FIX THE UMMAH FIRST:

Islam 'should talk to the West' (Heba Saleh, 4/24/04, BBC News)

Delegates from 65 Islamic countries are meeting in Cairo for the start of a conference on tolerance in Islam.

The Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, called on the participants to initiate a dialogue between the Islamic world and followers of other religions.

They should work together to refute the false allegations against Islam in the West, he said.

Many Islamic scholars have felt that their religion has come under attack since the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Mr Mubarak said they should maintain an open dialogue with followers of other religions, in order to demonstrate that Islam promotes peace and brotherhood between people.

The Cairo conference groups together ministers of religious affairs and other officials from Islamic countries.

It is an annual event, but this year it is focusing on the theme of tolerance in Islamic civilisation.

A more important dialogue would be with their adherents.

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DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS:

Strikes in France and the Netherlands; A Comparison of Labour Market Institutions (Professors den Butter and Koppes, Faculty of Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Abstract: Strikes as a consequence of labour conflicts occur about 28 times as much in France as in the Netherlands.... Our empirical analysis shows that strike activity is high in France if workers were successful in obtaining relatively high wage increases in collective labour agreements in the previous year, whereas strike activity is high in the Netherlands if, in the preceding year, real wage increases were relatively low as compared to productivity increases.

Yet more evidence that appeasing the wicked escalates conflict.

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SHOCKING, SAID LOUIS RENAULT:

Canadian economy flat (TERRY WEBER, 4/30/04, Globe and Mail)

The Canadian economy again missed its mark in February, recording no growth in what one analyst described as a "shockingly weak" showing likely to cast doubt on the future direction of interest rates in this country.

In a report Friday, Statistics Canada said February gross domestic product growth remained stagnant, surprising economists who had been looking for a rebound in the neighbourhood of 0.4 per cent for the month.

Equally disappointing was a downward revision to January's GDP number, showing that the economy shrank by 0.2 per cent rather than the 0.1 per cent originally reported a month ago.

The news sent the Canadian dollar — already under pressure this week — lower. The loonie closed down 0.09 of a cent at 72.88 cents (U.S.).

"It's a shockingly weak number," Toronto-Dominion Bank senior economist Marc Lévesque said moments after the release of the report.

Dying nations don't sustain growing economies.

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BEHOLD! THE LORD HIGH COMMISSIONER!:

This Moment in Iraq is a Moment of Truth: Remarks of Senator John Kerry (April 30, 2004, Westminster College - Fulton, Missouri)

The coalition should endorse the Brahimi plan for an interim Iraqi government, it should propose an international High Commissioner to work with the Iraqi authorities on the political transition, and it should organize an expanded international security force, preferably with NATO, but clearly under US command.

It's the Bush policy but with an extra from a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

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SENATOR KERRY'S CORE CONSTITUENCY:

Vietnam's Hero Still Grateful to Anti-War Americans (Christina Toh-Pantin, 4/30/04, Reuters)

Twenty-nine years after the end of the Vietnam war, communist military mastermind General Vo Nguyen Giap remains grateful to the Americans who opposed it.

The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand.

"I would like to thank them," the 93-year-old veteran said on Friday of those Americans who opposed the war.

Well, Mr. Kerry seems to have locked up the totalitarian endorsement race.

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SEND THE GUY WHO CAN'T TELL URANIUM FROM URANUS:

Book Names Iraqi in Alleged '99 Bid to Buy Uranium (Susan Schmidt, April 30, 2004, Washington Post)

It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.

That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.

Maybe he'd have learned it if he ever left the hotel bar? But then the point of choosing him in the first place was that he not learn anything, wasn't it?

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50-0:

Despite hoopla, most Californians oppose gay marriage (Dan Walters, April 30, 2004, Sacramento Bee)

When the Assembly Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would have granted full marriage rights to same-sex couples on an 8-3 vote, absolutely no one in the Capitol was surprised.

The eight Democrats who voted for the bill in committee are - like most of the Legislature's Democrats - unabashed liberals, and gay rights is a bedrock tenet of the California Democratic Party. Given its makeup, it would have been surprising only if the committee hadn't backed the measure.

The Los Angeles Times' chief pollster, however, read something into the vote that no one else saw. "This action shows just how more tolerant Californians are in supporting gay issues and more specifically, same-sex marriage, as compared to the rest of the country," Times pollster Susan Pinkus said in an analysis of the committee vote and a concurrent poll of Californians on the issue.

It was a completely fact-free conclusion, as demonstrated by the Times poll's own numbers. The survey found that just 31 percent of Californians favored gay marriage and while that number is marginally higher than the national support for gay marriage (about 25 percent in a previous Times poll), it's a long way from a majority. Indeed, were the Judiciary Committee representing popular will, it would have reversed itself and voted against San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno's bill by the same 8-3 margin.

The Times poll's latest findings, moreover, do not show any popular improvement for gay marriage advocates since a 2000 election in which California voters approved a measure that denies official recognition to same-sex weddings. The measure, sponsored by Republican Sen. Pete Knight, garnered 61.4 percent of the vote, while 38.6 percent of voters opposed it; one could even conclude, in fact, that the pro-gay marriage position has lost ground since 2000.

Those are the political numbers and they appear to be immutable; Californians, by a wide margin, still oppose the concept of allowing same-sex couples to marry. Whether that's the correct position is an entirely different issue. One could muster a strong argument for gay marriage on grounds of simple logic and equity, and popular sentiment may well change in the years ahead, but politics happen in real time and are not grounded in philosophical theory. And by pushing the issue, gay rights advocates and their political allies may be setting themselves up for a big backlash.

Can't talk about 9-11 or the war or the economy and moral issues are poison--how's John Kerry lookin'?

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TAKING THE "DEDICATED" OUT OF "PUBLIC SERVANTS":

DEM DUO DISSES DUBYA IN OVAL OFFICE WALKOUT (BRIAN BLOMQUIST and VINCENT MORRIS, April 30, 2004, NY Post)

In a stunning snub, two Democrats on the 9/11 commission yesterday abruptly walked out in the middle of the Oval Office interview with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Both early-departing panelists, former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey and ex-Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton, insisted they had prior commitments - but their sudden slip out the side door of the White House left Washington and some fellow commission members in shock.

Kerrey dashed to handle a private business matter - lobbying Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) for more money for his employer, the New School University in Manhattan.

Hamilton bolted so that he could introduce the Canadian prime minister at a ceremonial event at the Woodrow Wilson Center, which employs Hamilton as its director.

"I was surprised," fellow commission member James Thompson told The Post.

The sudden walkouts while Bush and Cheney were still testifying are all the more surprising because the commission had lobbied for months for unlimited time with the president with all 10 commissioners able to participate.

On the one hand, that's as much attention as their work deserves. On the other, neither man could be bothered to examine any of the evidence that was collected for the Clinton impeachment.

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RED TIDE IN THE BAY:

GOP boosts number of legislative candidates (Yvonne Abraham, April 30, 2004, Boston Globe)

The state GOP said yesterday that 133 Republican hopefuls filed papers to run for legislative offices this week, making good on Governor Mitt Romney's pledge to recruit candidates to run against Democratic incumbents, who dominate Beacon Hill.

The party expects that those 133 Republicans will be running in roughly 130 districts this November. That total, which includes the 25 GOP incumbents running for reelection in the Senate and the House, is the highest tally of Republican candidates since 1990, said state Republican Party executive director Dominick Ianno. Candidate signatures have yet to be certified, and some hopefuls may not qualify for the ballot. Still, fully six months before a ballot is cast, Ianno claimed a victory yesterday for Romney.

"There are a lot of people running, and we're still compiling them, there are so many," Ianno said. "We have a strong leader, and a strong message of reform. We went out and talked to hundreds and hundreds of potential candidates. We talked to people who have been involved in politics and who haven't been involved in politics. We were able to convince people we need reform, and people were willing to sign on, and run under the banner of the reform team."

In some cases, Romney called potential candidates personally to persuade them to run.

"He really did a good job of closing the deal," Ianno said of the governor. [...]

The party threw its weight behind Representative Scott P. Brown in a recent special election to succeed Senator Cheryl Jacques, a Needham Democrat, raising more than $100,000 for the Wrentham Republican. Romney appeared with Brown in the district several times, and the party has seen Brown's victory in that race as a sign of things to come.

Rob Cunningham, who managed Brown's campaign, and who is now managing the Senate campaign of Falmouth lawyer Tim Duncan, said his new candidate expects plenty of help. Duncan, a former volunteer on Romney's gubernatorial campaign, will be making his first run for office, against Senate Ways and Means chairwoman Therese Murray.

Bad enough when Al Gore was reduced to campaigning in TN (and lost), but consider that the Democrats will have to put effort into MA while the GOP is picking up numerous House seats effortlessly in TX.

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ON THE COUNT OF THREE, QUACK LIKE A DUCK:

Guns and Butter (Daily MoJo, April 29, 2004)

John Kerry wrapped up a three-day tour of industrial communities through the Rust Belt--West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, crucial swing states all--promising policies to revitalize the hard-hit manufacturing sector. Kerry’s strategists warn that he needs to keep the focus on the economy, not Iraq, because Kerry, for all his military credentials, has yet to pass a threshold of credibility on national security. As one put it, "No matter how bad Bush does on the war and 9/11, just having voters think about it kills us."

One has to be especially out of touch to think that having them focus on a booming economy is more helpful. What Mr. Kerry needs is for voters to focus on a hypnotist who will dissuade them of reality.

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CONSISTENT? (via Tom Morin):

NANCY PELOSI TWISTS CATHOLIC TEACHING (Catholic League, April 29, 2004)

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, took issue today with those Catholics who are calling for sanctions against Catholic public officials who vote in favor of abortion rights. Pelosi, who is a staunch advocate of abortion rights, defended herself as follows: “I believe that my position on choice is one that is consistent with my Catholic upbringing, which said that every person has a free will and has the responsibility to live their own lives in a way that they would have to account for in the end.”

Pelosi, a California Democrat, also criticized those who differ with her position: “I’m certainly concerned when the church comes together and says it’s going to sanction people in public office for speaking their conscience and what they believe.”

If every person has free will and a right to their own life then how can it be okay to kill them?

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BUSH VS. THE BUSHER:

Kerry, Bush Campaigns Shadow Each Other (TOM RAUM, 4/30/04, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

When Democrat John Kerry visits a battleground state, he's far from alone.

It's a sure bet that supporters and surrogates of President Bush are already there and ready to talk in public in an effort to steal, or at least divert, the spotlight.

Ahead of Kerry's visit Thursday to Harrisburg, Pa., for instance, state GOP Chairman Alan Novak told residents of central Pennsylvania "to be on the lookout for a flip-flopping presidential candidate from Massachusetts."

It's a political technique known as bracketing. Both parties do it, but the Bush-Cheney team has far more resources at its command - more than $185 million raised for the campaign and the power of incumbency. Recent Democratic fund-raising has started to narrow the gap; but the Republicans still hold a big dollar advantage.

Prominent Republicans are dispatched to appear before and after appearances by the Massachusetts senator. The GOP circulates talking points. Conference calls are arranged with members of Congress and local officials on the day of Kerry's visit. Campaign ads are unveiled. Senior administration and campaign officials suddenly become available for local media interviews. Cabinet members drop in for visits. [...]

Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist and longtime Bush watcher, said the Bush campaign's tactics began as an attempt to neutralize "Kerry's use of the daily headlines to frame his attacks on the president."

"They are recognizing that they're in a fight, and using rapid response technology," Buchanan said.

Campaign officials actively reach out to local and regional media.

When they spotted remarks by Kerry on oil in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the comments were quickly passed to Bush surrogates in Louisiana and Arkansas, both oil states.

"That black stuff is hurting us," Kerry was quoted as saying, noting links between the burning of fossil fuels and global warning and respiratory diseases.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a leader of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Arkansas, issued a news release accusing Kerry of being "anti-job, anti-oil." Local media picked up the remarks.

"Here's the governor of Arkansas talking about how Kerry's one statement on oil will hurt south Arkansas," said Ark Monroe III of Little Rock, Ark., a former state insurance commissioner and friend of Bill Clinton. "Now, that's effective. It does energize the base and say this guy really can't be trusted. That to me is how thorough they are."

Being the tallest dwarf doesn't make you tall.

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AVOIDANCE?:

Bush, Kerry Avoid Domestic Issue No. 1: Boomer Retirement (Mort Kondracke, April 30, 2004, Real Clear Politics)

The Bush and Kerry campaigns are playing the public for fools, avoiding one of the biggest questions in America's future: how to finance the retirement of the baby boom generation.

It's a monstrous problem that will either break the American economy or - if addressed creatively and soon - revitalize it. Demographically, there is no avoiding the crisis, even if current politicians are scared to death about tackling it.

The boomers, 77 million of them, will begin retiring in just six years, drawing huge Medicare and Social Security benefits. Right now, the taxes of just three workers support the benefits payable to each current retiree, compared to 16 workers back in 1950. When most of the boomers are retired, the burden will be carried by just two workers.

The choice is simple. Cut the benefits, tax the hell out of the boomers' children - or figure out better ways of sharing the burden.

In fact, some good (if controversial) ideas have been proposed, many at the New America Foundation, a independent centrist think tank. They include lifetime savings accounts, means-tested Medicare, a policy of stimulating healthier lifestyles and less-costly but better-quality medicine, and efforts to encourage greater birth rates and higher immigration levels to grow the nation's population.

Mr. Kondracke is a nice enough fellow, but one of those mysteriously unable to comprehend the revolutionary nature of the Bush presidency:
Gathering Forces for Historic Reform (Peter Ferrara, January 21, 2004, Townhall)

President Bush last night put personal accounts for Social Security on the top shelf of the national agenda.  Few people now recognize how enormous this initiative can be, with powerfully beneficial effects reverberating throughout our economy and society.

But the incredible historic opportunity now on the horizon is recognized by a new coalition of conservative and progressive leaders to be announced today.

 The President in his speech made clear that he believes the looming problems of Social Security must be addressed now, not put off to just get worse and worse.  Moreover, the President said, he means to solve the problems through the positive approach of a personal account option, and all of its advantages for working people, rather than the negatives of tax increases and benefit cuts.

The President emphasized some of these positive themes, pointing out that a major personal account initiative would greatly expand and broaden wealth ownership, as well as freedom of choice and control.  He also made absolutely clear that the reform would involve no change for todayís seniors, or anyone anywhere near retirement.  The point of the reform is to improve the future for todayís younger workers, who suffer the prospects of a sharply deteriorating Social Security program.

Health Savings Accounts great plan for health care (Terry Savage, January 22, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

The Health Savings Account was hidden away in the prescription drug bill passed by Congress last December. But unlike the seriously flawed drug plan, the Health Savings Account is an exciting concept that could make health insurance available -- affordable -- for millions of Americans who aren't covered by an employer plan.

Remarks by the President on Immigration Policy (The East Room, 1/07/04):

our country has always benefited from the dreams that others have brought here. By working hard for a better life, immigrants contribute to the life of our nation. The temporary worker program I am proposing today represents the best tradition of our society, a society that honors the law, and welcomes the newcomer. This plan will help return order and fairness to our immigration system, and in so doing we will honor our values, by showing our respect for those who work hard and share in the ideals of America.

President Bush Signs Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003  (The Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, D.C., 11/05/03)

America stands for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness and for the unalienable right of life. And the most basic duty of government is to defend the life of the innocent. Every person, however frail or vulnerable, has a place and a purpose in this world. Every person has a special dignity. This right to life cannot be granted or denied by government, because it does not come from government, it comes from the Creator of life. (Applause.)

In the debate about the rights of the unborn, we are asked to broaden the circle of our moral concern. We're asked to live out our calling as Americans. We're asked to honor our own standards, announced on the day of our founding in the Declaration of Independence. We're asked by our convictions and tradition and compassion to build a culture of life, and make this a more just and welcoming society.

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"ACTUALLY, THAT IS CHRIST, BUT HE THINKS HE'S ARNOLD PALMER":

-REVIEW: of BOBBY JONES: STROKE OF GENIUS (ROGER EBERT, April 30, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

Bobby Jones (1902-1971) was perhaps the greatest golfer who ever lived. Not even Tiger Woods has equaled Jones' triumph in 1930, when he became the only player to win the U.S. Open, the British Open, the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur in the same year. Then he retired from competition -- still only 28. Odds are good no golfer will ever equal that record -- if only because no golfer good enough to do it will be an amateur. Jones also won seven U.S. titles in a row, an achievement that may be unmatchable.

Jones was not only an amateur, but an amateur who had to earn a living, so that he couldn't play golf every day and mostly played only in championship-level tournaments. This makes him sound like a man who played simply for love of the game, but "Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius" shows us a man who seems driven to play, a man obsessed; there seems less joy than compulsion in his career, and the movie contrasts him with the era's top professional, Walter Hagen (Jeremy Northam), who seems to enjoy himself a lot more.

Jim Caviezel ("The Passion of the Christ") plays Jones as an adult, after childhood scenes showing a young boy who becomes fascinated by the game and watches great players while hiding in the rough. He comes from a family dominated by a strict puritanical grandfather, but Jones' father, "Big Bob" (Brett Rice) is supportive. Not so Jones' wife Mary (Claire Forlani), who plays a role that has become standard in the biographies of great men -- the woman who wishes her man would give up his dream and spend more time at home with her and the children.

Of course, Mary sees a side of Bobby that's invisible to the world. The man is tortured. He feels he must enter tournaments and win them, to prove something he can never quite articulate, to show "them" without being sure who they are. And he is often in physical pain. After a sickly childhood, he grows up into a reed-thin man with a tense face, and doctors have only to look at him to prescribe rest. His stomach starts to hurt at about the same time he begins to drink and smoke, and although the movie does not portray him as an alcoholic, we hold that as a hypothesis until we find the pain is caused by syringomyelia, a spinal disease that would cripple him later in life.

Mr. Caviezel runs the risk of being type-cast as a god.

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HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE A HORSE NAMED "SMARTY JONES"?:

20 horses, 8 real threats at Derby (JIM O'DONNELL, April 30, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

It is a handicapper's PlayStation. Even the most opinionated experts seem to acknowledge that at least two-thirds of the starting lineup could make it to the winner's circle. Further complicating matters is the fact Kentuckiana weather forecasters are calling for a 70 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms on Derby Day. There has not been a Derby run in the slop since 1994. [...]

Still, someone will win, and figuring out who that will be is a major preoccupation of speculators from Antigua to Emerald Downs this weekend. So once again, Team Sun-Times will winnow possibilities through the sieve of Odage.

Odage is the handicapping helper that has eliminated two-thirds of all Derby starters from serious consideration, dating back to 1996, based on three simple past-performance guidelines. A horse can win the Kentucky Derby only if:

1) It finished first or second in its last race.

2) It ran a Beyer Speed Figure of at least 100 in its last race.

3) The forward variance of its last two Beyers is no worse than minus-2.

Since 1996, all eight Derby champions have been Odage qualifiers. Last May, only six of the 16 eventual starters qualified, including the three who ran 1-2-3: Funny Cide, Empire Maker and Peace Rules.

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IDOLATRY:

The Divine is present where He is welcomed (Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, 4/30/04, Jewish World Review)

Committing a sin is not necessarily a denial or rejection of G-d. A person may simply have been overwhelmed by an urge that he did not suppress, or may not have realized that a sin causes him to be distant from G-d. However, a vain, egotistical person is one who is his own G-d. Inasmuch as there cannot be two G-ds, if a person thinks himself to be G-d, he cannot believe in the true G-d. There is no form of idolatry as absolute as the person who worships himself.

In my writings on self-esteem, I suggested that vanity and conceit are desperate defenses whereby a person tries to cope with a sense of unworthiness. I was thrilled to find that no less an authority than Rabbeinu Yonah validates this concept. ''The vain person seeks to compensate for his feeling of defectiveness by means of grandiosity'' (Rabbeinu Yonah al HaTorah, p. 156). A person with healthy self-esteem does not seek the praise and recognition of others to remind him that he has value.

If a person truly believes that he possesses a Divine neshamah (soul), he will realize that he has great worth, and even if he may have gone astray in his behavior, he is nevertheless worthy by virtue of his Divine neshamah. Anyone with a profound feeling of unworthiness must be in denial that he has within himself the breath of G-d.

That psychological abnormality is why atheists deserve pity and love rather than anger or hatred.

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HE'S NOT BUSH, BUT IS HE AT LEAST DOLE?:

Some Blacks and Hispanics Criticize Kerry on Outreach (JODI WILGOREN, April 30, 2004, NY Times)

For weeks, Senator John Kerry savored a Democratic Party that was unified in rallying behind his presidential candidacy. But in recent days, influential black and Hispanic political leaders whom the campaign had counted on for support have been openly complaining that Mr. Kerry's organization lacks diversity and is failing to appeal directly to minority voters.

Even as Mr. Kerry spoke here on Thursday to the National Conference of Black Mayors — an appearance his community outreach team viewed as critical to building a network of minority support — two influential Latino leaders circulated harsh letters expressing concern about the campaign's dealings with minorities.

And in interviews over the last week, more than a dozen minority elected officials and political strategists voiced concerns about what they said was the dearth of representation in Mr. Kerry's inner circle and worried that he was taking black and Hispanic votes for granted.

"The reality is that we're entering May and the Kerry campaign has no message out there to the Hispanic community nor has there been any inkling of any reach-out effort in any state to the Hispanic electorate, at least with any perceivable sustainable strategy in mind," Alvaro Cifuentes, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee's Hispanic Caucus, said in an e-mail message to party leaders provided by a recipient who insisted on anonymity. "It is no secret that the word of mouth in the Beltway and beyond is not that he does not get it, it is that he does not care."

The difference between a respectable loss (45-6%) and the Apocalypse (40-42%) for Mr. Kerry lies wholly in the turnout of core constituencies. When it became obvious that Bob Dole couldn't beat Bill Clinton he did the righteous thing and ran as a conservative to make sure his pals in Congress didn't get drubbed. Considering that he's surrounded himself with Kennedyite true believers, one wonders if Mr. Kerry is capable of an equally selfless decision.

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THE CATASTROPHISTS:

Catch as catch can (The Tipsheet, April 30, 2004, The Hill e-News)

Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) presidential campaign is assembling a "Team B" group of advisors to craft a political strategy for catastrophic events, such as a terrorist attack on the United States before the election, the capture of Osama bin Laden, a vast improvement in the economy, or any other event that could alter the political zeitgeist in 2004.

You can just see the Kerry team sacrificing chickens to get Baal to keep the economy from improving or Osama's corpse from being located.

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LIVE LIKE PURITANS, VOTE LIKE ATHEISTS?:

Despite civil rights complaints, President Bush still has some Muslim support (RACHEL ZOLL, 4/29/04, The Associated Press)

It was just a throwaway line, an aside in a speech to some fellow American Muslims that Muqtedar Khan considered a surefire crowd-pleaser. But when he criticized President Bush over the war on Iraq, Khan was surprised by the response.

"I was booed. They were shouting and booing at me," said Khan, a political scientist at Adrian College in Michigan. "A man came and told me, `If you think the war in Iraq is not moral then I'm sorry to say you have no idea what morality is."'

As Khan saw that day, the president still enjoys pockets of strong support among America's Muslims, despite deep resentment over scrutiny of their community following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

And while Democrats outnumber Republicans among U.S. Muslims, there is a sense that presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry has done relatively little to reach out to the community.

Among Bush's supporters are Iraqi-Americans and others grateful that Saddam Hussein was ousted, giving their fellow Shiias a chance to govern in that country after decades of oppression.

Others are wealthy, immigrant businessmen loyal to the Republican Party. They can be found among the Bush campaign's Pioneers and Rangers, who have raised tens of thousands of dollars for his re-election.

More votes could come from socially conservative Muslims, drawn into the Republican camp because of its opposition to gay marriage. "We are working hard to maintain and build upon the support for the president," said Scott Stanzel, a Bush campaign spokesman. [...]

John Kerry's campaign has been less aggressive in reaching out to Muslims, said Al-Marayati and other Islamic leaders.

There's no end of groups that vote against their own self-interest, but given that Senator Kerry can't allow any wiggle room between himself and the President on Israel or the war on terror but is much less interested in democratizing the Middle East, Reforming Islam, and remoralizing American culture, why wouldn't a Muslim vote Republican?

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SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE

U.N. Oil Papers vanish (Niles Lathem, N.Y. Post, 29/04/04)

The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.

The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.

The world body claims it transferred all information it had - including 3,059 contracts worth about $6.2 billion for delivery of food and other civilian goods to the post-Saddam governing body, the Coalition Provisional Authority.

But the GAO report also found that a database the U.N. transferred to the authority was "unreliable because it contained mathematical and currency errors in calculation of contract costs," the report found.

The GAO findings, which were aired at a hearing of the House International Relations Committee, raise new questions about corruption and mismanagement in the biggest-ever U.N. aid program - and what has been called the biggest financial scandal in history. An earlier GAO report said Saddam ripped off over $10 billion.

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said the report raised serious concerns - and could have "a potential impact on the reputation and credibility of the United Nations."

"If these charges prove true, some of the obvious victims are those Iraqis who failed to receive needed assistance," Hyde (R-Ill.) said. [...]

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan fired back.

"If you read the reports, it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to do with it. They did nothing wrong - it was all the U.N.," Annan said.

With all due respect to Congressman Hyde, the looming issue is not whether long-suffering Iraqis were victimized yet again by being deprived of food, but whether the UN itself, several European countries and numerous politicians and luminaries were bankrolled by Saddam to oppose the U.S. and Britain and led him to believe he was untouchable. If even half true, that would make hundreds of dead American and British soldiers and thousands of dead Iraqis the victims.

Expect the Left to go to herculean lengths to ignore, bury and obfuscate, accuse conservatives of bad faith and perhaps throw up a UN bureaucrat or two as sacrificial lambs to keep this story under wraps. Expect many "realists" on the Right to enable them. Like the truth about communism, this story has the potential to be too earth-shaking in its implications and too threatening to too many people to be digested fully in this generation.

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AGAINST WHAT STANDARD ARE WE JUDGING HERE?:

Moderate Muslims March in Phoenix: A patriotic Islamic group organizes a rally against terrorism -- and an anti-war demonstration breaks out. (Daniel Pipes, 4/30/04, FrontPage)

When the American Islamic Forum for Democracy organized "A Rally against Terror" on April 25 in Phoenix, its head, an Arizona physician named Zuhdi Jasser, said his goal was to give Muslim moderates "an opportunity to speak out publicly." And Jasser presented the rally as a robust response to the many criticisms that American Muslims had not produced a "groundswell of condemnation" against terrorism. In fact, he asserted,

The killing of innocent people out of revenge, out of hate or out of retribution is against the absolute laws of Islam. Suicide is against the absolute laws of Islam. People can justify their actions all day long, but we as Muslims are here to say clearly their actions are against everything we believe.

Jasser wrote an oped in the Arizona Republic where, as a Muslim, he took responsibility for the mistrust directed toward American Muslims, rather than merely blow this off as prejudice:

It is impossible as an American not to feel the growing palpable distrust toward the Muslim community. With attacks targeting innocent civilians across the globe, it has sadly at this time gone far beyond the initial prideful question of "Why are Muslims being singled out?" It is time now only to rally and provide an unmistakable resounding reply. 

With this in mind, he set out two goals for the rally:

We want to reassure the American public that the great majority of Muslims condemn the targeting of innocents by virtue of the tenets of our faith. We also want to give hope and inspiration to faithful Muslims all over the country that this type of rally is possible.

Jasser found support for his efforts as close as the Arizona Republic, which correctly judged this event to be "the nationís first Muslim rally against terrorism," and as far away as the country's capital, where a Washington Times editorial ended with, "We salute Dr. Jasser, American patriot."
The Muslim community of Phoenix is estimated at 50,000 persons; Jasser worked strenuously to reach out to the Valley Council of Imams, Valley mosques and major Valley Islamic organizations; and the Arizona Republic, the leading newspaper of Phoenix, gave the rally its full-fledged support. A head of steam behind him, Jasser optimistically predicted that 500 to 1,000 people would attend the event.

But then the event was held and reality set in.

You ever been to an anti-terror march?

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SPARE US ALL:

When everybody sounds like Tony Soprano: Expletives are fine, if used sparingly. But overuse has reduced them to little more than "you knows." (Theodore Roszak, 4/30/04, CS Monitor)

When the new HBO series "Deadwood" premiered, I was delightfully surprised to hear a TV critic on National Public Radio make a point of knocking its wildly excessive use of obscenities - even before he got around to offering the show a positive review. At last, I thought, a display of good critical judgment.

Don't mistake me. I write in defense of the expletive. Every language needs its dirty words. They are the cayenne pepper of speech, available to communicate uncontrollable fury, irreverence, or vulgar insolence. But the undeleted F-expletive is the most obvious literary vice of our day.

I'm sure social authenticity would be the justification offered by filmmakers for drowning their audience in dirty words. Martin Scorsese, whose 1990 "Goodfellas" raised expletive usage to new levels, would no doubt insist that movies about gangsters or prizefighters simply wouldn't sound real without salty language. Poor excuse. There is a name for work that indulges in mind-numbing and predictable repetition, whether the words are clean or dirty. We call it "bad writing."

Good writing sparkles, even when it gives voice to characters who are grossly inarticulate. There is a well-developed body of work that does a brilliant job of injecting wit into degraded English. The warriors who fill Shakespeare's history plays were doubtlessly as foul-mouthed as soldiers and gangsters in our time, but the bard didn't need to wallow in obscenity to make them come alive. And think of Charles Dickens, Ring Lardner, or even David Mamet - before he, too, joined the smut parade.

Today it doesn't matter who's talking: Everybody sounds like Tony Soprano.

We don't have many rules for our comments sections, but there's one we do try to enforce strictly: no profanity. People who know us find this odd, because, like any sons of a clergyman, the Brothers Judd are as profane as longshoremen. However--and maybe this is delusional--it seems that written swearing is less excusable than oral, if for no other reason than that you've time and chance to erase the words that make you sound like an ass.

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UNSMOTHERED BY MOTHER:

Would you believe it?: As Georges Simenon's centenary approaches, Mark Lawson unravels clues to the life of the Belgian thriller-writer and discovers a mysterious character who could write a book in 11 days and claimed to have had 10,000 lovers (Mark Lawson, November 23, 2002, The Guardian)

A remarkably prolific novelist, Simenon was also an astonishingly gushing lover. In old age, he claimed to have had sex with 10,000 women and, while all claims of erotic prowess are subject to a certain rounding-up, it's clear he used prostitutes at the rate Parisians get through Gitanes.

Beyond these enigmas involving his imagination and his penis, there are other mysteries to be considered by any writer investigating him, as I have for a Radio 4 play marking his centenary. Part of the reason this Belgian, whose most famous character was French, spent the last 40 years of his life in America and Switzerland was the accusation that he had collaborated with the Vichy regime during the second world war. There is also the question of why his daughter killed herself.

The main biographers - Pierre Assouline (1997), Patrick Marnham (1992), Stanley Eskins (1987) and Fenton Bresler (1983) - frequently disagree on details of the author's life but they are more often contradicted by the more than 20 volumes of autobiography which Simenon himself published. That torrent of autobiography is not even internally consistent. For example, he gives several different accounts of the genesis of his signature character, Superintendent Maigret.

A man who had published at least 400 novels under his own name and a variety of others would frequently lament to interviewers that he had always been incapable of making anything up. Certainly, he transferred a number of people, names and places wholesale from his research to the novels and, in consequence, suffered a number of libel suits. More gravely, when his 25-year-old daughter, Marie-Jo, decided to shoot herself in 1978, she was able to get the name and address of a reputable Parisian gunsmith from one of the Maigret stories.

Reluctant to admit fiction to his novels, Simenon was unusually inventive in real life. It is still, for instance, widely claimed in literary histories that the young Simenon once wrote a novel in public in 24 hours, while sitting in a glass cage in Paris, accepting character and plot suggestions from a gawping audience. The author did not discourage this legend and it became a perfect metaphor for both his exhibitionism and his profligacy. However, his biographers have proved that Simenon never in fact became a literary sea-lion in this way. He signed a contract for the transparent composition but cancelled the happening after being warned by friends that it would wreck his artistic reputation. As with his birth certificate, the misunderstanding seems appropriate.

Apart from the personal memories that went through more drafts than a Hollywood screenplay, he had what might be taken as a novelist's habit of renaming key players in his life, so that his first wife, Regine, was rechristened "Tigy", while her maid Henriette, with whom the libidinous Simenon had an inevitable affair, was asked to answer to "Boule". The second wife, Denise, seems to have held on to what she got at the font although, in an intriguing psychological sideswipe, she began to spell herself Denyse after their marriage ended.

During the 1950s, when Simenon was living in magnificence by Lake Geneva, one of his neighbours was Carl Jung. The crime writer was keen for a meeting and an appointment was made but was cancelled by the psychologist's death. Yet a session with Sigmund Freud would probably have been more appropriate. The more you learn about the author, the more you conclude that his childhood damaged him profoundly.

In the classic no-win of parenting, his father loved Georges too much, his mother too little. His father, Desire, died at only 44 from a heart ailment he had concealed from his wife, who had come to the alternative diagnosis of laziness. Shortly before dying, Simenon Sr gave his son a pocket-watch, which he later used as payment in a brothel. These events gave Georges three obsessions - with early death, timepieces and his mother's cruelty - which became driving forces in his writing.

Henriette - the target of a bitter, late non-fiction book, Letter To My Mother - distanced herself from Simenon not only by her alleged part in hounding his sainted father to an early grave. Most shockingly, when Georges's brother was killed, she complained to her surviving son: "Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been you?"

There's a popular psychological theory that men who are rejected by their mothers often become obsessive copulators, seeking vaginal acceptance, the compensating embrace.

And vice versa.

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THE SKY IS RISING:

CUT RUSSIA SOME SLACK: THE ALARM AND DISMAY ARE MISPLACED: Russia isn't as much of a mess as critics would have you think. Its economy is making progress, and its political system is probably not much less democratic than, say, Italy's. (Clive Crook, 4/28/04, Atlantic Monthly)

I was in Moscow and St. Petersburg recently, attending conferences organized by Washington's Cato Institute. It was my first visit to Russia for a few years, and what I saw surprised me: an economy poor by Western standards, to be sure, yet plainly making rapid progress; and a political system that, while messy and no doubt corrupt by the standards of the rich West, gives voice to dissent and is probably not much less democratic than, say, Italy's. The picture drawn by most Western commentators—of a kind of criminal anarchy seething beneath a top layer of sham constitutional government—just does not square with what one sees, or, for that matter, with the facts. [...]

The mistaken idea that Russia was a strong economy in 1990 and the eagerness to see capitalism fail go a long way to explain the current widespread misconceptions. Shleifer and Treisman argue that if one thinks of Russia as a middle-income developing country—which it was, in terms of per capita income, even in 1990—then its present difficulties look much more normal. Yes, Russia is far poorer than the United States is. It always was. At the moment, nonetheless, it ranks among the most promising middle-income developing countries. The answer to the question "Who lost Russia?" is not the International Monetary Fund, or the Clinton administration, or Boris Yeltsin's reckless economic reformers. Nobody lost it, unless you count the Communists.

If Russia's economy is doing better than readers of American and European newspapers might think, what about the country's politics? Again, by rich-country standards, things look bad. By developing-country standards, on the other hand, they seem about average. It is true that the government exercises influence or outright control over much of the media, and that Vladimir Putin has moved to strengthen the government's hand still further. This kind of sway would be regarded as outrageous in most Western countries (though not all: Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi, owns or controls the main television stations and much of the press). In many middle-income countries, ownership of industry, including the media, is concentrated in relatively few hands, and the families in charge take care to have friendly relations with politicians.

Putin's government does have an authoritarian cast, and things could deteriorate further. On the other hand, the popularity of his regime seems genuine: Nobody is claiming that the elections that recently entrenched his power were fixed, and it should come as no surprise that a recovering economy and Putin's emphasis on security are a hit with voters.

One thing that's kind of worrisome is the thought that: if the press, pundits and pols get this hysterical about an ally who's pretty clearly dragging his country forward, even if by means we'd not accept here, then how are they going to react to the unique political configurations that emerging Islamic democracies adopt? As Iraq and Iran and the rest liberalize they aren't going to have republics just like ours, but so what?

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KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

THE UPRISING: Shia and Sunnis put aside their differences. (JON LEE ANDERSON, 2004-05-03, The New Yorker)

The American plan to install friendly Shiite former exiles in positions of power in Iraq began to go wrong early on, most spectacularly on April 10th last year, the day after Baghdad fell, when Abdel Majid al-Khoei, a member of an important clerical family, was murdered near the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the holiest Shiite shrines. Khoei had been flown into Najaf in early April, and Ayad Jamaluddin met him there. They were staying with American military forces on the outskirts of the city. Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon’s primary Shiite candidate for a leadership position, was bivouacked a hundred and forty miles south, in Nasiriyah, with his little band of Free Iraqi Fighters.

Jamaluddin had not been in Najaf for more than twenty years. Khoei had left in 1992, in the aftermath of the Shiite uprising against Saddam following the Gulf War. His father, a Grand Ayatollah who was Sistani’s immediate predecessor, died under house arrest in Najaf soon afterward. In 1994, his older brother was hit by a truck on the road between Najaf and Karbala. Abdel Majid al-Khoei and his wife and four children lived in London, where he ran the Al Khoei Foundation, a well-endowed charitable organization. His principal American contacts were with the C.I.A., which disapproved of Chalabi, whom it believed to be untenable as a future leader.

Jamaluddin said that he and Khoei found themselves in circumstances that were unfamiliar and disorienting for two urbane sons of the upper class. “The place where we were was dusty, and it was exhausting,” he said. “It was not very suitable for us, but our sublime purpose in being there, which we were both anticipating, was the liberation of the Iraqi people. It was a meeting in a place for which we both felt a great responsibility.” They went to Ayatollah Sistani’s house with specific requests in mind. “My aim was to secure his protection and that of the holy shrines,” Jamaluddin said. “I learned afterward that Abdel Majid”—Khoei—“was seeking Sistani’s legal approval—a fatwa—for the U.S. military forces to be in Najaf.” The city was by no means secure then, but there were only a few young guards at Sistani’s house, and his son told them that the Ayatollah had gone somewhere else, for protection. When Khoei asked about Sistani’s position regarding the American forces, the son said that his father didn’t get involved in such matters. According to Jamaluddin, this made Khoei angry, and he said, “Then the people must find a new religious authority,” and he left. Jamaluddin was more sanguine. “The whole city was in a panic,” he said. No one knew for sure that Saddam was really out of power.

Jamaluddin shared a room with Khoei in those early, tumultuous days, and says that he warned him that he had heard people speaking against him. There are many factions among the clerics in Najaf, and it is easy to imagine that the resident clerics would be threatened by the newcomers, especially since they arrived with American soldiers and a great deal of money to distribute. Jamaluddin left for Kuwait on the evening of April 8th, and his brother Qusay, who is a doctor, and several of their friends stayed with Khoei. On the morning of the tenth, Khoei went to the mosque with the official custodian, Haidar Raifee, who was generally disliked because he was suspected of stealing from the shrine and diverting funds to Saddam and the Baath Party. Jamaluddin says that people began gathering around the men, demanding Haidar’s ouster, but that Khoei spoke of reconciliation and tried to calm things down. “Then the people became violent, breaking glass and pulling knives,” Jamaluddin said. His brother told him that Khoei pulled out a gun and fired it in the air. “Suddenly, everyone had pulled out guns—pistols and Kalashnikovs—and started shooting.” Three of Khoei’s fingers were blown off. “Then they tied him up and took him out of the mosque and began attacking him and Sayyid Haidar with knives,” Jamaluddin said. Haidar was killed at the gate of the mosque. Khoei “had on a flak jacket and so the knives were not so effective, but he was bleeding. About a hundred metres from the mosque, he found a shop and asked the shop owner to kill him”—to put him out of his misery. “The shop owner said he couldn’t, but gave him water. Then people came and got him again, and one man, using a sword, stabbed him in the neck. But he was not dead yet. Then they dragged his body perhaps ten metres in the street, and he was stabbed until he died. My brother called me from his cell phone and told me what was happening. He was too upset to describe it in detail, but he did later, and another friend who was there said the same thing.”

