The UN and the Jews

(Editor's Note: Antisemitism is rising again in Europe and around the world, amazingly only a little more than half a century after the Holocost. Often rationalized as anti-zionism, it unconsciously underlies many of the assumptions people make when discussing the Israeli palestinian conflict. It never ceases to amaze me, but the United Nations undeniably leans towards the anti-semitic. -BM)


Anne Bayefsky
Commentary Magazine

It was not an event that any of the big newspapers saw fit to cover, but this past December, a draft United Nations resolution condemning anti-Semitism was quietly withdrawn by Ireland, its sponsor in the General Assembly. In a complicated exchange, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen had promised the measure to his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom, but in the end Cowen refused to carry out his side of the bargain, pointing to a lack of consensus on the issue. (Several Arab and Muslim states had objections.) Thus went by the boards what would have been the first-ever General Assembly resolution dealing directly with the problem of anti-Semitism.

And thus, too, has gone much else at the UN in the name of human rights. Indeed, for veteran observers of the goings-on at Turtle Bay, the outcome of the latest session was just one more episode in a long and ugly history. Even when judged against the hypocrisy with which the UN has frequently treated its own founding principles—principles of tolerance, human dignity, and national self-determination—the international body’s abiding hostility to the just claims of Israel and the Jewish people remains a special, and especially egregious, case.

The events of World War II and the Holocaust weighed heavily on the founders of the United Nations. The starting point of the new organization’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, was the determination to overcome the "disregard and contempt for human rights" that had "resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind." Nazism had tried to eradicate one people, the Jews. The UN’s core documents generalized from that case, declaring that global progress depended on respect for fundamental freedoms without distinction of race, sex, language, or religion. Human rights were to be the new currency of international politics.

But even as some transgressions of these principles received juridical attention in the UN’s early years—theft of cultural property, gross deficiencies in education and labor standards, and the like—no mention was made of anti-Semitism. Not until 1959, when some 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents, ranging from serious property damage to threats of bodily harm, were reported in almost 40 countries (a large number of them in West Germany), did the UN’s Commission on Human Rights pass a resolution titled "Manifestations of Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Racial Prejudice and Religious Intolerance of a Similar Nature." By the time the resolution reached the floor of the General Assembly, however, the term "anti-Semitism" had been dropped.

Drafters of the UN’s key declarations on human rights soon became masters at evading the issue. When, in 1964-65, the American delegation (with the assistance of Brazil) tried to include a reference to anti-Semitism in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the effort failed, thanks to the Soviet Union, its satellites, and its Arab allies, who among other things insisted that anti-Semitism was a question not of race but of religion. When the UN finally got around to adopting its first declaration on religious intolerance in 1981, anti-Semitism was again excluded. By 2003, the lead sponsor of the perennial resolution on religious tolerance, Ireland, insisted with a straight face that anti-Semitism should be omitted because it was more properly considered under the rubric of race.

Against this unrelievedly dark record of omission, a few glimmers of progress have appeared over the past decade. After tumultuous multi-week negotiations in 1994, the U.S. persuaded the UN Commission on Human Rights to adopt its first resolution including the word "anti-Semitism" in over 30 years—and only the second in its history. Even so, a full third of the commission’s members refused to support it, and eight years later, with the U.S. temporarily voted off the commission, it returned to form, withdrawing its short-lived concern and excising anti-Semitism from the racism resolution. Last year, after drawn-out negotiations, the General Assembly did manage to permit references to anti-Semitism in two resolutions on racism, one of them without effect or follow-up and the second in the full knowledge that other elements in the resolution would force the United States and Israel to vote against it.

By the summer of 2001, at the now notorious UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, the notion that Jews were the target of any special animus, now or in the past, was being treated with simple contempt. References to anti-Semitism were removed from almost all parts of the final declaration. Not only was there no mention of the Holocaust in the conference’s demand that those who incite racial hatred should be brought to justice, but absent as well was any mention of the need to study the Nazi war against the Jews. The only references to the Holocaust and anti-Semitism appeared as part of a "Middle East package" in which Palestinians were declared to be victims of Israeli racism.

And what of today, as we experience the world’s most virulent outbreak of anti-Semitic deeds and speech in over a half-century? Concern over this phenomenon did make an appearance, however fleetingly, in two reports issued in 2003 by the UN special investigator on racism, Doudou Diéne. In one of them, his comment consisted of a short, vague reference to the controversy surrounding the recent broadcast on Egyptian television of a series based on the infamous czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Unnamed "authorities of the countries concerned," Diéne wrote, were in the process of sending him further information on this "allegation" of anti-Semitism.

In a second report published last year, this one addressed to the General Assembly itself, Diéne offered a seemingly new approach, promising to turn his attention to the "clear resurgence of anti-Semitism." But his only action to date has been to take note of the obvious fact that attacks on Jews are "on the rise in Europe, Central Asia, and North America." Entirely absent from his statements has been any mention of the boiling cauldron of Middle Eastern anti-Semitism—a silence all the more remarkable in light of the multiple examples of "Islamophobia" that he has documented with alarm. In this connection, it is worth noting that, though Diéne is now required to produce annual reports "on discrimination against Muslims and Arab peoples in various parts of the world," no report dedicated to the problem of anti-Semitism has ever been produced by any organ of the UN.

This indifference to anti-Semitism has been mirrored by the UN’s growing refusal over the decades to support the principle of self-determination for the Jewish people—that is, Zionism. The irony, of course, is that the UN General Assembly was very much present at the creation of the state of Israel, having endorsed the postwar partition plan for British-ruled Palestine. But much has changed since 1948.

In general, and in the abstract, the UN has remained committed to the ideal of self-governing nation-states. As one characteristic declaration of the General Assembly puts it, "All peoples have a right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development." Indeed, over the years, the UN has developed and extended the principles of self-determination, which are now taken to entail not just the basic right of political independence but guarantees of non-interference by other nations, a realm of domestic jurisdiction and national sovereignty, and the preservation of historical, cultural, and religious particularities.

Where the UN has fallen markedly short is in the application of these principles, and in no case more strikingly than that of Israel. The key factor has been the changing composition of the international body. From the late 1940’s to the mid-60’s, the original membership more than doubled. Of the 67 new states joining in this period, 80 percent attached themselves to the Group of 77—the UN’s third-world caucus, made up of many former European colonies—and some 40 percent had Muslim majorities. By 1977, the five members of the Arab League who helped to found the UN had been joined by all sixteen others.

