Friday, July 14, 2006
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I was supposed to go to New York City this week, and found myself making travel arrangements on 7/11, the latest blood-red letter day of jihadist infamy. That was when bombers struck in Bombay, killing more than 200 and wounding more than 700 rush-hour commuters just trying to get home for dinner. I decided to fly.
But was that the best (read: safest) way to go? The plot to blow up Manhattan's Holland Tunnel had this same week been "disrupted," as they say, so maybe driving a car before another plot was cooked up was the better bet. But since not even the Department of Homeland Security could "disrupt" the heavy traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, I still decided to fly.
Then again, aviation news was hardly confidence-building. The Houston Chronicle reported that a man with "a Middle Eastern name" and, as one airport screener put it, "all the components" of a bomb except for the explosives (a 9-volt battery taped to an alarm clock, a copy of the Koran, and "gutted out" shoes) was somehow cleared to fly the friendly skies by a local policeman. Which sounds quite nuts. And while the cop involved has been transferred to a desk job, that's no relief.
That's because this is just life as we know it, and, worse, life as we expect to know it in America, land of the free and stomping ground of the Islamic terrorist. Frankly, I hardly recognize the old place. The "home of the brave" becomes something else again when "brave" necessarily constitutes booking that domestic flight, taking that commuter train and sitting like ducks wondering whether we'll reach our destination in one piece -- unlike hundreds of innocents in Bombay. An Indian railway laborer made the carnage vivid to the Washington Post: "We collected scattered limbs with our own hands and put them in bundles and sent them to hospital."
Noting the ensuing security upsurge in American cities, Islamic expert Robert Spencer wrote the following at his must-read Web site, JihadWatch.org:
"This is the effect of terror, and this is just what the terrorists want that effect to be. It ties up their enemies' time and money, and it strikes fear in their hearts, in accordance with the Qur'an: 'Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly (8:60).'"
Spencer continued: "Of course, from the infidels' standpoint all anti-terror measures must be undertaken. But they should be accompanied by a strength of will that realizes that it is precisely fear and the loss of the will to resist that the jihadists are ultimately hoping to bring about."
He's right. The will to resist is indeed the target of jihadists from India to Israel, from New York City to London. But, as Spencer would undoubtedly agree, security measures alone -- walking through metal detectors (in our socks), submitting our belongings to random searches -- don't constitute policy. They don't solve the problem of global jihad: the war of terrorism. At best, security measures thwart acts of terrorism -- and thank goodness -- but only for another day, another trip, another short hop home.
Besides the will to resist, then, we need the knowledge to resist -- the knowledge that there is in the religion of Islam itself the historical, inexorable and driving force behind what the entire non-Muslim world is now experiencing as jihad terror. Whether most Muslims wouldn't hurt a fly is an increasingly irrelevant footnote to the hostile aggression of other Muslims who, in a very short time, have actually transformed civilization as we used to know it.
If the will to resist allows us to manage the threat of violence, the will to connect the dots would compel us to eliminate it. How? By carefully examining and, I would hope, reconsidering and reversing, through foreign, domestic and immigration initiatives, what should now be seen, gimlet-eyed, as the Islamization of the non-Islamic world. Such an assessment, however, is all too vulnerable to catcall-attacks of "bigotry," even "Nazism" -- a deceptively inverted assault given the doctrinal bigotry and similarities to Nazism historically promulgated by the Islamic creed.
But it's something to think about this summer -- on a vacation trip.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Mark Steyn: 'Great Men' Have Grating Effect on Mideast
July 16, 2006
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
I was on the road the other night and so found myself watching CNN's coverage of Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, etc. It was "Larry King Live," and it was one of those shows where Larry interviews great men about what needs to be done and the great men all agree that what needs to be done is that the president needs to get other great men involved to "broker" a "deal." Sen. Chuck Hagel proposed that Bush appoint Colin Powell or Jim Baker as his Special Envoy; Sen. Barbara Boxer proposed that Bush appoint Madeleine Albright as his Even More Special Envoy. Sen. George Mitchell, who himself served as Extra-Special Super-Duper Envoy a few years back, proposed that Bush involve the European Union. And someone else proposed the G-8. And Larry suggested Putin. Oh, and some smooth-talking apologist in Savile Row pinstripes proposed Chirac, because he and Bush had agreed a U.N. resolution on something or other a year or two back.
Aside from Larry's closing tribute to Red Buttons, I've never heard more rubbish in a single hour since . . . well, come to think of it, since the last time I saw "Larry King Live." But at least that was a special with Heather Mills (Paul McCartney's missus), with which subject Larry seemed rather more engaged, at least after Lady McCartney plunked her artificial leg up on the desk and invited Larry to feel its lifelike texture, which is more than one can say for Larry these days. But the point is that Larry and his Friars' Club Roast approach to geopolitics is about as irrelevant to what's going on there as could be devised, short of Sen. Hagel proposing Heather Mills as his Special Envoy, which may be just what Hamas and Hezbollah deserve.
It's easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East "peace plans" named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his "road map." Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to "Tenet," which would get us back to "Mitchell," which would get us back to "Wye River," which would get us back to "Oslo," which would get us back to Kansas.
And none of these Great Men meeting with other Great Men gets us anywhere. Some of the Great Men can't speak for their peoples (Mubarak) or their legislatures (Abbas). And a lot of the Great Men can't even speak for themselves: From the late Yasser Arafat to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, they say one thing in meetings with Western emissaries and something entirely different to their compatriots. And some of the Great Men we send to negotiate aren't all that great: the wretched Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, is, in fact, a patsy for the nuclear mullahs. To reprise one of my all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions, let's recall the perfect distillation of what Great Man diplomacy boils down to in the Middle East, as reported in the New York Times exactly a year ago:
"Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday."
If we don't let Iran go nuclear, they'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, Chuck Hagel.
The forces at play in the Middle East are beyond the Geopolitical Friars' Club. The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian "moderates" who've been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult? Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.
Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran's land borders with the Zionist Entity. They're "occupied territories" but it's not the Jews doing the occupying. So you've got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don't get Larry King's salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get.
One of the interesting features of the present escalation is the circumspection of Israel's Arab neighbors. Once upon a time, it would have been Egypt and Jordan threatening the Zionist usurpers. But these countries have been, militarily, a big flop against the Zionist Entity since King Hussein fired Sir John Glubb as head of the Arab Legion. So after '73 they put their money on terrorism, and schoolgirl suicide bombers -- the kind of "popular resistance" that buys you better publicity in the salons of the West. And one result of that has been to deliver Palestinian pseudo-"nationalism" away from Arab influence and into hard-core Iranian Islamist hands. It's Iran that wants war, not Egypt or Jordan, So Jim Baker jetting in to shake hands with, say, Jordan's King Abdullah is a waste of time, because King Abdullah cannot impact on the scene in any useful way.
During all the time the Great Men were shuttling back and forth, a kind of toxic globalization occurred: The Palestinian "movement" (insofar as there ever was a genuine nationalist movement) became infected and eventually annexed by hard-core Islamism and the Palestinians' most depraved terror techniques were exported to every corner of the world. You can build a "security fence" in the region, but what we might call Palestinianism has leapt the psychological fence and incubated in radicalized Muslim communities worldwide: It's not just Palestinians but also Yorkshiremen who now blow themselves up on public transit. What's happened in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and elsewhere is that the weaknesses of those polities were exploited by Iran and others through various client groups and a potent ideology that's really a virus.
That's a much more cunning and effective strategy than sending a fellow in a suit to concoct a plan in his name. We need to learn from the Iranians. We need to wage war on the ideology, because until we do, the reality is that the Middle East's fetid "stability," its demography, its remorseless nuclearization and proxy militarization all favor Israel's and our enemies.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
I was on the road the other night and so found myself watching CNN's coverage of Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, etc. It was "Larry King Live," and it was one of those shows where Larry interviews great men about what needs to be done and the great men all agree that what needs to be done is that the president needs to get other great men involved to "broker" a "deal." Sen. Chuck Hagel proposed that Bush appoint Colin Powell or Jim Baker as his Special Envoy; Sen. Barbara Boxer proposed that Bush appoint Madeleine Albright as his Even More Special Envoy. Sen. George Mitchell, who himself served as Extra-Special Super-Duper Envoy a few years back, proposed that Bush involve the European Union. And someone else proposed the G-8. And Larry suggested Putin. Oh, and some smooth-talking apologist in Savile Row pinstripes proposed Chirac, because he and Bush had agreed a U.N. resolution on something or other a year or two back.
Aside from Larry's closing tribute to Red Buttons, I've never heard more rubbish in a single hour since . . . well, come to think of it, since the last time I saw "Larry King Live." But at least that was a special with Heather Mills (Paul McCartney's missus), with which subject Larry seemed rather more engaged, at least after Lady McCartney plunked her artificial leg up on the desk and invited Larry to feel its lifelike texture, which is more than one can say for Larry these days. But the point is that Larry and his Friars' Club Roast approach to geopolitics is about as irrelevant to what's going on there as could be devised, short of Sen. Hagel proposing Heather Mills as his Special Envoy, which may be just what Hamas and Hezbollah deserve.
It's easy to fly in a guy in a suit to hold a meeting. Half the fellows inside the Beltway have Middle East "peace plans" named after them. Bush flew in himself a year or two back to announce his "road map." Before that it was Cheney, who flew in with the Cheney plan, which was a plan to open up a road map back to the last plan, which would get us back to "Tenet," which would get us back to "Mitchell," which would get us back to "Wye River," which would get us back to "Oslo," which would get us back to Kansas.
And none of these Great Men meeting with other Great Men gets us anywhere. Some of the Great Men can't speak for their peoples (Mubarak) or their legislatures (Abbas). And a lot of the Great Men can't even speak for themselves: From the late Yasser Arafat to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, they say one thing in meetings with Western emissaries and something entirely different to their compatriots. And some of the Great Men we send to negotiate aren't all that great: the wretched Mohammed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, is, in fact, a patsy for the nuclear mullahs. To reprise one of my all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions, let's recall the perfect distillation of what Great Man diplomacy boils down to in the Middle East, as reported in the New York Times exactly a year ago:
"Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview published Thursday."
If we don't let Iran go nuclear, they'll go nuclear. Negotiate that, Chuck Hagel.
The forces at play in the Middle East are beyond the Geopolitical Friars' Club. The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian "moderates" who've been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult? Israel withdrew from Gaza and, instead of getting on with a prototypical Palestinian state, Hamas turned the territory into an Islamist camp. Israel withdrew from Lebanon entirely in 2000, yet Hezbollah is now lobbing rockets at Haifa.
Why? Because in both cases these territories are now in effect Iran's land borders with the Zionist Entity. They're "occupied territories" but it's not the Jews doing the occupying. So you've got a choice between talking with proxies or going to the source: Tehran. And, as the unending talks with the EU have demonstrated, the ayatollahs use negotiations with the civilized world as comedy relief. They don't get Larry King's salutes to Red Buttons and Don Knotts on Iranian TV, so entering into talks with the French foreign minister is as near to big-time laughs as the mullahs get.
One of the interesting features of the present escalation is the circumspection of Israel's Arab neighbors. Once upon a time, it would have been Egypt and Jordan threatening the Zionist usurpers. But these countries have been, militarily, a big flop against the Zionist Entity since King Hussein fired Sir John Glubb as head of the Arab Legion. So after '73 they put their money on terrorism, and schoolgirl suicide bombers -- the kind of "popular resistance" that buys you better publicity in the salons of the West. And one result of that has been to deliver Palestinian pseudo-"nationalism" away from Arab influence and into hard-core Iranian Islamist hands. It's Iran that wants war, not Egypt or Jordan, So Jim Baker jetting in to shake hands with, say, Jordan's King Abdullah is a waste of time, because King Abdullah cannot impact on the scene in any useful way.
During all the time the Great Men were shuttling back and forth, a kind of toxic globalization occurred: The Palestinian "movement" (insofar as there ever was a genuine nationalist movement) became infected and eventually annexed by hard-core Islamism and the Palestinians' most depraved terror techniques were exported to every corner of the world. You can build a "security fence" in the region, but what we might call Palestinianism has leapt the psychological fence and incubated in radicalized Muslim communities worldwide: It's not just Palestinians but also Yorkshiremen who now blow themselves up on public transit. What's happened in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and elsewhere is that the weaknesses of those polities were exploited by Iran and others through various client groups and a potent ideology that's really a virus.
That's a much more cunning and effective strategy than sending a fellow in a suit to concoct a plan in his name. We need to learn from the Iranians. We need to wage war on the ideology, because until we do, the reality is that the Middle East's fetid "stability," its demography, its remorseless nuclearization and proxy militarization all favor Israel's and our enemies.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Bob Seger's Latest Road Heads Straight on Through to Country
July 15, 2006
The New York Times
By JEFF LEEDS
LOS ANGELES, July 14 — Given that the rock legend Bob Seger first bemoaned the eclipse of “old time rock ’n’ roll” in 1978, one can only imagine how he feels now. Rock music remains a popular radio genre, but part of its audience has been drifting away. So where is a resurgent rock star, known for hits like “Hollywood Nights” and “Night Moves,” to turn? To country music fans.
