the underprivileged like some government-subsidized tranquilizer. Simply handing money out to the needy fails to create equal opportunity because it does not confront the problems that underlie poverty, like deteriorating family values and the absence of future expectations in poor neighborhoods. [...]
Government programs that embrace victim status for individuals or subsidize laziness are violations of equal opportunity. The ultimate violation is racial quotas. "Affirmative action had a good idea to begin with and that was to level the playing field so that everyone could have equal access," says DeLay. The problem occurred when the government hijacked the program by focusing on quotas, rather than on those social conditions that undergird inequality.
"The government decided to come in and provide equal opportunity by numbers rather than equal opportunity by stopping people from discriminating, or equal opportunity by assuring that African-Americans have access to decent schools or by making sure that job opportunities were based on equal opportunity not race or gender," says DeLay. We need to "come together as a color-blind society where the government doesn't pick winners of losers but the government mandates that everyone have an equal opportunity based on the capacity for each individual to grab opportunity and make something of themselves."
Berkshire Hathaway, the hugely successful, Nebraska-based company led by Warren Buffett, recently announced an end to its program for charitable giving, and in a way that is big news.
The program was an object of adoration for years, not least because it allowed Class A shareholders to designate where they wanted their portion of the company's charity to go. It seemed so democratic, so enlightened compared with the usual corporate-charity model: allowing an executive committee to pick a few charities on behalf of all shareholders. And yet we should be glad that Berkshire's program has ended. It was a bad idea in the first place. [...]
As it turned out, Pampered Chef customers, not to mention the kitchen consultants themselves, weren't keen on the charities to which Berkshire's biggest shareholder--Mr. Buffett--was giving his money, and they let their unhappy feelings be known. (Because the program was open to only Class A shareholders holding physical certificates, Mr. Buffett controlled well over half the contributions even though he owns only about a third of the company.) Berkshire's press release acknowledged this unhappiness: "Certain donations, including some made by Berkshire's chairman, Warren Buffett, have caused harmful criticism to be directed at . . . The Pampered Chef."
Millions of dollars a year were going to Mr. Buffett's favorite charity, The Buffett Foundation, whose philanthropic interests are heavily weighted toward population control and family planning. Among other things, the Buffett Foundation has helped to finance trials of the abortion pill RU-486; it has purchased suction machines used for abortions around the world; and it has funded the deployment of the controversial sterilization pellet Quinicrine in Third World countries.
Mary Beth Walz ... is still just as undecided as she was two years ago, when Dick Gephardt came calling, or last summer, when John Edwards made his pitch. By now, she's seen six out of the nine Democrats seeking the nomination.
"Every time I'd walk out of a particular candidate's event, I'd say, 'This is the one,'" she said. "But then I always force myself to step back and put it in perspective."
Recent polls show Walz isn't alone: ... Franklin Pierce College's latest count shows undecideds at 37 percent, up from 31 percent in May.
Surveys find that only about 10 percent of social science and humanities faculty vote Republican. In the social sciences, the plural of anecdote is data. Here are some data about how colleges value diverse opinions:
- A sociologist who quit academia to join a think tank recalls, "When I decided to become a registered Republican, it was a sensation. It was as if I became a child molester. You don't want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts."...
- An article in Political Science Teacher describes an introductory American government class co-taught by a Democrat and a Republican, who regularly debate public policy. The professors lament that only departments with a Republican faculty member can offer such a course.
- On leaving his political science department for a think tank, a conservative professor says, "Our department has Marxists, communitarians, people who think that Castro has the only democracy in the world, and then it's got moderate liberals and Kennedy-Mondale kind of liberals, but the only two people that were right of center were driven out."...
How did institutions devoted to free thought become ideologically sterile? As economist George J. Stigler wrote two decades ago, getting a professorship is like pledging a fraternity - a single member of the "in crowd" can blackball you. Most academic departments have at least one leftist who vetoes conservative job candidates. Knowing this, I have found that few conservative students attend graduate school and fewer still apply for academic jobs on earning their doctorates.
