THE LEFT--THE LAST FOLKS WITH FAITH IN THE CIA'S CAPABILITIES:

A Legacy of Lies: President Bush misled the nation about the threat Iraq posed. But he wasn't the first to do so. (Seth Ackerman, January/February 2004, Mother Jones)

"It turns out we were all wrong and that is most disturbing," Kay declared.

But who exactly got it wrong? Intelligence agencies obviously exaggerated Iraq's WMD potential, and it's well known that they were egged on by their political masters in the Bush administration. But that's not the whole story. In fact, Bush's manipulation of Iraq intelligence was built on a foundation established during the late 1990's, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

Faced with the need to justify an economically devastating and internationally unpopular embargo of Iraq, the Clinton administration engaged in a pattern of stretching and distorting weapons data to bolster their claim that Saddam Hussein was still hiding an illicit arsenal. The Clinton White House never used that "intelligence" to push for an invasion of Iraq, as Bush so effectively did. But in its desperate quest to salvage a crumbling Iraq policy, the Clinton White House laid the groundwork for the deceptions of their successors.

Yet we conveniently ignored Muammar Qaddafi's more advanced nuclear program?

Isn't the more likely explanation that our intelligence just isn't very good and that we have no idea what weapons our enemies have, only that they are our enemies and need to be dealt with one way or another...

EARLY SURRENDER:

Democrats Scale Back Ambitions for House (CARL HULSE, 2/29/04, NY Times)

Strategists, independent analysts and House members of both parties say that after a decade out of power, Democrats are unlikely to reclaim control of the House in November. [...]

One major reason Democrats are pessimistic about taking back the House can be found in Texas. In redrawing the boundaries of Congressional districts last year in favor of Republicans, the Texas Legislature built a fire wall against potential losses elsewhere in the country. The formerly Democratic-dominated House delegation from Texas is now evenly divided, with 16 members of each party, and Republicans say they hope to end up with a minimum of 20 seats. That number, they say, would better reflect the state's political bent.

The new lines have already persuaded one Texas Democrat to switch parties and created one district where Democrats are not even fielding a candidate. "We've already picked up two seats and we haven't even had an election," observed Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, who was a main architect of the redistricting.

It is not just Texas that is vexing House Democrats in their quest for the majority. The party does not appear to be putting enough House districts in play to pick up the 12 seats now separating Democrats from the speaker's chair. Some top candidates are trailing their Republican opponents in financial resources. And the House Republican campaign organization is raising more money than its Democratic counterpart.

"I don't believe you can win back the House without candidates or money," said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. By his count, he said, 21 of the 40 Republicans he rates as most open to challenge do not yet have Democratic candidates running against them.

HATEY:

Aristide resigns, flees Haiti (IAN JAMES, February 29, 2004, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned and fled the country Sunday, bowing to pressure from a bloody rebellion at home and governments abroad. Gunfire rang out through the capital and black smoke billowed from the city center.

Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre declared three hours later he was taking charge of the country under the constitution. He urged calm after more than three weeks of violence.

60-40 VISION:

California election foreshadows November (George Will, February 29, 2004, Townhall)

Chaos theory suggests that the beating of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can set in motion effects that include, in time, a tornado in Topeka. Imagine a possible butterfly effect from Californians' votes on Tuesday.
Reverberations might help President Bush become competitive for the state's 55 electoral votes, forcing his opponent to at least spend significant time and money here.

Disregard the Democrats' presidential primary. Begin with the Republican primary to pick an opponent for Sen. Barbara Boxer, a San Francisco liberal seeking a third term.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, succumbing to the vice of gratitude, endorsed Bill Jones, the former secretary of state who did Schwarzenegger (and himself) the favor of not running for governor during the recall of Gov. Gray
Davis. Jones, a right-to-life conservative, has decent name identification -- he has run statewide three times -- yet looks like a probable loser in this socially liberal state.

But suppose Republican voters -- a recent poll showed half of them undecided -- create the year's most mesmerizing Senate race by nominating Rosario Marin. She is the 45-year-old former U.S. Treasurer and mayor of Huntington Park, a 95 percent Latino town of 60,000 in southeast Los Angeles County, where Democrats have a 5-to-1 registration advantage.

Today, when biography serves as political philosophy, Marin's suits this nation within the nation.

SANCTIONS=BA'ATHISM:

Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program (SUSAN SACHS, 2/29/04, NY Times)

Iraq's sanctions-busting has long been an open secret. Two years ago, the General Accounting Office estimated that oil smuggling had generated nearly $900 million a year for Iraq. Oil companies had complained that Iraq was squeezing them for illegal surcharges, and Mr. Hussein's lavish spending on palaces and monuments provided more evidence of his access to unrestricted cash.

But the dimensions of the corruption have only lately become clear, from the newly available documents and from disclosures by government officials who say they were too fearful to speak out before. They show the magnitude and organization of the payoff system, the complicity of the companies involved and the way Mr. Hussein bestowed contracts and gifts on those who praised him.

Yet his policy of awarding contracts to gain political support often meant that Iraq received shoddy, even useless, goods in return.

Perhaps the best measure of the corruption comes from a review of the $8.7 billion in outstanding oil-for-food contracts by the provisional Iraqi government with United Nations help. It found that 70 percent of the suppliers had inflated their prices and agreed to pay a 10 percent kickback, in cash or by transfer to accounts in Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian banks.

At that rate, Iraq would have collected as much as $2.3 billion of the $32.6 billion worth of contracts it signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began. And some companies were willing to pay even more than the standard 10 percent, according to Trade and Oil Ministry employees.

Iraq's suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East. Iraq generally refused to buy directly from American companies, which in any case needed special licenses to trade legally with Iraq.

In one instance, the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led administrators in Iraq, found that Syria was prepared to kick back nearly 15 percent on its $57.5 million contract to sell wheat to Iraq. Syria has agreed to increase the amount of wheat to compensate for the inflated price, said an occupation official involved in the talks.

Iraq also created a variety of other, less lucrative, methods of extorting money from its oil customers. It raised more than $228 million from illegal surcharges it imposed on companies that shipped Iraqi crude oil by sea after September 2000, according to an accounting prepared by the Iraqi Oil Ministry late last year. An additional $540 million was collected in under-the-table surcharges on oil shipped across Iraq's land borders, the documents show. [...]

When Dr. Khidr Abbas became Iraq's interim minister of health six months ago, he discovered some of the effects of Mr. Hussein's political manipulation of the oil-for-food program.

After a review of the ministry's spending, he said, he canceled $250 million worth of contracts with companies he believes were fronts for the former government or got contracts only because they were from countries friendly to Mr. Hussein.

They were paid millions of dollars, said Dr. Abbas, for drugs they did not deliver, medical equipment that did not work and maintenance agreements that were never honored. Iraq, he added, was left with defective ultrasound machines from Algeria, overpriced dental chairs from China and a warehouse filled with hundreds of wheelchairs that the old government did not bother to distribute.

"There is an octopus of companies run by Arabs connected with the old regime or personalities like Uday," he said, referring to one of Mr. Hussein's sons who was killed by American troops last July. "Some paid up to 30 percent kickbacks."

Other Iraqi officials said the ministries were forced to order goods from companies and countries according to political expediency instead of quality.

"There would be an order that out of $2 billion for the Trade Ministry and Health Ministry, $1 million would have be given to Russian companies and $500 million to Egyptians," said Nidhal R. Mardood, a 30-year veteran employee of the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, where he is now the director-general for finance.

"It depended on what was going on in New York at the U.N. and which country was on the Security Council," he added. "They apportioned the amounts according to politics."

One result, for Iraqis, was a mishmash of equipment: fire trucks from Russia, earth-moving machines from Jordan, station wagons from India, trucks from Belarus and garbage trucks from China.

"We got the best of the worst," Mr. Mardood said.

Yasmine Gailani, a medical technician who worked at a lab specializing in blood disorders, said the political manipulation resulted in deliveries of drugs that varied in quality and dosage every six months.

At one point, she said, the lab was instructed to only buy its equipment from Russian companies, adding, "So we would have to find what we called a Russian `cover' in order to buy from the manufacturer we wanted."

Her husband, Kemal Gailani, is minister of finance in the interim Iraqi government. Last fall, he said, he confronted a United Nations official over the quality of goods that Iraqis received in their monthly rations during the sanctions.

"We were looking at the contracts already approved and the U.N. lady said, `Do you mind if we continue with these?' " he recalled. "She was talking as if it was a gift or a favor, with our money of course. I said, `Is it the same contracts to Egypt and China? Is it the same cooking oil we used to use in our drive shafts, the same matches that burned our houses down, the same soap that didn't clean?' She was shocked."

Dr. Abbas, a surgeon who left his practice in London to return home to Iraq, said he was preparing lawsuits against some of the drug and medical supply companies he said were allowed to cheat Iraqis. He would also like to stop dealing with any company that paid kickbacks, but he said he realized that might not be practical.

But he would like to give them a message.

"I would say to them, it was very cruel to aid a dictator and his regime when all of you knew what the money was and where it was going," he said. "Instead of letting his resources dry up, you let the dictatorship last longer."

THE INCIDENTAL SECRETARY GENERAL:

It wasn't Kofi we were bugging, Clare, it was Tariq: In the run-up to last year's Iraq war, there was one conversation that everyone wanted to hear: that between Kofi Annan and the Iraqi deputy prime minister. (Con Coughlin, 29/02/2004, Sunday Telegraph)

As Mr Blair was quick to stress in the immediate aftermath of Ms Short's UN allegations, all of Britain's intelligence and security organisations are required to work within the law - both domestic and international - and while their main priority is to protect the security of the realm, no one in the intelligence community would undertake to spy on the UN secretary-general without the specific authorisation of their political masters.

In the majority of cases, targets are selected on the basis that they are considered to constitute a threat to the interests of the United Kingdom. But even though the energies of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ are primarily directed against what they call "the bad guys", there are occasions where, often inadvertently, they find themselves monitoring those who are regarded as friends and allies.

For example, in the build-up to last year's war, GCHQ would have been failing in its duty had it not monitored Tariq Aziz, Iraq's then deputy prime minister, who was Saddam's trusted confidant in international affairs and was in almost daily contact with UN officials in New York as part of his desperate attempt to avert war. If Mr Aziz were then to have had a discussion with Kofi Annan, a transcript of that conversation would have been made available to British officials, even though the main target of the espionage exercise was Mr Aziz, not Mr Annan.

The subtleties of how British intelligence works in reality are, unfortunately, lost on the likes of Ms Short who, although she had limited access to intelligence reports, was never senior - or trusted - enough in the Cabinet to have an understanding of the context in which certain operations were being conducted.

The same can be said for Katharine Gun, the junior GCHQ employee whose prosecution under the Official Secrets Act was dropped last week after she admitted leaking an email about an American request asking Britain to spy on the six countries that would decide the fate of the second UN security council resolution. As a low-grade translator of Mandarin, Mrs Gun was hardly in a position to know how the British authorities dealt with the request, or even if they acted upon it.

Ms Short was similarly out of the loop about the precise nature of Britain's espionage in the build-up to the war. Although she is correct when she says that her department had access to intelligence reports on Iraq to help her plan for humanitarian relief after the war, her access was strictly limited, and the material she was given was provided on a strict "need-to-know" basis. Even when she held Cabinet rank, she was regarded with some suspicion by the intelligence service both because of her previous outspoken support for the IRA and the obvious sympathy she displayed for the anti-war movement. For this reason, she would not have had access to the high-grade intelligence reports that were being circulated to the Prime Minister and his inner circle.

If - as is perfectly feasible - transcripts of Mr Annan's conversations had found their way to Whitehall as a result of British attempts to spy on Tariq Aziz, Ms Short would have been presented with only the bare facts of what Mr Annan had said, not how the information had been obtained.

THE ONLY WORTHWHILE FLATLANDERS:

Fortunate Sons: For the supergroup The Flatlanders, three albums in three decades ain’t so bad (MIKAEL WOOD, Feb 26, 2004, Dallas Observer)

When the laid-back cosmic cowpokes of Lubbock's Flatlanders reunited in 1998 to cut "South Wind of Summer" for Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer soundtrack, there weren't any perks to speak of: Beyond a 1973 debut album originally released exclusively on eight-track tape (and reissued on CD by Rounder in 1990 to pre-alt-country collectors), the Flatlanders, in the words of that CD's title, had become More a Legend Than a Band, an early precursor to the cowpunk liberalism that would produce such late-'80s/early-'90s bands-not-legends as Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks. What's more, each of the three Flatlanders--dry Joe Ely, wry Butch Hancock and presumably high Jimmie Dale Gilmore--followed up that '73 debut with a successful solo career of his own. So slotting them alongside successors like Gillian Welch and Steve Earle on Whisperer, Redford wasn't offering the Flatlanders anything more than a historical bump (and perhaps the chance to meet Kristin Scott Thomas in the flesh). When I met up with the guys last month in a New York City hotel suite, it's clear even that's more than they needed.

"A lot of times a band becomes a business or something," Ely says in his hardscrabble music-vet drawl. "We've always tried to keep the music thing not as part of any business, but just as part of the thing that moves us, whatever that thing is that keeps us going physically and spiritually. And that's what we try to keep fresh. We made an agreement: If business or anything like that ever comes in the way of our friendship, then we'll immediately drop that."

Gilmore and Hancock agree: As far as they're concerned, just because the world didn't hear from the Flatlanders for more than a quarter of a century doesn't mean the Flatlanders didn't exist. The opportunity to get together and record a song simply meant a chance to hang out on someone else's dime. "We've been part of each other's lives throughout," Gilmore says. "Sometimes we were overtly working together, but I feel like we've always been collaborators. The whole time we weren't playing music together we still were best friends."

That approach helps explain the easy warmth and effortless charm of Wheels of Fortune, the Flatlanders' new album and the follow-up to 2002's Now Again, which attracted attention precisely because it was the first most of the world had heard from the group for 29 years. Like Again, Wheels is a set of gently off-kilter country-rock songs about old love, new loneliness and beautiful women, though this one also boasts a song about a guy named Shorty, whom lots of women would like to strangle.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER:

Imagining John Lennon's Utopia (Byron Matthews)

John Lennon, a famously prolific songwriter, today is most remembered for his 1971 utopian anthem, "Imagine". The song appeared as the title track on Lennon's second post-Beatles album, and it represents the pop icon's deepest musical foray into the realm of political and economic philosophy. Just how strongly Lennon is identified with the song is suggested by the title chosen for his 1988 film portrait, Imagine: John Lennon. Then there was the 2000 release Gimme Some Truth – The Making of John Lennon's "Imagine", which included scenes from an earlier film by Lennon and wife Yoko Ono, entitled – you guessed it – Imagine. The unpopular War in Viet Nam made the song an immediate hit, and it remains the best-loved number in the pacifist hymnal more than thirty years later. It's a good bet that more candles and Bic lighters have been waved in the air to "Imagine" than to all else combined, "Kumbaya" included. In the plaintive voice of the since tragically murdered Lennon, "Imagine" can carry an emotional punch, especially when experienced as the reverent keening of a solemn nighttime gathering of believers in the dream. In the midst of so much hopeful sincerity, even an inveterate cynic could find himself fumbling for his Bic somewhere in the second verse. But what, exactly, was Lennon asking us to imagine? The answer leaves no doubt that Lennon should have stuck to singing about yellow submarines.

A sort of musical What Is To Be Done?, "Imagine" is Lennon's prescription for dragging ourselves out of the bloody trenches of war, at long last to "live as one" in the Brotherhood of Man. The secret is to get rid of the three things that have been putting us at each other's throats: religion, countries, and possessions. (How Lennon missed using "A Modest Proposal" as a prankish subtitle remains a mystery to this day.) A website devoted to John Lennon and "Imagine" once asked readers what they thought the song was about. Not exactly a stumper, the answers were about what you'd predict, only with worse spelling. But someone posted this Socratic bucket of cold water: "Are these lyrics not the promise made by communism?" Hmm. Maybe it's time for a dry-eyed look at Lennon's program. Do history and everyday experience suggest that abolishing religion, nations, and private property is the road to a world of peace and plenty? Or did Lennon actually write a prescription for political oppression and economic failure, for a society opposite in every important respect from the enticing vision he intended to promote?

SERVING THE DEVIL IN THE NAME OF TRUTH:

EUGENICS: IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE (Jacinta Lodge/ExBerliner/March, 2004) (click “In This Issue”, then “Feature”)

The green leafy suburb of Dahlem is known to most of us primarily as the home of the Freie Universität and numerous embassies. What many dońt realise is that a number of these noble facades hide a darker and more gruesome past than the elegant mortar work suggests. In particular, the frontage of Ihnestr. 22 once presented to the world the face of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics, an institute which played a central role in much of the Third Reich's racial politics.

Established under the directorship of Eugen Fischer, this institute was opened in 1927 during the 5th International Congress on Hereditary Science in Berlin. A few years prior, Fischer co-wrote Human Heredity and Race Hygiene, a book welcomed by the National Socialist Party that was soon to become the basis of the Nazi racial hygiene program. Following Hitler's assumption of power in 1933, Fischer made it clear: "The institute is completely and wholly prepared to assume the tasks of the current government."[...]

So it was in this hey day of eugenics that the KWI for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics was established and to which, in 1942, Baron Otmar von Verschuer moved, replacing Fischer as director. One of Verschueŕs primary research interests was in determining the genetic factors of disease. To this end, he worked with a large number of families, especially those of twins. His originally reputable research became more and more corrupted as he fell into the investigation of racial genetic differences, especially in terms of the "Jewish question," and it wasńt long before he was using human material gathered by one of his former research assistants and sent to him.

This former assistant was none other than Josef Mengele, the "Death Angel of Auschwitz." [...]

The KWI for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics remained throughout the war until February 1945, when most were evacuated. In April the institute building was confiscated by Russian forces, and the remaining scientists who had continued in the director's residence lost this building as well to the American troops in July. Soon the Kaiser Wilhelm Society officially ceased to exist, but a new society was built out of the ashes of the old – the Max Planck Society. By the time that this was founded in 1948, the KWI for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics was considered so politically compromised that it was not included, and the Society passed the building onto the Freie Universität. In 1988, pressure from the political science students studying there led to the erection of a memorial tablet on the front of the building. The final lines read: "Scientists have to be responsible for the content and consequences of their scientific work."

Note how the Institute closed finally because it was politically, not morally compromised.

The Pope prayed at Yad Vashem and Auschwitz and most Christian faiths have tried very hard to confront complicity in the Holocaust directly. It has changed them all. Yet to this day scientists defiantly deny any culpability by dismissing it all as either "bad" science, and therefore nothing to do with them, or a hangover from the pre-enlightenment era. Morally, scientific materialism is a cowardly, teflon-like creed that boasts endlessly about all the wonderful things it has wrought while blaming all other faiths for its murderous catastrophes.

DUH?:

Drinking With Osama: Every day, lately, we hear stories about the increasing travails of traveling internationally: the fingerprint scanning, the no-fly lists, the "shoes off." But Peter Bellone's travel misadventures may leave all the others in the waiting room. (Peter Bellone, 1/15/04, MetroActive)

In college, I enrolled in some literature classes where we discussed the significance of this, the subtext of that. To me, most of it seemed a stretch--exercises in job justification. Standing before my baggage now, contents unpacked and laid out in neat rows, I believed my professors were on to something. Most of the items on display were things I had acquired over the past three months, and each one had an innocent explanation.

I wanted to get up early and be productive, so I bought a windup alarm clock. It was cheap; it worked. Maybe that's why the bad guys in the movies wired them to bundles of dynamite.

Why get up early if you weren't going to talk to people? And nothing endeared people like trying to learn their language, hence the Teach Yourself Pashto book.

And all the folks I met were Muslim, so I bought a Koran, another step toward understanding. That also explained why all the names in my address book were Muslim ones. Did they expect me to meet Buddhists?

The posters and the political pamphlet--the one with Arabic writing heading a picture of the burning Twin Towers--these were items to show the family back home, and I thought they looked cool.

And speaking of being away from home, I wasn't about to traverse dangerous lands without a good-luck charm--therefore I brought along a glass jar of Iwo Jima sand I got in the Marines. Unfortunately, at the end of my trip it slipped out and shattered, which explained the seven Ziplocked dime-sized baggies of black, volcanic sand.

And of course, there was the cylinder, with its 30 mm live round. But hey, what could be cooler than that?

After a pause, the embassy guy had only two things to say. "You got some weird s[tuff] in your bag. I'm leaving now. Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"

Beware of the subtext and the alternate story our actions always tell, whether we choose to listen or not. This time I listened.

"The press card is a fake," I admitted. "I couldn't get into Afghanistan without one, so my friend and I made one on his computer."

The look on the embassy guy's face stayed with me the whole night, as I lay there in the airport detention center. I couldn't have slept anyway. They never killed the lights, and the floor was packed with men using their suit coats for blankets, mainly Chinese and Russians who'd been caught trying to sneak into the country. Instead of being locked up, it seemed like I had just missed a good party. Too bad the only thing being served now was a tall glass of regret.

It was unbelievable. I had set off as a freelance journalist, and now I was in danger of being taken as another John Walker Lindh.

SHUT THE CIA, OPEN INTELLIGENCE:

Open Source Intelligence (RICHARD S. FRIEDMAN, Summer 1998, Parameters)

Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other ten percent, the clandestine work, is just the more dramatic. The real intelligence hero is Sherlock Holmes, not James Bond.
--Lieutenant General Sam Wilson, USA Ret. former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

Former Ambassador to Algeria L. Craig Johnstone (presently State Department Director of Resources, Plans and Policy) recently told a Washington conference that during his assignment in Algeria, he bought and installed a satellite dish enabling him to watch CNN so he could have access to global news. He recalled:

The first week I had it running was the week of the Arab League summit in Algiers and, for whatever reason, the Department was interested in finding out whether Yasser Arafat would attend the summit. No one knew, and the day of the summit Washington was getting more frantic. We in the Embassy were banned from the summit site so there was no way we could find out whether or not Yasser Arafat would show. Finally, at about noon I was home for lunch and watching CNN when the office of the Secretary of State called. The staffer on the other end asked if there was anything at all he could tell the Secretary about Arafat's participation. And just then, on CNN I saw a live picture of Yasser Arafat arriving at the conference. "He is definitely at the conference," I reported. The staffer was ecstatic and went off to tell the Secretary. The next day I received a congratulatory phone call from the NEA bureau for pulling the rabbit out of the hat. How did you find out, they asked? The secret was mine. But I knew then and there that the business of diplomacy had changed, and that the role of embassies, how we do business in the world, also had to change.

Ambassador Johnstone's story provides an example of the value of information from open sources. Allen W. Dulles, when he was Director of Central Intelligence, acknowledged to a congressional committee, "more than 80 percent of intelligence is obtained from open sources." Whether the amount of intelligence coming from open sources is 90 percent, 80 percent, or some other figure, experienced intelligence professionals agree that most information processed into finished intelligence may be available from open sources. This essay explores the significance of a trend toward increased recognition of the role of open source information and discusses what this may mean for intelligence consumers at every level. [...]

Enthusiastic proponents of open source intelligence argue that the information revolution is transforming the bulk of any nation's intelligence requirements and reducing the need to rely upon traditional human and technical means and methods. But Robin W. Winks, distinguished Yale University historian who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and in its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, concluded, "Research and analysis are at the core of intelligence . . . . [Most] `facts' are without meaning; someone must analyze even the most easily obtained data."

The emerging debate between investing in technology and developing competent analysts concerns itself basically with the value and role of open source intelligence. To understand some of the forces that are shaping the debate, we need to weigh the relative benefits of primary and secondary sources, two discrete subsidiary classes of open source material. Primary sources, generally taken to include print and electronic media, have always provided information of value to the intelligence community in current intelligence, indications, and warning as well as background information used by analysts in their work. What the so-called information revolution has done is to increase the ability of users to gain access and to manipulate the information, and although most intelligence managers do not believe that the number of primary sources has expanded greatly, the number of secondary sources has increased exponentially. To compound the analyst's problem, the objectivity and reliability of many secondary sources are often questionable. We will need more experience before we can accept expansion of secondary sources as a benefit to the management of national security.

The largest general open source collection in the world is the Library of Congress. To replace the original library, which was destroyed during the War of 1812, Congress in 1815 purchased the private library of former President Thomas Jefferson, greatly increasing the collection's size and scope. The Library of Congress now includes works in more than 450 languages and comprises more than 28 million books, periodicals, and pamphlets as well as manuscripts, maps, newspapers, music scores, microfilms, motion pictures, photographs, recordings, prints, and drawings. The library's services also include research and reference facilities, which coordinate with or amplify local and regional library resources.

There are also several thousand databases available from commercial organizations; LEXIS/NEXIS, Dialog, Reuters, and The New York Times come to mind. Any discussion of contemporary open sources must now include the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). The World Wide Web (developed in 1989) is a collection of files, called Web sites or Web pages, identified by uniform resource locators (URLs). Computer programs called browsers retrieve these files.

The term "Internet" describes the interconnection of computer networks, particularly the global interconnection of government, education, and business computer networks, available to the public. In early 1996, the Internet connected more than 25 million computers in more than 180 countries. The Internet provides an immense quantity and variety of open source information and must be increasingly looked upon as a source for intelligence purposes.

The Internet and the World Wide Web exemplify technology that is not yet mature. One hallmark of immature technology is an underlying anarchy and a potential for disinformation. In October 1938, when radio broadcasting was emerging as a reliable source of information, producer-director Orson Welles, in his weekly radio show Mercury Theater, presented a dramatization of an 1898 H. G. Wells story, War of the Worlds. The broadcast, which purported to be an account of an invasion of earth from outer space, created a panic in which thousands of individuals took to the streets, convinced that Martians had really invaded Earth. Orson Welles later admitted that he had never expected the radio audience to take the story so literally, and that he had learned a lesson in the effectiveness and reach of the new medium in which content was struggling to catch up to technology.

Recent examples with the Internet and its spin-offs suggest that e-mail abuses, careless gossip reported as fact, and the repeated information anarchy of cyberspace have become progressively chaotic. This does not mean that the Internet and the Web cannot be considered seriously for intelligence work, but it does mean that intelligence officers must exercise a vigilant and disciplined approach to any data or information they acquire from on-line sources.

60-40 VISION FILES:

Hull's stormy divorce records unsealed (FRANK MAIN, February 28, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

The wife of Democratic Senate candidate M. Blair Hull accused him in 1998 of threatening to kill her, calling her vile names and punching her in the leg -- accusations Hull skirted on Friday.

"I did not respond at that time, and I am not going to respond now," Hull said.

Brenda Sexton divorced the multimillionaire securities trader, who was arrested on a battery charge for punching her in the shin. The case was later dropped.

UNREASONABLE DOUBT:

U.S. Denies Iran Report of Bin Laden's Capture (Reuters, Feb 28, 2004)

The U.S. Department of Defense denied reports by Iran's official IRNA news agency on Saturday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been captured.

IRNA quoted a story on Iran's state radio Pashtun service which reported "a very reliable source" as saying bin Laden had been captured in a tribal area of Pakistan.

A senior U.S. defense official denied the report, telling Reuters it was "another piece of stray voltage that's passing around out there."

And Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told a news conference he was aware of the Iranian report, but added: "We cannot confirm it at all."

Washington says bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001, suicide hijack attacks in the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

ANGLOSPHERIC, NOT EU-NICK:

A New Deal for Europe (Michael Howard to the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Berlin, February 12, 2004, The Guardian)

Britain and Germany are two great nations with their own histories and their own perspectives.

Germany has wanted to achieve closer and in some cases irreversible integration thanks to her specific experiences in two world wars. Konrad Adenauer, whom we honour in this foundation, understood that the European process could be of great service to Germany. As a result, he made this country strong in Europe, valued as a trading partner and trusted as an ally. I understand why his European policy, which helped to establish Germany's place in the community of nations, is admired in Germany today.

We in Britain came through the war with our national institutions strong. When we seek to preserve those institutions, we are defending a constitutional settlement that has survived great stresses and strains and which continues to work well and be understood by people in Britain.

Britain has always been a global trading nation. We have historic connections with our Commonwealth partners and with the United States. Look, for example, at where our international telephone calls go at Christmas and New Year: to North America, to the Caribbean, to the Indian subcontinent, to Australia and New Zealand.

This is not just a sentimental point. It is also a hard commercial truth. More of our trade is with non-EU members than is the case for any other member state. We have more overseas investments in non-European markets than any other member state. We are unique in the EU in having a global financial centre.

But Britain and Germany are not the only countries that approach European integration from a perspective shaped by their history. Every European country does. I do not always agree with your Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. Nor, I suspect, do you. But he was recently quoted in one of our newspapers as saying: 'All the countries ... have different traditions, different political disputes at home, complicated parliaments, complicated majorities ... Language and history matter in Europe and we have to understand these different histories and difficulties'. He makes an important point.

The Eastern European accession countries have thrown off the yoke of Soviet domination. They, along with other new member states, have rediscovered their own national identities and the freedom to determine their own destiny. As a result they may well be wary of giving up too much of that hard-won independence.

Different histories, different institutions and different traditions.

To undermine these institutions and ways of life, whether they have developed uninterrupted over hundreds of years or only recently re-emerged, and which are seen as legitimate by their people, would be an act of folly. Most people in the nations of Europe do not feel the same affinity or identity with EU bodies that they do with their own national institutions. People who identify themselves as Europeans rather than as citizens of their own country still remain a very small minority in every member state of the European Union.

Most people simply do not feel European in the same sense that they might feel American or German - or British.

There is no European public opinion; no European national identity. In the absence of a European demos, we are left with unadorned kratos: the power of a system that commands respect through force of law, not public affection.

ARE YOU EKSPERYANSED?:

Rebels Nearing Haitian Capital, Deepening Panic (LYDIA POLGREEN and CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS, 2/28/04, NY Times)

Among the possibilities the Pentagon is considering, Defense Department officials and military officers said, is to send a force of 2,200 Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., aboard Navy ships from Norfolk, Va., to take up positions off Haiti. But they said such a deployment, similar to what was done to stabilize Liberia last year, could take several days to organize.

In the gathering chaos in Port-au-Prince, no one could say for sure if that would be soon enough.

Truckloads of armed men, many in ski masks, patrolled the city on Friday, vowing to kill anyone who challenged Mr. Aristide's presidency. Looters pillaged warehouses at the port, and at least four people were killed in violence sweeping through the city. The bloodshed was set off by rumors that rebel soldiers would soon march in to remove Mr. Aristide by force.

Insurgents have already seized several large cities, and some moved Friday into Les Cayes, the nation's fourth largest town, The Associated Press reported. Rebel troops also took control of Mirebalais, an important crossroads town 25 miles northeast of the capital, The A.P. reported.

A rebel leader, Guy Philippe, told reporters that his plan was not to attack the capital immediately but rather to put it under siege. "We want to block Port-au-Prince totally," The A.P. quoted him as saying. "Port-au-Prince now, it would be very hard to take it. It would be a lot of fight, a lot of death."

With shouts of "Viv Titid!" — Titid is a Creole diminutive of Aristide — armed troops loyal to the president and his party, Lavalas, vowed to stop the rebel advance, brandishing M-16 rifles and semiautomatic handguns at barricades of flaming tires.

The port was a mad scene of looting, with thousands of people streaming into a narrow entrance that had been pried open. Just outside the gate lay the body a man killed earlier in the day, dressed in a pink shirt and black pants, a stream of blood congealing next to his head.

3.6 BILLION FILMGOERS CAN'T BE WRONG:

Hurray for Bollywood (PANKAJ MISHRA, 2/28/04, NY Times)

[I]ndia makes around 800 films each year, more than any country in the world. Bollywood produces up to 200 films in Hindi and Urdu alone.

Little of what comes out of this $1.3 billion-a-year industry is of much quality, and few films make a profit. Yet India, where approximately 12 million people go to the movies every day, remains culturally a world unto itself, immune to the films emerging from Hollywood, which have captured only 6 percent of the largest domestic movie market in the world.

Moreover, Bollywood's films reach up to 3.6 billion people around the world — a billion more than the audience for Hollywood. Egyptians, South Africans and Fijians joined Indians in electing Amitabh Bachchan — a name unknown to most people in Europe and America — as the "actor of the millennium" in a BBC online poll.

Mr. Bachchan gained his reputation by repeatedly playing the role of the poor, resentful young man who makes it in the big city — often through crime and violence. But Bollywood films do more than sell garish dreams of a better life to the poor. To people struggling for emotional and material security within their increasingly modern and fragmented societies, they offer the consolations of tradition, especially of family values. Mr. Bachchan's angry young man usually dies in the arms of his mother or father, having realized the folly of his ways.

ANYBODY EDIT UPI?:

Democracy and Bush's riddle (Vanessa Yeo, 2/28/2004, UPI)

About the American push for global democracy, the recently imploded Soviet Union and Japan come as examples of nations accepting an alien ideology -- albeit perhaps unwillingly.

Despite the 13 years since its collapse in 1990, Russia (ex-Soviet Union) today is nowhere near the supposed glory it envisaged it would reach, when it began experimenting with glasnost and perestroika.

And the zombie nature of the country hasn't helped either. With scores of principalities pulling at opposite ends, the aftermath of its collapse to this day has been a chaotic mix of mob rule, secessionist warfare and constant talk of coup. And, what was really worse in 1994, was talk of a return to communism, as the only form of ideology suitable for the body politic of the nation.

If democracy is of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the closest mirror image of that serene state in Russia, existed ironically during the era of Stalin and Khrushchev.

And now coming to Japan, the great wonder story of resilience whose capitulation during World War II was ordered not by invading U.S. troops, but by the emperor.

WEDGIE DEFENSE:

Revolution by Fiat (Charles Krauthammer, February 27, 2004, Washington Post)

Wedge? Marriage has been around for, oh, 5,000 years. In every society, in every place, in every time it has been defined as an opposite-sex union. Then four robed eminences in Boston decree otherwise. With the stroke of a pen, they radically redefine the most ancient of all social institutions. And then those not quite prepared to accept this undebated, unlegislated, unvoted, unnegotiated revolution are the ones accused of creating a political wedge! [...]

I welcome the debate on the constitutional amendment because it will shift the locus of this issue from unelected judges to where it belongs: the House and the Senate and the 50 state legislatures. In the end, however, I would probably vote against the amendment because for me the sanctity of the Constitution trumps everything, even marriage. Moreover, I would be loath to see some future democratic consensus in favor of gay marriage (were that to come to pass) blocked by such an amendment.

Nonetheless, that does not render the abusive, ad hominem charges made by the marriage revolutionaries -- that it is their opponents who are divisive and partisan -- any less hypocritical. Gay activists and their judges have every right to revolution. They have every right to make their case. But they deserve to be excoriated when, having thrown their cultural Molotov cocktail and finding that the majority of Americans have the temerity to resist, they cry: Culture war!

COMMON CAUSE (via Buttercup):

Feminism in The 21st Century (Phyllis Chesler and Donna M. Hughes, February 22, 2004, Washington Post)

In the past, when faced with choosing allies, feminists made compromises. To gain the support of the liberal left, feminists acquiesced in the exploitation of women in the pornography trade -- in the name of free speech. The issue of abortion has prevented most feminists from considering working with conservative or faith-based groups. Feminists are right to support reproductive rights and sexual autonomy for women, but they should stop demonizing the conservative and faith-based groups that could be better allies on some issues than the liberal left has been.

In the past feminists interpreted freedom of religion to mean freedom from religion. Too often they have viewed organized religion only as a dangerous form of patriarchy, when it can also be a system of law and ethics that benefits women. Too often feminists base their views of religious groups on outdated stereotypes. Groups that were hostile to feminism 40 years ago now take women's freedom and equality as a given. For example, faith-based groups have become international leaders in the fight against sex trafficking.

Human rights work is not the province of any one ideology. Saving lives and defending freedom are more important than loyalty to an outdated and too-limited feminist sisterhood. Surely after 40 years feminists are mature enough to form coalitions with those with whom they agree on some issues and disagree on others.

Twenty-first-century feminists need to become a force for literate, civil democracies. They must oppose dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush the liberty and rights of people, especially women and girls. They would be wise to abandon multicultural relativism and instead uphold a universal standard of human rights. They should demand that all girls have the opportunity to reach their full potential instead of living and dying in the gulags of the sex trade.

Twenty-first-century feminists need to reassess the global threats to women and men, rethink their vision, rekindle their passion and work in solidarity with pro-democracy forces around the world to liberate humanity from all forms of tyranny and slavery.

AND THE LIVIN' IS EASY (via Michael Herdegen):

The Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years (Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, 12/15/99, Cato Institute)

There has been more material progress in the United States in the 20th century than there was in the entire world in all the previous centuries combined. Almost every indicator of health, wealth, safety, nutrition, affordability and availability of consumer goods and services, environmental quality, and social conditions indicates rapid improvement over the past century. The gains have been most pronounced for women and minorities.

Among the most heartening trends discussed in this study are the following: life expectancy has increased by 30 years; infant mortality rates have fallen 10-fold; the number of cases of (and the death rate from) the major killer diseases—such as tuberculosis, polio, typhoid, whooping cough, and pneumonia—has fallen to fewer than 50 per 100,000; air quality has improved by about 30 percent in major cities since 1977; agricultural productivity has risen 5- to 10-fold; real per capita gross domestic product has risen from $4,800 to $31,500; and real wages have nearly quadrupled from $3.45 an hour to $12.50.

