STASIS

Rancher sells archaelogical site to government (AP, 6/30/04)

For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient settlements thousands of years old in near perfect condition.

Hidden deep inside eastern Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles along Range Creek, where Wilcox guarded hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, pit houses and rock shelters, some exposing mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.

The sites were occupied for at least 3,000 years until they were abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished. The Fremont, a collection of hunter-gatherers and farmers, preceded more modern American Indian tribes on the Colorado Plateau.

NOW I'LL BE REASONABLE:

Kerry backs away from Northeast compact (Scott Schultz, 6/30/04, The Country Today)

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said that if he's elected, he'd no longer support special regional dairy pricing programs that some Wisconsin and Minnesota farm leaders have opposed.

Sen. Kerry had supported the Northeast Dairy Compact, which Upper Midwest dairy leaders said unfairly benefited Northeast dairy producers.

He said in a June 23 telephone interview with The Country Today that he would seek a "reasonable" dairy policy that would be good for all regions.

"As a senator from the Northeast, I had to support it," Sen. Kerry said of the Northeast Compact. "But, as president, I have to represent the entire nation."

WHY "WE NEED MORE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ!":

Soldiers 'get the bad boys' in raids (Washington Times, 6/30/2004)

Under the cover of darkness, soldiers from Alpha Company, 91st Engineer Battalion, creep up a narrow alley to their target, ready to scale the front wall of a small home and seize the men who tried to attack their platoon.

First, they knock. When the gate swings open, they ask for the men in question and detain four of them. A field test reveals that the men have traces of explosives on their hands.

"This is how it's supposed to go," says 1st Lt. Nicolas Bradley, 27, of Salt Lake City, who led the pre-dawn raid. "This is the best part of our job, going to get the bad boys."

THE ONLY GOOD GERMAN...:

Germany's underrated resistance (Uwe Siemon-Netto, June 30, 2004, UPI)

Shortly before the suicide of Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow, a leading coconspirator in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, he wrote: "The moral value of a human being only begins to show where he is prepared to give his life for his conviction."

On July 20, Germany will commemorate the 60th anniversary of Tresckow's self-sacrifice and that of hundreds of others, almost all committed Christians, Catholic or Protestant. Some 200 of Germany's finest were executed for their part in this conspiracy.

Among them were 19 general officers, 26 colonels, two ambassadors, seven other diplomats, a government minister, three state secretaries, the head of the Reich chancellery, and several regional governors and police chiefs. Some -- like Col. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who placed a bomb almost literally under Hitler's feet -- were immediately shot after the coup's failure.

[F]or decades their martyrdom was belittled and scoffed at. "The highest personalities in the Third Reich are murdering one another, or trying to," snorted Sir Winston Churchill, then British prime minister, even though the German resistance had informed him beforehand of the assassination plan.

Anthony Eden, later British Foreign Secretary, dismissed the coconspirators as traitors to their country. To this day, the myth has survived that the resistance against Hitler was a Johnny-come-lately undertaking by reactionary militarists who saw that for Germany the war was de facto lost by the summer of 1944, and tried to rescue as much of the spoils as possible.

That there have been more than 30, perhaps even 40 previous attempts to remove Hitler, according to some historians, is still not common knowledge. As Peter Hoffmann of McGill University, has long shown, these efforts began in 1933, the very first year of Hitler's chancellorship. [...]

Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II and himself deeply involved in the conspiracy, once remarked to me that in the decades following Germany's defeat it was fashionable to belittle the resistance because the personality profiles of most of its members did not fit the fashionable left-wing fable that the heroes and martyrs of the struggle against Nazism evil were chiefly proletarians.

This fib made it possible for Nazis and traditionalists to be lumped together, he said, when in fact the opposition hailed from the upper-middle class and the nobility, whose religious, philosophical and moral values were deeply violated by Hitler and his thugs.

Almost 20 years ago in Chicago, I befriended an elderly German woman, a retired high school principal, who traveled the world trying to "vindicate" her father, Carl Goerdeler, who would have become German chancellor had the July 20 coup attempt succeeded. He was tortured and hanged in February 1945, shortly before Nazi Germany collapsed. His daughter, indeed his entire family, was liberated from concentration camp by the victorious U.S. forces. And yet it had become modish to dismiss him as just another right-winger, simply because he was a political conservative.

Her name is Marianne Meyer-Krahmer, and hers is an incredible tale. She had witnessed her father's resignation as mayor of Leipzig after the Nazis had blown up a monument to composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in his city. This grandson of one of Germany's greatest Enlightenment philosophers, Moses Mendelssohn, was of Jewish descent, though a fervent Protestant Christian.

Financed by industrialist Robert Bosch, Goerdeler then traveled from Western capital to Western capital warning politicians and tycoons against making any deals with Hitler on the assumption that he might be a bulwark against Bolshevism. "Don't fool yourselves," he warned, "Hitler is a Leninist. First he will destroy the Jews, then Christianity and ultimately capitalism."

DON'T TELL E.J.:

Poll shows Bush leads widening in Arizona (UPI, 6/30/04)

In Arizona, U.S. President George W. Bush's lead over Sen. John F. Kerry has widened to 12 points, according to the latest KAET-TV/Channel 8 poll.

Bush leads Kerry 47 percent to 35 percent in the latest statewide sampling of registered voters while liberal independent Ralph Nader polled at just 2 percent, well behind the 15 percent of respondents who said they were still undecided.

Until recently, Arizona had been seen as a clear swing state in November's presidential election...

THAT'S THE SPIRIT:

Top Saudi Qaeda Spiritual Guide Killed in Riyadh (Isa Mubarak, Jun 30, 2004, Reuters)

Saudi police killed a top spiritual guide for the Saudi wing of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network during a shootout in Riyadh on Wednesday, security sources said.

They named the slain militant as Abdullah al-Roshood, on a list of 26 most wanted suspects, and said his death was a hefty blow to the ideological hierarchy of al Qaeda in the world's biggest oil exporter.

The Interior Ministry said a policeman was also killed in the gun battle, the first militant violence since Saudi forces killed the leader of al Qaeda in the kingdom 12 days ago. Saudi Arabia has been battling militants trying to topple the country's pro-U.S. monarchy for more than a year.

The ministry statement said six more policemen -- and three passers-by -- were moderately to lightly wounded.

THE RECONQUISTA IS A QUAGMIRE

Heatwave brings power cuts in Spain (Giles Tremlett, The Guardian, 6/30/04)

Spain has suffered its first power cuts of the summer, with a heatwave stretching what critics say is an already over-strained electricity network to breaking point.

THE DANGER OF LISTENING TO PAUL KRUGMAN:

Kerry Flip-Flops... Again (James K. Glassman, 06/30/2004, Tech Central Station)

The House of Representatives is ready to pass a bill that would sharply limit an attempt by an unelected accounting board in Norwalk, Conn., to force U.S. companies to guess the costs of broad-based employee stock options and write them off as expenses when they are issued.

If the Financial Accounting Standards Board gets its way and stock options are expensed, it's almost certain that many businesses, including high-tech firms, will stop issuing them, and American innovation and competitiveness will suffer.

It all comes down to the Senate, where the House bill is being blocked by a few key legislators. Among them, according to an article in Monday's edition of National Journal's Technology Daily, is John Kerry, who, a month from now, will become the Democratic nominee for president.

In a speech in Silicon Valley last Thursday, Kerry extolled the benefits of stock ownership but, in the words of his economic policy director, Jason Furman, the Senator "believes that companies should be required to expense stock options."

As Drew Clark wrote in Technology Daily: "Some believe that Kerry's lack of support for an issue that TechNet CEO Rick White calls the 'number one, two and three issue' current of interest to technology companies could cost him support within the sector." By contrast, said White, "The president is clear that he is against expensing stock options."

Kerry is, at least for now, clearly in favor of expensing. But he did not always take that position.

AS THE QUESTION BECOMES HOW MANY JOBS HE CREATED, RATHER THAN LOST:

More U.S. jobs seen in June, buoying Bush (Andrea Hopkins, June 30, 2004, Reuters)

U.S. employment likely surged again in June, taking gains this year to some 1.4 million jobs and bolstering President George W. Bush's economic record ahead of the November election, analysts said onWednesday.

Economists believe 250,000 jobs were created this month, virtually matching May's jump of 248,000, though the unemployment rate probably will not budge from 5.6 percent because newly hopeful job-seekers are returning to the job market.

"I think the gains will be quite widespread again, and as we saw in April and May, we are likely to create slightly more higher-paying than lower-paying positions," said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Banc of America Securities.

MAD, QUITE MAD

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 2: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking: The long-time progressive makes a pitch for the disenfranchised Right (American Conservative, 6/21/04)

Ralph Nader recently accepted Pat Buchanan’s invitation to sit down with us and explain why his third-party presidential bid ought to appeal to conservatives disaffected with George W. Bush. We think readers will be interested in the reflections of a man who has been a major figure in American public life for 40 years—and who now finds himself that rarest of birds, a conviction politician.

Pat Buchanan: Let me start off with foreign policy—Iraq and the Middle East. You have seen the polls indicating widespread contempt for the United States abroad. Why do they hate us?

Ralph Nader: First of all, we have been supporting despots, dictators, and oligarchs in all those states for a variety of purposes. We supported Saddam Hussein. He was our anti-Communist dictator until 1990. It’s also cultural; they see corporate culture as abandoning the restraints on personal behavior dictated by their religion and culture. Our corporate pornography and anything-goes values are profoundly offensive to them.

60-40 NATION:

Executive Decisions (Chuck Todd, June 30, 2004, NationalJournal.com)

One fact will remain this November regardless of what happens in the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. -- nearly 60 percent of the country's population will call a Republican governor. Thanks to the California recall, Republicans hold the governorships of our largest states (California, Florida, New York and Texas), which does a lot for the population advantage statistic.
Republicans would love to hit the 30-state mark and with the handful of governor seats up this year... the party has a serious shot at making that happen.

But Republicans aren't satisfied with a mere 60 percent population dominance -- the party would love to hit the 30-state mark. And with the handful of governor seats up this year, particularly those in some GOP-friendly states, the party has a serious shot at making that happen. Currently, the Republicans hold 28 governor seats compared to 22 for the Democrats.

Since this could be our one and only profile of the 2004 gubernatorial races, let's start with the big picture:

* Eleven seats (6D, 5R) are up in this "off" year for governor campaigns.

* Four of the 11 races do not feature an incumbent.

* Two of the 11 have governors running for a second two-year term, as Vermont and New Hampshire still insist on non-stop campaigns for their highest elected office.

* Four of the 11 are taking place in presidential "purple states" (Missouri, New Hampshire, Washington and West Virginia). That number moves to five if Kerry names either Sens. John Edwards, D-N.C., or Evan Bayh, D-Ind., as his running mate -- both North Carolina and Indiana also feature a governor's race and both states would become presidential battlegrounds thanks to home state pride.

HOW ABOUT NAFTA INSTEAD OF THE EU?:

Nato summit sparks Turkish press debate (BBC, 6/30/04)

US President George W Bush's support for Turkey was received enthusiastically by a number of commentators.

Mr Bush's visit to Turkey "had symbolic meaning", says Milliyet, indicating the country's "long-term importance" to the US.

The daily is also gratified that the president "stuck to his guns" in calling for Turkey's acceptance into the European Union, despite an earlier warning not to interfere by French President Jacques Chirac.

Vatan agrees, pleased that Mr Bush had urged that Turkey "should be crowned with European Union membership".

It also feels he sent the country "important messages".

"He said Turkey is on the ascendancy... with its democracy which can serve as an inspiration for the Islamic world."

SHI'ASTAN WEST:

Lebanese poll:56 % consider Syrian presence ''illegitimate'' (Albabwa, 29-06-2004)

A public opinion poll published Tuesday demonstrated that 56 % of those polled rejected the Lebanese regime's contention that Syrian presence in the country was 'legitimate and provisional,' with 40 % supporting that concept.

In addition, 69 % of the Lebanese oppose an extension or renewal of President Lahoud's term in office and 90 % reject the concept of Syria appointing the president of Lebanon.

MEANWHILE, ON THE REACTIONARY LEFT:

John Kerry sells out to big education (Armstrong Williams, June 29, 2004, Townhall)

The National Education Association, the nation's largest professional employee organization, is fundamentally opposed to any education reform that seeks to hold public schools accountable for their failures. On July 3, it will hold its national convention in Washington, D.C. That's when the association is expected to endorse John Kerry for president. Along with the endorsement will come thousands of votes from teachers across the country.

In return, Kerry will talk about how school vouchers will tear apart our public education system.

Far more instructive, however, are the remarks Kerry made about education before he won the Democratic nomination and became beholden to the big interests of the teacher unions.

"We must end teacher tenure as we now know it," said Kerry in 1998 speeches delivered in Boston and Washington. During those speeches, Kerry took shots at a public education bureaucracy that shielded public schools and teachers from accountability and bemoaned that "those going into teaching have the lowest SAT and ACT scores of any profession in the United States."

In a 1998 New Republic article, Dana Milbank wrote that Kerry told her he'd "even approve government-funded vouchers - good for tuition at any accredited private school - as part of an overall education reform. ..." At the time, Kerry was proposing turning all public schools into charter schools. The reasoning was that, since students are assigned to public schools, the system has no incentive to improve and no accountability for failure. Stated otherwise, the public school system is a monopoly. But if poor families could send their children to any charter school, with the government paying all or part of the tuition, public schools would be forced to raise their standards or risk having their students flee.

"I'm for tough love here, folks," Kerry said. "It's time to come in and kick some butts. Democrats can't be viewed as somehow protecting these practices. You can't do this in some loosey-goosey ... way."

Six years later, Kerry is toting a different tune.

WHEN THEO MET NEO (via Tom Morin):

Political Paradoxes: how the terrorist assault on America sparked Bush’s progressive impulse (Peter Berkowitz, June 29, 2004, The New York Sun)

Conservatives maintain a lively sense of the weaknesses of human nature; cherish custom and tradition,and put a premium on preserving what has been achieved in the way of individual freedom and equality before the law, typically by limiting government’s reach.

Progressives maintain a lively sense of the possibilities of human nature, celebrate innovation and reform, and focus on expanding individual freedom and enlarging the sphere of equality, typically by increasing government’s size and role. [...]

So how did it happen that a conservative president staked his presidency on a foreign policy rich with progressive implications that nevertheless most progressives have roundly condemned?

As for the progressive critics, their strange reversal was fortified by the appeal to sound arguments, grounded in a more conservative emphasis on the dependence of democracy on culture and morals, for believing that we lack the know-how to democratize a large, far-away country whose language we do not speak, whose traditions differ dramatically from our own, and whose politics is riven by ethnic and religious sectarianism.

But many progressives critics might not have come to these conclusions had they not found themselves in the awkward position of opposing policies that reflect, to a degree that the critics have not grappled with, the latent progressive impulse in both neoconservatism and Mr. Bush’s Christian faith. [...]

Mr. Bush’s conclusion that it was appropriate to use military force to remove Saddam Hussein was bound up with his judgment that once Baghdad had been liberated, America could restore order and establish democracy in Iraq.

This is where his deep-seated Christian progressivism, his belief in the universality of the human desire and capacity for freedom, comes in and converges with the progressive impulse in neoconservatism. Time and again in his major speeches about Iraq, Mr. Bush has repeated some variant on the idea that freedom is not America’s gift to the world but God’s gift to humanity.

Of course, the same Christianity which is fueling Mr. Bush's progressivism also teaches the core conservative truth, that Man is Fallen and therefore imperfectable. This acts as the brake that Left utopianism lacks and establishes a perfect balance of the conservative and progressive human impulses.

POLITICS AS VOYEURISM:

Menino lets loose: Mayor slams ‘incompetent’ Kerry camp (David R. Guarino and Noelle Straub, June 30, 2004, Boston Herald)

Mayor Thomas M. Menino unloaded a searing attack on fellow Democrat John F. Kerry yesterday, calling his presidential campaign ``small-minded'' and ``incompetent'' - laying bare a years-old rift weeks before the city plays host to Kerry's FleetCenter coronation. [...]

Menino said he was enraged to see a local newspaper item saying he hung up on Kerry Sunday. The mayor yesterday said Kerry's campaign floated the story, which he called untrue.

``I wasn't angry with him, that's a rumor they're spreading,'' Menino said. ``They are trying to balance out their decision by saying the mayor's angry. I had no harsh words with them.''

Menino called the alleged leak ``the failure of the campaign to communicate with the public,'' adding, ``They are trying to find scapegoats for their incompetency.''

I KNOW THESE THINGS, I'M A NETWORK NEWSANCHOR... (via Tom Corcoran):

Brokaw Raps Iraqi PM for Linking Saddam to 9/11 (NewsMax, 6/29/04)

NBC "Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw was so dismayed Tuesday night when Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi linked Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks that he actually reprimanded him during his interview.

When Brokaw asked the new Iraqi leader if he could "understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?" Dr. Allawi responded:

"We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And the war [has] been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism."

Plainly miffed that Dr. Allawi hadn't accepted the U.S. media's attempt to cover-up links between Saddam, al Qaida and 9/11, Brokaw reprimanded him as cameras rolled:

"Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq."

RATES ARE TOO HIGH, NOT TOO LOW:

Bubble Bubble, Is There Trouble? (Arnold Kling, 6/29/04, Tech Central Station)

Many economists are skeptical that real interest rates will remain low. It appears to us that investors are ignoring the potential for large increases in borrowing by the U.S. government as deficits accumulate. For example, Rudolph Penner describes some alarming scenarios, including one in which our debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 100 percent in twenty years and keeps climbing thereafter.

IT'S THE 1870,s, NOT THE 1970's:
Playing it cool: Is Alan Greenspan fretting enough about inflation? (The Economist, 6/24/04)

Inflation-worriers, including The Economist, have pointed out that the economy is growing apace, inflation is rising and yet short-term interest rates, even after June 30th, will be negative in real terms. In the year to March output grew at its fastest pace for 20 years. Consumer prices rose by 3.1% in the year to May, up from 2.1% a year ago. Admittedly, much of that rise is due to higher oil prices, but even core consumer prices—which exclude the volatile categories of food and fuel—are edging up, from 1.1% in the year to January to 1.7% in the year to May. And people think inflation is on the rise. According to a survey by the University of Michigan, Americans' expectation of inflation over the coming year is now 3.3%, up from 2% last May.

More optimistic analysts note that inflation is still extremely low by historical standards. They point out that much of the recent acceleration may be due to temporary factors; and argue that price pressure is unlikely to damage an economy which still has a lot of excess capacity and where productivity is growing strongly.

According to conventional benchmarks, America's economy still has plenty of slack. The jobless rate at 5.6% is well above levels consistent with stable inflation and traditional measures of industrial capacity use are below historical averages. There are also signs that the jump in inflation at the beginning of the year is already abating: May's monthly core consumer prices rose by 0.2%, compared with 0.4% in March and 0.3% in April.

60-40 NATION:

The GOP's blue-state convention slate (Terence Jeffrey, June 30, 2004, Townhall)

When you look at the slate of prime-time speakers the Republicans announced this week for their national convention in New York this August, it brings to mind Yogi Berra. It's deja vu all over again.

For entirely different reasons, it resurrects images of 1992 and 1996.

It brings back 1992 because that's when then-Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia was the most conservative prime-time speaker at the Democratic convention. This year, Miller (now a senator but still a Democrat) will be the most conservative prime-time speaker at the Republican convention. [...]

The younger President Bush and Vice President Cheney will speak at this year's convention, of course, as will their wives. They can be counted on to give well-crafted and effective orations. But beyond them -- and the Democrat Miller -- all the speakers on the prime-time roster hail from more liberal precincts in the GOP.

They include: Education Secretary Rod Paige, Arizona Sen. John McCain, New York Gov. George Pataki, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

ABDUCTED?:

Abducted Marine Had Deserted the Military (JEFFREY GETTLEMANand NICK MADIGAN, 6/30/04, NY Times)

The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, a Marine officer said Tuesday.

The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The officer said Corporal Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.

"It was very disturbing to him," the officer said. "He wanted to go home and quit the game, but since he was relatively early in his deployment, that was not going to happen anytime soon. So he talked to some folks on base he befriended, because they were all fellow Muslims, and they helped sneak him off. Once off, instead of helping him get home, they turned him over to the bad guys."

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT:

Why Sudan has become a Bush priority (Abraham McLaughlin, 6/30/04, CS Monitor)

The last time a US secretary of State visited Sudan was 1978, when Jimmy Carter's envoy, Cyrus Vance, stopped to refuel his plane.

But in a sign of Sudan's growing significance, Colin Powell arrived Tuesday for a high-profile two-day visit. The trip is the latest evidence of a major shift in US policy toward the Muslim-led state that once harbored Osama bin Laden.

The visit is primarily aimed at halting the suffering and violence in Sudan's western region of Darfur, home to the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

But analysts say it may also fulfill other White House goals. If the Bush team can bring Sudan back into the family of nations, as it did this week with Libya, it would gain a diplomatic victory for the war on terror. It could also fire up its Christian-conservative base by securing a peace deal in Sudan's other war, a 21-year conflict between the Muslims in the north and the largely Christian south.

FOR WANT OF NIALL A NATION WAS LOST:

Europe gets my vote: As a Thatcherite, I support this constitution, which puts power back where it belongs (Niall Ferguson, June 29, 2004, The Guardian)

Is the new European constitution a blueprint for a United States of Europe - a fully fledged federation like the US on the other side of the Atlantic? Many of its continental proponents would say that is precisely the aim of the "treaty establishing a constitution" for the EU agreed by European leaders at Brussels last week.

Unfortunately for the constitution, that is a view currently shared by the large proportion of British voters who have no desire to become just one of 25 states in a USE. If they vote against ratification in the referendum Tony Blair has promised, then one of two things will happen. Either the constitution will be a dead letter and the enlarged EU will muddle along under old rules. Or - as a growing number of British voters seem to wish - Britain will leave the EU. Suddenly, a great deal hinges on Blair's ability to persuade voters that the new constitution is not a federalist document.

As someone who is routinely labelled a "rightwing historian" in the British press, I am probably one of the last people Guardian readers would expect to take the prime minister's side in this debate. But I do. Yes, I was a young Thatcherite in the 1980s, passionately agreeing that we had to stand up to the Soviet Union, Britain's over-mighty unions and the French socialists like Jacques Delors, who had retreated to Brussels having failed in Paris. Yes, I think she was right to be nervous about British membership of the exchange rate mechanism, and to be hostile to the idea of our joining European Monetary Union. If all that still makes me rightwing today, then I plead guilty (though I have always preferred to think of myself as a 19th-century liberal).

But there was never a time when I regarded departure from the EU as a serious option - provided, of course, that it remained a confederal structure primarily concerned with economic integration, in which the nation states retain power on non-economic matters. Does the new constitution change that? No. Indeed, the constitution changes very little about the way the EU works.

SAVE THE BASTER FOR THANKSGIVING:

Woman inseminated with wrong sperm (news.com.au, June 30, 2004)

A JURY awarded $US435,000 ($622,273) to an American woman who was accidentally inseminated with unprepared sperm at a fertility clinic.

WHY AREN'T THEY AMERICAN?:

Forty Million Frenchman (Robert Brustein, 06.24.04, New Republic)

The two shows under review this month--the death, funeral, and canonization rites of Ronald Reagan, and the 2004 Tony award ceremonies--both prove Bernard Shaw's definition of popular democracy as a system "that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." That our countrymen could have elected this good-natured, engaging, but utterly inconsequential B-movie actor to two presidential terms is commentary enough on the weakness of the democratic electoral process. But to hear pundits and pollsters claiming that Reagan should now be considered one of the great presidents of history, below only Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (FDR apparently having dropped down a memory hole), is to enter the realm of the preposterous, if not the occult. Yes, his genial smile and crinkly quips made everyone feel good about themselves, except those afflicted with such un-American disorders as homelessness, minority status, and AIDS.

NO ONE VOTES THEIR NEIGHBOR'S POCKETBOOK (via John Resnick)

Election-year economy (David Keene, 6/30/04, The Hill)

What’s happening now as month after month of good news comes out is reminiscent of the Democratic reaction to the Reagan economy back in 1984. First, the Democrats of that era predicted that the recession Reagan inherited would persist because of Reagan’s wrongheaded dedication to cutting taxes — every believing liberal Democrat knew wouldn’t work.

However, when things turned around and the economy began to pick up a real head of steam, Walter Mondale, the John Kerry of the day, pooh-poohed the recovery. He proclaimed that while the rich were benefiting from the tax cuts, the only jobs being produced as a result of the Reagan recovery were for “hamburger flippers.”

Before it was over, Mondale was promising to raise taxes and give the American people the sort of Democratic economic policies he and his fellow liberals just knew that voters craved. He lost 49 states.

This year Kerry is repeating Mondale’s mistakes of 20 years ago.

LESS NEO, MORE CON, AND A HEFTY HELPING OF THEO

How the neo-cons can do it better next time: Something went wrong in Iraq. George Bush and his advisers need to learn the lesson (John Keegan, 6/30/04, The Age)

The neo-conservatives' mistake was to suppose that, wherever tyranny ruled, democracy was its natural alternative. So, when planning for the government of postwar Iraq, the neo-conservatives jumped to the conclusion that, as soon as Saddam's tyranny was destroyed, Iraqi democrats would emerge to assume governmental responsibility from the liberating coalition and a pro-Western regime would evolve seamlessly from the flawed past.

To think in such a way was to reveal a dangerously post-Marxist cast of mind. Marxists can think only in political terms. They accept, even if they despise, liberal and conservative opposition. What they cannot accept is that their opponents may be motivated by beliefs which are not political. That explains their hatred of religion.

It is religion, of course, which the neo-conservatives have come up against in post-Saddam Iraq. Not only religion; the survivors of the Baath Party, a strictly secular organisation, are also deeply involved in the opposition to the American presence. Religion is, however, the real opposition force.

Whatever the purity of their political motives, the American occupiers should not have dissolved the Iraqi army or police or civil administration, whatever the number of Baath Party members they contain.

Iraq's new Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, has now to rebuild the country's military and civilian services from exactly the same group of individuals who the neo-conservatives rejected at the outset.

Let us hope the neo-conservatives have learnt a lesson, since it is unlikely that this will be the last time the US will have to undertake an exercise in nation-building. Next time Washington should take as its target the preservation of as much as possible.

MAKE THAT "DECISIVE MISSTEP" (via John Resnick):

Fed to take decisive step Wednesday (Rex Nutting, 6/29/04, CBS.MarketWatch.com)

The Federal Reserve will almost certainly raise its overnight interest rate target for the first time in four years when the U.S. central bankers conclude their two-day meeting on Wednesday.

Oil prices fell to their lowest in two months on Tuesday as the handover of power in Iraq raised hopes for less sabotage and steadier exports.

U.S. light crude settled 1.6 percent, or 58 cents, lower at $35.66 a barrel.

Growing U.S. commercial supplies and higher OPEC output have eased fears about summer gasoline shortages and knocked about $6 a barrel off the price of oil since record New York futures highs at the start of June.

BETTER NATURE (via brian boys):

Couple Helps Churches Retrofit 15-Passenger Vans: Van Angels ministry launched with funds from settlement over daughter's van-related death. (Yvonne Betowt, 6/21/04, Religion News Service)

Malori [Smith] was one of three people killed when the church van they were in crashed near Monterrey, Mexico, following the separation of a virtually new left rear tire. The others killed were Bethany Bosarge, 16, of Peachtree, Ga., and Jonathan Lomeli, 23, of Laredo, Texas. Several others were seriously injured.

While he was devastated at the loss of his only daughter and oldest child, [her father, Mark,] Smith and his wife, Cindy, decided not to sit by while others needlessly died — others such as 10-year-old Jesse Brooks of Albertville, Ala., killed coming home from a mission trip to Wyoming the same month as the Smiths' daughter.

After settling a class-action lawsuit against Ford and Michelin in February, Smith and the other families involved in the Mexico accident decided to set aside part of their undisclosed settlement to help churches and schools retrofit their 15-passenger vans by adding two rear tires.

"Each family decided what it wanted to contribute," said Smith, director of Van Angels. "After a few days of news, we asked ourselves, 'What can we do to prevent more accidents?' We came up with the idea of Van Angels to create educational awareness about issues relating to 15-passenger vans."

Smith said adding two rear tires will prevent most vans from rolling over during an accident.

THE WORST-RUN CAMPAIGN EVER:

A Republican Subs for Kerry With Relish: After John Kerry decided not to attend the annual meeting of the nation's mayors, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts seized the chance to needle Democrats. (PAM BELLUCK, 6/29/04, NY Times)

"I wanted to indicate my support of Mayor Menino," Mr. Romney said.

"He's a man of courage and integrity," he added, saying, "In the executive responsibility, you put first the people and not the pickets."

Mr. Romney had declined an invitation to attend the conference on Saturday because of scheduling conflicts, said his spokeswoman, Shawn Feddeman. But when he heard about Mr. Kerry's decision on Sunday night, he called to ask if he could take the senator's slot.

Mr. Romney insisted Monday he was "not here to make any comment or statement on Senator Kerry."

So, to whom might he have been referring when he said:

"A mayor, a governor and a president have a responsibility to make tough decisions and balance budgets. A senator doesn't, and that's a big difference. Senators don't have to balance budgets. Senators don't have to make those kinds of trade-offs. That's what the mayor has to do, and that's why I want to be here for him."

Mr. Romney capped his comments by calling Mr. Menino a "good Democrat."

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Menino said: "I love that. To be called a good Democrat by a Republican - that's great. That shows respect."

Not like Mr. Kerry, the mayor suggested.

THEIR WAR NOW:

Iraq's New History (Fouad Ajami, June 29, 2004 , Wall Street Journal)

[F]reedom can't be a fetish. There are the needs of Iraq, and they are staggering. There is the nemesis of Iraq's freedom, an insurgency drawing its fury and pitilessness from the forces of the old despotism, and from jihadists from neighboring lands who have turned Iraq into a devil's playground. We should be under no illusions about this insurgency. Its war against the new Iraq will not yield. For their part, the jihadists have a dreadful animus for the "apostates" within the world of Islam who ride with the infidels.

Indeed, that prince of darkness, the jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian sowing death in the streets of Iraq, anticipated this shift, and warned that the war would continue. "We do not wage our jihad in order to replace the Western tyrant with an Arab tyrant. We fight to make God's word supreme, and anyone who stands in the way of our struggle is our enemy, a target of our swords." The interim prime minister, Mr. Allawi, is a principal target of the Zarqawi bigots. "We have prepared for you a vicious poison and a sharp sword, we have prepared for you a full cup of death,"

Zarqawi warned the new Iraqi leader, in an audiotape released last week. The lines are drawn: A man of the Iraqi state against a drifter who has come to that country in search of a new battleground.

Grant Zarqawi his due: months earlier, in a message intercepted in Iraq--one that Zarqawi had intended for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri--the Jordanian foresaw the shape of things to come. "America is being bloodied in Iraq," he said, "but has no intention of leaving, no matter the bloodletting among its own soldiers. It is looking to a near future, when it remains safe in its bases, while handing over control to a bastard government with an army and a police force. . . . There is no doubt that our field of movement is shrinking, and our future looks more forbidding by the day." It was war, Zarqawi wrote, with a stark realism, or "packing our bags and looking for a new field of battle, as has been the case in other campaigns of jihad, because our enemy grows stronger with every passing day."

Zarqawi and his breed of militants know that a native Iraqi government can shelter behind the call of home and hearth and of Iraq's right to a new political life. Americans can't hunt down the restless young men thrown up by the chaos of Arab lands, perhaps encouraged to make their way to Iraq, to kill and be killed. This is a task for Iraqis. It is for them to reclaim their country from the purveyors of terror. It is one thing for Fallujah to pose as the citadel of Islam against the infidels; it is an entirely different matter for that town to take up arms against a native government--even one protected by a vast foreign force. Iyad Allawi can call the insurgents "enemies of Islam," as he did after the transfer of authority. It is awkward, at best, for George W. Bush to insert himself into that fight over, and for, Islam. In the same vein, we warned Iraq's neighbors to keep their fires--and their misfits--away from Iraq, but it was infinitely more convincing when Mr. Allawi told his neighbors that Iraqis would not forget those who stood with them, and those who stood against them.

In their fashion, Iraqis have come to see their recent history as a passage from the rule of the tyrant to the rule of the foreigner. This has given them an absolution from political responsibility and toil. Dependence was easy, and easy, too, was holding America responsible for everything under the sun. A measure of this abdication on the part of Iraq's people will have to yield in recognition of this (circumscribed) sovereignty that has come their way.

HANDOVER=ROLLOVER:

Let's Hear It for the Handover: Finally, Bush does something right in Iraq. (Fred Kaplan, June 28, 2004, Slate)

It was a smart move to transfer sovereignty to Iraq today, two days ahead of schedule. If the Bush administration keeps doing things this smart over the next several months, the transition to self-rule might go more smoothly than anyone has had reason to suspect.

TO BUILD A SOCIETY OF JUSTICE:

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY (6/29/04)

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: Laura and I are grateful for the warm hospitality we have received these past three days in the Republic of Turkey. I am honored to visit this beautiful country where two continents meet - a nation that upholds great traditions, and faces the future with confidence. And America is honored to call Turkey an ally and a friend.

Many Americans trace their heritage to Turkey, and Turks have contributed greatly to our national life - including, most recently, a lot of baskets for the Detroit Pistons from Mehmet Okur. I know youre proud that this son of your country helped to win an NBA championship, and America is proud of him as well.

I am grateful to Prime Minister Erdogan and President Sezer for hosting the members of NATO in an historic time for our alliance. For most of its history, NATO existed to deter aggression from a powerful army at the heart of Europe. In this century, NATO looks outward to new threats that gather in secret and bring sudden violence to peaceful cities. We face terrorist networks that rejoice when parents bury their murdered children, or bound men plead for their lives. We face outlaw regimes that give aid and shelter to these killers, and seek weapons of mass murder. We face the challenges of corruption and poverty and disease, which throw whole nations into chaos and despair - the conditions in which terrorism can thrive.