As part of the promotion for “Face the Promise,” Mr. Seger’s first album of new material in 11 years, his longtime label, Capitol Records, is shipping his first new single, “Wait for Me,” to country radio, in addition to stations that play classic rock and adult-contemporary formats.
There are also plans to pair Mr. Seger with an established country artist on “Crossroads,” the odd-couple performance series on Country Music Television, and in other nationally televised performances. And an album of Seger covers performed by country artists may be in the offing, too.
Mr. Seger’s return comes as a new crop of artists better known for their rock or pop hits are crossing into country territory. Earlier this year, Bon Jovi scored a No. 1 hit on the country chart with “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” a song performed with Jennifer Nettles of the hot country act Sugarland. Michelle Branch, who broke onto the pop charts as a teenage singer-songwriter, showed up on country radio with the debut of the Wreckers, the rootsy duo she formed with a friend.
Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, lent his trademark wail to a new single by the country singer Keith Anderson, aptly titled “Three Chord Country and American Rock ’n’ Roll.” And Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, who had recorded albums with Chet Atkins, is back on the country charts thanks to a collaboration with Emmylou Harris.
Many trace the most recent crossover fervor to the unexpected success of “Picture,” a song performed by Kid Rock with Sheryl Crow, on country stations four years ago.
Those efforts represent only the latest moves to blur the lines between pop, rock and country: 40 years ago, Ray Charles reimagined Hank Williams and Eddy Arnold in recording his trailblazing album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.”
But the transformation of the radio landscape in recent years seems to encourage crossovers once more. In particular, the country format has displayed relative resilience as other formats that once provided a natural home for these artists now appear unreliable, if not outright unwelcoming.
Slipping between musical genres in the compartmentalized world of record labels and radio formats is not taken lightly. Many country programmers are leery of providing exposure to acts donning country-music trappings as a last resort after failing to maintain popularity with pop or rock fans. (That perception cut short the prospects for “All I Ever Needed,” a country single released in 2004 by Bret Michaels, better known as the lead singer of the hair-metal band Poison. He has continued his makeover, though, by appearing as a judge on the USA Networks contest series “Nashville Star.”)
“I think the consensus is that just because you have an established brand from another genre you don’t get a hall pass to come to country and immediately get airplay,” said Eric Logan, executive vice president for programming at XM Satellite Radio and a former country radio programmer.
But as it happens, prospects for artists who try shifting genres (or at least radio formats) appear to be growing stronger. As listeners change the way they listen to music and discover new releases — twiddling with iPods or Internet stations, for example — programmers say they are being forced to consider more experimentation with their playlists to keep fans engaged. Some predict this will mean regular appearances by outsiders between radio mainstays like Kenny Chesney and Toby Keith.
“There used to be a huge group of people that were considered exclusively country music listeners; they grew up in a house where only country music was played,” said Brian Philips, CMT’s general manager. “Now, how would it be possible to grow up in a house where only one type of music was accessible, given 300 channels of television and infinite possibilities on the Internet? The hybrids and the fashion make all the sense in the world to people who are out there just looking for new sounds.”
That helps explain why Mr. Philips’s network has welcomed the singer Jewel, known for breathy folk-pop hits like “Who Will Save Your Soul?,” on several programs as she promotes her new album.
The reach of country outlets is formidable: CMT reaches an estimated 83 million homes. And in radio, country remains the most popular genre nationwide, accounting for roughly 16 percent of the country’s 13,000 stations, according to Arbitron. Moreover, its overall share of the audience has remained relatively stable in the face of major declines in the pop and rock fields.
In particular, the baby boomers who tuned in to the FM-dial rock revolution of the 1970’s have switched to other formats, including news and talk, or tuned out altogether. In the last five years alone, the rock sector (which in Arbitron’s definition includes “classic” rock and “album-oriented” rock stations but not current “alternative” rock outlets) has lost approximately 15 percent of its audience. Now, even a hit on older-skewing rock stations is not nearly as meaningful as a performance on country airwaves.
Consider: “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the most-played song at the 38 “heritage” rock stations monitored by Billboard in a recent week, reached a total audience of roughly 2.9 million people; “The World” by Brad Paisley, the most-played song at the 131 monitored country stations, reached approximately 38.2 million, according to the tracking service Nielsen BDS.
The Seger efforts are part of a broader push to bring his new album to the widest possible audience, including making it available on iTunes — a departure for Mr. Seger, who along with Radiohead and the Beatles is among the few remaining holdouts vetoing digital sales of their music catalogs.
Mr. Seger’s representatives say that while they expect his music to resonate with all sorts of fans, his image as a workingman’s heartland poet meshes especially well with country sensibilities. General Motors clearly thought so, adopting his hit “Like a Rock” for its long-running series of commercials for Chevrolet pickups.
His recordings have been covered by numerous country acts, from Kenny Rogers to Brooks & Dunn. One of Mr. Seger’s biggest singles, “Shame on the Moon” from the 1982 album “The Distance,” was written by the country performer Rodney Crowell. In Mr. Seger’s heyday and for years afterward, his songs could occasionally be heard on an array of radio formats, including country. But longtime country programmers in the genre do not recall Mr. Seger’s music being presented to them specifically as carrying country appeal.
The official date when Capitol hopes country stations start playing his single is not for two weeks, but it has already received airplay on about a dozen such stations.
“In my opinion we’ve relied on country audiences from the first record we put out,” said Punch Andrews, Mr. Seger’s longtime manager. These fans, he added, “don’t see all the fuzzy lines that everybody wants to draw. Rock ’n’ roll and country have always been basically the same. It’s just a few instruments that change.”
The New York Times
By JEFF LEEDS
LOS ANGELES, July 14 — Given that the rock legend Bob Seger first bemoaned the eclipse of “old time rock ’n’ roll” in 1978, one can only imagine how he feels now. Rock music remains a popular radio genre, but part of its audience has been drifting away. So where is a resurgent rock star, known for hits like “Hollywood Nights” and “Night Moves,” to turn? To country music fans.
As part of the promotion for “Face the Promise,” Mr. Seger’s first album of new material in 11 years, his longtime label, Capitol Records, is shipping his first new single, “Wait for Me,” to country radio, in addition to stations that play classic rock and adult-contemporary formats.
There are also plans to pair Mr. Seger with an established country artist on “Crossroads,” the odd-couple performance series on Country Music Television, and in other nationally televised performances. And an album of Seger covers performed by country artists may be in the offing, too.
Mr. Seger’s return comes as a new crop of artists better known for their rock or pop hits are crossing into country territory. Earlier this year, Bon Jovi scored a No. 1 hit on the country chart with “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” a song performed with Jennifer Nettles of the hot country act Sugarland. Michelle Branch, who broke onto the pop charts as a teenage singer-songwriter, showed up on country radio with the debut of the Wreckers, the rootsy duo she formed with a friend.
Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith, lent his trademark wail to a new single by the country singer Keith Anderson, aptly titled “Three Chord Country and American Rock ’n’ Roll.” And Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, who had recorded albums with Chet Atkins, is back on the country charts thanks to a collaboration with Emmylou Harris.
Many trace the most recent crossover fervor to the unexpected success of “Picture,” a song performed by Kid Rock with Sheryl Crow, on country stations four years ago.
Those efforts represent only the latest moves to blur the lines between pop, rock and country: 40 years ago, Ray Charles reimagined Hank Williams and Eddy Arnold in recording his trailblazing album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.”
But the transformation of the radio landscape in recent years seems to encourage crossovers once more. In particular, the country format has displayed relative resilience as other formats that once provided a natural home for these artists now appear unreliable, if not outright unwelcoming.
Slipping between musical genres in the compartmentalized world of record labels and radio formats is not taken lightly. Many country programmers are leery of providing exposure to acts donning country-music trappings as a last resort after failing to maintain popularity with pop or rock fans. (That perception cut short the prospects for “All I Ever Needed,” a country single released in 2004 by Bret Michaels, better known as the lead singer of the hair-metal band Poison. He has continued his makeover, though, by appearing as a judge on the USA Networks contest series “Nashville Star.”)
“I think the consensus is that just because you have an established brand from another genre you don’t get a hall pass to come to country and immediately get airplay,” said Eric Logan, executive vice president for programming at XM Satellite Radio and a former country radio programmer.
But as it happens, prospects for artists who try shifting genres (or at least radio formats) appear to be growing stronger. As listeners change the way they listen to music and discover new releases — twiddling with iPods or Internet stations, for example — programmers say they are being forced to consider more experimentation with their playlists to keep fans engaged. Some predict this will mean regular appearances by outsiders between radio mainstays like Kenny Chesney and Toby Keith.
“There used to be a huge group of people that were considered exclusively country music listeners; they grew up in a house where only country music was played,” said Brian Philips, CMT’s general manager. “Now, how would it be possible to grow up in a house where only one type of music was accessible, given 300 channels of television and infinite possibilities on the Internet? The hybrids and the fashion make all the sense in the world to people who are out there just looking for new sounds.”
That helps explain why Mr. Philips’s network has welcomed the singer Jewel, known for breathy folk-pop hits like “Who Will Save Your Soul?,” on several programs as she promotes her new album.
The reach of country outlets is formidable: CMT reaches an estimated 83 million homes. And in radio, country remains the most popular genre nationwide, accounting for roughly 16 percent of the country’s 13,000 stations, according to Arbitron. Moreover, its overall share of the audience has remained relatively stable in the face of major declines in the pop and rock fields.
In particular, the baby boomers who tuned in to the FM-dial rock revolution of the 1970’s have switched to other formats, including news and talk, or tuned out altogether. In the last five years alone, the rock sector (which in Arbitron’s definition includes “classic” rock and “album-oriented” rock stations but not current “alternative” rock outlets) has lost approximately 15 percent of its audience. Now, even a hit on older-skewing rock stations is not nearly as meaningful as a performance on country airwaves.
Consider: “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the most-played song at the 38 “heritage” rock stations monitored by Billboard in a recent week, reached a total audience of roughly 2.9 million people; “The World” by Brad Paisley, the most-played song at the 131 monitored country stations, reached approximately 38.2 million, according to the tracking service Nielsen BDS.
The Seger efforts are part of a broader push to bring his new album to the widest possible audience, including making it available on iTunes — a departure for Mr. Seger, who along with Radiohead and the Beatles is among the few remaining holdouts vetoing digital sales of their music catalogs.
Mr. Seger’s representatives say that while they expect his music to resonate with all sorts of fans, his image as a workingman’s heartland poet meshes especially well with country sensibilities. General Motors clearly thought so, adopting his hit “Like a Rock” for its long-running series of commercials for Chevrolet pickups.
His recordings have been covered by numerous country acts, from Kenny Rogers to Brooks & Dunn. One of Mr. Seger’s biggest singles, “Shame on the Moon” from the 1982 album “The Distance,” was written by the country performer Rodney Crowell. In Mr. Seger’s heyday and for years afterward, his songs could occasionally be heard on an array of radio formats, including country. But longtime country programmers in the genre do not recall Mr. Seger’s music being presented to them specifically as carrying country appeal.
The official date when Capitol hopes country stations start playing his single is not for two weeks, but it has already received airplay on about a dozen such stations.
“In my opinion we’ve relied on country audiences from the first record we put out,” said Punch Andrews, Mr. Seger’s longtime manager. These fans, he added, “don’t see all the fuzzy lines that everybody wants to draw. Rock ’n’ roll and country have always been basically the same. It’s just a few instruments that change.”
David Shribman: Remembering John Paul II
A Pope for All People
David Shribman
July 15, 2006
The Pittsburgh Press
I remember that my father had an abiding affection for Pope John XXIII. My daughters will remember that their father had an abiding affection for Pope John Paul II. Jews have had many enemies over the centuries, but we have had many friends as well.
Let me add one thought more, a Sunday morning reference to First Corinthians: The greatest of these was John Paul II.
The late pope lived, moved, studied, played and prayed among Jews. He grew up with Jews, he watched Jews being taken off to Nazi captivity and then cruel death, he returned the love that many Jews had for him. It is not too much to say, and perhaps to use the phrase for the first time ever without irony, that many of his best friends were Jews.
That is why a remarkable exhibit -- originated, with the help of Cincinnati's Jewish community, by one Catholic institution, Xavier University, and now appearing in another, Duquesne University -- is so moving a midsummer experience. It reminds us of the brotherhood of man, of the common faith of humanity, and of the capacity of people of different religions and outlooks to be, as the pope put it on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, "a blessing to one another."
Consider how extraordinary this is. Imagine telling someone in the years just after World War II -- in the chilliest days of the Cold War -- that in the coming decades the Catholic Church would select as its pope a man ordained a priest behind the Iron Curtain who would undermine the very foundations of the Soviet bloc, a cleric dripping with Polish nationalism and marinated in the traditions of the Polish church who would be a beacon of hope for Jews -- a light, you might say, among the nations. You would be dismissed as a dreamer.
And yet in a century that was not congenial to dreamers, all this became true. It is evidence, perhaps, that there is a God. We need not debate that question. There was a Karol Wojtyla.
