NEED ANY HELP LOADING THAT GUN?:

The Grassroots Can Save Democrats: Howard Dean paved the way to future victories. (JOE TRIPPI, November 30, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

The staggering defeat of the Democratic Party and its ever-accelerating death spiral weren't obvious from the election results. Two factors masked the extent of the party's trouble. Without the innovation of Internet-driven small-donor fund-raising and a corresponding surge in support from the youngest voters, John Kerry would have suffered a dramatically larger defeat. And the true magnitude of the Democrats' abject failure at the polls in 2004 would have been more clearly revealed.

Mr. Kerry raised nearly half of his war chest over the Internet. He was so successful at this that he actually outspent the Bush campaign. But it was the outsider campaign of Howard Dean, reviled by most of the Democratic establishment, that pioneered the use of the Internet to raise millions in small contributions; Mr. Kerry was just the beneficiary as the party nominee. And it was the risk-taking Dean campaign that forced the risk-averse Kerry campaign to opt out of the public financing system. Had that decision not been forced on Mr. Kerry, he would have been badly outspent by George Bush; he would not have been competitive at all throughout the long summer of 2004.

Mr. Kerry's lead among young voters hid just how bad Election Day really was for Democrats.

FINAL RED/BLUE SHOWDOWN ALL RED:

Runoff Election Features Pro-Lifers (Keith Peters, 11/30/04, Citizen Link)

Two Louisiana congressional races will be determined in a runoff election this Saturday. What's interesting is all four of the candidates claim to be pro-life.

In the 3rd District race, Republican Billy Tauzin III is running against Democrat Charlie Melancon, while in the 7th District, Dr. Charles Boustany, a Republican, faces Democratic state Sen. Willie Mount.

Kristen Day, who heads the group Democrats for Life, strongly endorses both Democrats.

"I think it's very exciting that the last two races of this election season are highlighted by two pro-life Democrats, and we're very pleased to see the party backing them one hundred percent," Day said.

BASE?:

A boost to his base: Cuban-born CEO seen to help Bush's plan to build support among Hispanics for Republican Party (KEN FIREMAN, November 30, 2004, Newsday)

[B]ush's second naming of a Hispanic to a high-profile administration post since his re-election will have inevitable political ramifications, according to Fernando Guerra, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The selection of Gutierrez, a Cuban-American, to replace Donald Evans followed Bush's Nov. 10 nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.

"It's the second cabinet-level appointment, and these are jobs not traditionally associated with Latinos," Guerra said.

"What Bush is communicating is, 'I'm appointing these guys because of substance, not symbolism,'" Guerra said. "Many Latinos are saying, 'We're beyond symbolism. Let's start dealing with substance.' This communicates it."

BET A MILLION?:

Reed to certify Rossi as winner of governor's race: Democrats struggle to find money for a costly hand recount (CHRIS MCGANN, November 30, 2004, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

Republican Dino Rossi becomes Washington's governor-elect when Secretary of State Sam Reed certifies the election this morning, and the Democrats have until Friday to demand a costly hand recount -- which right now they don't have the money for. [...]

Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for the Democrats, said that at this point, they're not even close to having enough to pay for the statewide hand recount.

"We budgeted to end on November 3rd," Brost said. "We now have a week in which to raise $700,000.

"We think a statewide recount is the best way to ensure every vote is counted," Brost said. "But at the same time, this could cost more than $1 million before it's over."

UNNATURAL CAUSES (via The Other Brother)

Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies (TOBY STERLING, 11/30/04, AP)

A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

IF NOT TODAY, TOMORROW:

The West's Moment: Protesters in Ukraine sang a new anthem: Vstavay! Rise up! But Moscow didn't like it, and some warn of a new Cold War. Shades of 1989? (Michael Meyer, 12/06/04, Newsweek International)

It's hard to escape the echo of 1989, the year the Berlin wall fell and oppressed peoples rose up to unseat communist dictators across Eastern Europe. And so it seemed last week in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested the results of a presidential election widely considered to have been rigged. In scenes reminiscent of yester-year's mass uprisings in Leipzig and Berlin, or the joyous Velvet Revolution in Prague, "people power" was once again on the march. Students, pensioners and middle-aged workers braved snow and freezing temperatures in extraordinary solidarity. They shouted Svoboda, or "freedom," and "We are the people!" They waved the blue-and-yellow flag of their country amid a sea of orange banners and ribbons—the color of the opposition, a symbol of fire within and without. Rock stars sang a pop hit that, overnight, became a national anthem: Vstavay! Rise up!

The lines could not be more clearly drawn, nor could the stakes be much higher—for Ukraine or the West.

MORE:
Ukraine president calls for fresh elections (Helen Womack, December 1, 2004, The Age)

Ukraine looked close to winning the right to fresh presidential elections after its outgoing head of state, Leonid Kuchma, conceded a new vote might be the best way to avoid civil conflict in the divided nation.

The Supreme Court, whose 21 judges are considering opposition complaints of fraud in the November 21 election, has still to give a verdict.

The European Union has said a rerun would be the ideal outcome, and even Russia, which originally backed Mr Kuchma's chosen successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, appears to have withdrawn its objections to another election.

WELL, WE'VE ALL RULED OUT ONE THEORY:

How the Big Freeze Killed the Buffalo (William Underhill, 12/06/04, Newsweek International)

Picture a bison. He's curly-headed, low-slung and huge. The male, the largest land animal in North America, may stand two meters high and tip the scales at one ton. Despite this formidable profile, the bison was no match for humans. In the 19th century, hunters brought ecocataclysm to the Great Plains, slashing bison numbers from around 60 million to fewer than 1,000.

Maybe Nature should share the guilt. Scientists now say that the earliest bison population in North America fell victim to a more contemporary scourge: climate change. Alan Cooper, a molecular evolutionist at Oxford University, blames a big freeze, not man, for driving the species to near extinction in prehistory.

W OUTLASTS ANOTHER FOE:

Mfume quitting as head of NAACP (Associated Press, November 30, 2004)

Saying he needs a break, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume announced Tuesday that he's stepping down as the head of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group.

The organization's legal counsel, Dennis Hayes, will serve as interim president while a national search is conducted.

IDEAL SPOT FOR A DEMOCRAT:

Ridge resigns Homeland Security post (Associated Press, November 30, 2004)

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, whose name became synonymous with color-coded terror alerts and tutorials to the public about how to prepare for possible attack, is resigning, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Ridge submitted his resignation in writing to President Bush on Tuesday morning, said officials who confirmed the departure only on grounds of anonymity. [...]

Among those mentioned as possible candidates for Ridge's replacement are Bernard Kerik, interim Minister of the Interior for Iraq and former New York City police commissioner, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt and White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend. Others are also believed to be interested in the job, including Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security in the Homeland Security Department.

SCALING ZION:

A pro-Israel group teaches us a lesson about Evangelicals and ourselves: Disagree all you want with the evangelicals, but give them their due (Jonathan Tobin, 11/30/04, Jewish World Review)

Can a group number as many as 70 million individuals fly under the radar? Outside of the context of politics, Christian evangelicals are virtually invisible in American culture, except to be laughed at or feared.

Just as the image of the Jew can be a dangerously misleading generalization, the same is true for the image of the evangelical.

Listen to many Jews talk about conservative Christians and you'd think they're discussing the Taliban.

This disconnect between image and reality is of no small importance in the aftermath of a presidential election in which evangelicals and "moral values" voters are said to have provided the margin of victory for President Bush.

DO THESE PEOPLE TURN DOWN THE 401K's THEIR BOSSES OFFER THEM?:

Social Security is Not in Crisis (Dean Baker, 11/30/04, TomPaine.com)

In the wake of his election victory , President Bush said that cutting Social Security will be at the top of his second-term agenda. He supports a proposal from his Social Security commission that hits workers with large cuts in their Social Security benefits. The proposed cuts are phased in over time, but an average wage earner who is 20 today will see their total Social Security benefits cut by close to $160,000 over their retirement. They will have the option of trying to retrieve a small portion of these cuts by seeking higher returns in the stock market, with the additional risk this implies.

Virtually everyone agrees that Social Security is a great system.

WAITING FOR THE MAYOR:

Will she or won't she? (Paul Bedard, 11/30/04, Washington Whispers, US News)

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. Is there any other name that creates the political buzz that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's does? Maybe not, but some friends and allies advise against placing bets that the former first lady will be the nation's 44th president. They report that the New York Democrat isn't so sure about a run for the White House. "She's not running," says one supporter. The thinking in the "don't run" campaign is that Clinton is well aware of the partisan feelings she generates. "People love her or they hate her," says an adviser. "There's very little gray area to gain voters in."

AND BIGGER...:

Third-Quarter Economic Growth Set at 3.9% (Jeannine Aversa, November 30, 2004, Associated Press)

The economy -- helped out by more brisk consumer and business spending -- grew at an annual rate of 3.9 percent in the third quarter, a performance that was stronger than previously thought.

The new reading on gross domestic product, which is based on additional data, was up from the 3.7 percent growth rate first estimated for the July-to-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

"I think the economy has found its groove," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

AND CHEAPER...:

The Oil Bubble II: Listen for the “pop.” (Frederick P. Leuffer, November 30, 2004, National Review)

In my column last month (“The Oil Bubble: Set to Burst?”) I discussed the speculative factors that pushed oil prices to all-time highs. I pointed out that despite fear of supply outages stemming from terrorism and a series of odd events, virtually every fear so far has gone unrealized: Terrorism has not removed a single barrel of oil production. Oil output in Saudi Arabia, instead of falling due to terrorism as some have feared, has increased by more than 1 million barrels a day. OPEC has steadily increased production and consistently outpaced analyst estimates of its capacity. Production at Russian oil giant Yukos has not fallen. And, despite a difficult war in Iraq, production in that country has averaged 2 million barrels a day this year — a 68 percent year-over-year increase. The only meaningful supply interruption to hit the oil industry this year was four back-to-back hurricanes in the southeastern U.S.

All of these non-shocks are sucking some of the speculative air out of oil prices. In the past three weeks, despite no significant developments on the macro front, oil prices have fallen by more than $9 a barrel to around $46. There was a similar correction at the end of August when fears of a terrorist attack during the Republican convention went unrealized. The “fear” premium in oil, approximately $15 a barrel currently, fluctuates with events, but I continue to believe that the absence of a significant prolonged supply outage will gradually push speculative money out of oil.

SORRY SIR, IT'S PERFUNCTORY:

'Like visiting your in-laws' (Greg Weston, 11/30/04, Ottawa Sun)

Canadians who might be wondering what Americans think of us should ponder no more: Generally speaking, they don't.

Even White House reporters expecting the usual "trip briefing" on Canada-U.S. issues were surprised by what they got: Zip.

"It is quite unusual not to have a briefing," said one senior White House correspondent who called yesterday, wondering if we had any idea why Bush was coming to Canada. (We had to say, sorry, can't help there.)

The best the White House press corps could make of it, she said, is "it's kind of like visiting your in-laws -- you go because it's what you do. It is sort of a perfunctory visit."

IF THEY'RE DOING WHAT WE DEMANDED OF THEM HOW IS OUR IDEA NOT WINNING? (via Paul Cella):

Understanding Terror Networks (Marc Sageman, November 1, 2004, FPRI)

We all know that Al Qaeda is a violent, Islamist, revivalist social movement, held together by a common vision of a Salafi state. Al Qaeda proper is just a small organization within this larger social movement. We often mistake the social movement for Al Qaeda and vice versa because for about five years, Al Qaeda had more or less control of the social movement.

The segment that poses a threat to the United States came out of Egypt. Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan. In 1991, Algeria and Egypt complained to Pakistan that it was harboring terrorists, so Pakistan expelled them. Thus the most militant of these terrorists made their way to Khartoum, where they were invited by Hassan al-Turabi of the National Islamic Front in Khartoum.

The Khartoum period is critical, because what these violent Salafists basically want to do is to create a Salafi state in a core Arab country. Salafi (from Salaf, “ancient ones” or “predecessors” in Arabic) is an emulation, an imitation of the mythical Muslim community that existed at the time of Mohammed and his companion, which Salafists believe was the only fair and just society that ever existed. A very small subset of Salafis, the disciples of Qutb, believe they cannot create this state peacefully through the ballot-box but have to use violence. The utopia they strive for is similar to most utopias in European thought of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, such as the communist classless society.

In Khartoum, the Salafists theorized that the reason they had been unable to overthrow their own government (the “near enemy”) was because it was propped up by the “far enemy”— the United States. So they decided to redirect their efforts and, instead of going after their own government, to attack the “far-enemy.” In 1996, for many reasons, Hassan al- Bashir, the President of Sudan, had to expel Al Qaeda after the imposition of international sanctions, because the Sudanese Government was implicated in the attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995. In August 1996, within two months of returning to Afghanistan, bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on the United States.

The fatwa clearly articulated the new goals of this movement, which were to get the U.S. out of the Middle East so they would be free to overthrow the Saudi monarchy or the Egyptian regime and establish a Salafi state. This remains their goal and is why 9-11 happened. This is why the embassy bombing happened. It’s really not so much to destroy the United States, something they know they cannot do right now. This is all why I put the start of the threat against us at 1996. [...]

Until late 2001, the terror network was the project of al- Turabi, who in the early 1990s had invited all the Muslim terrorists to Khartoum. That’s how Al Qaeda learned about truck bombing from Hezbollah. Then when they were expelled from Khartoum, bin Laden had a deal with Mullah Omar where he actually had a monopoly of sanctuaries in Afghanistan — the training camp, housing, funding. Instead of raising their own money, it was much easier to go to bin Laden for it. And so, by his control of training camps, sanctuaries, and funding for five years, bin Laden was able to dominate this movement

But after 2001, when the U.S. destroyed the camps and housing and turned off the funding, bin Laden was left with little control. The movement has now degenerated into something like the internet. Spontaneous groups of friends, as in Madrid and Casablanca, who have few links to any central leadership, are generating sometimes very dangerous terrorist operations, notwithstanding their frequent errors and poor training. What tipped the Madrid group to operation was probably the arrest of some of their friends after the Casablanca bombing. Most of them were Moroccans and the Moroccan government asked the Spaniards to arrest several militants. So the group was activated, wanting to do something. Their inspiration—the document “Jihad al-Iraq”— probably was found on the Web. Six of its 42 pages argued that if there were bombings right before Spanish election, it could effect a change of government and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq, the expulsion of the “far enemy” from a core Arab state. From conception to execution, the operation took about five weeks.

We hear that Al Qaeda plans its attacks for years and years. It may have before 9-11, but not anymore. Operatives in caves simply cannot communicate with people in the field. The network has been fairly well broken by our intelligence services. The network is now self-organized from the bottom up, and is very decentralized. With local initiative and flexibility, it’s very robust. True, two-thirds to three- quarters of the old leaders have been taken out, but that doesn’t mean that we’re home free. The network grows organically, like the Internet. We couldn’t have identified the Madrid culprits, because we wouldn’t have known of them until the first bomb exploded.

So in 2004, Al Qaeda has new leadership. In a way today’s operatives are far more aggressive and senseless than the earlier leaders. The whole network is held together by the vision of creating the Salafi state. A fuzzy, idea-based network really requires an idea-based solution. The war of ideas is very important and this is one we haven’t really started to engage yet.

ONE OF A KIND LOVE AFFAIR:

Congressman: Haredi Jews have 'love affair' with Republicans (Daphna Berman, 11/30/04, Ha'aretz)

The American Jewish community's Orthodox sector has begun a long-term "love affair" with the Republican party, according to a U.S. Congressman speaking Tuesday in Jerusalem.

"What we're seeing is not a flirtation [between the two camps] but rather a serious love affair," said Congressman Bob Beauprez of Colorado.

"Jews one after another have been very open about their support for the President and they backed that up recently at the ballot box."

Beauprez, who is in Israel this week for the Jerusalem Summit conference, said that his party has been "encouraged" by the newfound alliance with a demographic that historically supported the Democratic ticket.

GREAT BLUE HOPE:

'He wants to serve his country' (MICHAEL SNEED, November 30, 2004, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

Mayor Daley's only son, Patrick, has joined the Army during a time of war.

He reports to active duty as an enlisted soldier in the Army's regular airborne infantry.

His activation date: between Christmas and New Year's. His destination: presumably North Carolina's Ft. Bragg. His final destination? It could lead him to Iraq or Afghanistan within a year.

NOTHING EVER GETS MORE EXPENSIVE ANYMORE:

As flat-panel televisions pile up, prices may come down (Eric A. Taub, November 30, 2004, The New York Times)

>While hanging a television on the living-room wall may have captured the imagination of American consumers, it has yet to empty many pocketbooks.

That may soon change as a glut of liquid crystal display flat-panel televisions, called LCDs, enters the market, a result of a boom in new factories.

According to several manufacturers and analysts, the prices for LCD flat-panel televisions will drop in the next year, falling by as much as 30 percent by the end of 2005. The prices of plasma flat-panel televisions are also expected to fall significantly.

AFTER THE DWARF IS TOSSED::

A Dwarf Known as Al Qaeda: The threat posed by the group is hugely overblown. (Dirk Laabs, November 30, 2004, LA Times)

This month, at the BKA's annual conference, Germany's top investigators and international experts discussed what they had discovered since Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda and the international Islamist terror network. The main thing they have learned is that there is less than meets the eye.

Yes, Al Qaeda was once centralized, structured and powerful, but that was before the U.S. pulverized its camps and leadership in Afghanistan.

In other words, this battle in the war on terror might already be over. It's as an ex-CIA agent once said: "I quit the agency at the end of the Cold War because I was tired of politicians making me describe the Soviet Union as a 20-foot giant — when it was really only a dwarf."

RIGHTS COME WITH RESPONSIBILITIES:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraqvote30nov30.story>Debate on Iraq Vote Mirrors Divisions: Shiites, tasting power, reject the delay Sunnis seek. Allawi himself may want a post-Jan. 30 date. (Patrick J. McDonnell and Ashraf Khalil, November 30, 2004, LA Times)

The swirling debate about whether to conduct the parliamentary elections as scheduled despite a simmering insurgency underscores the ethnic, political and religious complexities of the modern Iraqi state.

For more than three decades, Saddam Hussein's Baath Party managed to keep the puzzle together with a ruthless police apparatus that favored Sunnis and tolerated no dissent or meaningful expression of ethnic and religious autonomy. But the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Hussein's regime opened the chance for Iraq's diverse peoples to air their long-repressed — and possibly incompatible — aspirations.

The stakes in the vote are high. Iraqis are to elect a 275-member national assembly that will choose a president and prime minister and oversee the drafting of a constitution. Voters are expected to go to the polls later in 2005 to approve or reject the document.

Sunni Muslims, many of whom view the elections as little more than a means to officially end their supremacy in Iraq, fear that the protracted violence will exclude many of them from voting and thus exacerbate their loss of power. Voter registration, which began Nov. 1 in most of Iraq, has yet to start in Al Anbar province, a Sunni-majority area north and west of Baghdad that has been at the heart of the insurgency.

Behind the Sunni temporizing, many observers argue, is a resolute refusal by some to accept a Shiite-dominated nation. Some fundamentalist Sunni Muslims view Shiites as apostates; others deride them as uneducated hicks beholden to Iranian ayatollahs.

THE TIMESMEN'S ROMANCE WITH TERROR (via Robert Scwartz):

MOVIE REVIEW | 'GUERRILLA: THE TAKING OF PATTY HEARST': Even in the Days of Patty Hearst, It Was the Innocent Who Died (STEPHEN HOLDEN, 11/26/04, NY Times)

What is familiar about this picture? A small group of fanatic terrorists wreak havoc on American soil. Playing an increasingly nervy cat-and-mouse game, they make fools of the F.B.I., which knows next to nothing about who or how many they are. Issuing communiqués whose language is as grandiose as it is inflammatory, they become the focus of a national mediathon. "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!" is one of their favorite mottos.

No, these terrorists aren't members of Al Qaeda. They were a mixed-race group of radical leftists fighting against the Vietnam War, racism and other social ills in the 1970's. Based in the San Francisco area and calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, they kidnapped the 19-year-old newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst on Feb. 4, 1974. They demanded a $300 million ransom in the form of food for the poor and needy. The Hearst family acquiesced. But when the first food giveaway caused riots in San Francisco, the plan was abandoned.

Ms. Hearst later announced that she had joined the radical group and adopted the name Tania. She called herself "a soldier in the people's army." Toting an AK-47, she participated in a robbery at the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco during which two bystanders were shot. Experts were called in to read her lips on the video as she shouted expletives.

She was arrested with three other S.L.A. members in September 1975, found guilty of bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison. After she had served 18 months, President Jimmy Carter ordered her release, and in 2001 President Bill Clinton issued a presidential pardon.

These events, which have faded into obscurity in today's new and scarier age of terrorism, are recounted and brought to life in Robert Stone's remarkable documentary "Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst." In retrospect the group's story is a painful example of the warped idealism of the radical left and its fateful romance with violence. [...]

After fleeing San Francisco for Los Angeles, the S.L.A. finally collapsed in a spectacular four-hour shootout with the police that was seen live on television. Crazy, outrageous and very sad, it all seems so long ago, and it accomplished nothing except the deaths of innocent people. That predatory insect, however you label it, is still very much alive and in a feeding frenzy.

IF IT WERE A COMPUTER GAME YOU'D SEE THE DESIGN:

In Arctic history, warm water (Andrew C. Revkin, November 30, 2004, The New York Times)

The ice-cloaked Arctic Ocean apparently was once a warm, biologically brewing basin so rich in sinking organic material that some scientists examining fresh evidence pulled from a submerged ridge near the North Pole say the seabed may now hold significant oil and gas deposits.

AND LOWER...:

"The China Price" (Business Week, 12/06/04)

"The China price." They are the three scariest words in U.S. industry. In general, it means 30% to 50% less than what you can possibly make something for in the U.S. In the worst cases, it means below your cost of materials. Makers of apparel, footware, electric appliances, and plastics products, which have been shutting U.S. factories for decades, know well the futility of trying to match the China price. It has been a big factor in the loss of 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. Meanwhile, America's deficit with China keeps soaring to new records. It is likely to pass $150 billion this year.

Now, manufacturers and workers who never thought they had to worry about the China price are confronting the new math of the mainland. These companies had once held their own against imports mostly because their businesses required advanced skills, heavy investment, and proximity to customers. Many of these companies are in the small-to-midsize sector, which makes up 37% of U.S. manufacturing. The China price is even being felt in high tech. Chinese exports of advanced networking gear, still at a low level, are already affecting prices. And there's talk by some that China could eventually become a major car exporter.

Multinationals have accelerated the mainland's industrialization by shifting production there, and midsize companies that can are following suit. The alternative is to stay at home and fight -- and probably lose. Ohio State University business professor Oded Shenkar, author of the new book The Chinese Century, hears many war stories from local companies. He gives it to them straight: "If you still make anything labor intensive, get out now rather than bleed to death. Shaving 5% here and there won't work." Chinese producers can make the same adjustments. "You need an entirely new business model to compete."

America has survived import waves before, from Japan, South Korea, and Mexico. And it has lived with China for two decades. But something very different is happening. The assumption has long been that the U.S. and other industrialized nations will keep leading in knowledge-intensive industries while developing nations focus on lower-skill sectors. That's now open to debate. "What is stunning about China is that for the first time we have a huge, poor country that can compete both with very low wages and in high tech," says Harvard University economist Richard B. Freeman. "Combine the two, and America has a problem."

How much of a problem? That's in fierce dispute. On one side, the benefits of the relationship with China are enormous. After years of struggling to crack the mainland market, U.S. multinationals from General Motors (GM ) to Procter & Gamble (PG ) and Motorola (MOT ) are finally reaping rich profits. They're making cell phones, shampoo, autos, and PCs in China and selling them to its middle class of some 100 million people, a group that should more than double in size by 2010. "Our commercial success in China is important to our competitiveness worldwide," says Motorola China Chairman Gene Delaney.

By outsourcing components and hardware from China, U.S. companies have sharply boosted their return on capital. China's trade barriers continue to come down, part of its agreement to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001. Big new opportunities will emerge for U.S. insurers, banks, and retailers. China's surging demand for raw materials and commodities has driven prices up worldwide, creating a windfall for U.S. steelmakers, miners, and lumber companies. The cheap cost of Chinese goods has kept inflation low in the U.S. and fueled a consumer boom that helped America weather a recession and kept global growth on track.

NO LIBERAL SHIBBOLETH LEFT BEHIND:

A city's schools test a new way: School privatization gets a boost from good results in Philadelphia. (Mary Beth McCauley, 11/30/04, CS Monitor)

[I]f privatizing school management has not proven to be the panacea many in Philadelphia had hoped, neither has Edison been the district's undoing, as activists and others warned when the firm was brought in during the rancorous and bitter state takeover of the district in 2002. On the contrary, test scores are up district-wide, and some of the most impressive gains have come in 20 of the toughest schools, those turned over to Edison in a last-ditch effort to jump-start them into performing.

"They've done a superb job with the most difficult schools," said James Nevels, chairman of the state-appointed School Reform Commission, which took over after the school board was disbanded. [...]

Not everyone has been converted. Barbara Goodman, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which fought the partnership, and whose members now staff the Edison schools, credits the district workforce with the gains in performance, and says the PFT favors uniform administration. Lois Yampolsky, a community activist who also fought privatization, still believes profitmaking Edison shouldn't be there, rejecting the company's argument that in public schools everything from transportation to textbooks comes from the private sector - and that there's no reason management shouldn't as well.

BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE:

Is Syria serious about peace with Israel? (Nicholas Blanford, 11/30/04, The Christian Science Monitor)

Syria is indicating with increasing frequency a willingness to resume peace negotiations with archenemy Israel after more than four years of deadlock.

The revival of the Syrian-Israeli track of the Middle East peace process could help deflect the intense pressure Syria is facing from the international community over its policies toward neighboring Lebanon and Iraq. The conclusion of a peace deal would see the return of occupied Syrian territory and open the country to much-needed economic assistance.

JUST ANOTHER STATE:

Push for rule of law in West Bank: The return of noted reformer Nabil Amr to Palestinian politics comes at a crucial juncture. (Ben Lynfield, 11/30/04, CS Monitor)

If the gunmen who shot reformist Palestinian legislator Nabil Amr through the window of his house in July hoped to silence him, they are being disappointed.

Mr. Amr, a vocal critic of the late Yasser Arafat's monopoly on power, was warmly welcomed back to his village of Dura over the weekend after four months of treatment in a German hospital. He immediately lashed out at the Palestinian Authority's failure to arrest anyone in the shooting, and more generally, the absence of daily security for Palestinian citizens.

"I feel I am back to life again," says Amr, a former minister of information. "I'm back from the mouth of death to another stage in my life and I will continue my message and my position and my direction." He defines this as pushing for democracy, building viable institutions, and restructuring the unwieldy and often competing labyrinth of Palestinian security forces into one streamlined organization.

SQUARE DANCE:

A New Order of Religious Freedom (Richard John Neuhaus, February 1992, First Things)

The question of religion’s access to the public square is not first of all a question of First Amendment law. It is first of all a question of understanding the theory and practice of democratic governance. Citizens are the bearers of opinion, including opinion shaped by or espousing religious belief, and citizens have equal access to the public square. In this representative democracy, the state is forbidden to determine which convictions and moral judgments may be proposed for public deliberation. Through a constitutionally ordered process, the people will deliberate and the people will decide.

In a democracy that is free and robust, an opinion is no more disqualified for being “religious” than for being atheistic, or psychoanalytic, or Marxist, or just plain dumb. There is no legal or constitutional question about the admission of religion to the public square; there is only a question about the free and equal participation of citizens in our public business. Religion is not a reified “thing” that threatens to intrude upon our common life. Religion in public is but the public opinion of those citizens who are religious.

As with individual citizens, so also with the associations that citizens form to advance their opinions. Religious institutions may understand themselves to be brought into being by God, but for the purposes of this democratic polity they are free associations of citizens. As such, they are guaranteed the same access to the public square as are the citizens who comprise them. It matters not at all that their purpose is to advance religion, any more than it matters that other associations would advance the interests of business or labor or radical feminism or animal rights or whatever.

For purposes of democratic theory and practice, it matters not at all whether these religious associations are large or small, whether they reflect the views of a majority or minority, whether we think their opinions bizarre or enlightened. What opinions these associations seek to advance in order to influence our common life is entirely and without remainder the business of citizens who freely adhere to such associations. It is none of the business of the state. Religious associations, like other associations, give corporate expression to the opinions of people and, as Mr. Jefferson said, “the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.”

It is to be feared that those who interpret “the separation of church and state” to mean the separation of religion from public life do not understand the theory and practice of democratic governance. Ours is not a secular form of government, if by “secular” is meant indifference or hostility to opinions that are thought to be religious in nature. The civil government is as secular as are the people from whom it derives its democratic legitimacy. No more, no less. Indeed a case can be made-and I believe it to be a convincing case-that the very founding principle that removes opinion from the jurisdiction of the state is itself religious in both historical origin and continuing foundation. Put differently, the foundation of religious freedom is itself religious.

THE WORLD MUST BE SPINNING, 'CAUSE I'M STANDING STILL

Dan got smeared (Bill O'Reilly, New York Daily News, 11/29/4)

Right-wing talk radio in particular pounded Kerry and also bludgeoned Dan Rather for his role in another smear incident - the charges against President Bush about his National Guard service. Again, Rather was found guilty without a fair hearing. Charges that he intentionally approved bogus documents that made Bush look bad were leveled and widely believed. It was chilling.

As a CBS News correspondent in the early '80s, I worked with Rather and have known him for more than 20 years. Listen to me: There is no way on this Earth that he would have knowingly used fake documents on any story.

It may be true that Rather did not vet the information supplied to him by producers, but few anchor people do. They are dependent on other journalists, and this is a huge flaw in the system.

WIDE ANGLE VIEW:

Discerning the Trends: The Prophecy of C. S. Lewis (BreakPoint with Chuck Colson, November 29, 2004)

C. S. Lewis was born on this date in 1898, and forty-one years after his death, one thing has become startlingly clear: This Oxford don was not only a keen apologist but also a true prophet for our postmodern age.

For example, Lewis’s 1947 book, Miracles, was penned before most Christians were aware of the emerging philosophy of naturalism. This is the belief that there is a naturalistic explanation for everything in the universe.

Naturalism undercuts any objective morality, opening the door to tyranny. In his book The Abolition of Man, Lewis warned that naturalism turns humans into objects to be controlled. It turns values into “mere natural phenomena”—which can be selected and inculcated into a passive population by powerful Conditioners. Lewis predicted a time when those who want to remold human nature “will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique.” Sounds like the biotech debate today, doesn’t it?

Why was Lewis so uncannily prophetic? At first glance he seems an unlikely candidate. He was not a theologian; he was an English professor. What was it that made him such a keen observer of cultural and intellectual trends?

The answer may be somewhat discomfiting to modern evangelicals: One reason is precisely that Lewis was not an evangelical. He was a professor in the academy, with a specialty in medieval literature, which gave him a mental framework shaped by the whole scope of intellectual history and Christian thought. As a result, he was liberated from the narrow confines of the religious views of the day—which meant he was able to analyze and critique them.

Anybody know anything about or where to find information about DVD writers? Both for making discs of home digital recordings and for recording off the tv and whatnot?

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE THERE'RE FLAMING IMBECILES:

FALLUJAH NAPALMED: US uses banned weapon ..but was Tony Blair told? (Paul Gilfeather, Nov 28 2004, Daily Mirror)

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh. [...]

Since the American assault on Fallujah there have been reports of "melted" corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.

MORE (via David Cohen):
Fire When Ready: Why we should consider using flamethrowers in Afghanistan. (Scott Shuger, Oct. 31, 2001, Slate)

There aren’t any news cameras trained on the caves of Afghanistan, but you can still watch U.S. soldiers battle an enemy hiding in underground tunnels and bunkers: Go rent Sands of Iwo Jima. The 1949 John Wayne classic incorporates actual combat footage of Marines attacking Japanese forces ensconced, à la the Taliban, in caves and other fortified underground positions, many of them linked by tunnels. On the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, the central command post was 75 feet below the island’s volcanic rock. On nearby Okinawa, the Japanese fought from several belts of caves and bunkers as well as from thousands of ancestral tombs. What was the weapon that enabled the Marines to take the fight in and down to an enemy this entrenched? As you can see in the movie, it was the flamethrower, which shoots a column of splattering fire that can penetrate viewing slits and air ducts and even kill around corners.

Recent news reports have said that Osama Bin Laden has access to caves that are electrified, multistoried, and steel-fortified. So we’re prepared to use flamethrowers to clear them out, right? On several occasions, President Bush has said of the terrorists, “We’re going to smoke them out of their holes.” But why settle for smoke when there’s fire?

Well, there’s a little problem. That John Wayne movie is about the only place you can see flamethrowers these days because the U.S. military doesn’t have them anymore. Though flamethrowers were in use as recently as the Vietnam War, none of our service branches has any in their inventory now. (None of the experts and old Army hands interviewed for this story knew exactly when they were eliminated.) The field manual used by the Army and Marines states that “flame is a valuable close combat weapon” that can be “used to demoralize troops and reduce positions that have resisted other forms of attack,” but the manual dropped detailed descriptions of flamethrower tactics in the early 1990s. A 66 mm man-portable rocket launcher that fires an incendiary round is still on the books, but most experienced U.S. military folks contacted this past week weren’t familiar with it. (One retired Army officer did remember that “years ago” the rocket was used at a U.S. base in a demonstration for visitors. He says such a fire rocket would be “dandy” for caves.) As the Afghan war bogs down against opponents willing to literally go underground, one very promising U.S. weapon for going after them is missing in action.

Why? Primarily because, among civilians, fire weapons are considered inhumane. The fuel for flamethrowers is basically napalm, and napalm has never recovered from its Vietnam reputation for awfulness.

RETURNING THE FAVOR:

Vatican seeks priests from Africa to re-evangelise the West (Jonathan Petre, 22/11/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Plans to ease Britain's acute shortage of Roman Catholic priests by importing scores of African clergy are being discussed by senior bishops with the Pope's blessing.

The initiative to "re-evangelise the West" was raised at a Vatican-backed conference of 100 Catholic bishops and archbishops from Europe and Africa earlier this month.

The bishops, including representatives from Britain, debated the idea of a large-scale exchange of clergy between the booming Church in Africa and its ailing European counterparts.

Under the plans, African priests from parts of the continent where vocations are thriving would send priests to parts of Europe is desperate for clergy.

THE ONLY SOCIETIES HE WANTS CLOSED ARE THE ONES THE PRESIDENT SENDS TROOPS TO:

People power? Or George power? (Mark Almond, 29th November 2004, New Stateman)

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, promised to "spend whatever it takes" to defeat George W Bush. So when the president was returned to office, he said he felt like retiring to a monastery. Yet outside America, the missionaries of Soros's lavishly funded Open Society foundations march in parallel columns with the Bush administration. Domestic enmities don't stop the two Georges presenting a united front abroad when it comes to promoting friends and punishing foes.

A year ago, they jointly helped topple Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze by putting financial muscle and organisational metal behind his opponents. Now Ukraine has felt the full force of their displeasure.

Bush's representatives have alleged fraud in the presidential elections held on 21 November, which ended in victory for the current prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, who is regarded as pro-Russian. Meanwhile, Soros's activists have marched in support of the west's favoured candidate for president, Viktor Yushchenko, and have provided the visiting media and election observers with allegations of fraud and intimidation.

KNOWING YOUR ENEMY:

57% Have Unfavorable Opinion of France (Rasmussen Reports, November 17, 2004)

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of American voters have an unfavorable view of France. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that just 25% have a favorable opinion of that nation.

In fact, more Americans believe France is our enemy (31%) in the War on Terror than believe Jacques Chirac's country is our ally (22%). A plurality, 43%, believe that France's role is somewhere in between ally and enemy.

These numbers stand in stark contrast to Great Britain. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Americans have a favorable opinion of Tony Blair's country while only 9% have an unfavorable view. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans view Great Britain as our ally in the War on Terror.

BLAME?:

Chinese PM Redirects Blame for Currency Rates to Washington (Heda Bayron, 29 November 2004, VOA News)

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has rejected pressure for exchange rate reforms and criticized the United States for not doing its part to keep the dollar from weakening. Washington has been calling on China to adopt a flexible exchange rate system to ease pressure on the dollar and reduce the U.S. trade deficit.

POLITICS AS USUAL:

Senior Hamas Leader Holds Out Possibility of Cease-Fire with Israel (Sonja Pace, 29 November 2004, VOA news)

A senior leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas says his organization will not stand in the way of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement if it is fair for the Palestinians. He also held out prospects for a long term cease-fire with Israel.

Sheik Hassan Yusef is the top Hamas leader in the West Bank, and his comments are the most moderate a member of the group has made publicly.

Hamas has never recognized the right of Israel to exist and has carried out dozens of attacks against Israelis during the past four years of violence, but Sheik Yusef indicated the group may be re-thinking its strategy as it explores new avenues in a post-Arafat era.

Violence has dropped off considerably since Mr. Arafat's death on November 11, with the interim Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government seemingly eager for a calm transition.