During the course of this century, the affordability and availability of consumer goods have greatly increased. Even most poor Americans have a cornucopia of choices that a century ago the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts could not have purchased. Today more than 98 percent of American homes have a telephone, electricity, and a flush toilet. More than 70 percent of Americans own a car, a VCR, a microwave, air conditioning, cable TV, and a washer and dryer. At the turn of the century, almost no homes had those modern conveniences. And although Americans feel that they are more squeezed for time than ever, most adults have twice as much leisure time as their counterparts did 100 years ago.

By any conceivable measure, the 20th century has truly been the greatest century of human progress in history.

IMPERFECT, BUT UNPRECEDENTED:

Combating AIDS: The Bush administration's global AIDS initiative has its faults, but it's a start. (Mother Jones, January/February 2004)

On Tuesday, the Bush administration announced details of its much-anticipated global strategy on HIV-AIDS, including approval for the first $350 million in grants to religious groups and humanitarian organizations to fight the disease. The money is the first installment of $15 billion worth of aid to be distributed to fifteen African and Caribbean nations over the next five years.

The plan, which Bush first announced in his 2003 State of the Union address, got a mixed reception from AIDS activists, who say it's short on specifics and has been too long in coming. But they also recognize that the $15 billion plan, whatever its imperfections, is by far the largest pledge ever proposed by any nation to combat the AIDS epidemic. [...]

Kate Carr, executive director of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, commented “The money's now available, the teams are in place and the dollars are going to flow.” Marsha Martin of AIDS Action praised Bush for "unprecedented leadership.”

60-40 NATION:

Gay marriage a big voter issue according to poll (WILL LESTER, February 27, 2004, AP)

Gay marriage is a more powerful social issue for voters than either abortion or gun control, a new poll suggests.

Four in 10 voters say they would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on gay marriage, even if they agree with the candidate on most other issues, according to a poll released Friday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. [...]

Gay marriage is a crucial issue mostly for those who are opponents - especially conservatives, evangelicals and those 65 and over.

People opposed gay marriage by more than a 2-1 margin in the poll, but when asked if they consider a constitutional amendment a top priority, they placed it 21st in a list of 22 possible choices.

Almost half, 45 percent, said they strongly oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally.

MOCK ON, MOCK ON, ‘TIS ALL IN VAIN:

From go-go to ga-ga (Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail, 28/02/04)

My girlfriends and I often wonder if we're going gaga. Although our minds are razor-sharp, we've noticed that we suffer from increasingly alarming lapses. The other day I left behind the $500 I had just extracted from the cash machine. I zipped in and out of there with such efficiency that I didn't even miss my money until the day after, when I reached into my pleasantly fat wallet and found nothing but a wad of old grocery-store receipts.

It's comforting to blame these mental slips on overtasking. We lead busy, busy lives, and our brains are buzzing with big ideas and too much to do. We've got lots of weighty matters on our minds — global warming, government corruption, whether Calphalon cookware is better than All-Clad, and how soon Barbara might leave Conrad now that he might go down the tubes. No wonder we occasionally find ourselves in the middle of the Staples store and can't remember why we're there.

But secretly, I know that overtasking's not to blame for this depressing deterioration of our faculties. Turning 50 is to blame. That's when the laws of entropy kick in with a vengeance. Around the time you find that first stout hair sprouting from your chin, you begin to lose your glasses when they're sitting on your own head. After you turn 50, it is dangerous to think about more than one thing at a time. If you do, you will drive right past your own street on the way home from work, the one where you've lived for 15 years.

Permit me a short, self-regarding moment. The other day I left the courthouse so excited about my brilliant victory in a bitter motion that I forgot my boots, but not my coat beside them. I was going to retrieve them yesterday, but I forgot. Beneficent science assures me and my Boomer colleagues excitedly that there is no reason we can’t break all-time longevity records and be productive members of society well into our seniorities. I sure hope I’ll be able to find the office.

THE AIR FORCE ONE-CHASER:

John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward: A look at John Edwards's legal career provides a window into the flaws of the legal system that made this mill worker's son a multimillionaire. (Stuart Taylor Jr., 2/25/04, Atlantic Monthly)

Edwards's autobiography, Four Trials, shows the tort system at its best, serving the indispensable functions of compensating injured victims and deterring dangerous conduct. But that's not all the book shows. And a preliminary look at Edwards's legal career provides a window into the faux-populist pretenses and other flaws of the system that made this millworker's son into a multimillionaire.

One of the book's four trials grew out of a heartbreaking accident in which a 4-year-old boy was orphaned when a tractor-trailer killed both of his parents. The truck driver, who had jackknifed across the double yellow line into the path of the parents' car after skidding to avoid rear-ending another car, pleaded guilty to reckless driving. Edwards, hired by the orphaned boy's grandmother, sued the driver's employer, a large textile company, and won a jury award of $2.5 million in compensatory damages plus $4 million in punitive damages. Assuming that Edwards (whose book never mentions his fees) took the standard contingent fee of about 33 percent— or more than $2 million—the award would cover the cost of the boy's upbringing and leave him a millionaire three or four times over.

The compensatory award's generosity seems appropriate, in light of the boy's incalculable emotional loss and the need to deter unsafe driving. But why the $4 million in punitive damages? It was not to punish the driver, Edwards explains: The grandmother thought he "seemed like a decent man, and she believed his remorse was genuine." Rather, Edwards persuaded the jury to punish the employer for paying its drivers according to "how many miles [they] covered," and thus to send a message to the trucking industry to sin no more. Paying drivers by the mile, Edwards argued, encourages them to be reckless and stay behind the wheel too long.

But nowhere in the book's 27-page discussion of this case does Edwards claim that this driver was violating the speed limit, or working more than the 12-hour shift allowed by law, or tired. Nowhere does he suggest that paying drivers by the mile was unusual in the trucking industry. Nowhere does he cite evidence that the driver decided to drive recklessly that day —after 27 years on the job—because he was paid by the mile. Nor does the book cite evidence that drivers paid by the mile are generally more reckless than those paid by the hour—who are, after all, often in a hurry to get home.

I happened to read this chapter while riding in the back of a metered taxicab on Interstate 95. The cabbie was paid by the mile, as are most cabbies. Does this make them reckless? Not that I've heard. Like truck drivers, they know that reckless driving can get them ticketed, arrested, smashed up, or even killed. And if we, as a society, want truckers to drive more slowly—which would increase the cost to consumers of moving cargo—the way to do it is to adopt and enforce lower speed limits.

THE OPPRESSED MR. BLIX

Blix: I was a target too (Ewan MacAskill, The Guardian, 28/02/04)

The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different matter. He described such behaviour as "disgusting", adding: "It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side."

He said he went to extraordinary lengths to protect his office and home, having a UN counter-surveillance team sweep both for bugs.

"If you had something sensitive to talk about you would go out into the restaurant or out into the streets," he said.

Mr Blix's darkest fears were reinforced when he was shown a set of photographs by a senior member of the Bush administration which he insists could only have been obtained through underhand means.

His accusations came after the former cabinet minster, Clare Short, claimed that US-British intelligence bugged the office of the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.

Speaking from his home in Stockholm, Mr Blix said that what galled him most was the possibility of being bugged by a country, the US, that he had assumed was on the same side. He said that surveillance was only to be expected between enemies or in cases where serious criminal activity is being monitored.

"But here it is between people who cooperate and it is an unpleasant feeling," he said.

Mr Blix, a Swedish diplomat who was head of the UN arms inspectors for Iraq between 2000 and 2003, said he had no conclusive evidence that the US bugged him. But his suspicions were raised when he had repeated trouble with his phone connections at his New York home.

This may baffle Americans, but a Canadian understands perfectly. Of course we can assume you are engaged in dirty tricks, condemn you loudly to your enemies, thwart your security interests, accuse you of being warmongers, call your leader a moronic cowboy and blame you for all the world's ills. We're your friends. We're really on your side. Honest.

Note how the international order works. Bugging by the US is "disgusting", but no less than one would expect from the savage Iraqis, who, of course, stood as full equals to the US. Can anyone seriously believe the French or Russians would ever stoop so low?

MORE REPUBLICAN SMEAR TACTICS:

Kerry rated most liberal member of Senate (Richard E. Cohen, February 27, 2004, National Journal)

The results of the [National Journal's congressional vote ratings] show that Kerry was the most liberal senator in 2003, with a composite liberal score of 96.5. But Edwards wasn't far behind: He had a 2003 composite liberal score of 94.5, making him the fourth-most-liberal senator. [...]

Last year, Kerry, Edwards, and other congressional Democrats who were seeking the presidency, including Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, missed many votes. To qualify for a score in National Journal's vote ratings, members must participate in at least half of the votes in an issue category. Of the 62 Senate votes used to compute the 2003 ratings, Kerry was absent for 37 votes and Edwards missed 22.

As a result, in the 2003 vote ratings, Kerry received a rating only in the economic policy category, earning a perfect liberal score. Edwards received ratings in the categories of economic and social issues, also putting up perfect liberal scores.

A separate analysis showed that of the votes that Kerry cast in the two categories in which he did not receive scores in 2003 -- social policy and foreign policy -- he consistently took the liberal view within the Senate. Edwards did not receive a score in the foreign-policy category; he sided with the liberals on five votes in that area, and with the conservatives on one vote. On foreign policy, Kerry and Edwards -- both of whom supported the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq -- last year joined most Senate Democrats in voting that half of the U.S. reconstruction aid to Iraq be provided as loans, a provision that ultimately was dropped.

To be sure, Kerry's ranking as the No. 1 Senate liberal in 2003 -- and his earning of similar honors three times during his first term, from 1985 to 1990 -- will probably have opposition researchers licking their chops. As shown in the accompanying chart, Kerry had a perfect liberal rating on social issues during 10 of the 18 years in which he received a score, meaning that he did not side with conservatives on a single vote in those years. That included his 1996 vote, with 13 other Senate Democrats, against the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited federal recognition of states' same-sex marriage laws.

NOT A FACTUAL ASSESSMENT?:

An Impenetrable Lie: a review of Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars by G. Edward White (MAX FRANKEL, February 29, 2004, NYT Times Book Review)

If you are too young to care much about Alger Hiss, move on. Turn away also if you recall the case and still believe Hiss never fed secrets to Soviet agents. But if you accept Hiss's guilt, as most historians now do, you will profit from G. Edward White's supplementary speculations about why, after prison, that serene and charming man sacrificed his marriage, exploited a son's love and abused the trust of fervent supporters to wage a 42-year struggle for a vindication that could never be honestly gained.

White is a legal scholar at the University of Virginia, but in ''Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars'' he is not just parsing legal evidence. Inspired by a chance family connection to Hiss, he felt a need to ruminate on two enduring mysteries: why Hiss persisted in his lying and why he managed to fool so many Americans for so long. White's answers, in a useful supplement to the vast Hiss literature, are plausible but beyond proof.

We will need novelists to recreate the angry idealism of the Depression years that led so many Americans to feel a kinship with Communists. A decade later, in the alarming first years of the cold war, even inoffensive ''fellow travelers'' came to be viciously hunted as traitors, and so the successful prosecution of Hiss greatly fanned the hysteria. In the ensuing partisan wars, believing Hiss guilty or innocent was likely to depend more on a cultural choice than a factual assessment.

THAT'S QUITE A RECORD OF SUCCESS:

Tomorrow the World: a review of An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by David Frum and Richard Perle (Thomas Powers, NY Review of Books)

"Hard-line" is a word defined by thirty years of examples. At various times hard-liners, Perle often among them, pushed for more and better nuclear weapons, ridiculed the notion of "arms control," argued for victory in Vietnam, were ready to spread the war into Laos, Cambodia, and even North Vietnam itself, supported Israel's invasion of Lebanon, wanted to kick the Sandinistas out of Nicaragua, argued that an all-out arms race would spend the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, pushed for American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, backed the scrapping of the anti-ballistic missile treaty, supported a clear commitment to defend Taiwan, and expressed contempt for the United Nations. To be hard-line involves the willingness to use force, realism about using money and power to get one's way, impatience with feel-good idealism, all-out backing for friends, and contempt for efforts to placate enemies. "Hard-liners" share an Old Testament view of the world, promise an eye for an eye, know what they want, and never forget an injury.

But perhaps most important of all, hard-liners are comfortable with the fact of overwhelming American military and economic power, and argue that it ought to be used without apology to chastise enemies, support friends, and get what America wants.

FALL AND RISE:

U.S. pitches Sharon plan to Europe, Arabs (Aluf Benn, 2/27/04, Ha'aretz)

The U.S. administration is trying to persuade European and Arab states as well as the Palestinian Authority to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has been telling European officials in recent days that Sharon is serious about his plan and that they should encourage Arab and Palestinian officials to respond in kind.

According to American sources, Rice said small steps could lead to larger processes and just as the fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of a chain of events, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza could lead to a "Middle East parallel" of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rice is a Sovietologist, and often uses images and analogies from the Cold War era.

MORE:
Israel's Sharon Is Up to Something in Gaza. But What?: What's up with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recent announcement that Israel intends to withdraw from its settlements in Gaza? (Jonathan Rauch, 2/25/04, The Atlantic Monthly)

No one knows what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is up to with his recent announcement that Israel intends to withdraw from most of its settlements in Gaza, but everyone knows it is momentous. Less than a year ago, notes David Makovsky, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Sharon insisted that he considered settlements in Gaza to be as important as Tel Aviv. Now Sharon is proposing to walk away, and to abandon a few, as yet unspecified, settlements in the West Bank as well.

"It's of historic significance that the architect of the settlement movement has declared his willingness to oversee the dismantlement of that enterprise in Gaza," Makovsky says. "That creates a new baseline."

At the Brookings Institution, senior fellow and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk remarks that no previous prime minister was willing to abandon even a single settlement outside the context of a final agreement with the Palestinians. "It's a revolution," Indyk says.

But what kind of revolution? That depends on what Sharon is up to. [...]

By getting out of Gaza, Sharon can firm up his lines and redeploy his resources. Abandoning some vulnerable West Bank settlements serves the same purpose. So does erecting the security barrier, which makes Israeli targets harder to bomb. Moreover, the barrier sits east of the Green Line, which, from Sharon's point of view, means that Israel retains land with which to bargain in negotiations with an eventual Palestinian partner.

More-defensible boundaries cannot exclude bombers entirely. Nor can they stop mortar shells and rockets. The Israeli army would continue to strike into Palestinian territory in both retaliation and pre-emption. But the frequency and difficulty of such incursions might be reduced. Israel might be less vulnerable, less stretched—and thus better able to hunker down.
For how long? "For a long time," Shain says. "Is that a fun kind of existence? No. Can it be a durable condition? Yes. Can it minimize a lot of the terror? Yes. Does it get to the point where exhaustion [of Palestinian militants] will eventually take place? Yes."

ALL DOWNHILL:

Kerry: He's Peaking, Already (ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, 2/22/04, CounterPunch)

By all rights John Kerry should have been at the top of his form, the night he won the Wisconsin primary. Even though the six biggest states, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, New York and California have yet to vote, he's been hailed as the Democratic nominee, with hit teams already on the rampage, hunting down prospective Nader supporters, rounding up all known and prospective third party defectors from the Democratic standard, forcing them to kneel and kiss the Democratic Party platform under pain of death, while playing a tape of DNC chair Terry McAuliffe screaching "convert or die!"

Kerry has emerged from the bruising kiss of imputed scandal and, unless Ms Alex Polier or other women inconveniently crop up again, Teresa Heinz won't have to wield the carving knife she has threatened to deploy to her husband's private parts if his path to the White House is derailed by sexual scandal. Polier not withstanding, never has a candidate had to put up with less in the way of the baptism of sewage that is a vital part of the primary process. Dean and Clark drew all the fire. John Edwards, who could slice up Kerry in a minute, has adamantly refused to unleash his forensic artillery.

So did Kerry have the jaunty mien of triumph, that night in Madison? Not that we could see. His long face, albeit abbreviated by corrective surgery, remained lugubrious and he stumbled his way tiredly through Bob Shrum's phrases. The one thing all Democrats this year want is a winner. He doesn't feel like a winner to us.

Right now some polls show Kerry a few points ahead of Bush. Other polls show Kerry peaked on February 15 and has started to slip behind Bush. The states that voted for Gore in 2000, according to a Zogby poll, are softer on Kerry while Bush states remain strong for their man. As yet Karl Rove has yet to launch the Shock and Awe barrage that will explode over Kerry's head some time in the late summer, after the Democrats have got their boost in Boston.

MORE:
Primary Colors (Elizabeth Drew, March 11, 2004, NY Review of Books)

Now that John Kerry seems the likely Democratic candidate, it's worth considering how the Democrats chose him, so that we can sort out the myths about the major candidates and the factors that have shaped the outcome thus far. The realities are unsettling. Not only have most of the candidates, abetted by the press and television, misrepresented themselves and their records, but much about the process of choosing the next nominee of the Democratic Party has gone seriously wrong, largely owing to mismanagement on the part of the Democratic National Committee and the treatment of the candidates by the press.

The idea behind bunching up the primaries within a few months, the brainchild of Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, was that the Democrats should select a candidate as quickly as possible, giving the nominee more time to raise the enormous amounts of money needed to respond to the heavily funded Republican advertising campaigns that have already begun. But what if the primary voters haven't had enough time to learn about the candidate they select? What if there could have been a better decision? Even with more time the Democrats have in the past made some weak and even preposterous choices of nominees, as they did with Michael Dukakis in 1988. The nominee could possibly govern us for the next four or eight years. In view of what's at stake, why should it be so important to complete the process so early—why not take two or three more months?

Under the new, compressed calendar, the nomination battle whooshes from state to state without giving the voters much time to reflect on the candidates and to take account of what has happened in the most recent contest, or contests. Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, has found that Kerry's Iowa victory gave him an additional twenty to thirty percentage points virtually overnight in New Hampshire and several other states. The pollster John Zogby has said, "This year's front-loaded primary schedule appears to have worked well in favor of the front-runner—as it apparently was intended to." [...]

The foreshortened primary system isn't McAuliffe's only blunder. Placing the Democratic Convention in Boston—vulnerable to attack by the Republicans as unrepresentative of the country, the home of lefties and supporters of gay marriage—was another feckless act. (The traffic getting to the recently constructed Fleet Financial Center will be frightful.) It could well be a replay of the raucous 1984 "San Francisco Democrats" Convention, of which the Republicans made a mockery.

Still another McAuliffe blunder was to force the candidates—ten of them at the time—to engage in nearly weekly "debates" last autumn. The results were terrible for the party—ten squabbling candidates in a largely meaningless, time-and-energy-consuming blur. While debates can tell us some important things about the candidates, not least their temperaments as well as the quality of their language, they put pressure on each candidate to put on some sort of act, to show in an impossibly brief time a superior, distinctive personality and command of the issues; the debates therefore gave a strong impression of being fake. And the debates tend to be judged by the press according to showbiz standards: Who can produce the best (usually rehearsed) one-liner; who attacked whom the hardest; who is the most entertaining; who made a gaffe that can be the subject of more stories? Such abilities have little to do with governing.

In fact, according to those who know him, Rove can hardly believe his good fortune in being handed an opposition so blunder-prone.

"MECHANICAL PLACEBOS":

For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button (MICHAEL LUO, 2/27/04, NY Times)

For years, at thousands of New York City intersections, well-worn push buttons have offered harried walkers a rare promise of control over their pedestrian lives. The signs mounted above explained their purpose:

To Cross Street
Push Button
Wait for Walk Signal
Dept. of Transportation

Millions of dutiful city residents and tourists have pushed them over the years, thinking it would help speed them in their journeys. Many trusting souls might have believed they actually worked. Others, more cynical, might have suspected they were broken but pushed anyway, out of habit, or in the off chance they might bring a walk sign more quickly.

As it turns out, the cynics were right.

The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show.

ZUMWALT'S PROBLEM:

Setting Straight Kerry’s War Record (THOMAS LIPSCOMB, 2/27/04, NY Sun)

No one denies Mr. Kerry’s four bemedaled months in “Swiftboats” or his seven-months’ service as an electrical officer on board the USS Gridley, during its cruises back and forth to California, or even his months as an admiral’s aide in Brooklyn, before he was able get out of the Navy six months early to run for office.

Taking a look at Mr. Kerry’s much-promoted Vietnam service, his military record was, indeed, remarkable in many ways. Last week, the former assistant secretary of defense and Fletcher School of Diplomacy professor,W. Scott Thompson, recalled a conversation with the late Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. that clearly had a slightly different take on Mr. Kerry’s recollection of their discussions:

“[T]he fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations,Admiral Elmo Zumwalt,told me — 30 years ago when he was still CNO —that during his own command of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam,just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass,by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.‘We had virtually to straitjacket him to keep him under control,’ the admiral said. ‘Bud’ Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions — but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.” And this statement was made despite the fact Zumwalt had personally pinned a Silver Star on Mr. Kerry.

Mr. Kerry was assigned to Swiftboat 44 on December 1, 1968. Within 24 hours, he had his first Purple Heart. Mr. Kerry accumulated three Purple Hearts in four months with not even a day of duty lost from wounds, according to his training officer. It’s a pity one cannot read his Purple Heart medical treatment reports which have been withheld from the public. The only person preventing their release is Mr. Kerry.

By his own admission during those four months, Mr. Kerry continually kept ramming his Swiftboat onto an enemy-held shore on assorted occasions alone and with a few men, killing civilians and even a wounded enemy soldier. One can begin to appreciate Zumwalt’s problem with Mr. Kerry as commander of an unarmored craft dependent upon speed of maneuver to keep it and its crew from being shot to pieces.

Mr. Kerry now refers to those civilian deaths as “accidents of war.”

WE WANT A PERP WALK:

Microsoft to drop questionable provision: Raided Japanese unit promises to remove PC licensing deal stipulation (The Japan Times, Feb. 28, 2004)

Microsoft Corp. will remove a patent-related provision in licensing contracts with personal computer makers, the U.S. software giant's Japanese unit said Friday.

The Japan unit was raided Thursday by the Fair Trade Commission on suspicion of violating the Antimonopoly Law.

The Japanese antitrust watchdog investigated Microsoft's headquarters in Tokyo regarding the controversial provision the U.S. firm inserts into contracts with original equipment manufacturers -- mostly PC and device makers that sell their products loaded with Microsoft's Windows operating system.

"Microsoft has decided that, given its focus on improving customer satisfaction, it would delete the provision in its entirety from the next round of OEM contracts, which will take effect later this year," Microsoft said in a statement released after the raid.

THE INEVITABLE TRAGEDY:

Catholic Priests Abused 10,600 Children-Study (Deborah Zabarenko, 2/27/04, Reuters)

More than 10,600 children said they were molested by priests since 1950 in an epidemic of child sexual abuse involving at least 4 percent of U.S. Roman Catholic clergy, two studies reported on Friday.

DANGLING CHAD:

The Making of an African Petrostate (SOMINI SENGUPTA, 2/18/04, NY Times)

Oil is bringing big changes to Chad, some cultural, like the one Mr. Elie worries about, others practical, like the way the World Bank will be overseeing how Chad manages its new wealth. Chad, among the poorest countries in the world, is now Africa's newest petrostate.

Its $3.7 billion underground pipeline, stretching 670 miles, began ferrying crude oil through neighboring Cameroon to the Atlantic coast last year. The pipeline is the largest single private investment in Africa.

Because the pipeline stands to transform this landlocked country, for better or worse, Chad is under a special glare — from the oil industry, global lending institutions and development groups.

The investment has come with strings attached: the oil revenues are to be transparent, and the government is to use the wealth to better the miserable lives of its nine million citizens. A citizens' committee is to review all spending to see that it conforms to the law.

If the rules work as intended, they could set a new model for how oil business is done in Africa. But if the usual corruption sets in, if democratic reforms are postponed, it will be just one more case of the spectacular misery that has befallen Africa's oil states, like Sudan, where oil greased the engines of war, or neighboring Nigeria, where living standards plummeted since oil production began 40 years ago. [...]

This year, Chad will see its first share of oil royalties, about $100 million, an amount that will enlarge the government treasury by about 40 percent, virtually overnight. While this allotment will be closely watched, another $100 million from taxes and customs duties is entirely at the government's discretion.

Certainly, there is no dearth of need. Electricity and water are beyond the reach of a majority of people here, and the average Chadian can expect to die before his 45th birthday. The per capita income barely exceeds $220 a year. Chad ranks 165th of 173 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.

Critics say it is foolhardy to expect a leadership dominated by one ethnic group (the president's) and with a record of repression and mismanagement to do anything but use its new wealth to crush opponents.

They point to worrisome signs: the banning of an antipipeline protest, the temporary closure of an irreverent radio station, the execution of criminals after what critics believe to be incomplete trials.

The most recent sign of trouble was a suggestion by supporters of Mr. Deby, a military ruler twice elected president, to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term. "For those who lead us, the law is just a piece of paper," said Dobian Assingar, head of the Chadian League of Human Rights and a member of the oversight committee.

The government, for its part, points out that no country has ever opened its revenues to such scrutiny. "I can only say: `Wait. Wait until the revenues are spent,' " said Tom Erdimi, the state's liaison to the project.

No matter how the money is spent this year, Chad is certain to have more in its future. ExxonMobil has already found more oil, and a Canadian company, Encana, is busy exploring north of here.

DESPOTS ARE FAIR GAME:

This war is not yet over: The consequences of Iraq could still break Blair and Bush, and change forever the way our world is ordered (Jonathan Freedland, February 11, 2004, The Guardian)

[T]he specific cost in human lives of the Iraq war is not the sole reason why this will remain the central question of current politics. There are wider reverberations. For this war was unique, the first truly pre-emptive attack lacking even the pretence of provocation. At least earlier, hotly controversial military adventures, whether over Suez or in Vietnam, had an initial, immediate prompt to action. But in 2002 there was no nationalisation of the canal, no threat by the north to topple the south. There was merely an ongoing stand-off with the United Nations, one that had been running for years and that, admittedly under the threat of military action, was beginning to unblock. Hans Blix and his men were making progress; they were not threatened or harassed. There was no provocation.

The Bush administration makes no secret that it sees the Iraq war as the prototype for future conflicts; indeed, it has enshrined the idea in its official national security strategy document. Pre-emption remains the Bush doctrine. Witness Donald Rumsfeld's revealing remarks in Munich last week. Asked whether America is bound by any international system, legal framework or code of conduct, the US defence secretary replied: "I honestly believe that every country ought to do what it wants to do ... It either is proud of itself afterwards, or it is less proud of itself." Translation: the US can do what it likes - including making war on countries that have made no attack on it.

Such pre-emptive wars are only possible with intelligence.

THE ENDLESS DEBT TO THE POLES:

SNP’s Swinney accuses Blair of xenophobia (Alan Crawford, 2/22/04, Sunday Herald)

In Edinburgh tomorrow evening author and journalist Neal Ascherson will tell an audience of influential guests at the Royal Society of Edinburgh that Polish immigrants are the solution to Scotland’s woes.

He told the Sunday Herald: “By God, what Scotland really wants is Poles. Poland is a highly educated place, and what we really need is Polish entrepreneurs. All these brilliant, hungry kids who know how to use money. As soon as they’ve got a few dollars together they settle down and start a small business. It’s that extraordinary kind of energy I think we might just get from a fine inflow of Poles.”

Ascherson echoed Swinney’s sentiments, criticising “stupid gesture politics because of the Daily Mail”, adding that “the idea of Poles coming in as sort of hairy, cheap labour and taking jobs away from honest working men is a complete misconception”.

Tory former whip Michael Brown, in The Independent, also argued last week that he would “have no hesitation, as a Tory, in espousing the most liberal attitude towards immigration from Poland”.

He wrote that, on his experiences in the 1980s representing Scunthorpe, which has many Polish emigrés, “it was the Poles who provided dynamism and enterprise”, being “natural workers, entrepreneurs and businessmen”.

“Indeed, the fewer Poles there are in Poland and the more of them in Britain, the better for our economy,” he added.

NO TEA AND SYMPATHY?:

The Anxiety of His Influence: Naomi Wolf recalls a night from 20 years ago. She once wrote about it differently. (MEGHAN COX GURDON, February 27, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

In 1997, Ms. Wolf recounted the incident in her book "Promiscuities," albeit veiling the identity of the amorous professor. In the book she makes clear that students knew that "Dr. Johnson" occasionally would "elect" girls with the right aura. One Saturday night, by pre-arrangement, the professor came over to her apartment with her manuscript and a bottle. In thrilled expectation, she had put out flowers, lit candles and taken particular care to dress attractively. And over the course of the evening she got room-spinningly drunk--a detail that does not appear in the New York magazine piece.

It's not surprising that in "Promiscuities" she confesses to feelings of complicity in the brief hanky-panky that ensued. Yet in the New York magazine exposé, there is no acknowledgment of her inner excitement or her romantic preparations--there's just the frightened panting of a tender fawn chased by a big bad predator.

There's so much ugliness in this story, and in the publicizing of it, that it's difficult to know where to start. For one thing, Ms. Wolf's tale illustrates two impossibly contradictory strains in the feminist culture that she herself promotes. Women must be sexually shameless--meaning shame-free--and society should encourage female erotic exploration. Men, however, must observe a phenomenal degree of purity--in language, eye-movement, intentions and most definitely in the placing of heavy, boneless hands on women's thighs.

This reverse-Talibanism may make sense in the steamy atmosphere of a women's studies class, but it withers into absurdity in the fresh air of real life.

HAITIAN IF YOU DO, HAITIAN IF YOU DON'T

If we go, let's stay until job is done(Joseph L. Galloway, Miami Herald, 2/25/04)

Three times in the last century, the United States has gone into Haiti with arms and money to calm the political situation, pacify the population, get rid of one homicidal dictator or another, and build some schools, clinics, roads and bridges.

The question now is whether we will have to do it again as we read about another uprising against another autocratic leader, born of the despair of the most grinding poverty in the Western Hemisphere.

• The first and longest U.S. occupation of Haiti began in 1915, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered in a brigade of U.S. Marines, 2,000 good men and true, and they took and pacified the entire country with a loss of only three Marines killed and 18 wounded. They stayed and ran Haiti until 1934. They built more than a thousand miles of highway with 210 bridges.

• In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the Marines again, this time to rebuild a shattered economy so communists couldn't get a toehold in the hemisphere. This the communists did the next year in nearby Cuba. This American incursion also helped prop up the dictatorship of the quite bloody-minded Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier.

• In 1994, President Clinton sent the Marines in yet again, this time with the U.S. Army and U.N. peacekeepers from half a dozen armies. It was to oust the latest military cabal, that of Gen. Raoul Cedras and his cronies, and to reinstall the overthrown elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest who turned out to have a dictatorial streak of his own.

The American soldiers who came briefly on this last incursion found themselves marching across the only things that still worked in modern Haiti: bridges carrying little brass plates that said: "Built in 1927 (or 1930, or 1931, or 1933) by the U.S. Marine Corps."

Now the Haitians are rising up in rebellion again, seizing a clutch of towns and cities. They're killing and burning and looting in hopes of overthrowing Aristide, in part because they believe that he stole an election but mostly because he has failed to give his people a shred of hope for a better future.

Thesis: The first United States Occupation of Haiti, after a slow start, made a great variety of capital improvements for Haiti, made changes in the Haitian political system, and refinanced the Haitian economy, none of which had much lasting impact on the Haiti people once the occupation was terminated.

Background: The United States occupied Haiti originally to restore public order in 1915. It's self-imposed mandate quickly expanded to reestablishing Haitian credit in the international credit system, establishing good government and public order, and promoting investment in Haitian agriculture and industry. After a slow start, marred by a brutal revolt in 1918-20, the United States Occupation of Haiti was reorganized and began to address many of the perceived shortcomings of Haitian society. Its international and internal debt was refinanced, substantial public works projects completed, a comprehensive hospital system established, a national constabulary (the Gendarmerie [later Garde] d'Haiti) officered and trained by Marines, and several peaceful transitions of national authority were accomplished under American tutelage. After new civil unrest in 1929, the United States came to an agreement to end the Occupation before its Treaty-mandated termination in 1936. Once the Americans departed in 1934, Haiti reverted to its former state of various groups competing for national power to enrich themselves. Almost all changes the American Occupation attempted to accomplish failed in Haiti because they did not take into consideration the Haitian political and social culture.

Recommendation: Before the United States intervenes in foreign countries, particularly in those where nation-building improvements are to be attempted, the political and social cultures of those countries must be taken into consideration.

In Haiti a worse situation faced us. That Republic was in chronic trouble, and it as it is close to Cuba the bad influence was felt across the water. Presidents were murdered, governments fled, several time a year. We landed our marines and sailors only when the unfortunate Chief Magistrate of the moment was dragged out of the French Legation, cut into six pieces and thrown to the mob. Here again we cleaned house, restored order, built public works and put governmental operation on a sound and honest basis. We are still there. It is true, however, that in Santo Domingo and especially in Haiti we seem to have paid too little attention to making the citizens of these states more capable of reassuming the control of their own governments. But we have done a fine piece of material work, and the world ought to thank us.

Clinton's actions in Haiti show both how coercive diplomacy can fail when there is not a credible commitment to use force to achieve outcomes, as well as how it can succeed when the commitment to back up diplomacy with force is present. Up until September 1994 Clinton was not prepared to use force if sanctions did not work. Because of this, Cedras and his followers lived with the sanctions, prospering off black market trade and bribes, without fear of retribution. During that time poverty in Haiti, already an impoverished country, increased significantly and resentment festered in the population as corruption, looting, killing and raping terrorized the people. The task of ruling the people of Haiti was no doubt more difficult when Aristide returned in 1994 than it would have been had he returned earlier. The implication for the United States of allowing the conflict to drag on was evident in the increased number of forces needed once the intervention finally occurred. The rapid success of coercive diplomacy in 1994, once it was backed up by the credible use of force, signifies that the United States could likely have ended the conflict sooner if it had been ready to act decisively. For the same cost, or less, Clinton could have had a sizable foreign policy victory instead of a blundering outcome.

The Haiti case also provides insight into the importance of leadership in international diplomacy. Clinton focused his energy during the Haitian crisis on Haiti and on the international community while neglecting to cultivate support among the American people and Congress. This ultimately showed in the low level of support for an armed intervention in September 1994. This lack of support, in turn, could have been read by Cedras as evidence that an invasion was not imminent. Kohut and Toth note that in the Persian Gulf Crisis, in which Americans ultimately favored intervention, the initial response of the American public to the use of force was overwhelmingly negative.42 However, as they note, President Bush invested considerable effort in explaining to Congress and the American people from the beginning what the national interest was in the conflict and that force might be necessary to achieve American objectives. When an intervention was ultimately necessary, Bush could count on Congress and the American people to rally behind him. However, this situation didn't just exist; Bush helped to create it. The contrasting lack of support for Clinton's initiative in Haiti is a strong argument in favor of spending time cultivating public opinion.

A team of 50 Marines arrived in the Haitian capital Monday to help protect the U.S. Embassy and its staff against possible rebel attack. . . .

Monday's political wrangling came a day after heavily armed rebels seeking to oust Aristide entered the key port of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, where they seized the international airport, torched the police station, released prisoners, broke into an arms depot and looted warehouses.

An undetermined number of people were killed, witnesses said. The Associated Press reported that violence and looting continued Monday as rebels went from house to house to root out Aristide supporters. . . .

It was unclear how many of Haiti's 4,000 police remained available. Many in the ill-equipped, poorly trained force have abandoned their posts.

The nation has no army. Aristide disbanded it a decade ago, and the rebels are led by former army members.

Boucher said an international police force could be sent to Haiti "and help the Haitian police establish themselves."

I DIDN'T ALWAYS SIDE WITH OUR ENEMIES, YOU KNOW:

John Kerry: Stuck in a Vietnam-era time warp (Byron York, 2/26/04, The Hill)

Consider this scene from a remarkable profile of Kerry published in the Boston Globe in October 1996, when Kerry was in a tough re-election battle.

Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat.

Kerry won the Silver Star, as well as a Purple Heart, for his efforts.

But the story wasn’t about the firefight itself. It was also Kerry’s reaction to it.

The future senator was so “focused on his future ambitions,” Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.

It was that film, transferred to videotape, that Kerry played for Sennott.

“I’ll show you where they shot from. See? That’s the hole covered up with reeds,” Kerry said as he ran the tape in slow motion.

Kerry told Sennott that his decision to re-enact the fight on film was no big deal — “just something I did, no great meaning to it.” But it’s clear that the old movie is a huge deal.

“Through hours of watching the films in the den of his newly renovated Beacon Hill mansion, it becomes apparent that these are memories and footage he returns to often,” Sennott wrote.

“Kerry jumps repeatedly from the couch to adjust the Sony large-screen TV in his home entertainment center, making sure the picture is clear, the color correct. He fast forwards, rewinds and freeze-frames the footage. His running commentary — vivid, sometimes touching, sometimes self-serving — never misses a beat.”