The young Karol Wojtyla grew up in Wadowice, a Polish city home to Catholics and Jews alike. (Jewish population before the war: 2,000. Jewish population in 1944, a year before the war ended: 0.) The pope vividly remembered the Jews who gathered every Saturday at the synagogue, which dated to the late 1880s. Both religious groups, he said, "were united, I presume, by the awareness that they prayed to the same God."
The removal of one of his friends' family from Wadowice was a searing experience for him, and he said at the time, perhaps hoping that saying this would make it true: "Not all Poles are anti-Semitic." Ginka Beer, his neighbor and part of the family that had to leave its home, remembered the young boy's reaction: "He did not say a word, but his face went very red. I said farewell to him as kindly as I could, but he was so moved that he could not find a single word in reply.''
Karol Wojtyla would continue to be moved by that memory, and eventually he would find words to reply. In 1998, as the most terrible of centuries was expiring, he wrote:
"We pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people has suffered in our century will lead to a new relationship with the Jewish people. We wish to turn our awareness of past sins into a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Judaism among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews, but rather a shared mutual respect, as befits those who adore the one Creator and Lord and have a common father in faith, Abraham."
Duquesne University's Mellon Hall is replete with quotations much like that. The pope spoke out continually, and with great and grave eloquence, on this question, as if he knew that he was peculiarly suited -- by temperament, by timing, by nationality -- to convey this message. Dare we say that the pope's life was a pilgrimage? The Catholic intellectual tradition regards a pilgrimage as a journey to discharge a religious obligation.
Remember that the pope was under no theological obligation to speak out for the Jews and against anti-Semitism. Over the centuries many popes have stuck to their doctrinal knitting, using their pulpit to speak on issues of their own faith, not other people's faith. And when they ventured into other religions it was not always to express their affection. But John Paul voluntarily embarked on this pilgrimage, and voluntarily took on this task, making it an obligation. You can think of it as an obligation of affection.
The pope undertook a parallel pilgrimage in 2000, visiting the Holy Land, paying tribute to "the three religious traditions which co-exist in this land." It was a remarkable moment in his life, and a remarkable moment in time, though Pope Paul VI, who was later to renounce and condemn the notion that Jews had collective guilt for the crucifixion, visited Jerusalem in 1964. On that occasion, in 2000, John Paul offered this prayer:
"God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
The pope has been dead for a little more than a year. We knew at the time that his passing meant the passing not only of a man but also of an era. We knew then, too, that this man helped shape more than his own church and that the ripples from his pebble in the papal pond extended far beyond Rome, far beyond Poland, far beyond Europe. We knew all that. It is just important to be reminded of it. And to realize that the world could use some more Wojtyla.
Copyright 2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
David Shribman
July 15, 2006
The Pittsburgh Press
I remember that my father had an abiding affection for Pope John XXIII. My daughters will remember that their father had an abiding affection for Pope John Paul II. Jews have had many enemies over the centuries, but we have had many friends as well.
Let me add one thought more, a Sunday morning reference to First Corinthians: The greatest of these was John Paul II.
The late pope lived, moved, studied, played and prayed among Jews. He grew up with Jews, he watched Jews being taken off to Nazi captivity and then cruel death, he returned the love that many Jews had for him. It is not too much to say, and perhaps to use the phrase for the first time ever without irony, that many of his best friends were Jews.
That is why a remarkable exhibit -- originated, with the help of Cincinnati's Jewish community, by one Catholic institution, Xavier University, and now appearing in another, Duquesne University -- is so moving a midsummer experience. It reminds us of the brotherhood of man, of the common faith of humanity, and of the capacity of people of different religions and outlooks to be, as the pope put it on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, "a blessing to one another."
Consider how extraordinary this is. Imagine telling someone in the years just after World War II -- in the chilliest days of the Cold War -- that in the coming decades the Catholic Church would select as its pope a man ordained a priest behind the Iron Curtain who would undermine the very foundations of the Soviet bloc, a cleric dripping with Polish nationalism and marinated in the traditions of the Polish church who would be a beacon of hope for Jews -- a light, you might say, among the nations. You would be dismissed as a dreamer.
And yet in a century that was not congenial to dreamers, all this became true. It is evidence, perhaps, that there is a God. We need not debate that question. There was a Karol Wojtyla.
The young Karol Wojtyla grew up in Wadowice, a Polish city home to Catholics and Jews alike. (Jewish population before the war: 2,000. Jewish population in 1944, a year before the war ended: 0.) The pope vividly remembered the Jews who gathered every Saturday at the synagogue, which dated to the late 1880s. Both religious groups, he said, "were united, I presume, by the awareness that they prayed to the same God."
The removal of one of his friends' family from Wadowice was a searing experience for him, and he said at the time, perhaps hoping that saying this would make it true: "Not all Poles are anti-Semitic." Ginka Beer, his neighbor and part of the family that had to leave its home, remembered the young boy's reaction: "He did not say a word, but his face went very red. I said farewell to him as kindly as I could, but he was so moved that he could not find a single word in reply.''
Karol Wojtyla would continue to be moved by that memory, and eventually he would find words to reply. In 1998, as the most terrible of centuries was expiring, he wrote:
"We pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people has suffered in our century will lead to a new relationship with the Jewish people. We wish to turn our awareness of past sins into a firm resolve to build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Judaism among Christians or anti-Christian sentiment among Jews, but rather a shared mutual respect, as befits those who adore the one Creator and Lord and have a common father in faith, Abraham."
Duquesne University's Mellon Hall is replete with quotations much like that. The pope spoke out continually, and with great and grave eloquence, on this question, as if he knew that he was peculiarly suited -- by temperament, by timing, by nationality -- to convey this message. Dare we say that the pope's life was a pilgrimage? The Catholic intellectual tradition regards a pilgrimage as a journey to discharge a religious obligation.
Remember that the pope was under no theological obligation to speak out for the Jews and against anti-Semitism. Over the centuries many popes have stuck to their doctrinal knitting, using their pulpit to speak on issues of their own faith, not other people's faith. And when they ventured into other religions it was not always to express their affection. But John Paul voluntarily embarked on this pilgrimage, and voluntarily took on this task, making it an obligation. You can think of it as an obligation of affection.
The pope undertook a parallel pilgrimage in 2000, visiting the Holy Land, paying tribute to "the three religious traditions which co-exist in this land." It was a remarkable moment in his life, and a remarkable moment in time, though Pope Paul VI, who was later to renounce and condemn the notion that Jews had collective guilt for the crucifixion, visited Jerusalem in 1964. On that occasion, in 2000, John Paul offered this prayer:
"God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
The pope has been dead for a little more than a year. We knew at the time that his passing meant the passing not only of a man but also of an era. We knew then, too, that this man helped shape more than his own church and that the ripples from his pebble in the papal pond extended far beyond Rome, far beyond Poland, far beyond Europe. We knew all that. It is just important to be reminded of it. And to realize that the world could use some more Wojtyla.
Copyright 2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, July 14, 2006
Charles Krauthammer: Israel's Existence at Stake
Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
July 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.
The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.
But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.
Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks like the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.
Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, on July 12, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the Cabinet, launched an attack into Israel that killed eight soldiers and wounded two, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.
What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the U.N. to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This "blue line'' was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.
Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turn it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's ten-thousand Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded over 100 in Israel's northern towns.
Over the last six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).
Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence.
That is what is at stake.
It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories.''
But again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just last Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Washington Post, referred to Israel as "a supposedly 'legitimate' state.''
He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media,'' he writes, "the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank.'' It is about "a wider national conflict'' that requires the vindication of "Palestinian national rights.''
That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about "the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967.''
In 1967, Israel acquired the "occupied territories.'' In 1948, Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the "genocidal Islamism'' (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
The Washington Post
July 14, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Next June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War. For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.
The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.
But you don't have to be a historian to understand the intention of Israel's enemies. You only have to read today's newspapers.
Exhibit A: Gaza. Just last September, Israel evacuated Gaza completely. It declared the border between Israel and Gaza an international frontier, renouncing any claim to the territory. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory in history. Yet the Gazans continued the war. They turned Gaza into a base for launching rocket attacks against Israel and for digging tunnels under the border to conduct attacks like the one that killed two Israeli soldiers on June 25 and yielded a wounded hostage brought back to Gaza. Israeli tanks have now had to return to Gaza to try to rescue the hostage and suppress the rocket fire.
Exhibit B: South Lebanon. Two weeks later, on July 12, the Lebanese terror organization, Hezbollah, which has representation in the Lebanese parliament and in the Cabinet, launched an attack into Israel that killed eight soldiers and wounded two, who were brought back to Lebanon as hostages.
What's the grievance here? Israel withdrew from Lebanon completely in 2000. It was so scrupulous in making sure that not one square inch of Lebanon was left inadvertently occupied that it asked the U.N. to verify the exact frontier defining Lebanon's southern border and retreated behind it. This "blue line'' was approved by the Security Council, which declared that Israel had fully complied with resolutions demanding its withdrawal from Lebanon.
Grievance satisfied. Yet what happens? Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turn it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's ten-thousand Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded over 100 in Israel's northern towns.
Over the last six years, Hezbollah has launched periodic raids and rocket attacks into Israel. Israeli retaliation has led to the cessation of these provocations -- until the next time convenient for Hezbollah. Wednesday was such a time. One terror base located in fully unoccupied Arab territory (South Lebanon) attacks Israel in support of another terror base in another fully unoccupied Arab territory (Gaza).
Why? Because occupation was a mere excuse to persuade gullible and historically ignorant Westerners to support the Arab cause against Israel. The issue is, and has always been, Israel's existence.
That is what is at stake.
It was Yasser Arafat's PLO that persuaded the world that the issue was occupation. Yet through all those years of pretense, Arafat's own group celebrated its annual Fatah Day on the anniversary of its first attack on Israel, the bombing of Israel's National Water Carrier -- on Jan. 1, 1965.Note: 1965. Two years before the 1967 war. Two years before Gaza and the West Bank fell into Israeli hands. Two years before there were any "occupied territories.''
But again, who needs history? As the Palestinian excuses for continuing their war disappear one by one, the rhetoric is becoming more bold and honest. Just last Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, writing in The Washington Post, referred to Israel as "a supposedly 'legitimate' state.''
He made clear what he wants done with this bastard entity. "Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media,'' he writes, "the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank.'' It is about "a wider national conflict'' that requires the vindication of "Palestinian national rights.''
That, of course, means the right to all of Palestine, with no Jewish state. In the end, the fighting is about "the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967.''
In 1967, Israel acquired the "occupied territories.'' In 1948, Israel acquired life. The fighting raging now in 2006 -- between Israel and the "genocidal Islamism'' (to quote the writer Yossi Klein Halevi) of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them -- is about whether that life should and will continue to exist.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
P. David Hornik: Israel's Challenge
P. David Hornik
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 14, 2006
Israel is like the archetypal retired gunslinger in Westerns who tries to stay out of trouble but ends up rejoining the fray when the provocations get too severe. In Israel’s case, though, the price of “retirement” has been inexcusable.
During the months of post-disengagement Qassam attacks on Sderot and other Gaza-bordering communities, it was painfully obvious that Israel’s restraint would end on the day the Qassams took a worse toll than injury, traumatization, and making life unlivable for thousands of Israelis. The “policy,” if any, of the Sharon and Olmert governments was to count on the Qassams’ relative inaccuracy and hope one’s luck would hold out.
The only surprise, then, was that when the fatal attack came it was not over the Gaza border fence by rocket, but under it by tunnel; and not against civilians but against soldiers, two of whom were killed and one kidnapped in the dawn raid at Kerem Shalom almost three weeks ago. It was only then, after a catastrophe whose occurrence, if not its exact nature, was entirely predictable, that Israel launched a large-scale military action in Gaza.
The script repeated itself Wednesday on the Lebanese border in a Hizbullah assault that took an even worse toll of eight Israeli soldiers dead and two kidnapped.
Here too, Hizbullah’s encampment along the border since Israel’s ill-conceived evacuation of Lebanon in 2000 was clearly a time-bomb waiting to go off. In particular, Hizbullah’s positioning of twelve thousand Iranian-supplied rockets along the border led to demands by IDF commanders for preemptive action. But, again, the Sharon and Olmert governments preferred to wait and see. On Thursday it was too late for scores of residents of northern Israeli communities, from Haifa to tiny villages, as the rockets rained down on them sowing death and injury.
The Hizbullah onslaught has also made clear that whatever Israel has done so far in Gaza has in no way restored its deterrence. Seemingly, by a rational calculation Hamas, Hizbullah, and their backers in Damascus and Teheran would conclude that the Kerem Shalom raid was not worth it: in retribution for two soldiers killed and one abducted, Israeli forces have killed dozens of terrorists in Gaza along with collateral deaths of civilians, damaged infrastructure, ominously hit official structures like Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s office and the PA Foreign Ministry, and arrested dozens of Hamas figures in the West Bank.
Israel’s enemies, though, are fanatics who are willing to pay any price if they perceive themselves to be prevailing by inflicting harm on Israel and wearing it down. Teheran is also seeking to divert attention from its nuclear plans at the upcoming G8 summit by shifting the focus to the Israeli sphere. So far, the jihad axis can also take satisfaction in the fact that Israel’s Gaza operations are yet to achieve either of their two main declared aims: retrieving kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit or stopping the Qassam fire, at least nine Gaza-fired rockets having landed in Israel on Thursday alone.