DON'T BOGART THE CONSTITUTION, MAN

Wary Court Considers Medical Marijuana (Gina Holland, AP, 11/29/04)

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the government in a divided opinion that found federal prosecution of medical marijuana users is unconstitutional if the marijuana is not sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.

But if the plaintiffs win, on the theory that Congress can't regulate in-state growth, transportation and sale of marijuana, it will be a huge blow to the whole, ugly edifice of the anticonstitutional regulatory state.

SPEECH ISN'T FREE:

How Kerry whistleblower suffered for truth (MARY LANEY, November 29, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

[Steve] Gardner told this story and others to radio stations and he wrote a piece for the local paper. Then, he says, he received a phone call from John Hurley, the veterans organizer for Kerry's campaign. Hurley, Gardner says, asked him to come out for Kerry. He told Hurley to leave him alone and that he'd never be for Kerry. It was then Gardner says, he was threatened with, "You better watch your step. We can look into your finances."

Next, Gardner said he received a call from Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. Brinkley told Gardner he was calling only to "fact check" the book -- which was already in print. "I told him that the guy in the book is not the same guy I served with. I told him Kerry was a coward. He would patrol the middle of the river. The canals were dangerous. He wouldn't go there unless he had another boat pushing him."

Days later, Brinkley called again, warning Gardner to expect some calls. It seems Brinkley had used the "fact checking" conversation to write an inflammatory article about Gardner for Time.com. The article, implying that Gardner was politically motivated, appeared under the headline "The 10th Brother."

Twenty-four hours later, Gardner got an e-mail from his company, Millennium Information Services, informing him that his services would no longer be necessary. He was laid off in an e-mail -- by the same man who only days before had congratulated him for his exemplary work in a territory which covered North and South Carolina. The e-mail stated that his position was being eliminated. Since then, he's seen the company advertising for his old position. Gardner doesn't have the money to sue to get the job back.

"I'm broke. I've been hurt every way I can be hurt. I have no money in the bank but am doing little bits here and there to pay the bills," he said.

All the millions of dollars raised by Gardner and his fellow Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and all the proceeds from John O'Neill's book, Unfit for Command, go to families of veterans, POWs and MIAs.

And, even though Gardner is broke and jobless for speaking out, the husband and father of three says he'd do it all over again. He says it wasn't for politics. It was for America.

NEVER IN DOUBT:

Bush's victory was more than 'moral values' (Eric Black, November 26, 2004, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

"Moral values" voters were not the key to understanding President's Bush's election victory, according to an analysis by University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs.

Jacobs argues that changes in the partisan makeup of the electorate and the difficulty of defeating an incumbent president during an economic recovery were more critical than the moral-values factor. [...]

Another key factor in Bush's victory, Jacobs argued in his paper, is that the economy wasn't as bad as Kerry needed it to be.

The rule of thumb, developed by political scientists who have studied indicators of election outcomes, is that the incumbent usually will win if the gross domestic product rises by 2.6 percent or more in the second quarter of the election year.

GDP rose by 3.3 percent in the second quarter of 2004 and 3.7 percent in the third quarter.

GET THEE TO A MOZILLARY:

MOZILLA MANIA: Volunteers spread word of Firefox (K. Oanh Ha, 11/29/04, San Jose Mercury News)

By day, Alexander Vincent is a mild-mannered secretary for a Vallejo real estate broker. By night, he's an online crusader protecting users of a new Internet browser from glitches and security bugs. If he were a superhero, you might call him Mozilla Man.

In fact, Vincent is part of a worldwide army of Mozilla men and women who believe in freedom, progress and the inalienable right to an open source browser.

Their weapon of faith is Firefox, a free browser created by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation as an alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer. Officially released this month, Firefox is converting a growing number of Internet users -- and nibbling away at Microsoft's dominance.

Vincent is one of roughly 2,000 volunteer evangelists who see their mission as freeing millions of computer users from the tyranny of Internet Explorer.

DON'T DRINK THE WATER:

Evolutionary Psychology and Its True Believers (Andrew Ferguson, March 19, 2001, Weekly Standard)

It's become commonplace to point out that of modernity's three most influential thinkers—Marx, Freud, and Darwin—only Darwin enters the twenty-first century with his reputation intact. But Darwin has troubles of his own. The troubles come not only from the right, where creationists and other religiously minded conservatives nip around the ankles of evolutionary theory, but also from the left, where social scientists, and even some real scientists, worry about the ends to which Darwin's great idea might be put.

It's a particular kind of Darwinism that has the left-wingers worried. Twenty-five years ago it ran under the name sociobiology; since then it has been slightly modified and rechristened "evolutionary psychology." Under either name it is an ambitious enterprise that claims to explain the patterns of human behavior—everything from child-rearing practices to religion to shopping habits—as a consequence of Darwinian natural selection. Sociobiology (or evolutionary psychology, or neo-Darwinism; we can use the terms interchangeably) has become a favorite of such conservative polemicists as Charles Murray, James Q. Wilson, Tom Wolfe, and Francis Fukuyama. At the same time, polemicists on the left compare it to Nazism (polemicists on the left compare lots of things to Nazism, of course, but now they seem to mean it).

Right-wingers suddenly embracing Darwin, while left-wingers try furiously to contain him—we've come a long way from the Scopes monkey trial. This makes for one of the more unexpected disputes in recent intellectual history, though it's hard to keep the sides straight without a program. Luckily, a spate of recent books helps the layman put the bickering in perspective. And as good a place as any to begin is with Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology, a collection of essays edited by Hilary and Steven Rose and published late last year.

Hilary is a sociologist, Steven a biologist, but both, more pertinently, are grizzled veterans of the 1960s New Left. So are their contributors, among them the postmodern theorist and architect Charles Jencks and the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Alas, Poor Darwin is merely the latest in a series of essay collections, going back to the late 1970s, that Steven Rose has edited for the purpose of placing sociobiology beyond the bounds of polite society. One of his earlier collections, Not in Our Genes (1984), drew such a blistering review from the sociobiologist Richard Dawkins that Rose threatened to sue for libel. These scientists don't fool around.

Rose sums up the sociobiological view neatly: "It claims to explain all aspects of human behavior, and then culture and society, on the basis of universal features of human nature that found their final evolutionary form during the infancy of our species some 100,000-600,000 years ago." Roaming the African savanna for thousands of centuries, homo sapiens adapted to environmental challenges through the process of natural selection, developing the genetic tendencies that shape our behavior today. The application of this view knows no limit. As Rose points out, sociobiology has got into our "cultural drinking water." It's not at all unusual to switch on, say, the Today show—if you're the sort of person who switches on the Today show—and see one or another pop psychologist tracing, say, the American male's love for golf to the evolutionary development of the species: The golf course's rolling landscape, dotted with water and clumps of trees, appeals to our genetic memories of the long-ago savanna.

"It is the argument of the authors of this book," writes Rose in his introduction, "that the claims of [sociobiology] in the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy are for the most part not merely mistaken, but culturally pernicious"—not just bad science but bad politics, too: right-wing politics. Roughly half the essays in the book are explicitly political, though the political objections bubble unmistakably through the others. [...]

As several essayists note in Alas, Poor Darwin, the ascendancy of evolutionary psychology in the late 1970s and 1980s coincided with the rise of Reaganism and Thatcherism in our politics. "The political agenda," writes Rose, "is transparently part of a right-wing libertarian attack on collectivity, above all the welfare state."

Some of the essayists have another beef: Far worse than playing politics, sociobiologists are practicing religion . Perhaps the most amusing feature of the debates between sociobiologists and their critics is the ferocity with which each side accuses the other of harboring religious sentiments, as though nothing could be more contemptible. When they get really mad the combatants hurl imprecations like "true believer" and "choirmaster." Stephen Jay Gould calls sociobiologists "Darwinian fundamentalists." His opposite number, Richard Dawkins, says that critics like Gould are "demonological theologians." Dorothy Nelkin, a sociologist from New York University, is on Gould's side. She devotes her essay in Alas, Poor Darwin to arguing that sociobiology is merely religion in disguise and, for that reason (though she doesn't have to say so explicitly), illegitimate as either science or philosophy.

Given that every prominent sociobiologist, from Pinker to Dawkins to Wilson, has ardently declared his atheism, you might think Nelkin has a difficult case to make. Dawkins, who is the most outspoken in this regard, calls religious belief a "virus of the mind" and says that anyone who believes that the existence of the universe implies the existence of a creator is by definition "scientifically illiterate." Wilson is emphatic that religion and science are incompatible, and that the practical achievements of science make religion intellectually untenable. Sociobiology routinely dismisses religious belief as a delusion that long ago may have had some "adaptive function," helping humans to survive and flourish, but which is no longer necessary.

In what sense, then, is evolutionary psychology a religion? "Scientists who call themselves evolutionary psychologists," Nelkin writes, "are addressing questions about meaning, about why things happen, about the ultimate ground of nature. . . . More than a scientific theory, evolutionary psychology is a quasi-religious narrative, providing a simple and compelling answer to complex and enduring questions concerning the case of good and evil, the basis of moral responsibility and age-old questions about the nature of human nature."

Anyone familiar with evolutionary psychology will see her point. One of the first things a layman notices upon wading into the literature is the grandiosity of its claims. The titles of the books, by both popularizers and scientists, are spectacular. Wilson himself has written On Human Nature and Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge; Robert Wright, who used to be a journalist before he moved on to much, much larger things, writes books with such subtitles as Why We Are the Way We Are and The Logic of Human Destiny. Other sociobiology titles: The Web of Life, Evolution and the Meaning of Life, The Origins of Virtue, and The Biology of Morality. The hyperbole is more than a publisher's marketing ploy. This is really the way sociobiologists think.

So of course the immodesty extends beyond the titles. "If the theory of natural selection is correct," Wright wrote, "then essentially everything about the human mind should be intelligible in these [Darwinian] terms. . . . Slowly but unmistakably, a new world view is emerging," he went on. "Once truly grasped . . . it can entirely alter one's perception of social reality." Laura Betzig, editor of a collection of sociobiology essays called, typically enough, Human Nature, introduces the book like so: "It's happened. We have finally figured out where we come from, why we're here, and who we are."

Sociobiology is a theory of simply everything. Darwin's original version of natural selection was already comprehensive, claiming to account for almost all the physical attributes of the planet's animal and vegetable life. But evolutionary psychologists extend Darwin's principle to bear on the mental life and cultural practices of human beings. Like most religions, evolutionary psychology tells a story—a myth, in the sociological sense of the word. [...]

Here's an example of how difficult it is to keep the sides straight in the sociobiology debates. Dawkins is the scourge of sociobiology's left-wing critics. But he is also a self-described man of the "liberal left." The same goes for Robert Trivers, a founder of sociobiology, and for two of the most prominent neo-Darwinian popularizers—the socialist economist Robert Frank and Peter Singer, the "controversial bioethicist," as the newspapers like to describe him. Together they constitute a left-wing rump of the sociobiology movement. And it seems they understand the ramifications of their creed far better than its enthusiasts on the right.

This is especially true of Singer, whose 1999 monograph A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation, offers a fitting note on which to close this survey of sociobiology and its critics. "Can the left swap Marx for Darwin?" Singer catchily asked. His answer is a resounding: You bet. "The left needs a new paradigm," he wrote, in a mirror image of Arnhart's assertion that "conservatives need Charles Darwin." And the new paradigm is sociobiology (though he rejects the term itself, presumably because it is ideologically fraught). "It is time," Singer goes on, "for the Left to take seriously the fact that we are evolved animals, and that we bear the evidence of our inheritance, not only in our anatomy and our DNA, but in our behavior too."

This fact, says Singer, demands that leftists make a few concessions. They should acknowledge that certain kinds of behavior—sex roles in child-rearing, for example—are cross-cultural and probably arise from a fixed human nature. They should abandon their belief in the perfectibility of man and other utopian schemes. But once these concessions to science are granted, Singer makes clear, the old socialist agenda can advance unimpeded. His Darwinian argument for the redistribution of wealth and the equalization of incomes is too elaborate to be recounted here, but it is no more implausible than the arguments made by right-wing Darwinians for, say, the free market.

What is most interesting is the depth of Singer's devotion to sociobiology, to the "Darwinian paradigm." It is interesting, but not surprising. He believes that the enduring value of sociobiology will be its use in the "debunking or discrediting of politically influential, non-Darwinian beliefs and ideas." Prominent among these is the distinction that has traditionally been made between human beings and animals. "Speciesism" is a word that Peter Singer, like many sociobiologists, takes seriously and employs liberally as an imprecation. "Darwinian thinking," he writes, "tells us that we have been too ready to assume a fundamental difference in kind between human beings and nonhuman animals." With Darwin as our guide to understanding human beings, we are prepared for a "revolution in our attitudes."

Students of Singer will be familiar with this argument, and where it leads. The reason the newspapers nowadays tag Singer as a "controversial bioethicist" is that he is—to put it more plainly—the world's most celebrated advocate of infanticide. "Killing Babies Isn't Always Wrong" was the title of a famous essay he published in the London Spectator in 1995. Singer's line of reasoning goes roughly like this: If we leave aside the arbitrary bias of speciesism, we see that moral respect is owed to organisms on the basis of their attributes. We agree that any being that can reason, that can recognize others, that possesses some form of self-consciousness is a being worthy of moral respect.

Singer believes, with good reason, that sociobiology validates his new, non-speciesist understanding. That understanding has both philosophical and practical effects. One philosophical consequence is to elevate the moral status of animals, like cats and dogs, who possess some form of self-consciousness and can recognize others over time. Another is to lower the moral status of human beings, like Alzheimer's victims, newborn infants, and the mentally disabled, who may not possess such attributes. He worries about "granting every member of our own species—psychopaths, infants, and the profoundly intellectually disabled included—a moral status superior to that of dogs, pigs, chimpanzees, and dolphins." The practical consequences are just as direct. Singer has no trouble advocating euthanasia for old people with reduced mental capacities. He has no trouble advocating a twenty-eight-day waiting period for parents to assess the mental and biological health of a newborn, before deciding whether to let it live.

Nothing in sociobiology requires an acceptance of infanticide or euthanasia, needless to say, any more than it requires political conservatism or liberalism. But Peter Singer is the real thing: a True Believer in the new Darwinian faith.

And it isn't hard to see why sociobiology is Singer's religion of choice. Subtly and quietly, it removes the barriers that have traditionally stood in the way of "controversial" views like his—barriers put in place by other, older religions. The new Darwinism may tell us nothing about whether women should serve in the military, or whether family-friendly tax credits are a good idea, or how much income should be redistributed to whom and why. But it does try to tell us what a human being is—and isn't. And before too long, after a few more years in the drinking water, its "controversial" views won't seem controversial at all.

TEMPLATE:

Iraq's lost lessons (Caroline Glick, Nov. 25, 2004, THE JERUSALEM POST)

Something remarkable is happening in Iraq. There is a civil war going on and the terrorists are losing. US Marine commanders in Fallujah reported Wednesday that they seized enough weapons in the city "for the insurgency to take over the whole country."

Iraq is currently undergoing a post-Saddam revolution. Last April, when the Marines first attempted to take over Fallujah from the Sunni terrorists, they were joined by an Iraqi army brigade led by a general from the former regime. His troops quickly went AWOL and joined the ranks of the terrorists in fighting American forces. Under pressure from the UN, the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by then-viceroy L. Paul Bremer, lost its nerve to continue fighting. The Marines fell back to the city's outskirts and enabled the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Palestinian-Jordanian arch terrorist, to take over Fallujah.

This month's combined US-Iraqi offensive into Fallujah was different. It was marked by tight cooperation between the Iraqi and American forces on the ground, and ordered by Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who didn't back down even when three of his relatives were kidnapped by the terrorists. The new Iraqi army that is now being trained is the first instance of an Arab army to be developed to fight Arab and Islamic terrorists. This is an extraordinary accomplishment. Iraqi soldiers are now fighting and dying to purge their country of Arab terrorists, many of whom are also Iraqis.

In addition to the new Iraqi government's determination to fight on the side of the US on the battlefields, it is also fighting the intellectual war against terror.

WAS THAT A PIECE OF TOM TANCREDO'S HEAD THAT JUST FLEW BY?:

Kellogg CEO Chosen for Commerce Post (DEB RIECHMANN, 11/29/04, Associated Press)

President Bush on Monday chose Carlos Gutierrez, chief executive officer of the Kellogg Co., to be secretary of Commerce, administration officials said. [...]

"Carlos's family came to America from Cuba when he was a boy," Bush said in the Roosevelt Room. "He learned English from a bellhop in a Miami hotel and later became an American citizen. When his family eventually settled in Mexico City, Carlos took his first job for Kellogg as a truck driver, delivering Frosted Flakes to local stores."

NOT THAT THE BLUE SENATORS WILL HAVE A MUCH EASIER TIME:

For Democrats in red states, 2006 daunting (Amy Fagan, November 29, 2004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Democratic senators in the states that President Bush won will face a tough road to re-election in 2006, Republicans say, with their sights set most eagerly on two Democrats named Nelson -- Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida. [...]

In Nebraska, Gov. Mike Johanns, a Republican, looks like Mr. Nelson's probable challenger for 2006, and Mr. Bush is expected to campaign on his behalf. In Florida, Republicans will be gunning for Mr. Nelson and hope to recruit a big name such as term-limited Gov. Jeb Bush to challenge him. [...]

Political analysts say Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Kent Conrad of North Dakota could have problems too, depending on whom Republicans find to challenge them. [...]

Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia -- also a red-state Democrat up for re-election in 2006 -- will be re-elected if he chooses to run for a ninth term at age 88, analysts say. But if he retires, Democrats will have a headache trying to keep the seat in a state that gave Mr. Bush a 13-percentage-point triumph.

OBLIGATORY BOLSHEVIK REFERENCE:

How to Tell a Terrorist From a Freedom Fighter (Tom Engelhardt, 11/29/04, Tom Dispatch)

Consider this as a description:

The "rebels" or "freedom fighters" are part of a nationwide "resistance movement." While many of them are local, even tribal, and fight simply because they are outraged by the occupation of their country, hundreds of others among the "resistance fighters" – young Arabs -- are arriving from as far away as "Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan," not to speak of Saudi Arabia and Algeria, to engage in jihad, ready as one of them puts it, to stay in the war "until I am martyred." Fighting for their "Islamic ideals," "they are inspired by a sense of moral outrage and a religious devotion heightened by frequent accounts of divine miracles in the war." They slip across the country's borders to fight the "invader" and the "puppet government" its officials have set up in the capital in their "own image." The invader's sway, however, "extends little beyond the major cities, and even there the… freedom fighters often hold sway by night and sometimes even by day."

Sympathetic as they may be, the rebels are badly overwhelmed by the firepower of the occupying superpower and are especially at risk in their daring raids because the enemy is "able to operate with virtual impunity in the air." The superpower's soldiers are sent out from their bases and the capital to "make sweeps, but chiefly to search and destroy, not to clear and hold." Its soldiers, known for their massive human rights abuses and the cruelty of their atrocities, have in some cases been reported to press "on the throats of prisoners to force them to open their mouths while the guards urinate into them, [as well as] setting police dogs on detainees, raping women in front of family members and other vile acts."

On their part, the "guerrillas," armed largely with Russian and Chinese rifles and rocket propelled grenade launchers, have responded with the warfare of the weak. They have formed car-bombing squads and use a variety of cleverly constructed wheelbarrow, bicycle, suitcase, and roadside bombs as well as suicide operations performed by volunteers chosen from among the foreign jihadists. They engage in assassinations of, for example, university intellectuals and other sabotage activities in the capital and elsewhere aimed at killing the occupying troops and their sympathizers. They behead hostages to instill fear in the other side. Funding for the resistance comes, in part, from supporters in sympathetic Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia. However, "if the mujaheddin are ever to realize their goal of forcing [the occupiers] out, they will need more than better arms and training, more than their common faith. They will need to develop a genuinely unified resistance… Above all, the analysts say, they will need to make the war… even costlier and more difficult for the [occupiers] than it is now."

It's easy enough to identify this composite description, right? Our war in Iraq, as portrayed perhaps in the Arab press and on Arab websites. Well, as it happens, actually not. All of the above (with the exception of the material on bombs, which comes from Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars, and on the beheading of hostages, which comes from an Amnesty International report) is from either the statements of American officials or coverage in either the Washington Post or the New York Times of the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, fostered, armed, and funded to the tune of billions of dollars by the Central Intelligence Agency with the help of the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence services.

NEXT:

President to overhaul economic team quickly: Aides said President Bush is seeking a more skilled economic team that can relate better to Congress and be more effective in dealing with financial markets. (MIKE ALLEN, 11/29/04, Washington Post)

The aides said the replacement of four of the five top economic officials -- including the Treasury and Commerce secretaries, with only budget director Joshua Bolten likely to remain -- is part of Bush's preparation for sending Congress an ambitious second-term domestic agenda.

Administration officials previously had signaled they would move gradually to replace the economic team, but the White House now is indicating it may move more quickly to convey a fresh start. Aides also indicated Bush is considering reaching beyond the kind of administration loyalists who will staff key national security posts in the second term.

Republican officials said Bush's economic team has been weaker than his national security advisors, and that the president believes he needs aides who can relate better to Congress and be more effective in dealing with financial markets and television interviewers. A more skilled team is essential, the aides said, because of the complex and politically challenging agenda of overhauling Social Security to add private investment accounts and simplifying the tax code. [...]

One senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John Snow has been invited to stay as long as he wants to, as long as it is not very long. Friends say Chief of Staff Andrew Card is one possibility to replace him. Bolten also could move over.

But Republican officials said Bush is also considering well-known officials from outside the administration, including New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican. Conservatives are pushing for former Sen. Phil Gramm, a Republican from Texas.

WELCOME TO THE POST-POST-9/11 WORLD:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-shop29nov29.story>Retailers' Early Holiday Present: With shoppers flooding stores, experts say Thanksgiving weekend spending is likely to have beat last year's. (Annette Haddad, November 29, 2004, LA Times)

The holiday shopping season got off to a strong start over the weekend as consumers handed the nation's retailers an early Christmas gift.

The National Retail Federation, the industry's main trade group, said Sunday that 133 million people hit the stores, plunking down $22.8 billion. That was more than 10% of the $220 billion that merchants hope to rake in by the end of December.

MISTAKING YOUR CURRENCY FOR SIGNIFICANCE:

US gives euro a long rope (Alex Wallenwein, 11/29/04, Asia Times)

It looks as though the US strategy in this transcontinental currency battle is to give the euro's masters what they want - except way too much of it, way too quickly - in order to overload the euro system and make it collapse.

The European Central Bank (ECB) was instituted by the euro's creators to preside over an orderly transition away from a dollar-dependent world to a more versatile arrangement wherein the euro fulfills a quasi-reserve function that will eventually give way to gold being the ultimate international currency reserve, with all the fiats freely floating against gold instead of against each other.

But the road there is a long and winding one, and not even all of those currently "in charge" (international central bankers) are fully aware that this is the ultimate goal. Rather, that unstated goal was wrapped up implicitly in the ECB's role of guaranteeing price stability, rather than using interest rates to jump-start an otherwise faltering economy as the Federal Reserve Board does in the United States.

"Price stability" means that the currency is intentionally not used as a means for gunning Euroland's economic engines. [...]

The Fed and the administration of President George W Bush know that the euro's ultimate aim is to slowly attract foreign investors and central banks to the euro and away from the dollar. But they also know that an explosively upward rocketing euro will wreck the Europeans' major economies in a heartbeat. As a result, the US game is to allow the dollar to drop lower - and faster than the Europeans' fragile economies can tolerate.

What financial commentators call a policy of "benign neglect" turns out not to be so benign at all: by pursuing its current strategy, the dollar establishment is killing three birds with one stone: they get the benefit of (1) higher US export-competitiveness and better economic performance, (2) simultaneously lower European Union export competitiveness resulting in economic stagnation, and (3) shift the entire burden of smoothing out the dollar's forex movements on to the Europeans' backs.

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK:

What makes the US a Christian nation: Few people doubt that the United States is a Christian nation. But discontinuity makes American Christianity a baffling quantity to outsiders; only a small minority of American Protestants can point to a direct link to spiritual ancestors a century ago. Yet it is the very nature of America that allows Christianity repeatedly to re-create itself there. (Spengler, 11/29/04, Asia Times)

Intellectual elites keep turning away from faith and toward philosophy - something that Franz Rosenzweig defined as a small child sticking his fingers in his ears while shouting "I can't hear you!" in the face of the fear of death. But one cannot expect the people to become philosophers (or, for that matter, Jews).

My correspondents point out frequently that one can trace no obvious connection between the religion of America's founders and today's American evangelicals. For that matter, observes one critic, there is no direct connection between the 14th-century English reformer and Bible translator John Wycliffe and the 16th-century Lutheran Bible translator John Tyndale - none, I would add, except for the Bible.

Two combustible elements unite every century or so to re-create American Christianity from its ashes. The first is America's peculiar sociology: it has no culture of its own, that is, no set of purely terrestrial associations with places, traditions, ghosts, and whatnot, passed from generation to generation as a popular heritage. Americans leave their cultures behind on the pier when they make the decision to immigrate. The second is the quantity that unites Wycliffe with Tyndale, Tyndale with the pilgrim leader John Winthrop, and Winthrop with the leaders of the Great Awakenings - and that is the Bible itself. The startling assertion that the Creator of Heaven and Earth loves mankind and suffers with it, and hears the cry of innocent blood and the complaint of the poor and downtrodden, is a seed that falls upon prepared ground in the United States.

Within the European frame of reference, there is no such thing as American Christendom - no centuries-old schools of theology, no tithes, no livings, no Church taxes, no establishment - there is only Christianity, which revives itself with terrible force in unknowing re-enactment of the past.

THE IRAQIS, OF COURSE, ARE JUST RATS IN A MAZE

America is losing the last mile in Iraq" (Thomas Friedman, International Herald Tribune, November 29th, 2004)

Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.

Winning in Iraq is now about who has the smarts, the focus, the gumption, the strategy, the coordination skills and the follow-through to get control of the last mile. Can America pull off a decent election in Iraq, with some Sunni participation, and produce a reasonably legitimate government there, for which the police and the army will fight, or will the insurgents thwart that? Can America connect the electricity and sewers and get more jobs going, so more Iraqis are invested in peace, or will the insurgents thwart that? Can America make sure that the 570-plus election polling places will be secure from suicide bombers, or will the insurgents thwart that? Can America finally build an effective U.S. information campaign in Iraq and the Arab world, or will we cede the field to Al-Jazeera instead? Can we neutralize meddling by the Iranians and Syrians in the Iraqi elections, or will they outfox us?

Wars are fought for political ends. Soldiers can only do so much. And the last mile in every war is about claiming the political fruits. The bad guys in Iraq can lose every mile on every road, but if they beat America on the last mile - because they are able to intimidate better than America is able to coordinate, protect, inform, invest and motivate - they will win and America will lose.

Can Americans take pride in their sacrifices to make the world and the Middle East safer and give the Iraqis the chance of a lifetime, or will the New York Times thwart that?

LEGALIZED MURDER:

Norway's Heroin Lows: The model welfare state is a prime market for the rising Afghan opium trade. Mounting overdoses and ruined lives are the result. (Jeffrey Fleishman, November 29, 2004, LA Times)

She said she only smoked heroin, but there were needle bruises on her neck. She said she loved her boyfriend, but she stood on a corner and offered herself to others. She said she was a girl, but then remembered she had become a woman. She said she wanted to quit, but she knew she wouldn't.

Across town in a brick chapel, Father Jon Atle Wetaas lighted three votive candles. "These are for peace and reflection," the priest said. "We never know what we'll meet out there." Then he and a nurse loaded a camper with clean needles, medicine and coffee and drove the streets searching for some of the estimated 5,000 to 7,000 heroin addicts that shadow this Norwegian port city.

They came upon the woman on the corner, a shattered 18-year-old desperately looking to fill her empty syringe. Her name was Katrin Nygard Helgeland.

"I try to quit," she said, her face pale in the autumn half-light. "I get depressed, and I run away inside myself."

Clean and tidy Oslo, the capital of a nation with one of the highest standards of living and some of the best social programs in the world, is one of Europe's heroin havens. Three years ago, it recorded more overdoses than any other major European city. [...]

The heroin scourge has been creeping through Oslo for decades. It surfaced in the late 1960s in the park near the palace and spread along the cobbled pedestrian mall until it landed at the plata, the park adjoining the train station. What began as a druggy counterculture movement of "flower power hippies," Eeg said, evolved into a population of medical and psychological outcasts that is testing Norway's sympathy for the downtrodden.

The plata had become a sinister yet fabled hangout for teenagers wanting to experiment with heroin and for prostitutes, who could sometimes be seen lifting their skirts to insert needles near their hips. "It was attracting boys who bought drugs and went home," said Gjengedal, who estimated that Oslo had about 60 street-level dealers. "It was turning them into users and creating other crimes. We had to move against it."

Heroin is smoked throughout much of the Continent. But Norway, with its history of secret heavy drinking to skirt temperance campaigns, is known for intravenous drug users seeking stronger highs. This binge mentality, social workers say, increases the risk of overdose because addicts frequently mix alcohol and depressants with heroin. Over the decades, the problem has spread beyond Oslo, and the government estimates that Norway has about 14,000 addicts.

In 1990, the nation had 75 overdose deaths. Government statistics show that the number of fatalities rose dramatically — to 270 in 1998 and 338 in 2001. The amount of heroin coming out of Afghanistan fell in 2002 and 2003, and the number of Norwegian deaths dropped to 210, then 172.

The decline also was attributed to less potent heroin and street-level medical and shelter services, such as those run by Franciscan Aid and the Church City Mission. In another attempt to limit overdoses, Oslo is expected to open a "public injection room" next year, where addicts can shoot up under the supervision of nurses.

Even though the number of heroin deaths is increasing, it's too early to determine if that's part of a trend. In 2003, Oslo had 53 overdoses. By October of this year, there were 64. Authorities attributed 11 deaths during an 18-day period in May to a powerful batch of heroin — another indication that purer Afghan drugs are reaching the market.

The problem tarnishes Norway's image as a country of splendid fjords and forests.

OTHER SUPPLY SIDE OF THE POND:

Big guns roll up to bombard Brown (BILL JAMIESON AND WILLIAM LYONS, 11/29/04, The Scotsman)

A HUNDRED senior business figures, academics and economists have called on Chancellor Gordon Brown to cut taxes.

The appeal, carried in a letter to the Financial Times today, comes as the Chancellor puts the finishing touches to Thursday’s Pre-Budget Report.

A combination of lower-than-forecast tax receipts and higher public spending may force higher taxes next year.

But today’s letter - signed by, among others, Sir Ronald Halstead, president of the Engineering Industries Association, Sir John Craven, chairman of Lonmin, hotelier Sir Rocco Forte and Tim Ingram, chairman of Caledonia Investments - says reducing the tax burden should now be a priority for the UK.

"Recent large rises in public spending and taxation have not delivered commensurate improvements in public services," they write.

"Instead, the priority should now shift to reducing taxes on wealth-creating businesses and on the millions of families for whom the ever-increasing tax take is a damaging imposition on their ability to support themselves in raising children and saving for retirement.

"We simply do not accept that the government can get better value for each extra pound it spends than those who have to pay the extra pound in tax."

AND THE LIGHT GETS DIMMER STILL

Stuffing your face doesn't make you fat - it's your genes (Jim White, The Telegraph, November 29th, 2004)

It was while watching the news the other night that I was called something I had never been called before. I had just observed that Mark Mardell, the BBC's estimable political correspondent, could do with losing a pound or two, that maybe his report about the Queen's Speech might have been enhanced were the viewer's concentration not distracted by the way he had attempted to corral an obstreperous waistline by fastening tight all three of the buttons on his jacket, when from the sofa came the suggestion that I was completely out of order.

"You are," I was told, "such a fattist." [...]

"Yes, fattist. And you know why you're fattist?" I was asked. "Because it's not his fault. You're attacking him for something he can't help. It's in his genes."

Indeed, this was the news delivered from the world of genes last week (possibly in the very same bulletin in which all eyes were drawn to that button about to explode like a champagne cork from the midst of the Mardell jacket). Scientists in America are beginning to conclude that we are far more enslaved to our inheritance than was previously believed.

We have long known that genes determine the colour of our eyes and how long we will live; now it seems they are in charge of virtually every facet of our behaviour. There is, for instance, growing evidence of a monogamy gene. Swans have it, certain Madagascan marmosets have it, but, so the boffins tell us, only about 60 per cent of the human population has it (a proportion believed to be even lower in certain parts of Brighton during the party political conference season).

Research is also beginning to suggest that it is those ferociously determined genes of ours that make the decision about whether we will fall to the siren lure of chocolate cake and take the car, instead of walking 100 yards round the block to stock up on an evening's supply of Mars bars. Presumably, in this energetic brew of competing genetic signals, the free-will gene is a weak, emaciated thing that rarely passes down the generations, bullied aside as it is by all those other character-forming strings of DNA.

From Darwin to Marx to Freud to Skinner to Carl Rogers to all the modern neuro-physicists, geneticists, psychologists, sociologists and other scientists, whether physical or social, respectable or quirky, the constant message has been that somebody or something else is to be blamed for all we are and do.

HIGH PRICE TO PAY FOR CHERIE:

BUSH GURU GETS WORLD'S WORST JOB (Paul Gilfeather, Nov 28 2004, Sunday Mirror)

FALTERING Tory leader Michael Howard has been thrown a political life-line - from the mastermind behind George Bush's victory in the US election.

The shock signing of Karl Rove is all the more amazing as President Bush's right-hand man banned Mr Howard from the White House just three months ago.

The highly-rated strategist discussed the Opposition leader's fading General Election hopes in a trans- atlantic phone call this week.

And during his talks with party chairman Liam Fox he agreed to bury differences over the Iraq war and draw up Mr Howard's masterplan for the May poll.

The development will stun Tony Blair, who is certain to feel betrayed.

The PM effectively backed the Bush re-election drive by refusing to publicly endorse Democrat challenger and Labour ally John Kerry.

Last night Government insiders predicted the move would put the PM's "special relationship" with the President under massive pressure.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, says his successor, Michael Howard, should mirror George Bush's approach to the US presidential campaign by focusing on traditional Conservative values.

The former leader, a friend of the Bush family, reveals in an interview for The Independent today that he is to publish a pamphlet on the lessons that the Tories can learn from the successes of Mr Bush and John Howard in Australia.

He will urge the Tory leaders to focus on 'compassionate conservatism'. He said the key lesson from the US presidential elections and the Australian elections for Mr Howard was to "be true to yourself, be true to your values."

His remarks will dismay Tory modernisers who fear Mr Howard will be tempted to swing further to the right on immigration, law and order, and social issues, to try to close the gap with Labour before the general election.

IF I KNEW YOU WERE COMIN' I'D HAVE BAKED YELLOWCAKE:

Complete nuclear bomb plant earmarked for Libya found in South Africa (Douglas Frant and William Rempel, November 29, 2004, LA Times)

Authorities hunting traffickers in nuclear weapons technology recently uncovered an audacious plan to deliver a complete uranium enrichment plant to Libya.

The discovery provides fresh evidence of the reach and sophistication of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's global black market in nuclear know-how and equipment. It also exposes a previously undetected South African branch of the Khan network.

Details of the plot began to emerge in September, when police found the elements of a two-storey steel processing system for the enrichment plant in a factory outside Johannesburg. They were packed in 11 freight containers for shipment to Libya. [...]

Some of the centrifuges for the plant were shipped separately from Malaysia, because the specialised steel needed was not available in South Africa. The interception of that cargo by US and Italian authorities in October 2003 led to the Johannesburg raid and spurred Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to renounce efforts to develop banned weapons.

HE WAS SERIOUS...AGAIN...:

NASA's Budgetary Gift Horse (NY Times, 11/29/04)

The space program fared remarkably well in the huge appropriations bill just approved by Congress. NASA got a hefty $16.2 billion budget for fiscal year 2005, only a tiny bit shy of what the administration had requested, and it was given unusual authority to shift money from one program to another.

The agency clearly scored a budgetary coup in a year when most federal programs were ratcheted back to make room for the costly war in Iraq and to alleviate huge deficits.

IT'S THE PRESIDENT'S CABINET, NOT VICE VERSA:

What Is a Cabinet For?: To serve at the pleasure of the president, not to constrain him. (BRET STEPHENS, November 29, 2004 , Wall Street Journal)

George W. Bush is accused of burying cabinet government for good with his appointments of close confidantes Rice, Alberto Gonzales and Margaret Spellings. Nonsense. Contrary to Andrew Sullivan, a cabinet is not something a president governs with; and contrary to Andrew Jackson, it is not something a president governs around. Ideally, a cabinet is what a president governs through. Now that Mr. Bush has moved his own people into the cabinet, he may at last be able to do just that.

HOW CONVENIENT:

Twins for Julia Roberts (Reuters, November 29, 2004)

Actress Julia Roberts has given birth to twins - a boy and a girl.