In John Kerry’s home entertainment center, it’s always 1969. It’s sometimes that way in his campaign, too.

IF HE WERE ANY DUMBER, WOULD THE BAATHISTS JUST FALL DOWN DEAD?

Iraqi Cleric Yields on Elections Shiite Leader Agrees To Delay of Six Months (Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, 2/27/04)

Iraq's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, declared Thursday that he would sanction a six-month delay in the nationwide elections that he had demanded be held this summer, giving the U.S. civil administration crucial leeway in its plan to formally end its occupation and transfer power to an Iraqi government by June 30.

WE OWE THEM AN ARMY:

WHO MADE A MESS OF HAITI?: The last thing Haitians need is any more 'help' from Washington. (Brendan O'Neill, 2/25/04, sp!ked)

Washington has been the key player in Haitian politics for the past hundred years. Haiti had been an independent state since 1804, following slave revolts and a War of Independence against France. In 1915, US President Woodrow Wilson, under the pretext of protecting Haiti from a potential German occupation, sent 330 marines and sailors to the Caribbean state; they stayed until 1934, as part of America's mission to 'teach Latin Americans to elect good men'. During this 19-year occupation, American forces took over the collection of custom duties, set up military courts, distributed food and medicine, censored the press, and enforced a new constitution that allowed American businessmen to own land in Haiti. They also created and trained the Haitian army, which was to dominate Haiti for decades to come.

Throughout the Cold War, US administrations were content to see that army terrorise Haitians and suppress opposition under the Duvaliers. In 1957, Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier was elected president, and soon set about rooting out and imprisoning or executing those who opposed his administration; he ensured his power through his private militia the tontons macoutes (Creole for 'Uncle Bogeyman') and amended the Haitian constitution in 1964 so that he could be elected president for life. Duvalier's son Jean Claude, known as 'Baby Doc', succeeded Duvalier in 1971. For all of today's professed concern in Washington for democracy in Haiti, both Papa and Baby Doc were propped up by millions of dollars in American aid.

The Duvalier regime collapsed in 1986. Four years later, in 1990, Aristide was elected in a landslide victory, but was subsequently overthrown by a military coup. After four years in exile in Washington, Aristide was returned to power by the US military under President Bill Clinton in 1994, in Operation Uphold Democracy. Clinton said America's aim in invading Haiti and restoring Aristide was to rid Haiti of 'the most violent regime in our hemisphere' - conveniently overlooking the fact that American intervention created that regime and trained the Haitian army. [...]

Inside Haiti, the collapse of state structures means that Aristide has few forces with which to protect himself from the rebels. During the 1994 invasion, US forces did much to disband the military government in Haiti; upon his return to power in 1994, Aristide sought to protect himself from further coups by fully disbanding the military, which had been the core part of the Haitian state since America's occupation of 1915-1934. Aristide set up a new police force to serve his government.

Now some of the former Haitian commanders are returning to challenge Aristide, whose police force is falling apart. Following the Clinton-backed disbandment of the military forces that had dominated Haiti under American guidance for over 60 years, Haiti has been left as a vacuum.

THE STAKES:

Bush's reelection campaign (Michael Barone, Feb. 27, 2004, Jewish World Review)

Bush aides have been saying that he was going to present a vision of an ownership society, to differentiate between his programs that provide choice and accountability and the Democrats' programs, which, in their view, do not. But Bush did not take the opportunity to make this case in his State of the Union address. Nor did he talk about the ownership society in a February 19 speech as aides said he would; he made the by now familiar case for his tax cuts instead. But on Monday night he came out for the ownership society loud and clear. It's worth quoting several lines to show what he is talking about.

"My administration understands the importance of ownership in our society. We've set a great goal: We want every worker in America to become a saver and an owner. And we have an agenda to meet this goal. We will help more people of every background to own their own homes and build their own savings. We will encourage more people to own their own small businesses. We'll help more people to own their own health care plans. We want younger workers to own and manage their own retirement under Social Security so that one day every worker can have the security of a personal account. When people have solid assets to call their own, they gain independence and security and dignity and more control over their future. I believe in property so much, I want everyone in America to have some."

This vision is in line with changes that have been coursing through the private sector. Defined benefit pension plans (in which a big company promises you a fixed pension) have been replaced by defined contribution pension plans (in which you invest tax-free money as you wish). Section 401(k) plans and other retirement plans have enabled people, over the course of a lifetime, to accumulate wealth to the point that the average American in the peak wealth years (ages 55 to 65) has a solid six-figure net worth. In 1992, less than a quarter of voters owned stocks and other financial assets. In 2002, some 60 percent of voters had financial assets: The electorate now has an investor majority. Bush's proposals are designed to enable more Americans to accumulate more wealth more rapidly and to gain control over healthcare decisions as well.

The Democratic candidates have a different vision. They want to expand government provision of healthcare, and they oppose personal retirement accounts in Social Security (though Bill Clinton flirted with the idea). They want America to move somewhat closer to the western European-style welfare states. They want to reduce choice and accountability in education. Here is how Bush characterized their positions:

"Our opponents are against the personal retirement accounts; against putting patients in charge of Medicare; against tax relief. They seem to be against every idea that gives Americans more authority and more choices and more control over their own lives.

"We'll hear them make a lot of promises over the next eight months. And listen closely, because there is a theme: Every promise will increase the power of the politicians and bureaucrats over your income, over your retirement, over your health care and over your life. It's the same old Washington mindset. They'll give the orders, and you'll pay the bills."

He who frames the issues tends to determine the outcome of the election. This is the way Bush intends to frame the issues. If his opponents will run against "the special interests" (Kerry) or "the privileged and the powerful" (John Edwards), Bush will run against "the politicians and the bureaucrats" and "the Washington mindset." The power of his framing of the issues was recognized by David Kusnet, Bill Clinton's chief speechwriter from 1992 to 1994, in a piece for the New Republic's weblog. "This should have been his State of the Union speech," Kusnet wrote. "Where his State of the Union speech had been partisan and pedestrian, devoid of what his father called 'the vision thing,' his new stump speech is both presidential and political; it makes the case for the Bush presidency–and against John Kerry and John Edwards–in forward-thinking, rather than defensive, terms." Kusnet makes the obvious and fair point that Bush was framing issues his way, in a way Democrats might consider unfair and misleading. But it is a message he seems to have honed more carefully than most of us thought and he is capable of repeating it, as he did his 2000 campaign themes, relentlessly.

THE BISMARCKIAN:

The Real Churchill (Adam Young, February 27, 2004, Mises.org)

Churchill made a name for himself as an opponent of socialism both before and after the First World War, except during the war when he was a staunch promoter of war socialism, declaring in a speech: "Our whole nation must be organized, must be socialized if you like the word." Of course, such rank hypocrisy was by now Churchill's stock-in-trade, and not surprisingly, during the 1945 election, Churchill described his partners in the national unity government, the Labour Party, as totalitarians, when it was Churchill himself who had accepted the infamous Beveridge Report that laid the foundations for the post-war welfare state and Keynesian (mis)management of the economy.

As Mises wrote in 1950, "It is noteworthy to remember that British socialism was not an achievement of Mr. Attlee's Labor Government, but of the war cabinet of Mr. Winston Churchill."

Churchill was converted to the Bismarckian model of social insurance following a visit to Germany. As Churchill told his constituents: "My heart was filled with admiration of the patient genius which had added these social bulwarks to the many glories of the German race." He set out, in his
words, to "thrust a big slice of Bismarckianism over the whole underside of our industrial system." In 1908, Churchill announced in a speech in Dundee: "I am on the side of those who think that a greater collective sentiment should be introduced into the State and the municipalities. I should like to see the State undertaking new functions." Churchill even said: "I go farther; I should like to see the State embark on various novel and adventurous experiments."

Churchill claimed that "the cause of the Liberal Party is the cause of the left-out millions," and attacked the Conservatives as "the Party of the rich against the poor, the classes and their dependents against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the happy, and the strong, against the left-out and the shut-out millions of the weak and poor." Churchill berated the Conservatives for lacking even a "single plan of social reform or reconstruction," while boasting that his "New Liberalism" offered "a wide, comprehensive, interdependent scheme of social organisation," incorporating "a massive series of legislative proposals and administrative acts."

Churchill had fallen under the spell of the Fabian Society, and its leaders Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who more than any other group, are responsible for the decline of British society. Here he was introduced to William, later Lord Beveridge, who Churchill brought into the Board of Trade as his advisor on social questions. Besides pushing for a variety of social insurance schemes, Churchill created the system of national labor exchanges, stating the need to "spread . . . a sort of Germanized network of state intervention and regulation" over the British labor market. Churchill even entertained a more ambitious goal for the Board of Trade. He proposed a plan whereby the Board of Trade would act as the economic "intelligence department" of the Government, forecasting trade and employment in Britain so that the Government could spend money in the most deserving areas. Controlling this pork would be a Committee of National Organisation to plan the economy.

Churchill was well aware of the electoral potential of organized labor, so naturally Churchill became a champion of the labor unions. He was a leading supporter of the Trades Disputes Act of 1906 which reversed the judicial decisions which had held unions responsible for property damage and injuries committed by their agents on the unions behalf, in effect granting unions a
privileged position exempting them from the ordinary law of the land. It is ironic that the immense power of the British labor unions that made Britain the "Sick Man of Europe" for two generations and became the foil of Margaret Thatcher, originated with the enthusiastic help of her hero, Winston Churchill.

We can only conclude by Churchill's actions that personal freedom was the furthest thing from his mind.

60-40 NATION:

Brother Driscoll has an amusing comparison of how the two sides are faring in the culture war.

BRANDED?:

Brown rips into Bush administration official (KEN THOMAS, 2/25/04, Associated Press)

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown verbally attacked a top Bush administration official during a briefing on the Haiti crisis Wednesday, calling the President's policy on the beleaguered nation "racist" and his representatives "a bunch of white men."

Her outburst was directed at Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega during a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill. Noriega, a Mexican-American, is the State Department's top official for Latin America. [...]

Brown sat directly across the table from Noriega and yelled into a microphone. Her comments sent a hush over the hourlong meeting, which was attended by about 30 people, including several members of Congress and Bush administration officials.

Noriega later told Brown: "As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man," according to three participants.

Brown then told him "you all look alike to me," the participants said.

ONE-UPMANSHIP:

What’s the big deal, Naomi? (Sam Schulman, 2/28/04, The Spectator)

I was 27, a postgraduate student at Yale in my last term, and then, as now, a man. Unlike Naomi Wolf, I needed nothing from Prof. Bloom. I was destined for a first teaching job at Boston University. I even had an official appointment at Yale (in Yale’s exquisitely calibrated taxonomy of humiliation) as Part-Time Acting Assistant Instructor of English.

One day, walking along Temple Street, I saw Harold ambling towards me. Taken aback, I acted on instinct — and resorted to flattery. I had heard him give a wonderful lecture at a conference on Gnostic religion a week earlier. The audience was composed primarily of scholars, but there were a few disconcerting figures in the audience who looked as if they were Magus figures escaped from the pages of an Iris Murdoch novel.

I told him that I thought his lecture was beautiful. He stopped, and regarded me with his soft, yearning eyes. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘what a lovely thing to tell an old and tired man.’ He was 47. ‘Here — let me kiss you.’ And he stepped forward, put his arms around me, pulled me to his then ample bosom, and kissed me on the mouth.

His lips, I remember, were full. They were rather chapped with the dryness of American houses in winter, even though spring had arrived. His kiss was decisive, tender, historic — a flag planted upon new territory.

What did it mean? My personal beauty was then at its peak. My locks were golden and curly. My figure was slender — it had not been bowed and thickened with the effort of pushing too many children in strollers in too many cities. I must have been hard to resist.

And what of Professor Bloom? He was a man of vast passion. A bottle of wine was enough to make him frisky. He enjoyed my beauty, yes, but then he enjoyed everything. I remember a moment in a seminar when, about to teach Tennyson’s poem ‘Mariana’, he gazed at the reproduction of Millais’s picture with its back view of the discontented heroine. ‘I knew Mariana was supposed to be attractive,’ Harold mused, ‘but I had no conception that she was so deliciously broad in the beam.’

GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT:

New Film May Harm Gibson's Career (SHARON WAXMAN, 2/26/04, NY Times)

Mel Gibson's provocative new film, "The Passion of the Christ," is making some of Hollywood's most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson's career.

Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson's reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it is no surprise that Hollywood — Jewish and non-Jewish — has been talking about little else, at least when it's not talking about the Oscars.

Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, the principals of DreamWorks, have privately expressed anger over the film, said an executive close to the two men.

The chairmen of two other major studios said they would avoid working with Mr. Gibson because of "The Passion of the Christ" and the star's remarks surrounding its release.

Neither of the chairmen would speak for attribution, but as one explained: "It doesn't matter what I say. It'll matter what I do. I will do something. I won't hire him. I won't support anything he's part of. Personally that's all I can do."

FOLLOW THE MONEY (via Mike Daley):

Bush Leads in Providing Fund - Raising Info (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 2/26/04)

President Bush, often criticized by Democrats for his record-breaking fund raising, provides far more information about how and when his re-election campaign collects cash than Democratic hopefuls John Kerry or John Edwards. [...]

The Kerry campaign released a list to the media in October. Even though Kerry is the winner of 18 of 20 contests, spokesman Michael Meehan said there is no need to update the list of $50,000-and-up volunteer fund-raisers because the front-runner hasn't gained any big givers since the fall.

"In a way there's an irony to this, and the irony is the Democrats are the ones beating up on Bush about this stuff, but they're the guys who have the least disclosure,'' said Frank Clemente, a spokesman for Public Citizen, a campaign finance watchdog group that has posted the Bush and Kerry lists of fund-raising volunteers on a Web site.

Clemente said Bush was the only one doing a "halfway decent'' job disclosing details of his fund-raising practices to the public, while Kerry was doing "a half-baked job'' and Edwards is "failing.''

THE ME GENERATION TO THE NTH DEGREE:

No Kids, Please: They don't want to have children, they don't want to be bothered by children, and they'd just as soon not live near children. It's the child-free movement, and it's growing. (Carlene Hempel, 2/22/2004, Boston Globe Magazine)

They don't appear to have much in common. Mike Crutcher plays bass in a Lowell band and teaches piano and guitar. Kathy Reboul is a social worker and, she reveals during dinner, allergic to peanuts. Lori Schneider is a former cop from Connecticut who's going back to school. Todd Larson of Allston writes about real estate for the Brookline Tab. They've gathered, along with 10 others, at Polcari's in Cambridge on a wintry Saturday night. They convene this way once a month, because that's what social clubs do. Except that while most clubs organize around something -- a model-train fixation, an interest in needlepoint, a love of good books or fine wines -- what this bunch has in common is what they don't have: kids.

And here's the point: They don't want them.

"Here, we know we don't have to listen to touching stories or about home schooling or what kind of diaper anyone is using," says Schneider, 40, a four-year member of the Boston chapter of No Kidding. She's here tonight with her husband, though he's still in the closet and declines to give his name. As a teacher in Framingham, he fears his anti-kid sentiment might cost him his job.

This is life for the child-free. In a culture often defined by breeders, those who dare not have children feel they must band together. They need support to help fend off parents who are desperate for grandchildren, or friends and co-workers who wonder how these seemingly productive members of society could be so selfish. They're not interested in hearing about the latest family-tested flick from Pixar. They're tired of hearing: "But you'd be a great parent." They don't need tips on using a Chinese adoption agency. They can have kids, they just don't want them. And they're fighting back.

Over the last decade, the movement's been growing. Today, there are numerous support groups such as No Kidding, which was launched in 1984 and has a fast-growing number of chapters in big cities in the United States and around the world. The Internet now has countless e-mail groups and Web pages -- www.childfree.net, www.overpopulation.org, to name two -- dedicated to people who don't have kids. There are even extreme political activists pushing a kid-free society, such as Somerville-based The Church of Euthanasia, launched in 1992 to try to persuade the world with guerrilla-style tactics to stop having babies.

HICKORY STICKS:

Rumsfeld v Powell: beyond good and evil: Donald Rumsfeld is the neo-conservative architect of war, Colin Powell the cuddly multilateralist. Right? Wrong. Behind the caricature is a titanic Washington struggle far more complicated and interesting. (John C. Hulsman, 23 - 2 - 2004, Open Democracy)

The truth of the competition for the foreign policy soul of the Bush administration lies not in cliché but in history. Colin Powell is the champion of the realist school of thought, which has been prevalent in America since Alexander Hamilton convinced Congress to support the Jay Treaty with England in 1794. Realism, an ideology based above all else on furthering American national interests (it must be said by either unilateral or multilateral means), is as far from the cuddly Wilsonian idealism that many Europeans ascribe to Powell as it is possible to be. [...]

[A]s a staunch believer in the transatlantic alliance, Rumsfeld is far more a Washington operator than he is an ideologue, unlike neo-conservatives such as his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the thrusting hawks clustered around vice-president Dick Cheney and his chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. In fact, although “neo-conservative” is the current watchword for all that is malign in European eyes about the Bush administration’s foreign policy, it is an open question as to whether Rumsfeld is one at all.

Strict neo-conservatives see America as the new Rome, the only global power of significance in an otherwise dangerous and chaotic world. Donald Rumsfeld’s famous dictum, “the mission determines the coalition – the coalition does not determine the mission”, may not be music to the ears of European believers in the multipolar ideal; but it is far from the neo-conservative belief that pursuing coalitions is pointless.

A WARTIME PRESIDENCY:

A Planned Parenthood Report on the Administration and Congress: George W. Bush's War on Women: A Pernicious Web

Introduction:

The accompanying report was prepared by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a nonpartisan advocate for reproductive rights and the leading provider of reproductive health care services, without which women cannot be free to control any other aspects of their lives. In reviewing the chronology of events, we admit to being baffled by George W. Bush's seemingly single-minded determination to strip women of reproductive rights and access to the panoply of reproductive health services - not just abortion but even family planning and real sex education.

With great precision, and shielded by the smokescreen of war, the threat of terrorism, and a bad economy, George W. Bush is systematically working to gut reproductive freedom in the U.S. and around the world. He's using every means available to him, a strategy in which each issue supports and leverages the other. Taken together they form a pernicious web that, left unchecked, will strangle reproductive rights and access to reproductive health care services. They include instituting gag rules that censor free speech; supporting legislation that limits access to family planning and abortion services; sinking huge sums of money into medically unproven abstinence-only sexuality education; and nominating staunchly anti-choice judges to federal benches and right-wing, religious ideologues to important scientific posts. His refusal to sign the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is a testament to his overall contempt for women and his steadfast refusal to respect their fundamental civil and human rights.

LIKE TRYING TO SNEAK A LAMB CHOP PAST A WOLF:

Antibiotic Link Is Cancer Baloney (Steven Milloy, February 20, 2004, Fox News)

Without a plausible biological link between antibiotic use and breast cancer, the researchers relied exclusively on statistical analysis, a potentially useful tool provided the data to be analyzed are of reasonable quality. These study data, however, fall way short.

The average study subject was about 60 years old. But study subjects who had taken antibiotics had been enrolled in the health plan for only about 20 years on average. Since the sole source for data on antibiotic use was the health plan’s records, about 40 years of data, on average, about potential antibiotic use were missing for each study subject.

Even more data is missing for the 18 percent of the study subjects who supposedly never took antibiotics. These women had only been in the health plan for about 10 years on average. 

But just because they didn’t take antibiotics while they were enrolled in the health plan, doesn’t mean they didn’t take antibiotics before enrollment. Indeed, some of the supposed “never users” could actually have been extremely heavy users of antibiotics prior to enrollment in the health plan.

Since the vast majority of Americans have taken antibiotics at some point, it’s difficult to believe that so many of the study subjects had never taken antibiotics.

This is a crucial data gap since the researchers claim that even a single day of antibiotic use increased breast cancer risk. The absence of complete data on lifetime antibiotic use renders comparisons between antibiotic users and “non-users” meaningless.

The study data are also faulty in terms of level of exposure to antibiotics. The researchers assumed exposure to antibiotics could be measured either by number of antibiotic prescriptions written or by the number of days prescribed for antibiotic use according to prescription records.

But patients commonly fail to complete courses of antibiotics prescribed by their doctors. Patients with a prescription for 10 days of antibiotics may feel better after just a few days and cease taking their medicine. A 10-day prescription, therefore, doesn’t necessarily mean 10 days of use. It may, in fact, mean much less use.

So the researchers really can’t say that more antibiotic use increases breast cancer risk because they really don’t know who took more antibiotics. [...]

The researchers used obviously deficient data to stir up a frightening, but dubious controversy that they hope to milk in terms of continued research funding.

MORE (via Mike Daley):
Bye-Bye, Bill Moyers (Center for Consumer Freedom, February 23, 2004)

Bill Moyers, who won more than 30 Emmy awards during a long career in broadcast journalism, will give up his weekly PBS show "Now" after the November elections. Although he claims to be "a journalist, reporting the evidence, not an environmentalist pressing an agenda," Moyers moonlights as president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, which distributes millions every year to radical environmental and anti-business activist groups. [...]

In 1999 EWG released a widely-criticized report called "How 'Bout Them Apples," which, once again, declared that America's children were in grave danger because of pesticides and other chemicals on fruit. The same year, Moyers paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times, produced by EWG, reading: "10 YEARS AFTER ALAR, APPLES STILL NEED A CLEANUP."

Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that Alar never posed any threat, Moyers' PBS website still includes a prominent link to an article titled: "The Alar Scare was Real." The article was published in the September/October 1996 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. And guess what. The 1995-1996 Schumann Foundation annual report lists a "three-year grant of $2 million to help the Columbia Journalism Review achieve financial stability." Does Moyers care so much about retroactively legitimizing the Alar hoax that he would buy off a publication that prides itself on being a "watchdog of the press"? You be the judge.

WHO HAS NUMBER 1,324,543?

Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry (The Onion, 2/25/04).

BOSTON—Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 5-2 Monday in favor of full, equal, and mandatory gay marriages for all citizens. The order nullifies all pre-existing heterosexual marriages and lays the groundwork for the 2.4 million compulsory same-sex marriages that will take place in the state by May 15.

"As we are all aware, it's simply not possible for gay marriage and heterosexual marriage to co-exist," Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall said. "Our ruling in November was just the first step toward creating an all-gay Massachusetts."

Marshall added: "Since the allowance of gay marriage undermines heterosexual unions, we decided to work a few steps ahead and strike down opposite-sex unions altogether."

Marshall said the court's action will put a swift end to the mounting debate.

"Instead of spending months or even years volleying this thing back and forth, we thought we might as well just cut to the eventual outcome of our decision to allow gay marriages," Marshall said. "Clearly, this is where this all was headed anyway."

POLICE STATES:

In Europe, The Enemy Within (Jim Hoagland, February 26, 2004, Washington Post)

One sense of what security means in the age of terror arrived via the self-confident words of a senior French official during a recent chat in Paris: "We know where to find 90 percent of the people who are threats in this country. We can and do track them."

Later that day, a French woman who is a lawyer told me of having been stopped for an identity check while driving in Paris a week before:

"There were twin messages in the intrusive grilling I got. One was that the police have a free hand today in France. The other was meant to be reassuring. If we are treating you like this in an upscale quarter of Paris, think about what we are doing in the Arab ghettos that you fear."

These conversations took place as the French National Assembly was passing a law to forbid Muslim girls' wearing head scarves to public schools. The law was framed more broadly than that -- it prohibits displays of any religious symbols in state schools -- but its true focus was widely understood. At some level the measure was meant to reassure the French that their government was not afraid of confronting Muslim fundamentalists at home.

This concern is not confined to France.

THE ROAD FROM TRUDEAUPIA:

Not my Canada, Not my Post (Mark Steyn, March 2004, Toro)

When I leave, I go quietly. I departed The American Spectator three years ago, and I've never said a word about it. That was the way I would have liked to have done things at the National Post. My final column appeared in their pages last spring, on the day Ken Whyte, his deputy, Martin Newland, the executive marketing supremo Alex Panousis, and assorted others were fired by the paper's owners. In the months following, I was bombarded by mail from Post (and, more to the point, ex-Post) readers, and had no desire to say anything other than, "No comment." But, six months on, my poor assistant was still spending half her morning replying to Posties, and I figured I couldn't afford the crippling manpower costs of a dignified silence any longer. So here's why I left: [...]

One of the most tedious aspects of Canadian life is the way Liberal Party policies are always sold as "Canadian values": socialized health care, the gun registry, sitting out the war on terror, etc. Do you listen to CBC radio? Me neither. But, on obscure stretches of highway when nothing else comes in, I love their political discussions, in which a centre-left host moderates a panel comprising someone from the soft left, someone from the hard left, and someone from the loony left, as if that's the only range of opinion acceptable in polite society. These folks genuinely believe in Trudeaupia. But, given that they've cornered the market on that, there ought to be one outlet for those who want a different Canada, a Canada that doesn't despise its own history, that recognizes that the last four decades have seen us slide from a major second-rank power to a global irrelevance, that the Trudeaupian road is a dead end, and that we need something new.

When Conrad Black sold his remaining fifty-percent share in the Post, he gave a farewell speech to the newsroom in which he said that the paper needed a proprietor who had better connections with the Liberal Party elite - presumably because that's the way things work in Canada. I said to Conrad recently that that's the last thing the Post needs. As a Canadian whose principal assets are in the United Kingdom and the United States, he's one of the few businessmen who doesn't need any favours from the government. Almost every activity in the dependents' Dominion - from books to aircraft manufacturing - obliges companies to enter into some sort of formal or informal relationship with the government. That's bad. It would be bad enough in a functioning democracy, where at least the [butts] one is obliged to kiss are rotated every five years. But it's worse in a one-party state like Canada, where it's always the same Liberal Party posterior, no matter how saggy and mottled it gets. Canada is no longer quite a respectable democracy, and I want to write for a paper that understands that.

Instead, week by week, the editorials are slowly but surely swimming back toward the shallow end of the pool.

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET HMONG:

60,000 Hmong should be resettled in U.S., leader says (Danel Lovering, February 26, 2004, Associated Press)

A U.S. offer of asylum for some ethnic Hmong refugees from Laos is inadequate, a Hmong leader said today, claiming a total of 60,000 of his people living in Thailand should be resettled in the United States.

The Hmong tribespeople were little known participants in the Vietnam War. They were enlisted by the CIA to help U.S. forces fight communist rebels in Laos during the was. After the communists seized power, many Hmong fled to Thailand, fearing retribution.

Between 14,000 and 16,000 Hmong refugees have been living for decades in a shantytown around Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple in central Thailand. In December, the United States announced it may accept the refugees.

But Gen. Vang Pao, who led a CIA-funded Hmong army in Laos in the 1960s and early 1970s, said 45,000 more Hmong are living in Thailand, scattered all over the country.

``If the U.S. government is going to resettle the refugees they have to do it for all 60,000 people,'' Vang Pao said in a telephone interview from his home in Westminster, Calif.

UNGOTCHA:

Two Different Democrats, Same Advisers and Ideas (ADAM NAGOURNEY, 2/26/04, NY Times)

[M]ore than once, Mr. Kerry's answers would wander down the tracks, thick with the Washingtonese that he had moments earlier said had been purged from his speech, as his listeners sunk deeper into their seats. An aide seated near him did not try to hide a yawn or two.

Not surprisingly for two men running for president, each evaded problematic questions, though in different ways: When asked if he would as president take the politically risky step of eliminating protections for the American sugar and cotton industries, Mr. Edwards smiled broadly and told the paper's editorial board, "Don't I wish I could give you what you want."

"I'm not for eliminating subsidies for family farmers," he said. "I am for eliminating subsidies for corporate farming operations, people who make over a million dollars a year in net profits."

When a questioner noted that the Louisiana primary is two weeks away, Mr. Edwards responded: "Yeah, you think I don't know that? Yeah, I think I'll stick where I am on that."

Mr. Kerry was similarly nonresponsive: "That is one of those issues that will be under review" in the first 120 days of his presidency, he said.

Mr. Kerry answered most questions, at least eventually, and often after an adventurous digression (a request to name his domestic policy advisers produced a five-minute discussion of his health care plan).

But even at this late date in the primary campaign, there were times Mr. Edwards seemed caught off guard by fairly standard questions. When he was asked to name his domestic advisers, Mr. Edwards pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow. "Let me think," he said. "You're testing me. Who have I been talking to about economic policy? It's been so long since I talked to anybody other than myself about economic policy."

ANYTHING BUT NEW:

Marry or Burn: The White House's new anti-poverty program: Shotgun weddings (Beth Hawkins, 2/25/04, City Pages)

The notion that marriage is the government's business is anything but new. "In the beginning of the United States, the founders had a political theory of marriage," writes Nancy Cott in Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. "As an intentional and harmonious juncture of individuals for mutual protection, economic advantage, and common interest, the marriage bond resembled the social contract that produced government. As a freely chosen structure of authority and obligation, it was an irresistible model."

Because it compelled monogamy and mutual responsibility, marriage was thought to be the bedrock of a citizenry that possessed the necessary moral capacity to create a great nation, writes Cott, a professor of history and American studies at Yale. It also formalized the ways in which wealth and property were held and passed from one generation to another.

Of course, most of the legal rights accrued to husbands, who virtually owned their wives and children. This hierarchy was thought to be fair because women were believed to enter into the bargain voluntarily and because men were supposed to support their families: "If a husband provided passably for his dependents, he fulfilled the most important requirement of his manhood in marriage, as much as a wife showed her femininity by giving evidence of obedient service."

As people without rights, slaves were not allowed to marry. Common-law marriages reflect the fact that, in addition to the parties' mutual consent, public recognition of a couple's bond defined their marriage.

Even in revolutionary times, however, there was room for divorce when one or the other spouse failed to fulfill their role. And by 1800, it was possible to divorce in almost every state in the union; several had formally spelled out the circumstances in which a marriage could be dissolved.

By the 1970s, most Americans had access to the no-fault divorce, where a marriage could be ended simply because the partners were unhappy. Divorce rates rose sharply, even as marriage rates fell. The number of households headed by unmarried couples multiplied 10 times between 1960 and 1998, and the number of unmarried adults rose. During the same time period, the divorce rate skyrocketed. Half of all marriages now end in divorce.

This trend had disturbed religious conservatives for decades. But by the mid-'90s, research confirming that children fared best in stable two-parent families had sparked a number of family social scientists, psychologists, and researchers to change their views and begin to complain that they'd wrongly put self-actualization before family unity.

OIL-FOR-FOOD/CASH-FOR-U.N. (via ef brown):

A New Job for Kay: Let him investigate the U.N. Oil-for-Food scam. (CLAUDIA ROSETT, February 25, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

When David Kay recovers from his weapons hunt, there's another Iraq-related quest I'd like to send him on. It's time a top intelligence team went scavenging for the real numbers on the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program--that gigantic setup through which the U.N. from 1996 through 2003 supervised more than $100 billion worth of Saddam Hussein's selling of oil and buying of goods. [...]

Basic integrity in bookkeeping seems little enough to ask of the U.N., where officials defending Oil-for-Food have been insisting that it wasn't their fault if Saddam was corrupt. They just did the job of meticulously recording the deals now beset by graft allegations, approving the contracts, and making sure the necessary funds went in and out of the U.N.-held escrow accounts. I'm sure there was some sort of logic to it. Though I have begun to wonder if maybe the same way the U.N. has its own arrangements for postal services and tax-exempt salaries, U.N. accounting has its own special system of arithmetic.

It all added up fairly neatly, of course, in the summary offered by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, when the U.N. turned over the remnants of Oil-for-Food to the Coalition Provisional Authority in November. Oil-for-Food, said Mr. Annan, had presided over $65 billion worth of Saddam's oil sales and in buying relief supplies had used "some $46 billion of Iraqi export earnings on behalf of the Iraqi people." (Keep your eye on those numbers.) In doing so, the U.N. secretariat had collected a 2.2% commission on the oil, which, even after a portion was refunded for relief operations, netted out to more than $1 billion for U.N. administrative overhead. The U.N. also collected a 0.8% commission to pay for weapons inspections in Iraq--including when Saddam shut them out between 1998 and 2002--which comes to another $520 million or so.

The keen observer will see that this adds up to payouts of just under $48 billion from Saddam's Oil-for-Food proceeds, which is about $17 billion less than what he took in. The difference is explained--near enough--by the $17.5 billion paid out of the same Oil-for-Food stream of Saddam's oil revenues but dispensed, under another part of the U.N. Iraq program, by the U.N. Compensation Commission to victims of Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That gives us a grand total of $65 billion earned, and about $65 billion allocated for payments, all very tidy.

Except the U.N. Compensation Commission states on its Web site that oil sales under Oil-for-Food totaled not Mr. Annan's $65 billion, but "more than US$70 billion"--a $5 billion discrepancy in U.N. figures. A phone call to the UNCC, based in Geneva, doesn't clear up much. A spokesman there says the oil total comes from the U.N. in New York, and adds, helpfully, "Maybe it was an approximate figure, just rounded up."

OK, but in some quarters, if not at the U.N., $5 billion here or there is big money.

NAGL'S KNIFE:

Insurgent and soldier: two views on Iraq fight: In separate interviews, an Iraqi insurgent and a US soldier both describe a classic guerrilla war. (Nicholas Blanford, 2/25/04, The Christian Science Monitor)

When a conventional army is forced to fight an antiguerrilla warfare campaign, it can be "messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife." So said T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, the British Army officer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I.

For Maj. John Nagl, never was a truer word spoken. He even adapted the quote as the subtitle for his doctoral thesis, "Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam," published two years ago.

The 37-year-old guerrilla warfare specialist serves with the 82nd Airborne Division in this former Iraqi Air Force base in the Sunni triangle. Since deploying to Iraq in September last year, Major Nagl has grappled with the challenges posed by the cells of insurgents operating in his area.

"It's a constant struggle of one-upmanship," he says. "We adapt, they adapt. It's a constant competition to gain the upper hand."

That view is shared by "Ahmad," a member of a local resistance cell. [...]

Ahmad says the motivation underpinning his cell of insurgents is a blend of devout religious belief coupled with a strong sense of patriotism.

"What compliments nationalism, compliments religion," he says. "Islam is after all a nation in itself. I see myself as a proud Iraqi and a good Muslim."

Ahmad's cell, which eventually numbered several dozen - although he says he does not know everyone - was led by a Sunni cleric in his 50s who fought for several years with Islamic militants against Russian forces in Chechnya.

According to Ahmad, many Iraqi Islamists traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya in the 1990s without the knowledge of the Baathist regime.

"If the regime had known about them, they would have been killed," he says. "The regime would not even allow us to pray for the people of Afghanistan and Chechnya."

Some cells are composed of ex-Baathists and former Iraqi soldiers, but Ahmad insists that they have shed their past ideology.

"They fight now as Muslims and Iraqis not as Baathists," he says.

The bulk of attacks in the early stages of the insurgency were hit-and-run raids against US patrols or mortar and rocket bombardments of military bases. By the time Nagl deployed to Khaldiyeh, the insurgency was well established. The roadside bomb proved to be its deadliest weapon.

"We have been most concerned about roadside bombs. From the beginning its been their most effective way of inflicting casualties upon us," Nagl says.

His 800-strong battalion has lost 12 soldiers in Iraq, 11 since deploying in September. A further 68 soldiers have been wounded. Of those 11 fatalities, 10 were from roadside bombs.

To appreciate the lethality of these bombs, consider that of the 61 US soldiers to have died in Iraq since the beginning of the year, 33 were killed by roadside bombs and six of those were in and around Khaldiyeh.

"They have gone from wire-command detonators to a variety of remote detonator devices - pagers and toy car remote controllers," Nagl says. "We were getting very good at spotting the wires. But the remote control bombs only have a small antenna attached and it's much harder to see them."

While roadside bombs continue to pose a serious threat, the number of shooting attacks and long-range bombardments has declined. "They are not spectacularly good shots nor spectacularly well-trained," says Nagl, adding that the militants usually fare badly in close encounters with American soldiers.

That appeared to bear true Tuesday when the US military announced that suspected bombmaker Abu Mohammed Hamza was killed by US troops who came under fire while distributing leaflets near Khaldiyeh.

WHERE DO WE SIGN UP FOR THAT AXIS OF GOOD?:

Georgia leader plans close ties with U.S. (Sharon Behn, 2/25/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Republic of Georgia plans to be a close ally of the United States and its giant neighbor Russia will have to live with that fact, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said in an interview yesterday.

The newly elected president, who engineered the ouster of former President Eduard Shevardnadze last fall, was in a buoyant mood after what aides described as a "very warm" meeting with President Bush yesterday in the Oval Office.

"The relationship is based on shared values," said the hulking U.S.-trained lawyer, who emphasized the "kinship" and "chemistry" between Georgia and the United States during a meeting at Blair House with editors and reporters from The Washington Times. [...]

He said Georgia also regularly exchanges information with the United States and that the FBI is active in his country, as are 70 U.S. military instructors and another 25 advisers at the Ministry of Defense.

ANYBODY EDIT THE TIMES?:

Stations of the Crass (MAUREEN DOWD, 2/26/04, NY Times)

The movie's message, as Jesus says, is that you must love not only those who love you, but more importantly those who hate you.