To this radicalized and often Soviet-influenced contingent, self-determination was invoked in UN circles not as a general principle but as a tool to wield against the West, especially the U.S. and its increasingly stalwart ally, Israel. Self-determination was a right of the oppressed, to be exerted against oppressors. In the prosecution of this cause, the weight assigned to historical claims was itself selective and discriminatory: those who rejected the UN's 1947 partition plan for Palestine were labeled the oppressed, while Jewish victims, from Palestine to Europe, were characterized as the oppressors.

By this means has the UN negotiated the passage from omission to commission. Not only has it consistently failed to appreciate or even to acknowledge the state of Israel’s preservation of Jewish independence and identity, it has become the loudest and most determined foe of the Zionist project.

In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed its notorious resolution explicitly equating Zionism with racism. Ever since then, and notwithstanding the formal repeal of the resolution in 1991, the repellent imagery of Israelis as racists has been a staple of UN rhetoric. Today, diplomats from Arab and Muslim states—states that effectively rendered themselves Judenrein in the late 1940’s—refer to Israel’s new security fence against terrorism as an "apartheid wall." Palestinian towns and villages are called "Bantustans." And the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti, on trial in Israel for acts of terrorism, is labeled another Nelson Mandela.

To judge by the UN’s official pronouncements, the Jewish state is the world’s archetypal human-rights villain. Over the past 40 years, almost 30 percent of the resolutions passed by the UN Commission on Human Rights to condemn specific states have been directed at Israel, which also has the distinction of being the only state to which the commission has devoted an entire item on its agenda.

As for the General Assembly, of the ten emergency special sessions it has convened in its history, six have focused on the purported misdeeds of Israel, from the Suez campaign of 1956 to the current dispute over the security fence. The abuse of this process has gone so far that the tenth session, originally convened in 1997, has become a permanent, open-ended forum; it has now been "reconvened" twelve times, most recently this past December.

Israel has been singled out in other ways as well. In the UN bureaucracy, it is the only country with its own standing inter-state monitor: the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories. Established as long ago as 1968, this body has issued annual reports ever since. Another committee, on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, was established in 1975, on the same day the General Assembly passed the Zionism-is-racism resolution. Still going strong almost three decades later, with 24 members and 25 observers, it too summarizes its findings every year while at the same time sponsoring a full program of meetings, conferences, and publications. In 2003 alone, the UN bureaucracy generated 22 reports and formal notes on "conditions of Palestinian and other Arab citizens living under Israeli occupation."

The UN’s response to an Israeli military incursion into the West Bank town of Jenin in April 2002 typifies the organization’s treatment of the Jewish state. At the time, even a report by Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement recognized Jenin as "the suicider’s capital," a place where organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad had sought shelter, among civilians, for their ongoing murderous operations. But the UN saved its venom for Israel’s armed response to the violence directed against its citizens. Terje Roed-Larsen, the organization’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, described the scene after Israel’s strike—a strike expressly designed to limit civilian casualties—as "horrific beyond belief." Peter Hansen, commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency, called it "a human catastrophe that had few parallels in recent history." A UN press release was headlined, "End the horror in the camps." Only much later, in mid-summer, did the UN Secretary General release a report on Jenin noting that the Palestinian death toll from this "massacre" was 52, approximately 35 of whom were armed combatants.

Israel’s policies are, of course, fair game for legitimate criticism. But the UN’s outrage is grossly selective, especially when one considers the record of any number of other member nations. In 2003, the General Assembly passed eighteen resolutions that singled out Israel for criticism; human-rights situations in the rest of the world drew only four country-specific resolutions. Nor, despite serious and well-documented charges of abuse reported to the UN over the years from, among others, the organization’s own special rapporteurs, has any resolution of the UN Commission on Human Rights ever been directed at China, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Pakistan, Malaysia, Mali, or Zimbabwe.

Consider the case of Sudan. This past year, members of the UN Commission on Human Rights had before them the report of their own special rapporteur on torture, which described the articles of the Sudanese penal code mandating "cross amputation"—the amputation of the right hand and the left foot—for armed robbery and, for other offenses, "death by hanging crucifixion." The report also took note of various cases in which Sudanese women had been stoned to death for adultery after trials conducted in a language they did not understand and in which they were denied legal representation.

The response to these gruesome findings? On behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Pakistan vehemently objected to a draft resolution condemning this sort of "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment," declaring such views "an offense to all Muslim countries." The resolution went down to defeat; for good measure, the commission terminated the ten-year-old position of rapporteur on human rights for the long-suffering people of Sudan.

The justifications that are typically given for turning a blind eye to human-rights violations in 95 percent of UN states are predictable enough. In 2003, teaming up to defeat a resolution condemning Russian behavior in Chechnya, Syria and China called it "interference in the internal affairs of that country." India said that "every state had the right to protect its citizens from terrorism." When it came to reproving Zimbabwe, South Africa objected to "naming and shaming," while Libya, complaining that the resolution was "an attempt to make the commission a forum to settle differences between countries," declared its preference for "the language of cooperation and dialogue."

How is it, one might wonder, that such reservations never give the UN a moment’s pause when it comes to the organization’s relentlessly one-sided prosecution of Israel—a democratic state with an independent judiciary that, unlike all these others, can point to a long and distinguished record of respect for human rights? The demonization of Israel would seem to be about something else entirely.

What that something is has become too clear to deny: over the past several decades, the UN has fashioned itself into perhaps the foremost global platform for anti-Semitism.

The leading agent of this process, needless to say, has been the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel’s supposed "partner in peace," in close cooperation with Arab and Muslim members of the UN. In presentations to the UN Commission on Human Rights, Palestinian delegates have repeatedly devised new variations on the medieval blood libel, accusing the Israelis of such things as needing to kill Arabs for the proper observance of Yom Kippur and of injecting Palestinian children with HIV-positive blood.

By Palestinians and others, Israelis are now routinely condemned with Nazi terminology—current resolutions speak of the "Judaization" of Jeru salem—or are themselves likened to Nazis. As the Algerian representative recently observed, in an especially memorable outburst:

Kristallnacht repeats itself daily. . . . Israeli soldiers are the true disciples of Goebbels and of Himmler, who strip Palestinian prisoners and inscribe numbers on their bodies. . . . Must we wait in silence until new death camps are built. . . . The Israeli war machine has been trying for five decades to arrive at a final solution.