NO MAN LOVED BY HAWTHORNE COULD BE ALL THAT BAD:

BOOKNOTES: Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son by Peter Wallner (C-SPAN, November 28, 2004, 8 & 11pm)

Biography of Franklin Pierce, New Hampshire native and 14th president of the United States. Volume covers Pierce to the night of his inauguration.

BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Brenda Wineapple, author of "A Life," Hawthorne, how much did politics play in his life?

BRENDA WINEAPPLE, AUTHOR, "HAWTHORNE: A LIFE": It played a much larger role than people have liked to think. He was a political man. He was involved in politics, and he was best friends with arguably one of the worst American presidents, which is saying something.

LAMB: Franklin Pierce.

WINEAPPLE: Franklin Pierce.

LAMB: How did he get to know Franklin Pierce?

WINEAPPLE: They met at college. They were at Bowdoin together. Pierce was a year ahead of Hawthorne. Pierce was a very gregarious, outgoing, warm and genial person, and he and Hawthorne became friends. They actually marched in a little group called the Bowdoin Cadets. One doesn`t think of Hawthorne marching, and certainly not marching behind anyone, but they did. And also, politics at Bowdoin was very important. They were both what became Democrats. They were Jeffersonian Republicans at the time, so that was a very important connection between the two men then. And they stayed friends for their entire lives.

LAMB: Bowdoin had, I think, 38 people in the graduating class that included Pierce and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but there were three -- I mean, three congressmen came out of that same class.

WINEAPPLE: Yes. Pierce was actually the class ahead of Hawthorne. It was -- Hawthorne`s class, which was the class of `25 was very well known because, I think, John Russworm (ph), who was the first president of Liberia, the colony, the American colony where emancipated slaves were sent for a while -- he was a member of the Bowdoin class. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from a whole other perspective, was a member of the Bowdoin class. Another very good friend of Hawthorne`s, Horatio Bridge (ph), was a member of that class. So it was a famous class, still, I think, in Bowdoin`s annals. [...]

After Hawthorne was married, he and his bride, Sophia (ph) Peabody Hawthorne, moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where they rented a house. They -- she was painting, he was writing. They weren`t making a lot of money. They were -- they were really poor. And so friends of Hawthorne, like Pierce, everybody else he knew -- he knew a number of very political people, John O`Sullivan, the man who coined the term "manifest destiny" -- all worked hard to get Hawthorne almost literally out of the kitchen, because they couldn`t afford hired help and his wife was pregnant, into political appointments.

And they went to Bancroft and whoever else they had to once the Democrats were back in power. Eventually, Hawthorne got the Salem Custom House, which he wanted very much. The family moved back to Salem, and he was there until a rotation in office. Democrats were voted out. The Whigs were voted in. Hawthorne was kicked out, and there was quite a brouhaha. So that was the next major appointment, and that lasted until 1849.

LAMB: As a matter of fact, you wrote, page 380, "He stood for dark, doubt and the Democratic Party."

WINEAPPLE: Right.

LAMB: Start with the Democratic Party. What was the Democratic Party back in the 1800s, 1850s?

WINEAPPLE: It developed out of Jackson. It`s a sort of Jacksonian Democrat. And the Democratic Party in those years was more like today`s Republicans. It`s important to sort of remember who became what. The Democrats stood very strongly for states` rights, and as a result, early on, they became a party associated with expansion, manifest destiny, as I said, expanding territories to the west, even to the south. And partly as a consequence of that, they also became associated with pro-slavery. A large part of the Democratic Party was pro-slavery, was a pro-slavery wing. It separated out later on as politics got even more dicey than they were.

But it was also a progressive party in that it was for the working person. It was -- stood against kind of moneyed capitalist aristocracy, say, of Boston, which was associated with the Whigs. So by Hawthorne and then Pierce and his friends at Bowdoin joining with the Jacksonian Democrats, they felt that they were joining with something that was youthful, exciting, exuberant, offered a kind of real hope and egalitarianism for America, which was true, as long as you were white and male.

But that was true, and that was the vision. So it was a kind of -- it was a kind of party, in a sense, of optimism, a kind of party of reform, too, which is interesting because then, later, when it becomes associated with pro-slavery forces, we tend to then think of that party as being conservative, benighted, reactionary. It was more complicated than that.

The Republicans rose out of the Whig Party that was against the Democrats. And the anti-slavery Whigs or the conscience Whigs, and the anti-slavery Democrats joined forces eventually, by 1860, and elected Lincoln as a Republican. Hawthorne stayed true to the Democratic Party all the way through, even though lots of people left it, became either -- if they didn`t become Whigs, that would be too hard, went to the Republicans, because, after all, the Republicans seemed to promise some of the things that the Democrats stood for but also anti-slavery. Hawthorne did not. So he was in the most -- he stayed with the most conservative part of the Democratic Party, which eventually fell apart. [...]

LAMB: Go back to, though, the biography. And almost all the lists you see of books that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, they don`t list -- I don`t mean you, but they don`t -- often, you don`t see the list of the biography of Franklin Pierce. How big a book was that?

WINEAPPLE: Oh, that`s interesting. I mean, that`s interesting. I mean, I -- that never dawned on me. You mean how long a book was it?

LAMB: Yes.

WINEAPPLE: It was about 250 pages. It was long enough. I mean, it was...

LAMB: Have you read it?

WINEAPPLE: Have I read it?

LAMB: Yes.

WINEAPPLE: Oh, yes. Oh, it`s fascinating.

LAMB: Why?

WINEAPPLE: Well, first of all, it`s Hawthorne. It has the signature of Hawthorne. The sentences are elegant and beautifully balanced. And he gives on one hand and takes away on the other. He won`t perjure himself. He won`t say, you know, Pierce is a great person. He says Pierce is great for the job, something like that.

But from another point of view, you know, quite -- not just literary, although literary is connected to it, it also demonstrates Hawthorne`s view of the Constitution, of slavery and of politics. He`s not mincing words. He doesn`t have the veil in front of his face. He`s very clear about what he thinks and what he thinks about what Pierce thinks. And because Pierce backs the Constitution, Hawthorne thinks he`s the man for the job because Hawthorne himself believes in the Constitution, which makes sense, when you think about it.

He was a cynical man who was conscious that we`re capable of doing terrible things to one another. And for him law, the Constitution, is a kind of document that prevents demagoguery, the demagoguery of, say, the witch trials or whatever in the -- you know, in the 17th century or the demagoguery that he would be a little bit skeptical about vis-a-vis Lincoln, you know? It prevents mob rule, all of those things. He really believed in the Constitution.

LAMB: But here you have a man that was born in the Northeast, and also Franklin Pierce, from Concord, New Hampshire.

WINEAPPLE: Yes.

LAMB: And he was a Democrat, elected in 1852, four years only. What was he about? Why was he so pro-slavery?

WINEAPPLE: I -- you know, it`s a terrible one-word answer. I wouldn`t say this about Hawthorne, but the first word that comes to my mind when you ask me that question is stupid.

(LAUGHTER)

WINEAPPLE: But that`s not a good answer. Why was he pro-slavery in that way? I think because he lacked the imagination to think of what it really is to be a slave. You know, I mean, I think it was a real failure -- it`s a failure of moral nerve and it`s a failure of imagination that comes to Pierce that he didn`t bother to think about it. He never got beyond the rule of law. So it wasn`t real to him.

Maybe being from the Northeast had something to do with it. Maybe being, as most people were -- whether it was Hawthorne at one extreme or even Theodore Parker at the other extreme -- maybe being racist had something to do with it. But he believed that -- and maybe there was some validity to one argument, that if the institution of slavery -- the institution -- is reprehensible, which it is -- they agreed about that. They disagreed about the means by which it should be changed. And in a sense, Pierce was a quietist. Pierce thought you leave just it alone, and eventually, it will go away. Hawthorne thought that, too, actually.

LAMB: How`d he ever get elected president?

WINEAPPLE: Pierce?

LAMB: Yes.

WINEAPPLE: Dark horse. You know, I mean, the sort of mechanics of the election of 1852 were such that he was able to get in. I don`t remember on which ballot, but eventually, he was able to get in. And it was also because he didn`t -- he offended the least amount of people. He was one of those kinds of candidates that, you know, the South could deal with him. The South thought it was OK. And the North -- well, he was still a Northerner. He`s still, as you said, from Concord, so that he had -- so represented the North and the South. And he tried not to say too much. He wouldn`t talk about the fugitive slave law, for example, even though he was for it. And because people liked him. He was evidently, to meet him, a very personable, charming guy.

LAMB: You say they were together when Nathaniel Hawthorne died?

WINEAPPLE: Yes, they were. As I mentioned, Hawthorne was ill. He`d been progressively ill. It`s hard to say exactly what he had. And he wanted -- he had already taken one failed journey from his house, very tragically, because his editor, one of his editors happened to die on that trip, so Hawthorne`s health clearly didn`t improve, especially to the extent that it was psychologically driven. And his wife, Sophia, thought that it would be good for him to take another trip. The only person he would go with was Franklin Pierce. He loved Pierce. You want to talk about people loving each other, these two men loved each other. And Pierce came to Boston, and Sophia took Nathaniel into Boston, and they went in Pierce`s carriage up through New Hampshire to -- and eventually, they went to Plymouth, and that`s where Hawthorne died, in the Pemigewasset (ph) Inn in Plymouth.

CUT THE BLUE WIRE:

Senate GOP set to go 'nuclear' over judges (CHUCK LINDELL, November 28, 2004, The Cox News Service)

Senate Republicans, boldly confident after their Nov. 2 electoral success, are preparing to end months of frustrating delays over President Bush's judicial picks by hitting Democrats with Republican's ultimate legislative weapon. [...]

Because all appointments must be resubmitted when a new Congress convenes, the first move will be up to Bush.

Based on the president's track record, Ornstein expects to see most of the 10 filibustered judges renominated to the circuit courts of appeal — one step below the Supreme Court. New nominees also will be scrutinized.

"He can up the ante here or reduce the temperature, which will make a difference in terms of the prominence of the issue," Ornstein said. "I think it's going to be big because I have a hard time imagining Bush not pushing the envelope on these nominees."

Even renominated judges must begin the process anew, sitting through grueling hearings before the Judiciary Committee, receiving approval from the panel's Republican majority, then waiting to see whether if Democrats filibuster on the Senate floor. If they do, Republicans likely will counter with two measures before considering the nuclear option.

One would mandate a timetable for judicial nominations — probably 30 days to hold a hearing, followed by 30-day deadlines for a committee vote and a floor vote.

The second gradually would reduce the number of senators necessary to halt a filibuster with each successive vote, from the current 60-vote threshold to 57, then 54, then a simple majority of 51.

Both options were introduced last Congress as resolutions, but Republicans chose not to press forward. Next Congress, however, they'll have a stronger majority with 55 seats, up from 51, improving their odds of success but still not enough to stop Democrats if they choose to filibuster the resolutions.

The nuclear option would be a last resort if other measures fail, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who will likely play a central role in the debate as a member of the Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Constitution subcommittee.

Cornyn argues that judicial filibusters unconstitutionally require a 60-vote supermajority to approve nominees, not the simple majority mandated in the Constitution.

"Democrats must stop not only for the good of the Senate but out of respect to the president, who received almost 60 million votes on November 2, and out of respect for the Constitution itself," Cornyn said. "No group of senators has the right, no minority has the right to tyrannize the majority of the Senate."

The nuclear option would begin with Frist taking the Senate floor to seek a ruling from the presiding officer, likely to be Vice President Dick Cheney in his role as Senate president, to determine whether judicial filibusters violate the Constitution.

Cheney's affirmative response would initiate a vote on changing the filibuster rule which also would be subject to a filibuster unless Cheney over- rules the Senate parliamentarian on whether normal debate rules apply. Then, only 51 votes would be needed for approval.

Another option includes changing Senate guidelines to disallow judicial filibusters, which also would require the Senate president to declare that normal filibuster rules do not apply, so 51 votes could prevail. Changing Senate rules should occur early in the session to gain legitimacy, some Republicans say, making this option potentially less appealing.

Either way, it would be pure power politics, leaving Democrats unable to respond.

COMMANDER DIRTNAP:

Muslim Extremist Leader Dies in Shootout (AP, Nov 27, 2004)

Government troops killed a leader of the notorious Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf in a shootout in the southern Philippines, officials said Sunday.

Munap Manialah, also known as Commander Munap, was shot dead late Saturday in a firefight with Philippine army and navy troops in southern Basilan island's Isabela city, Philippine army spokesman Maj. Bartolome Bacarro said in a statement. A trooper was slightly wounded in the shootout.

SAVING THE SCOTS:

How one day could unite our country: Campaigners calling for St Andrew’s Day to be a public holiday claim it would improve our sense of nationhood. Here, Scotland’s most senior Catholic argues it could also bring together the nation’s many faiths (Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien 11/28/04, Sunday Herald)

In the early centuries of the Christian Church’s history, legend had it that on November 30, 60AD, at Patras in Achaia, Greece, Andrew – son of John and brother of Simon Peter – having been scourged and tied to a diagonal crucifix, suffered what would have been an agonising death. His crime was to have preached the Christian message across that part of the Aegean, which was then under the control of Rome. The fact that his proselytising led to the conversion of the Roman proconsul’s wife sealed his fate.

Legend also has it that, in order to prolong Andrew’s agony, he was tied rather than nailed to the cross, but throughout those days of unimaginable suffering he continued to preach on the life of Christ to all who would listen. On Tuesday , almost 2000 years later, I will rededicate an altar in my own cathedral, St Mary’s in Edinburgh, to the memory of this outstanding apostle. Within the restored altar are two reliquaries containing relics of the saint, and a newly commissioned icon of Andrew will be installed above the altar.

In recent years, following the re-establishment of the Scottish parliament, a campaign has gathered momentum to have November 30 declared a national public holiday. In fact, a bill will be introduced in the Scottish parliament tomorrow attempting to establish St Andrew’s Day as a bank holiday – a move supported by three-quarters of Scots, according to an opinion poll last week.

I believe a public holiday would have the effect of bringing a heightened sense of nationhood to our country, as well as giving recognition to Scotland’s Christian heritage. St Andrew was first adopted as our patron precisely for that purpose, even though he was not a Scot. I am certain that many of those who have found refuge here in Scotland, even those belonging to a different faith community, would respect the significance of the day and happily take part in it as a national holiday. This is an appropriate time to consider such an initiative and – given the mood attending the opening of the new parliament building – it might well succeed.

Perhaps we should see Andrew as a unifying force, not only in Europe and around the world, but also in Scotland. To this end, it is important that we do not politicise our patron. He is for all Scots. We carry his memory collectively, not exclusively. Let no-one claim him as their own, or decry or disown him – we can disagree as to how best to remember him without disputing that he merits remembrance. Let us focus instead on the figure of Andrew as seafarer, fisherman, traveller, missionary and martyr, and in him find a human being of deep conviction around whom we can all unite. St Andrew being an apostle – one of those who had been sent out by Jesus – is an obvious model to us in all denominations in Scotland to reach out to those of other denominations and indeed to those of other faiths.

Within the Christian community, we must constantly remind ourselves of the shared reverence we have for St Andrew which should help us in our journey towards ever closer union. In our relations with other faiths we must hold Andrew up as a man of God whose strength and courage in the face of persecution and godlessness can inspire anyone with faith.

BETTER BENCH:

Portman’s potential has GOP excited: Party, strategists say congressman can go far, but it’s not clear which road he’ll take (Jonathan Riskind, November 28, 2004, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH)

Speaker of the U.S. House? Governor of Ohio? U.S. senator? Vice president of the United States? Even president?

Some savvy political minds here and in Ohio think one or more of those jobs could lie ahead for Rep. Rob Portman, a courteous Cincinnati Republican whose attempts to downplay such talk aren’t dousing all the intraparty enthusiasm.

Portman, a reliably conservative voter in the House, also has worked with Democrats to pass substantive legislation in areas such as pension reform. His growing legion of GOP fans think he has a potent combination of political assets.

Portman has the conservative credentials necessary to win favor from the Republican base but doesn’t come across as a right-wing ideologue in a state that seems to want its elected officials to hug the center.

Although Ohio is replete with statewide-elected Republicans, a number of GOP strategists and fund-raisers say Portman has the potential to leap from the relative obscurity of his congressional district into the governor’s chair or a Senate seat. He has the drive and talent to seek national office, they add.

Portman’s "got something special," said Washington-based GOP strategist Barry Bennett, who helped run Portman’s first congressional campaign. "He has the charm of a Bill Clinton, but an intellect and work ethic that is far superior. Given the state he’s from and how far he’s come in just 10 years, this is a guy who has a legitimate shot at being president someday."

THE STENCH OF THE MIGHTY WIND:

Creator won't rest in bashing of Darwin (Linda Valdez, Nov. 28, 2004, Arizona Republic)

This would be a good time to rent Inherit the Wind, and get ready for the latest sequel in the Monkey Wars saga.

The dates have been changed to reflect the persistence of the Darwin haters, and the arguments have been punched up with some pseudo-scientific jargon. But the goal remains the same: Dumb down science and inject somebody's version of God into the classroom.

[L]abor included public school teachers.

The new cause and methods adopted by the ACLU set the stage for how it would handle the Scopes trial. It remained an elitist organization dominated by liberal, educated New Yorkers who had grown wary of majoritarianism.

NO MESSIAH, NO LIMITS:

Chinese Christians Are a Force, But What Kind? (Joshua Kurlantzick, November 28, 2004, Washington Post)

Though the Communist Party all but destroyed the Protestant and Catholic churches when it took over in 1949, scholars estimate that the country now has at least 45 million Christians. Dennis Balcombe, pastor of Hong Kong's Revival Christian Church and an expert who has studied Chinese Christianity for two decades, believes that there may be as many as 90 million Christians in China.

There's a tendency among some outside China to see the spread of religion as speeding political change and creating an ethical bond with the world beyond China's borders. "As cultural and social traditions evolve, Christianity is poised to provide new ethical and moral foundations for the emergence of a modern Civil Society and State," Sister Janet Carroll of the U.S. Catholic China Bureau told the Congressional Executive Commission on China in September.

But the fastest growing religious movements in China seem unlikely to provide salvation for the country. Though Catholicism, which in China comprises both a state-sanctioned church and underground churches loyal to the Vatican, is becoming more popular, the majority of new Chinese Christians are Protestants. And while the state-sanctioned Protestant church is growing, most Chinese Christians are joining underground "house" churches. These churches are generally found away from city centers, in outlying regions, hidden within communal areas and marked only by discreet signs of faith.

Many house church services are so passionate that they would surprise even the most committed American evangelicals. Many house churches hold prayer meetings, at which they recruit new members and affirm their relationship to God, that last for several days, even up to a week. The Crying School, a house church that reportedly has at least 500,000 members, holds three-day retreats at which adherents wail and cry en masse, repenting in anticipation of the apocalypse. Another underground movement known as the Shouters believes in screaming for hours on end, to attest to one's faith. The Shouters reportedly shriek out a shortened version of the Lord's Prayer while stamping their feet.

There are several reasons why Christianity is thriving in China. Between 1949 and the decline of Maoism, the Chinese Communist Party eviscerated the country's traditional culture and institutions, denigrating Confucianism, ancestor worship, traditional family structures and classical Chinese education and arts. At the same time, the CCP suppressed civil society actors such as unions and rival parties.

Then, in the past two decades, the Chinese people have been tossed into a capitalist maelstrom of the most social Darwinist kind, with a paucity of social safety nets and an abundance of consumption. The government has tried to foster a new ideology based on Chinese nationalism, but it has not proven overwhelmingly popular. Shocked by the rapid transition of Chinese society, unconvinced that capitalism alone can provide a fulfilling life, and divorced from traditional culture, many younger Chinese have been turning to religion.

Indeed, not only Christianity but also many other faiths -- Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and qi gong offshoots like Falun Gong -- are gaining new adherents in the Middle Kingdom. As this newspaper has reported, Buddhist monasteries in central China have become so popular that they have drawn thousands of devout pilgrims, inspiring a government crackdown. In just five years, Falun Gong has grown from an obscure spiritual breathing movement into a national phenomenon capable of holding rallies across China.

Christianity is drawing older believers as well. Small farms and state-linked industrial enterprises have been closing in large numbers, especially in China's old manufacturing heartland in the northeast. In these areas, unemployed workers -- mostly middle-aged and older -- mill on the sides of the road or sleep in parks and other public areas. As Kim-Kwong Chan, executive secretary of the Hong Kong Christian Council and a fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, reported this year, Christianity "draws on the huge pool of dissatisfied unemployed workers or poor farmers, who may cling to anything that gives them hope." House churches also often provide social services to the poor whom the government has abandoned.

Christianity -- in particular, evangelical Protestant faiths -- is in some ways even more alluring to Chinese than Buddhism or Islam. With its emphasis on individual relationships with God, evangelical Christianity is flexible enough to tailor its message to both the poor and the wealthy. What's more, many Chinese, particularly in poor areas, associate Christianity with miracles. And house churches are not tainted by being registered with the government, which makes the state-linked church leaders appear to be party hacks. [...]

Still, it is unlikely that Chinese house churches will play the role of Catholicism did Poland during the 1980s, when it provided believers, laid-off workers and other groups with a unifying, liberal political structure. Unlike many priests in Eastern Europe, some Chinese house church leaders are highly conservative, focused on nothing other than evangelism and taking little interest in politics. Usually they are willing to challenge the state only when pressed to the wall, such as when Beijing tried to ban Sunday school education in several provinces.

What's more, because Christianity was so harshly repressed in China, and because many Chinese seem to be looking for millenarian, miracle-producing faiths, many popular house church movements have developed into authoritarian fiefdoms themselves, with adherents following one charismatic leader, who often has little religious training. These underground leaders are hardly vehicles for liberal reform.

SKEPTICISM IS WARRANTED, BUT...:

Paralyzed woman walks again after stem cell therapy (AFP, 11/27/04)

A South Korean woman paralyzed for 20 years is walking again after scientists say they repaired her damaged spine using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood.

Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident two decades ago.

Last week her eyes glistened with tears as she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea researchers went public for the first time with the results of their stem-cell therapy.

They said it was the world's first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

Michael Kinsley, likewise an advocate of murder for his own purposes, expresses himself with unusual clarity today, To Hell With Values (Michael Kinsley, November 28, 2004, LA Times)

It's been less than a month since the gods decreed that, due to the election results, American political life henceforth must be all about something called "values." And I gave it my best. Honest. But I'm sick of talking about values, sick of pretending I have them or care more about them than I really do. Sick of bending and twisting the political causes I do care about to make them qualify as "values."

IT ALL TIES TOGETHER:

Spanish Newspaper: FBI Links Madrid Bombings to September 11 (VOA News,
28 November 2004)

A Spanish newspaper says U.S. investigators have found the clearest link yet between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Madrid train bombings earlier this year.

The ABC newspaper says the FBI has told Spanish investigators that one of the men who helped plan the September 11 attacks also gave the order to carry out the Madrid blasts.

The Madrid-based daily says investigators do not know the man's identity but believe that during the summer of 2001 he met in Spain with Mohammad Atta, one of the lead September 11 hijackers.

It says investigators believe the man is a lieutenant of Mustafa Setmarian, a leading al-Qaida operative.

MORE:
Madrid Attacks May Have Targeted Election: Wiretaps Bolster Theory That Blasts Were Timed to Hurt Chances of Leader Who Backed Iraq War (Keith B. Richburg, October 17, 2004, Washington Post)

Seven months after bombs exploded aboard morning commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people, the precise motives of the attackers remain unclear. But new evidence, including wiretap transcripts, has lent support to a theory that the strike was carefully timed to take place three days before a national election in hopes of influencing Spanish voters to reject a government that sent troops to Iraq.

Some analysts argue that the placement of important clues -- particularly a videotaped claim of responsibility by a masked Islamic militant discovered two days after the March 11 attacks -- was aimed at quickly establishing that the attacks were a reaction to the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq and generating a backlash against the ruling Popular Party.

The party had a comfortable advantage in opinion polls but lost the election on March 14. The new Socialist party government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero quickly kept a campaign pledge to withdraw Spain's 1,300-troop contingent from Iraq. It also set about improving relations with neighboring Morocco, after two years of tension under the government of the previous prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar.

Newly disclosed wiretaps of an alleged organizer of the bombings expressing glee that "the dog Aznar" had been put out of office have prompted some analysts here to conclude that the perpetrators sought to try to bring about specific reactions through the attacks. [...]

Spanish authorities are now focusing on a senior al Qaeda operative close to Osama bin Laden who they believe was the overall plot organizer, a Syrian-born former journalist named Abu Musab Suri. He had married a Spanish woman and took Spanish nationality in the mid-1990s.

Suri, also called Mustafa Setmarian Nasar, is thought to be 45 years old. European intelligence agencies have said that he was once the overall commander of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and once headed al Qaeda's propaganda operation.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, investigators thought he was part of an al Qaeda faction that distanced itself from bin Laden's leadership. But more recently, European intelligence agencies have questioned that view and come to believe Suri may have traveled to Europe last year to activate some of the al Qaeda groups in Spain and elsewhere.

DOWN, DOWN, DOWN IN A BURNIN' RING OF FIRE (via brian boys):

Lizards Help Explain Survival of the Not-So-Fittest (John Roach, November 24, 2004, National Geographic News)

Glance at a crowd at just about any big sporting event and you'll notice that humans are a diverse bunch. Not only the fittest have survived.

Natural selection depends as much on behavior and environmental conditions as it does on physical prowess, as demonstrated by two studies of lizards in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.

"People have a very simple view of how natural selection shapes traits," said Barry Sinervo, an evolutionary biologist who was not involved in the studies. A biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Sinervo said the studies demonstrate the complexity of evolution.

"When behavior or physiology complicates what traits are involved, the results of natural selection are often thwarted or attenuated when compared to our naive perspective," he added.

Metaphors play an important role in the history of science. There are felicitous metaphors and those that are unfortunate. Darwin's term "natural selection" is on the borderline of the tweo categories and was strenuously resisted by the majority of his contemporaries. [...] When, at the urging of hios friends, Darwin adopted Spencer's term "survival of the fittest," he jumped from the frying pan into the fire, because his new metaphor suggested circular reasoning.

REALIGNING WITH ROVE:

Rove Unleashed: For the past 30 years he's focused like a laser on George W. Bush. What does Karl Rove do for an encore? The plans for a permanent GOP majority (Howard Fineman, 11/28/04, Newsweek)

One thing Rove will be up to, he made clear in a NEWSWEEK interview, is involvement of some kind in the race for the next Republican presidential nomination. Meeting with reporters only days after the election, he seemed to count himself out. "And 2008 is going to be left to someone who has a little bit more energy and interest than me," he said then. "This will be the last presidential campaign I will ever do." Last week he backtracked on that pledge. "I said that in haste," he said. "A lot of people in the White House told me that that was a really stupid thing to say. So let me say that I can't imagine spending two years away from my wife and son again, the way I did this time. But besides that, who knows?"

Telling it like it is: Rove, aboard Air Force One, shows the president his blueprints for victory
Charles Ommanney / Contact for Newsweek
Telling it like it is: Rove, aboard Air Force One, shows the president his blueprints for victory
Translation: the Karl Rove Primary has begun—or at least Rove (and Bush) want the world to believe it has, if for no other reason than to dangle the possibility of help from (or the threat of opposition from) the Architect before the eyes of would-be GOP contenders and power brokers. "The president will be a lame duck soon enough," said a Republican strategist. "He can't afford to let Karl be one, too." Indeed, being seen as "close to Karl" is a sign among desperate Republicans of "election" in an almost theological sense. All the more reason for Rove to be slow about taking sides. "He won't actually commit for years," the strategist predicted.

In the meantime, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee is regarded by colleagues as a subsidiary of Rove Inc., following the Architect's plan to hem in Sen. Arlen Specter's power as chairman of the judiciary committee. Rove also has a close operational and conservative philosophical bond with Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. At the same time, Rove has worked well with two cultural moderates: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even Sen. John McCain has patched up relations with Rove (strained to the breaking point in the 2000 campaign), spending long hours with him and the president on plane and bus trips in the final days of the 2004 race. "If you spend three days on a bus trip with someone," Rove says, "you really bond with them."

For now, Rove's goals are at once more immediate and more lofty: to design a legislative and philosophical agenda that will lead to further GOP gains, and beyond that to a political dominance that could last for decades, as FDR's New Deal did. The core principles are clear to anyone who listened to a Bush stump speech. They are drawn from a well of conservative (and, in the 19th-century sense, "liberal") dogma: that only free-market democracies respectful of traditional moral values can bring us a planet of fulfilled citizens secure from terror. In fact, Rove's formulation is a new hybrid, willing to use big government in the service of markets and morality. Asked to name Bush's biggest accomplishment thus far, Rove replied in a flash: "His clear-eyed explanation of how to win the war on terrorism. It was the defining moment of our time." In other words, the Architect plans to be fully engaged in formulating foreign policy—and, while he isn't thought of as a leading neocon, his views are squarely within that camp.

On domestic policy, Rove has a theme at the ready: "the ownership society" he says the president wants to build.

SCORIN' SOME H:

Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies (MATTHEW L. WALD, 11/28/04, NY Times)

Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, raising the possibility of using nuclear power to indirectly wean the transportation system from its dependence on oil.

The development would move the country closer to the Energy Department's goal of a "hydrogen economy," in which hydrogen would be created through a variety of means, and would be consumed by devices called fuel cells, to make electricity to run cars and for other purposes. Experts cite three big roadblocks to a hydrogen economy: manufacturing hydrogen cleanly and at low cost, finding a way to ship it and store it on the vehicles that use it, and reducing the astronomical price of fuel cells.

"This is a breakthrough in the first part," said J. Stephen Herring, a consulting engineer at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, which plans to announce the development on Monday with Cerametec Inc. of Salt Lake City.

The developers also said the hydrogen could be used by oil companies to stretch oil supplies even without solving the fuel cell and transportation problems.

Mr. Herring said the experimental work showed the "highest-known production rate of hydrogen by high-temperature electrolysis."

TOO BAD THEY HAVE NO OPPOSITION:

Gordon Brown ditches his beloved Prudence (Allister Heath and Fraser Nelson, November 28, 2004, The Business)

In a result that will dismay the Treasury ahead of Thursday's pre-Budget report, 48% of voters agree with the statement that "[GORDON Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer] is becoming an imprudent chancellor who has spent too much so that taxes will have to rise". Only 45% agree that he "remains a prudent chancellor who has controlled spending and run the economy well", according to the ICM survey for Reform, a free-market think-tank.

Two-thirds of voters are convinced taxes will go up if Labour wins the election, despite the chancellor's insistence that he remains on course to meet his fiscal rule without the need to hike taxes. Among Labour voters, 61% believe taxes will go up.

But in a blow to the Tories, 54% also believe that taxes will go up if the Conservatives were to win the next election, including 39% of Conservative voters, confirming widespread disillusionment with all politicians.

In a turnaround that marks a watershed in British public opinion, 50% of respondents don't want taxes to go up even to pay for more public services, against 48% who do. By 79% to 18%, voters agree with the statement that "public services need reform more than they need extra money", a proposition that gains even more support from Labour voters.

But by 59% to 39% voters also agree that "public services can only really improve if they receive more money from the government" - but nearly half of the 59% are unwilling to pay more tax to fund these improvements, confirming a change in voter attitudes away from the tax-and-spend model endorsed by Brown.

EVEN THE OTHER WEASELS DISTRUST THEM:

French banned from the Eurofighter (Tracey Boles, November 28, 2004, The Business)

NEW row has broken out over the Eurofighter Typhoon, with ministers from the £19bn (E27bn, $35bn) fighter plane's four partner nations banning all French nationals from promoting the aircraft for export.

The Business has learned that ministers have imposed the extraordinary condition as the plane approaches a pivotal period in its history because they believe the French would undermine the plane's export potential by putting their national interests - and products - first.

The ban, likely to increase tensions between the UK and France, was set out in a letter written by procurement ministers from Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany, the plane's four partner nations, to their industry partners on the troubled programme.

INESCAPABLE:

Quest for Nazi father shatters German myths (ALLAN HALL, 11/28/04, Scotland on Sunday)

WHEN Beate Niemann went in search of her father she hoped to find a man she could be proud of, but instead uncovered a truth that lay hidden for nearly six decades under family lies and deceit.

While she went looking for Bruno Sattler, a father, First World War soldier, Berlin policeman and family man, she found only SS Major Bruno Sattler: mass murderer with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Jews on his hands.

At a time when Germans have begun to embrace victimhood about the Second World War, projecting themselves as having suffered equally under RAF bombs, from Red Army rapes and under their Nazi masters on a scale that somehow equates with the millions upon whom Germany inflicted its savagery, Niemann’s story shatters this cosy attempt to retreat into shared pain. [...]

She said: "I went in search of father I never knew and I hoped that the nagging doubts I had had about him down the years would be dispelled and I would find a man that I could be truly proud of.

"Instead I found a man who was a mass murderer, whose life was glossed over by my mother; my mother who lied to me and who continued to lie up until the day she died. I found a man who, when I was being suckled on my mother’s breast, was ordering mobile gas wagons each day to a concentration camp outside of Belgrade to kill women and children.

"I found a man who gave the orders for tens of thousands of Jews to be shot in Smolensk and outside Moscow and who participated in the destruction of 500,000 partisans, Jews, gypsies and others in Yugoslavia.

"This is what I found. This is the truth. It is inescapable. And in my greatest rage I wonder why, why he didn’t even have the decency to kill himself, to do that small thing for me?"

DESERVING NOMINEE:

Gramm looks good for Treasury (ROBERT NOVAK, November 28, 2004, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

With Treasury Secretary John Snow's continuation in office uncertain, the White House is seriously considering former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas as his possible successor.

President Bush has never been an intimate of Gramm's, and did not think of him for Treasury four years ago when he made the disastrous choice of industrialist Paul O'Neill. However, according to sources close to the president, he is giving his fellow Texan a serious look this time. Gramm is now an investment banker.

ASHHEAPISM:

U.S. Eyeing New Tact in Respect of Iran (ELI LAKE, November 24, 2004, New York Sun)

The State Department is looking at ways to reach out to Iranian democrats inside the country to see who would be willing to accept outside support in their efforts to reform and change the Islamic republic.

"We are exploring ways to begin working with groups inside the country," the chief of the State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative, Scott Carpenter, told The New York Sun yesterday.

While the president's nominee for secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has yet to sign off on a new Iran policy, the recent interest in reaching out to Iranian democrats in itself represents a change for Foggy Bottom, which until now has shied away from any open contact with or support for Persian activists inside the country.

Mr. Carpenter stressed that his outreach to Iranian democrats was preliminary, adding that he was considering inviting dissidents and activists to regional conferences to explore the prospect of America working with their organizations on the ground as the National Endowment for Democracy already does in countries all over the world. "I'm talking with people who have contacts in the country. I've asked them to spread the word,' Are you interested? Would there be some ideas we should look at?'" Mr. Carpenter said.

The new chief of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, or MEPI, used to be a senior adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council and came into his job at the State Department this fall. While MEPI is based in the State Department, it has been a high priority for the White House. President Bush himself has touted it as an initiative he hopes to spur liberal reforms in the Middle East. The first director of MEPI was the daughter of the vice president, Elizabeth Cheney. [...]

Rarely discussed, however, in the context of America's Iran policy are the organic social pressures to oust the ruling mullahs, who in the last year have purged nearly all the politicians in their elected Parliament who favored a referendum on the powers of the supreme leader. Last month, a noted Iranian journalist and human rights activist, Emadeddin Baghi, wrote in the Washington Post of 8,000 nongovernmental organizations that have emerged in recent years replacing the traditional functions of the state. He ended his piece saying, "I remain hopeful and active in the Iranian movement to establish a democratic civil society."

In 2002 and 2003 especially, Mr. Bush publicly cheered on that movement. His secretary of state, however, did little to match a policy to those words. In 2002, the State Department opposed a Pentagon policy to provide non-lethal assistance to organizations in Iran and funding for satellite television stations run by Iranian exiles. Eventually, this national security policy directive was vetoed by Ms. Rice when she was the national security adviser.

NOW:

Shiite Leader Opposes Delay in Iraq's Vote (EDWARD WONG, 11/28/04, NY Times)

Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric is opposing a drive by prominent Sunni Arab and Kurdish political factions to delay elections scheduled for Jan. 30, an aide to the cleric and Shiite leaders said Saturday.

The American ambassador to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, also lent his forceful support to keeping the present election date. "National elections will be taking place on the 30th of January of next year," he said on Saturday, while touring the devastated Sunni city of Falluja.

Over the past week, a movement spearheaded by Sunni Arabs to delay the elections has gathered momentum, as they have argued that the nation remains too violent to allow safe voting.

Responding to those calls, the Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has insisted on keeping the Jan. 30 date. All along, he has argued that elections should be held as soon as possible.

Other figures are setting out their positions. The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, is not officially supporting a delay, a spokesman for him said, although his party did back the calls for a postponement.

As for the ayatollah, "Sayed Sistani doesn't see any need to delay the election date," an aide, Abu Ahmed al-Mudaffar, said in an interview from the holy city of Najaf, using the honorific reserved for direct descendants of Muhammad. Officials from the Sistani organization made clear that position in phone conversations Friday with Sunni leaders, said a senior official in the Shiite Council, an umbrella political group.

