We Are Not Amused...

This photo of Queen Elizabeth II visiting President Bush is from the official White House website... Meanwhile, actress Helen Mirren has snubbed Her Majesty, saying she was too busy to attend an audience in Buckingham Palace on May 1st--a truly Republican rejection of royalty that made headlines as far away as China.

That makes Helen Mirren the real Queen, IMHO.

Someone I know--who went to English boarding school--suggested that President Bush might have done better to follow President Franklin Roosevelt's example, than to affect pomp and circumstance. FDR served King George VI Nathan's hot dogs during a 1939 visit to Hyde Park, NY:

The King was so pleased with "this delightful hot-dog sandwich" that he asked Mrs. Roosevelt for another one.

Lileks Column Killed by Star-Tribune

James Lileks is one of the funniest bloggers on the internet--so it's news that his column has been cancelled by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Here's a link to his account (ht The American Thinker):

As it happens, they've killed my column, and assigned me to write straight local news stories.

Really.

There’s been some talk that I might leverage my mad web skillz into a tech beat, reporting on the Internet. But a local beat about the Internet? How many stories can do you about six guys in a loft coding a hot new start-up? And heaven forbid we have to illustrate them, because then you get the inevitable geek-by-the-screen shot. Look! He’s customizing the drop-down location menu so it defaults to the United States instead of Afghanistan!

I don’t want to write about the Internet. I want to write on the Internet. I’d rather develop content than report about content developers. It’s that simple, and it’s also a matter of recognizing my failings: I am not Biff Deadline, Ace Reporter. I can do long stories with lots of color, all aslosh with subjective opinions, but writing straight news - clearly, simply, briskly - is a skill I lack, and I take off my hat to those who've mastered that discipline.

My column will end a week from this Friday. (There’s a series of pieces I can’t wait to write.) After that, it's just-the-facts-ma'am - and I'll no longer be telecommuting, either. This means I will start burning my share of hydrocarbons like a good American. Hell, I may leave the vehicle running all day outside the building just to make up for lost time. Maybe I will put a green roof on the car to balance things out. Some turf, some switchgrass. It's murder on the paint but we all must do our part.

Would it matter if you contacted the paper? It very well might. Here's the reader's rep's page.

If I can get my column back and / or a nice big Online gig, that would be a satisfactory conclusion. Reporting on internet start-ups as opposed to joining an internet start-up – eh, not so much.

And let that be the last time the phrase “not so much” is used here. It’s old. We’ve all had a jolly laugh, but I heard Jeff Foxworthy use it on an oil-change commercial, which is like the UN-approved international standard for something being over.

Washington Madam Wants Clients Made Public

Fox News reports that Washington Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey wants the names of her government official clientele released to the public. Apparently, they allegedly include military officials, IMF staffers, and at least one Justice Department prosecutor:

McLEAN, Va. — A lawyer for alleged Washington madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey wants ABC News to disclose the identity of a federal prosecutor identified in a recent news report as a client of Palfrey's escort service.

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Palfrey's civil lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, contends that the Justice Department should compel ABC to disclose the prosecutor's identity and whether he had any role in the Palfrey investigation.

In a report Friday on its "20/20" newsmagazine, ABC News reported that a review of Palfrey's phone records revealed that her client list included officials at NASA, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, military officers and a "career Justice Department prosecutor."

But ABC did not identify those individuals, saying that their names were not prominent enough to be newsworthy.

Given the potential for blackmail here that might affect national security, the administration of justice, or international economis--blackmail potential that now applies to ABC News and the Disney corporation as well as the prostitution ring as a result of the network's possession of records--one would think that someone might champion "the public's right to know" in this case...

An Interview with Bernard Weinraub, Author of "The Accomplices"

Bernard Weinraub’s drama about the reaction of America to the Nazi extermination of European Jewry, The Accomplices, performed by the New Group at the Acorn Theatre,closed its New York run on May 5th, shortly after the author received a Drama Desk award nomination--alongside such veteran luminaries as August Wilson, Tom Stoppard and Peter Morgan. Apparently there were others in New York who liked the play as much as I did. (My review here) And it seems that you don't have to be Jewish to like "The Accomplices". For example, Lawrence Mass compared The Accomplices to Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in the Gay City News:

So striking is "The Accomplices" a demonstration of everything Kramer is trying to say in "The Normal Heart" about what happened in World War II and its applicability to AIDS that the two plays would make a perfect pairing. (There is even a Lipizzaner Stallions incident, parallel to the one documented in "The Normal Heart," that garners prime front-page coverage in the New York Times, preempting the Holocaust, just as it preempted AIDS 40 years later!).

Apparently, the message of "The Accomplices" may be universal. In order to find out more about Weinraub's goals as a playwright, I interviewed him by phone on May 2nd.

Q: Why did you write “The Accomplices”?

A: The story has always fascinated me, the story of what Bergson and all of his people did, beyond that the story of what the government did not do and what American Jews did not do, was a story that seemed to me had not really been fully told. I mean people knew about it to some degree, but not really, from my point of view. It just wasn’t a story that that many people knew about, that’s why I wanted to do it.

Q: Were you surprised by the reaction, or lack of reaction, to the play?

A: I was surprised, had the play come out ten years or 20 years ago, there would have been much more of a reaction…at this point in time, it’s hard to respond to the criticisms…on the one hand I say it is not a well-known story, on the other hand, the defenders of FDR and some of the Jewish groups can’t really defend too much longer what happened, and even when you read some of the books now, most recently about the Roosevelt administration by Michael Beschloss, they are quite critical…I actually picked up a biography of Stephen Wise that was obviously favorable--but on the issue of what he did or didn’t do during the war, it was critical.