What we are looking at here is human nature. People want to be around others who are roughly like themselves. That's called community. It probably would be psychologically difficult for most Brown professors to share an office with someone who was pro-life, a member of the National Rifle Association, or an evangelical Christian. It's likely that hiring committees would subtly -- even unconsciously -- screen out any such people they encountered. Republicans and evangelical Christians have sensed that they are not welcome at places like Brown, so they don't even consider working there. In fact, any registered Republican who contemplates a career in academia these days is both a hero and a fool. (emphasis added)
A remedy is available. Universities derive most of their revenue from federal appropriations, either directly in the form of overhead on research grants, or indirectly in the form of tuition subsidies. These subsidies cost the average taxpayer hundreds of dollars per year. These federal appropriations require the support of Republican appropriators to continue. It is quite reasonable for Republicans to condition their appropriations on intellectual diversity. If students had to pay their own tuition and if private organizations funded research, they would certainly direct funds toward ideologically diverse environments and researchers more similar to their own ideologies. Politicians have every right, indeed should, represent their constituents by funding universities in similar fashion.
Of course, this would raise howls of protest. But universities would be poorly placed to complain. After all, don't their own hiring committees condition grants of salary upon political viewpoint?
FAYE WATTLETON, former president of Planned Parenthood, announced some "alarming" news in late June. Her organization, the Center for the Advancement of Women, had commissioned Princeton Survey Research Associates to do a major study on contemporary feminism. The result was "Progress and Perils: A New Agenda for Women," a 140-page report on women's views on a range of issues, including abortion. The central finding: Far from wanting abortion as readily available as botox or tattoos (1.3 million abortions took place in 2000), most women oppose the procedure. As Wattleton wrote in the introduction, "There is significant and growing support for severe restrictions on abortion rights." [...]
But "Progress and Perils" doesn't just confirm that most women are pro-life. It undermines three political myths about women's views on abortion. Indeed, if you read the whole report, the study makes plain that Republicans enjoy an advantage on the abortion issue among women. And if conservatives decide to use it, they may have Faye Wattleton to thank.
The first myth the study exposes is that soccer moms are pro-choice. Ever since Clinton pollster Mark Penn coined the term, the mainstream press has depicted them as such. Fortunately, "Progress and Perils" doesn't take such generalizations for granted. The report classifies women into six groups, based on their attitudes toward women's roles and social status. [...]
The second myth "Progress and Perils" undermines is that Republicans will lose if they openly oppose abortion. Of the six groups profiled in "Progress and Perils," four heavily favor greater curbs on the procedure. And it's not only the traditionalists (69 percent), most of whom are evangelical, and family-firsts (70 percent), most of whom are working class and live in small towns, who feel this way. So do the separate-but-equals and the center-left modern feminists (67 percent), many of whom are black and Hispanic and poor. [...]
The third myth the study calls into doubt is that most women support Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. This belief was recently conveyed in the Washington Post by David von Drehle in an article about the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion and civil liberties: "Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans have little appetite for reversing the court's path on social issues."
Which polls is von Drehle referring to? It certainly wasn't the poll Wattleton's organization, then called the Center for Gender Equality, took four years ago, which found that 53 percent of women favored outlawing abortion or restricting it to the hard cases--a pre-Roe standard. Nor could von Drehle be referring to the current study, in which 51 percent of women felt the same way.
Akerlof: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience.
To be paralyzingly, painfully, hopelessly unfunny is not a particular defect or shortcoming in, say, a cable repair man or a Supreme Court justice or a Navy Seal. These jobs can be performed humorlessly with no loss of efficiency or impact. But to be paralyzingly, painfully, hopelessly unfunny is a serious drawback, even lapse, in a comedian. And the late Bob Hope devoted a fantastically successful and well-remunerated lifetime to showing that a truly unfunny man can make it as a comic. There is a laugh here, but it is on us.
Give a man a reputation as an early riser, said Mark Twain, and that man can thereafter sleep until noon. Quick, then—what is your favorite Bob Hope gag? It wouldn't take you long if I challenged you on Milton Berle, or Woody Allen, or John Cleese, or even (for the older customers) Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl. By this time tomorrow, I bet you haven't come up with a real joke for which Hope could take credit.
I saw him twice, and both times he was playing, as he often did, to the soft-centered Brit or Anglophile culture. At an evening dedicated to Prince Philip at Merv Griffin's Beverly Hilton, Hope got up and told of how he left England at the age of 3. "It was either that," he said, "or marry the girl." The timing was OK, consisting as it did of a long pause. The next time I caught the act was at the British Embassy in Washington, where the ambassador did the intro and tried to wow the crowd by telling "Bob's" favorite reminiscence, which was that he left England at the age of 3, having discovered that he could never become king. These are the kinds of joke that keep things going at golf clubs or Rotary dinners: They are harmless and sentimental and have no intrinsic humor. A Bob Hope joke was no laughing matter: It was a bland attempt at what we would now yawningly call inclusiveness.