Israel’s challenge, then, is to prove that attacking it is not worth it and restore its deterrence. It responded on Thursday by pounding not only Hizbullah but also Lebanese infrastructure and military targets from air and sea on the assumption that Lebanon can be gotten to disband Hizbullah and reassert sovereignty over its southern border. That would entail a degree of independence from its Syrian masters that Lebanon may not really possess. Israel may eventually engage Syria as well, but its early battle plan appears to be trying to play the Lebanese card.
Above all Israel has to be prepared to remove the Hizbullah missile hoard, much of which is hidden underground, even if this requires a ground invasion that risks casualties. The missile arsenal not only constitutes an unacceptable threat in itself but constrains Israel in acting against Syria and Iran. A freer hand against Iran may eventually be an existential necessity.
Israel begins the confrontation with certain clear handicaps. Hamas and Hizbullah, tiny as they are compared to the IDF, enjoy massive backing not only from Iran and Syria but from the world jihad movement in general, and fighters and infrastructure can always be replaced if Israel limits itself to temporary incursions and selective strikes.
Israel also can hardly count on world support, and is helped little by being attacked on its sovereign territory from places where it removed all vestiges of “occuaption.” Already on Thursday—after less than a day of fighting in Lebanon—France’s foreign minister condemned Israel’s “disproportionate act of war.” The EU as a whole said it was “greatly concerned about the disproportionate use of force by Israel in Lebanon [and] deplores the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.” Predictably the Europeans could not wait to verify reports or to consider Israel’s rationale for hitting Lebanon, which is hosting the jihadist movement that attacked it, a member of which is a minister in its cabinet. And this is only a foretaste.
Israel’s advantages include not only its superior operational capacity but also a growing realization among its leaders and populace that it has done all it could to reach accommodation with foes who do not want accommodation and is now fighting with its back to the wall. It has not taken long for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose sights were set on yet further withdrawals from the West Bank while hoping the Qassams wouldn’t do too much harm, and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a longtime extreme dove who still talks of himself as a man of peace and dialogue, to get harshly initiated into Middle Eastern reality.
It is critical for Israel’s future that they now leave behind their delusions about a Middle East that can either be made peace with or kept at bay with fences. At least in adamantly refusing to negotiate another lopsided prisoner exchange, Olmert is showing greater resolve than some previous Israeli governments. He needs to revive an older Israel that knew what the stakes were and knew how to win. That means—at least—hitting Hamas so hard that it will be left reeling and unable to pose a further threat; uprooting southern Lebanon’s kingdom of terror; and then not meekly retreating to let the enemy recuperate and rebuild. It also means not letting sensitivity to world reactions loom so large that one is helpless. Israel has no place left to turn and no choice, at this late hour, but to fight.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 14, 2006
Israel is like the archetypal retired gunslinger in Westerns who tries to stay out of trouble but ends up rejoining the fray when the provocations get too severe. In Israel’s case, though, the price of “retirement” has been inexcusable.
During the months of post-disengagement Qassam attacks on Sderot and other Gaza-bordering communities, it was painfully obvious that Israel’s restraint would end on the day the Qassams took a worse toll than injury, traumatization, and making life unlivable for thousands of Israelis. The “policy,” if any, of the Sharon and Olmert governments was to count on the Qassams’ relative inaccuracy and hope one’s luck would hold out.
The only surprise, then, was that when the fatal attack came it was not over the Gaza border fence by rocket, but under it by tunnel; and not against civilians but against soldiers, two of whom were killed and one kidnapped in the dawn raid at Kerem Shalom almost three weeks ago. It was only then, after a catastrophe whose occurrence, if not its exact nature, was entirely predictable, that Israel launched a large-scale military action in Gaza.
The script repeated itself Wednesday on the Lebanese border in a Hizbullah assault that took an even worse toll of eight Israeli soldiers dead and two kidnapped.
Here too, Hizbullah’s encampment along the border since Israel’s ill-conceived evacuation of Lebanon in 2000 was clearly a time-bomb waiting to go off. In particular, Hizbullah’s positioning of twelve thousand Iranian-supplied rockets along the border led to demands by IDF commanders for preemptive action. But, again, the Sharon and Olmert governments preferred to wait and see. On Thursday it was too late for scores of residents of northern Israeli communities, from Haifa to tiny villages, as the rockets rained down on them sowing death and injury.
The Hizbullah onslaught has also made clear that whatever Israel has done so far in Gaza has in no way restored its deterrence. Seemingly, by a rational calculation Hamas, Hizbullah, and their backers in Damascus and Teheran would conclude that the Kerem Shalom raid was not worth it: in retribution for two soldiers killed and one abducted, Israeli forces have killed dozens of terrorists in Gaza along with collateral deaths of civilians, damaged infrastructure, ominously hit official structures like Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s office and the PA Foreign Ministry, and arrested dozens of Hamas figures in the West Bank.
Israel’s enemies, though, are fanatics who are willing to pay any price if they perceive themselves to be prevailing by inflicting harm on Israel and wearing it down. Teheran is also seeking to divert attention from its nuclear plans at the upcoming G8 summit by shifting the focus to the Israeli sphere. So far, the jihad axis can also take satisfaction in the fact that Israel’s Gaza operations are yet to achieve either of their two main declared aims: retrieving kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit or stopping the Qassam fire, at least nine Gaza-fired rockets having landed in Israel on Thursday alone.
Israel’s challenge, then, is to prove that attacking it is not worth it and restore its deterrence. It responded on Thursday by pounding not only Hizbullah but also Lebanese infrastructure and military targets from air and sea on the assumption that Lebanon can be gotten to disband Hizbullah and reassert sovereignty over its southern border. That would entail a degree of independence from its Syrian masters that Lebanon may not really possess. Israel may eventually engage Syria as well, but its early battle plan appears to be trying to play the Lebanese card.
Above all Israel has to be prepared to remove the Hizbullah missile hoard, much of which is hidden underground, even if this requires a ground invasion that risks casualties. The missile arsenal not only constitutes an unacceptable threat in itself but constrains Israel in acting against Syria and Iran. A freer hand against Iran may eventually be an existential necessity.
Israel begins the confrontation with certain clear handicaps. Hamas and Hizbullah, tiny as they are compared to the IDF, enjoy massive backing not only from Iran and Syria but from the world jihad movement in general, and fighters and infrastructure can always be replaced if Israel limits itself to temporary incursions and selective strikes.
Israel also can hardly count on world support, and is helped little by being attacked on its sovereign territory from places where it removed all vestiges of “occuaption.” Already on Thursday—after less than a day of fighting in Lebanon—France’s foreign minister condemned Israel’s “disproportionate act of war.” The EU as a whole said it was “greatly concerned about the disproportionate use of force by Israel in Lebanon [and] deplores the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.” Predictably the Europeans could not wait to verify reports or to consider Israel’s rationale for hitting Lebanon, which is hosting the jihadist movement that attacked it, a member of which is a minister in its cabinet. And this is only a foretaste.
Israel’s advantages include not only its superior operational capacity but also a growing realization among its leaders and populace that it has done all it could to reach accommodation with foes who do not want accommodation and is now fighting with its back to the wall. It has not taken long for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose sights were set on yet further withdrawals from the West Bank while hoping the Qassams wouldn’t do too much harm, and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a longtime extreme dove who still talks of himself as a man of peace and dialogue, to get harshly initiated into Middle Eastern reality.
It is critical for Israel’s future that they now leave behind their delusions about a Middle East that can either be made peace with or kept at bay with fences. At least in adamantly refusing to negotiate another lopsided prisoner exchange, Olmert is showing greater resolve than some previous Israeli governments. He needs to revive an older Israel that knew what the stakes were and knew how to win. That means—at least—hitting Hamas so hard that it will be left reeling and unable to pose a further threat; uprooting southern Lebanon’s kingdom of terror; and then not meekly retreating to let the enemy recuperate and rebuild. It also means not letting sensitivity to world reactions loom so large that one is helpless. Israel has no place left to turn and no choice, at this late hour, but to fight.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Jerusalem. He can be reached at pdavidh2001@yahoo.com.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Music Review- Chris Knight: Enough Rope
I highly recommend all of Mr. Knight's albums...he's one of my favorite artists. He'll be at The Pour House in Raleigh on Saturday, August 12th...for more information visit http://www.chrisknight.net
by Megan Frye
http://www.allmusic.com
Chris Knight's Enough Rope is a tribute to blue-collar America, to the simple life and to the desperate hardships and the unmatched joys that people who aren't part of it will never know.
It's blatantly honest, often empathetic and frequently beautiful. The album never dips from its high level of songwriting skill, energy, and passion, though some songs are more touching and standout than others.
Enough Rope is a great mix of uptempo highway driving songs and sentimental, nostalgic ballads. "Up from the Hill" is a rollicking Southern rocker and "Bridle on a Bull" is country-tinged blues at its finest with distorted slide guitar delivering a howling solo: "If your mule don't want to plow/Talk to him with a two-by-four/And if he still don't want to plow/Talk to him just a little bit more/And if he just don't want to listen/Haul him off to the dog food store."
The best aspect about Enough Rope is the stories Knight tells. The most touching song on the album is the medium-tempo "Old Man": "Don't wanna die till I've lived too long/They'll sell this place, whenever I'm gone/I miss my sweetheart so, and the way she used to smile/I miss them kids of mine, running wild/When the daylight fades in late afternoon/About all I know is it was gone too soon." "William's Son" is a tale of a maverick youth who grew up tough after escaping from his abusive father: "I'm kinda glad my dad got blown away/I know he grew up hard and he grew up mean/But me and my sister was not to blame."
The album comes to a close with the perfect song: "Enough Rope" is a heartland rock ballad, reminiscent of a John Mellencamp tune (Knight's voice is a little grittier, but similar). It's slow, reflective, and simple, with acoustic guitar and violin — a tribute to hard-working people who never got to achieve their biggest dreams. "Well, I work for the city, in the town where I grew up/Some days I run the backhoe, some days I run the dump/If I had other plans on my graduation day/Then several years ago, I guess I hauled 'em all away/She told me she was pregnant on the day I turned 18/And I did what you're supposed to do, I bought her a ring."
Knight's music is the perfect blend of Americana and country-rock; it's clean at times, but it's far too soulful to be considered only contemporary country. His sound and style change little from album to album, but there's no need for change. Knight has discovered his niche as a songwriter, and Enough Rope is just another testament to his talent.
Media's Green Bias
By Cliff Kincaid
CampusReportOnline.net
July 13, 2006
The slanted coverage of the debate over global warming is on display almost every day. But a good recent example was the June 23 USA Today story headlined, “Global warming stoked ’05 hurricanes, study says.” That headline ran across the entire top of page 4 of USA Today. A picture with the story showed emergency workers battling Hurricane Katrina. You have to read to the 7th paragraph to find out that an expert named William Gray of Colorado State University believes “more intense hurricanes” are due entirely to natural changes. It turns out that Gray has been described as “the world’s most famous hurricane expert” and that he has been studying hurricanes for 50 years.
The story, however, highlighted a new report finding that “Global warming helped fuel 2005’s destructive hurricane season…” Gray, in the 7th paragraph of the story, called that “ridiculous.” Gray, former director of the National Hurricane Center, has told the Washington Post that global warming is “one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.” That is also the claim made by Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment Committee. Gray placed that quote on the cover of one of his scientific papers analyzing global warming and hurricanes.
In testimony before the Inhofe committee, he said that he has been dismayed over “the bogus science and media-hype” associated with the man-made global warming theory. “As a boy, growing up here in Washington, D.C.,” he said, “I remember the many articles on the large global warming that had occurred between 1900 and 1940. No one understood or knew if this warming would continue. Then the warming abated, and a weak global cooling trend set in from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. The global warming talk ceased and speculation about a coming ice age came into vogue. I anticipate that the trend of the last few decades of global warming will come to an end, and in a few years we will start to see a weak cooling trend similar to that which occurred from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.”
In a sense, getting Gray’s views on page-seven of a story is a step forward. Like gay rights, the idea of questioning a human role in global warming is being thrown aside by many in the media as not even worthy of attention.
What we are seeing is opinion journalism, in which journalists sharing Al Gore’s opinion about global warming are manipulating the coverage. In a famous Los Angeles Times op-ed, Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine said that the problem with modern journalism was not that there was too much opinion, but too little. He means liberal opinion.
It is noteworthy that Navasky, a professor of journalism at Columbia, is chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Cliff Kincaid is Editor of the AIM Report.
CampusReportOnline.net
July 13, 2006
The slanted coverage of the debate over global warming is on display almost every day. But a good recent example was the June 23 USA Today story headlined, “Global warming stoked ’05 hurricanes, study says.” That headline ran across the entire top of page 4 of USA Today. A picture with the story showed emergency workers battling Hurricane Katrina. You have to read to the 7th paragraph to find out that an expert named William Gray of Colorado State University believes “more intense hurricanes” are due entirely to natural changes. It turns out that Gray has been described as “the world’s most famous hurricane expert” and that he has been studying hurricanes for 50 years.