Q: What about the public reaction?

A: On the one hand I was surprised that there wasn’t much reaction, on the other hand, I wasn’t. Over the last 20 years, it has taken that long for people to react to what happened or didn’t happen during the War, Arthur Morse book in the 70s, in the last 20-30 years people finally came to terms, and so it took a long time, but I think people are now…the response of audiences is pretty extraordinary, very emotional response from audiences. Some say they didn’t realize, some say they knew about it, we have these talkbacks on Tuesday nights, you don’t understand what the situation was in the 30s…I think Wise is a complicated figure, in some ways the most complicated figure in the play, people who are sympathetic to him say you have to understand the tenor of the times, Father Coughlin and how careful Jews had to be then. There was so much anti-semitism in the country that Jews had to be really careful. And I understand that completely.

Q: How did you turn historical events into a drama?

A: You’re dealing with an issue, the major tragedy of the 20th Century, and so who am I to deal with the major tragedy of the 20th century? You are dealing with a level of government indifference and responsibility, a level of fear, panic, an enormous tragedy, problem trying to make it into a play about a man, about Peter Bergson, and not just make it a polemic, and to try to make it human and not just a mouthpiece, and that is a major problem in terms of writing the play…He makes a lot of speeches, you have to make him 3 dimensional, you have to give him a personality, it’s a drama, not a documentary, and he’s a fascinating figure, it’s still a play and you had to give him in drama, he had to go through whatever a figure goes through in a drama, if you look at contemporary dramas, there are a certain number of contemporary dramas that use real figures—currently it’s Nixon, or scientists that Michael Frayn writes about, and certain license had to be taken...

Q: Was the work of Michael Frayn an influence on your writing? Were there other influences?

A: I read Michael Frayn with fascination, he took real issues and real people and turned it into drama—Copenhagen about Heisenberg and the Bomb, Democracy about Willy Brandt and the Guillaume Affair—he’s really brilliant about how he does it. I read Peter Morgan’s latest play Frost/Nixon, and the movie The Queen. What’s interesting about all of them is that all of the people are utterly 3-dimensional. Someone like Morgan makes someone like Nixon utterly 3 dimensional, you are totally sympathetic to him and fascinated by him, it’s kind of brilliant. The opposite problem was with Bergson, you had to make him not just a hero, but make him flawed, not just having 2 hours of a wonderful guy.

Q: The producer of my documentary says you captured the relationship between Breckenridge Long and FDR perfectly. What do you say to those who would argue that Roosevelt would not have permitted European Jews to be kept out of the USA, if he had known they were destined for extermination?

A: All those people who say that Breckenridge Long was just a minor functionary, that’s just absurd. Breckenridge Long worked for FDR, FDR appointed him.

It’s like saying Rumsfeld and Cheney were architects of the Iraq war and Bush had nothing to do with it--that’s just wrong.

Breckenridge Long was a significant figure, obviously, the refugee policy, thousands of Jews barred from coming in—FDR appointed Breckinridge Long, knew what was happening, and kept him in the job for whatever reason—part and parcel of that administration, FDR was responsible for Breckenridge Long.

I remember a debate on this question between historians David Wyman and Arthur Schlesinger on PBS’s Charlie Rose show. Schlesinger was defending FDR, and Wyman took out this 4-foot long form designed by Breckenridge Long, and unrolled it—we have have a copy of it in the play—and Wyman said, this is what the administration did under FDR. That essentially shut up Mr. Schlesinger.

Q: I was struck by how critical the play was towards Roosevelt, was this intentional?

A: FDR was obviously in many ways a great President, he saved the country economically from the Depression, yet I cannot get into the mindset of people who said “you win the war and Jews are saved,” or “you can’t bomb the camps,” or “you can’t do anything about immigration policy.”

I don’t want to make FDR into an evil figure, it’s just too easy, I don’t think he was an evil figure, it is much more accurate to think of people as dimensional figures. I even try to make Long dimensional in terms of his fears of immigrants and what they mean to him personally, when you read Wyman, he called Long a nativist, more anti-immigrant than just anti-semitic. Long didn’t want any immigrants here, he didn’t want any foreigners here during WWII. It was a pretty brutal way to behave.

Q: How did this play get produced in New York?

A: I won a contest called Stellar Network, US-UK organization, online. One of the judges was Ian Morgan, who is a director at the New Group. He liked the play a lot. The prize was a reading of the play.

The reading was with Daniel Sauli, who played Bergson in the play, right now. Ian Morgan took the play to the artistic director of the New Group, Scott Elliott, he read the play and said he wanted to do it. It is very unusual for anyone to want to do a play at all, so I owe it all to Ian Morgan and Scott Elliott, they went way out on a limb, and I worked on the play with Ian Morgan and Scott Elliott, who was kind of the producer of the play, doing a lot of cutting, the play was really long and a little bit repetitious. Scott Elliott had some good ideas about the structure of the play, ending the first act with the pageant, that kind of stuff, moving things around a bit. Ideas about the form of the play. No talk about what the play said, it was really the shape of the play, and they were great.

Q: Who is director Ian Morgan? Is he British?

A: Ian Morgan is in his 30s, grew up in Middletown CT. Both parents are academics at Wesleyan.

Q: Do you think your novel about the New York Times, Bylines, may have caused some hard feelings at the newspaper that affected their review of "The Accomplices"? It seemed more negative than most other reviews that I read.