Jamaluddin’s account corresponds in general to the report from an Iraqi judge that led to the arrest warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr, the extremist Shiite leader who has been more or less at war with the Coalition for the past several weeks. Eyewitnesses said that Sadr’s men killed Khoei. On April 3rd this year, nearly a year after the murder, the Coalition arrested Mustafa Yaqoubi, Sadr’s deputy, as an accomplice. [...]

Early in April, I had sent a message to James Steele, Paul Bremer’s Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces, asking if we could talk. [...]

Steele advocates robust military action, “combined with the right political moves,” to quell the insurgencies. “In Fallujah, a heavy hand makes sense,” he said. “That’s the only thing some of those guys will understand. Down south, too. We can’t be seen as weak. Otherwise, this kind of thing can happen everywhere.” He said that the problem in Najaf was strategically more important than the one in Fallujah: “We can’t afford to miscalculate with the Shia. Most of them are in our corner and do not support Sadr, and we can’t lose them.” He hoped that, once Sadr was “neutralized,” his organization would fall apart, although “Sadr’s got something going for him now, in that he is playing to the underlying resentment against us. There’s a lot of people who don’t want us here. At some level, people feel pride when they see Sadr thumbing his nose at us. They think to themselves, You tell ’em! But if Sadr can be discredited, then his followers, many of whom are uneducated and without jobs, will probably back down again. Sad as it is to say, they’re used to being defeated here.” [...]

“Sadr’s followers are simple people,” a Shiite friend of mine said recently. “They are easily led by someone who says he is defending their interests. They listen to him because there have been so few visible reforms in the last year. The Iraqis suffered terribly under Saddam, and yet not one of the war criminals from his regime has been put on trial. None of the people who found relatives in mass graves have received compensation. The garbage in Sadr City is symptomatic of the bad conditions they live in. That’s the kind of thing that makes people join a mob.” [...]

Now, as Salaam and I drove up to the mosque, we saw a couple of large dump trucks being loaded with sacks of flour and boxes of cooking oil and bags of rice. The provisions were being transferred from small pickups that arrived in a steady stream. One of the pickups flew two black flags, Shia flags, like battle standards. An Iraqi man who was standing near me commented, in good English, “You see that. It’s from a Shiite mosque.” He said that mosques all over Baghdad were accepting donations from people and dispatching them to be sent on to Fallujah. “Before, there was no common ground between Sunni and Shia,” he said, “but now there is. The reason is because the Iraqi people are tired of the occupation and the humiliation of soldiers pushing in their doors and stealing from them and bothering their women and sticking guns in their faces.”

The conclusion of the article seems odd because after delineating what an aberration al-Sadr is among the Shi'a, that he is in fact at war with his fellow Shi'ites, Mr. Anderson asks us to accept that some signs that al-Sadr is supporting the Sunni, who also oppose the Shi'a generally, indicates that there's now a unified front of all Iraqis. The reality is that if the Shi'a and Sunni did join forces we'd have no choice but to kill 23 million people or leave. Instead the low levels of violence show how limited is support for the resistance.

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COSMIC, DUDE:

Scientists Announce Cosmic Ray Theory Breakthrough (SPX, Apr 30, 2004)

University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have proposed a new theory to explain the movement of vast energy fields in giant radio galaxies (GRGs). The theory could be the basis for a whole new understanding of the ways in which cosmic rays - and their signature radio waves - propagate and travel through intergalactic space.

In a paper published this month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists explain how magnetic field reconnection may be responsible for the acceleration of relativistic electrons within large intergalactic volumes. That is, the movement of charged particles in space that are originally energized by massive black holes.

"If our understanding of this process is correct," says Los Alamos astrophysicist Philipp Kronberg, "it could be a paradigm shift in current thinking about the nature of GRGs and cosmic rays."

Researchers still do not fully understand why magnetic field reconnection occurs, but this much is known: a deeper understanding of the mechanism could have important applications here on Earth, such as the creation of a system of magnetic confinement for fusion energy reactors.

If the Los Alamos scientists' theory is correct, the discovery also has wide-ranging astrophysical consequences. It implies that magnetic field reconnection or some other highly efficient field-to-particle energy conversion process could be a principal source of all extragalactic radio sources, and possibly also the mysterious "Ultra High Energy Cosmic Ray particles".

Giant radio galaxies are vast celestial objects that emit a continuum of radio wavelengths detectable with radio telescopes like those at the Very Large Array in Socorro, N.M. Using comprehensive data on seven of the largest radio galaxies in the Universe gathered over the past two decades, the researchers were able to study cosmic ray energy fields that are expelled from the GRGs centers - which are almost certain to contain supermassive black holes - outward as much as a few millions of light years into intergalactic space (1 light year = 5,900,000,000,000 miles).

What the Los Alamos researchers concluded was that the high energy content of these giant radio galaxies, their large ordered magnetic field structures, the absence of strong large-scale shocks and very low internal gas densities point to a direct and efficient conversion of the magnetic field to particle energy in a process that astrophysicists call magnetic field reconnection. Magnetic field reconnection is a process where the lines of a magnetic field connect and vanish, converting the field's energy into particle energy. Reconnection is considered a key process in the sun's corona for the production of solar flares and in fusion experiment devices called tokamaks. It also occurs in the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic field and is considered a principal cause of magnetospheric storms.

Cosmic rays will also eventually turn out to be the main force driving evolution.

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THE HUNKERED:

'Invisible army' key in GOP matchup: Schaffer has loyalty now, but voters could turn to Coors (M.E. Sprengelmeyer And Dick Foster, April 29, 2004, Rocky Mountain News)

There's an "invisible army" mobilizing in the Republican U.S. Senate contest, and where it lines up could influence the race between Pete Coors and Bob Schaffer.

Their ranks are thousands strong, hunkered at dining-room tables reading books, conjugating verbs, doing math and science lessons with their children.

They're home- schoolers - predominantly Republican parents, often religiously motivated, with their own special interest in politicians who shape the nation's education policy.

It may take some sort of secret weapon if former congressman Schaffer is to beat the better- known, better-bankrolled beer baron Coors.

Schaffer's camp includes many committed supporters who are familiar with his work in the state legislature, Congress and at a think tank that promotes home schools and private-school vouchers.

The question for Schaffer's campaign is whether they will stick with him in large enough numbers once Coors' education platform becomes as well known as his family name.

As it stands now, Schaffer shows signs of strength among school- choice supporters - a key GOP constituency that is highly motivated to get to the polls.

Doesn't seem like an issue where Mr. Coors will leave room to his Right.

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IN A RELATED STORY, THERE'S COAL IN NEWCASTLE:

3rd Adult Movie Performer Tests for HIV (AP, 4/29/04)

A third adult movie performer tested positive Thursday for the virus that causes AIDS (news - web sites) in the midst of an HIV (news - web sites) outbreak that has halted most production, according to the director of an AIDS testing service.

"This is not over," said Sharon Mitchell, executive director of the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, which screens performers for sexually transmitted diseases.

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PARADOXICAL EFFECT:

Being a Saudi political activist means learning to do jail time: Despite government constraints tied to his release, Mohammad Saeed Tayeb still dreams of democratic reform. (Faiza Saleh Ambah, 4/30/04, CS Monitor)

Shortly after noon prayers men in long white Saudi thobes and headdresses trickle into the living room, greeting [Mohammad Saeed] Tayeb with kisses and hugs. "Welcome back, father of Shaimaa [his eldest daughter]. Thank God for your safe return." Two Filipino waiters walk around the long rectangular room carrying trays filled with steaming glasses of red and green tea and Arabic coffee.

Tayeb's cellphone continuously interrupts the buzz of conversation. He fields calls from the BBC and Radio Sawa, the American-sponsored station. "We welcome you as a pleasant addition to the region's media," Tayeb tells the Sawa correspondent. "But I'm sorry, I'm not at liberty to speak to the press. I've been asked not to. Yes, you can say I said that."

The arrest of Tayeb along with about a dozen other pro-democracy activists last month has stalled the reform movement in Saudi Arabia, the most serious in the country's recent history. Most activists have been released on condition they stop organizing public events and don't talk to the press. Three who refuse to cooperate without a lawyer are still in detention.

At an age when most men are thinking about retirement, Tayeb is a central figure in a group of some 50 political activists. The group includes liberals from the Red Sea coast city of Jeddah, Islamists from the capital Riyadh, and Shiites from the Eastern province. They have been working together for the first time, gathering signatures for petitions asking for a constitution, economic and political accountability from the royal family and government, and more rights for women.

"Under the guidance of Mohammad Saeed Tayeb, Matrouk al-Faleh and Abdullah al-Hamid [Al Faleh and Al Hamid are still being detained], Saudi reformists were more active in the past three years than in the previous four decades," says Saudi writer and reformist Ahmad Adnan. The reason, says Mr. Adnan, is a political environment altered by the Sept. 11 attacks, terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the US-led war in neighboring Iraq, and calls for reform by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.

Over the past year, the reformists have gathered more than 850 signatures in several petitions calling for reforms, talked openly in newspapers and on TV satellite channels about the urgent need for change in the kingdom, and held a public meeting in Riyadh, the first of its kind.

But the reform-minded Prince Abdullah has been silent since the arrests March 16, leading many to suspect that his powerful half-brothers, Interior Minister Prince Nayef and Defense Minister Prince Sultan, engineered the arrests without his approval.

It's an especially delightful irony that one of the results of 9-11 will be the more rapid liberalization of Saud'i Arabia.

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HOWARD?:

AUDIO INTERVIEW: Moor History in Spain (Kojo Nnamdi Show, 4/29/04, WAMU)

Recent news reports mention the Moors in Spain. Find out more about the legacy of the Moors, including a golden century when Jews and Christians lived together in peace under Islamic rule.

Lourdes Maria Alvarez, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Catholic University

Howard D. Miller, assistant professor of history, Jacksonville State University, Alabama

Some of you might more easily recognize him as our friend H.D. Miller at Travelling Shoes.

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NOT NEUTRAL:

62% Say World Better If More Like USA: 64% Say American Society Generally Fair and Decent (Rasmussen Reports, April 27, 2004)

More than six-out-of-ten American voters believe the USA is a good role model for the rest of the world.

A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 64% of voters believe that American society is generally fair and decent. Additionally, 62% believe the world would be a better place if other countries became more like the United States.

However, while a solid majority views the nation in this way, there are significant differences of opinion among partisan, ideological, and political fault lines.

Among Bush voters, 83% say that American society is generally fair and decent. Just 7% say it is basically unfair and discriminatory.

While Bush voters are united behind this perception, Kerry voters are divided--46% say fair and decent while 37% say unfair and discriminatory.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Bush voters also believe the world would be better if other nations were more like the United States. This view is shared by just 48% of Kerry voters.

From an ideological perspective, 74% of conservatives say the world would be better if other nations were more like ours. Just 15% of conservatives believe it would be worse.

However, among self-identified liberals, the numbers are 49% better and 37% worse. A plurality of those who say they are very liberal believe the world would be in worse shape if other nations were more like ours.

Moderate voters, by a 3-to-1 margin think that having other nation's more like us would create a better world.

If you caught the excellent Frontline on the President's faith tonight, there was a hilarious bit with Jim Wallis of Sojourners fretting about Mr. Bush referring to terrorists as "evil." Here's the essay he more or less reiterated, Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush's theology of empire. (Jim Wallis, September-October 2003, Sojourners):

Since Sept. 11, President Bush has turned the White House "bully pulpit" into a pulpit indeed, replete with "calls" and "missions" and "charges to keep" regarding America's role in the world. George Bush is convinced that we are engaged in a moral battle between good and evil, and that those who are not with us are on the wrong side in that divine confrontation.

But who is "we," and does no evil reside with "us"? The problem of evil is a classic one in Christian theology. Indeed, anyone who cannot see the real face of evil in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is suffering from a bad case of postmodern relativism. To fail to speak of evil in the world today is to engage in bad theology. But to speak of "they" being evil and "we" being good, to say that evil is all out there and that in the warfare between good and evil others are either with us or against us—that is also bad theology. Unfortunately, it has become the Bush theology.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House carefully scripted the religious service in which the president declared war on terrorism from the pulpit of the National Cathedral. The president declared to the nation, "Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil." With most every member of the Cabinet and the Congress present, along with the nation's religious leaders, it became a televised national liturgy affirming the divine character of the nation's new war against terrorism, ending triumphantly with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." War against evil would confer moral legitimacy on the nation's foreign policy and even on a contested presidency.

What is most missing in the Bush theology is acknowledgement of the truth of this passage from the gospel of Matthew: "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." A simplistic "we are right and they are wrong" theology rules out self-reflection and correction. It also covers over the crimes America has committed, which lead to widespread global resentment against us.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that every nation, political system, and politician falls short of God's justice, because we are all sinners. He specifically argued that even Adolf Hitler—to whom Saddam Hussein was often compared by Bush—did not embody absolute evil any more than the Allies represented absolute good. Niebuhr's sense of ambiguity and irony in history does not preclude action but counsels the recognition of limitations and prescribes both humility and self-reflection.

And what of Bush's tendency to go it alone, even against the expressed will of much of the world? A foreign government leader said to me at the beginning of the Iraq war, "The world is waiting to see if America will listen to the rest of us, or if we will all just have to listen to America." American unilateralism is not just bad political policy, it is bad theology as well. C.S. Lewis wrote that he supported democracy not because people were good, but rather because they often were not. Democracy provides a system of checks and balances against any human beings getting too much power. If that is true of nations, it must also be true of international relations. The vital questions of diplomacy, intervention, war, and peace are, in this theological view, best left to the collective judgment of many nations, not just one—especially not the richest and most powerful one.

In Christian theology, it is not nations that rid the world of evil—they are too often caught up in complicated webs of political power, economic interests, cultural clashes, and nationalist dreams. The confrontation with evil is a role reserved for God, and for the people of God when they faithfully exercise moral conscience. But God has not given the responsibility for overcoming evil to a nation-state, much less to a superpower with enormous wealth and particular national interests. To confuse the role of God with that of the American nation, as George Bush seems to do, is a serious theological error that some might say borders on idolatry or blasphemy.

It is, of course, nonsense to pretend that George Bush does not recognize evil in himself or his nation--the reason he talks about the need to create a Culture of Life is obviously because we currently have one that is too much of Death. Meanwhile, the idea that there's something theologically unsound about using whatever resources you have at hand to fight evil is just risible. We recently reviewed a terrific novel about Esther and here's what Mordechai told her when she tried to beg off coming to the assistance of her people:

For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

We can't know if we were put here at this moment in time to fight the evil of radical Islamic terror, but we also can't weasel out of it and hope the fight and the evil pass us by.

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KEEPING THE PLAME BURNING:

Wilson Names Three Possible CIA Leakers (AP, Apr 29, 2004)

Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been pegged as a possible leaker of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to a syndicated columnist, according to accounts in a book by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband.

In "The Politics of Truth," to be published Friday, Wilson says Libby is "quite possibly the person who exposed my wife's identity," according to The Washington Post, which obtained an early copy.

The vice president's office did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.

Wilson writes that a "workup" of his background was done by the White House in March 2003, after his public criticism of the administration's Iraq policy.

"The other name that has most often been repeated to me in connection with the inquiry and disclosure into my background and Valerie's is that of Elliott Abrams, who gained infamy in the Iran-Contra scandal," he writes.

Infamy? Elliott Abrams has helped liberate Nicaragua and Iraq. What did Joe Wilson ever do of comparable worth?

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ALL OF THE GOOD ONES ARE TAKEN:

Kerry campaign lacks diversity at top: Mostly white inner circle worries some observers (The Associated Press, April 29, 2004)

A lack of minority representation at the upper levels of John Kerry’s presidential campaign threatens to weaken enthusiasm among black and Hispanic voters, two core constituencies, some Democrats and advocacy groups say.

Kerry’s inner circle — the dozen or so advisers who participate in the campaign’s most important decisions — is mostly white. [...]

Census Bureau estimates show that in 2002, 81 percent of Massachusetts residents were white, 7 percent were Hispanic and 5 percent were black. Nationally, the population is about 68 percent white, 14 percent Hispanic and 12 percent black.

The problem isn't that they're too white; it's that they're too liberal. But anticipate a quota hire by next week. "Donna Brazile, please report to the office, Donna Brazile..."

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TORO!:

9/11 panel interviews Bush, Cheney (Associated Press, April 29, 2004)

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney spent more than three hours behind closed doors Thursday with the Sept. 11 commission charged with finding ways to prevent a repeat of the worst terrorist attack in American history. ``I answered every question they asked,'' Bush said.

Bush declined to disclose details of the Oval Office discussion, saying the commissioners would incorporate his and Cheney's comments in their final report, set for release about three months before the November election.

But the president, who described the meeting as "very cordial,'' said the commissioners were ``very interested in the recommendations that they're going to lay out, and I'm interested in those as well.''

If he weren't a moron that phrasing would seem an exquisite barb.

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THE LOYALIST:

Specter victory credited to Bush (MICHAEL P. BUFFER, April 29, 2004, The Express-Times)

When U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter was giving his primary election victory speech about 1 a.m. Wednesday, several supporters of Lehigh Valley Congressman Pat Toomey watched Specter on a TV set in a lobby at the Holiday Inn in Fogelsville.

One upset Toomey supporter said something like this: President Bush dragged Specter's lousy rear-end across the finish line. His remark was a little less family friendly.

"It's not arguable that Specter owes his victory to President Bush," Franklin & Marshall College pollster G. Terry Madonna said. "His appearance with Specter (in Pittsburgh on April 19) was noticeable. We caught it in our polling. Wayward Republican voters came around to Specter. The appeal that the party needs you, the president needs you, proved to be the difference."

Once again the President put his own political capital and credibility on the line for the sake of the Party and once again he won. You'd have to assume that the next time he really needs the vote of Senator Specter or another congressman in a similar situation he'll have it.

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KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Mystery group wage war on Sadr's militia (COLIN FREEMAN, 4/29/04, The Scotsman)

FOR the past month they have been the rude young pretenders, a rag-tag slum army ruffling the quiet dignity of Iraq’s holiest city.

For every day that the United States army fails to act on its threat to crush them, the Shiite militiamen of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have grown in confidence in their stronghold in Najaf.

Now, however, a shadowy resistance movement within might be about to succeed where the 2,500 US marines outside the city have failed.

In a deadly expression of feelings that until now were kept quiet, a group representing local residents is said to have killed at least five militiamen in the last four days.

The murders are the first sign of organised Iraqi opposition to Sadr’s presence and come amid simmering discontent at the havoc their lawless presence has wreaked.

The group calls itself the Thulfiqar Army, after a twin-bladed sword said to be used by the Shiite martyr Imam Ali, to whom Najaf’s vast central mosque is dedicated. [...]

[W]hile Iraq’s leading Shiite moderate cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has warned the US that the city border was an uncrossable "red line", he is known to share the anger of many Shiites about Sadr’s use of a holy place as a sanctuary.

Local residents, moreover, are deeply angry at how his revolt has robbed them of their livelihoods in recent weeks.

Since Sadr’s forces drove out Spanish troops this month, the tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims who keep the city’s hoteliers, taxi drivers and restaurateurs in business have become a mere trickle.

During a visit to the city by The Scotsman last week, some residents branded Sadr "the second Saddam", claiming his followers regularly intimidate locals who speak against him.

So we should probably prepare for the flood of apologies from the ignorant folk whose feverous imaginations mistakenly perceived Sadr as leading a popular Shi'a uprising, right?

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WELL, THEY ARE THE GODLESS PARTY:

McDermott omits 'God' from Pledge (Amy Fagan, April 28, 2004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Rep. Jim McDermott, Washington Democrat, yesterday did not say the words "under God" as he led the House in its daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Rep. Pete Sessions, Texas Republican, accused Mr. McDermott of "embarrassing the House" and proving that "he and those like him stand more for the liberal left than they do for our friends and neighbors."

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CRANK UP THE VCR:

  'Frontline' explores Bush's religious bent (Sandi Dolbee, April 29, 2004, San Diego Union-Tribune)

Public television tonight takes a look at "the most openly religious president in recent times."

But don't expect an hour of diatribes against President George W. Bush and his blending of faith and politics. What you'll see tonight on "Frontline," which airs at 9 p.m. on KPBS/Channel 15 with some repeats, is an evenhanded, even cautious, examination of the former Texas governor who years ago told a group of people, "I believe that God wants me to be president."

The timing of "Frontline's" documentary, titled The Jesus Factor, is compelling.

It comes just two weeks after Bush ratcheted up his religious language in a nationally televised conference and on the heels of journalist Bob Woodward's new book, which describes the president as "casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan." (Not to mention Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's contention that religion should not be an issue.)

And while the show doesn't get into these most-recent forays, it does a very good job of reminding us that the president's convictions did not begin in the White House – nor did his commitment to a particular brand of Christianity.

Once you comprehend the degree to which his views and policies are shaped by his Christianity and his governing style influenced by his business background, George Bush's presidency becomes entirely predictable and obviously revolutionary.

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GOOD JOB, NOW BRING 'EM HOME:

Poll: Iraqis Split Over Whether Iraq Is Better Off (Reuters, April 28, 2004)

Most Iraqis believe the ouster of Saddam Hussein was "worth" the hardships they have endured since the U.S.-led invasion, but Iraqis are sharply divided over whether the country is better off, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released on Wednesday.

Forty-two percent of Iraqis said they believe their country is better off since the invasion launched more than a year ago, while 46 percent said the war has done "more harm than good," the poll found.

The poll, with a sampling error of 1.7 percentage points, was conducted among 3,444 Iraqis throughout the country in late March and early April before the latest upsurge of violence.

In the age of 24 hour news and instant communication you don't get years to run an occupied nation, as we did after WWII.

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HANG ON DEAR, HERE COME THE MARINES!

Nortel clears decks for admiral (Mark Evans and Wojtek Dabrowski, National Post, 29/04/04)

Nortel Networks Corp. shares tumbled almost 31% yesterday after the embattled telecom equipment maker fired chief executive officer Frank Dunn and two other senior executives -- a move the company said is "particularly difficult but ... the right decision."

The surprise announcement is the latest fallout of an accounting controversy that has damaged Nortel's credibility and scuttled the positive momentum generated by the company's painful restructuring.

It also raises the possibility that after earnings are restated to wipe out a profit in the first half of 2003, the executives dismissed yesterday will have to return tens of millions of dollars in paid-out bonuses.

Mr. Dunn, chief financial officer Doug Beatty and controller Michael Gollogly were "terminated for cause." Nortel chairman Lynton Wilson would not provide specific reasons why the three executives were fired. He said Mr. Dunn's termination was "about accountability for financial accounting. That is the concern, that is the issue."[...]

William Owens, who has been a member of Nortel's board since 2002, was named Mr. Dunn's successor. Bill Kerr has been named CFO while MaryAnne Pahapill was appointed controller.

Mr. Owens, who had been vice-chairman and co-CEO with satellite operator Teledesic LLC, has an extensive military background.

The 63-year-old was vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the second-ranking military officer in the U.S. From 1990 to 1991, he served as commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.

One of the great things about being Canadian is you know the U.S. military will be there to fix any serious mess you get yourself into.

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COULD YOU HAVE IMAGINED THIS ON 9-11?:

Israeli chess team invited to Libya (Ellis Shuman April 29, 2004, Israeli Insider)

Libya opened its World Chess Championship next month to "all qualified participants," including Israeli chess grandmasters. The Israeli Chess Federation is now waiting for Foreign Ministry approval to enable the Israelis to participate.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saadi, who serves as president of his country's Olympic Committee, confirmed yesterday that "all necessary organizational and security measures" would be taken at the chess championships, which will be held between June 18 and July 13 in Tripoli.

Originally the World Chess Federation (FIDE) knockout world championship was scheduled to be staged in two locations, Libya and Malta. This was mainly to accommodate Israeli players, who are not allowed to enter Libya, FIDE said.

The Libyan Olympic Committee (LOC), the local organizing body of the event, issued a press release yesterday guaranteeing entry visas to all the 128 qualified participants of the championship. Libya is sponsoring the chess championship and is putting up $1.5 million in prize money.

"This is a huge diplomatic achievement," said Israeli Chess Federation spokesman Yerach Tal following the Libyan announcement.

Saadi is a bit of an oddball--The odd case of Saadi Qaddafi and the question: Why? (Frank Bruni, November 7, 2003, NY Times)--but is very much engaged with the outside world.

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A HOOK ON ANYTHING:

Hooking the Gullible: Fish researchers analyze the science of a lure (Sid Perkins, 4/24/04, Science News Online)

Just about everywhere you go in the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame and Museum in Hayward, Wis., you'll find lures. On the walls and in display cases, vast arrays of fishing lures dominate the exhibits. Many of the baits mimic a fish's natural prey, such as insects, small fish, and frogs. One lure appears to be a creature straight from the Star Wars cantina. Another looks like a Ping-Pong ball–size Pacman with froglike eyes and Andy Rooney's eyebrows. Another resembles a hockey puck with an airbrushed paint job that would look at home on a 1970s muscle car. Yet another lure has the size, shape, and maybe even the hydrodynamic characteristics of a shoehorn.

"I think you could put a hook on almost anything and catch fish," says Ted Dzialo, the hall of fame's executive director.

As it turns out, hunger is only one of the factors that drives a fish to lunge for a lure. Research into fish behavior has been revealing other cues that fish find hard to resist, clues that lure designers might use to blind a fish to the sharp truth about what really awaits it on the end of a monofilament line. As for understanding what goes on in anglers' minds when they're choosing lures . . . . Well, that's another story.

The first U.S. patent for an artificial lure was issued in 1852 to Julio T. Buel. While taking a lunch break on his boat one day, Buel accidentally dropped his spoon overboard. As the shiny utensil fluttered toward the lake bottom, the Vermont angler saw a huge fish zoom from the depths and repeatedly strike at it. Buel went home, chopped up his silverware, added a few hooks, and spawned America's fishing lure industry—or so the fish tale goes.

Lures? You should see how many surface if you toss in a stick of dynamite.

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CRISPUS ATTUCKS REDUX (via Tom Morin):

The Torricelli Option: Will Dems dump Kerry? (High Hewitt, April 28, 2004, WorldNetDaily.com)

Don't bother looking up the rules governing nominations. There were rules in Florida, and the Florida Supreme Court tore those up when Gore needed help. There were rules in New Jersey, but when Torricelli flamed, the New Jersey Supreme Court tossed those aside. There were rules in California, and three judges ordered a halt to the recall that only went forward because the luck of an en banc draw brought sanity to the review panel.

No, the rules won't stop Kerry's recall. Only Teddy can, and the weight of the senior senator from Massachusetts shouldn't be underestimated. The Kerry campaign is his last hurrah, and the convention's in Boston, for goodness sake. What kind of a reception would follow a party that tossed Kerry onto the tracks?

Does Daschle care? Does Patty Murray? Barbara Boxer? Any of a half-dozen endangered Dem incumbents in the Senate and a score in the House? So the receiving committee is a littlie frosty and Teddy dumps them from the Christmas card list – they'll still have jobs. [....]

Bill Clinton just announced the publication date of his new memoir: Late June. How unfortunate for Kerry – Bill has to do a book tour for the month running up to the convention, sucking the air right out of an already spent balloon. Sorry, couldn't be avoided. Publisher deadlines and all.

So as Kerry melts away, there – on every television screen in the land – will be Saturday Night Bill, playing his sax, blowing his own horn, saying stuff. All sorts of stuff. Looking incredibly large, opposite the incredibly small Kerry.

Tick, tick, tick. The Torricelli Option. Coming to theaters near you this summer.

Why do we get the feeling that instead of funny straw hats the folks at the Democratic Convention will mostly be wearing black arm-bands?

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DER BINGLE:

Bing Crosby: Singer of the Century (Thomas Sowell, April 29, 2004, Jewish World Review)

May 2, 2004 will mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bing Crosby, whose recorded voice continues to sing "White Christmas" every Yuletide.

Other singers who came after him, including Sinatra and Elvis, had their day but it was Bing Crosby who first put American popular songs on the map around the world. At one time, more people had heard the voice of Bing Crosby than that of any other human being.

Part of this was due to the times but much of it was due to the man himself. Bing Crosby came of age just when radio, recorded music, and motion pictures were coming of age during the 1920s and 1930s. Though he was one of many entertainers of that era, Crosby clearly became Number One — and remained so for years.

Bing Crosby's casual, even breezy, style of singing was part of the reason for his great popularity — and it influenced later singers who followed in his wake. It was a kind of singing that seemed as if anyone, amateur or professional, could do.

That was part of the greatness of his art, that it looked like it wasn't art. He didn't make a fuss about it but he made history with it. It was a little like the way Joe DiMaggio played centerfield, making it look easy, even when it was superb.

One of the great things about the trend-sucking dilettantism of popular tastes (or lack of any) in our mass culture is that the best art is generally available rather cheap. So you can probably pop into K-Mart or Wal-Mart and find a phenomenal Bing Crosby cd and a Hope and Crosby "Road" movie for a total of $15 or less. The most amusing thing about the films is that these two conventional conservatives exhausted the postmodernist/metafictional bag of tricks years before academics stumbled onto them and thought they were launching a revolution.

MORE:
-INTERVIEW: Gary Giddins conversation on Bing Crosby (Jerry Jazz Musician, March 2001)
-INTERVIEW: Gary Giddins (Andrew Ford, 10/05/2003, The Music Show)
-AUDIO INTERVIEW: Jazz Critic and Writer Gary Giddins (Fresh Air, May 27, 2003)
-REVIEW: of A Pocketful of Dreams by Gary Giddins (David Hajdu, The Village Voice)
-REVIEW: of A Pocketful of Dreams by Gary Giddins (Chris Morris, LA Weekly)
-REVIEW: of A Pocketful of Dreams by Gary Giddins (Benjamin Ivry, The Christian Science Monitor)
-REVIEW: of A Pocketful of Dreams by Gary Giddins (Allen Barra, Salon)

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THE SHI'A ARE DIFFERENT:

Muslims for the War (Stephen Schwartz, April 29, 2004, New York Post)

[One of the New York area's most prominent Shi'a intellectuals, Dr. Masood Ali] Mirza noted his own victimization under Saddam: "I was held hostage together with my wife and daughter, and made a 'human shield' by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Thanks to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair and the brave soldiers of the Coalition forces, Iraq finally got rid of Saddam. Eradication of terrorism from the world has begun and the center stage for it is in Iraq."

Mirza described Sadr as "a hot-headed, illiterate hoodlum, despised both by the revered ayatollahs of Iraq and by more than 200 million Shi'as worldwide."

But he also touchingly related the killing of some Americans in Iraq to the deaths that began the epic struggle of Shi'a Islam 1,300 years ago: "The murder and desecration of the four civilian contractors hung from the bridge over the Euphrates River was committed in the spirit of those who ruthlessly murdered the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussain, and his family, on the banks of the same river."

New energies are visible and audible in Shi'a Islam. They support the Coalition. It only requires a commitment to truth and the ability of politicians and media to listen for them to be understood and for their aid to be appreciated.

The fanciful notion of Sunni and Shi'a banding together against George Bush makes for happier reading in our newsrooms.

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FORCE THE ISSUE:

Material grabs more sun (Kimberly Patch, April 21/28, 2004, Technology Research News)

One way to make solar cells more efficient is to find a material that will capture energy from a large portion of the spectrum of sunlight -- from infrared to visible light to ultraviolet.

Energy transfers from photons to a photovoltaic material when the material absorbs lightwaves that contain the same amount of energy as its bandgap. A bandgap is the energy required to push an electron from a material's valence band to the conduction band where electrons are free to flow.

The trouble is, most photovoltaic materials absorb a relatively narrow range of light energy. The most efficient silicon solar cells capture about 25 percent of the sun's energy. Multijunction solar cells combine several materials to capture multiple bands of photonic energy. Today's most efficient combination -- germanium, gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide -- boosts efficiency to 36 percent, but is relatively difficult to make and therefore expensive.

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have engineered a single material that contains three bandgaps. The material is capable of capturing more than 50 percent of the sun's energy, said Wladek Walukiewicz, a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The material could lead to relatively inexpensive, highly-efficient solar cells.

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WHY THE CULTURE OF LIFE:

The Population Implosion: Can America be saved? (NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, April 28, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

Both Europe and Japan...entered into "subreplacement" childbearing patterns over a generation ago and are poised for prolonged depopulation. In most developing countries, birthrates are plummeting. China's fertility is now at subreplacement levels, partly because of Beijing's antibirth programs. Other Third World countries without coercive population policies are veering toward subreplacement, too--Brazil and Iran, for example.

Elsewhere, "population explosion" stereotypes are fading. Among Arab societies--supposed "holdouts" for high-birth norms--Tunisia and Lebanon have already fallen to replacement fertility, or below. And while Paul Ehrlich may have used a taxi ride through teeming Delhi to illustrate his theme in "The Population Bomb" (1968), today's New Delhi, like most other big cities in India, no longer generates enough local births to sustain its current population numbers over the long term.

With world fertility levels down by nearly half since the early 1950s--and no end to the drop in sight--the 21st century may turn out to be an era of population decline. Curiously enough, few scholars or writers have contemplated the prospect. Now, however, Phillip Longman offers us a view of the depopulationist future--and he is alarmed by what he sees.

"The global fall in fertility," he warns in "The Empty Cradle," "is creating a world for which few individuals, and no nations, are prepared. Simply stated, this is because population growth and the human capital it creates are part of the foundation upon which modern economies, as well as modern welfare states, are built." It is true, he notes, that "the engine that created today's affluent societies" might work without population growth. But making that happen "will require thorough reengineering, and not just of the formal economy, but of the family as well." [...]

Despite its idiosyncracies, "The Empty Cradle" is an intelligent, well-researched and compelling read, if not always a persuasive one. Like the late Christopher Lasch and his communitarian devotees, Mr. Longman seeks to revitalize the family in America without recourse to patriotism or religious values. A challenging task indeed...

The culture has to go backwards if the country is to go forwards. There's no hope for Europe, but we still seem to have a pretty good chance of pulling it off.

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ENEMIES DON'T SHARE OUR FUNDAMENTAL LIBERTIES:

Cruel Detentions: The Supreme Court considers whether the president can throw away the key. (Dahlia Lithwick, April 28, 2004, Slate)

How you feel about the indefinite military detentions of Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla will turn largely on what you think life will look like when it starts. By "it," I mean the moment at which fundamental liberties are curtailed by well-meaning governments and the legal system becomes unable to offer relief. Never having seen "it" happen in my lifetime, I'm hardly an expert. German Jews who survived the Holocaust will tell you that it's hard to know at exactly which instant you've crossed the line into "it." Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American detained during World War II, knows what "it" looks like, and he says it looks a bit like this. Professor Jennifer Martinez, Padilla's oral advocate at the Supreme Court this morning, says we are at the line separating "it" from "not it" right now, today—as the court stands poised to decide whether "the government can take citizens off the street and lock them up in jail forever."

The detention of Japanese-Americans was a mistake because they represented no threat and were targeted merely because of FDR's racism. Had there been a serious threat of widespread sabotage in that community or had there been specific allegations and evidence against individuals, then it would have been entirely proper to round folks up. But what's most interesting about the detention is that it signaled almost nothing wider about civil liberties. It did not begin a descent into tyranny--it stands out precisely because it was an aberration.

If the Dahlia Lithwick's of the world are looking for a comparison from WWII to the current detention of enemy combatants--both these clowns and the guys at Guantanamo--they'd be more honest if they chose German,Japanese, and Confederate POWs. It seems rather unlikely that they were allowed access to the American criminal system to argue that their detentions were unjust and to the best of our knowledge not a soul has ever complained about that not to this day thinks it transgressed civil liberties.

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BAD PANHANDLER:

Kerry's Cuban Problem: How the Democratic nominee is blowing Florida. (Ann Louise Bardach, April 26, 2004, Slate)

John Kerry looks terrified when he talks about Florida—and not without cause. The state remains firmly in the hands of a Republican governor who happens to be the president's brother, an autocratic Republican legislature, and a new secretary of state who may prove more partisan than Katharine Harris.

But what Kerry should be most worried about is the Cuban vote. If he handles his Florida campaign right, Kerry could win a much larger share of this exile constituency than the paltry 18 percent Gore won in 2000 and do as well as Clinton's 39 percent, which would make victory in the state likely. But if he keeps going the way he has been, Kerry will get fewer Cuban votes even than Gore did and in all likelihood lose the state.

Kerry's approach so far has been pandering to hard-line Cuban exiles—ineptly. In March, Kerry told a Miami TV reporter that he had voted for Helms-Burton, the 1996 legislation that further tightened the U.S. embargo on Cuba. In fact, he had voted against it. [...]

Last Sunday, on his third trip to the state, Kerry used Miami as the backdrop for his appearance on Meet the Press. Tim Russert lost no time reminding him that in 2000 he had said that the United States' Cuba policy was the woeful result "of the power of the Cuban-American lobby." Quoting Kerry, Russert said, "We have a frozen, stalemated counterproductive policy. … There's just a complete and total contradiction between the way we deal with China, the way we deal with Russia, the way we have been dealing with Cuba. … The only reason we don't re-evaluate the policy is the politics of Florida."

Mr. Kerry is an inept candidate, but he was never going to beat George Bush in any state south of Maryland.

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PARTY HOUND:

Specter dodges a bullet - and so does Bush: Pennsylvania incumbent's primary win leaves wounds but bolsters GOP hopes of holding Senate. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 4/29/04, CS Monitor)

In the final hours of this race, the endorsement of the White House played heavily in the minds of Republican voters, say independent pollsters. "The national side of this race is clear: President Bush's endorsement and his visit helped turn the tide," says G. Terry Madonna of the Keystone poll at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster County.

It's possible to have honest disagreement about whether George W. Bush has a coherent policy vision that he's implementing--as we believe to be the case--but no one can argue with the fact that he is determined to make the GOP a permanent majority again. No president, at least in modern memory, has worked so assiduously to influence the party's choice of nominees in various races nor campaigned as hard for them once chosen. It is this aspect of his ambitions that makes it seem profoundly unlikely that he'll pass up the opportunity to put his own likely successor in the vice-presidential slot in 2004.

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TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING (via Matthew Cohen & John D. Hendershot):

Miller: Legislatures Should Pick Senators (JEFFREY McMURRAY, 4/28/04, Associated Press)

Zell Miller, Georgia's maverick Democratic senator, says the nation ought to return to having senators appointed by legislatures rather than elected by voters.

Miller, who is retiring in January, was first appointed to his post in 2000 after the death of Paul Coverdell. He said Wednesday that rescinding the 17th Amendment, which declared that senators should be elected, would increase the power of state governments and reduce the influence of Washington special interests.

"The individuals are not so much at fault as the rotten and decaying foundation of what is no longer a republic," Miller said on the Senate floor. "It is the system that stinks. And it's only going to get worse because that perfect balance our brilliant Founding Fathers put in place in 1787 no longer exists."

The Constitution called for voters to directly elect members to the U.S. House but empowered state legislatures to pick senators. The aim was to create a bicameral Congress that sought to balance not only the influence of small and large states but also the influence of state and federal governments.

Miller said that balance was destroyed in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment. He has introduced a resolution, which he acknowledges has no chance of passage, to repeal the 17th Amendment and again let state legislatures pick senators.

Along with all the other Progressive initiatives tending towards more direct democracy--recall, initiative and proposition, banning of poll taxes, female suffrage--the 17th should be repealed.

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ALL HUMOR IS CONSERVATIVE FILES:

What? Morals in 'South Park'? (VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, 4/28/04, NY Times)

[T]he real strength of "South Park" is that it flatters freethinkers by mocking Christians and Jews, including Jesus himself (a resident), along with the stand-out holy figures Buddha, Muhammad, Krishna and Laotzu. (They form a clique called Super Best Friends.)

But that stylized freethinking carries, of course, some dogma of its own. True, the boys of "South Park" — Cartman and Kyle, together with a schmo called Stan Marsh and some hangers-on — are unaffected by whatever spiritual troubles used to depress the "Peanuts" gang.

They have a more specific problem: American hypocrisy, the combination of greed and sanctimony that lets religion and would-be spirituality provide cover for rapacity. Where the "Peanuts" children were sad, the kids in "South Park" are furious and vengeful.