Some on both sides of the Atlantic have questioned whether the NATO alliance still has a great purpose. To find that purpose, they only need to open their eyes. The dangers are in plain sight. The only question is whether we will confront them, or look away and pay a terrible cost.

Over the last few years, NATO has made its decision. Our alliance is restructuring to oppose threats that arise beyond the borders of Europe. NATO is providing security in Afghanistan. NATO has agreed to help train the security forces of a sovereign Iraq - a great advantage and crucial success for the Iraqi people. And in Istanbul we have dedicated ourselves to the advance of reform in the broader Middle East, because all people deserve a just government, and because terror is not the tool of the free. Through decades of the Cold War, our great alliance of liberty never failed in its duties - and we are rising to our duties once again.

The Turkish people understand the terrorists, because you have seen their work, even in the last few days. You have heard the sirens, and witnessed the carnage, and mourned the dead. After the murders of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Istanbul last November, a resident of this city said of the terrorists, "They do not have any religion ... They are friends of evil." In one of the attacks, a Muslim woman lost her son Ahmet, her daughter-in-law Berta, and her unborn grandchild. She said, "Today Im saying goodbye to my son. Tomorrow Im saying farewell to my Berta. I dont know what [the killers] wanted from my kids. Were they jealous of their happiness?"

The Turkish people have grieved, but your nation is also showing how terrorist violence will be overcome - with courage, and with a firm resolve to defend your just and tolerant society. This land has always been important for its geography - here at the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Now Turkey has assumed even greater historical importance, because of your character as a nation. Turkey is a strong, secular democracy, a majority Muslim society, and a close ally of free nations. Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as a model to others, and as Europes bridge to the wider world. Your success is vital to a future of progress and peace in Europe and in the broader Middle East - and the Republic of Turkey can depend on the support and friendship of the United States.

For decades, my country has supported greater unity in Europe - to secure liberty, build prosperity, and remove sources of conflict on this continent. Now the European Union is considering the admission of Turkey, and you are moving rapidly to meet the criteria for membership. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had a vision of Turkey as a strong nation among other European nations. That dream can be realized by this generation of Turks. America believes that as a European power, Turkey belongs in the European Union. Your membership would also be a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the West, because you are part of both. Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the "clash of civilizations" as a passing myth of history. Fifteen years ago, an artificial line that divided Europe -- drawn at Yalta - was erased. Now this continent has the opportunity to erase another artificial division - by fully including Turkey in it.

Turkey has found its place in the community of democracies by living out its own principles. Muslims are called to seek justice - fairness to all, care for the stranger, compassion for those in need. And you have learned that democracy is the surest way to build a society of justice. The best way to prevent corruption and abuse of power is to hold rulers accountable. The best way to ensure fairness to all is to establish the rule of law. The best way to honor human dignity is to protect human rights. Turkey has found what nations of every culture and every region have found: If justice is the goal, then democracy is the answer.

In some parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, there is wariness toward democracy, often based on misunderstanding. Some people in Muslim cultures identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture, and want no part of it. And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind. There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency. For the sake of their families and their culture, citizens of a free society have every right to strive peacefully for a moral society.

Democratic values also do not require citizens to abandon their faith. No democracy can allow religious people to impose their own view of perfection on others, because this invites cruelty and arrogance that are foreign to every faith. And all people in a democracy have the right to their own religious beliefs. But all democracies are made stronger when religious people teach and demonstrate upright conduct - family commitment, respect for the law, and compassion for the weak. Democratic societies should welcome, not fear, the participation of the faithful.

In addition, democracy does not involve automatic agreement with other democracies. Free governments have a reputation for independence, which Turkey has certainly earned. That is the way democracy works. We deal honestly with each other, we make our own decisions - and yet, in the end, the disagreements of the moment are far outweighed by the ideals we share.

Because representative governments reflect their people, every democracy has its own structure, traditions, and opinions. There are, however, certain commitments of free government that do not change from place to place. The promise of democracy is fulfilled in freedom of speech, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, economic freedom, respect for women, and religious tolerance. These are the values that honor the dignity of every life, and set free the creative energies that lead to progress.

Achieving these commitments of democracy can require decades of effort and reform. In my own country it took generations to throw off slavery, racial segregation, and other practices that violated our ideals. So we do not expect or demand that other societies be transformed in a day. But however long the journey, there is only one destination worth striving for, and that is a society of self-rule and freedom.

Democracy leads to justice within a nation - and the advance of democracy leads to greater security among nations. The reason is clear: Free peoples do not live in endless stagnation, and seethe in resentment, and lash out in envy, rage, and violence. Free peoples do not cling to every grievance of the past - they build and live for the future. This is the experience of countries in the NATO alliance. Bitterness and hostility once divided France and Germany... and Germany and Poland ... and Romania and Hungary. But as those nations grew in liberty, ancient disputes and hatreds have been left to history. And because the people of Europe now live in hope, Europe no longer produces armed ideologies that threaten the peace of the world. Freedom in Europe has brought peace to Europe - and now freedom can bring peace to the broader Middle East.

I believe that freedom is the future of the Middle East, because I believe that freedom is the future of all humanity. And the historic achievement of democracy in the broader Middle East will be a victory shared by all. Millions who now live in oppression and want will finally have a chance to provide for their families and lead hopeful lives. Nations in the region will have greater stability because governments will have greater legitimacy. And nations like Turkey and America will be safer, because a hopeful Middle East will no longer produce ideologies and movements that seek to kill our citizens. This transformation is one of the great and difficult tasks of history. And by our own patience and hard effort, and with confidence in the peoples of the Middle East, we will finish the work that history has given us.

Democracy, by definition, must be chosen and defended by the people themselves. The future of freedom in the Islamic world will be determined by the citizens of Islamic nations, not by outsiders. And for citizens of the broader Middle East, the alternatives could not be more clear. One alternative is a political doctrine of tyranny, suicide, and murder that goes against the standards of justice found in Islam and every other great religion. The other alternative is a society of justice, where men and women live peacefully and build better lives for themselves and their children. That is the true cause of the people of the Middle East, and that cause can never be served by the murder of the innocent.

This struggle between political extremism and civilized values is unfolding in many places. We see the struggle in Iraq, where killers are attempting to undermine and intimidate a free government. We see the struggle in Iran, where tired and discredited autocrats are trying to hold back the democratic will of a rising generation. We see that struggle in Turkey, where the PKK has abandoned its ceasefire with the Turkish people and resumed violence. We see it in the Holy Land, where terrorist murderers are setting back the good cause of the Palestinian people, who deserve a reformed, peaceful, and democratic state of their own.

The terrorists are ruthless and resourceful, but they will not prevail. Already more than half of the worlds Muslims live under democratically-constituted governments - from Indonesia to West Africa, from Europe to North America. And the ideal of democracy is also powerful and popular in the Middle East. Surveys in Arab nations reveal broad support for representative government and individual liberty. We are seeing reform in Kuwait, and Qatar, and Bahrain, and Yemen, and Jordan, and Morocco. And we are seeing men and women of conscience and courage step forward to advocate democracy and justice in the broader Middle East.

As we found in the Soviet Union, and behind the Iron Curtain, this kind of moral conviction was more powerful than vast armies and prison walls and the will of dictators. And this kind of moral conviction is also more powerful than the whips of the Taliban, or the police state of Saddam Hussein, or the cruel designs of terrorists. The way ahead is long and difficult, yet people of conscience go forward with hope. The rule of fear did not survive in Europe, and the rule of free peoples will come to the Middle East.

Leaders throughout that region, including some friends of the United States, must recognize the direction of events. Any nation that compromises with violent extremists only emboldens them, and invites future violence. Suppressing dissent only increases radicalism. The long-term stability of any government depends on being open to change, and responsive to citizens. By learning these lessons, Turkey has become a great and stable democracy - and America shares your hope that other nations will take this path.

Western nations, including my own, want to be helpful in the democratic progress of the Middle East, yet we know there are suspicions, rooted in centuries of conflict and colonialism. And in the last 60 years, many in the West have added to this distrust by excusing tyranny in the region, hoping to purchase stability at the price of liberty. But it did not serve the people of the Middle East to betray their hope of freedom. And it has not made Western nations more secure to ignore the cycle of dictatorship and extremism. Instead we have seen the malice grow deeper, and the violence spread, until both have appeared on the streets of our own cities. Some types of hatred will never be appeased; they must be opposed and discredited and defeated by a hopeful alternative - and that alternative is freedom.

Reformers in the broader Middle East are working to build freer and more prosperous societies - and America, the G-8, the EU, Turkey, and NATO have now agreed to support them. Many nations are helping the people of Afghanistan to secure a free government. And NATO now leads a military operation in Afghanistan, in the first action by the alliance outside Europe. In Iraq, a broad coalition - including the military forces of many NATO countries - is helping the people of that country to build a decent and democratic government after decades of corrupt oppression. And NATO is providing support to a Polish-led division.

The government of Iraq has now taken a crucial step forward. In a nation that suffered for decades under brutal tyranny, we have witnessed the transfer of sovereignty and the beginning of self-government. In just 15 months, the Iraqi people have left behind one of the worst regimes in the Middle East, and their country is becoming the worlds newest democracy. The world has seen a great event in the history of Iraq, in the history of the Middle East, and in the history of liberty.

The rise of Iraqi democracy is bringing hope to reformers across the Middle East, and sending a very different message to Teheran and Damascus. A free and sovereign Iraq is also a decisive defeat for extremists and terrorists - because their hateful ideology will lose its appeal in a free, tolerant, successful country. The terrorists are doing everything they can to undermine Iraqi democracy, by attacking all who stand for order and justice, and committing terrible crimes to break the will of free nations. The terrorists have the ability to cause suffering and grief, but they do not have the power to alter the outcome in Iraq: The civilized world will keep its resolve ... the leaders of Iraq are strong and determined ... and the people of Iraq will live in freedom.

Iraq still faces hard challenges in the days and months ahead. Iraqs leaders are eager to assume responsibility for their own security, and that is our wish as well. So this week at our summit, NATO agreed to provide assistance in training Iraqi security forces. I am grateful to Turkey and other NATO allies for helping our friends in Iraq to build a nation that governs itself and defends itself.

Our efforts to promote reform and democracy in the Middle East are moving forward. At the NATO summit, we approved the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, offering to work together with nations of the broader Middle East to fight terrorism, control their borders, and aid the victims of disaster. And we are thankful for the important role that Turkey is playing as a democratic partner in the Broader Middle East Initiative.

For all of our efforts to succeed, however, more is needed than plans and policies. We must strengthen the ties of trust and good will between ourselves and the peoples of the Middle East. And trust and good will come more easily when men and women clear their minds, and their hearts, of suspicion and prejudice and unreasoned fear. When some in my country speak in an ill-informed and insulting manner about the Muslim faith, their words are heard abroad, and do great harm to our cause in the Middle East. When some in the Muslim world incite hatred and murder with conspiracy theories and propaganda, their words are also heard - by a generation of young Muslims who need truth and hope, not lies and anger. All such talk, in America or in the Middle East, is dangerous and reckless and unworthy of any religious tradition. Whatever our cultural differences may be, there should be respect and peace in the House of Abraham.

The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has said that the finest view of Istanbul is not from the shores of Europe, or from the shores of Asia, but from a bridge that unites them, and lets you see both. His work has been a bridge between cultures, and so is the Republic of Turkey. The people of this land understand, as Pamuk has observed, that "What is important is not [a] clash of parties, civilizations, cultures, East and West." What is important, he says, is to realize "that other peoples in other continents and civilizations" are "exactly like you."

Ladies and gentlemen, in their need for hope, in their desire for peace, in their right to freedom, the peoples of the Middle East are exactly like you and me. Their birthright of freedom has been denied for too long. And we will do all in our power to help them find the blessings of liberty.

Thank you, and God bless the good people of Turkey.

WE HAVE NO QUARREL WITH PRUSSIA

National Review Founder to Leave Stage (David D. Kirkpatrick, NY Times, 6/29/04)

As for conservatism today, Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests.

"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

I do not take Mr. Buckley to be saying that "Bush lied", or even that the case for war, ex ante, was not convincing. Rather, at least seen through the lens of the New York Times, Mr. Buckley is saying that, because it turned out that there were no stockpiles of MWD's ready for use, and because it turned out that the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda had not yet reached the level of cooperation to attack United States territory, there was in hindsight no conservative rationale for the war.

The more interesting question is, what difference does this make? Mr. Buckley certainly knows, even if the Times does not, that nothing can be known with certainty and the future least of all. This is a reason for war, not an argument against it. Mr. Buckley, according to the Times, was discussing the war in connection with a conservative idea that the foreign policy of the United States should only be concerned with the nation's vital interests. The Times' characterization is either much too broad or much too narrow. Does the left really want to cede to the right the idea that when we go to war, we should only do so to protect a vital interest? We joke that the left only supports wars, like Kosovo or Somalia (to stretch the term war) where we have no vital interest, but perhaps the left now agrees.

On the other hand, I don't believe that Mr. Buckley is suggesting, ex cathedra, that conservatives reject the idea of using our foreign policy to promote policies that are not vital to us. It is not conservative, in any sensible way, for us only to use jaw-jaw where we would be willing to use war-war. I assume that Mr. Buckley agrees that we should do what we can to discourage abortion in the Third World, but not go to war on Mexican abortionists.

All of which brings us to the real discussion. Given that the minimum requirement for a conservative war is that vital interests have been threatened, in what way does the Iraqi war not qualify. One supposes that Mr. Buckley was bringing up the difference between the paleocons and the neocons. But the true paleocons and the true neocons (read Jacksonians) have not wobbled. Those who supported the war for the right reasons understood that we should not change our behavior because the Islamists demand change, if our behavior is consistent with our values. Those who supported the war for the right reasons understood that terrorism is not caused by poverty, or Britney Spears or even Israel, but by the resentment of stagnant cultures that have lost the great arguments. Those who supported the war for the right reasons understood that our refusal to finish the job we began in 1991, our reliance on sanctions and the way in which we allowed the west to be scorned by the Ba'athists convinced our enemies we are vulnerable. Those who supported the war for the right reasons understood that peace for our children requires middle eastern governments that protect the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and thus the remaking of that region. We still do.

It is not conservative to go on grand crusades to remake the world. But it is conservative to see what has to be done to safeguard America, and then not stop until it is done.

EJ, AS IN ERRONEOUS JUDGEMENT (via Kevin Whited):

First Ripple of a Political Tidal Wave? (E. J. Dionne Jr., June 29, 2004, Wasshington Post)

"I've never seen a time with so many Republicans expressing consternation about their party and a willingness to support the other party," said Rep. Brian Baird, a Democrat whose district, in Washington's southwest corner, went for Bush four years ago.

Baird, a psychologist who has worked with statistics, is also skeptical of making too much of anecdotes. But he is running across plenty of them on the anti-Bush side. "If you contrast this campaign to the campaign of four years ago, you saw George Bush stickers everywhere and very few Al Gore stickers," he said. "Now, it's at least 50-50" between Bush and Kerry. Baird speaks of a man in a health club wearing a John Kerry T-shirt who told him: "What you have to understand is that I am a lifelong Republican." And the congressman chuckles over a car he spotted that "had an American flag, an 'I'm the NRA' bumper sticker and a John Kerry bumper sticker."

Inslee's metaphor of the 1994 Republican sweep piloted by former House speaker Newt Gingrich is intriguing because the Republican wave was not obvious in the polls at this moment in the campaign 10 years ago. A survey in mid-June 1994 by Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin, for example, found the Democrats with a three-point lead in the House races.

Yet many Republicans correctly argued that intense voter dissatisfaction with Congress, Bill Clinton and the status quo was moving the country decisively in the GOP's direction. Republicans then sensed that the energy on the Republican side could swamp Democrats by producing a turnout heavily tilted toward Republican candidates -- exactly what happened. Democrats feel a comparable energy could work for them this year.

50-0 FILES:

U.S. June Consumer Confidence Index Rises to 2-Year High (Bloomberg, 6/29/04)

Confidence in the U.S. economy rose this month to the highest level in two years, spurred by job growth and a decline in gasoline prices, a private survey found.

``Some of the concerns about Iraq and terrorism have taken a back seat to the good news on the economy and employment,'' said John Shin, an economist at Lehman Brothers Inc. in New York, before the report.

The New York-based Conference Board's consumer confidence index increased to 101.9 this month, from a revised 93.1 in May. The figure exceeded the highest estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Assessments of both current and future conditions rose.

The percentage that saw jobs as hard to get declined to the lowest since September 2002. The economy has added 1.2 million jobs so far in 2004 and economists forecast another quarter- million were added this month, boosting incomes and providing thrust for spending and the economy. Federal Reserve policy makers meet later today and are predicted to raise their benchmark interest rate tomorrow by a quarter-point to 1.25 percent to keep inflation from accelerating.

``The economy is slowly improving and doing better, and a lot of people are out traveling -- maybe more so than they have since 9/11,'' said David Neeleman, chief executive officer at JetBlue Airways Corp., in an interview. The company is raising the number of flights between its base in New York and Florida to 71 a day from a peak last year of 55, he said.

Higher consumer confidence and an improving economy may help President George W. Bush in his re-election bid against Democratic candidate John Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

LEAN, MEAN BOOM MACHINE:

Less-watched factors show strengthening economy (Matt Krantz, 6/28/04, USA TODAY)

Many investors might not know it, but Corporate America is in fine shape.

While stocks have been turning in a comalike performance in 2004, companies are healthier than they've been in years, if not decades. That's according to a number of financial measures that might be less-watched than earnings growth, but are just as important.

Everything from improving corporate bond ratings to soaring profit margins shows companies are turning in record performances, normal for early in an economic recovery. That flies in the face of fears the economy is delicate at best.

ONLY DOUBTING DARWIN IS BLASPHEMOUS:

Faith and reason (Christopher Shea, June 20, 2004, Boston Globe)

IF YOU HAD TO LIST the problems afflicting America, lack of vigor in the culture wars would probably not be very high on the list. (Can any of us bear another red-state/blue-state story?) Yet two very different writers – from opposite sides of the secular/ religious divide – recently declared that there are two groups of people who ought to throw themselves into the fray with fresh energy: atheistic scientists and intellectual Christians.

In the spring issue of The American Scholar, the literary journal of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa, the science writer Natalie Angier tries to rally the skeptics – by definition a hard thing to do – in a piece called “My God Problem – and Theirs.” The inspiration for the essay, she writes, was her visits with top scientists in the course of researching a forthcoming book about “the essential vitamins and minerals” of scientific literacy.

The scientists were uniformly appalled by polls that found that 82 percent of Americans think there’s a heaven and 51 percent believe in ghosts while only 28 percent believe the theory of evolution. Please, the scientists implored, help us bump up that last figure by getting across that evidence for Darwinism is “overwhelming” and that “an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet.”

But Angier detects a whiff of hypocrisy here. Sure, she writes, scientists sharpen the skewers when quizzed about “creationist ‘science’ . . . astrology, telekinesis, spoon bending.” But when asked about a different kind of supernaturalism, “they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent.” When it comes to discussing the virgin birth – “an act of parthenogenesis,” as Angier wryly puts it, “that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction” – or the resurrection, or the parting of the Red Sea, scientists “don the calming cardigan of a kiddie-show host on public TV.”

GO LEAHY:

Bush Defies Chirac, Says Turkey Merits EU Place (Reuters, 06/29/2004)

President Bush said on Tuesday that Turkey belongs in the European Union and that Europe is "not the exclusive club of a single religion" in what amounted to a rejection of French President Jacques Chirac.

In remarks prepared for delivery at a Istanbul university, Bush refused to back down in the face of Chirac's criticism on Monday that Bush had no business urging the EU to set a date for Turkey to start entry talks into the union.

"America believes that as a European power, Turkey belongs in the European Union," Bush said.

Bush is to use the speech to try to mend relations between Muslims and Americans left tattered relations by the Iraq war.

"We must strengthen the ties and trust and good will between ourselves and the peoples of the Middle East," he said.

Bush held up Turkey as an example of a Muslim democracy and said its entry to the EU would be "a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the West, because you are part of both."

"Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the 'clash of civilizations' as a passing myth of history," Bush said.

Chirac said on Monday that Bush should not comment on Turkey's EU entry hopes as EU affairs were none of his business.

MAKE EUROPE HAPPY, ELECT THE ANTI-AMERICAN:

Hating America (Bruce Bawer, Spring 2004, Hudson Review)

[A]s my weeks in the Old World stretched into months and then years, my perceptions shifted. Yes, many Europeans were book lovers—but which country’s literature most engaged them? Many of them revered education—but to which country’s universities did they most wish to send their children? (Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world’s scientific research and wins most of the Nobel Prizes.) Yes, American television was responsible for drivel like “The Ricki Lake Show”—but Europeans, I learned, watched this stuff just as eagerly as Americans did (only to turn around, of course, and mock it as a reflection of American boorishness). No, Europeans weren’t Bible-thumpers—but the Continent’s ever-growing Muslim population, I had come to realize, represented even more of a threat to pluralist democracy than fundamentalist Christians did in the U.S. And yes, more Europeans were multilingual—but then, if each of the fifty states had its own language, Americans would be multilingual, too.1 I’d marveled at Norwegians’ newspaper consumption; but what did they actually read in those newspapers?

That this was, in fact, a crucial question was brought home to me when a travel piece I wrote for the New York Times about a weekend in rural Telemark received front-page coverage in Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record. Not that my article’s contents were remotely newsworthy; its sole news value lay in the fact that Norway had been mentioned in the New York Times. It was astonishing. And even more astonishing was what happened next: the owner of the farm hotel at which I’d stayed, irked that I’d made a point of his want of hospitality, got his revenge by telling reporters that I’d demanded McDonald’s hamburgers for dinner instead of that most Norwegian of delicacies, reindeer steak. Though this was a transparent fabrication (his establishment was located atop a remote mountain, far from the nearest golden arches), the press lapped it up. The story received prominent coverage all over Norway and dragged on for days. My inhospitable host became a folk hero; my irksome weekend trip was transformed into a morality play about the threat posed by vulgar, fast-food-eating American urbanites to cherished native folk traditions. I was flabbergasted. But my erstwhile host obviously wasn’t: he knew his country; he knew its media; and he’d known, accordingly, that all he needed to do to spin events to his advantage was to breathe that talismanic word, McDonald’s.

For me, this startling episode raised a few questions. Why had the Norwegian press given such prominent attention in the first place to a mere travel article? Why had it then been so eager to repeat a cartoonish lie? Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I’d left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?

This experience was only part of a larger process of edification. Living in Europe, I gradually came to appreciate American virtues I’d always taken for granted, or even disdained—among them a lack of self-seriousness, a grasp of irony and self-deprecating humor, a friendly informality with strangers, an unashamed curiosity, an openness to new experience, an innate optimism, a willingness to think for oneself and speak one’s mind and question the accepted way of doing things. (One reason why Euro- peans view Americans as ignorant is that when we don’t know something, we’re more likely to admit it freely and ask questions.) While Americans, I saw, cherished liberty, Europeans tended to take it for granted or dismiss it as a naive or cynical, and somehow vaguely embarrassing, American fiction. I found myself toting up words that begin with i: individuality, imagination, initiative, inventiveness, independence of mind. Americans, it seemed to me, were more likely to think for themselves and trust their own judgments, and less easily cowed by authorities or bossed around by “experts”; they believed in their own ability to make things better. No wonder so many smart, ambitious young Europeans look for inspiration to the United States, which has a dynamism their own countries lack, and which communicates the idea that life can be an adventure and that there’s important, exciting work to be done. Reagan-style “morning in America” clichés may make some of us wince, but they reflect something genuine and valuable in the American air. Europeans may or may not have more of a “sense of history” than Americans do (in fact, in a recent study comparing students’ historical knowledge, the results were pretty much a draw), but America has something else that matters—a belief in the future. [...]

If America is founded on liberty—and on the idea that its preservation is worth great sacrifice—those who steer the fortunes of Western Europe have no strong unifying principle for which they can imagine sacrificing much. Their common cause is not liberty but security and stability; the closest thing they have to a unifying principle is a self-delusionary, dogmatic, indeed well-nigh religious insistence on the absolute value of dialogue, discussion, and diplomacy. This dedication has its positive aspects, but it can also make for moral confusion, passivity, and an antagonism to the very idea of taking a firm stand on anything. If, in the view of many Americans, a love of freedom and hatred of tyranny provide all the legitimacy required for taking actions like the invasion of Iraq, European intellectuals, having no such deeply held principles to guide them, turn instinctively to the U.N., as if it existed, like some divine oracle, at an ideal, impersonal remove from any possibility of misjudgment or moral taint.

THANKS, BILL:

Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky: Until Microsoft proves it can fix IE's security bugs, you're better off using one of a few good alternatives as much as possible (Stephen H. Wildstrom, JUNE 29, 2004, BusinessWeek)

In late June, network security experts saw one of their worst fears realized. Attackers exploited a pair of known but unpatched flaws in Microsoft's Web server software and Internet Explorer browser to compromise seemingly safe Web sites. People who browsed there on Windows computers got infected with malicious code without downloading anything (see BW Online, 6/29/04, "What's the New IE Flaw All About?"). I've been growing increasingly concerned about IE's endless security problems, and this epsiode has convinced me that the program is simply too dangerous for routine use.

IT'S FUTILE TO TRY COMING BETWEEN LEMMINGS AND A CLIFF:

Canadian Liberals to Form Minority Government (David Ljunggren, 6/28/04, Reuters)

Canada's ruling Liberals will stay in power after Monday's federal election, but will lose their majority in Parliament and need support from the left-leaning New Democrats to govern.

CBC television said the Liberals, in power for a decade, would not win the 155 seats they needed to control the 308-seat parliament, although they would win more seats than the Conservative opposition.

That would produce Canada's first minority government for 25 years -- and many political analysts expect a new election within a year.

HAPPY WARRIOR:

National Review Founder Says It's Time to Leave Stage (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 6/29/04, NY Times)

In 1954, when Ronald Reagan was still a registered Democrat and host of "General Electric Theater," the 28-year-old William Frank Buckley Jr. decided to start a magazine as a standard-bearer for the fledgling conservative movement. In the 50-year ascent of the American right since then, his publication, National Review, has been its most influential journal and Mr. Buckley has been the magazine's guiding spirit and, until today, controlling shareholder.

Tonight, however, Mr. Buckley, 78, is giving up control. In an interview, he said he planned to relinquish his shares today to a board of trustees he had selected. Among them are his son, the humorist Christopher Buckley; the magazine's president, Thomas L. Rhodes; and Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale and one of the magazine's youngest current contributors.

Mr. Buckley's "divestiture," as he calls it, represents the exit of one of the forefathers of modern conservatism. It is also the latest step in the gradual quieting of one of the most distinctive voices in the business of cultural and political commentary, the writer and editor who founded his magazine on a promise to stand "athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it." [...]

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, called Mr. Buckley's sometimes baroque style "genially ridiculous."

Mr. Wieseltier added: "It is a kind of antimodern pretense, but of course he is in fact a completely modern man. His thinking and his writing have all the disadvantages of a happy man. The troubling thing about Bill Buckley's work is how singularly untroubled it is by things."

But Mr. Buckley's voice has always been singular. He was not much older than Mr. Bramwell when he founded National Review. The son of an oilman, Mr. Buckley was already famous for his first book, "God and Man at Yale" (1951). Conservatism in the United States was close to its 20th-century nadir, marked by Dwight D. Eisenhower's defeat of the conservative Robert Taft for the 1952 Republican nomination. [...]

[H]e professed more than a little pride at the country's rightward drift during his years in control of National Review. "We thought to influence conservative thought, which we succeeded in doing," he said.

THEIR FIGHT NOW:

Iraqis Rejoice on Talk Radio Airwaves (TAREK EL-TABLAWY, 6/28/04, Associated Press)

Iraqi voices filled the airwaves of the nation's first independent talk radio station Monday, applauding a surprise move by the U.S.-led coalition to return sovereignty to Iraq two days early.

The callers clogged Radio Dijla's telephone lines to congratulate interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, urging him to be strong, while warning insurgents against continued violence.

"I send my congratulations to all Iraqis and every Iraqi home," a woman who identified herself as Um Yassin gushed, her voice choked with emotion. "I want to tell Dr. Allawi to be bold, to be strong. We need him to build up the army because we need them at a time like this."

Her message was echoed by dozens on the day Prime Minister Allawi was given a letter transferring sovereignty back to the citizens of Iraq after about 14 months of coalition administration.

But in the midst of adulation for the new government, callers urged that all must be vigilant for insurgents seeking to sow more chaos in a country plagued by violence since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled.

"I send all the Iraqi people my blessings," said Ali, a caller from Baghdad. "But I warn these terrorists, all the Iraqis will rise up and strike them with steel."

DOES THE TIMES NEVER TIRE OF CARRYING THE CIA'S WATER?:

Time to Polygraph the NY Times (Joel Mowbray, June 29, 2004, Townhall)

To a “small number” of civilian employees at the Pentagon, a New York Times story on June 3 came as quite a jolt: some of them had apparently already been polygraphed as part of an investigation into Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi.

Thing is, it never happened. Three weeks later, it appears that the implicated civilian employees at the Pentagon have not been polygraphed.

And the Times is unapologetic in the face of substantial evidence that it got the story wrong. [...]

Common knowledge inside the beltway is that the Times story identification of the “small number” of “civilian employees” was a thinly-veiled reference to people working for Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz or in the policy shop, headed by Undersecretary Douglas Feith. (Most in that group are political appointees and were hawks on Iraq.)

The practical result was a smear of State’s and CIA’s political enemies—Chalabi and the Pentagon’s hawks. That’s undoubtedly the exact outcome for which the Times’ sources hoped. [...]

Reading the June 3 article leaves one with the conclusion that the Pentagon did not dispute the polygraph story. Nowhere in the piece is there even a reference to the Pentagon’s side of the story.

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE REFORMATION STARTED? (via Tom Corcoran):

Speaking Out: Muslim reformers condemn Saudi Wahhabism (Steven Stalinsky, June 28, 2004, National Review)

Liberal Egyptian intellectual Tarek Heggy, author of Culture, Civilization and Humanity, recently wrote about the need for Muslim moderates to work against Wahhabism: "What needs to be done at this stage is to champion the cause of enlightenment by supporting moderates and promoting the humanistic understanding of Islam.... Efforts in this direction must go hand in hand with a counteroffensive against the rigid, doctrinaire, even bloodthirsty, version of Islam that first appeared among isolated communities separated from the march of civilization by the impenetrable sand dunes of the Arabian Desert."

Heggy, who will embark on a speaking tour in Washington, D.C., in late June to discuss his new Egyptian think tank and newspaper, added: "The time has come for the Saudi government to part ways with Wahhabism and to realize that the alliance between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi dynasty is responsible for the spread of obscurantism, dogmatism, and fanaticism, poisoning minds with radical ideas opposed to humanity...."

In addition to Heggy, an increasing number of reform-minded Muslims have begun to speak out against the impact of Saudi Wahhabism in the Muslim world. They have accused Wahhabism of serving as al Qaeda's guiding philosophy, "poisoning minds" of young Muslims, and being the main purveyor of anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-Christian sentiment in the Arab and Muslim world.

IF IT WALKS LIKE A PERSON...:

Scans uncover secrets of the womb (BBC, 6/28/04)

A new type of ultrasound scan has produced the vivid pictures of a 12 week-old foetus "walking" in the womb.

The new images also show foetuses apparently yawning and rubbing its eyes.

The scans, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell at London's Create Health Clinic, are much more detailed than conventional ultrasound.

BE LINCOLNESQUE:

In 3 Rulings, Supreme Court Affirms Detainees' Right to Use Courts (DAVID STOUT, 6/28/04, NY Times)

Besides the basic issue in their case, there was a secondary but still vital question involving the status of Guantánamo Bay itself.

Since a 1950 Supreme Court case has been interpreted to mean that enemy combatants held outside the United States have no right to habeas corpus, the detainees had to show through their lawyers that Guantánamo Bay is functionally, if not formally, part of the United States.

On the one hand, a long-ago treaty with Cuba said that it retained sovereignty over the base. On the other hand, the treaty also said that the United States exercised jurisdiction and control.

In any event, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last year that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees — a position that the Supreme Court rejected today.

The majority noted that the 1950 case cited by the administration involved German citizens captured by United States forces in China, then tried and convicted of war crimes by an American military commission in Nanking, and finally imprisoned in occupied Germany.

In contrast, the Supreme Court majority noted today, the Guantánamo detainees are not only held in territory arguably under United States control but they also have not had their guilt or innocence determined, unlike the Germans of a half-century ago, and have been held without formal charges.

Justice Scalia's dissent, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, was as emotional in tone as was Justice Stevens's dissent in the other direction in the Padilla case. The majority's holding in the Guantánamo case was so reckless as to be "breathtaking," Justice Scalia asserted.

Justice Scalia went on to declare that the majority's position needlessly upset settled law, and was particularly harmful in a time of war. "The commander in chief and his subordinates had every reason to expect that the internment of combatants at Guantánamo Bay would not have the consequence of bringing the cumbersome machinery of our domestic courts into military affairs," he wrote.

WORTHY CANADIAN ELECTION

Minority looms with today's vote: Leaders end six-week campaign (Norma Greenaway, CanWest News Service, 6/28/04)

Recent polls put the Liberals in a dead heat with the Conservatives, although the final seat projections from Barry Kay, a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University, based on previously published polls, suggest the Tories would win the most seats at 115, compared to 108 for the Liberals, 59 for the Bloc Quebecois and 26 for the NDP.

Dr. Kay's regional breakdowns give Atlantic Canada to the Liberals, who are projected to win 17 seats, to 11 for the Conservatives and four for the NDP. In Quebec, the Liberals are now projected to take 16 seats and the Bloc 59, a two-seat Liberal improvement from Dr. Kay's last projections.