The nadir of the UN’s record in these matters was the conference on racism and xenophobia held under its auspices in Durban in 2001. It would have been bad enough if (as we have already seen) the event had simply refused to acknowledge the growing problem of anti-Semitism; but it went much farther, turning into a festival of hatred against the Jews.

Though the Durban conference concluded with a formal meeting of government representatives, its first half consisted of an NGO forum—a meeting, that is, of the various nongovernmental organizations purportedly devoted to combating racism. NGO’s play a key role in the UN system, with some of them receiving formal status, but here Jews have once again been singled out for discriminatory treatment. Over the years, attempts have been made to impede groups like Hadassah, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists from obtaining official accreditation. Durban gave some idea why.

At the conference’s NGO forum, the Arab Lawyer’s Union freely distributed books containing cartoons of swastika-festooned Israelis and fanged, hooked-nosed Jews, blood dripping from their hands. Another best-selling title was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hundreds of flyers were distributed with a picture of Hitler and the words, "What if I had won? The good thing—there would be no Israel." Appeals to the conference’s secretary-general, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, to demand the removal of this anti-Semitic literature went unheeded.

The NGO forum at Durban did sponsor a single event on anti-Semitism, but it was disrupted by an angry mob of protesters, shouting, "You are killers! You are killers!" A news conference the following day, called by a broad range of national and international Jewish organizations, was similarly interrupted, this time for the benefit of the TV cameras, and was finally called off.

As the NGO forum drew to a close, the Jewish caucus, like all the other caucuses, submitted provisions for the conference’s final document. The group’s contribution stated that anti-Semitism could take many forms, including the equation of Zionism with racism, the attempt to de-legitimize the self-determination of the Jewish people, and the targeting of Jews throughout the world for violence because of their support of Israel. When the time finally came for a vote, a representative of the World Council of Churches called for the deletion of this language; the Jewish caucus was alone in voting against the motion. Jewish NGO’s from all over the world walked out in protest, even as representatives of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights stood by in silence. No statement proposed by any other caucus was deleted.

Did the UN system learn a lesson from this fiasco? To the contrary. Just months after Durban, Vladimir Petrovsky, director-general of the UN office in Geneva, declared the conference "the most extensive and momentous expression of the global resolve to combat the scourge of racism and intolerance in all its forms and at all levels." Commissioner Mary Robinson agreed, telling a subsequent UN human-rights gathering that the Durban conference’s International Youth Summit—a part of the NGO forum at which young Jews from all over the world were jeered, heckled, and threatened, before eventually walking out—had been "an inspiring event."

In the two years since Durban, whose outrages were quickly overshadowed by the events of 9/11, anti-Semitism voiced under the auspices of the UN has taken a new and, arguably, even more dangerous turn. In every UN body, Arab and Muslim states have opposed any effort to give meaningful definition to the notion of terrorism, largely because of its obvious implications for the Palestinian "uprising." The UN Counter Terrorism Committee, set up by the Security Council in the wake of 9/11, has yet to identify publicly a single terrorist organization or state sponsor of terrorism.

Worse still, organs of the UN have taken to glorifying terrorist violence against Israeli targets. In 2002, John Dugard, a special rapporteur for the Commission on Human Rights, could barely contain his admiration for the murderous enemies of the Jewish state: "The Palestinian response is equally tough: while suicide bombers have created terror in the Israeli heartland, militarized groups armed with rifles, mortars, and Kassam-2 rockets confront the IDF [Israeli army] with new determination, daring, and success."

In 2003, as Israel suffered successive waves of attack against its civilians, the commission itself put forward a resolution affirming the legitimacy of suicide bombing, declaring that movements against "foreign occupation and for self-determination" were entitled to "all available means, including armed struggle." The only members to vote against the resolution were Australia, Germany, Peru, Canada, and the United States. (France and the United Kingdom abstained.) The American and Canadian delegates protested that the resolution was "contrary to the very concept of human rights" and "deeply repugnant to the commission’s core values." It carried by a wide margin.

It is no accident that a UN apparatus which, for decades, has ignored anti-Semitism and distorted beyond recognition the idea of Zionism would seek to isolate Israel from the global community. At the UN, Israelis and Jews are, by definition, oppressors, as are the nations and organizations that rally to their cause. The energy with which these hateful views are expressed has ebbed and flowed over time, but there is no reason to think that the underlying reality will change anytime soon.

To appreciate the dimensions of this tragedy one need only recall the lofty promises of the UN Charter, ratified in the hope of securing the "equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small." By this plain and unambiguous standard, anti-Semitism is not some necessary if unfortunate by-product of multilateral progress, as some would suggest. It is an out-and-out malignancy, and it has compromised the integrity of the entire organism. Perhaps it is time to stop holding seminars and conferences on whether the UN glass is half-full or half-empty. The contents of the glass have been poisoned.

Anne Bayefsky, a new contributor, is a professor of political science at York University in Toronto and an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School.

What Goes Around . . .

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The topic of globalization has occupied governments around the world for over a decade now. Developing nations are eager to export the quickly improving capital, material, intellectual or otherwise. Developed nations are eager to market their products to an ever improving developing world. It would seems that a symbiotic relationship exists. On the contrary, developed markets worry about decreasing labor opportunities as unskilled, and now even skilled, labor is exported overseas. This concern is misplaced.

In the short term, it is true that employment suffers from diminished labor costs in emerging markets. However, the developed countries more than benefit from the reduced retail prices as a result of vastly reduced manufacturing costs. The exporation of these jobs overseas frees our labor market to again pursue ever more entrepreneurial ventures. It is an exceptionally healthy aspect of the capitalist markets. It results in invention, innovation, and greater productivity. Instead of challenging the likes of China and India for their so-called efforts to take American jobs, we should ultimately be thankful that they are freeing up our intellectual capital to continue economic advancement. Indeed, we have only to look back at concerns historically with the decline of the farming, steel, and consumer electronics industries. While labor evolution is a process that requires re-education, re-training, and perhaps even some initial frustration, it is the only way to ensure that the United States maintains its global presence and leadership. -EBO)


By Thomas L. Freidman
The New York Times

Bangalore, India

I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue.

Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues — like outsourcing of jobs to India — without any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long distance — answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for global banks — I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.

Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr. Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.

Consider one of the newest products to be outsourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks, founded three years ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these basic animation jobs from Americans. For 20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie companies, first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, preproduction, finishing and marketing of the animated films, though, always remained in America. Indian animation companies took the business away from the other Asians by proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of characters and the digital painting of each frame by computer — at a lower price.

Indian artists had two advantages, explained Ashish Kulkarni, C.O.O. of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so they could take instruction from the American directors easily, and they were comfortable doing coloring digitally." India has an abundance of traditional artists, who were able to make the transition easily to computerized digital painting. Most of these artists are the children of Hindu temple sculptors and painters.

Explained Mr. Kulkarni: "We train them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format." But to keep up their traditional Indian painting skills, JadooWorks has a room set aside — because the two skills reinforce each other. In short, thanks to globalization, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artists can keep up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.

But here's where the story really gets interesting. JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic about the childhood of Krishna. To write the script, though, it wanted the best storyteller it could find and outsourced the project to an Emmy Award-winning U.S. animation writer, Jeffrey Scott — for an Indian epic!

"We are also doing all the voices with American actors in Los Angeles," says Mr. Kulkarni. And the music is being written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games for the global market but outsources all the design concepts to U.S. and British game designers. All the computers and animation software at JadooWorks have also been imported from America (H.P. and I.B.M.) or Canada, and half the staff walk around in American-branded clothing.

"It's unfair that you want all your products marketed globally," argues Mr. Kulkarni, "but you don't want any jobs to go."

He's right. Which is why we must design the right public policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly networked world, where every company — Indian or American — will seek to assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those Americans hurt by the outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid and just start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what seems to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the surface, what's going around is also coming around. Even an Indian cartoon company isn't just taking American jobs, it's also making them.

Albright Lied -- People Died

(EDITOR'S NOTE: As you've probably guessed from prior posts, I'm basically a contrarian. So whenever I see something that describes a different take on a subject, I get interested, especially if there's irony involved. Personally, I supported the Bosnia and Kosovo interventions, but I got a laugh from this, origionally posted at Instapundit.com. -BM)

THE HAGUE -- The prosecution in Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial moved yesterday to rest its case two days early as the chief prosecutor conceded her team had not produced "the smoking gun" to convict the former Yugoslav president of genocide, the most serious charge against him.

Follow the link

No doubt we'll see handwringing, doubts about intelligence reliability, and charges that the Clinton Administration "sexed up" intelligence and misrepresented Milosevic as a genocidal dictator in order to build support for unilateral action that even Wesley Clark called technically illegal -- but justified on the basis of an "imminent threat" of genocide, one that is now, of course, completely undermined by the absence of a "smoking gun." Massive criticism of the Clinton Administration's warmaking, which landed us in a "Balkan quagmire" from which we have yet to extricate ourselves, is sure to ensue.

Yeah, right, that's going to happen.

The Left's Anti-Semitic Chic

By George F. Will

It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals.

Not all intellectuals, of course. And the seepage of this ancient poison into the intelligentsia -- always so militantly modern -- is much more pronounced in Europe than here. But as anti-Semitism migrates across the political spectrum from right to left, it infects the intelligentsia, which has leaned left for two centuries.

Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel.

Today's release of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" has catalyzed fears of resurgent anti-Semitism. Some critics say the movie portrays the governor of Judea -- Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect responsible for the crucifixion -- as more benign and less in control than he actually was, and ascribes too much power and malignity to Jerusalem's Jewish elite. Jon Meacham's deeply informed cover story "Who Killed Jesus?" in the Feb. 16 Newsweek renders this measured judgment: The movie implies more blame for the Jewish religious leaders of Judea of that time than sound scholarship suggests. However, Meacham rightly refrains from discerning disreputable intentions in Gibson's presentation of matters about which scholars, too, must speculate, and do disagree. Besides, this being a healthy nation, Americans are unlikely to be swayed by the movie's misreading, as Meacham delicately suggests, of the actions of a few Jews 2,000 years ago.

Fears about the movie's exacerbating religiously motivated anti-Semitism are missing the larger menace -- the upsurge of political anti-Semitism. Like traditional anti-Semitism, but with secular sources and motives, the political version, which condemns Jews as a social element, is becoming mainstream, and chic among political and cultural elites, mostly in Europe. Consider:

• A cartoon in a mainstream Italian newspaper depicts the infant Jesus in a manger, menaced by an Israeli tank and saying, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again." This expresses animus against Israel rather than twisted Christian zeal.

• The European Union has suppressed a study it commissioned, because the study blamed the upsurge in anti-Jewish acts on European Muslims -- and the European left.

• Nineteen percent of Germans believe what a best-selling German book asserts: The CIA and Israel's Mossad organized the Sept. 11 attacks.

• On French television, a comedian wearing a Jewish skullcap gives a Nazi salute while yelling, "Isra-Heil!"

• If Israel is not the Great Satan, it is allied with him -- America. European anti-American demonstrations often include Israel's blue and white flag with a swastika replacing the star of David, and signs perpetuating the myth, concocted by Palestinians and cooperative Western journalists, of an Israeli massacre in Jenin: "1943: Warsaw / 2002: Jenin."

• Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University, writes in the New Republic that much of what Hitler said "can be found today in innumerable places: on Internet sites, propaganda brochures, political speeches, protest placards, academic publications, religious sermons, you name it."

The appallingly brief eclipse of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz demonstrates how beguiling is the simplicity of pure stupidity. All of the left's prescriptions for curing what ails society -- socialism, communism, psychoanalysis, "progressive" education, etc. -- have been discarded, so now the left is reduced to adapting that hardy perennial of the right, anti-Semitism. This is a new twist to the left's recipe for salvation through elimination: All will be well if we eliminate capitalists, or private property, or the ruling class, or "special interests," or neuroses, or inhibitions. Now, let's try eliminating a people, starting with their nation, which is obnoxiously pro-American and insufferably Spartan.

Europe's susceptibility to political lunacy, and the Arab world's addiction to it, is not news. And the paranoid style is a political constant. Those who believe a conspiracy assassinated President Kennedy say: Proof of the conspiracy's diabolical subtlety is that no evidence of it remains. Today's anti-Semites say: Proof of the Jews' potent menace is that there are so few of them -- just 13 million of the planet's 6 billion people -- yet they cause so many political, economic and cultural ills. Gosh. Imagine if they were, say, 1 percent of Earth's population: 63 million.