The story, however, highlighted a new report finding that “Global warming helped fuel 2005’s destructive hurricane season…” Gray, in the 7th paragraph of the story, called that “ridiculous.” Gray, former director of the National Hurricane Center, has told the Washington Post that global warming is “one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.” That is also the claim made by Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment Committee. Gray placed that quote on the cover of one of his scientific papers analyzing global warming and hurricanes.
In testimony before the Inhofe committee, he said that he has been dismayed over “the bogus science and media-hype” associated with the man-made global warming theory. “As a boy, growing up here in Washington, D.C.,” he said, “I remember the many articles on the large global warming that had occurred between 1900 and 1940. No one understood or knew if this warming would continue. Then the warming abated, and a weak global cooling trend set in from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. The global warming talk ceased and speculation about a coming ice age came into vogue. I anticipate that the trend of the last few decades of global warming will come to an end, and in a few years we will start to see a weak cooling trend similar to that which occurred from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.”
In a sense, getting Gray’s views on page-seven of a story is a step forward. Like gay rights, the idea of questioning a human role in global warming is being thrown aside by many in the media as not even worthy of attention.
What we are seeing is opinion journalism, in which journalists sharing Al Gore’s opinion about global warming are manipulating the coverage. In a famous Los Angeles Times op-ed, Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine said that the problem with modern journalism was not that there was too much opinion, but too little. He means liberal opinion.
It is noteworthy that Navasky, a professor of journalism at Columbia, is chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Cliff Kincaid is Editor of the AIM Report.
Ruined Friendship Could Imperil Bonds
By DUFF WILSON
July 13, 2006
The New York Times
The former best friend and business partner of Barry Bonds has told federal investigators that Bonds was a heavy steroids user and flew into “roid rages,” his lawyer, Michael Cardoza, said yesterday.
The man, Steve K. Hoskins, 44, of Redwood City, Calif., also says Bonds gave him thousands of dollars to pass on to two of Bonds’s girlfriends, Cardoza said in telephone interviews.
Two lawyers for Bonds responded yesterday that Hoskins was lying to get back at Bonds for accusing him of financial misconduct in their memorabilia business. The lawyers acknowledged that Bonds and Hoskins had been best friends before a falling-out in mid-2003, when Bonds reported Hoskins to the F.B.I.
Bonds is widely expected to be indicted soon by a federal grand jury, which meets today and again next Thursday at the federal courthouse in San Francisco. After that, its 18-month term apparently expires, providing impetus to wrap up the case.
Witnesses who have testified say the grand jury is investigating whether Bonds engaged in income-tax evasion, and if he committed perjury in denying steroid usage. Other sports figures are also being investigated, but Bonds is the biggest target.
Bonds, 41, hit a record 73 home runs in 2001 and has 720 career homers, trailing only Hank Aaron’s 755.
On Dec. 4, 2003, Bonds told an earlier grand jury that he did not knowingly use steroids, despite drastic changes to his physique and documents with his name on them from 2001 to 2003 showing drug schedules, billing information and test results, The San Francisco Chronicle has reported.
The private dispute between Bonds and Hoskins went public this week when Michael L. Rains, Bonds’s defense lawyer, told The New York Times that the government was relying on Hoskins and Bonds’s former girlfriend Kimberly Bell for its case.
Hoskins is president of Kent Collectibles of San Carlos, Calif., and was widely known in the Giants’ clubhouse as Bonds’s right-hand man. The two were close: Hoskins was the best man at Bonds’s 1998 wedding, and Hoskins’s sister introduced Bonds to a woman who was his girlfriend from 1994 to 2003.
Laura J. Enos, Bonds’s lawyer for personal business matters since 1997, said in an interview yesterday that she and Bonds confronted Hoskins in June 2003 over the suspected forging of Bonds’s signature on contracts.
“He came and we met in a conference room,” Enos said. “He said: ‘I have three doors. If you don’t drop this memorabilia issue, I’m going to ruin Barry. Behind door No. 1 is an extramarital affair. Behind door No. 2 is failure to declare income tax. And behind door No. 3 is use of steroids. And I will go to the press and ruin Barry. His records will be ruined. He will never get into the Hall of Fame.’ ”
Enos said Bonds reported Hoskins anyway to the United States attorney and the F.B.I. in San Francisco in late June or early July 2003. Enos said Bonds was unaware at the time that the San Jose branch of the United States attorney’s office was already investigating whether Bonds used steroids.
LaRae Quy, a special agent and spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Northern California, confirmed yesterday that the F.B.I. checked into the complaint by Bonds against Hoskins. Quy declined to comment further.
Enos and Rains said the F.B.I. dropped the case against Hoskins when he turned on Bonds. But Hoskins’s lawyer, Cardoza, said the F.B.I. cleared Hoskins when it found he had not forged the signatures and had kept meticulous records of cash transactions, including giving thousands of dollars to two girlfriends for Bonds. “We did not make a deal with the feds,” Cardoza said.
Cardoza said he had warned Enos that the steroids activity would come out if Bonds complained about Hoskins to federal authorities.
“Barry and Stevie were friends for years,” Cardoza said. “And Barry starts to get into steroids. And Barry has what’s called roid rages, which start to affect his relationship with Stevie. Stevie was very concerned as a friend with his steroid use. In fact, he involved Bobby Bonds, the dad, you know, saying, ‘You better get Barry off steroids because it’s going to kill him.’ ” (Bobby Bonds died in 2003.)
Cardoza said Barry Bonds’s steroid use and rages led to the end of Bonds’s close relationship with Hoskins.
“Stevie would nag Barry to get off the stuff,” Cardoza said. “Their relationship finally went in the toilet, business and personal. And with that, Barry is saying Stevie stole from me. It’s not true. He reports that to the feds. The feds do a full-blown investigation.”
Cardoza added: “So in your face, Barry. You’re lying.”
Asked whether Hoskins had firsthand knowledge of Bonds’s steroid use, Cardoza said: “Steve was his best friend. Steve had a relationship with him that nobody else did.”
Cardoza would not say whether Hoskins has testified before the grand jury, only that he had spoken with investigators.
Rains, Bonds’s defense lawyer, said he thought Hoskins was the source for much of the derogatory information about Bonds, including details of suspected steroid usage, in the book “Game of Shadows” by the reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of The Chronicle. Hoskins was not mentioned by name in the 332-page book.
Rains and Cardoza said Hoskins’s sister had introduced Bonds to Bell in the early 1990’s and that Hoskins had known Bell for even longer.
“And now they’ve united in an effort to try to take down Barry,” Rains said. “And the government is dumb enough to try to use them to take down Barry.”
Bell is a graphic artist from San Jose, Calif., who says she dated Bonds from 1994 to May 2003. Bell has said Bonds told her he used steroids and gave her $80,000 cash.
Rains said Bell had tried to pressure Bonds to pay her money. Bell and her lawyer could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Enos said Hoskins and Bonds were childhood friends who became close as adults after Bonds returned to San Francisco from Pittsburgh in 1993. Hoskins was selling shoes at a Foot Locker when Bonds returned. Enos said Bonds helped Hoskins set up a business selling Bonds lithographs and memorabilia. .
Hoskins and Bell are now the key witnesses against Bonds, according to Rains. He said: “They won’t have any credibility once they get exposed. But I don’t know if the federal government bothered to tell the grand jury, once they heard their testimony, what liars they were.”
Rains said the only other witness the government was relying on was Greg Anderson. Anderson, Bonds’s trainer and a reputed steroid supplier, was sent to jail July 5 for refusing to testify to the grand jury.
Mark J. Geragos, a defense lawyer for Anderson, said he did not think that Bonds would be indicted in the next week or two because he did not think the government had a case. One of the elements of finding Anderson in contempt was that the government had to say it could not get the necessary evidence anywhere else, Geragos said.
Geragos said he anticipated that the government would try to keep Anderson in jail longer under a criminal contempt of court proceeding or by calling him in front of a new grand jury. Geragos said Anderson would never testify against Bonds.
Peter Keane, a law professor at Golden Gate University, said the government could empanel a new grand jury if it needed more time or wanted to pressure Anderson by keeping him in jail longer. Keane predicted that soon Bonds would be indicted “just as the night follows the day.”
The people known to have testified to the grand jury in the perjury investigation include Dr. Arthur Ting, Bonds’s orthopedic surgeon; Stan Conte, the San Francisco Giants’ head trainer; Dr. Larry Bowers of the United States Anti-Doping Agency; and Dr. Don Catlin, an antidoping expert at U.C.L.A.
July 13, 2006
The New York Times
The former best friend and business partner of Barry Bonds has told federal investigators that Bonds was a heavy steroids user and flew into “roid rages,” his lawyer, Michael Cardoza, said yesterday.
The man, Steve K. Hoskins, 44, of Redwood City, Calif., also says Bonds gave him thousands of dollars to pass on to two of Bonds’s girlfriends, Cardoza said in telephone interviews.
Two lawyers for Bonds responded yesterday that Hoskins was lying to get back at Bonds for accusing him of financial misconduct in their memorabilia business. The lawyers acknowledged that Bonds and Hoskins had been best friends before a falling-out in mid-2003, when Bonds reported Hoskins to the F.B.I.
Bonds is widely expected to be indicted soon by a federal grand jury, which meets today and again next Thursday at the federal courthouse in San Francisco. After that, its 18-month term apparently expires, providing impetus to wrap up the case.
Witnesses who have testified say the grand jury is investigating whether Bonds engaged in income-tax evasion, and if he committed perjury in denying steroid usage. Other sports figures are also being investigated, but Bonds is the biggest target.
Bonds, 41, hit a record 73 home runs in 2001 and has 720 career homers, trailing only Hank Aaron’s 755.
On Dec. 4, 2003, Bonds told an earlier grand jury that he did not knowingly use steroids, despite drastic changes to his physique and documents with his name on them from 2001 to 2003 showing drug schedules, billing information and test results, The San Francisco Chronicle has reported.
The private dispute between Bonds and Hoskins went public this week when Michael L. Rains, Bonds’s defense lawyer, told The New York Times that the government was relying on Hoskins and Bonds’s former girlfriend Kimberly Bell for its case.
Hoskins is president of Kent Collectibles of San Carlos, Calif., and was widely known in the Giants’ clubhouse as Bonds’s right-hand man. The two were close: Hoskins was the best man at Bonds’s 1998 wedding, and Hoskins’s sister introduced Bonds to a woman who was his girlfriend from 1994 to 2003.
Laura J. Enos, Bonds’s lawyer for personal business matters since 1997, said in an interview yesterday that she and Bonds confronted Hoskins in June 2003 over the suspected forging of Bonds’s signature on contracts.
“He came and we met in a conference room,” Enos said. “He said: ‘I have three doors. If you don’t drop this memorabilia issue, I’m going to ruin Barry. Behind door No. 1 is an extramarital affair. Behind door No. 2 is failure to declare income tax. And behind door No. 3 is use of steroids. And I will go to the press and ruin Barry. His records will be ruined. He will never get into the Hall of Fame.’ ”
Enos said Bonds reported Hoskins anyway to the United States attorney and the F.B.I. in San Francisco in late June or early July 2003. Enos said Bonds was unaware at the time that the San Jose branch of the United States attorney’s office was already investigating whether Bonds used steroids.
LaRae Quy, a special agent and spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Northern California, confirmed yesterday that the F.B.I. checked into the complaint by Bonds against Hoskins. Quy declined to comment further.
Enos and Rains said the F.B.I. dropped the case against Hoskins when he turned on Bonds. But Hoskins’s lawyer, Cardoza, said the F.B.I. cleared Hoskins when it found he had not forged the signatures and had kept meticulous records of cash transactions, including giving thousands of dollars to two girlfriends for Bonds. “We did not make a deal with the feds,” Cardoza said.
Cardoza said he had warned Enos that the steroids activity would come out if Bonds complained about Hoskins to federal authorities.
“Barry and Stevie were friends for years,” Cardoza said. “And Barry starts to get into steroids. And Barry has what’s called roid rages, which start to affect his relationship with Stevie. Stevie was very concerned as a friend with his steroid use. In fact, he involved Bobby Bonds, the dad, you know, saying, ‘You better get Barry off steroids because it’s going to kill him.’ ” (Bobby Bonds died in 2003.)
Cardoza said Barry Bonds’s steroid use and rages led to the end of Bonds’s close relationship with Hoskins.
“Stevie would nag Barry to get off the stuff,” Cardoza said. “Their relationship finally went in the toilet, business and personal. And with that, Barry is saying Stevie stole from me. It’s not true. He reports that to the feds. The feds do a full-blown investigation.”
Cardoza added: “So in your face, Barry. You’re lying.”
Asked whether Hoskins had firsthand knowledge of Bonds’s steroid use, Cardoza said: “Steve was his best friend. Steve had a relationship with him that nobody else did.”
Cardoza would not say whether Hoskins has testified before the grand jury, only that he had spoken with investigators.
Rains, Bonds’s defense lawyer, said he thought Hoskins was the source for much of the derogatory information about Bonds, including details of suspected steroid usage, in the book “Game of Shadows” by the reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of The Chronicle. Hoskins was not mentioned by name in the 332-page book.