In Ontario, the Liberals are projected to take 57 seats, to 40 for the Tories and nine for the NDP.

The problem for Canada's friends is worry over the price the Bloc Quebecois will extract for a vote establishing the coming minority government. A risk-taker, finding himself head of a conservative party with the most seats in Parliment might well sit out that bidding war, force the Bloc to sell its votes cheaply (much better for the nation) and bet that a minority Liberal government will continue to annoy the electorate during the short time before the wheels come off.

I must confess, though, that my typically shallow analysis is, when the subject is Canada, joined to a proud ignorace. I will be very interested in what actual Canadians think about this election.

MORE: I meant to post only that the election results can be followed at the CBC and the National Post, when the following poll, on the National Post homepage caught my eye:

With the nation gearing up for Canada Day, what uniquely 'Canadian' aspect do you think is most worthy of celebration?

Universal healthcare
Cultural diversity
Hockey
Beer
Poutine

WITH US OR AGAINST US:

Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Seen as Slowing the Hunt for Information on Terrorists: Confusion about the legal limits of interrogation has begun
to slow government efforts to obtain information from suspected terrorists, officials said. (DAVID JOHNSTON, 6/28/04, NY Times)

Some intelligence officials involved in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program have told colleagues that they are bitter because their superiors, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, had assured them that aggressive interrogation techniques were necessary and legal.

Other intelligence officials have expressed a sense of resignation, saying they had a feeling that, from the early days in the war on terror, aggressive steps taken in an effort to protect the country from another attack would lead to criticism and internal investigations.

Considering the fetish they've made of Abu Ghraib they've truly combined the two.

MORE:
He Has Seen The Future: It's in His Work: Charles McCarry's novels keep coming true. And his new book is about the end of the world. (BRIAN CARNEY, June 11, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

Charles McCarry's latest novel, "Old Boys," starts with the revelation that Jesus Christ may have been an unwitting agent in a Roman covert-action operation gone wrong. If this seems far-fetched, please pause to consider Mr. McCarry's record.

In 1979 he wrote a book, "The Better Angels," about an Arab princeling, made rich by oil, who decides to wage a terrorist war on America and Israel. His weapon of choice: passenger jetliners, blown up in flight over major metropolitan centers.

His 1995 novel, Shelley's Heart, describes the events surrounding the presidential election that would take place five years later. In Mr. McCarry's fictional world, the 2000 elections result in a Senate that is split 50-50 and a disputed outcome that hangs on a few thousand votes in a single state. An impeachment also figures in the tale. The state in question is Illinois, not Florida, but this bit of literary license can be forgiven, considering Illinois' long tradition of voter fraud. The title of the book, by the way, derives from the name of a fictional secret society at Yale that is central to the events surrounding Mr. McCarry's fictional anticipation of the 2000 election--a hint, perhaps, of the all-Skull-&-Bones contest looming in 2004. [...]

Charles McCarry, in a word, is a novelist with an uncanny imagination, and a compelling one, even if his work is less known than it should be. His masterpiece, The Last Supper, is a Cold War tale that ranks with the best of John le Carré--but without the moral cynicism. Now 70, Mr. McCarry knows spies, having worked for the CIA 40 years ago. The chief protagonist in most of his books, Paul Christopher, does not carry a gun or play card games with supercriminals in casinos. Instead he does what most real spooks do. He tries to gather information, make contacts and influence events, and occasionally to suborn those who work for the other side.

HEY, NINETEEN:

When Creators of 'Quality Television' Try the Opposite Approach (ALESSANDRA STANLEY, 6/03/04, NY Times)

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when it became safe to be a stupid slut on television.

There were always dumb blondes, of course, but even the bubbliest and most buxom of them — Donna Douglas on "The Beverly Hillbillies," Loni Anderson of "WKRP in Cincinnati" or Pamela Anderson of "Baywatch" — were sweet-natured objects of desire, not slatternly, intoxicated swingers.

Since then the devolution has spun ever downward to a world in which Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson and Lindsey Lohan are teenage role models and the hit movie "Mean Girls" revels in what it professes to mock. (Why exactly does Tina Fey, playing a math teacher, take off her top?) Even Washington is infested with gofers gone wild: a young Senate staffer who was fired last month for posting her sex diaries on the Internet (unacceptable use of Senate computers) assured The Washington Post that she and her girlfriends all accept money for sex — suggesting an ever-thinning line between "hooking up" and hooking. [...]

The dismantling of feminism in popular culture began long ago, but on television, at least, "Real World" on MTV was a bellwether. When it began in 1992, that voyeuristic show took the music video images of wanton women out of the realm of MTV fantasy and into the reality genre, training cameras on the carnal pursuits of ordinary people and teaching teenagers that fame, however fleeting, trumps shame. "Sex and the City" in 1998 also lent casual sex dignity, or at least glamour, but the imitations it inspired — both on television and in real life — kept getting more tawdry.

Network executives at Oxygen and other networks justify their slumming by insisting that such shows are breaking down unhealthy taboos; but there are no taboos left on television, except perhaps, girls behaving decently.

THEOCON IN CHIEF:

Aide Is Bush's Eyes and Ears on the Right: When Karl Rove cannot make certain calls, Timothy Goeglein steps in as the official White House liaison to
conservatives and Christian groups. (DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, 6/28/04, NY Times)

Mr. Goeglein, a slender, pink-cheeked 40-year-old Midwesterner who looks about half his age, is the official White House liaison to conservatives and to Christian groups. He is Mr. Rove's legman on the right.

"He is a constant set of eyes and ears," said Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Feulner said he saw Mr. Goeglein two or three times a week at meals, meetings or social events. "If I have a message I want to get to Rove or the administration, I will scribble out a note to Tim, and within 24 hours I will get a response back. For lots of things, he is sort of one-stop shopping for a point of access to the administration."

Christian conservatives, in particular, say that Mr. Goeglein (pronounced GAIG-line) has been an important conduit to the White House for their demands that Mr. Bush stop financing family planning groups that support abortion, heavily publicize a signing of anti-abortion legislation, block stem-cell research and oppose same-sex marriage - all calls that the president has heeded.

Mr. Goeglein also delivers special messages to the administration's most conservative supporters. After the most recent State of the Union speech, for example, Mr. Goeglein attended two meetings of conservative leaders in Washington to highlight elements of the speech that were most appealing to them, like support for teaching abstinence in schools. But he also gave assurances of the president's support for policies not mentioned in the speech, like an expansion of retirement savings accounts that would allow people to avoid taxes on most of their investment income.

In an interview in a briefing room near his office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, Mr. Goeglein - an earnest speaker who punctuates his conversation with the phrase "and I really do mean this" - insisted that his job was to convey information to and from the whole administration, not just his boss, Mr. Rove. "The wonderful thing for me is that I recognize each and every day that I work for the president of the United States, the president of all the people, not some."

But conservatives outside the White House say they view Mr. Goeglein mainly as an extension of Mr. Rove. And stalwarts of the right say that, even as some conservatives have grown sharply critical of the administration's spending or of the war in Iraq, his function as a hot line to the White House helps keep the Bush administration more closely allied with their movement than any previous administration has been.

"This Bush administration does better than Reagan and better than his father, it is very methodical about reaching out to people to try to meet their concerns," said Paul Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer.

LOONY TUNES:

Comparing Bush to Hitler no longer confined to loonies (John Leo, 6/28/04, Jewish World Review)

One hallmark of the new mainstream Hitler rhetoric is that the speakers typically try to soften the accusation right after making it. Greeley said, "He is not another Hitler. Yet there is a certain parallelism." Calabresi said he was "not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler." No, course not. That was probably the furthest thing from his mind when he decided to link Bush with Hitler. In his heyday, Joe McCarthy used the same rhetorical device. If he wanted to plant the idea that someone was a traitor without quite saying it, he would announce that somebody or other "is a traitor to America's highest principles," which is not exactly an accusation of treason.

As a test of the state of "Bush the Nazi" rhetoric, I went to Google and typed in "Bush is a Nazi" and got 420,000 hits, well behind "Hitler was a Nazi" (654,000 hits), but then Hitler WAS a Nazi...

BUG OUT:

Kerry cancels his speech to mayors: In a blow to Menino, will honor picket lines (Donovan Slack and Glen Johnson, June 28, 2004, Boston Globe)

Senator John F. Kerry last night canceled a planned speech today to the US Conference of Mayors in Boston, saying that he would not cross picket lines erected by workers engaged in a contract dispute with the city.

The announcement came as picketing firefighters and police officers dogged Mayor Thomas M. Menino at conference events for the third straight day yesterday. They had planned to picket the speech this morning at the Sheraton Boston Hotel.

''I don't cross picket lines," Kerry said last night, shortly after attending Mass at St. Vincent's Waterfront Chapel. ''I never have."

The statement leaves open the question of what he will do if the contracts are not settled before next month's Democratic National Convention.

Menino, in a brief news conference after emerging from a Symphony Hall performance last night, said, ''I'm very disappointed. They should open the picket lines and let John Kerry in so that he can make the speech." In an interview afterward with the Globe, Menino said he had talked with Kerry about 10 p.m. and reiterated, ''I'm extremely disappointed in his decision."

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIBERALS GONE? (via Patricia Garnaas):

The Empty Cradle Will Rock: How abortion is costing the Democrats voters--literally. (LARRY L. EASTLAND, June 28, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

• Republicans have fewer abortions than their proportion of the population, Democrats have more than their proportion of the population. Democrats account for 30% more abortions than Republicans (49% vs. 35%).

• The more ideologically Democratic the voters are (self-identified liberals), the more abortions they have. The more ideologically Republican the voters are (self-identified conservatives), the fewer abortions they have.

This isn't particularly surprising given the core constituencies of both political parties. But translating percentages into numbers for the purpose of evaluating their impact on politics makes the importance of these numbers real. It's one thing to quote percentages and statistics, it's quite another to look at actual human beings. For example:

• There are 19,748,000 Democrats who are not with us today. (49.37 percent of 40 million).

• There are 13,900,000 Republican who are not with us today. (34.75 percent of 40 million).

• By comparison, then, the Democrats have lost 5,848,000 more voters than the Republicans have.

These Missing Americans--and particularly the millions of Missing Voters--when compounded over time are of enormous political consequence... [...]

• Six out of 10 Americans call themselves conservatives. Only a quarter of them are having abortions.

• A little more than one-third of Americans call themselves liberals. More than four in 10 are having abortions.

• This means that liberals are having one third more abortions than conservatives.

STARSHIP TROOPERS OF GRIEF:

Families of 9/11 are 'the rock stars of grief' says sister of Pentagon pilot (Julian Coman, 27/06/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Among the activist leaders of 9/11 families' groups it is safe to say that Debra Burlingame - whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon - is not a uniformly popular figure.

Ms Burlingame, a staunch Democrat, has become the first public 9/11 "dissident" - a vocal critic of the "blame game" being played over the al-Qaeda attacks - and an unlikely defender of George W Bush. For good measure, the outspoken former lawyer describes some of the bereaved 9/11 families as America's "rock stars of grief".

"I've practically been thrown out of meetings," she says. "They've gotten very angry with me. But I've decided it's very important that another voice is heard in the September 11 debate." [...]

In blistering attacks last week on the 9/11 Commission and those who lobbied for it, she described the high-level hearings as a "Beltway soap opera - awash in politics and finger-pointing". Even more provocatively, in an article published in the Wall Street Journal, Ms Burlingame accuses prominent 9/11 activists of holding an unjustified "contempt for all the people whom they feel contributed to a loss of life on the day their loved ones didn't come home".

For good measure, she also states that the 9/11 families "are not a monolithic group that speaks with one voice". The activist organisations, she says, have been indulged too much. Standing by a memorial in Manhattan to the September 11 victims, with her back to Ground Zero, Ms Burlingame says: "I first felt the need to speak out when 'The Families of September 11' group protested against the use of images of Ground Zero in Bush campaign advertisements. The idea that relatives of victims 'own' September 11 and its images, and can give or withhold permission to use them, is frankly ridiculous.

"People held back from criticising the relatives because of who they were. But what's happening is that this prominent group of activists have become the rock stars of grief in this country. I think people are getting sick of them because they are being so demanding. I can say it because I'm a relative too."

CHUMP CHANGE:

'Fahrenheit 9/11' a No. 1 Hit Across America (Dean Goodman, 6/28/04, Reuters)

Bush-bashing became the nation's favorite spectator sport over the weekend as Michael Moore's red-hot documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" earned more in its first three days of release across North America than his previous record-breaking movie did in its entire run.

According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, "Fahrenheit 9/11," in which Moore takes aim at President Bush, and the war in Iraq, opened at No. 1 after selling about $21.8 million worth of tickets in the United States and Canada since June 25.

THREATENED THE BLACK KNIGHT:

Unearthing the bombers: Weakened Palestinians vow revenge (Greg Myre, June 28, 2004, NY Times)

Mass Palestinian funerals and ominous warnings of future attacks have been fixtures throughout the past four years of Mideast violence. And with great regularity, the Palestinians have delivered on those threats, often within days.

But over the past few months, the Palestinians have been repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to unleash a threatened "earthquake" against Israel.

Israel's operation on Saturday killed three senior leaders of Palestinian factions responsible for much of the anti-Israeli violence. It was the latest in a series of raids that have eliminated Palestinians on Israel's most-wanted list, including the leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Yet the Palestinians have not carried out a suicide bombing in three and a half months, the longest stretch between such attacks since the violence began in September 2000. No Israeli civilian has been killed since the shootings of a woman and her four daughters in the Gaza Strip on May 2.

Palestinians are still attempting attacks, and Israel attributes the relative calm to a combination of factors, including good intelligence, its West Bank separation fence and simple luck. Palestinian factions acknowledge they have been weakened, but say they will strike back.

SUNSET IN THE EAST:

Decline in savings rate a warning to reform-resistant politicians (TERUHIKO MANO, 6/28/04, Japan Times)

As Japan continues to maintain a current account surplus, it will remain subject to overseas criticism that its people should spend more and save less. However, the truth is that Japan's savings ratio has rapidly declined over the past decade. Let us look at some data and discuss why this is happening, and what should be done.

First of all, Japan's savings ratio, which stood at 15.1 percent in 1991, has dropped to 6.4 percent, according to the latest data available, and the pace of decline has accelerated in recent years.

Unlike Japan, the United States has long been criticized for its savings shortage. Americans are blamed for spending too much and thus incurring current account deficits -- one major reason behind the dollar's instability -- and have been urged to save more. Japan's current savings ratio is, of course, still higher than the roughly 4 percent observed in the U.S., but substantially lower than France's 12.2 percent and Germany's 10.4 percent.

Why is this happening? There are two key factors -- declining incomes and the aging of Japan's population.

nolens volens (Dictionary.com Word of the Day, 6/28/04)

nolens volens \NO-lenz-VO-lenz\:

Whether unwilling or willing. [...]

Nolens volens is from the Latin, from nolle, "to be unwilling"
+ velle, "to wish, to be willing."

GOOD LUCK AND GOD SPEED

Handover Completed Early to Thwart Attacks, Officials Say (Christine Hauser, New York Times, 6/28/04)

The United States-led occupation authority handed over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government today in a low-key ceremony two days ahead of the June 30 it was scheduled to do so, a surprise move apparently timed to pre-empt any planned attacks by insurgents.

The transfer of power took place in the green zone, a heavily fortified compound where the American occupation authority has had its headquarters since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein more than a year ago.

WHAT WERE VALERIE & JOE PALME TRYING TO COVER UP?:

Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war' (Mark Huband, June 27 2004, Financial Times)

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden."

This may have been the method being used by Libya before it agreed last December to abandon its secret nuclear programme. According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya. However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier.

Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two French-owned mining companies - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger.

"Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said.

DATED CLINTON, MARRIED BUSH:

Blair bonded with Clinton, but he shares his beliefs with Bush (Rachel Sylvester, 28/06/2004, Daily Telegraph)

[A]s the British and American governments prepare for the handover of power in Iraq on Wednesday, the truth is that when it comes to foreign policy - the area where the transatlantic "special relationship" really counts - Mr Blair actually has far more in common with George W. Bush.

President Clinton was cautious, pragmatic and nationalistic - he prevaricated over Rwanda and refused to send ground troops into Kosovo, declaring himself wary of "missionary zeal" in international affairs.

President Bush is idealistic, moralistic and willing to take risks. Like the Prime Minister, he interprets the world as a fight between good and evil in which his role is zealously to "spread the word" of Western democracy among the unconverted masses. Christianity is not Mr Bush and Mr Blair's only shared faith.

There are differences between the two men of course - over Guantanamo Bay, climate change and steel tariffs - but their interventionist instincts are the same. When Labour MPs asked the Prime Minister whether he is supporting Mr Bush simply in order to preserve the alliance with the United States, he replied: "I'm afraid it's worse than that, I actually believe in this war."

Perhaps Mr Blair is a neo-Conservative. Like several of the Washington advisers and politicians who have such an influence on Mr Bush, the Prime Minister started out on the political Left and has moved to the Right. Like the American neo-cons, he believes that to defend the national interest following September 11 it is necessary to "re-order the world", even if that means launching pre-emptive military strikes. He argues that, in an age of globalisation of trade and terror, the limits of the nation state need to be redefined. He agrees with the concept of a "new imperialism", one not of territory but of values, put forward by the former No. 10 adviser Robert Cooper.

Richard Perle, the king of the neo-cons, thinks that the Prime Minister shares his "moral sense" of international affairs. "Oh yes, Tony's a neo-con," says one former minister who supported the war. "It's terrifying. He's bought the whole idea about remaking the Middle East."

DEMOCRACY OF THE DEAD (via The Mother Judd):

Books Make You a Boring Person (CRISTINA NEHRING, 6/27/04, NY Times)

It is easy to fetishize things that we imagine are on their way out. In the age of Comcast and America Online, books seem quaint, whimsical, imperiled and therefore virtuous. We assume that reading requires a formidable intellect. We forget that books were the television of previous years -- by which I mean they were the source of passive entertainment as well as occasional enlightenment, of social alienation as well as private joy, of idleness as well as inspiration. Books were a mixed bag, and they still are. Books could be used or misused, and they still can be.

Writers themselves carried on about their danger. From Seneca in the first century to Montaigne in the 16th, Samuel Johnson in the 18th and William Hazlitt and Emerson in the 19th, writers have been at pains to remind their readers not to read too much. ''Our minds are swamped by too much study,'' Montaigne wrote, ''just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil.'' By filling yourself up with too much of other folks' thought, you can lose the capacity and incentive to think for yourself. We all know people who have read everything and have nothing to say. We all know people who use a text the way others use Muzak: to stave off the silence of their minds. These people may have a comic book in the bathroom, a newspaper on the breakfast table, a novel over lunch, a magazine in the dentist's office, a biography on the kitchen counter, a political expose in bed, a paperback on every surface of their home and a weekly in their back pocket lest they ever have an empty moment. Some will be geniuses; others will be simple text grazers: always nibbling, never digesting -- ever consuming, never creating.

''You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch,'' Hazlitt said, ''as expect the learned reader to throw down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum.'' Such a one is comparable to a person addicted to talk shows or sitcoms or CNN; no worse and no better, no dumber but no smarter either. It is not because something comes between two covers that it is inherently superior to what passes on a screen or arrives on the airwaves.

There is, of course, a good way of reading -- a very good way, and the thinkers of old knew it. They were all readers, though none of them were smug readers: they did not expect compliments but rather offered excuses for their book consumption. ''Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated,'' Emerson wrote. Thinking people ''must not be subdued'' by their ''instruments'' -- that is, by their library. They must be the master of it. They must measure a book's testimony against their own; they must alternate their attention to it with an even more passionate and scrupulous attention to the world around them. ''Books are for the scholar's idle times,'' Emerson said in a statement most academics today would find surprising, if not shocking.

The point is this: There are two very different ways to use books. One is to provoke our own judgments, and the other, by far the more common, is to make such conclusions unnecessary. If we wish to embrace the first, we cannot afford to be adulatory of books in the manner of Moskowitz; we must be aggressive. Even a hint of idolatry disables the mind. ''Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books,'' Emerson reminded us -- at a time when he was, admittedly, already a middle-aged man in a library.

Perhaps the best lesson of books is not to venerate them -- or at least never to hold them in higher esteem than our own faculties, our own experience, our own peers, our own dialogues.

THE CLINTONS VS. CHOICE (via Kevin Whited):

Bill Clinton offers a surprising primer on marriage (Houston Chronicle)

In interviews before the book's release this week, Clinton discussed for the first time the professional assistance that he, Hillary Clinton and their daughter Chelsea embarked on to decide their family's fate after the Monica Lewinsky debacle. Hillary Clinton, first of all, had simply to decide if she wanted to remain married. Clinton himself had to explore the "demons" that led him to veer so close to forever distancing his wife and daughter. He has said the family underwent not only individual therapy, but couples counseling and family therapy to assess and try to staunch the emotional damage.

Clinton's disclosure deserves attention for several reasons. First, though his marital problems were of spectacular proportions — harming not only his family, but disrupting the functioning of the U.S. government — the types of problems themselves were not all that unusual. Infidelity, unresolved conflicts from childhood, and the taking of a spouse for granted are frequent culprits in the roughly 50 percent of American marriages that fail. For the Clintons, as for many ordinary people whose marriages face collapse, mental health professionals can offer essential tools for restoring trust and function.

Even more useful, though, was Clinton's accurate portrayal of what counseling is really like: slow, difficult and without a guaranteed outcome. [...]

[C]linton was right in that, for any troubled family, quick fixes are illusory. In recent years, Americans have embraced a culture of voilà! We are fascinated by insta-marriage dating shows, prime-time makeovers and group-therapy reality TV. Clinton's account of therapy affirms that keeping real-life families intact needs patience, perseverance and hard work.

OPPORTUNITY SOCIETY (via mc):

Voucher Holders Shop Schools: Eager Parents and Children Pack Fair in First Step to Choice (Jay Mathews, June 23, 2004, Washington Post)

The doors of the former YMCA building on 12th Street NW were not supposed to open until 6:30 p.m. Monday, but Erica Shorter arrived an hour early, joining a line that soon stretched half a block to T Street.

Once she got inside, she rushed to a small table in the corner of the light-green gymnasium. Grabbing a pen, she signed up her two children for the St. Francis de Sales School on Rhode Island Avenue NE.

Shorter, 33, could not have afforded the Catholic school's tuition in the past. But her children were among 1,249 low-income students selected last week to receive the District's first tax-funded private-school vouchers, and she wanted them to be first on the school's list.

The public schools in Southeast Washington that her children have attended have low scores and limited programs, she said, "and I want them to be able to get all kinds of learning."

Shorter and the families of more than 500 other voucher recipients jammed into the small building, now called the Thurgood Marshall Center Trust, Monday evening and yesterday afternoon to visit tables staffed by representatives of 44 private D.C. schools that have agreed to participate in the program. [...]

Once she had time to read the scholarship fund's materials, Shorter realized that she had much more to do. She would need to complete an application form and provide her children's last report cards, test scores, birth certificates, Social Security numbers and immunization records.

All that, Shorter said, is fine with her. "It is such a great opportunity," she said.

IF ONLY REAGAN HAD HATED HUMANKIND:

The Big Opportunity Ronald Reagan Missed (Otis L. Graham, 6/21/04, History News Network)

In the late 1930s, Roosevelt gave voice and policy leadership to those who concluded that fascism, with its global ambitions, required a new world role for the United States. FDR, too, had the gift of conveying optimism and confidence and used those talents to ease the way toward difficult and necessary national readjustments. A sunny temperament, like FDR's and Reagan's, must be connected to a transformative mission matched to history's new directions and demands.

Reagan, when his turn came, cheered people up with the message that all of their old habits remained sound. Endless growth and expanding affluence had been the American formula, and this was what Reagan meant by "freedom." He told Americans that the old perpetual growth-as-usual formula should still be the nation's guide and goal. We know now that this is a recipe for mounting national and global disruptions and instability.

Indeed, it was known when he took office, for two national commissions (the 1972 National Commission on Population and the American Future, and the 1980 report, Global 2000) had arrived at similar conclusions: America had to get off the old unsustainable growth path, stabilize its population, then devise, and export, sustainable energy, agricultural, waste disposal and oceanic protection systems.

Reagan's predecessor, Jimmy Carter, understood and embraced these conclusions, but he entirely lacked the skills to deliver the message and point a new way without sounding like a pessimistic disciplinarian. Reagan had the gifts to rally the nation toward a difficult transition, to stitch it into the American story as a new, exciting phase of our journey and a tomorrow better than yesterday.

He squandered this opportunity and instead led in the opposite direction, toward economic and population expansion unhindered by the sort of environmentalist concerns nurtured in his own Republican Party during and for a few years after the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1908).

The idea though that what was needed in 1980 was population controls and an orderly decline towards oblivion is just as monstrous as facism in its own way. That this what the Left envisioned (envisions?) as our appropriate future makes Raganism seem even greater than we already recognize it to have been.

THE MATTER? HOW ABOUT WHAT'S RIGHT?:

Cashing In on Culture Wars, The Right Marches On: a review of What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank (Kevin Canfield, NY Observer)

Mr. Frank’s thesis goes like this: American conservatives have spent the last few decades orchestrating the "carefully cultivated derangement of places like Kansas," the author’s native state. With its dark brilliance for inciting moral outrage among the working and middle classes—the very people who are hurt when the G.O.P.’s economic programs favor the rich—the right has minted a generation "of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in Midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life …. "

It is, in Mr. Frank’s words, a right-wing "backlash" against the liberal establishment, and its grip on the nation’s heartland—the "red states" on the electoral maps—helped to assure the election of George W. Bush. [...]

Mr. Frank traces the recent rightward tilt of Kansas politics to 1991, when conservatives throughout the Midwest were galvanized by the so-called Summer of Mercy, a series of acts of civil disobedience meant to prevent abortions. The local authorities handed victory to the protesters when they encouraged abortion clinics to close for a full week—an act that, to some pro-lifers, "represented a bona fide miracle." The pro-life movement finally had something to show for its efforts: "This was where the Kansas conservative movement got an idea of its own strength; this was where it achieved critical mass."

Emboldened to press on other issues—school curricula, farm deregulation, changes in the tax structure—conservatives have pushed states across the Midwest ever further to the right. Consider Kansas: Today its two Senators, Mr. Brownback and Pat Roberts, are among the most conservative lawmakers in Washington, and in 2000 Mr. Bush won the state by a greater margin than native son Bob Dole did in ’96.

The proof of the right’s real genius is not getting power in the Midwest, but keeping it. It has done so, Mr. Frank writes, through the "systematic erasure of the economic." In other words, conservatives have amped up the volume on cultural matters while ignoring the fiscal well-being of the working and middle classes. Preoccupied by the abortion debate or the fight against the teaching of evolution in public schools, Kansans, Mr. Frank argues, ignore what the government might do to help their pocketbooks. Instead, many vote with a mind toward fixing our land’s "crisis of the soul."

"Out here," Mr. Frank reports, "the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, farther to the right. Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the C.E.O., and there’s a good chance they’ll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

GEORGE WHO?:

Nato gives Blair green light for more Iraq troops (James Cusick, 6/27/04, Sunday Herald)

NATO will tomorrow agree to send military personnel to Iraq to help train Iraqi security forces. Although the decision falls far short of earlier US ambitions for a large Nato troop deployment, it will allow Tony Blair to claim the post-war conflict has now been fully “internationalised” and, as a result, more British troops will now be sent to Iraq.

Nato ambassadors meeting yesterday ahead of the two-day summit which begins in Istanbul tomorrow, reached an initial agreement to respond positively to the request for assistance by Iraq’s newly installed prime minister, Iyad Allawi.

Up until last week, when Allawi’s plea was sent, there had been no formal contact between Nato and the new interim Iraqi administration and Nato had not played a direct role. The key members of Nato include the US, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain and Holland.

President George Bush, in Ireland for the mini-summit between the US and European Union, was informed in advance of the Nato decision. It allowed Bush to sound upbeat about the prospects of international involvement in dealing with post-war Iraq. He pointed to a joint agreement between the US and the EU to support the United Nation’s role in rebuilding Iraq, saying: “The bitter differences [over the war] are now over.”

ONLY DETAILS:

Strangling Democracy (VACLAV HAVEL, 6/24/04, NY Times)

Zimbabwe's leaders know that the international community will cooperate with them only if they meet certain conditions. That is why they are trying to give the impression of democracy and thus escape international isolation, and why they distort the standard democratic mechanisms in order to create a semblance of citizens' participation. At the same time, they create legal instruments that violate human rights. Democratic institutions are partly controlled by the leadership, partly circumvented by it.

A report published this year by the International Crisis Group, an international nonprofit group that works to resolve conflict, showed that many opposition members of Parliament in Zimbabwe have been subject to murder attempts, torture, assault and arrest. In parliamentary elections, President Robert Mugabe nominates 20 percent of members, who then become parliamentarians without a democratic mandate. Elections are regularly accompanied by organized violence and intimidation. The independent judiciary, one of the pillars of democracy, has been severely compromised, with the benches packed with Mr. Mugabe's supporters.

A law adopted before the presidential elections in 2002 requires journalists to provide detailed information about themselves. If they do not, they will not receive a journalist license. The law, called the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, has been used to close Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper and to arrest people for "suspicion of journalism." The state now claims a virtual monopoly of written and broadcast media; foreign correspondents, meanwhile, are a thing of the past.

Another law restricts the freedom of association. The government in Zimbabwe has used this law, called the Public Order and Security Act, to stamp out any form of protest, to block practically any public activity of opposition groups. Under this law, women have been arrested for giving out flowers on Valentine's Day.

The Orwellian names of these laws are both chilling and relevant. Totalitarian regimes may differ in small details — by the nature of their deviations, the degree of their representatives' contrivance, the degree of their cruelty and brutality — but their nature is the same. And so is the manner of resisting such regimes.

GOTTA BLAME SOMEBODY:

MMR, autism and politics (Helene Guldberg, 6/23/04, Spiked)

spiked readers will be familiar with the writings of Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, east London GP and trenchant critic of official health policy. His new book, MMR and Autism: What parents need to know, develops the arguments put forward in his spiked columns around the MMR debacle, where highly dubious scientific claims about the potential damage caused by a triple vaccine have managed to throw the political and medical establishment into turmoil, and knock a major UK immunisation programme off course.

Dr Fitzpatrick persuasively and eloquently demolishes the key plank of the MMR panic: claims of a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Indeed, any risks associated with the MMR vaccine are virtually non-existent: 'when 500million doses of a vaccine have been given in 80 countries over more than 30 years, and serious adverse reactions are found to be extremely rare, then it is fair to describe it as "safe"', he says. Meanwhile the case for immunisation is indisputable: 'Diseases that had caused devastating epidemics in living memory, and had produced a significant toll of death and disability into the post-war period, have virtually disappeared.'

But while MMR and Autism is a thorough dissection of the scientific and medical issues arising from the MMR panic, the book's scope is much broader than that. 'It is not a self-help manual intended to reassure parents worried about the safety of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, though it might very well do this', states an apt summary by Dr Anthony Daniels in the Sunday Telegraph. '[R]ather, it is a probing analysis of a continuing health scare, one that very soon suggests deep questions of political philosophy in general, and the nature of our society in particular.' Which begs the question - why focus on MMR in the first place? [...]

Fitzpatrick places the MMR controversy in the context of the collapse of traditional left and right politics, and the rise of a more individuated, risk-averse society. As Politics with a big 'P' has ceased to matter so much to people, issues relating to health - and those relating to lifestyle, education and other personal issues - have assumed an increasing importance in people's lives.

And as people have become more preoccupied with their own health and that of their children, the government has adopted a much higher profile on health issues. 'Health policy is no longer concerned primarily with providing services, but is more directed towards provoking individual anxieties and fears about smoking, obesity, and other "unhealthy" lifestyles, and relating to people's daily health concerns through initiatives like NHS Direct', he says.

In this situation, a health panic such as that surrounding the MMR vaccine is not a diversion from politics. It is politics. Like major political battles of the past, this scare has some very real and dangerous consequences - both for the state of debate, and for individuals' own lives.

BOOKNOTES:

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore (C-SPAN, 6/27/04, 8 & 11pm)

PATRIOTIC WAR? (via Mike Daley):
The Terrors: One of the foremost scholars of Soviet history assesses an ambitious new biography of Stalin: Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Robert Conquest, The Atlantic)

Sebag Montefiore is at his best when writing about the dramatic days just before and after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union-a story whose details come almost entirely from the new records and from the memories of crucial people in Moscow. The Nazi attack, in June of 1941, surprised and shook Stalin. After recovering from the shock, he again manifested his dictatorial strength. Some half a million Soviet soldiers had left the front. They were rounded up, and more than 10,000 were shot; the rest were formed into new units. This ruthlessness, which had the desired disciplinary effect, was accompanied by the execution of a group of experienced officers-and of the wives of previously executed officers.

The fate of the officers' wives was part of a widespread pattern-one to which Sebag Montefiore, with his interest in family matters, rightly calls our attention. According to a Soviet law written in 1935, the relatives of an accused person were also responsible for the "crime," even if they were
ignorant of it. It soon became routine for wives, children, brothers, and sisters of terror victims to suffer equally dire consequences. Consider the stories, recently learned, of the wives of Marshal Vasily Blyukher, who died under torture in 1938: his first and second wives were shot, and the third was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp.

In this regard it is instructive to compare the Stalinist epoch with that of the czars. For example, in the earlier period the execution of Lenin's brother on genuine grounds of treason (he participated in a terrorist plot) did not affect Lenin's academic career, much less result in his own execution. The decline in the government's humanity is remarkable. So is the difference between life in Stalin's gulag, whose inhabitants were starved and sweated, and the relatively comfortable "exile" to Siberian villages imposed on offenders by the czarist regime.