Most People Favor Solar Power, But Not in Their Neighborhood

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It is unfortunate that efforts to improve the economy, the environment, and our own national defense are met with disdain by citizens for aesthetic reasons. Solar power, in addition to other alternative energy sources such as wind and hydro, have recently come under increased scrutiny and attack by uninformed residents who would prefer for the United States to extend its reliance on rogue, oil-producing nations around the world. Our dependence on these nations, specifically in the Middle East, harms our ability to effectively counter anti-American sentiment and terrorist efforts that brew within them. Solar, wind, and hydro power are clean, efficient, and essentially infinite sources of electrical power that can reverse the United States' weakened foreign policies as a result of our hyper-dependence on foreign, fundamental, and radical nation-states. Moreover, these alternative sources are simply healthier for our citizens and the environment. We cannot allow indifferent and ignorant people to jeopardize our safety in order to maintain their visual aesthetics. Frankly, I am not offended by the appearance of new color-balance solar panels anyway. -EBO)

By Jim Carlton
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

As solar-power devices appear on more roofs around the nation, they are generating more than just hot water or electricity: Some are creating controversy from neighbors who think they're ugly.

In Florida, as many as 50 homeowners associations a year try to keep residents from putting solar panels on their rooftops, despite a state law that forbids them from imposing such restrictions, say attorneys for the solar industry. The law provides no punishment to inhibit associations from seeking such restrictions. That forces residents who want to install panels to file a costly lawsuit against an association, or to try to negotiate a compromise that may include a visual barrier or moving the panels farther back on a roof.

In Arizona, installers of solar equipment say they have met with dozens of homeowners associations in recent years to mediate concerns that the panels detract from a community's aesthetics. Even though Arizona law expressly prohibits such associations from making it difficult for homeowners to use solar power, installers say many residents opt to drop their plans to avoid the inconvenience of going to court.

"I think that the tactic of many associations is to just make it hard for the homeowner, and it's a shame," says Kelly Dancer, director of Heliocol Solar Pool Heating, an installation company in Tempe, Ariz.

Hank Speak has fought his neighbors for six years to keep his solar power. A 71-year-old retiree in the Phoenix suburb of Avondale, Ariz., Mr. Speak in 1997 installed a row of solar panels to heat his swimming pool in the winter. He picked panels that match his roof tile and placed them on the home's backside, facing a greenbelt. Nonetheless, his homeowners association hit him with a lawsuit and fines that eventually totaled about $100,000, arguing that the panels were unsightly and violated the community's covenants.

Mr. Speak prevailed last year when a state judge ruled that the association's restrictions conflicted with state law advocating solar power; an appeals court upheld the decision.

His neighbors remain unhappy, even though most profess to support solar power and other alternative energies. "You don't want to see some eyesore up there," says Frank DiLodovico, treasurer of the Garden Lakes Community Association.

Similar run-ins have flared in dozens of Sunbelt cities, from Florida to California, as the U.S. uses more solar power. Although highly touted in the 1970s, solar-generated electricity didn't start taking off until the 1990s, when the cost of the systems began dropping sharply thanks to new technology and state and federal tax incentives for using it.

Now, production of solar energy in the U.S. by all sources has jumped more than tenfold since 1993, to about 300 megawatts, or enough to power about 300,000 homes, according to estimates by industry officials. More growth is likely, as traditional energy sources become pricier and more erratic and government officials, in the Sunbelt and elsewhere, call for use of alternative energy. Solar has taken off most in states that have abundant sunshine, but its use is also spreading in New Jersey, New York and other Frostbelt areas.

Yet the sight of the flat, rectangular panels in different colors popping up on rooftops is creating a stir in some neighborhoods. In California, where the nation's solar movement has gained the most ground, as many as 20 communities have enacted laws making it harder to install the systems.

Even a company that sells solar energy systems got into hot water after it installed solar panels on its own roof. The company, Akeena Solar, in the Silicon Valley town of Los Gatos, Calif., was notified by local officials last year to erect a fence to hide the panels after a city inspector reported being able to see them from the street, a violation of municipal code.

But Akeena officials complained that the cost of building such a screen would offset their solar power savings, and say they had already gone to great lengths to conceal the blue-colored panels atop their 3,400-square-foot headquarters. "You have to tip your head to see the panels, which are peeking out from behind two air-conditioning units," says Barry Cinnamon, president of Akeena, which is suing to gain an exemption from the city ordinance. "And you almost miss the solar panels because they match the color of the blue sky."

Town officials defend their action, saying they are trying to protect the architectural integrity of the upscale community, where Victorian homes press up against the Santa Cruz Mountains. Yet many residents have spoken out on behalf of Akeena, saying the town shouldn't be stifling a clean energy source that it officially supports. Some also point out that Akeena's building sits in an industrial zone. "What all my customers gripe about are all the power lines over this street, not solar panels," says Jim Kooper, a nearby barber.

Meanwhile, some manufacturers report getting more orders from customers to match the colors of their roofs, in hopes the power systems will blend in better. Officials at PowerLight Corp. of Berkeley, Calif., for example, say they are selling more panels that resemble actual roofing material.

"You can put these panels on your roof so it looks like an add-on [an addition]," says Tom Dinwoodie, founder and chief executive of PowerLight, "or you can add it on to make it look like a skylight, and it looks fine."

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com

Look Who's Talking

By Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
February 19, 2004

One major criticism of the Iraq war is that by invading Iraq, the U.S. actually created more enemies in the Arab-Muslim world. I don't happen to believe that, but maybe it's true. What the critics miss, though, is that the U.S. ouster of Saddam Hussein has also triggered the first real "conversation" about political reform in the Arab world in a long, long time. It's still mostly in private, but more is now erupting in public. For this conversation to be translated into broad political change requires a decent political outcome in Iraq. But even without that, something is stirring.

The other day the always thoughtful Osama al-Ghazali Harb, a top figure at Egypt's semiofficial Al Ahram center for strategic studies, the most important think tank in Egypt, published an article in the country's leading political quarterly, Al Siyassa Al Dawliya, in which he chastised those Arab commentators who argue that the way in which the U.S. captured Saddam was meant to humiliate Arabs.

