Democratic Leadership Council Critizes Moore

Responsible democrats exist...even if they seem to be on the endangered species list these days. The DLC, created by Bill Clinton and other centrist democrats in the 1980's to revitalize the party and move away from the old, hard left politics and economics, had the following to say about "Michael Moore's Truth Problem" and his style.

Is Michael Moore a courageous political documentarist who unmasks the chicanery all around us -- or just a charlatan in a clown suit? Is he an entertainment genius or a dangerous ideologue? The answer, of course, is all of the above. The problem is that you never know which of the four is doing the talking in Moore's movies and books. The end result is that the writer-filmmaker spreads a fog of misbegotten notions about America, politics, business, and international affairs among his youthful, left-leaning following at home and, indeed, around the world. Uninformed readers and viewers tend to believe everything he says.

And there you have the essential Moore -- a worldview of America as a failed project and an abiding danger to the planet. No wonder they so love Moore abroad: His is a 1960s vision, hardened in the pre-NAFTA plant closings of the 1980s, of a nation hijacked by the suits, the very guys who for decades gave Moore's father a good job at General Motors. It's from this posture that all the Moorean invective flows.

Nothing to Fear, Except...

Denial is not just a river in Egypt, as the saying goes. The solution lies in embracing the unavoidable and the more practical. The following quote from Lileks makes an interesting observation on recent security precautions:

Right now I have a browser window open to Fark and a T-shirt ad shows Bush’s face with the logo "American Psycho." What else do you need to know? As Teddy Kennedy said in his convention speech: "The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush." It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? We live in a manufactured climate of fear ginned up by war-crazed neocon overlords. There is no threat. The only thing we have to fear is Bush, who sits as we speak in the Oval Office sucking the marrow from Whoopi’s shin-bones.

If so, I wonder why anyone agreed to the stringent security policies that characterize this year’s conventions. Why the bomb-sniffing dogs? Why the snipers? Why the metal detectors, the invasive inspection of bags?

Those Greedy Drug Companies

It is interesting to ponder why the left touts government-funded stem cell research as a panacea to every medical disorder while concurrently deriding private drug research, which has arguably saved millions, and threatening them with regulation in order to appease constituents. It is clearly another tactic in the business of 'buying' the public's vote. An email posted on Andrew Sullivan's weblog considers this quandary from a somewhat more personal perspective:

The Democrats' policies towards drug companies are every bit as anti-intellectual as the Republicans' policies on stem cell research. I was diagnosed with an especially aggressive strain of non-Hodgkins lymphoma a few months back. In fact, I was a couple of days away from death by strangulation, as the tumor had constricted my airway to something smaller than a pencil. To compound things, I don't have insurance (I'm not eligible for insurance through my job for another five months, and I was too short-sighted to get it on my own).

As I write this, though, I'm cancer-free. Why? Because of the amazing new drugs produced by those "greedy" drug companies, and because those same acquisitive bastards gave me the drugs free of charge. The greedy pricks at my hospital picked up my bills, and one of their rotten nurses came in on her day off to administer my first round of chemo because I needed it so badly.

We don't know how good we have it in this country, and I'm afraid by the time we figure it out that mob I saw in Boston will have gutted our healthcare system and crippled our drug companies. It makes perfect sense to me that their chosen candidate is a career politician who married money, and his running mate is a selfless white knight who's made tens of millions of dollars by going after besieged doctors, nearly all of whom have contributed more to mankind than he ever will, [while] charging his clients 30% of the take.

Update on Afghanistan

Finally, there's some good news from Afghanistan. While years of work remain ahead of us, The New York Post reports its findings on the first ever public opinion poll taken in the country. Local citizens are optimistic about the future and excited about upcoming elections:

* 64% say the country is heading in the right direction.
* 81% say that they plan to vote in the October election.
* 77% say they believe the elections will "make a difference."
* 64% say they rarely or never worry about their personal safety, while under the Taliban only 36% felt that way.
* 62% rate President Hamid Karzai's performance as either good or excellent.

And for those skeptics out there, this was no pro-Bush funded propoganda report. The polling firm, Charney Research, is a partisan Democratic polling firm. And superstar Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, who's read the study and who has worked on similar polling in developing countries called it "very reliable."

It's just some more food for thought when considering the consequences of our efforts around the world.

Multilateralism Is Not a Panacea

There are too many competing interests in the United Nations for the right thing to get done. What would be the cost of recruiting France, China, and Pakistan as allies in the current situation? My guess is that it would be prohibitive and likely require the selling out of other countries such as Taiwan.

Alas, it now seems that millions will die of disease and starvation while the world looks on. Again, and this time in Darfur, Sudan.

The Sudanese government made a false promise to protect the people in Darfur, and has threatened guerrilla war if other nations try to help them. Courage must replace patience in dealing with Khartoum.

Under the cover of a 21-year civil war, the Arab Islamist government in Khartoum has been using bandit gangs called Janjaweed to drive black people in its western territory from their homes. The gangs are made up of nomads threatened by desertification and who are loyalists of President Omar el-Bashir; the farmers in Darfur have land Mr. el-Bashir wants to give them. The farmers are also Muslim, though not generally Islamists...

The United States and Britain are pushing a Security Council resolution to impose trade sanctions, but they're having trouble getting it passed. Pakistan and China, for instance, are hesitant to interfere with Sudan's oil trade, which supplies about 300,000 barrels a day to Asia, partly pumped by a Chinese company.

The critics of the war in Iraq, those who said that was all about oil, are silent. France, the great multilateralist, has given just $6 million to a UN fund for Darfur, which Mr. Annan says needs $350 million. (The Americans have found $130 million so far.)

But for the aid to mean anything, the people of Darfur must have security, which Mr. Ismail has indicated the Sudanese government will deny them. These are the words of both a terrorist and a promoter of genocide, not a man who will be swayed by threats of trade sanctions. The world has dithered and innocents have died. It's time to find the nerve to act.

Multilateralism is failing again.

This Country Needs a Break

Perhaps the country does need a break from the "War" part of the war on terror, as one of my favorite commentators, Fareed Zakaria, notes below in an article on the 9/11 report:

The press has focused on its administrative recommendations: a new intelligence czar, new systems for congressional oversight of intelligence, homeland security and so on. Bureaucratic reforms are important. But all this attention on organization charts misses the big picture. What we need first and foremost is a grand strategy. The absence of such a comprehensive, long-term approach is the crucial gap in American policy. And it won't be solved by a better bureaucratic structure for intelligence.

The obsessive focus on bureaucratic reform is a product of a very American search for a simple solution. There's a problem; create a new government position to fix it. But what the 9/11 Commission report really does is take us back to basics, back to 9/12. The United States was attacked brutally by a new enemy, militant Islamic terror. How should we handle this threat? The commission puts forward a series of ideas and approaches in the first of two chapters of recommendations. This chapter ("What to Do?") precedes the one on organizational changes ("How to Do It"), which only makes sense What the commission suggests doing is important, persuasive and a substantial departure from current policy.

...The report notes that the use of the metaphor of a war accurately describes the effort to kill terrorists in the field, as in Afghanistan. It also properly evokes the need for large-scale mobilization. But the report points out that after Afghanistan, the scope for military action is quite limited. "Long-term success," it concludes, "demands the use of all elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and homeland defense." Even when it speaks of preventive action it suggests "a preventive strategy that is as much, or more, political as it is military."

...The issue of Iraq highlighted these choices. If you believed that this was truly a war, all that mattered was defeating the enemy. If you believed that a broader political struggle was key, then creating a new and modern Iraq was in many ways more important than defeating Saddam Hussein. The administration showed its colors with a brilliant war plan and no postwar planning. Even in Afghanistan, where the war succeeded and the postwar settlement is working (though fragile), the administration's superhawks (such as Donald Rumsfeld) were continually opposed to greater efforts at nation-building. It doesn't help the war on terror, they argued. But it does help the struggle against Islamic extremism. And there is no war on terror that is not fundamentally an ideological struggle.