So presumably you should come out of the theater suffused with charity toward your fellow man.

But this is a Mel Gibson film, so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in.

The great divide over the film seems to be between those who reach its end saying to themselves, "Look at what we did to Him," and those who instead say, "Look at what they did". Only the former is a Christian attitude.

AN ENDORSEMENT HE CAN'T AFFORD:

A Primary Endorsement (NY Times, 2/26/04)

Mr. Kerry, one of the Senate's experts in foreign affairs, exudes maturity and depth. He can discuss virtually any issue of security or international affairs with authority. What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy. While he still has trouble turning out snappy sound bites, we don't detect any difficulty in laying down a clear bottom line. His campaigning skills are perhaps not as strong as his intellectual ones, but they are pretty good and getting better. Early in the race he alienated some audiences with brittle, patronizing lectures. But he has improved tremendously over the last few months. His answers are focused and to the point, and his speeches far more compelling.

If Mr. Kerry wins the nomination, the Bush administration will undoubtedly attempt to paint Mr. Kerry as a typical Massachusetts liberal, but his thinking defies such easy categorization. His positions come from mainstream American thought, centrism of the old school. He has always worried over budget deficits. His record on the environment is extremely strong. He is a gun owner and hunter who supports effective gun control laws, a combat veteran who, having seen a great deal of death, opposes capital punishment. A sense of balance comes through when he is talking. Unfortunately, so far in this campaign Mr. Kerry has shown little interest in being daring, expressing a thought that is unexpected or quirky on even minor issues. We wish we could see a little of the political courage of the Vietnam hero who came back to lead the fight against the war.

CROSSING YOUR T'S:

One Shas MK says ban "Passion"; another says "Jews did kill Jesus" (Ellis Shuman February 26, 2004, Israeli Insider)

Shas Party head MK Eli Yishai said yesterday that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ "repeats a blood libel from before the dawn of history." Yishai called on Education and Culture Minister Limor Livnat to use her influence with the film censorship board to ban the film's screening in Israel. Meanwhile, Yishai's Shas colleague MK Shlomo Benizri said there was no need to deny it, "The Jews did kill Jesus." [...]

"It is unthinkable that a movie whose sole aim is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Jewish people will be screened in the Jewish State," Yishai said. "The movie repeats a blood libel from the dawn of history."

Yishai also called for Gibson to be brought to trial, and he called on the Foreign Ministry to ask Jews in the U.S. to boycott the film.

Meanwhile, Yishai's colleague in the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party, former minister of labor and social affairs Shlomo Benizri, told a Haredi pirate radio station a number of weeks ago that the Jews did, in fact, kill Jesus. "According to Torah law, they decided to hang Jesus."

Benizri, who confirmed the comments yesterday, said Jesus was put to death according to Sanhedrin (ancient Jewish court) tradition, Maariv reported. "They took him up to a high roof, and threw him crashing to the ground. Afterwards they hung his body on wooden beams in the shape of a "T," but not as the Christian legends say that he was crucified. That's nonsense."

Benizri told Maariv that Jesus' death was an internal Jewish affair. "What is there to deny? We're talking about a yeshiva student who left Judaism, and the Sanhedrim put him to death."

SORRY, I'LL BE AT THE V.A. GETTING EMERGENCY BOTOX TREATMENTS (via mc):

HOUSE TO VOTE ON FETAL HOMICIDE (Amy Fagan, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The House is expected to pass fetal homicide legislation today, and Carol Lyons ˜ whose pregnant daughter Ashley and unborn grandson Landon were slain last month ˜ had a message for Senate opponents of the bill, such as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry.

"Don't tell me there is one victim. There were two," Mrs. Lyons said yesterday, after speaking briefly at a Capitol Hill press conference. "[Ashley´s] choice was to have that baby and her choice should be protected; that baby should be protected."

Ashley's father, Buford Lyons, said he watched the video ultrasound of Landon for the first time this week, and the fetus -- about 21 weeks old during the Jan. 7 attack on Ashley -- was moving his hands and lips.

"If they can sit there and tell me that that's not a life, then I don't know where their heart is," Mr. Lyons said of the bill's opponents. [...]

"[L]egislation granting a fetus the same legal status in all stages of development as a human being is not the appropriate response," read an e-mail from Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, to one of his constituents in June.

Mr. Kerry said he opposes the bill because "the law cannot simultaneously provide that a fetus is a human being and protect the right of the mother to choose to terminate her pregnancy."

AND HERE WE THOUGHT WE'D POLITICALLY CORRECTED HUMAN NATURE...:

Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere (ERIC SCHMITT, February 26, 2004 , NY Times)

The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday.

There have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct over roughly the past 18 months in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, military officials said on Wednesday.

The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the Marine Corps 6.

Military officials said that the bulk of the charges were being investigated and that some had already resulted in disciplinary actions, but they could not provide specifics. They said a small number of the reports had turned out to be unfounded.

In addition, about two dozen women at Sheppard Air Force Base, a large training facility in Texas, have reported to a local rape-crisis center that they were assaulted in 2002. The Air Force Academy in Colorado is still reeling from the disclosure last year of more than 50 reported assaults or rapes over the last decade.

The latest accusations are the most extensive set of sexual misconduct charges since the Navy's Tailhook incident of 1991 and the Army's drill sergeant scandal about five years later. In response, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this month ordered a senior-level inquiry into the reported sexual assaults in Iraq and Kuwait, and how the armed services treats victims of sexual attacks. The Army and Air Force have opened similar investigations.

The issue came to a boil at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where Senate Democrats and Republicans sharply questioned the Pentagon's top personnel official and four four-star officers for what the lawmakers said were lapses in the military's ability to protect servicewomen from sexual assaults, to provide medical care and counseling to victims of attacks and to punish violators.

Lawmakers said they were particularly appalled by reports that women serving in roles from military police to helicopter pilots had been assaulted by male colleagues in remote combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, where immediate medical treatment and a sense of justice seemed to be lacking.

CIVILIZATION, WHAT HAS IT EVER DONE FOR US?:

Gay marriage is assuredly here to stay (James P. Pinkerton, February 24, 2004, Newsday)

The gay rights movement burst into American consciousness in 1969, during the so-called Stonewall riot in Manhattan. At the time, gays were striving for two kinds of liberation. First, they wanted to be free from routine police harassment. Second, they wanted "liberation" from the basic cultural norms of sexual restraint. In this latter quest, of course, homosexuals were joined by heterosexuals; the tagline for a 1978 movie about disco-swingers, "Thank God It's Friday," spoke to all sexual orientations: "After 5,000 years of civilization, we all need a break."

NOT EVEN WORTH THE EFFORT?:

Social Security Cuts Necessary, Greenspan Says: Action is needed 'as soon as possible' to address deficits and demographic changes, the Fed chief tells Congress. His remarks revive a volatile issue. (Edwin Chen, February 26, 2004, LA Times)

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), another private accounts proponent, said Greenspan's testimony was a call to action. "He has made demagoguing reform less attractive," Graham said in an interview.

But analysts were not so sure.

Several said that because Bush has antagonized Democrats in the last three years, the necessary bipartisan cooperation on the issue seems unattainable, especially in this election year.

"He's got to get Democrats to believe they can trust him," said former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, now president of the New School for Social Research in New York. "But Democrats are feeling very burned."

ANDROPOV'S GET (via mc):

Kerry’s Soviet Rhetoric: The Vietnam-era antiwar movement got its spin from the Kremlin. (Ion Mihai Pacepa, 2/26/04, National Review)

Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.

As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success." [...]

During my last meeting with Andropov, he said, wisely, "now all we have to do is to keep the Vietnam-era anti-Americanism alive."

CITIZEN SOLDIERS:

Fort Leavenworth school plants seeds for democracy (Bill Tammeus, Feb. 26, 2004, Jewish World Review)

The Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth has been educating foreign military officers such as [David] Tevzadze for 110 years. This year, the 6,500th officer to go through the program will be graduated. The officers, mostly majors or colonels, often go on to become generals. More than two dozen have become heads of state. And hundreds have reached the level of minister or ambassador, as did Tevzadze.

Democratic values are part of what these officers are exposed to here, both in their coursework and as they live off base. Many come from countries with long histories of open societies and civil institutions, so they learn not fundamental values but, rather, how those values get expressed in the American system. But some student soldiers come from countries that historically have been ruled by threat and force. What they begin to see here is a way of organizing society from the bottom up.

If democratic values are to spread around the world, it's crucial that military officers such as Tevzadze understand them and — more than that — put them into practice, especially when crises strike. The future of democratic reforms in many countries depends in part on how top military officers understand their role. Do they represent the citizenry or simply whoever is in power at the moment?

Recently, nearly 90 foreign officers from more than 75 nations, each now enrolled in the Fort Leavenworth program, came here to the University of Kansas to learn more about freedom of the press, a crucial pillar of open societies.

WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL TARIFFS?:

McWorld gathers steam in East Asia (Jim Lobe, 2/26/04, Asia Times)

Despite concerns that an economic slowdown and protectionist measures would lead to globalization's end, globalization is far from dead, and in fact, according to a recent report, the world is now more integrated than it's ever been.

Not only this, but developing countries are becoming increasingly globalized. For the first time, Singapore came in second on a list of the world's most globalized nations and East Asia came in just behind Europe and North America as the world's third most integrated region, according to the fourth annual edition of Foreign Policy magazine's "Globalization Index", released here on Tuesday. [...]

As in the previous three surveys, smaller Northern and Western European states outperformed the field, accounting for 12 of the first 20 rankings.

But for the first time, North America as a region outranked Europe, as the United States moved up four spots, from 11 in last year's Index to 7; Canada moved up one, from 7 to 6; and Mexico moved up six places, from 51 to 45.

The greatest declines in the rankings included Sweden (from 3 last year to 11); Morocco (from 29 to 47); South Africa (from 38 to 49); Kenya (from 44 to 54); and Egypt (from 48 to 60). Both China and India, whose combined populations account for more than one-third of the world's total, fell four rankings over the year.

The greatest gains were made by the Philippines (from 54 to 33); Argentina (from 50 to 34); and Peru, Australia and New Zealand, all of which rose eight rankings to 52, 13 and 8, respectively.

Besides Europe and North America, the world's most integrated region was East Asia, led by Singapore and Malaysia, which were followed by Japan (29), South Korea (32), the Philippines (33), Thailand (48) and China (57). Taiwan ranked 36, but its score would have been considerably higher had the political-engagement variables not applied. Taiwan ranked 62 in membership in international organizations, United Nations peacekeeping and treaty ratifications because China, which regards the island as a renegade province, strongly opposes international recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation.

Among the Latin American countries ranked in the Index, Panama (27) took the top spot, followed by Argentina (34), Chile (37), Mexico (45), Colombia (50), Peru (52), Brazil (53) and Venezuela (58). Overall, Latin American countries performed better than in the past largely due, however, to steep currency devaluations during 2002, which in effect shrank their economies' GDP, at least in US dollar terms. Thus, as a share of economic activity, the region's trade and investment flows were magnified.

Only six African countries were rated in the survey. Led by Botswana (30), they included Uganda (38), Senegal (40), Nigeria (42), South Africa (49) and Kenya (54).

As in previous years, the least integrated regions were South Asia and the Middle East-North Africa. While Israel and Tunisia ranked 22 and 35, respectively, all other countries in the two regions, with the exception of Saudi Arabia (41), fell into the bottom 12.

THE ACCIDENTAL AUSCHWITZ DEFENCE:

Prosecution rests at Milosevic trial(Alan Freeman, Globe and Mail, 26/02/04)

After two years, the prosecution in the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic finally rested its case Wednesday. But chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte was in no mood to crack open any champagne.

“There is nothing to celebrate,” Ms. Del Ponte told a small group of journalists at the converted insurance building that serves as the headquarters for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

“It's a nightmare, this trial,” she said, referring to delays due to the illness of Mr. Milosevic, who periodically suffers from exhaustion, high blood pressure and flu.

Although 4½ years have passed since the tough-talking Swiss lawyer took over as the chief prosecutor from Canadian Louise Arbour, there remain a number of frustrations.

The Milosevic case has taken much longer than expected. There are doubts that the former Yugoslavian leader will be found guilty of genocide[...]

Despite her frustration, she expressed a grudging admiration for her adversary.

“He learned a lot in court. . . . As a professional, I appreciated his ability to cross-examine.”[...]

“It's one of the most complicated cases ever,” said Eric Markusen, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and an expert on the Yugoslavian conflict.

“Genocide is the hardest crime to prove because you've got to show a specific intent to wipe out [a race or people],” said Reed Brody, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch. Getting that kind of documentary proof has proven extremely difficult, especially since the Yugoslav government has not been co-operative...

It sounds like they are having a chummy old time over there in the Hague. That is nice, because nobody else seems to be paying the slightest attention, certainly not the liberals/leftists that demanded we all rush to war to stop an open and shut case of genocide.

But a few questions still nag. If genocide requires proven intent, and if international relations are grounded solely in positive law and not in underlying ethical or moral concepts, is mere reckless mass slaughter permissible? If Milosevic is acquitted, was the war illegal? Will he be allowed to represent Saddam?

WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

Pakistan after India's 'Osama', too (Siddharth Srivastava, 2/27/04, Asia Times)

While all attention is focused on Osama bin Laden and his cohorts allegedly cornered in western Pakistan, in India there is an equal amount of interest in the one man who is wanted just as desperately - Dawood Ibrahim.

Reports quoting intelligence sources and independently confirmed by home ministry officials say that India's most wanted criminal - thought to be hiding in Pakistan - is facing the heat at the instance of none less than Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf. The reports say that Dawood's personal security guards, derived from the cream of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, have been removed. Ibrahim is now said to be on the run, and some reports say that he has shaved his mustache and is contemplating plastic surgery to take on a new identity and passport.

Following last week's foreign-secretary-level India-Pakistan talks, which ended with a clear time-frame and a positive roadmap for future dialogue, this crackdown on Dawood is music to India's ears. Such is the keenness in India that Pakistan nab Dawood that officials say that this one step by the Pakistan establishment could propel Indo-Pak relations to levels that have never been witnessed since the time of partition in 1947, during which the two countries have fought three wars and one near-war at Kargil in 1999.

MEANWHILE, FROM THE "AXIS OF GOOD" FILES:
Israel joins hunt for 'lord of the jungle' (S Ramesan, 2/27/04, Asia Times)

After outwitting and outgunning the police for four decades, brigand Veerappan's reign as lord of the dense jungles of southern India may now come to an abrupt end - with a little help from Israel.

Representatives of an inter-disciplinary team of the Israeli Military Industries and Integrated Security System Group visited Bangalore in January, at the invitation of the state government. They offered expertise in ending what has been billed as the world's longest-running manhunt.

Reports say that Veerappan has killed about 130 people, including security personnel and forest officials. He is believed to have slaughtered about 2,000 elephants for their tusks and plundered sandalwood and other forest wealth, but has so far survived on superior jungle survival skills that have made him into a legend.

Official sources say that the Israelis are due to make a second visit soon to prepare a feasibility report on nabbing Veerappan. "We are open to making use of advanced technology from anywhere," Karnataka state's director general of police, T Madiyal, said when asked about the Israeli offer. The Israeli involvement is handled with utmost secrecy and officials evade direct answers on the subject.

Turkish prosecutors have issued charges against 69 people suspected of involvement in four deadly suicide bombings in Istanbul last November.

The semi-official Anatolia agency said life sentences were demanded for five suspects described as "leaders of the al-Qaeda cell in Turkey".

Prosecutors asked for sentences of up to 22 years for the other defendants.

A WAR CRIMINAL AND A TRAITOR? (via mc):

Kerry Donors Include 'Benedict Arnolds' (Jim VandeHei, 2/25/04, Washington Post)

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls companies and chief executives "Benedict Arnolds" if they move jobs and operations overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

But Kerry has accepted money and fundraising assistance from top executives at companies that fit the candidate's description of a notorious traitor of the American Revolution.

CONSERVATISM AS NIHILISM:

President Versus Precedent: Bush's reckless bid for an amendment defies an Oval Office tradition (Cass R. Sunstein, February 26, 2004, LA Times)

In declaring his support for a constitutional amendment that would forbid same-sex marriage, President Bush is repudiating more than 200 years of American theory and practice. His proposal is radically inconsistent with the nation's traditions. Whatever it is, there is one thing that it is not: conservative.

HYWAY:

Governor's 'hydrogen highway' realistic by 2010, official says (DON THOMPSON, 2/25/04, Associated Press)

Schwarzenegger's proposed network amounts to about 200 fueling stations, a fraction of California's 10,000 retail gasoline stations, Tamminen said.

Twenty-five of those stations will soon be available, and Tamminen projected more can be built by universities, waste conversion stations and automakers at little cost to the state. If California can win $20 million to $30 million of the $1.7 billion President Bush promised for hydrogen research, Tamminen said the combination will pay most of the estimated $100 million cost of Schwarzenegger's proposal.

Even if those stations serve a million hydrogen vehicles, he acknowledged they alone won't make a significant dent in the air pollution caused by the projected 30 million vehicles that will crowd California highways by 2010.

But it's a good step, Tamminen said, along with more mass transit and retiring the heaviest polluting diesel and gas-powered engines.

"California is uniquely positioned to be a national leader in the hydrogen revolution," urged Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, because of its existing edge in technology and experts. "California needs to think big here."

LINING UP BEHIND KERRY (via Mike Daley):

: How a '50s psychology experiment can explain the Democratic primaries. (Duncan Watts, Feb. 24, 2004, at 12:49 PM PT

Barring a miraculous comeback by Sen. John Edwards, Sen. John Kerry will win the Democratic presidential nomination-despite the fact that most Democratic voters know little about him and don't like him very much. A few weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Kerry's campaign seemed dead, but then he unexpectedly won Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then primary after primary. How did this happen?

One answer may be found in a series of psychology experiments conducted at Princeton University in the 1950s. Princeton social psychologist Solomon Asch showed a room of participants a series of slides displaying sets of vertical lines. Two of these lines were clearly the same length, while the others were obviously very different. The subjects were then given the
seemingly trivial task of identifying which pair of lines were the same. But there was a trick: Everyone in the room except for one person had been instructed beforehand to give the same incorrect answer. The real subject of the experiment was the lone unwitting participant, and the real test was of an individual's ability to disagree with his or her peers.

Asch demonstrated a stunning effect: Faced with a decision that, in isolation, no one would ever get wrong, the unwitting subjects went against the evidence of their own eyes about one-third of the time. In psychology, Asch's result is famous, yet its implications for what we might call "social
decision-making" (decisions that are influenced by the previous decisions of others) are largely unappreciated by the general public, or even researchers who study decision-making.

HURRICANE NAOMI:

'I Am Victim' (Anne Applebaum, February 25, 2004, Washington Post)

[I]n an extraordinary, several-thousand-word article in New York magazine, Naomi Wolf, the celebrated feminist writer, has just accused Harold Bloom, the celebrated literary scholar, of having put his hand on her thigh at Yale University 20 years ago.

But Wolf's article is not merely about that event (a secret that she "can't bear to carry around anymore"). The article is also about the lasting damage that this single experience has wrought on a woman who has since written a number of bestsellers, given hundreds of lectures, been featured on dozens of talk shows and photographed in various glamorous poses, including a smiling, self-confident head shot on New York magazine's Web site this week. [...]

[I]n the end, what is most extraordinary about Wolf is the way in which she has voluntarily stripped herself of her achievements and her status, and reduced herself to a victim, nothing more. The implication here is that women are psychologically weak: One hand on the thigh, and they never get over it. The implication is also that women are naive, and powerless as well: Even Yale undergraduates are not savvy enough to avoid late-night encounters with male professors whose romantic intentions don't interest them.

The larger implications are for the movement that used to be called "feminism." Twenty years of fame, money, success, happy marriage and the children she has described in her books -- and Naomi Wolf, one of my generation's leading feminists, is still obsessed with her own exaggerated victimhood? It's not an ideology I'd want younger women to follow.

In the early 1990s, to my vexation, European commentators sometimes misidentified me as a student of Allan Bloom -- whom they confused with my real mentor, literary critic Harold Bloom, my dissertation director in graduate school. The latter's massive new book on Shakespeare has recently inspired press queries about my connection with him. For the record: Harold Bloom was the first person to fully understand and encourage my vast project for "Sexual Personae," which as a dissertation drew on materials (notably about Shakespeare's treatment of sex roles) that I had been developing since my undergraduate years at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

I never enrolled in any of Bloom's courses at Yale, nor did I meet him until he imperiously summoned me in 1970: He had heard, via fellow students, what I was planning for my doctoral thesis, and he had also been told about my problem in finding a sponsor after my graduate-seminar teacher Richard Ellmann left Yale for Oxford University to complete his biography of Oscar Wilde. "I am the only one who can direct that dissertation, my dear!" Bloom grandly announced to me -- thus beginning one of the most fruitful professional relationships that anyone could wish for.

Bloom had not yet published "The Anxiety of Influence" (1973), which made him the leading literary critic in the world, but he had already achieved fame for his books on English and Irish poetry, which revolutionized Romantic studies. Bloom and I shared a respect for Freud, a love of great art, a drive for omnivorous learning, an instinct for epic sweep, a contempt for conformist careerism and dainty institutional etiquette and an unembarrassed openness to strong emotion and intellectual risk-taking. I preached the pop gospel to him with Warholite fervor, but at that time he shared Allan Bloom's scorn for pop.

Through the long, isolated and increasingly impoverished years when I could not get "Sexual Personae" published in whole or part, Harold Bloom's faith in the book and in my ideas was an enormous source of strength and fortitude. In today's campus climate of adolescent sexual paranoia, I wonder whether women will ever get the kind of generous, freewheeling mentoring I did from Harold Bloom. Perhaps that era is over -- gone with the feminist wind.

GET OVER YOURSELF:

BALKING HEAD (PageSix, February 25, 2004)

Sen. John Edwards lost some votes in the disabled community the other night when he failed to provide a sign language interpreter during a speech in Rochester, and then patted a wheelchair-bound woman on the head. "It seems that Sen. Edwards lacks disability etiquette," Debbie Bonomo, who has cerebral palsy, said in a news release from the Center for Disability Rights. "Just because I am a woman who uses a wheelchair does not mean anyone should be patting me on the head. That is so 1950s."

SAMUELSENSE:

A Phony Jobs Debate (Robert J. Samuelson, February 25, 2004, Washington Post)

Facing a weak economy, a government can do three things: cut interest rates; run a budget deficit; and allow -- or cause -- its currency to depreciate. The first two promote borrowing and spending; the last makes a country's exports cheaper and its imports costlier. All these weapons have been deployed. Bush's policies are mostly standard economics; based on past patterns, these policies should have produced stronger job growth. But private employers have resisted hiring. "Economists are scratching their heads," says Randell Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Indicators, which surveys 50 economic forecasters.

Some jobs have moved abroad. Slow foreign growth and (until recently) the high dollar have hurt U.S. exports and encouraged imports. Mark Zandi of Economy.com estimates that almost 900,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to the higher trade deficit. By contrast, he reckons that "offshoring" of service jobs -- call centers, software design -- has cost only about 200,000 jobs over the same period. That's out of more than 130 million jobs. There are other theories. By one, higher fringe benefits (mainly health insurance and pension costs) have deterred companies from hiring. Although wage increases are slowing, total labor costs including fringes are actually rising. They grew 3.8 percent in 2003, up from 3.4 percent in 2002. Another theory is that employers have delayed hiring because they worry that the recovery will falter.

We don't know. But what we can know is that policies from a President Gore or Kerry or Edwards wouldn't have improved matters much. Of course, Democrats might have discarded some Bush policies: say, tax cuts for the rich. Still, the main forces shaping the job market would have remained well beyond presidential reach: the boom-bust cycle (President Bill Clinton didn't create the boom, and the bust was unfolding even before Bush's election); weak growth in Europe, Japan and Latin America, which account for almost 40 percent of U.S. exports; and business cautiousness. Protectionism is no panacea. It barely touches job creation; America's trade problem is weak exports as much as strong imports. Even if every offshored service job had somehow been saved, the job picture wouldn't have changed much.

No matter. During elections, politics overwhelms reason. Perhaps continuing economic growth and a weaker dollar will soon produce more jobs. On average, the economists surveyed by Moore expect 166,000 new jobs a month in 2004 -- or about 2 million for the year.

NATURE TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Let Toys Be Toys: Younger Moms Reshape an Industry (Jacqueline L. Salmon and Marylou Tousignant, February 24, 2004, Washington Post)

According to marketing strategists attending the American International Toy Fair in New York last week, Goold typifies the Gen X mother -- those millions of women born from 1963 through 1975 who are under the microscope of advertising agencies because of the power of their purses.

In 2001 this group controlled an estimated $730 billion in spending, says Kim Merrill, general manager of Uproar, the kids and toys division of the Tracy Locke Partnership ad agency. Such economic clout -- much of it wielded by mothers with young children -- lures toy and game makers like ants swarming over a piece of candy dropped on the sidewalk.

During a seminar titled "Capturing the Gen X Mom," Merrill and three colleagues offer tips on "getting into the psyche" of this demographic cash cow. First, they say, one must understand how Gen Xers differ from their own, baby boomer moms.

For starters, as a group the Xers are better educated, Merrill says, and more than half consider themselves white-collar professionals; 52 percent are married and 55 percent have at least one child. More significant in the parent-child sociological context, they are the first generation of moms to grow up amid widespread divorce and with lots of working and/or single mothers and outside-the-home child care.

As a result, though 75 percent of Gen X moms work, they value family time more than their parents did, the marketing analysts say. "They're less driven to break the glass ceiling [at work] and more willing to drive the kids to soccer practice -- and they expect the boss to understand," says Robert Chimbel, president of Tracy Locke. "Part-time work is the Holy Grail."

The premium put on family time "is the visible shift from baby boomers to this generation," says Ira Hernowitz, general manager of First Fun, a division of Hasbro toys. Gen X moms, he says, are concerned that their children will grow up too quickly, so they want to do more things with them.

And, like Goold, they often put less emphasis on the educational possibilities of the toys their kids play with. "They want smart children," Hernowitz says, "but they think it's more important for them to be emotionally and socially ready than educationally" prepared for school. "The number one thing they want in a toy is fun."

ABRENUNTIO!:

Greenspan urges cuts in Social Security (MARTIN CRUTSINGER, February 25, 2004, AP)

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, stepping into the politically charged debate over Social Security, said Wednesday the country can't afford the benefits currently promised to the baby boom generation.

MAYBE HE CAN EVEN GET THE V.A. TO PAY FOR IT:

Botox May Aid in Chronic Neck, Back Pain (Reuters, Feb 25,2004)

Botox injections may help ease stubborn pain in the neck and upper back when other treatments fail, preliminary research shows.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

bushisms The president's accidental wit and wisdom (Jacob Weisberg, Slate, 02/25/04).

"But the true strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of people like Travis, people who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves."—Springfield, Mo., Feb. 9, 2004 (Thanks to George Dupper)

GOOD BIGOTRY:

Supreme Court allows states to deny taxpayer-funded scholarships to divinity students (ANNE GEARAN, 2/25/04, Associated Press)

The Supreme Court, in a new rendering on separation of church and state, voted Wednesday to let states withhold scholarships from students studying theology.

The court's 7-2 ruling held that the state of Washington was within its rights to deny a taxpayer-funded scholarship to a college student who was studying to be a minister. That holding applies even when money is available to students studying anything else.

"Training someone to lead a congregation is an essentially religious endeavor," Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote for the court majority.

"Indeed, majoring in devotional theology is akin to a religious calling as well as an academic pursuit." [...]

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"Let there be no doubt: This case is about discrimination against a religious minority," Scalia wrote for the two.

"In an era when the court is so quick to come to the aid of other disfavored groups, its indifference in this case, which involves a form of discrimination to which the Constitution actually speaks, is exceptional."

Scalia said the court's majority was trying to play down the damage to Davey, who continued his education without the subsidy. He did not choose to enter the ministry after graduation, and is now in law school.

"The indignity of being singled out for special burdens on the basis of one's calling is so profound that the concrete harm produced can never be dismissed as insubstantial," wrote Scalia, the father of a Catholic priest.

EARTHQUAKE IN SAN FRANCISCO–WORLDWIDE TREMORS:

I'm not gay, says 81-year-old monarch with 14 children (Alex Spillius, The Telegraph, 25/02/04)

King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, an 81-year-old father of 14, yesterday surprised his subjects by denying that he was homosexual. His comments came as he underlined his support for same-sex marriage, having seen television coverage of such weddings in California.

In a statement on his website, the king said: "I am not gay, but I respect the rights of gays and lesbians. It's not their fault if God makes them born like that."

He said the statement, posted yesterday, was made in response to an "insulting" email he received from someone called Tom Adams, which presumably accused the monarch of being homosexual after he announced his approval of same-sex unions.

His statement continued: "Gays and lesbians would not exist if God did not create them. As a Buddhist I must have compassion for human beings who are not like me but who torture nobody, kill nobody."

Buckingham Palace has called a news conference for this evening. You won’t want to miss it.

PASS THE SOMA (via mc):

Europe Ends Soft Stance On Hard Prescription Drugs (CHARLES FLEMING and ANNE-MICHELE MORICE, 2/25/04, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

One of every four French women regularly downs a prescription pill to calm her nerves or lift her spirits. The average Belgian consumes seven times as many sedatives as the typical American. And the Irish are world champions of antianxiety medicines.

Because of a combination of low-price drugs and accommodating doctors, Western Europeans take more tranquilizers and antidepressants than practically anyone else in the world, according to the International Narcotics Control Board, an agency financed by the United Nations. Now some cash-strapped governments are trying to break pill poppers of the expensive habit.

THAT'S SOME CABANA:

Kerry loan twice as nice (Ellen J. Silberman and Jack Meyers, February 25, 2004, Boston Herald)

U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry used an appraisal pegging the value of his Beacon Hill townhouse at twice the amount listed on City Hall records in order to get the $6.4 million loan he needed to resuscitate his presidential bid.

The Kerry campaign says the elegant Louisburg Square townhouse that Kerry shares with is millionaire wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry is worth $12.8 million - exactly double the Christmas Eve mortgage the senator got from Mellon Bank.

But Boston's Assessing Department puts the value of the swank, five-story mansion - with six fireplaces, five bedrooms, a private elevator and roofdeck - at $6.6 million as of Jan. 1, 2003. The assessed value actually dropped from 2002's figure of $6.95 million.

The home's true value is significant since federal election laws allow Kerry to finance his presidential bid by borrowing only against his own assets - prohibiting him from tapping into his wife's millions.

"It could be a very, very big excessive contribution by his wife if, in fact, he's using more than half the real value of the house,'' said Don Simon, a Washington-based campaign finance lawyer who is unaffiliated with any presidential campaign. Kerry Heinz is limited to donating $2,000 to her husband's campaign.

The conflicting valuations also raise questions about the propriety of the loan - taken from Mellon Bank of New England, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based Mellon Bank, N.A.Kerry Heinz, heiress to the Heinz ketchup fortune, has a long history with Mellon Bank. The bank also serves as a trustee for The T & J Louisburg Square Nominee Trust, the entity that owns the townhouse.

ARE WE ON CRAZY PILLS?:

Zero-sum game (Rabbi Avi Shafran, Feb. 25, 2004 , Jewish World Review)

The lesson of the Kempling case transcends its Canadian context; it is of no less import to Americans or Europeans. The issue of "gay rights" is not benign; the struggle between those who wish to make homosexuality acceptable as a normative lifestyle and those who do not is, simply put, a zero-sum game. To the degree that the gay movement's program is advanced, those who adhere to a traditional moral system will be not merely ignored, but vilified, demonized and penalized.

That "gay rights" zero-sum truism is at the core of a legal brief recently submitted to the United States Supreme Court by the organization I am privileged to represent, Agudath Israel of America. We asked the Court to review and reverse a lower court's decision permitting the state of Connecticut to disqualify the Boy Scouts from inclusion on a list of charities to which state employees were encouraged to contribute. The reason the Boy Scouts were disqualified was the group's policy of not allowing homosexuals to serve as scoutmasters or in leadership positions

One of the brief's main points is that decisions like the lower court's patently malign traditional religious groups for their deeply-held beliefs. As The New York Sun noted in an editorial shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Court's "same-sex marriage" ruling, "with a few exceptions, this cause [the acceptance of same-sex marriage] is being advanced through the denigration of Jews and Christians who adhere to the fundamentals of religious law."

The editorial went on to recount the reaction of "a friend" of the editorialist to the opposition to same-sex marriages asserted by "Agudath Israel and its Council of Torah Sages." Said the gentleman: "I see them as bigots..."

Similarly, an American Civil Liberties Union advertisement several years ago in The New York Times compared those who object on moral grounds to homosexuality as akin to vicious racists of yesteryear. Those who espouse a traditional view of acceptable sexual behavior, the ACLU asserted, seek "to hide behind morality." But, the ad continues, "we all know a bigot when we see one."

$$$$$$$$$$$:

Crude Reality: As the brutal battle over proposed drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge grinds on, a former oil worker returns to the North Slope in search of the truth about the pro-exploration argument. His conclusion? (Brace yourself.) The unthinkable is the right thing to do. (David Masiel, February 2004, Outside Magazine)

I have listened to the debate over Arctic drilling for 20 years, and I believe it is far from finished, that it will never be finished until oil is obsolete or the first production wells start pumping ANWR crude into the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Election-year politics may have buried ANWR for now, but two points are clear: If reelected, George W. Bush will continue his pursuit of drilling in ANWR. And no matter who is elected, Alaskan lobbyists and politicians will never let this one go—there's simply too much at stake. "It's never decided," Senator Stevens has vowed several times, "until I win."

Meanwhile, both pro- and anti-drilling camps have dug their heels into the Arctic permafrost, each side deploying an array of facts and statistics, all of them "true," and most mutually exclusive. The Bush administration insists that, in the wake of 9/11, America's longtime goal of reversing dependence on foreign oil has become a necessity. The oil companies pledge that drilling can be done cleanly, thanks to new technologies like extended-reach drilling and man-made ice roads that melt every spring.

Environmentalists stress that any development is too much: The 1002 is home to the largest concentration of onshore polar bear dens in the world, the summer home to some 138 species of migratory birds, and the calving grounds of the 123,000-member Porcupine caribou herd. Even 2,000 acres of development, opponents argue, would create a maze of pipelines and service roads extending impacts a hundredfold. Moreover, they say, a defeat here will mortally wound the very idea of wilderness protection.

There's also the little matter of how much oil there is (no one really knows) and whether oil companies can ever be trusted as stewards (no one knows that, either). As if this weren't enough, native Alaskans themselves are divided: The Inupiat Eskimo of the North Slope largely favor drilling, but the Gwich'in Athabascans, to the south, don't.

I was divided myself. My family's ties to the oil business go back three generations. My grandfather was a tanker captain for Standard Oil, my father the president of Chevron Pipeline Company. My sister, brother-in-law, and cousin, not to mention half a dozen friends—oil people, all. On the North Slope, I'd gained intense respect for the people who work there, but I'd also seen the ways that the Arctic's harsh, remote conditions could drive crews to cut corners.

So, in 2002, I decided to drill into the issue—to drill into myself, frankly. My approach was admittedly personal. In my tiny way, I had helped bring drilling to ANWR, and I couldn't forget that bear as he escaped across the ice. I wondered, Is it possible to take care of the bear and still feed the machine?

After a journey that took me back to the Arctic for the first time in 13 years, and through dozens of interviews with policy analysts, native Alaskans, wildlife biologists, and congressional staff experts, I became convinced of only one thing: Both sides are far too entrenched to see the other side clearly.

It's time for a compromise, and as much as I can hear the cries of readers rising out of their chairs in choked protest, the reality of ANWR begs something new. Distasteful as it is, it's time to allow at least some drilling in the refuge. [...]

When old hands grumble about environmental standards, it's a good sign things are moving in the right direction. But anecdotal evidence is hardly proof. So I turned to my own contacts, including the CFO of one of the four largest oil companies in the world, who agreed to speak to me on condition of anonymity.

"We're the deep pockets," my friend told me. "Oil spills mean lost product plus cleanup costs. And ever since the Exxon Valdez, the bar has continually been raised. We're paying clean-up costs on operations from 20 years ago that were in full compliance of laws at the time. I tell my managers this all the time: Don't tell me you disposed of waste materials in some landfill and it's all according to EPA regulations, because I'm going to assume at some point we'll be required to go back and clean up—at greater costs. We want zero discharges."

In other words, economics ensures clean drilling. Another contact, the general manager of health, safety, and environment for the overseas branch of a major oil company, spelled it out for me: "The real reason for clean operations," he said, scribbling something on a piece of paper, "is this." He shoved the paper across the table. On it, he'd drawn a giant dollar sign.

IN TURN, WHY NOT BROADCAST HIS EXECUTION?:

Al-Qaeda member tried to set up satellite TV link so bin Laden could watch 9/11 (AFP, Feb 25, 2004)

One of the two alleged al-Qaeda members charged on Tuesday tried but failed to set up a satellite television connection so Osama bin Laden could watch the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, according to the indictment.

Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen was described by the Pentagon as a "key al-Qaeda propagandist" and former bodyguard to bin Laden, mastermind of the 2001 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington which left nearly 3,000 people dead.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Al Bahlul and another alleged al-Qaeda member held at Guantanamo Bay, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan, had been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes and would face trial by military tribunal.

MORE:
U.S. Charges Two at Guantánamo With Conspiracy (NEIL A. LEWIS, 2/25/04, NY Times)

According to the charge sheets, the two men have been part of a criminal conspiracy with Mr. bin Laden and several of his top aides that committed the offenses of "attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects" and other acts attributed in the documents to Al Qaeda. Mr. Bahlul is described as a Qaeda propagandist who made a recruiting video that celebrated the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in 2000 in the Yemeni port of Aden. Mr. Qosi was described as a Qaeda senior accountant who served as the deputy to the organization's chief financial officer. Both were described as part of an elite cadre of Qaeda associates who served as close associates of and bodyguards for Mr. bin Laden.

Prof. Detlev Vagts of the Harvard University Law School, an authority on the laws of war, said the conspiracy charge appeared to be an effort to fashion a new military offense along the lines of the civilian crime of conspiracy. Officials, Professor Vagts said, appear to have taken care not to charge that membership in Al Qaeda alone constitutes a crime.

Although the tribunal rules allow for the death penalty, the two defendants will not face it. Maj. John Smith, a lawyer with the Pentagon's office of military tribunals, said Tuesday that the chief prosecutor, Col. Fred Borch, had already decided that it would not be appropriate given the details of the accusations.

THE PILOT FISH (via Tom Morin)

'Bankrupt' Forces may shut 5 bases: Internal reports say $500M shortfall may cause closures from Winnipeg to Labrador (Chris Wattie, February 24, 2004, National Post)

Canada's army, navy and air force are facing a funding shortfall of up to half a billion dollars, defence sources told the National Post, and the military is recommending drastic measures to make up the difference, including closing some of the largest bases in the country.

The federal government is stalling the release of internal documents that outline the looming financial crisis, but military sources said the reports indicate that in the fiscal year beginning on April 1, the air force expects to be $150-million short of funds needed to fulfill its commitments, the navy will be $150-million shy of its needs and the army will be as much as $200-million short.

The figures were submitted to General Ray Henault, the Chief of Defence Staff, last month by the heads of the land staff, the maritime staff and the air staff in anticipation of this year's defence budget.

The military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the reports foresee a situation so dire that they recommend curtailing operations, dry-docking ships and mothballing vehicles or aircraft and closing at least four Canadian Forces bases.

SURVEY SAYS?!:

Was Einstein Right After All (SpaceDaily, Feb 24, 2004)

The good news from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is that Einstein was right--maybe. A strange form of energy called "dark energy" is looking a little more like the repulsive force that Einstein theorized in an attempt to balance the universe against its own gravity. Even if Einstein turns out to be wrong, the universe's dark energy probably won't destroy the universe any sooner than about 30 billion years from now, say Hubble researchers.

"Right now we're about twice as confident than before that Einstein's cosmological constant is real, or at least dark energy does not appear to be changing fast enough (if at all) to cause an end to the universe anytime soon," says Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore. [...]

Currently, there are two leading interpretations for the dark energy, as well as many more exotic possibilities. It could be an energy percolating from empty space as Einstein's theorized "cosmological constant," an interpretation which predicts that dark energy is unchanging and of a prescribed strength.

An alternative possibility is that dark energy is associated with a changing energy field dubbed "quintessence." [...]

If the repulsion from dark energy is or becomes stronger than Einstein's prediction, the universe may be torn apart by a future "Big Rip," during which the universe expands so violently that first the galaxies, then the stars, then planets, and finally atoms come unglued in a catastrophic end of time. Currently this idea is very speculative, but being pursued by theorists.

At the other extreme, a variable dark energy might fade away and then flip in force such that it pulls the universe together rather then pushing it apart.

This would lead to a "big crunch" where the universe ultimately implodes. "This looks like the least likely scenario at present," says Riess.

TWO OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD:

Anti-Semitism in 3D (NATAN SHARANSKY, Feb. 23, 2004, Jerusalem Post)

I propose the following test for differentiating legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. The 3D test, as I call it, is not a new one. It merely applies to the new anti-Semitism the same criteria that for centuries identified the different dimensions of classical anti-Semitism.

* The first D is the test of demonization.

Whether it came in the theological form of a collective accusation of deicide or in the literary depiction of Shakespeare's Shylock, Jews were demonized for centuries as the embodiment of evil. Therefore, today we must be wary of whether the Jewish state is being demonized by having its actions blown out of all sensible proportion.

For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz – comparisons heard practically every day within the "enlightened" quarters of Europe – can only be considered anti-Semitic.
Those who draw such analogies either do not know anything about Nazi Germany or, more plausibly, are deliberately trying to paint modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

* The second D is the test of double standards.

For thousands of years a clear sign of anti-Semitism was treating Jews differently than other peoples, from the discriminatory laws many nations enacted against them to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick.

Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies by other governments engender the same criticism, or is there a double standard at work? [...]

* The third D is the test of deligitimation.

In the past, anti-Semites tried to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they are trying to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it, among other things, as the last vestige of colonialism.

While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel's right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples have a right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people have a right to live securely in their homeland.

SENATOR "YES, BUT...":

Past votes may dog Kerry campaign: Democrat's support of Bush at issue (Jim VandeHei, Feb. 24, 2004, Washington Post)

In the stump speech he delivers virtually every day, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) stirs the Democratic faithful by railing against current trade practices and slamming President Bush's policies on education, civil liberties and Iraq.

But the Democratic front-runner does not mention how he, as senator, supported the president on all four issues, helping cement in law what he often describes as flawed government policies.

Kerry's past support for policies he now condemns is complicating his run for the White House, strategists from both parties say, and could prove problematic in a general election showdown with Bush. The president himself seized on this contrast in his opening attack on Kerry at a dinner last night of the Republican Governors Association.

Tony Coehlo, chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, said it is "critical" that Kerry "clearly" explain his votes "before the public perceives him as a flip-flopper." If not, Bush "will tag him," Coehlo said.

WE ALL KNOW HOW THIS STORY ENDS:

Bush's McCain Strategy Redux (E. J. Dionne Jr., February 24, 2004, Washington Post)

If Kerry's twenties and early thirties are destined to be an issue in this campaign, is it fair for the media to give the same years in Bush's life a pass just because he's the incumbent? To paraphrase John Edwards, will we have two standards, one for a Democratic challenger and one for a Republican president?

The Bush campaign, of course, is leaving the brutal stuff to surrogates. Formally, Bush's apparatus is focusing on Kerry's record in the Senate, especially his votes on intelligence and military spending. Isn't that fair game?

What's forgotten is that Bush has a pattern throughout his political career of staying above the fray while others tear his opponents to shreds. The Republicans are trying to weave a clear narrative about Kerry. The above-the-surface part is about his voting record, which Kerry will, indeed, have to defend. The below-the-surface part will paint him as a Vietnam-peacenik-Massachusetts-liberal weirdo.

The template is what Bush's campaign did to Sen. John McCain, another Vietnam hero, in South Carolina during the 2000 Republican primaries.

THIS MAILING BROUGHT TO YOU FOR FREE BY THE BUSH RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN (via mc):

Health Plans Boost Benefits for Seniors: Private Alternatives to Medicare Will Get Added Government Funding (SARAH LUECK, 2/24/04, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)

Private health plans are gearing up to sweeten coverage for senior citizens -- part of an aggressive effort to lure them away from the government-run Medicare program.

Starting next month, many private plans will begin using direct mail, advertising and informational meetings to entice seniors to sign up. The main selling point is better benefits.

Currently, more than 10% of the nation's 41 million Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in such programs. The Bush administration wants to boost that number. As a result, the recent overhaul of Medicare showers $1.3 billion over the next two years on private plans that enroll Medicare beneficiaries. The law stipulates that the plans must use the money to enhance the benefits they offer senior citizens, lower the fees they charge them, or boost payments to the doctors and hospitals who treat them.

In New York, Oxford Health Plans Inc. says it will, pending federal approval, start covering $1,200 of prescription drugs per year instead of the $250 and $500 it currently offers Medicare beneficiaries. In Minnesota, the nonprofit health-maintenance organization UCare Minnesota will reduce premiums by $15 a month for most of the 26,000 seniors it covers. In Philadelphia, seniors in one of Aetna's HMO options won't have to pay a monthly premium to the plan at all, beyond what the government-run program deducts from Social Security checks.

"This is the gold rush for the insurance industry," says Robert Laszewski, a consultant with insurance-industry clients.

Whether it is a good idea for Medicare beneficiaries to enroll in private plans is one of the most heated subjects in the debate over the future of the program. Private plans typically offer more benefits than traditional Medicare; the government program doesn't cover routine physicals, for example, but many private plans do.

However, the private plans generally aren't as flexible about choice of doctors and hospitals. Medicare generally covers visits to any doctor or hospital the patient chooses. But the private Medicare plans -- known as Medicare Advantage plans -- tend to have managed-care type networks, limiting patients to certain doctors and hospitals that have agreed to discounts.

While the Bush administration and many Republicans say that increasing the number of Medicare beneficiaries in private plans will help provide better care and eventually reduce Medicare spending, Democrats argue that the program will be weakened and seniors will end up with widely differing benefits depending on where they live.

FURTHER BACK:

I married a retrosexual: Here's to men who don't want to smell like girls ... (MARGARET WENTE, Feb. 14, 2004, Globe and Mail)

Genuine guys are sometimes known as retrosexuals, to distinguish them from metrosexuals, who are men with the good taste of gay men, only they're straight. Metrosexuals are scrupulous about their grooming and are great consumers of men's cosmetic products. They use hair gel. Retrosexuals are scared of hair gel. Some people think that retrosexuals automatically have Neanderthal views about women, but this is not the case. A retrosexual is simply someone who doesn't know the difference between teal and aqua, and frankly couldn't give a damn.

Secretly, I've always thought that my husband could stand to be just a little bit more metro. Sometimes I buy him fancy shaving cream or scent with a designer name, and leave it suggestively on his side of the sink. He never gets the hint. He prefers a 10-second dry shave, with a plastic disposable razor and toilet paper to staunch the wounds. If he's really in the mood he shaves with soap. He doesn't like anything too smelly.

From time to time, my husband's retrosexuality bothers me. For example, he can't understand why it's time to paint the kitchen when we just painted it nine years ago. He doesn't get why we need expensive matchstick blinds on all the kitchen windows, because we leave them permanently rolled up. He's baffled that my haircuts cost 10 times more than his do, and he thinks massages are a waste of time, unless it was the one he got from two Thai masseuses on the beach at Phuket. There are many things on which we'll never see eye to eye.

But there are certain advantages to my husband's retrosexual orientation, and they are large. For example, being completely indifferent to appearance, a retrosexual will never complain that you're putting on weight. This is one of the foundation stones of a good marriage. Also, it's easy to impress him with your culinary prowess. My husband is so grateful to get out of kitchen duty that he brags about my cooking, even though it's usually quite lousy. In return, he allows me to weasel out of certain household tasks like garbage duty and replacing light bulbs. He knows it's his job to talk to plumbers and electricians, man to man. We are aware that we have lapsed into tired gender stereotypes. We don't care. We only wish there were a third gender to clean the kitty litter. We have resolved our primal conflicts over housework by employing a cleaning lady and drastically lowering our (okay, my) standards in between her visits. This is another foundation stone of a good marriage.

SOMETHING WORTH CONSERVING:

Congress Is Urged to Pass an Amendment to the Constitution (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, February 24, 2004)

President Bush backed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage Tuesday, saying he wants to stop activist judges from changing the definition of the "most enduring human institution."

Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural and moral roots, Bush said, urging Congress to approve such an amendment.

"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization," the president said. "Their action has created confusion on an issue that requires clarity."

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said in advance of Bush's announcement that the president wanted to end "growing confusion" that has arisen from court decisions in Massachusetts, and San Francisco's permitting more than 3,000 same sex unions.

"The president believes it is important to have clarity," he said. "There is widespread support in this country for protecting and defending the sanctity of marriage."

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION:

Some teens in inner city barter with sex (Susan Reimer, January 25, 2004, The Baltimore Sun)

THE VOICES OF POOR, black, inner-city teen-agers are largely unheard, especially in the public debate over adolescent sex. And their faces are unknown to us.

A new report by Motivational Educational Entertainment (MEE) Productions and a devastating companion video may change that. [...]

The over-arching finding of the research is that "the old-school thinking about relationships doesn't fit low-income urban youth," said Juzang in a press briefing on the report. "Sex is transactional. It is a tool to barter with."

Girls reported having sex with a guy - any guy - in return for a new pair of tennis shoes, an outfit or a trip to the beauty parlor. And the guys pay up without complaint.

The teens also reported that adult male-teen female relationships were so common that older men are cruising high school parking lots and young girls are willingly hopping in their cars.

The men know that sex with a young girl will be relatively cheaper than sex with a more demanding woman of their own age. And the girls know the men will pay with nicer purchases than their classmates can afford.

There was also a real openness about same-sex experiences, about serial sex and about group sex. [...]

And Baltimore was the first place where the researchers heard about "try-sexuals," teens who will "try" anything once and, if they like it, they will try it again. [...]

Most disheartening of all was this comment from one young man: "Most people feel they ain't gonna live that long so they might as well have their fun on Earth." For him, a baby might be his only legacy.

The teens themselves were asked for solutions and, here too, their insight was impressive.

High school sex education classes are too little and too late. Most of them had had sex by their early teens. Remarkably, they said that if the horrific pictures of what sexually transmitted diseases can do to the genitals had been presented before they had sex, it might have made them think.

The media, of which these kids are the most voracious consumers, should clean up its act, the kids said. Even they were critical of rap songs and music videos for their overpowering sexual messages.

And, finally, these teens feel like the grown-ups have failed them, too. Their parents most often say nothing about sexual decision-making or contraception. Or they try to frighten their kids on the topic.

And parents often set horrendous examples by having sex with multiple partners in the home or by letting their children have sex in the home. One young man expressed amazement at the pornography he found in the family videocassette player.

But perhaps the most shocking revelation of all was this: Knowing what they know now, most of these teens said they wish they had waited to have sex.

SLIPPERY SLOPE? MORE LIKE A BLACK HOLE:

Gay Marriage Chaos (William J. Federer, February 23, 2004, Townhall)

"What's wrong with adult-child sex?" the college student asked me, "We read in an American Pediatric Association report that it could be beneficial for children."

Thus began the Q & A session of my talk "Preserving the Traditional Marriage" at the Indiana University, home of the Kinsey Institute.

It became clear that "gay marriage" was not the end, but the beginning of an agenda to change our entire cultural.

The ACLU, for example, is not only defending NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), which advocates the removal of all laws against incest, prostitution and age of consent, the ACLU is also working to remove laws against polygamy.

If what was unimaginable a generation ago is reality today, where will America be a generation from now? Group marriages? Mixed marriages, Children as sex toys?

IN-SOURCING PURITANS:

The Americano Dream: Contrary to what the political scientist Samuel Huntington
says, Latin American immigrants are assimilating into
American culture. (DAVID BROOKS, 2/24/04, NY Times)

In their book, "Remaking the American Mainstream," Richard Alba of SUNY-Albany and Victor Nee of Cornell point out that though there are some border neighborhoods where immigrants are slow to learn English, Mexicans nationwide know they must learn it to get ahead. By the third generation, 60 percent of Mexican-American children speak only English at home.

Nor is it true that Mexican immigrants are scuttling along the bottom of the economic ladder. An analysis of 2000 census data by the USC urban planner Dowell Myers suggests that Latinos are quite adept at climbing out of poverty. Sixty-eight percent of those who have been in this country 30 years own their own homes.

Mexican immigrants are in fact dispersing around the nation. When they have children, they tend to lose touch with their Mexican villages and sink roots here. If you look at consumer data, you find that while they may spend more money on children's clothes and less on electronics than native-born Americans, there are no significant differences between Mexican-American lifestyles and other American lifestyles. They serve in the military — and die for this nation — at comparable rates.

Frankly, something's a little off in Huntington's use of the term "Anglo-Protestant" to describe American culture. There is no question that we have all been shaped by the legacies of Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. But the mentality that binds us is not well described by the words "Anglo" or "Protestant."

MORE:
Critics Assail Scholar's Article Arguing That Hispanic Immigration Threatens U.S. (DAVID GLENN, February 24, 2004, Chronicle of Higher Education)

On Monday, critics of the article attacked both its factual premises and its analytic framework. In a letter to the editors of Foreign Policy, Andrés Jiménez, director of the University of California's California Research Policy Center, wrote that the article was "misinformed, factually inaccurate, inflammatory, and potentially injurious to public policy because of its potential for being used as a further baseless rationalization for anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican politics."

In an interview, Mr. Jiménez said that Mr. Huntington was wrong to suggest that Hispanic families place a lower value on educational achievement than do native-born Americans. He cited a January 2004 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, which found that Hispanic parents are more likely to attend PTA meetings and to help their children with homework than are white or African-American parents.

He also argued that Mr. Huntington was foolish to describe the history of Hispanic families' educational and labor-force status without acknowledging the history of formal and informal segregation in the Southwest. As recently as the 1950s, he noted, the State of Texas maintained separate schools for Hispanic students, which did not continue past the sixth grade.

Mr. de la Garza, of Columbia, said in an interview that Mr. Huntington's fear that Hispanic immigrants would maintain strong loyalties to their countries of origin was not grounded in empirical fact. Mr. de la Garza cited a 1998 study by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Los Angeles, that, he said, demonstrated that Hispanic residents of the United States have a relatively low level of engagement with the politics of their home countries and are much more oriented toward events in the United States.

James P. Smith, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, said in an interview that Mr. Huntington's analysis appeared not to distinguish fully between the experiences of first-generation immigrants and those of their children and grandchildren.

"It's not unique to him," Mr. Smith said. "He's using the convention of the field, and I think the convention of the field is methodologically flawed."

A more precise analysis would show that Hispanic immigrants have actually made rapid progress from generation to generation, Mr. Smith argued.

He added that he saw no reason yet to believe that the United States was becoming a binational society. "To say that some time in the future we might become like Canada, and that we should keep our eye on separating the country that way -- that's fine. But I don't think we're there yet," he said.

ZOOLANDER?:

‘Am I on Crazy Pills?’ Zoolander, a Muse For Bonehead Age (Ron Rosenbaum, Feb. 24, 2004, Jewish World Review)

I could be wrong, but I think the number of Zoolander aficionados out there is approaching the critical mass required to tip it over from stupid guilty pleasure to Spinal Tap-like cult status. It plays enough on cable, and it's one of those comedies that grows on you. Not as good as Spinal Tap (really, what is?), but up there with Waiting for Guffman...with what has become my all-time super-fave Zoolander catch phrase. It's the one delivered by Evil Fashion Guru Mugatu, Will Ferrell's great role.

It's the moment when Mugatu denounces Derek Zoolander, the moronic male model (played with steel-jawed stupidity by Ben Stiller) who's become famous for his signature "Looks": "Blue Steel," "Le Tigre" and "Ferrari." The embittered Mugatu cries out with helpless rage, "They're the same face! Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills …. I don't know whether it was a subsurface catch phrase before Will Ferrell uttered it (the movie was released in September 2001) and he just propelled it into mainstream popular consciousness, or whether he (or the screenwriters) invented it, but it seems like it's a phrase that's found its moment: 3,400 Google entries so far, with variations like "Are you on crazy pills?" and "What am I, on crazy pills?"

I guess it's not hard to figure out why this moment in history precipitated "crazy pills" into pop argot. Certainly it had something to do with the way Will Ferrell did it so perfectly, while faintly mocking it at the same time. But these last two years have been a kind of Bad Dream — History on crazy pills, you might say. So the timing was right.

And such "verbal icons" — as they used to call them in the Yale English Department (where the catch phrase "verbal icon" was invented) — as "crazy pills" don't get propelled into popular linguistic consciousness unless they strike a chord, expressing or echoing something deeply felt in the collective unconscious in some new way.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills …. It's that feeling you get when everyone around you seems to have willingly bought into something that seems like a mass delusion to you.

THE ENEMY PROBLEM:

-INTERVIEW: Our new epoch in history: 10 minutes with philosopher/political thinker/novelist Lee Harris (Bill Steigerwald, 2/24/04, Jewish World Review)

Q: Why do you say 9/11 is such an important historic event, like World War I or the French Revolution?

A: The importance is the fact that it was something that came completely out of the blue, and for which no existing categories of analysis were adequate. It was something that most intellectuals in America rushed immediately to classify. Most of them said, "Listen, I know exactly what took place. It is the beginning of a war," or, like (Noam) Chomsky, "It's the beginning of the counter-revolution of the oppressed."

So you had all these people coming in with their own particular theories explaining it, as if it fit into things we knew and could compare with before. But the more I thought about that, it didn't make any sense. From the word go, there was something mysterious about 9/11.

One of the factors being that there was no preparation for it, there was no diplomatic exchange. There were no demands. It simply just erupted one day.

The second thing is that by that time it became obvious there was no systematic strategic follow up, it began to occur to me that what we were dealing with here was not, in fact, the beginning of some kind of well-orchestrated military operation. But, in fact, it was a violent eruption of what I called "a fantasy ideology."

That is, a group of people got together and decided they wanted to change the course of history. They wanted to do something dramatic. They wanted to do something that symbolized the purity of Islam against the corrupt satanic America. They chose this act as a symbolic representation of their superior ethos. They showed that they could put themselves above material things, above fear of death, and they could make this enormous sacrifice to show us how hollow we were. It was really an act more for their sake than our sake.

Q: Who is the enemy — and where do we find him?

A: Well, to me, the use of the word "enemy" is a problem that I had actually thought about before 9/11. For a long time, I've been very interested in the problem of liberalism — that is, how a liberal society can come into existence and how it can keep in existence. We in America tend to take it for granted that when people get together, the first thing they're going to do is construct a nice little society. Well, that simply isn't the case.

OPPORTUNITY (via John Resnick):

Remarks by the President to the National Governors Association (2/23/04)

A lot of my foreign policy is driven by the fact that I truly believe that freedom is a gift from the Almighty to every person, and that America has a responsibility to take a lead in the world, to help people be free. And we're making progress in Afghanistan. We really are. Just look at the fact that young girls are now going to school for the first time in a long period of time.

Secretary Rumsfeld's wife, and Karen Hughes, and Margaret Spellings, who is my Domestic Policy Advisor -- they're on a plane right now heading to Afghanistan to continue the progress toward a more free society.

And in Iraq, obviously, I made a tough choice. But my attitude is, is that the lessons of September the 11th mean that we must be clear-eyed and realistic and deal with threats before they fully materialize. I looked at the intelligence and came to the conclusion that Saddam was a threat. The Congress looked at the same intelligence, and it came to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein was a threat. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence, and it concluded that Saddam Hussein was a threat. My predecessor and his administration looked at the same intelligence and concluded that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that's why Congress passed a -- resolved to remove Saddam from power, that regime change was a -- was policy for the government.

And there's a reason why not only does the intelligence say that he was a threat, his actions said he was a threat. He had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He hid weapons of mass destruction from inspectors. In other words, he wouldn't be open.

The United Nations Security Council, at my request, took a look at the issue one last time, and unanimously voted to have Saddam reveal, disclose, and destroy weapons of mass destruction and/or weapons of mass destruction programs and, if not, face serious consequences.

September the 11th affected my way of thinking when it came to the security of the country. We saw a danger, and so I gave him an ultimatum -- the world really gave him an ultimatum. And he refused. And rather than take the word of a madman whose actions had proven unworthy of leadership, we acted, and we removed him. And the world is better off for it, in my judgment. [...]

My view of government is to create an environment that is good for the entrepreneur; that encourages capital formation, particularly among small businesses. The tax relief we passed not only has put more money into the pockets of individuals, which I believe is good when you're trying to come out of a recession, but it also helps small businesses. Remember, most small businesses in your states are sole proprietorships or subchapter S corporations. That's a fact. And when you cut income taxes, all taxes -- not a few, but all -- you're providing additional capital for subchapter S and sole proprietorships.

And if you're worried about job growth, it seems like it makes sense to give a little fuel to those who create jobs, the small business sector. So I'll vigorously defend the permanency of the tax cuts, not only for the sake of the economy, but for the sake of the entrepreneurial spirit, which is important in your states. It's important that people have got incentive to create jobs. Not only is it good for those people looking for work, it's good for the soul of the country for people to own something. We want us to be an ownership society in America.

There's more to do. We need an energy bill. We'll try to get one out of the Congress here. We need tort reform, it seems like to me. We need tort reform for class action; we need tort reform for asbestos; we need medical -- national medical liability reform in order to help control the rising cost of health care. Associated health care plans -- I hope you support these. These are opportunities for small businesses to pool risk in order to better control the cost of health. That's where the focus ought to be, how best to address the rising cost of health care. And this administration will continue to do so for the sake of jobs -- less regulations, obviously.

We won't back off our desire to open up markets for U.S. products -- farm products, ranch products, manufacturing products. It's pretty easy to trade into America. What's hard is for Americans to trade into other countries. And so it's important for the administration to continue to focus on trade and the benefits of trade here at home. And I mentioned the permanency of the tax cuts. It's very important for people who are planning for the future to have -- wonder about tax relief, whether it will be there. It's essential that there be certainty in the tax code.

We also recognize that these are changing times, the economy is changing, people go to work in different ways. And therefore, the policy ought to reflect that. The policy ought to reflect it through health care, where people have got more control over their health care decisions. Health savings accounts are one such way to do that.

The education system is vital. However, as the economy changes, people have got to be prepared to work in the changing economy. I'm going to vigorously defend No Child Left Behind because I know in my heart of hearts it's the absolute right role for the federal government -- to provide money, but insist upon results -- to say for the first time, would you please show us whether or not the children are learning to read and write and add and subtract. And if not, there will be special help to make sure they do. And if so, there will be ample praise. You design the accountability.

I know Rod talked to you about flexibility and how we get to the numbers, which is good. Accountability isn't meant to punish anybody. Accountability systems are meant to help determine whether curriculum are working, whether or not the strategy is working, and whether or not people are being just shuffled through from grade to grade without concern as to whether or not they can read or write. That's what this is all about. And I look forward to working with you to make sure the system works well. And I just can assure you this is -- there will be a vigorous defense of what I think is the one of the most constructive reforms in education policy at the federal government ever.

We have put out some policies to encourage reading in math, a program for high school students who are falling behind; additional money for advanced placement for low-income schools; increasing -- larger Pell grants for students who prepare for college by taking more rigorous courses. And, of course, I've always felt that the community college system provides a great opportunity for job training. Elaine will talk about that to you. Community colleges are available, affordable; they're flexible. We don't need to be training 500 hairdressers for 50 jobs which exist. The system ought to be designed toward meeting the demand of your employers. And a good community college system will make it much easier for governors and mayors to attract jobs to your communities. And I know a lot of you have used your community college system wisely.

Governor Napolitano -- I was in Arizona, went to the Mesa Community College System. It's a fine community college system. One of the interesting stories there, a lady who worked for 15 years as a graphic design artist, and she went to the community college system to help get the skills necessary to become a viable employee in the high-tech world. And her starting pay -- I believe it's called Cable One -- was higher than her 15th year as a graphic artist, because she took time, with government help -- I think a Pell grant in her case -- to become reeducated. So we've got money in our budget to help invigorate the community college system.

Another issue that I think we need to work on -- I know we need to work on is welfare. They need to reauthorize welfare. I hope the Congress will reauthorize welfare. Welfare reform had worked. You need to have certainty as you plan your -- on how to help people become less dependent on government, and we need a welfare reform bill. And we'll push it, here in Washington.

And finally, the faith-based initiative -- I want to talk a little bit about that. My attitude is, if a program works, let's use it. If a program can help save somebody's life, it seems like to me that program ought to be allowed to access monies aimed at helping people help themselves. And yet, that's not the way it was here in Washington. Faith-based programs were discriminated against. There was a process argument. And governors are results-oriented people, and so am I. And it seems like to me, you ought have the flexibility, and people at your grass-roots level ought to have the flexibility to access taxpayers' money if they're able to meet common objectives.

Now -- and so -- well, I couldn't get the bill out of the Congress, so I just signed an executive order, which opened up federal grant money to faith-based groups, on a competitive basis.

We're also making sure that our bureaucracies don't say to faith-based groups, you can't be a faith-based group. If faith is part of being an effective program, it doesn't make sense to say to somebody, you can't practice your faith. And so we recognize here in Washington faith-based programs are a two-way street -- one, there's a federal interface, and two, that sometimes can be frightening to people of faith. And by the way, I'm talking about all faiths. This isn't just a single faith; it's Christian, Jewish, Muslim faiths, all -- which exist because they've heard the universal admonition to love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself.

And so I want to applaud those of you who have set up faith-based offices, and encourage you, if you haven't, to do so. There is a lot of federal money available to effective providers of social services. One such program is going to be the $100-million drug treatment programs, where now vouchers can be issued to people where they can choose where they go, whether it be kind of a clinical program or a program designed to help change somebody's heart. By the way, if your heart gets changed, it's a lot easier to quit drinking. I know.

And so it's -- this is an opportunity that I think is a viable opportunity for governors and states to really help people. And that's why we're in office, isn't it, is to do the best.

So regardless of your party, I hope you have this sense of optimism I do. You see the people in your states. We are lucky to be leaders in such a fabulous country, we really are -- good, honest, decent, honorable people. We've overcome a lot. There's more to do. There's a lot we can do together.

So thanks for coming by the White House. That's my pledge. This is going to be a year in which a lot of people are probably going to think nothing can done, right, because we're all out campaigning. Well, that's not my attitude. I fully understand it's going to be the year of the sharp elbow and the quick tongue. But my pledge to you is, we'll continue to work with you. You've got what you -- you've got to do what you've got to do in your home states, in terms of politics. But surely we can shuffle that aside sometimes, and focus on our people; do what you were elected to do and what I was elected to do to make this country hopeful.

RUMMY ON A ROLL:

Pentagon Says It Plans to Kill Copter Program (LESLIE WAYNE, 2/24/04, NY Times)

The decision ends a program that began in 1983 and at a cost of $8 billion had yet to produce a single operational craft. Moreover, the Comanche, an armed reconnaissance helicopter, was designed for operations against Soviet and Warsaw Pact armies and has been overtaken by the Army's need for lighter and more flexible aircraft to fight terrorists and guerrillas.

"It's a big decision," said Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff. "We know it's a big decision. But it's the right decision."

The cancellation must be approved by Congress when it reviews the Pentagon's budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which contains allocations for the Comanche. But many Congressional aides say that the helicopter program lacks widespread support in Congress that many other weapons have and that the Pentagon may not have a difficult time scrapping it.

In a Pentagon briefing, General Schoomaker, along with acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, said that ending the program would free up money for other Army aviation programs, mainly a modernization of the Apache attack helicopter now in combat use, along with more purchases of Blackhawk helicopters and continued development of drones.

Behind this decision is also a realization by the Army that the Comanche program did not fit in with the desire of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the administration to transform the military by eliminating outdated weapons programs and substituting newer technologies.

THE FISH BARREL:

Campaign Begins as Bush Attacks Kerry in Speech: The president shed his above-the-fray posture to defend his record and begin an assault on the Democratic front-runner (RICHARD W. STEVENSON, 2/24/04, NY Times)

"It's a choice between keeping the tax relief that is moving the economy forward, or putting the burden of higher taxes back on the American people," Mr. Bush said. "It's a choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence, or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger."

Without using Mr. Kerry's name, the president mocked him as a politician whose positions changed with the wind. The Democratic field, Mr. Bush said, is "for tax cuts and against them. For Nafta and against Nafta. For the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. In favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts."

The speech, delivered at a fund-raiser to benefit the Republican Governors Association, was billed by Mr. Bush's campaign as the start of a more aggressive phase of the race after months in which the president, to the growing consternation of some in his party, had remained largely on the sidelines.

Much of the speech was forward-looking. It sought to position Mr. Bush as optimistic and steady in the face of serious challenges to the country and relentless attacks by Democrats who, he said, have failed to say how they would deal with the challenges the United States faces at home and abroad.

"Our opponents have not offered much in the way of strategies to win the war, or policies to expand our economy," he said, sounding a theme similar to one his aides tried out when it appeared that Howard Dean would be the Democratic nominee. "So far, all we hear is a lot of old bitterness and partisan anger. Anger is not an agenda for the future of America." [...]

Alluding to Democrats who have criticized the war but agreed that the world is better of with Saddam Hussein out of power, Mr. Bush said, "Maybe they were hoping he'd lose the next Iraqi election."

In an indirect slap at Mr. Kerry, who in a 1970 interview suggested that the United States military should be deployed only under the auspices of the United Nations, Mr. Bush said he would never "outsource" national security to other governments.

YOU THOUGHT COPMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM WAS AN OXYMORON?:

French Lies About Iraq (Nidra Poller, February 19, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

AH:  My book is based on articles published in 5 major French newspapers--Le Monde, La Croix, Le Figaro, Libération, Ouest-France—during the three week period from the beginning of the war on March 20th to the fall of Baghdad on April 9th.  I studied the way these papers covered the war and I concluded that they misinformed their readers.  As a result, readers couldn’t understand how the Iraqi regime fell in three weeks.  I think this misinformation can be explained by an extraordinary atmosphere of nationalism in France at that time, following on the diplomatic crisis in which France and Germany stood against the US and Great Britain.  French people were unanimous on three points: they demonized the Bush and Blair administrations, approved the diplomatic line of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, and communed with the pacifist movement.  And journalists reported the war they would like to see rather than the war that was. 

Two or three days after the operation began a few Americans were captured, wounded, or killed in action, and five days into the campaign the press was already talking about a quagmire, then about Vietnam.  They said the Pentagon’s plan was wrong, there weren’t enough soldiers, the military equipment was too sophisticated for this kind of campaign and the Americans were stuck 80 km from Baghdad.  Some said it would take weeks, months, some said they wouldn’t start moving toward Baghdad before the summer.  Of course what happened is that the Americans were at the gates of Baghdad by the 2nd or 3rd of April.  The French press didn’t explain why this happened; they began to announce that the battle of Baghdad would be a new Stalingrad.  And of course that didn’t happen either.  After a few little raids in the city Saddam Hussein’s regime fell.  Journalists didn’t explain why they had made those prophecies and announcements, and why it happened another way.  They said the worst is ahead.

I think the reason why the press didn’t report the war the way it was is due to this extraordinary atmosphere--there was no plot, no conspiracy, no collective or individual will to misinform readers.  Journalists didn’t keep a decent professional distance from what was happening.  They were more excited by bad news about the offensive than good news.  I think they themselves were totally surprised by the outcome, as were the readers.  I see three reasons for this.  One is the extraordinary anti-Americanism at that time.  I think this has a lot to do with the personality of G. W. Bush and his administration.  G. W. Bush is the kind of American the French love to hate.  Then there is some kind of nostalgia for a time when France was an important player on the international scene.  Jacques Chirac and Dominique De Villepin were able to inflame the French nostalgia for that time.  And also there is Arabophilia…in a very bad sense of the term.  Arabophilia is not a problem in itself but here it is in a bad sense. 

It’s nothing new, it’s not just in connection with Iraq; t has to do with the history of France in Algeria.  There is more compassion…we see this in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sometimes there is more compassion for the Palestinian victims than for the Israelis.  There was a lot of compassion for the Iraqi people.  This was the second war, there had been a very long embargo.  I think the French, like any Western power, feel a little bit guilty that this embargo lasted so long, and that they didn’t go all the way to Baghdad 12 years ago, in the first war, and solve the problem.  All of these factors led to compassion for the Iraqi side.

BLACK LIKE ALEC:

FEARLESS LEADER (Page Six, February 23, 2004, NY Post)

ALEC Baldwin isn't suffering from any lack of self-esteem. In A&E's "Biography: Alec Baldwin," premiering tonight, the bombastic actor compares himself to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, who wrote "Soul on Ice." Baldwin recalls that when he was younger, "My dad said to me, 'If you were black . . . with your personality,' he said, 'Do you think you would be Martin Luther King, or would you be Eldridge Cleaver? Would you be patient and wise, and kind, and peaceful?' He said, 'Or do you think you'd really, really get out there and . . . exert yourself a little more in order to leverage change in our society?' And I knew the answer . . .

THE PIPE PUFFER:

What Bach could have taught Spinoza about Judaism: A world renowned Jewish philosopher on the creativity resulting from adherence to tradition (Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, 2/24/04, Jewish World Review)

It is our thesis that in a meeting between these two great minds Bach would have staunchly defended the world of Halacha (traditional Jewish Law) against Spinoza and that Spinoza would have informed Bach that he did not appreciate his music as much as he did Beethoven's. [...]