Rains and Cardoza said Hoskins’s sister had introduced Bonds to Bell in the early 1990’s and that Hoskins had known Bell for even longer.
“And now they’ve united in an effort to try to take down Barry,” Rains said. “And the government is dumb enough to try to use them to take down Barry.”
Bell is a graphic artist from San Jose, Calif., who says she dated Bonds from 1994 to May 2003. Bell has said Bonds told her he used steroids and gave her $80,000 cash.
Rains said Bell had tried to pressure Bonds to pay her money. Bell and her lawyer could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Enos said Hoskins and Bonds were childhood friends who became close as adults after Bonds returned to San Francisco from Pittsburgh in 1993. Hoskins was selling shoes at a Foot Locker when Bonds returned. Enos said Bonds helped Hoskins set up a business selling Bonds lithographs and memorabilia. .
Hoskins and Bell are now the key witnesses against Bonds, according to Rains. He said: “They won’t have any credibility once they get exposed. But I don’t know if the federal government bothered to tell the grand jury, once they heard their testimony, what liars they were.”
Rains said the only other witness the government was relying on was Greg Anderson. Anderson, Bonds’s trainer and a reputed steroid supplier, was sent to jail July 5 for refusing to testify to the grand jury.
Mark J. Geragos, a defense lawyer for Anderson, said he did not think that Bonds would be indicted in the next week or two because he did not think the government had a case. One of the elements of finding Anderson in contempt was that the government had to say it could not get the necessary evidence anywhere else, Geragos said.
Geragos said he anticipated that the government would try to keep Anderson in jail longer under a criminal contempt of court proceeding or by calling him in front of a new grand jury. Geragos said Anderson would never testify against Bonds.
Peter Keane, a law professor at Golden Gate University, said the government could empanel a new grand jury if it needed more time or wanted to pressure Anderson by keeping him in jail longer. Keane predicted that soon Bonds would be indicted “just as the night follows the day.”
The people known to have testified to the grand jury in the perjury investigation include Dr. Arthur Ting, Bonds’s orthopedic surgeon; Stan Conte, the San Francisco Giants’ head trainer; Dr. Larry Bowers of the United States Anti-Doping Agency; and Dr. Don Catlin, an antidoping expert at U.C.L.A.
Plamegate: Mystery Solved
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 13, 2006
Finally some straight talk on the Valerie Plame case, thanks to Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who first revealed the identity of the not-so-covert CIA officer three years ago.
Novak’s July 14, 2003, column on the much-disputed trip to Niger by Plame’s husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, triggered an FBI investigation, a federal grand jury, and eventually the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who indicted top White House aid Scooter Libby for perjury along the way.
At issue was whether Saddam Hussein ever sent a buying team to Niger looking for uranium yellowcake in the 1999-2000 period. After tea and crumpets with former friends in the Nigerian government, Wilson concluded that it never happened. At least, that’s what he says today.
(The definitive Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq, released in November 2004, asserts unequivocally that Wilson lied in public about the conclusions he sent to the CIA about his Niger trip).
Despite all the sturm und drang over the past three years, Novak kept silent about who said what regarding Wilson’s trip. The Left has imputed all kinds of scurrilous motives to Novak’s silence. They have accused him of cutting a special deal with the special prosecutor. They have accused him of fingering Libby and Rove. They have accused him of total disregard of the First Amendment, preferring to violate the “sanctity” of anonymous sources in favor of going to jail.
They have compared unfavorably to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who went to jail instead of revealing her sources in the same case.
But when the Left realized that Judy Miller had been close to Scooter Libby and actually reported on the facts of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, rather than the creampuff version being put out by the anti-Bush crowd at the CIA, they dropped her instantly. She was fired by the NY Times almost the minute she was released from jail.
Fitzgerald finally has closed the leak case in so far as Novak is concerned. “That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret,” Novak wrote yesterday in an account he published in Human Events.
“Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger,” Novak revealed. “After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.”
The official who was Novak’s primary source did not even know the name of Wilson’s wife. But it wasn’t a very close-held secret. “I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in ‘Who's Who in America,’” Novak wrote.
I have asked a number of former CIA clandestine operators about Valerie Plame.
One former senior clandestine officer scoffed at the claim that Valerie Plame had ever been truly covert. “How can you be [covert] when you are married to an ex-U.S. ambassador and work for the State Department overseas?” Somebody looking at her from a hostile power (say, Iran) would have to have a brain the size of a pea to miss her connection to the U.S. government, he added.
And yet, former CIA officers who vigorously oppose this administration have signed public letters and gone on network television to protest the exposure of her identity as the greatest national security breach of the century.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who became a deputy director of the State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau, has launched an internet witchhunt against Karl Rove for allegedly “outing” his former Camp Perry classmate, Valerie Plame. (Gee, Larry: Guess everybody must have known about Val’s Camp Perry date with you, so it’s okay to talk about that, right?)
Novak’s column takes the wind out of their sails. Not only was Karl Rove not Novak’s primary source, but Valerie Plame’s role at CIA was so well-known that a CIA spokesman, Bill Harlowe, was able to confirm to Novak that Plame had suggested Wilson for the Niger trip.
Like Novak and hundreds of others of reporters, I have had dealings with Harlowe over the years. Even if you had nailed down the identity of a covert CIA operator who had worked for the agency 20 years earlier, Harlowe would never confirm that person’s existence. The standard line was to neither confirm nor deny.
But if you asked if so-and-so who was posted overseas to a U.S. embassy, and was now working as an analyst, could give you a background briefing on their subject of expertise, he would at least get back to you with a yes or a no.
And that is exactly what he provided to Novak. The CIA public affairs office was his third source.
Larry Johnson and others had kvetched that Novak blew Valerie Plame’s cover at her “top secret” CIA proprietary, Brewster Jennings, in Boston.They allege that Plame was working undercover as an energy industry analyst to penetrate Iranian nuclear procurement networks.
But guess what? It wasn’t Bob Novak who revealed that Valerie Plame may have been working undercover (with an alleged tie to the alleged Brewster Jennings in Boston, which now hosts an Internet game similar to “Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego”?)
It was left-wing columnist David Corn, writing in The Nation, just two days after Novak’s first column.
It turns out that Corn is a close friend of the Wilson/Plame couple, and knew all about their various foreign outings. Unlike Robert Novak, he didn’t need to consult “Who’s Who in America” to learn Valerie Plame’s name.
If any security breach occurred with the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s name, look toward Joe Wilson, who posted his wife’s name to “Who’s Who,” and to their circle of political and professional friends.
My hunch: it was all part of a carefully orchestrated public relations scheme, that netted lying Joe Wilson prime time television appearances, a best-selling book, and a $2.5 million contract for the memoirs of Madame.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, New York), and Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 13, 2006
Finally some straight talk on the Valerie Plame case, thanks to Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who first revealed the identity of the not-so-covert CIA officer three years ago.
Novak’s July 14, 2003, column on the much-disputed trip to Niger by Plame’s husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, triggered an FBI investigation, a federal grand jury, and eventually the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who indicted top White House aid Scooter Libby for perjury along the way.
At issue was whether Saddam Hussein ever sent a buying team to Niger looking for uranium yellowcake in the 1999-2000 period. After tea and crumpets with former friends in the Nigerian government, Wilson concluded that it never happened. At least, that’s what he says today.
(The definitive Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq, released in November 2004, asserts unequivocally that Wilson lied in public about the conclusions he sent to the CIA about his Niger trip).
Despite all the sturm und drang over the past three years, Novak kept silent about who said what regarding Wilson’s trip. The Left has imputed all kinds of scurrilous motives to Novak’s silence. They have accused him of cutting a special deal with the special prosecutor. They have accused him of fingering Libby and Rove. They have accused him of total disregard of the First Amendment, preferring to violate the “sanctity” of anonymous sources in favor of going to jail.
They have compared unfavorably to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who went to jail instead of revealing her sources in the same case.
But when the Left realized that Judy Miller had been close to Scooter Libby and actually reported on the facts of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, rather than the creampuff version being put out by the anti-Bush crowd at the CIA, they dropped her instantly. She was fired by the NY Times almost the minute she was released from jail.
Fitzgerald finally has closed the leak case in so far as Novak is concerned. “That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret,” Novak wrote yesterday in an account he published in Human Events.
“Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger,” Novak revealed. “After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.”
The official who was Novak’s primary source did not even know the name of Wilson’s wife. But it wasn’t a very close-held secret. “I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in ‘Who's Who in America,’” Novak wrote.
I have asked a number of former CIA clandestine operators about Valerie Plame.
One former senior clandestine officer scoffed at the claim that Valerie Plame had ever been truly covert. “How can you be [covert] when you are married to an ex-U.S. ambassador and work for the State Department overseas?” Somebody looking at her from a hostile power (say, Iran) would have to have a brain the size of a pea to miss her connection to the U.S. government, he added.
And yet, former CIA officers who vigorously oppose this administration have signed public letters and gone on network television to protest the exposure of her identity as the greatest national security breach of the century.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer who became a deputy director of the State Department’s counter-terrorism bureau, has launched an internet witchhunt against Karl Rove for allegedly “outing” his former Camp Perry classmate, Valerie Plame. (Gee, Larry: Guess everybody must have known about Val’s Camp Perry date with you, so it’s okay to talk about that, right?)
Novak’s column takes the wind out of their sails. Not only was Karl Rove not Novak’s primary source, but Valerie Plame’s role at CIA was so well-known that a CIA spokesman, Bill Harlowe, was able to confirm to Novak that Plame had suggested Wilson for the Niger trip.
Like Novak and hundreds of others of reporters, I have had dealings with Harlowe over the years. Even if you had nailed down the identity of a covert CIA operator who had worked for the agency 20 years earlier, Harlowe would never confirm that person’s existence. The standard line was to neither confirm nor deny.
But if you asked if so-and-so who was posted overseas to a U.S. embassy, and was now working as an analyst, could give you a background briefing on their subject of expertise, he would at least get back to you with a yes or a no.
And that is exactly what he provided to Novak. The CIA public affairs office was his third source.
Larry Johnson and others had kvetched that Novak blew Valerie Plame’s cover at her “top secret” CIA proprietary, Brewster Jennings, in Boston.They allege that Plame was working undercover as an energy industry analyst to penetrate Iranian nuclear procurement networks.
But guess what? It wasn’t Bob Novak who revealed that Valerie Plame may have been working undercover (with an alleged tie to the alleged Brewster Jennings in Boston, which now hosts an Internet game similar to “Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego”?)
It was left-wing columnist David Corn, writing in The Nation, just two days after Novak’s first column.
It turns out that Corn is a close friend of the Wilson/Plame couple, and knew all about their various foreign outings. Unlike Robert Novak, he didn’t need to consult “Who’s Who in America” to learn Valerie Plame’s name.
If any security breach occurred with the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s name, look toward Joe Wilson, who posted his wife’s name to “Who’s Who,” and to their circle of political and professional friends.
My hunch: it was all part of a carefully orchestrated public relations scheme, that netted lying Joe Wilson prime time television appearances, a best-selling book, and a $2.5 million contract for the memoirs of Madame.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is the author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, New York), and Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Film Review: 'Superman Returns'
Correction: In a June 28 Style review of "Superman Returns" (which was excerpted in the June 30 edition of Weekend), Superman's home state was incorrectly identified as Iowa. He is from Kansas.
Happy 'Returns'
Zen and Now: Latest Superman Honors Heroes Past
By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 28, 2006; C01
"Superman Returns" answers a question about the Man of Steel we boys have wondered about for decades.
Is Superman ga --
No, no, that's Batman .
The question is: What would happen if you shot Superman in the eye?
And the answer is: You'd have to get a new bullet. The one you fired would have pancaked flatter than a quarter and be spinning on the cement.
It happens in "Superman Returns," in a nifty little sequence where Our Hero has stood up to an electric Gatling gun hurling wads of copper-coated lead at him at a rate of about 3,000 a minute. They bounce off into the gloaming, trailing neon incandescence. So the bad guy marches up to him, pulls out a .45 and issues a coup de grace. Bad mistake, dude. You are toast.
The much ballyhooed movie, far from great and far from short (2 1/2 hours!), is still great fun. Best is its love for the traditions of the Big Guy: It reaches out to embrace all the previous iterations of the caped flyboy, even finding room for Jack Larson and Noel Neill to get giant close-ups and dramatic scenes of the sort they never got in previous TV cameos. Neill, the ur-Lois Lane, plays a dying octogenarian who is swindled out of billions on her deathbed by Lex Luthor; and Larson, the ur-Jimmy Olsen, is a bartender who in a moment of stress actually hugs Sam Huntington, this movie's Jimmy Olsen. It's too bad George Reeves, the original TV tall-building leaper, isn't around to bask in a little afterglow.
Even the late, great Marlon Brando is disinterred from the archives and called up to deliver a warning to his son, though it's actually Lex and his minions who've penetrated the Fortress of Solitude and learn the lesson from Stanley Kowalski gone slumming in Richard Donner's 1978 incarnation. And the movie uses as its overture John Williams's blast of triumph that accompanied the big '70s and '80s versions, with additional music by John Ottman.
