May 31, 2004
16 TO 1:
NEW THEORY SUGGESTS PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO RELIGION FOR 16 REASONS (Jeff Grabmeier, OSU Research News)
People are not drawn to religion just because of a fear of death or any other single reason, according to a new comprehensive, psychological theory of religion.There are actually 16 basic human psychological needs that motivate people to seek meaning through religion, said Steven Reiss, author of the new theory and professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University.
“Because this theory can be tested scientifically, we can learn its strengths and weaknesses, and gradually improve it,” Reiss said. “Eventually, we may understand better the psychological basis of religion.”These basic human needs – which include honor, idealism, curiosity and acceptance – can explain why certain people are attracted to religion, why God images express psychologically opposite qualities, and the relationship between personality and religious experiences.
Previous psychologists tried to explain religion in terms of just one or two overarching psychological needs. The most common reason they cite is that people embrace religion because of a fear of death, as expressed in the saying ‘there are no atheists in foxholes,” Reiss said.
“But religion is multi-faceted – it can’t be reduced to just one or two desires.”
Reiss described his new theory – which he said may be the most comprehensive psychological theory of religion since Freud’s work more than a century ago -- in the June issue of Zygon, a journal devoted to issues of science and religion.
“I don’t think there has been a comprehensive theory of religion that was scientifically testable,” he said.
The theory is based on his overall theory of human motivation, which he calls sensitivity theory. Sensitivity theory is explained in his 2000 book Who Am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate Our Action and Define Our Personalities (Tarcher Putnam).
Reiss said that each of the 16 basic desires outlined in the book influence the psychological appeal of religious behavior. The desires are power, independence, curiosity, acceptance, order, saving, honor, idealism, social contact, family, status, vengeance, romance, eating, physical exercise, and tranquility.
In fact, Reiss has already done some initial research that suggests the desire for independence is a key psychological desire that separates religious and non-religious people. In a study published in 2000, Reiss found that religious people (the study included mostly Christians) expressed a strong desire for interdependence with others. Those who were not religious, however, showed a stronger need to be self-reliant and independent.
The study also showed that religious people valued honor more than non-religious people, which Reiss said suggests many people embrace religion to show loyalty to parents and ancestors.
Strange how there are 16 different reasons people are religious but the opposite of each one is the same: self-absorption.
WHO THAT DOESN'T RESPECT US IS WORTH HAVING THE RESPECT OF?:
America's battle to regain respect (Lawrence Freedman, May 30 2004, Financial Times)
We have reached a turning-point in international politics as well as in Iraq. President George W. Bush is widely seen to have gambled on Iraq and lost. The impact of that loss goes well beyond Iraq. The US has not been defeated in battle and is unlikely to be so but it can no longer impose its will on Iraq because it lacks the moral authority to do so.
AdvertisementThe "resistance" in any of its many guises is too divided to win and half- decent outcomes may yet emerge. The point is only that the future of Iraq increasingly depends on the variable quality of local leaders in the country, their ability to understand the consequences of allowing violence to become the first arbiter of their differences, the role that the United Nations chooses to play in helping to secure a transition from coalition occupation - and the readiness of the Americans to accept that they have lost the initiative. If he is to have any chance of success, Ayad Allawi, would-be prime minister, will need to demonstrate his distance from the coalition.
This was not inevitable.
We could have a contest just to see which assertion in this essay is the silliest:
(1) The attempt to make Iraq a democracy didn't inevitably have to end with Iraqis choosing their own leaders.
(2) The attempt didn't inevitably have to lead to resistance by Ba'athists and al Qaeda.
(3) The attempt didn't inevitably have to lead to opposition from Europe and the American Left.
(4) The attempt didn't inevitably have to lead to greater hatred of Israel.
(5) North Korea and Iran would not have eventually had to be dealt with.
NOT ONE OF US:
Bush likability not to be underrated: Ike, JFK, Reagan, and Clinton all had it - Kerry may need it to beat Bush. (Godfrey Sperling, 6/01/04, CS Monitor)
Yes, Senator Kerry has caught up with Bush in the polls. But the average of several polls I've seen would show that Kerry is only a percentage point or two ahead. So the question persists: Why, with Bush so far behind in public approval, isn't Kerry substantially ahead in the polls?I find the answer on the wall above my typewriter where I have the picture of my favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. I see in his face his warmth and friendliness. Polls show that voters find these qualities more in Bush than in Kerry. Indeed, this is what is keeping the contest in the polls close when Bush is so bogged down with problems.
A Zogby poll showed that voters found Kerry cold, aloof, and remote. Biographical material about Kerry describes him as a man who is really quite warm in personal relationships, but simply finds it difficult to show this friendliness when in a group. I recall Kerry coming into a Monitor breakfast back in his earlier years in the Senate. I remember how very reserved he was and commented on it at the time.
Now, as I watch Kerry on TV, I see him making an effort to be open and warm - and who knows, maybe he'll become likable and cuddly before the race is over.
Likability of a candidate certainly doesn't trump how he stands on the issues; but it is very important.
Who's the last candidate Americans knew to be unlikable who won anyway? Nixon in '68?
Add to that: the candidate perceived as obviously less intelligent won every race (not involving an incumbent--and many of those races too) in the 20th Century except for Hoover in '28. And look how that worked out...
65% WINS IN A DEMOCRACY:
US-named Iraqi council pushes back: Negotiations resume after weekend talks stalled between the Governing Council, CPA, and UN envoy Brahimi. (Nicholas Blanford and Orly Halpern, 6/01/04, CS Monitor)
The 24-member council, a mix of seasoned politicians, exiles, academics, and tribal leaders, appeared doomed to irrelevancy when Brahimi said last month that none of them would appear in the post-June 30 administration. Brahimi, charged with helping to form a transitional government, favored a team of technocrats who could hold Iraq together until national elections, scheduled to be held by the end of January.But on Friday, the council surprised everyone by announcing that it had endorsed Alawi as prime minister. Now the council has locked horns with the UN envoy and the CPA chief over the choice of president. The council members favor Ghazi al-Yawar, a US-educated Sunni engineer and leader of the prominent Shammar tribe who has expressed criticism of the occupation and US military actions. Mr. Bremer and Brahimi are said to prefer Adnan Pachachi, an 81-year-old veteran Sunni Iraqi politician who is regarded as generally pro-US.
Raja Habib Khuzai, a Shiite member of the council says, "The Americans want Pachachi, but they won't tell us why. If they continue to insist on Pachachi it will create very big problems because all the Iraqis want Sheikh al-Yawar, not just the Governing Council."
Despite his biting criticism of past coalition actions, Sheikh al-Yawar is a vocal opponent of the mainly Sunni-driven insurgency. His influence with Iraq's tribes could help reduce the level of violence, reassuring nervous Sunnis that they will not be marginalized in the new Iraq.
But CPA officials privately concede that Pachachi has the backing of the Americans because he is seen as the one person who will stand by the Transitional Administrative Law during ing the interim period. The law, of which Pachachi was a key architect, was drawn up earlier this year to serve as a temporary constitution until a permanent one is established no later than December 2005. "Everyone else will just ignore it like any piece of paper," says one CPA official.
The law sparked opposition among Shiites, who represent 65 percent of the population. They resented a clause that potentially allowed Kurds and Sunnis to veto a future constitution.
Any arrangement in Iraq is just a piece of paper until the Shi'ites agree to it.
MORE:
'Sovereignty' at issue in final push for Iraq transition plan: Members of UN Security Council are pressing the US to ensure that caretaker Iraqi government has full control. (Howard LaFranchi, 6/01/04, CS Monitor)
Sovereignty is taking on such importance because of deepening concern over whether the Iraqi people will embrace the interim government as legitimate in the crucial months before elections planned to be held by January 2005. "There are going to be problems with any government, especially where the security situation won't allow an electoral process to deliver it," says James Dobbins, a former White House envoy to Afghanistan and Bosnia. "But what is needed is a government that as many people buy into as possible."The interim government that began to emerge over the weekend is a reflection of a tougher tug of war than anticipated between the US-named Governing Council and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, entrusted by the White House with coming up with a caretaker government. Charged with forging a leadership made up of a prime minister, a largely ceremonial president and two vice presidents, as well as 26 ministers, Mr. Brahimi sought to deliver something more representative to average Iraqis than the Governing council, which has never enjoyed much public support.
But the council, made up largely of former exiles representing established political parties, balked at Brahimi's first choice for prime minister, nuclear scientist Hussain Sharistrani, a Shiite and senior adviser to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. After imposing one of their own, Mr. Allawi, in that post on Friday, council members also stonewalled candidates that were known to be the preference of Brahimi and the US for other top jobs.
But at the same time Brahimi was believed to have secured three of the six most coveted ministerial positions for two Kurd leaders and one Sunni - the other six going to representatives of the majority Shiites. While some of the top picks of the new government still being drawn up Monday were not Brahimi's first choices, the overall makeup is reflective of the careful balance among Iraq's predominant religious and ethnic populations that the UN envoy sought from the beginning. "Brahimi really has been very clever. He knows that if there is no buy-in from the main communities, the government won't have legitimacy and it can't be successful," says Laith Kubba, an Iraqi expert at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington.
From the beginning, the Governing Council was uneasy with what Brahimi said was his preference for a caretaker government of technocrats who would swear off any role in elections. People close to Brahimi say his talk of technocrats was never a hard and fast rule, but rather a way to discuss the new government's formation. "Brahimi doesn't go in with a vision, he goes in with an open mind and a plan for moving consultations in a desirable direction," says Mr. Dobbins, who worked with Brahimi in Afghanistan.