"What we, as Arabs, should truly feel humiliated about are the prevailing political and social conditions in the Arab world — especially in Iraq — which allowed someone such as Saddam Hussein to . . . assume the presidency. We should feel humiliated that Saddam was able . . . to single-handedly initiate a number of catastrophic policies that transformed Iraq, relatively rich in natural, human and financial resources, into the poorest, most debt-ridden country in the Arab world, not to mention the hundreds of thousands killed and displaced. We should feel humiliated that some of our intellectuals, supposedly the representatives of our nations' consciences and the defenders of their liberty and dignity, not only dealt with Saddam, but also supported him. . . . The Arabs should have been the ones to bring down Saddam, in defense of their own dignity and their own true interests."

Abd al-Hamid al-Ansari, the former dean of Qatar University's law school, just published an essay, in London's widely read Arabic-language daily Al Sharq Al Awsat, which asks whether the world is better off because of the U.S. ouster of Saddam. Those who say it is worse off, he argues, see only half the picture.

"Let us imagine the world if America had listened to the French and German logic saying: Give the murderers of the Serbs and the Arabs a chance for a diplomatic solution. Would Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq be liberated? Let us describe the situation of the Arabs, and especially of Iraq, had America listened to the European counsel that said: democracy is not suited to the Arabs, their culture is contrary to it. . . . See now how many countries are turning toward democracy. Even Afghanistan has a constitution. In Iraq [they are drafting] a new constitution and handing over the regime, and Libya has changed." (Translation by Memri.)

Saudi Arabia's leading English-language newspaper, Arab News, published an editorial last week denouncing the murder of Iraqi police recruits by pro-Al Qaeda sympathizers and "Baathist thugs." The Saudi paper asks, What do these terrorists fear? It adds: "Iraqis are keen to take back control of their country, and many are acutely aware of the opportunity they now have to build a new and fairer society. There is once again a pride in being an Iraqi. It is this growing feeling of restored honor and the rising confidence of Iraqis which is now the target of the terrorists."

Reuters reported from Damascus on Feb. 5 that a Syrian human rights group has started circulating a petition via the Internet — so far signed by about 1,000 people — calling for an end to state-of-emergency laws. It says: "We, the signatories, herein demand the Syrian authorities lift the state of emergency and annul all associated measures." Syria suddenly just freed over 100 political prisoners.

The Lebanese analyst Sahar Baasiri, writing in the leading Lebanese daily An Nahar, said the response of Palestinian officials to two corruption charges — one in a French weekly about millions of dollars reportedly transferred to Yasir Arafat's wife in Paris and the other an Israeli report about a Palestinian cement factory, owned by a prominent Palestinian family, that is alleged to be secretly providing the cement for the wall Israel is building in the West Bank — was not sufficient. "A clear and decisive Palestinian response" is required, the paper wrote.

Maybe the Iraq war made America new enemies. But it's certainly triggered a new discussion.

Libya made plutonium says IAEA

From CNN

VIENNA, Austria (AP) --Using technology and know-how acquired through the black market, Libya was able to process uranium into plutonium, the U.N. nuclear watchdog says.

Diplomats citing a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday the country was able to "separate a small amount of plutonium."

The report did not specify the amount, but it appeared to be less than the approximately three kilograms (nearly seven pounds) required to make a nuclear bomb.

The report was prepared by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei ahead of a board of governors' meeting of the agency next month. A separate report on Iran is due in the next few days.

Revelations in the confidential report that Libya was able to process plutonium, which is used in nuclear warheads, shed new light on how far the country was able to progress in its secret weapons program.

Libya announced in December it had engaged in researching programs of mass destruction and promised to scrap them. While U.S. and British intelligence had spoken of a fairly advanced program, the IAEA initially described Libya's nuclear activities as at the beginning stage.

The report also said Libya "imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities which it had failed to report," to the agency as required by agreements it had signed with the IAEA, according to the diplomats who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Much of the activity focused on enriching uranium, the report said. That -- along with producing plutonium -- is one way to develop the nuclear material used in warheads.

Between the early 1980s until the end of 2003, "Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of (clandestine) nuclear activities," said the report.

Libya "failed to declare imports of UF 6" in 1985, 2000 and 2001, the report said. UF6 is a uranium compound used in the enrichment process.

A Sri Lankan businessman, Buhary Abu Syed Tahir, who is implicated in the nuclear black market, has said that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qaheer Khan, the head of the illicit network supplying rogue nations with nuclear technology, had told him of shipments to Libya of UF6.

After coming out in the open in December, Libya also surrendered drawings of a nuclear warhead to U.S. and British experts. The blueprints and accompanying documents are now in the United States under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Diplomats recently told the AP that the drawing detailed how to build a warhead for a large ballistic missile, using technology developed by the Chinese in the 1960s that triggers a nuclear blast by a small conventional explosion.

'I blagged my way through, reading a torn-up textbook and ad libbing'

By Stewart Payne and Becky Barrow

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/19/nchina19.xml

An Oxford engineering student was surprised but undaunted when he was approached to deliver a series of lectures in Beijing on global economics.

Matthew Richardson knew "next to nothing" about the subject but, believing he would be addressing a sixth-form audience, he felt he could "carry it off".

Mr Richardson bluffed his way through the lectures
Mr Richardson, 23, borrowed an A-level textbook entitled An Introduction to Global Financial Markets from a library and swotted up on its contents on the flight from London to China.

From it he prepared a two-hour presentation, believing he had to deliver the same lecture several times over to different groups of students over three days.

Mr Richardson, who has the same name as a New York University professor who is a leading authority on international financial markets, was met at the airport and taken straight to a conference centre where, over lunch, "the horrible truth became apparent".

The real expert: Prof Richardson
He said: "It became clear to me that my audience was not students, but people from the world of commerce studying for a PhD in business studies having already gained an MBA.

"And instead of repeating the same lecture, I was required to deliver a series of different lectures to the same people over three days. The first one was immediately after lunch.

"I have no idea who they were expecting. Being Chinese, they were inscrutable and if they were expecting someone else they didn't show it. Perhaps they thought I was a prodigy. They all called me professor.

"I had come this far, so I decided not to back out. I hoped I could blag my way through."