The impact of the terrors on Party members and other elites has long been known. Our most substantial gain in understanding the Stalinist era concerns how and to what extent they struck at the general population. This is now decisively documented, in papers signed by Stalin and specifying quotas for death and imprisonment by category and locale; these decrees resulted in
nearly 770,000 executions in 1937-1938. In addition, over the whole of his career Stalin signed 44,000 individual death sentences. The "anti-Soviet elements" targeted included former kulaks, former officials of the czarist state and army, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, religious
activists, and "speculators"-a wide swath of society. Those carrying out the orders were required to send "albums" of the victims to Moscow, to confirm that the quotas had been met.

There is no longer much serious dispute about what the terrors unleashed, or about the extravagant falsification practiced by the regime. If anything is still missing in Western understanding, it is a full recognition of the mental degradation inflicted by the regime. The entire population was forced to accept a supposedly all-explaining dogma, along with the notion that it
was living in a social and political utopia-when what it actually experienced, of course, was the opposite. A Russian academic told me recently that many Westerners he meets still don't realize how horrible and psychologically exhausting a life it was.

OBLIGATORY NAZI COMPARISON OF THE DAY:

The Best Goebbels of All? (Frank Rich, 6/27//04, NY Times)

[G]oebbels is in fashion everywhere these days. As Mr. Moore implies that the Bush administration is in cahoots with the native country of 15 of the 9/11 hijackers, so the Bush administration has itself used a sustained campaign of insinuation to float the false claim that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with those hijackers, too. As Mr. Moore seeks to shape the story of what happened on 9/11, so the White House, President Bush included, collaborated on a movie project with the same partisan intent, "D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis," seen on Showtime last fall. Instead of depicting Mr. Bush as continuing to read "My Pet Goat" to second graders for nearly seven minutes while the World Trade Center burned (as "Fahrenheit 9/11" does), "D.C. 9/11" showed the president (played by Timothy Bottoms) barking out take-charge lines like "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me — I'll be home!"

In this fierce propaganda battle over the war on terrorism, the administration has been battling longer and harder than Michael Moore. And in John Ashcroft it has an even bigger camera hog in the starring role — no mean feat. While his on-screen persona needs work — he tries to come off like Robert Stack in "The Untouchables" but more often conjures up W. C. Fields in "The Bank Dick" — the attorney general's resources as a showman are considerable. He has a bigger budget than most filmmakers and can command far more free TV time for promoting his wares. His press conferences, whether to showcase his latest, implicitly single-handed victory in the war on terror or to predict the apocalypse he wants to make certain we won't blame him for, are now as ubiquitous as spinoffs of "C.S.I." and "Law & Order." While F.D.R. once told Americans that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ashcroft is delighted to play the part of Fear Itself, an assignment in which he lets his imagination run riot.

VACATION FROM REALITY:

Shuffling to the sound of the Morlocks' dinner bell (VIN SUPRYNOWICZ, 6/27/04, Las Vegas Review-Journal)

In Atlanta over the May 29 weekend, former movie producer, Bette Midler manager/paramour and Nevada gubernatorial candidate Aaron Russo -- who entered the Libertarian Party's national convention as the front-runner for the presidential nomination -- was doing himself no favors on the convention floor.

The Libertarian Party has more than its share of dorks and dweebs, who given the chance will corner you and seek a debate on the most arcane details of anything from private space exploration to the Federal Reserve.

I can understand Russo's reluctance to waste too much time on this stuff (though in fact, the Federal Reserve seems to have become one of his own favorite topics, of late). But eyewitnesses report Russo's response was to call such gadflies "idiots," sometimes throwing in a few extra modifiers which I can't print in a family newspaper. [...]

The majority of the LP's delegates in Atlanta concluded Aaron Russo might inject some money and some drama, but that he was a loose cannon.

"The delegates voted for the man who was the most like them, who presented in the most professional way the modal opinions and views and style of a Libertarian Party activist -- quiet, intense, no deviation from the catechism, more concerned with eternal ideological and philosophical verities than the political events of the day," summarizes Doherty.

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE:

Iowa Governor Makes His Case for Stepping Into the National Limelight With Kerry: Tom Vilsack may not have the name recognition of John Edwards or Richard A. Gephardt, but make no mistake: He wants the job badly. (DAVID M. HALBFINGER, 6/27/04, NY Times)

"I've lived in a small town, I've worked in a small town, I've been the mayor of a small town," Mr. Vilsack continues. "I understand the hopes, the aspirations, the frustrations and the anxieties of people who live in communities all over America. If you look at battleground states, many of them have one thing in common: They border the Mississippi, just like Iowa. I know the people of small-town U.S.A."

Tom Vilsack may not have the name recognition of John Edwards or Richard A. Gephardt; he may not have legions of trial lawyers and donors or leaders of big unions lobbying Mr. Kerry to choose him. But make no mistake: He wants the job badly.

Just listen to him audition for a vice-presidential debate with Dick Cheney. How would Mr. Vilsack respond if Mr. Cheney dismissed him as inexperienced in defense and foreign policy?

He starts right in, as if he has already thought this through many times: "With all due respect, Mr. Vice President, with your vast experience in foreign policy, you didn't raise the questions about whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, you didn't ask questions that would've allowed you to reach the conclusion that maybe there wasn't a nuclear program in full force and effect in Iraq, you didn't ask the questions specifically about what links existed in deed and in fact between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Why didn't you ask those questions? You're experienced - why didn't you ask those questions? Those are questions I would've asked."

CRANK UP THE VCR:

British Eyes Look at 1776 and See Less to Approve (ALESSANDRA STANLEY, 6/23/04, NY Times)

Since Sept. 11, television has done a decent job of explaining why they hate us. Tonight PBS reveals why they have always hated us. Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain lost America is a wickedly revisionist view of the American Revolution, a "Fahrenheit 1776."

When American soldiers are fighting Iraqi insurgents under a besieged banner of freedom and democracy, some viewers may not relish a re-examination of the Stamp Act and Yorktown from the point of view of the British Crown. And certainly the narrator, the British military historian Richard Holmes, gets a bit carried away in the heat of battle re-enactment. "Unsportingly," he says, "the Americans were picking off British officers who were easily identifiable by their scarlet rather than their faded red uniforms."

But the two-part documentary, being shown tonight and next Wednesday, is an engaging upside-down look at a period of American history that few Americans ever question. It may not be exactly fair — the British bias is blatant — but it is fairly accurate. Mostly, it gives viewers a sense of the world's more jaundiced view of a revolution that Americans cherish as a triumph of democracy and human rights. And a little like Michael Moore's polemical films, the documentary delivers its most striking indictments not in the facts but in the sly visual juxtapositions.

THEIR FIGHT NOW:

Biggest Task for U.S. General Is Training Iraqis to Fight Iraqis: A celebrated American field commander is charged with rebuilding an Iraqi security force that collapsed during April's uprisings. (DEXTER FILKINS, 6/27/04, NY Times)

On a recent afternoon in his new office in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, a celebrated American field commander, sketched his vision for how America's forces might one day extract themselves from this country.

"I know where this ends," said General Petraeus, 51, who earlier this month took control of a vast project to oversee the training of Iraqi security forces. "It ends with the Iraqis in charge of their country. You get as many Iraqis as possible to have a stake in the success of the new Iraq to defeat the insurgency."

THE ANTI-ZIONIST LEFT:

Arafat gets rehab (EFRAIM INBAR Jun. 26, 2004, Jerusalem Post)

Haaretz has adopted an uncharacteristic dose of "religiosity" by becoming the vehicle for a pathetic attempt by the Israeli radical Left to politically resurrect Yasser Arafat.

The newspaper claims that Arafat was not the instigator of the September 2000 intifada but has consistently searched for a two-state solution in his quest for peaceful coexistence. Haaretz also published an interview with the Palestinian leader which refrained from posing difficult questions. Arafat was allowed to portray himself as a man of peace.

Israeli messianic doves have repeatedly saved Arafat from oblivion. Yossi Beilin and the crowd around him saved Arafat in 1993 at a time when the PLO was weak due to its strategic blunder of supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War. The group, isolated in Tunis, was on the verge of bankruptcy.

But Beilin et al persuaded Yitzhak Rabin – against his better judgment – to enter into a deal with the PLO, which brought Arafat to the White House, allowed the PLO to regain its dwindling international status, and gave it a territorial foothold in the territories.

These same doves never stopped advocating – as if out of religious conviction – increasingly larger Israeli concessions and a policy of turning a blind eye to the Palestinian violations of the Oslo agreements. The failure of Arafat to honor his pledge to Rabin and desist from terrorist activities was invariably explained away.

The PLO chief's repeated calls for jihad were belittled as insignificant rhetoric. Early Israeli casualties resulting from Palestinian terrorism were seen as "sacrifices for peace."

But peace did not come. It took the majority of Israelis more than a decade and over 1,000 dead to realize the murderous nature of the Palestinian national movement. The swing in public opinion to a more realistic assessment of the conflict is the reason for the recent attempt by the radical Left to rewrite history.

ICE HAMMER:

Defrosting Texas: Tom DeLay's redistricting may do in a 13-term Democrat. (Beth Henary, 07/05/2004, Weekly Standard)

TEXAS REPUBLICANS wanted to accomplish several things last year, when they began redrawing the state's congressional districts. They wanted to increase the number of safe Republican seats to give them a majority. And they wanted to take revenge on, among others, 13-term Democrat Martin Frost. This they did by divvying up his shoo-in, 61 percent Democratic district. Now Frost is challenging incumbent Republican Pete Sessions for the newly redrawn District 32.

Knocking off the wily former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman would be especially gratifying for Republicans. Frost was the chief architect behind the 1990s redistricting, which kept gains in Congress scarce for the Texas GOP in that decade. This came to a stop only when Republicans captured both houses of the Texas legislature in 2002.

Early renderings of last year's redistricting map were kinder to Frost and other senior Democrats. But after Democratic state representatives and senators ran, respectively, for the Oklahoma and New Mexico borders to try to avoid the special redistricting sessions, Republicans made sure Frost would be short on chances to continue his career in Congress.

50-0 FILES:

Bush Edges Kerry (Fox News, June 24, 2004)

President Bush currently has an advantage over Democratic candidate John Kerry in both the two-way matchup and three-way matchups. If the election were held today, the poll finds Bush at 48 percent and Kerry at 42 percent. When independent candidate Ralph Nader is included he receives three percent, Bush 47 percent and Kerry 40 percent. [...]

As has been the case since the end of the primary season, Bush’s strength of support is much higher than Kerry’s. Fully 75 percent of Bush voters say they support him "strongly" and 25 percent say "only somewhat." Among Kerry voters, just over half — 53 percent — say they support him "strongly" and 45 percent say "only somewhat." [...]

Regardless of how they plan to vote, half of the public believes Bush is going to win in November, 30 percent believe Kerry will win and 20 percent are unsure or think it is too early to say.

The president’s overall job approval rating is 49 percent, which is about where it has been holding for the last four months.

Now we head into a period where Iraq will disappear from public consciousness and the numbers will soon reflect net job gains, plus a burgeoning economy. Meanwhile, Ralph Nader looks like he's in the race to stay.

MICHAEL MOORE'S MINUTEMEN HARD AT WORK

16 Afghans Slain by Taliban for Carrying Voter Cards (Reuters, New York Times, June 27th, 2004)

Taliban guerrillas kidnapped and then killed 16 people in an Afghan province after finding them with voter registration cards for the country's September elections, a district official said Sunday.

The guerrillas stopped a bus carrying 17 civilians through the district Friday, said Haji Obaidullah, chief of Khas Uruzgan district in the central province of Uruzgan.

The guerrillas took the passengers to the neighboring province of Zabul and killed all but one of them when they found they were carrying voter cards, he quoted the lone survivor as saying.

"They were apparently killed because they were carrying the registration cards,'' he said.

The greatest obscenity is not Moore or his film. It is that so many presumably decent, if confused, types accord him such respect during a week of beheadings and this kind of atrocity. Is it possible to win the war on terror while losing the war of outrage over terrorism?

WE DIDN'T MEAN TO COMPARE THAT NAZI TO HITLER...:

And It’s Only June…: Bush and Kerry camps spar over whose Hitler images are more offensive (Michael Hastings, June 25, 2004, Newsweek)

On Friday, Democrats and Republicans went to war over a new Bush reelection campaign ad that uses images of Adolph Hitler in bashing Democrat John Kerry.

The Web video, e-mailed to 6 million Bush supporters Thursday evening, splices together clips of Al Gore, Howard Dean, Rep. Dick Gephardt, film director Michael Moore and Kerry. On two occasions in the 87-second-long “Webmercial,” Hitler is shown, speaking loudly in German. The fuhrer footage is overlaid with the words “sponsored by MoveOn.org” while the ad’s opening screen says “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party.”

MoveOn.org, a left-wing political fundraising group, immediately objected. “We never sponsored those [Hitler] ads, we didn’t condone them,” says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn PAC. He says the Hitler clips originally appeared on the group’s Web site in January...

MAYBE SENATOR KERRY WAS RIGHT NOT TO BOTHER WITH A CONVENTION, HE CAN'T MATCH THIS ONE:

McCain and Giuliani to Be Spotlighted at G.O.P. Convention (ADAM NAGOURNEY, June 26, 2004, NY Times)

Senator John McCain of Arizona, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Rudolph W. Giuliani have been chosen for prime-time speaking spots at the Republican convention in New York City this summer, campaign officials said Saturday.

The lineup is intended to spotlight party moderates while underlining a central theme of the Republican gathering: President Bush's response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Gov. George E. Pataki of New York will also speak in prime time, according to a schedule that will be officially released Monday. Mr. Pataki or Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, may well end up nominating Mr. Bush at the convention, party officials said. [...]

The convention schedule also suggests that the White House apparently agreed with Mr. Schwarzenegger about what role he could serve at the convention. Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a recent interview that "if they're smart," Republicans would put him in prime time, and they did.

Two of the other prime-time speeches will be given by Laura Bush, the first lady, and Rod Paige, the secretary of education.

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES (via Eric Timmons):

Zarqawi Group Kidnaps Three Turks in Iraq (Fox News, June 26, 2004)

Terrorists loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were shown on Al-Jazeera television Saturday, holding three Turkish workers hostage and threatening to behead them in 72 hours, just as President Bush was arriving in Turkey for a NATO summit.

THE SPOKESMAN THEY DESERVE:

All Hail Moore (DAVID BROOKS, 6/26/04, NY Times)

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." [...]

Before a delighted Cambridge crowd, Moore reflected on the tragedy of human existence: "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: "It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton." [...]

In an open letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: "Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Moore helped citizens of that country understand why the United States went to war in Iraq: "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

But venality doesn't come up when he writes about those who are killing Americans in Iraq: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win." Until then, few social observers had made the connection between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Paul Revere.

So we have our Sartre. And the liberal grandees Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorenson, Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer flock to his openings. In Washington, a Senate vote was delayed because so many Democrats wanted to see his movie.

PLAYING BY TORRICELLI RULES (via AWW):

Mass. to Get Special Vote if Kerry Wins (Fox News, June 23, 2004)

If John Kerry is elected president, his seat in the Senate would be filled by the winner of a special election rather than a successor picked by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney under a bill approved Wednesday by the Massachusetts Senate.

The Senate voted largely along party lines, 32-8, after a sometimes testy debate pitting the badly outnumbered Republicans, who opposed the change, against Democrats. The measure now goes to the Democratic-controlled House.

The bill requires a special election not more than 160 days and not less than 145 days after a vacancy is created in the Senate. Under the bill, a vacancy is created when a letter of resignation is filed, even if the incumbent senator does not actually resign until a later date. The winner of the special election would serve out the remainder of the unexpired term. Kerry's term ends in 2008.

Although Romney could veto the measure, the Democrats have the votes to overturn it.

ALL BLUE BATTLEFIELD FILES:

Poll shows Bush ahead in Wisconsin (UPI, 6/26/04)

The latest Badger Poll showed President George W. Bush ahead of Sen. John F. Kerry in the critical swing state of Wisconsin.

Bush led Kerry, 46 percent to 42 percent, in the poll, which sampled opinions from 504 adults. Liberal independent Ralph Nader took 5 percent in the survey, which was conducted by the University of Wisconsin's Survey Center between June 15 and June 23.

ABLE CANDIDATE:

Senate Candidate Vows to Carry Christian Values to Capitol (Chad Groening, June 25, 2004, AgapePress)

A successful black businessman who is seeking to become Georgia's next U.S. senator says he will never waffle on the pro-family issues. Former pizza magnate Herman Cain believes God had a hand on the founding of America, and he says people have no right to redefine what God has defined.

Cain is facing two incumbent Republican congressmen in the July 20 Republican Primary. The former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza says his Christianity governs his political stances. So when issues such as abortion and so-called homosexual marriage come up, he notes, "They are not difficult questions for me to answer because of my biblical basis."

The Senate candidate says without hesitation, "I am pro-life from conception, and I believe that God defined marriage as between a man and a woman. And I believe God knew what he was doing -- end of story."

ACCIDENTAL PARTY TO A CIVIL WAR:

Unsettled civilizations: How the US can handle Iraq (Reuven Brenner, 6/24/04, Asia Times)

There is an old clause in the law codes that King Ine of Wessex established in the 8th century. If fewer than seven men attack private property, they are thieves; if between seven and 35 attack, they are a gang, and if more than 35, they are a military expedition. According to these criteria, billionaire philanthropist and financier George Soros' view of the September 11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than an act of war - stating that "crime requires police work, not military action" - is erroneous. After all, the 19 people carrying out the attack were backed by well-organized groups of thousands of other people and by a financing network too. Al-Qaeda's goal has been to fight the United States, and declare war on it. Why shouldn't one take such declarations seriously?

Whereas Soros believes that the police and the US giving more foreign aid are the solutions for dealing with terrorism, others view the events unfolding since September 11, 2001 in a different light. Samuel Huntington sees these events as part of a "clash of civilizations", and suggests remedies such as strengthening the US's military power and increasing coordination with Western Europe, Russia, Japan, and Latin America. Most important, Huntington concludes, is "to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single-most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world". Though this last observation from Huntington's Clash of Civilizations is often quoted, closer inspection reveals that it is either meaningless or wrong.

It is not clear how Huntington perceives a world where - to keep things stable - the West would "not intervene". Channels of communications being what they are, how can the West not influence other civilizations? Prohibit broadcasting, wireless communications and trading, perhaps? Stop selling or giving medicine? Cease buying oil? As to the second part of the statement, Huntington is wrong. Defeating "emerging civilizations" such as Nazi Germany's or communist Russia's have diminished conflicts and increased people's well-being.

It is easy to criticize both grandiose thesis and narrow ones. To come up with a different way of perceiving the events and offer solutions is a bit harder. Yet this brief does just that. It shows that today's conflict between Islamic groups and the West, as well as within Islamic societies, can be viewed as one between "mobile" and "immobile" civilizations, whose members can be found in every society. What distinguishes the US is that it has far more people sharing the outlook of a "mobile civilization" than any other country. And what characterizes many Islamic countries is that they have a large number of people sharing the values of an "immobile" civilization. "Relativist" orthodoxy notwithstanding, one point I make is that although one can understand the values and ideals of "immobile societies", as fitting certain situations, there cannot be a compromise between these two civilizations. Today's circumstances - demographic in particular - require moves toward "mobility".

Perceived from this angle, September 11 and the other terrorist attacks reflect the power struggle within the Islamic world, a type of struggle that Western Europe went through for centuries. As in Europe, the conflict within Islam, played out both within the countries and on the world stage, is an attempt of their "immobile", tradition-based constituents to prevent members of their "mobile" constituents - and whom the US supports - to gain the upper hand.

What's important in all this is that even if we did as the Left and far Right wished and withdrew back into Fortress America, we would remain effectively engaged in this conflict because the force of our ideas is driving the liberalization of the Islamic World. Even if we were militarily passive we'd still be on the intellectual offensive and al Qaeda may not care about the nature of our society but they very much care about their own society not becoming ever more like ours. Like it or not, we are natural enemies.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW:

GM expansion in Poland angers German unions (Ralph Atkins, June 25 2004, Financial Times)

General Motors, the US carmaker, angered German trade unions on Friday by announcing that its Opel subsidiary would expand production of its new Zafira family car in Poland rather than at Rüsselsheim, its main German factory.

The announcement comes a week after GM reorganised its European operations, which also include the Saab and Vauxhall brands, to centralise control in Zürich, Switzerland. Opel said its works in Gliwice, Poland, offered "significant competitive advantages" compared with the group's other production facilities. [...]

GM confirmed its decision to build the Zafira in Poland was linked to Warsaw's agreement to buy fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, under which the US side committed itself to boosting investment into the Polish economy.

But the Opel workers' council said the decision had been taken "on purely political considerations". Its statement said: "It is economically wrong and directed against Germany as an investment location and the employees of Adam Opel."

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Thirteen Dead in Attacks Across Iraq (Fox News, June 26, 2004)

Nine people, six of them rebels, died in the Sunni Triangle city of Baqouba, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Two Iraqi National Guardsmen and a policeman died in Mahmoudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad.

A car bomb in the northern city of Irbil wounded a Kurdish politician and 15 others, and the politician's bodyguard was killed.

An American soldier died of wounds incurred in an ambush on his patrol in central Baghdad, but the U.S. military did not say when the attack occurred.

The attacks in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, occurred only two days after U.S. tanks and jets routed insurgents who assaulted police stations and government offices there as part of a widespread offensive that killed about 100 people nationwide.

In the Saturday attacks, rebels targeted offices of two political parties — one of them run by Iraq's prime minister — a police station and a government building. U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces took up defensive positions across the city, the center of Iraq's orange-growing region.

WHAT OTHER CHOICE DID THEY HAVE?:

U.S. and European Union Pledge Support for Iraq (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/26/04)

The United States and the European Union offered strong support for Iraq's urgent request for NATO military help Saturday. ``NATO has the capability and I believe the responsibility to help the Iraqi people defeat the terrorist threat that's facing their country,'' President Bush said.

"I think the bitter differences of the war are over,'' Bush said at the close of a U.S.-European Union summit. "There is a common interest and a common goal to help the Iraqi people.''

The United States and the European Union agreed in a joint statement to back Iraq's urgent request for NATO military and support the training of Iraqi security forces, and to reduce Iraq's international debt, estimated to be $120 billion.

IRAQIFICATION?:

Army Used Speed and Might, Plus Cash, Against Shiite Rebel: The operation against the militia of Moktada al-Sadr is already being studied by an Army struggling to learn the lessons of a war that continues to evolve. (THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT, 6/26/04, NY Times)

When the First Armored Division got orders to mount its counterattack against the Sadr militia, one-fourth of its 30,000 soldiers and more than half of its 8,000 tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces had already left Iraq. The division, along with the Second Light Cavalry Regiment, also under its command, did an about-face, recalling troops, unpacking gear and receiving unwelcome orders to extend its stay by 90 days.

"I called together all my commanders, and I told them that we were going to demonstrate that a heavy force could be agile — to put heavy and agile in the same sentence, a place where they had never been before," said Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, whose signature weapon is the 70-ton Abrams tank.

"And 15 hours later, from a standing start in Baghdad, we moved 170 kilometers down to Najaf, and were in contact with the enemy," General Dempsey said, referring to a distance of just over 100 miles.

As quickly as the military spent its ammunition, though, it spent its money in an effort to heal some of the wounds it was inflicting, and those dealt by the militia as well.

From the moment the Americans recaptured Kut, the first town where they reclaimed control, officers switched from military to civil operations. Having scattered the enemy, they pulled them back together and put them to work in an amusement park destroyed in the fight.

"These are young men who have been poisoned, unemployed, disenfranchised and very poorly led," General Dempsey said. "We found a local tribal sheik who said he could corral them. We hired him to repair the amusement park, and he in turn hired these young men."

The example was repeated in Diwaniya and all across south-central Iraq, where General Dempsey spent several hundred thousand dollars to pay locals to remove rubble, rebuild roads and finance claims for damaged homes and businesses.

The campaign against the Sadr militia in south-central Iraq also had to be fought elsewhere — inside military headquarters in Baghdad, in the command-and-control "Tank" at the Pentagon, inside the National Security Council at the White House and even at the United Nations, as senior commanders debated with civilian policy makers how best to counter this menacing militia presence that grew in the shadows of the American occupation.

On one side were those who believed that Mr. Sadr could be sidelined, and that to attack him would only stoke support among his followers in Iraq and beyond its borders. This view was convincing to the uppermost level of commanders in Iraq, and certainly was the stance of Bush administration officials, especially after they heard the opinions of Iraq's own nascent leadership. On the other side were those, mostly field commanders, who argued that Mr. Sadr was a growing threat in advance of the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and that eventually he would have to be arrested or eliminated to guarantee the future of a stable and democratic Iraq.

MORE LIKE A SANDBOX THAN THE SENATE:

VEEP: I DON'T @#&*%!ING REGRET IT (DEBORAH ORIN, June 26, 2004, NY Post)

Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday said he has no regrets about using the F-word to Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy — and in fact "felt better after I had done it."

"Instead of having a substantive debate over important policy issues, [Leahy] had challenged my integrity, and I didn't like that," Cheney said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

"Most of all, I didn't like the fact that after [Leahy] had done so, then he wanted to act like, you know, everything's peaches and cream. And I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms. And as I say, I felt better afterwards."

THE CLASSICIST:

Inside Ronald Reagan: A Reason Interview (REASON, July 1975)

Those of us concerned about liberty have had good reason of late to be interested in Ronald Reagan. Increasingly, California’s former governor has been turning up in first place among Republican figures in political opinion polls, among Independents as well as Republicans. In addition, in recent months Reagan has taken to using the term "libertarian" (or "libertarian-conservative") to describe his political philosophy. All of which naturally made us interested in taking a closer look at the man and his ideas. Thanks to the efforts of the late Ned Hutchinson (a former Reagan aide), REASON was able to obtain time out of Reagan’s busy schedule for him to be interviewed by Editor Manuel S. Klausner.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Illinois in 1911. After a varied career as a radio sports announcer, motion picture actor, and TV host, Reagan became active in conservative politics. After achieving national publicity for his televised speeches for Barry Goldwater in 1964, Reagan went on to win the California governorship in 1966 and was re-elected to a second four-year term in 1970. Throughout his eight years in office, Reagan stressed the idea of holding down the size and cost of government, nonetheless, the state budget increased from $5.7 billion to $10.8 billion during his time in office.

Reagan did institute property and inventory tax cuts, but during his tenure the sales tax was increased to six percent and withholding was introduced to the state income tax system. Under Reagan’s administration, state funding for public schools (grades K- 12) increased 105 percent (although enrollment went up only 5 percent), state support for junior colleges increased 323 percent, and grants and loans to college students increased 900 percent Reagan’s major proposal to hold down the cost of government was a constitutional amendment to limit state spending to a specified (slowly declining) percentage of the gross income of the state’s population. The measure was submitted to the voters as an initiative measure, Proposition One, but was defeated when liberal opponents pictured it as a measure that would force local tax increases.

Reagan instituted a major overhaul of the state welfare system that reduced the total welfare caseload (which had been rapidly increasing) while raising benefits by 30 percent and increasing administrative costs. He encouraged the formation of HMO-like prepaid health care plans for MediCal patients, a move that has drawn mixed reactions from the medical community. His Federally-funded Office of Criminal Justice Planning made large grants to police agencies for computers and other expensive equipment, and funded (among other projects) a large-scale research effort on how to prosecute pornographers more effectively. He several times vetoed legislation to reduce marijuana possession to a misdemeanor, and signed legislation sharply increasing penalties for drug dealers

Thus, Reagan’s record, while generally conservative, is not particularly libertarian. But one’s administrative decisions, constrained as they are by existing laws, institutions, and politics, do not necessarily mirror one’s underlying philosophy. We were therefore curious to find out more about the real Ronald Reagan. Looking relaxed and healthy despite his 64 years and a hectic schedule, Reagan welcomed us to his Los Angeles office on Wilshire Boulevard and talked political philosophy with us for over an hour. Here is what we learned. [...]

REASON: Governor, could you give us some examples of what you would consider to be proper functions of government?

REAGAN: Well, the first and most important thing is that government exists to protect us from each other. Government exists, of course, for the defense of the nation, and for the defense of the rights of the individual. Maybe we don’t all agree on some of the other accepted functions of government, such as fire departments and police departments–again the protection of the people.

REASON: Are you suggesting that fire departments would be a necessary and proper function of government?

REAGAN: Yes. I know that there was a time back in history in which fire departments were private and you insured your house and then had an emblem on the front of your house which identified which company was responsible for protecting it against fire. I believe today, because of the manner in which we live, that, you can make a pretty good case for our public fire departments–because there are very few ways that you can handle fire in one particular structure today without it representing a threat to others.

REASON: How would you distinguish "socialized" fire departments and "socialized" fire insurance companies? Or would you be in favor of socialized fire insurance also?

REAGAN: No. Nor am I in favor of socialized medicine. But, there’s bound to be a grey area, an area in there in which you ask is this government protecting us from ourselves or is this government protecting us from each other. [...]

REASON: Don’t you think the Food and Drug Administration basically serves the Big Brother role, the protectionist role, and that the free market could adequately deal with it in the absence of the regulations?

REAGAN: Well, if they would. And I’m sure the free market would today, but remember that the FDA was born at a time when people in this country were being killed. Back in the Spanish American War, for instance, we lost soldiers who were sent poisoned canned meat and this is when the scandal erupted that led to the pure food laws.

Maybe what we should look at are those areas where government should be a "Big Brother" in ensuring that the private sector is doing the job. In other words, suppose the whole food industry would police itself. Then I think government would have a legitimate place in keeping a watchful eye on them to make sure that industry did not gradually, for profit, erode the standards. This I think could hold true with a great many other things. [...]

REASON: Let me ask you–still in the area of tax reform, Governor–how you feel about the Liberty Amendment, which would abolish the income tax. Is that something you’re in favor of?

REAGAN: Well, let me tell you where my doubts are there. I am very critical of the income tax–the progressive features and the complications of it–it’s the one instance in your whole fiscal experience in life in which you figure out what you owe and government reserves the right to come back and tell you your figures are wrong. If you’re going to have a tax the people should know what the tax is and the government should be able to tell them without the people having to go to the expense of figuring it out themselves.

On the other hand, I have always felt that taxing income is probably as fair a method of raising revenue for government as any. Let’s take a simple case. Suppose 100 of us were shipwrecked on an island and we knew there was little chance of release and we established a community to get along–to survive there. I n a sense we set up a government. What you’d probably do is ask each individual to dedicate a certain amount of his time to such things as standing guard or hunting and fishing to keep the people alive and providing fresh water and so forth, so you’d probably each one contribute a certain amount of service to the community. You’d basically be on your own except for X amount of time. Well, this in a sense is what you do with your income tax.

REASON: Of course, if you’re talking about starting from scratch–the shipwrecked people on the island– you’re really talking about a voluntary approach, aren’t you–as against taxation?

REAGAN: Well, we’re inclined to think that our government here is a voluntary approach and that we’ve set up a government to perform certain things, such as the national protection, etc.

REASON: Aren’t we deluding ourselves to talk in terms of consent, though? When we talk about taxation, aren’t we really dealing with force and coercion and nothing less than that?

REAGAN: Well, government’s only weapons are force and coercion and that’s why we shouldn’t let it get out of hand. And that’s what the founding fathers had in mind with the Constitution, that you don’t let it get out of hand.

But you say voluntary on the island. Let’s take a single thing. Let’s say that there was some force on the island, whether it’s hostiles or whether it was an animal, that represented a threat and required round he-clock guard duty for the safety of the community. Now I’m sure it would be voluntary but you get together and you say look, we’re all going to have to take turns guarding. Now what do you think would happen in that community if some individual said "Not me; I won’t stand guard." Well, I think the community would expel him and say "Well, we’re not going to guard you." So voluntarism does get into a kind of force and coercion where there is a legitimate need for it. [...]

REASON: Are there any particular books or authors or economists that have been influential in terms of your intellectual development?

REAGAN: Oh, it would be hard for me to pinpoint anything in that category. I’m an inveterate reader. Bastiat and von Mises, and Hayek and Hazlitt–I’m one for the classical economists....

REASON: What about Rand or Rothbard?

REAGAN: No. I haven’t read Ayn Rand since The Fountainhead. I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged. The last few years, I must say, have been a little rough on me for doing that kind of reading–for eight years I found that when I finished reading the memorandums and reports and so forth, then I found myself digging into nonfiction, economists and so forth, for help on the problems that were confronting me.

THEIR FIGHT NOW:

Foes of U.S. in Iraq Criticize Insurgents: Clerics and Militiamen Decry Violence (Edward Cody, June 26, 2004, Washington Post)

Key Iraqi opponents of the U.S. occupation expressed unease Friday over the wave of insurgent attacks that killed more than 100 Iraqis a day earlier, and rejected efforts by foreign guerrillas to take the lead in the insurgency and mate it with the international jihad advocated by Osama bin Laden.

The objections -- from anti-U.S. Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders, including rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr, and even from militia fighters in the embattled city of Fallujah -- arose in part from revulsion at the fact that victims of the car bombings and guerrilla assaults in six cities and towns Thursday were overwhelmingly Iraqis. But they also betrayed Iraqi nationalist concerns that the fight against U.S. occupation forces risked being hijacked by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom U.S. officials describe as a paladin in bin Laden's al Qaeda network. [...]

"Which religion allows anyone to kill more than 100 Iraqis, destroy 100 families and destroy 100 houses?" raged [Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarrae, a Sunni cleric with a wide following] in his sermon. "Who says so? Who are those people who do this? Where did they come from? . . . It is a conspiracy to defame the reputation of the Iraqi resistance by wearing its dress and using its name falsely. These people hurt the Iraqis and Iraq, giving the occupier an excuse to stay longer."