Now an international security expert at the RAND Corp., Dobbins says any government Brahimi accepts will be one he believes can move Iraq ahead.
ORTEGA IS A LOCK...:
Why Not Palestinian Elections? (Jackson Diehl, May 24, 2004, Washington Post)
Last week an Arab government publicly embraced the idea of democratic elections and asked the United States for its help in holding them -- and the Bush administration, which says Middle Eastern democracy is its top priority, ducked. That's because the idea came from the Palestinian Authority, where a free vote would probably demonstrate that another tenet of Bush policy, the "irrelevance" of Yasser Arafat, is a fiction.Loath to acknowledge the reality of Arafat's continuing authority, or offend Israel's Ariel Sharon, the White House brushes off the appeals of Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia for new elections for a Palestinian parliament and president. In doing so it misses an important opportunity -- one that may offer the only real hope of achieving American aims on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
Like it or not (and no reasonable non-Palestinian does), Arafat remains in charge, as he has demonstrated repeatedly during the past year. Qureia and other Palestinian moderates are too weak to move against him or to meet U.S. and Israeli demands that control over security forces be taken away from him. That leaves Bush's "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian peace stalemated -- a status that is convenient for Sharon but disastrous for Bush's attempts to regain his footing in Iraq and the broader Middle East.
What would happen if the United States were to endorse and facilitate Palestinian elections? To begin with, Bush would get considerable credit around the region for acting to back up his democracy sloganeering and for taking an initiative in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beyond his indiscriminate backing of Sharon. Both the president's democracy initiative for the "greater" Middle East, due to be unveiled next month, and the cause of elections in Iraq would get a boost.
More important, the stalemate in Ramallah would finally end. Most likely Arafat would be reelected president -- after all, his most formidable rival, Marwan Barghouti, is inside an Israeli prison. But Palestinian voters would almost certainly vote out of office the corrupt and feckless band of Arafat cronies and yes men now serving in the Palestinian parliament. In their place would come a new generation of Palestinian leaders, from both nationalist and religious parties, who mostly oppose their 75-year-old president and would be eager to curb his power. Some would be cronies of Barghouti, who, unlike Arafat, is liable to support a negotiated settlement with Israel. Some would be representatives of Hamas, which would be drawn into the realm of democratic politics and government -- as opposed to insurgency and terrorism -- for the first time.
Mr. Diehl sounds like one of those folks who was certain Mikhail Gorbachev was a popular leader in the USSR. Arafat too would lose, which is one reason why it makes no sense dealing with him. But we should obviously support elections which are the best way to empower reformers and hasten the transition of Hamas from terrorist organization to normal political party.
MORE:
Egypt tells Arafat: Reform or be removed - report (JOSEPH NASR, 5/31/04, Jerusalem Post)
Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman has reportedly warned Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to relax his grip on the reins of Palestinian power or face the possibility that Egypt and the US will cease to block Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from carrying out his threat to "remove" the chairman.According to a report Monday in the pan-Arab Al-Quds-al-Arabi, Suleiman handed Arafat three demands:
First, to unite all the Palestinian security forces under one command authority, and into three components. These include the police, the Preventative Security Service (equivalent of Israel's General Security Service), and the Palestinian foreign security service (equivalent of Israel's Mossad).
Secondly, give PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei complete authority to conduct negotiations with Israel over Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan.
Thirdly, stand aside and accept a symbolic position and let others lead the Palestinian Authority.
THE BIGGER THE BETTER:
Warning of massive Saudi attack (Michael Theodoulou and Daniel McGrory, June 1, 2004. news.com.au)
INTELLIGENCE agencies believe the Islamic terrorists behind the weekend kidnapping and murder of foreigners in Saudi Arabia are close to staging "a spectacular attack" that will cause devastating loss of life.The British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sherard Cowper-Coles, confirmed yesterday that "further attacks may be in the final stages of preparation".
It is feared the attack could be on a key oil installation or the causeway linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain.
Three suspected al-Qaeda militants escaped after slitting the throats of up to nine foreigners among at least 22 killed in a 24-hour rampage in a housing compound in the eastern oil city of Khobar.
The trio seized one car then another in their flight, and appeared yesterday to have escaped.
Going by the timing offered by the owner of the second hijacked car, they may even have slipped away from the Oasis housing compound before Saudi commandos descended in a helicopter to rescue what hostages they could.
A fourth militant, the alleged leader, was wounded and captured. He was identified only as one of the kingdom's "most wanted".
Took 9-11 for us to get serious.
OH, SO THAT'S WHAT "RAM" MEANS
GOP looks to limit class-action suits (Jesse J. Holland, AP, 5/31/04)
After trying to curb class-action suits for years, Republicans finally have enough support to ram legislation through the Senate to limit what they call an overabundance of frivolous cases against American businesses. . . .It means Republicans gaining a supermajority to stop the Democratic minority from blocking a vote.GOP senators fell one vote short of achieving a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in October. But now several Democrats, including Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Charles Schumer of New York, have agreed to support the legislation.
WHERE'S THE BLACKLIST WHEN YOU NEED IT...:
Hollywood as a Tool of German Foreign Policy? (Stephan Richter | Friday, May 28, 2004, The Globalist)
Roland Emmerich, ["Day After Tomorrow"]’s director, comes with impeccable cinematographic credentials, including “The Patriot” and “Independence Day.” Both these movies revolve around core American ideals — such as overcoming adversity, fighting for one’s way of life and the ultimate belief that good will conquer evil. [...]Hollywood has long been used as a tool to project "soft" American power around the world.
In that sense, this activist director must feel like he has achieved a perfect circle — aligning the commercial interests of the movie industry with his own agenda, which in this case is pro-environment.
So far, so good. What is completely overlooked in this tale is the fact that Mr. Emmerich hails from Germany, is an avid supporter of the pro-environment German Green Party — and is known to hang out on trendy Berlin cafes with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the leading figure of the Green Party.
Which goes some way towards explaining the near-fatal problems with The Patriot.
EVEN LE PEN IS ON THE RIGHT SIDE ONCE IN AWHILE (via Tom Corcoran)
Remembering the Vendée (Sophie Masson, LewRockwell.com)
In 1789, the French Revolution began, a revolution that at first was full of optimism, of the genuine wish for reform; a revolution that was not even opposed by King Louis XVI himself. This was the Enlightenment. Humanity was to be trusted to behave well. Liberty, equality, fraternity. Who could argue with that? Very few did, least of all the peasants of western France, who welcomed many of the changes – the abolition of compulsory labour, the gradual abolition of privilege. The revolutionaries produced a passionate and idealistic document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Some of those rights were the right to freedom of religion; the right to live peacefully, without tyranny or arbitrary rule; the right to discuss. Alas! While Desmoulins and Danton debated and wrote passionately, Robespierre bided his time. That time came all too soon.In 1790, the first cracks began to appear. Provincial assemblies were abolished, stripping people of their local governments. The clergy was to be stripped of its property and would be appointed by lay people, not the church. In practice, this meant that the bourgeois of the cities now had the right of imposing chosen priests on peasant communities. Vendée and Brittany and Normandy began to stir at this; they were greatly attached to their own priests and resisted the imposition of others. A year later, the King was arrested. Riots erupted in Brittany. In 1792, the extremist Jacobins under the leadership of Robespierre took power and formed the now infamous Convention. And then the horrors began in earnest.
Madame Guillotine was fed many times, soon taking Danton and Desmoulins and many of the earlier revolutionaries, who, too late, had seen the monster they had unleashed. But it was not till 1793 that two events happened which precipitated France into a terrible civil war; the consequences of which are still very much felt today.
Those events were the execution of Louis XVI, the subsequent pre-emptive declaration of war by France on the rest of Europe, and, as a consequence, the forced conscription of 300,000 men – the revolutionaries wanted the peasants of France to pay for their murderous folly! There was immediate revolt in Vendée, in Brittany, in Normandy, but the centre of the revolt was Vendée itself. This was a completely popular uprising; it was the peasants themselves who took the initiative and who only later persuaded some of their native nobles, who had been army officers, to lead some of their armies.
The new, the First Republic reacted immediately. This would be a fight to the death, for it was a tussle for the very spirit of revolution. The fact that the Vendée revolt was a popular one called into question the very nature of the Revolution, with its middle-class and aristocratic leaders. More than that, it dared to oppose the "despotism of liberty." Republican armies led, more often than not, by ci-devant ex-nobles and princes were sent into the rebellious province. But the Vendéens proved difficult nuts to crack. To the contemptuous surprise of the Paris grandees, the armies of the Chouans, as they became known (because of their rallying call, which imitated the call of the screech owl, or chat-huant in French), were well-disciplined and highly effective, and unusual in that the men had an input into decisions, not just the leaders (some of course later saw that as a weakness). They fought with a combination of regular and guerilla tactics and had a number of brilliant leaders – Cathelineau, La Rochejacquelein, Charrette, d'Elbée, Stofflet, Lescure. The Bretons, under Cadoudal, Jean Jan, Jean Cottereau and others, joined them at several points.
In the first year, they were remarkably successful, and their armies swelled to more than 150,000 men, none of whom had been coerced or conscripted. They captured towns and villages, made tentative links with the English, who were horrified by the fate of the King, and with the émigré nobles who had escaped to England already. It seemed that not only the liberation of western France, but also of the whole of France from the tyranny and terror of the Convention was at hand. Alas . . .
Division began to appear in Chouan ranks, as leaders with strong egos fought with each other, the English and the French émigrés (many of whom scorned this "peasant army") proved to be of no help whatsoever, and the Republic spared no expense of finance or soldiers' lives to crush the rebels. The crushing defeat of the Chouan armies at the end of 1793 in Vendée did not predispose the Republic to mercy. In early 1794, the Convention decided to exterminate the Vendéens, to the last man, woman and child. And they found plenty who were happy to carry out these orders.