But the truly beloved figure of this trip to Metropolis is the late Christopher Reeve; he and his late wife, Dana, are the dedicatees at movie's end. More to the point, the young actor Brandon Routh seems chosen for the part not because he embodies Superman but because he specifically embodies Reeve's Superman, with dark good looks, a modest, even ego-less screen presence, a curiously muted sexuality and a sense of well-brought-up preppie's politeness and diffidence. He's a Superman who'd always call you Sir.
Yet at the same time, it's not an impersonation, it's a performance. In certain ways the director, Bryan Singer (of "The Usual Suspects" and the first two "X-Men" movies), has found new stylings to enable his leading man to make the part his own.
Flying, for example; Reeve and even Reeves were coached to see flying as athletic, an expression of strength and speed. To get airborne they took off, building up a head of steam, then (oof!) bounding into the air with a diver's gymnastics as he launches off the high board. By contrast, Routh is a much less athletic, much less muscular flier. For him, flight almost seems Zen. He doesn't have to put any muscle into it and when he's flying, he's not penetrating the atmosphere (his hair hardly moves) but rather transcendentally meditating his way through it. His landings aren't controlled crashes softened by super-strong muscles and ligaments (oof! again) but a kind of delicate settling. He's a Supe who's made peace with the air. I kept expecting him to break into, "Look at me way up high, suddenly here am I, I'm flyyyyying!"
That same glee seems to run through the movie's first half, when, since the story hasn't really started, there seems plenty of time to experience the sheer joy of Superman's return. As the script -- cobbled out by Singer, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, among the millions who have toiled on it anonymously -- has it, Superman's been gone for five years seeking remnants of Krypton among the stars. Satisfied, if melancholy that the old home orb is forever gone, he returns to Earth to pick up where he left off, and discovers what Thomas Wolfe really meant by "You Can't Go Home Again."
Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), for example, now has a child. She's even won a Pulitzer Prize for her essay: "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." Her boyfriend has great teeth, Daily Planet Editor Perry White has morphed into lounge-lizard Frank Langella, and Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has just exited the slammer, copped billions from the old lady (played by Neill) and started a new shenanigan.
The lack of forward momentum makes room for a lot of pleasant lateral movement. We get to watch Supe rescue Lois in an elaborate sequence in which her plane, trailing flame and shreds of twisted metal, is headed for the dirt. He puts it gently down in Shea Stadium before the thousands of adoring Mets fans who commemorate the return. If only he had a good fastball!
It follows that Lois and Clark deal with buried feelings, and there's even world enough and time for Supe to remember his boyhood in Iowa, where the corn grew as high as an elephant's eye but he could leap as far as a thousand elephants, end on end or on top of each other. (Eva Marie Saint has a nice turn as his mom.)
These sequences, particularly the invocation of tender feelings between Clark and Lois, and Lois and Supe (she has to know, at some level), have a kind of puppy-love innocence to them. They're not sexual, but pre-sexual, full of the awkward romantic gropings of kids who don't really know what happens when the lights go down. Everything is idealized: Since Lois is now living with Perry White's nephew Richard, played by face-guy James Marsden, Clark/Supe is honor-bound to preserve the sanctity of the union and therefore can only pine in private. Lois, meanwhile, is in harsh denial, and we understand that her essay was really not addressed to the world but to her own heart. She has, she tells herself, Moved On, even if she doesn't believe it and we don't believe it.
What's missing? Oh, right, a caper. A plot. Hmm, the movie's an hour and a half old, and nobody's done anything yet.
Here's where I wish the team had done it better. First of all, as great an actor as Kevin Spacey is and as perfect for this part as he seems to be: Nobody could do it better than Gene Hackman.
True, it's probably easy to underrate Hackman's turns as Luthor, but they were great pieces of work. He was avuncular, self-parodying, narcissistic, self-amused and evil all at once. They gave such balance to Reeve's square virtue while at the same time providing a lot of comic mileage in interplay with sidekicks Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine.
By contrast, Spacey lacks Hackman's charm, Parker Posey hardly registers as Lex's immorata and the hilarious Beatty has been replaced by three moogs of utter banality.
Worse, the plot seems not nonsensical or lacking in weight, just uninteresting. Having discovered Supe's lair and copped some magic crystals, Lex uses them to -- see if you can stay with me, and pray that I'm able to stay with me -- generate new continents, which, rupturing out of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, seem fated to put half of North America underwater, while he claims sole ownership of the new land, which will be Luthorville or Luthorania or the United States of Lexatoria or some such. Never quite works, nor do the too many scenes of Lex and his pals playing pinochle in a wet cave that somehow is supposed to represent the Death of the West.
In fairness, the plot is just strutwork upon which to mount ever more elaborate set pieces, as Superman shunts faster than a speeding e-mail from crisis to crisis to undo the effects of Luthor's villainy. It would probably help if you brought a standard dead-tree World Mythological Concordance with you or watched with Treo 700p Smartphone in hand keyed to Wikipedia, for by the end of the film, Singer is looting world symbology for imagery. Atlas bent under the globe? Twice , even! The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? In jillions and jillions of bright pixels! How about Icarus falling from the rays of the sun, or is that the fall of man, the death of Odin, the last act of Wagner's "Gotterdammerung," the final chorus of Beowulf or the end of Richard Fleisher's "The Vikings"? Or even Will Kane limping out of town in "High Noon."
It's all of them, and many more I haven't thought of or don't know in the first place.
But the news is good. It's a myth, not a miss. The bottom line is that Superman has returned and again, you will believe that a man can fly, and that virtue is its own reward.
Superman Returns (154 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for violence (parents should note that, at one point, the Man of Steel gets a tub-thumping beating).
Daniel Pipes: The Vatican Confronts Islam
Daniel Pipes
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 5, 2006
“Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It’s our duty to protect ourselves.” Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican’s supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus’ admonition to his followers to “turn the other cheek,” De Paolis noted that “The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century…and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights.”
De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund’s Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.
These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West’s more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.
This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.
This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.
Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II’s time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that “There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens.” Tauran pushed for reciprocity: “Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well.”
Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect “the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all.” In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.
Lower-ranking clerics, as usual, are more outspoken. “Islam’s radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus,” asserts Monsignor Philippe Brizard, director general of Oeuvre d’Orient, a French organization focused on Middle Eastern Christians. Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, advises the Church to drop its “diplomatic silence” and instead “put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities.”
The Danish cartoons crisis offered a typical example of Catholic disillusionment. Church leaders initially criticized the publication of the Muhammad cartoons. But when Muslims responded by murdering Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria, not to speak of scores of Christians killed during five days of riots in Nigeria, the Church responded with warnings to Muslims. “If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us, ” said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. “We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” added Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, its foreign minister.
Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican’s diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in interfaith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 5, 2006
“Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It’s our duty to protect ourselves.” Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican’s supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus’ admonition to his followers to “turn the other cheek,” De Paolis noted that “The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century…and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights.”
De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund’s Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.
These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West’s more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.
This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.
This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.
Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II’s time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that “There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens.” Tauran pushed for reciprocity: “Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well.”
Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect “the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all.” In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.
Lower-ranking clerics, as usual, are more outspoken. “Islam’s radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus,” asserts Monsignor Philippe Brizard, director general of Oeuvre d’Orient, a French organization focused on Middle Eastern Christians. Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, advises the Church to drop its “diplomatic silence” and instead “put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities.”
The Danish cartoons crisis offered a typical example of Catholic disillusionment. Church leaders initially criticized the publication of the Muhammad cartoons. But when Muslims responded by murdering Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria, not to speak of scores of Christians killed during five days of riots in Nigeria, the Church responded with warnings to Muslims. “If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us, ” said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. “We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” added Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, its foreign minister.
Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican’s diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in interfaith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
The Saddam-Osama Connection: The Terrorist Testimony
Mark Eichenlaub
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 7, 2006
One of the pillars of the argument that there were “no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda” is that the captured/defected members from both sides have denied any relationship existed. (The Left makes this claim even though most of the detainees’ interrogation logs remain classified and their contents remain on a need-to-know basis.) This “no connection” claim has been made a number of times, and those making it generally receive favorable media attention; they’re rarely if ever confronted with testimony that conflicts with their argument. I will not argue on behalf of the truthfulness of former Ba’athists and al-Qaeda members, but if their testimony is going to admitted, shouldn’t critics also hear the testimony of those in custody who tell a different story?
There are more than a few former Iraqi officials and captured al-Qaeda affiliates who have revealed examples of cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and Osama’s terrorist assets.
· “Abu Mohammed,” a former colonel of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen fighters, told reporters long ago that Iraq was training terrorists, including al-Qaeda.
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14, 2002
· Iraqi soldiers, captured during the early phases of the war on Iraq in 2003, revealed that al-Qaeda terrorists were present inside Iraq fighting alongside Iraqi troops
Gethin Chamberlain, The Scotsman, 10-28-03
· Hamsiraji Sali, Commander of the al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf, admitted receiving $20,000 dollars a year from Iraq.
Marc Lerner, Washington Times, 3-4-03
· Salah Suleiman, revealed that he was a former Iraqi Intelligence officer, captured on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border shuttling between Iraq and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Janes Foreign Report, 9-19-01
· Jamal al-Qurairy, a former General in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, who defected years ago, said “that [is] ours” immediately after seeing 9/11 attacks.
David Rose, Vanity Fair, Feb. 2003, and David Rose, The Observer, 3-16-03
· Abbas al-Janabai, a personal assistant to Uday Hussein for 15 years, has repeatedly stated that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that included training terrorists at various camps in Iraq.
CNN, 7-23-2003
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14,2002
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Two Moroccan associates of Osama bin Laden, arrested in Rabat in Nov 98, confirmed that Col Khairallah al-Tikriti, the brother of Iraq’s top Intelligence official (Mukhabarat), was the case officer in charge of operations with al-Qaeda in Kashmir and Manila
Jacquard, Roland, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Duke University Press, 2002, pg.112
· Wali Khan Amin Shah, an al-Qaeda operative in custody, told the FBI that Abu
Hajer al-Iraq had good contacts with Iraq Intelligence Services (reported to Senate Intelligence Committee)
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, 7-18-05
· Farouk Hijazi, former #3 in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, although he denies the well documented reports of his later meetings with bin Laden, Hijazi admits that he met with Osama bin Laden to discuss antiship mines and terror training camps in Iraq during the mid-90’s.
9-11 Commission, Staff Statement 15
· Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat from 1997-2002, says that he worked to link Saddam Hussein regime with Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda.
Preston Mendenhall, MSNBC, "War Diary"
Jonathan Schanzer, Weekly Standard, 3-1-04
· Mohamed Gharib, Ansar al Islam’s Media chief, later admitted that the group took assistance from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 10-16-03
· Mohamed Mansour Shahab, aka Muhammad Jawad, is a smuggler who claims to have been hired by Iraq to bring weapons to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-03-02
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is a senior al-Qaeda operative. Although he has changed his story, he initially told his captors that his mission was to travel to Iraq to acquire poisons and gases from Iraqi Intelligence after impressing them with al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· An “enemy combatant” being held at Guantanamo Bay, who was also a former Iraqi Army officer, admits that he served as a liaison between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi Intelligence. He was arrested in Pakistan before completing joint IIS/al-Qaeda mission to blow up U.S. and British embassies
Associated Press, 3-30-05
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn. Weekly Standard. 7-18-05
· Abu Hajer al-Iraqi (aka Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim) told prosecutors that he was bin Laden’s best friend and in charge of trying and procure WMD materials from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 6-17-04
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· A “Former Senior (Iraqi) Intelligence Officer” has told U.S. officials that a flurry of activity between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda took place in early and late 1998, the meeting point was Baghdad’s Intelligence station in Pakistan
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Wafiq al-Sammarrai, former head of Iraq’s Military Intelligence before defecting in 1994, stated that Saddam Hussein has agents “inside” al-Qaeda
Laurie Mylroie, “Study of Revenge”
· Khidir Hamza, Saddam Hussein’s former top WMD official, says that Saddam had connections to al-Qaeda
CNN, 10-15-01
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy , a former high-ranking officer in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the September 11 attackers were trained in Salman Pak, as were other members of al-Qaeda
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· Sabah Khodada, a former Captain in Iraq’s Army, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the terrorist training camp at Salman Pak included the training of al-Qaeda members airplane hijacking
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· An “Iraqi Defector,” who spent 16 years working for Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told the Iraqi National Congress that Saddam Hussein’s illegal oil revenues helped fund al-Qaeda (story later corroborated by Claudia Rosett )
Radio Free Europe 9-29-2002
· Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a captured senior Iraqi official, said that IIS agents had met with bin Laden until the middle of 1999
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Qassem Hussein Mohamed, who served in Iraq’s Mukhabarat for 20 years, told reporters that Saddam Hussein has been secretly aiding, arming and funding Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda for several years
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-2-02
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Al-Masri also said that Saddam even went so far as to fund the movement of some al-Qaeda members into Iraq and then later supplied them with arms caches and money, later to be used in insurgent attacks. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, "Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists, 3-28-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s former mentor, told reporters in 2004, “Saddam Hussein's regime welcomed them with open arms and young al-Qaeda members entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation.” AFP, 8-30-04 Thomas Joscelyn, "What Else Did Hudayfa Azzam Have To Say About Al-Qaeda In Iraq?” 4-3-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam, has said Iraq’s government worked closely with al-Qaeda before the war and welcomed a number of members in after they left Afghanistan and armed and funded them Thomas Joscelyn citing AFP, 8-30-04
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, “Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists,” 3-28-06
· Haqi Ismail, a Mosul native with relatives at the top of Iraq’s Mukhabarat and spent time in al-Qaeda/al Ansar camps in Afghanistan and Northern Iraq before being caught by Kurdish security, indicated that he was working for Saddam Hussein’s Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat)
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Moammar Ahmad Yussef, a captured deputy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, told officials that Iraq provided money, weapons, fake passports, safe haven and training to al-Qaeda members
Dan Darling, Winds of Change, 11-21-03
· A “top Saddam Hussein official,” who was also a senior Intelligence official, says that Iraq made a secret pact with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad and later al-Qaeda. Secret meetings between the two sides began in 1992.