DESPITE SOME SKETCHY FLETCHING:

Is Humanism a Religion? (G.K. Chesterton, 1929, The Thing)

Modern science and organization are in a sense only too natural. They herd us like the beasts along lines of heredity or tribal doom; they attach man to the earth like a plant instead of liberating him, even like a bird, let alone an angel. Indeed, their latest psychology is lower than the level of life. What is subconscious is sub-human and, as it were, subterranean: or something less than earthly. This fight for culture is above all a fight for consciousness: what some would call self-consciousness: but anyhow against mere subconsciousness. We need a rally of the really human things; will which is morals, memory which is tradition, culture which is the mental thrift of our fathers.

The fact is this: that the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom; including, of course, many truths known to pagan antiquity but crystallized in Christendom. But it is not really starting new enthusiasms of its own. The novelty is a matter of names and labels, like modern advertisement; in almost every other way the novelty is merely negative. It is not starting fresh things that it can really carry on far into the future. On the contrary, it is picking up old things that it cannot carry on at all. For these are the two marks of modem moral ideals. First, that they were borrowed or snatched out of ancient or mediaeval hands. Second, that they wither very quickly in modern hands.

Mr. Norman Foerster's book, American Criticism might almost have been meant for a text-book to prove my point. I will begin with a particular example with which the book also deals. My whole youth was filled, as with a sunrise, with the sanguine glow of Walt Whitman. He seemed to me something like a crowd turned to a giant, or like Adam the First Man. It thrilled me to hear of somebody who had heard of somebody, who saw him in the street; it was as if Christ were still alive. I did not care about whether his unmetrical poetry were a wise form or no, any more than whether a true Gospel of Jesus were scrawled on parchment or stone. I never had a hint of the evil some enemies have attributed to him; if it was there, it was not there for me. What I saluted was a new equality, which was not a dull levelling but an enthusiastic lifting; a shouting exultation in the mere fact that men were men. Real men were greater than unreal gods; and each remained as mystic and majestic as a god, while he became as frank and comforting as a comrade. The point can be put most compactly in one of Whitman's own phrases; he says somewhere that old artists painted crowds, in which one head had a nimbus of gold-coloured light; "but I paint hundreds of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light." A glory was to cling about men as men; a mutual worship was to take the form of fellowship; and the least and lowest of men must be included in this fellowship; a hump-backed Negro half-wit, with one eye and homicidal mania, must not be painted without his nimbus of gold-coloured light. This might seem only the final expansion of a movement begun a century before with Rousseau and the Revolutionists; and I was brought up to believe and did believe that the movement was the beginning of bigger and better things. But these were songs before sunrise; and there is no comparison between even sunrise and the sun. Whitman was brotherhood in broad daylight, showing endless varieties of radiant and wonderful creatures, all the more sacred for being solid. Shelley had adored Man, but Whitman adored Men. Every human face, every human feature, was a matter of mystical poetry, such as lit like chance torchlight, hitherto, a face here and there in the crowd. A king was a man treated as all men should be treated. A god was a man worshipped as all men should be worshipped. What could they do against a race of gods and a republic of kings; not verbally but veritably the New World?

Here is what Mr. Foerster says about the present position of the founder of the new world of democracy: "Our present science lends little support to an inherent 'dignity of man' or to his 'perfectibility.' It is wholly possible that the science of the future will lead us away from democracy towards some form of aristocracy. The millennial expectations that Whitman built upon science and democracy, we are now well aware rested upon insecure foundations... The perfection of nature, the natural goodness of man, 'the great pride of man in himself' offset with an emotional humanitarianism — these are the materials of a structure only slightly coloured with modernity. His politics, his ethics, his religion belong to the past, even that facile 'religiousness' which he hoped would suffuse and complete the work of science and democracy... In the essentials of his prophecy, Whitman, we must conclude, has been falsified by the event." This is a very moderate and fair statement; it would be easy to find the same thing in a much fiercer statement. Here is a monumental remark by Mr. H.L. Mencken: "They (he means certain liberal or ex-liberal thinkers) have come to realize that the morons whom they sweated to save do not want to be saved, and are not worth saving." That is the New Spirit, if there is any New Spirit. "I will make unconquerable cities, with their arms about each other's necks," cried Walt Whitman, "by the love of comrades, by the lifelong love of comrades." I like to think of the face of Mr. Mencken of Baltimore, if some casual comrade from Pittsburgh tried to make him unconquerable by putting an arm around his neck. But the idea is dead for much less ferocious people than Mr. Mencken. It is dead in a man like Aldous Huxley, who complained recently of the "gratuitous" romancing of the old republican view of human nature. It is dead in the most humane and humorous of our recent critics. It is dead in so many wise and good men to-day, that I cannot help wondering whether, under modern conditions of his favourite "science," it would not be dead in Whitman himself.

It is not dead in me. It remains real for me, not by any merit of mine, but by the fact that this mystical idea, while it has evaporated as a mood, still exists as a creed. I am perfectly prepared to assert, as firmly as I should have asserted in my boyhood, that the hump-backed and half-witted Negro is decorated with a nimbus of gold-coloured light. The truth is that Whitman's wild picture, or what he thought was a wild picture, is in fact a very old and orthodox picture. There are, as a matter of fact, any number of old pictures in which whole crowds are crowned with haloes, to indicate that they have all attained Beatitude. But for Catholics it is a fundamental dogma of the Faith that all human beings, without any exception whatever, were specially made, were shaped and pointed like shining arrows, for the end of hitting the mark of Beatitude. It is true that the shafts are feathered with free will, and therefore throw the shadow of all the tragic possibilities of free will; and that the Church (having also been aware for ages of that darker side of truth, which the new sceptics have just discovered) does also draw attention to the darkness of that potential tragedy. But that does not make any difference to the gloriousness of the potential glory. In one aspect it is even a part of it; since the freedom is itself a glory.

YOU MEAN WORDS LIKE HOMOPHOBE AND BIGOT

Churches warned over 'gay slurs' (BBC, November 28th, 2004)

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for church traditionalists opposed to homosexuality to stop using inflammatory words about gay people.

Dr Rowan Williams, in a letter to the world's Anglican churches, said harsh language can lead to murder.

His comments come as the Church is embroiled in a bitter global row about the ordination of gay bishops.

Some traditionalist Anglican leaders strongly condemn homosexuality as being outlawed by the Bible.

According to The Sunday Times, Dr Williams has outlined his views to the Anglican faith's 43 self-governing churches.

His letter to them reportedly says: "Any words that could make it easier for someone to attack or abuse a homosexual person are words of which we must repent.

This is getting very tiresome. Despite an in-your-face tone to gay activism and the ceaseless hurling of derogatory epithets at anyone who defends marriage or thinks homosexual acts wrong, traditionalists have been almost universally civil and respectful in their opposition. Indeed, there would be no civil unions or doctrinal debates on this matter if they weren’t. Yet here is the Archbishop accusing them of dangerous, inflammatory language, by which we assume he means quoting the Bible.

IRAN PROMISES NO NUKES ON MONDAYS, WEDNESDAYS AND FRIDAYS.

EU warns Iran to seal nuclear deal (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, November 29th, 2004)

France, Britain and Germany have told Iran if they do not reached a final agreement to freeze key parts of its atomic programme by Monday, they will not stop moves to seek sanctions against Tehran, diplomats say.

"The Iranians were told that if there's no deal by Monday, they (the EU) would no longer block a referral to the U.N. Security Council when the (U.N. nuclear watchdog) reconvenes," a Western diplomat told Reuters on Saturday. The Security Council has the power to impose economic sanctions.

But the diplomats said neither the EU trio nor Iran wanted the talks to collapse. They said it would be a big humiliation for the Europeans and could escalate the standoff over Tehran's nuclear plans into an international crisis.

The United States, which has been pressing for Iran's case to be referred to the Security Council, accuses Tehran of wanting to build a nuclear bomb. Iran, though oil-rich, says its programme is aimed solely at generating electricity.

Last week, Iran promised the EU it would halt all activities related to uranium enrichment -- a process that can create atomic fuel for power plants or weapons -- in return for an EU pledge to neutralise the threat of economic sanctions.

The ink on the hard-won accord was barely dry, however, when Tehran demanded an exemption for some 20 enrichment centrifuges for research. European diplomats said this was impossible and could only deepen suspicions Tehran had a secret arms programme.

On Friday, Western diplomats said Iranian negotiators had agreed to drop the demand, paving the way for a comprehensive deal with the EU on an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution that would make the voluntary freeze a binding commitment for Tehran.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi appeared to revive the centrifuge demand on Saturday, telling reporters in Tehran the deal with the EU did not ban research and development involving centrifuges -- the equipment used to enrich uranium.

The EU trio has softened the resolution twice to accommodate Iran's many demands and does not want talks on the text to drag on indefinitely, diplomats close to the talks said.

Why not? Isn’t dragging talks on indefinitely a European specialty?

NOT A MISTAKE ISLAM MAKES

The Truth About Men & Church (Robbie Low, Touchstone, November, 2003)

In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.

If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.

If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.

Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father’s commitment grows in proportion to mother’s laxity, indifference, or hostility.

Before mothers despair, there is some consolation for faithful moms. Where the mother is less regular than the father but attends occasionally, her presence ensures that only a quarter of her children will never attend at all.

Even when the father is an irregular attender there are some extraordinary effects. An irregular father and a non-practicing mother will yield 25 percent of their children as regular attenders in their future life and a further 23 percent as irregulars. This is twelve times the yield where the roles are reversed.

Where neither parent practices, to nobody’s very great surprise, only 4 percent of children will become regular attenders and 15 percent irregulars. Eighty percent will be lost to the faith.

While mother’s regularity, on its own, has scarcely any long-term effect on children’s regularity (except the marginally negative one it has in some circumstances), it does help prevent children from drifting away entirely. Faithful mothers produce irregular attenders. Non-practicing mothers change the irregulars into non-attenders. But mothers have even their beneficial influence only in complementarity with the practice of the father.

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.

A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!

The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.

Modern barbarism really picked up when men began to see going to church as something they did to please their wives.

COMING SOON: SCOTCH THAT ADDS MUSCLE TONE

Is this the beer that really refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach
(Roya Nikkhah and Gareth Bethell, The Telegraph, November 28th, 2004)

It is the news to cheer drinkers everywhere: beer could make you feel healthier and look younger.

The Neuzelle Kloster Brewery, a 400-year-old company in eastern Germany, says that its latest beer is enriched with ingredients that maintain good health and slow down the ageing process.

The drink, labelled on the bottle in a bizarre mixture of English and German as "Anti Ageing Bier", has been developed by adding hot spring mineral water, algae and antioxidants to the traditional ingredients of beer - water, hops, yeast and barley, resulting in an ale that is rich in vitamins and minerals.

Stefan Fritsche, the managing director of the brewery in north-east Germany, said that he hoped that the beer would encourage people to lead healthier lives.[...]

Peter Hoeck, the manager who drinks a bottle of the beer every day, has sold up to 400 bottles a week to guests and past guests, who come back to place their orders.

"At first they are sceptical of an anti-ageing drink because they think that it sounds a bit strange, but once they drink it, they love it and order it again and again," he said. "The guests tell me that their general wellbeing is improved after drinking it and that they feel fitter and revitalised.

Yes, we rather expect they do.

TRANSCENDING SELF:

PROLOGUE: The Heart of Virtue (DONALD DEMARCO)

It is not possible to improve either our personal lives or our society apart from acquiring virtue. We are reluctant to do this, however, because we believe that our sole moral responsibility is to eliminate vice, which we think we can accomplish with a minimum of effort. Yet we lull ourselves into a dangerous moral complacency when we assume that vice is no more formidable a foe than a draft of cold air that we can keep out by slamming the door in its face. It is equally perilous to maintain that slogans are sufficiently powerful to keep the devil at bay. Just saying “no” to drugs, racism, prejudice, and all forms of sexual aggression does not transform them into gentle lambs that will obediently go away even if our “no” does mean “no”. Vices therefore invade and inhabit our lives. And while we fail to discern their lingering presence, we do remain outraged by crime. Yet crime is nothing less than the unseemly dividend that vice had always promised.

Saying “no” to vice and voicing indignation at crime logically presupposes the presence in us of positive and protecting virtues. But we often take these virtues for granted even when we have done nothing to understand, acquire, or develop them. Trying to become virtuous merely by excluding vice, however, is as unrealistic as trying to cultivate roses solely by eliminating weeds. After clearing the garden of weeds, one must still plant seeds or cuttings and nurture their growth; otherwise, the weeds simply return. The best way to exclude vices is to crowd them out with the presence of strong virtue. If we oppose crime, we must oppose vice, and if we oppose vice, we must promote virtue. Clifton Fadiman's maxim is worth repeating: “The formula for Utopia on earth remains always the same: to make a necessity of virtue.”

Where strong virtues are lacking, the vices that rush in to fill the void often assume the mask of virtue. Dorothy Sayers has her own list of such counterfeit virtues, which she calls the “Seven Deadly Virtues:. They are: Respectability, Childishness, Mental Timidity, Dullness, Sentimentality, Censoriousness, and Depression of Spirits. Sayers is mindful of how easy it has been for human beings throughout the ages to pervert the seven foundational virtues into seven hapless imitations. The seven virtues that are the cornerstone of the moral life consist of three theological virtues — Faith, Hope, and Love — along with the four cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. The first three, sometimes called “supernatural virtues”, are infused at baptism and correspond to the life of grace; while the cardinal virtues, although not entirely removed from sources of grace, are their more naturalistic counterparts. The theological virtues give us a focus that transcends us without excluding us. In this way they are the perfect antidotes to self-centeredness and its consequent vice, pride. The cardinal virtues, sometimes called “the Human Virtues”, give us a focus within ourselves that does not exclude others — a self-mastery for the purpose of self-giving.

MORE:
Light sources - Paris, Washington, London: departure points for the modern world: a review of The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Jonathan Clark, Tiles Literary Supplement)

Postmodernists dislike grand narratives; and here is a grand modernist narrative indeed, wearing its wide learning with a deceptive grace. For Gertrude Himmelfarb, a distinguished American historian of Victorian Britain, this book is an attempt to "reclaim the Enlightenment. . . from postmodernists who deny its existence and historians who belittle or disparage it". It seeks to do this by reinterpreting the Enlightenment in Britain, America and France to create a scenario for Western history.

The Enlightenment begins the book in the singular but soon divides into three national examples, linked because "the three Enlightenments ushered in modernity", a modernity of which the French Revolution was "one of the most dramatic events". Whatever the claims of the postmodernists, for Himmelfarb the achievements of the people she writes about are still current: "We are, in fact, still floundering in the verities and fallacies, the assumptions and convictions, about human nature, society, and the polity that exercised the British moral philosophers, the French philosophes, and the American Founders". To establish this scheme, the French must be disabused of the idea that they alone had an Enlightenment. The "British" had it first, handed it to colonial Americans (Henry Steele Commager's The Empire of Reason: How Europeans Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment lurks in the footnotes), but later lost it. Recent Scots claims to have had an Enlightenment while England did not are gently deflected: the Scottish Enlightenment "was not as parochially or exclusively Scottish as might be thought".

To bring the British Enlightenment "center stage" is "to redefine the very idea of Enlightenment", for in Britain, virtue (especially compassion, benevolence and sympathy) rather than reason topped society's list of ideals. This vindicates Britain's unrevolutionary track record from the charge of being "a species of counter-Enlightenment"; in turn, it allows Himmelfarb to rescue 1776 from being "a prelude to or a minor version of" 1789, and to make the American Revolution a moderate, pragmatic, limited event. Indeed, the French Revolution, like the French Enlightenment, threatens to become the odd man out: clearly on the correct side in the clash between pre-modernity and modernity, but hinting at sensationally unacceptable causes. So the American Revolution comes last, not second, in her analysis. Colonial Americans drew the right lesson from Britain; the French Revolutionaries failed to do so.

ALL ROADS:

An Arriviste (David Warren, November 2004, Crisis)

This is, strange to say, the first time I have appeared in print as a Catholic writing to fellow Catholics, though I have lived half a century and have been writing for a living since I was 16. I was only received into the Catholic Church last New Year’s Eve. Someday, should I live, I would like to write a memoir titled The Half Life: Fifty Years of Sin and Error, explaining how I came to be received after making my best efforts to avoid it.

I’m an ex-Anglican, and was a kind of “evangelical atheist” before that, but one who was raised in the bosom of a loving, lapsed-Protestant family. I am also a “born again,” for I had to discard my adolescent atheism after meeting Christ on the Hungerford footbridge over the Thames in London at 22.

There was a reason why I didn’t become a Catholic then, even though the idea appealed to me, and my new religious sensibility was more sacramental and “catholic” than “protestant” in flavor. A copy of the then-celebrated Dutch Catechism fell into my hands, and I made the mistake of reading it under the impression that it was an official expression of the Catholic Church.

I became an Anglican, in due course, because I thought the Catholic Church was dead and because, as an autodidact steeped in English literature, I felt very comfortable in the church of Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, the Oxford Movement, and T. S. Eliot. I was an unmistakably “high” Anglican. It felt like Catholicism to me.

A long and terribly unequal wrestling match began with John Henry Newman, but in my younger days he only frightened me—he couldn’t touch me. I could see that I would never win an argument with him and so used that Dutch Catechism and other documents of Catholic postmodernity as roadblocks to slow his advance. This, incidentally, is classical Anglicanism: wasting a great deal of time finding or creating obstacles on a road that can only lead to Rome.

It is a pilgrimage of grace, as one learns when one finally arrives.

PAN-ORTHODOXY:

Right Alliances: Our Ecumenical Touchstone (Robert P. George, “Right Alliances” was given at a dinner celebrating Touchstone’s 100th issue, held in Washington, D.C., in late May)

In the euphoria occasioned by the Second Vatican Council, observers looked forward to a flowering of ecumenism and perhaps even the reunification of the Christian Church. Official commissions were formed to reexamine issues that had historically divided Eastern and Western Christians, Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews. Denominational leaders sought opportunities for ecumenical cooperation, and theologians explored the possibility of compromises and new understandings to overcome differences in areas of doctrine, discipline, and authority.

One thing seemed certain back in those days: The ecumenical action would be on the left wing of the various religious communities, not on the right. Traditional Catholics, conservative Protestants, and orthodox Jews were viewed as part of the problem, not part of the solution. After all, interfaith dialogue would require flexibility, openness, tolerance—virtues of the religious and sociopolitical left, it was supposed in those days, not the right. Indeed, the alleged rigidity, dogmatism, and authoritarianism of conservative religious believers would, it was thought, make them obstacles to what was known as “the dialogical enterprise.”

Ecumenism would have to proceed despite anticipated conservative resistance. Then came the culture war.

Secular Assault

The massive assault of the secularist left on traditional Judeo-Christian moral beliefs about sexuality, marriage and the family, and the sanctity of human life—largely acquiesced in, and very often abetted by, the religious left—brought conservative elements of the various religious communities together in the pro-life, pro-family movement.

In the beginning, the pan-orthodox alliance, as I call it, was understood by religious conservatives themselves as a sort of marriage of convenience. And even today there are religious conservatives, including some who are active in the movement, who view it that way. Perhaps it goes without saying that liberal critics of the pan-orthodox alliance are certain that the alliance can never be anything other than a marriage of political convenience.

What is remarkable, and what was in 1965 surely unpredictable, is that at century’s end, and now into the new century, the new millennium, an alliance that began as a marriage of convenience in the moral-political sphere would, without anybody planning or even foreseeing it, blossom into a genuine and profound spiritual engagement, precisely of the sort that manifests itself in Touchstone magazine. As things have turned out, the serious ecumenical action is almost entirely on the religious right, and we have the cultural depredations of the left to thank for it. God really does have a sense of irony, if not humor.

Today, traditional Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelical and other conservative Protestants, and believing Jews are not only working but praying together. Interfaith cooperation in pursuit of operational objectives in the culture war—protecting the unborn, preserving the institution of marriage, and so forth—has occasioned the emergence of genuine and unprecedented spiritual fellowship. The ecumenism of Touchstone magazine is an ecumenism of the streets and the living rooms.

It unites Protestants and Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Western Christians, people who have in common very practical worries about what Dr. Ruth has in mind for their children and what Dr. Kevorkian has in mind for their parents. It brings together, from different communities of faith, people who listen to Dr. Dobson for advice about parenting, and to Dr. Laura for reassurance that they aren’t the ones who are crazy. [...]

The ecumenism growing out of the pan-orthodox alliance, the Christian ecumenism of Touchstone, is the real thing. It is an ecumenism that takes religious faith, and therefore religious differences, seriously. This ecumenism neither ignores nor trivializes, much less relativizes, the important points of doctrine, discipline, and authority that divide Protestants from Catholics, Catholics from Orthodox Christians, the Orthodox from the Protestants. It proceeds not by pretending that all sincerely held theological positions are equally true or that doctrinal differences don’t matter, but by respectful yet serious engagement of theological differences.

But this creates a puzzle. How can there be genuine spiritual fellowship between people who sincerely consider each other to be in error on profoundly important religious questions? The issues disputed by Christians of different stripes include: the sacraments, the priesthood, the filioque, papal authority, and the Marian dogmas.

Yet the spiritual fellowship of the alliance has emerged despite these obstacles. It has been made possible, in my opinion, by the promotion of interfaith understanding through intellectual work, as well as by common prayer and mutual support. The experience of the past three decades reveals that the misperceptions and mistrust that long impeded fellowship among Christians of diverse points of view—in the days before the culture war—were in many, many cases rooted in misunderstanding of the scope and content of religious differences.

By largely eradicating these misperceptions and overcoming mistrust, the movement has been transformed from a mere marriage of political convenience. Without ignoring their differences, faithful Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians have come to understand and appreciate that they have in common much more than what separates them. They share a larger set of beliefs, a view of the world, that includes much that is common in theology, anthropology, sacred history, and religious practice.

MORE:
Us and Them (Maria Poggi Johnson, November 2004, First Things)

My attempt to put my students in touch with the Jewishness of the Scriptures is not limited to those Scriptures that Christians share with Jews. It is hard enough when we read the Old Testament to keep some students from throwing into their essays wildly anachronistic (rather than properly typological, which is way beyond most of them) references to Jesus and the Church. When we turn to the New Testament and meet the baby Jesus in the manger, they imagine themselves on home ground and they can become lazy. I have to remind them energetically that this is still a book largely by and about Jews; that although we are reading about the roots of the Church to which they belong, the world of the New Testament is very different from the novenas, CCD classes, and parish raffles of our area’s deep-rooted Catholic culture. I find that the more I succeed in getting them to “think Jewish” the better readers of the text they become and the more attuned they are to the intense drama of the New Testament. If I can help them to grasp that the apostles and the Pharisees are as passionate about the Law and about their Jewishness as that lady in the hat who came to class to talk to us, then Jesus starts to look a lot more exciting and troubling. They can better appreciate what is at stake in the story of Cornelius’ conversion if they can identify with Peter, who, tossed a few cryptic clues and forced to think on his feet, must rethink hundreds of years of religious tradition in the course of an afternoon. They must learn to side with the conservatives at the Jerusalem conference in the Acts of the Apostles in order to understand the depth of the debate about whether gentiles must be circumcised in order to become Christians.

If I have to remind my students to think Jewish, I have also to remind myself to think Christian. In my eagerness to help my students see that the decision at Jerusalem against circumcision was a difficult one to make, and in my fascination with the lives of my neighbors (a fascination in part foolish and romantic, I admit) I become half a Judaizer myself, and occasionally find myself musing about how it might be nice to do something with candles on Friday evenings or even keep just a very little bit kosher. When Paul bellows, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” I have to shake myself and remember that this question has already been dealt with, and an answer has been given, with a clarity that it would be more than foolish to second-guess. [...]

The image of Christians as an alien branch engrafted, by the grace of God, into the vine of the Covenant and thus truly of the Chosen People would probably sound thoroughly absurd, at best, to our Jewish friends. For us the image expresses not only a theological proposition subject to analysis and interpretation but also a simple fact of daily life and, as such, it makes perfect sense.

FROM D.O.A. TO LAW IN TWELVE EASY MONTHS:

No Deficit of Courage: Congress and the president are getting spending under control. (JOSHUA BOLTEN, November 27, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

With Congress's completion of its work on the 2005 budget this week, President Bush and congressional leaders achieved a significant victory in the battle for spending discipline in Washington.

When the president released his Fiscal 2005 Budget in February calling for a disciplined budget, some politicians and pundits dismissed it as "dead on arrival." They warned that its spending limits could not be met or would require devastating reductions in key priorities. They were wrong.

To the credit of key leaders, Congress stayed within budget limits and met key priorities. While the appropriations bills are not perfect, they honor the goals President Bush set last February: Overall discretionary spending in Fiscal 2005 will rise only 4%, the same as the average increase in American family income. The budget also provides substantial increases in funding for essential defense and homeland security needs.

Just as the president proposed, discretionary spending for nonsecurity programs will rise only about 1%, which is half the rate of inflation and the lowest rate of growth since the Republicans first took control of Congress in the mid-1990s.

This is the fourth consecutive year that growth in such spending has declined, down from 15% growth in the last budget year of the previous Administration. And even within this year's restrained budget, the Congress managed to fund important priorities, such as expansions in community health center services, the president's Community Colleges initiative, and an ambitious plan to fight the global AIDS crisis.

TR WAS, THANKFULLY, UNIQUE:

'04 Voting: Realignment -- Or a Tilt?: Political Parties Look for Answers (John F. Harris, November 28, 2004, Washington Post)

By any measure, President Bush and his fellow Republicans had a good night on Nov. 2. The question now is whether the election results set the GOP up for a good decade -- or more.

As some partisan operatives and political scientists see it, Bush's reelection victory and simultaneous Republican gains in the House and Senate suggest that an era of divided government and approximate parity between the major parties is giving way to an era of GOP dominance. By this light, the Republican advantage on the most important issues of the day -- the fight against terrorism, most of all -- and the party's uncontested control of the federal government leave it in a position to win long-term loyalty among key voter blocs and craft an enduring majority.

If so, 2004 would qualify as what academics call a "realignment election." [...]

"Something fundamental and significant happened in this election that creates an opportunity for" the Republicans to remake national politics over the long term, said Ken Mehlman, who managed Bush's reelection campaign and was tapped by the president after the election to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. "The Republican Party is in a stronger position today than at any time since the Great Depression." [...]

This election was the first in which exit polls showed equal numbers of self-identified Republicans and Democrats -- both at 37 percent -- erasing what had been a decades-long advantage for Democrats, 4 percent in 2000. In addition to the House and Senate gains, Bush received a higher raw vote total than any candidate in history (Kerry's total was second highest) and was the first presidential candidate to break the 50 percent barrier since 1988. On a percentage basis, he improved on his 2000 performance in 48 states.

Most significantly, in the view of people who suspect realignment, exit polls showed Bush cutting into Democratic advantages with some historically Democratic groups -- especially Hispanics, who gave Bush 42 percent of their votes, compared with 35 percent in 2000. [...]

Yale political scientist David R. Mayhew two years ago wrote a book calling the entire notion of realignments a fiction, at least at the presidential level. In the 15 presidential elections since World War II, he noted, the incumbent party has kept power eight times and lost it seven times. "You can't get any closer to a coin toss than this," he said. "At the presidential level, the traits of the candidates are so important that they blot out party identification."

And consider the presidents who actually interrupted the long phases of one party domination--Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat; Ike and Nixon, liberal Republicans; and, in retrospect perhaps, Bill Clinton, conservative white Southern Democrat. It seems fair to say that Woodrow Wilson was the only president of at least the last hundred and fifty years who truly governed against the prevailing political alignment, and the circumstances of his election were so peculiar as to be unlikely ever to recur.

EXPORTING PROHIBITION:

Britain: a nation 'in grip of drink crisis' (Martin Bright and Gaby Hinsliff, November 21, 2004, The Observer)

The American 'super-cop' brought in by the Home Office to cut Britain's crime rate warned last night that the nation's binge drinking culture was spiralling out of control and fuelling an epidemic of violence outside pubs and clubs that threatened to overwhelm the police.

In his first major interview the former Boston police chief, Paul Evans, described scenes he had witnessed in the early hours of the morning in city centres across Britain as chaos. 'I'm not sure it can get much worse,' he said, in response to police fears that new licensing laws allowing 24-hour drinking would lead to increased violence.

As the government prepares to put tackling crime and antisocial behaviour at the heart of this week's Queen's Speech, Evans is now considering new proposals from senior police officers for tough new sanctions against violent drinkers.

One measure would see binge drinkers caught fighting in city centres given points on their driving licences. Another would give antisocial behaviour orders to offenders banning them from high-crime nightspots.

Evans, appointed last September as the head of the Home Office's police standards unit, will launch a 'Christmas blitz' next month to crack down on alcohol-related offences using on-the-spot penalty fines, sting operations on businesses serving under-age drinkers and closure notices on pubs and clubs associated with violence.

'If you're in the business of fighting crime, then you have to be in the business of dealing with the alcohol issue,' Evans said.

HAPPY TOGETHER:

Before You Flee to Canada, Can We Talk? (Nora Jacobson, November 28, 2004, Washington Post)

I moved to Canada after the 2000 election. Although I did it mainly for career reasons -- I got a job whose description read as though it had been written precisely for my rather quirky background and interests -- at the time I found it gratifying to joke that I was leaving the United States because of George W. Bush. It felt fine to think of myself as someone who was actually going to make good on the standard election-year threat to leave the country. Also, I had spent years of my life feeling like I wasn't a typical American and wishing I could be Canadian. I wanted to live in a country that was not a superpower, a country I believe to have made the right choices about fairness, human rights and the social compact.

So I could certainly identify with the disappointed John Kerry supporters who started fantasizing about moving to Canada after Nov. 2. But after nearly four years as an American in the Great White North, I've learned it's not all beer and doughnuts. If you're thinking about coming to Canada, let me give you some advice: Don't.

Although I enjoy my work and have made good friends here, I've found life as an American expatriate in Canada difficult, frustrating and even painful in ways that have surprised me. As attractive as living here may be in theory, the reality's something else. For me, it's been one of almost daily confrontation with a powerful anti-Americanism that pervades many aspects of life. When I've mentioned this phenomenon to Canadian friends, they've furrowed their brows sympathetically and said, "Yes, Canadian anti-Americanism can be very subtle." My response is, there's nothing subtle about it.

FASTER, BUT EASIER:

So You Think Times Are Changing Fast Now? (Robert J. Samuelson, Nov. 29, 2004, Newsweek)

Picture yourself in the mid-1840s. It's an exciting time. Fifteen years earlier, railroads barely existed. In 1830 there were only 23 miles of track. By 1840, there were 2,818; by 1850, 9,021. Steamboats ply major rivers—another recent development. In 1844 Samuel Morse had introduced the telegraph by sending this message from Washington to Baltimore:

"What hath God wrought!" For some, it was all too much. "The world is going too fast," wrote one old-timer, a 69-year-old former mayor of New York named Philip Hone. "Railroads, steamers, packets, race against time ... Oh, for the good old days of heavy post coaches and speed at the rate of six miles an hour!"

Hone apparently coined the phrase "good old days"—and we've been chasing them unsuccessfully ever since. It's not simply that you can't turn back the clock. The larger difficulty is that the "good old days" never were. The supposedly placid past, once probed and explored, usually turns out to have been as jarring as the disruptive present. Something is always assaulting our sense of security and stability. We Americans say we like change, but we want it without troubling side effects. This is a mirage. Anyone who doubts that should read John Steele Gordon's superb, just-published book "An Empire of Wealth."

Gordon has written the best one- volume economic history of the United States in a long time and, perhaps, ever. Highly readable and fact-filled, it's basically optimistic. Gordon argues that America's success is rooted in a society that rewards people for being ambitious, taking risks and trying new ideas.

MORE:
-BOOKNOTES:
The Business of America by John Steele Gordon (C-SPAN, September 23, 2001)

JENKINS/CLINTON '08

U.S. Army deserter Jenkins sobs after release from prison (Eric Talmadge, AP, 11/27/04)

Free for the first time in nearly four decades, U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins sobbed with joy as he was released from a military jail on Saturday after serving 25 days for abandoning his squadron and crossing the border into North Korea in 1965.

The frail 64-year-old, still in uniform and carrying a heavy duffel bag, broke down in tears after arriving at this U.S. Army base, where he was flown by Blackhawk helicopter after completing his sentence at a nearby naval prison. . . .

Jenkins, a native of Rich Square, N.C., testified in his Nov. 3 court-martial that he fled his Army post in South Korea on Jan. 5, 1965, because he had heard rumors that he was to be reassigned to combat in Vietnam. He said he didn't intend to stay in the North - instead, he had planned to defect to the Soviet Embassy there and eventually make his way back to the United States. Jenkins also revealed Parrish's death during the testimony. . . .

Jenkins has said that North Korea used him as a propaganda tool in broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and that he was forced to teach English to North Korean military officer cadets.

FANS OUGHT TO OBSERVE, NOT PARTICIPATE:

An Enigma In the Hall Of Infamy: Suspended NBA Player Is Full of Contradictions (Mike Wise and Sally Jenkins, November 28, 2004, Washington Post)

The basketball player branded America's menace is on the telephone, calling from a children's pizza parlor in suburban Indiana. Ron Artest knows television does not lie. That's him on videotape, balling his fists, over and over.

He also explains that trauma is relative, pleading for everyone to move on -- beyond even the endless televised loop.

After all, when Artest was 12, he saw someone get shot in front of his housing complex in New York City, but life kept moving then, too. "We just gathered the kids around us and told 'em it would be all right," Artest recalled. "They could go outside again.

"People say I'm a thug or whatever," Artest said. "But my cousin got life for killing someone. I have other cousins who sold cocaine and drugs. So what type of person am I supposed to be? Don't I deserve some credit for overcoming that? I didn't see a lot of nice stuff growing up, so really, who am I supposed to be?"

Who is Artest supposed to be? Villain to many, victim to some, today the all-star forward of the Indiana Pacers is at the epicenter of one of the most violent altercations in the annals of American sports, a free-swinging brawl nine days ago between players and fans in the final minute of an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons in a suburban Detroit arena. Repeated televised replays of the fight have spot-shadowed the widening disconnect between millionaire basketball players and their suddenly emboldened customers.

SOUND LIKE ANYONE WE KNOW?:

Revealed: how Blair and Milburn are sidelining Gordon Brown (Sunday Telegraph, 28/11/2004)

Once he stood like a colossus over vast areas of Government policy, the heir apparent to the Labour crown. Now the Chancellor's grip is being loosened by rivals - with the backing of No 10. Patrick Hennessy, our Political Editor, reports

Alan Milburn, Labour's general election supremo, has launched an unprecedented operation to sideline Gordon Brown and seize control of key powers across Downing Street and Whitehall.

A leaked memo, obtained by The Telegraph, reveals for the first time how almost every area of the Government's domestic policy is now under the direct stewardship of either Mr Milburn or his deputy, Ruth Kelly.

The five-page document, dated October 27 and marked "restricted - management", also shows that Mr Milburn and Ms Kelly rigidly control access to Tony Blair.

The leak comes at a time of dramatically heightened tension between supporters of Mr Blair, who include Mr Milburn, and those backing the Chancellor, who will deliver his Pre-Budget Report this week.

It is the clearest evidence yet that Mr Brown has been sidelined in the Government's chain of command, with Mr Milburn taking over his former spheres of influence across Whitehall. Whole areas of policy, including pensions, industry, deregulation, welfare reform and incapacity benefit, all of which were previously regarded by Mr Brown as under the Treasury's control, are now supervised by Mr Milburn and Ms Kelly.

The memo shines revealing new light on why Mr Brown was so furious when the Prime Minister brought Mr Milburn, the former health secretary, back into the Cabinet in September as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

DOESMN'T SEEM A HARD CHOICE:

Ukraine's destiny is being decided on the streets, in the courts - and in the Kremlin (Simon Sebag-Montefiore, 27/11/2004, Daily Telegraph))

If Kiev's brave street protesters triumph over tyranny, corruption and electoral fraud, the Ukrainian revolution will soon glory in one of those wonderful nicknames, such as Georgia's Rose Revolution. My favourite was Estonia's Singing Revolution. What would this be? The Silk Revolution? The Dancing Revolution? Probably the Orange Revolution, after the opposition's colours. But Ukraine has a Soviet-dominated army and security police who are quite capable of turning this into a tragedy. There could be blood, not roses, on the streets of Kiev.

The biggest country in Europe west of Russia will become either a liberal democracy or a Russianised kleptocracy. Even as power seems to be draining away from outgoing President Kuchma and his heir, Victor Yanukovich, Ukraine stands at the crossroads of its very existence. Russia again faces the dilemma of its manifest destiny.

Ukraine is not just a rusty Soviet dump, but a fascinating, charmingly complex melting pot. Yes, it's split between Russian Orthodox East and Roman Catholic West with its more Polish/Austrian experience. Kiev itself is the ancient birthplace of Rus and Orthodoxy. Then there is the glorious Black Sea coast, a land of wine and luxury.