Because Mr Richardson was relying on the book, written by Stephen Valdez, he had taken the precaution of buying a second copy before leaving Oxford. "I ripped out the pages and disguised each chapter as notes.

"Because I was speaking through an interpreter I had the time to glance at the pages and prepare myself for what I was going to say next. I ad libbed a bit and really got into the subject. I was learning as much as my audience."

To add authenticity to his delivery, he used his laptop computer to make it appear that he was reading from his own material and made notes on a board to emphasise points he was making.

All went well during the first afternoon. The following day he made it through to the lunch break when several students told him, through the interpreter, how informative they were finding his lectures.

"The problem was that I was running out of chapters. By mid-afternoon on the second day I was already on chapter 15 of 16 and I still had the rest of the day and the following morning to go. I realised I wasn't going to make it."

It was then that his nerve broke. "I didn't like to tell them I didn't know what I was talking about. So I decided to leg it."

During a coffee break he collected his bag from the adjoining conference hotel and checked out. He booked into another hotel where he spent a fearful night expecting a knock on the door at any time and then headed for the airport for his pre-arranged flight home.

He said: "I have no idea what they thought when they returned from their coffee break to discover their lecturer had fled."

Mr Richardson, from Sheffield, who is in his fourth year at St Peter's College, returned to Britain on Sunday.

He said yesterday that he was approached to deliver the lectures by Dr Raoul Cerratti, who runs a private tutorial college in Oxford.

"I have done some lectures for him in the past to earn a bit of money and I bumped into him at the student union bar, where he asked me if I was interested in going to Beijing.

"He offered me £1,000 to cover my flight, visa and expenses.

"It was only on my return to Britain that I discovered that there is a professor with the same name in New York. To this day I do not know if that is who the Chinese were expecting."

Dr Cerratti, who said he was often asked to provide Oxford academics for lectures overseas, said: "I asked him if he could do the job, and he said he could. We only found out it was to PhD students when he got there."

The real Prof Matthew Richardson, speaking from the business school at New York University where he is a lecturer in finance, said: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and it seems as if this young man will go far. I do not know if the Chinese students were expecting me. I feel sorry for them if they feel let down, but there was no real harm done."

Mr Valdez, author of Introduction to Global Financial Markets, said he was "chuffed" that his book had proved so invaluable to Mr Richardson.

"It is meant to be a basic textbook for beginners. I deliberately pitched it in a straightforward language."

Mr Valdez said Mr Richardson was fortunate with the timing of his visit. The Chinese edition of the book will go on sale shortly.

Media Bias

From Glen Reynolds's Blog
People are always talking about media bias, and usually it's dismissed as a mere issue of perception. So it was interesting to see the folks at ABC News' political blog, The Note, fess up to what everyone knows:

From ABC News
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions." They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories. . . .

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies. . . .

The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race. Truer words were seldom spoken. Of course, sometimes it goes farther than that. Though the Bush "AWOL" story has now collapsed, with witnesses coming forward to say they remember him, and with Bush's military records being released, some journalists seem to hope it can be kept alive with stories like this "cheap shot" (in the words of the Columbia Journalism Review) -- a story that frames the issue politically without looking at the evidence. There seems little doubt that the press will slant more and more anti-Bush as the election nears, and not just in the institutional way that ABC describes. Just keep that in mind as you read, and watch, the news.

Preparing for the End Game

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I found this to be an interesting viewpoint -BBM)


by JONATHAN ARIEL
Maariv International

Washington has gotten whatever it’s going to get out of the Iraqi campaign, and is refocusing on its core security concerns, Al Qaida and nuclear proliferation. The answer to both issues lies in Pakistan. The key allies are Israel and India.

The situation in Iraq is still far from stable. However what we are seeing is a transformation from an insurrection primarily aimed against US troops to the beginnings of the battle for control of post US Iraq.

Washington has realized that the Iraqi campaign has been no more than a partial success. Saddam is gone, and that alone justifies defining the war as being a success. Ridding the world of a gangrenous political organ like Saddam was not the sole strategic goal of the campaign. The administration had hoped that the sight of US arms parading triumphantly along the shores of the Tigris and the Euphrates would be sufficient to generate a political and cultural upheaval in the Moslem world that would rid it of militant fundamentalism. This would have also been the end of Al Qaida, which would have seen its pool of recruitable human bombs begin to evaporate.

Iraq was chosen as the opening battlefield for three reasons: military, political, and historical. The terrain was the military one, an open flat country with relatively little natural cover for guerrillas, almost made to order for maximizing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of US military capabilities. The US, embarking on its first unilateral major military undertaking since Vietnam, had to ensure a swift and decisive military victory. Iraq was the best place to ensure such an outcome.

The political reason was twofold. It was relatively easy to sell a war against Iraq, Saddam being Saddam. In addition, the Administration expected to uncover significant amounts of non-conventional weaponry, enabling the US to make a point that whoever develops such weapons without its tacit approval risked being ousted from power. This was especially important regarding North Korea and Iran, who together with Saddam occupied the central places in Bush’s axis of evil.

Historically Baghdad was, together with Damascus and Cairo, one of the centers of Arab power. The last Arab caliphate was ruled from Baghdad. In order to generate the kind of cultural and political whirlwind the Americans hoped to see uproot fundamentalism across Arabia, the target had to be Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, or possibly Mecca. For a variety of political considerations the most viable and convenient target was Baghdad.

However the other aims have not been achieved. The shock and awe did not resonate with sufficient force across the Shatt el Arab river separating Iraq from Iran, and the hoped for east European style peoples revolt that would rid the region of the Ayatollahs never happened. Evidence of WMD remains elusive, probably buried under the sands of the Syrian desert. The only way these aims may be achieved is via a war with Syria, as discussed in a previous article.

A US invasion of Syria or Iran is not on for now. Washington is about to go on the defensive in the Middle East theater of the war on terror. This means enough presence in Iraq to contain Iran and Syria, but no proactive measures beyond that.

From the two rivers to the Valley of the Indus

This explains the recent disclosure of Pakistan’s nuclear hanky-panky. However intelligence reports suggest that by the early nineties the CIA knew that Prof. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb had sold nuclear expertise to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

The most likely explanation why the Reagan, 1st Bush and Clinton administrations did nothing, despite having concrete information that Khan was peddling nuclear technology to rogue states, was that the US decided that he was carrying out Pakistani state policy. Pakistan has been a US ally since the onset of the cold war, and was the main conduit for US aid to the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet occupation forces. Even after the USSR collapsed, orthodox thinking reigned supreme in the foreign policy establishment.