Taking the war to the enemy is important, but there's no doubt that the post war planning should have gone better. And I'm not sure why Bush can't seem to tackle the other, equally important "non-war strategies".

I just wish that I could trust Kerry on Iran and the need to vigorously promote democracy (even if only through economic and diplomatic pressure). He has repeatedly said that he would favor stability over democracy in Iraq. Will this also apply to the whole of the Middle East? Does favoring stability mean that there won't be any pressure on Arab governments to modernize and open up to democratic reforms? If Kerry wants to get cooperation on the war on terror by bringing in more allies, will backing off on demands for reform be part of the deal? Won't this have a chilling effect on Middle East moderates? Don't we need to encourage and support them?

Will emphasis on stability over change just be a return to the failed policies of the last 50 years, where we look the other way in the name of stability while they just continue to sell us cheap oil?

These policies are not benign; they interfere indirectly in the internal politics of the Middle East just as effectively as direct action. While arguably necessary during the cold war, they don't have to be followed any longer unless that's the cost of getting more European and Arab leaders as allies. You could say that these policies indirectly led to 9/11 and the current state of affairs by allowing totalitarian regimes to remain in power, while concurrently destroying all freedoms and all vestiges of civil society except for the mosque. It became the only outlet for frustration and anger in these societies, and the only place where people could legally congregate.

What are other potential costs to bringing in more allies? They will all act in their own self-interest and most likely not in the interests of advancing freedom and democracy.

It will take a lot more than simply asking nicely. For example, there are rumors that we are engaged in negotiations with the Russians to send about 40,000 troops into Iraq. The cost is to acknowledge that the Russians will again have central Asia and the Caucasus within their sphere of influence. In other words, the cost is to offer them free reign there.

This would mean that Russia would become responsible for basket cases like Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Khirgizia. Of course, one must also question the fate of other budding republics such as Georgia and Armenia? Will these be abandoned too? It's clear that there are other benefits to an increased Russian footprint in Central Asia (it counteracts Chinese and Iranian influence), but are these benefits going to one day outweigh the costs?

And finally, what would be the cost of Chinese support in Iraq and North Korea? Will we have to abandon Tiawan? Is their support in Iraq really necessary? As a subscriber to realpolitik, is this the type of strategy Kerry would propose? I don't know, but it is worrying. He needs to make his plans clear, and much more so than by just promising that more allies will appear, as if by magic, if he's elected.

The Chirac Doctrine

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Up until now, France has been dead set against the admission of Turkey into the European Untion. Not surprisingly, all it takes to encourage President Jacques Chirac to compromise on his own ideals is a few billion dollars. Well, what worked for Saddam Hussein in Iraq should surely work wonders for Turkey. Confused? Well, excerpts from Newsweek should help our readers out. -BBM)

The Chirac Doctrine: France gives the nod to Turkish membership in the European Union. What is Paris up to?
By CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
Newsweek International
August 2, 2004 issue

When French presidents invoke "the national interest," often as not it means they've cut a deal they'd really rather not explain. But when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came courting President Jacques Chirac in Paris last week, hoping the ever-reluctant French would back Turkey's bid to join the European Union, the cash-and-carry policymaking was right out front.

As one senior Turkish official told NEWSWEEK, the intention was to "spread a package of economic benefits" before Chirac that "France could not reject." Sure enough, Turkish Airlines announced it would purchase 36 Airbus planes worth more than $1.5 billion. Erdogan also hinted he might be in the market for France's big-ticket nuclear technology. And just as surely, after years of implicit opposition and fence-straddling, Chirac suddenly decided that support for Turkey's candidacy suits "the national interests" of France.

...Against the odds, he seeks to create a tight-knit new Europe, one that will be an alternate (if not opposite) pole of power to the United States. Simultaneously he looks to limit, if not thwart, American influence in Europe's Muslim backyard. And opportunist that he is, of course, he hopes to do all this while remaining popular with French voters.

...Chirac himself has always been a champion of a tightly integrated Europe—with France in the driver's seat. The admission of a populous, nationalistic, Muslim Turkey (with the most votes in the Union) would certainly dilute Paris's influence. And although France and Germany make a show of their cozy cooperation these days, their inherent rivalry remains. The Turks' vast economic, emigrant and historical ties to Germany probably would tip Europe's core balance of power even further toward Berlin.

...But Chirac's looking over his shoulder at the United States right now. If he could, he'd probably declare a sort of Monroe Doctrine a la Francaise, warning Washington away from Europe's backyard just the way Washington once warned Europe to stay out of Latin America. But he can't.

...That's why Chirac was so testy when President George W. Bush had the temerity to say at the Istanbul summit that Washington was in favor of Turkey's joining the European Union. "This is a European issue," snapped Chirac. Sweeter revenge would be to wean Turkey away from the American sphere and into Europe's - at the same time replacing Germany as the one to tip the scales in Ankara's favor.

Erdogan seemed more than happy to play along last week. (To gauge the new balance of power, count the planes Turkish Airlines bought last week: 15 Boeings from the United States, and more than twice as many from Europe.) Indeed, the Turkish press was ecstatic. But the Turks may be rejoicing too soon. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was quick to note that even if Brussels begins formal negotiations with Turkey after this December's EU summit, accession is not automatic. "It is not tomorrow that Turkey will be entering the EU," said Barnier. "The road ahead is still long."

...Some observers think that's actually what Chirac wants: to make the expanded "New" Europe so unwieldy that the "Old" Europe can shed the skeptics and pull together into a tighter, more decisive union at Europe's core. Maybe. Such big-think is a whole lot easier to conceive than execute. But for now, Chirac's played it pretty smart. He can take the Airbus money and run—in the national interest, of course.

What about Iran?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Who can we trust to make tough decisions on Iran if that should that become a necessity? Do we really want to reinforce the creation of another North Korea situated in the already highly-charged Middle East? The following excerpts from Tactitus ask us if this is really what's in the best interests of the United States, the region, and the World in the long run? -BBM)


The Next Battlefield
by BIRD DOG
Tacitus
Friday, July 23, 2004

More links between al Qaeda and Iran are becoming known. Newsweek recounts those links here and follows up here. Winds of Change connects all kinds of dots here. We know an Iranian general, Ahmed Vahidi, collaborated with the plotters of 9/11. We know that Iran is harboring al Qaeda. We know Iran is pursuing a nuclear program and secretly enriching uranium, and is likely to have a nuclear bomb some time during the next presidential administration. Diplomacy by Britain, France and Germany is failing. We know Iran is a terrorist nation.

So given all that we know, what do we do? Charles Krauthammer offers a stark analysis:

If not war, then what? We know the central foreign policy principle of Bush critics: multilateralism. John Kerry and the Democrats have said it a hundred times: The source of our troubles is President Bush's insistence on "going it alone." They promise to "rejoin the community of nations" and "work with our allies."

Well, that happens to be exactly what we have been doing regarding Iran. And the policy is an abject failure. The Bush administration, having decided that invading one axis-of-evil country was about as much as either the military or the country can bear, has gone multilateral on Iran, precisely what the Democrats advocate. Washington delegated the issue to a committee of three -- the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany -- that has been meeting with the Iranians to get them to shut down their nuclear program.

The result? They have been led by the nose. Iran is caught red-handed with illegally enriched uranium, and the Tehran Three prevail upon the Bush administration to do nothing while they persuade the mullahs to act nice. Therefore, we do not go to the U.N. Security Council to declare Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We do not impose sanctions. We do not begin squeezing Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Instead, we give Iran more time to swoon before the persuasive powers of "Jack of Tehran" -- British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw -- until finally, humiliatingly, Iran announces that it will resume enriching uranium and that nothing will prevent it from becoming a member of the "nuclear club."

The result has not been harmless. Time is of the essence, and the runaround that the Tehran Three have gotten from the mullahs has meant that we have lost at least nine months in doing anything to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The fact is that the war critics have nothing to offer on the single most urgent issue of our time -- rogue states in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Iran instead of Iraq? The Iraq critics would have done nothing about either country. There would today be two major Islamic countries sitting on an ocean of oil, supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction.