A: I don’t think so. My novel was a long time ago. It was a personal novel, and not a happy experience. It should have gone through my typewriter 3-4 more times.

The only thing about the Times in the play is the way the Times dealt with the Holocaust—Rosenthal has written about it, Alex Jones’ book goes on at some length about that. There is a book by Laura Leff, a whole book about the Times and the Holocaust, very detailed and very good. So, this is not a new story about how the Times covered the events. Leff book pretty terrific, the way the Times covered it was shocking. In the last 20 years, all this stuff has been coming out.

Q: What will your next play be about?

A: I don’t want to talk about what I’m writing about. This is what I like to do, the best part is the research. I spend a lot time reading and researching, again it deals with a period in time, the 40s-50s, but it has nothing to do with the Holocaust. It will be a fact-based play, it interests me, personally.

Q: How do you feel to be nominated for a Drama Desk Award?

A: The Award nomination is totally thrilling. I went to Drama Desk event, and it was thrilling to be in there with Tom Stoppard, Peter Morgan, August Wilson. Andrew Polk the actor who played Merlin, was also nominated. Thrilling to be in that league. This guy David Harrow, who wrote Black Bird, is also an Englishman.

Q: Do you think the British get more respect for writing about serious subjects?

A: There are a lot of serious plays, but off Broadway. People seem to like British plays. British plays become easier to produce on Broadway, when something has a success in London.

Q: Will your play be performed in London?

A: It has been submitted to British theatres, it has been talked about in Israel, other cities in US, like LA, someone in Washington seems to be interested.

Q: Have there been any difficulties in staging The Accomplices?

A: This play has 8 actors, a big cast, actors play multiple roles, it can be a little complicated, everyone likes to have as few actors as possible because of the expense.

Q: How do you feel about the future for the play?

A: I hope it has a life of its own, a life after NY. I hope it does. It has been personally thrilling. The audiences have been enthusiastic and emotional.

Q: Is this play primarily for Jewish audiences?

A: The actors, some of them are Jewish, some of them are not Jewish. They have been so involved in the play itself. They tell me that they have never had an experience like this. It has been thrilling experience for everyone, including me--just to have audiences respond this way. Audiences thank ushers, they are very emotional, it not your usual experience. People come up and say they have parents or grandparents who perished in the Holocaust. They leave weeping. It has been much more emotional than I ever dreamed. It’s been a Jewish audience but not just Jews. All kinds of people have come. I never imagined this.

Sarkozy Beats Royal 53%-47%

Complete results at LeFigaro.fr, which has published Sarkozy's reform agenda here (in French). Google English translation reads:

“I WILL SAY very front, for to do everything afterwards.” This creed, Nicolas Sarkozy hammered since mid- January, date of its nomination by UMP. With the wire of the months, that which was not yet that candidate thus drew up his program and his priorities. And reaffirmed that it would act as of its arrival with to be able, in order to give a sign of its will “to make the policy differently”. In theory, Nicolas Sarkozy should take “a few days of reflexion”, enters today and on May 17, date completion of mandature of Jacques Chirac.

“Ten days to digest the countryside and to live the function presidential”, according to its own terms. period will enable him to choose its Prime Minister definitively, as well as the fifteen ministers who will compose his government. Secretaries of State who will assist the ministers will be named, them, which after the legislative ones, on June 17. To receive the whole of the two sides of industry Between on May 16 and on June 17, the new one president should print his mark on priority topics in its eyes: the social one, taxation, environment and the international one. Initially, it should receive the whole of the two sides of industry. The latter will be encouraged to work with the new chief of the government on the method and the calendar reforms to come (flexisecurity, social democracy…). This go will be used to give one sign extremely in favour of the social dialogue, but also to put a corner on the question of the minimum service. In the tread of the appointments with the trade unions and employers, that which was committed respecting the ecological pact of Nicolas Hulot should start to prepare a “Grenelle” of the environment with ONG, the industrialists and the two sides of industry.

The elected president wants to also print his mark with the international one. Two displacements, one in Brussels and the other in Berlin are already registered with the program. It is necessary “to advance quickly on the simplified treaty and to resolve the operation of Europe”, underlines its entourage. But Nicolas Sarkozy “wants to also be ready with to work and to legislate as of the installation of the new Parliament”, indicated Francois Fillon. Some bills symbolic systems - including one on safety and another on the universities - should be launched quickly, in order to be presented at the national representation at the time of the extraordinary session of summer. The collective budgetary, in July, would have in addition to allow to make pass social and tax measurements of which it the most spoke during countryside and which, there still, is symptomatic mark of “  rupture  ” that Nicolas Sarkozy wants to print.

Lastly, the new president of the Republic should also benefit from July 14 to take a turning symbolic system. In addition to the procession soldier, Nicolas Sarkozy wishes to organize a festival of youth and Europe. And one thinks of arranging with the oubliettes the traditional televised interview.

Since this blog has been covering Sarkozy for a while, we were not at all surprised that he won this election decisively. We endorsed his candidacy on September 15, 2006...

Here's a link to President Sarkozy's website.

Vive la France!

Anne Williamson on the Meaning of the World Bank's Wolfowitz Scandal

From LewRockwell.com:

Wolfowitz's agenda puts at risk a very cozy world based on the post–World War II modus operandi in which dollar loans are extended to undeveloped and impoverished nations in order to grab control over their resources and governments. The main point is the loan, not the borrower's ability or commitment, but the lender's claim on national collateral. The corruption emerges from institutional action, action inherent in and according to the World Bank's design as a political lender masquerading as a humanitarian enterprise, and nothing effective can be done about it as long as the institution exists. Reform is not an option, only elimination.