It is becoming increasingly clear that policy regarding Pakistan is gong to go down in history as another great chapter of US folly. The US significantly upgraded the capabilities of the ISI (Inter-Service-Intelligence), Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, using it as its main tool in supplying the Afghan rebels. It failed to notice that the ISI itself had come under the command of militant Islamists, and had become the most influential force within the Pakistani military establishment. When Uncle Sam belatedly realized he was being had by his erstwhile allies, he preferred to bury his head in the sand rather than admit he had been played for a fool. As a result the ISI was able to effectively hijack Pakistani policy. It created the Taliban, and gave them the green light to turn Afghanistan into the base of an Islamic jihad against the West, while professing to the US that it was the sole lever of moderation over Mullah Omar.

One of the main supporters of the ISI within the Pakistani military was General Pervez Musharraf, who, it is believed, played a significant role in developing the Pakistani bomb. Just how deep a game Musharraf himself has been playing is unclear. His Indian neighbors have never trusted him, and have always maintained that he is a closet Islamic militant who actively supports Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. Their opinion is worthy of consideration.

Bush Sr. played a significant role in creating this mess, first as head of the CIA, subsequently as Vice President and President. His son is going to have to clean it up. The irony is delicious: the son, considered a foreign policy ignoramus, is having to deal with the problems created by his father, considered one of the biggest foreign policy mavens ever to occupy the White House.

To his credit, George W Bush doesn’t ignore his problems. His lack of foreign policy expertise is turning out to be a blessing. Never having been part of the foreign policy establishment, he is unfettered by its conventional thinking. Moreover, it has become increasingly clear that whatever cerebral abilities he does or does not have, he is capable of creative thinking out of the box.

It has become clear to him that Pakistan, ostensibly an ally in the war on terror, is more of a liability than an asset. The recent disclosures of Pakistan’s nuclear misbehavior is the first step in dealing with this. They occurred while CIA chief Tenet was in Islamabad. At the same time Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom was in Delhi, signing a whole range of arms deals with India, including the sale of Phalcon airborne radar, the sale of which was approved by the US. This is the same radar that is used by the Arrow ABM, enabling India to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear threat. The message, though discreetly sent, is very clear. “The game is up, we know who you are and what you did. Play ball or face the consequences”.

The price was also named. Stop pussyfooting around, and take out Al Qaida, which continues to exist and is gradually rebuilding itself in the rugged North-Western Frontier area. The US sees an opportunity to decisively eliminate Al Qaida, which is clearly relatively weak, unable to mount an offensive against the US itself. The US takes the possibility that Al Qaida has acquired some atomic devices seriously, and wants to take the movement out before it can rebuild sufficient logistical and operative capabilities to try an attack the US with one of them.

Musharraf is in a quandary. He knows that if Pakistan doesn’t clean up its act, there is a real danger of a coordinated Indian-American offensive against it. However he knows that convincing his countrymen of this danger is not going to be easy, least of all in the all important North-Western frontier area. This is heavily populated with Pushtuns, many of who do not like what the US did to the Taliban, which was dominated by Pushtuns.

Either way, as soon as the spring thaw begins, things will begin to happen. Either the Pakistani military will apprehend Al Qaida terrorists, or the US military will. It may not be the cakewalk Iraq was, given the much more rugged terrain, but it is doable. If this happens, India will make sure that the Pakistan military doesn’t get in the way. Any attempt by al Qaida, which has transferred many of its fighters to Iraq, to start a second front in the Middle East would require Syrian cooperation, unlikely in view of the threat from Israel. The US may be poised to go for the kill, trusting India and Israel to protect its flanks.

The writer is Editor-in-Chief of Maariv International.

The 1000 Fighting Styles of Donald Rumsfeld

This is pretty damn funny.

http://www.poe-news.com/features.php?feat=31845

Global Warming and Pseudoscience

Aliens Cause Global Warming
by MICHAEL CRICHTON
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.

I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

But let's look at how it came to pass.

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way.

Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day.

But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.

And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.

Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage.

Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.

The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.

At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:

Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.)

The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on.

And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic.

According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.

But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.

This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.

The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the the effect of nuclear winter.

I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…"

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views.

At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."

Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant.

I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended.

What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring.

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened.

What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.

As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam?

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergoe famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure.

But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area.

The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.

In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.

And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.

I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what.

Well, I'll tell you.

In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.

The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?

Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggresively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Thank you very much.

Bush Lied?

"When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know. So I thought it was prudent for the president to go to the U.N. and for the U.N. to say you got to let these inspectors in, and this time if you don't cooperate the penalty could be regime change, not just continued sanctions."
--Bill Clinton, July 22, 2003

Hillary in 2002 - "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seing and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

So were the naysayers right? Well, in retrospect yes, in all probability. However, the IAEA and UN were quite wrong about:

1.Iran
2.Lybia
3.North Korea

All these programs were MUCH more advanced than they thought (and more advanced than we thought). Though the threat from Iraq was not as imminent as we thought (unless Saddam were to pass WMD biotech to terrorists... which potentially could have happened at any time), the data available did seem to support the need for action (and there were many other reasons to remove Saddam as well).

Isn't it better to err on the side of caution in these matters? Here's an article I found on Andrew Sillivan's Blog:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/rauch2004-02-11.htm

"JUSTIFIED MISTAKE": Jon Rauch is, in my view, the most honest thinker of his generation. Here's his latest on the Iraq war - fearless, and right. Money quote:

A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. The policeman expects a thorough investigation (and ought to cooperate). In the end, if he is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.
George W. Bush and the CIA thought they saw a gun. So did French President Jacques Chirac, who last February warned of Iraq's "probable possession of weapons of mass destruction." So did Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, a former Vermont governor, who last February said, "My personal belief is that Saddam may well possess anthrax and chemical weapons. That being the case, he must be disarmed."

Remember, that if you hold that Bush, Cheney, Tennet, Powell, Rice et al "lied", you must also hold that Clinton, Gore, Sandy Berger, Kerry, Lieberman, Grahm et al (and even Jacques Chirac) also "lied" (see the above quotes in prior posts).

Then you have to explain why the latter group also "lied".

It begins...

The future is now!