Spinoza is well known for his rejection of Jewish Law. To him Judaism, and even more so Halacha, is a kind of religious behaviorism, in which outward action is idolized and inner devotion of secondary importance. Judaism, according to Spinoza, is a well-organized discipline, in which tradition and careful observance have the upper hand. To obey and to follow all the minutiae of the Law is the ultimate goal of the religious Jew. There is "no place for lofty speculations nor philosophical reasoning." "I would be surprised if I found (the prophets) teaching any new speculative doctrine, which was not a commonplace to gentile philosophers."

Spinoza believed that for Judaism "the rule of right living, the worship and the love for G-d was to them rather a bondage than the true liberty, the gift and grace of Deity." (Tractatus Theologico Politicus III, XIII) Spinoza's main objection against Jewish Law is its confinement of the human spirit and its intellectual constraint. It does not allow for any novelty or intellectual creativity. All that the rabbis did, as they developed biblical law, was to spin a web so intertwined that it killed its very spirit and turned the religious Jew into a robot. As such, the Jew became a slave of the law and the law became a yoke. ( Because of this, Emanuel Kant maintained that Judaism is "eigentlich gar keine Religion" [actually not a religion]. The same applies to Hegel.)

Indeed this seems to be a bitter critique on the foundations of Judaism, not easily defeated.

Those who carefully study the music of Johann Sebastian Bach will be surprised to discover that the great musician dealt with music as the rabbis dealt with the law. Bach was totally traditional in his approach to music. He adhered strictly to the rules of composing music as understood in his days. Nowhere in all his compositions do we find deviation from these rules. But what is most surprising is that Bach's musical output is not only unprecedented but, above all, astonishingly creative.

THE PASSION:

Kerry's Inner Dove (Joshua Muravchik, February 23, 2004, washingtonpost.com)

When he won election to the Senate in 1984, Kerry said that the "issue of war and peace" remained his "passion." As a first major foreign policy cause, he championed the "nuclear freeze." Later Kerry battled Sen. Sam Nunn, a hawkish Democrat who chaired the Armed Services Committee, over the funding of research into missile defense, which Kerry wanted to slash.

The litany of weapons systems that Kerry opposed included conventional as well as nuclear equipment: the B-1 bomber, the B-2, the F-15, the F-14A, the F-14D, the AH-64 Apache helicopter, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Patriot missile, the Aegis air-defense cruiser and the Trident missile. And he sought to reduce procurement of the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the F-16 jet. Time and again, Kerry fought against what he called "the military-industrial corporate welfare complex that has relentlessly chewed up taxpayers' dollars."

Kerry was one of the Senate's strongest critics of President Ronald Reagan's policies of military resistance to Communist inroads in this hemisphere. When U.S. troops intervened in Grenada, Kerry denounced the action as "a bully's show of force." Kerry lent his name to Medical Aid for El Salvador, a political group that brought humanitarian aid to regions of that country held by Communist guerrillas. And he made himself one of the Senate's most vigorous opponents of aiding the anti-Communist contras as a means of pressuring Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. "I see an enormous haughtiness in the United States trying to tell them what to do," said Kerry. He and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) traveled to Managua to try to work their own peace deal with strongman Daniel Ortega and thus undercut U.S. policy. Kerry justified this by saying Reagan had failed "to create a climate of trust" with the Sandinistas.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF TOTAL SELF-UNAWARENESS:

NAILED:
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” (David Denby, 2004-02-23, The New Yorker)

In “The Passion of the Christ,” Mel Gibson shows little interest in celebrating the electric charge of hope and redemption that Jesus Christ brought into the world. He largely ignores Jesus’ heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radiance—Christ as a “paragon of vitality and poetic assertion,” as John Updike described Jesus’ character in his essay “The Gospel According to Saint Matthew.” Cecil B. De Mille had his version of Jesus’ life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese had theirs, and Gibson, of course, is free to skip over the incomparable glories of Jesus’ temperament and to devote himself, as he does, to Jesus’ pain and martyrdom in the last twelve hours of his life. As a viewer, I am equally free to say that the movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony—and to say so without indulging in “anti-Christian sentiment” (Gibson’s term for what his critics are spreading). For two hours, with only an occasional pause or gentle flashback, we watch, stupefied, as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man (James Caviezel) is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus’ message of love into one of hate.

And against whom will the audience direct its hate? As Gibson was completing the film, some historians, theologians, and clergymen accused him of emphasizing the discredited charge that it was the ancient Jews who were primarily responsible for killing Jesus, a claim that has served as the traditional justification for the persecution of the Jews in Europe for nearly two millennia. The critics turn out to have been right. Gibson is guilty of some serious mischief in his handling of these issues. But he may have also committed an aggression against Christian believers. The movie has been hailed as a religious experience by various Catholic and Protestant groups, some of whom, with an ungodly eye to the commercial realities of film distribution, have prepurchased blocks of tickets or rented theatres to insure “The Passion” a healthy opening weekend’s business. But how, I wonder, will people become better Christians if they are filled with the guilt, anguish, or loathing that this movie may create in their souls?

By the beginning of 2000, my life had changed in a number of extraordinarily important ways, but most of it was still in place.

As I saw it, my job, as always, was to build a family, build a career, observe, observe, learn a few things, write them down, and get them into good enough shape to publish in a magazine or a book. I was a married, middle-class professional, a critic and journalist-an Upper West Sider, and therefore one of God's sober creatures, a householder and provider living among Manhattan's brown and gray buildings. The Upper West Side was the land of responsibility, a family neighborhood, hardworking, increasingly prosperous-and pleasureless, some would say. There were parks, there were dogs, there were many places to buy broccoli and diapers, to get suits pressed and prescriptions filled.

But there were few elegant people (even the wealthy dressed like assistant professors), few art galleries or clubs, no wicked entertainments to speak of. You could walk for blocks without finding so much as a neighborhood bar.

My wife and I had added two boys to the swarm of children laughing and shoving on Broadway and shooting basketballs at the netless rims in Riverside Park. They were skinny boys, both of them. We fed them virtuously with fresh vegetables and fruit purchased at the long produce counters of the great Fairway Market, at Broadway and 74th. At breakfast, I plowed through the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and at night I watched the news (the stentorian Tom Brokaw, holding aloft the national virtue) and political chat shows (Chris Matthews interrupting God as He explained His policies on the third day of creation). I made my living writing for The New Yorker (and earlier for New York magazine). I went to Woody Allen movies and sometimes (as a type) appeared in them. I had been reviewing movies in one place or another since 1969. At the beginning of the nineties, when it became obvious to anyone with eyes to see that American movies, under conglomerate control, were not going anyplace wonderful, I wrote Great Books, in which a middle-aged man-me-slapped himself out of unhappiness by returning to his undergraduate college (Columbia) and rereading some of the Western literary and political-theory classics. Defending the books against the ideological manhandling they were being subjected to from left and right, I had made a few enemies to be proud of with that book, and a few friends, too, also to be proud of.

Thus the armature of routine, the thick-barked trunk of family love and work for a man of fifty-six. But in the months before I heard myself chattering, my daily habits had changed: I had become obsessed with piling up money, obsessed with the stock market, and I spent hours most weekdays watching CNBC. The men and women of financial reporting, my new friends, went on the air every trading day at five in the morning.

They remained on the air all day, mopping up after the market closed at 4:00 P.M. with various recaps, surveys, predictions, and so on, continuing until eight, at which point the hard-blowing Matthews and the somber Brian Williams took over with the less important criminal, political, and constitutional entertainments of the day. Like several hundred thousand other Americans, I had become addicted to the reporters on CNBC, our joshing chroniclers of the national hopes. They were with us.

On New Year's Day of 2000, the market was closed, and I relinquished CNBC and went to a party. A terrific group had gathered together, teachers, lawyers, journalists, editors, novelists, smart people, and nice, too -good people -and I ate smoked salmon and drank mimosas and spoke too rapidly to a great many of them. I wanted to talk about the market, and they wanted to talk about politics, journalism, and children, and after a while, I thought, Pleasure! What a waste of time! Every other weekday morning, I would take my post in the kitchen, looking at the little TV perched on the granite counter. A half hour, I told myself. Forty-five minutes, that's all! The kitchen was not a comfortable place to watch TV. But then, ignoring the cat, Daphne, who rubbed against my shins and nipped at my ankles, I would sit there for two or three hours, fascinated by the stock tickers running at the bottom of the image, by the declining thirty-year- bond yield and the shocking new Producers Price Index Number. Everything that happens in the market is related to every other thing; it is a gigantic puzzle whose parts move as unceasingly as the tentacles of an underwater creature. It was all new to me-the Consumer Confidence Index! Wow!-and I was amazed. Even though I knew that some of what they said was hooey, I sat patiently through interviews with strategists from the big brokerage houses, with CEOs and money managers, with gurus and savants of various sorts who spread their blankets and displayed their urns and gourds and gave their opinions of shifting currents in the bazaar. It was a rattle of semi-worthless but spellbinding words. I loved it.

Speaking over the din of a brokerage trading floor, many of the CNBC reporters and their guests raced like corsairs. They had very little airtime in which to say complicated things. But more than that, they were driven by the tempo of the market itself, the pulsing, darting flow of money around the globe, all of it intensified, as the CNBC anchors broke for commercials, by that rhythmic clickety-clack of electronic noise needled by a snare drum ... dig-a-dig-a-dig-a-dig-a-DIG-a-dig-a ... Were all the beats the same? Or were there, as I imagined, little emphases which turned the pulse into the music of money? Speed was inside my head, and I couldn't get it out.

At that moment, in early 2000, you were sure that if you could just grab hold of the flying coattails of the New Economy investments, you could get rich very quickly. The newspapers and CNBC were filled with stories of twenty-four-year-old millionaires, start-up companies going through the roof, initial public offerings outlandishly doubling and tripling their price on their first day of trading. And the market! In the previous year, 1999, the Nasdaq composite index went up 85.6 percent; it went up by more than 39 percent the year before. And, as the market soared, you could feel it. You would have to be insensible not to feel it. All around, in the suddenly resplendent corporate pomp of once-dreary San Jose in Silicon Valley; in the crisp linen and sparkle of a downtown Manhattan restaurant at lunchtime; in the fatted pages of new and brazenly successful Internet magazines like the Industry Standard-in all these places and many more, you could sense the thrilling, oxygen-rich happiness of wealth being created overnight.

My urgency was driven by hunger. Making money seemed a function of quickness, and in the market, more than anywhere else, you experienced time as the instant dead past. The market underlines the mystery and terror of time: It never stops. As I sat there in the kitchen watching CNBC, there was only the next instant, and the next, rushing toward you, and I kept trying to catch up. In Times Square, across the street from The New Yorker's office, the news headlines and stock results from Dow Jones -"the zipper"-flashed around the corners of the old Times tower. My eyes would travel with a group of words until they hit the corner and disappeared. That was time, always moving on:

No one could pull the words back. Either read them or lose the information forever. The zipper made me slightly ill, and there were much more powerful zippers around. Using the Internet as a speed lane, an ideally informed person would never sleep at all but would trade the markets and chase news and rumors through the links twenty-four hours a day. What bliss! What a nightmare! The market, it turns out, is the quintessence of instability in the Information Age, the perfect paradigm of life as ceaseless change. That is why it is so mesmerizing, so defeating, and, again, so mesmerizing.

I needed to make money, serious money, that year. Not for the usual reasons that prosperous people want to have more cash. I did not want to buy a villa in Tuscany or a BMW 540i or the Lynx $7,692 gas grill with dual smoker drawers. What in the world could you do with such a resplendent cooking apparatus? Barbecue gold-leafed weenies on it? In all, I was quite sure that I was not the patsy-victim of the standard smug liberal critique -the American who does not know that money can't buy happiness.

No, I didn't want to buy anything in particular. I wanted the money so I could hold on to something very important to me. For I had already lost something of incomparable value - not a possession, but the center of my life-and I was in danger of losing a great deal else.

At the beginning of 1999, a year earlier, my wife, Cathleen Schine, announced that she no longer wanted to be married to me. She had to leave, she had to get away for a new life, for she had mysteriously changed in her affections. Not just in her affections.

She had changed in her being, and she was no longer whole, she was broken, and I was not the one to fix what was wrong.

This, then, is our circumstance. Something has gone dreadfully wrong with the world, and with us in the world. Things are out of whack. It is not all our fault, but it is our fault too. We cannot blame our distant parents for that fateful afternoon in the garden, for we were there. We, too, reached for the forbidden fruit-the forbidden fruit by which we not only know good and evil, but, much more fatefully, presume to name good and evil. [...]

The First Word from the cross: "Father, forgive them." Forgiveness costs. Whatever the theory of atonement, this is at the heart of it, that forgiveness costs. Any understanding of what makes at-one-ment possible includes a few simple truths. First, like the child, we know that something very bad has happened. Something has gone very wrong with us and with the world of which we are part. The world is not and we are not what we know was meant to be. That is the most indubitable of truths; it is beyond dispute, it weighs with self-evident force upon every mind and heart that have not lost the sensibility that makes us human. The something very bad that has happened takes the form of the long, dreary list of history's horribles, from concentration camps to the tortured deaths of innocent children. And it takes the everyday forms of the habits of compromise, of loves betrayed, of lies excused, of dreams deferred until they die. The indubitable truth is illustrated in ways beyond number, from Auschwitz to the shattered cookie jar on the kitchen floor. Something very bad has happened.

Second-and here I simplify outrageously, but our purpose is to cut through to the heart of the matter-we are complicit in what has gone so terribly wrong. We have problems with that. World-class criminals, murderers and drug traffickers, if they know what they have done, may have no trouble with that, but for many of us it may be a bit hard to swallow. I mean, we haven't done anything that bad, have we? Surely nothing so bad as to make us responsible for the death of God on the cross ? True, the writer of 1 Timothy called himself "the chief of sinners," and St. Paul did do some nasty things to the Christians in his earlier life as Saul of Tarsus. But then it would seem that he made up for it with an exemplary, indeed saintly, life. Chief of sinners? There would seem to be an element of pious hyperbole there, perhaps even an unseemly boastfulness, a reverse pride, so to speak.

It is difficult to face up to our complicity because the confession of sins does not come easy. It is also difficult because we do not want to compound our complicity by claiming sins that are not ours. We rightly recoil from those who seem to wallow in guilt. The story is told of the rabbi and cantor who, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, lament their sins at great length, each concluding that he is a nobody. Then the sexton, inspired by their example, laments his sins and declares that he, too, is a nobody. "Nuh," says the rabbi to the cantor. "Who is he to be a nobody?"

Contemporary sensibilities are offended by what is dismissively termed "guilt tripping." Some while ago I was on the same lecture platform with a famous television evangelist from California who is noted for accenting the positive and upbeat in the Christian message. According to this evangelist, it is as with Coca-Cola: Everything goes better with Jesus. He had built a huge new church called, let us say, New Life Cathedral, and he explained that during the course of the building there was a debate about whether the cathedral should feature a cross. It was thought that the cross might prompt negative thoughts, maybe even thoughts about suffering and death. "Finally, I said that of course there will be a cross," the famous evangelist said. "After all, the cross is the symbol of Christianity and we are a Christian church. But I can guarantee you," he declared with a triumphant smile, "there is nothing downbeat about the cross at New Life Cathedral!"

St. Paul said the cross is "foolishness to the Greeks" and a "stumbling block to the Jews" and seemed to think it would always be that way. Little did he know what gospel salesmanship would one day achieve. In the eighteenth century, Isaac Watts wrote the hymn words: "Alas! and did my Savior bleed, / And did my Sovereign die? / Would He devote that sacred head / For such a worm as I?" A worm? Really now ? A contemporary hymnal puts it this way: "Would he devote that sacred head / For sinners such as I?" Surely "sinners" is bad enough. Similarly with the much beloved "Amazing Grace." "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me." "Wretch" will never do. That is cleaned up in a contemporary version: "That loved a soul like me."

Examples can be multiplied many times over. Groveling is out, self-esteem is in. And if self-esteem seems not quite the right note for Good Friday, at least our complicity can be understood as limited liability. Very limited. Perhaps the changes in Christian thought are not all bad. There have been in Christian devotion excesses of self-accusation, of "scrupulosity," as it used to be called. Wallowing in guilt and penitential grandstanding are justly criticized. And yet ? We cannot just take the scissors to all those Bible passages that say he died for us and because of us, that they were our sins he bore upon the cross. Yes, Christianity is about resurrection joy, but do not rush to Easter. Good Friday makes inescapable the question of complicity.

I may think it modesty when I draw back from declaring myself chief of sinners, but it is more likely a failure of imagination. For what sinner should I speak if not for myself? Of all the billions of people who have lived and of all the thousands whom I have known, whom should I say is the chief of sinners? Surely I am authorized, surely I am competent to speak only for myself? When in the presence of God the subject of sin is raised, how can I help but say that chiefly it is I? Not to confess that I am chiefly the one is not to confess at all. It is the evasion of Adam, who said, "It was the woman whom you gave to be with me." It is the evasion of Eve, who said, "The serpent beguiled me." It is not to confess at all, and by our making of excuses is our complicity compounded.

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do." But now, like the prodigal son, we have come to our senses. Our lives are measured not by the lives of others, not by our own ideals, not by what we think might reasonably be expected of us, although by each of those measures we acknowledge failings enough. Our lives are measured by who we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls. Finally, the judgment that matters is not ours. The judgment that matters is the judgment of God, who alone judges justly. In the cross we see the rendering of the verdict on the gravity of our sin.

THE DIVINE ME:

The Public Square (Leander Harding quoted by Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, February, 04)

“The quintessential American Religion is the quest for the true and original self which is the ‘pearl of great price,’ the ultimate value. Finding the true self requires absolute and complete freedom of choice unconstrained by any sources of authority outside the self. Limits upon personal freedom and choice are an affront to all that is sacred to the American Religion. When the self-determining self finds ‘the real me’ salvation is achieved and the ultimate self has achieved contact with the ultimate reality. Finding your true self is to the contemporary Gnostic the same thing as finding God. For the Gnostic the purpose of the religious community is to facilitate the quest and validate the results. The contemporary Gnostic church, which can appear in both conservative and liberal forms, is the community of those who know that they have found God because they have found their own uncreated depths. Both devotees of the New Age and many in some ‘conservative’ Christian circles see salvation as purely a matter of personal experience, which can only be validated by those who have had similar ‘deeply personal’ experiences. Notice how perfectly the contemporary presentation of homosexuality fits the American Religion. A person who discovers that he or she is gay has recovered his or her true self and ‘come out’ and come through what the Gnostics called the ‘aeons,’ in this case levels of personal, familial, and social oppression that hinder and constrain the true self. It is a heroic and perilous journey of self-discovery which would be familiar to a first-century Gnostic like Valentinus. That the means of liberation is sexual practice is even a familiar theme. Some ancient Gnostics were ascetic but others counseled sexual license. Both stratagems can come from the same contempt of nature and are different ways of asserting the radical independence of the self. Here is the point. Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire not in spite of being gay, not as an act of toleration and compassion toward gay people, but because he is gay and as such is an icon of the successful completion of the quest to find the true and original self. He has been chosen for high religious office because he represents high religious attainment. He is being recognized and receiving regard for being an accomplished practitioner of the American Religion. According to this Gnostic logic, divorcing his wife and leaving his family to embrace the gay lifestyle is not some unfortunate concession to irresistible sexual urges but an example of the pain and sacrifice that the seeker of the true self must be willing to endure. That natural, organic, and conventional restraints must be set aside is time-worn Gnostic nostrum. From the point of view of this contemporary Gnosticism, if the Church does not validate such a noble quest for enlightenment then it invalidates itself and shows that it is no help in the only spiritual struggle that counts, the struggle to be the ‘real me.’ Because Gene Robinson has ‘found himself’ he has according to the Gnostic logic of the American Religion found God and is naturally thought to be a truly ‘spiritual person’ and a fit person to inspire and lead others on their spiritual journey which is to end in a discovery of the true self which is just so the discovery of the only real god, the Gnostic god...”

Modern men and women, religious or not, will gravitate to any philosophy or faith that puts them personally at the center of all meaning and permits them to do whatever they want.

IN THE COURT WE DON'T TRUST:

Move on to restore constitutional powers to their place (Phyllis Schlafly, February 23, 2004, Townhall)

The opening shot in a campaign to require the federal courts to operate within their authorized jurisdiction was unveiled recently in Montgomery, Ala., as the Constitution Restoration Act.

The original sponsors of Senate Bill 2082 are Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Zell Miller, D-Ga., Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The original sponsors of the companion bill H.R. 3799 are Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and Mike Pence, R-Ind.

This legislation would clarify that the federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear cases brought against a federal, state or local government or officer for acknowledging God. The bill is in response to the dozens of cases filed nationwide asking federal judges to declare the recitation in public schools of the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it includes the words "under God," or asking that the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings or parks be held unconstitutional.

The bill's sponsors believe that federal courts lack the authority to hear such cases or render such a decision.

IT NEEDS TO BE US VS. US NOT US VS. THEM:

London's cops look to New York: London's mayor Ken Livingstone wants to introduce New York-style policing. It is more difficult than it sounds (The Economist, Feb 19th 2004)

WHEN “Red” Ken Livingstone ran London in the early 1980s, he enjoyed cocking a snook at authority over everything from outsize public transport subsidies to Irish terrorism. But reincarnated as the capital's ardently business-friendly, market-minded mayor, keen on road pricing and selling the city abroad, Mr Livingstone has changed his tune on the law. He's now a strong supporter of intensive, highly visible policing. [....]

Initially, the idea was to copy the “zero tolerance” approach of New York's former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and William Bratton, the police commissioner from 1994 to 1996. This interventionist method, also known as “broken windows policing” assumes that minor, unpunished crimes encourage more law-breaking. It's a sensible notion, but results in Britain have so far disappointed. The thinking now is that the new techniques worked in New York because police numbers rose a lot too.

Mr Livingstone hopes to pull off the same trick. He goes into this year's mayoral elections saying that he will be disappointed if crime in London does not halve.

That's a brave and probably a foolish pledge. New York's recovery certainly started with a clampdown on anti-social behaviour—graffiti writing, street drinking, turnstile jumping, and so on. But these low-level miscreants were then shackled, fingerprinted, and (if they didn't have identification) often held overnight in police cells. Over time, the police built up a store of information that they used to solve all sorts of crimes. British police, with their milder approach and heavier form-filling burden, will find these methods hard to copy.

Secondly, away from the neighbourhoods that British politicians tended to visit, New York's cops were trying out more aggressive methods such as undercover buy-and-bust operations, neighbourhood sweeps and “vertical patrols”, in which entire tower blocks were raided. These did more to take bad guys off the streets than harassing squeegee men.

This style of policing only works if citizens are willing to suffer it.

YOU MAY RECALL, WE ROOTED FOR THE PINKERTONS (via ef brown):

As jobs vanish, U.S. is an agricultural colony (Pat Buchanan, Feb. 20, 2004, San Jose Mercury News)

Sen. John Edwards did not win Wisconsin, but he closed a huge gap with John Kerry with astonishing speed in the final week.

The issue propelling Edwards was jobs, the lost jobs under George Bush, and Edwards' attribution of blame for the losses on NAFTA and the trade deals for which John Kerry voted in Congress.

Edwards has plugged into an issue that could cost Bush his presidency. [...]

To neoconservatives of the Wall Street Journal school, these trade numbers are yardsticks of their success at creating a global economy and measures of their triumph in championing NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. To the Old Right, however, manufacturing was a critical component of American power, indispensable to our sovereignty and independence, and the access road for working Americans into the middle class.

THE BUSH REVOLUTION:

Security Workers on Merit (CS Monitor, 2/24/04)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has stepped into line with a commonly accepted practice in corporate America: tying pay increases to performance and the type of job performed.

Last week, the department formally announced its plans to shed an outdated federal system of handing out annual pay increases as a matter of course. The new rules would give government managers the flexibility they need in DHS's primary task of countering terrorists.

Salaries will be structured according to the type of work, a person's experience, and job location - and, notably, not by seniority. And in the case of a national emergency, the president can waive labor agreements. [...]

DHS began putting together 180,000 employees from some 22 government agencies in 2002. When a similar restructuring is complete at the Defense Department, about half the government's 1.8 million civilian employees will have made the transition to the new merit system. That's costly in the short term, but cost-saving in the long run.

"ACQUIRED URGENCY" (via Mike Daley):

Showstoppers: Nine reasons why we never sent our Special Operations Forces after al Qaeda before 9/11. (Richard H. Shultz Jr., 01/26/2004, Weekly Standard)

SINCE 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly declared that the United States is in a new kind of war, one requiring new military forces to hunt down and capture or kill terrorists. In fact, for some years, the Department of Defense has gone to the trouble of selecting and training an array of Special Operations Forces, whose forte is precisely this. One president after another has invested resources to hone lethal "special mission units" for offensive--that is, preemptive--counterterrorism strikes, with the result that these units are the best of their kind in the world. While their activities are highly classified, two of them--the Army's Delta Force and the Navy's SEAL Team 6--have become the stuff of novels and movies.

Prior to 9/11, these units were never used even once to hunt down terrorists who had taken American lives. Putting the units to their intended use proved impossible--even after al Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, bombed two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, and nearly sank the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. As a result of these and other attacks, operations were planned to capture or kill the ultimate perpetrators, Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, but each time the missions were blocked. A plethora of self-imposed constraints--I call them showstoppers--kept the counterterrorism units on the shelf.

I first began to learn of this in the summer of 2001, after George W. Bush's election brought a changing of the guard to the Department of Defense. Joining the new team as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict was Bob Andrews, an old hand at the black arts of unconventional warfare. During Vietnam, Andrews had served in a top-secret Special Forces outfit codenamed the Studies and Observations Group that had carried out America's largest and most complex covert paramilitary operation in the Cold War. Afterwards, Andrews had joined the CIA, then moved to Congress as a staffer, then to the defense industry.

I'd first met him while I was writing a book about the secret war against Hanoi, and we hit it off. He returned to the Pentagon with the new administration, and in June 2001 he called and asked me to be his consultant. I agreed, and subsequently proposed looking into counterterrorism policy. Specifically, I wondered why had we created these superbly trained Special Operations Forces to fight terrorists, but had never used them for their primary mission. What had kept them out of action?

Andrews was intrigued and asked me to prepare a proposal. I was putting the finishing touches on it on the morning of September 11, when al Qaeda struck. With that blow, the issue of America's offensive counterterrorist capabilities was thrust to center stage.

By early November, I had the go-ahead for the study. Our question had acquired urgency: Why, even as al Qaeda attacked and killed Americans at home and abroad, were our elite counterterrorism units not used to hit back and prevent further attacks?

THE BLACK (AND FORGOTTEN) MENCKEN:

George S. Schuyler and Black History Month(s) (Nicholas Stix, February 23, 2004, Mich News)

George S. Schuyler was, simply, the greatest black journalist this country has ever produced. From 1924-1966, he bestrode the negro press like a colossus. Working for Robert Lee Vann's (1879-1940) Pittsburgh Courier weekly newspaper, under his own name, Schuyler penned a column, "News and Views," of which H.L. Mencken remarked, "I am more and more convinced that he is the most competent editorial writer now in practice in this great free republic." Schuyler was in turn known as "the Negro's Mencken." Schuyler wrote the Courier's weekly unsigned, house editorial. He traveled the world, investigating stories, which he wired back to the Courier, such as his world scoop on the return of slavery to Liberia, which had been founded in 1847 by American freedmen. (He was also the first black journalist to write, as a freelancer, for leading white publications, such as the New York Evening Post (now the New York Post), Washington Post, The Nation and The American Mercury). And under no less than eight pseudonyms, he wrote the serial pulp fiction that proved to be the Courier's most popular feature (Samuel I. Brooks, Rachel Call, Edgecombe Wright, John Kitchen, William Stockton, Verne Caldwell and D. Johnson).

Schuyler was also the greatest racial satirist this country has ever seen,
whose classic, 1931 novel, Black No More has twice been reprinted in the past 15 years.

In the same year that Black No More appeared, Schuyler's novel, Slaves Today: A Story of Liberia, was published, in which he presented, in fictional form, his discovery of the very real Liberian slave trade. [...]

George Schuyler's problem was that he was (gasp) . a conservative!

Negro art “made in America” is as non-existent as the widely advertised profundity of Cal Coolidge, the “seven years of progress” of Mayor Hylan, or the reported sophistication of New Yorkers. Negro art there has been, is, and will be among the numerous black nations of Africa; but to suggest the possibility of any such development among the ten million colored people in this republic is self-evident foolishness. Eager apostles from Greenwich Village, Harlem, and environs proclaimed a great renaissance of Negro art just around the corner waiting to be ushered on the scene by those whose hobby is taking races, nations, peoples, and movements under their wing. New art forms expressing the “peculiar” psychology of the Negro were about to flood the market. In short, the art of Homo Africanus was about to electrify the waiting world. Skeptics patiently waited. They still wait.

True, from dark-skinned sources have come those slave songs based on Protestant hymns and Biblical texts known as the spirituals, work songs and secular songs of sorrow and tough luck known as the blues, that outgrowth of ragtime known as jazz (in the development of which whites have assisted), and the Charleston, an eccentric dance invented by the gamins around the public market-place in Charleston, S. C. No one can or does deny this. But these are contributions of a caste in a certain section of the country. They are foreign to Northern Negroes, West Indian Negroes, and African Negroes. They are no more expressive or characteristic of the Negro race than the music and dancing of the Appalachian highlanders or the Dalmatian peasantry are expressive or characteristic of the Caucasian race. If one wishes to speak of the musical contributions of the peasantry of the south, very well. Any group under similar circumstances would have produced something similar. It is merely a coincidence that this peasant class happens to be of a darker hue than the other inhabitants of the land. One recalls the remarkable likeness of the minor strains of the Russian mujiks to those of the Southern Negro.

As for the literature, painting, and sculpture of Aframericans—such as there is—it is identical in kind with the literature, painting, and sculpture of white Americans: that is, it shows more or less evidence of European influence. In the field of drama little of any merit has been written by and about Negroes that could not have been written by whites. The dean of the Aframerican literati written by and about Negroes that could not have been written by whites. The dean of the Aframerican literati is W. E. B. Du Bois, a product of Harvard and German universities; the foremost Aframerican sculptor is Meta Warwick Fuller, a graduate of leading American art schools and former student of Rodin; while the most noted Aframerican painter, Henry Ossawa Tanner, is dean of American painters in Paris and has been decorated by the French Government. Now the work of these artists is no more “expressive of the Negro soul”—as the gushers put it—than are the scribblings of Octavus Cohen or Hugh Wiley.

This, of course, is easily understood if one stops to realize that the Aframerican is merely a lampblacked Anglo-Saxon. If the European immigrant after two or three generations of exposure to our schools, politics, advertising, moral crusades, and restaurants becomes indistinguishable from the mass of Americans of the older stock (despite the influence of the foreign-language press), how much truer must it be of the sons of Ham who have been subjected to what the uplifters call Americanism for the last three hundred years. Aside from his color, which ranges from very dark brown to pink, your American Negro is just plain American.

PERSIA AS POLAND:

Solidarity With Iran: Free people are the only real stability. (MICHAEL MCFAUL AND ABBAS MILANI, February 23, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

On Friday, there was a coup d'état in Iran. By preventing thousands of democratic candidates from participating in the parliamentary elections, the clerics eliminated yet another relatively independent institution of political power. Their next target is the presidency. If President Mohammad Khatami is replaced in 2005 through a similar faux electoral process, then the concentration of monopoly power in the hands of a clique of despotic clerics will be complete.

Contrary to common perception, Iranian society is today one of the most pluralist, and the Islamic regime one of the most fragile, in the region. Even after the election, the prospects for a democratic breakthrough are greater there than elsewhere in the Middle East. Iran occupies the same place in its neighborhood as Poland did in communist Europe in the 1980s. Like Poland then, Iranian society is organized, hostile to the regime, pro-democratic and pro-American, while Iran's rulers--like their Polish counterparts 20 years ago--have no legitimacy, are deeply corrupt, and seem ready to use any means necessary to survive. At the risk of stretching the analogy, last Friday's "coup" in Iran is the equivalent of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's crackdown against Solidarity. Just as in Poland after December 1981, inside Iran the era of compromise and negotiation is now over. [...]

The Bush administration and our European allies cannot be tempted into an agreement with Khamenei or his surrogates. If the past is any indication, the clerics will break any agreement they have signed out of expedience. Already there are signs of their bad faith on their promise to come clean on the extent of their nuclear program. There is even a theological concept--Tagiye--to justify such double-dealings with the "infidels." Nor can they help in Iraq, where Iran's mullahs have in fact little influence over clerics such as Ayatollah Sistani. The only way they can influence events in Iraq is through the thousands of agents they have sent over the borders.

Most importantly, signals of rapprochement would send a demoralizing signal to Iran's democratic forces. Negotiations over weapons inspectors are absolutely necessary, but the interlocutors in such discussions must be elected officials, not unelected clerics. Beyond this limited engagement, President Bush must initiate a more sophisticated strategy for engaging Iranian society--without appearing to legitimize the regime. He must make public statements to assure democratic forces inside Iran that the U.S. is still on their side. President Bush should meet publicly with Iran's genuine democratic leaders, while avoiding imposters claiming to represent the Iranian people. American NGOs must engage more directly with Iranian civil society. Iranian students, scholars and entrepreneurs must be allowed greater interaction with American counterparts. Iran's democratic movement would benefit from contact with the West--with Western societies, ideas and economies. The same strategy and organizations that helped support Polish society in the dark days after December 1981 must be deployed in Iran.

The future of Iran, and of its potential democracy, must be determined inside Iran. But the U.S. can play a crucial role by making clear that democracy is the paramount foreign policy goal in Iran. Arms control negotiations with the mullahs may serve American short-term interests, but at the expense of more lasting gains. If Iran becomes a liberal democracy, surely the Iranian nuclear threat to the U.S. will disappear definitively. After all, did not Poland's Solidarity ultimately do more to end the Cold War than any Soviet-American arms control agreement?

DIE AND LEARN:

Legal Disputes Over Hunt Paralyzed Clinton's Aides (Steve Coll, February 22, 2004, Washington Post)

Clinton's covert policy against bin Laden pursued two goals at the same time. He ordered submarines equipped with cruise missiles to patrol secretly in waters off Pakistan in the hope that CIA spotters would one day identify bin Laden's location confidently enough to warrant a deadly missile strike.

But Clinton also authorized the CIA to carry out operations that legally required the agency's officers to plan in almost every instance to capture bin Laden alive and bring him to the United States to face trial.

This meant the CIA officers had to arrange in advance for detention facilities, extraction flights and other contingencies -- even if they expected that bin Laden would probably die in the arrest attempt. These requirements made operational planning much more cumbersome, the CIA officers contended.

In fashioning this sensitive policy in the midst of an impeachment crisis that lasted into early 1999, Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, struggled to forge a consensus within the White House national security team. Among other things, he had to keep on board a skeptical Attorney General Janet Reno and her Justice Department colleagues, who were deeply invested in law enforcement approaches to terrorism, according to senior officials involved.

As the months passed, Clinton signed new memos in which the language, while still ambiguous, made the use of lethal force by the CIA's Afghan agents more likely, according to officials involved. At first the CIA was permitted to use lethal force only in the course of a legitimate attempt to make an arrest. Later the memos allowed for a pure lethal attack if an arrest was not possible. Still, the CIA was required to plan all its agent missions with an arrest in mind.

Some CIA managers chafed at the White House instructions. The CIA received "no written word nor verbal order to conduct a lethal action" against bin Laden before Sept. 11, one official involved recalled. "The objective was to render this guy to law enforcement." In these operations, the CIA had to recruit agents "to grab [bin Laden] and bring him to a secure place where we can turn him over to the FBI. . . . If they had said 'lethal action' it would have been a whole different kettle of fish, and much easier."

Berger later recalled his frustration about this hidden debate. Referring to the military option in the two-track policy, he said at a 2002 congressional hearing: "It was no question, the cruise missiles were not trying to capture him. They were not law enforcement techniques."

The overriding trouble was, whether they arrested bin Laden or killed him, they first had to find him.

Members of the Bush Cabinet met at the White House on Sept. 4. Before them was a draft copy of a National Security Presidential Directive, a classified memo outlining a new U.S. policy toward al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Massoud.

It had been many months in the drafting. The Bush administration's senior national security team had not begun to focus on al Qaeda until April, about three months after taking office. They did not forge a policy approach until July. Then they took still more weeks to schedule a meeting to ratify their plans.

Among other things, the draft document revived almost in its entirety the CIA plan to aid Massoud that had been forwarded to the lame-duck Clinton White House -- and rejected -- nine months earlier. The stated goal of the draft was to eliminate bin Laden and his organization. The plan called for the CIA to supply Massoud with a large but undetermined sum for covert action to support his war against the Taliban, as well as trucks, uniforms, ammunition, mortars, helicopters and other equipment. The Bush Cabinet approved this part of the draft document.

Other aspects of the Bush administration's al Qaeda policy, such as its approach to the use of armed Predator surveillance drones for the hunt, remained unresolved after the Sept. 4 debate. But on Massoud, the CIA was told that it could at least start the paperwork for a new covert policy -- the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war.

In the Panjshir Valley, unaware of these developments, Massoud read Persian poetry in his bungalow in the early hours of Sept. 9. Later that morning he finally decided to grant an interview to the two Arab journalists visiting from Kabul.