For the well-positioned second-raters that people the Bank, there's no advantage in trading in a country club existence and perfumed reputation just to browbeat and bludgeon troops out of poor nations in return for dollar grants. It's so much more agreeable to posture as a helping-hand, hiding the nasty imperial bits in the loan covenants. True, the policies the loans require often lead to public riots, and to resource, land and territorial wars among their clients, but the mainstream media never connects the loans to their bloody consequences. At worst, details of the borrower's thievery leak out.

What's really at stake for staff is the richest, absolute best government plantation in the entire world. World Bankers, along with IMF, IFC and EBRD employees, enjoy a mem-Sahib lifestyle; tax-free six-figure salaries, foreign expeditions involving first-class travel, five-star hotels, generous per diems, lavish banquets, and – if one is obliged to "stay on" overseas for "mission" work – extensive local staff and personal aides, language tutors, tuition support for the children, numerous mandated vacations home per annum, residential rent subsidies, full insurance packages, diplomatic mail for those legally-dubious art acquisitions, the best address, and fancy invites.

If you are a foreign national lucky enough to escape your native backwater for an assignment in Washington, or London, or Paris, or Geneva – all the best places! – there is no treachery you wouldn't commit to stay in place. (The very best institutional reform scheme ever put forward was Christopher Fildes's suggestion to move the Bank's headquarters to Bangladesh.)

If you are a consultant, or an academic "adviser," you'll keep your honest opinions to yourself, and do the job, no matter how mad or useless. There's no way your university could, or your firm would, roll out a red carpet like the World Bank does.

If you are a Third World borrower and a government official and therefore advantageously-positioned to skim the loans and use the principal for purposes more useful to you and your continuing hold on power than to the nation, the World Bank is your literal lifeline. Without scads of dollars to hand out, an honest election or worse – open revolt – are always possibilities.

If you are a large, richly-endowed private corporation with an eye on the profit possibilities in some foreign hellhole, you'll play along, doing your bit to legitimize, publicize and generally support the Bank. After all, those giveaway loans may well be your critical leverage indirectly. Tit for tat. Loan for license.

Clearly, there's a lot of mouths to be fed. Luckily for the class of useless hors d'oeuvre eaters, there is China.

China is a rare creature in the World Bank firmament in that it is a large and paying customer, taking full advantage of the Bank's subsidized loans despite having an unprecedented $1.2 trillion in reserves. The income China represents to the World Bank is critical; already the Bank's sister institution, the IMF, an agency China does not patronize, is unable to make enough of a return on its international loans to pay its costs and is currently floating the idea of selling a portion of the Fund's contributed gold horde for cash to pay for their jobs and privileges.

The World Bank does not wish to be similarly indisposed.

There really wasn't much heat in the Shaha Riza story. After all, a couple of middle-aged parasites and public policy bores divvying up a big bag of other peoples' money while giving free reign to their shared delusions of bayonet democracy and the Middle East is somehow depressingly familiar.

But in the initial scandal data dump to the Washington Post on 12 April ("World Bank Chief's Leadership Role Called Into Question"), one sizzling fact leaked out apparently by mistake as it was never mentioned again in future reports. The maverick leak was an e-mail "noting that the bank had received a warning from China that it might halt future borrowings if Wolfowitz refused to curb anti-corruption investigations."

Wolfowitz is toast.

Alas, the Bank is not. Not yet, anyway.

Peggy Noonan Says Fred Thompson Won GOP Debate

In the Wall Street Journal:

Each had flubs and false moves. Something tells me it will all get more interesting, and not only because Fred Thompson will get in.

Michelle Malkin Interviews Frank Gaffney about PBS Censorship

Of his documentary film Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center, at HotAir.com.

More information at FreetheFilm.net.

Watch Gaffney's appearance on Fox News' O'Reilly Report above.

Watch trailer here.

Ryan Sager on the Republican Presidential Debate

From the NY Sun (ht Michelle Malkin):

But, now, to name the winners and losers. Off the bat, let me stipulate that I don't consider any of the seven dwarves to necessitate much analysis. Ron Paul is a pure libertarian, so I always enjoy hearing from him. But I'll stick mostly here to the Big Three. Winner: Mitt Romney. Loser, by a mile: Rudy Giuliani. Treading water: John McCain.

Mr. Romney: If anyone stood out from the other candidates, in terms of looking polished and poised, it was clearly Mr. Romney. He got off some of the best lines of the night, partially because Chris Matthews gave him some oddball questions (I particularly liked: "I don't say anything to Roman Catholic bishops. They can do whatever the heck they want." [see: 8:38]). He, more than any of the others, managed to sound reasonable and assured no matter what he was saying. He's still got a major flip-flopping problem, and basically lied about it during his answers on abortion. But any casual observer of the debate (were there any non-junkies watching?) would probably have to view him as head-and-shoulders above the others.

Mr. Giuliani: At this point, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Giuliani campaign is in a full meltdown. The former mayor simply wasn't himself on that stage, trying to contort himself into something the religious right can accept, while at the same time refusing to pander to them in any way that would actually help him win the nomination. Basically, he was offending them while seeming terrified of offending them. His answer on abortion [see: 8:29] will go down as one of the worst moments of either debate so far this season — just painful to watch. His inability to say more than five seconds worth of positive things about Christian conservatives [see: 8:44] was also truly awful. He was thrown a softball and chose to bash himself over the head with the bat instead. The campaign is still salvageable for Mr. Giuliani, but if tonight wasn't his operation's wake-up call, nothing will be.