"Not one is to be left alive." "Women are reproductive furrows who must be ploughed under." "Only wolves must be left to roam that land." "Fire, blood, death are needed to preserve liberty." "Their instruments of fanaticism and superstition must be smashed." These were some of the words the Convention used in speaking of Vendée. Their tame scientists dreamed up all kinds of new ideas – the poisoning of flour and alcohol and water supplies, the setting up of a tannery in Angers which would specialise in the treatment of human skins; the investigation of methods of burning large numbers of people in large ovens, so their fat could be rendered down efficiently. One of the Republican generals, Carrier, was scornful of such research: these "modern" methods would take too long. Better to use more time-honoured methods of massacre: the mass drownings of naked men, women, and children, often tied together in what he called "republican marriages," off specially constructed boats towed out to the middle of the Loire and then sunk; the mass bayoneting of men, women and children; the smashing of babies' heads against walls; the slaughter of prisoners using cannons; the most grisly and disgusting tortures; the burning and pillaging of villages, towns and churches.
The ci-devant aristocrat Turreau de la Linières took command of what are known in Vendée as the douze colonnes infernales (the twelve columns of hell), which had specific orders both from his superiors and from himself to kill everyone and everything they saw. "Even if there should be patriots [that is, Republicans] in Vendée," Turreau himself said, "they must not spared. We can make no distinction. The entire province must be a cemetery." And so it was. In the streets of Cholet, emblematic Vendéen city, by the end of 1793, wolves were about the only living things left, roaming freely and feeding on the piles of decomposing corpses.
People in Vendée still tell the stories of the colonnes infernales and the unspeakable things they did. There was not even any pretence of discriminating between fighters and civilians; documents of the time, still kept in army records in Vincennes, tell their hideous, chilling story, a story which has tolled repeatedly in our own terrible century. The generals speak coolly of objectives achieved, exterminations nicely done, "ethnic cleansing" carefully carried out, of genocide systematically and rigorously conducted. There were those, too few, alas, who refused to take part; but they were summarily dealt with.
But the Vendéens were not completely beaten. Full of hate now, they fought back, sporadically but ferociously. Their "chouan" rallying cry became a source of terror for republican stragglers in the deep remote country of the marshes and forests of Vendée. And the Bretons fought, attempting to come to the aid of their brothers, but it was difficult to maintain resistance in the face of such full-scale assault. One by one, the charismatic leaders were killed or hunted down like wild beasts. Within two years, Chouan resistance in Vendée was all but dead, though Brittany, under the leadership of the remarkable Georges Cadoudal, continued to fight for many years to come. [...]
Right wing, left wing, centre in France have never been able to deal with the legacy of Vendée. The left wing has problems with the impugning of the Revolution; the right wing because civil war put France in peril of foreign armies; the centre because, hey, it's not exactly pretty stuff. Thirty or so years ago a then-unknown but now infamous Jean-Marie le Pen championed the cause of Vendée and Brittany, applauding regionalism and independence, and produced a recording of Chouan songs; now, as the leader of the extreme right Front National, he studiously ignores it all, speaking grandly and opportunistically of the marvellous republic and the great destiny of a centralised France – for Vendée costs votes. Vendée is embarrassing, for it shows what the French are capable of doing to the French without any help from immigrant bogeys. The extreme left, the communists, of course never had any warm feelings for "priest-ridden peasants." Besides, they understood Robespierre's "despotism of liberty" only too well.
Many people in Vendée who keep the memory in their hearts refuse to vote at all in general elections, considering that the soul of the republic itself is soiled and flawed. They find it bitter indeed that the 1989 bicentenary ignored them completely. There are some who would sanctify all the Chouans, would make of them impossibly perfect heroes. For them, the "Bleus," the republicans, were devils without any redeeming features. But it is remarkable how many in Vendée do not hate. They only wish to remember.
There's a good Balzac novel about the mostly forgotten story. It's even on-line.
ARE THEY LIES IF YOU MAKE YOUR OWN POSITIONS MURKY ENOUGH?:
From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity: Scholars Say Campaign Is Making History With Often-Misleading Attacks (Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei, May 31, 2004, Washington Post)
It was a typical week in the life of the Bush reelection machine.Last Monday in Little Rock, Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all" and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."
On Tuesday, President Bush's campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.
The same day, the Bush campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.
On Wednesday and Thursday, as Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.
The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading.
The immediate retreat from wrong to misleading gives up the game. Just to take one easy example, Mr. Kerry has indeed suggested that terrorism is more of a criminal than a military matter. He may even be right. He certainly was about the gas tax.
VP RICE IT IS:
Cheney office denies role in Halliburton deal: E-mail cited by Time implies veep helped ex-employer get Iraq contract (Suzanne Malveaux, May 31, 2004, CNN)
Vice President Dick Cheney's office denied Sunday that he was involved in a coordinated effort to secure a multibillion dollar Iraq oil deal for Halliburton, his former employer.A reference to such an arrangement was made in an internal Pentagon e-mail from an Army Corps of Engineers official to another Pentagon employee, Time magazine reports in its June 7 edition, which is due on newsstands Monday.
The existence of the e-mail was confirmed to CNN by a senior administration official familiar with it.
The e-mail -- dated March 5, 2003 -- says Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, approved the arrangement to award the contract to the oil-services company, the administration official said.
According to an e-mail excerpt in Time, the contract was "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP's office."
The Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract three days later without seeking other bids, Time reports.
Time says it found the e-mail "among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group."
The senior official told CNN the e-mail was a typical "heads-up" memo from one government agency to another that "a decision has been made, we're about to announce this contract, and as a courtesy we are alerting the White House of a public announcement. This is a standard practice."
The "coordinated action" referred to, the senior administration official said, was "that of publicly announcing the contract decision that has already been made."
Who else could you give it to?
CARTHAGE WASN'T DESTROYED IN A DAY:
Pro-life lobby touts fetal-pain bill (Amy Fagan, 5/20/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
The next big rallying point for the pro-life movement on Capitol Hill appears to be legislation introduced yesterday that would require doctors to inform women seeking abortions that the procedure will cause pain to their unborn children."Unborn children can and do feel pain," said the bill's Senate sponsor, Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican. "Women should not be kept in the dark."
"We're going full-court press," said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is sponsoring the measure in the House.
Mr. Smith has asked for hearings on the legislation and is hoping for a floor vote this year. Mr. Brownback is talking with Senate Republican leaders about attaching the proposal to a larger bill that comes before the Senate.
MEANING?:
Double standard: Israel escapes sanctions imposed on other nations (Bill Kaufmann, 5/31/04, Calgary Sun)
In Washington state, a mother still struggles over the meaning of her daughter's sacrifice.In March, 2003, Rachel Corrie, 23, was crushed to death in Rafah, Gaza, beneath an Israeli bulldozer in an incident photos and witnesses suggest was a cold-blooded killing.
Meaning? The wages of hate-mongering is death.
50-0 FILES:
In Minnesota, Kerry holds narrow lead (BILL SALISBURY, 5/31/04, St. Paul Pioneer Press)
Democrat John Kerry holds a slim 3-percentage point lead in Minnesota over President Bush, according to a new statewide poll.The poll shows 44 percent of Minnesota voters would vote for Kerry, while 41 percent favor Bush. Two percent support independent candidate Ralph Nader, while 13 percent are undecided.
Kerry's 3-point lead puts the race within the poll's 4-point margin of error.
HOW?
The Real Story of Fallujah: Why isn't the administration getting it out? (ROBERT D. KAPLAN, May 31, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
If Al-Karmah is reclaimed, if Fallujah itself remains relatively calm, if the Marines can patrol there at some point, and if mortar attacks abate measurably--all distinct possibilities--the decision not to launch an all-out assault on Fallujah could look like the right one.But none of the above matters if it is not competently explained to the American public--for the home front is more critical in a counterinsurgency than in any other kind of war. Yet the meticulous planning process undertaken by the Marines at the tactical level for assaulting Fallujah was not augmented with a similarly meticulous process by the Bush administration at the strategic level for counteracting the easily foreseen media fallout from fighting in civilian areas near Muslim religious sites. The public was never made to feel just how much of a military threat the mosques in Fallujah represented, just how far Marines went to avoid damage to them and to civilians, and just how much those same Marine battalions accomplished after departing Fallujah. [...]
[I]...found that there are many different Iraqs and different levels of reality to each of them. Presently, the administration lacks the public relations talent and the organizational structure for conveying even the positive elements of the Iraqi panorama in all their drama and texture.
Because the battles in a counterinsurgency are small scale and often clandestine, the story line is rarely obvious. It becomes a matter of perceptions, and victory is awarded to those who weave the most compelling narrative. Truly, in the world of postmodern, 21st century conflict, civilian and military public-affairs officers must become war fighters by another name. They must control and anticipate a whole new storm system represented by a global media, which too often exposes embarrassing facts out of historical or philosophical context.
Without a communications strategy that gives the public the same sense of mission that a company captain imparts to his noncommissioned officers, victory in warfare nowadays is impossible. Looking beyond Iraq, the American military needs battlefield doctrine for influencing the public in the same way that the Army and the Marines already have doctrine for individual infantry tasks and squad-level operations (the Ranger Handbook, the Fleet Marine Force Manual, etc.).
The centerpiece of that doctrine must be the flattening out of bureaucratic hierarchies within the Defense Department, so that spokesmen can tap directly into the experiences of company and battalion commanders and entwine their smell-of-the-ground experiences into daily briefings. Nothing is more destructive for the public-relations side of warfare than field reports that have to make their way up antiquated, Industrial Age layers of command, diluting riveting stories of useful content in the process. Journalists with little knowledge of military history or tactics and with various agendas to peddle can go directly to lieutenants and sergeants, yet the very spokesmen of these soldiers and Marines themselves--even through their aides--seem unable to do so.