No wonder. They're surrounded by frauds. Cartman has a doting single mother, a Christian and hermaphrodite, who sleeps around for favors. She's indulgent and ineffectual. ("Eric is still supposed to be grounded for trying to exterminate the Jews two weeks ago.") Kyle's mother is carping, anxious, lethally meddlesome; she takes a stand to raise awareness of conjoined twins, which seems intended just to mortify the person it's supposed to help, a school nurse who has a dead fetus attached to her head. Bland Stan has a grandfather who is presented as the picture of happy longevity but begs Stan to kill him.

"South Park" consolidates the rage and humor of preadolescents, kissing up to them with gags about gas, fat and vomit. (And jokes about jokes about gas, as on "Terrance and Phillip," the long-running show within a show.) Then, armed with little more than judiciously applied censor's bleeps, permissible words like sphincter and anus and a willingness to look into digestion, the show musters an air of anarchy. Perfect for the young at heart: anarchy — but a jolly cartoon — and on basic cable.

Formerly rebellious adults may be the biggest fans of "South Park," which is predicated on the hope that it continues to offend someone, somewhere. Really to savor the show, it still helps to imagine joyless souls — repressive parents or balky advertisers, stupefied by political correctness or Christian moralism — tsk-tsk-ing in a distant living room. (Advertisers have stood by the show, even when it pushes decency standards, and parents have never mounted a serious campaign against it.) As much as it offers new jokes, "South Park" also offers a chance to defy those fantasy scolds one more time.

But in spite of this pose, "South Park" does not lay claim to bad-boy television's principle of "no learning, no hugs," the mandate Larry David laid out for "Seinfeld." "South Park" can even be overtly pious. Theology may come off as myth on it, and bigotry and self-righteousness as broadly terrible, but religion here is also a decent sweetener and civilizer.

What's more, a chord of uplift sounds at the end of many episodes. The creators, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, are regularly identified as libertarians and consider themselves singularly in touch with the wickedness of boyhood. But let's face it: there's learning, even hugs, on "South Park."

It's surprising, in fact, that in almost seven years viewers haven't bridled at the show's pedantry. In an episode this season crusaders in South Park lost sight of real danger when they focused on a trivial Janet Jackson-like flashing crisis. The show spelled it out: people get hung up on phony sex scandals and ignore the real problem of violence.

Two weeks ago a pedophile pop star named Michael Jefferson, who has a son named Blanket, came around to taking fatherhood seriously.

"I've been so obsessed with my childhood that I've forgotten about his," he says. "I thought having lots of rides and toys was enough, but Blanket doesn't need a playmate. He needs a father, and a normal life."

This sounds almost ingratiatingly sane. If "South Park" is one of television's great comedies, it's not great for being reckless; it's great for being a series of funny, topical parables.

Not parables but jeremiads, summoning the faithful back to the true ideals of the religion.

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GO GIPPERS! (via Tom Morin):

Supporters Push Ronald Reagan University (T.R. Reid, April 28, 2004, Washington Post)

On the silver screen, he was a college football hero and a cheerleader. He played cadets at two different military academies. He appeared as a zoology professor in the Hollywood classic "Bedtime for Bonzo." But now America's only movie-star-turned-president may have another dramatic role in higher education: as the namesake and inspiration for Ronald Reagan University.

Backers of the ambitious plan to build a private university outside Denver that would focus on the former president's economic and diplomatic principles asked the Colorado legislature this week to endorse the idea. With a 200-acre campus site donated by a prominent Colorado Republican, the plans call for construction to begin next year and a student body of 10,000 to be in classes before the end of the decade.

"We have worked with an architect, and we think we're looking at an $850 million construction budget," said Terry Walker, a former professor and administrator at the University of Louisiana who is serving as founding president of the proposed school. "We are planning for a full-scale university, with a law school, business school and a graduate school of foreign affairs and public policy. We also want a performing arts school, to reflect the president's long movie career."

Looks like I'll be getting an MBA, honey!

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MAYBE I’LL JUST KEEP GOING TO DAMASCUS AFTER ALL

I may back terror again, says Gaddafi (Robin Gedye, The Telegraph, 28/04/04)

The Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, dented his return from pariah status on his first visit to Europe yesterday in 15 years by warning the European Union that he hoped Libya would never have to go back to supporting terrorism.

In a 45-minute harangue in Brussels, flanked by a group of photogenic women bodyguards, he will have caused anxiety to those who have welcomed him back to the fold.

"I hope that we shall not be prompted or obliged by any evil to go back or to look backwards," he said after defending his past support for militant third world freedom fighters.

"We do hope that we shall not be obliged or forced one day to go back to those days when we bombed our cars or put explosive belts around our beds and around our women so that we will not be searched and not be harassed in our bedrooms and in our homes, as it is taking place now in Iraq and in Palestine."[...]

Col Gaddafi, wearing a fez and a grey-green robe, clearly revelled in all the attention as he waved and smiled at more than 200 dancing supporters when he arrived at the commission building. After talks and lunch with Mr Prodi and a meeting with Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian prime minister, he was to spend the night in a black Bedouin tent, complete with satellite dish, pitched in the grounds of a Belgian government residence.

When fighting to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, it helps to keep a long term perspective.

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GAPOLOGY:

AUDIO INTERVIEW: with Thomas P. M. Barnett (Diane Rehm Show, 4/28/04)

Steve Roberts, sitting in for Ms Rehm, conducted an interview today that was as good an hour of radio as you'll ever hear. Thomas P. M. Barnett was on discussing his book The Pentagon's New Map, which essentially argues that:

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

This simple way of looking at the war on terror--that there are Gap states that have to be integrated into the Core--helps to clarify greatly what we are about and let's us see just how doable a task it is. The combination of internal reform in the Islamic world, military intervention by the United States and the inexorable pressures if globalization should serve to fill the Gap far faster than most imagine possible. This is not to say that it will be easy or bloodless, only that it is a manageable project. Unfortunately, there is zero reason to believe that any democratic people has the patience to see such a project through. So we'll most likely be left reacting to discrete blow ups in individual nations once the window of opportunity that the President has wisely exploited slams shut.

MORE:
-Thomas P. M. Barnett: Weblog
-ESSAY: The 'Core' And The 'Gap': Defining rules in a dangerous world (Thomas P. M. Barnett, November 7, 2002, Providence Journal-Bulletin)
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP: IT EXPLAINS WHY WE’RE GOING TO WAR, AND WHY WE’LL KEEP GOING TO WAR. (THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, March 2003, Esquire)

LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good.

When the United States finally goes to war again in the Persian Gulf, it will not constitute a settling of old scores, or just an enforced disarmament of illegal weapons, or a distraction in the war on terror. Our next war in the Gulf will mark a historical tipping point—the moment when Washington takes real ownership of strategic security in the age of globalization.

That is why the public debate about this war has been so important: It forces Americans to come to terms with I believe is the new security paradigm that shapes this age, namely, Disconnectedness defines danger. Saddam Hussein’s outlaw regime is dangerously disconnected from the globalizing world, from its rule sets, its norms, and all the ties that bind countries together in mutually assured dependence.

The problem with most discussion of globalization is that too many experts treat it as a binary outcome: Either it is great and sweeping the planet, or it is horrid and failing humanity everywhere. Neither view really works, because globalization as a historical process is simply too big and too complex for such summary judgments. Instead, this new world must be defined by where globalization has truly taken root and where it has not.

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Globalization’s “ozone hole” may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we schedule the U.S. military’s next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.

-ESSAY: Forget Europe. How About These Allies? (Thomas P.M. Barnett, April 11, 2004, Washington Post)
-ESSAY: Global Transaction Strategy: Operation Iraqi Freedom could be a first step toward a larger goal: true globalization. (Thomas P.M. Barnett and Henry H. Gaffney Jr.)
-INTERVIEW: The U.S. Challenge in the Middle East with Thomas Barnett (The Globalist, April 26, 2004)
-ESSAY: The End of the “End of History”: 9/11 beginnings. (Mackubin Thomas Owens, September 11, 2003, National Review)
-ESSAY: Pentagon moving swiftly to become ‘GloboCop’ (Jim Lobe, Asheville Global Report)

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SO CLOSE

Looking Through Keyholes (David Brooks, New York Times, 4/27/04)

These are the crucial months in Iraq. The events in Najaf and Falluja will largely determine whether Iraq will move toward normalcy or slide into chaos.

So how is Washington responding during this pivotal time? Well, for about three weeks the political class was obsessed by Richard Clarke and the hearings of the 9/11 commission, and, therefore, events that occurred between 1992 and 2001. Najaf was exploding, and Condoleezza Rice had to spend the week preparing for testimony about what may or may not have taken place during the presidential transition. . . .

Some people in other places may like to look through keyholes to see women in their underwear. We here in the political class like to look through keyholes to see what happens when a bunch of alpha males (and females) with the jobs we wish we held sit around a table and curse about people not in the room. After two years of Iraq obsession, many of us couldn't tell you what the Dawa Islamic Party stood for if our kids' Sidwell admissions depended upon it, but the frisson we feel hearing the nasty words Colin Powell said behind the back of Douglas Feith! C'est délicieux! . . .

Meanwhile out in the world, the American people have decided they at least are going to be serious. While we capital Clios are lost in the quagmires of ostentatious parlor game parallelism (Is Iraq Vietnam or the intifada? Is 2004 1920 all over again?), many Americans have decided that it's time to persevere and win. The number of Americans who want to increase troop levels has tripled. Many people want to stick it out, and judging by President Bush's jumping poll numbers, they seem to admire his decision not to engage with us Beltway types.

My first reaction to this column was that it is the best David Brooks column I've read in 20 years. My second reaction is that an article about how bolixed up the Washington process is, is still an article about the Washington process.

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"A STATE, WHETHER YOU WANT ONE OR NOT":

Why the Palestinians are in such a state: The only way the Palestinians will get any kind of state is if Israel and America inflict it on them. (Mark Steyn, 4/28/04, Jewish World Review)

[I]f Bush did "take my job", it's because [Saeb] Erekat is not up to it. For 10 years, the world has been trying to give a state to the Palestinians and the Palestinians keep tossing obstacles in their path. The latest innovation was a suicide-bomber arrested with explosives bearing HIV-infected blood, the thinking being that anyone who survived would get Aids. Unfortunately, the heat of the explosion kills the virus. But, in his combination of depravity and incompetence, the "Aids bomber" neatly encapsulates the present state of Palestinian "nationalism". The only way the Palestinians will get any kind of state is if Israel and America inflict it on them and eliminate such lethargic middle-men as Mr. Erekat.

So Sharon is withdrawing from Gaza, abandoning the settlements and building a wall. This is bad news for those Palestinians who take a more nuanced approach to Jews - who think that, if you accidentally infect yourself while strapping on the HIV bomb, you should have the right to state-of-the-art treatment from an Israeli hospital. But they'll have to make the best of it. Israel has concluded that, if you can't "live in peace" with your neighbor, the priority is to live.

What a strange world the Middle East is. For 10 years, in northern Iraq, the Kurds have run a pleasant, civilized, pluralist, democratic de facto state, but external realities require them to be denied one de jure. For the same period, in the West Bank and Gaza the Palestinian Authority's thugs, incompetents and bespoke apologists have been lavished with EU aid and transformed their land into an ugly, bankrupt Arafatist squat. But external realities require the world to defer to the "Chairman" as a de jure head of state, lacking merely a state to head.

One of the things that's most notable about this current period is just how quiet Palestine has been. The Palestinian people would certainly appear to be ready to accept a state and get on with life, even if their "leaders" aren't. They don't even seem much bothered by the assassinations of Hamas terror-mongers and one doubts they'll much mind when Sharon assassinates Arafat on Israel's way out the door.

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THE MOST SECRETIVE BRANCH:

Justices seem reluctant to lift veil on energy panel (GINA HOLLAND, April 28, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

The Supreme Court appeared troubled Tuesday by the prospect of letting the public have a look into private White House policy meetings, a hopeful sign for the Bush administration's aggressive defense of secrecy in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.

The court is the latest stop in a nearly three-year fight over access to records of the task force that prepared a national energy strategy. The president put Cheney, a former energy industry executive, in charge and the group's recommendations were friendly to industries. Most stalled in Congress.

Raising the gravest concerns about unnecessary snooping into the executive branch was Justice Antonin Scalia, who stayed in the case despite conflict-of-interest questions relating to his friendship with Cheney. He said a president has broad authority to keep matters private.

''He has the power as an independent branch to say, 'No, this intrudes too much upon my powers. I will not do it,''' Scalia said.

Other justices also expressed concerns about a ruling that would disrupt the government's behind-the-scenes work.

At the same time, the court could disappoint the administration by deciding that the case is premature for a ruling because the lower court that ruled against the Bush administration had not worked out exactly which documents should be released. Several justices, including Sandra Day O'Connor, hinted at the possibility of such an outcome.

It's a simple separation of powers question--the Administration shouldn't even have sent anyone to argue the case, just ignored the courts. All you really need to know about this notion that private deliberations are public business is that the Justices then adjourned to a secret chamber to discuss it.

---

THE 51ST STATE:

The great divide: Can western Canada and Ottawa learn to love each other? (The Economist, Apr 1st 2004)

WHEN British Columbia joined the new Dominion of Canada in 1871, it was promised a transcontinental rail link to the Atlantic by 1883. The railway was built late, and only after the territory threatened to secede. Ever since, western Canada has tended to regard itself as a resource-rich colony, exploited by the more developed and populous east: over-taxed, and neglected by the federal parliament and its spending programmes. Notwithstanding the contempt with which westerners have historically viewed his Liberal Party, Paul Martin, prime minister since December, has vowed to address this rancour across the Rockies. Unfortunately for him, a scandal has endorsed the worst western fears about eastern politicians.

Easterners like Mr Martin often dismiss western grievances as the grumbling of fat-cat British Columbians and Albertans, or of glum Saskatchewan and Manitoba farmers. But the evidence for what sociologists call “western alienation” is compelling. The Canada West Foundation (CWF), a think-tank, last year reported a “deep-seated belief” among westerners that “the government of Canada doesn't listen [to them], doesn't understand, and doesn't care.” Last month a CWF poll found that 64.7% of westerners felt their province's interests were poorly or very poorly represented at the federal level.

Unusually for a Canadian prime minister, Mr Martin acknowledges that the syndrome exists.

How hard is the choice between being Ottawa's red-headed stepchild or New Hampshire's brother?

---

IT'S A SERIOUS CABANA UPGRADE?:

Kerry's fatal flaw (Tony Blankley, April 28, 2004, Townhall)

It would appear that John Kerry is running for president for the same reason that chickens cross to the other side of the street: Just to get there. Can anyone, including Mr. Kerry, state in one sentence why he wants to be president?

So that George Bush won't be.

That alone gets you 40% of the vote most cycles, but the presence of Ralph Nader may make it hard to get any more than that.

---

OUR BOB:

Bob Woodward's Washington: The books come and go, but the plot is always the same--vanity, duplicity, flattery, and guile. (Andrew Ferguson, 05/03/2004, Weekly Standard)

"We're urging people to buy the book," said the White House communications director, Dan Bartlett. "What this book does is show a president who was asking the right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult times. This book undermines a lot of the critics' charges."

Well, maybe it does, but the sight of a White House humping a Woodward book is an interesting development all by itself. I'm showing my age, but I remember when Republicans hated Bob Woodward. It all began with Watergate, of course, when Woodward and his partner Carl Bernstein dragged the bloodied body of Richard Nixon from the White House and martyred him on the front page of the Post. Hostilities intensified with a book about the Iran-contra scandal, Veil, in which Woodward claimed to have snagged a deathbed interview with William Casey, Ronald Reagan's director of central intelligence. Though few people could translate Casey's mumbles even when he was healthy, Woodward said he palavered with the old spook as he lay in a hospital room, wreathed in tubes and half-paralyzed from a stroke. By his account, Woodward asked Casey why he had orchestrated the scandal, and (said Woodward) Casey said: "I believed."

Republicans didn't. By the late 1980s, in that pitiless, binary ledger kept by Washington's professional conservatives, Woodward was the enemy.

Then, suddenly, it appeared that Woodward was becoming more--um, objective. The Commanders, Woodward's behind-the-scenes account of the Gulf War, showed a masterly George H.W. Bush manipulating the geopolitical map like Kasparov at a chessboard, faithfully attended by Powell, Dick Cheney, and America's Metternich, James Baker III. In The Man Who Would be President, Woodward teamed up with David Broder to sketch a portrait of Dan Quayle as a Hoosier Pericles. Really, Dan Quayle. The Choice and The Agenda, Woodward's backstage peeks at Bill Clinton's White House, did as much as any piece of Gingrichian agitprop to solidify that administration's reputation as a clownshow of fops and incompetents.

Hey, thought Republicans: Maybe we've been a little hard on old Bob. And of course they had.

In fact, Bob Woodward will likely be seen in retrospect as one of the most important conservatives of the pasty few decades.

---

ON OR AHEAD OF SCHEDULE:

U.N. Envoy Seeks New Iraq Council by Close of May (WARREN HOGE, 4/28/04, NY Times)

The special United Nations envoy for Iraq, offering a speeded-up timetable for the selection of a caretaker government in Baghdad, said Tuesday that the new government should be chosen a full month before sovereignty is transferred on June 30 to give it time to define its authority.

Addressing the Security Council, the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said the month would be necessary for the transitional leaders to reach "crystal-clear understandings" of their relationship to the occupation authority they would replace and to the American military commanders who are to remain in charge of Iraqi security forces.

In his first extensive public comments since outlining his plans for an interim government earlier this month, Mr. Brahimi also said the occupants of the government's top posts should insulate themselves from partisan activity by agreeing not to be candidates in national elections next year.

Although he did not say so specifically, that seemed to rule out a role in the caretaker government for prominent Iraqis now in the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council, including the heads of political parties who are expected to contest the June 2005 elections.

Though the Left and the neocons want to slow the process and keep us there until November or forever, respectively, the process should instead be speeded up.

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SCOTTISH LAW KEEPS ITS DEFENDER:

Specter ekes out win in Pa. Senate race (AP, 4/27/04)

Moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter beat back a tough primary threat, barely defeating a conservative congressman who lacked support from party leaders but gained momentum by casting the four-term incumbent as too liberal.

The full-moon Right takes one on the chin.

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REPUBLICANISM:

The Muslim Renovatio and U.S. Strategy (Michael Vlahos, 04/27/2004, Tech Central Station)

[T]here is a third explanatory model, and it exposes what is wrong with the two prevailing frameworks. This model describes neither terrorism nor civil war, but rather a "world-historical" movement of Islamic revival. Terrorism in this reality-framework is an expression neither of criminal evil nor of an evil vision. Rather, violent radical elements are only a small part of a much broader movement for Islamic restoration, or in the traditional sense inherited from Late Antiquity, of renovatio. Renovatio, or another Roman favorite, reparatio, speaks more directly to Islamist visions than words like "revival," which in the Western consciousness at least refer more narrowly to simpler religious "awakenings." For Muslims at least, their vision is one of an entire order restored, of not simply religion but of an entire, "rightly guided" way of life brought back as it should be. For a generation and more the drive for this Islamic restoration has been gathering strength and asserting itself.

This alternative model suggests that terrorism cannot be truly abstracted as a separate phenomenon within the Muslim World, but instead must be seen as part of a bigger change movement within that world. Likewise, there is no civil war between mythical "moderates" - meaning "reasonable" Muslims who just want to live and let live - and wild-eyed "radicals" who would burn it all down. In contrast the larger Islamist restoration movement seeks to purify the Muslim World of corrupt and apostate tyrants. The movement has many elements and agendas, and thus many paths to this goal. Like many broad movements with revolutionary goals, most are non-violent. The example of Islamists in Egypt and Turkey suggests that the majority of Islamists seek their goals through peaceful means, and the world they would create is couched in surprisingly moderate and tolerant terms.

But the goal shared by all Islamists is nonetheless a radical goal. The restoration of Islam would mean an end to Western style secular civil society in the Muslim World, even if it led to an Islamic civil society that Westerners might not find uncomfortable.

If this model is closer to actual "reality" in the Muslim World than the two frameworks currently underpinning US strategy and policy, it suggests strongly a rethinking of both strategy and policy. If the Islamist restoration movement is the core dynamic of change within the Muslim World, and truly of world-historical proportions, this suggests a very changed world, admittedly over the historical long term. [...]

[H]ow can we know whether the Islamist renovatio is truly the core dynamic of change in the Muslim World, as opposed to either terrorism - a criminal assault on the Muslim establishment - or civil war - the vision of radical Islam versus the life of "regular" Muslim societies?[iv] This alternative model must be more deliberately explored before it can openly compete with our current explanatory frameworks. This cannot be done in a single paper or through simple argument. Instead it is proposed here that to test this third model, we should ask four questions:

* What is the Islamist movement - and what is its political strength?
* What is the role of fighting groups in a broader Islamist movement?
* What is the historical trajectory of the Islamist movement?
* What is the role of the United States in this prospective big change?

What follows then is a suggestion of how we might go about thinking through these questions, if not actually "answering" them. Think of it as a critical hypothesis to be tested. [...]

In Iran the revolution slowly lost the fervent support, and then even the loyalty of its own people. Islam can perhaps best be understood - in contrast to religious life in the modern West - as a complete "blueprint for life." Thus its success both for the individual and society depends on inner motivation and collective participation. The Islamic Republic of Iran, Abdo argues, reduced Islam to mere ideology, a set of rules enforced from above by the state. Rather than a way of life shared by all, and defended by all, Islam became just another recipe for state tyranny.

Thus radical Islam failed to take formal control in the Muslim World; and where it did, including places like Afghanistan, it failed effectively to lead. Thus commentators like Judith Miller declared Islamism in steep decline at century's end.

But there was another quieter brand of Islamist making real headway at the same time. These are non-violent Islamists, what some call "moderate Islamists," but whose beliefs and goals might be better served by Raymond Baker's term, "New Islamists." The success of the New Islamist movement in Egypt suggests a strong alternative path - for an Islamic renovatio achieved without violent struggle. This path may be important now more than ever, given the failure of radical Islamist struggles.

Egypt is important because it represents the heart of the Arab-Sunni World. It is also at the core of Islamism. Radical Islamists attempted to overthrow the regime in the 1990s and were contained. But Islamist thinkers - like Qtub - who themselves were non-violent were also imprisoned and even executed, as though they were radical fighters.

Yet Islamists in Egypt have still managed to bring the rest of society to their vision. Even if the corrupt Mubarak regime still rules, the heart of the people is with the Islamists. The regime acknowledges this in its genuflection to the Islamist message.

But one of the most telling aspects of this evolution in Egyptian society is not so much that the New Islamists succeeded where the radicals had failed, but rather that both the radicals and the state unconsciously conspired to solidify and legitimate the New Islamists. On one hand, the radicals alienated Muslim society through the viciousness of their violence, which at the same time exposed their inability to topple the state. But the state, for its part, showed itself to be incapable of addressing the urgent needs of society that had given the radicals their authority - among the people - to make change in the first place.

This is a prevailing theme in Islamic tradition, and one apropos to the possibility of Islamism as a world-historical movement. The state in Islam traditionally was never vested with the responsibility for regulating and sustaining civil society. Rather, Islam itself through the Ulama took on that role. In Egypt today it is the New Islamists that have come to represent the leadership of society.

In contrast to Iran, this is an Islamic revolution from the bottom up and achieved without violent insurgency. The New Islamists may not yet wield formal political power, but their aims certainly follow that trajectory. [...]

[A]s a hypothetical excursion, let us say that Islamism - the prospect of an Islamic renovatio - is assured. If this, then, represents the future to be, what would that tell us about what we are experiencing today?

Looking back it would suggest that what is happening today - including the specter of terrorism - is part of an unfolding grand narrative. Of course this is not a story that anyone in the West can accept. It is however exactly what Muslims everywhere - whether or not they support radical violence - look to as the future. The compelling question for us: who is right?

Even if this war comes to form a "grand narrative" its outcome will undoubtedly in the end please no one. Yet it may be useful to posit a grand narrative, in the sense of a big historical story full of upheaval and change. After all there are some well-known examples of historical big change, full of people and ideas in conflict.

There is in fact a favorite comparison already: the Protestant Reformation. "Islam has not yet had its Reformation," we all declare. [...]

Of course this comparison suggests that big change in Islam is only beginning. And also, it elides the fact that the good changes - like modern democracy - came only after a century and more of bitter war.[...]

[P]uritanical (or fundamentalist or radical) Islamism may succeed even if, or perhaps even because it is defeated. It will succeed if it opens up space for creative change within Islam, and if it prevents the imposition of Western values on the Muslim World. Likewise, American success in the mid-term in bringing democratic change to Islam may in fact be the catalyst for renewed resistance - and resistance not confined simply to radical groups, but a universal rising against us. It was after all Hapsburg-Catholic success in the Counter-Reformation that ultimately forced the new Protestant North to come together, that brought conflict to a head and insured the survival of the very cause it sought so strenuously to eradicate. [...]

If US war aims seek to create a democratic consensus in the Muslim World, there is little room in this vision even for the New Islamist. The current US paradigm of democracy demands the creation of a secular civil society in the American manner. There is absolutely no room in US Iraq planning for an Islamic Republic, even along the relatively tolerant and pluralistic lines of New Islamist thought.

Furthermore, current US policy seems unaware that its secular democratic paradigm is unacceptable to Islamists. To them it represents a form of religious conversion and threatens the very possibility of achieving a "rightly guided" Islamic way of life in Muslim societies. To the contrary, American policymakers and strategists tend to see all Islamists as unreconstructed medieval men. What is missing is an ability to properly differentiate between fiery radicals and very much more thoughtful New Islamists.

This is an exceptionally good essay that we excerpt at greater length than our usual policy to get some sense of its fullness, but be sure to follow the link and read the whole thing.

Perhaps the most interesting way to approach the argument here is to reverse the entire thing and look at the Renavatio in the West. Well, really it's just in America, but that's the point. Just as the kind of totalitarianism that Islam has tended to require inevitably fails, so too does secularism as excessive as that adopted by most of our allies--and nearly by us, until the reversal came in 1980. What the conservative movement in America has been about for some time now and what has been greatly accelerated by President Bush is the project to diminish the state and restore the centrality of civil society--and with it the domination of daily life by religion.

Critics who perceive some inkling of this grand project will sometimes worry that it is an attempt to move America towards theocracy--nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a far more radical endeavor, seeking not to gain access to state powers but to remove power from the State. Thus creation of a "culture of life" to restore the rights that pre-exist the State; tax cuts to bleed the State of revenue; an Opportunity Society to make men independent of government as regards health and retirement; school vouchers to break the State monopoly on education; the Faith-Based Initiative to return the provision of social services back to churches and charities; etc.; etc.; etc...

In effect, conservatism in America is attempting something not too different from what Mr. Vlahos credits New Islamists with attempting. The question as regards Islam is: do the New Islamists understand that it is best for them to eschew governmental power and allow both government and economics to be relatively secular and quite free? Or are they destined to establish totalitarianism? The rapidity with which the Iranian experiment with totalitarianism collapsed would seem to give us some reason to hope that its example can generally be avoided in the future.

The question as regards America is: can the secular State, once created, successfully have its powers devolved back to civil society? Or are we destined to keep sliding into the same kind of suicidal secular decline that we see in Europe? The coming election will go some considerable distance to determining whether the counter-revolution will continue.

What both groups are groping towards is pretty much the republicanism of the Founders, with a fairly minimalist, somewhat liberal, kind of democratic central government but then a tightly knit civil society that depends for its continued health on the virtue of its citizenry. It may be that this is too high a wire for men to walk, too fine a balance to strike, but we've seen that the alternative extremes are disastrous, so what other choice do we really have but to try to make the American experiment work?

MORE:
Horror and humiliation in Fallujah (Spengler, 4/27/04, Asia Times)

Analysts unfriendly to the Muslim world speak of a "pride-and-honor culture", in which the prickliness of the Arab street regarding the Palestine issue and so-called honor killings are supposed manifestations of the same social traits. There is another way to look at the matter. Among the world's religions Christianity and Islam alone have the capacity for mass absorption of converts from different races and ethnic groups. It is hard to tell which of the two is growing faster. One of them will be the world's dominant religion in the 21st century. There is a radical difference between Islamic and Christian conversion. Both seek to supercede Judaism, but in different ways. Christianity offers a New Israel, called out from among the nations by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because God's love for mankind is the premise of the New Israel, there is a limit to Christian tolerance for bloodshed. To propose open genocide, the Nazis had to repudiate Christianity and embrace paganism only.

The Christian's participation in the vicarious sacrifice of the Cross offers salvation at the end of the soul's journey. Christian practice puts enormous effort into sustaining the conviction of the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven: prayers, hymns, cathedrals, paintings, and so forth. No such concept of individual spiritual transformation exists in mainstream Islam. The individual submits wholly to Allah, who controls all things without qualification. That is Islam's enormous strength; the individual believer can leave behind the carping self-doubt of the Christians. For the same reason, however, setbacks to the Ummah are a challenge to the faith of every believer, for all events are in the hands of Allah, not those who have submitted to His will. Success therefore is a theological necessity for Islam. Humiliation for Jews and Christians is a chastisement from God; did not Christ accept His humiliation on the cross? For Islam, humiliation is a refutation of the faith itself.

For a generation, Western policy towards the Muslim world has emphasized deference towards Muslim sensibilities, the Bush White House emphatically included. It does not occur to Muslim radicals that their enhanced status in the Islamic world might prompt the West to undertake the opposite, namely to humiliate some aspects and some leaders of Islam, if not the religion itself. The Islamists' vision of the future is audacious, as Dr Mansoor recounts:

Irrespective of their color, religion, or culture, we can see that their foothold and leadership methods are taking hold. This has been transferred across the world to China, South America, the Middle East, the Far East, South Asia, as well as the Central Asian republics. The general dismay coupled with the dividing lines of rich and poor in the world and the complexities of culture and capitalism are allowing their message to gain ground steadily. This means more recruits, more audacious plans in the pipeline, and even more difficulty in using third generation forces to counter fourth generation asymmetric threats which appear and disappear like ghosts. The question for me is not the method of implementation, widely regarded as terrorism, throughout the world. This has always been in existence. The question for me is the message and why it is so blindingly powerful. The message provides the impetus to the heart, and perception drives the mind into the court of the Islamist.

Again, the opposite may be the case. Muslims of different ethnicity and sect are more likely to fall out when the credibility of the Islamists suffers a reverse. During the past week, the United States has for the first time humiliated the Islamic world openly and without compunction, in the small matter of the West Bank settlements. If it continues in this direction, Dr Mansoor's scenario may not work out as he expects.

The temptation to apocalyptic thinking is always a danger. It's really a sign of our own desire for self-importance: sure there are billions of us and I'm just a cipher, but I was there when we blew the joint up. Behind the hysterical fears of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War was a devout wish for it to happen and give our lives significance, however briefly. Likewise, folks now want a final showdown between the West and Islam.

The reality is far more mundane, a certainty that Islam will evolve towards the model of liberal democracy, because that is the only system that allows enough freedom in economics and politics for affluence to develop and people to be financially secure. In this regard Islam is just like the other universalist ideologies that Mr. Spengler ignores--communism, Nazism, socialism, secularism--which have failed so spectacularly and been forced either out of existence or to the brink. The difference is that Islam can remain a perfectly valid set of beliefs around which to arrange the rest of society.

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"THE ATTACK":

Hillary Blasts Bush in Arab Press (NewsMax, April 27, 2004)

Sen. Clinton delivered the unprecedented attack in an interview with the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Monday, with newspapers from Tehran to Islamabad picking up her harsh words almost immediately.

Typical was the coverage by Tehran's news agency Mehr, which quoted Clinton as saying that "the U.S. is trapped in the quagmire of Iraq."

"Referring to the Bush Administration policies as arrogant and insolent," Mehr said, "the wife of the former U.S. president further added that Bush is not willing to admit his mistakes in Iraq, the grave mistakes that have endangered the lives of both the Iraqi people and the U.S. servicemen alike."

Well, that seems ill-advised.

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KEEPING SILENT FOR WORLD PEACE

UN apologists remain silent on oil scandal (James Morrow, The Australian, 28/04/04)

The editorial decision to turn a blind eye to the story puts the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in good company with other Western news outlets, most of which have taken a see-no-evil approach to one of the biggest corruption scandals in modern history: the systematic purchasing of friends and allies by the Iraqi dictator.

The scheme was elegant in its simplicity, but huge in scale. From 1996 to 2003, Iraq's government was allowed to sell some of its oil through a UN program and, theoretically, buy food and medicine for its citizens.

But any humanitarian goods that were purchased with this money were doled out to Baath party supporters, while the rest of the cash went to building Saddam's lavish palaces and maintaining his terrifying security apparatus.

Far worse was the abuse of oil given to "non-end users" (that is, not sold to refineries and petroleum companies). Documents found in Iraq's old ministry of oil reveal that hundreds of prominent individuals received vouchers to buy Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices and sell it on the open market -- at tremendous, often seven-figure, profits.

Those named include not just Sevan but a vast array of Russian politicians, close friends of French President Jacques Chirac (including France's former minister of the interior), British Labour MP George Galloway, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and, closer to home, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. [...]

But by far the biggest recipient of Saddam's largesse was the UN. During the program's existence, more than $US1 billion was kept by the organisation as a fee for administering the program. As one senior UN diplomat recently told London's Daily Telegraph: "The UN was not doing this work just for the good of Iraq. Cash from Saddam's government was keeping the UN going for a few years."

Amazingly, though, it has taken an incredible amount of time for this story to get what little traction it has so far gained in the media. (Certainly the anti-war Left, which is happy to believe that George W. Bush toppled Saddam to kick a few contracts to Dick Cheney's old pals at Halliburton, has been deafeningly silent on the topic.)

Perhaps because of all the DIY international lawyering engaged in by the world press corps in the run-up to Iraq's invasion, many journalists are reluctant to admit that the UN they put so much faith in was many times more corrupt than they could imagine the Bush White House being.

Or maybe they just don't want to admit that so many of the anti-war voices they used to support their stories were bought and paid for with money belonging to the long-suffering, if little-mentioned, Iraqi people.

But the naive belief among journalists with little or no international law background that no military action is legitimate without the UN's seal of approval is one thing. The continued fetishistic belief of politicians and opinion-makers in the supposed good intentions of the UN is another -- and it is something that needs to end immediately.

The Left did say that it was all about oil.

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A NATION SO PRIVILEGED:

Melting pot stirred in land of Betty Crocker: As a wave of Hmong refugees heads for St. Paul, their predecessors prepare to help them adjust. (Amanda Paulson, 4/28/04, CS Monitor)

Outside states with significant Hmong populations - California, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, along with Minnesota - few Americans know of the group. But in the annals of refugee stories, theirs is particularly compelling.

Originally from China, most Hmong migrated to Laos nearly 300 years ago. During the Vietnam War, many worked for the CIA to fight the communists who had taken control of Laos. After the war, they fled, often hiding for years in the jungles. Talk to any Hmong over age 40, and you are likely to hear stories of jungle battles, desperate trips across the Mekong, and relatives who died along the way. Since the first wave of refugees arrived in 1976, perhaps 150,000 have come here. Those left behind were often afraid to come, or hoped they'd return to their home.

Today, St. Paul's University Avenue is lined with Hmong restaurants, grocery stores, and gift shops. There are Hmong representatives on the school board and in the state legislature. But the assimilation hasn't been easy. Many are illiterate; their language didn't exist in written form until a few decades ago. Even Xiong, who owns several businesses and four buildings, has never learned to read or write. Polygamy, common among Hmong, was a challenge, and authorities decided to break up some families. And the Hmong have higher poverty and unemployment rates than other Southeast Asian minorities.

Some experts worry that next wave of immigrants will face still more challenges. Years in a camp with no UN presence has meant little or no healthcare. More than half the camp's population is 14 or younger, and many have never been to school. Without formal residency status, few have been able to work, beyond making crafts to sell to relatives in America.

There's no doubt that their arrival will put a strain on city services, acknowledges St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly. "It really couldn't come at a worse time for local government, because of the downturn in the economy. With state budget deficits and the cutback in local government aid, local governments are stretched pretty thin."

Mayor Kelly has heard from a lot of unhappy residents, but he's also accepted what is ultimately a federal decision - while actively lobbying for federal assistance. Housing will be especially tough, he says, but he hopes the fact that nearly half of established Hmong own homes - more than any other minority - will provide some relief.

Having betrayed them we hardly deserve to have them come here, but we're lucky they do.

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CONVERGENCE:

Jordan Airs Confessions of Al-Qaida Suspects Who Allegedly Planned Bomb and Poison Gas Attacks (Jamal Halaby, 4/26/04, Associated Press)

Al-Qaida plotted bombings and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan, two conspirators said in a confession aired Monday on Jordanian state television.

Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of the Jordanian cell of al-Qaida, appeared Monday in a 20-minute taped program and described meeting Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in neighboring Iraq to plan the foiled plot. [...]

"I have pledged loyalty to Abu-Musab to fully be obedient and listen to him without discussion," al-Jayousi said in the Jordanian television segment. He said he first met al-Zarqawi in Afghanistan, where al-Jayousi said he studied explosives, "before Afghanistan fell." He said he later met al-Zarqawi in Iraq, but was not specific about when.

We've been rather skeptical about the purported direct ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but no one even denies that al-Zargawi was in Baghdad in May 2002. If the two stories join up at that point then one more objection to the war goes down the tubes.

MORE:
Saddam's WMD Have Been Found (Kenneth R. Timmerman, April 26, 2004, Insight)

New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all. But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions, a senior administration official tells Insight. "There is a long list of charges made by the U.S. that have been confirmed, but none of this seems to mean anything because the weapons that were unaccounted for by the United Nations remain unaccounted for."

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OTTANTOTTISTS R US:

"A reactionary king of Piedmont-Sardinia became almost a figure of fun by wandering about mumbling pathetically the word 'ottantott,' Italian for '88. Thereby he meant to say: all problems would vanish if only the world turned its clock back to 1788, the year before the [French] Revolution."
-Peter Viereck (1916-), Conservatism: from John Adams to Churchill (1956)

MORE:
-POEM: Kilroy (Peter Viereck)
-POEM: Unthings (Peter Viereck)
-EXCERPTS: from The Unadjusted Man: A New Hero for the Americans: Reflections on the Distinction between Conforming and Conserving (Peter Viereck)
-ESSAY: Peter Viereck: Reconciliation and Beyond (Michael A. Weinstein, 1997, HUMANITAS)
-ESSAY: George Sylvester Viereck: Poet and Propagandist (NIEL M. JOHNSON, November 1968, Books at Iowa)
-REVIEW: of Tide and Continuities: Last and First Poems 1995-1938, by Peter Viereck (Michael A. Weinstein, HUMANITAS)
-QUOTE:

The liberal sees outer, removable institutions as the ultimate source of evil; sees man’s social task as creating a world in which evil will disappear. His tools for this task are progress and enlightenment. The conservative sees the inner unremovable nature of man as the ultimate source of evil; sees man’s social task as coming to terms with a world in which evil is perpetual and in which justice and compassion will both be perpetually necessary. His tools for this task are the maintenance of ethical restraints inside the individual and the maintenance of unbroken, continuous social patterns inside the given culture as a whole. Hence, the conservative distrusts direct democracy, unrestrained and unpatterned.
-Peter Viereck, The Unadjusted Man: A New Hero for Americans (1956)

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THE DRAFT DODGER (via Bruce Cleaver):

John Kerry Must Go: Note to Democrats: it's not too late to draft someone-anyone-else (James Ridgeway , April 27th, 2004, Village Voice)

With the air gushing out of John Kerry's balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn't have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party's got to have someone to run against George Bush. They can't exactly expect the president to self-destruct into thin air. [...]

What to do? Look for the Dem biggies, whoever they are these days, to sit down with the rich and arrogant presumptive nominee and try to persuade him to take a hike. Then they can return to business as usual--resurrecting John Edwards, who is still hanging around, or staging an open convention in Boston, or both.

Well, it can't be any worse for Bob Shrum than having to withdraw New Coke.