Mr. McCain: Maybe it's because I've seen too much of him recently, but Mr. McCain was really relying on a lot of canned lines at this debate, and it was grating. He didn't embarrass himself like Mr. Giuliani, but he didn't distinguish himself either. He may be the tortoise in this race. But it's no fun watching him plod.

Christopher Hitchens on Mormonism

My father tipped me off to this Hitchens essay in Slate:

If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future "revelations" after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world's fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword." He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people's bibles.

In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being "a disorderly person and an impostor." That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or "necromantic" powers. However, within four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) as the discoverer of the "Book of Mormon." He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become that the region became known as the "Burned-Over District," in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which, unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess the signs of an ancient history.

A vanished and vanquished Indian civilization had bequeathed a considerable number of burial mounds, which when randomly and amateurishly desecrated were found to contain not merely bones but also quite advanced artifacts of stone, copper, and beaten silver. There were eight of these sites within twelve miles of the underperforming farm which the Smith family called home. There were two equally stupid schools or factions who took a fascinated interest in such matters: the first were the gold-diggers and treasure-diviners who brought their magic sticks and crystals and stuffed toads to bear in the search for lucre, and the second those who hoped to find the resting place of a lost tribe of Israel. Smith's cleverness was to be a member of both groups, and to unite cupidity with half-baked anthropology.

Mixed Reviews in Salt Lake City for PBS Mormon Documentary

Carrie Moore reports on the response in Utah, in the Deseret News:

With few of the major issues facing the LDS Church left untouched, the final installment of the four-hour PBS documentary on "The Mormons" drew responses all across the board late Tuesday night among Utahns of different faiths — and particularly Latter-day Saints.

This stained-glass window, completed in 1913 by an unknown artist, depicts the first vision in which the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. said God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in 1820 in answer to prayer.

Sacred temple rites, death, family life, intellectual dissidents, excommunication, homosexuality, blacks and the priesthood, missionary work, conversion and obedience were among the topics chronicled in Tuesday night's installment, looking at the modern church.

Gold plates, angels, revelation, basic doctrine, persecution, polygamy and the Mountain Meadows massacre were covered in Monday's part one, which looked at the church's early history. The effort is believed to be the most in-depth broadcast examination to date on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, both past and present.

Fred Woods, a religion professor at Brigham Young University, said he doesn't think people of other faiths "would have understood Mormons by this documentary. Just as Jews understand Judaism and Muslims Islam better than outsiders, LDS people understand their faith better than someone (Helen Whitney in this case) looking from the outside in."

He credited the filmmaker for the many interviews she included, though he said, "There was too much of those who did not present what Mormonism is really all about, particularly by those who had left the faith and therefore presented a tainted view."

Quoting the apostle Paul, he said, "The natural man (or woman) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (I Cor. 2:11,14).

Official response from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints here.

Christopher Hitchens on George Tenet

From Slate (ht Drudge):

Notice the direct quotes that make it clear who is the author of this brilliant insight. And then pause for a second. The author is almost the only man who could have known of Zacarias Moussaoui and his co-conspirators—the very man who positively knew they were among us, in flight schools, and then decided to leave them alone. In his latest effusion, he writes: "I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting." Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it then, and not just in his "gut" but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies. His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to "HUMINT" under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle. It's for this reason that the CIA now has to rely on torturing the few suspects it can catch, a policy, incidentally, that Tenet's book warmly defends.

So, the only really interesting question is why the president did not fire this vain and useless person on the very first day of the war. Instead, he awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom! Tenet is now so self-pitying that he expects us to believe that he was "not at all sure that [he] really wanted to accept" this honor. But it seems that he allowed or persuaded himself to do so, given that the citation didn't mention Iraq. You could imagine that Tenet had never sat directly behind Colin Powell at the United Nations, beaming like an overfed cat, as the secretary of state went through his rather ill-starred presentation. And who cares whether his "slam dunk" vulgarity was misquoted or not? We have better evidence than that. Here is what Tenet told the relevant Senate committee in February 2002...

Read the whole thing.

Turkey's Byzantine Heritage

Writing before the Constitutional Court overturned the AKP candidate's election, Indian diplomat K Gajendra Singh noted the current Turkish presidential election crisis is about the struggle between Islamism vs. Secularism, in the context of Turkey's Byzantine heritage:

In spite of all AKP endeavours Abdullah Gul failed to get required 2/3rd votes in the first round . In fact the opposition Republican Peoples party ( RPP) which controls one third of the seats , refused to enter the Parliament , thus 'even the quorum was not established' .Later it filed with the Constitutional Court that in the absence of quorum of 367 ,the proceedings were illegal and be declared invalid. The Court is likely to decide before the next vote.

Ever since AKP stunned everyone including itself in November 2002 elections by winning over 360 seats , the Turkish Armed forces , a bastion of secularism have made no secret of its dislike for the former's policies. AKP has used the criteria for joining the Europe Union(EU) to reduce military's decision making role in the National Security Council, now an advisory body .

Apparently it was in a coordinated manouvre by the secular establishment that the Chief of General Staff (CGS) issued the statement that "It should not be forgotten that the Turkish armed forces is one of the sides in this debate and the absolute defender of secularism." It added, "when necessary, they will display its stance and attitudes very clearly. No one should doubt that."