Nothing in the history of our democracy suggests that the government can get the truth out about a policy in competition with a press that prefers another.
WHAT WOULD SHE KNOW ABOUT IT?:
SCUD MISSIVES: a review of Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael S. Berliner (Florence King, May 28, 2004, National Review)
If anyone needs a makeover it's Ayn Rand. After her death in 1982, her one-time proteges, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, both published biographies portraying her as an abusive monster who held facts instead of opinions, drove her husband to drink, and held purge trials in her living room whenever one of her acolytes got philosophically out of line.The centerpiece of both books is Miss Rand's affair with Nathaniel, begun when she was 50 and he 24, and continuing until they were 63 and 37. The story goes that she gathered the Brandens together with her husband, Frank O'Connor, announced that she and Nathaniel wanted to have an affair, and then opened the floor to discussion, which she dominated, analyzing the proposed adultery to prove that it was rational according to the principles of Objectivism, her home-cooked contribution to Western thought.
When the inevitable explosion came, Miss Rand publicly repudiated and denounced the Brandens, who soon divorced. Her think tank, largely their work, fell apart, as did many of her emotionally dependent acolytes, some of whom discussed whether it was rational to assassinate Nathaniel.
No hint of any of this appears in Letters of Ayn Rand, a labor of love by Leonard Peikoff, her leading loyalist (and sole heir under her will, according to Barbara Branden), and Michael S. Berliner, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, newly restored to promote Objectivism. They give us a new, improved Ayn Rand. [...]
Writing to Barry Goldwater about his book, The Conscience of a Conservative, she upbraids him for saying that conservatism rests on faith instead of on reason.
Ms King is always funny and Ms Rand an inviting target, but no one has ever had her number better than that great conservative and man of faith Whittaker Chambers.
HOWL OF THE BITTER
Resistance (Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde Diplomatique, May, 2004)
Resistance means saying no. No to contempt, arrogance and economic bullying. No to the new masters of the world: high finance, the countries of the G8, the Washington consensus, the dictatorship of the market and unchecked free trade. No to the quartet of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. No to hyper-production. To genetically modified crops. To permanent privatisations. To the relentless spread of the private sector. No to exclusion. No to sexism. No to social regression, poverty, inequality and the dismantling of the welfare state.No to the abandonment of the South. No to the daily deaths of 30,000 poor children. No to the destruction of the environment. No to the military hegemony of a sole superpower. No to "preventive" war, to invasion, to terrorism and to attacks on civilians. No to racism, anti-semitism and islamophobia. No to draconian security measures. No to a police state mentality. No to dumbing-down. To censorship. To media lies. To manipulative media.
Resistance also means saying yes. Yes to solidarity between the six billion inhabitants of this planet. Yes to the rights of women. Yes to a renewed United Nations. Yes to a new Marshall plan to help Africa. Yes to the total elimination of illiteracy. Yes to an international campaign against a technology gap. Yes to an international moratorium that will preserve drinking water.
Yes also to generic medicines for all. To decisive action against Aids. To the preservation of minority cultures. And to the rights of indigenous peoples.
Yes to social and economic justice. And a less market-dominated Europe. Yes to the Porto Alegre Consensus. Yes to a Tobin tax that will benefit citizens. Yes to taxing arms sales. Yes to writing off the debt of the poor nations. Yes to banning tax havens.
To resist is to dream that another world is possible. And to help build it.
Who says the Left and Right can’t find common ground? We’re completely on board with that bit about dumbing down.
THE ONLY AMERICAN POSITION:
What Europe Doesn't Understand: Neoconservatism is neither neo nor conservative. It's just American. (ZACHARY SELDEN, May 26, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
It is difficult to define neoconservative foreign policy or to spell out what distinguishes it from other strains of political thought. Originally the label was applied to former leftists who became anticommunist after World War II and to Democrats who found themselves more in the Republican camp in the post-Vietnam era. But many of the individuals identified as neocons today are too young to have been part of the original group or were never associated with the Democratic Party.Some turn to a more arcane definition of "the neoconservatives" as the students of the University of Chicago political philosophy professor Leo Strauss. Others note the Jewish surnames of many of the president's foreign affairs and defense advisors and hint darkly that the U.S. government is being manipulated for the benefit of Israel. Once again, these definitions fail to satisfy. Strauss may have been an influence on some, but it is difficult to believe that a relatively obscure philosophy professor dead for 30 years could now suddenly wield such influence over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. By the same token, many of President Bush's advisors may indeed have Jewish roots, but many do not; it is, moreover, truly bizarre to believe that individuals can work their way to the top of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus by advocating the interests of another state to the detriment of the United States.
More often than not, the label is now employed as a pejorative to mean "hawkish on foreign policy." But this description applies to much of the American public since September 11. What has happened is that some commentators and defense intellectuals associated with the neocon label have been successful after 9/11 in articulating ideas that resonate with the general public and deep-seated beliefs that have historically guided the conduct of American foreign policy.
As much as some may have wanted to push the U.S. toward intervention in Iraq and take a firmer line with state supporters of terrorism, it simply was not politically possible until the clear and present danger presented itself. The arguments of Paul Wolfowitz and others were originally made in the early 1990s. They pressed for a more interventionist policy based on the threat to U.S. national security posed by inaction in the Greater Middle East, particularly in Iraq. One does not have to look any further than the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992 (co-authored by Mr. Wolfowitz), which in part advises removing the Saddam Hussein regime, to see the pattern. Others have long been advocating increased U.S. pressure on other regimes in the region, such as Iran and Syria. But it was not until September 11 that such a policy could have resonance in American public opinion.
There is also a strong misperception in Europe that the ideas ascribed to the neocons represent a small, extreme faction of the Republican Party. Although the so-called neocons may in general be Republicans, their ideas have a fair degree of approval within the ranks of the Democratic Party as well. In my own recollection, the first two individuals to promote the idea of military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power were both Democratic Party figures--one a retired congressman and the other a former Clinton administration official. It also bears repeating that 81 Democrats in the House voted in favor of authorizing the president to use military force in Iraq. Clearly there is more involved here than a handful of Rasputin-like ideologues whispering in the president's ear.
In truth, much of what has been identified as the neoconservative agenda has little to do with Republican versus Democrat; it is more a contest between realists and idealists--with the neocons firmly in the idealist camp. Realists are generally conservative in the true sense of the word. They do not seek to take risks to extend liberal democratic ideals. On the contrary, they seek to maintain American primacy and would not risk diluting finite resources to take on an enormous and protracted mission such as remaking the Middle East.
The realist school of thought contrasts sharply with the neoconservative camp, whose agenda would not be unfamiliar to Woodrow Wilson. He too sought to remake the international system from a position of relative strength, to spread democracy and the rule of law. It is true that today's crusaders are not about to place their trust in international institutions to do the job, but the basic ideals are similar in that they seek to use American power to reshape the global environment in the name of a set of liberal democratic ideals. It is their belief that this will make the United States more secure by reducing the seemingly intractable problems of the Middle East, thus getting at some of the root causes of terrorism. In taking up this banner, the neocons play into a very deep and old aspect of American political thought. This is why President Bush could speak for a large majority of the country when he set forth such an ambitious agenda based on their proposals.
Doesn't neoconservatism really just represent the recognition that the Democrats had become a secular party and no longer shared Wilson's crusading faith in the universality of American ideals? Today even John Kerry concedes that the Democrats are no longer pro-democracy--it's too messy.
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, JOE DiMAGGIO?:
A's blow another lead, lose to Indians: Rhodes melts in 2nd straight game as Cleveland sweeps (Josh Suchon, May 31, 2004, )
Pitcher Arthur Rhodes thought it was the third sign. Catcher Adam Melhuse thought it was the second sign. Rhodes threw a hard slider. Melhuse expected a cut fastball.By the time Melhuse realized a different pitch was coming, it was too late. The ball was past him at the backstop, the winning run sliding home, and the Oakland Athletics found another painful way to lose a game.
In a game of bullpen meltdowns, the A's were handed two runs in their half of the ninth, then Rhodes gave two back as the Cleveland Indians completed a weekend sweep in their final at-bat to win 4-3 on Sunday before 24,005 fans at Jacobs Field. [...]
Rhodes' history with Vizquel may have played a role in his emotions. Three years ago, Vizquel asked Rhodes, then with Seattle, to remove his earring because the glare made it tough to see.
During a heated argument, Rhodes called Vizquel "a little midget" and was ejected. Rhodes later told reporters, "I'm not going to let a guy weighing 125 pounds tell me that I have to take off my earring."
That's just not a sentence you can sound macho while speaking.
HIGH, BUT INTENTIONALLY SO:
If you really want to reduce gas prices, here's how (BEN LIEBERMAN, 5/31/04, Chicago Sun-Times)
The nearly $10 per barrel rise in oil prices since the start of the year explains much of the nation's 2004 jump at the pump, from just over $1.50 to over $2 per gallon, but it does not explain all of it. That's because we can't put crude oil into our fuel tanks. First it must be refined into gasoline and diesel.And it is at this step that costly regulations have pushed gas prices higher than necessary.
Under the Clean Air Act, refiners must adhere to strict requirements affecting the composition of motor fuels, and at the same time comply with tough provisions restricting refinery pollution. Both types of regulations have become more stringent in recent years. And several state-specific requirements have also complicated matters.