...What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities. The country should be ripe for revolution. The regime is detested. But the mullahs are very good at police-state tactics. The long-awaited revolution is not happening.

Which makes the question of preemptive attack all the more urgent. Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term. Some Americans wishfully think that the Israelis will do the dirty work for us, as in 1981, when they destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. But for Israel, attacking Iran is a far more difficult proposition. It is farther away. Moreover, detection and antiaircraft technology are far more advanced than they were 20 years ago.

There may be no deus ex machina. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the "Great Satan" will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or preemptive strike.

Both of which, by the way, are far more likely to succeed with 146,000 American troops and highly sophisticated aircraft standing by just a few miles away -- in Iraq.

For me, it's hard to disagree with Krauthammer and this bleak situation. We need an aggressive policy of regime change for Iran, we need to actively foment democratic revolution in this oppressed country and we need to stop this terrorist nation from building a nuclear bomb. So do we take aggressive steps to curtail the Iranian leadership or do we "offer leadership" and call a meeting?

The Sun Is Burning Brighter

It has always been clear that the Earth's climate and climate change are poorly understood. Moreover, the causes of climate change on Earth are multifactorial, rather than the linear approach that most environmentalists would have the public belive. New evidence suggests that the Sun's solar output has actually increased over the last 150-200 years. It is thought it may be the results of increased sunspot activity, which greatly increase the radiation of energy emitted from the sun.

Excerpts from an article by David Whitehouse appearing on the BBC provide an excellent review of this phenomenon:

Sunspots are plentiful nowadays. A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years. Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity. The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface. It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

The following excerpts from swissinfo add even more color:

The Sun is burning brighter than at any time over the past 1,150 years, according to a study by a professor at a Swiss university. Professor Sami Solanki said this could be compounding the effects of greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming.

“We have to acknowledge that the Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago, and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years. We expect it to have an impact on global warming,” he told swissinfo.

Possible Breakthroughs in Alternative Power

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's an overview of some of the alternative energy projects currently under development, courtesy of Futurepundit. While these advances are a long way off, they clearly offer hope over the next 30 years or so. -BBM)


Nanotech Start-Ups Pursuing Cheaper Photovoltaic Solar Power
by RANDALL PARKER
Futurepundit
Sunday, July 11th, 2004

MIT's Technology Review has a good survey of some of the venture capital start-ups pursuing development of cheaper methods for producing photovoltaic solar cells.

At least one startup may beat Siemens to that goal. Konarka is now gearing up to manufacture its novel photovoltaic film, which it expects to start selling next year. Unlike Siemens’s, Konarka’s films don’t use buckyballs, instead relying on tiny semiconducting particles of titanium dioxide coated with light-absorbing dyes, bathed in an electrolyte, and embedded in plastic film. But like Siemens’s solar cells, Konarka’s can be easily and cheaply made.

The article also covers an interesting approach by a company called Nanosolar.

Down the road, researchers hope to boost nano solar cells’ power output and make them even easier to deploy, eventually spraying them directly onto almost any surface. Palo Alto, CA-based startup Nanosolar, which has raised $5 million in venture capital, is working on making this idea practical. The company is exploiting the latest techniques for automatically assembling nanomaterials into precisely ordered architectures—all with a higher degree of control than ever before possible.

Nanosolar’s approach is disarmingly simple. Researchers spray a cocktail of alcohol, surfactants (substances like those used in detergents), and titanium compounds on a metal foil. As the alcohol evaporates, the surfactant molecules bunch together into elongated tubes, erecting a molecular scaffold around which the titanium compounds gather and fuse. In just 30 seconds a block of titanium oxide bored through with holes just a few nanometers wide rises from the foil. Fill the holes with a conductive polymer, add electrodes, cover the whole block with a transparent plastic, and you have a highly efficient solar cell.

The ability to spray paint a surface with photovoltaics would allow sides and roofs of buildings, signs, billboards, water towers, bridges, and numerous other structures to be turned into solar collectors. In the United States, human structures already cover an area equal to the size of Ohio, and that is more than enough area to provide enough power for current level of usage if photovoltaics could be made that could cover all the human-built structures.

An article on Konarka Technologies explains how Konarka's approach allows photovoltaics to be made at lower temperates than current processes require.

The problem? Until now, PVCs have been made by heating the titanium crystals to 450 degrees Celsius and then coating them with a light-sensitive dye – a process known as “sintering.” That process was too expensive to make them a practical source of power. Tripathy and his researchers perfected a “cold-sintering” method that achieves the same result at temperatures of 150 degrees or lower.

Those cooler temperatures are critical to new uses for PVCs. When forged at higher temperatures, PVC material can only be coated onto glass, which makes for expensive, delicate product applications. Cold-sintering allows the PVC material to be coated onto plastics; in essence, a product’s outer shell becomes its power source.

And at those cooler temperatures, they can churn out large numbers of photovoltaic cells quickly and cheaply. The Konarka cell does not generate any more electricity than other power cells, or do so more efficiently. Its appeal is that the cell can be manufactured far more cheaply, so Konarka can churn out a large supply and, the company hopes, put them into all sorts of devices.

The ideal process would not require the use of any elevation of temperatures when the photovoltaics are applied. So if Nanosolar's process can be perfected it would open up a greater potential by allowing easier conversion of existing surfaces into photovoltaic collectors. Though the approach being pursued by Nanosys to incorporate photovoltaics into plastics to make roofing tiles would certainly work for new structures and when installing the inevitable new roofs when old roofs wear out.

Update: Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley has an opinion piece on Small Times arguing for a big research effort to develop new cleaner and cheaper energy technologies to end our reliance on oil.

Update II: A Stanford prof thinks organic photovoltaic nanoparticles can eventually be made an order of magnitude cheaper than current solar cells.

Right now, the efficiency rate--the amount of sunlight that gets turned into electricity--ranges from 3 percent to nearly 12 percent for various nanoparticles in different lab experiments. That could grow to 20 percent, said Michael McGehee, an assistant professor at Stanford in materials science and engineering. McGehee currently is conducting research on organic photovoltaic nanoparticles.

..."It costs $300 per square meter now for crystalline solar cells. We think we can get this down to $30 a square meter," he said. Michael McGehee, an assistant professor at Stanford in materials science and engineering

Found WMD? That Report Is 'Stupid'

And from Reuters, here is a response to reports that nuclear weapons were found in Iraq:

Iraqi Interior Minister says reports of nuclear missiles found in Iraq are 'stupid'.

Hmmm....we'll keep you posted.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Finally!

(EDITOR'S NOTE: There is no more that needs to be said. Read the following press release, courtesy of UPI. It should surely change the perception of why we went to war. -EBO)


Nuclear Arms Reportedly Found in Iraq
United Press International
Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday. The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

They pointed out that the missiles were actually discovered in the trenches lying under six meters of concrete and designed in a way to unable sophisticated sensors from discovering nuclear radiation. The sources said al-Douri, who is related to former Vice Chairman of the Iraq Revolution Council and Saddam's right-hand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was captured after Iraqi police intercepted an e-mail message in which he set a meeting with another former Baath official.

The report could not be authenticated by the interior ministry or the national security department, but the paper noted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zibari made a surprise request recently to Mohammed el-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to resume inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

(Is it really any surprise to anyone that Saddam Hussein would have taken measures to build nuclear weapons, and then to design bunkers that would thereafter prevent their detection by the international community? -EBO)

Masters Of Barely Anything?

Some interesting comments from BusinessWeek in a review of a book written by Henry Mintzberg entitled, "MANAGERS NOT MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development". Now, there are plenty of industries where MBAs seem to excel. Indeed, an MBA education seems to have provided these individuals with the skill set and the relationships to succeed. This is not to suggest that an MBA is a requirement; rather, it simply suggests that it may be more useful than Mr. Mintzberg admits. Then again, let's just see exactly what he had to say (as told through the eyes of Jennifer Merritt, a book reviewer at BusinessWeek, and excerpts of which appear below):

In the scathing Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development, McGill University business professor Henry Mintzberg says today's B-school is essentially a sham.

