White, Black, and Gold: The Future of Catholicism

By Drew Belsky

http://americanthinker.com/

November 26, 2013

British-Canadian author Michael Coren's book Why Catholics Are Right (Feb. 2012) had a white cover.  Heresy (Apr. 2012) had a black one.  Now, The Future of Catholicism -- arguably the third installment in a trilogy -- is gold.  Reading Coren's latest, one will find some meaning in the color progression.

The Future of Catholicism is no crystal ball (that would be sinful), but rather a reasoned evaluation of where the Church is going based on where she is and where she's been.

"What Catholics need to do and have to do," Coren proposes from the outset in Future, "is to explain where the Church is rooted in permanent truth and why it cannot change, and also -- and just as boldly -- where the Church is indeed in need of reform, why this is the case, and how it can be achieved" (1).

From there, Coren delves into apologetics and history, often to the point of getting mired in them.  It's understandable -- a book explaining how the future Church will refuse to compromise on such matters as birth control and female ordination will ring hollow without also explaining why -- but getting into the weeds does weigh down the narrative in places.  This may prove especially problematic for readers of Coren's previous books, who will have seen such material at least once before.  On the other hand, the "extra" content is fascinating even when it's not new, and its inclusion strengthens Future as a standalone work.
All that said, Coren diligently realigns with Future's thesis in every chapter.  From marriage to abortion, from priestly celibacy to evangelization and beyond, Future lays out where the Church can change; where, indeed, she must change; and where change is not only impermissible, but also impossible.  The long apologetic and historical passages (often framed in gigantic paragraphs and replete with quintessentially Queen's-English comma splices), though sometimes prolix, beef up Coren's case in every instance.

Of particular interest is the chapter on ecumenism, in which Coren explores how the Catholic Church will interact with the other faiths of the world.  He describes the relationship between Catholics and Jews going forward as "lyrical with the music of reconciliation and reform" (164): though "Catholic hostility toward the Jewish people in greater or lesser degrees has been documented numerous times," the Catholic Church "has done most things possible to repent for what happened in the past, and there is every indication that the future Church will do the same" (174).

Coren, who himself boasts three Jewish grandparents, sums up this section as follows:

There is such a thing as Jewish anti-Catholic feeling just as there still is anti-Semitism.  But the Jewish people's problem ceased to be Christians a long time ago and now comes from a very different religion indeed.  It's tragic that there are still people who seem to prefer denial and ancient feuds to making that tough leap of understanding about the genuine culture war that is being fought. (175*)

Wise words, and worthwhile for both Jews and Catholics to ponder carefully.

(Elsewhere in the chapter, Coren is less coy.  He does not shrink from exploring the Church's fraught relationship with Islam -- yet he highlights the possibility of reconciliation even there.)

But more important than the Church's interactions with the outside world is how she will conduct herself within.  This, Coren makes clear, is not just a matter of bishops and priests re-examining celibacy or holding the line on marriage.  Rather, the future Church will avoid limping pitifully through the 21^st century only with the concerted cooperation of all the faithful -- especially, it must be stressed, the laity.

There's reason to grumble and to hope here: Coren juxtaposes the disastrous state of mainstream Catholic schools -- "there is simply no possibility of restoring the institutions such as Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, and Boston College"  -- with the inescapable observation that "younger people are attracted to and by orthodoxy.  They don't want slightly Catholicized versions of what they encounter on a daily basis, but a glimpse of the beauty and grace of Catholic worship" (187).  In a similar vein, he recalls Pope Benedict's prediction of a smaller but more faithful Church, but contrasts it with an almost triumphal declaration of resurgence in the Third World: "the future Church will often be a different colour [sic], from a different culture, speaking a different language.  That is worrying to the nostalgic, but not at all to the genuinely Catholic" (229).

But regardless of where the future Church is calumniated, where she is persecuted, and where she is ascendant, Coren smartly sticks to an important basic point.  Namely, as he tells it -- and this is a good indicator that the man knows what he's talking about -- the future Catholic Church will be, in its fundamentals, exactly like the present Catholic Church, and the past one.  It's in the particulars where we can expect to see some changes.

With Future now on the shelves, one can analyze the white-black-gold progression brought out in the covers of Coren's last three works.  Why Catholics Are Right and Heresy laid out a spectrum of facts, from white to black, for Catholics: the Church's positions and why she holds them, the assaults from without, and all the reasons to be proud of the faith and confident in what it imparts.  But black and white knowledge goes only so far without action.  The Future of Catholicism implores Catholics not only to take pride in their faith, but to actively preserve and defend it -- not only to accrue the knowledge available to them, but to share it.