I spent much time there researching my biography of Potemkin, who annexed the Crimea and southern Ukraine, ending an earlier version of Ukraine - the independent Cossack republic of the Zaporoche Sech. He then founded many of Ukraine's southern cities, such as the famous naval base, Sebastopol, and Odessa. Take that decadent, cosmopolitan city: one of my favourites. Odessa was planned by the Spaniard de Ribas, built by the French Duc de Richelieu, populated by Jews, Italians, Russians, Ukrainians, beloved of writers such as Pushkin. The most beautiful girls in the world sip Crimean champagne in the open-air cafés of Deribaskaya. Or the seaside paradise of Crimea. Under a liberal democratic regime, Kiev, Crimea and Odessa will become alluring entrepots of tourism and commerce. Today, Ukraine is drab, depressed, corrupt, as Soviet as the direst Russian provinces.

WE DIDN'T LAND ON PLYMOUTH ROCK, IT WAS LANDED ON US:

U.S. Seizes Nine Insurgent Suspects South of Baghdad (Alastair Macdonald, 11/27/04, Reuters)

U.S. and Iraqi forces seized nine suspected insurgents in overnight raids on the lawless town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad, U.S. officers said on Saturday.

It was the latest in a series of operations code-named Operation Plymouth Rock, launched four days ago by U.S. Marines in a cluster of towns along the Euphrates river that have become popularly known as the "triangle of death."

A further arrest was made further north, officers said.

Iraqi police commandos from the nearby city of Hilla formed the bulk of the 200-strong force in six raids in Latifiya coordinated by the Marines, Captain Tad Douglas told reporters at the headquarters of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

IT'S THE END OF HISTORY AS WE LKNOW IT, AND THE WORLD FEELS FINE:

Good News About Poverty (DAVID BROOKS, 11/27/04, NY Times)

[W]e're in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth "accelerated sharply" this year to a rate of about 4 percent.

Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the U.S. and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.

This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder. In its report, the World Bank notes that economic growth is producing a "spectacular" decline in poverty in East and South Asia. In 1990, there were roughly 472 million people in the East Asia and Pacific region living on less than $1 a day. By 2001, there were 271 million living in extreme poverty, and by 2015, at current projections, there will only be 19 million people living under those conditions.

Less dramatic declines in extreme poverty have been noted around the developing world, with the vital exception of sub-Saharan Africa. It now seems quite possible that we will meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which were set a few years ago: the number of people living in extreme poverty will be cut in half by the year 2015. As Martin Wolf of The Financial Times wrote in his recent book, "Why Globalization Works": "Never before have so many people - or so large a proportion of the world's population - enjoyed such large rises in their standard of living."

CHICAGO WAY?:

Marines Train a Secret Weapon on Babil Province (Bruce Wallace, November 27, 2004, LA Times)

The Cobra attack helicopters thumping overhead disrupt the predawn stillness of this rural town, agitating the roosters and the dogs. Through the cacophony and a cold rain, troops wearing the signature uniforms of the U.S. Marine Corps' Force Reconnaissance platoon race down potholed streets, balaclavas hiding their faces.

The tan masks not only make the raiders appear menacing. They also disguise the fact that the men behind them are not Americans, but Iraqis.

This is the embryonic Iraqi SWAT team in action, rousing families from their sleep and rounding up men for questioning about the deadly insurgency in towns such as Jabella, south of Baghdad.

The policemen leave behind their calling card: a postcard-size photo of the SWAT team in full gear carrying the message, "Are You a Criminal or Terrorist? You Will Face Punishment."

The flashy raid is aimed at creating a daring image for the 125-man SWAT team, an attempt by their American military patrons to turn them into an Iraqi version of the Untouchables.

MORE:
U.S. Sends in Secret Weapon: Saddam's Old Commandos (Alastair Macdonald, 11/27/04, Reuters)

Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heartland of Iraq's old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon -- ex-members of Saddam's special forces.

For five months, Iraqi police commandos calling themselves the Black Scorpions have been based with U.S. Marines in the region along the Euphrates south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go areas and earned it the melodramatic description "triangle of death."

"All of them were previously officers in the Iraqi army or special forces," the Scorpions' commander, Colonel Salaam Trad, said at the Marines' Kalsu base near Iskandariya on Saturday.

"But Saddam was dirty and no good for Iraq."

A RIVAL SUPERPOWER?:

A Parent's Worst Nightmare in China: Wave of knife assaults on children can be seen as cries for help in a society where economic growth has created rising social tensions, analysts say. (Ching-Ching Ni, November 27, 2004, LA Times)

Analysts say the attacks demonstrate how crime has escalated in a country once viewed as virtually crime-free. More than two decades of economic growth have created rising social tensions but few institutions to address them.

The attacks on children, analysts say, can also be seen as cries for help.

"It's no longer just about personal revenge," said Zhao Xiao, a Beijing-based scholar who studies transitional economies. "They also want … impact. That's why they are seeking out little children to make their point by attacking someone even weaker. This is potentially a very scary development."

In September, farmer Yang Guozhu woke up, shaved his head, bought some sunglasses and marched into a day-care center in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. He used a fruit knife to attack children. Twenty-eight were wounded; the oldest was 6 and the youngest 2.

According to Yang's account in Chinese media reports, he was forced to take drastic action because no one would pay attention to his family tragedy. Back in his village, Yang's younger brother and the brother's girlfriend had been charged with living together illegally. The village's family planning committee levied a fine on Yang's parents and confiscated their meager possessions: 17 sacks of grain and three bags of fertilizer.

A year later, the committee imposed a new fine, this time $1,200, an unobtainable sum for the peasants. Feeling helpless and humiliated, his parents committed suicide by drinking pesticide.

Yang and his siblings preserved their parents' bodies so they could seek justice. But local officials forcefully removed the corpses for cremation and beat relatives who tried to stop them.

After failed attempts to seek redress, Yang told a friend he would do something that everyone would hear about. For maximum impact, he picked Sept. 11, the three-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. A week earlier, Yang watched militants shock the world by killing more than 300 people — mostly young children — at a school in Beslan, Russia.

Yang's target was a local elementary school. He apparently went prepared with gasoline and homemade explosives. But this year, Sept. 11 fell on a Saturday and the campus was empty. So he made his target the day-care center.

REVOTE:

Ukrainian Parliament Declares Sunday's Presidential Election Invalid (Bill Gasperini, 27 November 2004, VOA News)

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, left, and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych stand next to each other after negotiations in Kiev, Friday

Ukraine's parliament has declared the disputed presidential election vote invalid. The non-binding resolution, adopted in emergency session Saturday, comes amid increased calls for new elections.

Ukraine's parliament approved a resolution declaring that the runoff presidential election was invalid and failed to reflect the intention of voters. It also passed a vote of no confidence in the Central Election Commission, which declared Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner of the November 21 election.

The speaker of parliament, Volodymyr Lytvyn, opened the session, saying the best option to end the political crisis would be to hold a new election. He said a new vote is needed in light of the numerous allegations of fraud that marred the presidential runoff vote last Sunday.

THE OSSUARY THAT LENIN BUILT:

Abortion in Russia: No Big Deal (Anna Arutunyan, 11/25/04, The Moscow News)

There may be no sex in Russia, so goes a Soviet urban legend. And somehow, with abortions outnumbering live births nearly 2 to 1, if you’re a Russian woman and never had one, you’re a statistical non-entity.

The women I spoke to — stoic, intelligent matrons obviously with other things on their minds besides talking their husbands into using condoms — took it for granted that they had friends who’d chide them with “I’ve had thirty abortions already, what’s the big deal?” when they had to make that trip to the clinic.

And, according to one gynecologist who has been practicing for 45 years, there was certainly no reason to blanche when a girl told you that “I’d rather just have abortions than not have satisfying sex.”

Western media — like the Washington Post — put Russia at number three for its abortion rate, just after Cuba and Romania. Conservative think tanks like the Rand Corporation are more blatant: Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world.

Statistics, like women, are fickle; and yet whatever numbers you look at, the rates are staggering. According to a compilation from the Demographic Yearbook of the European Council and an analogous Demographic Yearbook by the United Nations, Russia is the only nation in the world where abortions consistently outnumbered live births by a ratio of about 2 to 1. In 1970, for example, there were 1.9 million births and 4.8 million abortions. Today, with more access to real contraceptives, that number has decreased: for every live birth there are between 1.3 and 1.5 abortions, depending on the statistics you look at.

IF MEN WERE ANGELS, THERE'D BE NO COMEDY:

The Happy Hater (Franklin Foer, 11.24.04, New Republic)

A misanthropic character, who considered Western civilization to be on a road to perdition, [Albert Jay Nock] viewed himself an atavistic figure from premodern times and occasionally wore a cape to symbolize his preference for the past. This sartorial detail also had the intended effect of enshrouding him in mysteriousness. During a stint as editor of the Freeman, he declined to give his colleagues his home address or to reveal more substantive details about himself. Van Wyck Brooks recounted a rumor that contacting Nock required leaving a note under a rock in Central Park. None of his New York friends or colleagues knew that Nock had spent decades as an Episcopal priest or that he had abandoned his wife and children. Had they read his Memoirs they would not have come to know these facts either.

While most conservatives have willfully suppressed any memory of Nock, the godfather has been gracious in his treatment of him. In a lecture in 1999, Buckley recounted, "I began reading Albert Jay Nock, from whom I imbibed deeply the anti-statist tradition which he accepted, celebrated, and enhanced." Buckley hadn't just known Nock from his oeuvre. During the early forties, Nock regularly lunched with Buckley's father at the family's estate, delivering sweeping pronouncements about civilization's decay. A good portion of the early National Review staff looked upon Nock with similar reverence.

Given the noisy victory dance Christian conservatives are now performing, it is hard to imagine that they are part of a movement that Nock helped launch. But, at its birth, the conservative movement looked a lot more like Randolph Bourne than Ralph Reed--a bit anarchist, somewhat bohemian, occasionally blasphemous, and thoroughly misanthropic. Nock's Memoirs exudes these qualities and has another charming trait: It may be the most splenetic work in all of American literature.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man begins with an advertisement against itself. Nock tells his readers that he "led a singularly uneventful life"--an announcement that doesn't portend the massive egotism and arrogance to come. From the start, the book fails miserably as memoir. Just as he refused to give colleagues his address, he resists supplying readers with the most basic data. He lives in towns without names, cavorts with nameless friends in unspecified years. As a self-described anarchist, he stays true to himself and resists convention. The book abandons all pretenses to chronological storytelling and melts into a pot of digressions. But Memoirs isn't really memoir at all. It resides in the canon of elitist misanthropy--a genre that flourished in the interwar period in the angry writings of H.L. Mencken, Ralph Adams Cram, and, to an extent, Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Nock began his journalistic career as muckraker, working along side Lincoln Steffens. But, like Mencken and Cram, he grew wildly disillusioned with the secular faith of the progressive era. When he looked at the changes of the early twentieth century, the embrace of the democratic ideal and the rise of mass culture, he recoiled in horror. Society was in the midst of what he described as "rebarbarisation." It was "increasingly repulsive and degrading." He lamented, for instance, that the expansion of literacy and schooling had "enabled mediocrity and submediocrity to run rampant." And the state, he argued, had turned into "a pliant organ of such segments of the Neolithic mass as can get at it."

The last phrase holds the key to Nock's view--the Neolithic mass. Society, he believed, included both humans and barbarians suffering from delusions of grandeur. These barbarians hadn't evolved to a state that could be properly described as human. But in the twentieth century, they had broken through the gates. Nock responded to this incursion with seemingly infinite haughtiness. "One can hate human beings, at least I could--I hated a lot of them when that is what I thought they were--but one can't hate subhuman creatures or be contemptuous of them, wish them ill, regard them unkindly."

Nock can't easily be slipped into a shelf on the taxonomical table of American ideology. He gets described in turns as an anarchist, anarchocapitalist, and libertarian. His biographer Michael Wreszin places him squarely in the anarchist camp. (Wreszin also wrote a superb biography of Dwight Macdonald, another devotee of Nock's work.) Indeed, he wrote a book called Our Enemy, the State. When Nock summed up his political philosophy, it sounded strikingly similar to the objectivism of Ayn Rand. "I found myself settled in convictions which I suppose must be summed up as an intelligent selfishness, intelligent, egoism, intelligent hedonism." But unlike Rand and her disciples, this celebration of selfishness didn't lead him to laissez faire economics. In fact, he despised modern society's embrace of "economism" and rampant materialism. "Such values," he wrote, "cannot build a [society] which is lovely." In end, he is a classic conservative, who views the values of the past as superior to those of the present.

IF THEY HAD BROAD SUPPORT THEY'D BE LAW, NOT OPINION:

The Constitutional Doctrines that Won't Change, Even If the Supreme Court Does (VIKRAM AMAR AND ALAN BROWNSTEIN, Nov. 26, 2004, Find Law)

What factors make any constitutional doctrine permanent, or at least relatively stable, over time?

Much of American constitutional law has ebbed and flowed over time along with the varied cultural and political tides that have influenced our society - and our judges. But some doctrinal principles seem more insulated from retrenchment than others, even today - when change is in the air. Why is that so?

Political Constituencies Will Cut Back on Rights That Never Serve Their Interests

We suggest that a given constitutional doctrine moves toward stability and permanence when it is recognized as valuable by a broad and politically diverse constituency.

To see why, it's important first to note that the rights set forth in our Bill of Rights -- and the structural arrangements mandated by the rest of the Constitution -- impose burdens on third parties and/or the general public. In this sense, constitutional principles can be seen as expensive political goods that carry costs with them. Once these costs are analyzed, it becomes clear that freedom really isn't free.

Why would citizens readily accept the cost of a given constitutional constraint over the long haul, if that constraint has little utility for them right now in the cases the courts are adjudicating? The answer, we think, is that they perceive that the guarantee will work to their benefit in other circumstances and will provide them needed protection against government interference at least some of the time. So even if they are not benefiting with regard to a specific application of constitutional law they see today, they - or their children - may benefit from this guarantee on other occasions.

On this logic, a guarantee will be especially tenuous - and vulnerable to Court reconsideration - if it protects decisions or conduct of only particular political constituencies, and provides no foreseeable benefit to other parts of the polity. Such a guarantee may be short-lived, for when the political winds change and groups that have been out of office regain political power, those groups may well challenge that guarantee. Why wouldn't they? It requires them to incur normative or material losses for which they receive nothing in return - now, or in the foreseeable future.

TIGHTER AND TIGHTER SHIP:

The Rise of a New Economic Czar?: Bush loyalist Tim Adams may be the favorite to head the National Economic Council. If he does, he's likely to boost the position's power (Howard Gleckman, 11/24/04, Business Week)

The remaking of the Bush economic team continues. Stephen Friedman, who heads the National Economic Council, is resigning to return to New York, White House aides say. And whoever replaces him may well find that the best place to shape economic policy in the second-term Administration will be inside the White House, at the head of the NEC. [...]

While Bush hasn't yet named a replacement, the inside track belongs to Tim Adams, the former Treasury Dept. chief of staff who served as policy director of the President's reelection campaign.

Adams, a low-key policy expert, would fit the recent Bush pattern: Choosing long-time loyalists to fill sensitive posts. At Treasury and on the campaign, Adams was able to manage sometimes-nasty policy spats among conservative economists. Like Friedman -- and unlike Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was the NEC chair from 2001 to 2002 -- Adams is a pragmatist who's unlikely to bring his own agenda to the job. But unlike Friedman, Adams is considered a savvy Washington insider.

As a result, Adams could fill a key role as the Bush Administration pursues its twin second-term domestic-policy initiatives: Creating private Social Security accounts and revamping the federal tax system. Sources say Adams strongly supports early and aggressive action on both initiatives. And should he become the NEC chief, Adams and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten could be central players in developing both policy and strategy inside the White House. The third key player: Top political adviser Karl Rove.

OUR IGNORANT ANCESTORS

Dumbing down: the proof (The Spectator, November 27th, 2004)

As a service to Spectator readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.

FOXES AND CLUCKS:

Inquisition (Dr. James Hitchcock, Nov-Dec 1996, Catholic Dossier)

The modern historiography of the Inquisition, most of it by non-Catholic historians, has resulted in a careful, relatively precise, and on the whole rather moderate image of the institution, some of the most important works being; Edward Peters, Inquisition; Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press; John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy; and Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition.

Some of their conclusions are:

* The inquisitors tended to be professional legists and bureaucrats who adhered closely to rules and procedures rather than to whatever personal feelings they may have had on the subject.

* Those roles and procedures were not in themselves unjust. They required that evidence be presented, allowed the accused to defend themselves, and discarded dubious evidence.

* Thus in most cases the verdict was a “just” one in that it seemed to follow from the evidence.

* A number of cases were dismissed, or the proceedings terminated at some point, when the inquisitors became convinced that the evidence was not reliable.

* Torture was only used in a small minority of cases and was allowed only when there was strong evidence that the defendant was lying. In some instances (for example, Carlo Ginzburg's study of the Italian district of Friulia) there is no evidence of the use of torture at all.

* Only a small percentage of those convicted were executed — at most two to three percent in a given region. Many more were sentenced to life in prison, but this was often commuted after a few years. The most common punishment was some form of public penance.

* The dreaded Spanish Inquisition in particular has been grossly exaggerated. It did not persecute millions of people, as is often claimed, but approximately 44,000 between 1540 and 1700, of whom less than two per cent were executed.

* The celebrated case of Joan of Arc was a highly irregular inquisitorial procedure rigged by her political enemies, the English. When proper procedures were followed some years later, the Inquisition exonerated her posthumously.

* Although the Inquisition did prosecute witchcraft, as did almost every secular government, the Roman inquisitors by the later sixteenth century were beginning to express serious doubts about most such accusations.

The Inquisition has long been the bete noir of practically everyone who is hostile to the Church, such as Continental European anti-clericals. But its mythology has been especially strong in the English-speaking lands, including America.

Much of this is due to John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (commonly called his Book of Martyrs), which for centuries was standard reading for devout Protestants, alongside the Bible and John Bunyan. Foxe, an Elizabethan, detailed numerous stories of Protestant martyrs, especially during the reign of Queen Mary. Ironically, in view of the ways the book has been used, Mary's persecution of Protestants had nothing to do with the Inquisition, which did not exist in England.

But the English-speaking hatred of the Inquisition also stems from the unfamiliar legal system that institution employed. “Inquisition” of course means merely “inquiry,” something which in itself is hardly sinister. But most Continental legal systems, in contrast to English common law, were derived from Roman law and used not the adversarial system but one in which the judges were not neutral umpires of the proceedings but were charged with ferreting out the truth.

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH RAN THE 3,000:

Weaker Than We Think: Al-Qaeda may have already fired its best shot. (Russell Seitz, December 6, 2004, The American Conservative)

Salafist fanaticism is a worthy successor to Marxist zeal when it comes to malevolence, but policy must consider the capacity for action, not intent alone. To judge by action, terrorism indeed took advantage of our at best sporadic vigilance and summoned its resources in the ’90s much as the president’s speech observed. But how does its actual capacity for evildoing compare with the sum of our fears?

In a War on Terror, knowing the enemy’s numbers is vital. London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies reckons Osama bin Laden has recruited 18,000 since 9/11, while some DOD officials think he’s down to his last 3,000 men. [...]

However tall bin Laden may loom as a scourge of civilizations, it is increasingly clear that his arsenal is as phony as his army is small—its shelves are bare of expertise and materiel alike. But the War on Terror is anything but phony, and al-Qaeda is under withering attack by every means a hyperpower and its allies can devise. The cancer remains, but intrusive therapy is clearly taking its toll. As the attrition continues, the focus on what remains is intensifying. This concentration of fire to accelerate the enemy’s demise coincides with the contraction of the safe haven available to him to hide. A feedback loop has arisen from the intelligence that flexibility has gained. It is becoming a noose around Osama’s neck, and he has only himself to blame for the crumbling platform on which he stands.

Al-Qaeda means “foundation” in the sense of a base of operations rather than a Brookings Institution. In 2001, its host, Afghanistan’s Taliban, was on a war footing with the Northern Alliance, an American ally against the Soviet occupation. With the Twin Towers still standing, bin Laden ordered the assassination of the Alliance’s leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. The blood feud this ignited bought al-Qaeda’s leadership breathing space, but eventually forced it to flee not just into the Pashtun no-man’s-land along the Pakistani border but beyond it, into Pakistan’s Northern Areas. It is a region whose lower passes are higher than the Rockies and whose winters make Tora Bora look like Palm Springs—a fine place to hide, but a ludicrous launch pad for a global revolution. On the lam and preoccupied with security and survival, not strategy, al-Qaeda is no longer a magnet for the best and brightest young jihadis. The average al-Qaeda grunt is no Atta, but a high-school dropout who lives at home.

However much the world changed on 9/11, the thousand days before and after it remain identical in one respect—Islamic terrorists killed no one on American soil. Whatever our future fears, in the here and now, al-Qaeda remains boxed. They can spike truck bombs with as much concentrated radwaste as they can steal or buy, but a frontier of plausibility still separates analytical pessimism from the hinterland of paranoia. Those who imprudently equate the modern ubiquity of high technology with terrorists becoming omniscient or infallible risk a rendezvous with cognitive dissonance.

Practitioners of urban terrorism, like those of strategic bombing on both sides in World War II, may find the psychological as well as the physical damage done disappointing. London’s civil society endured the Blitz, and cities of millions coexist with violent death today as well. On 9/11, 1 in 3,000 New Yorkers perished, but in the same year, over 1 in 1,000 urbanites were murdered in three major cities in the Western hemisphere alone.

ANSWERING CHALLENGES:

How Bush's Plan Would Secure Social Security: Funding a personal account is like prepaying a mortgage (Glenn Hubbard, 11/29/04, Business Week)

[R]eform would strengthen opportunities to build wealth for millions of Americans, many of whom have few financial assets today. Personal accounts also offer a surer way to prefund our obligation to pay future Social Security benefits. While lawmakers find it difficult to "save" rather than spend Social Security surpluses (the excess of current payroll tax over current benefits), personal accounts would be off-limits to politicians. The emergence of Social Security reform as a domestic policy priority is encouraging, but the focus on personal accounts raises both challenging questions and questionable challenges that need to be addressed.

CHALLENGING QUESTIONS. To start, what are the objectives of Social Security reform? One obvious objective is to advance the President's ownership society agenda. The transition costs to personal accounts will actually put Social Security on a firmer footing. As long as future net obligations are reduced by prefunding Social Security benefits through personal accounts, the diversion of a portion of payroll taxes to personal accounts is akin to prepaying part of a mortgage. If the transition costs are borrowed, the resulting higher explicit federal debt in the near term is offset by lower implicit debt (Social Security obligations) in the longer run. The present value of Social Security's unfunded liabilities is lowered.

This point relates to the second challenging question. Will the reform put Social Security on a better financial footing? The long-term funding gap facing Social Security is large because promised benefits exceed payroll tax receipts by trillions of dollars. Personal accounts alone will not secure Social Security's long-term financial future. The President has stated that there would be no change for current retirees or those nearing retirement. Hence, to close the gap without raising taxes, younger workers will need to receive lower benefits relative to their previous earnings than today's retirees do.

Under current law, initial benefits are indexed to average wage growth in the economy during the years that the retiree worked. Since young workers start their careers at a higher wage level than older workers, they get a larger Social Security benefit in real terms when they retire. One reform plan that replaces this wage indexing with price indexing eliminates almost all of the unfunded liabilities of the system. Benefits received relative to wages would decline (along with Social Security's liabilities), but they would be supplemented by expanded savings from the personal accounts.

REALISTICALLY, ZION'S BEEN NOTHING BUT TROUBLE:

'Anonymous' Agent Blasts Israel Lobby (MARC PERELMAN, 11/26/04, Forward)
"It is in the self-interest of the United States to find a way to cut into the ability of bin Ladenism to grow in popularity and gather support in the Muslim world," Scheuer said in an interview last weekend. "I am not saying we need to abandon Israel, but there is a perception in the Islamic world that it is a case of the tail leading the dog.... America is not perceived as an honest broker, but as backing Israel unconditionally."

Scheuer claims that because of savvy lobbying, crucial policies in the Middle East — he cited America's unflinching support of both Israel and Saudi Arabia — have not been debated during the past 30 years.

Scheuer denied any antisemitic leanings, after he was asked about the critical assertion he made in his book, stating that Israel, with the aid of its network of American supporters, had demonstrated an uncanny ability to stifle such a debate in the United States. He reaffirmed his strong belief in Israel's deep influence over American policymaking.

"I admire what Israel has accomplished," he said. "As a former intelligence official, I wish our intelligence service could acquire a basis of support and the influence in the politics of another country like the ones Israel has established here."

While advocating bolder military and intelligence operations against radical Islamic terrorist networks, Scheuer argues those steps should be followed by a slate of economic and diplomatic initiatives, as well as policy changes, aimed at generating support for America in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

When pressed about his policy advice, Scheuer demurred, saying his thoughts were narrowly focused on American interests and that he was not a policy expert. Asked whether he was only criticizing the close relationship between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he said he felt the United States was perceived as a more honest broker under President Clinton than it is now. "Still, we have a long record of doing things perceived as pro-Israel," he said. "My own view is that we should talk about it."
Of course we should talk about what State and the CIA really want to do in the Middle East--sell out Israel to the Arabs.

10 OUT OF OVER TWENTY MILLION:

10 reasons elections in Iraq will succeed (Quentin Langley, November 27, 2004, Pittsburgh Tribune Review)

Over the next few weeks, Iraqi government troops and their coalition allies - from Britain, Australia, America, and countless other countries -- will be in action to make Iraq safer. In Fallujah, which will continue to see some of the worst fighting, it will be Iraqi and American troops that will be undertaking the most dangerous tasks.

We can guarantee that during this time, while the fighting is at its worst, the faint hearts and pessimists - the French and German governments; the U.N.; the Democrats; CNN and CBS - will tell us that the effort is doomed. They will say that the Iraqi elections will be a flop, turnout will be low, and that Saddam's supporters will likely come back to power. They will also tell us that only American soldiers are getting killed, with no reference to the brave Iraqis fighting to take their country back from the terrorists. Here are the top 10 reasons why they are wrong. ..

UNEQUIVOCALLY:

The Unsilent Pope: a review of Inside the Vatican of Pius XII: The Memoir of an American Diplomat During World War II. By Harold H. Tittmann, Jr. (William Doino, Jr. and Joseph Bottum, First Things)

Given Tittmann’s importance in the debate about the papacy during the war, these memoirs may be the most important document to be published on Pius XII in over twenty years. And they prove to be, far from an indictment, an overwhelming defense of the Pope and the Catholic Church. [...]

There are at least half a dozen major revelations in this memoir. Perhaps the most interesting comes when Tittmann relates his discussions with Joseph Mueller, the anti-Nazi Bavarian lawyer who served as a middle-man between Pius and the German resistance. “Dr. Mueller said that during the war his anti-Nazi organization in Germany had always been very insistent that the Pope should refrain from making any public statement singling out the Nazis and specifically condemning them and had recommended that the Pope’s remarks should be confined to generalities only,” Tittmann writes. To have this testimony from a leading member of the anti-Nazi resistance means that Pius XII’s conduct during the war was not due solely to his personal instincts but also to the explicit advice of the anti-Nazi resistance.

Other revelations include the Vatican’s maintenance of “special accounts in New York banks” operated by Archbishop Spellman, as well as a “personal and secret account” for Pius XII (“about which Spellman knew nothing”), which the Pope “used exclusively for charitable purposes” during the war. Pius revealed the accounts to Tittmann in a “strictly confidential” meeting, after Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing American assets of hostile European countries. How much of this papal money was distributed to those persecuted by the Nazis is unknown, but Tittmann at least strengthens the testimony of Fr. Robert Leiber, Pius’ longtime aide, who told Look magazine in 1966: “The Pope sided very unequivocally with the Jews at the time. He spent his entire private fortune on their behalf.”

Tittmann provides, as well, new details of the Vatican’s anxiety over written documents that might expose the Pope’s anti-Nazi activities and collaboration with the Allies. “It was only rarely that records were kept by the Vatican officials of conversations the Pope had with his intimate collaborators or even with important visitors from the outside, such as ministers, ambassadors, or private individuals offering information or suggestions,” Tittmann writes. When the German occupation of Rome began on September 10, 1943, Nazi surveillance increased dramatically, and Pius’ secretary of state, Cardinal Maglione, quickly recommended that any compromising documents be destroyed. Tittmann notes: “At a meeting on September 14, the Allied diplomats decided to follow the cardinal’s advice by destroying all documents that might possibly be of use to the enemy. Osborne [British minister to the Holy See] and I had already finished our burning, and the others completed theirs without exception by September 23, when I reported to the State Department.” As a result, even the many official diplomatic documents which survive the war years represent merely a fraction of Pius XII’s activities. [...]

Discussing the charge that Pius went easy on Nazism because of his fears of Soviet communism, Tittmann insists that the Pope “detested the Nazi ideology and everything it stood for,” and he describes in fresh detail Pius’ intervention for an extension of America’s lend-lease policy to Russia, persuading the American Catholic hierarchy to soften its stand against the Soviet Union in order to serve a greater, and more immediate, cause—the defeat of Nazi Germany. “Thus Pius XII himself had joined the President,” Tittmann says, “in admitting that Hitlerism was an enemy of the Church more dangerous than Stalinism and that the only way to overcome the former was an Allied victory, even if this meant assistance from Soviet Russia.”

Although a strong admirer of President Roosevelt, Tittmann does not flinch from criticizing the Allies’ carpet-bombing of Italian cities and religious institutions (including the attack on Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope was sheltering thousands of refugees). Tittmann also reveals how Roosevelt, anxious to secure American Catholic support for the lend-lease program to Russia and eager for the Pope to intervene for him with the American bishops, wrote Pius a letter claiming that “churches in Russia are open”—and asserting his putative belief that there was “a real possibility that Russia may, as a result of the present conflict, recognize freedom of religion.” Obviously embarrassed by this, Tittmann quotes another State Department official who had been stationed in Moscow as saying “he could not understand how such a letter as the President’s could ever have been written in the first place in view of all the contrary information that was on file in the State Department.”

EVEN BLUE STATES WANT RED GOVERNORS:

Rell approval rating soars to new height (AP)

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell's popularity is at a new high with Connecticut voters, making her a formidable gubernatorial candidate in 2006, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.

The poll of 1,774 registered voters gives Rell an 80 percent approval rating, nearly the highest of any governor ever surveyed by the university. Only New York Gov. George Pataki was rated higher at 81 percent, in a poll a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. [...]

In a hypothetical race for governor, the poll puts Rell in a tight competition with U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, who trails Rell 45 percent to 43 percent. A spokesman for Dodd reiterated Tuesday that the senator has said he has no plans to run for governor.

AND BY SEPARATION WE MEAN HOSTILITY:

Boy's religious absences stir flap at Indiana school (Associated Press, November 26, 2004)

A mother said a Lowell, Ind., school has threatened to expel her 6th-grade son if he misses any more days, even if he is absent for religious reasons.

Ruth Scheidt said Lowell Middle School officials had her 12-year-old son sign a letter last month stating he understood that he could be expelled if he missed another day of school for any reason before the end of the semester in January.

The family had just returned from an out-of-state, eight-day religious observance called the Feast of Tabernacles, celebrated by the United Church of God.

Scheidt said she told the Tri-Creek School Corporation well in advance of taking her son to the observance and presented a letter from the church explaining the holy days.

Alice Neal, superintendent of the school district south of Gary, said that the issue was a misunderstanding and that she told Scheidt the policy on excused absences, five of which are allowed per semester.

Excuses include illness with a doctor's note, a death in the immediate family, quarantine or court appearance. Neal said the schools accept one day off per semester for religious observance, and the family had used that already.

MAY OUTLAST THE U.N. TOO:

The UN confronts its biggest scandal: Saddam Hussein's regime poisoned everything it touched - including the United Nations (Tony Parkinson, November 27, 2004, The Age)

A Syrian journalist was paid almost $2 million in illicit oil profits to serve as a mouthpiece in the public campaign in the Arab world to rail against sanctions as a genocide of the Iraqi people. A Scottish engineering firm agreed to pay more than $10 million in kickbacks to a front company - while overcharging the UN - after Saddam's regime threatened to scrap its supply contracts.

These are but two examples of Saddam's "reward and punish" strategy. But as Republican senator Norm Coleman asks pointedly: "How high up does the corruption go?"

Oil-for-food has become the biggest financial scandal in the UN's history. Senior officials are under intense scrutiny. The UN has been known for decades to play host to pockets of patronage and cronyism, but never before has it been linked to fraud on this scale.

Benon Sevan, the director of the oil-for-food program, continues to deny he profited from oil vouchers allocated in his name. He, like others, will be awaiting anxiously an interim report, expected by January, from a UN-appointed inquiry.

It's bad enough for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that somebody he appointed to a position of trust may be implicated. But what has most besmirched the UN's reputation is the accusation it was linked organically to a multibillion-dollar scam set up to sustain the Iraqi dictator in power.

The question is where this sordid money trail might lead - not just at the UN, but in the government and business elites of leading powers on the Security Council.

SO, YOU MARRIED AN AX-MURDERER:

The Fear Born of a Much Too Personal Look at Jihad (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, 11/27/04, NY Times)

THE first thing to know about the woman known widely here as Doris Glück is that Doris Glück is not her real name. She won't tell you her given name, or even her official new name - provided by the German police - beyond the first name and initial, Regina S. She won't say where she lives, either, and when she meets you at the railroad station in Bremen, she is clearly anxious to get away quickly lest she meet someone who knows her.

About a month ago, under the pseudonym Doris Glück, she published a book in Germany, "I Was Married to a Holy Warrior," in which she described how she fell in love with an Egyptian, married him and then watched, appalled, as he became progressively more militant and, finally, fully engaged in jihad.

The worst moment came in the mid-1990's in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she and her now ex-husband had gone to help the Muslim side in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. (In the book she calls him by a pseudonym, Omar, to forestall any effort he might have made to block publication had she used his real name, Reda Seyam.) One day, she was taken to a place near a mountain, she says, where she became an involuntary witness to the revenge execution of three Serbian men, one of them by beheading. [..]

IN their first seven years of marriage, she said, "my husband drank liquor, he had no beard, he didn't go to the mosque." But in 1994, the same year he became a German citizen, he broke his arm in a bicycle accident. With time on his hands, he started going to a mosque in Heidelberg, the university town along the Rhine where they were living, and before his wife knew it, he had committed himself to the Islamic cause.

Along the way, at Omar's request, Regina S. converted to Islam, taking the name Aysha, after one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad and also the name of her mother-in-law.

"Islam is a wonderful thing," she said, "but they destroyed that in me, because my ex-husband hates unbelievers. He thinks it's O.K. to kill unbelievers."

GEORGIA AFTER ALL?:

THE FACTS ON THE UKRAINIAN MELODRAMA (Srdja Trifkovic, 11/24/04, Chronicles)

The media myth: An East European "pro-Western, reformist democrat" is cheated of a clear election victory by an old-timer commie apparatchik. A wave of popular protest may yet ensure another Triumph of Democracy a la Belgrade and Tbilisi, however. The fact: neither the winner of the presidential election in the Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, nor his Western-supported ultranationalist rival Viktor Yushchenko, are "democrats" or "reformers" in any accepted sense. They differ, however, on the issue of the Ukrainian identity and destiny in what is a deeply divided country. Ukraine is like a large Montenegro, split between its Russian-leaning half (the south, the east) and a strongly nationalist west and north-west that defines its identity in an unyielding animosity to Moscow. The prediction: "The West"—the United States, the European Union, and an array of Sorosite "NGOs"—will fail to rig this crisis in favor of Yushchenko: the critical mass that worked in Serbia in October 2000, and in Georgia in 2003—the complicity of the security services and mafia money—is simply not present.

The myth is virulently Russophobic. It implicitly recognizes the reality of Ukraine's divisions but asserts that those Ukrainians who want to maintain strong links with Russia are either stupid or manipulated. This view has nothing to do with the well-being or democratic will of 50 million Ukrainians. It is strictly geopolitical, in that it sees Moscow as a foe and its enemies (Chechen Jihadists included) as friends. [...]

"You see the whole apparat," says our source, "a conclave of governments, friendly (and government funded) NGOs, and contract opportunities. Something for everybody—and all for ‘democracy.' Y'gotta love it!"

The reality is that the apparat will fail on this occasion. A Serbian or Georgian scenario cannot work in a country in which the key elements of power—the police, the army, and the business community—have not decided to support the opposition. The key to Milosevic's downfall was a secret deal between his political enemies and Serbia's key security chiefs in advance of public protest. Even if the authorities in Kiev accede to Western demands and investigate fraud or conduct a recount, the results are unlikely to change because they reflect a political landscape too complex to be reduced to the NGO black and white paradigm. [...]