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AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS MINE LIES A SMALL, SMALL MAN:

Kerry rejects medals dispute: Challenges Bush on Guard record (Patrick Healy, 4/27/04, Boston Globe)

Even his endorsement by the United Mine Workers of America, outside a coal mine near Wheeling, W.Va., was overshadowed by his appearance on ABC after ''Good Morning America" aired the 1971 footage. Kerry appeared on the program from the mine site, scrapping tensely with interviewer Charlie Gibson, who at one point intimated that the medals controversy might derail Kerry's presidential bid. When the segment was over, Kerry turned to two aides and complained, "God, they're doing the bidding of the Republican National Committee."

Kerry appeared a little reserved as he shook hands with mine workers and accepted a gift, a gold-colored "safety lamp" that miners use to determine whether there is enough oxygen in a mine.

When Ronald Reagan got busted by an open mike he was doing exactly what you'd think he might: joking about nuking Russia.

When George Bush and Dick Cheney got busted, they too sounded like their public personae: exchanging locker room humor about a Timesman.

John Kerry has been busted twice now and in both instances has been whining like a girl.

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HAVE THEY EVER BEEN RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING?

Bring back DDT: Eco-imperialism is killing African children (Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, 27/04/04)

Who could possibly object to Earth Day, that benign occasion on which we are encouraged to throw away our pesticides, clean up our environment, and contemplate the damage we have done to Mother Earth?

Niger Innis, for one.

Mr. Innis is neither a shill for industry nor a raging neo-con. He is the spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, a leading African-American advocacy group, and last week he and other black activists got together to explain exactly what is wrong with Earth Day.

"We must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated or imaginary risk. And we must stop trying to protect it on the backs, and the graves, of the nation's and world's most powerless and impoverished people," he said.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but hard on the heels of Earth Day came Africa Malaria Day. Earth Day got more coverage, and that's a shame, because malaria is as big a scourge as AIDS, maybe worse. Malaria kills two million people a year and ravages economies. In Africa, a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, and many who don't die suffer brain damage.

But we've been blinded by environmental paternalism. And so we're standing back and watching.

The problem is our irrational aversion to DDT, which, in the popular imagination, is the most toxic pesticide known to man. So allergic are we to DDT that the World Health Organization will not fund its use, and most agencies are pushing for a ban worldwide. This, despite massive evidence that DDT as it is used today does no harm to people or the environment -- and saves lives.

"Our position is that DDT is perhaps the most effective, inexpensive way to wipe out malaria," Mr. Innis told me. "What's outrageous to us is that African countries aren't even being allowed to have the option of using it."[...]

Black leaders say that our prejudice against DDT amounts to ecological imperialism. But this brand of imperialism is even more insidious than the old kind, because it's done in the name of the weak. As Mr. Innis puts it, First World environmentalists have saddled the Third World with debt and death.

Foreign aid, socialist planning, drought relief, land reform, sex education and environmentalism. How much more Western charity can Africans take before the last one is killed off in agonized gratitude?

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CHEYENNE AUTUMN:

Attacked, Expelled, Ignored (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 4/25/04, NY Times Magazine)

The Darfur region of western Sudan is one of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth, which makes it an ideal place to get away with ethnic cleansing. Since late last year, an Arab militia called the Janjaweed has killed thousands of darker-skinned non-Arabs and driven about one million from their homes. Most of the refugees are still in Sudan, many of them in squalid camps, the children dying of malnutrition and measles. An additional 110,000 refugees have crossed into Chad. Even there they are not safe: the Janjaweed regularly raid across the border.

The killing here is not about religion, as it is elsewhere in Sudan. It is largely about race and ethnicity -- and the age-old tension between nomadic herdsmen and settled farmers.

As always, racism is a far more powerful impulse to kill than religion is a restraint.

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SO, HERE'S A QUESTION FOR EVERYBODY...:

Fresh threats in 'al-Qaeda' tape (Paul Wood, 4/27/04, BBC)

A message claiming to be from al-Qaeda says it is not to blame for a suicide car bomb attack in Riyadh last week.

The tape does however warn of "fierce" attacks in 2004 against American and other western targets.

The tape, which can be heard on an Islamist website, says the attack on a police centre was a consequence of the Saudi rulers' "infidel policies.

Last week was the first time that the Saudi state has been directly targeted as opposed to a foreign target.

The tape says the Saudi royal family and its alliances with Christians and Jews was the reason for the attack.

Americans, Jews and "Crusaders", as western troops are called, will continue to be targeted by al-Qaeda, the tape says.

"This year, God willing, will be fiercer and harsher for them," it concludes.

Why is it that if it looks like America is going to war all these human shields turn up and offer their services to the dicators but when the West is threatened with murderous attacks the same peace activists are nowhere to be found? Why don't liberal clergymen surround our embassies all over the world to shield them from attack?

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CAN JIHADI COME OUT AND PLAY...:

U.S. Troops, Insurgents Battle Near Najaf: Bulk of 64 Dead Are Militiamen Loyal to Moqtada Sadr (Karl Vick and Fred Barbash, April 27, 2004, Washington Post)

U.S. troops killed more than 60 insurgents in an overnight battle near Najaf but steered well clear of the city itself, avoiding a perilous confrontation in a stronghold of Iraq's militant Shiite rebels.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman, took pains to note that early reports of the fighting had "mischaracterized" it as being in the city, parts of which are considered sacred to Shiite Muslims across the globe.

Most of the dead, he said, were militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who has taken refuge in Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad. But American troops never crossed the Euphrates River into Najaf, he stressed.

For ease of identification later, the Mahdi Army, before going into battle, rather than put on dog tags, should tie on toe tags.

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SCIENCE UBER ALLES:

Bush-League Lysenkoism: The White House bends science to its will (The Editors, 4/26/04)

Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.

In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. It begins, "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid perilous consequences.... The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."

Just in case you thought science wasn't a religion, here's a special pleading that it be treated like an Orthodox Church of America.

---

WHAT JOHN KNEW:

The Myth of the Beginning of Time (Gabriele Veneziano, 4/26/04, ScientificAmerican.com)

The unavoidable singularity poses serious problems for cosmologists. In particular, it sits uneasily with the high degree of homogeneity and isotropy that the universe exhibits on large scales. For the cosmos to look broadly the same everywhere, some kind of communication had to pass among distant regions of space, coordinating their properties. But the idea of such communication contradicts the old cosmological paradigm.

To be specific, consider what has happened over the 13.7 billion years since the release of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The distance between galaxies has grown by a factor of about 1,000 (because of the expansion), while the radius of the observable universe has grown by the much larger factor of about 100,000 (because light outpaces the expansion). We see parts of the universe today that we could not have seen 13.7 billion years ago. Indeed, this is the first time in cosmic history that light from the most distant galaxies has reached the Milky Way.

Nevertheless, the properties of the Milky Way are basically the same as those of distant galaxies. It is as though you showed up at a party only to find you were wearing exactly the same clothes as a dozen of your closest friends. If just two of you were dressed the same, it might be explained away as coincidence, but a dozen suggests that the partygoers had coordinated their attire in advance. In cosmology, the number is not a dozen but tens of thousands--the number of independent yet statistically identical patches of sky in the microwave background.

In the beginning was the word...

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AUTHORITARIANS DEMOCRATIZE:

(via Kevin Whited):
A Need to Act on Burma (John McCain and Madeleine Albright, April 27, 2004, Washington Post)

The world's democracies have a common moral obligation to promote justice and freedom. In few places is this obligation more acute than in Burma, a country in which a band of thugs, led by Gen. Than Shwe, controls the population through violence and terror. The regime has a record of unchecked repression. It has murdered political opponents, used child soldiers and forced labor, and employed rape as a weapon of war. Nearly one year ago the Burmese military junta launched an orchestrated, violent attack against democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of her supporters. Since then the regime has kept more than 1,000 political activists imprisoned, including elected members of parliament. It recently sentenced three Burmese citizens to death for contacting representatives of the International Labor Organization.

The Burmese junta, with the cynical support of neighboring governments, has announced a "road map to democracy," beginning with a constitutional convention in May. The convention is expected to be stage-managed by the junta, which has offered no meaningful participation to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, no timetable for progress toward a political transition, no release of political prisoners and no guarantee that the military will cede control to democratically elected leaders. Instead, the junta's proposals seem designed to institutionalize military control by creating a veneer of civilian authority, while meeting only the minimum expectations of Western democracies in order to avoid further sanctions.

The past several decades have taught us one lesson--over and over and over again--cynical attempts to create a veneer of democracy inevitably lead people to demand genuine democracy and the leadership that has made it a mantra ends up succumbing whether that was their original intent or not. We need not think that Franco, Pinochet, Marcos, Trujillo, the Afrikaaners, etc., really meant what they said about preserving and fostering democratic institutions, the reality is that they ended up leaving behind them liberal democratic societies.

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CAN DEMOCRATS INVOKE THE SLAUGHTER RULE? (via John Resnick):

Job Outlook Beefs Up Consumer Confidence (Amanda Cooper, 4/27/04, Reuters)

Americans were more upbeat in April about finding a job than they have been in almost 18 months, causing markets to quickly shift focus to next week's influential report on the U.S. employment situation.

Also consumers bought a near-record number of homes last month, adding to views the U.S. economy now might finally be in a bonafide expansion since it began its choppy recovery from recession in 2001.

Optimism among manufacturers about the economy and the business outlook is also near record levels another report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) showed on Tuesday.

The positive news about jobs seemed to more than offset economists' concerns that soaring gasoline prices, bloodshed in Iraq and a recent pull-back in share prices might dent consumer confidence.

The Conference Board, a business group based in New York, said on Tuesday its index of consumer confidence rose to 92.9 in April from 88.3 in March, its highest since January.

More to the point, the jobs-hard-to-get index within the group's survey fell to 27.6 in April from 29.9 in the month before, its lowest since November 2002.

If this election were a Little League game they'd stop it. This is just going to be humiliating.

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PAPER DRAGON (via Jeff Guinn):

A Dangerous Surplus of Sons?: Two political scientists warn that Asia's lopsided sex ratios threaten world peace (DAVID GLENN, 4/30/04, Chronicle of Higher Education)

The reasons for the persistence of offspring sex selection, and the exact numbers of pregnancies involved, have been hotly debated since the early 1990s, when the economist Amartya Sen called attention to the phenomenon of "missing women." By some social scientists' measure, more than 100 million females are now missing from the populations of India and China. Mr. Sen and others have argued that sex selection both reflects and reinforces women's low social status, which -- beyond its intrinsic cruelty -- impedes the development of democracy and prosperity in male-skewed nations. Scholars and feminist organizations in both Asia and the West have produced many volumes of often conflicting advice about how to combat the practice.

Now two political scientists have joined the fray with an ominous argument: Offspring sex selection could soon lead to war.

In a new book, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population (MIT Press), Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer warn that the spread of sex selection is giving rise to a generation of restless young men who will not find mates. History, biology, and sociology all suggest that these "surplus males" will generate high levels of crime and social disorder, the authors say. Even worse, they continue, is the possibility that the governments of India and China will build up huge armies in order to provide a safety valve for the young men's aggressive energies.

"In 2020 it may seem to China that it would be worth it to have a very bloody battle in which a lot of their young men could die in some glorious cause," says Ms. Hudson, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University.

Those apocalyptic forecasts garnered a great deal of attention when the scholars first presented them, in the journal International Security, in 2002. "The thing that excites me about this research is how fundamental demography is," says David T. Courtwright, a professor of history at the University of North Florida and author of Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder From the Frontier to the Inner City (Harvard University Press, 1996), a study of sex ratios and murder rates in American history. "The basic idea that they have, that in some sense demography is social destiny -- that's a very powerful idea."

But other experts are unpersuaded. They say that Ms. Hudson and Ms. den Boer's argument rests too heavily on a few isolated historical cases, and that the authors have failed to establish a systematic correlation between sex ratios and violence. Critics also suggest that the argument promotes false stereotypes of men and masculinity, and that the authors do not offer detailed knowledge of Asian societies and political systems. Offspring sex selection is indeed a serious problem, the critics say, but to treat it as a problem of international security is an unwarranted distraction. [...]

Mr. Goldstein and Ms. Parikh also worry that the Bare Branches argument leans too heavily on what they regard as crude evolutionary models of male behavior. "The authors seem to completely lack empathy for these low-status rootless men," says Ms. Parikh. "These guys are the victims of development, and they call them criminals and potential criminals. This is so appalling." For instance, contrary to the book's suggestion, she says, most migrant workers in Asia maintain strong kinship ties with their home villages, send money home every month, and are nothing like the untethered marauders pictured in the authors' warnings.

The term "surplus males," Mr. Goldstein says, "is offensive, and for lack of a better term, sexist. They're making a very conservative argument, which is sort of wrapped up in a feminist skin." It is a mistake, he says, to draw easy lessons from the finding that unmarried men tend to have higher testosterone levels than do their married peers. [...]

The argument presented in Bare Branches is akin to one developed in the late 1990s by the Canadian psychologists Neil I. Wiener and Christian G. Mesquida. They argued that violence and conflict are tightly correlated with a given society's "male age ratio," the ratio of men age 15 to 29 to men age 30 and older. If there is a relatively high proportion of young men, they say, a society is much more prone to violence. In Mr. Wiener and Mr. Mesquida's framework, young men are hard-wired for "coalitional aggression" as they fight for resources and potential mates.

The upshot of that argument is optimistic: The two psychologists predict that war and conflict will diminish during the 21st century, as the world's median age rises and the male age ratio improves. (Mr. Goldstein finds their optimism comically overdrawn, noting that the York University alumni magazine has quoted Mr. Mesquida as flatly declaring, "Right now we don't have to worry about Russia because their population is static.")

Mr. Wiener is enthusiastic about Ms. Hudson and Ms. den Boer's work, and says they are asking exactly the right questions about Asia's future. "Males cause trouble," he says. The prospect of tens of millions of unmarried men "is potentially extremely disruptive for these societies."

See? It's an easy enough problem not to worry about if you just deny human nature.

A war between India and China that was mainly driven by the need to exterminate excess males though would call to mind the quote from our war against the Iraqis:

This is the Perfect War. They want to die, and we want to kill them.
-Sgt. Major Henry Bergeron, 1st Marine Division

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QUIET?:

JOHN KERRY'S QUIET COLLAPSE (John Podhoretz, April 27, 2004, NY POst)

THE conventional wisdom is that the presidential election will be close. It's a 50-50 country, so the CW goes, just as it was in the year 2000.

The problem is that the conventional wisdom hasn't taken a proper accounting of John Kerry. Here's the truth that Democrats don't want to admit and that Republicans are fearful of speaking openly because they don't want to jinx things:

Kerry is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate. [...]

Kerry mentioned Bush's National Guard service not once, but twice, during his five minutes with Charlie Gibson. So now we have the Democratic candidate for president himself making the accusation that the president of the United States was a deserter.

You don't have to be a Bush fan to think this is spectacularly stupid. The issue isn't Bush or his campaign. The issue is Kerry and a series of statements he made on the record in the media dating back more than 30 years. Trying to change the topic to Bush's service simply smacks of cornered desperation.

And that is Kerry's great weakness as a candidate - a weakness that will be hard for him to overcome, because it appears to be a character trait. The man who said "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" is a man filled with the conviction that he can talk himself out of a tough situation.

Sometimes, it's better just to be silent, take the hit and move on. But Kerry seems constitutionally incapable of doing that.

Kerry has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for two months now. Ask yourself: Aside from fund-raising success, has he had a good day? Has he come up with a winning soundbite? Has he made a policy proposal you've heard people talking about?

Bush has had about as bad a time as he could have had these past two months, and he's not only still standing, but doing better than he was a month ago. And why? Because when he takes center stage, as he did in the press conference last week, he usually helps himself.

Not so for Kerry.

Mr. Kerry's problem is actually the opposite of a quiet collapse--it is that he keeps talking. He should really take several months off before people get totally sick of him. There's no shame in losing to a popular incumbent with a booming economy, but at the rate he's going he risks being a James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover who ushers the other party into seven decades of power.

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OH, VERY YOUNG, WHY DID YOU LEAVE US THIS TIME?:

The Vanishing Young Kerry Voter (Newsweek, 4/22/04)

Sen. John Kerry, who once held a commanding, double-digit advantage over President George W. Bush among young Americans, now finds himself in a statistical dead heat with the president among voters aged 18-29, according to the latest NEWSWEEK/GENEXT poll. While Kerry currently leads Bush within the margin of error, 45 percent to 42 percent, back in February 56 percent of 18-29 year-olds said they supported the senator versus 42 percent who said they would vote for Bush. advertisement
The decline for Kerry among young voters comes as the candidate appears to be losing ground overall. An AP/Ipsos poll of registered voters taken at the time of the GENEXT poll showed Bush leading Kerry within the margin of error, 45 percent to 44 percent. Eight weeks ago, Kerry led Bush 48 percent to 45 percent in a NEWSWEEK poll. [...]

Clearly, some young voters have turned away from Kerry for the same reasons as older citizens. But the GENEXT poll indicates that the presumptive Democratic candidate’s strength among the youth vote has been disproportionately dissipated by the entrance of independent Ralph Nader into the presidential race. In the latest GENEXT poll, the consumer advocate earns 11 percent of the under-30 vote. While Nader’s showing is down 1 point from a month earlier, it still is nearly double the 6 percent of voters who said they would vote for him in the AP/Ipsos poll of all voters.

Nader says his main appeal lies with voters who the major political parties have previously turned off. And 29 percent of respondents in the GENEXT poll who said they were likely to vote for Nader said they wouldn’t vote at all if he had not entered the race. Still, 49 percent of GENEXT Nader voters said they would vote for Kerry if they didn’t vote for Nader, compared to only 20 percent who said they would vote for Bush.

President Bush would be crazy to debate Senator Kerry without Ralph Nader being invited.

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IF THIS IS FASCISM COULDN'T WE PLEASE MAKE HIM FIRST AGAINST THE WALL?:

A Vision of Power (PAUL KRUGMAN, 4/27/04, NY Times)

There's a deep mystery surrounding Dick Cheney's energy task force, but it's not about what happened back in 2001. Clearly, energy industry executives dictated the content of a report that served their interests.

The real mystery is why the Bush administration has engaged in a three-year fight — which reaches the Supreme Court today — to hide the details of a story whose broad outline we already know.

One possibility is that there is some kind of incriminating evidence in the task force's records. Another is that the administration fears that full disclosure will highlight its chummy relationship with the energy industry. But there's a third possibility: that the administration is really taking a stand on principle. And that's what scares me. [...]

What Mr. Cheney is defending, in other words, is a doctrine that makes the United States a sort of elected dictatorship: a system in which the president, once in office, can do whatever he likes, and isn't obliged to consult or inform either Congress or the public.

They had private meeting to formulate public policy--that's dictatorship? Well, this is a guy who thinks Bushonomics has caused a Second Great Depression...

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MANY CHINAS:

China Bars Steps by Hong Kong Toward More Democratic Voting (KEITH BRADSHER, 4/27/04, NY Times)

Beijing on Monday barred popular elections for Hong Kong's chief executive in 2007 and ruled out any expanded voting by the general public for the legislature in 2008, in the latest in a series of moves to restrict democracy here.

The decision angered democracy advocates here, who promised street demonstrations, and drew sharp criticism from the United States and Britain, which said Beijing was eroding the autonomy of Hong Kong that it had pledged to preserve.

Beijing has been intervening increasingly in the territory's political affairs. It has now made clear that it intends to give Hong Kong's people a very junior role in decisions about how to open the electoral system in the future.

Bill Rammell, the British foreign office minister for China and Hong Kong, called in China's ambassador in London to complain about the move, saying in a statement that it was "inconsistent with the `high degree of autonomy' which Hong Kong is guaranteed under the Joint Declaration." The declaration, by Britain and China in 1984, cleared the way for Hong Kong's transfer to Chinese rule.

China's leaders are tightening controls here after a series of developments that began with a march by 500,000 people last July 1 to protest stringent internal-security legislation.

In November elections for neighborhood councils, pro-Beijing parties were trounced by pro-democracy parties, suggesting a grim future at the polls for Beijing's allies. Finally, Taiwan's politicians moved further toward independence, making Hong Kong less useful as an example of how Taiwan might someday be reunited politically with the mainland.

The Meaning of the American Revolution: A letter to H. Niles (John Adams, 13 February 1818):

The American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and consequences have already been awful over a great part of the globe. And when and where are they to cease?

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. While the king, and all in authority under him, were believed to govern in justice and mercy, according to the laws and constitution derived to them from the God of nature and transmitted to them by their ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and queen and all the royal family, and all in authority under them, as ministers ordained of God for their good; but when they saw those powers renouncing all the principles of authority, and bent upon the destruction of all the securities of their lives, liberties, and properties, they thought it their duty to pray for the continental congress and all the thirteen State congresses, &c.

From Palestine to Kurdistan to Taiwan to Hong Kong, folks are having trouble learning the simple lesson that John Adams teaches: a people who begin thinking of themselves as a nation have already effected the Revolution and they will have an independent state.

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DIFFERENT STROKES TO RULE THE WORLD:

Waiting for Change in Najaf, Preparing to Force It in Falluja: Differences between the two cities help explain why the U.S. military appears to be taking a softer line in Najaf than in Falluja. (THOM SHANKER, 4/27/04, NY Times)

When American commanders on the outskirts of Najaf and Falluja peer into the two troubled Iraqi cities, they see very different problems. Each place has its own culture, each harbors a different enemy, and each offers its own potential allies to help calm a volatile situation.

Those differences help explain why the American military appears to be taking a softer line in Najaf than in Falluja, where the threat of an outright assault is never more than a day or two away.

Najaf is home to the Shrine of Ali, one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites for Shiite Muslims. Moktada al-Sadr, the leader of the rebellious Mahdi Army militia, remains entrenched there. But American military officials have stopped proclaiming that they will capture or kill him, despite the fact that his fighters continue to confront occupying forces there and in a slum of Baghdad.

Senior Pentagon and military officials said Monday that they had no intention of sending American forces into the center of Najaf, near the holy sites. Even though officials said Mr. Sadr's militia must immediately stop stockpiling weapons in shrines and mosques there, they seem to have accepted that any attack could inspire riotous demonstrations throughout the Shiite world.

That stance contrasts starkly to the one adopted by American commanders at Falluja, a bastion of Sunni support for Saddam Hussein west of Baghdad where marines are poised for an offensive against entrenched urban guerrillas should no political solution be reached. There, the marines on Monday blasted away the minaret of a mosque being used as a sniper nest by insurgents. [...]

Pentagon officials, of course, say that no options can be ruled out should the situation in Najaf flare out of control at Mr. Sadr's bidding. But the strategy to isolate and marginalize the cleric is specifically intended to sap his strength.

"Sadr gains his power by confronting the United States," one senior Pentagon official said Monday. "We do not intend to let him grow in power. We will deny him the opportunity to confront us."

While American forces are isolating Mr. Sadr in Najaf, they are looking to mainstream Shiite clerics and political parties to marginalize him. These local leaders have their own reasons to eliminate Mr. Sadr as a rival for the majority Shiite vote in the new Iraqi government, although they must be careful not to appear to be working on behalf of the widely unpopular American occupation.

---

ISN'T ANDY CARD THE REAL ISSUE?:

Democrats to Target Cheney: Attacks on Vice President Aimed at Eroding Confidence in Bush (Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, April 26, 2004, Washington Post)

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and the Democratic Party will open a week-long assault on Vice President Cheney today in hopes that tarring him as promoting secrecy and controversial policies will erode confidence in President Bush.

Cheney is less popular than Bush in polls, and Democratic strategists said they need to further inhibit the vice president's effectiveness as Bush's attack messenger.

Here's the mark of an undisciplined campaign--just because you're in the midst of picking your own doesn't mean that anyone cares about the vice-presidential running mate. All it does is deflect you from your main purpose.

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DON'T DISTRACT ME WHILE I'M TRYING TO DISTRACT YOU:

Kerry defends Vietnam record (Jill Lawrence, 4/27/2004, USA TODAY)

Democrat John Kerry battled back Monday against a Republican offensive designed to erode one of his biggest assets as a presidential candidate: his credentials as a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War.

Kerry responded testily when asked in several TV interviews whether he had changed his story about throwing combat ribbons or medals over a fence at the Capitol in an anti-war protest in 1971. For the first time, he also cited President Bush's spotty attendance in the National Guard. (Related story: Questions raised over Kerry account of '71 protest)

Kerry called the medals issue "a distraction" and a campaign tactic. "It's coming from a president who can't even prove that he showed up for duty in the National Guard," he said in an interview with WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh.

Senator Kerry, who served in Vietnam, may be right that issues surrounding his and George Bush's service to their country thirty years ago is a distraction--maybe he shouldn't bring it up so often?

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TREAT HIM LIKE THE TWERP HE IS:

Sadr the agitator: like father, like son: Militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr builds on his father's fame and has eclipsed many moderates. (Dan Murphy, 4/27/04, CS Monitor)

While Moqtada's religious credentials are weak, his family's political standing is as deep as the modern history of Iraq. His grandfather was the prime minister in 1932. And this young, militant cleric didn't spontaneously emerge after the fall of Saddam Hussein. US forces now entering the city of Najaf, are up against a man who has donned the well-cultivated mantle of his father, the leading Shiite thorn in the side of the Hussein regime in the 1990s.

Today, the younger Sadr has built on his father's popularity and created a militant Shiite movement that has eclipsed many in the more moderate Shiite majority, who have remained largely silent.

For the moment, his movement is stalled. The uprising he sparked across southern Iraq in early April has failed. [...]

For his supporters, the stand-off with the Americans is evidence that he's on the right path. "The tyrants always fear the ones who are most just, must good,'' says Ali Yassawi, sitting in the movement's main office in Sadr City, the sprawling Baghdad public housing quarter that is a hot-bed of Saddriyun, or Sadr supporters. "At first I wasn't sure about Moqtada, but just like the father, our enemies are fighting against him. This proves he's on the right path."

Fighting and dying for near hopeless causes inspires almost mystical reverence within the Shiite community, going back to the beginnings of the Sunni- Shiite split in the 7th century. When Imam Ali was assassinated after leaving the mosque in Kufa where he had set up a rival caliphate, his son Hussein later led 72 men into battle against an army of 4,000 opponents. Hussein's defeat at Karbala cemented the schism.

Moqtada refers to the US as "Yazid," the name of the Ummayid Caliph whose men killed Imam Hussein, and talks about the martyrdom of both his own father and his uncle, the prominent Ayatollah and philosopher Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, killed by the Hussein regime in 1980. His framing of the conflict in these terms has made it difficult for the US to deal with Sadr, a man US officials have charged with murder.

"The idea of martyrdom and persecution does resonate throughout the Shiite world,'' says David Patel, a PhD candidate at Stanford University in California who's studying Shiite political movements in modern Iraq. "The average Shiite is unlikely to empathize with Moqtada's plight, probably thinking he brought it on himself." But Patel says that if US forces move on Najaf, Sadr's support could blossom.

Shutting down his newspaper was foolish and it would be best now to completely marginalize and minimize him. Let Ayatollah al-Sistani and company deal with him when we're gone.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF 60:

Pickering's reputation restored (Nat Hentoff, April 26, 2004, Jewish World Review)

For two years, Federal District Court Judge Charles Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, has suffered continuous character assassination by Senate Democrats who have filibustered his nomination by President Bush to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is on that bench now only because of a temporary recess appointment.

The assaults on the judge have been led by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who has accused him of "glaring racial insensitivity." And NAACP National Chairman Julian Bond proclaimed that "a vote for Pickering is a vote against civil rights."

Most damaging has been the charge — carelessly circulated nationwide by many in the media — that Pickering went to extraordinary lengths 10 years ago to lessen the sentence for one of three white men who burned a cross at the home of an interracial couple in Mississippi. But, at last, in a March 28 "60 Minutes" segment, Mike Wallace restored Pickering's reputation in a report from Mississippi showing 16 million CBS viewers the actual facts of Pickering's record — on and off the bench. [...]

Also on "60 Minutes," Mike Wallace emphasized that, "many black attorneys who practice before him say Pickering is fair and first-rate." One of them, Deborah Gambrell, a Democrat, said she has appeared before him year after year, including representing the NAACP in a case, and was "shocked and appalled" at the charges that Pickering is "insensitive on racial issues."

Pickering told Wallace that "To accuse a white southerner of being a racist is about the worst thing you can do. I have worked for more than three decades trying to provide better relations between the races, trying to protect equal rights. That's my core being. And they've attacked that."

His is one of the appointments that will be made permanent in January 2005.

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DEFENDING DOGMA DOWNWARDS:

DEALING WITH THE BACKLASH AGAINST INTELLIGENT DESIGN (William A. Dembski, April 14, 2004, Design Inference)

Ten years ago, the Quarterly Review of Biology (December 1995) gave the following plug to the book Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?
 
The editors deserve credit for a very fair book. Without editorializing or bias, the book lets everyone have their say... In fact, it has a nice tone of “give and take,” mostly polite, but in places amusingly peppery.... Moreover, the book is a readable primer on scientific philosophy, and provides a relatively sophisticated and invigorating philosophical challenge.
 
It is a measure of the success of our movement that no biology journal would give our books such respectful treatment any longer.
 
Why is that? The stakes are now considerably higher. Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? is the proceedings of a symposium that took place at Southern Methodist University in the spring of 1992. The focus of that symposium was Phillip Johnson’s then recently published book Darwin on Trial. At the time, Johnson was a novelty -- a respected professor of criminal law at Cal Berkeley who was raising doubts about evolution. All harmless, good fun, no doubt. And Berkeley has an illustrious history of harboring eccentrics, kooks, and oddballs.
 
Ten years later, any amusement about Johnson’s critique of Darwinism has long since vanished. All sides now realize that Johnson was, from the start, deadly earnest, not content merely to tweak Darwin’s nose but intent, rather, on knocking him down for the ten-count. Johnson is, after all, a lawyer, and lawyers think contests are not simply to be enjoyed but also to be won.
 
This has not set well with the academic community, which thrives on irresolution. I once discussed with some philosophers the difference between mathematics and philosophy. One philosopher remarked that whereas in mathematics one finds a problem and solves it, in philosophy one finds an itch and scratches it. It would have been one thing if Johnson had raised doubts about Darwinism and then gestured at some ways of supplementing or reinterpreting evolutionary theory to take the materialist edge off. But Johnson was convinced that Darwinism had become a corrupt ideology that was being enforced by a dogmatic and authoritarian scientific elite, and that the proper course of treatment for Darwinism was not refurbishment or reformation but removal and replacement.
 
Thanks to Johnson, we now have a cultural, intellectual, and scientific movement that gives voice in the academic world to multiple millions of people who find it plausible, or even self-evident, that the world and its living forms were brought about by a designing intelligence. That movement is now so effective that evolutionists have to spend a lot of time writing articles and even whole books attacking intelligent design (and, in some cases, like Robert Pennock, they even make an academic career attacking it).
 
In contrast to the respectful review of Darwinism: Science or Philosophy? a decade ago, we now face an academic and scientific world that is increasingly hostile to intelligent design and that seeks to crush it rather than engage it as a serious intellectual project. This may seem unfair and mean-spirited, but let’s admit that our aim, as proponents of intelligent design, is to beat naturalistic evolution, and the scientific materialism that undergirds it, back to the Stone Age. Our opponents, therefore, are merely returning the favor.
 
We have this going for us, however, which the evolutionary naturalists don’t, namely, the evidence and arguments are on our side. It’s therefore to our advantage to discuss intelligent design and naturalistic evolution on their merits. Conversely, the other side needs to delegitimate the debate between intelligent design and naturalistic evolution, casting intelligent design as a pseudoscience and characterizing its significance purely in political and religious terms. As a consequence, critics of intelligent design engage in all forms of character assassination, ad hominem attacks, guilt by association, and demonization.

Darwinists increasingly act like folks under whom the paradigm is shifting.

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THE OIL ISN'T WORTH IT:

Democracy spreads across Africa: Ten years after apartheid, political freedom faces new pressures. (Abraham McLaughlin, 4/27/04, CS Monitor)

Forty-three of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have held at least one multiparty election during the past decade, compared with 1990, when just three were solidly democratic.

Yet outside pressures threaten to derail or even reverse this progress. The geopolitical profile of Africa is rising as a key source of oil - it will soon export more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia - and as a potential terrorism incubator. And some observers worry that the US, a longtime backer of democracy here, may increasingly push for political stability over democracy in order to protect oil outflows and prevent terrorism. [...]

Several new US initiatives, in the Sahel Desert, and in East and West Africa, aim to bolster counterterrorism skills. They appear to be useful: Last month, for instance, Chad's military, with help from a US Navy plane, reportedly killed 42 Islamic fighters from Algeria who may have had Al Qaeda ties.

Given this shift, South Africa, the continent's economic and political powerhouse, may be key to shaping Africa's democratic future. Its just-reelected president, Thabo Mbeki, is a champion of "good governance" across Africa. Two initiatives he's pushing hard are the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the African Union. Both reward good government and democratic stand-outs - and punish slackers.

"This begins to shift the balance in inter-African politics toward better-governed countries," says Francis Kornegay, a columnist for several South African papers. [...]

"If there's the faintest trade-off between democratization and oil, oil will win," says Steven Friedman of the Centre for Policy Studies here.

Or consider 10 major hot spots for US counterterrorism efforts, including Somalia, Djibouti, Niger, Chad, and Kenya. Three of them are "not free." Six are "partly free." One - Mali - is "free."

There is a strong debate about how the US should tackle the war on terror in Africa. It could aim for stability by helping states gain strong antiterror military capability - even if this means supporting dictators, as during the cold war.

Or it could take a more democracy-friendly approach. "If you're going to really deal with the threat of terror, you need politically capable states" that bolster citizens' rights - thus preventing the disaffection that can breed anger, argues John Stremlau, head of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand here. And, he says, you don't get that "by putting boots on the ground. You need ballots in the box" - democracy.

Indeed, the US has started to attach good-governance strings to its aid through the Millennium Challenge Account, a new program started by the Bush White House.

Africa's tilt toward democracy is evident from a more-nuanced Freedom House measurement of political rights and civil liberties in each country. In 2002, the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa racked up a total score of 417 points. In 2003, it was 407. In 2004, 403. The lower the score, the more freedom.

A further demonstration of why we need to break our oil dependency. Fortunately, the Bush Administration seems to take the task of improving the lives of Africans seriously.

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FORCING THE CONTRADICTIONS:

Thousands protest legalizing same-sex marriage: Asian Americans, Christians rally in Sunset District (Ulysses Torassa, April 26, 2004, San Francisco Chronicle)

A largely Asian American and Christian crowd of more than 7,000 rallied Sunday in San Francisco's Sunset District to protest the legalization of same-sex marriage, saying it goes against the Bible and threatens the future of families and society.

Most were dressed in identical red T-shirts with the slogan, "Marriage/1 man + 1 woman" in English and Chinese. Protesters fanned out along 19th Avenue, between Quintara Street and Holloway Avenue, asking motorists to honk in favor of keeping marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples. Many did, but most just drove by.

"We're not here today to antagonize or to hate people, we're here with true love and true concern," Thomas Wang, of the Great Commission Center International, a South San Francisco missionary organization, said to the sun- soaked crowd at Larsen Park. "God created one man and one woman -- Adam and Eve. They became husband and wife and the first human family began. ... We believe any deviation from it will bring disastrous results.'' [...]

Billed as a rally to showcase support among Christians in all ethnic communities, most of the organizers and the majority of participants were Chinese Americans. The instructions were written in Chinese and English and the crowd was addressed in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Organizers said the event drew members of more than 150 Bay Area churches.

Organizers said they wanted to emphasize a positive message in favor of traditional marriage and asked participants to refer all reporters' questions to official spokespeople. Joy Kao of San Francisco's Chinatown, who was with a group from the Chinatown Presbyterian Church, said, "We don't feel (same-sex marriage) is a threat, we're just here to voice our opinion," she said. "It's not good as an example for the children.''

Asian Americans represent a socially conservative community in which the GOP should be able to make inroads.

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GIVING JIHAD A BAD NAME:

Jordan says major al Qaeda plot disrupted: Authorities: Chemical cloud would have been released in Amman (CNN, April 26, 2004)

Jordanian authorities said Monday they have broken up an alleged al Qaeda plot that would have unleashed a deadly cloud of chemicals in the heart of Jordan's capital, Amman.

The plot would have been more deadly than anything al Qaeda has done before, including the September 11 attacks, according to the Jordanian government. [...]

In a nighttime raid in Amman, Jordanian security forces moved in on the terrorist cell. After the shooting stopped, four men were dead. Jordanian authorities said. They said at least three others were arrested, including Azmi Jayyousi, the cell's suspected ringleader, whom Jordanian intelligence alleges was responsible for planning and recruiting.

On a confession shown on state-run Jordanian television, Jayyousi said he took orders from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a suspected terrorist leader who has been linked to al Qaeda and whom U.S. officials have said is behind some attacks in Iraq.

"I took explosives courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to obey him without any questioning," Jayyousi said.
Jordanian authorities said Azmi Jayyousi was the suspected ringleader in an alleged al Qaeda plot.

Jordanian intelligence suspects Jayyousi returned from Iraq in January after a meeting with al-Zarqawi in which they allegedly plotted to hit the three targets in Amman.

In a series of raids, the Jordanians said, they seized 20 tons of chemicals and numerous explosives. Also seized were three trucks equipped with specially modified plows, apparently designed to crash through security barricades.

The first alleged target was the Jordanian intelligence headquarters. The alleged blast was intended to be a big one.

"According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department will be destroyed, and nothing of it will remain, nor anything surrounding it," Jayyousi said.

Details of the alleged plot were shown Monday on Jordanian television, including graphics of how the cell apparently intended to carry out the attack.

In an videotape shown on Jordanian TV, Hussein Sharif said Jayyousi recruited him as a suicide bomber.

"The aim, Azmi told me, was to execute an operation to strike Jordan and the Hashemite Royal family, a war against the crusaders and infidels," Sharif said. "Azmi told me that this will be the first chemical attack that al Qaeda will execute."

That would seem to betray a willingness to kill an awful lot of fellow Muslims just to maybe get a few Hashemites, no?

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50-0:

Battleground states in play for Bush camp (Donald Lambro, April 26, 2004, Washington Times)

Sen. John Kerry is trailing or tied with President Bush in many of the battleground states Democrats won in 2000 and that will likely decide the outcome of this year's elections, according to a survey of polls across the country by The Washington Times.

With six months to go before the November election, Mr. Bush is surprising political pundits and Democratic strategists in key Democratic-leaning states in the Northeast and Midwest. [...]

• Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes): An April 13-19 Quinnipiac University poll of 769 registered voters showed Mr. Bush leading Mr. Kerry 46 percent to 42 percent, with 7 percent undecided. When consumer crusader Ralph Nader is included, Mr. Bush leads 45 percent to 39 percent, with 8 percent for Mr. Nader. The margin of error was 3.5 percentage points. [...]

• New Jersey (15 electoral votes): Mr. Gore carried this state by 16 points in 2000. But a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll taken April 3 to 10 found the two rivals in a close race -- 47 percent for the president versus 48 percent for Mr. Kerry, a surprising development in a heavily Democratic state that was thought to be solidly in Kerry's column. The poll's margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.

• Michigan (17 electoral votes): An EPIC/MRA poll taken at the beginning of this month put the race in a close race -- 47 percent for Mr. Kerry to 45 percent for Mr. Bush. The two-point gap was well within the poll's margin of error. An earlier survey by Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell for the Detroit News in March had Mr. Bush leading 46 percent to 42 percent. [...]

• Iowa (7 electoral votes): An American Research Group poll of 600 likely voters, conducted April 18 to 21, showed Mr. Bush trailing Mr. Kerry by a single point, 47 percent to 46 percent, with Mr. Nader at 3 percent and 4 percent of respondents undecided. The poll's margin of error was four percentage points.

• Florida (27 electoral votes): A Mason-Dixon poll completed April 1 showed Mr. Bush leading Mr. Kerry 51 percent to 43 percent. More recent polls show the president holding a smaller lead in a state where unemployment is a low 4 percent and where Mr. Bush has made numerous trips over the past three years. The poll's margin of error was four percentage points.

• Even in reliably Democratic Maryland (10 electoral votes), Mr. Bush has begun to cut into Mr. Kerry's numbers. Mr. Gore carried the state by 17 points, but a recent survey by Maryland pollster Patrick Gonzales gives Mr. Kerry only a five-point edge.