Non-Catholics can read The Future of Catholicism for a lucidly presented sense of where the Church is going, and why.  Catholics, for their part, should look at Coren's latest as a manual, laying out how they do their part to effect a vibrant and indomitable Church for the 21^st century.

Most people take the Golden Rule -- Do unto others as you would have others do unto you -- as a truism, a passive way to look at life.  But with his gold-covered Future of Catholicism, Coren reminds us that -- for Catholics, at any rate -- the Golden Rule is a command.  Do.

Drew Belsky is American Thinker's deputy editor.  Contact him at drew@americanthinker.com, or follow him on Twitter.  The Future of Catholicism is available for purchase here.

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*I have corrected a typo acknowledged by the author in a personal communication.  The original reads, "But the Jewish people's problem ceased to be Christians' a long time ago[.]"

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/white_black_and_gold_the_future_of_catholicism.html#ixzz2lkuLr9Zl
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Aftermath of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case

Posted By Roger Kimball On November 24, 2013 @ 9:35 am In Uncategorized | 61 Comments

http://pjmedia.com

Crystal Mangum: found guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of her boyfriend.


Remember the so-called “Duke lacrosse rape case”? That was the scandal that briefly riveted the nation’s attention not once but twice. The first time was in March 2006 when a black stripper called Crystal Mangum accused three Duke University lacrosse players of kidnapping and rape. Yikes. The bien pensant commentariat went into overdrive to condemn not just the three lacrosse payers, but the entire Duke lacrosse team and indeed the “racist” culture of white privilege at Duke.

A few days ago, Ms. Mangum was convicted of second-degree murder ^[1] in the death of her boyfriend who died from wounds she inflicted with a kitchen knife.  That hasn’t made too many headlines, but its is a sad, if ironically apt, coda to the whole sorry story.

Travel back to 2006. Syracuse University early on got into the act when it decided not to accept as transfers any students from the Duke lacrosse team—not just the three accused chaps, mind you, but anyonecontaminated by having played lacrosse for Duke. “I think it would be inappropriate,” sniffed Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross ^[2]. (Where is he now? Llama farming in Peru? Nope. Still athletic director at Syracuse.)

But there are at least two other aspects of the case that deserve comment. One is the role of the media, which pounced on the story with unseemly delight. Oh, how the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and countless other bastions of liberal self-satisfaction loved it! Race. Class. Sex. Victimhood. It was the perfect morality tale. Those white jocks at “the Harvard of the South” just had to be guilty. And what a good time we were all going to have lacerating the malefactors while at the same time preening ourselves on our own superior virtue!

The editorials, the op-eds, the comments, the analyses poured forth non-stop, demonstrating that one of the deepest human passions is the urge to self-righteous pontification. The novelist Allan Gurganus epitomized the tone in an op-ed for the Times ^[3] in April 2006: “The children of privilege,” he thundered, “feel vividly alive only while victimizing, even torturing.” You don’t say? Even sports writers got into the act. Selena Roberts ^[4]located Duke University “at the intersection of entitlement and enablement, . . . virtuous on the outside, debauched on the inside.” By August 2006, as District Attorney Michael Nifong’s case was betraying worrisome fissures, the Times published a 6,000-word article ^[5] arguing—“praying” might be a more apposite term—that, whatever weaknesses there might be in the prosecution’s case, “there is also a body of evidence to support [taking] the matter to a jury.” As the Times columnist David Brooks ruefully noted ^[6] after the tide had begun to turn, the campaign against the athletes had the lineaments of a “witch hunt.”

Indeed. Richard Brodhead, Duke’s president, got out his broomstick and suspended the accused students, fired the lacrosse coach, cancelled the rest of the team’s season, and pandered to every possible PC interest, but especially to those baying for the heads of the accused. (One commentator estimated that only 3 percent of Brodhead’s statements could be construed as supporting the accused students.)

And then there was the Duke faculty. As Vincent Carroll, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, noted, “the most astonishing fact, hands down, was and remains the squalid behavior of the community of scholars at Duke itself. For months nearly the entire faculty fell into one of two camps: those who demanded the verdict first and the trial later, and those whose silence enabled their vigilante colleagues to set the tone.”

Particularly egregious was the behavior of the “Group of 88,” a congeries of faculty activists and fellow-travelers who signed “What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like? ^[7],” a full-page manifesto published in April 2006 in the Duke student newspaper. The statement, which purported to be “listening” to students on campus, mingled anonymous student comments with racialist agitprop. “Regardless of the results of the police investigation,” ran part of the introductory comment, “what is apparent every day now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism.” There followed a mosaic of histrionic proclamations: “We want the absence of terror,” one student is supposed to have said. “But we don’t really know what that means.” “This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with racist classmates, we go to gym with people who are racists . . .”