About a half of all Ukrainians who voted for Yanukovych did not do so solely on the grounds of his pro-Russian outlook, however. As the Financial Times noted on November 19, strong economic growth of 13 percent has helped his campaign of "peace and stability." This year's grain harvest will reach 45m tones, the highest since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Increasing social spending, including payment of pensions and state salaries, are attributed to the Prime Minister's policies. By contrast Yushchenko's stronghold in western Ukraine is an economic wasteland. Nikolas Gvosdev was a rare Western commentator to point out that for many in central and eastern Ukraine increased links with Russia translate into greater prosperity: trade turnover in goods and services between the two countries is expected to reach $20 billion in 2004, one-half of Ukraine's current GNP. By contrast, its trade with the EU accounts for only a fifth of the total. "Many Western observers lament Ukraine's continuing economic and political ties to Russia," Gvosdev says, "but U.S. and European governments have done little to provide more concrete economic incentives for change." Yushchenko's campaign was not helped by a statement earlier this year by the president of the European Commission Romano Prodi that Ukraine will "never" be a member of the EU. Despite all the rhetoric supporting a "European" the scenario of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration was not seriously entertained in any important Western capital. It was unrealistic to expect the Ukrainians to make a plunge without any concrete promises of what they'd get in return.

Washington would be well advised to accept the result with equanimity. As Doug Bandow of CATO Institute says, the United States and Europe aren't going to "lose" Ukraine: it will continue to expand its commercial and political ties with the West regardless of outcome. On the other hand, excessive insistence on the preordained outcome would unnecessarily alienate Russia at a time when her cooperation is sorely needed in the war against Jihad.

Journalists on Ukraine's state-owned channel - which had previously given unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - have joined the opposition, saying they have had enough of "telling the government's lies".

Journalists on another strongly pro-government TV station have also promised an end to the bias in their reporting. The turnaround in news coverage, after years of toeing the government line, is a big setback for Mr Yanukovych.

Ukrainian police have sided in droves with opposition protests against the conduct of last weekend's presidential election and a feared crackdown on the demonstrators has not been carried out.

But the authorities can rely on a hard core of allies in the security services, police and military, who a former senior official warned could act if the situation appeared to be getting out of control.

Responding to a call to "join the people" by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who claims to be have been cheated out of the presidency by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, dozens of police have been showing their colours.

They have been appearing on the opposition television station Kanal 5 and speaking on the platform set up in central Kiev's Independence Square to proclaim their backing for the pro-western Yushchenko.

"We are expressing our distrust of the Government," one policeman told hundreds of thousands of cheering opposition supporters.

UKRAINE’S presidential rivals publicly renounced violence last night and agreed to set up a working group to heal the country’s political paralysis, but the opposition still insisted on fresh elections.

At crisis talks mediated by Russia and the EU, Viktor Yanukovych, the Prime Minister, and his liberal challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, called for a peaceful solution to the impasse. “We stand against any use of force that might lead to an escalation of conflict and bloodshed,” they declared in a joint statement.

FEEL OR THINK? (via Tom Corcoran):

Manchurian Voters: New technology spots differences in Republicans’ and Democrats’ brains. (Christopher Orlet, 11/26/04, American Spectator)

Most of us have long suspected that there are profound differences between the brains of Republicans and Democrats. Now new brain-scan technology has scientifically proven this to be the case. No, Democrats' brains are not noticeably smaller than Republican brains. The difference lies in how Democrats and Republicans react to being shown certain stimuli.

According to researchers at UCLA, differences were noted mainly in regard to the expression of empathy: "One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of John Kerry 'with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset,'" according to researcher Joshua Freedman. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back." In other words Republicans may be better at building real and realistic relationships, while Democrats are more likely to see the connection between a Democratic victory and continued and unimpeded flow of government handouts. [...]

In another segment of the test, according to the Associated Press, "voters were shown a pro-Bush commercial that included images of the September 11 attacks. The amygdala region of the brain -- which lights up for most of us when we see snakes -- illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: at a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming."

BORDER GUARDS:

Liberals vow to fight Gonzales nomination (Jerry Seper, 11/26/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

A coalition of liberal groups is vowing to challenge the nomination of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general over his role in policies governing the treatment of detainees in Iraq and in the war on terrorism.

Led by the People for the American Way, which helped organize more than 200 groups to oppose the 2000 nomination of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the coalition is expected to push Senate Judiciary Committee members to question Mr. Gonzales on the development of policies that led to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the rights and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

AND THE CHILEANS WONDER WHY HE NEEDS REAL SECURITY?:

Bush targeted (Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, 11/26/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

The Colombian terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, threatened to attack President Bush during his stop in Colombia this week.

U.S. intelligence officials said reports from the region indicated that the Marxist group, which has conducted numerous bombings and terrorist attacks in the country, had planned to conduct some type of bombing or shooting attack during Mr. Bush's visit.

NOT MOVING ON:

Can Howard Dean Save the Democrats?: The Vermont firebrand is essentially a centrist—with conviction and passion. He's an obvious choice to lead the fractured party (Eleanor Clift, Nov. 26, 2004, Newsweek)

The struggle to be Democratic National Committee chair is round one of the battle for the soul of the party. The obvious choice is Howard Dean, who has the clarity of conviction and the passion that voters hunger for even if they don’t always agree with him.

Party activists around the country are furious at the Washington Democrats for blowing the election. Wresting control away from the entrenched establishment is their goal. Dean would spark a Red State rebellion within the party, but the Heartland’s leading contender, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, withdrew his name from contention after being shown numbers suggesting Dean would win.

Dean is talking to a lot of people, and what he’s telling them is that if a consensus African-American or minority candidate emerged, he would not seek the job. Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman’s name surfaced, but she said she wasn’t interested, and so far nobody else has assumed the mantle. A DraftHoward.com Web site has sprung up, and a Democratic source says Dean is planning a series of speeches “to position himself as a centrist.” A campaign aide with close ties to the governor protests that he “wouldn’t be positioning himself. Remember in Iowa, the nicks came from the left.” Rival campaigns attacked Dean for once agreeing with Newt Gingrich that Social Security’s growth rate should be slowed, and for winning the endorsement of the National Rifle Association as Vermont’s governor.

Dean is essentially a New Democrat who happened to be against the war.

PEOPLE WILL WAKEN AND LISTEN TO HEAR:

After Victory, Crusader Against Same-Sex Marriage Thinks Big (JAMES DAO, 11/26/04, NY Times)

The warning call came in December 1995. "Do you folks on the mainland know what is going on here?" a friend from Hawaii asked Phil Burress, an antipornography crusader from the suburbs of Cincinnati.

Mr. Burress confessed that he did not. "They're going to legalize gay marriage here, and it's coming your way," the friend said, referring to a case before the Hawaii Supreme Court dealing with the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Mr. Burress, a self-described former pornography addict, had spent much of the 1990's fighting strip clubs and X-rated bookstores. But here was something he saw as a potentially greater threat to his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and traditional family values: something he called the "gay agenda."

"We saw a stepped program, a plan by gay advocates," Mr. Burress recalled. "It would lead to homosexuality being taught in schools as equal to heterosexuality. And we saw that what they couldn't get from legislatures they would try to get by going to court."

And so Mr. Burress became a Paul Revere for the movement against same-sex marriage, not only sounding warnings across the land but also laying the groundwork for a church-based conservative movement that he hopes will transform Ohio politics for years to come.

PUTTING PALESTINIANS FIRST:

Measure Palestinian freedom, not summits: The peace process will fail again if it is not linked to real democracy and human rights (NATAN SHARANSKY, 11/25/04, THE JERUSALEM POST)

Toward the end of the Cold War, the free world began to link its policies toward the Soviet Union to human rights within that nation. Rather than focus on what Soviet leaders had to say about the West, the focus turned to how the Soviet regime was treating its own subjects.

THE JACKSON Amendment, for example, linked most favored nation trade benefits to the Soviet Union to that regime's respect for its citizens' right to emigrate. By focusing attention on a concrete right that was easily measurable, the Jackson Amendment proved a highly effective means of measuring the degree of freedom within the USSR and, as a result, Soviet intentions.

We, too, should seek to find concrete means to determine whether Palestinians are making progress on democratic reforms, so we can link our policies directly to such reforms. In addition to the obvious need to preserve the Palestinians' right of dissent - the quintessential mark of a free society - there are other reliable measures of the new leadership's commitment to reform.

First, that leadership can finally seek to end the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in refugee camps. Four generations of Palestinian refugees have been used as pawns in the Arab world's struggle against the Jewish state. These refugee camps should be dismantled as soon as possible and the refugees resettled in decent housing.

A leadership that is willing to end the fantasy of destroying Israel and begin to actually improve the conditions in which Palestinians live should be embraced by the free world with a new international Marshall Plan that can put an end to a shameful humanitarian disaster.

Second, the new leadership can stop poisoning Palestinians to hate Jews and the Jewish state. Textbooks where Israel does not appear on the map and PA-controlled television programs where kindergarten children beckon their classmates to follow the path of suicide martyrdom should be replaced with an educational system that promotes peace.

Third, the new leadership can expand economic opportunities for millions of Palestinians. For a decade, Arafat hollowed out Palestinian civil society and crushed its middle class. He monopolized basic industries, controlled work permits in Israel, as well as the distribution of international aid. A test of the new PA will be whether it, unlike Arafat, is willing to embrace joint ventures that strengthen the Palestinian middle class while inevitably lessening the control the new regime has over its subjects.

Finally, a new Palestinian leadership that is committed to reform will be our partners in fighting terror, for as long as terror continues no reform will be possible.

FALL INTO THE GAP:

The Baby Gap: Explaining Red and Blue: How birthrates color the electoral map (Steve Sailer, December 20, 2004, The American Conservative)

oters are picking their parties based on differing approaches to the most fundamentally important human activity: having babies. The white people in Republican-voting regions consistently have more children than the white people in Democratic-voting regions. The more kids whites have, the more pro-Bush they get.

I'll focus primarily upon Caucasians, who overall voted for Bush 58-41, in part because they are doing most of the arguing over the meaning of the red-blue division. The reasons blacks vote Democratic are obvious, and other racial blocs are smaller. Whites remain the 800-pound gorilla of ethnic electoral groups, accounting for over three out of every four votes.

The single most useful and understandable birthrate measure is the "total fertility rate." This estimates, based on recent births, how many children the average woman currently in her childbearing years will end up with. The federal National Center for Health Statistics reported that in 2002 the average white woman was giving birth at a pace consistent with having 1.83 babies during her lifetime, or 13 percent below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. This below-replacement level has not changed dramatically in three decades.

States, however, differ significantly in white fertility. The most fecund whites are in heavily Mormon Utah, which, not coincidentally, was the only state where Bush received over 70 percent. White women average 2.45 babies in Utah compared to merely 1.11 babies in Washington D.C., where Bush earned but 9 percent. The three New England states where Bush won less than 40 percent -- Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island -- comprise three of the four states with the lowest white birth rates, with little Rhode Island dipping below 1.5 babies per woman.

Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility (just as he did in 2000), and 25 out of the top 26, with highly unionized Michigan being the one blue exception to the rule.

In sharp contrast, Kerry won the 16 states at the bottom of the list, with the Democrats' anchor states of California (1.65) and New York (1.72) having quite infertile whites.

Among the fifty states plus Washington D.C., white total fertility correlates at a remarkably strong 0.86 level with Bush's percentage of the 2004 vote. (In 2000, the correlation was 0.85). In the social sciences, a correlation of 0.2 is considered "low," 0.4 "medium," and 0.6 "high."

You could predict 74% of the variation in Bush's shares just from knowing each state's white fertility rate. When the average fertility goes up by a tenth of a child, Bush's share normally goes up by 4.5 points.

In a year of predictably partisan books, one lively surprise has been What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank, a leftwing journalist from Kansas who now lives with his wife and single child in the Democratic stronghold of Chicago. Frank is puzzled by why conservative Republicans in his homestate are obsessed with cultural issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and teaching evolution in the schools instead of the leftist economic populism that Frank admires in Kansas' past.

While the Christian right in Kansas doesn't much hold with Darwin, they are doing well at the basic Darwinian task of reproducing themselves: pro-life Kansas has the fourth highest white fertility in the country at 2.06 babies per woman, and the birthrate of the conservative Republicans that Frank finds so baffling is likely to be even higher. On the crucial question of whether a group can be bothered not to die out, "What's the Matter with Massachusetts?" would be a more pertinent question. Massachusetts' whites are failing to replace themselves, averaging only 1.6 babies per woman, and the states' liberal Democrats are probably reproducing even less than that.

So, white birthrates and Republican voting are closely correlated, but what causes what? The arrow of causality seems to flow in both directions.

WEED WHACKERS (via Mike Daley):

Abortion foes raise race issue: Brochure handed out near Rocklin High likens treatment of blacks to Klan era. (Laurel Rosen, November 26, 2004, Sacramento Bee)

Taking their message as close to school campuses as they are legally allowed, local abortion opponents have been distributing information to
students that compares abortion with racial lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan.
About 15 members of a group called Teens for Life appeared late last week
outside Rocklin High School and, as students entered campus, distributed
brochures depicting a pointed white hood with the statement: "Lynching Is
for Amateurs." [...]

Planned Parenthood officials countered, saying the goal of their
organization is to provide health care in areas where it is needed most.

"There is a high correlation between the women's reproductive rights
movement and the civil rights movement," said Kathy Kneer, president of
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. "Both were founded on the core
basis of human rights and justice."

METHINKS HE'S A WEASEL (via Tom Corcoran):

Intellectuals Who Doubt Darwin: Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing Edited by William A. Dembski (Hunter Baker, 11/24/2004, American Spectator)

At one time, the debate over Darwin's theory existed as a cartoon in the modern imagination. Thanks to popular portrayals of the Scopes Trial, secularists regularly reviewed the happy image of Clarence Darrow goading William Jennings Bryan into agreeing to be examined as an expert witness on the Bible and then taking him apart on the stand. Because of the legal nature of the proceedings that made evolution such a permanent part of the tapestry of American pop culture, it is fitting that this same section of the tapestry began to unravel due to the sharp tugs of another prominent legal mind, Phillip Johnson.

The publication of his book, Darwin on Trial, now appears to have marked a new milestone in the debate over origins. Prior to Johnson's book, the critics of evolution tended to occupy marginalized sectarian positions and focused largely on contrasting Darwin's ideas with literalist readings of the Genesis account. Johnson's work was different. Here we had a doubter of Darwin willing to come out of the closet, even though his credentials were solid gold establishment in nature. He had attended the finest schools, clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, taught law as a professor at highly ranked Berkeley, and authored widely-used texts on criminal law. Just as Darrow cross-examined the Bible and Bryan's understanding of it, Johnson cross-examined Darwin and got noticed in the process. He spent much of the last decade debating the issue with various Darwinian bulldogs and holding up his end pretty well. [...]

TOP HONORS, HOWEVER, go to David Berlinski's essay, "The Deniable Darwin," which originally appeared in Commentary. The essay is rhetorically devastating. Berlinski is particularly strong in taking apart Richard Dawkins' celebrated computer simulation of monkeys re-creating a Shakespearean sentence and thereby "proving" the ability of natural selection to generate complex information. The mathematician and logician skillfully points out that Dawkins rigged the game by including the very intelligence in his simulation he disavows as a cause of ordered biological complexity. It's clear that Berlinski hits a sore spot when one reads the letters Commentary received in response to the article. Esteemed Darwinists like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett respond with a mixture of near-hysterical outrage and ridicule. Berlinski's responses are also included. At no point does he seem the slightest bit cowed or overwhelmed by the personalities arrayed against him.

For the reader, the result is simply one of the most rewarding reading experiences available.

I don't know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence 'Methinks it is like a weasel', and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?

The sentence has 28 characters in it, so let us assume that the monkey has a series of discrete 'tries', each consisting of 28 bashes at the keyboard. If he types the phrase correctly, that is the end of the experiment. If not, we allow him another 'try' of 28 characters. I don't know any monkeys, but fortunately my 11-month old daughter is an experienced randomizing device, and she proved only too eager to step into the role of monkey typist. Here is what she typed on the computer:

UMMK JK CDZZ F ZD DSDSKSM S SS FMCV PU I DDRGLKDXRRDO RDTE QDWFDVIOY UDSKZWDCCVYT H CHVY NMGNBAYTDFCCVD D RCDFYYYRM N DFSKD LD K WDWK HKAUIZMZI UXDKIDISFUMDKUDXI

She has other important calls on her time, so I was obliged to program the computer to simulate a randomly typing baby or monkey:

WDLDMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P Y YVMQKZPGJXWVHGLAWFVCHQYOPY MWR SWTNUXMLCDLEUBXTQHNZVIQF FU OVAODVYKDGXDEKYVMOGGS VT HZQZDSFZIHIVPHZPETPWVOVPMZGF GEWRGZRPBCTPGQMCKHFDBGW ZCCF

And so on and on. It isn't difficult to calculate how long we should reasonably'expect to wait for the random computer (or baby or
monkey) to type METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Think about the total number of possible phrases of the right length that the monkey or baby or random computer could type. It is the same kind of calculation as we did for haemoglobin, and it produces a similarly large result. There are 27 possible letters (counting 'space' as one letter) in the first position. The chance of the monkey happening to get the first letter-M -right is therefore 1 in 27. The chance of it getting the first two letters — ME - right is the chance of it getting the second letter - E - right (1 in 27) given that it has also got the first letter - M - right, therefore 1/27 x 1/27, which equals 1/729. The chance of it getting the first word - METHINKS - right is 1/27 for each of the 8 letters, therefore (1/27) X (1/27) x (1/27) x (1/27). .., etc. 8 times, or (1/27) to the power 8. The chance of it getting the entire phrase of 28 characters right is (1/27) to the power 28, i.e. (1/27) multiplied by itself 28 times. These are very small odds, about 1 in 10,000 million million million million million million. To put it mildly, the phrase we seek would be a long time coming, to say nothing of the complete works of Shakespeare.

So much for single-step selection of random variation. What about cumulative selection; how much more effective should this be? Very very much more effective, perhaps more so than we at first realize, although it is almost obvious when we reflect further. We again use our computer monkey, but with a crucial difference in its program. It again begins by choosing a random sequence of 28 letters, just as before:

WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P

It now 'breeds from' this random phrase. It duplicates it repeatedly, but with a certain chance of random error - 'mutation' - in the copying. The computer examines the mutant nonsense phrases, the 'progeny' of the original phrase, and chooses the one which, however slightly, most resembles the target phrase, METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL.

BAR THE DOORS, MOTHER, IT’S OUT FRONT AGAIN

Hodge stresses state's role in family life (Tom Happold, The Guardian, November 26th, 2004)

Margaret Hodge today defended the government's efforts to improve parenting against the charge that ministers are creating a "nanny state".

In a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research thinktank, the children's minister said: "The state can be a powerful force for good in families and communities and we should celebrate, not denigrate, its role."

She added: "When we [the government] act to support and help families by lifting them out of poverty and giving them real opportunities, they call us nannies and accuse us of interfering." [...]

"I want to celebrate and promote the role of the state in family life - the state as an enabler and partner to give children the best opportunities to fulfil their talent," she added.

"I recognise this involves difficult judgments, whether it's about enabling action or curtailing action. But shying away from these judgments is not good enough.

"For me it's not a question of whether we should intrude in family life, but how and when."

A fifty percent divorce rate, an explosion in single-parenthood, a literacy crisis, delinquency, female and child poverty, emotional illness in youth, historically unprecedented rates of abortion, decrepit public schools and dangerous public housing can all be related in whole or in part to the whittling away of family authority and self-reliance by the state. Yet despite the atrocious failures, progressives continue to celebrate each new state initiative as if it were a compassionate exercise of charity to those temporarily in hard times. It boggles the mind to think that, in 2004, anyone still thinks the state can lift anyone out of poverty or help children fulfil their talent.

POWER OF ONE:

A Modest Step Toward Unity: Richard John Neuhaus on the Catholic bishops' decision to join Christian Churches Together. (Interview by Rob Moll, 11/24/2004, Christianity Today)

There was some hesitation by the bishops about joining Christian Churches Together, so why did they eventually decide to join?

I think the decision is contingent upon the understanding that CCT is a very modest enterprise, and it's very different from the discussions of 20 and more years ago about the Catholic church joining the National Council of Churches or the World Council of Churches. CCT is at this point really not much more than an annual meeting of religious leaders to get to know one another and get ideas and share experiences, which is a pretty obvious thing to do. There were a lot of bishops who were very worried that it would become something like the old National Council of Churches, and therefore there was a very substantial vote against the proposal. But reassurances have been given that there are many checks and limits and built-in occasions for making sure CCT remains the modest enterprise that it presents itself as being now.

Could it have much impact if it is such a modest proposal?

I don't think we should underestimate the ways in which people who get to know one another and develop relationships of personal trust can then take steps toward forms of cooperation. It's not really just Christian churches, it's also national organizations in the social welfare and world development areas, and while they have their own institutions and patterns of interacting, this perhaps could strengthen that. You'd have to judge on a case by case basis as to whether a form of cooperation confuses or compromises the integrity of any particular church or organization, but on the face of it, I think it's very hard to argue in principle against what CCT aims to do at this point.

Jesus' prayer in John 17 to be one so that the world would believe is stated as a reason for forming CCT. Could you give me an understanding of the Catholic perspective on the importance of working out Jesus prayer in John 17?

The Catholic commitment to Christian unity is irrevocable. There is the Second Vatican Council, and the subsequent popes—and especially this pope—have said it again and again. But by Christian unity, Catholics mean something far beyond what is envisioned for CCT. And that is full communion, which means that one would be united in faith and life and that unity would be expressed in the Eucharist. So that's the Catholic understanding of the goal of Christian unity. But on the way to that goal, if God-willing it is ever to be achieved short of our Lord's return, there are other things that Christians can do together.

BLUE RINSE DISASTER:

Greying nation facing huge bill (Stefanie Balogh and Luke McIlveen, November 25, 2004, news.com.au)

AUSTRALIA's rapidly ageing population will force governments to find an extra $2200 billion over the next 40 years to meet the drain on health care and other costs.

A draft Productivity Commission research report sends a dire warning to governments about the need to act now to combat the problems of a greying population or face financial ruin.

It estimates the extra pressure on government spending will be 7.1 per cent of gross domestic product by 2044-45 – or around $5100 a person in that year alone.

From now to 2044-45 the commission estimates the accumulated shortfall in government spending will be around $2200 billion.

The drain on governments will come from the growing army of senior citizens.

The number of older Australians is expected to double in 40 years.

In 2044-45 there will be about 7 million people over 65 compared with about 2.5 million now. They will represent one in four Australians.

The potential blue-rinse economic disaster is being driven by people living longer and having fewer children.

LIVES OF THE SECULAR SAINTS (via Robert Schwartz):

Gays Angry Over TV Report on a Murder (FELICIA R. LEE, 11/26/04, NY times)

An ABC News report about the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, which focused national attention on violence against gays, has ignited indignation among gay rights advocates even before its broadcast tonight.

The hourlong report on "20/20" re-examines the murder of Mr. Shepard, a 21-year-old college student who was tied to a fence, beaten and left to die by two men outside Laramie, Wyo.

The program includes prison interviews with the confessed killers, Aaron J. McKinney and Russell A. Henderson, who are serving life sentences. Mr. McKinney tells the ABC News correspondent Elizabeth Vargas that he was high on methamphetamine when he killed Mr. Shepard in a rage, explaining that his intent was to beat up and rob him. [...]

Those leading the charge against the heavily promoted ABC report - including Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation - said the program relied on speculation, two convicted killers and other witnesses lacking credibility who are now changing their stories or making accusations that cannot be proved.

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

4x4s 'should carry health warning' (Richard Black, BBC, November, 26th, 2004)

Four-wheel-drive vehicles, those rugged beasts designed for the open hillside but more commonly found doing the city school run, are so polluting and dangerous that they should carry a cigarette packet-style health warning.

That is the view of UK think tank the New Economics Foundation, which outlines its arguments about the vehicles - also known as Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) - in the magazine New Statesman.

"They're really Satan's little run-around," NEF's policy director, Andrew Simms, told BBC News.

"They make an entirely unnecessary contribution to one of the biggest environmental problems we face - global warming - and there's a huge and unacknowledged health crisis which results from vehicle emissions."

According to the World Health Organization, vehicle emissions are responsible for tens of thousands of premature deaths in western Europe alone each year.

The agency also ascribes around 150,000 deaths globally each year to climate change.

A wise blogger once said anything that ill-treats others is a sin.

CRACKED ALRIGHT:

Code cracked as hunt for Grail goes on (KAREN MCVEIGH, The Scotsman)

IT is one of the most enduring myths of Western European literature, a cryptic message which has inspired tales from Arthurian legends to Dan Brown’s best-selling crime novel The Da Vinci Code.

But after months of research, experts believe they may now hold the key to the 250-year-old code, which is carved on a monument at the Earl of Lichfield’s Shugborough Hall estate in Staffordshire.

The Shepherd’s Monument, commissioned in 1748 by the then earl, Thomas Anson, features a carved image of a Nicolas Poussin painting with the letters D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M. underneath.

The cryptic inscription was rumoured to point to the location of the Holy Grail - the cup Jesus is said to have used at the Last Supper.

But veteran code-breakers from Bletchley Park, the former Second World War intelligence centre-turned museum in Buckinghamshire, now say the code is likely to stand for "Jesus (As Deity) Defy", a message from a sect called the Priory of Sion, a secret order with similar beliefs to the Knights Templar. Both sects were held to be heretical, notably by the Church of England, because they considered Jesus to be an earthly prophet, not a heavenly one.

THE REGIME CHANGERS:

US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev (Ian Traynor, November 26, 2004, The Guardian

[W]hile the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

NO SPANDEX PLEASE, WE'RE CONSERVATIVES:

Reshaping fitness industry: No-frills Curves becomes No. 1 in exercise centers by letting women be comfortable (CLARKE CANFIELD, 11/25/04, Associated Press)

Targeting women in small-town America is part of the company's business strategy — and it's working. Curves has grown to more than 8,400 franchises in all 50 states and 28 countries, making it by far the world's No. 1 fitness center in terms of number of clubs. One in every four fitness clubs in the United States is a Curves, including 44 in the Houston area.

In some ways, Curves is the anti-club: no treadmills, no saunas, no locker rooms, no mirrors, no aerobics classes, no free weights. Forget the spandex — sweat shirts rule.

Members work out on eight to 12 hydraulic resistance machines, stopping between stations to walk or jog in place. The clubs' standard routine is over in 30 minutes and is designed to burn 500 calories.

While other clubs go after the prized 18-to-34 demographic, Curves' customers are more likely to be aging baby boomers. [...]

The company is the creation of Gary Heavin, 49, who heads Curves International in Waco. Heavin was a millionaire by age 30 after taking over a failing health club in Houston and expanding it into a chain of 17 clubs. But then came a divorce, bankruptcy and business failure. He spent 2 1/2 months in jail when he couldn't make child support payments.

In 1992, Heavin and his second wife, Diane, opened the first Curves club. It was small and simple, a place where women could feel comfortable.

Three years later, Heavin was selling franchises, and by 1998 there were 500. Curves aims to have more than 25,000 — including 8,000 in Asia and 8,000 in Europe — within five years. By comparison, Gold's Gyms and Bally Total Fitness, two of the biggest fitness clubs in the country, have about 1,000 facilities between them. [...]

Curves and Heavin, however, aren't without critics.

Some dismiss Curves as a fad. Heavin, a born-again Christian, has been criticized for his conservative political views and donations to anti-abortion causes. Some members have quit the clubs over his political stands.

At the annual Curves convention in Las Vegas this month, one of the topics was "the fallout from my values," Heavin said.

Heavin is credited with shaking up the fitness industry.

The Curves phenomenon has "forever altered the landscape of the worldwide fitness industry," John McCarthy, executive director of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, wrote in a recent state-of-the-industry letter to association members.

VIGOR TAKES TOO MUCH RIGOR:

Bridging the allies' divide (Helle Dale, November 26, 2004, Townhall)

[N]ot all Europeans are resigned to the decline in values and vigor that they see around them. If 70 percent of Frenchmen, for instance, would have preferred Sen. John Kerry to win the 2004 election, then 30 percent supported George Bush.

What kind of values are we talking about? More than family values per se, many are worried about the fundamental values of the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition, from which spring our concepts of human, political and religious rights.

"Unless Europe remembers the values of its own traditions, it is bound to be neglected," says Mr. Adornato, and Islam will prevail. "If we have no values and behave only in a relativistic way, we will lose because the other side believes more in their values than we do in ours." Hoping to inspire renewed cooperation between the United States and Europe, Fondazione Liberal has proposed a New Common Charter for Europe and the United States. In some ways resembling President Bush's recent speeches on the promotion of freedom and democracy, this New Common Charter focuses on the rather ambitious goal of "global liberty" and is yet a work in progress. Significantly, though, it is one among several recent efforts at rewriting the Atlantic Charter to put the U.S.-European relationship back on a more solid footing.

BUT HOW EXACTLY DOES THIS HURT ME?

Kennedys aghast at game that lets you be Oswald (National Post, November 23rd, 2004)

Friends and family of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy condemned yesterday's release of a video game that puts players behind the trigger of his assassin's rifle.

David Smith, a spokesman for the slain president's younger brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, said it was bad enough that the game JFK Reloaded lets players stalk the Kennedy motorcade through a telescopic rifle sight.

But Mr. Smith said it was "despicable'' for the British-based maker of the game to release it yesterday, the 41st anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

Mr. Smith would not say if the Kennedys plan legal action. "It's despicable. There's really no further comment," he said.

In the game, players take the role of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, watching as the Kennedy motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

"Concentrate, and think like a sniper!" reads the instructions to the game, which can be downloaded for US$10. Players must fire three shots at Kennedy's black limousine from Oswald's perch in the Texas School Book Depository.

Points are awarded or subtracted according to how accurately the shots match the official version of events, documented by the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination.

Players can choose to see the results of their actions by pressing a "blood effects" option, which shows a digital image of the effects of their shots on the presidential motorcade.

Contestants have points deducted if they accidentally hit former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, clothed in her famous pink outfit with pillbox hat.

How can one condemn, restrict or ban this abomination without reference to notions of obscenity or even blasphemy? (Unworthy Kennedy jokes discouraged)

SECOND HAND COSTS:

Study: Cigarettes Cost Society $40 a Pack (Associated Press, 11/25/04)

Cigarettes may cost smokers more then they believe. A study by a team of health economists finds the combined price paid by their families and society is about $40 per pack of cigarettes.

The figure is based on lifetime costs for a 24-year-old smoker over 60 years for cigarettes, taxes, life and property insurance, medical care and lost earnings because of smoking-related disabilities, researchers said.

"It will be necessary for persons aged 24 and younger to face the fact that the decision to smoke is a very costly one - one of the most costly decisions they make," the study's authors concluded.

Smokers pay about $33 of the cost, their families absorb $5.44 and others pay $1.44, according to health economists from Duke University and a professor from the University of South Florida. The study drew on data including Social Security earnings histories dating to 1951.

Incidental costs such as higher cleaning bills and lower resale values for smokers' cars were not included.

DESURGENT:

Iraqi Officials to Meet With Rebels to Discuss Political Role (EDWARD WONG, 11/25/04, NY Times)

The Iraqi foreign minister said today that the interim Iraqi government planned to meet soon in Jordan with leaders of the insurgency to try to persuade them to take part in legitimate politics here.

The remarks by the minister, Hoshyar Zebari, signal the first time the government has agreed to an official meeting with rebel leaders. Mr. Zebari did not did not give a date for the meeting or specify which rebel leaders might attend. He said Iraqi officials agreed to the meeting, which would take place in Amman, Jordan, after being asked by various diplomats at a conference in Egypt to open a dialogue with the resistance.

"The aim is really to reach out to as many people as possible both inside and outside" of Iraq, Mr. Zebari said at a news conference this afternoon in the foreign ministry here.

The government welcomes "the broader participation of Iraqis, even those who are oppositionists, in this process" of politics "if they renounce violence and terror," he said.

The rebel leaders who will be invited will be "some people who are of political and tribal backgrounds," he said, declining to elaborate further. American and Iraqi officials say much of the insurgency is being financed by wealthy loyalists to Saddam Hussein who fled to bordering countries in the run-up to the American invasion in March 2003. Many are believed to be operating from Syria and Jordan, helping to organize the insurgency from there and funneling millions of dollars to the rebels.

MUCH FOR W TO BE THANKFUL FOR:

Dropping the anchorman (Lexington, Nov 25th 2004, The Economist)

FOR conservative America, it just keeps on getting better. A mere 20 days after the Republicans' clean sweep of the White House and Congress, the American right celebrated the retirement of one of the hated grandees of liberal journalism, Dan Rather. “It's as if the voters just keep on voting,” says one conservative. “And our side just keeps on winning.”

MORE:
And soon Kim Jong Il.

RECLAIMING THE CULTURE:

After an Ugly Few Days, Manners Come Back to Mind (Thomas Boswell, November 24, 2004, Washington Post)

Often, it's hard to spot turning points, especially as they are in progress. This time, it's not. This is sportsmanship's window of opportunity. Everybody needs to grab this chance with both hands. Welcome back, old friend, you've been gone too long.

The last few days may actually turn out to be among the best we've seen in sports in a long time. Nobody got seriously hurt, but a serious problem got a ton of attention. That's win-win. Usually, to stir public furor, somebody gets maimed. Not now. Every time we see the now infamous replays we expect a broken neck. Instead, nothing. For once, we get the lesson without the tragedy. We see the problem vividly defined with few consequences, except punishment for the perpetrators, as it should be.

Don't worry. Our current age of sports rage won't suddenly be replaced by boring good behavior just because there's a fuss. It took decades for our games to reach their current disrepute among decent people. It'll take years to reverse those trends. Go with the flow of indignation. This time, it's good.

THEOLOGY TRUMPS BIOLOGY:

It's the pro-lifers' moment: Bush's re-election, the Peterson case and other factors show that the right has gathered steam (James P. Pinkerton, November 25, 2004, Newsday)

[F]or years now, the right has been winning the fight. In the '90s, conservatives won the moral-intellectual battle over "partial-birth abortion"; most Americans deem it to be an abhorrent practice. In fact, the more time people spend pondering the mechanics of abortion, the less likely they are to support it. In the meantime, pro-life sentiment builds further as ultrasound technology improves, to the point where in utero imaging becomes three-dimensional and all the more vivid.

The coverage of the 2002 killing of eight-months-pregnant Laci Peterson in California illustrated a further shift. Reporters routinely referred to "the murder of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner." That a fetus was thus deemed to be a full person, with a name, was a spectacular success for the right. Scholars call it "semantic infiltration." Indeed, this infiltration was enshrined in a new federal law making it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. Bush himself refers to the bill as "Laci and Conner's Law."

The continuing, growing power of the right-to-life movement has many sources, but the most profound source is basic biology: The human species, like any species, is programmed for its own perpetuation. And yet across the industrial nations, the birth rate has fallen. Births are now at or below the numerical replacement level. The once-feared "population bomb," in other words, has proven to be a "population bust." Three major books have been published of late on this topic, the most recent of which is "Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future," by Ben Wattenberg, a scholar who hardly rates as a traditional pro-life conservative.

One solution to the birth-dearth, of course, is immigration. Yet that brings controversy. A more natural solution, which people yearn for in their bones, is an increase in the birth rate - more patter of more little feet. Hence the surging popularity of "pro-family" policies put forth by "family values"-oriented candidates. And yes, as part of the same swell of feeling comes the impulse to restrict abortion.

MORE:
President Bush's Potential Supreme Court Picks are Pro-Life on Abortion (Steven Ertelt, November 24, 2004, LifeNews.com)

With the potential to nominate as many as three or four Supreme Court justices, there is little doubt that one legacy President Bush will have is how he shaped the views of the nation's top judicial panel.

When Bush begins nominating new justices to replace the aging members of the court, one of the key battles will revolve around abortion.

A recent CBS-New York Times poll found that 64 percent of those polled said they thought Bush would appoint pro-life judges who favor making abortion illegal.

They may be right.

A survey of the most often discussed possibilities for Supreme Court appointments indicates many are either pro-life or have issued decisions on legislation favorable to the pro-life community.

PUTTING THEO IN THEOCRACY:

1m Christians sign EU religion plea (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 25/11/2004, Daily Telegraph)

More than a million people from all over Europe are to deliver a petition to Tony Blair and fellow EU leaders calling for changes to the constitution recognising Europe's Christian heritage.

Refusing to accept a secular "fait accompli" from Brussels, a Christian coalition is demanding that each EU state publish its version of the constitution's preamble, with references to God if desired.

Already armed with 1,149,000 signatures and with thousands more pouring in from Holland since the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, the group claims that most states want some reference to Christianity but were blocked by France.

WHAT ISLAMICISTS GET AND ISLAMOPHOBES DON'T:

Al-Zarqawi attacks the 'silent' scholars (Stephen Farrell, 11/25/04, Times of London)

THE insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has attacked Muslim clerics for failing to support attacks on United States-led forces in Iraq.

The outburst signals an apparent rift between Iraq’s most-wanted man and hardline Islamic scholars who had been united with him in opposition to Western troops in the country.

In a recording published on an Islamist website, a voice attributed to al-Zarqawi attacks the ulemas (theologians) for not speaking out against American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. “You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy . . . You have quit supporting the Mujahidin,” the voice says. “Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.”