...Mintzberg posits that MBA programs not only educate "the wrong people" -- namely, those lacking sufficient experience -- they actually fail to teach management. Rather than producing good administrators, B-schools foster an arrogant, "elitist" class who understand little yet think they can solve any problem. Mintzberg suggests replacing what he sees as broad and superficial MBA training with specialized programs, granting degrees such as a Masters of Business in Finance, or Retail, or Consulting.

...Management education should be for those who already have some background directing personnel, says Mintzberg, and most MBA students do not. "Trying to teach management to someone who has never managed is like trying to teach psychology to someone who has never met another human being," he argues.

...Mintzberg sees a big problem in how B-schools promote "heroic management" -- the notion that a CEO savior can come in from outside and fix anything. His favorite target is Harvard Business School, whose case studies, employed to the near-exclusion of other approaches, provide narrow snapshots of the kinds of problems usually faced only by top executives. That methodology, he persuasively argues, leads MBA students to think of themselves as "superstars," capable of high-level decision-making. Instead, the author suggests, Harvard produces more high-profile failures than you'd think: In Inside the Harvard Business School (1990), former professor David W. Ewing listed 19 alums who had excelled, among them former Bendix CEO William Agee and former Continental Airlines CEO Frank Lorenzo. But as of 2003, Mintzberg says, 10 of those had left their jobs on bad terms. Some were forced out, while others steered their companies into bankruptcy through bad decisions. Only five ended up with good records.

Finally, Mintzberg overplays his critique by making management education the scapegoat for all that ails corporations -- and much that afflicts society. After railing against the "corruption of established institutions," the author observes that "greed has been raised to some sort of higher calling" and that "MBA education plays a significant role in this." That's a heavy load to lay on educational programs -- especially since, as Mintzberg acknowledges, most CEOs and other top executives don't even have MBAs.

I wonder if Mr. Mintzberg ever got an MBA. On reviewing his CV, he certainly has a lot of degrees, including a Ph.D. from the Sloane School of Management at MIT, but no MBA. Perhaps he is bitter that Harvard Business School rejected him? Who knows? Who cares? But I do admit to agreeing with some of his conclusions.

Oh, by the way, it bears mentioning that I don't have an MBA, either. So much for impartiality.

Double Standards in Democracy

There's nothing like a good realization from inside the beltway. This time, the blatant attempt at masking elected officials' hypocrisy by reporters at The New York Times is brought straight to the public's attention by Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post:

Here's something that could have been a front-page story, but which the NYT put at the bottom of Page 15 and other papers ignored. John Edwards, the self-proclaimed champion of the little guy, used a tax shelter to avoid paying $600,000 in Medicare taxes -- this from a man who made $27 million in the four years before entering the Senate and had criticized tax shelters for undermining Medicare. What would the media reaction had been if Dick Cheney was found doing the same thing?

As Mr. Kurtz opined, we all know the answer to that one.

Back to Bias: I Just Can't Help Myself

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It's worth prefacing that I hate media bias. There will be those of you who immediately assume that I disregard the media because I tend to be more conservative. First, I would more accurately describe myself as a libertarian, with an equal proportion of allegiance to conservatives and/or liberals depending on the particular issue at hand. Second, the very notion that most people consider my distaste of reporting by today's media as the result of a conservative bent wholeheartedly implies a liberal bias in the media...a priori, my distaste. Frankly, it simply boils down to my displeasure of reading editorial content on the front page. Sadly, these efforts to connote political persuasion in the form of objective news reporting are often so thinly-veiled as to become utterly transparent.

Where am I going with this? Why am I going there again, particularly after having devoted so many posts on the realist party to this very topic? Perhaps it has to do with the editorial that my colleague, Brendan, forwarded to me only this past evening. Dr. Murphy has an uncanny ability to get me riled up at a moment's notice. I, in turn, am obligated to do the same to our readers. Excerpts from this article, penned by Orson Card on The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal web site, appear below. He responds to the onslaught that Fox News and The New York Post have taken recently at the hands of the mainstream media (granted, the onslaught was exacerbated by a report in the Post this past Monday erroneously naming Richard Gephardt as John Kerry's vice-presidential candidate instead of John Edwards) and a newly published book criticizing Fox News' coverage. It is long, but it is mightily worth the effort. Emphasis added. -EBO)


High Bias: "Mainstream" Reporters Aren't Just Liberal -- They're Fanatical
by ORSON SCOTT CARD
WSJ OpinionJournal
Monday, July 12, 2004

...Now, almost a decade later, Fox News Channel has left both CNN and MSNBC in the dust. There's no guarantee that this is permanent, of course. But it certainly has the left in a panic. Now, though, to have Fox News Channel be the source for the largest portion of America's TV news junkies just sticks in their craw. How could such a thing happen? Scott Collins, author of "Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN," thinks he has the answer.

It's not what Fox claims -- that the American news media have a pronounced and painful liberal bias, so that huge numbers of Americans had given up on TV news, only to return in droves when Fox News offered them a balanced, trustworthy source of information. No, it's that a large number of Americans believed that the news was biased. How they got this idea is that they were...hmmm...idiots? But no matter. Mr. Collins repeatedly states that the perception is what mattered, and by homing in on the audience dumb enough to think the media was biased, Fox News won the ratings race (but not, of course, the race for quality news coverage).

I'm painting Mr. Collins's book far too negatively, and I'm doing it deliberately. In fact, you can finish "Crazy Like a Fox" and think you have received a balanced story. Nowhere does Mr. Collins actually say that Fox News viewers are idiots. But Mr. Collins is a product of the liberal American news media, which are deeply offended at any accusation of bias. They don't twist the news -- they inform their readers of the truth. And when they see Fox News trumpeting slogans like "we report, you decide" and "fair and balanced," they see red. They take it for granted that those slogans are true of every news outlet except Fox News. So when Mr. Collins sets out to write a fair and balanced account of Fox News's triumph, he does not realize that his own reporting is biased, too.

But the bias is there. It is simply taken for granted that Fox distorts the news, that Fox is unusual for taking sides, while all of the allegations about liberal bias are refuted so that one could close this book believing that liberal bias in the vast majority of the American news media is a delusion shared only by dimwitted conservatives who don't like it that the world has passed them by -- and blame the messenger.

So let's put it to the test. Is there a real leftist bias in the mainstream news?

...One recent morning -- the Sunday before Memorial Day -- I picked up the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and started looking through national news coverage. You know, the stuff that is filtered through the lens of liberal bias long before it even reaches local papers, which rarely revise what they get off the wire services.

In a story on Donald Rumsfeld's remarks to the graduating class at West Point, here is the lead paragraph: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making no mention of the prisoner abuse scandal that has led to calls for his ouster, told a cheering crowd of graduating cadets Saturday that they will help win the global fight against terror."

Let's see, how could there be any bias in that? Every word is true, right?

Except for this: The first thing mentioned, the lens through which we are forced to view the rest of the story, is something that did not happen and that only an idiot would expect might happen: Mr. Rumsfeld mentioning the prisoner-abuse scandal at a commencement address at West Point.

The lead, in other words, is not the graduation that is supposedly being reported, but rather Mr. Rumsfeld's failure to resign in the face of events that happened weeks ago. How is Mr. Rumsfeld's not resigning news? It's mentioned in this story only because the reporter does not want to let go of it.

This is bulldog journalism: Once you get hold of a story, you never loosen your grip until your victim dies--at least politically.

Does it happen to everybody? Or just Republicans? Well, try this fictitious opening paragraph: "Senator Hillary Clinton, making no mention of the $100,000 she once made by trading cattle futures with astonishing perfection, told a cheering crowd of activists that President Bush's globalist economic policy is hurting poor people in other countries and costing American jobs."

Nope. You've never seen it, and you never will. Because bulldog journalism only goes one way in our "unbiased" mainstream media.