Some of the Group of 88 were common or garden-variety academic liberals—timid souls whose long tenure in the protected purlieus of the university surrounded by adolescents has nurtured their risible sense of self-importance and political enlightenment. But a good percentage were radicals more devoted to political activism than scholarship. Indeed, one scandal that still has not received sufficient publicity is the preposterous pseudo-scholarship purveyed by many trendy academics. A look at the CVs ^[8] of many members of the Group of 88 provides a case in point, partly shocking, partly embarrassing. It’s 99 percent race-class-gender gibberish embroidered with a toxic dollop of ill-digested lit-crit-speak and infatuation with the dregs of pop culture. “Shuckin’ Off the African-American Native Other: What’s PoMo Got to Do with It?,” Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, etc. This is scholarship at one of America’s best universities?

One of the central players in the scandal was Houston A. Baker, Jr.  A former president of the Modern Language Association, Baker has built his career through a carefully orchestrated fabrication of race scandals and juvenile cultural relativism. (Choosing between Shakespeare and Jacqueline Susann, he once wrote ^[9], is “no different from choosing between a hoagy and a pizza,” adding that “I am one whose career is dedicated to the day when we have a disappearance of those standards.”) Soon after the lacrosse scandal broke, Professor Baker called for “immediate dismissals of those principally responsible for the horrors of this spring moment at Duke. Coaches of the lacrosse team, the team itself and its players, and any other agents who silenced or lied about the real nature of events.” He joined the other members of the Group of 88 in signing a “thank you” letter to campus radicals who had distributed a “wanted” poster of the lacrosse players and publicly branded them “rapists.” After the more serious charges against the three students were dropped in December, the mother of another member of the team emailed to ask if he would reconsider his comments. Professor Baker’s response ^[10] is illuminating:

LIES You are just a provacateur [sic] on a happy New Years [sic] Eve trying to get credit for a scummy bunch of white males! . . .
I really hope whoever sent this stupid farce of an email rots in. . . . umhappy [sic] new year to you . . . and forgive me if your [sic] really are, quite sadly, mother of a “farm animal.”

Houston Baker was the George D. and Susan Fox Beischer Professor of English at Duke. How proud the Beischers must have been! In the aftermath of the Duke scandals, Baker decamped to a distinguished professorship at Vanderbilt University. What does that tell us about the state of American academia?

Nothing good. But Richard Brodhead and the Group of 88 were not the only ones out of control. There was also former District Attorney, now the disgraced and disbarred former District Attorney Michael Nifong. In a disgusting spectacle of prosecutorial abuse ^[11], Nifong suppressed evidence about the case, cynically bartering the lives of three white lacrosse players in his populist bid to win reelection in racially divided Durham.

The second suite of attention-grabbing headlines came on April 11, 2007, when Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, announced ^[12] that he was dropping all charges against the three Duke lacrosse players who had been indicted for kidnapping and raping Crystal Mangum. As Mr. Cooper stressed, he was dropping the case not because there was insufficient evidence—often a euphemism for “probably guilty, but we can’t prove it”—but because the three players were completely innocent of the charges that had recklessly been brought against them. Mr. Cooper went further: not only had there been “a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” but the case also showed “the enormous consequences of overreaching by a prosecutor.”

The story of this tawdry melodrama at Duke deserved an entire book, and it got a very good one in Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case ^[13]by KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, and the journalist Stuart Taylor. They show in horrifying detail how “many professors and, to a lesser extent, administrators at one of the nation’s finest universities chose to grind their radical political axes at the expense of both their own students’ well-being and the academy’s traditional fidelity to due process.”

Many of people suffered because of the Duke farce. But what of Professor Bakers and his preening, activist colleagues? What of the Group of 88? Only one member apologized. The rest issued a statement ^[14] that categorically rejected all “public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it.” I’ve often had occasion in the space to allude to Glenn Reynolds’s contention that higher education in this country is experiencing a dangerous and unsustainable bubble. ^[15]  What happened at Duke, up to and including the grisly aftermath of the conviction of Crystal Mangum for murder, is part of that story of hyperinflation.  Travesty finally met tragedy.  But the Group of 88 and their enablers sail blithely on.  For now.
__________________

**CORRECTION** In the original posting, I had misidentified Michael Nifong.  He was District Attorney for Durham County.

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Article printed from Roger’s Rules: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/11/24/aftermath-of-the-duke-lacrosse-rape-case/

URLs in this post:

[1] convicted of second-degree murder: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9335974

[2] sniffed Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross: http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=232142