Next day, in a show of confidence rarely seen in past civilian administrations, the AKP government rebuked the military said that it was "unthinkable" for the institution (military) to challenge its political leaders in a democracy. "It is out of the question to withdraw my candidacy," Gul insisted on 29 April. "The Constitutional Court will make the right decision."

"We must avoid polarization ... Turkish democracy has been wounded," said Erkan Mumcu, leader of the center-right ANAP party, referring to the army statement. Protests began with thousands at Ankara University against the government on 27 April. Then came the Istanbul show of strength.

The secular establishment and citizens suspect AKP of harbouring a secret Islamic agenda like National Salvation Front in 1992 in Algeria which had almost won but was banned .( US led West said nothing then) .AKP attempted to criminalise adultery, restrict alcohol sales and lift a ban on Islamic headscarves in public places. It even tried to intervene in the autonomy of the military which expels suspected Islamist officers each year.

It is feared that the strict separation of state and religion will be eroded and Islam will creep into all fields of life if Gul were elected. Control of Presidency will give AKP a free hand to implement Islamist policies.

A hard and determined Prime Minister Recep Erdogan with statements like "Minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are our soldiers," for which he was convicted and jailed for 4 months ,make people nervous . Perhaps pre-poning general elections due in November , which AKP is likely to win but not with 2/3 rd massive majority , would be the best option. To cool tempers for now.

IMHO Western complaints about the role of the Turkish military as guardians of secularism are ill-considered. It is clear that the American military, and NATO, play a similar role in Western Europe to that of the Turkish military in Turkey. NATO has done so since the end of World War II--acting as guardians against a return to Fascism or the advance of Communism, overthrowing Communist governments when needed, and currently at war against Islamists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, the EU would do better to unconditionally support the Turkish military's defense of secularism against the "democracy" supposedly represented by so-called "moderate Islamist parties"--a fraudulent political pose analagous in its relation to the central menace to the so-called "Eurocommunism" that disappeared immediately after the fall of the USSR from which it once claimed to be independent...

More coverage at Turkish Daily News.

May Day!

You can read Wikipedia's history of May Day, here:

International Workers' Day (a name used interchangeably with May Day) is a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labour movement. May Day commonly sees organized street demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of working people and their labour unions throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world — though, as noted below, in neither the United States nor Canada. More-radical groups such as communists and anarchists are also given to widespread street protest on this day as well.

May Day was originally the commemoration of the Haymarket protests in Chicago in 1886: in 1889, the first congress of the Second International, meeting in Paris for the centennial of the French Revolution and the Exposition Universelle (1889), following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne, called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. These were so successful that May Day was formally recognized as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently.

In 1904, the International Socialist Conference meeting in Amsterdam called on "all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." As the most effective way of demonstrating was by striking, the congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May 1, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."

May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and anarchist groups. In some circles, bonfires are lit in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs, usually right as the first day of May begins [1].
Due to its status as a celebration of the efforts of workers and the socialist movement, May Day is an important official holiday in Communist countries such as the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union. May Day celebrations typically feature elaborate popular and military parades in these countries.

In countries other than the United States and Canada, resident working classes fought hard to make May Day an official holiday[citation needed], efforts which largely succeeded. For this reason, in most of the world today, May Day is marked by massive street rallies led by workers, their trade unions, anarchists and various socialist and communist parties.

Due to its importance in Communist countries, the First and Second Red Scare periods ended May Day as a mass holiday in the United States, which has celebrated Labor Day on the first Monday of September since 1880.

Is Bush Education Secretary Whoring for Coke?

Scott Jaschik reports in Inside Higher Ed that critics of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings efforts to re-design American higher education are pointing to her acceptance of gifts from the Coca-Cola Company:

Asked a series of questions about Coke’s role in the Atlanta meeting (including specific questions about how much money was involved and what it was paying for), the department’s press office responded by sending a copy of a portion of the U.S. Code that says: “The Secretary is authorized to accept, hold, administer, and utilize gifts, bequests and devises of property, both real and personal, and to accept donations of services, for the purpose of aiding or facilitating the work of the Department. Gifts, bequests, and devises of money and proceeds from sales of other property received as gifts, bequests, or devises shall be deposited in the Treasury and shall be available for disbursement upon the order of the Secretary.”

Pressed for details, Chad Colby said that he believed Coke was paying for food for the Atlanta meeting and that the department was paying other expenses. Arrangements for the other regional meetings would each be different, he said.

Critics — most of whom did not want to be quoted by name — said that they viewed the invitations noting Coke’s role as host as further evidence of a corporate tilt by the department. They noted that the invitations were not generally available to rank and file professors and that the Spellings Commission report had a strong business orientation, but has been criticized for ignoring the liberal arts.

“The emphasis in the department’s consultations seems to be primarily on colleges and universities as training grounds for corporate America, rather than as a place for students to explore a variety of perspectives and learn to think critically for themselves,” said John W. Curtis, director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors, via e-mail. “This was reflected in the inclusion of corporate representatives on the secretary’s commission while faculty were largely excluded. The fact that these follow-up ’summit’ meetings are by invitation only, and appear to have some level of corporate sponsorship, only strengthens this impression.”

Charles Miller, chair of the Spellings Commission, said that the arrangements for the regional meetings were set up to make it relatively easy for people to attend and that many businesses can be helpful in this area.