1964, Bien Hoa, Vietnam. On Christmas Eve, just before Hope and his USO troupe were to arrive at the Brinks Hotel, a disguised Viet Cong truck with 300 pounds of TNT exploded, blowing out the hotel walls. Hope was delayed because his cue-card man, Barney McNulty, was late getting the cards off the plane. A Viet Cong document found later indicated that Hope was the target of the attack. Hope's opening gag at his next show: "I want to thank you for your welcome to Saigon. As I came into town, I saw a hotel go the other way."
James A. Traficant, a former Ohio congressman in prison for bribery and racketeering charges, has given his approval to supporters to form a presidential exploratory committee.
"The battle to free James Traficant and to evict the Socialists and 'free traders' from the Democratic Party is now under way," campaign spokesman Marcus Belk said. "Someone buy the Washington establishment a bottle of Maalox." [...]
Traficant, a Democrat who represented northeast Ohio in the House for nine terms, was expelled from Congress in July 2002 after being convicted in a federal court of racketeering, bribery and tax evasion. He is now serving an eight-year prison sentence at the minimum-security Allenwood federal prison in White Deer, Pa.
The former lawmaker couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Three weeks ago, I wrote about books before 1750 that those looking to avoid the tyranny of the urgent should read. One person who saw the list asked about books from the past 250 years that would help us understand: a) why America has become a success and b) why the 20th century was in many ways a disaster. I do have four recommendations on each topic.
Larry C. Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, says he wants to be the Democratic Party's standard bearer -- or maybe "barer" -- in the coming California recall election, and he's running for governor.
"They said that the person with the best name recognition stood the best shot, so why not?" said Flynt, 61, who has taken out papers to run for the state's top job. Speaking in a phone interview last night from his Los Angeles home, Flynt said his reason is simple: "I think I can do a better job balancing the budget than those bureaucrats in Sacramento." [...]
Unlike many who say they want the job, Flynt says that he has a plan on "how to balance the budget without raising taxes . . . I've done my homework."
"I would expand the gaming and the private casinos, the slot machines," said Flynt, who is connected with the Hustler Casino in Gardena. "This would provide enough revenue to where the state could get out of debt -- the entire deficit. Nobody's taxes get raised, and no programs get cut."
[R]eligion and politics are becoming more entwined in the American psyche. A nationwide survey released last week shows that religion plays a significant part in people's thinking about contentious policy issues and is seen increasingly as an important element in political life.
Religious perspectives show up readily, for example, in public attitudes toward such disparate issues as gay marriage and US foreign policy in the Middle East, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The groups surveyed 2,002 adults between June 24 and July 8. [...]
Strong support for Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tied to faith concerns. Fully 44 percent of Americans believe God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people, the poll says.
And 36 percent believe that "the state of Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming of Jesus" - 63 percent of evangelicals, 21 percent of mainline Protestants, and 25 percent of Catholics.
On the role of faith in political life, the survey could help boost religious rhetoric in the presidential campaign. It finds Americans are quite comfortable with the religiosity of public officials - particularly President Bush.
A 62 percent majority says he strikes the right balance in how much he mentions religious faith, and 58 percent say his reliance on religion in policymaking is appropriate.
When asked in general about expressions of faith and prayer by political leaders, 41 percent said there was "too little," and only 21 percent said "too much."
In the kitchen, Nina sauteed fresh, fat scallops in a little butter, removed them and made a simple but exquisite saffron sauce by adding a little stock, cream and a few pink peppercorns for color. Eystein dipped monkfish chunks into an elemental flour batter for quick sauteeing. I've never subscribed to the marketers' description of monkfish as the ''poor man's lobster'' -- it's like the Chicken Liver Council claiming its product is Gonzo's rib-eye for those who can't afford it. I usually find it combative in texture and only mildly toothsome. If you see a whole monkfish at the market, you'll find its massive mouth scarier than a shark's. Apparently it sits on the bottom of the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recipients of W's capital-gains cuts. So it has in common with lobster only reprehensibility of character.