[3] op-ed for the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/opinion/09gurganus.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1385307264-IZpHVdZUGftjJdLHWGnpYA

[4] Selena Roberts: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/sports/31roberts.html

[5] 6,000-word article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/us/25duke.html

[6] David Brooks ruefully noted: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/opinion/28brooks.html

[7] What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?: http://johnsville.blogspot.com/2006/11/duke-case-listening-statement.html

[8] the CVs: http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/AAAS/faculty

[9] he once wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/06/us/education-us-literature-canon-under-siege.html

[10] Professor Baker’s response: http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2007/01/baker-in-his-own-words.html

[11] prosecutorial abuse: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229

[12] Roy Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, announced: http://www.ncdoj.com/News-and-Alerts/News-Releases-and-Advisories/Press-Releases/AG-Cooper-dismisses-charges-in-Duke-Lacrosse-case.aspx

[13] Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case : http://www.amazon.com/Until-Proven-Innocent-Correctness-Injustices-ebook/dp/B001FA0SPG

[14] issued a statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_88

[15] dangerous and unsustainable bubble.: http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Education-Bubble-Encounter-Broadside/dp/1594036659

Wind Turbines Are Climate-Change Scarecrows

By Robert Bryce

http://www.nationalreview.com

November 26, 2013

For years, the wind-energy sector and renewable-energy advocates have repeatedly claimed that wind turbines are essential to the fight against carbon dioxide emissions and catastrophic climate change. Here’s the reality: Wind turbines are nothing more than climate-change scarecrows.

The proliferation of wind turbines over the past few years has not, and will not, result in statistically significant reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions. That point can easily be proven with a bit of simple math, which I’ll do in a moment.

Before we look at the numbers, allow me to bolster my thesis by pointing you to an open letter issued recently by some of the world’s top climate scientists. Although the language they used was not as blunt as what I’m using here, they made a similar point. That is, if the world’s policymakers and environmentalists are serious about addressing climate change, then they must admit that renewable energy simply cannot meet the world’s soaring demand for energy at prices that consumers can afford.

The letter, which was clearly aimed at anti-nuclear environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, was signed by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist; Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Tom Wigley of the University of Adelaide in Australia; and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution. The letter says that while renewables “like wind and solar and biomass” are growing, those sources “cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires.” It went on, saying that “in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.”

The four concluded their epistle by saying that if environmental activists have “real concern about risks from climate change,” then they should begin “calling for the development and deployment of advanced nuclear energy.”

Frances Beinecke of the NRDC offered a predictable response to the letter, telling The Associated Press that nuclear is not a “panacea.” She added that “the better path is to clean up our power plants and invest in efficiency and renewable energy.”

Ah yes, efficiency and renewables — the two-legged stool upon which the Green Left has been trying to balance its untenable energy policies for decades. Never mind that even as energy efficiency has increased dramatically, energy demand has been soaring. Global energy use has nearly doubled since 1982, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. As for non-hydro renewable energy, despite decades of hefty subsidies and in some cases, mandates, it now provides about 2 percent of the 250 million barrels of oil-equivalent energy (from all sources) that is being consumed globally every day.

The hard truth is that renewable energy cannot even keep pace with soaring global energy demand, much less replace significant quantities of hydrocarbons. That’s not an opinion. It’s basic math.

Last year, all of the wind turbines on the planet provided about 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to the global economy. That sounds like a lot until you compare wind’s contribution with that of the world’s fastest-growing source of energy: coal. In 2012, global coal use increased by about 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in coal usage, we’d have to nearly replicate the entire global fleet of wind turbines — some 285,000 megawatts of capacity — and we’d have to do so every year.

The same is true for solar energy. I’m bullish on solar. I have 3,200 watts of solar panels on the roof of my home in Austin, Texas. (Yes, I got a big subsidy to install them.) The rapidly declining cost of photovoltaic panels is encouraging. But last year, all of the world’s solar installations contributed just 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to the global economy. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in coal usage, we’d have to install about five times the world’s existing solar capacity — which totaled about 100,000 megawatts in 2012 — and we’d have to do so every year.

Now let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions. In 2012, the American Wind Energy Association claims, wind energy reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 80 million tons. Again, that sounds significant. But consider this: Last year, global emissions of that gas totaled 34.5 billion tons. Thus, the 60,000 megawatts of U.S. wind-generation capacity reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by about two-tenths of 1 percent.

To make the point even clearer, let’s look at the history of carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1982, global carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by an average of about 500 million tons per year.