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WHY ARE THE REALISTS ALWAYS WRONG?:

Realistpolitik: Finally, some foreign-policy conservatives get fed up with Bush. (Danny Postel, 05.07.04, American Prospect)

John Mearsheimer, one of the pre-eminent representatives of the realist school of international relations, voted for George W. Bush in 2000. But not this time. Come November, he's not only voting for John Kerry but
"will do so with enthusiasm."

As a realist, the University of Chicago political scientist liked Bush's
anti-nation-building rhetoric during the 2000 debates, and was
displeased by Al Gore's support for the humanitarian interventions of
the 1990s. But Bush's handling of foreign policy -- particularly the
Iraq War -- has turned Mearsheimer and other realists into some of the
administration's sharpest critics. "[T]he more time goes by," he says,
"the more Bush makes [Bill] Clinton look like a genius in both domestic
and foreign policy."

Indeed, not only is the American right a house divided on Iraq but over
the intensifying imperialist drift of U.S. foreign policy more broadly.
A convergence of realists, libertarians, and traditionalists (or
"paleocons") has taken shape in opposition to the neoconservative
foreign-policy agenda. In October, they came together to form the
Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, which holds that "the move
toward empire must be halted immediately."

Spearheaded by Christopher Preble, director of foreign-policy studies at
the Cato Institute, the coalition's signatories include Mearsheimer and
fellow realist Stephen Walt of Harvard; Andrew Bacevich, author of
American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy; Ted
Galen Carpenter and Charles Peña of Cato; John Hulsman of The Heritage
Foundation; Christopher Layne and Scott McConnell of Pat Buchanan's
magazine, The American Conservative; and Jon Utley of the organization
Americans Against World Empire. A handful of left-of-center types are
also onboard, among them Blowback and Sorrows of Empire author Chalmers
Johnson, Anatol Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, and former Colorado Senator Gary Hart.

Here's all you really need to know about Realism in foreign policy, the two pre-eminent proponents of the doctrine in American history were Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. As Robert Kaplan has written, in a generally positive profile of the arch-realist Kissinger:

In perceiving the Soviet Union as permanent, orderly, and legitimate, Kissinger shared a failure of analysis with the rest of the foreign-policy elite--notably excepting the scholar and former head of the State Department's policy-planning staff George Kennan, the Harvard historian Richard Pipes, the British scholar and journalist Bernard Levin, and the Eureka College graduate Ronald Reagan.

In other words, on the central judgment about humanity and politics in the 20th Century, the realists were wrong. Reality isn't Realist.

What is perhaps most interesting about the unrealism of the realists is that they were wrong then for many of the same reasons they are wrong now. Those of you of a certain age will recall hearing it explained that Slavs--"who are practically an Asiatic people after all"--were unsuited to democracy and therefore generally satisfied with more strong-handed governments than we in the West might prefer. Their satisfaction was, of course, demonstrated by their failure to rise up or to flee in considerable numbers. Indeed, if the governments of the East had chosen to have elections the totalitarian Communists probably would have won them anyway. Just substitute Muslims, Arabs, and Islamicism in there and you have the realist view of the Islamic world--only the names of those incapable of democracy have been changed.

Over and against the Realists you had the utterly unrealistic, thoroughly idealistic view of Ronald Reagan, who even at the high water mark of the Soviet Union--when Jimmy Carter had either stood by or helped as the Sadinistas took Nicaragua, the Ayatollah took Iran and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan just years after Nixon, Ford, and Congressional Democrats sold out South Vietnam--had the foresight to declare that Communism was doomed and could never satisfy the peoples it oppressed. In 1982, in a speech influenced by the aforementioned Mr. Pipes, President Reagan put it thus:

If history teaches anything it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. We see around us today the marks of our terrible dilemma -- predictions of doomsday, antinuclear demonstrations, an arms race in which the West must, for its own protection, be an unwilling participant. At the same time we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?

Sir Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitability of war or even that it was imminent. He said, ``I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.''

Well, this is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see; but I believe we live now at a turning point.

In an ironic sense Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis, a crisis where the demands of the economic order are conflicting directly with those of the political order. But the crisis is happening not in the free, non-Marxist West, but in the home of Marxist-Leninism, the Soviet Union. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens. It also is in deep economic difficulty. The rate of growth in the national product has been steadily declining since the fifties and is less than half of what it was then.

The dimensions of this failure are astounding: A country which employs one-fifth of its population in agriculture is unable to feed its own people. Were it not for the private sector, the tiny private sector tolerated in Soviet agriculture, the country might be on the brink of famine. These private plots occupy a bare 3 percent of the arable land but account for nearly one-quarter of Soviet farm output and nearly one-third of meat products and vegetables. Overcentralized, with little or no incentives, year after year the Soviet system pours its best resource into the making of instruments of destruction. The constant shrinkage of economic growth combined with the growth of military production is putting a heavy strain on the Soviet people. What we see here is a political structure that no longer corresponds to its economic base, a society where productive forces are hampered by political ones.

Here too you can substitute Arab, Muslim, and Islam and give pretty much the same speech, as President Bush has several times.

Essentially though, what Realists want is stability, even a stability where every nation was totalitarian would be preferable to one in which the struggle between the free and the dominated risked bringing war. They'd rather have the Taliban and Saddam running countries because they'll generally keep them quiet. Mr. Mearshimer describes himself why Realism is so antithetical to Americanism:

Realism has two real problems with it for most Americans. First of all, Realism has a very pessimistic view of international politics. It says there has always been conflict, there is conflict today, and there always will be conflict, and there's not much you can do about it. This is what I call the "tragedy of great power politics," which is the title of my book.

The second point that Realists make that most Americans find repugnant is the idea that you can't discriminate between morally virtuous states and malign states in the international system. For Realists, all states are basically black boxes that behave the same way. If the United States has to be ruthless, the United States will be ruthless. That's the argument that Realists make. Now, Americans are fundamentally liberals at heart. They believe in progress, they're products of the Enlightenment, they are people who believe that through hard thinking and skillful policies, it's possible to solve the world's problems; that somewhere out there in the future (it's hard to say when), we can create a more peaceful world. That is in contrast to the pessimism of Realists. And American liberals -- and when we talk about American liberals, we're talking about the vast majority of Americans -- therefore, dislike Realism for that reason.

The other point that Americans believe in is the idea that our country, the United States, is a highly moral country, that we behave according to a different code of conduct than most other states. In the Cold War, for example, there were good guys and bad guys -- we were the good guys and the Soviets were the bad guys. Realists, on the other hand, don't discriminate between good states and bad states, they're just states. And a Realist explanation of the Cold War would say that the United States and the Soviet Union were both equals, and they behaved according to the same rules, because the structure of the system left them with no choice. That's a perspective that most Americans recoil at.

That's why they find it so easy to make common cause with the America-hating Left. If you too find yourself confused about whether we are the good guys or the North Koreans are, then you too may be either a Realist or a liberal and you should definitely vote for John Kerry, who thought North Vietnam morally superior to the United States.

President Bush follows in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan and understands the American cause of extending liberty and democracy universally to be not only good but Godly:

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.

The Realists may be indifferent to totalitarianism--God is not. And therefore Americans can not be. Realists probably should have figured that out by now.

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WHEN THE SILENT MAJORITY SPOKE UP:

Remembering an Earlier War in America's Streets (Joe Guzzardi, April 26, 2004, ChronWatch)

In the spring of 1970, I worked for Merrill Lynch on Wall Street as an investment banker.

By 1970, the Vietnam War had split American into two factions—the pro-war and the anti-war.

And few demonstrated tolerance towards anyone whose view was different from theirs.

Most afternoons, my friends and I took our brown bag lunches down to Battery Park to watch the Hawks and the Doves argue over what course in Southeast Asia the Nixon administration should take.

What we didn’t realize was that those super-heated, in your face disputes would boil over into one of America’s ugliest street brawls during an era when violent demonstrations were commonplace.

Within the Hawks and the Doves were two subgroups: the Hard Hats, over-the-top patriotic construction workers who supported escalating the war and the Peaceniks, student groups who favored a complete and immediate withdrawal from Southeast Asia. [...]

The first bloodshed came on May 6.  Medical students from the Whitehall Medical Center ripped down an American flag on a Broad Street construction job.  Several of the students were beaten up. 

But on May 8, everything exploded.  A major peace rally scheduled for noon on Wall Street drew a big crowd.  Everyone expected trouble but we had no idea just how much raw violence we were about to witness.

Shortly after 12:00, the first wave of 200 construction workers arrived at the corner of Wall and Broad. Waving American flags, they all shouted, ''America, love it or leave it'' and ''All the way, U.S.A.''

My friends and I could sense what was coming.  The Hard Hats pushed their way past a police line that offered no resistance, grabbed the demonstrators and started to pound on them.  They hit them with helmets, pliers and wrenches.

It was pretty nearly the only good day between the Mets winning the World Series in October '69 and the US Hockey team beating the Soviets in February 1980.

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60-40 NATION:

New Poll: Majority of Americans, Blacks, Students Pro-Life on Abortion (Steven Ertelt, April 26, 2004, (LifeNews.com)

While abortion advocates marched in Washington on Sunday, pro-life groups were touting the results of a new poll showing that a majority of Americans, including African Americans and students, are pro-life on abortion.

In a poll released Friday by Zogby International, a respected polling firm, a total of 56 percent agreed with one of the following pro-life views: abortion should never be legal (18 percent), legal only when the life of the mother is in danger (15 percent) or legal only when the life of the mother is in danger or in cases of rape or incest (23 percent).

Since abortions in cases of rape or incest or those necessary to save the life of the mother are extremely rare, that means a majority of Americans oppose approximately 96 percent of all abortions.

Only 42 percent of those surveyed agreed with one of the following statements supporting abortion: abortion should be legal for any reason in the first 3 months (25 percent), legal for any reason during the first 6 months (4 percent) or legal for any reason at any time during the woman's pregnancy (13 percent).

Given that 13% would apparently support abortion during the birth, it would be interesting to poll on Peter Singer's idea of a six month test drive, duuring which infanticide would be allowed.

MORE:
White House to pull support for conference (Charles Hurt, April 26, 2004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Bush administration is scrapping plans to sponsor a major global health and reproductive rights conference that features liberal advocacy groups, including several pro-choice organizations and MoveOn.org, which is spending millions of dollars on negative ads to defeat President Bush.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will withdraw its support today, according to a senior government official.

"We expect they will be notified officially" today, a senior government official said of USAID's decision to withdraw from the June gathering in Washington.

Happy Death March Day.

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THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE:

The Know-It-All Neighbour: When it comes to America, writes JONATHON GATEHOUSE, we have all the answers (JONATHON GATEHOUSE, May 03, 2004, MacLean's)

No matter how the election-bound Liberals try to spin it, things have gone sour between old allies, and it has happened during their watch. It's more than the deep divisions over Iraq, or the Canadian public's palpable distaste for a Yalie cowboy and his conservative politics. Suddenly, there's a meanness to our day-to-day interactions. We harass American flag-waving school kids, and boo their national anthem at hockey games. Promises to stand "shoulder to shoulder" after the Sept. 11 attacks have been overshadowed by epithets like "moron" and "bastards." Symptoms of a declining friendship are everywhere you look.

Our unsolicited advice to Washington about the war on terror goes mostly unheeded, our small military contributions largely unappreciated. And far from our cherished self-image as the world's "helpful fixer," a sort of moral superpower, both Democrats and Republicans have come to view us as unhelpful nixers. Like the know-it-all neighbour who never misses a chance to bend your ear over the back fence or critique your yardwork, Canada has become the block bore. The "special" status that we once took for granted, able to withstand even the frankest disagreements, seems in doubt. Things between our countries are apparently getting worse all the time. And, the evidence suggests, the attitude problem is almost entirely our own.

An exclusive new Maclean's poll probing what Canadians and Americans really think of each other shows this new sense of animus is disproportionately centred north of the border. Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians say the U.S.'s global reputation has worsened over the last decade, while 38 per cent of us say we feel more negatively about America since Sept. 11 (the biggest reasons cited -- the Iraq war and George W. Bush). Asked to pick the word that best describes our neighbours to the south, the No. 1 response was "arrogant," with "patriotic" (not necessarily a compliment) close behind. More of us say Americans are "dangerous" than "compassionate." And even though a majority would be willing to immediately commit Canadian troops to defend the U.S. in the event of another attack, only 44 per cent of us "strongly support" the idea.

On the flip side, most Americans remain indifferent to the insults and jibes floating across the border.

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PAGING DR. SMITH (via mc):

Out of pocket costs may soar (Julie Appleby, 4/25/2004, USA TODAY)

Sharply higher health insurance deductibles may hit workers in the next two years as employers embrace newly created tax-free Health Savings Accounts.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of employers asked by Mercer Human Resource Consulting said they were likely to offer the new accounts to their workers by 2006, according to a survey to be released this week.

"We're looking at a major market change," says Linda Havlin, Mercer's Midwest health care practice leader, noting that a 73% interest in adopting a new program within two years "is unprecedented."

The interest reflects employers' frustration with double-digit increases in health care costs and a dearth of new ideas for dealing with those costs.

The accounts, known as HSAs, enable employers to shift some of the cost of health care to workers and may also result in lower insurance premiums. HSAs, approved by Congress last year as part of the Medicare reform legislation, let policyholders set aside money tax free to cover health care costs.

Unspent money earns interest and can be rolled over, but the accounts must be coupled with insurance policies with annual deductibles of at least $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for families.

Widespread adoption of the plans could drive up the average annual deductible paid by workers, which is now about $300 for single employees and $600 for families, according to data from Mercer and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Mercer's survey of 991 employers found that 61% would set the individual annual deductible for an HSA plan at $1,000. But 17% chose $1,500, 11% said $2,000 and 10% were above $2,000.

As conservative cry-babies sleep through the revolution their President is winning for them....

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WELCOME BACK, SENATOR QUAYLE:

Wanted: Veep Who Can Carry Iowa and Ohio (Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing and Jessica Shyu, 4/26/04, CBS News)

As John Kerry travels the country looking for votes and donations, his team of VP vetters, led by Jim Johnson, is looking for the perfect running mate. And while the vetting process has been very quiet, this week's flavors include politicians who can carry Ohio and Iowa. Kerry traveled to Iowa on Sunday, fueling "speculation of a Kerry-Vilsack ticket," reports the Des Moines Register. Sen. Tom Harkin, who endorsed Howard Dean in the primaries but stood at Kerry's side on Sunday, alluded to former President Franklin Roosevelt choice of Iowan Henry Wallace and said of Roosevelt, "When he was looking for a vice president, he came to Iowa. My friends, it's the same today." Vilsack himself was more reserved, saying only that "It is up to us to get this good man elected."

Moving east from Iowa, Ohio is looming large in the minds of many VP prognosticators. In Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg says that Democrats must win in Ohio and that neighboring Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana may be the man to help them do so. Passing over home-state pols, Rothenberg also skips Dick Gephardt and John Edwards, settling on Bayh as "a former two-term governor and true moderate Democrat who has been successful among voters not unlike the kind found in south and central Ohio."

Hard to know which is sillier, a guy who you'd compare to Henry Wallace or one whose Senate seat they'd then lose to the GOP.

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KERRY WITHOUT A FRINGE ON TOP:

Iraq could be Kerry's quagmire, not Bush's (G. Pascal Zachary, April 25, 2004, San Francisco Chronicle)

The conventional wisdom would have you think Iraq is turning into George Bush's quagmire, his Vietnam.

Well, as the war gets worse, Bush's popularity remains steady and even nudges up a bit, and at least his bedrock supporters seem prepared to stick with him no matter what happens in Iraq.

Democrats and independents may not be as understanding of John Kerry. And so the war threatens to become his albatross, not George Bush's.

The perils for Kerry were revealed last week when Ralph Nader, who may have cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election, described Kerry as "stuck in the Iraq quagmire the way Bush is."

Nader is no saint. His run for president this year destroys for many nearly all his well-earned credibility as a conscience of America.

But Nader now has a rationale for his campaign. While the antiwar wing is small, it is large enough, if it goes for Nader, to tip the vote Bush's way in a few swing states.

If by "swing" you mean CA...

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THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR:

US troops threaten to cross Shia 'red line' to enter Najaf (Patrick Cockburn, 26 April 2004, The Independent)

American troops will enter parts of the holy city of Najaf to crush the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr but will avoid its sacred sites, a US general said yesterday.

Shia leaders have warned there will be an explosion of anger among the 15 to 16 million Iraqi Shia if US soldiers enter Najaf, where Imam Ali, the founder of their faith, is buried in a golden-domed shrine.

"We're going to drive this guy [Mr. Sadr] into the dirt," said Brigadier General Mark Hertling, the deputy commander of the 1st Armoured Division. "Either he tells his militia to put down their arms, form a political party and fight with ideas not guns, or he's going to find a lot of them killed."

General Hertling is practically a poster boy for Victor Davis's Hanson's argument about the uniquely liberationist ethos of democratic warriors.

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IF FRED KAPLAN DIDN'T EXIST . . .

Our Hidden WMD Program: Why Bush is spending so much on nuclear weapons (Fred Kaplan, Slate, 4/23/04)

The budget is busted; American soldiers need more armor; they're running out of supplies. Yet the Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year, and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years. This does not include his much-cherished missile-defense program, by the way. This is simply for the maintenance, modernization, development, and production of nuclear bombs and warheads. . . .

There is no nuclear arms race going on now. The world no longer offers many suitable nuclear targets. President Bush is trying to persuade other nations—especially "rogue regimes"—to forgo their nuclear ambitions. Yet he is shoveling money to U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories as if the Soviet Union still existed and the Cold War still raged.

These articles must just write themselves: we spend lots of money on something useless; any idiot should realize that it's useless; hey, look, isn't it ironic that we're doing things we don't want other nations doing. The rebuttals flow just as easily: this is less than three-tenths of one percent of the federal budget; reasonable people can disagree about whether today's world presents attractive targets for nuclear weapons; and most Americans insist on the admittedly parochial distinction between Libya, Iraq and North Korea, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, us. For that matter, we're not even asking the French to disarm, suggesting that we can still see a sliver of light between Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein.

But we shouldn't complain about the Fred Kaplans of the world. They do us the indispensible service of helping to convince the rest of the world that the President, and by extension the entire country, really is willing to nuke someone we find sufficiently annoying. We really, really are.

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50-0 FILES:

U.S. March New Home Sales Rise to a Record 1.228 Million Rate (Bloomberg, 4/26/04)

U.S. sales of new homes rose to a record 1.228 million annual rate in March, exceeding forecasts, as cheap financing and an improving job market persuaded Americans to invest in real estate.

Single-family home sales rose 8.9 percent from a revised 1.128 million annual pace in February, the Commerce Department said in Washington. New home sales reached an all-time high of 1.085 million in 2003.

Mortgage interest rates last month approached four-decade lows and companies added the most workers to their payrolls than at any time in almost four years. Builders such as Centex Corp. and D.R. Horton Inc. are confident rising employment will underpin sales, boosting the economy. A measure of the supply of homes for sale fell to the lowest since August.

Heard the Democrats refer to Bushonomics recently?

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LEGITIMACY, NOT STABILITY:

Mideast instability? Bring it on (Mark Steyn, 4/26/04, Jewish World Review)

In the summer of 2002, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, issued a stern warning to the BBC: a US invasion of Iraq would "threaten the whole stability of the Middle East." As I wrote at the time, "He's missing the point: that's the reason it's such a great idea." [...]

Ariel Sharon has decided that one cannot negotiate with a void, a nullity — and even sentimental European Yasserphiles might, in their more honest moments, acknowledge that the only way the Palestinians are ever going to get a state is if they're cut out of the process. So the Israelis are building their wall, and what's left over on the other side will either be a new state, the present decayed Arafatist squat, or an ever more frustrated self-detonation academy. But it will be up to the Palestinians to choose because they'll be the ones living with the consequences.

BUSH HAS gone along with Sharon because it accords with his post-9/11 assessment of the Middle East: The biggest gamble can't be worse than Moussa's stability. Indeed, the Israeli government's new Hamas Assassination-of-the-Month program usefully clarifies the bottom line: A high rotation of thugs is better than the same thug decade in, decade out. Poor Rantissi, killed this weekend, seems unlikely to get the glowing send-off from European obituarists they gave to his predecessor, the "revered quadriplegic spiritual leader," Sheikh Yassin. Already, bigshot terrorists in Gaza are said to be reconsidering their applications for next month's vacancy.

That's the bottom line elsewhere, too. If all else fails, then a modified Sam Goldwyn philosophy will do: I'm sick of the old despots, bring me some new despots.

But it won't come to that. In Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere, the old Middle East is dying, and what replaces it can only be better.

Folk seem to have forgotten the level of instability and the volume of slaughter that was required as the West reformed from totalitarianism (pretty much from Germany all the way East) to the Bering Sea. Thus far the reform of Islam has been comparatively easy, quick, cheap, and bloodless.

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WHAT WAR?:

Kerry faces PR fight over foreign policy (Farah Stockman, April 26, 2004, Boston Globe)

In a presidential race dominated by national security issues, Kerry's success may hinge on whether voters are convinced that his ability to forge ties with allies can make America safer than President Bush's more unilateral approach. Lately, the differences between the candidates have sometimes been hard to detect.

But in public opinion surveys, Bush trumps the Massachusetts senator on those issues. A USA Today/ CNN/ Gallup poll released last week indicated that 41 percent of respondents said they thought ''only Bush" would do a good job handling terrorism, while 20 percent said ''only Kerry" would. On the situation in Iraq, 40 percent indicated ''only Bush," while 26 percent indicated Kerry. Those numbers come in one of the most troublesome news cycles for the Bush administration, as the Sept. 11 commission hearings and the rising violence in Iraq have raised questions about Bush's conduct on both issues.

The poll numbers also come as Bush and Kerry have increasingly echoed each other's statements on foreign policy, complicating Kerry's struggle to distinguish himself in voters' minds and maintain the support of antiwar Democrats.

Bush is beginning to adopt measures that Kerry has long advocated: giving the United Nations a far greater role in Iraq, emphasizing the importance of welcoming NATO to Iraq, and beefing up the number of US troops in Iraq.

The president's moves have generated a mixed reaction among Kerry's advisers, some of whom have urged him to take credit for the change.

''It is the greatest form of flattery in a sense, isn't it?" Beers said.

But others see a danger for Kerry in Bush's new pronouncements.

''The nightmare for Kerry is that all of his criticisms become moot, except the woulda-shoulda-coulda criticism about the war," said Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''In this sense, voters are going to say to themselves: 'What's the difference? If I vote for Kerry, I will get a war in Iraq and someone who doesn't believe in the war but is going to have to fight it anyway. If I vote for Bush, I get a war in Iraq, fought by somebody who believes in the war.' "

Kerry also has appeared to take on positions more associated with Bush, and in recent weeks has endorsed Bush's foreign policy decisions more than once. When Bush lauded the plan by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, to withdraw from Gaza and keep some settlements in the West Bank, Kerry agreed. He also agreed that Palestinians should not expect to gain the right to return to Israel, and he suggested that Israel has a right to defend itself by killing leaders of the Islamic militant group Hamas. In recent weeks, Kerry also has said that he would act alone, if necessary, to protect America's interests -- a hallmark of Bush's presidency -- and that he would stay in Iraq as long as necessary to bring stability to the country.

''I think they are moving toward a merge," Mead said. ''Most of the people I talk to don't think there's going to be that much difference between them, in substance, because the options are so limited. I think in a second term, the Bush administration would try to get more foreign support, and a Kerry administration would sometimes have to go it alone."

Foreign policy will only be an issue in this election to the extent that it enables Ralph Nader to siphon off some of the lunatic Left.

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SELF-MARGINALIZATION:

Politics of Patriot Act Turn Right for Bush (Peter Wallsten, April 25, 2004, LA Times)

Only months ago, Democrats were targeting the controversial USA Patriot Act as an ideal issue to use in their campaign against President Bush, assailing the law as an intrusion on civil rights. But in a turnabout, the act has suddenly emerged as a cornerstone of Bush's reelection campaign, while Democratic rival Sen. John F. Kerry and others have toned down their criticism.

The Patriot Act is proving to be more popular in opinion polls than once expected, given its diverse range of critics. Also, both Democratic and Republican strategists now believe that public debate over the Patriot Act and other aspects of the nation's response to terrorism only enhance Bush's national security credentials, while threatening to paint Kerry as soft on terrorism.

The result is that the Democrats have lost what once seemed like a useful tool for rallying opposition to the president.

"There's a dangerous trap here for Democrats," said Jim Mulhall, a Democratic strategist working with independent groups targeting Bush. "It's a terribly unfair characterization, but … if Democrats are not careful, they will sound more like they're worried about technical concerns than they are about locking up terrorists."

Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has recently been couching his positions on the law as "fixes," whereas in December the Massachusetts senator called for "replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." Kerry has even argued that his ideas would make the law, bashed repeatedly last year by nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders, tougher than it is currently.

There's a name for a party that's as out of touch with the American people as are the Democrats: the Whigs.

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BONFIRE OF THE INANITIES:

THE RADICAL: Why do editors keep throwing “The Boondocks” off the funnies page? (BEN McGRATH, 2004-04-12, The New Yorker)

On the day of Saddam Hussein’s capture, last December, the left-leaning political weekly The Nation celebrated its hundred-and-thirty-eighth birthday. It was a Sunday night, and the weather was dreadful—forbiddingly cold and wet, heavy snow giving way to sleet—but three hundred people could not be deterred from dropping five hundred dollars a plate for roast chicken amid the marble-and-velvet splendor of the Metropolitan Club, on Fifth Avenue. Jean Stein, a veteran of the liberal party circuit and the mother of Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation’s editor, was there, as were E. L. Doctorow, John Waters, Charlie Rose, and even John McEnroe. Robert Byrd, the senior senator from West Virginia, was an honored guest; Amtrak had been advised of his itinerary, and, despite service delays all weekend, the train got him there on time. Joseph Wilson, the former Ambassador to Gabon, riding a wave of liberal good will since the politically motivated outing of his wife, the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame, attended as well, by special invitation.

Byrd spoke first, and he delivered a generous helping of full-throated Southern oratory. Yes, it was good to see Saddam gone, Byrd said, but he was ever more convinced, what with a “swashbuckling, ‘High Noon’” kind of President in office, that Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time. “Thank God for courageous institutions like this one,” he said, “which are willing to stand up to the tide of popular convention.” He recited the closing lines of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” and then, finishing up, invoked “the spirit of Longfellow.” Standing ovation.

Toward the dessert (chocolate torte) portion of the evening, Uma Thurman rose to introduce a special guest: Aaron McGruder, the creator of the popular and subversive comic strip “The Boondocks,” who, as it happens, had travelled farther than anyone else to be there, all the way from Los Angeles. McGruder, one of only a few prominent African-American cartoonists, had been making waves in all the right ways, poking conspicuous fun at Trent Lott, the N.R.A., the war effort. An exhibition of his comic strips—characters with Afros and dreadlocks drawn in a style borrowing heavily from Japanese manga,with accentuatedforeheads and eyes—was on display in the Metropolitan Club’s Great Hall. It seemed to be, as a Nation contributor said later, “his coronation as our kind of guy.”

But what McGruder saw when he looked around at his approving audience was this: a lot of old, white faces. What followed was not quite a coronation. McGruder, who rarely prepares notes or speeches for events like this, began by thanking Thurman, “the most ass-kicking woman in America.” Then he lowered the boom. He was a twenty-nine-year-old black man, he said, who got invited to such functions all the time, so you could imagine how bored he was. He proceeded to ramble, at considerable length, and in a tone, as one listener put it, of “militant cynicism,” with a recurring theme: that the folks in the room (“courageous”? Please) were a sorry lot.

He told the guests that he’d called Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser, a mass murderer to her face; what had they ever done? (The Rice exchange occurred in 2002, at the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, where McGruder was given the Chairman’s Award; Rice requested that he write her into his strip.) He recounted a lunch meeting with Fidel Castro. (He had been invited to Cuba by the California congresswoman Barbara Lee, who is one of the few politicians McGruder has praised in “The Boondocks.”) He said that noble failure was not acceptable. But the last straw came when he “dropped the N-word,” as one amused observer recalled. He said—bragged, even—that he’d voted for Nader in 2000. At that point, according to Hamilton Fish, the host of the party, “it got interactive.”

Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, was sitting in the back of the room, next to Joe Wilson, the Ambassador. He shouted out, “Thanks for Bush!” Exactly what happened next is unclear. Alterman recalls that McGruder responded by grabbing his crotch and saying, “Try these nuts.” Jack Newfield, the longtime Village Voice writer, says that McGruder simply dared Alterman to remove him from the podium. When asked about this incident later, McGruder said, “I ain’t no punk. I ain’t gonna let someone shout and not go back at him.”

Alterman walked out. “I turned to Joe and said, ‘I can’t listen to this crap anymore,’” he remembers. “I went out into the Metropolitan Club lobby—it’s a nice lobby—and I worked on my manuscript.”

Newfield joined in the heckling, as did Stephen Cohen, a historian and the husband of Katrina vanden Heuvel. “It was like watching LeRoi Jones try to Mau-Mau a guilty white liberal in the sixties,” Newfield says. “It was out of a time warp. Who is he to insult people who have been putting their careers and lives on the line for equal rights since before he was born?”

By the time McGruder had finished, and a tipsy Joe Wilson took the microphone to deliver his New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps half the guests had excused themselves to join Alterman in the lobby. A Nation contributor estimated that McGruder had offended eighty per cent of the audience. “Some people still haven’t recovered,” he said, sounding thrilled.

“At a certain point, I just got the uncomfortable feeling that this was a bunch of people who were feeling a little too good about themselves,” McGruder said afterward. “These are the big, rich white leftists who are going to carry the fight to George Bush, and the best they can do is blame Nader?”

It's as if Tom Wolfe wrote a screenplay for a Fellini movie...

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WHEN PIGS FLY:

While Europe is a eunuch, America is our only shield: We can't walk away from Bush's follies without a credible military alternative (Max Hastings, April 26, 2004, The Guardian)

[E]ven the French and Germans recognise that no responsible nation can simply turn its back on the US. The strange part is that America's critics refuse to take the obvious step further: to recognise that Europe could only afford entirely to distance itself from US policy if it possessed the military means to manage its own security.

Terror within the Ministry of Defence about a breach with Washington reflects our dependence on security and, above all, intelligence cooperation with Washington. European disenchantment with Bush's foreign policy is not reflected in willingness to adopt the obvious remedy: that of creating armed forces capable of acting effectively without the US.

Britain's defence policy today rests on the avowed presumption that we shall never have to engage in conflict without the Americans. This may represent reality, but it is also a huge European abdication of responsibility. If we are really fed up with Bush, if we recognise that no future US president is likely be entirely to our taste, we should surely get on with creating credible European armed forces. As it is, no European nation - with the possible exception of France - shows the smallest interest in spending money or displaying spine for this purpose.

Until we address this, and against the background of a struggle against international terrorism that is likely to grow more alarming rather than less, America remains the indispensable ally and shield. That means George Bush. At the very moment when most of us feel surfeited with the president's vacuous grin and impregnable moral conceit, we cannot walk away from his follies unless or until Europe makes itself something quite different from the eunuch it is today.

Poor Mr. Hastings, doesn't he realize that Europeans will never transfer money from their welfare programs to a develop a significant military and that even if they did spend the money they don't have the young men to staff it nor to build the equipment they'd need? Nor would such a multinational/multilingual/multicultural force ever be even remotely coherent and credible. No transplant is possible for the eunuch.

Here's all you really have to know about Europe's military future: the lingua franca of its young men is Arabic.

MORE:
Fragmented Europe Invites Terrorism (Sebastian Rotella, April 26, 2004, LA Times)

Despite round-the-clock teamwork by European anti-terrorism agencies in the wake of last month's train bombings here, persistent barriers to cooperation and coordination make Europe vulnerable to attack, senior European and U.S. police officials, prosecutors and other experts say.

Justice systems clash, policing styles diverge, and open borders allow terrorists far more mobility than their pursuers. For years, the Al Qaeda terrorist network has taken full advantage of these factors — and Europe's democratic, tolerant environment — using the continent as a base for recruitment, logistics and plotting attacks elsewhere.

The Madrid attacks, which killed 191 people, showed how Al Qaeda used that infrastructure to carry out its first successful strike in a Western Europe that was caught off guard, investigators say.

"There's a lack of trust among security services and among countries," said Baltasar Garzon, Spain's best-known anti-terrorism magistrate. "There's a lack of solidarity. Self-interest dominates. What we need is a European intelligence community. We are straitjacketed by absurd formalities that distract from what should be essential."

Investigative cooperation depends largely on political dynamics and personal chemistry among Europe's counter-terrorism magistrates, prosecutors, police and spies. Europe wants to build regional justice and policing systems one day, but governments find it hard to relinquish the national security powers that are the core of their sovereignty.

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RENOUNCING THE SYMBOLS OF HIS COUNTRY...KINDA...MAYBE:

1971 Tape Adds to Debate Over Kerry's Medal Protest (JIM RUTENBERG and JAMES DAO, April 26, 2004, NY Times)

Throughout much of his political career, Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has faced questions about a singular event that took place 33 years ago last week: he and fellow veterans discarded medals in Washington to protest the war in Vietnam.

The Kerry campaign Web site says it is "right-wing fiction" that he "threw away his medals during a Vietnam War protest."

Rather, the Web site says, "John Kerry threw away his ribbons and the medals of two veterans who could not attend the event."

But the issue is not so cut and dried. A television interview Mr. Kerry gave in November 1971 shows that Mr. Kerry himself fed the confusion from early on. The New York Times obtained a videotape of the interview late last week.

The interview was shown on the Washington television station WRC, archived by President Richard M. Nixon's communications office and held by the National Archives.

On the program, an interviewer asked Mr. Kerry to explain what was happening in a photograph of a man hurling a medal, apparently during a protest. Mr. Kerry responded that the veterans had decided that the best way to "wake the country up" about the war was to "renounce the symbols which this country gives, which supposedly reinforces all the things that they have done, and that was the medals themselves."

"And so they decided to give them back to their country," he added.

Mr. Kerry said they had decided to do so as "a last resort."

When the interviewer asked, "How many did you give back, John?" he answered, "I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine."

When the interviewer pointed out that Mr. Kerry had won the Bronze and Silver Stars and three Purple Hearts, Mr. Kerry added, "Well, and above that, I gave back my others."

Strange that they think there's a way to spin this that doesn't make him unfit to lead our nation.

---

UNCONVENTIONALLY CONVENTIONAL:

Koizumi Leaving His Mark on Japan After Three Years in Office (Audrey McAvoy, Apr 25, 2004, Associated Press)

As he enters his fourth year in power on Monday - a milestone achieved by only five of Japan's 26 postwar premiers - [Prime Minister Junichiro] Koizumi has wrought dramatic changes in defense policy and broken with conventions in the way Cabinet members are chosen. [...]

Japan began refueling and supplying warships of the U.S.-led coalition in the Indian Ocean to support the war on terror in Afghanistan - the first in a series of decisions by Koizumi that have tested the limits of the nation's pacifist constitution.

Koizumi has tirelessly championed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and pushed special legislation through Parliament to send troops to Iraq on a humanitarian mission, the country's first military deployment to a combat zone since 1945.

The missions in Afghanistan and Iraq broke new ground for Japan's military, which has been severely restricted by a public skeptical of military might and a pacifist constitution drafted by U.S. occupiers after Japan's defeat in World War II.

"He's a different type of character - for better or for worse - and this has enabled him to implement such policies," said Masato Ushio, an assistant professor at Seigakuin University.

The importance for Koizumi of close ties with the United States has also helped this process, he said.

With his preference for popular music and permed silver hair, Koizumi flew in the face of Japan's typically ultraconservative politicians when he was elected three years ago. He was famously called a "weirdo" by his then most-ardent supporter, politician Akiko Tanaka.

He has consolidated decision-making under his office and grabbed the right to make his own Cabinet appointments, a privilege once shared by power brokers in his Liberal Democratic Party.

Still, he has yet to take a hatchet to heavily protected industries and public services to ignite an economic recovery that would lift Japan out of its decade-long slump.

Hard to have any hope for a nation where you can represent a radical break with transition without so much as addressing any of the country's fundamental problems.

---

THE GAME IS AFOOT:

Open verdict in death of Holmes expert (Jamie Wilson, April 24, 2004, The Guardian)

The world's foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes was found garrotted in his bed surrounded by cuddly toys and a bottle of gin, an inquest heard yesterday.

Richard Lancelyn Green, 50, had become paranoid in the days before his death, telling friends and relatives that his home was bugged and that a mysterious American was out to besmirch his reputation.

He died from asphyxiation after a garrotte was tightened around his neck.

Yesterday coroner Paul Knapman called it a "very unusual death" and recorded an open verdict. He said there was insufficient evidence to rule whether it was suicide, murder or a deviant sexual act taken too far that had caused the death of the former chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

The court heard talk of the "curse of Conan Doyle", where people connected with the creator of Sherlock Holmes seem unusually predisposed to unexpected death, breakdown or unpleasant conflict.

Mr Green was found dead on March 27 in bed at his multimillion pound home in Kensington. A pathologist said the form of his death was so unusual he had come across only one other such case in 30 years.

---

WHAT OTHER NATION COULD YOU WAGER ON?:

The Tale of the Toaster, or How Trade Deficits Are Good (BEN STEIN, 4/25/04, NY Times)

SEE that Chinese-made toaster on the shelf at Wal-Mart that sells for $6.87, while the one made in America, on sale at your local kitchen and wine shop, costs $49.99? There is a story there, and it's not a bad story at all - or at least not an all-bad story.

Plug in the toaster, slide in an English muffin and pay attention. By the time the muffin is crisp, you will have learned something.

If you are a factory worker whose job has just been sent to Guangdong, you probably do not have kind feelings about Chinese manufacturers. If you are an automobile assembly line worker (as my grandfather was) whose factory is on shaky ground because of the torrent of Japanese imports, you may not feel madly in love with the Japanese. Few people want to lose their jobs. But if you are an ordinary American consumer or investor, you may want to connect the dots and see just what it means that the United States imports so incredibly much from China and Japan and how, in many ways, it is a substantial benefit to the American consumer and especially to the investor - at least in the short run.

As everyone knows, the United States runs very large trade deficits with many countries, but let's focus on China and Japan. The trade deficits mean that the Chinese and the Japanese collect a vast hoard of dollars by selling us toasters and other products, but that they do not spend nearly as much here buying cow hides, lumber, wheat and whatnot. They take these unspent dollars, turn them in to the central banks of their countries and get their local currencies to pay their workers and pay their mortgages.

The central banks then take all those dollars, or a lot of them, and buy Treasury securities in the United States. Japan loves Treasuries: in the last year, it has been buying those bonds at a rate of about $20 billion a month. To be sure, part of this has been to keep the dollar high and thus encourage additional American purchases of Japanese goods, but much of the reason is that Treasuries are a remarkably safe investment in terms of return of principal.

Japan now holds roughly one-sixth of all Treasury debt, or more than $600 billion of it. China has bought much less but still owns about $170 billion of the stuff and is adding a few billion dollars a month. (I am indebted to my statistician friend, Phil DeMuth, head of Conservative Wealth Management, for this data.)

This may seem scary, and, in a way, it is. It means that we citizens are paying a good chunk of our income tax each year for interest on debt owned by the Chinese and the Japanese.

But there are legions of positive effects from their bond buying and the large trade surpluses that their countries are running with the United States - and will continue to run, even if their commodities prices rise, because their labor costs will remain less.

If you're betting on the future, which is what investors do, you buy American debt.

---

EXCEPT THAT THEY WENT LOOKING FOR IT:

Stop with the Hindsight ... Or Should We Rerun All Our Wars? (Thomas Fleming, 4-19-04, History News Network)

World War I began with a presidential assumption that made Lincoln's 90-days-to-victory look owlishly wise. President Woodrow Wilson called on America to declare war on Germany presuming that he would not have to send a single American soldier to France. Brainwashed by British propaganda, he thought the war was as good as won. His army chief of staff put a memo in the files to this effect, a month after Congress voted for war. The Democratic leader of the Senate, questioning the reason for an emergency appropriation of $3 billion, said to the Army's spokesman: "Good lord, you're not going to send soldiers over there, are you?"