The only differences between Fox News and all the other news media are (1) they admit that on some issues they take sides, and (2) they allow the conservative side to be heard -- without contempt.

...But let me go on. A story about terrorists murdering civilians and taking hostages in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, never actually uses the word terrorist. Instead, the killers are "gunmen" (in the headline), "suspected Islamic militants wearing military-style uniforms" and "attackers" (in the body of the story). Suspected Islamic militant -- this pussyfooting appellation even though later in the story we learn that an Islamic group called "Al-Quds" and signing itself "al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula" is claiming credit for the attack. But presumably they are only "suspected" of being Islamic militants because, after all, they might turn out to be long-hidden Nazis or perhaps holdouts from the Irish Republican Army or--who knows?--maybe Timothy McVeigh's buddies from the "red states" in America.

That's what makes some Americans turn away from mainstream sources in disgust. Why in the world is there any need for the news writers to wrap themselves in impartiality when the story makes Islamic militants look bad, but when the story is about our own secretary of defense, he gets slapped around from the first paragraph on?

This "neutral" approach to a terrorist attack on Americans and other westerners working for American companies in Saudi Arabia is one reason why Fox News is triumphing. Fox makes it clear that they're on America's side, that what happens to Americans abroad is happening to "us" -- in short, they feel our pain because they are part of us.

...In every case of bias I just cited, the writers would almost certainly be outraged at my accusation that they were doing anything other than reporting the facts as clearly and fairly as possible. It doesn't occur to them that they are biased because they live in a box filled with people who share exactly the same bias. But that's how we human beings create our working definition of sanity -- someone who shares the same worldview as his neighbors is "sane," and those who don't are crazy.

The left-wing news media live in a tiny village of people who all think (or pretend to think) exactly alike. Therefore, to them any reporter or media outlet that rejects their premises must be insane or dishonest, and instead of seeking to refute them with actual evidence, they merely call them names and accuse them of venal motives.

The fact remains that on Fox News, and only on Fox News, we get television reportage that gives us at least two sides of every important issue. On all the other TV news outlets -- and "mainstream" newspapers -- we mostly get coverage that is hopelessly biased. The madmen have taken over the asylum and now, dressed in white lab coats, they pronounce the rest of the world insane.

...I wrote this essay for a newspaper that is also biased. The only difference -- and it's all the difference in the world -- is that the Rhinoceros Times admits that it's a conservative paper and reports events through conservative eyes. Likewise for this Web site. Fox News Channel, on the other hand, claims to have only one bias -- it is definitely pro-American -- and it presents all the facts and every viewpoint and leaves the decision up to the viewer. Imagine if these news stories had been written from that perspective. They would be barely recognizable -- and some of them would not have been written at all.

What makes the liberal bias in the mainstream media so pernicious is that they deny that they're biased and insist that their twisted version of events is "reality," and anyone who disagrees with them is either mentally or morally suspect. In other words, they're fanatics. And, like all good fanatics, they're utterly convinced that they're in sole possession of virtue and truth.

The Splintering of Resistance in Iraq

(EDITOR'S NOTE: If viewed in a microcosm, the pace of change in Iraq may seem to be progressing at a maddeningly slow pace, depending on your point of view and political bias. Indeed, there are some that recognize the macro forces at work and come away impressed at how rapidly societal, economic, and political changes have been implemented there in the approximately 1.5 years since Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

Reporting from Baghdad, Dan Murphy, a staff writer at The Christian Science Monitor, profiles the ever widening divide between the Iraqi public and their counterparts in the minority terrorist camps. The following excerpts from his article should help to put the situation in Iraq, which is often overblown by the media, into better perspective. -BBM)


Iraqi Rebels Dividing, Losing Support
by DAN MURPHY
The Christian Science Monitor
Monday, July 12, 2004

Fallujah is now emerging as a symbol of the splintering Iraqi resistance. The mutilation of six Shiites widens the divide.

In April, with anger swelling at the US occupation and a Marine-led assault on the Sunni city of Fallujah,thousands of Shiites provided assistance to their Iraqi brothers in the city.

Adnan Feisal Muthar filled up his truck with food and drove it to Fallujah to help residents rendered homeless by US bombing. His uncle and two of his sons donated blood for the wounded. "We wanted to help the people there,'' says Mr. Muthar. "They were Iraqis and they were suffering."

But the city west of Baghdad is no longer a sympathetic rallying place for a unified Iraqi resistance. It is now seen as run by intolerant and exclusivist Sunni imams who are seeking to turn it into a haven for Al Qaeda ideologues. Fallujah is emerging as a symbol of the disparate nature of the overall insurgency inside Iraq. Many Shiites, like the Muthars, have stopped supporting it.

Since two of Muthar's brothers and four of his cousins - all members in a family trucking cooperative - were tortured and murdered in the resistance stronghold three weeks ago, he's changed his mind about how the US handled Fallujah.

Kerry's (False) Racial Rhetoric: Race Baiting?

It's only been a few days since John Kerry made another one of his famous false claims, this one involving the notion that millions of blacks were mysteriously disenfranchised during the 2000 presidential election. In reality, less than 26 claims were actually filed, and the vast majority of those were spurious.

Now comes another great whopper, courtesy of Will Collier at Vodkapundit, and this time it's a clear case of race baiting. One wonders how this rhetoric could ever possibly be constructive. Will the mainstream press call him on it? Then again, we all know better than to expect too much from the media, but your faithful servants at the realist party come to the rescue. Judge for yourselves:

Quoth Kerry: "We've got more African Americans in jail than we do in college. That's unacceptable."

Stefan Sharkansky at SharkBlog fact-checked [Kerry's remarks], and found [them] sadly lacking:

In fact, it seems that there are more than twice as many African Americans in college than in jail.

-U.S. Census Bureau (2000): African Americans in college = 2,224,181.

-U.S. DoJ Office of Justice Programs: "Prison and Jail Inmates at MidYear 2003" (p.11): "Table 13. Number of inmates in state or federal prisons or local jails" -- Black Americans in jail = 899,200.

Those nearly 900,000 incarcerated African Americans still represent a tragic waste of lives and potential. But fortunately, things are not nearly as gloomy as John Kerry wants to believe they are.

James Taranto at Best of the Web also busted Kerry on this whopper, nearly a month ago. But Kerry was still repeating the "more in prison" line in a speech on Monday--and the quote was repeated without challenge by (wait for it), Reuters.

Is there a print or television media outlet in this country (BOTW is, of course, Internet-only) willing to challenge Kerry's ugly and dishonest race-baiting?

Not yet, apparently.

Then again, the realist party is more than happy to offer our services to the discerning reader.

Bipartisan Fiscal Irresponsibility

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Weeks ago, I highlighted the fiscal impudence of our elected representatives, who rejected proposed legislation to implement spending constraints and stringent parameters towards achieving and ultimately maintaining a balanced budget. It seems that fiscal extravagance is not only the mark of the legislature; it has become the cornerstone for an American public that have taken to financing every expenditure from staggering home mortgages to items as small as the average toaster. Where do the financial traits of overburdening personal and public debt all begin? At the very top, of course.

Once again, Caroline Baum from Bloomberg reviews the schizophrenic accounting that our executive branch, both the current administration and its current liberal adversary, utilizes in haphazardly ravaging our tax contributions. Excerpts from today's article appear below, along with my customary emphasis added. -EBO)


In Fiscal Discipline, It's a Race to the Bottom
by CAROLINE BAUM
Bloomberg
Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Total federal spending rose 29 percent during Bush's first term, according to Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Protecting the homeland and fighting the war on terror became a necessity following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In fact, they are among the legitimate functions of the federal government as laid out by the founders. [But], take out defense and spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which are on automatic pilot, and non-defense discretionary spending soared 36 percent during Bush's four years as president, de Rugy says.

So much for the devil we know. The devil we don't know, John Kerry, has promised to cut the deficit in half in four years, pay for every program he proposes, make health care affordable and cut taxes for the middle class. Alas, the numbers don't add up, according to Drew Johnson, a policy analyst with the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, the non-partisan research arm of the National Taxpayers Union.