America has at least 15 different gasoline blends in use, in order to meet the hodgepodge of regulations. The fuel specifications get even tougher during the summer months, when several smog-fighting provisions kick in.
One of the most difficult summer blends to produce is the one required in Chicago. According to AAA, a gallon of regular gasoline currently averages $2.18 in Chicago, and $2.05 nationally.
At the same time that refiners struggle to produce gasoline that meets these requirements, they must also comply with a long and growing list of facility emissions controls. Due in part to this multi-billion dollar regulatory burden, no new domestic refinery has been built since 1976, and expansions of existing refineries has barely kept pace with growing demand. The Department of Energy predicts that gasoline demand will set a record this summer, but notes that "refinery capacity has not expanded significantly since last summer."
Few are inclined to shed tears over the plight of "big oil," but oil companies' high production costs and capacity restraints are hurting all of us, boosting the retail price of gas above and beyond the impact of crude oil costs.
Lower prices should not be a national goal, but more rational high prices should be. That means reducing the costly burden of complex regulation and replacing those savings with direct taxation (offset by tax cuts elsewhere to maintain revenue neutrality).
BRACE FOR BLOWBACK:
Dem dispute may give GOP budget say (DAVE MCKINNEY, CHRIS FUSCO AND LESLIE GRIFFY, May 31, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)
With their leaders going separate ways, Democrats fumed Sunday at the growing possibility of budget gridlock driving them into legislative overtime -- a prospect that could lift Republicans off state government's doormat.Seemingly oblivious to the gravity all around her, Gov. Blagojevich's 8-year-old daughter Amy played volleyball with a staffer in a Capitol hall while her father was entangled in a behind-the-scenes political wrestling match with House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago).
As hope of a budget deal appeared to crash, sending the General Assembly out the door early during a rare Sunday session, an adjournment deadline looms today in a poisoned atmosphere where Democrats hold all the power but can't get along.
Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) left the Capitol at 10 p.m. and summed up the situation in particularly bleak terms: "It's going to be a long, long year."
There may be no state Democrats are counting on more heavily in both the presidential and senate contests.
BIRTH OF A NATION:
Progress in Iraq: Consider the possibility, for a change, that on our Memorial Day, we have cause for cautious optimism. (WILLIAM SAFIRE, 5/31/04, NY Times)
Iyad Alawi is the Acceptable Arab. At the Ambrosetti conference in Italy last year, he and Adnan Pachachi — a Sunni in his 80's close to the Saudi royals — were the only Iraqis present. They spent most of their time in close consultation with Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League. Pachachi, whose exile ended with our overthrow of Saddam, was overtly ungrateful to the Americans.Alawi, however, was noncommittal, so I plonked myself next to him at lunch and asked who was going to run Iraq after the U.S. left. He said only "I have a real political organization in Iraq." Mebbeso; at any rate, this tough-minded escapee from Saddam's assassins knows how to dicker with disparate colleagues and knew precisely when to make his move.
Present and former C.I.A. types, fresh from exacting their vengeance on their hated critic, Ahmad Chalabi, are telling media outlets that Alawi has always been their asset. This boasting by our leakiest intelligence agents is harmful to the presumptive prime minister because Alawi cannot let himself appear to be any outsider's puppet. But apparently some of our spooks feel that settling scores and falsely claiming credit takes precedence over U.S. and Iraqi interests.
Now the fast-fading three B's — Brahimi, Blackwill and Bremer — are joining with Alawi to put across Pachachi as figurehead president to appeal to the Arab League's Moussa. The Kurds, who have so far been outmaneuvered by Iraqi Arabs and, as usual, abandoned by our State department, prefer the younger Ghazi al-Yawar, sheik of the powerful Shamar Arab tribe and a businessman educated in the U.S.
The purpose of all this jockeying is to form an organization capable of holding an election in a country beset by Saddam loyalists and terrorists determined to block that election. This will take Iraqi politicians courageous enough to risk their lives, sensible enough to work closely with coalition generals to protect the voters from the killers, and persuasive enough to enlist many more Iraqis to join the fight for freedom.
It's worth recalling that Congress authorized the Second Iraq War in October 2002 and the handover is scheduled for July 2004.
By contrast, Congress authorized WWII in December 1941. American troops first landed in France in June 1944. The Federal Republic of Germany was created in 1949. That republic did not include East Germany, which we failed to liberate.
Guess which is called the Good War?
PRODUCTIVE MALAISE?:
What Studs Terkel's 'Working' Says About Worker Malaise Today: It is hard to read "Working," Studs Terkel's oral history of working life published 30 years ago, without thinking about what has gone wrong in the workplace. (ADAM COHEN, 5/31/04, NY Times)
There have been substantial productivity gains. But those gains have not found their way to paychecks. In a recent two-and-a-half-year period, corporate profits surged 87 percent, while wages rose just 4.5 percent. Not surprisingly, a study last fall by the Conference Board found that less than 49 percent of workers were satisfied with their jobs, down from 59 percent in 1995.When "Working" was written, these trends were just visible on the horizon. A neighborhood druggist laments "the corner drugstore, that's kinda fadin' now," because little shops like his can't compete. "Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit," an editor says. "Jobs are not big enough for people."
When America begins to pay attention to its unhappy work force — and eventually, it must — "Working" will still provide important insights, with its path-breaking exploration of what Mr. Terkel described as "the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people."
Mr. Terkel's book is silly enough in its own right without dragging him into the bizarre argument that despite spectacular productivity gains workers are more dissatisfied now than they have been in the past.
LEARN THE LEFT:
Office Politics Give Liberal Radio a Rocky Start: Even by the chaotic standards of a new media company, Air America Radio's first two months of broadcasting have been convulsive. (JACQUES STEINBERG, 5/31/04, NY Times)
The fledgling talk-radio network has replaced five top executives, been taken off the air in two of its top three markets and lost several crucial producers. By late April, current and former executives said last week, the company was perilously close to running out of money. It has since received an infusion of cash, though it has not disclosed how much or from whom. [...]Despite the intrigue concerning its management - and the abrupt pulling of its programming last month from stations in Chicago and Los Angeles, in a contract dispute - there are early indications that, where it can be heard, Air America is actually drawing listeners. WLIB-AM in New York City, one of 13 stations that carry at least part of Air America's 16 hours of original programming each day, even appears to be holding its own with WABC-AM, the New York City station and talk radio powerhouse that is Mr. Limbaugh's flagship.
For example, among listeners from 25 and 54, whom advertisers covet, the network estimates it drew an average listener share (roughly a percentage of listeners) of 3.4 on WLIB in April, from 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, according to the company's extrapolation of figures provided by Arbitron for the three months ended in April. (Arbitron, which does not provide ratings in monthly increments, said the network's methodology appeared sound, although such figures were too raw to translate to numbers of listeners.)
By contrast, according to Air America's figures, WABC-AM drew an average share of 3.2 during the same period in April for the same age group. That time period includes the three hours in which Mr. Limbaugh was pitted head to head against Mr. Franken.
Phil Boyce, the program director of WABC , cautioned against drawing conclusions from preliminary data. "If they end up doing that well when the final number is out, which is two more months, I'll give them a congratulations," Mr. Boyce said.
While the network is awaiting the release of similar figures from Arbitron for other cities, KPOJ-AM, the Clear Channel station that carries its programming in Portland, Ore., informed Air America executives by an e-mail message in late April that its ratings appeared to have tripled last month, according to the station's informal survey. (A station executive, Mary Lou Gunn, did not return a telephone message left at her office on Friday.)
The network, which is also carried on the satellite radio providers XM and Sirius, has found an audience on the Internet. In its first week, listeners clicked on the audio programming on the Air America Web site more than two million times, according to RealNetworks, the digital media provider.
"It's clear the audience is there," Mr. Franken said.
We wish them well, because you canm't both be informed about the news of the day and remain liberal. The news proves conservatism.
EXCEPTION NATION:
The Challenge Of Secularism: It is no accident that the introduction of universal compulsory state education has coincided in time and place with the secularization of modern culture. (CHRISTOPHER DAWSON, 1956, Catholic World)
Where the whole educational system has been dominated by a consciously anti-religious ideology, as in the Communist countries, the plight of Christianity is desperate, and even if there were no persecution of religion on the ecclesiastical level, there would be little hope of its survival after two or three generations of universal Communist education. Here however the totalitarian state is only completing the work that the liberal state began, for already in the nineteenth century the secularization of education and the exclusion of positive Christian teaching from the school formed an essential part of the program of almost all the progressive, liberal and socialist parties everywhere.Unfortunately, while universal secular education is an infallible instrument for the secularization of culture, the existence of a free system of religious primary education is not sufficient to produce a Christian culture. We know only too well how little effect the Catholic school has on modern secular culture and how easily the latter can assimilate and absorb the products of our educational system. The modern Leviathan is such a formidable monster that he can swallow religious schools whole without suffering from indigestion.
But this is not the case with higher education. The only part of Leviathan that is vulnerable is his brain, which is small in comparison with his vast and armored bulk. If we could develop Christian higher education to a point at which it meets the attention of the average educated man in every field of thought and life, the situation would be radically changed.
In the literary world something of this kind has already happened. During my lifetime Catholicism has come back into English literature, so that the literary critic can no longer afford to ignore it. But the literary world is a very small one and it does not reflect public opinion to anything like the degree that it did in Victorian times. The trouble is that our modern secular culture is sub-literary as well as sub-religious. The forces that affect it are in the West the great commercialized amusement industries and in the East the forces of political propaganda. And I do not think that Christianity can ever compete with these forms of mass culture on their own ground. If it does so, it runs the danger of becoming commercialized and politicized and thus of sacrificing its own distinctive values. I believe that Christians stand to gain more in the long run by accepting their minority position and looking for quality rather than quantity.