Add to this fiasco the arrival of British and French military missions who cried: "We want men, men, men!" and admitted the Germans were winning the war. Throw in a conference with British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, who told Wilson about the secret treaties the Allies had signed, dividing up Germany's African colonies and Turkey's Middle Eastern provinces and you have a benumbed president realizing his crusade to make the world safe for democracy was just another war to make the battered globe safer for imperialism. The eventual death toll was 50,300 dead in a mere five months of fighting on the western front.

On the eve of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had long since shed Wilson's idealistic illusions. But he clung to some fairly serious unrealities of his own. One was the racist conviction that the Japanese were terrible pilots and mediocre sailors. It was their bad eyesight and monkey-like forebrains, don't you know? Desperate to stop Adolf Hitler's rampage through Russia, FDR cut off Japan's flow of oil from the United States to provoke a clash that would get the U.S. into the war against Tokyo's ally through "the back door," as Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes called it.

We all know what happened next: The December 7, 1941, Japanese assault that sank battleships and destroyers in Pearl Harbor and killed 3200 American sailors. Talk about embarrassment! It was especially acute, when we factor in President Roosevelt's knowledge that the Japanese were going to attack us somewhere. We had broken their codes and knew they were committed to war. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox visited FDR in the White House at 1 p.m. on December 7. "He was white as a sheet," Knox later told his naval aide. "He expected to get hit but not hurt."

Whatever other crimes folk may want to lay at George Bush's door they can't claim he went looking for a 9-11.

---

TRY READING HIS LIPS:

Bicycling to War (Richard Cohen, April 20, 2004, Washington Post)

Old joke: A man repeatedly rides a bike across the Mexican-U.S. border. Each time, he's stopped by Customs and the bike is taken apart. Nothing is found. Finally, one day a Customs official offers the man immunity from prosecution if only he will tell what he's smuggling. The man pauses for a second, shrugs and says, "Bicycles."

I offer you this because I have just finished Bob Woodward's compelling new book, "Plan of Attack," and while it contains several gasps per chapter -- more reasons why George Tenet should be fired, more proof that Condi Rice is in over her head and more reasons that Dick Cheney should be medicated -- the stunning disclosure that I expected is simply not there. I thought Woodward would reveal the real reason George Bush went to war in Iraq. It turns out we already knew.

The "bicycle" in this case has been in plain sight: Bush's conviction that he is a servant of God and history, chosen to liberate Iraq, bring democracy to the Middle East and make sure the United States is safe from terrorism.

Again we ask: has any president ever confused his foes and friends more by simply being transparent and straightforward?

---

LUCKILY IT'S ONLY CANADIAN MONEY:

The `fatal conceit' of Kyoto (KEN GREEN, Apr. 25, 2004, Toronto Star)

A suppressed report by the federal government evaluating the effectiveness of spending $500 million since the year 2000 to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases has shown — surprise! — that the spending was largely wasted, producing neither a reduction in gas emissions, nor the development of new "cleaner" technologies.

An anonymous source that participated in the mid-term review is quoted in the Star, saying, "We seriously underestimated the difficulty of getting reductions and overestimated the payoff from new technologies."

How did the government manage to blow $500 million of taxpayer money?

It put it into "Action Plan 2000," which committed $210 million to promote technologies that reduced greenhouse gas emissions in industry and transportation; it gave $125 million to cities to encourage them to use the non-existent new technologies.

And another $100 million was spent on promoting foreign demand for the non-existent new technologies.

The lack of value Canadians received for their half-a-billion dollars should come as a surprise to ... well, nobody.

Governments are notoriously bad at "inspiring" development of new technologies and encouraging their adoption.

The idea that government can inspire the development of new, beneficial technologies is an example of "industrial policy," a type of governmental steering of industrial development thoroughly discredited outside the halls of Ottawa.

Industrial policy relies on what the Nobel Prize-winning economist Frederick Hayek called "the fatal conceit," that somehow, government planners have special knowledge that markets, investors, and industry lack.

There but for the GOP landslide of '94 go we.

---

WAR OF THE RATS:

US tips toward restraint in Fallujah: Over the weekend, US forces around the insurgent city held off from assault in favor of more pinpointed security measures. (Scott Peterson, 4/26/04, The Christian Science Monitor)

The US Marine sniper hadn't slept all night, but it was hard to tell under the layers of camouflage face paint.

He was back at home base after a night battle that left some 30 insurgents dead. "Recon found [the insurgents], they were engaged, and then Specter gunships let loose," said the sniper. "They are no more."

The sniper is at the sharp end of an increasingly successful hunt for guerrillas that is giving US Marines pause as they weigh the possibility of an all-out assault on Fallujah.

Tuesday, US troops will begin joint patrols with Iraqi security forces inside Fallujah in an attempt to gradually restore control over the insurgent stronghold without a major attack. Fallujah presents US officials with a difficult nut to crack. They cannot cede control of the city to the 2,000 or so insurgents now there. But a full-scale assault - accompanied by likely civilian casualties - could turn large segments of the Iraqi population against the US, and derail plans to construct a democratic stronghold in the Middle East.

Tough threats from US commanders that insurgents in Fallujah had just "days not weeks" to hand in their weapons gave way over the weekend to a less strident tone.

"If we don't do this absolutely correctly, we will incur damage to the end state we seek," warns Col. John Coleman, chief of staff of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force that controls western Iraq.

Instead of bringing enough stability to hand over control to a future Iraqi government, he says the stand-off over Fallujah is a very complex "small war" and "we're deep in it."

Better to kill them than just collect their weapons.

MORE:
Falluja truce has 'weakened resistance' (aljazeera.net, 04/25/2004)

The ceasefire brokered by Iraqi mediators in the Iraqi city of Falluja appears to have weakened the fighters battling US marines while also creating divisions within the Sunni Muslim community.

The fighters have been trapped by the US siege in the flashpoint city west of Baghdad for the past three weeks, after having initially succeeded in winning national support for their cause.

"The city has been completely surrounded for the past 10 days and the fighters are trapped inside and cannot leave," said one local tribal chief, Mansur al-Hadithi, who is sympathetic to the resistance.

"Most of these fighters are from Falluja and determined to defend their city in case of an attack," he said.

The Islamic Party and the Association of Muslim Scholars, composed of top Sunni clerics, which helped broker the truce, have now come under fire from within the Sunni minority over their mediation.

A communique signed by the "Iraqi resistance in Falluja" said the truce was "an inspiration from Satan because it shifted the balance power in favour of the occupation forces."

"Our mujahideen had the situation under control, and the truce weakened them," said the statement. A nationalist leader accused the Islamic Party of campaigning for a truce from the first week of fighting "to extricate the Americans from the Falluja quagmire."

---

JOBLESS IN GAZA:

Why Did Bush Take My Job? (Saeb Erekat, April 25, 2004, Washington Post)

Because you wouldn't do it?

---

PUSHOVERS:

THE SCENT OF DEMOCRACY (AMIR TAHERI, April 25, 2004 , NY Post)

One question that is seldom asked is: Why did the Muslim world witness the demise of the Taliban and the Iraqi Ba'ath with indifference verging on disdain? To be sure, many Muslims felt humiliated because the two beastly regimes were overthrown by non-Muslim powers, not by liberating forces from within Islam. But there is no sign that any substantial body of opinion within the Muslim world regrets the collapse of the Taliban and the Ba'ath.

What interests a growing number of Muslims is to find out why were the Taliban and the Ba'ath such easy pushovers.

A few persist in asserting that neither stood any chance against the might of the world's only superpower. This may well be true, but does not answer another important question: Why did the Taliban and the Ba'ath lead their nations into conflict in the first place?

Others argue that the Taliban and the Ba'ath were programmed to run into conflict with the Western world because of policies that excluded the Afghan and Iraqi peoples from the decision-making process while making conflict with the West inevitable. Both collapses showed that, contrary to claims by some "Islamologists," the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not love despots and are not prepared to fight for them.

This was made clear in recent conferences of Muslim democrats in Istanbul and Alexandria. In each case, the subtext was that democracies can't be led into deadly conflict without majority consent. We know that no such consent was given or even sought in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

There is a growing sentiment in the Muslim world that their political systems have reached a dead end, with some form of democratization as the only way out. The old debate on whether Islam is compatible with democracy is hardly engaged these days. The issue now is the necessity of democracy for Muslims rather than its compatibility with Islam. Even the most conservative of Muslim regimes are now committed to the creation of elected organs of government.

History Ended, the reform of Islam is just a detail.

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GO, PIZZA GUY:

Put-up or shut-up time (Bill Shipp, April 25, 2004, Gwinnett Daily Post)

Will U.S. Rep. Denise Majette abandon her seat in the House to mount a no-chance Democratic bid for the U.S. Senate? Will outrageous ex-Rep. Cynthia McKinney try to make a comeback? Can Gov. Sonny Perdue recruit a viable candidate to challenge state Supreme Court Justice Leah Sears? Will the greatest Irish baritone in the history of Georgia government return to the state Legislature to make us weep one more time with “Danny Boy?”

We shall soon know. Put-up-or-shut-up time begins Monday at 9 a.m. and ends Friday at noon. Those dates and times signify the start and finish of candidate-qualifying season in Georgia. They also likely mark the beginning and end of numerous political careers across the state. [...]

Can a rich black owner of a chain of pizza parlors influence the outcome of the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate? The pizza guy is Republican senatorial candidate Herman Cain. The two mainstream candidates are U.S. Reps. Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins. Conventional wisdom holds that either Isakson or Collins will win the nomination and ultimately the seat now held by the Bush administration’s pet Democrat, Zell Miller. Don’t bet on it. The fight between Isakson and Collins is expected to turn into a mudslinging match. Even before qualifying starts, Collins already is warning Georgia voters against choosing a “moderate” (meaning Isakson) in such perilous times. Cain could become the “neither of the above” candidate and walk away as the nominee. 

Will Democrats find a competitive candidate for the U.S. Senate? Or will the party’s leaders watch helplessly as Majette, millionaire Cliff Oxford, political activist Leigh Baer and several other faceless souls try to win the Democratic Senate nomination — a prize that may turn out to be worthless in the November election?

If Mr. Cain is the nominee he gets a primetime speaking slot at the Convention.

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I'M RUBBER; YOU'RE GLUE:

Wallowing in nuance, Dems lack resolve (Mark Steyn, April 25, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

It's a good rule of thumb that so-called moderate opinion is several degrees to the left of popular opinion. You can test this for yourself easily enough: pick a subject such as, say, illegal immigration and compare the position of every Democratic senator, the majority of Republican senators and 90 percent of the media with the position of the American people.

That's why the press were befuddled by last week's polls. A month of Richard Clarke, the 9/11 Commission, Bob Woodward, Muqtada al-Sadr, Fallujah and Basra, and a constant drip-drip-drip of conventional wisdom on the president's "vulnerability" from the Beltway to Hollywood to the Ivy League to that brave radio station in Plattsburgh, N.Y., that's now the flagship of Al Franken's Air America ''network'' -- and what happens? Bush's numbers go up and Kerry's go down.

Another six weeks of Dick Clarke's book tour, of snotty network reporters condescending to the president at his press conference, of the sneering Richard Ben Veniste and emotionally unhinged Bob Kerrey badgering Condi Rice at their hack hearings, of Bob Woodward and his unreadable book filling up slabs of CNN's prime time every night with irrelevant arcana about what did Prince Bandar know and when did he tell Woodward he knew it, another six weeks of things that make Bush ''vulnerable,'' and he'd be heading for a 49-state blowout over Kerry. [...]

[T]he problem for John Kerry is that he and the networks and the New York Times are finding it all but impossible to make any dent in the Bush half. If it is a 50/50 nation, one side's 50 percent is pretty solid and the other's a lot softer.

How can this be? Well, let's turn to our senior political analyst, the late Osama bin Laden. In his final video appearance 2-1/2 years ago, Osama observed that, when people have a choice between a strong horse and a weak horse, they go with the strong horse. But, to take that a stage further, the strong horse doesn't have to be that strong when the other fellow's flogging a dead horse.

Except that Mr. Bush will carry the Republican state of MA.

MORE:
The Strong Horse?: Failing to stay the course in Iraq would be a provocation for bin Laden. (JAMES SCHLESINGER, April 25, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

Let me underscore why it is that the U.S. is so deeply engaged in the Middle East and what is at stake in Iraq--for I fear that there is some public uncertainty regarding these issues. For that purpose, I recommend a rereading of Osama bin Ladin's "Declaration of War Against the Americans," in which he states that "the Defense Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that the explosions at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by cowardly terrorists." (I should point out that in 1998 the defense secretary in question was not Donald Rumsfeld but rather William Cohen.)

Bin Laden continues: "We say to the Defense Secretary that his talk could induce a grieving mother to laughter! And it shows the fears that have enveloped you all. . . . When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the street of Mogadishu, you left the area in disappointment, humiliation and defeat, carrying your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You had been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear."

Bin Laden and his ilk may be fanatics, but they are deadly serious and thoroughly persistent. We must anticipate, therefore, a conflict that will continue for many years.

Osama himself has opined that "when the people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they naturally gravitate toward the strong horse." Consequently, this country must conclusively demonstrate that we are not the weak horse.

---

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Saudis were secret U.S. allies on Iraq (JOHN SOLOMON, April 25, 2004, Chicago Sun Times)

Saudi Arabia secretly helped the United States far more than has been acknowledged in the Iraq war, allowing operations from at least three air bases, permitting Special Forces to stage attacks from Saudi soil and providing cheap fuel, U.S. and Saudi officials say.

The American air campaign against Iraq essentially was managed from inside Saudi borders, where military leaders operated an air command center and launched refueling tankers, F-16 fighter jets, and sophisticated intelligence gathering flights, the officials said.

Much of the assistance has been kept quiet for more than a year by both countries for fear it would add to instability inside the kingdom.

Which is why George W. Bush runs the country, not pundits and bloggers.

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WHO'DDA GUESSED IT?--MARKET FORCES WORK:

Early results on 'No Child': progress (ROSALIND ROSSI, April 25, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

Kids who won highly prized transfers out of failing Chicago public schools averaged much better reading and math gains during the first year in their new schools --just as drafters of the federal No Child Left Behind Law envisioned, an exclusive analysis indicates.

And, contrary to some predictions, moving low-scoring kids to better-performing schools didn't seem to slow the progress of students in those higher-achieving schools.

Even kids "left behind'' in struggling schools generally posted better gains in state tests once their peers transferred elsewhere.

"It's a win-win-win,'' said Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan. "I couldn't have asked for better results.''

Opposition to vouchers is opposition to educating poor kids. The only folks who oppose it are those who are irretrievably wedded to the idea that government is efficient, those who seek to prop up union boondoggle jobs, those who fear having black kids in their children's classes, and those who despise religion so much they'd rather see kids remain ignorant than see religious institutions provide educations. Unfortunately, that's pretty much a majority.

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TAFTIAN TAR BABY:

The Multilevel Marketing of the President (MATT BAI, 4/25/04, NY Times Magazine)

For Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, and the rest of the Bush team, Ohio is beginning to look a lot like Florida without the oranges. The most recent polls show Bush and Kerry essentially tied there; according to the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, Bush's approval rating in the state has dropped from a record 76 percent a year ago to 46 percent now. And it would be hard to imagine a world in which Bush could win the White House without winning Ohio (a feat, in fact, that no Republican has ever accomplished). As the election grows closer, the two sides, armed with hundreds of millions of dollars, will unleash a storm in Ohio so intense -- ads on every channel, knocks on every door, mailboxes and in-boxes overflowing -- that it could inspire a horror movie. Rove and his associates are known as a controlling bunch, and it has to be frustrating for them to know that so much of what could ultimately decide the race -- an ambush in Iraq, a spike in gas prices -- is entirely beyond their control. They crave something more empirical, some new formula with which to guarantee victory in November. And they think they've found it in the reassuringly hard data of street-level politics.

Traditionally, it was the Democrats who went door-to-door, registering voters while the G.O.P., pressing its significant financial advantage, relied on 30-second ads and paid mailings. But Rove came away from the 2000 election convinced that Bush would have won by a comfortable margin had it not been for Democratic ground forces. (Although Bush won Ohio, his commanding lead in the polls -- 10 points on the final weekend -- drained away to a margin of fewer than 4 points on Election Day, when Democrats turned out in force.) During the midterm elections of 2002, Republicans successfully tested their own turnout strategy, which they called the 72-Hour Project. For 2004, Rove's team has devised the most ambitious grass-roots model in the party's history.

Up close, what Bush is assembling on the local level looks less like a political campaign than what is known in business as a multilevel marketing scheme. In an MLM, like Mary Kay Cosmetics or Tupperware, each independent entrepreneur who joins the sales force -- a Betty Kitchen, say -- also becomes a recruiter who is responsible for bringing in several new entrepreneurs underneath her. The result is a pyramid-like sales structure that broadens to include more and more recruits with each descending level.

The notion of translating the MLM concept into politics is visionary -- and also a little disquieting. Pyramid-based companies have proved amazingly successful at raising up armies of enterprising Americans; Amway, the world's most successful MLM, has more than 3.6 million distributors. But some MLM's thrive by imposing their own strange and insular cultures on their recruits, and while they offer the illusion of self-employment, those at the top of the pyramid often demand a rigid kind of uniformity and loyalty. Amway has often been compared to a cult -- so often, in fact, that on its own Web site the company feels the need to answer such frequently asked questions as ''I've heard rumors that Amway is a cult; is this true?'' and ''Why do Amway meetings appear to some people like a cult?'' When I met with Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, in suburban Washington, and suggested that the Bush campaign could fairly be compared to Amway in its approach, he agreed without hesitation. ''Amway, no question,'' he said.

By descending the levels of this newly created Bush pyramid, from its headquarters in Washington down to the doorsteps of the exurban town houses sprouting up all over Ohio, you can see not just the outlines of the 2004 campaign taking shape but also the emerging portrait of politics in a new century. As steel and coal have faded, so, too, have the great political machines those industries created in Ohio's cities. These urban strongholds, hit hardest by job losses, are the places where Democrats have long ruled the streets. But Republicans believe they can control a new, more promising demographic: the fast-growing, conservative communities just beyond the suburban sprawl, where tony malls are rising almost monthly out of fields and farmland. For Republicans, this means a whole new market of potential entrepreneurs to enlist and mobilize. If Bush can harness the power of the exurbs, he can create a kind of organization the country has not yet witnessed -- a political machine for the new economy.

Ohio is the Democrats' black hole, a place they can't win but are likely to contest, leading to losses (including Senate seats) in states they could have held. Every dollar and minute spent in OH puts places like CA, HI, IL, etc. at risk.

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WINNING THE CULTURE WAR:

Abortion's Opponents Claim the Middle Ground (ROBIN TONER, 4/25/04, NY Times)

Today, as [abortion rights supporters] assemble on the Washington Mall, the movement faces a far more complicated and in some ways more challenging political landscape. The anti-abortion movement is more confident, more sophisticated and far more ensconced in the government, with allies now in control of the House, the Senate and the White House.

Its legislative goals are incremental, careful and popular with Americans who would oppose an outright ban on abortion, even if this agenda is considered by its opponents to be a stealthy chipping away of rights. The anti-abortion movement has, in many ways, become part of the establishment.

Nobody has made a serious effort to push a constitutional ban on abortion through Congress in many years. The Republican Party platform still calls for such a ban, as it has since the ascendancy of the Reaganites, and that plank is expected to be reaffirmed this year.

But President Bush, who opposes abortion except in cases of rape and incest and to protect the life of the woman, tried to defuse the fears of moderate voters early on. He said that he did not believe the country was ready for a ban, and talks more generally about creating a "culture of life."

Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who also works for Naral Pro-Choice America, said her research showed that Mr. Bush rarely even used the word "abortion" for months at a time.

The current Congressional agenda of the anti-abortion movement is a series of steps aimed at restricting abortion and recognizing the "personhood" of the fetus. Legislation already passed includes the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, aimed at a procedure performed in the second or third trimester, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a separate offense to harm a fetus in a federal crime committed against a pregnant woman.

A quintessential conservative revolution--step by step...

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JUST SET ASIDE $30 A WEEK FOR ONE YEAR:

The Lord of the 'Rings' at the Met (DAVID POGUE, April 25, 2004, NY Times)

AS he strolls backstage, joking with the stagehands, you wouldn't peg the 57-year-old Joe Clark as the technical director of the Metropolitan Opera. With his neatly trimmed mustache, mild manner, dress shirt and tie, he looks more like a visiting college professor than the man ultimately responsible for the sets, lights, sound, special effects, props, costumes and titles, and even the auditorium seats, at the most famous American opera house.

He's got just five minutes before the final dress rehearsal for the Met's production of "Die Walküre," the second installment of its complete staging of Wagner's 17-hour, four-opera "Ring" cycle. This will be the only chance Mr. Clark's 100-man stage crew will have to run the show without breaks before opening night. Yet Mr. Clark professes to be unconcerned.

"We've done this before," he says.

Playing down the stakes — and his own importance — is typical of the man who has been responsible for, in his words, "everything you see" at the Met for 24 years. It doesn't seem to faze Mr. Clark that this production of the "Ring" is one of the most eagerly anticipated events in the opera world, that it was sold out within weeks of its announcement (orchestra seats: $1,500 for the four operas) or that the 125 tons of moving sets could squash Plácido Domingo, one of the stars, in the space of a sixteenth note.

This presentation of the "Ring" is the Met's sixth in the Otto Schenk production from 1988, and Mr. Clark has overseen all six stagings. But even for an old hand, the Met poses formidable challenges. Its stage is five times as large as that of a Broadway theater, demanding much larger forces: a chorus of 110, for example, in "Götterdämmerung," the fourth "Ring" opera. The sets and props for the "Ring" fill 28 40-foot shipping containers. (Between "Ring" years, they join the Met's 775 other containers of scenery in a New Jersey storage yard.)

If you've never seen the Ring it's well worth the investment of time--though perhaps not $1500--just don't go when the Seventh Day Adventists are in town.

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WHEN WE GET BEHIND CLOSED DOORS...:

The Issue That Never Went Away: After 12 years, abortion rights are on trial again. (WILLIAM SALETAN, 4/25/04, NY Times)

The purpose of these inquiries is to try to prove that the so-called partial-birth procedure is never medically necessary, because that's what Congress asserts and the plaintiffs deny. But once this question is resolved, the next round of subpoenas will have a different purpose. It won't be to determine whether partial-birth abortion is ever necessary. It will be to determine whether each partial-birth abortion was necessary.

If the ban is upheld, any doctor found to have performed the procedure will be subject to a two-year prison term unless he or she can prove that the procedure was "necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury." To settle that question, the court will need details about the patient.

Alternatively, if the ban is struck down, Congress will have to add to it what the Supreme Court demanded four years ago: a clause allowing the procedure when necessary to protect the woman's health. That, too, will require details about the patient.

As Mr. Ashcroft puts it, "If the central issue in the case, an issue raised by those who brought the case, is medical necessity, we need to look at medical records to find out if indeed there was medical necessity." That's why the government subpoenaed the records of the doctors who challenged the law. And that's why the government will subpoena the records of any doctor who, having been charged with performing a partial-birth abortion, argues that the procedure was medically necessary. This is what it takes to enforce an abortion ban.

That's the lesson of these trials. For years, Republicans have used Congress and the White House to showcase the ugliness of late-term abortions. The public, naturally repelled, endorsed the so-called partial-birth ban, and Congress enacted it.

But an abortion ban isn't just a moral statement. It's a pledge to prosecute, and prosecution introduces a different kind of ugliness: the public investigation of personal tragedies. That's the ugliness that lies ahead. If Americans won't take that warning from today's marchers, maybe they'll take it from John Ashcroft.

Incest investigations tend to violate the privacy of perpetrators and reveal tragedies too.

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WHERE'S WALL? DOH!:

9/11: SAVE SOME BLAME FOR COURTS THAT CREATED THE 'WALL': Let's take a break from the Clinton-Bush blame game for long enough to revisit how the wall between intelligence agents and criminal investigators was built and why it was torn down. (Stuart Taylor Jr., 4/21/04, Atlantic)

The so-called wall originated in a succession of federal court decisions interpreting—or misinterpreting, it now appears—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and seeking to avoid any conflict between FISA and the Fourth Amendment. Presidents had previously claimed inherent authority to use warrantless wiretaps in investigations of suspected foreign-intelligence agents and terrorists. FISA required the Justice Department to seek special judicial warrants. At the same time, the law made such warrants somewhat easier to obtain and longer-lasting than ordinary criminal warrants.

A FISA warrant application must show "probable cause" to believe that the target is a foreign "agent," defined to include U.S. citizens only if there is evidence implicating them in "sabotage or international terrorism," which are crimes; activities "in preparation therefor"; or "clandestine intelligence-gathering activities [that] involve or may involve a [criminal] violation." Ordinary criminal warrants require probable cause that actual criminal activity has occurred. FISA also created the highly secretive FISA court, which now has 11 judges, to handle Justice Department applications for FISA warrants; and the three-judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, known as the FISA review court, to hear any government appeals.

In the 1980s and 1990s, several other federal courts around the country, and eventually the FISA court, ruled that the government could not seek FISA wiretaps primarily for the purpose of prosecution, even for crimes of espionage or terrorism. The Justice Department adopted this interpretation in the 1980s. The court decisions presented Justice with a dilemma: While FISA's stated purpose was to "protect against" foreign spies, the most direct way to do that—locking them up on criminal charges—risked judicial rebuke. And even agents whose primary purpose in seeking a warrant was not prosecution could be mistakenly accused of having concealed such a purpose if they later came across evidence of crime and turned it over to prosecutors.

It was to guide investigators through this judicially created maze, and to avoid running afoul of the courts, that in 1995, Gorelick developed highly detailed curbs on contacts between intelligence and law enforcement officials. These instructions, portions of which the FISA court incorporated into some of its rulings, were enforced quite strictly by the career Justice Department officials who handled FISA warrant applications. Thus had the wall become a formidable barrier to coordination between intelligence and law enforcement officials.

[I]n November 2002, the FISA review court tore down both the wall and the legal analyses on which it was based.

The review court ruled that the government can seek FISA warrants regardless of whether its primary purpose is gathering pure intelligence or obtaining evidence for criminal prosecutions, as long as the alleged crimes are related to terrorism or espionage. The court acknowledged that this holding was not clearly supported by the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment precedents, some of which suggest that any search or wiretap for which the primary purpose is prosecution must be based on probable cause to suspect that an actual crime has been committed. But the court concluded, quite persuasively, that using FISA's somewhat lower standard in cases that may "involve the most serious threat our country faces" was "reasonable" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Some of the same people who have deplored the lack of coordination between terrorism investigators were quick to attack the FISA review court's decision as a "misguided" grant to the government of "broad new authority ... to wiretap phone calls, intercept mail, and spy on Internet use of ordinary Americans," as The New York Times editorialized. The American Civil Liberties Union added that it would "affect every American's privacy rights."

Such are the alarums of those who have not learned from the past. Let's hope they are not condemned to repeat it.

"Liberties" aren't much use if you have no physical security.

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THE WORK-AROUNDABLE:

All The President’s Men: Bob Woodward’s explosive account of the run-up to invasion of Iraq reveals how President George Bush’s administration conspired to pursue military action … and how Tony Blair declined every chance to opt out (Ian Bell, 25 April 2004, Sunday Herald)

ON page 161 of Bob Woodward’s book Plan Of Attack there is an arresting passage. In August 2002, as America moved closer to a war its president had been planning long before weapons inspections had been given a chance, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, was holding a private meeting at his Long Island home with Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary. According to Woodward, the pair had “some of the same concerns” about the unfolding scheme for an assault on Iraq. Straw had come with the message that Britain could not join the adventure “unless you go to the United Nations”. This, it seems, was useful to Powell in his attempts to restrain George W Bush because the President “absolutely had to have Blair on board”.

Later, with war looming, Prime Minister and President had an astounding conversation. Bush was concerned that Blair’s government could fall because of its allegiance to America. “We don’t want that to happen under any circumstances,” he is recalled as saying. Then the reactionary who had dreamed up every pretext for war, who would wait nervously for the decision of the Westminster parliament, so much did he need British “cover”, offered Blair a way out.

“If it would help, Bush said, he would let Blair drop out of the coalition and they would find some other way for Britain to participate.” Put aside the revealing suggestion that the United States might “let” its little ally do something, and you come to the most remarkable of Woodward’s claims, at least for British readers: Bush didn’t simply offer to excuse Blair from service, he made the offer three times in succession. We could have been “peacekeepers or something”, not the country whose participation in the war was Bush’s clinching excuse for invasion.

Hard to believe that Mr. Bell could biff this story so badly when Mr. Bush was obviously offering a friend a way out precisely because we didn't need the British and were going ahead regardless of their decision. We all know, of course, that Mr. Bush is too stupid to say what he means and to insecure to do anything on his own, but you'd think Mr. Bell would at least have noticed that the identical sentiment came from one of the President's secret cabal of puppeteers:

At a Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Rumsfeld was asked how the U.S. would proceed against Iraq if Blair were forced by domestic political pressures to withdraw British troops from participating.

"That is an issue that the president will be addressing in the days ahead, one would assume," Rumsfeld said.

"What will ultimately be decided is unclear as to their role; that is to say, their role in the event a decision is made to use force," Rumsfeld added. "To the extent they're not [able to participate], there are work-arounds, and they would not be involved, at least in that phase of it."

Mr. Blair had no power over Mr. Bush except for that of friendship. This won him a chance to convince the UN to go along, but not to stop the war.

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ENGLAND OUT OF EUROPE:

Europe or Bust: He told us he has no reverse gear, that the EU constitution changes were simply tinkering, and that he, not Rupert Murdoch, runs the country. Really? The Sunday Herald trawls through the wreckage . James Cusick, 25 April 2004, Sunday Herald)

Although Blair’s Easter recess Bermuda break was described by Number 10 as a “well-deserved holiday” it was not the usual get-away-from-it-all package you can buy from Elegant Resorts or Kuoni. Blair was carrying heavy baggage with him: the right-wing free enterprise economist Irwin Stelzer, a close business associate of Rupert Murdoch, had dined in Downing Street just before parliament broke up.

Stelzer’s table talk is said to have been blunt and clear. Murdoch wants a referendum on the draft constitution and effectively warned Blair that the continued support of The Times and The Sun was conditional on that. Given the current level of public support and scepticism over the idea of a European constitution, Downing Street also knows Murdoch wants a referendum for one reason and one reason only – because the government will lose.

And Blair and his Cabinet colleagues do not want to lose either a referendum or the next general election. But on how such objectives will be achieved there is no consensus.

Blair took with him to Bermuda the advice of key colleagues. As one adviser puts it: “Let’s get this clear, there was no marching into Blair’s office to get things clear on the Europe problem. There was no Thatcher-style moment where doves turned into hawks and boldly told it to Tony straight. Whoever the hell is putting this about is living in a fantasy land.”

But what there was, was almost a collegiate offering of opinions that may have persuaded Blair of what he was already beginning to feel. Bottom line? He’d got it wrong on his blanket refusal to hold a referendum and unless he confessed to the misjudgement and changed direction quickly, accepting the political fallout and short-term embarrassment, an opportunity would be gone.

The opportunity is the window between now and the European elections in June. But as well as the Stelzer “ultimatum” meeting, Blair was also recently briefed by his private polling experts. The forecasts for Labour’s predicted performance made grim reading, even for the Downing Street advisers who knew the European poll was a key date for voters to give the government a mid-term black eye on everything from Iraq to tuition fees. Blair’s falling trust quotient, factored into everything else, pointed to the lowest turn-out recorded in a national poll, with Labour not expected to pass the 50% of those who bothered to vote. That kind of support – perhaps as low as one in 10 of the entire electorate – would cloud everything the government did between June and the expected general election in May next year.

Those in the Cabinet who offered their view are said to have focused on one potential pathway through the electoral mire: disarm the more confident Conservative Party. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, is said to have recently reconvened a fading friendship with the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Straw, an almost time-served Eurosceptic, according to some close associates in the Foreign Office, has apparently had a rethink on Europe. His tone in discussions with Brown were described as “almost confessional”. The thinking is that Michael Howard needs to be disarmed of the referendum weapon and by Labour pro-actively calling for the referendum, it would remove the constant accusation of running scared. It would also re-ignite the entire “in” or “out” of Europe debate – likely to cause more splits in Tory ranks than among the Labour benches – and it would remove with a scalpel efficiency, the foundation Howard was building on which to fight both the European and general elections.

Now the Tories have to summon the courage to admit that they were wrong and Margaret Thatcher was right. If they wage the next election as the anti-European party they'll win. But Mr. Blair's calculation that they don't have the guts to is likely accurate.

MORE:
Blair’s gamble plays into the hands of Eurosceptics … and ‘old Europe’ (Angus Roxburgh, 4/25/04, Sunday Herald)

Europeans – in the sense of those who support “the European project” – have reacted with astonishment and dismay to Tony Blair’s U-turn on holding a referendum on the EU’s constitution. Astonishment because there is no EU requirement for the constitution to be approved by referendum and everyone accepted Blair’s previous insistence that such matters were dealt with in the UK by parliament, as they are in several other countries. Dismay because a referendum on Europe in the continent’s most Eurosceptical country looks like dangerous folly, risking the destruction not just of a treaty but of the EU itself. Dismay, too, because some other countries which didn’t really want to hold a referendum (such as France and Sweden) may now feel under pressure to do so.

One German newspaper predicted that the EU now faced a rocky period after which “the dream of a unified larger union will be over”. Britain would be more isolated than ever, and Germany and France would be at the heart of a “core Europe”. The stakes are very high.

Isolated from a dying Europe but at the heart of the Anglosphere and the Axis of Good.

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IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME YOU PLAY BY THE RULES:

Privacy of Wife's Fortune Casts a Shadow Over Kerry: Senator John Kerry's campaign is bracing for a battle over whether to disclose his wife's tax returns. (KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, 4/25/04, NY Times)

Now that Senator John Kerry has made his military records public, his presidential campaign is bracing for an even bigger battle over whether to disclose his wife's tax returns, a highly charged issue that pits the privacy of his wife and her children against the political exigencies of his candidacy.

But Mr. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry — whose personal wealth, estimated at more than $500 million dollars, derives from the family fortune of her late husband — said this week that she would not release her returns because her finances were deeply entwined with those of her three adult children and she wanted to protect their privacy.

Two of her sons are active in the campaign while the third lives an intensely private life.

"What I have and what I receive is not just mine, it is also my children's, and I don't know that I have the right to make public what is theirs," Mrs. Heinz Kerry told reporters. "If I could separate it, I would have no problem."

But citing history and the demands for candidates to release information about their finances, several political analysts said disclosure seemed inevitable.

There's a simple way to keep your private life private: don't run.

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LIGHT AND DARKNESS

A Chronicle of Courage (Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 20/04/04)

In October 1941, "one of the respected members of the community" asked Rabbi Oshry if he could commit suicide. His wife and children had been seized by the Nazis, and he knew that their murder was imminent. He also knew that the Nazis would most likely force him to watch as his family was killed, and the prospect of witnessing their deaths was a horror he couldn't bear to face. He begged for permission to take his own life and avoid seeing his loved ones die.

Later that month, the head of another household came to Rabbi Oshry "with tears of anguish on his face." His children were starving to death and he was desperate to find food for them. His query was about a bit of property that had been left behind by the family in the next apartment. The entire family had been butchered a few days earlier, and there were no surviving relatives. Under Jewish law, could he take what remained of their belongings and sell them to raise cash for food?

Next to such questions, answers seem almost superfluous. (The rabbi did not permit the suicide; he allowed the neighbors' property to be taken.) What is stunning is that men and women in the throes of such suffering and brutality were still concerned about adhering to Jewish law. In the lowest depths of the Nazi hell, in a place of terror that most of us cannot fathom, here were human beings who refused to relinquish their faith -- who refused even to violate a precept without first asking if it was allowed.

Violence, humiliation, and hunger will reduce some people to animals willing to do anything to survive. The Jews who sought out Rabbi Oshry -- like Jews in so many other corners of Nazi Europe -- were not reduced but elevated, reinforced in their belief, determined against crushing odds to walk in the ways of their fathers.

Some Jews fought the Nazis with guns and sabotage, Rabbi Oshry would later say; others fought by persisting in Jewish life. In the end, "Responsa from the Holocaust" is a chronicle of courage and resistance -- and a profound inspiration to believers of every faith.

One wonders how they would have behaved if they thought life was a series of random, purposeless accidents and only a 1.6% gene differential separated them from the animals.

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WASN'T THIS VIEW SUPPOSED TO BE UNIQUE TO MEL GIBSON?:

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as "God on the Cross." In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us.
-John Stott

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DOWN WHERE THE VULTURES FEED:

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition (Steven Plaut, April 23, 2004, JewishPress.com)

The Bible makes it crystal clear that the way one acknowledges that human souls are created in God's image and deserving of respect and dignity is through capital punishment. Just read Genesis 9:6: "A man who spills human blood, his own blood shall be spilled by man because God made man in His own Image." Not just among Jews, by the way, but among all sons of Noah.

In other words, the preservation of human dignity requires capital punishment of convicted murderers. The position of Judaism is the opposite of the position espoused by liberals. It is precisely because of man's creation in God's image that capital punishment is declared justified and necessary. Human dignity requires execution of murderers, not compassion for their souls.

Moreover, capital punishment is regarded by Judaism as a favor for the capital sinner, a form of atonement and redemption. Ordinary murderers are allowed to achieve atonement for their souls in their execution. Only especially vile murderers -- such as a false witness whose lies are discovered after the person who was framed has been executed, or a man who sacrifices both his son and his daughter to the pagan god Molokh -- are denied execution because they are regarded as beyond redemption through capital punishment. Again, execution preserves human dignity, it does not defile it.

It is this command too that makes war against dictators like Saddam Hussein not merely just but an obligation of decent men.

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IT'S THE ECONOMY, SILLIES:

Bush Campaign Readies New Advertisements Attacking Kerry on National Security Issues (JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY, 4/25/04, NY Times)

The Bush advertisements open at a military staging ground somewhere in the desert, teeming with tanks, fighter jets and soldiers. But the matériel begins to vanish from the screen as an announcer ominously lists the military spending cuts Mr. Kerry supported.

"John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror," the announcer says.

Strategists from both parties said that national security remained the threshold issue for Mr. Kerry, meaning he must establish his credibility as a potential commander in chief before undecided voters will listen to his appeal on other issues. From the moment Mr. Kerry first began running for president, he argued to Democrats that he could at least neutralize the president's advantage on foreign policy because of his status as a decorated Vietnam veteran and his years in the Senate.

But even some Democrats say Mr. Kerry has yet to accomplish that. Jim Gerstein, the executive director of Democracy Corps, a Democratic research organization, said focus groups by his organization had found that Mr. Kerry has yet to break that barrier, though he said that television advertisements Mr. Kerry began broadcasting last week would help him.

"The role of commander in chief is a bigger part of this election than it has been, and because of that there's a higher threshold to pass," he said. "If you don't pass that threshold they won't consider you as president."

His lack of credibility won't help any, but it's the economy that makes the election unwinnable for Mr. Kerry. National security is a sideshow and will fade even further into the background over the course of the Summer, disappearing from the campaign by Fall.

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CIVILIZATION'S SAVIOR:

Only Bush can save Europe: the US President’s ‘transformational’ response to Muslim fundamentalism can save the Old World; European ‘managerialism’ can’t (Mark Steyn, 4/24/04, The Spectator)

Most European politicians see Islamist terrorism as a managerial problem. After September 11th, George W. Bush opted to approach it transformationally. Around the world Islam is expanding, and around the Islamic world a radicalised form of Islam is expanding. Bush determined to tackle the problem at source: he decided — as I heard Condi Rice say last week at the US Naval Academy — to turn the map of the Middle East ‘upside down’. He would bring liberty to a region that had never known it. [...]