As one of them set up a television camera, the other read aloud a list of questions he intended to ask. About half of them concerned bin Laden.

A bomb secretly packed in the television equipment ripped the cameraman's body apart. It shattered the room's windows, seared the walls in flame and tore Massoud's chest with shrapnel.

Hours later, after Massoud had been evacuated to Tajikistan, his intelligence aide Amrullah Saleh called the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. He spoke to Rich, the bin Laden unit chief. Saleh was sobbing and heaving between sentences as he explained what had happened.

"Where's Massoud?" the CIA officer asked.

"He's in the refrigerator," said Saleh, searching for the English word for morgue.

Massoud was dead, but members of his inner circle had barely absorbed the news. They were all in shock. They were also trying to strategize in a hurry. They had already put out a false story claiming that Massoud had only been wounded. Meanwhile, Saleh told the Counterterrorist Center, the suddenly leaderless Northern Alliance needed the CIA's help as it prepared to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban.

On the morning of Sept. 10, the CIA's daily classified briefings to Bush, his Cabinet and other policymakers reported on Massoud's death and analyzed the consequences for the United States' covert war against al Qaeda.

Donald H. Rumsfeld sat in a vault-like room studded with video screens and talked with President Bush as the Pentagon burned.

"This is not a criminal action," the secretary of defense told Bush over a secure line. "This is war."

The word "war" meant more than going after the al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, the fault line of terrorism. Bush said he wanted retaliation.

The setting was the Pentagon's Executive Support Center, where Rumsfeld held secure video teleconferences with the White House across the Potomac or with ground commanders 10,000 miles away.

The time was 1:02 p.m., less than four hours after terrorists steered American Flight 77 into the Pentagon's southwest wall.

Rumsfeld at first had dashed to the impact site. In his shirt and tie, he helped transport the wounded.

Finally convinced to leave the scene, Rumsfeld entered the closely guarded ESC, where whiffs of burned rubble penetrated the ventilation system. The video monitor in front of him was blank, but there was an audio connection with the president at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

Rumsfeld's instant declaration of war, previously unreported, took America from the Clinton administration's view that terrorism was a criminal matter to the Bush administration's view that terrorism was a global enemy to be destroyed.

"That was really a breakthrough strategically and intellectually," recalls Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. "Viewing the 9/11 attacks as a war that required a war strategy was a very big thought, and a lot flowed from that."

Rumsfeld wanted a war that was fought with ruthless efficiency: special forces, high-tech firepower, a scorecard for killing or capturing terrorists. He had no desire to become the world's jailer. And he refused to be stymied by bureaucracy.

Rumsfeld quickly shared his views in a meeting of his inner circle, the so-called Round Table group including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This would be a global war, Rumsfeld said, and he planned to give Special Operations forces -- Delta Force, SEALs and Green Berets -- unprecedented powers to kill terrorists.

IS JOSEPH STIGLITZ EVEN AN ECONOMIST?:

A Normal Country (Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, March/April 2004, Foreign Affairs)

Russia's economic and political systems remain far from perfect. But their defects are typical of countries at a similar level of economic development. Russia was in 1990, and is today, a middle-income country, with GDP per capita around $8,000 (at purchasing power parity) according to the UN -- comparable to Argentina in 1991 and Mexico in 1999. Almost all democracies in this income range are rough around the edges: their governments suffer from corruption, their judiciaries are politicized, and their press is almost never entirely free. They have high income inequality, concentrated corporate ownership, and turbulent macroeconomic performance. In all these regards, Russia is quite normal. Nor are the common flaws of middle-income capitalist democracies incompatible with further economic and political progress -- if they were, western Europe and the United States would never have left the nineteenth century.

To say that Russia has become a "normal" middle-income country is not to overlook the messiness of its politics and economics, nor to excuse the failures of its leaders. The average middle-income country is not a secure or socially just place to live. Nor is it to say that all middle-income countries are exactly alike. No other such country has Russia's nuclear arms or its pivotal role in international affairs. Yet other countries around Russia's level of income -- from Mexico and Brazil to Malaysia and Croatia -- face a common set of economic problems and political challenges, from similarly precarious vantage points. Russia's struggles to meet such challenges strikingly resemble the experiences of many of its peers.

The popular vision of Russia resembles the reflection in a distorting mirror: its features are recognizable, but they are stretched and twisted out of proportion. To see Russia clearly, one must return to the facts. [...]

As Russian voters go to the polls in March 2004 to elect a president for the fourth time, they will do so in a country that none of them could have envisioned 20 years ago. Russia's economy is no longer the shortage-ridden, militarized, collapsing bureaucracy of 1990. It has metamorphosed into a marketplace of mostly private firms, producing goods and services to please consumers instead of planners. A few business magnates control much of the country's immense reserves of raw materials and troubled banking system, and they lobby hard for favored policies. Small businesses are burdened by corruption and regulation. Still, the economy continues to grow at an impressive pace.

The country's political order, too, has changed beyond recognition. The dictatorship of the party has given way to electoral democracy. Russia's once-powerful Communists no longer control all aspects of social life or sentence dissidents to labor camps. Instead, they campaign for seats in parliament. The press, although struggling against heavy-handed political interventions, is still far more professional and independent than the stilted propaganda machine of the mid-1980s. In slightly more than a decade, Russia has become a typical middle-income capitalist democracy.

So why the dark, at times almost paranoid, view? Why the hyperbole about kleptocracy, economic cataclysm, and KGB takeovers? A number of factors -- psychological, ideological, and overtly political -- led to the dyspeptic consensus among Russia-watchers in the West. Many Western observers simply reacted in a generous, if unreflective, way to the visible suffering of Russians dislocated by the transition. Beside the excesses of the new super-rich, the plight of impoverished pensioners seemed doubly shocking. But there were also some less pure motivations for focusing on the darker side of Russian life. First, there is sensationalism. Newspaper editors and television producers knew they could make money exploiting the anxieties of Western publics with chilling exposes of the Russian mafiya. Second, the intellectual left adopted Russia as the poster child for its crusade against globalization. With Russia's leaders embracing market rhetoric and reforms, the country's initial hardships could be portrayed as proof of the dangers of excessive liberalization. Third, Russia became a football in American politics during the late 1990s. With President Bill Clinton committed to supporting Yeltsin and Vice President Al Gore deeply involved in steering U.S.-Russia relations, bashing Moscow became a way for Republicans to score points in the 2000 election.

Exaggerated despair over Russia was also fueled by a fundamental and widespread misconception. Many Western observers thought of Russia in the early 1990s as a highly developed, if not wealthy, country. With its brilliant physicists and chess players, its space program, and its global military influence, Russia did not look like an Argentina or a South Korea. Believing that Russia started off from a highly developed base, these people saw the country's convergence to the norm for middle-income countries as a disastrous aberration. The same misconception informed some academic analyses. A recent paper by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Karla Hoff makes the remarkable observation that, when it comes to legal institutions, "between Russia and most other developed, capitalist societies there was a qualitative difference [in the 1990s]." There was indeed a qualitative difference: Russia was never a "developed, capitalist society."

WHAT A LUCKY NATION WE WERE.

Washington's Farewell Address (1796)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?

Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

WE NEED MORE FATWAS (via John Resnick):

Fatwa issued for 'shameless' reality TV (AP, 18feb04)

THE dean of Kuwait's Islamic Law College has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to boycott a popular reality TV show for its "shamelessness and decadence."

Star Academy brings together talented young men and women from different Arab countries - including Kuwait - to learn music while they live under the same roof. One participant is voted off each week.

"Following this program or supporting it (by voting for candidates) is sacrilegious," Mohammed al-Tabtabai said in comments published Tuesday.

"Heads of every family should prevent its members from watching it," because such programs are responsible for "stripping our society from its good Islamic values," he added.

But his call is likely to be dismissed by many of the program's fans, who watch it for hours a day.

Star Academy is aired from Lebanon by the privately owned Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. Viewers can watch the participants 24 hours a day on a satellite music channel, Nagham, as they cook, eat, fight, hug, kiss and attend sports, music and dance classes. Men and women have separate sleeping quarters.

WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE HAPPENED ON CHRETIEN'S WATCH?:

Funding fracas ends Martin's honeymoon: Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin, and his Liberal party are suffering a major slump in support over a financial scandal. (Anne McIlroy, February 23, 2004, The Guardian)

It wasn't much of honeymoon. Paul Martin had waited 14 years to become Canada's prime minister, only to see support for his Liberal party plummet just weeks after he had reconvened parliament.

The stunning slide, which included a drop of more than 10 percentage points in one day alone, leaves Mr Martin at risk of winning only a minority government should he call an election, as expected, this spring. Depending on which poll you read, support for the Liberals currently stands as low as 36%.

The sudden drop in the party's popularity has been triggered by a scandal over the misuse of public funds in a programme put in place in Quebec.

The programme was introduced after separatists came within a whisker of winning the 1995 referendum on sovereignty, and was designed to boost the federal presence in the predominantly French-speaking province.

The amount of money involved was relatively small - less than $75m (£40m), but the fact that it appeared to go directly into the coffers of communication companies with Liberal ties - companies that appeared to have done very little, if anything, to earn the cash - sparked outrage amongst Canadian voters.

The auditor-general, Sheila Fraser, used the word fraud in her report detailing what had happened.

ANOTHER REASON TO LOVE ORWELL:

The ever-longer road to Wigan Pier: Biographers often fall out of love with their subjects. But a year after publication of his life of Orwell, DJ Taylor is excited by new material about the writer and has become an obsessive relic collector (DJ Taylor, February 21, 2004, The Guardian)

Quite as fascinating is a letter sent from Orwell's sickbed in Hairmyres Hospital near Glasgow in May 1948 to a Mrs Marshall, a lady with whom he had begun to correspond during the war. Mrs Marshall was clearly solicitous of his welfare. At any rate, he begins by confessing that "It has been on my conscience for a long time that you once sent me a pot of jam for which I never thanked you."

The letter is chiefly interesting as a statement of Orwell's literary opinions: his continuing dislike of JB Priestley ("...he is awful, and it is astonishing that he has actually had a sort of comeback in reputation during the last year or two"), his admiration for Osbert Sitwell and George Gissing ("one of the best English novelists, though he has never had his due") and his attempt, while bed-bound, to read Henry James ("I can never really get to care for him").

I DON'T THINK THAT WORD MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS (via mc):

U.S. SEARCH FOR BIN LADEN INTENSIFIES (Rowan Scarborough, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Pentagon is moving elements of a supersecret commando unit from Iraq to the Afghanistan theater to step up the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

A Defense Department official said there are two reasons for repositioning parts of Task Force 121: First, most high-value human targets in Iraq, including Saddam Hussein, have been caught or killed. Second, intelligence reports are increasing on the whereabouts of bin Laden, the terror leader behind the September 11 attacks. [...]

Task Force 121 is a mix of Army Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs, transported on helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The SEALs and soldiers are based at Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Delta-SEAL teams typically move into theater, practice missions and wait for military and CIA intelligence to provide the location of a target, such as Saddam.

The new task force to hunt bin Laden in the Afghanistan area likely will be led by a Navy SEAL who was toasted in Washington while working antiterrorism issues in the Bush administration. The Washington Times is withholding his name because of the secret nature of the operation.

THE DEBT HOAX:

Crocodile Tears: THE RIGHT'S PHONY OUTRAGE OVER DEFICITS (Jonathan Chait , 02.23.04, New Republic)

, the most expensive spending programs under Bush have been for defense, homeland security, and international aid. None of these areas has grown fat. To the contrary, the military is overstretched, homeland security underfunded, and aid programs to build strong governments and civil societies that can resist radical Islam woefully inadequate. Still, if you add up the cost of all the legislation enacted since Bush took office--as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities did--these three areas account for 30 percent of that cost. New entitlements account for 13 percent, and, with the Medicare benefit projected to grow, that share will increase over time. But, rather than tackle these areas of spending--or address the elephant in the living room, the president's tax cuts, which account for 55 percent of the "cost" of legislation under Bush (more on this later)--conservatives have focused the brunt of their fiscal wrath upon a relatively small and innocuous slice of the federal budget called domestic discretionary spending. 

Discretionary spending includes everything the government does other than entitlements, defense, and interest on the national debt. All of this--from national highways to scientific research to public housing--accounts for a mere 17 percent of the overall budget. It makes up a still smaller 3 percent of the total cost of legislation passed under Bush, and its impact on the budget pales beside the tax cuts. But, because many of these programs lack strong political constituencies--at least when compared with heavyweights like Medicare--they are taking the brunt of the conservative attack. Heritage paints the growth in discretionary spending as insidious: "[N]on-defense discretionary spending," argues its December backgrounder, "has reached 3.9 percent of GDP ($3,900 per household) for the first time in nearly 20 years." But most of that increase has come from homeland security. The Center for American Progress found that, over the last decade, domestic programs unrelated to security have grown from 3.3 percent of GDP to--da-dum!--3.4 percent of GDP. 

Trying to balance the budget by squeezing domestic discretionary spending is like trying to lose weight by giving up that slice of tomato on your cheeseburger. Not that Republicans aren't trying anyway: GOP leaders have proposed a total freeze on discretionary spending this year. Doing so would save $2 billion. To grasp the absurdity of that effort, keep in mind that this year's deficit is expected to top $500 billion. Even if Congress persuaded Bush to completely eliminate all discretionary programs including homeland security, that would still leave Washington with $137 billion in red ink. 

The big picture, then, is this: Overall spending has crept up a bit, now taking up 1.6 percent more of the economy than it did when Bush took office, but it remains modest by modern standards. The really spectacular change is in tax revenue, which has fallen from 20.9 percent to 15.8 percent of GDP since Bush took office. The collapse in revenue, in other words, has been more than three times the growth in spending. This year, revenue will account for a smaller share of the economy than in any year since 1950. Now, it's true that much of that revenue loss stems from broader economic factors, not just tax cuts. But, even if you look only at deficit increases caused directly by legislative action, the cost of the tax cuts is still nearly five times the size of all the non-security spending increases and accounts for more than all new spending (defense, homeland security, and domestic) put together. 

MAYHEM AT THE MARGINS (via ef brown):

Defining the Domestic Role of the Military (Peter Brownfeld, February 23, 2004, Fox News)

Amidst calls to use the military to fight the war on terrorism at home, some experts warn that allowing the military to perform a domestic role would set a dangerous precedent, put civilians at unnecessary risk and threaten Americans' basic civil liberties.

"The military has been so impressive abroad that in many ways, it's not surprising that some people think it could be equally effective at fighting the war at home," said Gene Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute.

But, Healy added, those people could find themselves sadly mistaken.

"A free society is not a militarized society. It is a society where law enforcement is the duty of civilians and any effort to change that ought to meet a very heavy burden of proof," he said.

A number of politicians have been talking about making such a change. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., have been calling for a militarization of America's borders.

NOT WHETHER BUT WHEN:

Reform still tops agenda in Iran: Following Friday's vote, moderate conservatives are seen by some as the new standard bearer for reform. (Scott Peterson, 2/23/04, CS Monitor)

Among the conservatives, two factions - hard-line and moderate - are already gearing up for the new tug of war. But amid a cascade of uncertainties and mixed signals, Iran's political future is far from clear.

Many reformist Iranians predict renewed repression, and point to the closure of two reformist newspapers on the eve of the vote as a sign of things to come. But others argue that moderates will prevail and embrace key elements of the reform agenda.

"This is the point where the usefulness of hard-liners is over," says Amir Mohebian, a director of the conservative newspaper Resalat. "They will endeavor to stay in [control], but their time is over. The new mission belongs to moderate conservatives.

"Hard-liners are like dynamite: You can destroy things with them, but can't build things," adds Mr. Mohebian.

INDEBTEDNESS:

The good folks at Bruderhof have made available a free Ebook of Kierkegaard's writings, Provocations:
Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, about which First Things says:

This thoughtful selection of Kier kegaardís writings serves on several levels. In the first place, it makes the otherwise daunting Kierkegaard accessible in an inviting format. Secondly, its logical arrangement of texts presents the major themes of his work, as in the sections "To Will One Thing," "Truth and the Inwardness of Passion," and "Anxiety and the Gospel of Suffering." And thirdly the book is prayerful: it invites worshipful devotion as much as intellectual reflection, a rare and rewarding combination.

Love is perhaps best described as an infinite debt: when a person is gripped by love, he feels like he is in infinite debt. Usually one says that the person who receives love comes into debt by being loved. Similarly we say that children are in love’s debt to
their parents, because their parents have loved them first and the children’s love is only a part-payment on the debt or a repayment. This is true, to be sure. Nevertheless, such talk is all too reminiscent of a bookkeeping relationship – a bill is submitted and it must be paid; love is shown to us, and it must be repaid with love.

We should not, then, speak about one’s coming into debt by receiving love. No, it is the one who loves who is in debt. Because he is aware of being gripped by love, he perceives this as being in infinite debt. Remarkable! To be sure, by giving money one does not come into debt; it is rather the recipient who becomes indebted. But when love gives, the one who loves comes
into infinite debt. What a beautiful, holy modesty love takes along as a companion!

TUNE CALLING:

Before Teaching Ethics, Stop Kidding Yourself (GORDON MARINO, 2/20/04, Chronicle of Higher Education)

Over the past couple of decades, the ethics industry has kicked into high gear. We now have a growing number of professional ethicists who are prepared to act as superegos for hire to the various professions. Indeed, take any given profession and there is another profession called the ethics of that profession. (Think bioethics, medical ethics, legal ethics, computer ethics, and so forth.) [...]

People who presume to teach ethics should help their students be honest with themselves about their own interests. Such candor is, of course, part of the Socratic curriculum of coming to know yourself. But it is hard psychological work, which we do not value much in these post-Freudian times. Unless our ethics students learn to examine themselves and what they really value, their command of ethical theories and their ability to think about ethics from diverse perspectives are not likely to bring them any closer to being willing and able to do the right thing.

AS VIETNAM BACKFIRES ON CABANA BOY:

Bush Campaign Denies Kerry's Allegation (NEDRA PICKLER, 2/22/04, AP)

George W. Bush's presidential campaign told John Kerry it "does not condone" any effort to impugn his patriotism but asserted that senator's voting record on national security and defense issues is a valid target of political scrutiny.

Responding Sunday to a letter in which Kerry accused President Bush of using surrogates to attack his military service in Vietnam and his subsequent opposition to the war, Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign chairman Marc Racicot said, "I ask you to elevate the remarkably negative tone of your campaign and your party over the past year."

Kerry had taken umbrage at statements that Sen. Saxby Chambliss made earlier, predicting trouble for the Massachusetts Democrat in Georgia's primary because of a "32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems."

In the letter to Bush Saturday, Kerry wrote: "As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our nation's history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So, it has been hard to believe that you would choose to reopen these wounds for your personal political gain. But, that is what you have chosen to do."

IT'S A BAD THING:

Martha Stewart's Surreal Ordeal (Christopher Westley, February 23, 2004, Mises.org)

So the Martha Stewart trial has come to this. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum ruled that the government cannot introduce testimony about how Stewart's statements to the press asserting her innocence of violating insider trading law affected investors of her firm, Martha Stewart Living.

As a result, the government has effectively lost. The New York Times reports that this development is the nail in the coffin in the prosecution's case, noting that "[a] person involved in Ms. Stewart's defense said the ruling "renders the securities fraud charge dead on arrival, although other material might be introduced by prosecutors themselves."

This statement highlights what this trial is about--not insider trading, but the right to declare one's innocence, even when the government later agrees with the declaration.

THAT'S THE SPIRIT!:

Will Eisner Draws a Rebuttal (STEVEN LEE BEEBER, 2/23/04, NY Times)

What do you do 25 years after creating a new artistic genre? If you are Will Eisner, you do the same thing again in your late 80's.

A Contract With God, set in the tenements of his Bronx youth and published in 1978, established Mr. Eisner as the father of the graphic novel. Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic history that applies his dark, 1930's-style illustrations to real events of a century ago.

This latest work, called "The Plot," tells the story behind the creation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the infamous Russian forgery that purported to reveal a Jewish plan to rule the world. Mr. Eisner, the son of Jews who fled Europe, has reached into the past to say something about the present: a time, he says, when anti-Semitism is again on the rise.

"I was surfing the Web one day when I came across this site promoting `The Protocols' to readers in the Mideast," said Mr. Eisner, 86. "I was amazed that there were people who still believed `The Protocols' were real, and I was disturbed to learn later that this site was just one of many that promoted these lies in the Muslim world. I decided something had to be done."

WHERE'S THE ANTI-WAR CROWD ON THIS ONE?:

Afghanistan: Now it's all-out war (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 2/24/04, Asia Times)

A massive land and air military operation on either side of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is now under way, with the main goals of catching leading commanders of the Afghan resistance, as well as Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

The focal point of the operation at this point is the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on the Pakistani side, and Paktia and Paktika in Afghanistan. On Sunday, Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat confirmed that Pakistani paramilitary troops had been deployed in these tribal areas.

In the coming weeks, the operation is gradually expected to increase in intensity and size and spread to all seven of the Pakistani-administrated tribal areas, and subsequently to all major Afghan cities, including Jalalabad, Asadabad, Gardez, Khost, Zabul and Kandahar, in a bid to wipe out the Afghan resistance.

Well-placed sources stationed in South Waziristan's Wana told Asia Times Online of a large mobilization of Pakistani troops in the two agencies, adding that several villages situated on the border had been evacuated as there were fears that they would be caught in crossfire between Pakistani troops, guerrillas and US-led coalition troops on the Afghan side of the border.

Pakistan law-enforcement agencies have virtually sealed entry and exit routes in North and South Waziristan, and travelers report exhaustive security checkposts.

WO-OH, I KANT GO FOR THAT:

Immanuel Kant and the Iraq war: The German philosopher Immanuel Kant thought his way through the global conflict sparked by the American and French Revolutions. His response was an appeal to enlightenment, law and reason. Two hundred years on, the distinguished English philosopher Roger Scruton asks: where would Kant’s principles lead him today? (Roger Scruton, 19 - 2 - 2004, Open Democracy)

There is always a danger, when reading Kant, of overlooking his profound critique of reason and its aims. Although he believed that reason is the distinguishing mark of the human condition, and although he upheld the Enlightenment view of our nature – as free beings guided by rational choice – Kant also believed that reason is prone to overreach itself. An example of this is when reason interprets a merely ‘regulative’ idea as a constitutive principle.

The idea of a world republic is just such a regulative idea. For Kant, it does not indicate a condition that can actually be achieved, but an ‘Ideal of Reason’ – an idea that we must bear in mind, by way of understanding the many ways in which mortal creatures inevitably fall short of it. The principal way in which we fall short is by failing to establish any kind of republic, even at the local level. And Kant is clear that a League of Nations can establish a genuine rule of law only if its members are also republics. Unless that condition is fulfilled, nations remain in the rivalrous state of nature.

In a republic, the people themselves are the authors of the laws that govern them, and no official can claim exemption. The members of a republic are not subjects but citizens, bound by reciprocal rights and duties and governed by representative institutions. Although Kant was suspicious of democracy and tolerant of constitutional monarchy, he nevertheless believed that free beings demand accountable government, and that nothing less could enable them to realise their potential.

Furthermore, we are commanded by reason to treat each rational being as an end and not as a means only. States in which this command is not obeyed by the rulers, or made impossible to be obeyed by anyone else, are states that violate the moral law. They also fail to conform to the version of the social contract that Kant derived from his vision of morality. Such states are intrinsically illegitimate, which means that their disappearance is good in itself, and the aim and desire of all rational beings.

This does not mean that the violent overthrow of despotism is justified, since violence has moral costs that may not easily be accepted. Although Kant was a passionate defender of the American and French Revolutions, and even inclined to turn a blind eye to the crimes of the Jacobins, news of the Terror and of the judicial murder of King Louis XVI horrified him as it horrified his contemporaries.

Nevertheless, the recourse to international law, he believed, presupposes that members of the League of Nations are republics. If they are not republics, but regard themselves as in a state of nature vis-à-vis other states, then it may be necessary to confront them with violence, in order to prevent them from imposing their will. Of course, the violence must be proportional to the threat, and its aim must be to bring about a lasting peace. But war conducted for the sake of peace was, for Kant as for his predecessors in the ‘just war’ tradition, a paradigm of legitimate belligerence.

THE FREAK SHOW:

Against Illiberal Internationalism (Carroll Andrew Morse, 02/20/2004, Tech Central Station)

The identification of democratic globalism as a unique school of thought makes Krauthammer's speech important. Krauthammer's taxonomic structure for foreign policy thought is equally as impressive. The best classification schemes transcend mere explanation of the previously observed; they point to possibilities yet to be identified. In the natural sciences, the classic example of this was the prediction of new chemical elements to fill the gaps in the original periodic table of elements. In political science, a good classification scheme helps fill gaps in the prevailing worldview. By extending Krauthammer's categories, we can identify a fifth school of coherent American foreign policy thought -- an influential school of that has escaped scrutiny because it has never been called by an accurate name.

Krauthammer's categories of "liberal internationalist" and "democratic globalist" suggest a natural extension. They imply the existence of internationalists and globalists who are neither liberal nor democratic, "illiberal internationalists" or "oligarchic globalists." Starting from Krauthammer's description of liberal internationalism, where he generously suggests that liberal internationalists are not motivated by "anti-Americanism, or lack of patriotism or a late efflorescence of 1960s radicalism," but seek "to turn the state of nature into a norm driven community. To turn the law of the jungle into the rule of law," we can identify a school of thought that fits into an illiberal internationalist or oligarchic globalist category.

Despite their high-minded rhetoric, respect for the rule of law and the expansion of humanitarian norms is not the most important item for many contemporary internationalists. The de facto primary goal of the present international system is ensuring that the world's borders do not change. When this goal is assured, the next highest goal is the protection of continuity of government within the existing borders -- even when that means defending the legitimacy of brutal totalitarian states. The protection of individual freedom and democracy places a distant third, at best. Occasionally, in a Liberia or a Haiti, when civil government utterly collapses, the international community will call for coordinated action, but these cases are the exception, not the rule. Humanitarian goals are pursued only when they can be done without interfering with the decidedly illiberal goal of preserving existing state structures at any cost.

Ultimately, a school of thought that claims that "rights" of states trump the rights of individuals cannot claim the mantle of liberalism. A true liberalism would find means to act against massacres of individuals perpetrated by the governments of Iraq and Zimbabwe, to remedy chronic violations of human rights perpetrated by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Cuba. This does not require supporting war in each case, necessarily, but it does require advocating something more effective than waiting for dictators to die and hoping that something better replaces them.

Perhaps this model of global engagement is the twenty-first century heir to isolationism.

ONE DAY AT A TIME:

The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire (Sebastian Mallaby, March/April 2002, Foreign Affairs)

a new imperial moment has arrived, and by virtue of its power America is bound to play the leading role. The question is not whether the United States will seek to fill the void created by the demise of European empires but whether it will acknowledge that this is what it is doing. Only if Washington acknowledges this task will its response be coherent.

The first obstacle to acknowledgment is the fear that empire is infeasible. True, imposing order on failed states is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous. Between 1991 and 2000 the United States spent $15 billion on military intervention in the Balkans. A comparable effort in Afghanistan, a much bigger area with deeper traditions of violence, would cost far more. But these expenses need to be set against the cost of fighting wars against terrorists, drug smugglers, and other international criminals. Right after September 11, Congress authorized $40 billion in emergency spending -- and that was just a down payment in the struggle against terrorism. The estimated cost to the U.S. economy ranges from $100 billion to $300 billion.

The second obstacle to facing the imperial challenge is the stale choice between unilateralism and multilateralism. Neither option, as currently understood, provides a robust basis for responding to failed states. Unilateralists rightly argue that weak allies and cumbersome multilateral arrangements undercut international engagement. Yet a purely unilateral imperialism is no more likely to work than the sometimes muddled multilateral efforts assembled in the past. Unilateralists need to accept that chaotic countries are more inclined to accept foreign nation builders if they have international legitimacy. And U.S. opinion surveys suggest that international legitimacy matters domestically as well. The American public's support for the Persian Gulf War and the Afghan conflict reflected the perception that each operation was led by the United States but backed by the court of world opinion.

The best hope of grappling with failed states lies in institutionalizing this mix of U.S. leadership and international legitimacy. Fortunately, one does not have to look far to see how this could be accomplished. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) already embody the same hybrid formula: both institutions reflect American thinking and priorities yet are simultaneously multinational. The mixed record of both institutions -- notably the World Bank's failure on failed states -- should not obscure their organizational strengths: they are more professional and less driven by national patronage than are U.N. agencies.

A new international body with the same governing structure could be set up to deal with nation building. It would be subject neither to the frustrations of the U.N. Security Council, with its Chinese and Russian vetoes, nor to those of the U.N. General Assembly, with its gridlocked one-country-one-vote system. A new international reconstruction fund might be financed by the rich countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the other countries that currently contribute to the World Bank's subsidized lending program to the poorest nations. It would assemble nation-building muscle and expertise and could be deployed wherever its American-led board decided, thus replacing the ad hoc begging and arm-twisting characteristic of current peacekeeping efforts. Its creation would not amount to an imperial revival. But it would fill the security void that empires left -- much as the system of mandates did after World War I ended the Ottoman Empire.

The new fund would need money, troops, and a new kind of commitment from the rich powers -- and it could be established only with strong U.S. leadership. Summoning such leadership is immensely difficult, but America and its allies have no easy options in confronting failed states. They cannot wish away the problem that chaotic power vacuums can pose. They cannot fix it with international institutions as they currently exist. And they cannot sensibly wish for a unilateral American imperium. They must either mold the international machinery to address the problems of their times, as their predecessors did in creating the U.N., the World Bank, and the IMF after World War II. Or they can muddle along until some future collection of leaders rises to the challenge.

LET A MILLION FLOWERS BLOOM:

2 languages better than 1, kids say: City school board to vote tonight on creating a charter at Fruit Ridge. (Erika Chavez, February 19, 2004, Sacramento Bee)

Founded in 1994, the Fruit Ridge immersion program starts in kindergarten with 90 percent Spanish instruction and 10 percent English. Each year, Spanish instruction decreases by 10 percent.

While students in two-way immersion programs initially score lower on standardized tests, they do as well or better than their peers in third grade and beyond, said Julie Sugarman, a researcher at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a nonprofit think tank that pioneered curricula for English as a Second Language and promotes foreign language instruction.

The same trends hold true at Fruit Ridge. Soto-Chapa said that almost four out of 10 English-speaking second-through fifth-graders in the Spanish immersion program score at advanced or proficient levels on the English Language Arts portion of the California Standards Test. By comparison, only one out of 10 English speakers in grades two through five not enrolled in the Spanish immersion program score at advanced or proficient levels.

US:

'His Blood Be on Us': Mel Gibson and Matthew 27:25: If the verse meant only the Jews bear responsibility for Jesus' death, it would overturn Christian theology. (David Klinghoffer, BeliefNet)

Mel Gibson has reportedly dropped from his forthcoming film, The Passion of the Christ, what have been called the most inflammatory words in the New Testament. This cut has been hailed as a victory for Jews who worry about the impact of the film. Is it really something to celebrate? [...]

Of course there have been anti-Semites who understood Matthew’s words differently, and any such hateful individuals still around today will find confirmation of their bigotry in Gibson’s film. As with any piece of art, what you see will be conditioned by what you bring to it. In the same way, because representatives of the ADL see Jewish victimization wherever they look, they will see anti-Semitism in the film even if none is there.

But it’s wrong to expect Mel Gibson to tailor his work because of the extreme imaginings of a minority of viewers, whether anti-Semitic bigots or self-appointed anti-bigotry watchdogs.

When you consider that Matthew got his idea in the first place from his Jewish background, and that at the same time it speaks not of Jewish people in particular but of mankind in general, the grounds for insisting that Gibson excise the verse seem very tenuous. According to news reports, he only deleted the scene because friendly screening audiences objected to it. That, at least, is a comfort. The irony would be too painful if he had been pressured into editing his faith by critics who claim to be defenders of the freedom of faith.

BIG MONEY ON THE SIDELINES:

ICI money market mutual fund assets fell in week (Reuters, 2/22/04)

Total money market mutual fund assets stood at $2.096 trillion in the Jan. 21 week, down by $1.05 billion from a revised $2.097 trillion the prior week, an industry trade group said on Thursday.

LONG WAY TO GO TO SLAY A STRAW MAN:

Satellite may sway warming debate (Hil Anderson, 2/20/2004, UPI)

Engineers in an ultra-clean assembly room near Los Angeles International Airport Friday were putting the finishing touches on a 6,500-pound satellite that potentially could change the entire debate over the controversial issue of global warming.

The sophisticated bird -- known as Aura -- is to take flight this summer from Southern California and spend the next six years in orbit, giving earthbound scientists their best look yet at the feared phenomenon of creeping climate changes that have fueled a heated debate among environmentalists, space scientists and political policymakers around the world.

"Some people don't believe it (global warming) is happening," said Anne Douglass, NASA's deputy project manager for the satellite, which is scheduled for launch in June from Vandenberg Air Force Base. "And this satellite will provide them with a lot of information."

"One of the things people are always looking for are signs of global warming that are inescapable," Douglass told United Press International Friday after a ceremony marking Aura's completion.

ALL GREEN LIGHTS FOR RED KEN:

London road success could go global (Peter Almond, 2/21/2004, UPI)

All but the most skeptical admit that London's "Congestion Charge" experiment has significantly cut traffic, increased road speeds, doubled bus ridership and raised additional revenue -- all in the last year.

Now, socialist-minded Mayor Ken Livingstone, who campaigned for election on his pledge to introduce the charge four years ago, is so set for re-election, he has asked the government to consider adding the charge to cities all over the country.

"The scheme has made a real difference in getting London moving again," said Livingstone. "Despite the dire predictions before the launch of the scheme, congestion charging has proved a success. That is why nearly three quarters of Londoners now support the scheme. It works."

That's not quite the view of some business people in London's financial district. They blame the $9 daily charge for a significant loss of retail business. They say motorists are scared away.

"Shops, restaurants and business in the zone have been damaged, many to the point of closure," said Livingstone's Conservative Party mayoral opponent Steve Norris.

Norris cites a survey by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors claiming that 90 percent of retailers have been adversely affected. However, an independent poll published by London First, a business organization, shows that 58 percent of firms surveyed see the impact on the economy as being positive or neutral. Only 26 percent say it is negative.

WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

Pakistan plans attacks on Qaeda and Taliban (David Rohde and Carlotta Gall, February 23, 2004, NY Times)

Pakistan is preparing to mount a major military offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces along its border with Afghanistan in the next several weeks, Pakistani government officials said Sunday.

The operation is expected to be the first act of a violent, and potentially pivotal, spring along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In recent weeks, signs have emerged that American and Pakistani forces, as well as Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, are all preparing to mount their own separate "spring offensives" in the area.

American military officials expect Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to try to disrupt national elections scheduled for June in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. and Pakistani forces are expected to step up their efforts to gain firm control of the border area and try to capture the fugitive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

N. Korea should be given ultimatum (Richard Halloran, 2/22/04, Honolulu Advertiser)

When American, Chinese, Japanese, South Korean and Russian diplomats sit down with the North Koreans in Beijing on Wednesday, they might want to consider how the North Koreans have become almost irrelevant and should be ignored. [...]

[A]merican negotiators in Beijing may want to look the North Koreans in the eye and say: "We have had enough of your brinkmanship and failure to negotiate in good faith. We are acutely aware of your lying, deception and dissembling in the past. When you're ready for genuine negotiations, call me at this telephone number.

"And just so there is no misunderstanding, a nuclear or any other threat to our allies in South Korea or Japan will draw swift and overwhelming retribution at a time and place and in a manner of our choosing. Have a nice day."

LEAVE THE SADDAM'S TO US, WE'LL LEAVE REBUILDING TO YOU:

In Iraq, It's Time for Some Smarts (Fareed Zakaria, 3/01/04, Newsweek)

As the war in Iraq was coming to a close, many people—from Tony Blair to Joseph Biden (and even this writer)—urged Washington to give the United Nations a central role in postwar politics. This had been a well-worked formula for at least a decade: in Kosovo, East Timor and most recently in Afghanistan, where it produced a legitimate government and a constitutional process with remarkably little conflict. But the Bush administration was adamantly opposed—even though sidelining the U.N. would mean fewer troops and less money from other countries. "We fought the war," administration officials explained to me at the time, "and besides, the U.N. is not competent to handle a complex undertaking like Iraq." Six months later, with Washington facing a political train wreck in Iraq, whom did it call? The United Nations.

The lesson here is not that the United Nations is always right. It isn't. The lesson is that America needs to exercise power shrewdly, using those instruments that help achieve its goals—U.N., NATO, World Bank, Rotary Club, whatever. As politics in Iraq get more complicated—and they're going to get a lot more complicated—Washington will have to be far more sophisticated than it has been.

It was obvious that a nakedly American occupation was going to make Iraqis resent the United States. The Pentagon's ideologues couldn't see this, but Ayatollah Ali Sistani did.