If we take the American Wind Energy Association’s claim that 60,000 megawatts of wind-energy capacity can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 80 million tons per year, then simple math shows that if we wanted to stop the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions by using wind energy alone, we would have to install about 375,000 megawatts of new wind-energy capacity every year. If we assume each turbine has a capacity of two megawatts, that would mean installing 187,500 wind turbines every year, or nearly 500 every day.

How much land would all those wind turbines require? Again, the math is straightforward. The power density of wind energy is 1 watt per square meter [PDF]. Therefore, merely halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions with wind energy would require covering a land area of about 375 billion square meters or 375,000 square kilometers — an area the size of Germany — and we would have to do so every year.

What would that mean on a daily basis? Using wind alone to stop the growth in carbon dioxide emissions would require us to cover about 1,000 square kilometers with wind turbines — a land area about 17 times the size of Manhattan Island — and we would have to do so every day. Given the ongoing backlash against the wind industry that is already underway here in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, the silliness of such a proposal is obvious.

The punch line here is equally obvious: If we are going to agree that carbon dioxide is a problem, then we must embrace the technologies that are most effective at reducing our production of that gas. As Hansen, Wigley, and their colleagues point out, that means nuclear. And while the climate scientists don’t mention methane, we are also going to have to use lots of natural gas, as that’s the only other fuel that can supplant significant amounts of coal. 

Over the past few years, the U.S. and other countries have been subsidizing the paving of vast areas of the countryside with 500-foot-high bird- and bat-killing whirligigs that are nothing more than climate talismans. Wind turbines are not going to stop changes in the earth’s climate. Instead, they are token gestures — giant steel scarecrows — that are deceiving the public into thinking that we as a society are doing something to avert the possibility of catastrophic climate change.

— Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His fifth book,Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: Innovating toward a Greener, Richer World, will be published next May.

New Springsteen album due in January

NEW ALBUM OFFICIAL: MAN, THE DOPE'S THAT THERE'S HIGH HOPES

http://www.backstreets.com/news.html

November 25, 2013

They couldn't go back to Australia without a new album, right? Right. On January 14, less than two weeks before Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band set out for South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, Springsteen will release his 18th studio album, High Hopes.

The title track is one with a history in Springsteen's repertoire, a Tim Scott/Havalinas cut that Bruce first tackled with the E Street Band in '95, then revisited live in Australia early this year. In the album's liner notes, Springsteen describes the cover — resurrected at Tom Morello's suggestion — as a catalyst for this new album. Bruce states that he was already "working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade," but then "Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level."

So this is not Tracks 2. Still, "High Hopes" isn't the only song fans have heard before; as Springsteen writes, "Some of these songs... you'll be familiar with from our live versions. I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording." A full half of the album's 12 songs have been performed live, also including "American Skin (41 Shots)," "The Wall," "The Ghost of Tom Joad," Saints cover "Just Like Fire Would," and Suicide cover "Dream Baby Dream." Only one of them, however, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," had been released in a studio version already, and that, of course, in a dramatically different form.

Enter Tom Morello. As the High Hopes "muse," Morello is all over this record, dueting on "Joad" and playing on "High Hopes," "Harry's Place" (a title known from Springsteen's Rising-era notebook), "American Skin," "Just Like Fire Would," "Heaven's Wall," "Hunter of Invisible Game," and "Dream Baby Dream."

The remaining tracks on the record are all Springsteen originals: "Down in the Hole," "Frankie Fell in Love," and "This Is Your Sword."

In addition to the Sydney studio sessions Springsteen had previously spoke about, the album was recorded in New Jersey, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New York City, with production credit going to Brendan O'Brien, Ron Aniello, and Springsteen. The various locales and production credits reflect material dating back to sessions for The Rising.As the press release states, "Clarence Clemons, who passed away in 2011, and Danny Federici, who passed away in 2008, also appear on several songs."

	Songwriter	Producer	Played live	Previous availability
1. High Hopes	Tim Scott McConnell	RA, BS	yes	studio, 1995
2. Harry's Place	Bruce Springsteen	B'OB	no, only title known	none
3. American Skin (41 Shots)	Bruce Springsteen	RA, BS	yes	live, 2000
4. Just Like Fire Would	Chris J. Bailey (The Saints)	RA, BS	yes	none
5. Down in the Hole	Bruce Springsteen	BO'B	no	none
6. Heaven's Wall	Bruce Springsteen	B'OB, RA, BS	no	none
7. Frankie Fell in Love	Bruce Springsteen	RA, BS	no	none
8. This Is Your Sword	Bruce Springsteen	RA, BS	no	none
9. Hunter of Invisible Game	Bruce Springsteen	B'OB	no	none
10. The Ghost of Tom Joad	Bruce Springsteen	RA, BS	yes	studio, 1995; live, 2008
11. The Wall	Bruce Springsteen (inspired by Joe Grushecky)	RA, BS	yes	none
12. Dream Baby Dream	Martin Rev and Alan Vega (Suicide)	RA, BS	yes	live, 2005

High Hopes can be pre-ordered now. The album will be available digitally from iTunes, with tracks "High Hopes" and "Dream Baby Dream" available now as mp3s.