Miller suggested that some academics “seem to have a problem with the word corporation” and suggested that professors should welcome more business involvement. He said that most business leaders are strong supporters of higher education. “They pay the taxes, they are on the boards, they use the graduates, they know about foreign competition,” he said.

In this context, it makes sense to look for ways to involve business leaders, he said. “It’s wrong-headed to think that the only people who can talk about the academy are the people who are in it.”

More criticism of Spellings on SchoolsMatter, including a link to this brewing scandal over US Department of Education-funded reading programs:

Fueled by a growing list of such complaints, the House Education and Labor Committee is looking into whether the Bush administration steered contracts to its favorite vendors, shutting out Slavin and other competitors.

And the Education Department's inspector general has asked the Justice Department to examine allegations of mismanagement and conflicts of interest that are swirling around the $6 billion federal grant program known as Reading First, a centerpiece of the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law.

Inspector General John Higgins said his office began investigating Reading First in May 2005 after receiving complaints of favoritism. He told the Education and Labor Committee that the law calls for a balanced panel of experts to review grant applications but the department had created a panel that had professional ties to a specific reading program.

Democratic Rep. George Miller of California, the committee's chairman, said three people involved in the reviewing process benefited financially - either directly or indirectly - when the panel distributed grants.

At a committee hearing April 20, three review panel members acknowledged benefiting from the sale of an assessment product called the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Learning Skills. One of the panel members was a co-author of the product, and the company in which he owned a 50 percent share had received more than $1.3 million in royalty and other payments from the sale of DIBELS. Two other review panel members were co-authors of a reading intervention product that was packaged with DIBELS, and they each had received about $150,000 in royalty payments from sales of their product.

All three denied any conflict of interest, saying they didn't review grant proposals that involved their own products. They said their products were selling because of their popularity, not because of any pressure from Washington.

Bush Foreign Aid Chief Resigns in Call-Girl Scandal

From the Indianapolis Star::

WASHINGTON - Ex-State Department official and Indiana native Randall Tobias may be called to testify in the defense of the woman at the center of a Washington sex scandal, her attorney said Monday.

Montgomery Blair Sibley, an attorney for Deborah Jeane Palfrey who is accused of running a prostitution service, said Palfrey has the obligation and the right to compel witnesses like Tobias to testify on her behalf.

"When they are served with a subpoena to appear and testify under oath, we expect them to tell the truth," Sibley said. "And we expect them to show up because nobody is above the law in this country, as this case is rapidly pointing out."
Tobias resigned Friday from a top post in the State Department where he oversaw most U.S. foreign aid.

ABC News reported late Friday that Tobias said in a Thursday interview that he had used the Pamela Martin and Associates escort services for massages, but he said there had been "no sex." Palfrey ran the service and turned its telephone records over to ABC.

Here's a link to the White House biography for Ambassador Tobias. Tobias was ex-CEO of pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly. Interestingly as US aid czar, he had been responsible for US government HIV and sexually transmitted disease initiatives, among other things.

According to an AP report on Yahoo! News:

Tobias submitted his resignation a day after he was interviewed by ABC News for an upcoming program about an alleged prostitution service run by the so-called D.C. Madam.

ABC reported on its Web site late Friday that Tobias confirmed that he had called the Pamela Martin and Associates escort service to have women come to his condo and give him massages. More recently, Tobias told the network, he has been using a service with Central American women.

Tobias, 65, who is married, told ABC News there had been "no sex" during the women's visits to his condo. His name was on a list of clients given to ABC by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who owns the escort service and has been charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital.

U.S. officials would not confirm the information. A message left on Tobias' voice mail seeking comment was not returned.

Tobias held two titles: director of U.S. foreign assistance and administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development. His rank was equivalent to deputy secretary of state.

Your tax dollars at work...

Olga Sobolevskaya on Mstislav Rostropovich

From RIAN.ru:

Talent and conscience were his only guides in life. "Solzhenitsyn's suffering earned him the right to speak the truth," he declared in 1970 in an open letter to the press. By supporting the dissident writer, he expressed his own unshakeable credo: be truthful in everything, in art and in life.

He had followed that credo since his youth. In February 1952, Rostropovich performed Prokofiev's Symphony Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, with the pianist Sviatoslav Richter conducting, at the Grand Conservatory Hall. It was a daring act of civil defiance as memories were still fresh of the crackdown on "formalist" composers (including Shostakovich and Prokofiev), who were accused of sacrificing content for the sake of form. In any case, he was "forgiven," just like he would be 10 years later, in the early 60s, when he accompanied his wife's performance of "Satires," a vocal cycle composed by Shostakovich to the words of a "banned" poet, Sasha Cherny. These social send-ups were considered frivolous, but they fell short of being criminal, so the couple were allowed to go on tours, win prizes and put their creative ideas into practice. In 1968, Rostropovich was even able to realize his life-long dream by staging Tchaikovsky's opera "Eugene Onegin" at the Bolshoi with Vishnevskaya, his wife, singing the lead part, Tatyana Larina.

In the 1970s, after the Solzhenitsyn scandal, the authorities tried to cut off Rostropovich's oxygen. They didn't stand a chance. His freedom was personal and total. No ideology could crush it. And no ailment could stop him from creating.

Putin on Yeltsin

From Kremlin.ru:

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Dear Naina Yosifovna,

Dear members of the Yeltsin family,

Dear friends,

We have just paid our last farewell to Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, a man of true Russian expanse and generosity of spirit. We have paid farewell to a man of resolute will and authentic determination.