National Review’s John Derbyshire wrote last week about a ‘1945 solution’ for Iraq. This is shorthand for the bombing of Dresden, the nuking of Hiroshima, etc. — the sort of stern measures that let an enemy know he’s well and truly whipped. But, as Mr Derbyshire points out, war abroad is determined by culture at home, and if we were fighting the second world war today, we wouldn’t nuke Hiroshima or even intern Japanese-Americans: the culture will not permit it. Nor will it permit old-school imperialism. Culturally sensitive nation-building is as aggressive as you can get these days. So Bush has gone for the only big-picture scenario available.
The Bush ‘transformational’ approach to terrorism may fail. The EU ‘managerial’ approach certainly will. It’s fine for small, contained, stable populations like Ulster, Corsica or the Basque country. But not for the primal demographic forces sweeping the Continent.

Last week Niall Ferguson called me ‘the Pangloss of Republican humourists’. I wish I was. But I’m not at all Panglossian these days, and I was interested to see that Ferguson, in a recent speech, has become a somewhat belated convert to the Eurabian scenario I’ve been peddling in these pages for a couple of years now. Perhaps he’ll have better luck with it than I’ve had. Meanwhile, in the current issue of Fortune, Philip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, is even more apocalyptic: ‘So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world,’ he writes. ‘Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an antimarket culture dominated by fundamentalism — a new Dark Ages.’ That ten-year-old girl could have a lot more to worry about than gloomy Blair speeches.

‘What do you leave behind?’ asked the Prime Minister. There will only be very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the mid-point of this century. What will they leave behind? Territories that happen to bear their names and keep up some of the old buildings, in the way that the great cathedral of St Sophia in Constantinople is now a museum run by the Turkish government? Or will the dying European races understand that the only legacy that matters is whether the peoples who will live in those lands after them are reconciled to pluralist, liberal democracy? The Bush vision is the best shot.

The hardest truth for many ion the West to bear is that in the long run Islam affords a better basis for the future of mankind than does Europe's secularism.

MORE:
-Which Nations Will Go Forth and Multiply?: Declines in fertility have spread to every corner of the globe. (Phillip Longman, April 5, 2004, FORTUNE)

When asked how long it will take for the world's population to double, nearly half of all Americans say 20 years or less. That's hardly surprising, given the crowding many of us encounter in everyday life and the reports we hear of teeming Third World megacities. Yet forecasts by the United Nations and others show that world population, currently at a little over six billion, is unlikely to double—ever. Indeed, demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a nongovernmental research organization in Laxenburg, Austria, predict that world population will peak at nine billion within the lifetime of today's Gen Xers and then start shrinking. Meanwhile, the average age of the world's citizens will advance dramatically. This aging will happen fastest not in the developed world, where we are used to fretting about the graying of society, but, astonishingly, in the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. By the end of this century, even sub-Saharan Africa will probably grow older than Europe is today.

These predictions come with considerable certainty. The primary reason, confirmed in late March by a U.S. Census Bureau report, is a fall in fertility rates over the last generation that is spreading to every corner of the globe. In nations rich and poor, under all forms of government, a broad social trend is absolutely clear: As more and more of the population moves to urban areas in which children offer little or no economic reward to their parents, and as women gain in economic opportunity and reproductive control, people are producing fewer and fewer children. [...]

The implications for world economic growth are stark. Japan developed its export-driven economy at a time when the number of consumers in Western Europe and the U.S. was still growing robustly. By contrast, when today's developing nations look for long-term export markets, they find most rich countries on the brink of absolute population decline and deeply encumbered by the cost of their health and pension programs. We may all be facing a diminished old age.

Even more sobering are the implications for modern civilization's values. As urbanization and globalization continue to create a human environment in which children become costly impediments to material success, people who are well adapted to this environment will tend not to reproduce. Many others who are not so successful will imitate them. So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world—who either "don't get" the new rules of the game that make reproduction an economic liability, or who believe they are (or who in fact are) commanded by a higher power to procreate.

Such a higher power might be God, speaking through Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, or some latter-day saint, or it might be a totalitarian state. Either way, such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an antimarket culture dominated by fundamentalism—a new dark ages. History records a similar shift in third-century Rome, when pagan fertility collapsed, while that of early Christians did not. If modern secular societies are to survive, they must somehow enable parents to enjoy more of the economic value they produce for everyone when they sacrifice to create and educate the next generation.

Which somehow manages to miss the point entirely: secular society can not and should not be preserved. It is anti-human.

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NOTHING LEFT TO CHANCE:

Swelled Heads (Jim Holt, April 25, 2004, NY Times Magazine)

Did a jaw mutation really ''cause'' the enlarged brains that make us human? Darwin himself, curiously enough, suggested just the opposite: first we acquired our bigger brains, then our smaller jaws. The expansion of the brain, he theorized, occurred in tandem with the spread of hunting and tool-making. After all, a meal of meat takes intelligence to obtain, and it also provides rich protein for hungry brain tissue. And once we became meat eaters, we could afford smaller jaws, since meat needs less chewing than nuts and plants, especially if you're clever enough to tenderize it over a fire and cut it with a blade. Moreover, a knack for fashioning weapons makes a powerful muzzle less important. As our ancestors ''gradually acquired the habit of using stones, clubs or other weapons for fighting with their enemies,'' Darwin observed in ''The Descent of Man,'' ''they would use their jaws and teeth less and less. In this case, the jaws, together with the teeth, would become reduced in size.''

Since those words were written, evolutionary theorists have come up with a bewildering variety of explanations for how natural selection might have produced human intelligence. Steven Pinker agrees with Darwin that hunting and tool-making had a lot to do with it, but he also cites the fact that our hominid ancestors were social creatures. Living in groups, they had to compete with one another with increasing shrewdness to further their interests. Such competition, the idea goes, might have set off a ''cognitive arms race'' that led to rapid growth in brain size. Another view, advanced by Geoffrey Miller, is that sexual selection explains the evolutionary push toward intelligence. The human brain, according to this hypothesis, is rather like the peacock's tail: a courtship device to attract and retain sexual mates. Wit, virtuosity and inventiveness are turn-ons, and those that have them end up producing more offspring.

The late Stephen Jay Gould, by contrast, said he believed that our lurch into intelligence wasn't really driven by anything at all. He held that random genetic drift caused a slowing-down in the emergence of adult features in each individual. In fact, humans, with their relatively big brain cases, small jaws and hairless skin, look like baby apes. The prolonged period of development before adulthood gives our brains a chance to grow to three times the size of an ape's. Much of this growth necessarily takes place outside the womb, since the female pelvis can barely accommodate the newborn's enormous head as it is. (The pain women undergo in childbirth is part of the price we pay for our big brains.)

The great mystery about all these competing mechanisms is why they should have worked only for humans. We are hardly unique in being a social species; bumblebees, parrots, dolphins, elephants and wolves also live in groups, but none of them have participated in cognitive arms races. We are not the only hunting species; lions show tremendous cunning when hunting zebras, but that cunning has not evolved into all-purpose intelligence. [...]

However we humans shimmered onto the scene, it seems important to our self-image that the appearance of Homo sapiens was somehow cosmically decreed -- either by divine will or as the inevitable culmination of a stately natural process. The very idea that we owe our existence as a species to a hitherto unnoticed mutation that need never have happened (and a mutation that weakened something, at that) might seem a blow to our dignity. But if we're a fluke, at least we're unique. Let the other apes gnash their powerful teeth in envy.

One of the innumerable similarities between Creationists and Darwinists is that genuine randomness is unacceptable to both. Evolution must have a purpose--God's, Nature's or both.

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THEY'RE NOT ON OUR SIDE:

French snub outrages British intelligence (Colin Brown, 25/04/2004, Sunday Telegraph)

British intelligence agencies are furious with their French counterparts after being refused assistance in their efforts to track terrorists in this country linked to the Madrid bombers.

The row has led to the worst rift between British and French intelligence agencies for years and is hindering attempts to trace connections between Moroccans involved in the Madrid bombs and Islamic militants in Britain. A senior Home Office official said: "We are getting very good co-operation from the Moroccans and the Spanish but there appears to be a hiccup with the French."

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THE MORE DEAD THE BETTER:

Suited to Guerrillas, a Dusty Town Poses Tricky Perils (THOM SHANKER and JOHN KIFNER, 4/24/04, NY Times)

If the Pentagon could build a training ground that would incorporate all the perils of urban warfare, it would look very much like the city the marines may have to invade: Falluja.

Falluja offers urban guerrillas the combat terrain they would desire. The city has nearly 300,000 residents, a complex mix of boulevards, narrow streets and many back alleys. Apartment buildings are mostly of two, three and four stories, with porches well suited to snipers. Every neighborhood has a mosque, a clinic, schools and markets, where an errant shell from the Americans could carry a high cost in civilian lives, and therefore a great risk of angering Iraqis about the occupation.

The marines encircling Falluja have logistical advantages, too.

The city is flanked to the north by one of the military's favorite geographic features, a highway, in this case the expressway linking Baghdad to Jordan. America and its allies operate from bases around Falluja that have been functioning for almost a year. They control all of the airfields in the region, and their reconnaissance planes, which have thoroughly mapped Falluja, patrol high above the range of shoulder-fired missiles.

Military officers warn that Falluja's insurgents are tunneling between buildings, linking cellars throughout the neighborhoods they control so they can pop from one building to ambush advancing American forces, then vanish underground where they cannot be tracked by helicopter or Predator surveillance drones.

Into this sand-colored and dusty community along the Euphrates River, American forces, if ordered in, would hope to attack insurgent leaders and their gunmen in a series of lightning, precise raids backed by helicopters and flying AC-130 gunships, according to Pentagon and military officials.

"That doesn't mean that we have to fight a protracted, block-to-block urban warfare," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of operations for the military coalition in Iraq, said in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Under the military's new tactics for urban warfare, there is no boundary-to-boundary invasion of a city, but precisely focused attacks. Rather than going block by block and kicking down doors, which are often booby-trapped, troops may punch holes in the walls of buildings. A new generation of explosives is designed to open the wall, but not to blast through the building, collapse it or hit what lies beyond. Soldiers also may penetrate a building from above, deposited on roofs by ropes slung from helicopters, whose firepower would be bolstered by AC-130 gunships.

Those gunships, which already have been used to fight insurgents in Falluja, carry cannon and heavy machine guns aloft and are equipped with such sensitive surveillance equipment that crews circling a target can pick out individual adversaries.

Although the military in Iraq would draw on new technologies and new tactics to dislodge the insurgents from Falluja, "This is the most difficult of all types of situations you enter in warfare," one senior Pentagon official said this weekend.

The continued fractiousness of the Sunni Triangle affords a second opportunity to decimate that portion of the population that is most opposed to liberal government.

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VOTING WITH A CHECKBOOK:"

Pete Coors puts his cash where his sentiments lie: Millions of family dollars have gone to support conservative campaigns and candidates (Jim Tankersley And Gwen Florio, April 24, 2004, Rocky Mountain News)

Unlike his two major opponents for Senate - Democratic Attorney General Ken Salazar and former Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer - Pete Coors doesn't have a voting record. But his extensive political contributions show which candidates and causes are most important to him.

"I'm like everybody else," when donating to politicians, Coors said. "I look at how I think they will represent things that I think are important, how they'll vote on issues that are important to me."

His donations, Coors said, "would certainly give people an indication" of where he stands.

Coors' contributions trend toward the Republican Party and its candidates. He donated $65,300 to GOP committees, including $25,000 to the Colorado Republican Committee on Sept. 11, 2002.

Allard is his favorite candidate - he's given $34,250 to the senator's various campaign committees. He donated to George W. Bush but not to George H. W. Bush.

He's given thousands to Reps. Scott McInnis, Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave; less to Rep. Bob Beauprez (and former Rep. Schaffer) and none to Rep. Joel Hefley.

Coors and his relatives often back the same people. They also share an affinity for the Free Congress Foundation, whose focus on the culture wars is credited with indirectly helping conservative members of Congress get elected or retain their seats.

But Coors hasn't contributed to some polarizing groups, as other family members have.

Coors' mother, Holly Coors, for example, donated $5,000 to the political arm of Moral Majority, a group of fundamentalist Christians led by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Pete Coors says his family agrees on a core set of values that drive their donations: less government, lower taxes. But he says it's wrong to lump any family member in with the individual contributions made by other family members.

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, agrees that it's not fair to judge Pete Coors by his family's donations. "But politics isn't fair," he continued. "It's the least fair part of life . . . Anything you or your family or your associates have touched is fair game. That's the way the system works."

Pete Coors traces his political donations to the dinner table, growing up, when his parents would talk current affairs with their kids.

Both parents were outspoken conservatives: Joseph Coors kick-started the Heritage Foundation with a $250,000 grant. Holly organized several Republican women's groups. Both were longtime friends of Ronald Reagan.

"It just seemed like it was part of your duty as a citizen to vote and to be active in politics," he said. "So it was natural for me to be a Republican and to support Republican candidates."

He's not going to have trouble explaining that he supports conservative causes and candidates.

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BROTHERS JUDD FILM CLUB:

Brother Cohen has made some idle threats in the past about attempting a film discussion here on weekends. Having finally gotten to see Master and Commander, I thought perhaps we could have a test run with this superb and profoundly conservative film.

Here's what David wrote, back in November:

Starting with the movie as a movie, Weir has created a masterpiece. Though mostly scrubbed of gore, the scenes of 19th century war are convincing. Almost as good are the scenes of Surprise rounding the Horn. In this, and in showing the crowding of almost 200 souls aboard a small frigate, the movie succeeds in outdoing O'Brian in showing what life was like on a man-of-war at sea. Though the movie is not at all a slavish adaptation of the novel (among other things, major parts of four of the books find their way into the movie), a number of O'Brian's major themes are sounded and a number of lines and sights are thrown in for no other reason than to please those who have read the novel.

Weir's riskiest choice succeeds brilliantly. Rather than "opening up" the novel, Weir closes in on the Surprise and her crew. This is as non-commercial a choice as could be made. Rather than introducing a Hollywood romance, making the entire war depend upon catching the Acheron, or introducing the 19th century equivalent of a red timer ticking down to zero, Weir tosses out source material that might broaden the movie's appeal. O'Brian's The Far Side Of The World includes an adulterous love triangle on board between Hollum, the gunner's wife (who was one of several women on board) and the gunner, who kills the lovers, Higgens the surgeon's mate (who botches an abortion Stephen refuses to perform) and then goes mad and hangs himself. Instead, Weir focuses claustrophobically on the Surprise, the seamen and her Captain. This focus brings the audience to the final battle as a part of the crew, which is now a coherent unit.

Weir's real triumph is the choreography and filming of the battle scenes, which are done as well as any I've ever seen. Filming a general melee of three hundred men fighting for their lives with one-shot pistols, swords, pikes and knives in a confined space, Weir manages to present three or four themes in such a way that the viewer always can follow the action and tell what is happening to whom. At the same time, the audience feels the confusion and violence that the characters are feeling.

This triumph allows Weir to return to themes he has dealt with before, as early as Gallipoli, when he presented the insanity of World War I trench warfare as seen by Australian troops. This link comes through most clearly during the speech Jack Aubrey gives (most uncharacteristically) before the Surprise surprises the Acheron. Jack says that the Surprise is England and family and that the men will fight bravely for country and family, which of course they do. The Australians, on the other hand, were fighting and dying in an "European" war and, although they fought bravely, were fighting in the end only for each other. Weir presents their deaths as tragic and odd, where the deaths on the Surprise are presented as worthy, though also tragic. This comes through in the choice of identifiable characters who die on the Acheron, Nagle, Allen and Calamy. Nagle and Allen are not sympathetic characters. Calamy we are not allowed to know, though we are meant to like and admire him, but his death (which is Weir's invention, not O'Brian's) is presented as coming during an opportunity he greatly desired and is the most bitterly regretted death in the movie. Soon after, the Surprise moves on and so do we.

In an interview about Gallipoli, Weir once said the following:

Our first approach was to tell the whole story from enlistment in 1914 through to the evacuation of Gallipoli at the end of 1915, but we were not getting at what this thing was, the burning center that had made Gallipoli a legend. I could never find the answers in any books and it certainly wasn't evolving in any of our drafts, so we put the legend to one side and simply made up a story about two young men, really got to know them, where they came from, what happened to them along the way, spent more time getting to the battle and less time on the battlefield.

The draft fell into place. By approaching the subject obliquely, I think we had come as close to touching the source of the myth as we could. I think there's a Chinese proverb - it's not the arriving at one's destination but the journey that matters. Gallipoli is about two young men on the road to adventure, how they crossed continents and great oceans, climbed the pyramids and walked through the ancient sands of Egypt, and the deserts of the outback, to their appointment with destiny at Gallipoli.

The end of the film is really all about that appointment and how they coped with it. I don't think we could have sat down in the early stages and got this - it took years of talking, writing, arguing, to finally get back to something incredibly simple.

The similarities with Master & Commander are clear. The differences are those between a younger man and an older man looking at life. Now the friendship at the heart of the movie is less important to the characters and the audience than the war in which they have chosen to fight.

But still, the theme from O'Brian's novel that comes through most strongly in the film is the conflict between the high Tory Aubrey and the liberal Maturin. Jack believes in the higher discipline; that men must be led both in order to accomplish anything worthwhile and for their own happiness. Stephen rejects this idea of man as a yoked beast, though more because of its effect on the leader than on the men. Stephen believes, that is, that power corrupts, and that's a shame for the powerful. The resolution of this dispute is perhaps the most disappointing part of the movie. Although Jack's idea of discipline wins out in the end, it does so only because he gives up the pursuit of the Acheron to save his friend's life. I think we are meant to see the need to blend the two philosophies in order to succeed (Jack and Stephen complete each other, blah, blah, blah), but we don't, because the Acheron reappears as a deus ex machina, with no connection to Jack's supposed sacrifice.

But perhaps this is the message, after all. The movie is almost entirely free of post-modern irony (the only exception, in which Jack wonders at this "modern age we're living in", is one of the movie's few clunkers). This earnestness leads to the movie's greatest surprise. Weir's movie is significantly more Christian -- at least, more explicitly Christian -- than O'Brian's novel. We are hit over the head with this at the end, with perhaps the only non-ironic, earnest Christian service I've ever seen in a major motion picture. Weir might think that Jack, as a Christian hero, is rewarded for his works, but actually he was rewarded out of grace.

I was struck even more forcefully than David by the degree to which Maturin and Aubrey are presented as opposites, with Aubrey having faith in the service, his nation, patriotism, order, God, etc., and Maturin openly scoffing at the ship, Lord Nelson, disciplining a mutinous crewman, etc. Especially devastating are the scenes where Aubrey barks out that they don't have time for Maturin's "hobbies" and where he tells Maturin: "You've come to the wrong ship for anarchy, Brother."

It makes the film extraordinarily pertinent to our own times, with Maturin the kind of fey intellectual who barely has a side in the war vs. Aubrey the duty-bound man of action who cares utterly about England (and himself, of course) winning.

In this regard, Christopher Hitchens, for one, seems to have completely missed the point of the adaptation, Empire Falls: How Master and Commander gets Patrick O'Brian wrong. (Christopher Hitchens, Nov. 14, 2003, Slate):

Unlike Forester, O'Brian set himself not just to show broadsides and cutlass work and flogging and the centrality of sea power, but to re-create all of the ambiguities and contradictions of England's long war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. (This, I argue, was the true and real "First World War," because it extended itself to every ocean and almost every nation, not exempting this one.) The summa of O'Brian's genius was the invention of Dr. Stephen Maturin. He is the ship's gifted surgeon, but he is also a scientist, an espionage agent for the Admiralty, a man of part Irish and part Catalan birth—and a revolutionary. He joins the British side, having earlier fought against it, because of his hatred for Bonaparte's betrayal of the principles of 1789—principles that are perfectly obscure to bluff Capt. Jack Aubrey. Any cinematic adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing this figure.

On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole project. As played by the admittedly handsome and intriguing Paul Bettany, Maturin is no more than a good doctor with finer feelings and a passion for natural history. At one point he is made to say in an English accent that he is Irish—but that's the only hint we get. In the books, for example, he quarrels badly with Aubrey about Lord Nelson's support for slavery. But here a superficial buddy movie is born out of one of the subtlest and richest and most paradoxical male relationships since Holmes and Watson.

A former pro-Soviet Marxist, Mr. Hitchens is understandably loathe to learn the lesson of modernity and apply it to Maturin and himself, but surely the rest of us can see that the great heroes of our history are the men--Aubrey, Burke, Churchill, Solzhenitsyn, Reagan, etc.--who are not seduced by the Revolution of the day, only to find themselves "betrayed" by its inevitable course. The Maturin's, George Orwell's, Whittaker Chambers's, Christopher Hitchens's are welcome to join the side of the righteous once they come to their senses, but are not to be lightly forgiven their original treason's nor allowed to whitewash their past's. The problem with the French Revolution was not Napoleon taking it over any more than the problem of the Bolshevik Revolution was Stalin taking it over. The Revolutions were themselves evil from their inception.

What Mr. Weir has achieved is to demonstrate the education of Stephen Maturin in just the one film. Were Jack Aubrey--and England--to run the navy and fight the war in the Frenchified manner that Maturin begins by insisting upon they would surely lose. But Aubrey harbors no such delusions and if he does have some doubts is nonetheless faithful to the ideals and traditions that have made him love King, country, and navy in the first place. Maturin is a fine friend and good company--so long as you just want to play the fiddle or discuss a book, but taking his counsel in a time of war would be disastrous. Because the French must be defeated, it is Maturin who bends to Aubrey's will (to the British way), not Aubrey who yields to "Reason".

As David mentions in his review, the movie includes, near its end, one of the most affecting religious scenes ever committed to film. What's so remarkable is that it makes vivid the Lord's Prayer that we've all repeated so many times that we may have stopped listening to what we're saying. It recaptures its power here because we recognize the degree to which it commits us to a faith in Providence and just how antirational it is: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done." The deaths suffered in battle may be tragic, but they are not senseless.

It is no coincidence that America is today being led in war by a President who shares this view of History, a vision which intellectuals think antiquated, Providence and the President: George W. Bush's theory of history. (James W. Ceaser, 03/10/2003, Weekly Standard):

GEORGE W. BUSH is the product, far more than his father, of the modern conservative movement. Like Ronald Reagan, he is a self-described optimist who once went so far as to chastise a conservative intellectual for the sin of pessimism. What Bush has added to the mainstream of conservatism is a religious dimension, which in the case of the question of History includes the theme of Providence.

Providence is one of the richest and most complex--and therefore one of the most variously interpreted--of all religious ideas. For many, of course, the mere mention of a religious term is sufficient to provoke Pavlovian accusations of political messianism; any idea of religious pedigree (other than the message of peace) is devoid of all sense. Yet those willing to consider the matter more deeply will find that traditionally, Providence has had a reasonably determinate meaning. One of its central themes is that the course of history, from a human standpoint, is unfathomable: "The Almighty has His own purposes." One conviction, however, remains supreme: While the path of events before us can never be fully known, and while there will always be difficulty and pain, Providence offers a basis for hope and a ground for avoiding despair. Yet it disclaims any pretension to know the future and offers no assurance of divine reward for our action in this world. At the practical level of human affairs, the focus remains on human responsibility and choice.

The most sublime evocation of the "providence of God" in political rhetoric appears as the central theme of Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural. This speech carries a message of ultimate hope without any guarantee of immediate reward. It keeps the focus in the political realm on duty, on the need to do right "as God gives us to see the right." These aspects of this great speech are well known, but less known, perhaps, are two other things. The first is that Lincoln's recourse to Providence was a response to the nineteenth-century precursor to the Doctrine of History that had circulated before the war and that taught, in the words of the historian George Bancroft, that "everything is in motion for the better. . . . The last political state of the world likewise is ever more excellent than the old." Standing where he did in 1865, after experiencing all of the agony and turns of fortune of the Civil War, Lincoln had come to know the centrality of political choice and to experience pathos. The second thing was that no sooner did Lincoln give the speech than he was widely criticized for not invoking God more directly on his side and for not promising a swift and certain reward. In one of his last letters, Lincoln explained that such a wish was contrary to the idea of Providence and unsuited to the education of a great people.

Although no one at this point can claim to know administration "policy" on Providence, President Bush's comments have followed in the Lincolnian mold. As he observed in his State of the Union address: "We do not know--we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history." Without taking anything away from a practical kind of optimism, the theme of Providence seems to have separated the president from the embrace of anything like a Doctrine of History. The focus has been on duty. Perhaps this language, suitably developed and elaborated, provides the best framework for conservatives both to express and reconcile their hopes and fears about history.

Presidents, it hardly needs to be said, are not philosophers. Yet in their responsibility to act, it happens that their words sometimes open a dimension of theoretical insight that more abstract thought misses. Modern man is growing ever more impressed with his supposed mastery of the physical environment. By contrast, it is obvious that the course of history can never be brought under his complete control. There will always be shocks, surprises, and events. So long as this fact does not lead to skepticism and paralysis, it can serve as a salutary reminder of the intrinsic limits of the human situation. It bids us open our thoughts, in a spirit of wonder and awe, to something much larger than ourselves. And this too is a part of the conservative message.

The movie that Peter Weir made is not the movie that Christopher Hitchens wanted but the world we live in is not the world that Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Maturin dream of. We live in the world and the culture of Jack Aubrey and George W. Bush, >President's Remarks at National Prayer Breakfast (Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., 2/07/02):

Faith gives the assurance that our lives and our history have a moral design. As individuals, we know that suffering is temporary, and hope is eternal. As a nation, we know that the ruthless will not inherit the Earth. Faith teaches humility, and with it, tolerance. Once we have recognized God's image in ourselves, we must recognize it in every human being.

Respect for the dignity of others can be found outside of religion, just as intolerance is sometimes found within it. Yet for millions of Americans, the practice of tolerance is a command of faith. When our country was attacked, Americans did not respond with bigotry. People from other countries and cultures have been treated with respect. And this is one victory in the war against terror.

At the same time, faith shows us the reality of good, and the reality of evil. Some acts and choices in this world have eternal consequences. It is always, and everywhere, wrong to target and kill the innocent. It is always, and everywhere, wrong to be cruel and hateful, to enslave and oppress. It is always, and everywhere, right to be kind and just, to protect the lives of others, and to lay down your life for a friend.

The men and women who charged into burning buildings to save others, those who fought the hijackers, were not confused about the difference between right and wrong. They knew the difference. They knew their duty. And we know their sacrifice was not in vain.

Faith shows us the way to self-giving, to love our neighbor as we would want to be loved ourselves. In service to others, we find deep human fulfillment. And as acts of service are multiplied, our nation becomes a more welcoming place for the weak, and a better place for those who suffer and grieve.

For half a century now, the National Prayer Breakfast has been a symbol of the vital place of faith in the life of our nation. You've reminded generations of leaders of a purpose and a power greater than their own. In times of calm, and in times of crisis, you've called us to prayer.

In this time of testing for our nation, my family and I have been blessed by the prayers of countless of Americans. We have felt their sustaining power and we're incredibly grateful. Tremendous challenges await this nation, and there will be hardships ahead. Faith will not make our path easy, but it will give us strength for the journey.

The promise of faith is not the absence of suffering, it is the presence of grace. And at ever step we are secure in knowing that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope -- and hope does not disappoint.

MORE:
-INFO: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) (Imdb.com)
-FILMOGRAPHY: Peter Weir (Imdb.com)
-REVIEW ARCHIVES: Master and Commander (MRQE.com)
-ESSAY: Empire Falls: How Master and Commander gets Patrick O'Brian wrong. (Christopher Hitchens, Nov. 14, 2003, Slate)

Unlike Forester, O'Brian set himself not just to show broadsides and cutlass work and flogging and the centrality of sea power, but to re-create all of the ambiguities and contradictions of England's long war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. (This, I argue, was the true and real "First World War," because it extended itself to every ocean and almost every nation, not exempting this one.) The summa of O'Brian's genius was the invention of Dr. Stephen Maturin. He is the ship's gifted surgeon, but he is also a scientist, an espionage agent for the Admiralty, a man of part Irish and part Catalan birth—and a revolutionary. He joins the British side, having earlier fought against it, because of his hatred for Bonaparte's betrayal of the principles of 1789—principles that are perfectly obscure to bluff Capt. Jack Aubrey. Any cinematic adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing this figure.

On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole project. As played by the admittedly handsome and intriguing Paul Bettany, Maturin is no more than a good doctor with finer feelings and a passion for natural history. At one point he is made to say in an English accent that he is Irish—but that's the only hint we get. In the books, for example, he quarrels badly with Aubrey about Lord Nelson's support for slavery. But here a superficial buddy movie is born out of one of the subtlest and richest and most paradoxical male relationships since Holmes and Watson.

-REVIEW ESSAY: O'Brian's Great Voyage (Christopher Hitchens, March 9, 2000, NY Review of Books)
-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

-ESSAY: A High-Risk Film on the High Seas: Every once in a while a Hollywood studio throws out the hit-formula playbook and bets that smart moviegoers will go along for the ride. "Master and Commander" is that rare

case. (ANNE THOMPSON, 11/13/03, NY Times)

-ESSAY: Happily seduced (William F. Buckley, November 12, 2003, Townhall)

-ESSAY: "Master and Commander": Success On the High Seas (Charles Krauthammer, Jewish World Review)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (A.O. Scott, NY Times)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (Ella Taylor , LA Weekly)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (GREGORY WEINKAUF, Dallas Observer)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (Stephen Hunter, Washington Post)

-REVIEW: of Master and Commander (Desson Howe, Washington Post)

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DAVID SMELLS FLOP SWEAT (David Hill, The Bronx)

Bush's strength surprises some pollsters: Even in solidly Democratic states, challenger appears weak (The Associated Press, April 23, 2004)

In Maryland, pollster Patrick Gonzales is surprised that Democrat John Kerry isn't farther ahead in such a solidly Democratic state. In New Hampshire, Republican Tom Rath is encouraged that President Bush has retained his footing in a state where he was pummeled relentlessly during the Democratic primaries.

Bush can tick off a number of states where polls now show him to be on better footing than he was at the end of his November 2000 showdown with Al Gore.

The most interesting question that remains to be answered about election 2004 is the same as it was at the start of primary season: can the Democratic candidate carry Washington, DC?

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CRANK UP THE VCR's (via Mike Daley):

C-SPAN 2 is re-airing Professor Allan Guelzo's Ashbrook Colloquium on his recently published book, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, on Saturday, April 24, at 11:30 a.m. (Eastern).

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WE NOW DECLARE CIVILIZATION CLOSED

'Farting Dog' teaches tolerance: author (CBC Art News, 23/04/04)

Humour and the "f-word" -- fart-- may initially attract children to the Walter the Farting Dog books, but the co-author of the best-selling series believes there's more to it.

"Kids love scatological detail and bodily functions," Murray admitted. "But Walter has an extra charm, I think, and a message of acceptance and tolerance and making the best of a bad situation."

Murray, a Fredericton-based writer and educational technology supervisor, co-authored Walter the Farting Dog and its follow-up Walter the Farting Dog: Trouble at the Yard Sale with his friend William Kotzwinkle, a writer based in Maine.

The books tell the story of the titular pooch and the troubles he gets into because of his uncontrollable and unpleasant bodily function. In the end, however, Walter always saves the day.

I warned everyone that Captain Underpants was a dangerous slippery slope, but did they listen? So I am giving up and retiring to write the tale of how Herman the Belching Pig promotes human rights.

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STUPID PARTY, STUPID PEOPLE?:

THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE: "Love guns and hate gays? Bush is your kind of populist. Low taxes? Bush has relieved the tax burden on working Americans; Clinton promised to, but failed to deliver." The Republicans, unlike the Democrats, have delivered what their constituency wants. (Jack Beatty, 4/22/04, The Atlantic)

The Shanksvilles of America have been tricked by the Republicans, Thomas Frank writes in the April issue of Harpers.

The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital-gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking.

But these trends and measures are not Republican swindles on credulity. They are the priorities of the funders of both parties, and Bill Clinton advanced and presided over them. Clinton promised "people who work hard and play by the rules" greater economic security; they got de-industrialization with NAFTA, the WTO, and the normalization of trade with China—and greater economic insecurity. Senator Ernest Hollings (D, S.C.) called the anti-trust division of the Clinton justice department "the anti-anti-trust division" for its benign attitude toward conglomeration. Clinton promised a tax cut for the middle class but delivered a cut in capital gains.

And the Republicans "values" agenda is not a con. Bush signed a ban on late-term abortions vetoed by Clinton. He curtailed stem-cell research. He ended abortion counseling in U.S.-funded clinics in the Third World. And Bush has made the White House God's temple. The first words the speechwriter David Frum heard upon entering the Bush White House were, "Missed you at Bible study.

Love guns and hate gays? Bush is your kind of populist. Low taxes? Bush has relieved the tax burden on working Americans; Clinton promised to, but failed to deliver. Has Bush made America stronger? Almost certainly weaker, as Richard Clarke argues, by subordinating the war on terror to the obsession with Iraq. But he talks strength, and believes in force. He has, after all, liberated thousands of Iraqis and Afghans from life under tyranny to death under American bombs—i.e. "freedom." Bush thinks the whole world deserves "freedom," and if he has to fill graveyards "changing the world," as he declared at his recent press conference, well, at least people will know that when America says it will do something, it will follow through no matter how counter-productive the effort or how many Red (and Blue) State kids die along the way. The GOP "strong on defense" mantra is no con. Bush's foreign policy is war.

The Red State electorate is not fooled. They may not know the details of Bush's crony-capitalist raid on the treasury but would they reject the GOP if they did? They vote for values, strength, guns, and righteous ferocity abroad—and the GOP delivers. The rest comes under the heading of keeping government off our backs.

What have the Democrats delivered?

It's a sad day when Jack Beatty has to defend the American people from the charge that they're being duped. Over the next 6 months, as John Kerry's candidacy descends from farce into tragedy, expect to see more essays like Mr. Frank's than like Mr. Beatty's.

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PLENTY OF HEROES:

U.S. Soldiers Re - Enlist in Strong Numbers (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 4/24/04)

Despite the shrapnel wounds Staff Sgt. William Pinkley suffered during his tour in Iraq, the 26-year-old is joining other soldiers who are re-enlisting at rates that exceed the retention goals set by the Pentagon.

As of March 31 -- halfway through the Army's fiscal year -- 28,406 soldiers had signed on for another tour of duty, topping the six-month goal of 28,377. The Army's goal is to re-enlist 56,100 soldiers by the end of September.

Another hope of the Left shattered.

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THE FIRST PRIMARY OF 2008:

Senate Beckons a Coors From Beer to Political Ads: Through philanthropy, conservative politics and, of course, beer, the Coors family helped shape Colorado. Now the Coors name is hanging over a key Senate race. (KIRK JOHNSON, 4/24/04, NY Times)

"I don't think things are as dire for the Republicans as it seemed when Campbell got out," said Jennifer E. Duffy, the Senate editor at the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington. "But I'd be surprised to see it move out of the toss-up category — it's one of these races that's there for the duration."

Here in Colorado, many people say the biggest presence in the race is a man who is not running — Mr. Coor's father, Joseph. The elder Mr. Coors emerged in the 1960's as a spokesman and financial backer of the conservative agenda that politicians like Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Ronald Reagan were creating. He later helped to found the Heritage Foundation in Washington, which has since become a bulwark of conservative research and thought.

It was during that period that that Mr. Coors became a political totem for the left as well, as labor and liberal groups organized a beer boycott that lasted well into the 1980's.

"My sense is that they've tried to package Pete as Coors light — that he's a Coors, but not like his parents with the Heritage Foundation and the hard-right crowd," said Chris Gates, the state Democratic chairman.

Mr. Coors's campaign manager, Sean Tonner, said his candidate's political views were in fact quite similar to those of his father, but with one major difference.

"Pete always realizes there needs to be compromise in order to move forward," Mr. Tonner said. "He's very much his own man."

Dan Baum, a journalist and author who has closely studied the Coors family, said he thought Mr. Coors's biggest problem could be the rigidly hierarchical, publicity-shy traditions that for generations have dictated how members of the Coors family are expected to behave.

"He's the least-suited person I can think of to endure a campaign," said Mr. Baum, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of "Citizen Coors — A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics and Beer" (HarperCollins, 2000). "Like everybody else in the family, he's incredibly private and very thin-skinned."

But he is also unquestionably familiar. For years, he has been his company's spokesman on television commercials, extolling the virtues of clean water or responsible drinking. The beer commercials featuring Mr. Coors stopped running in Colorado the day before his Senate announcement, a campaign spokesman said, but will continue to run outside the state.

"hanging over"?

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NEXT TIME THEY CAN CHORUS LINE KICK INTO PARIS (via David Hill, The Bronx):

Germany to allow privates on parade (Kate Connolly, 22/04/2004, Daily Telegraph)

German soldiers who are in relationships with each other will be able to sleep together in barracks and on foreign missions.

Peter Struck, the defence minister, said the new guidelines applied to homosexual as well as heterosexual couples. They were necessary to reflect "social normality".

Until now, sex between married or cohabiting servicemen has been forbidden in barracks and on operations at home and abroad.

The change was announced after protests from several Social Democrat MPs who said that the ban on cohabitation in barracks was putting women off becoming soldiers.

There was also growing criticism in military circles that the ban on sexual relations, which was imposed to safeguard order and discipline, was "hostile to life".

Well, had the policy been in effect ninety years ago there would never have been a Third Reich.

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KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Radical Cleric Is Unwanted by His Neighbors (ABDUL RAZZAQ AL-SAEIDY and EDWARD WONG, 4/24/04, NY Times)

The black-turbaned imam sounded ready for martyrdom.

Standing in the courtyard of the golden-domed Shrine of Ali on Friday, staring at 2,500 worshipers seated on rugs, the imam, Sadr al-Din al-Kubanchi, hurled words as sharp as scimitars at the army that had invaded this holy city.

But the soldiers he denounced were not Americans but members of the ragtag Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army. Dozens of them, bristling with Kalashnikovs and grenade belts, surrounded the shrine even as Mr. Kubanchi spoke.

They and their young spiritual leader, Moktada al-Sadr, had brought their war with the Americans to Najaf nearly three weeks ago, when they retreated here after a short-lived revolt against the occupation forces. More than 2,500 American soldiers have encircled the city in an attempt to flush out Mr. Sadr — and the residents here are caught in the middle.

"It's not brave to take refuge in the house or the mosque or the markets and use women and children as human shields," Mr. Kubanchi said of the Mahdi Army. "They are people who are trying to cheat you, and they are people from the regime of Saddam Hussein, former intelligence officers. They want to drag you into battle to be destroyed. If that happens, the soldiers will attack Najaf, and our enemies will happily see our blood flow."

The standoff in Najaf has turned into a showdown between the clerics of the city and Mr. Sadr, as the religious and tribal leaders here try to nudge their unwanted neighbor out of town.

They are men of the book rather than of the bullet, so they are seeking to pry Mr. Sadr loose through their powers of rhetoric.

They know that the hopes of a majority of Shiites of overcoming the long-running domination of Sunni Muslims rest with the success of the Americans' efforts to establish a largely democratic Iraq. They know, as well, that by advocating armed rebellion, Mr. Sadr's forces play into the hands of the violent Iraqi insurgents who seek to drive the United States out and reassert Sunni dominance.

Gingerly, since Mr. Sadr now runs the city, they have handed out flyers and given speeches urging the Mahdi Army to take its fight elsewhere. They have done so while their mosques and homes are surrounded by undisciplined militiamen.

The bad behavior of one rather minor cleric has been one of the most misreported stories to come out of an Iraq where the Shi'ites remain our de facto allies.

The Sunni are not, U.S. Issues Blunt Warning to Besieged Falluja Rebels: American authorities warned that if the insurgents did not lay down their arms, U.S. soldiers would attack within days. (IAN FISHER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 4/24/04, NY Times)

The American authorities increased the pressure on besieged insurgents in the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Falluja on Friday with a series of blunt warnings that if they did not lay down their arms, United States soldiers would attack within days.

A senior Bush administration official in Washington said that although a decision had not been made to attack pending a final round of negotiations, "there isn't much time left." He said the administration felt a sense of urgency because the insurgents had turned over only outdated weapons and because Falluja faced an imminent human crisis, with residents in dire need of food and medicine.

"Our patience is not eternal," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief spokesman for the American-led military command in Baghdad.

Crush Fallujah, spare Najaf.