"Even after $30 billion in proposed savings, John Kerry plans to introduce $226 billion in new spending -- in his first year alone,'' Johnson says in a new study entitled, "One Hand in Your Pocket: How Kerry's Campaign Pledges Stand to Cost Taxpayers Billions.'' Johnson looked at all of Kerry's proposed savings -- including cutting corporate welfare and terminating 100,000 federal contracting jobs -- offset them with his proposed new spending and came up with numbers that suggest Kerry's promise to pay for every new program without increasing the debt is pure hokum. "Kerry's proposals increase spending by a cumulative $621.76 billion over a four-year presidential term,'' Johnson says. "That translates to an average increased tax burden of $6,066 for every person paying federal taxes in America over Kerry's first term.'' In other words, repealing tax cuts for the rich will impose a bigger tax burden on everyone. In all instances, Johnson gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt, using the lowest available cost estimates (often from the Kerry campaign) for spending proposals and the highest estimates for savings.

For his part, Kerry touted his voting record as a reason Americans could trust him to deliver on his promises. Unfortunately, that record doesn't hold up well under the microscope. "No other Senator proposed more new federal spending during the 106th Congress than John Kerry,'' says Johnson, referring to the 1999-2000 congressional session. "And from 1997-2002, Sen. Kerry voted to increase federal spending by a cumulative total of $731 billion.''

"Since announcing his candidacy, John Kerry has offered 70 policy proposals affecting federal outlays, only five of which would decrease government spending,'' Johnson says. "Overall, Sen. Kerry proposes spending $770.6 billion over five years to fund his projects, while suggesting just $35.99 billion in budget cuts.'' That leaves $734.62 billion unaccounted for, which will be passed on to U.S. taxpayers in the form of either higher taxes today or more government debt today and higher taxes tomorrow.

On the issue of government spending alone, it's hard to decide who's worse: Kerry or Bush. No wonder voters disregard politicians' promises and vote their pocketbook. With two big spenders parading as fiscal conservatives, who can blame them?

Less Jobs, More Pay?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It's a well known fact that statisticians can generate any conclusion out of any data set. The capacity to do just so becomes startling easier when the information collected has been generated by surveys to represent consumer sentiment. This is worth mentioning because the 2004 Presidential election race, economists, and the media have each trumpeted varying figures on employment. It surely comes as no surprise that each of their conclusions differs substantially from the others' despite their utilization of the same data as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. How can this possibly be? Why would anyone want to skew standardized employment information? Well, that's easy...to get elected.

Caroline Baum offers a more insightful review of these data trends in her column on Bloomberg, excerpts of which appear below. Emphasis added. -EBO)


Even Low-Paying Industries Have High-Paying Jobs
by CAROLINE BAUM
Bloomberg
Tuesday, July 13, 2004

...We are a nation of hopeless hamburger flippers, creating low-paying jobs to replace the high-paying jobs that have been lost to machines or low-cost producers overseas. Not so fast, says a new study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate monitoring factual accuracy of politicians. In a July 9 Political Fact Check, analysts at Annenberg dispute the contention of Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry and many economists that most of the new jobs being created are low-paying.

Most analyses of the trend in job creation focus on industry categories. If the restaurant industry is creating jobs, and restaurant jobs are low-paying, then ipso facto the jobs being created are low-paying. "To the extent there has been any improvement on the job front over the past four months, the impetus has been concentrated at the low end of the quality spectrum,'' writes Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach, citing restaurants, temporary hiring agencies and building services as the leading sources of job growth. John Kerry made a similar claim last month, asserting that 90 percent of the jobs created in the past year pay an hourly wage less than the average.

The problem with both arguments is that they don't differentiate industry from occupation. "Broad industry averages tell nothing about the pay levels of the specific jobs that have been gained or lost within those industries,'' says Brooks Jackson, director of Annenberg Political Fact Check and author of the study.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly survey of establishments doesn't break out occupations within industries. So while this survey suggests that jobs in "lower-paying industries have been growing faster than better-paying industries in recent months,'' it doesn't reveal how many of the new jobs in the low-paid restaurant industry, for example, "are dishwashers and burger flippers and how many are managers, chefs or wine stewards,'' Jackson says.

Using the BLS's household survey, which breaks out 11 occupational groups within 14 different industries (or 154 separate cells), the Annenberg Political Fact Check finds strong growth (more than 1.1 million new jobs) in higher-paying categories over the past year and no growth in lower-paying ones. "It's fair to say that there's been more employment growth in occupation industry cells that pay above the median wage than in those that pay below the median'' of $541 a week, says Randy Ilg, an economist with the BLS's household survey.

The whole argument about high-paying versus low-paying jobs may be much ado about nothing in an election year. Don't forget it was only a short time ago that all the low-paying jobs were being outsourced -- sent to countries where labor is a fraction of the cost of U.S. workers. Now, if you believe all the hype, these are the only jobs being created in the U.S. Not long after the 1992 election, all the buzzwords that defined the race -- the jobless recovery, the giant sucking sound of jobs moving to Mexico, and a nation of hamburger flippers -- were consigned to the dustbin (as it turns out, just waiting to be recycled). This may turn out to be the case with the 2004 election as well.

Analyzing the 9/11 Commission's Analysis

(EDITOR'S NOTE: It has become increasingly clear that sweeping generalizations of the 9/11 Commission's report simply do not capture the actual content accurately. Accordingly, it is important to review a more detailed analysis of the documents in order to arrive at a more resounding conclusion. The following post, appearing on the Winds of Change web site, offers a good overview. -BBM)


The Senate Intelligence Committee Report
by DAN DARLING
Sunday, July 11, 2004

I spent the better part of Friday slogging through all 521 pages of the report and identifying the relevant sections of it for Michael Ledeen, which is something that I would seriously recommend that anybody who is genuinely interested in what went wrong on the subject of Iraq do as well. Even the partisan hacks. Especially the partisan hacks.

Ledeen is going to have an NRO piece up on a good chunk of this at some point, but in the meantime I thought I'd convey my own impressions of the document with respect to the terrorism aspects of it, seeing how I know far more about terrorism than I do about WMD, as well as perhaps some other things that you might find interesting. Because I'm accessing this report in PDF form, I can't do the whole copy/paste thing to provide quotations so instead I'll be providing page references.

Joe Wilson
Now, Onto The Red Meat...
Iraqi Support for Terrorism
Al-Qaeda
Pressure on the CIA
The Report's "Additional Views"
The Bottom Line

UPDATE: Michael Ledeen's column is up: The Great Intelligence Committee Report: Some Mysteries Remain Unsolved

The Israeli Wall: Safety Trumps World Opinion

The decision reached by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last Friday seems irrelevant from Israel's perspective. To refresh our readers' memories, the ICJ ruled that Israel's security fence is in violation of international law. Forgetting for a moment that Israel's security is not answerable to international law, particularly when the relevance of international law is uncertain, why should Israel risk turning away from the many months of seamless peace and quiet since the fence's construction? Yes, since the fence was erected, terrorist plots in Israel have fallen dramatically. For a nation that has endured years of massacres whereby hundreds of innocent Israeli lives were taken, deconstruction does not seem a viable solution at present.

Specifically, these innocent civilians died at the hands of faceless criminals operating without a national mandate. To that end alone, an international court of law, speaking nothing of the Geneva Convention, is not even applicable to the Palestinian cause. Most flummoxing, the international community has opted to focus its attention on Israel's efforts to protect itself, no doubt at the great prodding of the Arab oil-producing states in the region, rather than to condemn the continued terrorists attacks undertaken by the PLO, al Qaeda, Hamas, and all other fundamentalist and militant regimes. It reeks wholeheartedly of anti-Semitism, clearly and loudly.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal today, Jeremy Rabkin, a professor of government at Cornell University and author of "The Case For Sovereignty," offered the following criticisms of the ICJ:

The terror war against Israel, launched in the summer of 2000, has by now resulted in the deaths of nearly a thousand Israeli civilians. The security fence, by greatly impeding the movement of would-be terrorists into Israel, has helped to achieve a sharp decline in terror attacks over the past year. Nonetheless, the ICJ admonished that the nations of the world are obligated, not to pressure Palestinians to abandon terrorism, but to pressure Israel to dismantle its security fence.