This does not mean that Catholicism should become an esoteric religion for the learned and the privileged. The minority is a religious minority and it is to be found in every class and at every intellectual level. So it was in the days of primitive Christianity and so it has been ever since.
The difference is that today the intellectual factor has become more vital than it ever was in the past. The great obstacle to the conversion of the modern world is the belief that religion has no intellectual significance; that it may be good for morals and satisfying to man's emotional needs, but that there is no such thing as religious knowledge. The only true knowledge is concerned with material things and with the concrete realities of social and economic life.
This is a pre-theological difficulty, for it is impossible to teach men even the simplest theological truths, if they believe that the creeds and the catechism are nothing but words and that religious knowledge is not really knowledge at all. On the other hand, I do not believe that it is possible to clear the difficulty away by straight philosophical argument, since the general public is philosophically illiterate and modern philosophy is becoming an esoteric specialism.
The only remedy is religious education in the widest sense of the word. That is to say a general introduction to the world of religious truth and the higher forms of spiritual reality. By losing sight of this world, modern secular culture has become more grievously impoverished than even the non-Christian cultures, for those cultures agreed in recognizing the existence of a higher supernatural or divine world on which human life was dependent.
Now the Christian world of the past was exceptionally well provided with ways of access to spiritual realities. Christian culture was essentially a sacramental culture which embodied religious truth in visible and palpable forms: art and architecture; music and poetry and drama, philosophy and history were all used as channels for the communication of religious truth. Today all these channels have been closed by unbelief or choked by ignorance, so that Christianity has been deprived of its natural means of outward expression and communication.
It is the task of Christian education to recover these lost contacts and to restore contact between religion and modern society — between the world of spiritual reality and the world of social experience.
It's always helpful to go back and read conservative and Christian (and Christian conservative) warnings from the New Deal/Great Society era to get some sense of just how reactionary modern American culture truly is. While Europe continues on its inexorable path over the secular cliff, America has at least applied the brakes and is trying to ram into reverse. In this instance the movement for universal school vouchers is obviously a powerful antidote to the poison of compulsory secular education.
THE DROPOUTS:
The real problem with Europe (Martin Walker, 5/31/2004, UPI)
Whatever happened to the European economies? Since 1990, the big three continental economies of Germany, France and Italy have grown at an average rate of less than 1.7 percent a year. By contrast, the United States grew almost twice as fast over the same period.One result of this became strikingly clear last week when the German edition of the Financial Times published a league table of the world's 100 "most valuable" companies (which means ranked by market capitalization). Were it not for the British, whose refusal to join the euro currency renders them semi-detached, the Europeans would be dropping out of contention. [...]
No wonder that Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, in his appearance before the European Union's Economic and Social Committee last week lamented that Europe needed "a radical change."
Prodi was testifying on something called the Lisbon strategy, a highly ambitious plan drawn up at the EU summit in Lisbon in 2000 that was supposed to deliver the "most competitive economy in the world by 2010." The strategy called for liberalization of labor markets, intensified competition, Europe-wide coordination of education and skills training, and reform of corporation taxes and incentives for research. The "social partners," as the EU dubs the representatives of the EU's federations of labor unions and of employers, were to be brought into the process. And this was all to be combined with a budget and investment strategy that was supposed to unleash the talents of Europe and catch up -- and even overtake -- the great spurt the American economy had displayed in the 1990s.
Instead, the Lisbon strategy has become something of a joke.
They dropped out of contention decades ago when they lost their religious faith, stopped having children and became willing dependents of the Welfare State.
NOT REALISTIK:
Freedom is taking root in Russia (Aleksander Lebedev, May 31, 2004, The Boston Globe)
THE CHANGES in Russia during the past 15 years have been brought about by the desire of the Russian people to have a better life. Although laced with imperfection, democratic changes have taken root in Russia, and we now have an elected parliament and a popularly elected president.We also have a multi-party system and claim to be tolerant of a pluralism of views and attitudes.The economy is based on market values and private ownership. Russia voluntarily withdrew its troops from Eastern and Central Europe, and our nuclear weapons are no longer aimed at theWest.We have been assisting the United States in the war on terrorism, and few can downplay the significance of Russian-American cooperation in Afghanistan.
Domestically, Russia will soon undergo rapid economic growth. After the 1998 default the economy is growing at a steady rate. In 2003, economic growth was more than 7 percent of the GDP. The first quarter results of 2004 support these positive trends: GDP grew by 8 percent, and investment grew by 13 percent, while inflation was the lowest ever at 3.5 percent. Real income grew by 13.9 percent while net capital outflow was as low as $200 million.
It would be a mistake to try to attribute this growth only to higher prices on oil and other natural resources in the international markets. Yet to accelerate this growth we have to solve many problems. Most important is that we clear a path to development of private entrepreneurship. If we succeed in this, Russia will have a real chance to complete the historic economic reforms of the 1990s.
Silly Mr. Lebedev--if he'd paid attention duiring the 20th Century he'd have learned from the Realists that Slavs have no desire for freedom, just as they tell us now that Muslims have none.
ONE WAY, MANY MEANS:
A Worn Road for U.N. Aide (DEXTER FILKINS, 5/31/04, NY Times)
When Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, arrived earlier this month, he declared that he would crisscross Iraq to give the people a new government, one that he suggested would be more independent of America's heavy-handed ways.Now, as Mr. Brahimi nears the end of his work, Iraqis are discovering that his task was not so simple.
With his slate of appointees expected to be announced in the next day or two, the appointments leaked so far suggest that what Mr. Brahimi ultimately accomplishes may turn out to be less a revolution than a rearrangement, less a new cast of characters than a reworked version of the same old faces.
The reason, Iraqis are beginning to say, has been the unexpected assertiveness of American officials and their allies on the Iraqi Governing Council, coupled with Mr. Brahimi's surprising passivity, after he was expected to have a free hand.
Here's a handy rule of thumb for anyone who still hasn't figured it out four years into the Bush administration: today's story about the President reversing a position will be followed by tomorrow's about how he's simply accomplishing it via different means.
WE LET THE SERVANTS WORRY ABOUT BABIES
Careers curtailing children
(Anne Marie Owens, National Post, May 31st, 2004)
Canadian professional women are choosing not to have children, or severely limiting their number of offspring, because they do not believe they can have children and successful careers, according to new research that has significant implications for Canada's future labour market and economic consumption patterns.Almost a third of female professionals and managers had no children at all and almost as many had just one child, with the majority of those surveyed indicating they made a conscious decision on how many children to have and stating their career was a major factor in that decision.
The number of women surveyed who had more than two children was extremely low: None of the women under the age of 31 had more than two children, and only 17 of the nearly 100 under the age of 38 had more than two children.
The study, which is to be released today by researchers at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, provides one of the first insights into the behaviour and decision-making that is driving the international trend of declining fertility.
"This is a revolution in fertility," says Linda Duxbury, one of Canada's leading workplace experts and one of the authors of the study. "These professional women are making a conscious decision to limit family size because they know that organizations and government haven't responded.... They used to have the kids and worry about the career later. Now, they're worrying about the work first."
The researchers say their findings have significant societal implications because they show the impending labour-force shortage stemming from this declining fertility is largely a result of a conscious rejection by working women of workplace practices and government policies that have made the top professional careers incompatible with family life.
Debates about demographics often reflect an assumption that we are speaking of broad socio-economic forces or evolutionary imperatives cutting a wide swath through society. The tone of these debates leaves the impression that people largely make their choices unconsciously or in response to general forces over which they have little control, and that some sort of counter trends or equilibrium will set in as these change. They do not consider that demographic change can be a product of individual intelligent design that has little to do with the objective state of the world around them.
The article makes a half-hearted and predictable attempt to blame government and corporations for the lack of child-friendly policies. But the problem is a spiritual one that is reflected in the word “career”. People can have jobs, which are generally mundane, practical means to acquire the material needs that support what is really important to them. They can have vocations, which imply service and duty within certain defined and traditional parameters. But folks with careers believe the worth their lives is measured by their personal status, which requires a continuous, discernable advancement in power, wealth and prestige. Emotionally, they live for themselves and nothing–certainly not the messy, demanding life of family–can be allowed to stand in their way.
It is fine to point fingers at women, but, as with so many popular feminist causes, they are simply following trends set by men and are but a generation or two behind.
UN-ISLAMIC:
CLERICS CONDEMN KHOBAR CARNAGE (Ahmad Wahaj Al-Siddiqui, 5/31/04, The Saudi Gazette)
ISLAMIC scholars and high authorities condemned the deadly terrorist attacks at the Arabian Petroleum Investment Corp. residential compound in Al-Khobar.It is most abhorring to kill innocent people who came to Saudi Arabia on its invitation to help build the country and who are under a covenant to get protection under Islamic order, the clerics said.
These criminal acts only strengthen the Zionists in their aggression against the Palestinians, they said.
Dr. Abdullah Abdul Mohsin Al-Turki, the Secretary General of the Muslim World League and member of the Supreme Council of Islamic clerics at Makkah, explained why terrorist acts have no place in Islam.
Islam came at a time when the world was a lawless state, he said. It is Islam that laid down the constitution to govern and brought peace and made every one including the ruler subservient to peace. This caused Islam to spread quickly. But now these terrorists are indulging in un-Islamic and inhuman acts of barbarism which no religion ever allows.
He appealed the people to cooperate with the authorities in achieving and maintaining peace in the Kingdom.
Not as graceful as one would like, but progress...