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50-0

Sniffing out the reasons for Kerry's April slide (David Broder, 4/24/04, Washington Post

If you watched Kerry on "Meet the Press," you saw many examples of dodginess on his part. At the very start, moderator Tim Russert asked for a "yes or no answer" to the question, "Do you believe the war in Iraq was a mistake?" Kerry's response was: "I think the way the president went to war was a mistake." By restating the question, he left the fundamental issue unanswered.

Over the course of the hour, Kerry struggled to explain why he had once (decades ago) advocated placing U.S. forces under the direction of the United Nations, why he had said in 2000 that America's effort to isolate Cuba was a "frozen, stalemated, unproductive policy," why he had voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein and why he now criticizes that policy after promising he would not do so "once the shooting starts."

This is not a new problem for Kerry. As Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish, Brian Mooney and Nina Easton write in their newly published biography of the senator, despite instances where Kerry showed himself "a lawmaker willing to stand up to prevailing political winds ... he is trailed by a reputation for political opportunism. ... Unlike many who are driven to succeed in public life by a core belief system, the arc of Kerry's political career is defined by a restless search for the issues, individuals and causes to fulfill a nearly lifelong ambition" for the White House.

The election is still six months away. But Kerry's reputation has been built over 40 years. And the voters seem to be sniffing it out.

April 24: Broder bails.

MORE:
-Kerry's 1971 testimony on Vietnam reverberates: Vivid words alleged atrocities by soldiers (Candy Crowley, 4/23/04, CNN)

"I think the way I characterized it at that time was mostly the voice of a young, angry person who wanted to end the war," Kerry told CNN's Candy Crowley in an interview broadcast on Thursday's anniversary of his Senate testimony.

"I regret any feeling that anybody had that I somehow didn't embrace the quality of the service. But I have always said how nobly I think every veteran served."

The senator concedes he wouldn't say the same things in the same way today, that talk of "atrocities" back then was over the top. Yet, he insists he's still proud he stood up against the war. While he has regret for the words he chose, he defends the legitimacy of the sentiment he so starkly articulated.

"They were honest expressions of the passion that we brought to the cause," said Kerry. "I'm older, I'm wiser. I'm farther from it. But they were the words that came out of my gut at that time, based on the anger and frustration that I felt back when it was happening."

He also told Crowley, "I'm not going to back down one inch on what I've fought for and what I've stood for all of these years."

Such qualified regret doesn't go far enough for some Vietnam veterans, who can't forgive the stigma they still see attached to those long-ago words.

A bigger problem even than the despicable things he said and did is that so few believe that's how he really felt. Being anti-war was just good politics in MA so he was.
-Kerry Role in Antiwar Veterans Is Delicate Issue in His Campaign: Senator John Kerry's antiwar past, after he returned from five months of combat in Vietnam, is coming under new scrutiny. (DAVID M. HALBFINGER, 4/24/04, NY Times)

When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action.

It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years ago to re-examine their hazy memories while assuring them that Mr. Kerry was sure he had not been there.

John Musgrave, a disabled ex-marine from Baldwin City, Kan., who told The Kansas City Star that Mr. Kerry was at the meeting, said he got a call from John Hurley, the Kerry campaign's veterans coordinator.

"He said, `I'd like you to refresh your memory,' " Mr. Musgrave, 55, recounted in an interview, confirming an account he had given to The New York Sun. "He said it twice. `And call that reporter back and say you were mistaken about John Kerry being there.' "

Such little-noticed moments in Mr. Kerry's past — including his decision at age 26 to meet the Vietcong emissaries to the Paris peace talks — are coming under new scrutiny now, as Mr. Kerry finally makes the presidential run that his comrades in arms, and in the antiwar movement, half-mockingly predicted decades ago.

In an interview about his antiwar activities, Mr. Kerry said that he knew nothing of attempts by his campaign to tinker with the past and that he disapproved.

As the old saw goes: those who are on the wrong side of history are condemned to rewrite it.

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YEAH, BUT WHO'D GO WHEN WE ALREADY HAVE EPCOT?:

Europe to become Giant Theme Park! (www.weeklyworldnews.com, April 24, 2004)

Member nations of the European Union have announced plans to discontinue their status as individual countries in order to merge into one giant theme park!

The new park will be called EuroWorld and will cover the entire continent of what is now known as Europe. The decision was made by the EU countries in response to their collective realization that no one in Europe has had an innovative idea in well over a century.

With nothing new to offer visitors, the European countries decided to stop pretending they were still relevant, and to start celebrating their colorful pasts.

"Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades," explains an unnamed EU representative. "Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality."

Each country will now be an exhibit within the park. For example, what was once known as Germany will now be the Germanland exhibit. Only traditional German foods such as bratwurst, sauerkraut and beer will be permitted in Germanland.

The citizens of each European country will now be considered "Euro hosts." The Euro hosts will be required to dress in traditional ethnic outfits from their respective homelands to better entertain visitors.

Thus, Germans must wear lederhosen at all times, Scots must wear kilts, and so forth.

"It's better this way. I remember vacationing a few years ago in Holland and nobody was wearing wooden shoes. And very few of them lived in windmills. I was outraged and demanded my money back from my travel agent," comments sociologist Alan Kennedy, a consultant to the EU for the theme park initiative.

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THEY'LL GET THEIRS:

The outsiders (The Age, April 19, 2004)

[T]he reality is that Europe's estimated 12.5 million Muslims are feeling less welcome in the countries that once provided shelter, jobs and the chance of a better future. A continent that once exported its ideas of freedom and democracy to the world is now, Muslims say, showing it how to quietly victimise its own citizens. "When I go on the Metro with my headscarf on, people stare at me," says Leila Horr, a 17-year-old Paris high school student. "The big controversy about the veil is creating more problems than there were before. It's creating a gulf between the community and the rest of France."

But the veil, which will be banned from state schools in France from September, is not the only ideological flashpoint. Other hot issues include asylum, immigration, racism and crime -- all driving a wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims and, even within the Islamic community whose members come from a range of practices, traditions and cultures.

Many Muslims are, for the first time, facing a clear choice of becoming either less integrated -- and more ghettoised -- or standing up and demanding their rights. A warped minority is making a further choice: to join the worldwide jihad against the West, in its own backyard. They grab the headlines as the war on terror rages across Paris, London, Rome and countless other European cities and towns; the vast majority quietly fume, abide by the law and pray for deliverance.

In The Hague, where almost half of inner-city residents are Muslim, Arif Potmis, 42, an adviser to the local Islamic organisation, sees his community being made to feel like second-class citizens. A moderate man by nature and political inclination, he spends his days talking to younger Muslims about the need to engage with the broader Dutch society rather than look inwards and to radicalised versions of Islamic teaching. Potmis doesn't readily buy into conspiracy theories, but concedes it is hard to win the argument when Muslims are denied access to city facilities (and Jewish groups aren't) as happened at the end of last year's Ramadan.

It seems unlikely that the Decline and Fall of Europe will produce a Gibbon, though it will warrant one.

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A PARTY FROZEN IN AMBER:

What the Right Does Right: I may not agree with all their values, but at least they have them. (Knute Berger, 4/24/04, Seattle Weekly)

Virtually all of our most powerful elective leaders—Democrat and Republican alike—supported the recent multibillion-dollar Boeing giveaway. Of the major candidates for governor, only Democrat Phil Talmadge has come out swinging against the Boeing deal. But it’s interesting to me that the major player in Olympia demanding accountability was Bob Williams and his conservative government watchdog group, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. It led the way in getting the state to more fully disclose what we taxpayers are on the hook for, and how the deal came together. While I may not agree with the free-market philosophy of this group, their insistence on disclosure was a public service. And their doggedness grew out of a long-standing skepticism about public spending, tax policy, and the fundamental honesty of government—skepticism that is not misplaced and ought to be thoroughly bipartisan.

Education is another arena where conservatives are helping push the envelope. My children—both doing well in college—were homeschooled after grade school. That kind of education might not have been possible in this state were it not for the Christian right’s activism in getting our homeschooling laws liberalized and helping citizens regain the right to educate their own children. For that, I am grateful. The far right has also been active in fighting the proliferation of drugs like Ritalin in public schools. We’ve turned our schools into medicine cabinets, a trend that is symptomatic of an increasingly pharmacologically dependent society where drugs are prescribed by authority figures to regulate behavior in controlled settings (getting us ready for the chronic depression induced by the typical workplace, no doubt). One of the leading crusaders against the drugging of America’s youth has been cultural conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly. More recently, conservatives have helped to keep the pressure on for charter schools that, I believe, have the potential to demonstrate important reforms for the rest of public edu-cation. Instead of fighting them, the state’s teachers ought to be embracing charters and the kinds of freedom, energy, and experimentation they represent. Their resistance is a result, I think, of the fact that they, too, are victims of a sick system.

Such grudging admiration is largely a function of how reactionary the American Left is become. All of the energy and ideas for improving American life now come from the Right, while the Left has nothing to say but: "Let's keep doing what we're doing but spend more money on it."

MORE:
ALL QUIET ON THE HOME FRONT: The Democrats' focus on appearing 'electable' has
stopped them from winning arguments. (Alex Gourevitch, 4/22/04, sp!ked-politics)

principled consistency is out of temper with contemporary politics. Immediately after Dean's so-called screaming fit in the Iowa caucuses, his electoral fortunes took a turn for the worse. It seems that what he was really punished for was appearing to care enough about an issue to look like a zealot. In an odd way, Dean shares with Bush what seems to disconcert a lot of people: they are both accused of coming across as 'fundamentalists'. Bush has been criticised for being a 'crusader' or, as Kerry and many Democrats put it, 'arrogant'.

While people may find the Kerry's placid and empathetic style of politics more comforting, it is also a self-constraining and apolitical approach. (Even the 'Anybody But Bush' opposition has been criticised for appearing to express 'hatred' rather than the ostensibly more acceptable 'dislike'.)
When political passion is considered pathological, it is impossible to sustain a real political debate. After all, there is nothing reassuring or pleasing about principled politics - in opposition or otherwise. Moreover, masking true opinions behind a politically correct style means that even when you are right, you cannot take advantage of it. The more contemporary politicians line up behind today's 'anti-fundamentalist' ethos, the more difficult it is to know where they stand.

The irony is, what seems to be a strategy for making Kerry 'electable' prevents him from developing any coherent and consistent critique of Bush, or fully exploiting the many openings Bush's hapless presidency has left. That Bush felt the need to hold only the third press conference of his entire presidency last week was a clear sign that the administration knows something is amiss, and feels a need to try and reassure the public. Despite a poor performance, the tactic may have worked, if for no other reason than that it exposed once again the fact that the opposition had no meaningful alternative around which a public debate could polarise. After a month of chaos in Iraq, the opposition should have more to say about the current situation than that Bush is arrogant.

Nor can Kerry justify his strategy by hiding behind public fear and caution. Political leaders are supposed to do just that - lead. Appealing to the public's powers of reason and respect for principle by arguing steadfastly for one's own position would surely be more attractive than a campaign carefully tailored not to offend anybody. And people respond to what's put before them.

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MURKY?:

From the Murky Depths: Fathoming the lasting appeal of Saint-Exupéry and "The Little Prince." (BENJAMIN IVRY, April 15, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

Sampling the readers' opinions of his books on amazon.com, one finds admirers hardly less passionate and devout than readers of the Bible and "Das Kapital." After all, the story of a Little Prince from another planet who enlightens a downed pilot about the real meaning of life is in the domain of spiritual philosophy, however blatantly expressed, belying "The Little Prince's" perplexing reputation as a book for children.

Saint-Exupéry's popularity is based on swimmingly vague musings like the ones above, and most elements of his life remain vague as well. We may never know just why his plane crashed, and theories ranging from suicide to accident remain equally plausible. Even biographical facts are oddly insubstantial, like a broken engagement with the French writer Louise de Vilmorin, described as enchantingly irresistible by biographers. Never mind that Evelyn Waugh, who knew de Vilmorin well, described her in a letter to Nancy Mitford as "an egocentric maniac with the eyes of a witch. She is the spirit of France. How I hate the French." To which Ms. Mitford replied, "Oh how glad I am you feel this about Lulu--I can't sit in a room with her she makes me so nervous."

The Little Prince couldn't be a more straightforward Christian allegory.

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AN ALTERNATIVE CREATION MYTH:

Why is Evolution Believed in More Firmly than the Evidence Warrants? (J. P. Moreland, April 2004, Boundless)

[S]cientific naturalism includes three claims. First, scientific knowledge is vastly superior to all other forms of knowledge. Second, the scientifically authorized story of how all things came about revolves around the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary theory. According to the atomic theory of matter, all chemical change is the result of the rearrangement of tiny little parts — protons, neutrons and electrons. According to evolutionary theory, random mutations are largely responsible for providing an organism with a change in characteristics; some of those changes provide the organism with a survival advantage over other members of its species; as a result, the organism’s new traits eventually become the norm for all members of the species. The important thing about naturalism’s second claim is that its creation story is a purely mechanical, physical story with no need or room for miraculous divine activity. Third, the picture of reality that results from this creation story (which is, in turn, the only story alleged to have the support of scientific ways of knowing) is physicalism: the belief that the physical, material cosmos is all there is, was or ever will be.

It is important to note the relationship between these three claims: Most naturalists believe that the physical cosmos is all there is, was or ever will be because their creation story allows no room for miraculous divine activity. And most naturalists believe in a creation story with no room for divine activity because (a) their theory of knowledge says that it’s irrational to believe in things that can’t be tested scientifically with the five senses, and (b) because they believe that divine activity can’t be so tested. Thus most naturalists believe Claim Three because they believe Claim Two, and they believe Claim Two because they believe Claim One.

Curiously, naturalism’s theory of knowledge (i.e., Claim One, according to which a belief is rational only if it is scientifically testable) is not itself scientifically testable. Thus the naturalist’s theory of knowledge fails to pass its own standard of acceptability and refutes itself. But this leaves many naturalists without any basis for believing Claim Two and, therefore, without any basis for believing Claim Three either.

With this background in mind, let us recall that our present question is not about the scientific evidence for evolution. I think this evidence is quite meager. In any case, even if we grant (for the sake of argument) that there is a decent amount of evidence for evolution, the degree of certainty claimed on its behalf and the widespread negative attitude toward creationists are quite beyond what is warranted by the evidence alone. What is going on here? [...]

Evolution functions as a myth for secularists. By “myth” I do not mean something false (though I believe evolution to be that) but, rather, a story of who we are and how we got here that serves as a guide for life. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins said that evolution made the world safe for atheists because it supposedly did away with the design argument for God’s existence. In graduate school, I once had a professor say that evolution was a view he embraced religiously because it implied for him that he could do anything he wanted. Why? Given that there is no God and that evolution is how we got here, there is no set purpose for life, no objective right and wrong, no punishment after death, so one can live for himself in this life anyway he wants. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer made the same statement on national TV. Dahmer said that naturalistic evolution implied that we all came from slime and will return to slime. So why should he resist deeply felt tendencies to kill, given that we have no objective purpose or value and there is no punishment after death? I am not here arguing that secularists cannot find grounds for objective purpose and value in their naturalistic worldview, though I believe that to be the case. I am simply pointing out that evolution functions as an egoistic myth for many intellectuals who have absolutized freedom, understood as the right to do anything one wants. Philosophical naturalists want evolution to be true because it provides justification for their lifestyle choices.

You can hardly begrudge people the need for a religious myth--we all share that. The problem is the indecent purposes to which they seek to put theirs.

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50-0:

First-quarter GDP another scorcher (Rex Nutting, April 23, 2004, CBS.MarketWatch.com)

For the third quarter in a row, U.S. economic growth has exceeded all expectations.

Following a blowout third quarter and a very strong fourth quarter, most economists expected the economy to pause just a bit in the first three months of 2004.

Instead, growth apparently accelerated, boosted by consumer spending, business investment, housing and inventory stocking.

The first estimate of first-quarter growth will be released by the Commerce Department on Thursday morning. The report is the highlight of another fairly busy week on the economic calendar.

Economists surveyed by CBS MarketWatch expect, on average, annualized growth of 5 percent in the first quarter after 4.1 percent growth in the fourth quarter and 8.2 percent in the third.

It would be the first time in 10 years that growth exceeded 4 percent for three straight quarters.

Harold Stassen could win this election for the GOP.

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SOMETHING THERE IS IN THE WORKPLACE THAT DOES LOVE A WALL:

'IT'S STIFLING, THAT FEELING OF FALSENESS': Ricky Gervais talks to Ed Barrett about The Office and offices. (Ed Barrett, 4/22/04, sp!ked-culture)

One striking thing about the paper merchants in The Office is that nobody actually mentions paper, unless the subject is unavoidable. 'Nobody cares!' laughs Gervais. 'You never talk about the product, or how proud you are of your work, you talk about people: "You'll never believe what that Pete Gibbons said to me last night - idiot!" or "So-and-so's got a pay rise!".'

Although offices are changing, they are still places where people of different types and ages are thrown together - unlike pubs and other institutions, which are becoming increasingly segmented. [...]

Even the open-plan office itself, that symbol of openness and team-building has been divided up into personal territories, each customised with pictures, novelty mouse mats, charity stick-bugs, trinkets and, of course, ersatz barriers like the wall of box files that is erected between desks in one episode of The Office. 'I'm not an anthropologist or sociologist', admits Gervais, 'but I don't think open plan offices are natural. I imagine that the first thing you do when you're thrown together with 30 people that you might not care for, is build a wall.'

Gervais was drawn to the subject of offices by precisely this random - and frankly misanthropic - way in which they draw together people of different ages who have nothing in common. Yet for all their personal quirks, there is something instantly recognisable about the dramatis personae of The Office. This is entirely intentional, as they were deliberately typecast. ('It was a case of: "You know those type of people that...."') [...]

Mustn't grumble. That's an order, by the way - the great unwritten rule of office life. Criticise the job too much and, by implication, you criticise your colleagues as well. Complaint may be expressed only in coded form, via the strained jocularity of the novelty sign or the humorous email circular with its jokey complaints about the drinks machine that's never fixed or the ever-diminishing lunch 'hour'. Timid, cringing, and, let's face it, pathetic.

There's nothing wrong with having a laugh, but this isn't really a laugh at all. 'It's stifling, that feeling of claustrophobia and falseness', muses Gervais. 'When they start teaching people how to enjoy life, there's something a little bit odd about that.' And official fun invariably has a coercive element, as Brent's laugh-a-minute tyranny shows. It reminds everyone who's in charge. Jokes are barbed with references to lateness, or light-hearted threats of the sack. It can go further, with the management-led pillorying of those deemed not to be pulling their weight through 'Wally of the Week' boards, dunce's hats and 'humorous' forfeits.

Joking can be a serious matter. In one episode of The Office, a full-scale investigation is launched when a pornographic picture featuring David Brent is emailed around the office. No wonder he is careful to point out that his officially sanctioned material is kosher. ('"Does my bum look big in this?"' he chuckles, reading a cartoon on the wall: 'It's OK, it's not sexist - it's the bloke saying it.') Politically correct codes of conduct keep everyone walking on eggshells: anyone could take offence at anything, and someone usually does. And when they do, there's no sorting it out between yourselves: it's straight off to personnel for an official warning.

Seemingly reliable folks who've seen it swear it's funny.

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ME U:

Blair's EU-turn: British politics all at sea (Mick Hume, 4/21/04, Spiked)

This surprising and messy turn of events reveals something about the true state of contemporary political life. Without the sort of anchors that can be provided by principled beliefs and ideologies, politics seems to have become a more arbitrary affair - unpredictable, unstable, adrift and out of control.

The European debate in Britain has always been shaped more by domestic political concerns than by the details of what goes on in the smokeless committee rooms of the EU. Thus the Tory Party's very public divisions over Europe in the 1980s and 90s were not principally about the European treaties and exchange rate mechanisms on which they focused. The underlying tensions had far more to do with the advancing identity crisis of traditional Toryism. In a similar vein, the current chaotic debate over Europe says rather less about the obscure provisions of a draft EU document than it does about the crisis of authority afflicting the British government and the political system.

The Cabinet's flip-flop on the referendum reveals the profound insecurity of the rudderless New Labour 'project' today. Terrified of being exposed as 'out of touch' with the public, an isolated political elite has buckled once again under a bit of pressure from sections of the media (not from any popular movement). That this is due more to a loss of nerve than a change of heart was clear to anybody watching Blair in parliament. He stumbled and bumbled his way through arguing the case for a referendum that neither he nor many close supporters wants, so shaken that he was unable even to bring himself to use the 'r' word.

The move to support a referendum also looks like a typically nervous New Labour twitch: announcing a 'decision', in order to put off doing anything decisive. It is clear that Blair wants any referendum postponed until after the next general election, effectively kicking it into the long grass while he seeks re-election. Expect a drawn-out process of announcements, consultations, proposals and, possibly, judicial hearings before anything actually happens.

The Tories appear cock-a-hoop at the sight of Blair's discomfort. Yet they too must be concerned at how the European campaign could expose the extent to which they remain tied to their discredited past. There would be no automatic gain for the Tories from an anti-European vote that was based on a general cynicism about political institutions. It was not so long ago, remember, that campaigners against Britain adopting the euro decided to distance their cause from the Conservatives, because the link was costing them support.

We are left with a situation where the only certainty is that anything could happen - although the paralysis of our fearful politicians means that nothing frequently does. (We can also be pretty sure that the EU constitution debate is not about to spark a popular revolution.) The arbitrary character of politics today stems from the lack of any clear divide between alternative visions of society, the absence of defining principles on all sides. Even on Europe, there is a far narrower political division today than during the referendum of 30 years ago, when the public and the political class were split over the fundamental issue of whether Britain should join the European Community at all. That is why a prime minister who laughably claims to be a 'conviction politician' can switch his convictions on an issue like this apparently overnight, without even acknowledging that he has done so.

To see where an arbitrary system of politics can end up, look to Spain. The recent shock election result, in which the ruling Popular Party (PP) was beaten by the unfancied Socialists, was shaped by immediate reactions to the Madrid bombings. But it also revealed the broader problem of fickle, knee-jerk politics in which 'loyalties' are based on little more than an emotional spasm.

For the first time that I can recall, a major Western nation elected a government that even the voters did not think was the best bet to run the country. The Socialists were not elected because of their policies, or even because of the policies of the PP government. They won because people were angry with the government over the bombings of just a few days earlier. If the elections had been held a week later, the results may well have been different. That is no way to run a political contest, or a country.

In a Europe that no longer has any core values, what are you left with but your self and your emotions?

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VICTORIAN WITH A HORN:

A Face of Armstrong, but Not the Image (TERRY TEACHOUT, JUL 29, 2001, NY Times)

Granted that serious jazz scholarship is a comparatively young field, it is still decidedly odd that so many scholars and critics have been so slow -- if not positively reluctant -- to grapple with the sometimes uncomfortable implications of what Armstrong wrote about his life and work, which does not always mesh neatly with his good- humored public image. One who has done so is Dan Morgenstern, who wrote the introduction to the 1986 paperback reissue of "Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans." In it he shrewdly observed that while Armstrong "doesn't pass judgment on the `gamblers, hustlers, cheap pimps, thieves [and] prostitutes' among whom he was raised, it is clear throughout this book that his values, from a very early age on, differ from theirs."

"He was different from most of them, and the key difference was character," Mr. Morgenstern wrote.

Again, most people know in a general way that Armstrong grew up poor, but the devil is in the details. He was the illegitimate son of a 15-year- old part-time prostitute from the poorest quarter of New Orleans, abandoned at birth by his natural father and sentenced at the age of 11 to the Colored Waif's Home, an orphanage-like reform school, for the crime of firing a revolver into the air to celebrate the Fourth of July. It was the first time his name appeared in print, and by all rights it should have been the last, save perhaps for a final entry on a police blotter; instead, he wrote himself indelibly into the history of Western music. Yet his genius alone was not powerful enough to pull him out of the gutter. That took something more, and he knew it.

Why did Armstrong spend so much of his spare time hunched over a typewriter? Partly because he was a gregarious soul who loved to send letters to his friends, but also because he thought he had important things to say. Armstrong's autobiographical writings "can be seen as a series of moral lessons," Mr. Bergreen argues, and, like Mr. Morgenstern, he got it right on the nose. Armstrong wanted to teach his fellow men a lesson, which can be summed up in six words: You get what you work for. Having been born desperately poor, he worked desperately hard, first as a boy and then as a man. In this respect, he had much in common with Ragged Dick, Horatio Alger's plucky bootblack, whose burning desire to "grow up 'spectable" propelled him into the ranks of the middle class. Self-discipline, self- improvement, self-reliance: these were Armstrong's lifelong watchwords, and no Alger hero could have improved on his iron determination to get ahead in the world. Once he did so, he felt an obligation to tell others how to do the same thing.

"I don't want anyone to feel I'm posing as a plaster saint," he wrote in "Satchmo." "Like everyone I have my faults, but I always have believed in making an honest living. I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so."

This aspect of Armstrong is no longer fashionable, to put it mildly, and even in his lifetime, long before the 19th-century work ethic of individual responsibility and deferred gratification had become politically controversial, progressive-minded intellectuals were starting to have trouble with it. Around the time that Armstrong was sent to the Colored Waif's Home, George Bernard Shaw was writing "Pygmalion," in which Eliza Doolittle's father savagely mocks the accepted distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor:

"I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more . . . What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything."

A true child of his time, Armstrong would have found such talk absurd at best, pernicious at worst. He smoked marijuana every day and cheated happily on all four of his wives, but when it came to poverty, he was a perfect Victorian, certain that work was the only path to salvation and that those unwilling to follow it earned their dire fate. "The Negroes always wanted pity," he recalled in his 1969 reminiscence of life in New Orleans. "They did that in place of going to work . . . they were in an alley or in the street corner shooting dice for nickels and dimes, etc. (mere pittances) trying to win the little money from his Soul Brothers who might be gambling off the money [they] should take home to feed their starving children or pay their small rents, or very important needs, etc." The note of anger -- of contempt -- is unmistakable.

In a recent review of "Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words" and "The Louis Armstrong Companion," Brian Harker, an assistant professor of music at Brigham Young University, remarked that Armstrong was "a product of turn-of-the-century African-American ideology, especially that of Booker T. Washington."

"Like Washington," Mr. Harker added, "Armstrong was an accommodationist, determined to play -- and win -- by the rules of the white majority." This is true as far as it goes, but it overlooks the fact that most jazz musicians, black and white alike, come from middle-class backgrounds, while most of those who are born poor strive mightily -- and more often than not successfully -- to join the ranks of the middle class. Anyone who doubts that Armstrong filled the latter bill need only visit his home, some seven blocks from Shea Stadium in a shabby but respectable part of Queens. (It will open as a museum in 2003.) It is a modest three-story frame house whose elaborate interior is uncannily reminiscent of Graceland, Elvis Presley's gaudy Memphis mansion. From the Jetsons-style kitchen-of-the-future to the silver wallpaper and golden faucets of the master bathroom, the Armstrong house looks exactly like what it is: the residence of a poor Southern boy who grew up and made good.

Unlike Graceland, though, it is neither oppressive nor embarrassing. As one stands in Armstrong's smallish study (whose decorations include, among other things, a portrait of the trumpeter painted by Tony Bennett), it is impossible not to be touched to the heart by the aspiration that is visible wherever you look. This, you sense, was the home of a working man, one bursting with a pride that came not from what he had but from what he did. "I never want to be anything more than I am, what I don't have I don't need," Armstrong wrote. Referring to his fourth wife, he added, "My home with Lucille is good, but you don't see me in no big estates and yachts, that ain't gonna play your horn for you. When the guys come from taking a walk around the estate they ain't got no breath to blow that horn." Is it any wonder that it enraged him to be branded an Uncle Tom? As far as he was concerned, working hard was not "acting white": it was acting human.

A writer misuses the great Louis Armstrong (Stanley Crouch, August 3, 2001, J ewish World Review)

LOUIS ARMSTRONG was perhaps the greatest single innovator in the history of original American music, but he was often dismissed as an exploited Uncle Tom because of his equal emphasis on art and entertainment.

But Armstrong was never exploited in such a brazen manner as he was by Terry Teachout in Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section. By stressing Armstrong's belief in "self-discipline, self-improvement, self-reliance," and through the selective use of quotes, Teachout sets Armstrong in conflict with his own people. He makes him appear to be a Negro-hating Negro.

Bitter Armstrong letters are quoted from 1969, when black power had subverted the civil rights movement and people of his generation were being dismissed or insulted.

Teachout ignores this context and gives the impression that Armstrong hated his own ethnic group. But Teachout is after more than name-calling. His point is that the problems experienced by black people were not attributable to racism, institutional and otherwise. No, their unwillingness to work hard or take responsibility for their fates or to help the ambitious among them is why those destined to succeed must count on the kindness of white people.

Did Mr. Crouch even read the column in question?

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SURE, I DISOBEY GOD, BUT I'LL BE FAITHFUL TO YOU...(via John Resnick):

Kerry: Religion Shouldn't Mix With Politics (NEDRA PICKLER, 4/23/04, AP)

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign said Friday that religion should not be an issue in U.S. politics after a top Vatican official said Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied Communion.

Cardinal Francis Arinze would not comment on whether it was right to give Communion to Kerry, who is Catholic and supports abortion rights. Arinze spoke to reporters Friday while issuing a Vatican directive, commissioned by Pope John Paul II, that clamps down on liturgical abuses in Mass. The 71-page document does not address the question of pro-choice politicians, an issue reporters raised with the cardinal.

When asked in general about "unambiguously pro-abortion" Catholic politicians, Arinze said such a politician "is not fit" to receive Communion. "If they should not receive, then they should not be given," he said.

Kerry spokesman David Wade would not respond directly to Arinze, but he reiterated Kerry's position on the separation of church and state that "helped make religious affiliation a nonissue in American politics."

"The decisions he will make as president will be guided by his obligation to all the people of our country and to the Constitution of the United States," Wade said in the statement. "Every American - whether they be Jewish, Catholic, Protestant or any other faith - must believe their president is representing them."

If he'll violate his obligation to the tenets of his religion for political convenience then why would he trust anything he says to us?

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1400 YEARS OF ENMITY AND THEY THINK IT'S ABOUT US?:

Basra arrest bolsters revenge theory: Evidence suggests homegrown terrorists - not al-Qaida - carried out bombings in response to attack on Falluja (Luke Harding and Mohammad Haider, April 23, 2004, The Guardian)

An Iraqi suspected of involvement in Wednesday's devastating bomb attacks in Basra came from the Sunni city of Falluja, Iraqi officials said yesterday, suggesting that the blasts may not have been the work of al-Qaida but an act of revenge for the US's brutal offensive in the city.

According to British officials, Basra's governor, Wael Abdullatif, told colleagues on Wednesday night that an Iraqi caught running away from the scene of one of the explosions had travelled to southern Iraq from Falluja.

He was detained outside the police academy in Zubayr, 15 miles south of Basra, which was the scene of two of Wednesday's car bomb attacks.

As the death toll from the explosions rose to 74 yesterday, with 160 injured, Mr Abdullatif said the Iraqi authorities were pursuing several leads and expected to make more arrests shortly.

He gave no further details of the man in custody, but Iraqi officials said "seven or eight" Iraqis from the mainly Sunni town of Zubayr had been killed in the US military's offensive against Falluja.

It appears to be entirely predictable Sunni violence directed at Shi'ites, having little or nothing to do with the U.S., except that we're delaying the final conflict between the two groups.

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WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

Musharraf whipping Pakistan into (US) line (Syed Saleem Shahzad, 4/22/04, Asia Times)

[M]usharraf will retain his grip at the helm, and will continue in reshaping Pakistan-Afghanistan and Pakistan-Indian relations in line with US interests.

To achieve this, Musharraf will have to win over large sections of the grass-root electorate. Already, the powerful rural base of Punjab (the largest province) , which used to be the source of power of the ruling PML - Nawaz group, has been won over to the PML - Quaid-i-Azam group, a pro-Musharraf party. The remaining power pillars of Punjab and North West Frontier Province are dominated by the Pakistan People's Party led by former premier Benazir Bhutto, now organized under the Patroit group and the Sherpao group, both pro-Musharraf parties. All independent "feudal lords" who once dominated national politics, like former president Farooq Laghari and former interim prime minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, have been united under the National Alliance, a pro-Musharraf group. And all these will be gathered under the umbrella of the PML, whose leadership will eventually go to Musharraf. [...]

Analysts also believe that in the coming months there will be more army reshuffles to flush out those who cling to traditional beliefs - such as anti-India and pro-Taliban.

If all of these changes are effected, Pakistan could be in a position to strongly continue on its present course of appeasement with India, and a serious clampdown on radicals, even if Musharraf is not at the helm.

The funny thing is how many in the West are in denial about the General.

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FOOTBALL HERO (via Matthew Cohen):

Tillman killed while serving as Army Ranger (ESPN.com news services, 4/23/04)

Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan after walking away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army Rangers, U.S. officials said Friday.

He was 27.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a formal announcement was expected later in the day. Spokesmen at the Pentagon and U.S. Army declined comment.

Tillman was killed in direct action during a firefight in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, Pentagon sources told ABCNEWS.

A Pentagon source said that Tillman was killed when his Rangers patrol was attacked by small arms fire and mortars during a coordinated ambush.

Two U.S. soldiers were wounded and one enemy combatant was killed during the ambush. Tillman was the only U.S. soldier killed, Pentagon sources told ABCNEWS. His brother Kevin is in the same platoon.

Pat Tillman's battalion was involved in "Operation Mountain Storm," part of the U.S. campaign against Taliban and al-Qaida groups along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, military officials said.

Just reading Rick Atkinson's new book on the Iraq War and he refers to Michael Kelly's death as senseless. Jackass.

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BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME:

For Kim and North Korea, a sign of mortality (David Scofield, 4/24/04, Asia Times)

Disaster of enormous but still unknown proportions struck North Korea nine hours after Kim Jong-il's heavily guarded train re-entered the Hermit Kingdom and passed through Ryongchon station, 20 kilometers south of the Chinese border. The Dear Leader had returned from "secret" talks with China on defusing the Pyongyang nuclear crisis, gradually giving up his weapons of mass destruction in exchange for massive economic and food aid, clean energy and a better life for his people. The outcome of the talks was not known.

Then, it happened: Two trains (some say a train and a truck) laden with fuel, oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) collided and exploded. First reports said as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured in the densely populated town. The Red Cross later said at least 54 were killed and more than 1,200 injured - the full scope of the disaster was yet to emerge. As of Friday afternoon, North Korean officials had not acknowledged the tragedy, and international phone services had been cut, making it difficult to gather information. 

Speculation abounds, but none has been verified. Some suggest the explosions were intended to kill Kim but were badly timed - South Korean experts dismiss that speculation.

having left the Communists in control of the North, the least could do is send in a Predator to get rid of him for them.

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MORE THAN:

The secrets of ‘Ein Keloh-enu’: At first blush, one of Judaism's most and popular liturgical songs, dealing with greatness of the Divine, seems illogical. But study its words and get a crash course in Judaism's philosophical underpinnings (Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, April 23, 2004, Jewish World Review)

Commentators have noted that the sequence of the famous song-prayer "Ein Keloh-enu" ("Nobody is like our G-d") sang at the end of the morning service is somehow odd.

In this prayer we first state that there is nobody like our G-d and then continue and ask "Mi-Keloh-enu" ("Who is like our G-d?"). Would it not be more logical first to ask who is like our G-d and afterwards continue to state that nobody is like Him?

Even more surprising is the fact that the song does not answer its own question. Nowhere throughout the song is there any answer to "Mi- Keloh-enu" ("Who is like our G-d?") All what one could argue is that the song answers its own question ("There is nobody like our G-d") before the question is posed! It seems that it is not the answer, but the question that counts.

By reversing the obvious order and refusing to answer its own question, Judaism wants to make the point that the recognition of G-d is first of all an act of faith and only in the second place an act of philosophical inquiry. This is not because reason has no place within Judaism, but because faith is more than reason.

A people doesn't endure for thousands of years unless it has its priorities straight, nu?

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CONSIDERATION:

Reading Your Mind: How our brains help us understand other people (Rebecca Saxe, Boston Review)

Children's early understanding of what makes people do the things they do appears to develop in two stages. In the first stage, children understand that people act in order to get the things they want: that human beings are agents whose actions are directed to goals. At 18 months, a child already understands that different people can have different desires or preferences—that for instance an adult experimenter may prefer broccoli to crackers, even though the infant herself much prefers crackers. Toddlers not yet two years old talk spontaneously about the contrast between what they wanted and what happened. Even nine-month-old infants expect an adult to reach for an object at which she had previously looked and smiled.

Children in the first stage are missing something very specific: the notion of belief. Until sometime between their third and fourth birthdays, young children seem not to understand that the relationship between a person's goals and her actions depends on the person's beliefs about the current state of the world. Two-year-olds really do not understand why, if Sally wants the ball, she goes to the basket, even though the ball is in the box. They do not talk spontaneously about thoughts or beliefs, and have trouble understanding that two people could ever have different beliefs. Similarly, while a five-year-old knows that she has to see a ball to be able to tell whether its red, a three-year-old believes he could tell if the ball is red just by feeling it. In the first stage, children think that the mind has direct access to the way the world is; they have no room in their conception for the way a person just believes it to be.

The limitations of a stage-one understanding of the mind apply even to the child's own past or future beliefs. If you show a child a crayon box and ask her what she thinks is inside, all children will say that the box contains crayons. But if you open the box to show that it actually contains ribbons, re-close the box, and then ask the child what she thought was in the box before it was opened, the three-year-old children claim they thought all along that the box contained ribbons.

An impressive conceptual change occurs in the three- or four-year-old child. From American and Japanese urban centers to an African hunter-gatherer society, children make a similar transition from the first stage of reasoning about human behavior, based mainly on goals or desires, to the richer second stage, based on both desires and beliefs. What explains the change? How do children acquire the idea that people have beliefs about the world, that some of the beliefs are false, and that different people have different beliefs about the same world? Between three and five, children mature in so many ways: their vocabulary increases by orders of magnitude, their memory improves, they just know more facts about the world. Each of these changes might account for the advantages of a five-year-old over a three-year-old in solving the false-belief task.

But more than just an accumulation of knowledge is at issue. Rather, we seem to be equipped by evolution with a special mental mechanism—a special faculty or module in our minds—dedicated to understanding why people do the things they do. The maturation of this special mechanism between three and four, in addition to all the other changes happening around the same time, makes the difference between a child who simply doesn't get Romeo's decision and one who does. [...]

So far, we have avoided the questions about whether the capacity to reason about other minds is innate, universal (common to all members of the human species), and specific to the human species. But the very idea of an evolved special mechanism of the mind implies that this mechanism is part of the human genetic endowment, universal within our species and possibly unique to it. So troubles with any of these three ideas may mean trouble for the idea of a mental faculty dedicated to reasoning about other minds. And each of these three is the subject of intense current debate.

Rather than try to do justice to the enormous range and subtlety of these debates, I will defend just the possibility that the capacity to use attributed beliefs to explain and predict behavior is innate, universal, and species-specific by answering three narrower questions: (1) How can a capacity be innate if that capacity only begins to operate three to five years after birth? (2) How can we say that reasoning about other minds is universal, when the very notion of a mind changes dramatically across cultures and across time? (3) Based on what evidence do we accord or deny to other species the ability to reason about other minds? [...]

What is still missing is definitive evidence that any non-human animal has ever gone beyond stage one, to make the three-year-old's impressive transition into a world of beliefs: a transition that enables us to predict one another's conduct, coordinate for the common good, and suffer the sorrows of Romeo and Juliet when we get things wrong.

What's most interesting about this is that modern liberalism--of the Left and of the libertarian Right--is then in a precise sense anti-human:

[T]he new social fact here analysed is this: European history reveals itself, for the first time, as handed over to the decisions of the ordinary man as such. Or to turn it into the active voice: the ordinary man, hitherto guided by others, has resolved to govern the world himself. This decision to advance to the social foreground has been brought about in him automatically, when the new type of man he represents had barely arrived at maturity. If from the view-point of what concerns public life, the psychological structure of this new type of mass-man be studied, what we find is as follows: (1) An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations; consequently, each average man finds within himself a sensation of power and triumph which, (2) invites him to stand up for himself as he is, to look upon his moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete. This contentment with himself leads him to shut himself off from any external court of appeal; not to listen, not to submit hi