In the U.S., Amazon.com will carry an exclusive, limited version with a bonus live DVD: Springsteen and the E Street Band performing Born in the U.S.A. in its entirety at the 2013 Hard Rock Calling show, June 30 at London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. TheAmazon Bonus Limited Edition is available now for pre-order.

The video for the title track, directed by Thom Zimny, is a collage featuring photos from Danny Clinch, Australian tour footage shot by Chris Hilson and featuring Tom Morello.

Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes Liner Notes 

I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello (sitting in for Steve during the Australian leg of our tour) suggested we ought to add "High Hopes" to our live set. I had cut "High Hopes," a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the LA based Havalinas, in the '90s. We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it. We re-cut it mid tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with "Just Like Fire Would," a song from one of my favorite early Australian punk bands, The Saints (check out "I'm Stranded"). Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level. Thanks for the inspiration Tom.

Some of these songs, "American Skin" and "Ghost of Tom Joad," you'll be familiar with from our live versions. I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording. "The Wall" is something I'd played on stage a few times and remains very close to my heart. The title and idea were Joe Grushecky's, then the song appeared after Patti and I made a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It was inspired by my memories of Walter Cichon. Walter was one of the great early Jersey Shore rockers, who along with his brother Ray (one of my early guitar mentors) led the "Motifs". The Motifs were a local rock band who were always a head above everybody else. Raw, sexy and rebellious, they were the heroes you aspired to be. But these were heroes you could touch, speak to, and go to with your musical inquiries. Cool, but always accessible, they were an inspiration to me, and many young working musicians in 1960's central New Jersey. Though my character in "The Wall" is a Marine, Walter was actually in the Army, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry. He was the first person I ever stood in the presence of who was filled with the mystique of the true rock star. Walter went missing in action in Vietnam in March 1968. He still performs somewhat regularly in my mind, the way he stood, dressed, held the tambourine, the casual cool, the freeness. The man who by his attitude, his walk said "you can defy all this, all of what's here, all of what you've been taught, taught to fear, to love and you'll still be alright." His was a terrible loss to us, his loved ones and the local music scene. I still miss him.

This is music I always felt needed to be released. From the gangsters of "Harry's Place," the ill-prepared roomies on "Frankie Fell In Love" (shades of Steve and I bumming together in our Asbury Park apartment) the travelers in the wasteland of "Hunter Of Invisible Game," to the soldier and his visiting friend in "The Wall", I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing. Hope you enjoy it.
—Bruce Springsteen

This morning's official press release from Shore Fire Media announced details regarding the album only; there has yet to be any indication of further touring after New Zealand in March.

Fiasco in Geneva

Posted By P. David Hornik On November 25, 2013 @ 12:43 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, second left, meets with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, center, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, third right, at the Iran Nuclear talks in Geneva, Nov. 9, 2013. (AP)

“Israel is the sinister, unclean, rabid dog of the region…. The Zionist regime is a regime whose pillars are extremely shaky and is doomed to collapse.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that on Wednesday to a huge assembly of his Basij militiamen. The Times of Israel noted that “Footage of the event showed the crowd shouting ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel.’”

Slightly later the BBC gave this translation (find it here) of parts of Khamenei’s speech:

We are against the arrogance. We fight against the arrogance…. The government of the United States of America is on the top of the arrogance in the world. [The audience repeatedly chants: “Death to America" 

The Zionist regime is doomed to oblivion. The Zionist regime is an imposed regime which is formed by force. None of the formations or creatures which are formed by force is durable, and neither is this one…. Unfortunately, some European countries cringe before this creature which is not worthy of the name of a human being, before these leaders of the Zionist regime, who look like beasts and who cannot be called human.

One might wonder: on the eve of the new round of nuclear talks with the P5+1 countries in Geneva, why did Khamenei use such language? Since Khamenei is indeed the “supreme leader” of Iran, and Iran appeared to want an agreement, wouldn’t Khamenei have thought such a tirade would make the P5+1—or at least its leader, the United States—have grave doubts about whom it was dealing with?

The answer is that Khamenei knew better; he knew his words would have no such effect. Just three days later, on Saturday, President Obama announced that a six-month interim deal had been struck, claiming it had “cut off Iran’s most likely paths to a bomb.”