York believes that it is unfair, and even dangerous, to charge Senate Democrats with anti-Catholicism. He points out that the Democrats are not against Bush nominee Bill Pryor because he is Catholic; they're against him because he's against abortion. They would also oppose an evangelical Protestant who opposed abortion as vigorously as Pryor does. They would oppose an atheist pro-lifer, for that matter....
So Republican rhetoric about the Democrats' having adopted a "religious test for office" is not true. It is true, however, that the Democrats have adopted the next best thing. They have a viewpoint test for office that has the effect of screening out all Catholics faithful to their church's teachings on abortion.... It really is true that faithful Catholics "need not apply" as far as most Democrats are concerned....
The Democrats are not prepared openly to say that their litmus test excludes Catholics and evangelical Protestants. That's why they will continue to squeal even if Republicans make the argument in the most precise, rhetorically clean way possible. And why Republicans should not flag in doing exactly that.
Most people, for instance, think of a racist as someone with particular subjective characteristics. There was much ill-feeling among conservatives who opposed affirmative action on subjective grounds that are not the least racist, only to have Democrats accuse them of racism on the grounds that the objective consequences of refraining from affirmative action would be harmful to blacks. Here we have the same phenomenon with roles reversed: the Democratic actions are clearly harmful to Catholics, depriving faithful Catholics of the opportunity to serve in the federal judiciary. The Democratic actions are objectively anti-Catholic, but there is no real evidence that the Democrats are subjectively anti-Catholic, in the sense of being motivated by a desire to harm Catholics. For subjective phenomena are unobservable. No one can observe another's thoughts, emotions, or motives, only the actions that emerge from them.
If we had those separate words, we could call the Democrats objectively anti-Catholic without risk of confusion with a charge of subjective anti-Catholicism. As it is, we are torn: to make a charge of subjective anti-Catholicism would be, at best, uncivil because we can have no proof of the correctness of the charge, and, at worst, outright wrong. And given the limitations of our vocabulary, making a charge of objective anti-Catholicism opens up the possibility of misunderstandings that can expose us to the charge of incivility.
I am inclined to agree with Ponnuru. The ad that ran in Maine and elsewhere was uncharitable; but it is important to make the point that Democratic actions are, objectively, anti-Catholic. That is why Republicans should look for "precise, rhetorically clean" language, and run more ads.
MORE:
Some things change, some things really don't (Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop of Denver)
[T]he committee debate on Pryor was ugly, and the vote to advance his nomination split exactly along party lines. Why? Because Mr. Pryor believes that Catholic teaching about the sanctity of life is true ...
The bias against "papism" is alive and well in America. It just has a different address.
It was the Democratic Senate opposition -- and not the Committee for Justice's ad campaign -- that injected religion into the Pryor debate, suggesting a litmus test that would allow the Democrats to block (by filibuster if necessary) any person of faith they choose.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) framed the issue in his opening statement by saying, "When it comes to the separation of church and state, we have to be concerned as well. . . . I personally am a deeply religious man. I believe if we all behaved more in accord with traditional religious teachings, we would have a better, healthier and safer country. But the comments the attorney general has made . . . are troubling."
Later, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Pryor, "Do you not understand that [your] statement . . . raises concerns of those who don't happen to be Christian, that you are asserting . . . a religious belief of your own, inconsistent with separation of church and state?" He also argued that "you have opened up a long series of questions related to the Establishment Clause. It is one thing to say that we have the freedom to practice. It is another thing to say that we condone by government action certain religious belief."
In the annals of bureaucratic officialese, the press release about a cash grant from Human Resources Development Canada to the francophone minority in Yukon certainly ranks near the top.
"Through its economic development and employability network (RDEE), the Association franco-yukonnaise will use these funds to implement a strategy aimed at enhancing the vitality of the community by supporting its socio-economic development through human resources planning and work force adjustment activities."
Mr. Keller, from the University of Victoria, said, "God knows what that means. I think the only words missing were diversity and multiculturalism." [...]
Jim Marino, a professor emeritus of English with the University of Alberta, said, "I think it becomes unconscious and second nature for people in bureaucracy to do this."
Mr. Marino, who has been asked by attorneys and politicians for his expertise in interpreting legislation, said bureaucrats who try to write in plain language are often thought of as ignorant and uninformed by their superiors. "People are taught that this is the proper language for the bureaucrat. It's like a virus; it simply spreads and no one notices that they are infected."