Most of the Court's reasoning, based on arguments advanced by British barristers, is superficially plausible -- so long as one ignores the actual political context of the dispute. Perhaps the Children's Rights Convention or the Fourth Geneva Convention do provide arguments against disrupting the free movement of innocent Palestinians. But the arguments are more plausible [only] if one ignores the terror threat to Israeli lives, as the Court essentially does.

The statute of the ICJ provides that the Court may only decide disputes submitted by states and then only with the consent of the states that are parties to the dispute. The traditional approach to international arbitration would have barred the Court from entering into this most intractable international conflict. Palestine, since it is not a recognized state, cannot sue before the ICJ in its own name. And [even more importantly] Israel assuredly did not consent to let the legality of the fence be decided by the ICJ.

Given the membership of the Court, where states hostile to Israel are plentifully represented, condemnation of the fence was to be expected. Most dismaying, however, was that all five judges from EU states (UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Slovakia) went along with the majority. Only the dissent of the American judge, Thomas Buergenthal, argued against taking this leap into the heart of the Mideast conflict.

Israel has already announced that it will ignore the Court's decision. American officials have vowed to veto any resolution at the Security Council aimed at enforcing it. For Yasser Arafat, the decision now looks like an unalloyed boon, tossed to him without extracting any serious effort to help suppress ongoing terrorist activities.

It is tragic anytime the international community caves to the efforts of terrorists, thereby strengthening their resolve. Sadly, the withdrawal of troops in the mideast in response to the Madrid train bombings by Spain and to the most recent hostage crisis in Iraq by the Philippines only bolsters and supports terrorists' actions in the future. As we have all learned, the right course of action is often the hardest one. It is a lesson learned well in our youth, though is surely seems that some politicians need a refresher course.

Emerging Countries, Emerging Human Rights

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Coming on the heels of the just announced $54 million settlement for a sexual discrimination lawsuit at Morgan Stanely, women's rights take a blow for the worse in Brazil. That's right, a convicted rapist of seven female adolescents in Brazil remains free from serving his sentence because of an obscure 1940s penal code which, get this, releases the sexual predators if all their victims successfully get married. You can't make stories like this up. The Wall Street Journal offers all the details in an article from today's paper, excerpts of which appear below. -EBO)


Convicted of Rape, Brazilian Doctor Finds Way to Remain Free
By MATT MOFFETT
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, July 12, 2004

Back in 1997, Boadyr Veloso, a politically prominent 60-year-old physician, was becoming well known to people in the rundown barrio of Palmares. He was the man who paid young girls for sex, using the alias "Dr. Fernando."

In November of the same year, undercover police caught Dr. Veloso taking a 14-year-old girl into a motel. In a rarity for a judicial system that often overlooks sex crimes involving influential people, a state court in 2000 convicted Dr. Veloso of what Americans would call statutory rape, involving seven young women. He was sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison.

But then, in a thunderbolt decision in February this year, the state's highest court nullified the sentence. What got Dr. Veloso off the hook wasn't a newly discovered witness or a DNA test. It was that all seven young women had since married. Dr. Veloso avoided doing time because of Clause VIII of Article 107 of Brazil's 1940 penal code, which says that a sex criminal's punishment may be canceled if the victim subsequently weds.

The marriage provision harks back to a time when "a woman's destiny was marriage, and a woman who was raped lost her chance to fulfill that destiny," says Brazilian Congresswoman Iara Bernardi. "So marriage was seen as resolving the damage of sexual abuse."

The case is spotlighting a broader issue in Latin America, where mistreatment of women is still reinforced by archaic laws, as well as by broadly accepted judicial customs. Women's-rights advocates say that outdated laws set the tone for wider discriminatory practices by police investigators, judges and juries.

Judges handling rape cases often interrogate women about their skirt length rather than the violence done them, says Juliana Belloque, a Sao Paulo attorney specializing in women's issues. A recent study by Ms. Belloque and a colleague found that juries frequently acquit men in domestic violence cases on grounds of "legitimate defense of honor."

Notwithstanding the charges, in October 2000, Dr. Veloso was elected mayor of Goiás, a central Brazilian colonial tourist town about 80 miles from Trindade. He remains mayor today. "These are not the most well-informed voters," says Rodrigo Santana, an opposition councilman in Goiás. "They voted for him because he was wealthy and they thought that would make him less likely to steal from them."

No Political Pressure on Prewar Iraq Intelligence

As has become a habit during partisan accusations in an election year, another criticism from the left has fallen by the wayside. Which one this time? There was not a single witness called before the commission who claims that the administration pressured them to arrive at a specific conclusion on WMDs in Iraq. Again, Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit offers the following:

No political pressure on intelligence? That's what the New York Times is reporting, and Tom Maguire has an observation:

“More than 200 witnesses, any of whom would have been given a career-long shoulder ride by the Democrats simply for uttering the magic words, and no one admitted to being pressured to produce cooked intelligence? That will come as a shock to some, and we are sure the Times will want to highlight this information.”

All Eyes on Iran

As brought to my attention by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi and Elio Bonazzi at the National Review wonder why the media has not lavished more attention on Iranians' calls, at some personal risk to themselves, for human rights and democracy:

As July 8 approaches, Iranians all over the world are preparing to display — as they do each year during this week — their hatred for the mullahs dominating Iran. This year, the annual demonstrations mark the fifth anniversary of the brutal university massacres of 1999. That was the year President Khatami showed his true colors, abandoning both his promised reforms and the people who voted for him. What started out as a reaction to the utter brutality of the fossilized establishment by young Iranian students has turned into a freedom movement the world should acknowledge and encourage. And yet, no Western politico has embraced the annual protest, a sign of a people's love for freedom, human rights, and democracy, within the confines of a tyrannical, dangerous regime.

Confirming the Iraq-Niger Uranium Connection

A portion of the evidence suggesting that Iraq was trying to procure Uranium from Niger and other African countries is now known to have been based on bad intelligence, particularly in the form of apparently forged documents. Nonetheless, we have always known that those documents were not the ONLY evidence, but one would never know that if one only relied on the mainstream media for news coverage. Indeed, the British government never wavered from its contention that a link existed, and now it appears that a government inquiry has confirmed these original suspicions. It begs the question of what Saddam ultimately wanted with Uranium? Moreover, taken in addition to recent revelations from Russian President Vladimir Putin stating that he had warned the United States several times prior to the War in Iraq that Saddam was planning attacks on US interests and the evidence is increasingly compelling.

Will this new information receive the attention it deserves in the mainstream press or is it too contradictory to the meta-narrative that Bush connived his way into this war? Does it even matter at this point? Is the damage from the misinformation already too great to correct? The fact remains that this fight with Iraq was coming, either now or in 5-0 years with a fully developed nuclear arsenal. But don’t take my word for it, read the following excerpts from The Financial Times:

A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger. The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers on Wednesday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned the UK government's claims about the threat from Iraq.

The Financial Times revealed last week that a key part of the UK's intelligence on the uranium came from a European intelligence service that undertook a three-year surveillance of an alleged clandestine uranium-smuggling operation of which Iraq was a part. Intelligence officials have now confirmed that the results of this operation formed an important part of the conclusions of British intelligence. The same information was passed to the US but US officials did not incorporate it in their assessment.

And there’s more from Jon Henke at QandO:

You know, I spent more hours than I care to remember debating this point with people who could never understand that there was more to the claim than those forged Niger documents.

I plan to spend the rest of this evening enjoying the vindication.

UPDATE: Oh, and of course, there was this story, which got about 1/1,000,000th of the coverage gotten by the initial "16 words/Bush lied" story:

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

That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium.”