I am certain that only such a leader, a leader raised and nurtured by all the energy of our great Russia, could arouse a country such as ours and lead it to such fundamental change.

He became President through the support of millions of our citizens, changed the face of power and broke down the thick wall between the public and the state. He was devoted to his people and served them with courage.

He knew how to and loved speaking with people frankly and openly. He never remained in the shadows or hid behind the backs of others. There were times when he consciously chose to take all the fire on himself, accepting personal responsibility for very tough but necessary decisions. He bravely took upon himself the most difficult role in creating the most important democratic institutions.

President Yeltsin understood that most important of all was the irreversibility of the changes that had taken place and steadfast resolution in pursuing his strategic course.

This kind of political style and instinct distinguishes national leaders who do not think only of the present moment but look far ahead into the future.

At a time when the old mechanisms of power had collapsed and Russia’s statehood was weakened, Boris Yeltsin made the difficult achievement of giving the country a new constitution. He put his health and even perhaps his life on the line during the election of 1996, and he emerged victorious.

Looking back at Boris Nikolayevich, one cannot but remember his openness and love of life. It is not by chance that his amazing ability to build relations of genuine friendship became a real foreign policy advantage for Russia.

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is the destiny of a rare few to have found their own freedom and been followed by millions, to have led their country to truly historical transformation and in so doing change the world itself.

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was able to do this, not once retreating or bowing under the weight of his task, not once betraying the people’s choice and his own conscience.

He will always remain a shining symbol of change, a symbol of the fight against decrepit dogmas and prohibitions.

Figures of this dimension never leave us. They live on in people’s ideas and aspirations, in the achievements and successes of their Motherland.

No matter how difficult it was for him, and no matter how great the challenges facing our country, Boris Nikolayevich always believed in the renaissance and transformation of Russia. He respected the talent and strength of the Russian people and sincerely tried to do all he could to improve the lives of millions of Russians (and he always said this word in his own distinctive way, with that particular ‘Yeltsin intonation’).

This was his dream, his goal. And Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin will not just live on in our memories – we will work towards this goal.

May his memory live forever!

Leon Aron on Yeltsin's Legacy

From The American.com:

He was rife with authoritarian habits and urges—and bound by self-imposed and self-enforced constraints. He thirsted for power and was zealous to acquire and hold it. Yet both the mode of acquisition of that power (by two free elections) and at least some of the uses to which he put it—greatly weakening the state’s stranglehold over society and the economy, and Moscow’s over Russia—were utterly novel for that country.

The Russia that Yeltsin left behind reflected the contradictions of its founding father. It was a hybrid: a polity still semiauthoritarian, corrupt, and mistrusted by the society, but also one that was governable, in which the elites’ competition for power was arbitrated by popular vote, and in which most of the tools of authoritarian mobilization and coercion appeared to have been significantly dulled. Yeltsin’s legacy is a collection of necessary, although far from sufficient, conditions for a modern capitalist democracy: free elections; freedom of political opposition; demilitarization of state and society; decentralization of the traditionally unitary state; a largely privatized economy; and a still small and weak but increasingly assertive civil society, sustained by civil liberties, freedom of the press from government censorship, and an increasingly independent and assertive judiciary. The political organism that he forged is full of severe defects, both genetic and acquired, yet capable of development and of peacefully thwarting Communist restoration without succumbing to authoritarianism.

Perhaps most important of all, Yeltsin freed Russia from what the great English poet Robert Graves (in an entirely different context) called “the never changing circuit of its fate”—the history that after four centuries appeared to have become destiny: imperialism, militarism, and rigid centralization interrupted by episodes of horrifyingly brutal anarchy. He gave Russia a “peredyshka,” a time to catch its breath. The traditional attributes of the Russian state—authoritarianism, imperialism, militarism, xenophobia—are far from extinguished. Yet more and higher hedges have been erected against their recurrence under Yeltsin’s peredyshka than at any other time in Russian history.

Brutalized—the rulers and the ruled alike—by terror and lies, gnarled by fear and poverty, paralyzed by total dependence on the state, the Russians’ journey from subjects to a free people will be neither easy nor fast. Yet, like a convalescing invalid, Russia under Yeltsin began to hobble away from the prison hospital that the czars and commissars built, with its awful food, stern nurses, short visiting hours, and ugly uniforms.

She is not out of the hospital yard yet. But if she can no longer be stopped, Yeltsin’s name, next to Gorbachev’s, will be inscribed by History among those of the greatest liberators.

Giuliani Speaks on Hamas-US Relations

Hizzoner is for them in principle, on one condition: Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist and renounce terrorism.

Sounds good to me. Here's Susan Rosenbluh's report from New Jersey's Jewish Voice and Opinion (ht lgf):

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t care whether the Palestinian government is run by Hamas, which is recognized by the US as a terrorist organization, or Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of Fatah who is regarded by the Bush administration as a moderate.

"Hamas or Abbas, it makes no difference. The ball is in their court, and we just have to show patience and not push any peace process until they do what they have to do," said Mr. Giuliani.

What they have to do, he said, is, at the very minimum, to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to renounce terrorism. Then, he said, Israel and the US should sit back and see if they mean it.

"They don’t just have to say the words. Anyone can say the words. They have to show that they are ending terrorism; they have to show that they are doing what they have to do to end terrorism. I’m a strong proponent of the philosophy that we can trust, but we have to verify," he said. "If all that happens, then it will lead naturally to a peace process, but we have to wait patiently until they are ready to make it happen. And no one should make any concessions to the Palestinians until they take those steps."