Dear Cecil: you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope,
For I've been reading of Schroedinger’s cat,
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously alive and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened. In the other I ain't.
If you understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will and won't see you in Schroedinger's zoo.
signed, Randy F., Chicago
Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don't worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
He saw that the theory that Newton'd invented
By Einstein's discov'ries had been badly dented.
"What now?" wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, "Don’t panic,
No grease monkey I, but a Quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and sometimes like particles.
"If that’s not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat though - my theory permits us to judge
Where some of ’em is and the rest of them was."
Not everyone bought this; it threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E'en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, "Brother, suppose we’ve a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at,
"Along with a solitare deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got 'em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or attom - whatever - but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder’s sealed. The hour's passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring - or pushing up daisies?
"Now, you’d say the cat either lives or it don't,
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer to wit:
We may not know much, but one thing’s fo' sho':
There’s things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons - You’ll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed -
Which ruins your test! But if there’s no testing
To see if a particle’s moving or resting,
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability - certainty, never.
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
’Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
'We’ve just flipped a coin and we’ve learned he’s a corpse.'"
So said Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, "Your’re nuts.
God doesn’t play dice with the universe, clutz!
I’ll prove it!" he said, and the Lord knows he tried -
In vain - until fin’ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: "Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I’ll say this of the saint:
Ten-to-one he’s in heaven - but five bucks says he ain’t."
Attorney General Bill Lockyer issued a stern warning to fellow Democrat Gov. Gray Davis on Thursday: Run the kind of "trashy ... puke" campaign you did last year and a lot of prominent Democrats will vote to recall you and give the job to Republican Richard Riordan. [...]
"If they do the trashy campaign on Dick Riordan ... I think there are going to be prominent Democrats that will defect and just say, 'We're tired of that puke politics. Don't you dare do it again or we're just going to help pull the plug.'
"There is a growing list of prominent Democrats that, if that's how it evolves, are going to jump ship." [...]
Lockyer's comments infuriated Davis' longtime political consultant, "startled" the Republican strategist who would likely manage Riordan's campaign and gave rise to the notion that Democratic unity behind Davis may be crumbling.
About the same time Lockyer was making his comments, U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, who has been urging U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to put her name on the ballot, suggested she might enter the race. [...]
GOP consultant George Gorton, now advising actor Arnold Schwarzenegger but expected to work for Riordan, said he was stunned. "Talk about breaking ranks," Gorton said. "What he's done is make it harder for Davis to attack Riordan."
On the basis of political momentum, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is now the frontrunner for the Democrats' 2004 presidential nomination. And, if history is any guide, he's in the process of leading the party to disastrous defeat.
Dean has roared from obscurity to first-tier status by expressing - and fueling - the near-hatred that Democratic activists feel for President Bush and all his works, especially the Iraq war.
The danger is that the party will put itself in the same position it occupied in 1972, 1984 and 1988 - far to the left of mainstream American opinion - and it will lose the election in a landslide. Dean doesn't lead the nine-candidate Democratic field in any national polls - yet. But he raised more money than any of his rivals in the last quarter. Polls show he's competitive in Iowa, tied for the lead in New Hampshire and now the favorite of California Democrats.
And you can tell he's the leader because other candidates are following him, especially on his signature issue, opposition to the Iraq war. [...]
So far, only one of his rivals - Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) - has had the gumption to raise alarms about the danger that Dean represents. Unfortunately, there's a dangerous precedent for Lieberman, too - that of hawk- Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who was an also-ran for the 1972 and 1976 nominations.
In 2001, George W. Bush, despite a decade more of alarming studies in scientific journals, pulled out of the Kyoto global warming treaty and reversed his pledge to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. He said he would wait until ''we can make a decision based upon sound science.'' Once he got the sound science, he said hear no science, see no science, delete all science. [...]
The Senate vote to delay action on cars came on the same day that the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research reported the first evidence that global cooperation on the atmosphere does matter. Researchers found a slowing of the destruction of the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays. They said the slowing coincides with the reductions in chlorofluorocarbons from spray cans, refrigerators and air conditioning that started in 1989 as a result of an international treaty.
''This is proof that the treaty is working,'' said lead researcher Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
On gas guzzling cars, Bush and senators still wait for proof. They sit in a huddle at the seance, waiting for the next instruction from Exxon-Mobil and Ford. The message will not contain sound science. It will be another hoax.