Odd. I must have missed his follow-up NYTimes column, entitled: "What I did find in Africa, after all."

(We must have missed it too. -EBO)

It's a Russian Perspective, but It's Spot on

You give the Russians a little taste of democracy and all of a sudden they are experts on practicality and the need for tort reform. Unfortunately, it's not as though I can disagree with anything from the following editorial appearing in Pravda yesterday. Frankly, it reeks of a nation that sits unchallenged atop the entire world, the United States. As there is imminent world threat other than terrorism to focus our energies upon, we have taken to gorging ourselves into obesity, egregiously taxing the efforts of honest, hard-working Americans, and condoning the outrageous growth of our entitlement programs such as social security and welfare. At one time in this country, it was good enough to just have the opportunity to excel on one's own merit. Sadly, it now seems that American values have shifted such that everyone feels they are owed, nay entitled, to everything their heart desires, irregardless of any inherent laziness or ignorance. In turn, they are overburdening every facet of American life, including our courts and our taxpayers.

Think I am kidding? Well, here's what the Russians think, and as I already mentioned, they're not far off the mark:

Joke on Basic Principles of American Life
Translated by ANDREY NESTEROV

If a woman puts a cup of hot coffee on the car seat between her legs when she is driving and talking on mobile phone at the same time, and the coffee gets spilt and burns her thighs, she blames the restaurant for this. If your son commits suicide, you blame rock-"n"-roll or his favorite musician. If you smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years and finally die of lung cancer, your family accuses the tobacco company. If your daughter gets pregnant from the captain of the school football team, you blame school for bad sexual education. If your neighbor crashed the car onto the tree when he was drunk and was driving home - the barman is guilty. If your relative got AIDS when he injected drugs to himself with the dirty syringe - the government is guilty as it did not provide him with the sterile syringe. If your grandchildren are bullies - television is guilty. If some psycho killed your friend - the weapons producer is guilty. If some other psycho breaks in the airplane cabin and tries to kill the pilot when the plane is high in the sky, and the passengers kill him instead, the mother of the killed guy accuses the air company. I have lived long enough to understand what the world is about. If I die when sitting at this computer, I want you to accuse Bill Gates.

You see that?! I have been working away on computers for over a decade and never thought to do that. Those Russians, they're so crafty.

(Thanks to Caitlin for raising this topic. -EBO)

Moore Manipulations

(EDITOR’S NOTE: A part of me admires Michael Moore for the skill with which he is able to manipulate his audiences. But it is important to highlight the techniques that he employs to achieve his goals. The following excerpts are from an article by Dave Kopel, who endorsed and voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 Presidential election. In it, he deconstructs “Bowling for Columbine”, addressing many of Moore’s conclusions that may have been accepted by the audience on first viewing. Recently, he has also been completing a critique of Moore’s new film, “Fahrenheit 9/11“, that you can read by clicking here. -BBM)


Bowling Truths: Michael Moore’s Mocking
by DAVE KOPEL
National Review
Friday, April 4, 2003

In the field of mockumentary filmmaking, there are two giants. Rob Reiner created the genre with his film This is Spinal Tap. Michael Moore has taken the genre to an entirely different level, with Bowling for Columbine.

...The first mockumentary "fact" is the title itself. The Columbine murderers were enrolled in a high-school bowling class. After the NRA introduction, the film begins on the morning of April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine murders. Narrator Moore announces that on that day, "Two boys went bowling at six in the morning." This serves as a setup for a later segment looking at the causes of Columbine, and arguing that blaming violent video games (which the killers played obsessively) or Marilyn Manson music (which the killers enjoyed) makes no more sense than blaming bowling.

In fact, the two killers ditched bowling class on the day of the murders. The police investigation found that none of the students in the bowling class that morning had seen the killers that day. The police report was completed long before the release of Bowling for Columbine, so the title itself is a deliberate falsehood. (I don't use the word "lie" because the mockumentary genre allows for the use of invented facts.)

...Similarly, the ideology of gun ownership and civil liberty is not presented by reference to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, or to legal scholars such as liberal Democrats Sanford Levinson or Larry Tribe. Instead, Moore goes to the Michigan Militia.

While Moore allows the militia members to present their case, he makes the group (which has no record of illegal violence or any other illegal activity) appear extremely dangerous by informing viewers that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols attended militia meetings. Moore conveniently neglects to mention that the two were eventually kicked out, for talking about violence.

...Aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin has a factory in Littleton, so Moore asks a company spokesman if "our kids say to themselves, 'Well, gee, Dad goes off to the factory every day, and he builds missiles, he builds weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'"

...Of course the connection is nonsense. While one killer's father once served in the Air Force, neither family worked in the defense industry. The other killer's parents were gun-control advocates — so much so that they forbade him to play with toy guns — unlike the many children who are shown with toy guns elsewhere in the film. One of the killers' gun suppliers was the son of a Colorado anti-gun activist.

...Right after the footage of the airplanes hitting the Twin Towers, Bowling shows a B-52 memorial at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Moore intones: "The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972." The point is obvious: that the United States government and al Qaeda both perpetrate murder by airplane.

In fact, the plaque on the B-52 at the AFA is not as Moore describes it. The plaque says "B-52D Stratofortress. 'Diamond Lil.' Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26-year history in the command. Aircraft 55-083, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52Ds credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam Conflict Flying out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southern Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas Eve, 1972."

...A montage of U.S. foreign-policy atrocities (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World") concludes with the statement that the U.S. gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000-01. The next shot is of the World Trade Center in flames.

In fact, that money was not given to the Taliban government, but rather to U.S. and international agencies that distributed humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan.

...Having established the racism and paranoia of American gun owners, Moore now begins an extended sequence depicting the media as racist fear-mongers. He first argues that the media create irrational fears about black criminals. (According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, table 43, 4,238 blacks were arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter, compared to 4,231 whites.)

On the one hand, Bowling works the audience into self-righteous anger at "the media" for using cheap sensationalism to promote fear. At the very same time, the film uses — you guessed it — cheap sensationalism to promote fear. The very techniques which he decries in the media, Moore uses himself, with obvious approval from the audience. Moore thus enacts a real demonstration of how the audience is itself complicit in the cycle of fear.

Moore criticizes weakly researched media stories that scare people over nothing (such as phony stories about razors in Halloween apples), but at the same time, his own factual claims are either invented or taken grossly out of context.

Glassner's book points out that an American schoolchild is much more likely to be killed by lightning than in a school shooting. Yet Moore's film rests on the premise that the Columbine shooting represents an American epidemic of violence.

...After over an hour spent on the horrors of the United States, Moore switches to the peaceful society of Canada. He begins by arguing that Canada and the United States are very similar — except that Canada has a generous welfare state, and no culture of fear.

It's true that Canada does have a lot of guns compared to England or Japan, but Canada's per-capita gun ownership rate is about a third of the American level.

Moore films the over-the-counter purchase, no questions asked, of some ammunition in a Canadian store. The Canadian government has pointed out that such a transaction would be illegal, since the buyer is required to present identification. Moore did not respond to a request from the government's Canadian Firearms Centre to explain whether he staged a fake purchase, edited out the ID request, or broke the law.

Moore then tells the audience that 13 percent of the Canadian population is minority ethnic, the same as in the U.S. Actually, it's about 31 percent in the U.S. More significantly, blacks and Hispanics, who are involved in well over 50 percent of American homicides (both as victims and as perpetrators) make up about 2.5 percent of the Canadian population. In the United States, each group makes up about one-eighth of the U.S. population.

...Bowling for Columbine revels in the tabloid-style, raw exploitation of emotion — in promotion of unjustified fear, in falsehoods and quarter-truths, in oversimplification of the problems of race, and in mean-spirited pandering to the audience's bigotry about people of different social backgrounds.

In this way, Bowling subverts its own audience. To participate in Bowling's emotional journey is to surrender to the very same mendacious hate- and fear-mongering that the movie purports to criticize.