Samarrae said he had learned that some Iraqi insurgent leaders have begun to clash with Zarqawi loyalists, insisting the jihadists do not represent the "right and true resistance." He warned against those who he said want to tear the country apart in the name of Islam and suggested they were foreigners who should not be part of Iraq's conflict.

In Baqubah, where scores of fighters proclaiming allegiance to Zarqawi attacked police stations and government buildings in Thursday's offensive, clerics called on the faithful not to support such attacks. The attackers, they said in their Friday sermons, were foreigners attacking Iraqis.

"This is the first time we have heard the minaret broadcast support for the Iraqi government," said Edward Peter Messmer, the occupation authority's coordinator for the Baqubah region, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. "And it couldn't come at a better time."

Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has fought U.S. troops in the Sadr City slum in eastern Baghdad and in Najaf, 90 miles to the south, ordered his followers to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi police in Sadr City to "deprive the terrorists and saboteurs of the chance to incite chaos and extreme lawlessness." [...]

Abdul Hadi Darraji, a Sadr spokesman in Sadr City, said Sadr's order was issued in part to see whether U.S. occupation authorities were serious about transferring power to Allawi's government. If they were, he suggested, Sadr's movement could continue cooperating with Iraqi authorities in combating terrorists who, he said, come from outside the country.

"This gesture is designed to distinguish between honorable, legal resistance against the occupation and the dishonorable resistance, which does not target the occupation, but targets the Iraqi people," he said.

SO EASY A CHILD COULD DO IT

Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years (Carl Hartman, AP, 6/25/04)

President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space.

Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors.

"It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," he says. "If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up."

AND CONCRETE IS A CONGLOMERATE CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL

Sen. Miller to Speak at GOP Convention (Jeffrey McMurray, AP, 6/25/04)

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention later this summer, a congressional aide said Friday. . . .

Miller drew a sharp rebuke from the dean of the state's congressional delegation, Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who called the senator's decision "a shame and a disgrace." . . .

"I think he has sold his soul for a mess of pottage," said Lewis, in a reference to a speech Miller gave as a congressional candidate 40 years ago in which he argued that President Johnson was "a Southerner who sold his birthright for a mess of dark pottage" because of his support for the Civil Rights Act.

Pottage is defined as a thick soup or stew of vegetables.

OBLIGATORY FASCIST REFERENCE OF THE DAY:

Al Gore Speech (JUNE 24, 2004)

The Administration works closely with a network of "rapid response" digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for "undermining support for our troops."

DON'T TELL THE VALETUDINARIANS:

Japan's soaring debt now more than 700 trillion yen (Japan Times, 6/26/04)

Japan's outstanding debt rose 4.9 percent from a year ago to a record 703 trillion yen as of March 31, the government said Friday.

At 1.4 times gross domestic product, Japan's public debt burden is the highest in the industrialized world. Per person, the government's liabilities total 5.5 million yen.

SMACK DOWN UNDER:

Carr tells Latham to toe US line (Dennis Shanahan, June 26, 2004, news.com.au)

LABOR'S longest-serving leader, NSW Premier Bob Carr, has warned Mark Latham to exercise the "utmost diplomacy" on withdrawing troops from Iraq and urged him to accept the US free trade deal "the sooner the better".

Mr Carr, who has just returned from a two-week visit to the US, warned his federal counterparts Washington feels "wounded" and is sensitive "to any ally, any friend, turning their back on America".

The NSW Premier said he had been told in Washington that Canberra should think "carefully about a premature withdrawal from Iraq" because helping the US in a "tough time" meant Australia could have an influence on US policies.

Mr Carr's comments, made in Canberra yesterday and to be broadcast on ABC radio this weekend, increase the pressure on federal Labor's policy on two fronts - troop withdrawal by Christmas and opposition to the US trade agreement.

In an interview with the ABC's Sunday Profile radio program to be broadcast this weekend, Mr Carr said Australia was highly regarded in Washington because "we've got troops in Iraq".

"I'm contemplating a change of government - if Labor is to be elected in the forthcoming elections, this will be a major diplomatic challenge," he said.

In an apparent slight to Mr Latham, Mr Carr said "a lot of diplomacy and skill will be required" and suggested former Labor leader Kim Beazley and foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd and "other members of the Labor team, caucus and shadow cabinet" would be up to it.

IF ONLY...:

Ohio a Good Campaign Backdrop for Kerry (CONNIE MABIN, 6/25/04, AP)

Residents of this northeast Ohio town have some advice for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry when he visits Friday: don't use their hard luck for political gain.

Local governments are struggling with budget deficits and, in the past month alone, two major area employers have announced plans to cut thousands of manufacturing jobs in a state already reeling from such losses.

"The job losses could hurt Bush, but Kerry's got to be careful not to be too political. That could rub people the wrong way," said Robert Chaney, who is retired from his job at Timken Co. (TKR), a bearings maker.

One of Kerry's central campaign issues remains the economy and job losses under President Bush, despite signs of an economic rebound and the creation of nearly 1 million new jobs this year.

On the stump, Kerry often derides an administration that he says has the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression.

MOORE WON CANNES AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY REVIEW:

Howard Zinn: You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train (Movie Review, Boston Globe, 6/25/2004)

If Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" leaves you hungry for another movie about someone fighting the government on behalf of truth, justice, and the average American, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" might hit the spot....

The film ... [is] short enough to get you back out on the streets, challenging the system....

If Zinn weren't such a compelling, compassionate figure, and if his dedication to ideas of governmental honesty and human equality weren't so ineffable ...

His words ... are the gentle, temperate writings of a statesman. It's hard to find invective in them....

The ideas are generous and inclusive rather than divisive ...

WHY ARE SKEPTICS SO CREDULOUS? (via Jeff Guinn):

Why Is Religion Natural?: Is religious belief a mere leap into irrationality as many skeptics assume? Psychology suggests that there may be more to belief than the suspension of reason. (Pascal Boyer , March 2004, Skeptical Inquirer)

The first thing to understand about religion is that it does not activate one particular capacity in the mind, a "religious module" or system that would create the complex set of beliefs and norms we usually call religion. On the contrary, religious representations are sustained by a whole variety of different systems, of which I will describe some presently. A second important point is that all these systems are parts of our regular mental equipment, religion or no religion. In other words, belief in religion activates mental systems involved in a whole variety of non-religious domains. These two points have important consequences for our understanding of why there is some kind of religion in all human cultures, why religion is so easy to acquire and transmit. [...]

The lesson of the cognitive study of religion is that religion is rather "natural" in the sense that it consists of by-products of normal mental functioning. Each of the systems described here (a sense for social exchange, a specific mechanism for detecting animacy in surrounding objects, an intuitive fear of invisible contamination, a capacity for coalitional thinking, etc.) is the plausible result of selective pressures on cognitive organization. In other words, these capacities are the outcome of evolution by natural selection.

In other words, religious thought activates cognitive capacities that developed to handle non-religious information. In this sense, religion is very similar to music and very different from language. Every normal human being acquires a natural language and that language is extraordinarily similar to that of the surrounding group. It seems plausible that our capacity for language acquisition is an adaptation. By contrast, though all human beings can effortlessly recognize music and religious concepts, there are profound individual differences in the extent to which they enjoy music or adhere to religious concepts. The fact that some religious notions have been found in every human group does not mean that all human beings are naturally religious. Vast numbers of human beings do without it altogether, like for instance the majority of Europeans for several centuries.

Is religion "in the genes," and could it be considered a result of natural selection? Some evolutionary biologists think that is so, because the existence of religious beliefs may provide some advantages for individuals or groups that hold them. The evidence for this is, however, still incomplete. It may seem more prudent and empirically justified to say that religion is a very probable byproduct of various brain systems that are the result of evolution by natural selection.

Taking all this into account, it would seem that the "sleep of reason" interpretation of religion is less than compelling. It is quite clear that explicit religious belief requires a suspension of the sound rules according to which most scientists evaluate evidence.

The answer to the question, "Why is religion natural?", is quite simple: it isn't.

BLAME CANADA!:

"Michael Moore's next movie" (Steve Martinovich, 6/25/04, ESR: Musings)

ESR OBTAINS SCRIPT FOR NEXT MICHAEL MOORE MOVIE: It's apparently entitled "Pig at the Trough" and it blows apart conventional thinking about the Oil for Food scandal that has conservatives salivating at the prospect of embarrassing the United Nations. According to Moore's next movie, the villain behind the scandal isn't who you think it is.

OPENING CREDITS: Pig at the Trough: The United Nations, Steve Martinovich and a conservative conspiracy by Michael Moore.

GETTING A JUMP ON DAMAGE CONTROL:

Bush will have nothing to celebrate if he comes here: A presidential visit would be a furtive and humbling affair (Jonathan Steele, June 25, 2004, The Guardian)

What kind of Iraq will George Bush see when he comes here next week to celebrate the handover of sovereignty to the country's new interim government? It will certainly not be the scene that Karl Rove, the White House political adviser, must have hoped for when he hatched the idea last autumn of bringing his boss into the heart of downtown Baghdad for the ceremony.

Huge crowds of adoring Iraqis would line the streets as the presidential motorcade passed. George Bush would mount a platform at the very spot where Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in April 2003, the Great Liberator addressing the Iraqi nation and wishing them well as they embarked on the road to freedom and democracy. God Bless Iraq. God Bless America.

Now it will be a much more humble and humbling affair. There will be a speech, of course, but only after a helicopter dash to the heavily-fortified "green zone" where the occupation authorities have held sway for the past 14 months, handshakes with a small group of carefully selected Iraqis in the government which the Americans had a decisive role in appointing, and some hasty photo-ops with US troops.

Even this hole-in-corner performance will be enough to embarrass John Kerry, which is, after all, its main purpose. Like the Thanksgiving turkey platter which Bush carried out from behind a curtain in a hangar at Baghdad airport last November, next week's publicity coup will be hard for the Democratic party's candidate to denounce. You can't sneer at patriotism or deride a president for visiting the trenches.

By any wider scale of measurement Bush's Baghdad visit will only serve to highlight the failures of his overall Iraq strategy. Instead of enjoying peace and prosperity, Iraq is in a state of war.

The Bush visit has not been announced, and may yet be cancelled for security reasons, leaving Colin Powell, the secretary of state, or perhaps not even him, to come in the president's place. But like clues in a treasure hunt, telltale hints of the Bush/Rove plan are there for the finding.

ALL HUMOR IS CONSERVATIVE FILES:

Get Over Yourselves: Here's a little constructive criticism for two liberal icons: Margaret Cho, be more funny; Tom Hanks, loosen up. (Noy Thrupkaew, The American Prospect)

Dear Margaret, [...]

I know you're getting attacked viciously all the time. I know about the Drudge Report thing – how Drudge selectively excerpted portions of your performance at a MoveOn.org event where you criticized Bush in your usual fierce manner. FreeRepublic.com then linked to it, and you got torrents of awful hate mail from right-wing conservatives – people were calling you a gook, a slut, a pig. And just a few weeks ago, the president of the Omni Hotels, where you were doing a convention gig, turned off the mic and stopped payment on your check. He's a close friend of George Bush, so I guess he didn't like what you had to say about the Mess o' Potamia.

When stuff like this happens, I'm reminded just how radical – and, yes, revolutionary – it is for you to be you: Korean-American, feminist, queer, sexual, and scatological, an unflagging advocate and political activist on so many fronts of injustice. I see your Web site in support of queer marriage: loveisloveislove.com. I see you stumping for Ms. Magazine. I want you to keep on keeping on, you know? But I want you to make me laugh, too. Is that so selfish?

Yes, you can still be political and funny – whoever says those things are incompatible is too stupid to live. The issue is the approach. Before, it was enough for you to lean on the "I" in the identity politics. I felt blessed that you even existed. When I interviewed you for a story long ago, I was plotzing the whole time, and I couldn't find the wherewithal to thank you for being a role model, an inspiration to this Mini-Cho wannabe. That "I Will Survive" feel to your comedy – the same thing that made some magazine call you and Cher, Ms. "Do You Believe?", comeback queens – was exhilarating and great. But your shtick is starting to feel indulgent. [...]

Dear Tom, [...]

First Margaret, now you. I so appreciate your support of queer causes, of liberal politics, of little indie movies, even if they turn out to be as hideous as My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But does being a card-carrying liberal or progressive mean that you can't be a little bit evil, a little bit funny anymore? Look at your buddy Steven Spielberg, the prototypical Hollywood liberal. Too bad his humanistic feelings toward his characters have run rampant – his deep concern, his sense of moral righteousness, his inability to inflict unhappy endings on characters he loves keeps him from following the natural arc of his storylines and making the art he so badly wants to create. If someone came by and guillotined the last twenty minutes of almost all his movies, we'd have a serious oeuvre. If ET kicked the bucket, if the little boy robot of A.I. froze to death, if Minority Report's Detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) rotted in prison forever... well, those would be some damn fine movies, instead of some damn fine movies nearly wiped out by a landslide of goo at the end.

PERMISSION FROM THE FRENCH?

How the EU Really Works (Martin Hüfner | Monday, June 21, 2004, The Globalist)

Europe has been more successful than many would believe in taking courageous political steps and undertaking reforms in recent years — much more so than many originally expected.

The creation of the European Monetary Union, the eastern enlargement of the Union, the new European constitution are all huge projects. To my knowledge, they are larger than anything accomplished on a regional level anywhere in the world in this period.

Despite what critics say, Europe on the whole is anything but an impediment to reform. On the contrary, it is an engine for change.

In addition, there were important deregulations — for example — in the telecommunication sector from which consumers profit. In all fairness, however, it must be added that there are also areas — such as agricultural policy and the growth of bureaucracy — in which developments were more disappointing.

Despite what critics say, Europe on the whole is anything but an impediment to reform. On the contrary, it is an engine for change. The key question is a different one: Why has so much been achieved at the EU level — and so little at the national level?

AS MCNAMARA, SO THE LEFT:

Martin Wolf Vs. the World Bank: Critics of globalization would never believe that they have anything in common with the Financial Times' Martin Wolf. And yet, Mr. Wolf's criticism of the World Bank is probably as harsh as anybody's. In his new book "Why Globalization Works," he offers his views on the disastrous failures of the World Bank — and the institution's uncertain future. (Martin Wolf | Friday, June 25, 2004, The Globalist)

By the late 1970s, I had concluded that — for all the good intentions and abilities of its staff — the World Bank was a fatally flawed institution.

The most important source of its failures was its commitment to lending — almost regardless of what was happening in the country it was lending to.

Bank lending made it easier for corrupt and occasionally vicious governments to ignore the interests and wishes of their peoples.

This was an inevitable flaw, since the institution could hardly admit that what it could offer — money — would often make little difference. But this flaw was magnified by the personality of Robert McNamara, former U.S. Defense Secretary, who was the World Bank's dominating president from 1967 to 1981.

McNamara was a man of ferocious will, personal commitment to alleviating poverty — and frighteningly little common sense.

WHY NOT JUST ABORT THE ONES WITHOUT THE MUTATION?

Genetic mutation turns tot into superboy (MSNBC, June 25th, 2004)

Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.

DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.

The discovery, reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.
Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up.

The boy’s mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff “mighty mice” by “turning off” the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.

“Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals,” said the boy’s physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. “We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy.”

Given the huge potential market for such drugs, researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies already are trying to find a way to limit the amount and activity of myostatin in the body. Wyeth has just begun human tests of a genetically engineered antibody designed to neutralize myostatin.

HOW ABOUT RYNE SANDBERG?:

Sources: Ryan to drop out (SCOTT FORNEK, June 25, 2004, Chicago Sun Times)

Under fire for his handling of old allegations of taking his wife to sex clubs, Republican Jack Ryan is folding his bid for the U.S. Senate, campaign sources told party officials Friday. [...]

The 19-member Republican State Central Committee would select a replacement candidate. The deadline to put a name on the ballot is Aug. 27. Ryan’s replacement will become an instant underdog in a campaign against Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama. [...]

The poll showed the favored politician to replace Ryan would be former Gov. Jim Edgar, who, in a head-to-head contest still would trail 45 percent to 42 percent.

SWIMMING WITH SARKO:

Chirac's offer to Sarkozy: A poisoned chalice? (Katrin Bennhold, June 25, 2004, International Herald Tribune)

In the latest chapter of the simmering power struggle between France's two most closely watched politicians, President Jacques Chirac told his finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, that he was free to seek the presidency of the ruling party, traditionally seen as paving the way to the presidency.

The catch: Sarkozy has to give up his ministerial duties, according to sources close to Chirac.

It is yet another poisoned chalice dangling in front of Sarkozy, France's most popular minister, political experts said Thursday.

The proposal leaves the 49-year- old Sarkozy with a dilemma: quit his job at the Finance Ministry after barely three months, giving the impression that he puts his career before his country, or stay put and forgo the full-blown support of the financing and campaign machine that is the Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, ahead of the next presidential election in 2007.

"This is very clever maneuvering," said Brice Teinturier, director of political studies at the Paris-based Sofres Institute. "Given how popular Sarkozy is, it would be very difficult for Chirac to oppose his candidacy, so he is trying to stifle his ambitions without saying it."

WRONG? (via ef brown)

In Allah's Name?: Muslims in America react to the recent beheadings. (NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, June 25, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

"At best, it's vigilantism. At worst it's anarchy. Islam is against both." That was the reaction of Daniel McBride to the recent beheadings of South Korean Kim Sun Il and Americans Paul Johnson and Nicholas Berg. Mr. McBride, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, Fla., wants to make clear that "for these radicals to even imply that what they're doing is Islamically correct is wrong."

Many Muslims are disturbed that such acts of terrorism are being committed in the name of their religion. The Council on American-Islamic Relations launched a petition a few weeks ago that notes: "We, the undersigned Muslims wish to state clearly that those who commit acts of terror, murder, and cruelty in the name of Islam are not only destroying innocent lives, but also betraying the values of the faith they claim to represent."

Mohammad Tariq Sherwani, the director of the Muslim Center in Flushing, N.Y., signed the petition because he was concerned that "lots of times, Muslims don't speak up against violence." He expressed special sadness about the death of Paul Johnson. "That gentleman in Saudi Arabia. He was so honest. He lived there for years. He trusted the people. He was killed by the people he trusted."

Kareem Irfan, chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations in Greater Chicago, cites the "strong traditions of the prophet Muhammad, which require dealings based on compassion, tolerance and mercy, even with military engagement." He emphasizes: "With civilians, there is no possible justification [for mistreatment] in the Koran or the actions of the Prophet."

That the terrorists were chanting "God is great" while executing Nicholas Berg is particularly disturbing for Yassir Fazaga, the imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation in Mission Viejo, Calif. "As if that gives you an OK, that what you're doing is the will of God. . . . It's a disgrace."

SHOWTIME:

U.S. launches another strike against terrorist safehouse in Iraq (Associated Press, June 25, 2004)

The U.S. military launched its third airstrike in a week Friday in Fallujah, using precision weapons to destroy a suspected safehouse for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror network. U.S. officials estimated 20-25 people were killed.

The Jordanian-born terrorist claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks in other Iraqi cities that killed more than 100 people Thursday - less than a week before Iraq's new government takes power. Insurgents set off car bombs and seized police stations in an offensive aimed at creating chaos before the handover.

"Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi network, we will attack them,'' a military statement said of the strike. [...]

"Our culture, our customs have been destroyed,'' interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said. "The time has come for a showdown.''

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING AN ANTI-SEMITE AND USING ANTI-SEMITISM?:

Conspiracy theories: Attempts to cast the war in Iraq as a plot should give its critics pause (Jonathan Tobin, 6/25/04, Jewish World Review)

[N]utty conspiracy theories are not the sole province of the Jew-haters who seem to dominate the Muslim world these days. Although it would be unfair to draw a straight line between vile Islamic anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and those of the American far left, let's just say that the crackpots of Cairo might find something to talk about with the likes of, say, Tim Robbins or Michael Moore.

Robbins, the Hollywood star/playwright, had his anti-Iraq war satire "Embedded" produced at New York's Public Theater this spring. The play, which portrayed the war as a neoconservative conspiracy, will be remembered chiefly for the fact that, as Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout pointed out, Robbins actually used a publication put out by lunatic left-cult leader Lyndon Larouche as the source for a misquote of conservative philosopher Leo Strauss.

As for Moore, his new "documentary" film "Fahrenheit 9/11" is about to open after a huge buildup in the press. The flick, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, purportedly shows the war to have been a conspiracy cooked up by evil-doers in the White House.

Among the chattering classes, Moore is considered something of a comic genius, though his previous films were more agitprop than wit. I'll leave the skewering of his latest work to others after it comes out. But I will note that any one who could have written in a book, as Moore did in his best-seller "Dude, Where's My Country?" that George W. Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks, or that most Israelis "know they are in the wrong" in defending themselves against Palestinian suicide bombings, is not exactly a trusted source on the subject of the war on terrorism.

Though Moore belongs on the Sci-Fi Channel, his brand of analysis is being treated as the stuff of mainstream debate on C-Span. And that has consequences not just for the upcoming presidential election, but for the sanity of American democracy itself.

HE PICKED THE WRONG PARTY (AND PARTIES):

GOP lawmakers agree Ryan must go (LYNN SWEET AND SCOTT FORNEK, June 25, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

Led by Illinois' most powerful Republican, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, the state's 10 GOP members of Congress agreed Thursday that Jack Ryan cannot withstand the sex scandal dogging his campaign and needs to step down as the party's nominee for U.S. Senate.

It is the strongest signal to date that Hastert will use his clout to pressure Ryan to vacate the ticket and free the Illinois GOP leaders to pick a replacement.

The move comes as Ryan took a two-day hiatus to privately mull whether to pull the plug or mount a full-scale battle to get his beleaguered campaign back on track -- possibly through TV or full-page newspaper ads.

ANOTHER POL, ANOTHER F BOMB:

Minister is left eating humble pie (HAMISH MACDONELL, 6/25/04, The Scotsman)

THE Scottish Parliament was in a frenzy over a new scandal yesterday as reports emerged of "Porky Piegate" - a tale of a minister, a hearty lunch and an embarrassing apology.

The minister was the gaffe-prone Frank McAveety, the arts minister, who was forced to apologise to his fellow MSPs yesterday for taking time out to enjoy a solid lunch in the MSPs’ canteen when he should have been answering questions in the chamber.

Mr McAveety’s late lunch of pie, roast potatoes and beans was rudely interrupted at 2:10pm yesterday afternoon when his one of his colleagues burst into the canteen and told him he should have been answering questions on behalf of the Executive in the chamber from 2pm.

Mr McAveety rushed to the chamber but then managed to compound his original error by telling MSPs he had been "unavoidably detained" because of a literary event, failing to mention that he had actually been late because of his desire for a pie and beans.

The minister had indeed been at an arts council book event but he had left in good time to make the chamber in time for ministers’ questions.

He had actually arrived late for the Scottish Arts Council's Book of the Year award as well and told the guests he had been detained by First Minister’s Questions in the parliament.

And, in an off-the-cuff remark which he may come to regret, Mr McAveety told guests at the awards ceremony: "I understand I have occasionally been described as a philistine. I have checked it in the dictionary and I can't find it under ‘F’ anywhere."

MORE HONEST THAN JENNINGS ANYWAY:

Framing Michael Moore: What do Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Michael Moore have in common? They have all fallen victim to Michael Isikoff’s poison pen. (Joel Bleifuss, June 24, 2004, In These Times)

Yes, Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda, in the same way the nightly news is, or the front page of your daily paper. It’s just that Moore is more upfront with the point he is trying to make.

HOW OFTEN DO WE SEE PRESCIENCE

Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome, 1889)

Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?

That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.

But in 200 years' time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was.

We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as "those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs."

The "sampler" that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as "tapestry of the Victorian era," and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the "Presents from Ramsgate," and "Souvenirs of Margate," that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

At this point Harris threw away the sculls, got up and left his seat, and sat on his back, and stuck his legs in the air. Montmorency howled, and turned a somersault, and the top hamper jumped up, and all the things came out.

DESPAIR

There is Hope in the Holy Land (Max Hastings, The Spectator, June 26th, 2004)

In one of hundreds of grey concrete breezeblock shanties that pass for houses in Shatila refugee camp, I drank coffee with Mohammed Khalout, who has lived there since he arrived as a small child in 1948. A score or so members of his family clustered around us as we talked, because in Gaza no one has any place to go. The Khalouts were a jolly crew that morning, obviously welcoming a distraction. Since Israeli punitive operations destroyed Gaza’s flickers of economic life, terrorism and the proclamation of grievances have become the only meaningful activities. Who can be surprised that refugees breed vast families? Procreation and suicide-bombing are their only forms of self-assertion. ‘We are not Jew-haters,’ says Mohammed. ‘But the way they treat us, when we see horrible things, innocent people and children being killed, of course we feel hate. They have no respect for us.’ What does he think of the suicide bombers? He hesitated perceptibly, then said, ‘The Israelis are killing the innocent. They don’t distinguish. Imagine 50 people living in three rooms in this house, which we can’t get out of. If you want to judge the suicide bombers, look at where they come from.’ The whole family is remarkably articulate, perhaps because they have had so much practice at rehearsing their miseries. From a rusty old tin box, they produce the handsomely crested British Mandate title deeds of the house and land in Israel they lost for ever in 1948, yet which dominate their folk memory.

Everything that Israelis say is true about the difficulty — perhaps impossibility — of making deals with the Palestinians. In Gaza and the West Bank scarcely the vestige of a political or social structure exists. Every man with a weapon is a warlord. Crime of all kinds — blackmail, intimidation, rape, murder — thrives unchecked.

It was impossible to spend an hour with the Khalout family without feeling a surge of anger and pity for their predicament. I asked the swarming tribe of children around us whom they like on TV. With one voice, they cried eagerly, ‘Rambo! Rambo!’ God in heaven, what a role model for these people. They exist, but they do not live. A Western diplomat remarked to me, ‘They’re queueing outside the mosques to become suicide bombers. It’s the fashionable thing to do. The only reason there have been few explosions lately is that closing the borders has made it hard to get bombs to their targets.’ Israel’s draconian security measures impose a huge economic cost, but have proved notably successful in curbing suicide bombing.

The Palestinians inhabit a fantasy world because never in their lives have they been permitted to make real choices, real decisions. As prisoners of their own ghastly leadership as well as of the Israelis, they have been denied access to adult life. Thus they have become incapable of living it — only of dying it. I came out of Gaza sated with tales of atrocity and recrimination, of murdered children and wrecked homes, which are the only currency valued by the inhabitants.

HOPE

For what purpose are the innocents slain? The Daily Star (Beirut), June 25, 2004

Thursday was a very bloody day in Iraq, and for what? At least 75 more people have been killed. Among this number are less than a dozen military personnel - Iraqi national guardsmen and American soldiers. The majority were innocent Iraqis.

Similarly, the killing of individual, innocent South Korean and American civilians, whether by grisly beheadings or by shooting, in Iraq or elsewhere, serves little purpose other than to turn the world away in horror. What does the slaying of Nicholas Berg, Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-il add to the equation other than more gruesome death? How does their death advance the cause of the Arab and Muslim worlds? What do the Iraqi people and the Palestinian people gain from this bloodshed?

"Senseless" is an understatement. We are witnessing the actions of psychopaths, or, rather, of "psycho-politicopaths." They are doing little but expressing their own machismo rage in a way designed to make a spectacle of their own aimless existence. They are attempting, and failing, to invent a cause for themselves and to pathetically but tragically convince the world they have found one.

They and their creed must be firmly rejected. But they do represent a lesson for the international community, and this lesson is nowhere more pertinent than in the Middle East. The region's leaders and governments in particular should heed this lesson: Callous serial killers such as those who are currently shocking the world can only thrive in an environment where justice does not prevail. These beasts that pass themselves as human beings are an expression of disease, the product of injustice.

That disease and that injustice are homegrown - they are not inflicted by outside adversaries, real or imagined. Those who hold the reins of power in this region should hold up a mirror, and they should not like what they see.

IT'S GOSS:

Bush narrowing choices for CIA director (AP, 6/24/04)

Administration officials say President Bush has narrowed his field of candidates for CIA director to at least two people, just two weeks after outgoing director George Tenet announced his departure.

Two administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Bush is focusing on House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., and at least one other candidate. The officials spoke on the condition they not be identified because the president prefers to make his own personnel announcements.

"The president has not made a decision, and there's more than one candidate," said White House communications director Dan Bartlett.

NOT HIS FATHER'S HEIR:

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: By describing various parts -- deregulation, media consolidation, pre-emptive war -- Americans fail to grasp the problem as a whole: failed conservative politics. (Laurie Spivak, AlterNet)

Search on Lexis-Nexis for the phrase "failed conservative policies," and you'll turn up a grand total of three articles: two in British newspapers and one magazine article, all referring to the conservative Tories in England.

Now try the same search but replace the word "conservative" with "liberal." You'll find that the phrase "failed liberal policies" has been echoed by a slew of conservative commentators and politicians including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Dan Quayle, George Pataki, Rudy Guiliani, Ralph Reed, and Tom DeLay. For more than a decade, "failed liberal policies" has been the conservative revolution's official unofficial mantra.

In 1988 at a rally for George H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle, Ronald Reagan asked his audience, "Do we want to risk going back to the old, failed liberal policies of the past?" to which the crowd in unison responded, "No!" Throughout the rest of the Bush campaign, the phrase made regular appearances on the stump. Then, in the final days before the 1988 election, Bush delivered the wholesale indictment and definitive declaration, "If I win this election, it will be a rejection of the failed liberal policies of the past."

George H.W. Bush did win, but just four years later, after only one term, voters elected to reject Mr. Bush and arguably his failed conservative policies as well. Today, little more than a decade later, voters are being asked to weigh in on the performance of Mr. Bush's son, who according to George Will is the most conservative president in living memory next to Ronald Reagan, "and not second by much." Yet critics of the 43rd President, the second most conservative president in living memory, rarely, if ever, criticize failed conservative policies.

ONLY BETTER (via The Other Brother):

Europe's 'insult' to the Internet (Declan McCullagh, June 21, 2004, CNET News.com)

A report released last month by the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association shows that the usual heaping helpings of taxes and regulations continue to hurt the growth of stock markets and funds available for start-up companies in Europe. It rates the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Ireland as the most attractive for investment.

That should be no surprise. Statistics compiled by the European governments bear this out. The total tax burden for the average worker is 48.3 percent in France, 50.7 percent in Germany, and an astonishing 52.6 percent in Hungary. Compare this to a total tax rate in Ireland of just 25.8 percent and the U.K. of 29.7 percent--the two countries that are most like the U.S. in political temperament.

Thomas Hellmann, a professor at Stanford Business School, said in a paper on developing a venture capital industry that the U.S. history "did not involve heavy-handed direct government intervention."

"Indeed, U.S. government took a market-enhancing approach, with policies designed mainly to enable private actors to develop new firms, markets and institutions," his paper said. "Most important, the government did not try to influence the specific course of development."

One result is that the average American is wealthier than the average European, and far more likely to have a job. France's socialist government, thanks to its unwillingness to relinquish control of companies like France Telecom and Air France, enjoys a per capita GDP of $27,500. Germany's economy is moribund, with a growth rate of approximately zero and a GDP per capita of $27,600. Thanks to high taxes and weighty labor regulations, Italy's per capita GDP is $26,800.

Compare those figures with a U.S. growth rate of around 4.2 percent, and a per capita GDP of $37,800 last year.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist put it well in a floor speech in March when he said: "European economies are buried by public-sector debt; European economies are drained of their vitality by excessive taxation; and European economies are strangled by excessive regulation from bureaucrats sitting in Brussels."

It's important to acknowledge that the U.S. legal and regulatory system has its own set of serious problems. But to attract entrepreneurs and tech startups, it doesn't need to be ideal. It only needs to be better than Europe.

THE G.U.T.:

Daily Liberty Quote (6/25/04)

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917.
--Will Durant (1885-1981)

HEY FELLAS, IT'S THE 21ST CENTURY:

Pakistani Army must go through the Pashtuns: The war on terror along the Afghan-Pakistani border has become more than a fight against militant Islam. Now, it's tribal. (Owais Tohid and Scott Baldauf, 6/25/04, CS Monitor)

Once a fight between Western democratic values and militant Islam, the war on terror along the Afghan-Pakistani border has become something murkier, complex, and ancient. Now, it's tribal.

The rules of this war are a far cry from the easy slogans of "you're either with us or against us." Indeed, Pashtun history is filled with heroes who played both sides for the benefit of tribe, family, and honor.

The latest such figure is tribal leader Naik Mohammad. Before being killed this month, Mr. Mohammad had cut deals with both his Al Qaeda guests and the Pakistani military trying to evict them. That it was the military who ultimately got double-crossed displays how much the antiterror coalition still must learn about how to influence the tribes who shelter top Al Qaeda leaders.

"The Army thinks they can give an order and people will just obey it," says a former Pakistani intelligence officer. "They should have paid more attention to history. The Pashtuns don't take orders from anybody."

Following a bruising fight with tribesmen in March, Pakistan opted to negotiate. Through the mediation of local mullahs and legislators, military officials and five local militant leaders struck a truce. The five chiefs, including Mr. Mohammad, pledged to stop using Pakistani territory for terrorist activity.

But the settlement quickly soured when Mohammad refused to help register foreigners with the authorities, disputing with officials who said that had been agreed. What Pakistan was asking was the impossible: handing over guests in a culture that demands protection of those who seek refuge. Amid the recriminations, Mohammad announced he would continue jihad and fighting erupted again (see timeline).

Tribal insiders say it was easy for the militants to break their deal with the Pakistani government, because the deal was perceived to be conducted through local mullahs - not through an assembly of tribal elders, called a jirga. In Pashtun society, form is everything.

"Nobody was sincere," says Mohammad Noor, an educated tribal member. "It was a deal with knives hidden under sleeves. Both sides are here to fight, not negotiate."

A SCOOP TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says (THOM SHANKER, 6/25/04, NY Times)

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.