YOU BETTER THINK:
U.S.: China rethinking military strategy ROBERT BURNS, 5/30/04, AP)
The speed with which U.S. ground forces captured Baghdad and the prominent role played in Iraq by U.S. commandos, have led China to rethink how it could counteract the American military in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan, the Pentagon says.The Chinese also believe, partly from its assessment of the Bush administration's declared war on terrorism, that the United States is increasingly likely to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan or other Chinese interests, according to the Pentagon analysis.
"Authoritative commentary and speeches by senior officials suggest that U.S. actions over the past decade ... have reinforced fears within the Chinese leadership that the United States would appeal to human rights and humanitarian concerns to intervene, either overtly or covertly," said the Pentagon.
Overtly, or Congress would go ballistic.
May 30, 2004
WHAT ABOUT THE STEEL TARIFFS?:
Central America Free Trade Agreement (Cynthia Kirk, May 29, 2004, VOA)
The United States has signed a trade agreement with five Central American countries. The five are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.Trade ministers from the six countries signed the agreement in a ceremony Friday at the Washington headquarters of the Organization of American States. The new treaty is known as the Central America Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.
The Dominican Republic is expected to join CAFTA at a later date. All seven countries will be included in the agreement when it is presented to the United States Congress for approval.
President Bush first announced his plan to negotiate a free trade agreement with Central American countries in two-thousand-two. The negotiations were completed at the end of last year.
Mr. Bush continues to build on what was already quite the best free trade record of any modern president.
WHERE THE WAR ENDS:
Senior Pro-Taliban Cleric Killed in Pakistani Port City (Reuters, May 30, 2004)
A senior pro-Taliban cleric in Pakistan was gunned down by unknown assailants outside his mosque in the port city of Karachi on Sunday and later died of his wounds, police and hospital sources said.
Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, who called for a holy war against the United States after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was wounded along with three of his sons outside his mosque, police official Fayyaz Qureshi said.
Careful what you wish for...
MAKE TUBBY WALK
Actually, we eat less (Daily Telegraph, May 30th, 2004)
In fact, Britons are eating less than they used to. According to a study by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the food intake of the average Briton has declined by 750 calories a day over the past 30 years. The reason we are getting fatter is that we are doing less manual work and taking less exercise: we are burning off 800 fewer calories a day than we were in the early 1970s. For the decline in physical activity, especially among children, the Government has to take some of the blame. It has continued to allow school playing fields to be sold to developers and has introduced health and safety legislation which makes it more difficult for outdoor adventure courses to operate.To accuse the food industry of promoting child obesity is to distract attention from these issues. But there is also a cultural reason why the manufacturers of crisps, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks get blamed for promoting obesity: they represent everything which the Left dislikes about globalisation. The main difference between the British diet now and that of 30 years ago is not that we eat more sugar and fat, as a visit to an old-fashioned greasy spoon will remind anyone; it is that we eat more branded foods. Wotsits are damned not just because, when eaten in excess, they make people fat but because they are produced by a multinational company and are marketed around the world in standardised form.
While the availability of many forms of junk food has certainly increased over the past generation, so too have the opportunities to eat well. Whereas the greengrocer of 30 years ago offered a limited range of yellowing cauliflower and frozen peas, today's supermarket brims with fresh fruit and vegetables from all over the world. Thanks to the globalised food industry, it is possible now to buy leaner meat than 30 years ago, to buy olive oil as well as butter, skimmed milk as well as full cream. Moreover, food manufacturers now offer hugely detailed nutritional information, including calorie counts, on their packets: something which they never used to do.
Clearly, not all Britons are making wise decisions about what they eat, but to lay the charge of promoting obesity at the door of the food industry is the easy way out. Those who get fat have themselves to blame above anyone else.
Or their parents. If children were compelled to walk to and from school, to play outside all day on weekends and to pay for their own treats out of a modest allowance, there would presumably be a sharp decline in childhood obesity. Yet somehow many modern parents have let themselves be convinced that the first is dangerous, the second oppressive and the third mean. More and more they see exercise as a scheduled event to be undertaken only on consent. Having lost control over the matter, they find it much easier to direct their wrath at an imagined corporate conspiracy and teach their children to be neurotic about food.
Scientists and lawyers know a good deal when they see one and are persuading millions that we all ate a diet based upon fruits and vegetables and unrefined grains in the good old days. Those of us who can remember the typical huge breakfasts, rich desserts, school lunches, fatty meats and gravies, creamy milks, syrupy canned fruits, sugar-laden juices and soft drinks and ubiquitous cakes and pies of the 50's and 60's may wonder how we possibly managed to avoid the very real tragedy afflicting so many of our children.
STOCK UP ON YOUR SUMMER READING:
Conservative Classics Outlet (ISI)
and FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Brothers Judd Recommended Summer Reading
WHERE MY PEEPS AT?:
Christian Cool and the New Generation Gap (JOHN LELAND, 5/16/04, NY Times)
FOR evidence of generational upheaval these days, you might skip over the usual suspects - sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll - and consider instead the church.Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed intimidating crosses or stained-glass images of Jesus in favor of neutral environments, their children are now wearing "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirts.
As mainline churches scramble to retain young people, these worshipers have gained attention by creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church.
But does a T-shirt really serve the faith? And if religion is our link to the timeless, what does it mean that young Christians replace their parents' practices?
The movement "has a noble side," said Michael Novak, the conservative theologian at the American Enterprise Institute. He himself remembers how much he enjoyed the Christian comic books of his youth. He compared the alt-evangelicals to missionaries, who "feel they've learned something valuable from their faith and want to share it" using the native language.
"But in boiling it down, trying to make it relevant, you leave out the hard edges and the complicated points," he said. "You make the faith less than it is."
Yet for many in this generation, the worship of their parents feels impersonal - not bigger than their daily, media-intensified lives, but smaller. Their search is for unfiltered religious experience.
"My generation is discontent[ed] with dead religion," said Cameron Strang, 28, founder of Relevant Media, which produces Christian books, a Web site and Relevant magazine, a stylish 70,000-circulation bimonthly that addresses topics like body piercing, celibacy, extreme prayer, punk rock and God.
"We don't want to show up on Sunday, sing two hymns, hear a sermon and go home," Mr. Strang said. "The Bible says we're supposed to die for this thing. If I'm going to do that, this has to be worth something. Our generation wants a tangible experience of God who is there."
If Christ were among us in these times, we'd surely know it as the "Sermon on NBC", not "on the Mount." Gotta evangelize where the people are.
NOT LEBANON:
Deadlock Seen on Presidency in Iraqi Talks (DEXTER FILKINS and STEVEN R. WEISMAN, 5/30/04, NY Times)
American, Iraqi and United Nations officials deadlocked Saturday over the selection of an Iraqi president, even as they appeared to strike a deal over the most important cabinet ministers for the new government that is to take over on July 1.On one side of the deadlock are the United Nations envoy, Lakdar Brahimi, and the chief American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, who are backing the former foreign minister, Adnan Pachachi. Leaders of the Iraqi Governing Council support a rival, Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar. Both men are Sunnis.
Some Iraqi officials said Saturday that Mr. Brahimi had reached agreements with Mr. Bremer and Iraqi leaders on six important cabinet positions. Two people close to the Iraqi Governing Council said Mr. Brahimi had reached agreements to name three Shiites, two Kurds and one Sunni to high-level jobs in the cabinet. That mix reflects the ethnic and religious balancing act under way.
According to these sources, the two Kurds were Barham Salih, who would become the foreign minister, and Hoshyar Zebari, who would be named the defense minister. The Kurds, deprived of the top jobs of prime minister and president, would get these two important cabinet posts. Three members of the majority Shiite population would be in line for the cabinet: Adel Abdul Mahdi as the finance minister, Thamir Ghadbhan as the oil minister, and Dr. Raja Khuzaie as the health minister.
In addition to the president being a Sunni Arab, the last of the six cabinet officials mentioned would also be Sunni: Samir Sumaidy, who stands to become the interior minister.
The stage appears set for a showdown on the presidency on Sunday.
American officials say they are backing Mr. Pachachi in large part because they believe he would adhere to the interim constitution that was hammered out earlier this year and is meant to guide the new government until elections are held.
The constitution is, and should be, toast--get over it.
FORCING THE SAUDIS INTO THE WoT:
Hostages Released After Standoff in Saudi Arabia (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 5/30/04)
Saudi forces freed dozens of American and other foreign hostages Sunday after a shooting rampage turned into a daylong standoff with Islamic militants at an expatriate resort. A Saudi security official said the lead attacker was in custody and two other suspects were being arrested.Saudi officials would not comment on the condition of the hostages. However, a diplomat in Khobar said officials told him there were deaths among the hostages and attackers. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said he did not know how many hostages were dead, but was informed that two gunmen were killed.
At least 10 others -- including an American -- died in the attack claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group that began Saturday morning when gunmen in military-style dress opened fire on security forces at two oil industry compounds in Khobar, 250 miles northeast of Riyadh.
The assailants -- believed to number up to seven -- then fled up the street, taking some 45-60 hostages in a high-rise housing mainly foreigners.
THE HIGH FEELING LOW:
The Literary Divide (Anne Applebaum, April 7, 2004, Washington Post)
At the National Book Awards ceremony last fall, a special lifetime achievement award was given to the horror writer -- and mass-market success -- Stephen King. He returned the favor with a slap in the face. In an extraordinary acceptance speech, he claimed that he had been snubbed all of his life by snooty critics; that wonderful writers such as John Grisham were regularly ignored by snobbish prize committees; and that never, ever in his entire life had he written a word for money.But most people do write for money. How else would we survive? As long ago as the 18th century, Samuel Johnson declared that it would be idiotic to imagine otherwise: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Only people like Stephen King, whose best-selling novels are regularly made into popular movies, don't need to think about money: He employs an accountant to do that. It's hardly surprising that he's resented, even snubbed, by authors like the anonymous, self-described "critically acclaimed mid-list writer" who wrote a long, painful description of her career ups and downs -- four published books, good reviews, middling sales, waves of rejections thanks to middling sales and, finally, a decision to take another job -- in Salon last month, causing a minor sensation.