OLD HATE AND NEW:

Return of the old hatred: Anti-Semitism is on the increase and its roots are not in the Right but in the Sharon-hating Left (Melanie Phillips, February 22, 2004, The Observer)

Coverage of Israel is obsessive and disproportionate, and marked by a hysteria and malice not applied to any other conflict. And it cannot be divorced from the overt Jew-hatred that has now surfaced in Britain and Europe, particularly the give-away calumny of world Jewish power. The claim that Jews conspire to dominate the world is one of the oldest tropes of classic Jew-hatred. Astonishingly, claims made by the European Left are not far removed. It repeats claims that the 'powerful Jewish lobby' is now running American foreign policy. When Labour MP Tam Dalyell observed that a 'cabal' of Jewish power was behind Blair, he was thought a loveable eccentric. In the House of Lords, a meeting heard that Jews control the British media. One peer told a Jewish colleague: 'We've finished off Saddam. Your lot are next.'

The outcome is that an astonishing axis has developed between Islamic Jew-haters and the Left, marching behind the banners of 'human rights' on demonstrations in Europe producing chants of 'Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas'.

Why? The main reason is ignorance of both the Middle East's history and its present. Next, the Left's hatred of Sharon is so great, along with its prejudice that America/the West is the oppressor and therefore the Islamic/Third World the victim, that it can't see what is happening.

Then there's the Left's deconstruction of the very concepts of objectivity and truth, so that it has become a conduit instead for propaganda and lies; and finally, its own history of Jew-hatred from Marx onwards. The final twist is that there are some Jews on the Left who subscribe to all the above too.

UMM, BUT OF COURSE WE MUSTN’T PRE-JUDGE THE VERDICT:

Ruling on the Barrier (Claire Cavanaugh, Radio Netherlands, 13/02/04)

At the urging of the Palestinians, the UN General Assembly has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague to rule on Israel's construction of the controversial security barrier through Palestinian territory.

While Israel's announcement that it will boycott the ICJ hearing has surprised few, there's been more attention for the level of international criticism about the case being heard at all. The United States and European Union have both questioned the international court's jurisdiction to rule on the issue.

In this interview with Radio Netherlands, International Law expert André Nollkaemper of the University of Amsterdam explains why some parties feel the ICJ is not the right venue for this kind of case.

"...The states concerned have advanced two arguments basically. One is the strictly legal one - and I believe that is the argument of Israel - that this is an internal conflict in Israel, and by [giving] an advisory opinion the court would in essence determine a specific legal conflict."

"The other, more political background of the position of the US and the European Union, I believe, is that these states see a danger for the General Assembly to ask very general politically laden questions to the court, and then the court would become a political actor, which it was not designed to be."

RN: "Are you saying the court can never rule on politically sensitive issues?"

"Well, a particularly good precedent is the advice by the International Court of Justice in 1996 on the legality of nuclear weapons, when the General Assembly asked the court to give advice on whether the possession and use of nuclear weapons is legal. At the time, the US and the EU also took the position that this was not a question for the court to answer."

"And, of course, in the present timeframe one could think of the possibility that the Assembly would ask a question about the legality of the use of force in Iraq, for instance. And clearly that's something which both Europe and the United States would not wish to see."

RN: "What do you make of this kind of face-off between international law and politics?"

"[...] the fact that a legal conflict may have political ramifications does not mean that the court could not rule on the narrow legal issue. The court is very well able to distinguish between the legal aspects of the case and the political aspects of the case. The General Assembly has in October already adopted the position stating clearly that the building of the wall was in violation of international law."

"Personally, I can see only benefits from the court's giving a well-argued advice that supports that argument by the General Assembly, finding that the building of the wall is illegal, and then that could be a useful argument for a further political resolution of the conflict. Of course, it would not solve the conflict, but it could be one stepping stone on which the parties could find common ground for a further political resolution."

RN: "The International Court of Justice's decisions are non-binding. So Israel wouldn't have to remove one centimetre of this wall if the court ruled against it."

"That's very true, and we should not overestimate the legal impact of an opinion by the court. Nonetheless, it would confirm the widely held belief that the way the wall has been built now is illegal. Again, that would be one point on which the parties could find each other, and then use that as a basis for further political negotiations."

As Israel mourns yet more victims of barbarity, the cognoscenti continue to wage their abstract, corrupt war on behalf of darkness. The US, Europe and Canada are all opposed to this hearing and are expected to express their opposition by shunning it. Can victories in the war on terrorism ultimately prevail over the losses civilization is taking in the war of ideas?

60-40 VISION:

Wealthy hopefuls lead Senate race (ANDREW HERRMANN AND SCOTT FORNEK, February 22, 2004, Chicago Siun Times)

Multimillionaire candidates Blair Hull and Jack Ryan lead in their U.S. Senate primaries -- but voters don't buy opponents' complaints that they are buying the election, a new poll shows.

The survey of 1,500 Illinois voters finds that three out of four respondents said either that they are more likely to vote for a person who spends millions of his own money to win office or that a candidate's wealth doesn't matter either way. The primary is March 16.

Hull -- a trader who has pumped $24 million of his own money into his Democratic race -- leads with 27 percent, ahead of state Sen. Barack Obama and state Comptroller Dan Hynes, who each had 17 percent.

On the Republican side, Ryan -- a former investment banker who has dipped into his wallet for nearly $2.6 million -- leads dairy and investment magnate Jim Oberweis, 41 percent to 17 percent.

WHY CAN'T WE BE MORE LIKE NORWAY? (via Brian Hoffman):

Former President Carter says Americans generally oblivious to suffering elsewhere in the world (David Peterson, 02/22/2004, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Former President Jimmy Carter delivered a Saturday sermon to a standing-room-only crowd at St. Olaf College, condemning the American people as much as their leaders for what he called their indifference to the disease and despair that prevail in much of the developing world.

"It's a different world from ours," he said. "And we don't really care what happens to them." [...]

What made his talk more sermonlike than political, however, was his depiction of Americans, who he said are as responsible as their government for continuing problems around the world.

He said that "despite glorious speeches in Washington" pledging assistance for AIDS in Africa, the nation of Ghana is actually getting a sixth of what it used to get from this country, and that the United States is giving one-seventeenth as much aid to others in proportion to income as Norway does.

"The problem lies among the people of the U.S.," he said. "It's time to assess what the government is doing, and shape and influence it appropriately."

Although this is a "great country, with great potential," he said, it is not doing what it could to bring about peace, freedom and health in the developing world.

WHY STOP IT?:

A Job for Rewrite: Stalin's War (BENJAMIN SCHWARZ, 2/21/04, NY Times)

According to the conventional view, based largely on the often-self-serving accounts of German generals, the Wehrmacht was the most operationally advanced military in the war, and Soviet tactics and performance were leaden and unimaginative in comparison; the Red Army ultimately prevailed not because it was skillful, but because it was so large.

By incorporating Colonel Glantz's findings, however, Mr. Murray of Ohio State and his co-author, Allan R. Millett, conclude in "A War to Be Won" (Harvard, 2000), their general history of the Second World War, that the Soviets' brilliant use of encirclement and what they called "deep battle" — extremely rapid, far-reaching advances behind the enemy's front lines — constituted the most innovative and devastating display of "operational art" in World War II. Soviet operations from the summer of 1944 to the winter of 1945, they conclude, were far superior to those of the German Army at its best.

Speaking from his house in Carlisle, Pa., near the United States Army War College, Colonel Glantz marveled that close to one-half of wartime Soviet operations — including major battles involving hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers — are simply "missing from history," either neglected or covered up.

For example, in November and December of 1942 the celebrated Soviet Field Marshal G. K. Zhukov orchestrated a gigantic offensive ("Operation Mars") involving seven Soviet armies with 83 divisions, 817,000 men and 2,352 tanks. The failed operation cost the Red Army nearly 350,000 dead, missing and wounded men, and 1,700 tanks, yet it was methodically concealed in Soviet historiography, in large part to preserve Zhukov's reputation.

HE MUST BE ELECTABLE, HE CRUSHED WES, HOWARD, AND GUY SMILEY:

Mr. Likable vs. Mr. Electable (JOHN TIERNEY, 2/22/04, NY Times)

"Voters find Kerry aloof and distant," said Frank Luntz, a pollster who has conducted focus groups for MSNBC among primary voters in a half-dozen states. "They find Edwards smooth and enticing. Women really find him sexy. Men like his personality."

Mr. Edwards has been criticized for not having enough government experience, but a pleasant disposition can overcome a lot of handicaps. Intellectuals made fun of Eisenhower's mangled syntax, but they were outnumbered by voters wearing "I Like Ike" buttons. Gary Hart's candidacy in 1988 was ended by his sexual indiscretion, but Bill Clinton survived his, thanks in no small part to his charm. Al Gore may have been a better debater than George W. Bush, but the audience was put off by his supercilious manner.

"A majority of Americans disagreed with Ronald Reagan's policies in 1984, but he won because they liked him personally," said Mr. Luntz, who has advised Republican candidates. "People look at presidential candidates in a special way because they can't get away from the president. They can ignore a senator or governor, but a president will be in their living rooms for four years. At a minimum they have to like him."

Michael Deaver, the crafter of Mr. Reagan's image, said that in his cheerfulness Mr. Edwards reminded him of Mr. Reagan, as did Mr. Edwards's response to criticisms by Mr. Kerry.

"Edwards responded to Kerry's negative statement by saying, 'Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I would say it this way,' " Mr. Deaver recalled. "That was exactly the way Reagan would rephrase a negative question and put a positive twist on it."

Daniel Hill, the author of "Body of Truth," an analysis of body language, has studied the candidates' styles by tracking 23 facial expressions during televised debates. He counts, for instance, the number of "social smiles" using just the mouth, "genuine smiles" using the eyes and mouth and signs of disgust or anger.

"Dean consistently showed anger by pressing his lips together or tensely holding his mouth slightly open," Mr. Hill said. "Last fall, Kerry was showing definite signs of contempt and disgust by raising his upper lip, but that's gone now. He's trying to be more likable by smiling more, but rarely can he get past the social smile to the genuine smile. Edwards gets there much more often. He conveys the most optimism, and lately he's been adding gravitas by knitting his eyebrows to show that he feels the pain of the other America."

If Mr. Edwards wins the charm contest, why is Mr. Kerry winning the primaries? Likability is not everything, especially in times of war.

IT'S NOT LIKE GIAMBI WILL CATCH ANY OF HIS THROWS TO FIRST ANYWAY:

For Measuring the Fielder, There Are No Formulas Yet (ALAN SCHWARZ, 2/22/04, NY Times)

JOE TORRE offered the only explanation he could. Asked on Tuesday why the Yankees are moving their newest Fabergé egg, Alex Rodriguez, to third base rather than unseat Derek Jeter from shortstop, the team's diplomatic manager cited no hard evidence to support his claim that Jeter is the superior defender. The reams of statistics that baseball churns out every year were of no use. Instead, he burrowed into the impregnable haven of opinion, where baseball arguments go to die.

"It's really tough to try to measure," Torre said of Jeter's defense. "There's something special about Derek Jeter. It's something that you can't put down on paper."

And that was that. If one had suggested that Jeter is the better hitter, even Torre would trot out the many statistical categories (home runs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and so on) that prove that preposterous.

But any appraisal of Jeter as being the superior fielder (an equally untenable claim, given that Rodriguez has won the Gold Glove award two years running), one hears no statistical barrage of "A-Rod had a higher fielding percentage!" or "Derek made six more errors!"

The argument remains fuzzy - fuzzy enough to obscure that the Yankees plan to play their better shortstop at third base.

WE'RE WITH ROY:

Reanimated (DEBORAH SOLOMON, 2/22/04, NY Times Magazine)

Roy E. Disney, who has long been derided as ''Walt's idiot nephew,'' as he puts it, is actually an eloquent, thoughtful man who completes the daily crossword in ink. Yet he does have a quirky sense of humor that he tends to unleash at his own expense. One recent afternoon, while we were sitting in his living room with his wife and his oldest son, I looked up from my notepad and was astonished to see him tugging on both ears, dangling his tongue from his mouth and panting like an exhausted dog. ''Did you know,'' he asked me, ''that I was the model for Goofy?''

At 74, Disney is an affable, gray-haired man whose long face and squinty eyes lend him an uncanny likeness not to old Goofy -- for whom he did not actually pose -- so much as to their mutual forebear Walt. His temperament, though, is closer to that of his father, Roy O. Disney, the kinder, gentler and lesser-known of the entertainment empire's founders. Within the company, the younger Roy has always been viewed as an oddly nonchalant heir, indifferent to the seductions of power, content to spend his days tinkering with films and keeping court with the old-time animators whom he had watched, in his privileged boyhood, sketching scenes for ''Pinocchio'' and ''Fantasia'' on their storyboards.

''When you grow up around a company in which the power is already yours,'' he explained that day at his home in Toluca Lake, a suburban section of Los Angeles, ''you look at power in a different way. I believed that the work was the important thing. I wasn't political. I wasn't trying to nudge some guy out of the way.''

These days, however, Roy Disney is very intent on nudging a guy out of the way. He is trying, by his own admission, to destroy Michael D. Eisner, the chairman and chief executive of the company and a man Disney himself helped hire in 1984.

WHO NEEDS KIDS?:

On the childcare bandwagon, pushing granny off the bus (Muriel Gray, 2/22/04, Sunday Herald)

[Michael] Howard has now decided to put behind him that old Conservative mantra that single mothers are the greatest living threat to civilisation as we know it, and instead make a concerted effort to win round the lactating vote. The proposal on the table is that a Conservative government would pay mothers to stay at home for three years and look after their children instead of returning to work, basing the policy on the Finnish model, under which mothers are paid £150 per month to stay at home and another £50 for each subsequent child. Parents on the poverty line receive an extra £100, but the basic rate is paid to all, irrespective of income.

Let’s put aside for a moment the naked desperation of the Tories, who would clearly say or do anything to get a sniff of power again, and examine this new attempt at winning public support. They’re not alone in thinking that the plight of the working mother is a vote winner, with the government also raking around in the issue of childcare, no doubt to see if it can salvage some votes from a disillusioned electorate still disgusted with Labour following the disaster of Blair’s Iraq campaign.

Clearly both parties think it essential that the taxpayer takes more responsibility for the upbringing of children in families where parents need or wish to work. What has not been examined in any great detail is why. A decent society, when it works, is a marvellous tool for delivering practical altruism even when the motives are selfish. For instance, a very rich, bitter and misanthropic individual might nevertheless see the sense in subsidising the poor, even though he despises them, since at its most simple such a course of action may mean that the community he lives in will be less likely to suffer from crime and his quality of life may therefore be improved overall. His tax pounds to fund education and support for the poverty-stricken are therefore no less effective, even if they’re given for the wrong reasons.

So when it comes to the taxpayer subsidising parenting, there must be similarly positive benefits for all, including the childless, or else it’s a hard policy to justify. So what are the benefits? [...]

Chameleon man Howard might think that this bandwagon is a clear winner, but he should be careful. Having a child is a lifestyle choice, not a right, and not everyone believes that the parents of healthy bouncing babies are the most down-trodden and wretched victims in society.

PITY THE POOR GERMANS:

A Blitz on Dresden: a review of Dresden by Frederick Taylor (George Rosie, Sunday Herald)

Taylor is an assiduous researcher. He paints a picture which, while still terrible, is not quite the apocalyptic one of popular history. And in the process he deflates a number of myths.

One of them is that Dresden was an “innocent” city, a wonderland of art and architecture devoid of any strategic significance. Nothing more than Florence on the Elbe. This is nonsense. Dresden was home to any number of high-tech engineering firms all working flat out to supply Hitler’s war machine. One was Carl Zeiss-Jena, the lens-making company which was churning out optics for bomb sights, artillery sights and U-boat periscopes. Many of these factories relied on slave labour from concentration camps. In fact, the Dresden Yearbook for 1942 boasts that the city was “one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich.”

Dresden was also the site of one of the most important railway marshalling yards in eastern Germany. It was a nodal point on the network with hundreds of thousands of troops, guns and tanks being shunted through Dresden on their way to the eastern front. Politically, the city was solidly Nazi. Hitler’s visits were met with wild enthusiasm. There was an SS barracks in the suburbs. Hundreds of Hitler’s enemies had died on the blade of Dresden’s electric-powered guillotine. One way or another, Dresden was a “legitimate” target for the allied bombers (if bombing of any city can be regarded as legitimate).

Ironically perhaps, Dresden’s tragedy was not to have been bombed far earlier in the war. If it had been, things might have been different. But for years the city was beyond the reach of allied aircraft. Dresden seems to have been lulled, quite literally, into a false sense of security. As a result it failed to build the kind of deep, air-raid shelters with blast shutters and air-filtration systems which was the norm elsewhere in Germany (and which probably saved millions of lives). Dresdeners made their own arrangements – in basements, cellars, under stairs, where so many were to prove utterly vulnerable to the rain of high explosives and incendiaries.

VERDICT? TOO LATE:

The Not-So-Funny Farm: Labour is going to give us GM crops whether we want them or not … what does that say about British democracy? (Ian Bell, 2/22/04, Sunday Herald)

WHEN the jury is still out, you can’t have a verdict. You can have opinions, even faith, but until those who have studied the evidence reach a firm conclusion your views are not worth a great deal. Being a new Labour minister, even a prime minister, does not grant you supernatural powers of prophecy and insight denied to the rest of us. That’s the nub of the argument where genetically modified crops are concerned. The government knows only too well that a large majority of people don’t want their food modified. It knows, too, that if the public’s questions were properly addressed and properly answered, opposition would probably melt away. Show beyond doubt that the stuff is safe, in this age of mad cow disease and Sars, and we might just swallow it. Instead, according to papers leaked last week, the Blair administration intends to allow the first crop of GM maize in the name of British science regardless of what the public thinks. A government that claims to be in the middle of a “Big Conversation” with voters has decided to turn off its hearing aid. Typically, it presents this as a staunch refusal to “take the easy way out”. Most of us know, however, that the hard way, unthinkable to the Blairites, would be to continue to resist the demands of the United States and its agri-business.

That lobby tends to present GM as the latest gee-whiz way to save the world. Plant the new seeds, they say, and hunger will be banished among the wretched of the Earth. It sounds like a splendid aspiration. But why, then, are the GM companies so fanatically keen on forcing their way into the European market? Starvation isn’t exactly an issue on this side of the Atlantic. If anything, we are glutted with foods of every variety. Obesity is our problem, not hunger.

Last year, in any case, the government held what it called a national GM debate. (Were you consulted? Me neither). This produced a disappointing, not to say dismal, result for GM’s proponents. More than 80% of those polled didn’t want modified foodstuffs and only 2% said they would knowingly let such substances pass their lips. Other surveys have suggested that opposition is perhaps less deeply rooted, but none have established anything like a majority for tampering with food. Still the government, knowing nothing for sure, maintains that it knows better.

In fact, the science it has commissioned is scarcely compelling. A five-year trial by the advisory committee on releases to the environment ended in January with a report concluding that GM maize is preferable to maize saturated with herbicides (right answer, wrong question), but establishing that both GM oil-seed rape and GM sugar beet were harmful to the environment. This confirmed previous findings, including those of the government’s own chief scientist, Sir David King. Still the government presses on.

It does not know – because no-one knows – how to prevent GM crops from contaminating ordinary crops, particularly organic crops. It cannot say – because no-one can say – what economic benefit there is to be had from GM, though its own Cabinet Office has struggled to identify any benefit whatsoever. It cannot even begin to predict – because it chooses not to predict – whether the imposition of GM will provoke civil disobedience, or worse, from environmentalists and others. It is walking into a minefield, not a maize field, and appears not to grasp the fact.

Strange that people get so worked up about altering food but are eager to tamper with our own genome.

THE AUTISM HOAX:

MMR storm: Wakefield welcomes probe: Health Secretary demands inquiry after doctor who linked triple jab with autism accused of conflict of interest (Liam McDougall, 2/22/04, Sunday Herald)

THE scientist at the centre of new claims that his research linking the MMR vaccine with autism was “entirely flawed” has welcomed government demands for an investigation into his controversial work.

Dr Andrew Wakefield told the Sunday Herald that an independent inquiry “would be particularly welcome” after health secretary John Reid yesterday urged a probe by the General Medical Council (GMC).

Wakefield’s research was branded “invalid” by the editor of The Lancet, Dr Richard Horton, who claimed that at the time of publication in 1998 Wakefield was also carrying out studies for the Legal Aid Board on behalf of parents who believed the vaccine had harmed their children. Horton said that was a serious conflict of interest.

MORE:
-Maverick view that sparked panic over the triple vaccine: Despite fellow doctors' doubts, Andrew Wakefield's claims won uncritical media coverage. (Jane Fineman, February 22, 2004, The Observer)

Just eight years ago, nearly every parent in the country welcomed infant vaccination against mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) as protection against serious, potentially fatal illnesses. But for over half a decade, it's become a nightmare. For a large number of people the idea of those same vaccinations has become synonymous with playing Russian roulette with their children's health.

That is has become so is thanks to a single paper, published in the Lancet on 28 February 1998. The lead author was Dr Andrew Wakefield, head of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Study Group at the Royal Free Hospital and a man on a mission. [...]

The ensuing anti-MMR hysteria manifested itself in a dramatic reduction in uptake of the vaccine - from a high of 92 per cent in the mid-Nineties to between 72 and 79 per cent now. This is well below the 95 per cent cover required to ensure herd immunity. Experts predict a measles epidemic is not far off.

GP and academic Dr Tom Heller was one of the few doctors to publicly dispute the mountain of evidence against the Wakefield paper, claiming that 'the more strident the experts become, the less believable I seem to find them'. In contrast, a survey of health workers in 2001 (at a time when over 20 papers confirming the safety of the vaccine had been published) found that only 54 per cent of GPs and 45 per cent of health professionals agreed completely with giving a second dose of the MMR vaccine.

According to Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, the individual talent for mindreading is partially hardwired into our skulls. Baron-Cohen has devised a simple test -- called "The Reading The Mind In The Eyes Test" -- that measures an individual's mindreading ability. The test requires subjects to discern subtle emotional states from a series of photographs of eyes (see illustration, D1). Some people fly through the test with ease, correctly identifying emotions without a second thought. Others flounder, constantly second-guessing themselves. And one group consistently fails the test: people suffering from autism.

But autism, according to Baron-Cohen, may not be a simple on/off condition. Its symptoms -- including difficulties with social interaction and a disinclination to make eye-contact -- exist on a continuum. In other words, although it's impossible to be a little bit pregnant, it may be possible to be a little bit autistic. (Last fall, Baron-Cohen stirred up controversy with a book arguing that autism, which afflicts boys far more often than girls, may even be just an extreme version of normal tendencies in the male brain.)

Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, England, have devised another simple test, called the Autism Spectrum Quotient, that can help us place ourselves along the autism continuum. Instead of testing your IQ, it tests your "AQ." (The test is available at www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html, among other websites.)

Just answer 50 questions about yourself, and a simple program will spit out a number between 1 and 32. The median score is 16.4; most diagnosed autistics score 32 or higher. But Baron-Cohen emphasizes that this is not a diagnostic tool. Those who score 32 or above do not necessarily report finding social interactions difficult, he says, and do not necessarily have autism.

PAGING THE RED ARMY:

Edwards, Kerry Were Barely Solvent Last Month (Thomas B. Edsall, February 22, 2004, washingtonpost.com )

New campaign finance reports show that the two leading candidates for the Democratic nomination were barely solvent at the end of January heading into a prospective $50 million-plus ad blitz by President Bush.

Bush, whose reelection drive is the richest in American history, ended January with $104.4 million in the bank, nearly 100 times as much as the net balances of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the Democratic front-runner, and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), Kerry's leading challenger for the nomination.

"We will never catch up," said Michael Meehan, Kerry's spokesman, noting that so far in February, Kerry had raised $5 million.

Bush is gearing up to weaken the Democratic nominee well before the general election starts, using a tactic that proved highly effective for President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Clinton, using unregulated large contributions of "soft money" the Democratic National Committee collected from unions, corporations and wealthy individuals, spent an estimated $30 million during the summer months on ads portraying Republican nominee Robert J. Dole in a harsh and negative light. Dole had no money to launch a counterattack.

Republican pollsters who tracked Dole's favorability said that in areas where the anti-Dole ads ran, the public's view of Dole deteriorated significantly, making it more difficult for him to mount his general election campaign in the fall.

With a base of $50 million, and perhaps significantly more, for spring and summer television commercials, the Bush campaign plans to spend at least 167 percent of what the Clinton campaign did eight years ago.

SEWING HATRED:

P.R. GURU QUITS OVER 'PASSION' (NY Post, February 12, 2004)

SUSAN Blond - the public relations powerhouse who is also an Orthodox Jew - has quit representing Heeb magazine because she was so offended by a 10-page photo feature mocking Mel Gibson's controversial movie "The Passion of the Christ." Some Jewish leaders have attacked the film, fearing it could foster anti-Semitism for showing the role Jews played in the Crucifixion. Heeb, the hip quarterly dubbed "The New Jew Review," had used Blond to promote its launch in 2002. The magazine's new cover announces "Back Off Braveheart" to tout a photo feature inside called "Crimes of Passion." Editor-in-chief Josh Neuman wasn't very forthcoming in describing the offensive photos: "It's our interpretation of Jesus' final hours. It's what you'd expect from Heeb magazine." But Blond said one photo showed a Jewish prayer shawl being used as Jesus' loincloth and another depicted the Virgin Mary with nipple rings.

NEVER TRUST A WACKENHUT (via Matt Drudge):

Airline says security officers approved faked ID for passenger (HARRY EAGAR, February 20, 2004 , Mauni News)

A screaming, cursing passenger without identification got help from Kahului Airport security officers to board a Pacific Wings flight last Friday.
Pacific Wings security coordinator (and chief pilot) Robert McKinney says his staff felt "pressured" by a Wackenhut officer who identified himself as a Maui police officer and by an official of the Transportation Security Administration to accept a "manufactured" police report and pass the woman through security.

McKinney says he knows his staff has the final say on who boards and who doesn't, but he says the airline's workers were "badgered by three uniformed people who insisted it was OK."

Pacific Wings became more alarmed when it turned out that the alleged police report used instead of proper ID was bogus.

WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

Coalition locates bin Laden in northwest Pakistan (Haaretz Service, 2/22/04)

A British newspaper on Sunday quoted American security sources as saying that coalition troops have located Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, for the first time since 2001, Army Radio reported.

The radio said that the Sunday Express cites the sources as placing bin Laden and 50 trusted associates, in northwest Pakistan, close to the border with Afghanistan.

The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, is said to be among the 50, the radio said.

The Sunday Express says the Al-Qaida leader has been "boxed in" by American and British special forces.

RIDING THE DRAGON:

The Man Who Would Be Khan: A new breed of American soldier—call him the soldier-diplomat—has come into being since the end of the Cold War. Meet the colonel who was our man in Mongolia, an officer who probably wielded more local influence than many Mongol rulers of yore (Robert D. Kaplan, March 2004, Atlantic Monthly)

In the early spring of 2003, as U.S. troops in Iraq were consolidating their hold over Baghdad, few people had their eyes on Mongolia. And yet what was happening at the time in that country—90 percent of whose foreign military training and assistance now comes from the United States—was critical to the extension of America's global liberal influence. "Mongolia is a vast country completely surrounded by two anti-American empires, Russia and China," S. Galsanjamts, a member of Mongolia's national-security council, told me recently. "It is therefore a symbol of the kind of independence America wants to encourage in the world." Today, more often than not, the United States is encouraging that sort of independence not by intervening militarily on a grand scale but, rather, by placing a few quietly effective officers in key locations around the globe.

Last year I traveled to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, to meet Colonel Tom Wilhelm, one of the best of this new breed of American soldier-diplomats. Wilhelm's official roles at the time of my visit included serving at the U.S. embassy as the defense attaché, as the security-assistance officer, and as the liaison for the military's Pacific Command (PACOM). The embassy is a small building and somewhat less imposing than other posts, befitting the low "threat assessment" assigned to Mongolia. The country lived under virtual Soviet domination for seventy years, a generation longer than the satellite states of Eastern Europe, and public opinion is staunchly pro-American. At the time of the Iraq crisis the Mongolians staged no anti-war demonstrations. Indeed, they deployed a contingent of 175 soldiers to Baghdad last year, to help with policing efforts—a move that marked the first entry of Mongol troops into Mesopotamia since 1258, when Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan's, arrived and exterminated most of the population of Baghdad. [...]

Wilhelm's assignment to Ulan Bator occurred against the following backdrop: Mongolia, with one of the world's lowest population densities, is being threatened demographically by the latest of Eurasia's great historical migrations—an urban Chinese civilization is determined to move north. China—which ruled much of Mongolia from the end of the seventeenth century until the early twentieth century, during the Manchu period—covets the oil, coal, uranium, and empty grasslands of its former possession. Given that a resurgent China has already absorbed Tibet, Macao, and Hong Kong, reabsorbing Mongolia—a country that on the map looks like a big piece of territory bitten away from China—seems almost irresistibly a part of China's geopolitical intentions.

Only three full-time defense attachés serve in Ulan Bator—representing Russia, the United States, and China, the three countries with past or future imperial interests in Mongolia. Americans, of course, are uncomfortable with the idea of having or running a global empire, but that responsibility is being thrust upon them nevertheless in Mongolia as elsewhere. And unconventional men like Tom Wilhelm, largely out of sight, are the ones carrying the load and transforming the world order. I went to Mongolia to see him in action. [...]

When Wilhelm arrived in Mongolia, in 2001, U.S.-Mongolian defense relations had no focus. All that existed was a hodgepodge of unrelated aid and training programs that had not been staffed out in detail in Washington or in Ulan Bator. Mongolia's post-communist military had no realistic vision of its future. It wanted a modern air force but wasn't sure what such an air force would do, or how it would be sustained, or its aircraft maintained. Wilhelm, with the active support of Ambassador John Dinger, quickly provided a sense of purpose. He and Dinger developed a "three pillars" strategy for the country and persuaded the Mongolian military to sign on. The three pillars are:

1) Securing Mongolia's borders not against a conventional military threat from China (such security would be impossible) but against illegal border incursions, criminal activities to finance terrorism, and transnational terrorism itself, particularly by the Uighur separatists of western China. Aided by the Chechens and the broad militant Islamic network, Uighur extremists represent the future of terrorism in Central Asia.

2) Preparing the Mongolian military to play an active role in international peacekeeping, in order to raise its profile in global forums and thus provide Mongolia with diplomatic protection from its large, rapacious neighbors. The dispatch of Mongolian troops to post-Saddam Iraq elicited shrill cries of annoyance from Russia and China, but it was the first building block of this pillar.

3) Improving Mongolia's capacity to respond to natural disasters, most notably drought.

NEWS FROM THE COLONIES:

Staring Into the Mouth of the Trade Deficit (ELIZABETH BECKER, 2/21/04, NY Times)

Huge container ships steam into this port every day loaded with clothes and shoes, furniture and video games, electronics and aircraft parts made in Asia.

On their return trip, those same ships often cross the Pacific half empty, bearing chemicals, meat, grain and engines and routinely stuffed with hay or scrap paper.

"This is what the nation's trade imbalance really looks like," said Mark Knudsen, the deputy director of the Port of Seattle.

NEVER KNOW WHAT FUNDAMENTALIST BASTION YOU'LL FIND THOSE SKEPTICS IN:

Darwin and Design (Prof. Alvin Kibel , Fall 2003, MIT)

Highlights of this Course

Many of the readings for the course may be downloaded, and all assignments are available.

Course Description

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the immediate intellectual antecedents and some of the implications of the ideas animating Darwin's revolutionary On the Origin of Species. Darwin's text, of course, is about the mechanism that drives the evolution of life on this planet, but the fundamental ideas of the text have implications that range well beyond the scope of natural history, and the assumptions behind Darwin's arguments challenge ideas that go much further back than the set of ideas that Darwin set himself explicitly to question - ideas of decisive importance when we think about ourselves, the nature of the material universe, the planet that we live upon, and our place in its scheme of life. In establishing his theory of natural selection, Darwin set himself, rather self-consciously, to challenge a whole way of thinking about these things. The main focus of attention will be Darwin's contribution to the so-called "argument from design" - the notion that innumerable aspects of the world (and most particularly the organisms within it) display features directly analogous to objects of human design and, since design implies a designer, that an intelligent, conscious agency must have been responsible for their organization and creation. Previously, it had been argued that such features must have only one of two ultimate sources - chance or conscious agency. Darwin proposed and elaborated a third source, which he called Natural Selection, an unconscious agency capable of outdoing the most complex feats of human intelligence.

The course of study will not only examine the immediate inspiration for this idea in the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus and place Darwin's Origin and the theory of Natural Selection in the history of ensuing debate, but it will also touch upon related issues.

ADDING INSULT TO SOX FAN INJURY:

Club says it knew Soriano was 28 (Associated Press, 2/18/04)

Alfonso Soriano is 28 years old, not 26, and that didn't come as a surprise to the Texas Rangers.

ANYPLACE, ANYTIME:

Russia Says New Missile Will Beat Any U.S. Defenses (Tom Miles, February 19, 2004, Reuters)

Russia has developed ballistic missile technology that can outwit any defensive system, a top Russian general said on Thursday, in a clear challenge to the United States' planned $50 billion anti-missile shield.

The declaration came a day after President Vladimir Putin, eyeing nationalist votes for elections next month, promised to equip his armed forces with a new generation of long-range weapons matching those of the United States. [...]

Russia's maneuvers have not gone entirely smoothly over the last week.

A Russian ballistic missile self-destructed after a failed test launch from a submarine in the Arctic north on Wednesday. On Tuesday, two ballistic missiles failed to take off in a test on another nuclear submarine.

KERRY VS. KERRY:

Kerry's Past to Star in Bush's Ads: Reelection Team Says Democrat's 32-Year Career Is Rich in Ammunition (Howard Kurtz, February 20, 2004, Washington Post)

President Bush's reelection campaign has decided to focus its coming advertising barrage not only on John F. Kerry's record as a senator but also on his days as an antiwar activist, a House candidate and Massachusetts's lieutenant governor.

"The beauty of John Kerry is 32 years of votes and public pronouncements," said Mark McKinnon, the chief media adviser. McKinnon suggested a possible tag line: "He's been wrong for 32 years, he's wrong now."

Campaign officials said in interviews that they plan substantial positive advertising about the president, focused on his proposals rather than accomplishments, when they begin spending tens of millions of dollars on the airwaves next month. But they made it clear that many of the ads will accuse the Democratic front-runner of "hypocrisy," in McKinnon's word, in part by reaching back into his early career. [...]

While the Bush camp is sitting on a $100 million war chest, strategists plan to target the ad blitz to fewer than 20 states -- such as Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico -- that were most closely contested in 2000.

By taking the rare step of preparing for a general-election ad blitz five months before the party conventions, the Bush team is following the lead of President Bill Clinton, whose early 1996 commercials helped frame the election by tying GOP nominee Robert J. Dole to unpopular House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The Bush ads would air at a time when Kerry may lack the resources to effectively respond, and in any event the money must be spent before the fall, when both nominees will be limited to $75 million in public financing. [...]

The Republican National Committee, which is sitting on more than $30 million, could join in the aerial assault on Kerry, but officials there said no decision has been made. The Democratic National Committee has raised about two-thirds of the $15 million it hopes to spend on ads to help Kerry counter the Bush barrage.

DISSATISFIED LOBBYISTS (via Paul Cella):

Evangelicals frustrated by Bush (Ralph Z. Hallow, February 20, 2004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

President Bush left several million evangelical voters "on the table" four years ago and again is having trouble energizing Christian conservatives, prominent leaders on the religious right say.

"It's not just economic conservatives upset by runaway federal spending that he's having trouble with. I think his biggest problem will be social conservatives who are not motivated to work for the ticket and to ensure their fellow Christians get to the polling booth," said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute.

"If there is a rerun of 2000, when an estimated 6 million fewer evangelical Christians voted than in the pivotal year of 1994, then the Bush ticket will be in trouble, especially if there is no [Ralph] Nader alternative to draw Democratic votes away from the Democratic candidate," added Mr. Knight, whose organization is an affiliate of Concerned Women for America (CWA).

Their list of grievances is long, but right now social conservatives are mad over what many consider the president's failure to strongly condemn illegal homosexual "marriages" being performed in San Francisco under the authority of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Top religious rights activists have been burning up the telephone lines, sharing what one privately called their "apoplexy" over Mr. Bush's failure to act decisively on the issue, although he has said he would support a constitutional amendment if necessary to ban same-sex "marriages."

Bolstered by lopsided backing from core supporters, President Bush is in a stronger position with voters than his father or Bill Clinton were at the same stage of their re-election bids, an Associated Press poll found.

Men, evangelicals and rural voters are supporting Bush by big margins at the start of this election year, while traditionally Democratic-leaning groups such as women have more divided loyalties, according to the poll. The public’s growing confidence in the economy is helping boost Bush’s standing as well. [...]

Bush is in significantly better shape with the public than either Clinton or the first President Bush were at this stage in their re-election bids and about the same as Ronald Reagan before his landslide re-election victory in 1984.

A UNION OF STATES, NOT INDIVIDUALS (via ef brown):