Aquoi ressemble le touriste américain cette année ? Rare, seul ou en couple, et un peu raide sur les finances. En avril, César Balderacchi, président du Syndicat national des agents de voyage, pressentait une baisse du tourisme américain : «Nos confrères d'ou tre-Atlantique ne programment plus la France», s'inquiétait-il. Les attentats du 11 septembre, la campagne de dénigrement de la France suite à ses positions antiguerres concernant l'Irak, les dégradations de cimetières de soldats alliés en France, et surtout «la mobilisation des soldats américains» ont vidé les avions.Ideas have consequences.
Dépit. Patrice Lejeune, président de 50 commerces de l'Ile de la Cité, le déplore : «Pas un seul emploi de jeunes créé cette année contre un à deux par boutique, l'an passé.» Au Mont Saint-Michel, l'office de tourisme, qui fait aussi bureau de change, a peu vu le vert des billets américains. Certains commerçants, dépités, tirent le rideau vers 18 heures, à l'heure de la fermeture de la basilique. Philippe, directeur de L'Estaminet, restaurant situé à 5 kilomètres des plages du débarquement, en Normandie, préfère, lui, oublier 2003 et ses 50 % de clients en moins. «Je pense que nous avons pris une année sabbatique avec les Américains... Pour 2003, c'est foutu.».
In the July 19 New York Times Cornell historian Mary Beth Norton scathingly rebuked Donald Rumsfeld for comparing unrest in Iraq with unrest in United States at the close of the American Revolution. She sneered at his claim that "roving loyalists" still resisted the new government, and looting and burning roiled the nation. I have long been an admirer of Ms. Norton's work. She is the foremost authority on woman's history in the colonial and Revolutionary era. Her recent revisionist book on the Salem Witch Trials consigns to history's dumpster previous versions of that tragedy. But I disagree with her attempt to paint the Defense Secretary as a complete ignoramus. Although Rumsfeld overstated the case -- he was making an offhand remark, not teaching American History 101-- the American Revolution was a war with a turbulent postscript. [...]
All in all, Secretary Rumsfeld's description of a restless, violent Revolutionary era America is not as farfetched as Mary Beth Norton maintains. Revolutionary situations tend to spawn such disorder in any time or place, especially when people sense a government is malfunctioning or defunct, as in Iraq.
Let me add that I share Ms. Norton's dislike of Donald Rumsfeld; he tends to be arrogant and needlessly flippant. But the secretary's personal failings should not deter us from supporting the strategy that America is pursuing in Iraq. In essence, it seeks to confront the enemy in his bailiwick, rather than wait passively for him to attack us on our soil. This "forward" strategy won the Cold War. It is basic to our war on terrorism. If we abandon the initiative and allow the hostile remnant of a discredited regime to intimidate us in Iraq, we are on the road to disaster.
Always there, in the background, was his strange affinity for all things Caledonian.
It began when he was commissioned into the King's African Rifles and fell under the spell of a group of Scottish officers. He rose quickly through the ranks and their approval for this resourceful, tough character grew. Plaudits flowed to the young orphan: Amin was the product of an intertribal marriage that went wrong, his father disappearing, his mother becoming a camp follower at the barracks. [...]
In whatever dark star hung above Idi's head (he was keen on witchcraft), it was written that he should do some of his military
training in Stirling. After his coup d'etat, one of his first requests to the British government (which had given tacit assent for the coup) was that he have the opportunity to return to Scotland. "He'll need a special bed," warned British intelligence, knowing that Idi's enormous frame would prove too much for ordinary beds.
The highlight of the tour, which included bathing in the sea and shopping on Princes Street, was a military ceremony at Holyrood. This
was July 1971. Within just a few years, Amin's connections to Scotland were of a very different kind. As he fell out of favour with Westminster, he became a vocal supporter of Scottish self-determination, at one point even offering to be the country's "king"; thus the title of my novel.
Bush-era unfunded mandates and impositions, like expenses for homeland security, however, have been particularly hard on the so-called blue states. In part that's because they tend to be the states with the poorer people, the larger welfare and Medicaid loads, and, not coincidentally, the tougher environmental regulations, none of them beloved by this Administration.