There are, it is true, still a few "crossover" writers, mostly writers of excellent popular books about American history, and one or two novelists. But my sense is that their numbers are shrinking, that there's almost no more middle ground. Popular culture now hates high culture so much that it campaigns aggressively against it. High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it. As for the rest of us -- we're inundated with the former, often alienated from the latter. And if we write books, we skulk about checking our Amazon rankings, wondering whether CNN might possibly have put our names in tiny print at the bottom of the screen, and feeling dazed -- and extremely grateful -- when we win prizes.
Americans have especially good cause for and a long history of hating intellectuals, but the literati have done themselves no favors in this regard by intentionally making their work unreadable. Meanwhile, popular culture is obviously uneven, but much of it--from Lord of the Rings to The Passion to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and so forth--plumbs more enduring and interesting themes than most high culture.
OUTSIDE THE BOX:
Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group (MICHAEL ERARD, 5/22/04, NY Times)
Got a good idea? Now think for a moment where you got it. A sudden spark of inspiration? A memory? A dream?Most likely, says Ronald S. Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, it came from someone else who hadn't realized how to use it.
"The usual image of creativity is that it's some sort of genetic gift, some heroic act," Mr. Burt said. "But creativity is an import-export game. It's not a creation game."
Mr. Burt has spent most of his career studying how creative, competitive people relate to the rest of the world, and how ideas move from place to place. Often the value of a good idea, he has found, is not in its origin but in its delivery. His observation will undoubtedly resonate with overlooked novelists, garage inventors and forgotten geniuses who pride themselves on their new ideas but aren't successful in getting them noticed. "Tracing the origin of an idea is an interesting academic exercise, but it's largely irrelevant," Mr. Burt said. "The trick is, can you get an idea which is mundane and well known in one place to another place where people would get value out of it."
Mr. Burt, whose latest findings will appear in the American Journal of Sociology this fall, studied managers in the supply chain of Raytheon, the large electronics company and military contractor based in Waltham, Mass., where he worked until last year. Mr. Burt asked managers to write down their best ideas about how to improve business operations and then had two executives at the company rate their quality. It turned out that the highest-ranked ideas came from managers who had contacts outside their immediate work group. The reason, Mr. Burt said, is that their contacts span what he calls "structural holes," the gaps between discrete groups of people.
"People who live in the intersection of social worlds," Mr. Burt writes, "are at higher risk of having good ideas."
People with cohesive social networks, whether offices, cliques or industries, tend to think and act the same, he explains. In the long run, this homogeneity deadens creativity. As Mr. Burt's research has repeatedly shown, people who reach outside their social network not only are often the first to learn about new and useful information, but they are also able to see how different kinds of groups solve similar problems.
The most famous example is Charles Darwin, who looked at the economic theories of the day (mainly Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus) and combined them with local breeding techniques to come up with a theory for how evolution might occur naturally.
May 29, 2004
NO, NOT THAT PEOPLES’ CHOICE!
British-educated surgeon is new Iraqi prime minister (Luke Harding, Michael Howard and Julian Borger, The Guardian, May 29, 2004)
A British-educated neurosurgeon who spent 30 years in exile in Britain, and who has close links with both the CIA and MI6, was named as Iraq's new interim prime minister last night.Ayad Allawi, 58, the head of the Iraqi National Accord (INA), emerged as Iraq's surprise new leader after weeks of speculation and intrigue.
Earlier this year the INA said it had provided "in good faith" the raw intelligence from a single source that was used to support the claim that Saddam Hussein was able to deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of the order.
The INA said later it had presumed that MI6 would verify the claim. [...]
Other observers were also enthusiastic. Laith Kubba, a veteran Iraqi liberal who is now at the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, said Dr Allawi would be a unifying choice. "He has reached out to Sunni and Shia as well as Kurds."
However, Dr Allawi's close links to US and British intelligence agencies will not make him a popular choice for many ordinary Iraqis. [...]
The Iraqi resistance is likely to dismiss Dr Allawi as an American stooge and try to kill him.
So, Ba'athists and terrorists are now the "Iraqi resistance". It isn't very hard to figure out what the Left's worst nightmare is.
WINNING THE WoT:
Bush Points the Way: President Bush scored a humanitarian victory in Sudan this
week, but unfortunately it is not far-reaching enough. (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 5/29/04, NY Times)
I doff my hat, briefly, to President Bush.Sudanese peasants will be naming their sons "George Bush" because he scored a humanitarian victory this week that could be a momentous event around the globe — although almost nobody noticed. It was Bush administration diplomacy that led to an accord to end a 20-year civil war between Sudan's north and south after two million deaths.
If the peace holds, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of refugees will return home, and a region of Africa may be revived.
But there's a larger lesson here as well: messy African wars are not insoluble, and Western pressure can help save the day. So it's all the more shameful that the world is failing to exert pressure on Sudan to halt genocide in its Darfur region. Darfur is unaffected by the new peace accords. [...]
Yet while Mr. Bush has done far too little, he has at least issued a written statement, sent aides to speak forcefully at the U.N. and raised the matter with Sudan's leaders. That's more than the Europeans or the U.N. has done. Where are Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac? Where are African leaders, like Nelson Mandela? Why isn't John Kerry speaking out forcefully? And why are ordinary Americans silent?
Islamic leaders abroad have been particularly shameful in standing with the Sudanese government oppressors rather than with the Muslim victims in Darfur. Do they care about dead Muslims only when the killers are Israelis or Americans?
Far be it from a Timesman to credit the fact, but the Sudanese have made it quite clear that this agreement is fruit of the war on terror (including even Bill Clinton's cruise missile strike) and of the efforts of Christian evangelicals to influence Africa policy.
FLYOVER TERRITORY:
Calling All Ids: Freudians at War (D. D GUTTENPLAN, May 29, 2004, NY Times)
Who owns psychoanalysis? That question is at the center of the most recent battle here in the Freud Wars, the epic (or as the man himself might say, interminable) struggle over the legacy of Sigmund Freud, pioneer psychotherapist, cartographer of the unconscious and former resident of Hampstead, the leafy corner of Northwest London where the concentration of therapeutic couches per square mile may be even higher than on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.Late last year a new group calling itself the College of Psychoanalysts sent out a letter inviting British therapists who met certain qualifications to list themselves on the organization's "register of practitioners." The British Psychoanalytical Society, headquarters of classical Freudian analysis, responded with a statement accusing college members of "misleading the public about their training and qualifications." And then the fireworks really started. One founder of the college — which is a professional organization rather than a training institution — countered with a letter describing the society's action as "a phobic response to growth as symbolized in the Oedipal myth." An opponent of the college, on the other hand, described the new group as "an association of wannabes and poseurs."
More recently, the society's Web site included a disclaimer describing the college as a device for allowing therapists "to pass themselves off to the public as though they were trained psychoanalysts." In British law, "passing off" is a form of fraud; this was a declaration of war.
Susie Orbach, a therapist, an active member of the college and the author of the best-selling "Fat Is a Feminist Issue" and other books, says the dispute has already had "a chilling effect" on British intellectual life. To her, the society's argument that the title psychoanalyst "refers not to what the practitioner does, but what they have been trained to do" is nonsensical, a spurious restraint on trade.
"I do the work," she said. "My contributions are contributions to psychoanalysis, its theory and clinical practice, not to some other field."
On the surface, this is a parochial argument about labels and credentials, a tempest in a Viennese teacup — or at most, a professional turf war. But you don't have to probe the protagonists too deeply to discover that this is also a battle over the nature of therapy itself — what it is, what it does, how it works. And it quickly becomes apparent that alongside the intellectual controversy is a bare knuckles fight over money, power and prestige. These people, after all, are professionals of the ego.
Nurse Ratched must restore order.
WHEN ARABISTS ATTACK:
Conservative Allies Take Chalabi Case to the White House (ELISABETH BUMILLER, 5/29/04, NY Times)
Influential outside advisers to the Bush administration who support the Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi are pressing the White House to stop what one has called a "smear campaign" against Mr. Chalabi, whose Baghdad home and offices were ransacked last week in an American-supported raid.Last Saturday, several of these Chalabi supporters said, a small delegation of them marched into the West Wing office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to complain about the administration's abrupt change of heart about Mr. Chalabi and to register their concerns about the course of the war in Iraq. The group included Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of a Pentagon advisory group, and R. James Woolsey, director of central intelligence under President Bill Clinton.
Members of the group, who had requested the meeting, told Ms. Rice that they were incensed at what they view as the vilification of Mr. Chalabi, a favorite of conservatives who is now central to an F.B.I. investigation into who in the American government might have given him highly classified information that he is suspected of turning over to Iran.
Mr. Chalabi has denied that he provided Iran with any classified information.
The session with Ms. Rice was one sign of the turmoil that Mr. Chalabi's travails have produced within an influential corner of Washington, where Mr. Chalabi is still seen as a potential leader of Iraq.
"There is a smear campaign under way, and it is being perpetrated by the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. and a gaggle of former intelligence officers who have succeeded in planting these stories, which are accepted with hardly any scrutiny," Mr. Perle, a leading conservative, said in an interview.
Mr. Perle, referring to both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the campaign against Mr. Chalabi was "an outrageous abuse of power" by United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad.
Whatever Mr. Chalabi may or may not have done, CIA and State always favor Sunni dictatorship, so this certainly serves their purposes.