The document states that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast anti-Saudi propaganda, and that a request from Mr. bin Laden to begin joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia went unanswered. There is no further indication of collaboration.

Last week, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks addressed the known contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which have been cited by the White House as evidence of a close relationship between the two.

The commission concluded that the contacts had not demonstrated "a collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Bush administration responded that there was considerable evidence of ties.

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, THE POST RAN THE DREAD WORD IN ITS ENTIRETY:

Cheney Dismisses Critic With Obscenity (Helen Dewar and Dana Milbank, June 25, 2004, Washington Post)

A brief argument between Vice President Cheney and a senior Democratic senator led Cheney to utter a big-time obscenity on the Senate floor this week.

On Tuesday, Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice.

"F[***] yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency. [...]

As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.

KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE:

Religious Zionism at the crossroads (Isi Leibler, June 23, 2004, Israel Insider)

The recent government crisis highlighted [leader of the National Religious Party, Effi] Eitam's worst characteristics. Dismissing the majority decision of his colleagues and failing, in Haredi fashion, to persuade hard-line rabbis to order the NRP to leave the government, he and Yitzhak Levi unilaterally quit. Despite a grotesque band-aid compromise enabling one wing of the party to be in opposition while the other retains ministerial portfolios, the NRP effectively split. It is probable that the moderate majority, headed by Zevulun Orlev, will soon also be obliged to leave the government, a move which would virtually guarantee a return to power of Labor's unreconstructed architects of Oslo.

This would not be the first time the national camp has brought disaster upon itself and, by extension, the country. They broke up the Yitzhak Shamir government in 1992, which led to the 1993 Oslo disaster and also paved the way for the dysfunctional Ehud Barak regime by bringing down the Binyamin Netanyahu government in 1999.

The current party crisis is so serious that some even predict it portends the end of religious Zionism in the political arena.

That need not be so. The Frish Committee, commissioned to analyze the 1996 NRP election debacle, concluded that voter fallout was primarily due to the perception of the party concentrating exclusively on settlements and neglecting issues of wider Jewish concern.

However, the report also suggested that many disaffected NRP supporters could be enticed back were the party to restore its former moderate approach, concentrate on broader Jewish issues, and rebuild bridges with non-observant Israelis. In the past the NRP took pride in basing itself on the Maimonides middle-of-the-road outlook - the shvil hazahav or golden mean - that shuns extremism. It also considered as its primary responsibility the well being of the "soul of Israel," which meant enhancing the Jewish character of Israel's society while retaining its democratic values.

This is the central historic task and challenge facing the religious Zionist movement. At its heart is nourishing Jewish heritage and civilization within the general educational curriculum. Unless this challenge is confronted, Jewish identity in secular high schools will continue to deteriorate, and ever greater numbers of Hebrew-speaking Canaanite graduates will emerge.

This is particularly relevant because a review of the relationship between state and religion is now under way. It would be tragic if this were to be undertaken without representation of the religious Zionist movement in a government including the aggressively anti-traditional Shinui and perhaps even Labor.

WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES:

Former French PM: Israel's creation a "historic mistake" (Ellis Shuman June 21, 2004, Israel Insider)

Former French prime minister Michel Rocard said last week that the 1917 Balfour Declaration leading to the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state had been an "historic mistake."

Rocard, a member of the French Socialist Party who also serves in the European Parliament, told an audience at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, on June 16 that Israel was an "abnormal case in the world."

Referring to England's promise to create a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine, Rocard described the Israel state as a "unique and abnormal condition because it was created with a promise, and that millions of Jews gathered from all around the world, creating an entity that continues to pose a threat to its neighbors until today," the Palestinian International Press Center reported.

Rocard drew attention to the fact that Israel was historically created on a "racist basis," depending on armed conflict to set its borders.

DON'T WORRY JOHN, I'VE GOT YOUR BACK...:

Bill: Hil eyes run for Prez (Daily News, 6/24/04)

Bill Clinton offered a window into his wife's presidential ambitions yesterday, drawing a parallel with his own early calculations that a Democratic victory would end his White House hopes.

"She's now where I was in 1988," Clinton told ABC's "Good Morning America."

"When I didn't run in 1988, I thought I would never get another chance to run because I thought the Democrats were going to win."

CFR VS. FREE SPEECH (via John Thacker):

‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ ban?: Ads for Moore’s movie could be stopped on July 30 (Alexander Bolton, 6/24/04, The Hill)

Michael Moore may be prevented from advertising his controversial new movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” on television or radio after July 30 if the Federal Election Commission (FEC) today accepts the legal advice of its general counsel.

At the same time, a Republican-allied 527 soft-money group is preparing to file a complaint against Moore’s film with the FEC for violating campaign-finance law.

In a draft advisory opinion placed on the FEC’s agenda for today’s meeting, the agency’s general counsel states that political documentary filmmakers may not air television or radio ads referring to federal candidates within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.

The opinion is generated under the new McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law...

INCOMING:

The Real Air War Has Now Started (James K. Glassman, 6/24/04, Tech Central Station)

A free-market conservative organization -- called a "527 political organization" after a section in the tax code -- goes public on Friday with hard-hitting independent issue ads on television. It's about time.

The ads ask viewers to imagine how Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), the likely Democratic presidential candidate, would have reacted to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, especially considering his voting record of opposition to spending on measures to increase U.S. security.

The ads, which may provoke an uproar in the media because they show footage shot at the World Trade Center site after the attacks, contrast Kerry's likely reaction to the courage and determination shown by President Bush.

The new commercials, the work of the Progress for America Voter Fund, place conservative messages on a field that has been dominated, up until now, by the Left.

A HOMESTEADING GENERATION--A FEW CENTURIES LATE... (via Mike Daley):

Top Colleges Take More Blacks, but Which Ones? (SARA RIMER and KAREN W. ARENSON, 6/24/04, NY Times)

At the most recent reunion of Harvard University's black alumni, there was lots of pleased talk about the increase in the number of black students at Harvard.

But the celebratory mood was broken in one forum, when some speakers brought up the thorny issue of exactly who those black students were.

While about 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates were black, Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, pointed out that the majority of them — perhaps as many as two-thirds — were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples.

They said that only about a third of the students were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions.

What concerned the two professors, they said, was that in the high-stakes world of admissions to the most selective colleges — and with it, entry into the country's inner circles of power, wealth and influence — African-American students whose families have been in America for generations were being left behind.

One haunting possibility is that Black America was done particularly intractable damage when it was deprived of an initial "immigrant" generation and therefore never had the chance to follow the classic immigrant pattern--where the first generation busts its collective hump to provide a better life for the second, inculcating a set of values in the process. The crime of chattel slavery thus lives on, seemingly permanently.

But this possibility raises another: without absolving people of responsibility for their own failures, perhaps we can acknowledge that white America stacked the deck against them those many years ago, and so reparations aren't such a bad idea. Maybe it's time for that 40 acres and a mule?

CANADA CLOSES BORDER

Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker burns Harper (CBC News, June 24th, 2004)

U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore sounded off Wednesday on Canada's election, warning voters not to elect a Conservative government.

Moore, in Washington for the official American premiere of his movie Fahrenheit 9/11, said he hopes his film will convince Canadians to bypass Stephen Harper.

"You've got four days after it opens, to get people out to the polls to make sure that Mr. Harper doesn't become your next prime minister," he said.

"We're trying to get rid of our conservative, you know. We're going one way, you guys shouldn't be going the opposite direction," said Moore, whose new documentary takes a critical look at U.S. President George W. Bush's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war.

"You should be saying, 'You know what? We don't want this country, Canada, to become like Bush's America,'" he said.

BRING ON THE GRAY GOO

Are we becoming more stressed at work? (The Telegraph, June 24th, 2004)

New Government figures show that more than £2 billion a year is spent on benefits for people claiming they have been disabled by stress, depression and anxiety.

Critics claim that these benefits are being paid out for vaguely defined disorders that encourage the workshy and artificially lower unemployment figures.

More than 700,000 people - a quarter of all claims - receive up to £84 a week incapacity benefit on grounds of poor mental health, a 38 per cent increase since 1997.

Stress and depression - the two causes showing the sharpest increases since 1997 - now account for 65 per cent of all mental health cases.

Paul Goodman, the Conservative social security spokesman, says that if doctors are signing people off too easily then these figures represent hidden unemployment. He warned of the danger of a "can't cope" culture.

However, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that depression is experienced by 1 in 10 adults at any one time and Mind, the mental health charity, has called for more understanding.

Conservatives tend to be suspicious and see these people as slackers, but why wouldn’t mental health decline in an atomistic society marked by fragile families, social isolation, declining employer-employee loyalty, pessimistic atheism and a destructive cult of impersonal sex?

NO, PAY ATTENTION TO MEEE

Kerry fights label of economic pessimist: Challenges fiscal record of Reagan (Patrick Healy, Boston Globe, 6/24/04)

Democrat John F. Kerry yesterday countered Republican attempts to label him a pessimist about the US economy, arguing that criticism of the Bush administration's record of job creation actually reflected optimism that the economy could do better.

The Massachusetts senator also challenged the fiscal record of the GOP's favorite optimist, Ronald Reagan -- Kerry's first broadside against the former president since his death June 5. . . .

Kerry aides said that the senator wanted to make the case that calling for economic progress was not divisive, and that Republicans were in fact dividing the electorate by painting Kerry as a doom-and-gloom candidate. Kerry's remark about Reagan was unusual and awkward, given the senator's praise for Reagan's optimism after his death.

THE SEMITOPHILE BBC

Mid-East coverage baffles Britons (James Read, BBC London, 6/24/04)

An academic study suggests that TV news coverage in the UK on the Middle East conflict confuses viewers and features a preponderance of Israeli views.

So much so, that many viewers think Israeli territory is occupied by Palestinians, not the other way round.

And despite extensive media coverage of the conflict on television, some Britons believe Palestinians are refugees from Afghanistan. . . .

The report says the main shortcomings include:

Preponderance of official Israeli perspectives
Origins of the conflict overlooked
Israeli actions contextualised but not Palestinian actions
Emphasis on Israeli casualties

1967 Israel fought a further war with its Arab neighbours and in the process of this, occupied Gaza and the West Bank, thus bringing the Palestinian refugees under its military control. East Jerusalem, which has great religious and cultural significance for both Israelis and Palestinians was also occupied (taken from Jordan).

The point, of course, is that this sort of "context" is infinately reductive, with each side able to point to one earlier step of which they were the victim and which, had it not occurred, would have averted all the succeeding violence. In the west we still distinguish, perhaps naively, between people strapping bombs to themselves and seeking out civilians to murder, on the one hand, and military action, on the other. We also have noticed that, if the Palestinians simply wanted a state, they could have had one years ago. Unfortunately, they don't simply want a state, they want a particular state and that state has different ideas.

HAIL TO THE KING:

A Crowning at the Capital Creates a Stir (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/23/04, NY Times)

As a shining symbol of democracy, the United States capital is not ordinarily a place where coronations occur. So news that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the eccentric and exceedingly wealthy Korean-born businessman, donned a crown in a Senate office building and declared himself the Messiah while members of Congress watched is causing a bit of a stir.

One congressman, Representative Danny K. Davis, Democrat of Illinois, wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding one of two ornate gold crowns that were placed on the heads of Mr. Moon and his wife, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, at the ceremony, which took place March 23 and capped a reception billed as a peace awards banquet.

Mr. Davis says he held the wife's crown and was "a bit surprised'' by Mr. Moon's Messiah remarks, which were delivered in Korean but accompanied by a written translation. In them, he said emperors, kings and presidents had "declared to all heaven and earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.'' [...]

"I remember the king and queen thing,'' said Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, "But we have the king and queen of the prom, the king and queen of 4-H, the Mardi Gras and all sorts of other things. I had no idea what he was king of.'' [...]

At 84, Mr. Moon cuts a curious figure in Washington, where he mingles with the city's power elite by dint of his dual roles as religious leader and media mogul. He owns The Washington Times, which bills itself as a conservative alternative to The Washington Post, as well as United Press International, the wire service. He calls himself "Father'' and has drawn notoriety for officiating at mass weddings. Mr. Moon's Unification Church has many tentacles, including the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, which held what it called an Ambassadors for Peace awards banquet in the Dirksen Office Building on March 23. An initial invitation, sent to all members of Congress, stated that Mr. Moon and his wife would also be present and honored for their work. But follow-up letters, including one provided by Mr. Dayton, mentioned only the peace foundation and simply told lawmakers who from their states was being honored.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, an organization devoted to preserving the separation of church and state, said Mr. Moon often drew lawmakers into his fold in this way. Mr. Lynn said it seemed Mr. Moon was courting black lawmakers, including Mr. Davis of Illinois and Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, who attended but said he did not stay for the crowning ceremony. [...]

Mr. Bartlett said he attended to support The Washington Times. "I'm a conservative," he said. "I'm delighted that we have a middle-of-the-road paper in Washington."

50-0 FILES:

Time-tested formulas suggest both Bush and Kerry will win on Nov. 2 (Susan Page, 6/23/04, USA TODAY)

Of six measurements for predicting the outcome of presidential contests, all with excellent track records, each signals a clear outcome in November. The problem is, they're pointing in different directions.

A formula by a Yale University economist that has correctly predicted five of the last six elections shows President Bush winning in the biggest landslide since Ronald Reagan's 49-state victory in 1984. It says Bush is a shoo-in.

But Bush's job-approval rating has slid below 50%; not since Harry Truman in 1948 has a president in that territory won the election. By this standard, Bush is guaranteed to lose.

PRESENT AT THE DESTRUCTION:

Doom and Gloom by 2100: Unleashed viruses, environmental disaster, gray goo--astronomer Sir Martin Rees calculates that civilization has only a 50-50 chance of making it to the 22nd century (Julie Wakefield, 6/21/04, Scientific American)

Death and destruction are not exactly foreign themes in cosmology. Black holes can rip apart stars; unseen dark energy hurtles galaxies away from one another. So maybe it's not surprising that Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, sees mayhem down on Earth. He warns that civilization has only an even chance of making it to the end of this century. The 62-year-old University of Cambridge astrophysicist and cosmologist feels so strongly about his grim prognostication that last year he published a popular book about it called Our Final Hour. [...]

Innovation is changing things faster than ever before, and such increasing unpredictability leaves civilization more vulnerable to misadventure as well as to disaster by design. Advances in biotechnology, in terms of both increasing sophistication and decreasing costs, means that weaponized germs pose a huge risk. In a wager he hopes to lose, Rees has bet $1,000 that a biological incident will claim one million lives by 2020. "In this increasingly interconnected world where individuals have more power than ever before at their fingertips, society should worry more about some kind of massive calamity, however improbable," Rees states.

In calculating the coin-flip odds for humanity at 2100, Rees adds together those improbabilities, including those posed by self-replicating, nanometer-size robots. These nanobots might chew through organic matter and turn the biosphere into a lifeless "gray goo," a term coined by nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler in the 1980s. Gray goo achieved more prominence last year after Prince Charles expressed concern about it and Michael Crichton used it as the basis for his novel Prey.

It's not just out-of-control technology that has Rees worried. Basic science can present a threat. In July 1999 Scientific American ran a letter by Princeton University physicist Frank Wilczek, who pointed to "a speculative but quite respectable possibility" that the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could produce particles called strangelets. These subatomic oddities could grow by consuming nearby ordinary matter. Soon after, a British newspaper posited that a "big bang machine"--that is, RHIC--could destroy the planet.

The ensuing media flurry led then Brookhaven director John H. Marburger to pull together an outside panel of physicists, who concluded that the strangelet scenario was remote, about a one-in-50-million chance of killing six billion people. (Another panel, convened by CERN near Geneva, drew a similar conclusion.) In Our Final Hour, Rees noted that the chances can be expressed differently--namely, that 120 people might die from the RHIC experiments. He thinks experts should debate in public the merits and risks of such work.

THE BIG PICTURE:

The Connection: How Saddam collaborated with Osama. (Jamie Glazov, FrontPage)

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Stephen F. Hayes, the author of The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. [...]

Hayes: [...] The Clinton Administration deserves some credit for at least recognizing the problem. In fact, in its spring 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden, Janet Reno's Justice Department included what it termed an "understanding" between Iraq and al Qaeda whereby al Qaeda agreed not to agitate against the Iraqi regime and, in exchange, Saddam promised help on "weapons development" to al Qaeda. Later that same year, top Clinton official disclosed several pieces of intelligence that tied Iraq to al Qaeda-linked chemical weapons programs in the Sudan. Where the Clinton Administration failed, I think, is that even after having recognized the threat that an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance posed to America, it did very little to eliminate it.

FP: What did you think of Tenet's resignation?

Hayes: I have very mixed feelings about George Tenet's resignation. It is clear that no significant intelligence reform was going to happen under his watch. He was protective of a slow-moving bureaucracy that in many cases didn't deserve protecting. One example: in March 2002 Jeffrey Goldberg from the New Yorker magazine published a remarkable story in which he interviewed several detainees in a Kurdish prison who spoke openly about extensive contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Kurds who had captured the prisoners let them speak to Goldberg in part because the CIA, having been informed of their presence and given the basic outlines of their allegations, showed little interest in interviewing them. I assumed that after Goldberg's article, the Agency would have been so embarrassed of its negligence that it would have immediately dispatched interrogators to northern Iraq. Wrong. A senior intelligence official told the Washington Post some six months later that although the agency was aware of the prisoners and their stories, no one had yet been sent to interview them. Inexcusable. Tenet probably should have been fired on the spot.

But from that point forward, Tenet consistently showed an openness to exploring the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship that put him squarely at odds with the bureaucracy beneath him. He authored a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2002 that laid out some highlights of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship and reiterated many of his points in congressional testimony as late as March 2004. Publicly discussing the relationship in that fashion certainly didn't make the agency look good since, as you've pointed out, they downplayed it for years.

FP: What do you think our next steps should be in the War on Terror in general and in Iraq in particular?

Hayes: Get Iraq right. Nothing is more important to a victory -- in the long-term -- in the War on Terror. This is not only because there are so many terrorists operating in Iraq today, but also because by establishing some form of representative government in Iraq those in the Middle East will see that we're finally serious about reform in the region. One of the complaints you hear most from moderates in the Middle East is that the U.S. has long talked a good game about democracy and human rights in the region, but our actions have sent the opposite message. We've paid lip service to self-determination and, at the same time, funded oppressive regimes. These changes will, and must, come slowly, but we've already seen some progress. The G-8 leaders this past week endorsed democratic change (however vague) in the Middle East and even the Arab League has made some noises about reform. This big-picture stuff often gets lost in the news-of-the-day reporting that results from a 24-hour news cycle. But it's happening.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the interim government in Iraq. There's reason for Iraqis to be skeptical about new Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (chiefly, his close association with the CIA), but his almost singular focus on security is precisely what Iraqis need. If he create in Iraqi security forces a sense that they are fighting for the future of their own country, that will be more important that anything we can do at this point.

WHEN I HE (via Mike Daley):

Mourning Families Touched by President (Diane Lacey Allen, June 17, 2004, The Ledger)

Petty Officer Ron Ginther was the stern one. He always helped 8-year-old Alayna with her homework, searching the Internet for tips on preparing for the FCAT. He was the backbone of the Auburndale family.

So when the Seabee was killed by mortar fire last month, Donna Ginther worried how she would carry on without her husband. She was terrified her daughter would grow up to be a different adult without Ginther to lead the way.

Donna Ginther told President George W. Bush about her fears Wednesday when he met with families of fallen servicemen following a speech to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

"When I told him that, he pressed his forehead against mine and said, `You can do it, and we'll all help you through it,"' she said.

Donna Ginther took his words to heart.

"It wasn't something he was saying to make me feel better. Like trying to pacify me and walk away and forget it," she said. "He wasn't afraid to touch you. It wasn't like he was better than us. He kissed us. He cried with us. When I was crying, he cried."

FAIRY TALES, SCIENCE, WHAT DIFFERENCE?:

I’m With My Dad on Stem Cell Research (Michael Reagan, 6/22/04, Chronically Biased)

Listen to what Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke told the Washington Post: “People need a fairy tale,” he said, explaining why scientists have allowed society to believe wrongly that stem cells are likely to effectively treat Alzheimer's disease. He added “Maybe that's unfair, but they need a story line that's relatively simple to understand.”

A story line that is a flat out lie.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, lawyer, ethicist and human life advocate Wesley J. Smith reported that “Researchers have apparently known for some time that embryonic stem cells will not be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's, because as two researchers told a Senate subcommittee in May, it is a ‘whole brain disease,’ rather than a cellular disorder (such as Parkinson's). This has generally been kept out of the news. But now, Washington Post correspondent Rick Weiss, has blown the lid off of the scam, reporting that while useful abstract information might be gleaned about Alzheimer's through embryonic stem cell research, ‘stem cell experts confess . . . that of all the diseases that may be someday cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit.’”

People such as Nancy, however, have been allowed to believe otherwise - “a distortion,” Weiss writes that “is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Why? The false story line helps generate public support for the biotech political agenda. As Weiss noted, “It [Nancy Reagan's statement in support of ESCR] is the kind of advocacy that researchers have craved for years, and none wants to slow its momentum.”

Unlike the hyped embryonic stem cell research, adult stem cell research is already paying dividends. According to Michael Fumento, one of the nation’s most skilled debunkers of junk science, “Over the horizon are so-called adult stem cells (ASCs), extracted from people of any age and from umbilical cords and placentas. Not only don't they carry the moral baggage of embryonic stem cells (ESCs), but research with them is much further along.

Fumento adds, ”Unfortunately, embryonic stem cell researchers have so powerful a PR machine that many influential people don't even know there's an alternative.“

MAKE THE SPECIES FITTER (via Tom Corcoran):

Maggie Sanger and the Human Weeds (Shawn Macomber, 6/23/2004, American Spectator)

After a lengthy incubation, the sick dreams of Margaret Sanger are finally hatching. Against the excuses of her modern defenders, it should be remembered that the founder of Planned Parenthood's main interest in the legalization of abortion was not that women should be freed from the bonds of childbearing, but that unsavory types should be cleansed from the larger population.

In fact, Sanger only turned to abortion when her original plan to "apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation" to those with "objectionable traits" -- sometimes derided as the stronger epithet "human weeds" -- found little support. Turned out folks felt a bit queasy about sending those of certain ethnic backgrounds and with disabilities and mental illnesses off to "farm lands and homesteads" to be "taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives."

Sounds a bit like a concentration camp, no? Then again, she was a great admirer of the Nazi eugenics movement. Like Hitler, she had a long list of folks she wanted to eliminate from society, including "illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope fiends." [...]

[N]ow, ABORTION ON demand, combined with ever more rigorous screening of children in the womb, has provided the perfect backdoor for other eugenic obsessions to quietly slip back into American life.

YOUR MORNING SMILE

The man who sucks up all the available oxygen ( Mark Steyn, Jerusalem post, June 24th, 2004)

There was a photo in The New York Post a few weeks back of Bill Clinton and some other fellow entering a room. Seven-eighths of the picture was Clinton with a big broad smile and his arms outstretched, like a cheesy Vegas lounge act acknowledging the applause of the crowd before launching into his opening number (I Get a Kick Out of Me).

The gaunt, cadaverous fellow wedged into the left-hand sliver of the photograph proved on closer inspection to be Senator John Kerry, looking like a gloomy, aged retainer trying to remind the big guy that his 10 o'clock appointment was waiting. If I were a Democrat, that picture would have been more depressing than one of the oxymoronic "Kerry rallies."

"His glamor is undersung," panted Tina Brown – about Clinton, not Kerry – after wangling an invite to the White House. "A man in a dinner jacket with more heat than any star in the room – he is vividly in the present tense and dares you to join him there."

The problem for Kerry is that the Clinton presidency is now half a decade in the past, but the guy is still vividly in the present tense, daring Tina and co. to join him there. And if it's a choice between Bill's heat-exuding tuxedo or John Kerry, it's no contest.

THAT'S MILLS AS IN D'AMATO:

Frequent-Flying Senator Pays After a Challenge by a Rival (MICHAEL SLACKMAN, 6/24/04, NY Times)

Howard Mills does not have much money, or support, or, for that matter, basic name recognition in his bid to unseat United States Senator Charles E. Schumer. But Mr. Mills did manage to land a blow in his long-shot bid this week.

Mr. Mills's staff pored over documents and maps and found that during his years in office, Mr. Schumer chartered private planes 603 times, spending $409,253 of taxpayer money. They asserted that they had caught the senator using tax dollars to fly around the state to raise campaign cash, which would be illegal, and turned their findings over to The New York Times.

Asked for a response to Mr. Mills's claims, Mr. Schumer's staff began its own review, and found that on some 35 occasions, Mr. Schumer had let taxpayers foot the bill for his political and fund-raising trips.

It was, if nothing else, a humbling moment for Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, whose office described the questionable billing as "accounting errors." After having tried to effectively ignore his opponent as irrelevant, Mr. Schumer's staff instead had to announce that the senator's campaign was - because of Mr. Mills's initial inquiries - returning some $20,000 to the federal government.

GOT MORE?:

The 2004 Arts & Faith Top 100 Spirtually Significant Films

(in alphabetical order -- click here for an analysis by director or here for a chronological view)

The Addiction, 1995, Abel Ferrara

Amadeus, 1984, Milos Forman

American Beauty, 1999, Sam Mendes

Andrei Rublev, 1969, Andrei Tarkovsky

The Apostle, 1997, Robert Duvall

Au Hasard Balthazar, 1966, Robert Bresson

Babettes Gæstebud ("Babette's Feast"), 1987, Gabriel Axel

Bad Lieutenant, 1987, Abel Ferrara

Bad ma ra khahad bord ("The Wind Will Carry Us"), 1999, Abbas Kiarostami

The Big Kahuna, 1999, John Swanbeck

Blade Runner, 1982, Ridley Scott

Breaking The Waves, 1996, Lars von Trier

Changing Lanes, 2002, Roger Michell

Chariots of Fire, 1981, Hugh Hudson

Code inconnu ("Code Unknown"), 2000, Michael Haneke

Crimes And Misdemeanors, 1989, Woody Allen

Days of Heaven, 1978, Terrence Malick

Dead Man Walking, 1995, Tim Robbins

Dekalog ("The Decalogue"), 1987, Krzysztof Kieslowski

Dersu Uzala, 1975, Akira Kurosawa

Dogma, 1999, Kevin Smith

Dogville, 2003, Lars von Trier

La Dolce vita, 1960, Federico Fellini

The Elephant Man, 1980, David Lynch

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, Michel Gondry

Fearless, 1993, Peter Weir

Fight Club, 1999, David Fincher

Le Fils ("The Son"), 2002, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Fuori dal mondo ("Not of This World"), 1999, Giuseppe Piccioni

Grand Canyon, 1991, Lawrence Kasdan

Groundhog Day, 1993, Harold Ramis

Hell House, 2001, George Ratliff

Henry V, 1989, Kenneth Branagh

Der Himmel über Berlin ("Wings of Desire"), 1987, Wim Wenders

Ikiru ("To Live"), 1952, Akira Kurosawa

It's A Wonderful Life, 1946, Frank Capra

Jean de Florette, Manon des sources, 1986, Claude Berri

Jésus De Montréal ("Jesus of Montreal"), 1989, Denys Arcand

Jesus Of Nazareth, 1977, Franco Zeffirelli

Le Journal D'un Curé De Campagne ("The Diary of a Country Priest"), 1951, Robert Bresson

Ladri di biciclette ("The Bicycle Thief"), 1948, Vittorio De Sica

The Last Days of Disco, 1998, Whit Stillman

The Last Temptation Of Christ, 1988, Martin Scorsese

Life of Brian, 1979, Terry Jones

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The
Return of the King, 2001-2003, Peter Jackson

Ma nuit chez Maud ("My Night At Maud's"), 1969, Eric Rohmer

Magnolia, 1999, Paul Thomas Anderson

A Man For All Seasons, 1966, Fred Zinnemann

The Matrix, 1999, Andy & Larry Wachowski

Mies vailla menneisyyttä ("The Man Without A Past"), 2002, Aki Kaurismaki

The Miracle Maker, 2000, Derek W. Hayes & Stanislav Sokolov

The Mission, 1986, Roland Joffé

Nema-ye Nazdik ("Close-Up"), 1990, Abbas Kiarostami

The Night Of The Hunter, 1955, Charles Laughton

Offret - Sacrificatio ("The Sacrifice"), 1986, Andrei Tarkovsky

On The Waterfront, 1954, Elia Kazan

Ordet ("The Word"), 1955, Carl Theodor Dreyer

La Passion De Jeanne D'arc ("The Passion of Joan of Arc"), 1928, C. Dreyer

The Passion Of The Christ, 2004, Mel Gibson

Peter and Paul, 1981, Robert Day

Ponette, 1996, Jacques Doillon

The Prince Of Egypt, 1998, Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells

La Promesse, 1996, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

Punch-Drunk Love, 2002, P.T. Anderson

Roma, città aperta ("Open City"), 1945, Roberto Rossellini

Sansho Dayu ("Sansho the Bailiff"), 1954, Kenji Mizoguchi

Schindler's List, 1993, Steven Spielberg

Secrets & Lies, 1996, Mike Leigh

Shadowlands, 1993, Richard Attenborough

The Shawshank Redemption, 1994, Frank Darabont

Signs, 2002, M. Night Shyamalan

The Sixth Sense, 1999, M. Night Shyamalan

Det Sjunde Inseglet ("The Seventh Seal"), 1957, Ingmar Bergman

Smultronstället ("Wild Strawberries"), 1957, Ingmar Bergman

Solyaris ("Solaris"), 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky

Stalker, 1979, Andrei Tarkovsky

Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, 1977, 1980, 1983, George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand

Stevie, 2002, Steve James

The Straight Story, 1999, David Lynch

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1927, F.W. Murnau

Sånger från andra våningen ("Songs From the Second Floor"), 2000, Roy Andersson

The Sweet Hereafter, 1997, Atom Egoyan

Tender Mercies, 1983, Bruce Beresford

13 Conversations About One Thing, 2001, Jill Sprecher

Trois coulers: Bleu, Trzy kolory: Bialy, Trois coulers: Rouge ("Three Colors: Blue, White, Red"), 1993, 1994, 1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski

Tokyo Monogatari ("Tokyo Story"), 1953, Yasujiro Ozu

The Truman Show, 1998, Peter Weir

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, Stanley Kubrick

Unforgiven, 1992, Clint Eastwood

Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo ("The Gospel According to Matthew"), 1964, Pier Paolo Pasolini

Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994, Louis Malle

Le Vent souffle où il veut ("A Man Escaped"), 1956, Robert Bresson

La Vita è bella ("Life is Beautiful"), 1997, Roberto Benigni

Vredens dag ("Day of Wrath"), 1943, Carl Theodor Dreyer

Waking Life, 2001, Richard Linklater

Werckmeister Harmonies, 2000, Béla Tarr

Witness, 1985, Peter Weir

The Year Of Living Dangerously, 1982, Peter Weir

Yi yi ("Yi Yi: A One and a Two"), 2000, Edward Yang

Zerkalo ("The Mirror"), 1975, Andrei Tarkovsky

Pi (1998) (Darren Aronofsky)

Donnie Darko (2001) (Richard Kelly)

Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace (2000) (Eric Till)

Field of Dreams (1989) (Phil Alden Robinson)

Cool Hand Luke (1967) (Stuart Rosenberg)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) (Milos Forman)

Unbreakable (2000) (M. Night Shyamalan)

Bruce Almighty (2003) (Tom Shadyac)

Song of Bernadette (1943) (Henry King)

MORE:
-Moving Pictures: These movies will keep your video player—and your conversations—going for a long time: the Arts & Faith Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films. (Ron Reed, Christianity Today)

WHAT DO YOU DO TO GET REBORN AS KRUGMAN?:

Paul Krugman: The Wicked Economist? (Footnotes, May/June 2004)

“An Indian born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economics class,” Paul Krugman writes in the opening paragraph of his Preface to Peddling Prosperity. “‘If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist,’ he said, ‘you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.’” Krugman then continues, “A sociologist might say that this quote shows what is wrong with economists: they want a subject that is fundamentally about human beings to have the mathematical certainty of the hard sciences.... But good economists know that the speaker was talking about something else entirely: the sheer difficulty of the subject. Economics is harder than physics; luckily it is not quite as hard as sociology.” (1994:xi)

A BLOW TO KERRY'S ANTI-CRIME PROGRAM:

Further Tests of Abortion and Crime (Ted Joyce, NBER Working Paper)

Abstract: The inverse relationship between abortion and crime has spurred new research and much controversy. If the relationship is causal, then polices that increased abortion have generated enormous external benefits from reduced crime.... First, I examine closely the effects of changes in abortion rates between 1971 and 1974.... If abortion reduced crime, crime should have fallen sharply as these post-legalization cohorts reached their late teens and early 20s, the peak ages of criminal involvement. It did not. Second, I conduct separate estimates for whites and blacks because the effect of legalized abortion on crime should have been much larger for blacks than whites, since the effect of legalization of abortion on the fertility rates of blacks was much larger. There was little race difference in the reduction in crime. Finally, I compare changes in homicide rates before and after legalization of abortion, within states, by single year of age. The analysis of older adults is compelling because they were largely unaffected by the crack-cocaine epidemic, which was a potentially important confounding factor in earlier estimates. These analyses provide little evidence that legalized abortion reduced crime.

ALSO:
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (JOHN J. DONOHUE III, Stanford Law School; STEVEN D. LEVITT, University of Chicago; Aug 1999)

Did Legalized Abortion Lower Crime? (THEODORE JOYCE, National Bureau of Economic Research, Jun 2001)

Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime: A Reply to Joyce (JOHN J. DONOHUE III, Stanford Law School; STEVEN D. LEVITT, University of Chicago; Mar 2003)

OH, YOU'RE GOING TO GET LETTERS

OFF DEADLINE (Harry Eagar, Maui News, 6/22/04)

There have been quite a few references to something called the Geneva Conventions lately.