The problem is that it does no such thing.

Although the text of the deal was still under wraps, the U.S. State Department released a fact sheet on its main points. They concern Iran’s uranium enrichment, its Arak plutonium reactor, monitoring of its nuclear program by the IAEA, and—in return for Iran’s ostensible concessions—sanctions relief.

On enrichment, Iran is supposed to stop enriching uranium to 20%, not install additional centrifuges, leave some of its existing centrifuges inoperable, and not increase its stockpile of 3.5%-enriched uranium.

And yet, as Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai notes:

These restrictions are in fact almost meaningless, as the Iranians have already managed to install nearly 18,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium. With such an amount of centrifuges, they can enrich uranium to any level they want within a short period of time. At the moment they already have more than 8 tons of uranium enriched to a 3.5-5% level, which is enough for four to five atom bombs of the size dropped on Hiroshima.

By allowing Iran to go on enriching uranium despite six UN Security Council resolutions in recent years that prohibited it from doing so, the P5+1 has—as Iranian president Hassan Rouhani lost no time proclaiming triumphantly to his countrymen—conceded on the crucial issue of Iran’s supposed “right to enrich.”

Which raises this question: now that the “international community” has validated Iran’s violation of six Security Council resolutions, why should it be any more resolute in enforcing the current deal?

On the plutonium reactor, the State Department’s fact sheet lists some things Iran is not supposed to do there for the next six months, such as fueling it, adding components, transferring fuel and heavy water to it, and others.

What Iran does not have to stop, however, is construction at Arak. Ben-Yishai calls this “the major flaw,” noting that:

after the construction is completed, the installment of plutonium production equipment…can be implemented for about six months—and then Iran will have, together with the enrichment abilities it already possesses, a perfect fuel circle which can produce a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. 

In addition, when that equipment is brought in and the reactor becomes “hot,” it cannot be targeted in a military operation for fear of a Chernobyl-like disaster.

On monitoring, the fact sheet says Iran has agreed to “provide daily access by IAEA inspectors” to two of its enrichment sites, Natanz and Fordow.

That, however, in no way addresses the issue of secret nuclear sites. Just last week an Iranian exiled opposition group—which has exposed such sites in the past—said it had information about a secret site now under construction.

And Mark Hibbs, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment, said monitoring would be “full of landmines” and that it would

require a level of cooperation and information sharing between the IAEA, the powers and Iran which is probably unprecedented concerning one country’s nuclear program…. 

Which again raises the question: are the Iranian regime and its operatives the sort of people one should trust?

Finally, on sanctions, the State Department fact sheet says the deal will provide “limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible relief” to Iran worth about $7 billion.

But Mark D. Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warns that:

the carefully constructed sanctions architecture developed over decades has been significantly rolled back…those touting this agreement do not appear to understand the fragility of sanctions, or the dangers of rolling them back and easing the economic pressure on Iran.

Meanwhile AP reported on Sunday that the Obama administration and Iran have been holding secret talks on a nuclear deal over the past year.  For ten days following the UN General Assembly meeting in September,

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stayed in the U.S….along with 75 colleagues from President Rouhani’s entourage—businessmen, industrialists and representatives of the Iranian gas and oil sector, who met with representatives of American oil companies Chevron and Exxon.

It makes you wonder how much of the remaining sanctions will be left after six months—and just who is going to revamp them after, of course, Iran cheats on all of its commitments.

If it sounds like the West reaching yet another hollow deal with a heinous, manipulative, entirely dishonest regime, it is. If it sounds like the Obama administration was never really serious about the Iranian threat in the first place, it’s that too.

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Iran Deal: Not as Bad as It Could Be, but Still Bad

By  Fred Fleitz
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner
November 24, 2013


U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attend a meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany during the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013. (Jason DeCrow/AP)

It’s not a surprise that President Obama and Secretary Kerry are doing victory laps over the deal reached with Iran tonight.  President Obama has been trying to get an agreement with Iran since he came to office and his administration has been desperate to get one over the last few weeks.

The claim that this deal will set back Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is false. While Iran has committed to downblend its 20 percent enriched uranium to reactor grade, the main proliferation threat is Iran’s much larger reactor-grade uranium stockpile. Iran can convert either its 20 percent or reactor-grade uranium stockpiles into weapons-grade uranium in a couple of months according to studies by the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Science and International Security, and the Nuclear Proliferation Education Center.

Increased monitoring will prevent Iran from enriching its reactor-grade uranium to weapons fuel for now, but this threat remains until its reactor-grade stockpile is removed from the country. There’s no indication Iran will agree to this.