The broadside appears to be motivated by bitterness that the Americans’ assault on Fallujah failed to rouse the same passions across the Muslim world as a siege last April.

HAVING LEARNED NOTHING FROM ROME (via Robert Schwartz):

Violence Taints Religion's Solace for China's Poor (JOSEPH KAHN, 1/25/04, NY Times)

The demise of Communist ideology has left a void, and it is being filled by religion. The country today has more church-going Protestants than Europe, according to several foreign estimates. Buddhism has become popular among the social elite. Beijing college students wait hours for a pew during Christmas services in the capital's 100 packed churches.

But it is the rural underclass that is most desperate for salvation. The rural economy has grown relatively slowly. Corruption and a collapse in state-sponsored medical care and social services are felt acutely. But government-sanctioned churches operate mainly in cities, where they can be closely monitored, and priests and ministers by law can preach only to those who come to them.

The authorities do not ban religious activity in the countryside. But they have made it so difficult for established churches to operate there that many rural Chinese have turned to underground, often heterodox religious movements.

Charismatic sect leaders denounce state-sanctioned churches. They promise healing in a part of the country where the state has all but abandoned responsibility for public health. They also promise deliverance from the coming apocalypse, and demand money, loyalty and strict secrecy from their members.

Three Grades of Servants, a banned Christian sect that claims several million followers, made inroads in Huaide and other northern towns beginning nearly a decade ago. It lured peasants like Yu Xiaoping, as well as her neighbor, Ms. Kuang, away from state-authorized churches. Its underground network provided spiritual and social services to isolated villages.

But it also attracted competition from Eastern Lightning, its archrival, which sought to convert Ms. Yu, Ms. Kuang and others. The two sects clashed violently. Both became targets of a police crackdown.

Xu Shuangfu, the itinerant founder of Three Grades of Servants, who says he has divine powers, was arrested last summer along with scores of associates. Mr. Xu was suspected of having ordered the execution of religious enemies, police officers said.

Yet such efforts rarely stop the spread of underground churches and sects, which derive legitimacy from government pressure.

DE-REALISTIFICATION:

2 Top Officials Are Reported to Quit C.I.A. (DOUGLAS JEHL, 11/25/04, NY Times)

Two more senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service are stepping down, intelligence officials said Wednesday, in the latest sign of upheaval in the agency under its new chief, Porter J. Goss.

As the chiefs of the Europe and Far East divisions, the two officials have headed spying operations in some of the most important regions of the world and were among a group known as the barons in the highest level of clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations. [...]

Last week, President Bush directed Mr. Goss to draw up detailed plans in 90 days for a major overhaul of the agency, to address shortcomings that have become evident with intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prewar assessments of Iraq.

The directive included a call for 50 percent increases in crucial operations and analytical personnel, a goal that the agency had already set in a five-year strategic plan drafted in December under George J. Tenet, the previous director of central intelligence. Many of the agency's top officials, including John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director, and A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official, have stepped down or announced plans to do so since Mr. Goss took office in September. The upheaval has been most extensive in the operations directorate, made up of spies and spymasters who have made careers out of stealing secrets.

The clandestine service is a proud closed fraternity and one that sees itself as fiercely loyal and not risk-averse. It is also a group that has recoiled in recent weeks at the criticisms leveled at the agency, including comments this month from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who accused the agency of acting "almost as a rogue" institution.

SUBSTITUTE BECAUSE FOR DESPITE:

Reagan Years May Give a Clue to Bush’s Future Actions (Abdulrahman Al-Rashid, 11/21/04, Arab News)

Following the 1991 American-led war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq, people in the Gulf used to joke about George Bush the father. They said if Bush was nearby, you could sleep soundly in your house. Now, in light of what is going on in the region, people are saying if Bush the son is near, you had better flee your house. The departure of Colin Powell, the only rational voice in the administration, and the naming by Bush of his iron-lady national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to replace him, is a clear message to every one that Bush is not afraid of engaging in new wars.

If we think this is a matter of temperament or disposition we must consider the elation Bush must have felt over his re-election. He won 60 million votes in the election and that means he has a popular mandate. The American people elected him despite the numbers of dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and despite the Guantanamo scandals, the rift with the Europeans and Al-Qaeda’s visible activity. Bush won despite Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit911 , which ridiculed the US president by its searing examination of his administration’s actions in the wake of Sept.11. Bush won although the film set box-office records when shown in theaters across the US. He won even though many musicians, singers, actors and the media were against him.

DENYING HUMAN NATURE

Europe pays the price for cultural naïveté (William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, November 25th, 2004)

This specifically Dutch tragedy was created by good intentions combined with false assumptions about the human, social and political realities of cultural difference. After the Nazi catastrophe, racial and cultural distinctions were interpreted as cause for discrimination and conflict, and accordingly were not only avoided but denied. Certain illusions about the nature of man were - and are - promoted. People in the West want to continue to believe in these illusions, despite all that history has done to disprove them.

They include the belief that the core values of the Western democracies are innate, and that education, the liberalization of political and social institutions, and political action can liberate these values among people who don't yet recognize them. It is believed that everyone is headed not only toward liberal democracy but also toward secularism or religious indifference.

Western political (and even economic) values are said to be universal, valid for all societies now and in the future. Hence the unity of mankind is only a matter of time. The moral complexity of the human condition in the past is ignored, or is simply unknown.

It all adds up to a naïve version of the belief in inevitable human progress that arose during the French Enlightenment and has inspired virtually every Western political ideology we have known since - and that history has repeatedly disproved.

And when the children of the Enlightenment are confronted with the refusal of history to back them, they can become very angry.
.

DEFENDERS OF THE CITY:

Give Thanks for These Patriots: Civilian turkey- eaters: Show your gratitude for the armed forces. (Max Boot, November 25, 2004, LA Times)

It is all too easy to take the all-volunteer armed forces for granted. They've been around now for 31 years, ever since the draft was abolished in 1973. We have become used to having a high-quality military filled by dedicated young women and men willing to put their lives on the line for less money than Donald Trump hands out in tips every week.

It is worth remembering how extraordinary and unusual our service members really are � and how much we owe them this Thanksgiving.

(originally posted: November 25, 2004)

IDEAS MATTER, NOT MONEY:

In Battle of 527 Groups, Conservatives Do More With Less (John Carlisle, November 24, 2004, CNSNews.com)

While Republican campaign committees raised more money than Democrat party groups - $558 million vs. $452 million - the liberal 527 committees more than leveled the fundraising playing field. Of the $464 million raised by 527s, the overwhelming majority went to Democratic-leaning groups.

The top three groups - the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, America Coming Together, and the Media Fund - spent more than $175 million. The Media Fund spent $50 million on radio and TV ads while America Coming Together raised $125 million for voter mobilization efforts. They were joined by other liberal 527s, giving the Democrats a near-monopoly on the 527 market.

By contrast, the conservative Progress for America Voter Fund, the largest of the pro-GOP 527s, raised just $38 million. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth raised $26 million.

But it was the under-funded Republican-leaning 527s that carried the day. They did so by simply producing ads that made the biggest impact on voters.

NO REST[ROOM] FOR THE WICKED:

GEORGE MICHAEL'S BREAK-IN TRAUMA (Gary Jones, 11/25/04, Daily Mirror)

SCARED George Michael is being terrorised by a woman stalker who broke into his luxury home.

ANTI-REALIST ICON:

Martin Malia, 80, Soviet-Era Skeptic, Dies (MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN, November 24, 2004, NY Times)

Martin Malia, a historian of Soviet Communism who persistently challenged the prevailing notion of that system's durability, died last Friday in a convalescent home in Oakland, Calif. He was 80 years old.

The cause was pneumonia, said a statement from the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught for more than 30 years.

During the final three decades of the Soviet empire, Mr. Malia, who retired in 1991, provided an often provocative voice from the conservative flank of Soviet studies, which scorned the idea that Communist rule would ever be capable of reforming itself and assailed those of his fellow academics who foresaw such possibilities.

In his books and numerous magazine articles, Mr. Malia advocated the position that the Soviet Union was constituted ideologically - and became as he put it an "idiocracy" that was alien to the currents of Russian and European history and thus could not endure. [...]

The most dramatic expression of Mr. Malia's views on Communism's dismal prospects and impending doom took the form of a January 1990 article in the quarterly Daedalus titled "To the Stalin Mausoleum." The author was identified only by the single initial "Z."

At the time, Mikhail Gorbachev and his policies of perestroika were generating optimism and enthusiasm in much of the West, including academic circles. But the article lambasted the Soviet leader, insisting that his rule would bring neither democracy nor free markets to the Soviet Union, though they might extend the life of the Communist Party, whose existence, the article contended, lay at the heart of the Soviet Union's problems.

Partly because of speculation over the identity of the author, the article gained international attention and a crucial portion was excerpted on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. One line of conjecture held that the "Z" in the signature was meant to recall the famous 1947 article in Foreign Affairs in which George F. Kennan's proposed policies for the containment of the Soviet Union were presented under the pseudonym "X." In the fall of 1990, after the Berlin Wall had come down and Mr. Gorbachev was being eclipsed by Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Malia acknowledged in another Op-Ed piece in The Times that he was "Z," and not a diplomat, as Mr. Kennan had been, but a university professor who eight months earlier had hidden his identity to avoid compromising his sources in Russia and Eastern Europe.

A devout Roman Catholic, Mr. Malia was quick to recognize how Poland's Solidarity movement was gaining cultural and popular support in its challenge to Communism and wrote about the struggle for The New York Review of Books. He saw no prospect of similar upheavals in Russia, and in contrast to many colleagues he refused to believe that significant changes could emerge from party structures. Yuri Slezkine, a history professor at Berkeley, observed that Mr. Malia's views were regarded as controversial by many in the field, but added, " things kind of came together in the end, and he was very grateful."

MISTER, WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE HERMAN GOERING AGAIN:

Turkish workers a mistake, claims Schmidt (Hannah Cleaver in Berlin, 25/11/2004, Daily Telegraph)

Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, has inflamed the country's debate on immigration by saying that multiculturalism can only work under authoritarian regimes, and that bringing millions of Turkish guest workers to Germany was a mistake.

"The concept of multiculturalism is difficult to make fit with a democratic society," he told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.

He added that it had been a mistake that during "the early 1960s we brought guest workers from foreign cultures into the country".

CROWN IN HAND:

Spain's PM sends Bush message of goodwill (SCOTT LINDLAW, November 24, 2004, AP)

Spain's king brought President Bush a message of goodwill Wednesday from Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose vocal opposition to the Iraq war has chilled U.S.-Spanish relations.

Zapatero, the head of the Spanish government, has written and called Bush to congratulate him on his re-election, but can't get past the White House switchboard. Bush sent him a note earlier this month thanking him.

By contrast, King Juan Carlos, who holds no political power, was ferried onto Bush's ranch aboard a Marine Corps helicopter bearing the U.S. presidential seal. The first king to visit Bush's ranch, he was accompanied by his wife, Queen Sofia, for the one-hour, 20-minute stay.

Bush drove his white pickup truck to the landing site, accompanied by his wife, Laura, and his father, former President George H.W. Bush. After a hearty handshake and a lingering pose for group pictures, Bush held the pickup's passenger door open for his royal guest; the king rode shotgun during a tour of the 1,600-acre ranch, the wives in the back seats.

BUT SCIENCE SAYS ALL OUR OCTOGENARIANS WILL BE PRODUCTIVE

Growing fears over booming aged numbers (Matt Wade, Sydney Morning Herald, November 25th, 2004)

Australia's booming aged population will hit the economy harder than previously thought, halving economic growth in 20 years and leaving governments with a $2200 billion budget hole over 40 years, a new report warns.

The report, released today by the Productivity Commission, predicts ageing will open a "fiscal gap" of 7 per cent of gross domestic product for federal and state governments by 2045.

It predicts the average rate of economic growth per person will dip to 1.25 per cent by the 2020s - half the current average.

"Economic growth will flag as the Australian workforce grows more slowly than the population," the commission's chairman, Gary Banks, said.

He said the gap was "large and will require action by all governments".
The commission has canvassed increasing taxes to meet the budget shortfall.

Its report builds on one released by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, in 2002, which estimated ageing would create a federal budget gap of 5 per cent of GDP in 40 years.

By 2045, one in four Australians, or 7 million, will be aged 65 or more, compared to 2.5 million now.

The Federal Government will bear the brunt of this shift mainly due to soaring health costs, about a third of which will be due to ageing. But the Productivity Commission says state and local governments will bear their share. The provision of human services, including for the elderly, accounts for around half of all local government spending.

Maybe the public school system should stop teaching evolution and replace it with demographics.

PUNCTUATION MARKS:

upernova debris found on Earth (Mark Peplow, 11/02/04, Nature)

Cosmic fallout from an exploding star dusted the Earth about 2.8 million years ago, and may have triggered a change in climate that affected the course of human evolution. The evidence comes from an unusual form of iron that was blasted through space by a supernova before eventually settling into the rocky crust beneath the Pacific Ocean. [...]

When the iron-60 arrived from space, it was evenly distributed all over the Earth. But the signatures are only detectable in crust that has lain undisturbed for millions of years, such as certain parts of the Pacific Ocean floor. This particular crust was taken from an area a few hundred kilometres southeast of the Hawaiian Islands in 1980. It was collected by oceanographers who were investigating the rocks as a potential source of rare mineral ores.

Korschinek estimates that the supernova was between about 100 and 200 light years away and happened 2.8 million years ago, give or take 300,000 years. The explosion can't have been too close to Earth, or it would have delivered enough radiation to cause mass extinctions. Conversely, if the supernova was any further away, more of the iron-60 would have been filtered out by the thin wisps of matter drifting between the stars.

This means the supernova would have been at the right distance to spray out a stream of cosmic rays that could have increased the cloud cover on Earth. Korschinek calculates that there may have been 15% more cosmic rays arriving on Earth than normal for at least 100,000 years. This is not enough to actually kill anything, but was perhaps sufficient to change the Earth's climate.

The increase in cloudiness would have cooled the surface, tying up water as ice at the poles and leading to a dryer climate in Africa. Climate records in rock cores match the dates of the supernova event.

"Some people believe this climate change in Africa was a driving force in our own evolution," adds Korschinek.

SECULARISM IS ANTI-AMERICANISM:

Declaration of Independence Banned at Calif School (Dan Whitcomb, 11/24/04, Reuters)

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

A BELL RINGS:

Where are the answers from the wounded Dems? (Clarence Page, November 24, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

First of all, the party must stand for something. It needs, like Samuel Johnson's famous plum pudding, a theme. Roosevelt had "the New Deal." Bush offers "the Ownership Society," which reminds me of Richard M. Nixon's offer of "a piece of the action" to black Americans in response to Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society."

Themes matter. They focus minds, big and small, on creating an agenda that offers hope to voters of a better world.

All of this came to mind as I was watching one of my guilty pleasures, "The Wire," an exceptionally realistic HBO series about Baltimore cops and drug gangsters. Like life, it's a complicated show that produces unexpected nuggets of wisdom.

During a dinner conversation, a detective was asked by his political-consultant girlfriend whether he voted for Kerry or for Bush. Neither, he responded wearily. No matter who wins the White House, he said, nothing changes on the streets where he works. Drugs keep flowing, kids keep dying.

There was more fact than fiction in that exchange. If Democrats, the party of poor people, working people and Baltimore people, are not offering a vision of a better future to drug-ravaged neighborhoods, I wondered, who will?

Significantly, Bush has. His administration assists grass-roots, faith-based leaders like Rev. Eugene Rivers, co-founder of Boston's Ten Point Coalition. An effort by more than 50 local churches to join forces with Boston police, courts and City Hall to combat youth violence, the coalition reduced Boston's juvenile homicide rate to zero in the mid-1990s. It made a difference.

Former Vice President Al Gore favored faith-based programs in his 2000 presidential campaign, but President Bush embraced them, despite liberal critics who complained about possible breaches of church-state separation. I am a 1st Amendment absolutist, but when a program that works can be funded without discriminating against anyone's religious beliefs, that's good enough for me. It's also good enough for poor folks for whom Bush's faith-based initiatives have given Republicans a more compassionate image.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party's response to innovative ideas like school vouchers, charter schools and income-based affirmative action, instead of race-based, has too often resembled classic conservatives, fiercely holding on to past political gains without offering any new alternatives.

AND TWO MORE CONGRESSMEN ON SATURDAY:

GOP's Rossi Wins Wash. Governor Recount (AP, 11/24/04)

Republican Dino Rossi came out ahead of Democrat Christine Gregoire by just 42 votes Wednesday in the recount for Washington governor, but the Democrats are expected to demand yet another recount.

ANTI-EXISTENTIAL:

-REVIEW: of A Man Escaped (Ron Reed, 11/23/2004, Christianity Today)

The "man" of the title is Fontaine, a French Resistance fighter locked away in a Nazi prison. We know from the blunt title and his past-tense narration that he has escaped and is recounting his story at some later time. Or do we? If we know his fate is secure, why do we feel such tension and suspense?

As relentless as the filmmaker's attention is to the inescapable physical realities of this prison—wood and iron and stone, fabric and wire and water on a face—we're also led constantly to question whether these are the only reality available to Fontaine, and maybe that's what makes us question whether he'll ultimately escape from the literal prison. Perhaps his escape will be spiritual, the kind of rebirth suggested in a Scripture smuggled to him on a scrap of paper: "You must be born from above." The film's subtitle undercuts the main title's apparent sense of certainty when it refers to that same passage in John, reminding us that God defies predictability: "the wind blows as it listeth." (Bresson, a master filmmaker whose Christianity is perhaps more integrated into his work than any other, loves titles that introduce notes of uncertainty which stand in tension with the "certainties" of faith: Le Diable Probablement translates to "The Devil Probably," and the "au hasard" of Au Hasard Balthasar means "by chance.") Or perhaps Fontaine's only escape will be into eternity, through the doorway of death, as suggested by the man without hope in the next cell: when Fontaine encourages him by saying, "We'll meet up," the man replies, "In another life, maybe." Perhaps Fontaine will be taken away and shot without warning or explanation, like other prisoners? Perhaps he will he escape the walls of his cell only to be taken in a corridor or gunned down on a rooftop?

Is escape even a possibility? It hardly seems likely, and Bresson explicitly tells us that the slim hope of freedom will only be kept alive through constant faith—the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Visually we're as confined as Fontaine: we glimpse the corridors of the prison only through the peephole in his cell door, by surreptitious glances down hallways when the prisoners are led to the prison yard, in the awkward view from his barred window. We hear cryptic sounds that must be deciphered—tappings from other cells, footsteps, keys on a railing, unidentifiable squeaks and sobs and whimpers. Secretive conversations at the trough where inmates wash their face elude our understanding, cut short by guards or full of obscure and uncertain meanings. And from outside the prison, sounds of traffic, trains, a clock tower's bell.

We are caught, along with Fontaine, in a constant, sometimes unbearable tension between confinement and liberty, between palpable physical circumstances and invisible spiritual realities.

While it may sound like A Man Escaped is an extended allegory about the hope of escaping "the prison of this life" through some sort of spiritual transcendence, the film is far too particular for that.

TOXIC BREW:

REVIEW: of War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race By Edwin Black (Johannes L. Jacobse, Townhall)

The father of the modern eugenics movement, England's Francis J. Galton, gave the pseudo-science its first taste of scientific credibility. Intoxicated by the ideas of Charles Darwin, the rediscovered genetic theories of Gregor Mendel, and the secularized philosophy of Herbert Spencer, Galton concluded that assembling data about social heredity could predict which families and ethnic groups would produce socially desirable offspring.

Eugenics never found widespread acceptance in England, but in America it was a different story. The American movement found a leader in Charles Davenport, a biologist with a flair for organization, fundraising, and promotion. Drawing upon Galton's work and funded by the Carnegie Foundation, Davenport opened the Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution in Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1904.

Davenport wasted no time. In short order, a battalion of social workers fanned into the countryside to chart the characteristics of people they considered undesirable (blacks, poor, infirm, criminals, alcoholics, etc.). Thousands of people were forcibly sterilized (6,000 between 1907 and 1927; 36,000 by 1940). Children were taken from their families. Criminals were castrated.

Some states passed legislation supporting sterilization, and the nation soon found itself considering a federal policy of forced sterilization. The eugenics movement found its poster child in Carrie Buck, the daughter of a prostitute. After giving birth to an illegitimate child, Carrie was forcibly institutionalized and declared "feebleminded by the laws of heredity."

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the chief jurist hearing the case. Carrie lost 8-1. Writing for the majority, Holmes arrogantly declared:

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if we could not call upon those who sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices… compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes… three generations of imbeciles is enough.

It was music to the eugenicists' ears.

Common people were more clear-headed. The arbitrary decisions about what constituted social desirability struck many Americans not only as capricious but as evil. The movement was resisted, critiqued, and mocked at every turn, and justifiably so. It was challenged in the courts and editorial pages. Support for it finally began to wane.

In Germany, the opposite happened. The American ideas were enthusiastically embraced by German thinkers, resulting in the murder of 250,000 disabled Germans between 1935 and 1945 alone. Black believes that the inspiration for Hitler's Final Solution drew more from the ideas of American eugenicists than from Hitler's nationalism.

SCIENCE IS NEVER IN GREATER DANGER THAN WHEN IT CONFRONTS THE WHY?

Cosmic Conundrum: The universe seems uncannily well suited to the existence of life. Could that really be an accident? (MICHAEL D. LEMONICK; J. MADELEINE NASH, 11/22/04, TIME)

Dealing with cranks is an occupational hazard for most scientists, but it's especially bad for physicists and astronomers. Those who study the cosmos for a living tend to be bombarded with letters, calls and emails from would-be geniuses who insist they have refuted Einstein or devised a new theory of gravity or disproved the Big Bang. The telltale signs of crankdom are so consistent — a grandiose theory, minimal credentials, a messianic zeal — that scientists can usually spot them a mile off.

That's why the case of James Gardner is so surprising. He seems to fit the profile perfectly: he's a Portland, Ore., attorney, not a scientist, who argues — are you ready for this?--that our universe might have been manufactured by a race of superintelligent extraterrestrial beings. That is exactly the sort of idea that would normally have experts rolling their eyes, blocking e-mails and hoping the author won't corner them at a lecture or a conference.

But when Gardner's book Biocosmcame out last year, it carried jacket endorsements from a surprisingly eminent group of scientists. "A novel perspective on humankind's role in the universe," wrote Martin Rees, the astronomer royal of Britain and a Cambridge colleague of Stephen Hawking's. "There is little doubt that his ideas will change yours," wrote Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in California. "A magnificent one-stop account of the history of life," wrote complexity theorist John Casti, a co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute. Since then, Gardner has been welcomed at major planetariums and legitimate scientific conferences, explaining his ideas to a surprisingly interested public.

It's not that anyone actually buys Gardner's theory. He admits it's "farfetched," and even those scientists who find it stimulating think it's wildly improbable. But it does have one thing in its favor. The biocosm theory is an attempt, albeit a highly speculative one, to solve what just might be science's most profound mystery: why the universe, against all odds, is so remarkably hospitable to life. [...]

The proposition that the cosmos is — against all odds — perfectly tuned for life is known as the anthropic principle. And while it has been getting a lot of attention lately, there is no consensus on how seriously to take it. Some scientists are confident that there is a law that dictates the values of those key cosmic numbers, and when we find it, the anthropic problem will go away.

THE COUNCIL EARNS ITS KEEP:

New technique eyed in stem-cell debate (Gareth Cook, November 21, 2004, Boston Globe)

With the nation deadlocked over the morality of using human embryos for research, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics is quietly promoting a proposal that might allow scientists to create the equivalent of embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, offering a potential path out of the controversy.

Dr. William Hurlbut, a Stanford bioethicist and staunch opponent of research on human embryos, has traveled the country developing and winning support for the idea in consultation with a small circle of scientists and conservative ethicists. The procedure, called altered nuclear transfer, would engineer a human egg that could generate cells with the full potential of embryonic stem cells, but without ever forming an actual embryo.

The technique has not been attempted with human cells, but biologists consider it feasible with today's technology. The larger question is whether the technique could overcome the strong ethical and religious opposition that has led to sharp limits on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell experiments and turned embryonic stem-cell research into a flashpoint in American politics.

So far, three critics of current methods for creating embryonic stem cells -- Archbishop William J. Levada of San Francisco, Robert George, a member of the president's bioethics council, and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, a leading intellectual in the evangelical movement -- have seen Hurlbut's proposal and said they believe it could offer a way around their moral objections. Hurlbut will present his idea to the bioethics council early next month.

RISING STAR:

Thompson Out and McClellan In at HHS? (John Gizzi, Nov 23, 2004, Human Events)

High-placed sources in Wisconsin last week told HUMAN EVENTS that Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson would shortly be leaving the Administration. Word of Thompson's exodus came amid growing reports that Dr. Mark McClellan, head of the Food and Drug Administration, was the front-runner to take over HHS if the post of secretary came open.

REPLACEMENT GAMES:

A Heartbeat Away: Speculation about a replacement for Dick Cheney just keeps on ticking (James Ridgeway, November 24 - 30, 2004, Village Voice)

Most recently, on November 13, Cheney went to the hospital for medical tests after experiencing shortness of breath. Initial tests showed no abnormalities. The pacemaker indicated no irregularities during the preceding 90 days. And an electrocardiogram showed no change.

Should his condition go south, any number of politicians could get the nod, but many of these possible fill-ins carry bad baggage. Let's consider four of the realistic possibilities:

BUGHOUSE:

WHY GOLD? (James Surowiecki, 2004-11-22, The New Yorker)

To true believers—known as “gold bugs”—the idea that gold is a commodity is rank heresy. They prefer to think of gold as the planet’s most reliable currency, a stable, ineradicable source of wealth, whose value will endure no matter what comes to pass.

It’s hard to square this faith with what has happened to the price of gold in the past two decades. It has been a terrible investment. Even with the recent surge, it’s up zero per cent since 1988, while the S. & P. 500 has almost quadrupled. Gold’s buying power has plummeted, too. In 1980, ten ounces of gold would have bought you a nice car. Today, it would get you a nice bike. The gold bugs have a handy explanation: gold is a victim of market manipulation and bad press. Wall Street and the world’s central banks are, apparently, “enemies of gold,” holding gold prices down in order to prop up people’s confidence in the paper-money system. One gold bug even filed a lawsuit against various government officials and big banks alleging a conspiracy to sabotage gold prices with surreptitious sales. Another compared a skeptical journalist to Joseph Goebbels.

The gold bugs are classic cranks, but their obsession is rooted in experience; we’ve all been conditioned—by history, by myth, by Mr. T—to think of gold as money. James Bond never had to contend with a Nickelfinger, and Bette Midler would probably not have accepted payment in palladium or cowrie shells or cattle. The world’s central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is real.

So there’s a little bit of the gold bug in all of us. Still, in a world of “swaptions” and strips gold’s allure is increasingly atavistic. The idea of gold as a platonic currency, universally valuable across time and space, reflects a basic distrust of markets, a fear that in a world of paper money wealth is just an illusion. For gold bugs, paper money turns us all into Wile E. Coyote—we’re running on air, and we’ll plummet once we look down and realize there’s nothing holding us up. The gold bug’s apocalyptic mentality maintains that someday the global economy will look down and the result will be chaos. Gold is the only thing that will still be valuable after the bottom drops out.

Yet gold is valuable only as long as we collectively agree that it is. It may be soft, shiny, durable, and rare, but it has no more intrinsic value than feldspar or quartz. Just because it has a long history of being used as money doesn’t mean that it has a future. In the end, our trust in gold is no different from our trust in a piece of paper with “one dollar” written on it. The value of a currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it—whether in food, fuel, assets, or labor. And that’s always and everywhere a subjective decision. Gold or not, we’re always just running on air. You can’t be rich unless everyone else agrees that you’re rich.

Gold investors like to pride themselves on being sober realists. The irony is that buying gold is the purest form of speculation.

IT'S NOT EASY BEING MUJAHADEEN...:

Muslim Religious Scholars Betrayed Mujahedin, Zarqawi Tape Accuses (VOA News, 24 November 2004)

An audio recording posted on the Internet Wednesday, says Muslim religious scholars or Ulemas have betrayed Islamic fighters by keeping silent about U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The message charges the Ulemas have quit supporting the mujahedin, betraying them in the darkest circumstances and leaving them to confront the world's greatest power alone.

The recording was attributed to wanted al-Qaida-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqwai.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT'S DUE:

House Call: SOCIAL SECURITY LIES. (Noam Scheiber, 11.24.04, New Republic)

The obvious sticking point in privatizing Social Security is how you finance the transition from the current system--in which today's workers fund the benefits of today's retirees--to a system in which workers save partly for their own retirement as well. The problem is that any dollar you divert to fund private accounts is one less dollar available to pay for what remains of the existing system. So the burden is on privatization advocates to explain where they will get the money to bridge the gap.

Social Security wonks distinguish the various plans floating around Capitol Hill by the degree to which they acknowledge this financial hurdle. At one extreme are so-called free-lunch plans, like those sponsored by Representatives Paul Ryan of Wisconsin or Clay Shaw of Florida, or Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire. These create private accounts while guaranteeing that no one will receive fewer benefits than they do today. Proponents intend to finance this arrangement through huge borrowing (as much as $7 trillion over the next several decades) or vague budget cuts, or some combination of the two. At the other end of the spectrum are the tough-love plans proposed by representatives like Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe and (recently defeated) Texas Democrat Charlie Stenholm, who want to finance the transition with deep cuts in Social Security benefits and modifications to the payroll tax. In the middle are plans like those of GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, which rely on substantial benefit cuts but also some slightly dubious budget savings from measures like closing corporate tax loopholes. The different plans require infusions of anywhere from $750 billion to nearly $4 trillion to pay for the initial decade of the transition, during which time no benefits would be cut.

As a general rule, the more honest the accounting (i.e., Kolbe-Stenholm), the more draconian the cuts to the current system. Which means that, given the political reality, the most honest proposals are the ones least likely to be enacted.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS STATE CAPITAL:

Will the secular left continue bowling alone? (William Davies, 15th November 2004, New Statesman)

In the days following the defeat of Boston's native son John Kerry, the city's newspapers echoed some of the questions raised in the months following 9/11: Why do they hate us? How did religious zeal come to overpower political reason?

Robert Putnam, the Harvard professor who wrote Bowling Alone and was recently described in the NS as one of the most important intellectual influences on Tony Blair, is the man most likely to have the answers. "Liberals," he says, "have allowed conservatives to dominate religious political expression over the past 30 years, but this was not true historically." At his Harvard office, he rattles off the progressive movements that depended on religious organisation: slave emancipation, reform of child labour laws, civil rights. "I think one of the problems liberals currently face," Putnam says, "is that they have allowed themselves to become alienated from that strand in American history." The next wave of liberalism, he thinks, will have to come at least partly from progressive Christian movements if it is to speak to Americans who live closer to the Mississippi River than to the Pacific and Atlantic seaboards.

The rise in voter turnout was expected to benefit Kerry. But Putnam says: "The election was a contest between the ability of evangelical Christians to mobilise their supporters at grass-roots level, and what you might call the 'old left' - the unions and Democratic Party. And the evangelical right won." Putnam is the man more responsible than anybody else for the idea of "social capital", a shorthand term for participation in politics and community and social life. Such participation, according to Bowling Alone, is associated with higher levels of health and happiness and lower levels of crime. These findings - Putnam is a very evidence-based man who, when he says half, truly means 50 per cent - have recently impressed policy-makers in London more than those in Washington, DC.

But, and here's the rub for the Democrats, he says "voluntary activity, philanthropy, membership of organisations - half of these activities occur in a religious context". And that "is something that Europeans often fail to understand".

BACK SCRATCH FEVER:

Bush-black rapprochement urged (Brian DeBose, 11/23/004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, one of the highest-ranking elected black Republicans in the country, said he would like to see President Bush smooth over his rocky relationship with the NAACP and schedule more speeches in black communities.

Mr. Steele, in a meeting with editors and reporters of The Washington Times, said he has discussed the matter with Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who recently sent a letter to the White House requesting a meeting with Mr. Bush. [...]

Mr. Steele said the president has an opportunity to show black voters that the Republican Party cares about their issues with the gesture and could improve black voter turnout for their candidates in future races.

He said, however, that he wasn't surprised Mr. Bush received more support from the black community in this most recent election, gaining two percentage points nationally (11 percent in 2004, up from 9 percent in 2000) and larger numbers in key states like Ohio, where Mr. Bush received 16 percent of the black vote.

Mr. Steele said issues such as same-sex "marriage," medical-malpractice reform and tax cuts resonated with many black voters, adding that the president could have done much better among that voting bloc if he had scheduled more appearances in black communities and spoke directly to them about his policies.

MEANWHILE, BILLIONS OF CONDOMS LATER...

HIV now a bigger threat to women than men (Sarah Bosely, The Guardian, November 24th, 2004)

The Aids pandemic rampaging around the globe will not be stopped without radical social change to improve the lot of women and girls, who now look likely to die in greater numbers than men, United Nations agencies said yesterday.

Infections among women are soaring, from sub-Saharan Africa to Asia to Russia. What began as a series of epidemics among men - in some regions gay and bisexual men, in others men who frequented sex workers or male drug users - has spread to their female partners who are biologically more easily infected.

In many countries, women's subordinate status, and their lack of education and economic power, have made it impossible for them to negotiate sex with men or to ask for the use of condoms. Yesterday the UN agency set up to combat the pandemic, UNAids, called for all that to change in the interests of checking the spread of a disease which killed 3.1 million adults and children last year.

"We will not be able to stop this epidemic unless we put women at the heart of the response to Aids," said UNAids' executive director, Peter Piot.

At the launch of the UNAids annual report on the pandemic yesterday, actor Emma Thompson, who is a founder member of the Global Coalition on Women and Aids launched this year, put it in starker fashion. "There are some countries where women are an endangered species - they will disappear from the face of the earth," she said. "I think this is the greatest catastrophe that the human race has ever faced."

Promoting safe sex while scorning fidelity and abstinence ends up harming women? Astounding.

BREAKING OUT OF THEIR MALAYSE:

Anwar the Malaysian chameleon: While speculation continues as to where Anwar Ibrahim will place his political allegiances, Malaysia's former deputy premier has quietly gone about courting minorities and the disfranchised. Often accused of being a chameleon, he'll need to hone his message. But it appears that Anwar may be on to something. (Ioannis Gatsiounis, 11/24/04, Asia Times)

While he himself is Malay and rose to prominence partly on his Islamic credentials - he founded the youth Islamic organization Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) - minorities, who make up 40% of the population here, find themselves feeling less represented by their government these days.

All Malaysian political parties are race-based. Over the years UMNO has dealt with this obstacle through its coalition with Chinese, Indian and other minority-oriented parties. But UMNO has always steered the ship, and there's a growing sense that the non-Malay parties are made up of ineffectual sinecures submissive to UMNO-sponsored window dressing.

This coincides with UMNO's insistence in recent months that an affirmative-action program catering to the majority Malays "never" be questioned, despite its inability to reverse Malay "backwardness" and its running 14 years beyond its intended expiry date, 1990. It also coincides with an unceasing Islamization of the Malay community, which UMNO has pandered to, even promoted, for support. The Muslim headscarf is ever more visible, for instance.

The multibillion-dollar administrative capital is Islamic-themed, with no prominent tributes to the nation's myriad other ethnicities. On Sunday, a UMNO head in the state of Terengannu announced that concerts that do not reflect Islamic values will be barred from the state. Everywhere one turns, racial distinctions are being emphasized.

The consummate politician in Anwar appears to have taken note. At a dialogue on Tuesday at the Bar Council he said the formation of an Islamic state, advocated by the atavistic Islamic opposition Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), was not part of his agenda. "I respect the religious rights of every Malaysian and, therefore, their democratic right to air their views," Anwar said. Regarding hudud, punishment for crimes as stipulated by God, according to Muslims, Anwar said, "We're not in a position to implement [hudud] with the complexities of Malaysia and ... of the modern world."

Anwar was careful not to go to the other extreme and support the Western tag of "secularism", as "many Muslims resent that [term]".

CAN'T MAKE 'EM VOTE:

The recipe for civil war (Pepe Escobar, 11/24/04, Asia Times)

Fallujah plus elections amounts to civil war. This tragic equation may come to life in Iraq in early 2005. The official American rationale for the Fallujah offensive was to "stabilize" the country before the elections. This strategy may have paved the way to civil war. Ample evidence suggests that the majority of Sunnis - up to 30% of the population - will boycott the elections and denounce them as illegitimate, while Shi'ites, for the first time in Iraq, will be in power.

BACK TO SPACE:

NASA Chief Sees Mandate for Bush Space Program: The budget increase Congress just voted for NASA is a clear endorsement of President Bush's plan to send astronauts back to the Moon and later Mars, said Sean O'Keefe. (WARREN E. LEARY, 11/24/04, NY Times)

Now, Mr. O'Keefe told NASA employees in an agency address and later emphasized in a news conference, it is up to the agency to prove it can accomplish Mr. Bush's vision of sending people back to the moon by 2020 and using that venture as a springboard to exploration of Mars and beyond.