In the interest of clear thinking, it would be well to understand there isn't any such thing, despite a signing ceremony in 1949. Never has been.

Nor were there Hague Conventions in 1899 and 1907, nor a Brussels Conference in 1874. . . .

The protection [of American prisoners held by the Germans] came, in fact, from the only system yet devised by any nation to protect its nationals in unfriendly hands: reprisal.

For Americans, the doctrine of reprisal was begun by Gen. George Washington. The British threatened to hang POWs as rebels, and Washington, who controlled British prisoners, informed the English that he'd match them neck for neck.

Mr. Eagar notes that the Japanese did not treat Allied prisoners as the Convention demands. He does not note that American soldiers, too, shot Japanese prisoners and were even known to have mutilated their bodies before burial. Since then, we have become more fastidious in our treatment of our enemies. It is now assumed that, if any prisoner is not granted the rights accruing to American criminals, we have violated not just our (wholly fictional) treaty obligations, but also fundamental human rights.

We must, then, go on to ask the questions that Mr. Eagar doesn't ask: are we saps to require that the Secretary of Defense sign off on "shoving" prisoners or making them stand up for 8 hours, while our enemies cut off their prisoners' heads? The answer is obviously "yes", but that might be the modern test of power. We are powerful enough to be saps.

LIKE NADIA COMENEICI WITH A KEYBOARD (via Political Theory):

This is a really extraordinary moment. Millions, billions, trillions? of words have been written over the course of human history but the following essay from the Guardian may well be the most idiotic assemblage of them ever recorded, The struggle for sovereignty: Democracy in Europe grew out of popular action against unrepresentative rule; the resistance in Iraq is part of the same story (Karma Nabulsi, June 23, 2004, The Guardian)

The United States and Britain claim to be handing sovereignty to Iraq next week. In fact, the occupying power cannot legally transfer sovereignty on June 30 for one simple reason: it does not possess it. Sovereignty is vested in the Iraqi people, and always has been: before Saddam Hussein, after him, under the martial law of the American proconsul Paul Bremer today.

This fact is reflected in the language of the most recent UN resolution - 1546, on June 8 - as well as previous ones, all of which "reaffirm the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq". The constant need of George Bush and Tony Blair to claim sovereignty reflects more than a misunderstanding of the laws of war and basic international law. It demonstrates an alarming ignorance of the democratic structures of the very countries they were elected to represent. This ignorance also provides us with some clues as to why they have no understanding either of what they are doing in Iraq, or what is happening on the ground there.

When the formal apparatus of a state crumbles during invasion and occupation, and authority is exercised by a foreign military power, sovereignty returns to its bearers, a country's citizens. Sovereignty is vested in the people, and not in the apparatus of state. This is the fundamental principle from which modern democracies draw their legitimacy, and the basis for all representative government. It is also the cornerstone of modern international law. [...]

The young men who defended Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, and who recently won back the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Najaf from the occupying power, are not the terrorists - or the enemies of democracy. They are our own past torchbearers, the founding citizens of popular sovereignty and democratic practice, the very tradition that freed Europe and that we honoured on D-day.

Remarkably though, Ms Nabulsi tops this idiocy by arguing that the thugs who are trying to prevent the transfer of sovereignty to a representative government in Iraq are fighting for democracy.

But wait, these are only the affirmative assertions she makes that are obviously wrong--unbeknownst to her she's done something even more mindnumbingly stupid: in an essay where she seeks to attack Tony Blair and George Bush and to support the Ba'ath Party remnants, disgruntled al-Sadrites, and al Qaeda terrorists who are trying to destabilize Iraq, she has instead made the moral argument in favor of the war. The revolution that America and Britain are jointly effecting in foreign affairs--from Grenada to Panama to Kosovo to Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond--has led to the point where the democratic nations of the world need not recognize the sovereignty of any state which is not itself a liberal democracy. The mere fact that Saddam Hussein oppressed his own people is, as her essay suggests it should be, reason enough for us to have deposed him and restored sovereignty to the Iraqi masses. In effect, the test of a state is no longer the capacity of its government to exercise power but the legitimacy of its rule. At the End of History, that legitimacy depends on the government being chosen by and representing the interests of the people. Regimes that aren't legitimate and organizations that oppose democracy are fair game. The torchbearers remain--by her own standards, properly applied--we who fought against Saddam and who are fighting against those who resist the coming of democracy.

As for Ms Nabulsi, she should probably retire and rest on her laurels--she'll never top this.

A CASE FOR HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL:

AIR AMERICA HITS SOUR RATINGS NOTE (JOHN MAINELLI, June 22, 2004, NY Post)

ENCOURAGING preliminary ratings for all-liberal Air America in New York have collapsed along with the fledgling radio network's finances.

An unofficial "extrapolation" of Arbitron data released last Friday — which Air America's hosts crowed about last month but virtually ignored yesterday — showed WLIB's ratings dropping back to their lowly levels before the net's April launch. [...]

According to the article, many Air America investors thought the network had raised $30 million — when, in fact, only $6 million had been raised before the network launched.

"We have a new influx of cash coming up," said Franken, whose contract promises more than $1 million a year, according to the Journal.

"I am being paid now," he told listeners yesterday. "I've been paid for weeks."

SIDE BY SIDE HEADLINES

Boston Globe, June 23rd, 2004

Memos detail debate on prisoners (By Bryan Bender and Charlie Savage, Globe Staff)

In late 2002, the Pentagon approved a set of harsh interrogation techniques to be used on Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, including threatening them with attack dogs, stripping them naked, and pushing, grabbing, and poking them, according to government documents released yesterday.

Militants behead hostage from S. Korea (By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press)

Islamic militants yesterday beheaded a South Korean who pleaded in a heart-wrenching videotape that "I don't want to die" after his government refused to pull its troops from Iraq. He was the third foreign hostage decapitated in the Middle East in little over a month.

It appears any hope of intelligent debate on the issue of prisoner treatment is fading fast. By taking the question right out of the realm of reality and throwing it into abstract, one-sided idealism, those targeting the Administration are ensuring many people will die unnecessarily.

THE GODLESS PARTY FIGHTS BACK (via Christianity Today: Weblog):

The Anti-Slackers: Young Christians are pushing the edges of faith. Here's a glimpse into the hearts and dreams of a few of them, in their own words. (Sojourners, March 2002)

Mara Louise Vanderslice, Outreach coordinator, Jubilee USA Network [...]

"I was raised as a Unitarian Universalist; I'm really grateful for the openness that tradition gave me. When I later learned about Jesus..."

A METHOD TO THE MADNESS?:

Just Like Stalingrad: If Bush is another Hitler, what words are left to describe Hitler? (BRET STEPHENS, June 23, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

According to Sidney Blumenthal, a onetime adviser to president Bill Clinton who now writes a column for Britain's Guardian newspaper, President Bush today runs "what is in effect a gulag," stretching "from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world." Mr. Blumenthal says "there has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union."

In another column, Mr. Blumenthal compares the April death toll for American soldiers in Iraq to the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Mr. Bush's "splendid little war," he writes, "has entered a Stalingrad-like phase of urban siege and house-to-house combat."

The factual bases for these claims are, first, that the U.S. holds some 10,000 "enemy combatants" prisoner; and second, that 122 U.S. soldiers were killed in action in April.

As I write, I have before me a copy of "The Black Book of Communism," which relates that on "1 January 1940 some 1,670,000 prisoners were being held in the 53 groups of corrective work camps and 425 collective work colonies. In addition, the prisons held 200,000 people awaiting trial or a transfer to camp. Finally, the NKVD komandatury were in charge of approximately 1.2 million 'specially displaced people.' "

As for Stalingrad, German deaths between Jan. 10 and Feb. 2, 1943, numbered 100,000, according to British historian John Keegan. And those were just the final agonizing days of a battle that had raged since the previous August.

THIS IS WHAT VICTORY LOOKS LIKE

Army unit claims victory over sheik (Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times, 6/23/04)

Once he had targets, Gen. Dempsey could then map a battle plan for entering four key cities — Karbala, Najaf, Kufa and Diwaniyah. This would be a counterinsurgency fought with 70-ton M-1 Abrams tanks and aerial gunships overhead. It would not be the lightning movements of clandestine commandos, but rather all the brute force the Army could muster, directed at narrowly defined targets.

Last week, Sheik al-Sadr surrendered. He called on what was left of his men to cease operations and said he may one day seek public office in a democratic Iraq.

Gen. Hertling said Mahdi's Army is defeated, according the Army's doctrinal definition of defeat. A few stragglers might be able to fire a rocket-propelled grenade, he said, but noted: "Do they have the capability of launching any kind of offensive operation? Absolutely not."

The division estimates it killed at least several thousand militia members.

BETTER, AND MORE COMPLETE, THAN THE BIOGRAPHY (From Andrew Sullivan)

THE UNKNOWABLE: Ronald Reagan’s amazing, mysterious life. (Edmund Morris, The New Yorker, 6/21/04)

The first subsection deals with Ronald Reagan’s body. In 1988, at seventy-seven years of age, the President stood six feet one and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, none of it flab. He boasted that any punch aimed at his abdomen would be jarringly repulsed. After a lifetime of working out with wheels and bars, he had broadened his chest to a formidably walled cavern forty-four inches in circumference. He was a natural athlete, with a peculiarly graceful Algonquin gait that brought him into rooms almost soundlessly. No matter how fast he moved (that big body could turn on a dime), he was always balanced.

One recalls how elegantly he choreographed Mikhail Gorbachev up the steps at the 1985 Geneva summit: an arabesque of dark blue flowing around awkward gray. Reagan loved to swim, ride, and foxtrot. (Doris Day remembers him as “the only man I ever knew who really liked to dance.”) Eleven weeks after nearly dying in the assassination attempt of 1981, he climbed onto the springboard at the Camp David swimming pool and threw a perfect half pike before anybody could protest.

Gorbachev once remarked on Reagan’s “balance” to me in an interview. But he used the Russian word ravnovesie in its wider sense, of psychological equilibrium. The President’s poised body and smooth yet inexorable motion telegraphed a larger force that came of a lifetime of no self-doubt (except for two years of despair in 1948-49, after Jane Wyman, his first wife, left him for boring her). Reagan redux did not care whom he bored, as long as nobody tried to stop him. His famous anecdotes, recounted with a speed and economy that were the verbal equivalent of balance, were persuasive on the first, and even the fourth, telling. But when you heard them for the fourteenth, or the fortieth, time, always with exactly the same inflections and chuckles and glances, you realized that he was a bore in the sense that a combine harvester is boring: its only purpose is to bear down upon and thresh whatever grain lies in its path. Reagan used homilies to harvest people.

ALL ABOUT ME:

In New Tests for Fetal Defects, Agonizing Choices (AMY HARMON, 6/20/04, NY Times)

Fetal genetic tests are now routinely used to diagnose diseases as well known as cystic fibrosis and as obscure as fragile X, a form of mental retardation. High-resolution sonograms can detect life-threatening defects like brain cysts as well as treatable conditions like a small hole in the heart or a cleft palate sooner and more reliably than previous generations of the technology. And the risk of Down syndrome, one of the most common birth defects, can be assessed in the first trimester rather than waiting for a second-trimester blood test or amniocentesis.

Most couples say they are both profoundly grateful for the new information and hugely burdened by the choices it forces them to make. The availability of tests earlier in pregnancy mean that if they opt for an abortion it can be safer and less public.

But first they must decide: What defect, if any, is reason enough to end a pregnancy that was very much wanted? Shortened limbs that could be partly treated with growth hormones? What about a life expectancy of only a few months? What about 30 years? Or a 20 percent chance of mental retardation?

Striving to be neutral, doctors and genetic counselors flood patients with scientific data, leaving them alone for the hard conversations about the ethics of abortion, and how having a child with a particular disease or disability would affect them and their families. There are few traditions to turn to, and rarely anyone around who has confronted a similar dilemma.

Against the backdrop of a bitter national divide on abortion, couples are devising their own very private scales for weighing whether to continue their pregnancies. Often, political or religious beliefs end up being put aside, trumped by personal feelings.

WHO WAS THAT UNMASSED MAN?:

Rare Kerry appearance causes uproar in Senate: Arriving for vote, he dismisses GOP calls to resign (Patrick Healy, June 23, 2004, Boston Globe)

Under fresh attack by Republicans to resign his Senate seat after missing months of votes, John F. Kerry returned to the Senate chambers yesterday to be in position to vote on a bill providing improved health care for veterans -- a move that triggered a partisan battle among his colleagues. [...]

Kerry waited seven hours on the Hill yesterday in hopes of voting on a proposal to increase health care spending for veterans by 30 percent, but Republicans used procedural tactics to delay any vote until at least after Kerry had left for a campaign trip to San Francisco last night. [...]

Kerry, who turned his campaign plane around in Denver Monday night and flew to the capital in a rare moment of political spontaneity, waited hours to speak on the issue. On the Senate floor yesterday afternoon, Kerry accused Republicans of playing politics with the needs of veterans by refusing Democrats the ''normal courtesy" of speaking and voting on a legislative proposal put forward by their leader, Daschle. [...]

The partisan politicking forced Kerry to scuttle a $500,000 fund-raiser in New Mexico last night, but it reaped other rewards for his campaign. By portraying Republicans as silencing him in the Senate, Kerry gained a useful new weapon to fight opponents who are pressuring him to step down for skipping 89 percent of Senate votes so far this year.

He also was able to sit for a ''class picture" yesterday afternoon of the full Senate; had he not been there, Kerry aides said, Republican media strategists would have had a photo at their disposal of all but Kerry present on a day when senators were debating veterans' benefits and Pentagon spending.

In what Kerry aides said was a coincidence of timing, the senator returned to the Hill just as Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney -- the most prominent advocate of a Kerry resignation -- repeated that call yesterday during an appearance nearby to testify about gay marriage. Kerry aides said that the senator did not return here to rebut Romney's contention that Kerry was shirking his duties.

WHY NO ONE SPEAKS OF “OLD ASIA”

Slaying Firms Korean Resolve (Reuben Staines, Korea Times, June 23rd, 2004)

Fear hardened into angry resolve on Wednesday following the execution of interpreter Kim Sun-il by Iraqi insurgents, with experts predicting the incident will swing public opinion in favor of the planned troop dispatch to Iraq.

While many South Koreans had previously opposed the government’s plan to send 3,000 additional troops to assist the U.S.-led postwar effort in Iraq, the beheading will draw Seoul and Washington closer together, said Lee Sang-hyun, director of security studies at the Sejong Institute.

"The foremost reaction of most of the Korean public is anger”, Lee said. "People are terrified by this inhumane and barbaric act.”

He said some opponents of the Iraq war will continue their calls for President Roh Moo-hyun to scrap the troop dispatch plan but a majority want the government to stand firm.

It is sad that so many people will go to such extreme lengths to deny evil and only recognize it when innocent folks die. It is even sadder that so many refuse to recognize it even then.

DON'T TELL TANCREDO:

Contreras's Wife, Daughters Leave Cuba (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6/22/04)

Jose Contreras' family defected from Cuba this week, and the New York Yankees pitcher left the team Tuesday and traveled to Miami to reunite with his wife and two daughters.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Barbara Gonzalez said she did not know details on how the family got out of Cuba. A call to U.S. Border Patrol officials was not immediately returned.

"It's spectacular news,'' Yankees manager Joe Torre said before Tuesday night's game at Baltimore.

Wife Miriam, 11-year-old Naylan and 3-year-old Naylenis were taken by the border patrol to immigration offices, where they were interviewed and released.

After being examined by Miami-Dade County medical officials, they left with Contreras' agent, Jaime Torres, early Tuesday evening. [...]

"Thanks to God, they are free,'' Torres said.

BUT DIDN'T:

Bush Claimed Right to Waive Torture Laws (SCOTT LINDLAW, 6/22/04, Associated Press)

Bush outlined his own views in a Feb. 7. 2002, document regarding treatment of al-Qaida detainees from Afghanistan. He said the war against terrorism had ushered in a "new paradigm" and that terrorist attacks required "new thinking in the law of war." Still, he said prisoners must be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time," the president said in the memo, entitled "Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban Detainees."

In a separate Pentagon memo, dated Nov. 27, 2002, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, recommended that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approve the use of 14 interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, such as yelling at a prisoner during questioning and using "stress positions," like standing, for up to four hours.

Haynes also recommended approval of one technique among harsher methods requested by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo: use of "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing."

Among the techniques that Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, in addition to that one, the yelling and the stress positions:

_ Use of 20-hour interrogations.

_ Removal of all comfort items, including religious items.

_ Removal of clothing.

_ Using detainees' "individual phobias such as fear of dogs to induce stress."

In a Jan. 15, 2003, note, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval and said that a review would be conducted to consider legal, policy and operational issues relating to interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. military in the war on terrorism.

Rumsfeld's decision was prompted at least in part by objections raised by some military lawyers who felt that the techniques approved for use at Guantanamo Bay might go too far, officials said earlier this year.

The review was completed in April 2003, and on that basis Rumsfeld reissued his guidance on April 16, 2003. He approved 24 interrogation techniques, to be used in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions, but said that any use of four of those methods would have to be approved by him in advance. Those four were use of rewards or removal of privileges from detainees; attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating the use of friendly and harsh interrogators, and isolation.

INTELLIGENT, NOT INTELLIGENCE:

How America can win the intelligence war (Spengler, 6/15/04, Asia Times)

Every US intelligence assessment of Soviet military strength and morale available in 1981 was dead wrong. Washington learned better by putting Moscow under stress. How adaptable was Russian weapons technology? Start a high-tech arms race with the Strategic Defense Initiative and find out. How good were Russian avionics? Help the Israeli air force engage Syria's MiGs in the Bekaa Valley in 1982, and the destruction with impunity of Russian-built fighters and surface-to-air missile sites would provide a data point. How solid was Russian fighting morale? Instigate irregular warfare against the Russian army in Afghanistan and learn.

The United States lacks the aptitude and inclination to penetrate the mind of adversary cultures. In the so-called war on terror, it lacks the floating population of irredentist emigres who provided a window into Russian-occupied Eastern Europe back during the Cold War. But the best sort of intelligence stems not from scholarship but from decisiveness of command and clarity of mission. "War is not an intellectual activity but a brutally physical one," observes Sir John Keegan in Intelligence and War, published last year. President George W Bush might do well to read it carefully before choosing the next CIA director.

It was not the intellectuals but the bullyboys of the Reagan administration who shook loose the relevant intelligence. In 1981 the CIA enjoyed a surfeit of Russian speakers, in contrast to today's paucity of Arabic translators. But William Casey routinely ignored the legions of Russian-studies PhDs, reaching out instead to irregulars who could give him the insights he required.

Intelligence in warfare presents a different sort of intellectual challenge than academics are trained to address. President Reagan, no intellectual in the conventional sense, nonetheless formed a clear assessment of what the enemy was, what it wanted, and how it might be defeated. Without the courage to define and then engage the enemy, intelligence services will wander randomly in the dark. [...]

Bush might as well shut down the CIA and re-create something like the wartime Office of Strategic Services, for which Casey parachuted agents into occupied Europe. Most of the CIA amounts to a make-work project for second-rate academics, drawn from an academic environment generally hostile to US strategic interests. Even if US universities still produced strategic thinkers rather than multicultural mush-heads, and even if the CIA could recruit them, little would change. In spite of the academics, Bill Casey won his intelligence war because the US convinced enough players on the other side that it would win. To win to its side the best men and women of the Islamic world, the United States must make clear what it wants from them.

Yes, yes, of course, we all know you cannot poke a stick through the walls of a concrete tower, but here's something to think about: what if the walls are only a painted backdrop?

THE ORDERLY ADMINISTRATION OF MURDER:

Live babies being born after abortions (Rebecca Smith, 22 June 2004, Evening Standard)

Leading doctors today called for a major overhaul to avoid babies being born alive after abortions.

Pregnancy expert Professor Stuart Campbell has demanded rules should be tightened after it was revealed that at least nine babies are known to have survived terminations in recent years.

He said injections that were supposed to end their lives in the womb failed to do so - and he called for stricter regulations to be enforced on the methods of abortion. [...]

"It is really unfair on the nurses and the parents to see the baby making some sort of movement after birth."

OBLIGATORY FASCIST COMPARISON:

Bush Looks to Heaven While Iraq Goes to Hell (Nicholas Von Hoffman, May 27, 2004, www.dissidentvoice.org)

To listen to George Bush, you would think that he was elected Pope or Chief Rabbi or something. With Mr. Bush, it’s him and God all the time. "I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world," he averred at his recent press conference. "Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world."

Freedom is not the Judeo-Christian divinity’s gift to anybody. None of the political and social ideals upon which the nation was begun come from either of these two religions. Remember St. Paul’s injunction that slaves should obey their masters.

Freedom and democracy have their origins with the Greeks and the Romans, who had a bunch of gods whose idea of family does not comport with George Bush’s. Holy moley, their big god, Zeus/Jupiter, was a cross-dresser and not above an occasional bout with bestiality. A very lusty god was/is he. The rest of that troop of Olympians were little better, tumbling in and out of each other’s beds, extorting sexual favors from mortals and generally disporting themselves in ways not approved of by the Republican National Committee, the Sanhedrin or the National Baptist Convention.

A dispassionate look would lead a person to conclude that freedom and democracy arose out of what George Bush and his fellow holy rollers would consider the libertine, permissive, anti-family culture of classical antiquity. If that’s overstating it, it is not an overstatement to say that freedom, even the idea of the individual as we conceive it, was invented by the pagans of Greece and Rome, the same people who threw away the oppressive belief that laws come from God and replaced it with man-made legislation. [...]

In 1941, Adolf Hitler sent his tank divisions flying into the Ukraine, where the Roman Catholic, Communist-hating peasantry can still be seen in the old newsreels running out of their little houses greeting the invading army with flowers and offers of food. Within a year, thanks to the Nazi genius at interpersonal relations, those same peasants were hiding in hill and forest, staging surprise attacks against the Germans.

While the American Army’s welcome in Iraq was by no means as fulsome and unanimous as that accorded Hitler’s legions in the Ukraine, there is no doubt that many an Iraqi was happy to see the Yankees come in and give their dictator the boot. Although American-sponsored polls of Iraqi public opinion have to be regarded as worthless, much other evidence exists of the local good will toward the invaders. Here is an excerpt taken from an e-mail written a few days ago by an American soldier hunkered down in an area hostile to the invaders: "We are operating on other people’s courage. They come to us or call. These are Iraqis who have taken the word of the Prophet to heart and only think of their community. Not that I think the Coalition is optimal, and I don’t think that these people do either, yet they have decided that of the choices, modernization and/or reform with the Coalition is the best thing for the community. I know that their behavior is unselfish devotion for two good reasons: 1) We are not paying these people anything and 2) If they are discovered, they will be killed out of hand—well not quite, first they will be taken to the Sharia court, tortured, then killed." Thus, even now favorably disposed Iraqis are still to be found.

FREEING THE TIED HAND:

Out of the shadows, into the world: Slowly, but sometimes showily, the female half of the population is beginning to find a voice (The Economist, 6/17/04)

Outsiders commonly assume that Islam itself is the cause of sexual inequality in the Arab world. This is not strictly true. Earlier this year, for instance, Morocco adopted a progressive family status code which, among other things, grants both sexes equal rights to seek divorce and to argue before a judge for custody of children. It also places such tight conditions on polygamy as to render the practice virtually impossible. Yet the new law won backing not just from King Muhammad VI, who declared it to be “in perfect accordance with the spirit of our tolerant religion”, but also from the country's main Islamist parties.

In Kuwait, too, religion is being used to push reform. Five years ago, Islamists in the country's parliament blocked a law that would have granted women the right to vote and run for office. The same law is being tabled again this year, but this time several Islamist MPs have defected to the liberals. One reason is a fatwa recently issued by a prominent cleric, which questions the reliability of the source who, 14 centuries ago, reported the Prophet Muhammad as saying “A nation commanded by woman will not prosper.”

Aside from giving them the short stick on inheritance, and having their testimony in law considered half as weighty as men's, and letting husbands marry up to four wives, whom they may beat if they are disobedient, the Koran itself is not unkind to women. Centuries before Christian women in the West, Muslim women freely enjoyed full property rights. In many Arab societies, it has been customary to evade statutory inheritance laws by simply signing over property to female relations before your death.

The trouble, in places like Saudi Arabia, lies more in how the holy text—as well as the hadiths, or Prophet's sayings, that inform the Sharia—are interpreted. Such texts are often not so much interpreted, as twisted to fit pre-existing traditions. The ban on driving, for instance, is unique to Saudi Arabia. Yet even Saudi clerics are hard-put to find support for the rule in holy scripture. (And in any case, according to one survey, 29% of Saudi women say they already know how to drive.)

The extreme Saudi phobia regarding ikhtilat, or mixing of the sexes, also has no textual justification. And although the Koran mentions modesty in dress, how much is a matter of opinion. Most scholars agree that hadiths about fuller covering relate to the Prophet's own wives. Whether to follow their example should be a free choice, as indeed it is in most Muslim societies.

Some countries, such as non-Arab Tunisia, have simply bypassed such questions by imposing fully secular laws. For the time being, Arab public opinion is strongly opposed to this; the link to Islamic roots is seen as essential. Yet when it comes to women's rights, the evidence is that Arabs, even the men among them, acknowledge the need for improvement. In a 2002 survey of social attitudes carried out in seven Arab countries by Zogby International, 50% of respondents considered the improvement of women's rights a high priority. Significantly, the firmest support for change came from Saudi Arabia.

The reformers will eventually get their way. Saudi women are, in fact, already chalking up important gains. Last month they were granted the right to hold commercial licences, a significant advance considering that women own a quarter of the $100 billion deposited in Saudi banks, with little opportunity to make use of it. In 2001, they won the right to have their own identity cards (though a male guardian must apply for them). Saudi businesswomen spoke eloquently, to long applause, at a major conference in Jeddah earlier this year. Since January, Saudi state TV has employed female newscasters.

The kingdom's best-known TV personality also happens to be a woman. Rania al-Baz won further fame earlier this year when her husband beat her almost to death. Instead of staying silent, as her mother would have done, Mrs al-Baz invited photographers into her hospital room to show the world her broken face. She has now formed a group to combat the abuse of women in Saudi Arabia.

SETTING FASTER:

Inflated fertility rate used for pension bills: Ministry allegedly sat on lower figure (REIJI YOSHIDA, June 23, 2004, The Japan Times)

Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry officials said Tuesday they had estimated a record-low fertility rate in 2003 of 1.29 almost two weeks before the contentious pension reform bills were pushed through the Diet on June 5, based on a rosier figure.

The government's pension reform package was based on a more optimistic fertility rate of 1.32 for the year, forecasting it to eventually recover to around 1.39. A figure above 2.08 is needed to sustain the population. [...]

The government's fertility rate forecasts have been consistently overoptimistic for more than two decades, forcing it to repeatedly revise down pension premium revenue assumptions.

A higher birthrate prediction is politically favorable for the government, which has been trying to bathe its social security plan in a rosy glow.

MORE:
Effects of zero-interest rates (Japan Times, 6/23/04)

More than a decade has passed since the Bank of Japan brought benchmark interest rates to almost zero. Now that Japan's economy is showing signs of steady recovery, it stands to reason that this extraordinary policy of quantitative monetary easing should come to an end. Yet, reversing a policy that has persisted for so many years may prove difficult. [...]

One major consequence of rock-bottom interest rates is an enormous glut of government bonds. Over the years the Finance Ministry has issued massive amounts of long-term debt, which have been purchased mainly by financial institutions and institutional investors. Now, however, they are beginning to sell some of their bloated bond holdings to avoid risks. As a result, bond prices are falling while long-term interest rates are rising.

The numbers boggle the mind. The balance of government bonds stood at 460 trillion yen at the end of March. Of this, 85 trillion yen (including bonds issued to finance the fiscal loan and investment program) was held by the BOJ, 120 trillion yen by banks and 116 trillion yen by insurance companies and pension funds.

Lower bond prices lead to higher valuation losses for bondholders. In the business year that ended March 31, however, these holding losses by banks were apparently offset by rising stock prices. By contrast, the BOJ recorded its first current-account deficit in 32 years, mainly due to a huge holding loss of 1.1 trillion yen. As a result, the bank's capital adequacy ratio reportedly dropped below the international standard of 8 percent.

Falling bond prices, if the trend continues, will also hit banks. The bonds they hold will depress profits if these assets become new "nonperforming loans." If that happens, banks will be left holding the bag again. The timing could not be worse because their painstaking efforts to clean up nonperforming loans to businesses are finally bearing fruit.

THE FINAL NAIL IN "IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE"'s COFFIN:

Poll: 64% of Israeli Jews support encouraging Arabs to leave (Yulie Khromchenco, 6/22/04, Haaretz)

A University of Haifa poll released Monday reveals that a majority of the Jewish public in Israel - 63.7 percent - believes that the government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate from Israel.

The survey, conducted by the university's National Security Studies Center, also found that 48.6 percent of the Israeli Jews polled said the government was overly sympathetic to the Arab population.

Compared to similar polls conducted in 2001 and 2003, the current survey indicates an increase in the public's extremism.

The majority of Jewish respondents, 55.3 percent, said Israeli Arabs endangered national security, while 45.3 percent of those polled said they supported revoking Israeli Arabs' right to vote and hold political office.

WHICH LIE WAS I STICKING WITH?:

Clinton Book Weighs Failures and Successes: Memoir Contradicts Testimony on Lewinsky (John F. Harris and Linton Weeks, June 22, 2004, Washington Post)

Clinton's own legal battle with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr accounts for one of the book's more peculiar revelations. In his August 1998 grand jury testimony, Clinton said he began an inappropriate sexual relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky in "early 1996." His testimony, as was widely noted at the time, was in conflict with Lewinsky's story: She testified the relationship began on Nov. 15, 1995, in the midst of a government shutdown.

Starr's prosecutors, in their report to Congress, accused Clinton of lying about the date of their relationship in order to avoid admitting that he had sexual relations with an intern, as Lewinsky still was in the fall of 1995 before being hired for a paying job in the winter.

Without explanation, in his memoir Clinton departs from his grand jury testimony and corroborates her version: "During the government shutdown in late 1995, when very few people were allowed to come to work in the White House, and those who were there were working late, I'd had an inappropriate encounter with Monica Lewinsky and would do so again on other occasions between November and April, when she left the White House for the Pentagon."

Clinton aides yesterday said they could not explain the discrepancy, and his attorney, David Kendall, was traveling and did not return a call.

ZARQAWI IN THE CROSSHAIRS:

Large Explosions Rock Fallujah in Iraq (AP, 6/22/04)

Large explosions rocked Fallujah late Tuesday in the same area as a U.S. airstrike last weekend, witnesses said. The Americans said the weekend attack was against a safehouse of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's movement.

WMD?:

Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (March 18, 2003)

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

MASTER OF HIS CRAFT

Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore. (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, June 21st, 2004)

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something---I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now---has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion. [...]

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers——get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Put your feet up, grab a glass of your favourite refreshment, and enjoy...

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE DEAD BUT THE LIVING:

Senate Backs Ban on Photos of G.I. Coffins: The Bush administration's policy of barring the media from photographing the coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Senate on Monday. (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/22/04, NY Times)

PBS Masterpiece Theatre is running a terrific detective series this month, Foyle's War. It stars Michael Kitchen as Christopher Foyle, as a DCI who gets stuck fighting crime at home instead of the Nazis abroad. What makes the show fascinating is that the home front is populated by petty bureaucrats, fascists, pacifists, cowards, profiteers, and the like and thick with the atmosphere of fear and anti-German/anti-Italian hysteria. At any rate, this week's installment included a mysterious military installation that ultimately turned out to be shrouded in secrecy for a simple but surprising reason: they were making coffins there to bury the anticipated dead of the Blitz, but they were keeping it quiet for reason of morale. The foreman said he hoped Foyle would understand and, of course, he did.

PARTY OR SELF?:

With Kerry's choices, you'd want McCain, too (Peter A. Brown, 6/22/04, Jewish World Review)

Kerry ideally would like one of three things in a running mate:

—A senator, but preferably a governor, from a major battleground state whose presence on the ticket might push it into the Democratic column.

—A racial minority or woman who could energize voters because of the candidacy's precedent-setting nature, but still pass the crucial threshold for popular support that requires such a nominee be considered presidential.

—A candidate who complements the presidential nominee in a way that sends a clear message, as the 1992 choice of Al Gore by Bill Clinton showed that the Democrats would offer a youthful, fresh-faced alternative to the Reagan/Bush years.

Yet none of those Kerry is reportedly considering seems to fit any of those molds.

NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION:

Oil as a curse (Amity Shlaes, 6/22/04, Jewish World Review)

[T]here was a sense of relief when Putin said the Russian government did not want to smash Yukos altogether.

But perhaps there ought not to have been. That, at least, is the conclusion we can draw from an article by Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian in the newest issue of Foreign Affairs. The authors — Birdsall heads the Washington-based Center for Global Development, while Subramanian is at the International Monetary Fund — offer a one-word explanation for the globe's diverse troubles: oil. [...]

The market-oriented right has bridled at the idea that any capital, even petro-capital, is evil. Then, in the last century, free-market thinkers such as Mancur Olson and P.T. Bauer pointed out that the natural resources themselves, and not the colonizers, were the problem. Indeed, a lack of oil constitutes an advantage. Japan, West Germany and Singapore all profited when, absent what nature provides, they were forced to develop industrial or intellectual capital.

Now Birdsall and Subramanian are adding to the debate. They note that oil wealth relieves a nation of the pressure to tax (Saudi Arabia). The state therefore has no stake in the private-sector creation of wealth or citizens' day-to-day well-being. There is no need for a civic relationship — on either side. Property rights, contract law, reliable courts — to us, basics — seem dispensable. And the state is free to bully.