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, has said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had good contacts with Iraqi Intelligence Services
Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, December 2, 2005
· Abu Iman al-Baghdadi, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi intelligence, told BBC news that Saddam Hussein is funding and arming Ansar al-Islam to fend off anti-Saddam Kurds
Jim Muir, BBC, July 24, 2002
Surely, much more detail is locked away in the classified interrogation logs of other captured al-Qaeda fighters and former Baathists in custody. (I have filed an FOIA request for a few.) Those who may have some answers would be the big name al-Qaeda fighters who were caught in Iraq and the captured Baathists in custody caught after the war terrorizing with Zarqawi and his affiliates. But what we know already should make us discount the “no connection” argument made by partisans denying reality.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Mark Eichenlaub runs the website Regime of Terror, "Documenting Saddam Hussein's State Sponsorship of Terrorism."
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
July 7, 2006
One of the pillars of the argument that there were “no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda” is that the captured/defected members from both sides have denied any relationship existed. (The Left makes this claim even though most of the detainees’ interrogation logs remain classified and their contents remain on a need-to-know basis.) This “no connection” claim has been made a number of times, and those making it generally receive favorable media attention; they’re rarely if ever confronted with testimony that conflicts with their argument. I will not argue on behalf of the truthfulness of former Ba’athists and al-Qaeda members, but if their testimony is going to admitted, shouldn’t critics also hear the testimony of those in custody who tell a different story?
There are more than a few former Iraqi officials and captured al-Qaeda affiliates who have revealed examples of cooperation between Saddam’s Iraq and Osama’s terrorist assets.
· “Abu Mohammed,” a former colonel of Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen fighters, told reporters long ago that Iraq was training terrorists, including al-Qaeda.
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14, 2002
· Iraqi soldiers, captured during the early phases of the war on Iraq in 2003, revealed that al-Qaeda terrorists were present inside Iraq fighting alongside Iraqi troops
Gethin Chamberlain, The Scotsman, 10-28-03
· Hamsiraji Sali, Commander of the al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf, admitted receiving $20,000 dollars a year from Iraq.
Marc Lerner, Washington Times, 3-4-03
· Salah Suleiman, revealed that he was a former Iraqi Intelligence officer, captured on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border shuttling between Iraq and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Janes Foreign Report, 9-19-01
· Jamal al-Qurairy, a former General in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, who defected years ago, said “that [is] ours” immediately after seeing 9/11 attacks.
David Rose, Vanity Fair, Feb. 2003, and David Rose, The Observer, 3-16-03
· Abbas al-Janabai, a personal assistant to Uday Hussein for 15 years, has repeatedly stated that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden that included training terrorists at various camps in Iraq.
CNN, 7-23-2003
Gwynne Roberts, Sunday Times, July 14,2002
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Two Moroccan associates of Osama bin Laden, arrested in Rabat in Nov 98, confirmed that Col Khairallah al-Tikriti, the brother of Iraq’s top Intelligence official (Mukhabarat), was the case officer in charge of operations with al-Qaeda in Kashmir and Manila
Jacquard, Roland, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Duke University Press, 2002, pg.112
· Wali Khan Amin Shah, an al-Qaeda operative in custody, told the FBI that Abu
Hajer al-Iraq had good contacts with Iraq Intelligence Services (reported to Senate Intelligence Committee)
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, 7-18-05
· Farouk Hijazi, former #3 in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, although he denies the well documented reports of his later meetings with bin Laden, Hijazi admits that he met with Osama bin Laden to discuss antiship mines and terror training camps in Iraq during the mid-90’s.
9-11 Commission, Staff Statement 15
· Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who served in Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat from 1997-2002, says that he worked to link Saddam Hussein regime with Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda.
Preston Mendenhall, MSNBC, "War Diary"
Jonathan Schanzer, Weekly Standard, 3-1-04
· Mohamed Gharib, Ansar al Islam’s Media chief, later admitted that the group took assistance from Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 10-16-03
· Mohamed Mansour Shahab, aka Muhammad Jawad, is a smuggler who claims to have been hired by Iraq to bring weapons to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-03-02
Richard Miniter, TechCentralStation, 9-25-03
· Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is a senior al-Qaeda operative. Although he has changed his story, he initially told his captors that his mission was to travel to Iraq to acquire poisons and gases from Iraqi Intelligence after impressing them with al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· An “enemy combatant” being held at Guantanamo Bay, who was also a former Iraqi Army officer, admits that he served as a liaison between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi Intelligence. He was arrested in Pakistan before completing joint IIS/al-Qaeda mission to blow up U.S. and British embassies
Associated Press, 3-30-05
Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn. Weekly Standard. 7-18-05
· Abu Hajer al-Iraqi (aka Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim) told prosecutors that he was bin Laden’s best friend and in charge of trying and procure WMD materials from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 6-17-04
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· A “Former Senior (Iraqi) Intelligence Officer” has told U.S. officials that a flurry of activity between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda took place in early and late 1998, the meeting point was Baghdad’s Intelligence station in Pakistan
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Wafiq al-Sammarrai, former head of Iraq’s Military Intelligence before defecting in 1994, stated that Saddam Hussein has agents “inside” al-Qaeda
Laurie Mylroie, “Study of Revenge”
· Khidir Hamza, Saddam Hussein’s former top WMD official, says that Saddam had connections to al-Qaeda
CNN, 10-15-01
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy , a former high-ranking officer in Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the September 11 attackers were trained in Salman Pak, as were other members of al-Qaeda
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· Sabah Khodada, a former Captain in Iraq’s Army, told PBS Frontline and the New York Times that the terrorist training camp at Salman Pak included the training of al-Qaeda members airplane hijacking
PBS Frontline "Gunning For Saddam"
· An “Iraqi Defector,” who spent 16 years working for Iraq’s Mukhabarat, told the Iraqi National Congress that Saddam Hussein’s illegal oil revenues helped fund al-Qaeda (story later corroborated by Claudia Rosett )
Radio Free Europe 9-29-2002
· Khalil Ibrahim Abdallah, a captured senior Iraqi official, said that IIS agents had met with bin Laden until the middle of 1999
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Qassem Hussein Mohamed, who served in Iraq’s Mukhabarat for 20 years, told reporters that Saddam Hussein has been secretly aiding, arming and funding Ansar al Islam and al-Qaeda for several years
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 4-2-02
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Al-Masri also said that Saddam even went so far as to fund the movement of some al-Qaeda members into Iraq and then later supplied them with arms caches and money, later to be used in insurgent attacks. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, "Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists, 3-28-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s former mentor, told reporters in 2004, “Saddam Hussein's regime welcomed them with open arms and young al-Qaeda members entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation.” AFP, 8-30-04 Thomas Joscelyn, "What Else Did Hudayfa Azzam Have To Say About Al-Qaeda In Iraq?” 4-3-06
· Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden’s mentor Abdullah Azzam, has said Iraq’s government worked closely with al-Qaeda before the war and welcomed a number of members in after they left Afghanistan and armed and funded them Thomas Joscelyn citing AFP, 8-30-04
· Dr. Mohammed al-Masri, a known al-Qaeda spokesman, told the Sunday Times that Saddam Hussein contacted the “Arab Afghans” (al-Qaeda) in 2001. Abdel Bari Atwan, Sunday Times, 2-26-06 via Thomas Joscelyn, “Saddam, the Insurgency, and the Terrorists,” 3-28-06
· Haqi Ismail, a Mosul native with relatives at the top of Iraq’s Mukhabarat and spent time in al-Qaeda/al Ansar camps in Afghanistan and Northern Iraq before being caught by Kurdish security, indicated that he was working for Saddam Hussein’s Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat)
Jeffrey Goldberg, New Yorker, 3-25-02
· Moammar Ahmad Yussef, a captured deputy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, told officials that Iraq provided money, weapons, fake passports, safe haven and training to al-Qaeda members
Dan Darling, Winds of Change, 11-21-03
· A “top Saddam Hussein official,” who was also a senior Intelligence official, says that Iraq made a secret pact with Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad and later al-Qaeda. Secret meetings between the two sides began in 1992.
Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard, 11-24-03
· Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, has said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had good contacts with Iraqi Intelligence Services
Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard, December 2, 2005
· Abu Iman al-Baghdadi, a 20-year veteran of Iraqi intelligence, told BBC news that Saddam Hussein is funding and arming Ansar al-Islam to fend off anti-Saddam Kurds
Jim Muir, BBC, July 24, 2002
Surely, much more detail is locked away in the classified interrogation logs of other captured al-Qaeda fighters and former Baathists in custody. (I have filed an FOIA request for a few.) Those who may have some answers would be the big name al-Qaeda fighters who were caught in Iraq and the captured Baathists in custody caught after the war terrorizing with Zarqawi and his affiliates. But what we know already should make us discount the “no connection” argument made by partisans denying reality.
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Mark Eichenlaub runs the website Regime of Terror, "Documenting Saddam Hussein's State Sponsorship of Terrorism."
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Robert J. Samuelson: Global Warming's Real Inconvenient Truth
Robert J. Samuelson
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 5, 2006; Page A13
"Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the next century, but -- regardless of whether it is or isn't -- we won't do much about it. We will (I am sure) argue ferociously over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Little will be done. . . . Global warming promises to become a gushing source of national hypocrisy.''
-- This column, July 1997
Well, so it has. In three decades of columns, I've never quoted myself at length, but here it's necessary. Al Gore calls global warming an "inconvenient truth," as if merely recognizing it could put us on a path to a solution. That's an illusion. The real truth is that we don't know enough to relieve global warming, and -- barring major technological breakthroughs -- we can't do much about it. This was obvious nine years ago; it's still obvious. Let me explain.
From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.
Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).
The IEA report assumes that existing technologies are rapidly improved and deployed. Vehicle fuel efficiency increases by 40 percent. In electricity generation, the share for coal (the fuel with the most greenhouse gases) shrinks from about 40 percent to about 25 percent -- and much carbon dioxide is captured before going into the atmosphere. Little is captured today. Nuclear energy increases. So do "renewables" (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal); their share of global electricity output rises from 2 percent now to about 15 percent.
Some of these changes seem heroic. They would require tough government regulation, continued technological gains and public acceptance of higher fuel prices. Never mind. Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent.
Since 1800 there's been modest global warming. I'm unqualified to judge between those scientists (the majority) who blame man-made greenhouse gases and those (a small minority) who finger natural variations in the global weather system. But if the majority are correct, the IEA report indicates we're now powerless. We can't end annual greenhouse emissions, and once in the atmosphere, the gases seem to linger for decades. So concentration levels rise. They're the villains; they presumably trap the world's heat. They're already about 36 percent higher than in 1800. Even with its program, the IEA says another 45 percent rise may be unavoidable. How much warming this might create is uncertain; so are the consequences.
I draw two conclusions -- one political, one practical.
No government will adopt the draconian restrictions on economic growth and personal freedom (limits on electricity usage, driving and travel) that might curb global warming. Still, politicians want to show they're "doing something." The result is grandstanding. Consider the Kyoto Protocol. It allowed countries that joined to castigate those that didn't. But it hasn't reduced carbon dioxide emissions (up about 25 percent since 1990), and many signatories didn't adopt tough enough policies to hit their 2008-2012 targets. By some estimates, Europe may overshoot by 15 percent and Japan by 25 percent.
Ambitious U.S. politicians also practice this self-serving hypocrisy. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a global warming program. Gore counts 221 cities that have "ratified" Kyoto. Some pledge to curb their greenhouse emissions. None of these programs will reduce global warming. They're public relations exercises and -- if they impose costs -- are undesirable. (Note: on national security grounds, I favor taxing oil, but the global warming effect would be trivial.) The practical conclusion is that if global warming is a potential calamity, the only salvation is new technology. I once received an e-mail from an engineer. Thorium, he said. I had never heard of thorium. It is, he argued, a nuclear fuel that is more plentiful and safer than uranium without waste disposal problems. It's an exit from the global warming trap. After reading many articles, I gave up trying to decide whether he is correct. But his larger point is correct: Only an aggressive research and development program might find ways of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels or dealing with it. Perhaps some system could purge the atmosphere of surplus greenhouse gases?
The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it's really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don't solve the engineering problem, we're helpless.
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