But of course these are also the states that voted for Gore and thus, with the exception of the states that may be in play in 2004, find no
particular hospitality in the Bush Administration. According to Representative Bob Matsui, a Democrat, and others in the California delegation, even staunch California Republicans, like Representative David Dreier, head of California's GOP caucus, have a hard time getting access to the White House. "Dreier's staff," said a staff member for another Californian, "feel like stepchildren. The White House pays attention to swing states like Pennsylvania and Illinois, but California"--where Bush was trounced in 2000 and where Gray Davis won re-election as governor in 2002 despite a major White House effort to beat him--"has been humiliating for Rove. He ended with egg on his face.... They're not going to do a damn thing for us." [...]
Through the past two and a half years, the Administration, often flying the flag of the terrorism war, has altered federal policy in ways that couldn't have been imagined before the 2000 election--in its radical aggrandizement of the power to investigate, wiretap and detain suspects; in the concomitant rollback of civil liberties; in its tolerance for polluters and offshore tax dodges; in its multitrillion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans; in its rollback of countless social programs.
But the attempt, often successful, to extend those efforts into the states, to use local cops to search out undocumented immigrants for detention, to go after liberal state laws--auto emission controls, medical marijuana, doctor-assisted suicide, welfare and childcare--is unprecedented. Without fanfare or discussion, the Administration appears to be putting the screws to liberal state programs with the same determination it is applying to things like tax cuts (which, of course, are the key to all other domestic policy).
Consistent with that effort, in March the White House decided no longer to publish a key document called Budget Information for States, which reported annually how much states receive under each federal program, and thus made it easy for local officials and advocacy groups to keep track of how their programs were treated. Eliminating the book, said a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, will eliminate the cost of the paper and production of the volume. How frugal. Who would have thought that it would be a Republican--and an ex-governor to boot--who'd bring federalism to its knees?
A sap-sucking bug that coats plants with wads of foamy spit has been crowned the insect world's greatest leaper. It has more jumping prowess than fleas, out hops the springiest grasshoppers, and clears the high bar more quickly than bush crickets.
Philaenus spumarius, commonly known as a froghopper or spittle bug, is a mere 0.2 inches (6 millimeters) long, but employs a novel catapult mechanism to launch itself upwards of 28 inches (70 centimeters) into the air.
"They do jump a heck of a long way," said Malcolm Burrows, a neurobiologist in the zoology department at the University of Cambridge in England. [...]
What he found was an insect that accelerates from the ground with a force that is 400 times greater than gravity. For the sake of comparison, we humans jump with a force that is two to three times that of gravity.
"[The froghopper] experiences something like 400 g's," said Burrows,whose research on the froghopper appears in the July 31 issue of the
journal Nature. "That's a lot. We pass out when we experience about 5g's." Merriam-Webster defines g as a unit of force equal to the force
exerted by gravity on a body at rest and used to indicate the force to which a body is subjected when accelerated.
When she left The Heritage Foundation more than two years ago, I felt certain Elaine Chao was heading off to one of the loneliest jobs in the country: Labor Secretary for a Republican president.
During her tenure, the Bush administration has reached out to labor leaders, but it’s a tough sell. Despite her overtures, the big unions remain staunch supporters of more liberal candidates, as they have been for decades.
But that hasn’t stopped Chao from trying to make life better for low-income laborers. For example, the Labor Department is trying to update the laws governing overtime—laws first written during the Great Depression. Clearly, the job market has changed since then. When’s the last time you saw a classified ad seeking a “leg man” or “straw boss,” terms that remain in the current law?
Unfortunately, labor laws haven’t kept up. Today, companies can classify employees who make just $8,061 per year as “exempt,” meaning they would be ineligible for overtime. Chao has proposed raising that threshold to $22,000, a step that would immediately make an additional 1.2 million workers eligible for time-and-a-half.
The Vatican fired a booming shot yesterday in the rapidly escalating political battle over gay marriage, issuing specific instructions for Catholic lawmakers to oppose any effort to give legal status to homosexual unions.
According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the Vatican's agency for policing Roman Catholic orthodoxy -- "the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition [to gay marriage] clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral." [...]
Gay rights advocates have made steady strides in the past two decades. But public opinion polls in the United States have shown a sharp increase in opposition to gay unions since the Supreme Court's sodomy decision and conservatives hope they can make opposition to gay marriage a winning political issue. The Vatican's statement yesterday could help those efforts.
"There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law," the Vatican declared in a document that restated previous church teachings.