Over the next six months, Iran will keep its reactor-grade uranium stockpile and has agreed to convert new uranium enriched to this level to uranium oxide so the amount of reactor-grade uranium will remain at the same level. This will not set back Iran’s reactor-grade stockpile since uranium oxide can be readily converted back into a uranium compound (UF6) that can be further enriched to weapons grade.

The deal’s provision that Iran not add additional centrifuges is significant, although it will be allowed to replace damaged centrifuges. But why is Iran enriching uranium at all? Years of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanded Iran halt all enrichment. To get this deal, the Obama administration threw out this demand, a concession that undermines U.S. resolve.

A provision that Iran leave inoperable roughly half of installed centrifuges at the Natanz facility and three-quarters of installed centrifuges at the underground Fordow facility is significant since it will not allow Iran to increase the rate of uranium enrichment. However, this concession is offset by the fact that Tehran already has a large stockpile of enriched uranium.

Other aspects of agreement are less significant than they seem.

Iran agreed not to install or use advanced centrifuges, but it has few of them now and they have encountered technical problems.

Iran agreed not to commission, fuel, or add fuel components to the Arak heavy-water reactor which will be a source of plutonium for the next six months. But this reactor is at least a year away from start-up and its construction violates U.N. Security Council resolutions. This is clever language that allows work on this reactor to continue.

The White House statement that this agreement is an intermediate step that expires in six months and “and does not represent an acceptable end state to the United States or our P5+1 partners” is encouraging. The White House contends that a final agreement will require Iran to come into compliance with all U.N. Security Council resolutions and give the IAEA full access to all nuclear sites.

This step consisted of very mild concessions by Iran for sanctions relief.  The next step will be much harder and supposedly will require Iran to make much more significant concessions. While this agreement does not concede Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium, it appears there will some sort of Western concession, probably allowing Iran to continue to enriched uranium to reactor grade.

A final agreement that resolves the threat from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons must include halting all enrichment, removing all enriched uranium from the country, dismantling all centrifuges, halting work on the Arak reactor, and full access by the IAEA to suspected nuclear sites. There is no sign that Iran will agree to such conditions.

A Bad and Morally Indefensible Deal

By  Jack David

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

November 24, 2013

The announcement that the P-5+1 (the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) reached a nuclear deal with Iran has just been made. A few details of the deal have been announced and there likely will be others. But what has been reported so far is sufficient to conclude, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said of the draft deal reported two weeks ago, that “this is a very, very bad deal.”

The Iranian “concessions” thus far announced are unimpressive: Iran will stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent; it will install no additional centrifuges; it will convert the 100 pounds or so of 20 percent enriched uranium which quickly can be converted to weapons-grade uranium to something harder to convert to weapons-grade uranium. Iran has not agreed to dismantle any of the thousands of centrifuges it has installed and continues to operate; to send any of its 20 percent enriched uranium out of the country; to close the nuclear facilities which will soon provide it with plutonium with which to make nuclear weapons; to stop its testing of long-range missiles; or to cease its support of terrorist activities by Hezbollah and others.

The United States has reportedly agreed to provide Iran with $7 billion in sanctions relief. This relief doubtless will help Iran in many ways, not least the “right” to continue the dangerous nuclear-weapons development and terrorist-support activities which it has long maintained. It will not be in the least surprising, as more details of the deal are announced, to learn of other benefits provided to Iran to induce it to agree . . . to something – anything.

The U.S., by pressing forward with this very, very bad deal has further eroded its dwindling international credibility. No country in the Middle East will perceive U.S. agreement to this deal as anything but further evidence of its weakness, further evidence that the U.S. is content to undermine its historical alliances, expressions to the contrary notwithstanding.

In defending the deal, the United States (and perhaps others among its P-5+1 partners) doubtless will point to the fact that it is only an interim step and that Iran has agreed to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit its still-operating facilities. Given Iran’s long history of preventing IAEA inspectors to do their jobs and its long history of flouting its obligations regarding its nuclear program, the value of this Iranian promise should be discounted to zero.

In a speech in Tehran this past week to a crowd of thousands that was was broadcast live, Iranian Supreme leader Khamenei attacked the U.S., France, and Israel, saying that “Zionist officials cannot be called humans, they are like animals,” that “the Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation,” that the “Zionist regime” is the “rabid dog of the region.”

The deal the U.S. and its partners just struck with Iran is a “very, very bad deal” as a practical and a political matter. In the context of Khamenei’s contemporaneous statements and the background of so many other statements of similar stripe, it is also morally indefensible.

— Jack David, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for combating weapons of mass destruction and negotiations policy from 2004 to 2006.