"This is a great day," he said. "It's a good start."

In wrangling over the spending bill Congress approved over the weekend, lawmakers approved a $16.2 billion budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a 5 percent increase at a time most agencies took cuts. While the $822 million increase for the space program in the 2005 fiscal year, which began in October was $44 million less than the president requested, NASA was a clear winner in a year when discretionary spending increased only about 1 percent.

The legislation requires Mr. O'Keefe to report within 60 days on the agency's plans, including what programs might be delayed, deferred or canceled because of the new initiative.

NASA officials also acknowledged the role of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, whose district includes the Johnson Space Center, in securing the spending.

SMITH NOT TOTALLY FORGOTTEN:

U-turn over private care to slash NHS waiting lists (ALISON HARDIE, 11/24/04, The Scotsman)

THE Scottish Executive has staged a major policy U-turn and sanctioned significant investment in private health-care services in a drive to cut woeful NHS waiting lists, The Scotsman can reveal today.

Jack McConnell, the First Minister, had until now agreed to only limited private-sector involvement in the health service, while ministers at Westminster forged ahead with independent health-provider agreements to transform the face of the NHS south of the Border.

However, with waiting lists at an "unacceptably high" level, Mr McConnell has caved in and ordered Andy Kerr to hold talks with private health-care companies about how they can speed up NHS diagnosis and treatment in Scotland. [...]

Mr Kerr is understood to share his Westminster counterparts’ belief that buying in more private health-care will not only provide patients with much-needed additional choice, it will also drive up competitiveness and efficiency.

WANT A READABLE BUDGET? START CUTTING:

In Congress, Growing Doubts on Spending Process: Members of both parties say the system for financing the government, which in recent years has relied on huge
last-minute bills, is broken. (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 11/24/04. NY Times)

Though the parties are bickering about the omnibus, both sides agree that the process that produced it is in tatters. Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who has served on the Appropriations Committee for his entire 46 years in the Senate, found the measure, which was passed on his 87th birthday, so odious that he voted against it.

"We have seen within these last few years, especially, this excrescence of the body politic grow until now it has become malignant," Mr. Byrd said, calling it "a disgrace upon the escutcheon of the Senate."

The problem with an omnibus, lawmakers and independent analysts agree, is that it creates an opportunity for what Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called "legislative mischief." Others call it pork, and this year's bill is chock full of it. The measure will send taxpayer dollars all over the country, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a homeless shelter in Hawaii.

Passing spending bills is one of the few jobs that lawmakers can trace directly to the Constitution, which does not permit the president to spend money unless Congress approves. Under the current system, lawmakers are responsible for passing 13 separate spending bills each year. But in recent years, the Senate especially has been unable to complete its appropriations work.

This year, for instance, the House passed 12 of the 13 appropriations bills but the Senate passed only 4. Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, blamed the Senate for failing to adopt a budget resolution, which helps guide the appropriations process.

Mr. Byrd said "it was never that way in the old times."

Mr. Reischauer says appropriations bills were less contentious in the past, when one party or the other had a large majority in the Senate and deficits were not the problem they are today.

THE RISE AND FALL OF AN ELEGANT IDEA:

REVIEW: of Evolution : The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory by Edward John Larson

MULTI-FRONT:

U.S. Expanding Iraqi Offensive in Violent Area (JAMES GLANZ and EDWARD WONG, 11/23/04, NY Times)

Thousands of American, British and Iraqi troops began a new offensive sweep on Tuesday across a region south of Baghdad known as the triangle of death. The area earned its fearsome reputation as a haven for thieves, killers, crime families and terrorists, as well as insurgents who fled Falluja before the fighting started there.

The operation began with 11 simultaneous early-morning raids in Jabella, west of the Euphrates River and about 40 miles south of Baghdad, said Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is leading the effort.

The new push can be seen as the opening of a third front - after the invasion of Falluja and more limited operations in the north around Mosul - by American-led forces against the insurgency. Officials said it would involve 2,000 to 3,000 American marines, soldiers and sailors, more than 1,000 members of Iraqi security forces and 850 members of the Black Watch, a British infantry battalion. [...]

"We know that some of them headed in our direction before the Falluja battle," he said, citing intelligence reports. "We're going to try to isolate them. Then we're going to bounce all over. We're not going to hit just one area. We're going to hit a multiplicity of targets so that they have no safe haven that they can go to."

SAVINGS AND CLONE SCANDAL:

Cloning kitty: A California company is selling cloning technology to pet owners. (Michael B. Farrell, 11/24/04, CS Monitor)

[P]roblems could range from health maladies resulting in the cloned pet's early death or other birth defects and shortened life spans, he says. Others say there are already too many homeless cats and dogs in shelters. Some wonder why anyone would want to spend so much money when most cats cost nothing.

But Ben Carlson, vice president of communications for GSC, says those issues have been exaggerated by cloning opponents. About 23 percent of all animals born through cloning do have cloning-related health problems. The company's website says, "Fortunately, this has not yet been the case in pet-cloning research. We're investing millions in developing embryo-assessment technology to ensure that each cloned embryo we transfer to a surrogate mother is normal, and will develop into a healthy cloned pet."

Another complaint about cloning is that animals born through chromatin transfer, the process Genetic Savings & Clone uses, are perceived to have much shorter life spans. "The theory that clones would age prematurely has not proven to be correct. However, the issue has developed a life of its own, and the perception, I would go so far as to say myth, about premature aging in clones is now quite widespread." [...]

But right now, GSC is not a money-making operation, says Carlson. It is all being supported by one billionaire investor named John Sperling who loved a dog named Missy.

Mr. Sperling, founder of the Apollo Group, a for-profit educational company, wanted to clone his adopted mutt because she had "exceptional characteristics." He ended up spending $3.7 million to fund the Missyplicity Project at Texas A&M University. The project eventually cloned the first cat, CC (short for Copy Cat) in December 2001. But cloning a dog proved much too difficult then because of the unique characteristics of the canine's physiology, but GSC promises they'll be able to offer the service next year.

After the researchers perfected the technique to produce cloned cats from cell tissue, Sperling and partner Lou Hawthore, now the CEO of GSC, branched out from the laboratory to offer clones commercially.

YET PEOPLE ARE BUYING EUROS...:

France's Industrial Power Trip: Paris can't stop interfering with the economy -- and that's bad news for Europe (John Rossant, 11/29/04, Business Week)

Unfortunately, the traditional French sport of picking national champions is not likely to recede once Sarkozy departs the Finance Ministry. True, the headline-craving politician loves to play to the French electoral galleries. But there are other powerful forces behind the latest outbreak of French dirigisme. For one, it's a way to react to the in-your-face political assertiveness coming out of Washington. As President Jacques Chirac tirelessly reminds listeners, Europe has to stand up as a "counterweight" to the U.S. And if Europe wants to compete successfully with the U.S. on the world stage, it requires corporate giants of its own. It's a belief shared by many beyond France. "Europe needs industrial champions," says Europe's incoming Industry Commissioner, Guenter Verheugen of Germany.

The problem is that "European champion" in the French language invariably seems to translate as "French champion." Earlier this year, Paris was so eager to make sure the country could boast a world-class pharmaceutical giant, it forcefully brokered the $70 billion takeover of Franco-German Aventis by Paris-based Sanofi-Synthélabo. Aventis' German board members were ignored. At the same time, the French government made it clear that Switzerland's Novartis would be unwelcome. Similarly, earlier this year, Germany's Siemens was told it wouldn't be a welcome bidder for Alstom's railway operations, which manufacture the renowned high-speed TGV trains. That led German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to rebuke Paris publicly.

The pace has only intensified. In late October, Sarkozy blessed the coupling of French telephone-equipment maker Sagem with aircraft engine maker Snecma -- a $9 billion merger virtually devoid of industrial logic. Then in early November, news leaked that Franco-German aerospace giant EADS -- with Sarkozy's support -- was examining a takeover of Thales, a French defense-electronics group with $14 billion in sales. Such a deal would make some economic sense, since EADS is overly reliant on its Airbus civil aviation unit for profits and has been looking to bulk up its military business. Yet if the two were to merge, the bigger entity would become largely a French concern, throwing off EADS' delicate French-German balance. Although Sarkozy insists that France would respect the principle of equal French and German control of EADS, the Germans are "furious," according to one banker close to the talks.

Why would France want to risk alienating its key European ally? One reason could be the recent enlargement of the European Union to 25 members, a vast grouping in which the traditional Franco-German motor can no longer get much traction. In the Iraq crisis, for example, Franco-German opposition to the U.S. was not enough to curb the pro-American enthusiasm of Poland and other East European states. As a Nov. 15 editorial in Le Monde put it, "France realized with dread that even allied with Germany, it could find itself overruled in an enlarged Europe." And that, suggests the newspaper that is the mouthpiece of France's elite, is why France is becoming more and more narrowly nationalistic. That doesn't augur well for a powerful new Europe.

LYING HIS WAY OUT THE DOOR:

Rather Quitting as CBS Anchor in Abrupt Move (JACQUES STEINBERG and BILL CARTER, 11/24/04, NY Times)

Dan Rather announced yesterday that he would step down next year as anchor and managing editor of "CBS Evening News." The move came two months after he acknowledged fundamental flaws in a broadcast report that raised questions about President Bush's National Guard service.

Mr. Rather's last broadcast will be on March 9, the 24th anniversary of the night he succeeded Walter Cronkite. He plans to continue to work full time at CBS News, as a correspondent for the Sunday and Wednesday editions of "60 Minutes." [...]

"I wish it were not happening while this panel is looking into the '60 Minutes' weekday story," Mr. Rather said at his office at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Manhattan. "One reason I wanted to do this now was to make the truth clear - this is separated from that."

Mr. Rather said the most intense round of conversations among himself; his agent, Richard Leibner; and Mr. Moonves began about 10 days ago at Mr. Moonves's office at Viacom's headquarters in Times Square. At a certain point, Mr. Leibner excused himself and Mr. Rather spoke alone to Mr. Moonves.

"Dan was very emotional," Mr. Moonves recalled yesterday. "Clearly, this job and CBS News mean a lot to him. It was a very hard decision for him. Dan said to me, 'I'd like to do this on my own terms.' We totally supported him."

Mr. Rather - after a series of conversations last weekend with his wife, Jean, and his grown son and daughter - said he called Mr. Moonves, who was in California, on Monday afternoon and told him that he had made up his mind to go. In a measure of the awkward predicament in which CBS finds itself, Mr. Moonves said he felt compelled to inform the investigative panel of Mr. Rather's plans.

DID THEY PICK 12 BECAUSE IT MAKES US DOUBLE NAZIS?:

Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? (Guenter Lewy, 11/23/04, History News Network)

[A]ccording to Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a "vast genocide . . . , the most sustained on record." [...]

It is a firmly established fact that a mere 250,000 native Americans were still alive in the territory of the United States at the end of the 19th century. Still in scholarly contention, however, is the number of Indians alive at the time of first contact with Europeans. Some students of the subject speak of an inflated "numbers game"; others charge that the size of the aboriginal population has been deliberately minimized in order to make the decline seem less severe than it was.

The disparity in estimates is enormous. In 1928, the ethnologist James Mooney proposed a total count of 1,152,950 Indians in all tribal areas north of Mexico at the time of the European arrival. By 1987, in American Indian Holocaust and Survival, Russell Thornton was giving a figure of well over 5 million, nearly five times as high as Mooney’s, while Lenore Stiffarm and Phil Lane, Jr. suggested a total of 12 million. That figure rested in turn on the work of the anthropologist Henry Dobyns, who in 1983 had estimated the aboriginal population of North America as a whole at 18 million and of the present territory of the United States at about 10 million.

From one perspective, these differences, however startling, may seem beside the point: there is ample evidence, after all, that the arrival of the white man triggered a drastic reduction in the number of native Americans. Nevertheless, even if the higher figures are credited, they alone do not prove the occurrence of genocide.

To address this issue properly we must begin with the most important reason for the Indians’ catastrophic decline—namely, the spread of highly contagious diseases to which they had no immunity. This phenomenon is known by scholars as a "virgin-soil epidemic"; in North America, it was the norm.

The most lethal of the pathogens introduced by the Europeans was smallpox, which sometimes incapacitated so many adults at once that deaths from hunger and starvation ran as high as deaths from disease; in several cases, entire tribes were rendered extinct. Other killers included measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. Although syphilis was apparently native to parts of the Western hemisphere, it, too, was probably introduced into North America by Europeans.

About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, "but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath." It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.

To some, however, this is enough in itself to warrant the term genocide. David Stannard, for instance, states that just as Jews who died of disease and starvation in the ghettos are counted among the victims of the Holocaust, Indians who died of introduced diseases "were as much the victims of the Euro-American genocidal war as were those burned or stabbed or hacked or shot to death, or devoured by hungry dogs." As an example of actual genocidal conditions, Stannard points to Franciscan missions in California as "furnaces of death."

But right away we are in highly debatable territory. It is true that the cramped quarters of the missions, with their poor ventilation and bad sanitation, encouraged the spread of disease. But it is demonstrably untrue that, like the Nazis, the missionaries were unconcerned with the welfare of their native converts. No matter how difficult the conditions under which the Indians labored—obligatory work, often inadequate food and medical care, corporal punishment—their experience bore no comparison with the fate of the Jews in the ghettos. The missionaries had a poor understanding of the causes of the diseases that afflicted their charges, and medically there was little they could do for them. By contrast, the Nazis knew exactly what was happening in the ghettos, and quite deliberately deprived the inmates of both food and medicine; unlike in Stannard’s "furnaces of death," the deaths that occurred there were meant to occur.

The larger picture also does not conform to Stannard’s idea of disease as an expression of "genocidal war." True, the forced relocations of Indian tribes were often accompanied by great hardship and harsh treatment; the removal of the Cherokee from their homelands to territories west of the Mississippi in 1838 took the lives of thousands and has entered history as the Trail of Tears. But the largest loss of life occurred well before this time, and sometimes after only minimal contact with European traders. True, too, some colonists later welcomed the high mortality among Indians, seeing it as a sign of divine providence; that, however, does not alter the basic fact that Europeans did not come to the New World in order to infect the natives with deadly diseases.

Or did they? Ward Churchill, taking the argument a step further than Stannard, asserts that there was nothing unwitting or unintentional about the way the great bulk of North America’s native population disappeared: "it was precisely malice, not nature, that did the deed." In brief, the Europeans were engaged in biological warfare.

Unfortunately for this thesis, we know of but a single instance of such warfare, and the documentary evidence is inconclusive. In 1763, a particularly serious uprising threatened the British garrisons west of the Allegheny mountains. Worried about his limited resources, and disgusted by what he saw as the Indians’ treacherous and savage modes of warfare, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, wrote as follows to Colonel Henry Bouquet at Fort Pitt: "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians [with smallpox] by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race."

Bouquet clearly approved of Amherst's suggestion, but whether he himself carried it out is uncertain. On or around June 24, two traders at Fort Pitt did give blankets and a handkerchief from the fort’s quarantined hospital to two visiting Delaware Indians, and one of the traders noted in his journal: "I hope it will have the desired effect." Smallpox was already present among the tribes of Ohio; at some point after this episode, there was another outbreak in which hundreds died.

A second, even less substantiated instance of alleged biological warfare concerns an incident that occurred on June 20, 1837. On that day, Churchill writes, the U.S. Army began to dispense "'trade blankets' to Mandans and other Indians gathered at Fort Clark on the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota." He continues: Far from being trade goods, the blankets had been taken from a military infirmary in St. Louis quarantined for smallpox, and brought upriver aboard the steamboat St. Peter’s. When the first Indians showed symptoms of the disease on July 14, the post surgeon advised those camped near the post to scatter and seek "sanctuary" in the villages of healthy relatives.

In this way the disease was spread, the Mandans were "virtually exterminated," and other tribes suffered similarly devastating losses. Citing a figure of "100,000 or more fatalities" caused by the U.S. Army in the 1836-40 smallpox pandemic (elsewhere he speaks of a toll "several times that number"), Churchill refers the reader to Thornton’s American Indian Holocaust and Survival.

Supporting Churchill here are Stiffarm and Lane, who write that "the distribution of smallpox- infected blankets by the U.S. Army to Mandans at Fort Clark . . . was the causative factor in the pandemic of 1836-40." In evidence, they cite the journal of a contemporary at Fort Clark, Francis A. Chardon.

But Chardon's journal manifestly does not suggest that the U.S. Army distributed infected blankets, instead blaming the epidemic on the inadvertent spread of disease by a ship's passenger. And as for the "100,000 fatalities," not only does Thornton fail to allege such obviously absurd numbers, but he too points to infected passengers on the steamboat St. Peter's as the cause. Another scholar, drawing on newly discovered source material, has also refuted the idea of a conspiracy to harm the Indians.

Similarly at odds with any such idea is the effort of the United States government at this time to vaccinate the native population. Smallpox vaccination, a procedure developed by the English country doctor Edward Jenner in 1796, was first ordered in 1801 by President Jefferson; the program continued in force for three decades, though its implementation was slowed both by the resistance of the Indians, who suspected a trick, and by lack of interest on the part of some officials. Still, as Thornton writes: "Vaccination of American Indians did eventually succeed in reducing mortality from smallpox."

To sum up, European settlers came to the New World for a variety of reasons, but the thought of infecting the Indians with deadly pathogens was not one of them. As for the charge that the U.S. government should itself be held responsible for the demographic disaster that overtook the American-Indian population, it is unsupported by evidence or legitimate argument. The United States did not wage biological warfare against the Indians; neither can the large number of deaths as a result of disease be considered the result of a genocidal design.

THERE ARE NO JOYFUL STATISTS:

Now the liberals don the mantle of zealots: Christian belief has become something to hide in 'free' Britain. (KATIE GRANT, 11/22/04, The Scotsman)

Godless liberalism, the new opium of the masses, can be just as destructive as god-fearing religion, and - excuse the pun - has none of religion’s saving graces. Yet it escapes any censure. I would go further. Liberalism, in the way we currently mean it, ie not Gladstonian liberalism which was a political creed dedicated to limiting taxation, promoting trade and industry, reducing public expenditure and getting rid of restrictive laws, but social liberalism, ie all judgments are relative and nothing can be labelled right or wrong unless that is what liberals decree, while it has made society less rigid, on balance a good thing, has also brought about a whole host of disasters: family breakdown, sexual disease among the young, teenage pregnancy, the collapse of self-respect and dignity, yob culture and, above all, a new kind of sanctimonious intolerance among politicians for anybody expressing views, particularly religious views, that actually draw clear lines.

To be a social liberal used to denote a kind of cheerful free-and-easiness. That has vanished. Nowadays, social liberalism means cheerless totalitarianism. Ban, ban, ban, the liberals cry, as they noisily air personal dislikes and turn them into law, making pariahs out of smokers, hunters, those who shake the salt cellar too hard, and soon those who shoot and anybody else who doesn’t conform to the rigid liberal agenda as well. It seems that Britain avoided religious confessional politics only to allow liberal confessional politics in by the back door.

I suppose it is the word "liberal" that has blinded us. "Liberal" sounds so, well, liberal. It is a word redolent of freedom and breathing space; a good word. Its hijacking by MPs, MEPs and MSPs as a weapon of mass social destruction is depressing, although it has a certain amusing irony that it was the leader of the liberal group, Graham Watson, who was one of the most vociferous in declaring Mr Buttiglione unacceptable as justice commissioner, whereas "former" communists are greeted like long lost friends. European liberals, while taking enormous care not to be tainted by even a sniff of Islamophobia - a current taboo - are openly "Christophobic" - a useful word coined by French MEP Philippe de Villiers. The really worrying thing is that so many powerful people applaud.

FALLUJAH = TET:

Web Posting May Provide Insight Into Iraq Insurgency (Bill Blakemore, 11/23/04, ABC News)

For the second time this month, a message that appears to come from inside the Iraqi insurgency has been posted on a Web site. While its authenticity can't be proven, the message seems to provide a valuable perspective on both the insurgents' strategy and the challenges they face.

The new message opens with a plea for advice from Palestinian and Chechen militants as well as Osama bin Laden supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We face many problems," it reads in Arabic, "and need your military guidance since you have more experience."

The problems, the message says, are the result of losing the insurgent safe haven of Fallujah to U.S. troops. It says the insurgency was hampered as checkpoints and raids spread "to every city and road." Communications broke down as insurgents were forced to spread out through the country.

The arrest of some of their military experts, more "spies willing to help the enemy," and a dwindling supply of arms also added to the organizational breakdown, it reads.

THE GEORGIA MODEL WORKS AGAIN:

KIEV: HANDOVER OF POWER (Sky News, 11/23/04)

A peaceful handover of power has reportedly been agreed in the Ukraine after protesters clashed with anti-riot police outside the president's headquarters.

Tensions in the capital Kiev reached breaking point as tens of thousands of demonstrators surrounded the HQ.

They had been called on to march by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.

He and his supporters believed the presidential election, which took place at the weekend, was rigged.

According to the poll results, Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won the presidency.

But after calls from outgoing president Leonid Kuchma for talks between the two sides, Mr Yanukovych stepped aside.

Mr Yushchenko will now become president, it has been reported.

MORE IN COMMON THAN DIFFERENT:

Racially Diverse Faith Coalitions Oppose Gay Marriage, Tackle Other Issues: Invigorated by the election, African-American and Hispanic leaders are reaching out on a range of political fronts. (Adelle M. Banks, 11/22/2004, Religion News Service)

The Rev. Dwight McKissic of Arlington, Texas, traveled to Washington for a September summit that Traditional Values Coalition Chairman Louis Sheldon pulled together for African-American pastors to join the fight against same-sex marriage. But McKissic, a Southern Baptist, said the bipartisan "Not on My Watch" group he started with other African-American clergy will remain an "intentionally black" endeavor, seeking passage of both state and federal constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, but not joining white evangelicals on other causes.

"Many black pastors I know chose to make that effort independent of white evangelicals because they did not want to be seen as carrying water for the Republicans or white conservatives," he said.

Pastor Ken Hutcherson, the African-American organizer of Mayday for Marriage, a multicultural event that drew thousands to Washington's National Mall in mid-October, takes a different view. "Tell them that if that was the same attitude we had taken toward same-sex marriage, we would have a different president," the Seattle-area pastor said, adding that the 11-0 win on state amendments affirming traditional marriage would have gone in the opposite direction.

"They better get off their pride and start working together."

Hutcherson looks forward to next leading his multicultural congregation—and, he predicts, an eventual national movement of religious conservatives—in an effort to halt discriminatory adoption practices in which people pay more to adopt a white child than an African-American one.

"We have to come together on issues and we have to come together in color," he said.

Hispanic leaders, too, are taking different approaches to future alliances.

Yuri Mantilla, director of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family's Hispanic Voter Education Project, said the same diversity reflected in the campaign against gay marriage is needed to address issues such as embryonic stem cell research and judicial nominations.

"The future of these movements has to be diverse—Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian-American, all united," he said. "That's essential."

The Rev. Daniel de Leon, pastor of Templo Calvario in Santa Ana, Calif., one of the largest Hispanic evangelical churches in the country, said he and other Hispanic leaders are considering forming a separate bipartisan network to influence Capitol Hill with stances opposing abortion, supporting the traditional family, and selecting judges who will uphold such positions.

De Leon attended a May press conference in which a multicultural group of religious leaders announced a poll showing the majority of Americans supported a federal marriage amendment.

But he said there's a need now for Hispanics to start some political action on their own.

"I think the coalition will start small and narrow but I think it's almost, by its very nature … going to expand," he predicted.

Matt Daniels, president of the racially diverse Alliance for Marriage, based in Washington, said that religious conservatives who worked in concert this fall now have momentum to continue with plans to revive a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2005. A similar effort failed this year in both houses of Congress.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who recently announced a new Faith and Values Coalition, estimated that 10 percent of the people who worked with him on voter registration in the past year were African-American and a similar percentage were Hispanic. Such diverse outreach will continue as he aims to get 40 million religious conservatives to the polls in 2008.

"We're going out to everybody, every American who breathes and who shares our faith," he said.

AND ANOTHER ONE'S GONE...:

Bush economic adviser leaving White House (DEB RIECHMANN, November 23, 2004, AP)

Stephen Friedman, one of the President Bush's top economic advisers, is leaving the White House to return to the private sector in New York, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

Friedman, who served as the behind-the-scenes coordinator for the administration's economic policies, is to leave by the end of the year. There is no imminent announcement on his replacement, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Friedman replaced Larry Lindsey, who resigned with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill two years ago in a shake-up of Bush's economic team.

The senior administration official said that while there has been wide speculation that Friedman might become treasury secretary in Bush's second term, Friedman had never been considered for the job because he had expressed no desire for the post. Friedman had expressed his intention to return to New York after the presidential campaign, the official said. [...]

One person mentioned as Friedman's replacement as head of the National Economic Council is Tim Adams, who served as policy director for Bush's re-election campaign and before that was chief of staff at the Treasury Department under both O'Neill and current Treasury Secretary John Snow.

W AND HIS MENTOR:

An Israeli Hawk Accepts the President's Invitation (Dana Milbank, November 23, 2004, Washington Post)

Those looking for clues about President Bush's second-term policy for the Middle East might be interested to know that, nine days after his reelection victory, the president summoned to the White House an Israeli politician so hawkish that he has accused Ariel Sharon of being soft on the Palestinians.

Bush met for more than an hour on Nov. 11 with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident now known as a far-right member of the Israeli cabinet. Joined by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., incoming national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and administration Mideast specialist Elliot Abrams, Bush told Sharansky that he was reading the Israeli's new book, "The Case for Democracy," and wanted to know more. Sharansky, with co-author Ron Dermer, had a separate meeting with Condoleezza Rice, later chosen by Bush to be the next secretary of state. [...]

Sharansky's ideas are clear: no concessions, funds or legitimacy for the Palestinians unless they adopt democracy, but a modern-day Marshall Plan for the Palestinians if they embrace democratic ways. The same hard line that worked for Ronald Reagan against the Soviet Union, Sharansky argues in his book, would work for Israel against the Palestinians.

In his book, Sharansky echoes many of Bush's favorite lines, talking of the need for "moral clarity" in fighting evil. Likening the fight against terrorism to the struggle with Nazism and communism, he described a world "divided between those who are prepared to confront evil and those who are willing to appease it" -- a common Bush dichotomy. "I am convinced that all peoples desire to be free," Sharansky writes. "I am convinced that freedom anywhere will make the world safer everywhere. And I am convinced that democratic nations, led by the United States, have a critical role to play in expanding freedom around the globe."

Just as Bush justifies the Iraq war by talking of it as a catalyst for democratization in the Middle East, Sharansky argues that while dictators keep power by spreading fear and hatred, democracies are inherently peaceful. "When a free people governs itself, the chances of a war being fought against other free peoples is removed almost entirely," he writes.

Sharansky had previously met with Rice and Vice President Cheney, but Dermer said this was his first meeting with Bush as president. Still, the book is flattering of Bush's leadership. While accusing then-President Jimmy Carter, who championed Sharansky's cause during his Gulag days, of having "blind sympathy" and "trust for dictators," the Israeli praised a Bush speech on the Middle East as "almost too good to be true," saying: "President Bush turned his back on Yasser Arafat's dictatorship once and for all." As previously noted in this space, that Bush speech lifted many of Sharansky's ideas.

RACIAL TENSION AND GUNS ARE A BAD MIX:

Vang details shooting spree in woods, authorities say (Larry Oakes and Jill Burcum, November 23, 2004, Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Chai Vang, the man accused of killing six Wisconsin hunters and wounding two others in the woods of Sawyer County on Sunday, has told investigators he only opened fire after one of the six shot at him.

That account differs sharply from that of one of the wounded.

Vang's story came out in documents released today as part of a probable cause hearing in the case before Circuit Judge Norman Yackel. Yackel ruled there is probable cause to try Vang for the shootings, set Vang's bail at $2.5 million and set his next court appearance for Dec. 20.

According to the documents, this is what Vang told investigators:

He was lost in the woods and climbed into an unoccupied deer stand. After about 15 minutes, another hunter came upon the scene, told Vang he was on private property and told him to leave. The man summoned his friends via radio. Others showed up, surrounded Vang and started using racial epithets.
Map of shootings

Vang said only one of the people confronting him was armed. Vang said that as he turned to leave, he saw the man with the gun point it at him. Then, Vang said the man fired at him from about 100 feet, with the bullet hitting the ground about 30 feet behind.

Hunting is a tradition many Hmong have continued to pursue since resettling here from Laos, though not always smoothly.

Some Hmong hunters in the Twin Cities say they have been targets of harassment and intimidation. Some of their white counterparts complain that the former refugees, used to unregulated hunting in their homeland, sometimes fail to comply with modern hunting regulations and wildlife management practices.

"A lot of these hunters are people who have a strong tradition in hunting," said Hmong activist Michael Yang of St. Paul, who joined friends looking for deer on his first hunting trip a few weeks ago. "That was one of the bases of survival back in the old days. You go out there in your farm fields and hunt what you need." [...]

Lee Pao Xiong, a Hmong activist from St. Paul, said he stopped hunting on public lands in Minnesota after an incident several years ago in which he and two friends were hunting for squirrels. Two carloads of white hunters suddenly pulled in to the spot where the three were camping and started making harassing comments. Several other Hmong hunters overheard the commotion, and the other hunters left when they realized they were outnumbered.

Michael Yang said he hears Hmong hunters talking of discrimination and taunts from other hunters. Hmong hunters have even been forced to take off their clothes at gunpoint, he said.

"Definitely, there's a lot of friction," Michael Yang said.

POLLYANNA'S RIGHT AGAIN:

Rays of light amid the gloom: (The Economist, Nov 23rd 2004)

Iraq’s Shia Muslims (about 60% of the population) and its Kurds (perhaps 20%) seem keen to vote. In those parts of the country where they predominate, the prospects of staging the elections look fair. However, the areas where Sunni Arabs predominate, especially the region around Fallujah, west of Baghdad, may still be too insecure by late January for balloting to be held there. If few people in the Sunni heartlands dare to vote, there is a risk that the elections will be deemed illegitimate, perpetuating the insurgency.

The Sunni Arabs—from whose numbers most of the insurgents are drawn—enjoyed privileged treatment under Saddam Hussein. They have mixed feelings about participating in elections that are likely to produce a Shia-dominated government. Though several of the main Sunni parties are still calling for a boycott, most of the various coalitions that will fight the elections will include some Sunnis on their candidate lists. Thus, assuming voting takes place, there should be quite a few Sunnis in the new national assembly. Whether there will be enough to legitimise the assembly in the eyes of their brethren remains to be seen. Possibly complicating things further, two senior Sunni clerics from a group calling for an election boycott were shot dead in separate incidents this week. The perpetrators are so far unknown. [...]

At least a consensus has finally been reached by the Paris Club on reducing Iraq’s crippling debt burden. The group’s members agreed on Sunday to forgive four-fifths of the $39 billion that Iraq owes them. President George Bush had pressed for an even bigger write-off but France had argued that such generosity was unjustified, given that Iraq has the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

The debt will be cut in stages, with the latter stages conditional on the Iraqi government agreeing an economic programme with the International Monetary Fund and then sticking to it. Iraq owes even bigger sums to countries outside the Paris Club—from the Gulf to Eastern Europe—and its debts total $120 billion. But the remaining creditors may now follow the club’s lead and agree to waive a large proportion of what they are owed.

The debt relief, plus the aid Iraq is receiving from America, should give the government in Baghdad the resources to rebuild the country’s war-ravaged infrastructure and start tackling poverty and unemployment.

OHIO, ENGLAND:

The mean machine (Peter Oborne, The Spectator)

Karl Rove, supreme architect of George W. Bush’s triumph and the universally acknowledged high priest of modern campaign management, has long understood that all voters are not equal in a modern democracy; indeed the vast majority do not matter at all. In 2004 Voter Vault was used by Karl Rove and his acolytes to sift out the tiny minority who determined the result. Some 120 million people went to the polls in the United States two weeks ago, but as far as Rove was concerned only a handful of voters in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and a few others mattered. And long before election day came Voter Vault knew every relevant piece of information about these highly desirable people: their type of car, their social class, the likely size of their house and their likely religious and sexual preferences.

This information enabled analysts to sift out those who were likely to vote Republican, vote Democrat or — the only category to which Rove paid the slightest attention — were torn between the two. Voter Vault made possible interesting observations about the American people; for instance, that Volvo drivers are making a statement about their international outlook and therefore much less likely to vote Republican. In the final weeks of the campaign the Voter Vault machinery enabled campaign managers to guide their voters to the polls with the precision of cruise missiles turning a street corner in central Baghdad. Voter Vault told them whom to ring and, better still, which questions to ask and what information to convey. In this sense the American presidential election of 2004 was the first designer election in history, with policies tailored not for the country at large, but for the individual voter.

Voter Vault has now been acquired at huge cost by the Conservatives, and Tory strategists claim that they have honed this extraordinary piece of kit to a far higher level of ingenuity and precision than anything that has ever been seen in the past. Labour has a version of Voter Vault called Mosaic — but the Conservatives insist their machine is in a different class. ‘We have a much more scientific weapon than anything we have seen before,’ insists co-chairman Maurice Saatchi. ‘We like to think that we are well ahead of the other parties.’ Saatchi says that ‘millions of pounds’ will have been spent on it by the time of the general election.

In America Voter Vault’s powerful and probing intelligence focused on the few million people who determined the result. In Britain it has an even narrower focus. Its all-seeing eye does not engage with retired colonels in Tunbridge Wells. Safe Tory voters in one of the 165 constituencies which remained Tory in the 2001 holocaust are simply taken for granted. Likewise Voter Vault excludes from consideration unemployed shipworkers in Glasgow, since there are few Glasgow marginals which might go Conservative in 2005.

In fact Voter Vault is dedicated to just 900,000 people, or a remarkably small 2 per cent of Britain’s 45 million adult population. Tory strategists have identified these people as the only ones who even faintly matter in the 2005 general election. To qualify for membership of this privileged category voters must possess three attributes. First, they must live in one of the 167 target marginal seats, most of them in the central or West Midlands, which the Conservatives must secure if they are to claim victory. Second, they did not vote Conservative last time. Third, they must be ready to toy with the idea of doing so in 2005. Central Office strategists assert that Voter Vault’s expertise — experts call it ‘geo-demographic segmentation’ — enables them to identify every last one of these people.

The moment one of these precious creatures has been unearthed by Voter Vault, he or she can be targeted with a pitiless accuracy. Election literature, specially focused on voters’ personal concerns, starts to arrive through the letterbox. Electronic mail — a big feature of the recent American elections — is remorselessly dispatched. Canvassers, when they call at the door, will show a special anxiety and concern. In due course this target voter will be called — in some cases repeatedly — from the Conservative phone banks now being set up all around Britain. The largest of these is at the recently opened campaign centre of Coleshill near Birmingham. Coleshill has been deliberately chosen because it is at the heart of next year’s election battleground. Some 20 full-time staff are being hired there, chosen for their easy telephone manner and excellent local knowledge. Armed with Voter Vault’s insights, these staff will show an unnerving insight into the needs and preoccupations of the voters they speak to.

None of this comes about by chance: about 500,000 of Voter Vault’s chosen few are within easy reach of Coleshill. The outcome of the British general election will be determined in the West Midlands, just as Ohio held the key to the United States result two weeks ago. All Conservative policy-making is aimed directly at the handful of swing voters in these crucial target seats. Michael Howard’s speech at Tory conference six weeks ago was a manifestation of this. His five key points — law and order, health, education, tax and immigration — were the five points which, intensive research showed, most closely concerned the Voter Vault 900,000. Last week’s speech by Mr Howard on childcare was made in response to preoccupations highlighted by this allegedly formidable software. One Conservative strategist says that Voter Vault will enable the party ‘to fight a series of local elections, not one big national campaign’.

There is something very disturbing and, beyond doubt, anti-democratic about this relentless focus on such a remarkably small slice of the British electorate. It produces all kinds of malign and distorting effects. The lavish attention on just a few means the effective disfranchisement of the majority, while the obsessive concentration on just 2 per cent of the electorate explains why the policies of the two main parties are coming to resemble each other so closely.

ISOLATING THE "INSURGENTS" AND THE FRENCH:

Iran and Syria condemn the insurgency in Iraq (Jenny Booth, 11/23/04, Times Online)

Jack Straw tonight hailed a new mood of international unity on Iraq after a gathering of key foreign ministers endorsed the elections set for January 30.

The conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which brought together the G8 group of industrialised nations, Iraq’s neighbours and the Arab League - issued a final communique condemning terrorist violence and supporting the democratic process.

"It shows that there is a real desire in the Arab world and key countries in the international community to look forward and not back and to see this is now a shared problem," the Foreign Secretary said.

The conference was attended by many of the leading critics of the US-led war in Iraq, including France, Germany, Russia, Iran and Syria. Present were the representatives of 20 nations, including Iraq's six neighbors, and bodies such as the Group of Eight, the European Union and the Arab League, who came to this Red Sea resort to discuss Iraq's future.

The conference rebuffed calls from France and some Arab states to set a deadline for withdrawing the US-led forces.