TEAM TORRICELLI BACK IN ACTION:

Filling Kerry's shoes (Renee Loth, June 22, 2004, Boston Globe)

Our story so far: Democrats are trying to change a nearly century-old law in order to prevent Governor Romney from filling the Senate seat that will be vacant should Kerry become president. The Democrats gravely speak of ``letting the people decide,'' trying to claim the high ground in an argument that involves nothing but partisan swamp.

The ``reformers'' over at Romney Inc., meanwhile, are trying to sweeten their own power grab by hinting broadly that the governor would appoint a woman or minority to the post, loosening the white-boy stranglehold on the congressional delegation. (Apparently Barney Frank's status as a gay man doesn't earn any points in this diversity varsity.)

Fearful of letting a Romney designee earn two years of incumbency before the next statewide election in 2006, Democrats want a special election, probably sometime in February 2005. They are pushing legislation on Beacon Hill that would negate the system in effect since 1913, when the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, providing for the popular election of US senators.

IN BASEBALL YOU PLAY AGAIN TOMORROW...:

Dissecting the Marlins-Sox blowout one year later (CHRISTOPHER YOUNG, Portland Phoenix)

When the clock struck midnight last October 25, the Florida Marlins were in the midst of a raucous celebration following their Game-Six whitewash of the New York Yankees, which climaxed the Marlins’ stunning World Series triumph.

But four months earlier, they weren’t so jubilant. Not as such. Because back on the night of June 27, on a picture-perfect summer evening at Fenway Park, the Jack McKeon–led Marlins suffered a defeat of ignominious proportions — a pasting so complete and embarrassing that it painted the Florida baseball team’s professional credentials as somewhat more than dubious.

Indeed, if you had asked a baseball fan following that night’s fiasco — a 25-8 Red Sox victory — which team would likely find itself in the Fall Classic in four months’ time, it would have been a no-brainah: humiliated on a level rarely seen beyond suburban T-ball leagues, the Marlins seemed destined for the cellar.

Instead, against all reasonable odds, the Marlins rebounded from this disgraceful performance to reach the pinnacle of the baseball world. Numerous records were set during the debacle, and those remarkable stats alone provide the gist for today’s look back at that Sox-Fish tilt. But first, let’s set the stage.

DEFLATION WITH TEMPORARILY HIGHER GAS PRICES:

A W-for-President scenario (Larry Kudlow, June 22, 2004, Townhall)

There's a lot of angst these days over the threat of rising inflation. Sensitive market prices are saying don't worry about it, but economists are worrying nonetheless. Should you worry, too? No. Markets are smarter than economists.

Key leading indicators are showing 5 percent to 6 percent real growth of gross domestic product this year, with roughly 2.5 percent inflation. This is quite a good scenario. It's a pro-stock market scenario. It's a pro-growth scenario. It's an anti-budget-deficit scenario. And it's a George W. Bush-for-president scenario.

Liquidity and inflation indicators do not suggest that virulent inflation is headed our way. The mere hint of a slightly less-accommodative policy from the Federal Reserve has driven down the prices of gold and other metals by roughly 10 percent this spring. (Commodities, remember -- in particular gold -- are leading indicators of changes in general price levels.) And even with rising energy prices, the Commodity Research Bureau's broad-based futures index has declined about 6 percent.

True enough, consumer prices have moved up to 3 percent and producer prices have jumped to 5 percent. However, buried inside the latest producer price report, crude materials (less food and energy) have registered a 19 percent annual decline rate over the past three months, picking up the recent commodity weakness. The 10-year Treasury -- another inflation-sensitive indicator -- is hovering around a historically low yield of 4.7 percent.

THE BOYS ON THE BUS:

Look Who’s Feuding: Suddenly it’s Republicans (for a change!) who are at one another’s throats over Iraq. There’s even talk of a postelection neocon purge. The sun sets on national greatness conservatism. (Danny Postel, 07.01.04, American Prospect)

These have been, to state the obvious, a rough couple of months for the Republicans. Talk of the administration's "wheels coming off" abounds. Consider these recent developments: In light of the "house of horrors" at Abu Ghraib, neocon stalwart Max Boot calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to step down. The secretary's "failure to offer his resignation over the Abu Ghraib scandal is sadly typical of the lack of accountability that permeates the U.S. government," Boot thunders in the Los Angeles Times.

# The editors of the National Review, a bedrock of support for the war from day one, call for "An End to Illusion" and urge their readers to "downplay expectations" in Iraq. "The administration," they editorialize, "clearly wasn't ready for the magnitude of the task that rebuilding and occupying Iraq would present."

# Crossfire host Tucker Carlson joins the ever-expanding conservatives-who-have-changed-their-minds-on-Iraq club. "I think it's a total nightmare and disaster," he tells The New York Observer, "and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it. It's something I'll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I'm enraged by it, actually."

# One vice chairman at the American Conservative Union, Donald Devine, declines to shake hands with the president and does not applaud during George W. Bush's keynote address to the group. A Zogby poll shows that Devine is hardly alone, with one out of five Republicans not committed to voting for Bush, which conservative columnist Robert Novak says "could spell defeat in a closely contested election."

# In response to the rolling thunder of right-wing disaffection with the war, William Kristol tells The New York Times that the neoconservatives have "as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives." He fulminates, "If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me … ."

And that's just what's been reported in the press. Republican anxieties and grumblings go considerably deeper...

Posted it. Do they really charge for their stuff now?

AXIS OF GOOD FILES:

Indian PM calls for mutual trust with US in high tech areas (AFP, Jun 21, 2004)

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Monday mutual trust between India and the United States was key to a strategic partnership in high-tech areas, including commerce.

"India and the United States recognise that there is a vast scope for bilateral high technology commerce, including civilian space commerce," Singh said in a speech read out by junior minister Prithvi Raj Chauhan at the start of an India-US Conference on Space Science, Applications and Commerce.

"Strong economic ties in high technology based on mutual trust can greatly supplement our shared values and political interest."

HIGH LIVING & LOW RATINGS:

Inside Air America's troubles: Optimism and shaky finances (JULIA ANGWIN, The Associated Press and SARAH MCBRIDE, The Wall Street Journal, 6/21/04)

On March 30, the night before Air America went on the air, the liberal radio network threw itself a $70,000 party at Manhattan's hip Maritime Hotel. More than 1,000 guests, including Yoko Ono and Tim Robbins, drank red, white and blue vodka cocktails as they toasted the network's bid to challenge the dominance of conservative talk radio.

But behind the scenes, Air America was running out of money. Today several employees say they still haven't been reimbursed for the costs of attending the New York launch. "It was a fun party, until I knew I was paying for it," says Bob Visotcky, Air America's former Los Angeles market manager, who hasn't been reimbursed for his hotel room and flight.

Mr. Visotcky wasn't the only insider in the dark about the company's problems. Many of Air America's investors and executives say they thought the network had raised more than $30 million, based on assurances from its owners, Guam-based entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen and Rex Sorensen. In fact, Air America had raised only $6 million, Mr. Cohen concedes. Within six weeks of the launch, those funds had been spent and the company owed creditors more than $2 million.

When the problems came to light, "we realized that we had all been duped," says David Goodfriend, the company's acting chief operating officer.

A BEEMAN'S MOMENT (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Up, up and away - 62 miles high: In a first, test pilot guides craft out of the atmosphere (John Schwartz, June 22, 2004, NY Times)

A veteran civilian test pilot on Monday became the first human to reach space in a privately financed mission, soaring more than 62 miles above the California desert in a tiny spacecraft that nonetheless encountered some serious in-flight malfunctions before gliding home to a safe and festive landing on a runway here.

Michael Melvill, the diminutive test pilot at the controls of SpaceShipOne, emerged from the cockpit upon his return, climbed atop the plane, spread his arms and let out a primal ‘‘Yeeeeeeee-haaah!’’

That elation was in sharp counterpoint to some moments during the flight.

As it rocketed toward the threshold of space 62 miles up, mission officials later said, the craft unexpectedly rolled 90 degrees, and then a wing flap moved out of alignment, taking the craft off course and forcing Melvill to take swift corrective actions. Those problems limited the ship to a high point of 328,491 feet, project officials said, but still a few hundred feet greater than 100 kilometers (62.2 miles) aove Earth, the altitude that the Federation Aeronautique International recognizes as the boundary of space.

The craft’s pioneering designer, Burt Rutan, who had hoped that SpaceShipOne would reach 360,000 feet, said that the malfunctions were ‘‘the most serious safety problems we have had’’ with the ship, which had flown less eventfully on lower-altitude test flights.

THAT'S IT?:

Ryan papers contain allegations he pressured wife for public sex (MAURA KELLY LANNAN, 6/22/04, Associated Press)

Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan pressured his wife, actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, to have sex in clubs while others watched, she charged in custody documents related to their divorce that were released Monday.

The ``Boston Public'' and ``Star Trek: Voyager'' actress said she angered Ryan by refusing. She did acknowledge infidelity on her part, which she said took place after their marriage was irretrievably broken.

In the documents Ryan denied the allegations, saying he had been ``faithful and loyal'' to his wife. [...]

Jeri Lynn Ryan charged during a custody hearing that Ryan took her on surprise trips to New Orleans, New York and Paris in 1998, and that he insisted she go to sex clubs with him on each trip.

She said that after going out to dinner with Ryan in New York, he demanded that she go to a club with him.

``It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling,'' she said.
She said Ryan asked her to perform a sexual act while others watched, and she refused.

She said they left and Ryan apologized to her and said it was out of his system. But then, she said, he took her to Paris and again took her to a sex club.

She said she cried and became physically ill at the club, and her husband got angry with her.

She said she could never get over that incident.

She also accuses him in the papers of being controlling and lying repeatedly throughout the proceedings.

``I did arrange romantic getaways for us, but that did not include the type of activity she described,'' Ryan said in the papers. ``We did go to one avant-garde nightclub in Paris which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return,'' he told the court.

He said he felt bad for their son that she would falsely accuse him and said she said she knew he had political aspirations.

In a statement released Monday evening, Jeri Lynn Ryan made no mention of the allegations, but said she now considered Ryan a good man and loving father.

PICK 2, GET 4?:

Beating Kerry to Punch, Nader Picks a No. 2 (MARK GLASSMAN, 6/22/04, NY Times)

Ralph Nader, who twice ran for president on the Green Party ticket, chose as his running mate on Monday a member of that party. The selection rekindled his association with the Greens and raised the outside possibility that they might endorse him and thereby put him on the ballot in 22 states and here in Washington.

Mr. Nader's choice, Peter Miguel Camejo, 64, was a candidate for governor of California in 2003 and the second-most-popular presidential candidate in the Green Party primaries this year.

But no sooner had Mr. Nader announced Mr. Camejo's selection in Washington than he upstaged it by saying that he would accept the party's endorsement if offered.

He said he would continue to run as an independent but welcomed support from alternative parties because his campaign, he said, aimed to be "an ecumenical gathering of third parties."

The Green Party endorsed Mr. Nader in 1996 and 2000, and many members have indicated that they are ready to do so again at the 2004 Presidential Nominating Convention in Milwaukee, which begins on Wednesday. Mr. Camejo will attend and speak on Mr. Nader's behalf.

MORE:
The Men Who Defeated John Kerry?: Ralph Nader`s running mate, Peter Camejo, is a self-avowed "Watermelon": Green on the outside, Red on the inside. And that may mean trouble for the Democrats. (Lowell Ponte, 6/22/04, FrontPage)

[E]ven though Nader decided to run in 2004, Democrats for a time believed they had dodged a bullet when he refused to seek the Green Party's official nomination. This has opened the door in Milwaukee for Democratic Party ally David Cobb to grab the Green brass ring himself and become the 2004 Green Party candidate.

A lawyer-activist from the shrimpboat village of San Leon, Texas, David Cobb got into third party politics when Nader asked him to manage the Green Party 2000 campaign in Texas. Cobb has traveled to dozens of states courting support from Green Party leaders, but he has fallen short of enough support among the 2,000 expected activists gathering Wednesday in Milwaukee to win outright. Unlike Nader, he has zero name recognition and zero support outside the Green Party itself -- and hence has no hope of approaching the 2.8 million votes that long-famous Ralph Nader got while running as a Green in 2000.

Nader this year is asking not for the Green Partyís nomination but for its "endorsement." His goal is to go beyond the limits of one party and get on the ballot lines of several parties. Nader already has such endorsement and potential ballot access from the Reform Party in up to seven states, including Florida, where an April American Research Group poll found that Nader would win 3 percent, enough to push Bush above Kerry by 46-45 percent. (The Democrats, needless to say, are using everything in their bag of dirty tricks to keep him off state ballots.)

Cobb has pledged not to run a Green campaign in as many as 17 states where he might cause Democrat candidate Kerry to lose. He is, in effect, promising if nominated to turn the Green Party from a genuine political party into just one more leftist auxiliary of the Democratic Party, into another Emilyís List, Sierra Club or MoveOn.org. If nominated, Cobb has pledged to neuter and neutralize the Green Party, removing any reason the Democratic Party might have for including Green Party policies in its platform. Cobb would offer the Green Party as a salad course to be devoured and absorbed by the Democratic Party.

Nader, by contrast, has already exerted serious pressure on Kerry not to move right-ward (that is, to the center). But from the point of view of a hard-Left Green Party "progressive," Kerry is already center-right, a politician who voted for the war in Iraq and has not backed away from that vote. Kerry has admitted committing war crimes and atrocities against women and children himself in Vietnam. Kerry also supported President Bill Clintonís international trade agreements including NAFTA, which according to leftists exploit foreign workers, pollute the global environment and send unionized American jobs to non-union workers overseas. How can any serious Green Party delegate in Milwaukee vote for David Cobb, knowing that Cobb has pledged to help secure votes and victory for the likes of Kerry?

The dynamics of the Green convention in Milwaukee -- a left-wing labor town that proudly hosted the national convention of the Communist Party USA three years ago-- changed dramatically on Monday with Ralph Naderís selection of his running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo.

!FLOW !FLOW !FLOW:

The Allies Must Step Up (Ivo Daalder and Robert Kagan, June 20, 2004, Washington Post)

One would think, therefore, that the new U.N. consensus on Iraq would offer real hope not only for putting Iraq on the right track but also for healing some of the rifts between the United States and its European allies. France and Germany demanded a significant U.N. role, and they've gotten it. They demanded a rapid turnover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, and they got that, too. With the two countries having gotten their way in the negotiations on the resolution, the time has come for them to pitch in and join in the effort to build a peaceful, stable, democratic future for Iraq. After all, French, German and other European officials have insisted all along that the success or failure of Iraq is as much a vital interest for them as for the United States. They've also insisted, understandably, that if the United States wanted their help, it would have to give them a say over policy in Iraq.

Unfortunately, now that the Bush administration has finally acquiesced to their requests, it appears that France and Germany are refusing to fulfill their end of the bargain. Leaders of both countries have declared they will not send troops to assist in Iraq under any circumstances. Still more troubling was French President Jacques Chirac's declaration at the Group of Eight summit last week that he opposed any NATO role in Iraq, even though the resolution France supported explicitly calls on "Member States and international and regional organizations to contribute assistance to the multinational force, including military forces."

The positions staked out by the French and German governments are an abdication of international responsibility.

OBLIGATORY FASCIST REFERENCE:

AUDIENCE GASPS AS JUDGE LIKENS ELECTION OF BUSH TO RISE OF IL DUCE: 2nd Circuit’s Calabresi Also Compares Bush’s Rise to That of Hitler (JOSH GERSTEIN, 6/21/04, The New York Sun)

A prominent federal judge has told a conference of liberal lawyers that President Bush’s rise to power was similar to the accession of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler.

“In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United States…somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power.That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put somebody in power,” said Guido Calabresi, a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan.

“The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy,” Judge Calabresi continued, as the allusion drew audible gasps from some in the luncheon crowd Saturday at the annual convention of the American Constitution Society.

“The king of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had not won an election, and make him prime minister. That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in. I am not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual,” the judge said.

Judge Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School, said Mr. Bush has asserted the full prerogatives of his office, despite his lack of a compelling electoral mandate from the public.

“When somebody has come in that way, they sometimes have tried not to exercise much power. In this case, like Mussolini, he has exercised extraordinary power. He has exercised power, claimed power for himself; that has not occurred since Franklin Roosevelt who, after all, was elected big and who did some of the same things with respect to assertions of power in times of crisis that this president is doing,” he said.

IT'S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE AT DAWN WE SLEPT (via Eric Timmons & Charlie Herzog):

The End of Power: Without American hegemony the world would likely return to the dark ages. (NIALL FERGUSON, June 21, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the one of the ninth century. For the world is roughly 25 times more populous, so that friction between the world's "tribes" is bound to be greater. Technology has transformed production; now societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of mineral oil that are known to be finite. Technology has changed destruction, too: Now it is possible not just to sack a city, but to obliterate it.

For more than two decades, globalization has been raising living standards, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. Deglobalization--which is what a new Dark Age would amount to--would lead to economic depression. As the U.S. sought to protect itself after a second 9/11 devastated Houston, say, it would inevitably become a less open society. And as Europe's Muslim enclaves grow, infiltration of the EU by Islamist extremists could become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to breaking point. Meanwhile, an economic crisis in China could plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that have undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out, and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad.

The worst effects of the Dark Age would be felt on the margins of the waning great powers. With ease, the terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers and cruise liners while we concentrate our efforts on making airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in Korea and Kashmir; perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East.

The prospect of an apolar world should frighten us a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the U.S. is to retreat from the role of global hegemon--its fragile self-belief dented by minor reversals--its critics must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony. The alternative to unpolarity may not be multipolarity at all. It may be a global vacuum of power. Be careful what you wish for.

DON'T THINK, LEARN:

Mass Men? (Paul J. Cella, 06/21/2004, Tech Central Station) 

It is interesting question to contemplate: does education, in the modern sense, make a man more or less susceptible to propaganda, which I define here as mendacious manipulation of the mind? The conventional answer is, of course, less -- but the more I think on that convention the less I am convinced by it. [...]

[John Henry] Newman thought, very sensibly, that universities ought to teach students what is good, true and beautiful. But the whole edifice of modern education, to which, by and large, most Conservatives have conceded, is debased by an utilitarian ethos that has cast such ideas from its compass; this, in part, because our shared ideas about the Good and the True have fragmented, leaving only worldly success as the standard. If men cannot agree on what is good, the unspoken argument goes, at least they can agree on what is profitable or successful.
 
Yet there is no utilitarian method of resistance against propaganda short of the cultivation of the intellect. There is no easy formula; no heuristic shortcut. That resistance must be active and individual; it cannot be passive and general. When people are told blithely that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal revived the American economy from the Depression, they must have ready in their minds the contrary fact that it did little of the sort; that, rather, it was not until the War began that any sustained revival occurred. But when they are elsewhere told that war is a positive good for a nation's economy, they must have ready the contrary fact that no enterprise dedicated to massive destruction can possibly be the cause of a real growth of wealth.* The work of propaganda is too multifarious, too subtle, too ubiquitous to suffer neat shorthand methods of inoculation. To defy this empire of influence requires vigorous, ably-trained intellects.

Ortega y Gasset well understood the limitations of the masses:

WE take it, then, that there has happened something supremely paradoxical, but which was in truth most natural; from the very opening-out of the world and of life for the average man, his soul has shut up within him. Well, then, I maintain that it is in this obliteration of the average soul that the rebellion of the masses consists, and in this in its turn lies the gigantic problem set before humanity to-day.

Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-men can have recourse. There is no culture where there are no principles of legality to which to appeal. There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred.  There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognise the necessity of justifying the work of art.

When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

Albert Jay Nock thought the best one could hope for was to reach the Remnant

What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians. But it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct, and because such people make up the great, the overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man--be he high or lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper--gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence, knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. . . .

As things now stand, Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last, and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. . . .

The main trouble with this [mass-man approach] is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples, if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen. . . .

Indeed, as Ralph Adams Cram pointed out, never mind being educable, most folk are barely human beings:

We do not behave like human beings because most of us do not fall within that classification as we have determined it for ourselves, since we do not measure up to standard. And thus:

With our invincible—and most honourable but perilous—optimism we gauge humanity by the best it has to show. From the bloody riot of cruelty, greed and lust we cull the bright figures of real men and women. Pharaoh Akhenaten, King David, Pericles and Plato, Buddha and Confucius and Lao Tse, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and Virgil, Abder-Rahman of Cordoba, Charlemagne and Roland; St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Louis; Godfrey de Bouillon, Saladin, Richard Coeur de Lion; Dante, Leonardo, St. Thomas Aquinas, Ste. Jeanne d'Arc, Sta. Teresa, Frederick II, Otto the Great, St. Ferdinand of Spain, Chaucer and Shakespeare, Strafford and Montrose and Mary of Scotland, Washington, Adams and Lee. These are but a few key names; fill out the splendid list for yourselves. By them we unconsciously establish our standard of human beings.

Now to class with them and the unrecorded multitude of their compeers, the savage and ignorant mob beneath, or its leaders and mouthpieces, is both unjust and unscientific. What kinship is there between St. Francis and John Calvin; the Earl of Strafford and Thomas Crumwell; Robert E. Lee and Trotsky; Edison and Capone? None except their human form. They of the great list behave like our ideal of the human being; they of the ignominious sub-stratum do not—because they are not. In other words, the just line of demarcation should be drawn, not between Neolithic Man and the anthropoid ape, but between the glorified and triumphant human being and the Neolithic mass which was, is now and ever shall be.

What I mean is this, and I will give you this as a simile. Some years ago I was on the Island of Hawaii and in the great crater of Kilauea on the edge of the flaming pit of Halemaumau. For once the pit was level full of molten lava that at one end of this pit, at the iron edge of old lava, rose swiftly from the lowest depths, then slid silently, a viscous field of lambent cherry colour, along the length of the great pit, to plunge and disappear as silently, only to return and rise again, when all was to happen once more. Indeterminate, homogeneous, it was an undifferentiated flood, except for one thing. As it slid silkily onward it "fountained" incessantly. That is to say, from all over its surface leaped high in the air slim jets of golden lava that caught the sun and opened into delicate fireworks of falling jewels, beautiful beyond imagination.

Such I conceive to be the pattern of human life. Millennium after millennium this endless flood of basic raw material sweeps on. It is the everlasting Neolithic Man, the same that it was five or ten thousand years B.C. It is the matrix of the human being, the stuff of which he is made. It arises from the unknown and it disappears in the unknown, to return again and again on itself. And always it "fountains" in fine personalities, eminent and of historic record, or obscure yet of equal nobility, and these are the "human beings" on whose personality, character and achievements we establish our standard.

The basic mass, the raw material out of which great and fine personalities are made, is the same today as it was before King Zoser of Egypt and the first architect, Imhotep, set the first pyramid stones that marked the beginning of our era of human culture. Neolithic it was and is, and there has been no essential change in ten thousand years, for it is no finished product, but raw material and because of its potential, of absolute value. We do not realize this, for it is not obvious to the eye since all that greatness has achieved in that period is as free for the use of contemporary Neolithic Man as it is for those who have emerged into the full stature of humanity. Free and compulsory education, democratic government and universal suffrage, and the unlimited opportunities of industrial civilization have clothed him with the deceptive garments of equality, but underneath he is forever the same. It is not until we are confronted in our own time with a thing like the original Bolshevik reign of terror, the futility of popular government, not only national but as we see it close at home in the sort of men that we choose to govern us in our cities, our state legislatures, the national Congress; in the bluntness of intellect and lack of vision in big business and finance, or when we read Mr. Mencken's "Americana" or consider the monkey-shines of popular evangelists, "comic strips", dance- and bicycle- and Bible-reading marathons, that we are awakened to a realization of the fact that there is something wrong with our categories.

Those that live in these things that they have made are not behaving like the human beings we have chosen for ourselves out of history as determinants of that entity, and this for the reason that they still are the veritable men of the Neolithic age that no camouflage of civilization can change.

Perhaps we have set our standard too high. Perhaps we should, in accordance with the alleged principles of Mr. Jefferson, count the mob-man as the standard human being; but since the gulf that separates him from the ideal we have made for ourselves is too vast to be bridged by any social, political or biological formula, this would force us back on the Nietzschean doctrine of the Superman which, personally, I reject. It seems to me much more fitting to accept our proved ideal as the true type of human being, counting all else as the potent material of creation.

I cannot blind myself to the fact that if what I have said is taken seriously it will probably seem revolting, if not grotesque and even impious. I do not mean it to be any of these things, nor does it seem so to me. Put into few words, and as inoffensively as possible, all I mean is that the process of creation is continuous. That as the "first man" was said to have been created out of the dust of the earth, so this creation goes on today as it ever has. As this same "dust of the earth" may have been Neolithic or more probably Paleolithic sub-man, so today the formative material is of identical nature and potency—but it is still, as then, the unformed, unquickened, primitive or Neolithic matter. Within its own particular sphere it is invaluable, indispensable, but we treat it unfairly when, through our vaporous theorizing we are led to pitchfork it into an alien sphere where it cannot function properly, and where it is untrue to itself, and by its sheer weight of numbers and deficiency of certain salutary inhibitions, is bound to negative the constructive power of the men of light and leading, while reducing the normal average to the point of ultimate disaster.

If there is any modicum of truth in what I have said I must leave to you the noting of those implications that must follow in respect to the doctrine and workings of democracy as these are manifested today in society, politics and religion.

And now, in these last days we stand aghast at the portent of our own Gotterdammerung. The high gods we had revered and before whom we had made sacrifice of so much of the best we had, show thin and impotent, or vanish in the flame of disaster. Political and social democracy, with their plausible devices and panaceas; popular sovereignty, the Protestant religion of the masses; the technological triumphs that were to emancipate labour and redeem the world; all the multiple manifestations of a free and democratic society fail of their predicted issue, and we find ourselves lapped in confusion and numb with disappointment and chagrin.

I suggest that the cause of comprehensive failure and the bar to recovery is the persistence of the everlasting Neolithic Man and his assumption of universal control.

If it's too much to expect schools to make students human it's obviously unrealistic to expect them to train intellects. Let them restrain themselves to the simplest of pedagogic functions, to instructing students in the rudiments of Western Civilization. As Alfred North Whitehead said:

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

A PERFECT COUNTERPOINT TO THE JEWISH MYSTICISM

Piper adds Madonna's material skirl (Angie Brown, Scotsman, June 22nd, 2004)

WHEN Lorne Cousin received a voicemail from Madonna on his home phone asking him to call her, the Edinburgh lawyer thought his friends were playing a practical joke.

So the 31-year-old got the surprise of his life when the very same global megastar answered the return call and invited him to play his bagpipes on stage with her during the artist’s five month Reinvention world tour.

For months Mr Cousin was ordered to remain quiet about the exciting proposal - even suffering a scare when news reports mistakenly said another Scottish piper had been chosen to play on the tour.

However, following reassurances from Madonna that she wanted the 6ft 1in lawyer to star in her shows until October, Mr Cousin has now taken leave from his job with Edinburgh law firm Turcan Connell to appear on stage with the world famous singer.

A gentleman was once defined as someone who knows how to play the bagpipes, but doesn’t.

SOMEBODY IS SPOILING FOR A FIGHT

Royal Navy team is seized by Iran (Michael Smith and Behzad Farsian, The Telegraph, June 22nd, 2004)

Iran seized eight Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel in three patrol boats on the Shatt al Arab waterway yesterday, claiming that they had strayed across the border with Iraq.

The boats, which were being delivered to the Iraqi riverine patrol service, were flying the White Ensign. They were travelling up the waterway towards Basra.

Teheran said: "British boats entered territorial waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran and officials of the naval force, in accordance to its laws, seized the boats and arrested the eight crew members aboard.

"Interrogation of those detained will continue until the matter is clarified."

An Iranian Arabic-language television station which broadcasts to the mainly Shia population of southern Iraq said the Royal Navy personnel had "confessed that they have made a mistake".

British sources in Baghdad appeared to confirm that the boats had crossed into Iranian territorial waters in the waterway, which has long been a matter of contention between Iran and Iraq

There was immediate speculation that the arrests were linked to the row over Iran's nuclear programme.

The Iranians were infuriated after Britain helped to draft a highly critical resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, condemning Teheran's failure to co-operate fully with international inspections.

YOU CAN'T REALLY GO WRONG WITH SUCH INGREDIENTS (via Rick Turley):

Pork choc on the menu in Ukraine (Helen Fawkes, 6/21/04, BBC)

Dasha prods the 's' shaped chocolate bar in front of her.

You can understand why she's in no rush to eat it - the Ukrainian student has just been served pork fat covered in chocolate.

Chocolate salo: Salty on the inside, sweet on the outside

"It's salty on the inside and very sweet on the outside. It's unusual yes, but it's completely disgusting," says Dasha Khabarova.

Forget deep-fried Mars bar. One of the unhealthiest snacks in the world can now be found in Ukraine.

For years people here have loved pork fat, known as salo.

Normally, small slices of the white fat are eaten with black bread, raw garlic and vodka.

But this new twist is designed to appeal to Ukraine's love of all things fatty.

"DEUTSCHLAND IS HAPPY AND GAY":

Against Happiness (JIM HOLT, 6/20/04, NY Times Magazine)

Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly enough, happy people tend to be nasty, too.

Such (allowing for a little journalistic caricature) were the findings reported in last month's issue of Psychological Science. Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments -- like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he's a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody's sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ''everything is fine'' attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes -- including malicious ones.

The news that a little evil lurks inside happiness is disquieting. After all, we live in a nation whose founding document holds the pursuit of happiness to be a God-given right. True to that principle, the United States consistently ranks near the top in international surveys of happiness. In a 1994 survey of 41 countries, only the supposedly dour Swedes surpassed us in ''positive affect.'' (Elaborate scales have been invented to measure individual happiness, but researchers admit that difficulties remain; for example, a person is more likely to express satisfaction with his life on a sunny day than on a cloudy one.) Of course, happiness has always had its skeptics. Thinkers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn have criticized it as a shallow and selfish goal. But the discovery that happiness is linked to prejudice suggests a different kind of case against it. Does happiness, whether desirable or not in itself, lead to undesirable consequences? In other words, could it be bad for you, and for society?

It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

ANONYMITY ISN'T PRIVACY:

High Court Rules on Police ID Requests: Decision Sides With Nev. Law That Requires Compliance (Gina Holland, June 21, 2004, The Associated Press)

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional right to refuse to tell police their names.

The 5-4 decision frees the government to arrest and punish people who won't cooperate by revealing their identity.

The decision was a defeat for privacy rights advocates who argued that the government could use this power to force people who have done nothing wrong, other than catch the attention of police, to divulge information that may be used for broad data base searches.

ZERO CRED:

Kerry and the Mark of McCain (Colbert I. King, June 19, 2004, Washington Post)

So what if picking McCain would have meant turning to the right and away from moderate Democratic candidates? The Kerry camp believes Democrats are willing to do -- or tolerate -- anything to break George Bush's hold on the White House. Kerry insiders are counting on differences with the Bush administration on jobs, health care and tax cuts to keep Democratic voters in Kerry's camp.

Besides, goes the thinking, so what if grass-roots Democrats are disenchanted with Kerry? Where do they turn? To the party of Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld?

That, by the way, was the thinking of Maryland lieutenant governor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend two years ago when she tapped a former Republican, Adm. Charles Larson, to be her running mate. She, too, thought a prominent ex-military officer and longtime Republican on her ticket would appeal to conservative voters who weren't likely to look her way. It turned out, however, that Larson, a former Naval Academy classmate of McCain and a supporter of McCain's GOP presidential bid in 2000, was of little help to Townsend at the polls.

Her party's most loyal constituency, African Americans, hurt by her snub of better Democratic candidates and angered by her taking them for granted, failed to turn out on Election Day as she needed. [...]

One more thing. Despite what Kerry may have been told by his handlers and fundraisers, his candidacy is not a sure thing in communities where concerns for justice, civil rights and economic empowerment are live issues. Townsend found that out for herself. Kerry needs to keep that in mind. His dalliance with McCain didn't win him any points in precincts that can make or break him in November.

CAN'T GET TOOTHPASTE BACK IN A TUBE:

PLAN B: As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds. (SEYMOUR M. HERSH, 2004-06-28, New Yorker)

[Patrick Clawson, of the Institute for Near East Policy] told me that Israel’s overwhelming national-security concern must be Iran. Given that a presence in Kurdistan would give Israel a way to monitor the Iranian nuclear effort, he said, “it would be negligent for the Israelis not to be there.”

At the moment, the former American senior intelligence official said, the Israelis’ tie to Kurdistan “would be of greater value than their growing alliance with Turkey. ‘We love Turkey but got to keep the pressure on Iran.’” The former Israeli intelligence officer said, “The Kurds were the last surviving group close to the United States with any say in Iraq. The only question was how to square it with Turkey.”

There may be no way to square it with Turkey. Over breakfast in Ankara, a senior Turkish official explained, “Before the war, Israel was active in Kurdistan, and now it is active again. This is very dangerous for us, and for them, too. We do not want to see Iraq divided, and we will not ignore it.” Then, citing a popular Turkish proverb—“We will burn a blanket to kill a flea”—he said, “We have told the Kurds, ‘We are not afraid of you, but you should be afraid of us.’” (A Turkish diplomat I spoke to later was more direct: “We tell our Israeli and Kurdish friends that Turkey’s good will lies in keeping Iraq together. We will not support alternative solutions.”)

“If you end up with a divided Iraq, it will bring more blood, tears, and pain to the Middle East, and you will be blamed,” the senior Turkish official said. “From Mexico to Russia, everybody will claim that the United States had a secret agenda in Iraq: you came there to break up Iraq. If Iraq is divided, America cannot explain this to the world.” The official compared the situation to the breakup of Yugoslavia, but added, “In the Balkans, you did not have oil.” He said, “The lesson of Yugoslavia is that when you give one country independence everybody will w