be afraid....

Nov. 30, 2007—[Republican SEC Chief] Cox plans to discuss how the increase in investments by foreign government investment funds, which manage between $2 trillion and $3 trillion in asserts, may “fundamentally change how markets work.” Cox says they could particularly affect US regulatory structure… His stance breaks with the administration and IMF, which has agreed only to study the phenomenon. WSJ A8

--In the past three months alone, Dubai International Capital purchased a minority stake in Sony; another investment arm of Abu Dhabi took an 8% stake in the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices and a 7.5% stake in the private-equity group Carlyle; Citic Securities, a Chinese state bank, took a stake in credit-troubled Bear Stearns; Dubai's stock exchange purchased a major share of both the Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange; the Chinese government took a stake in the Blackstone group; and last but certainly not least, another arm of the Dubai government bought the New York fashion emporium Barney's. This is only a sampling of the deals done, and in all likelihood a small subset of the deals to come. … The weak dollar is clearly a factor, and has enhanced the buying power of many foreign buyers. Of course the dollar has weakened in part because the U.S. is both a huge debtor and a large consumer of global goods, and that weakness is yet one more reason why our assets are so attractive at current prices. Simplistically, the system would say: Money goes out as we borrow and spend, and then comes back in the form of investments into our economy by the people we're borrowing and buying from. But then there's culture and politics and national identity, and that makes it not so simple. Finally, let's address the elephant in the living room: Many in the U.S. simply aren't comfortable with increased dependency on either the Middle East or China. Whatever the merits of those concerns, the interdependence of the global economy is a fact. As it stands, the sovereign wealth funds that are so eagerly investing in both the U.S. and throughout the world are controlled by groups that embrace the global capital system rather than others who might reject it. In life, in business and in international affairs, you don't usually have the luxury of selecting the perfect allies. For much of the 20th century, the U.S. could maintain the illusion that we would only work with states and groups that we liked and who we thought liked us. That may have been true then; it isn't true now. We had better get used to it. –WSJ A17

--The largest number of adolescents in history of coming of age world-wide. WSJ B1

help me now i'm falling

Nov. 29, 2007-- India’s Ministry of Culture announces that foreign tourists can no longer pay in dollars when visiting the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites... Three of the world’s biggest oil exporters, Iran, Venezuela and Russia, are demanding payment in euros rather than US dollars. ... The main reason for the collapse of the US dollar is President George W. Bush’s attempt to fight expensive foreign wars while cutting taxes at home.--SBT, B5

Keeping it legal (ii)

Nov. 28, 2007--Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006. At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination. ... Mr. Bloch believes the White House may have a c onflict of interest in pressing the inquiry into his conduct while his office invesitages the White House Political operation. WSJ A5

--With the NFL regular season entering the home stretch [the WSJ] talked with two lawyers who in their proverbial spare time rally hometown fans from the sidelines, [Linda Rothstein cheering for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and Heather Johnson moonlighting as a cheerleader for the Carolina Panthers]—WSJ B9

keeping it legal

Nov. 27, 2007—Bush signed a deal setting the foundation for a potential long-term US troop presence in Iraq. –WSJ A1

--The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to San Diego County’s practice of searching welfare applicants’ homes without warrants. –WSJ A1

--It may be a virtual world, but six merchants in the online environment Second Life have filed a real-world lawsuit over what they say are knockoffs of their digital wares. ... The vendors suing [Queens resident Thomas Simon] say he violated copyright and trademark laws by duplicating their product.—2007 LUSA 717 –11-19-2007

--Attempted sex with a mannequin behind a closed door may be unusual, but it’s not indecent exposure which would require a 19 year old to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, according to the South Dakota Supreme Court. NLJ, Nov. 19, 2007

our children is learning, and they test good too

Nov. 26, 2007—In nearly all of the states studied [by a Stanford/Berkeley center], students did noticeably worse on federal tests than on state tests. In Oklahoma, the gap in scores was a shocking 60 percentage points in math and 51 percentage points in reading. In Texas, that gap was 52 percentage points in math and 56 points in reading. The state that came closest to the federal standard was Massachusetts, where there was a modest 1 percent gap in math and 10 percent gap in reading.—NYT, A26

Thanksgiving weekend update

Nov. 25, 2007—With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectations of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.—NYT A1—so declare victory and bug out, or make it the 51^st state?

--Mr. Howard’s defeat[incumbent prime minister of Australia] follows that of Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, who also back the US led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair of Britain. (NYT A6)

--Venezuela -- As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin.

Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university.... Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students "terrorists" and written them off as "pampered, rich mama's boys." UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers. Mr. Chávez's description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. WSJ Nov. 24-25, A1, A12

Adam Smith was right (sometimes)

DECATUR, Ga. (Nov. 19. 2007) - The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her. Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk's family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test. In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.—AOL News

Adam Smith, WEALTH OF NATIONS (1776): The clergy of an established and well-endowed religion frequently become men of learning and elegance … but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of people … Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves perfectly defenceless… Upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning and good writing may sometimes be on the side of the established church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries ...the methodists, without half the learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue. … It is with [clergy who depend upon voluntary oblations from the people] as with the hussars and light infantry of some armies: no plunder, no pay. ... [Quoting Hume:] ... “in every religion except the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly and delusion. Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violence abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency in the doctrines inculcated. Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address in practicing on the passions and credulity of the populace.”

Turkey Week News

NEW ORLEANS

--In one of the clearest signs yet of Hurricane Katrina’s lasting demographic impact, the City Council is about to have a white majority for the first time in over two decades, pointing up again the storm’s displacement of thousands of residents, mostly black.—A14, NYT 11-20-07 but we already knew that: --Old Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future. Mr. Reiss said he and other business leaders will no longer tolerate living in a dangerous city with bad schools and substandard municipal services. “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way … “ The power elite of NOLA … insist the remade city won’t simply restore the old order. –WSJ, A-12 Sept. 12, 2005 [sic]

THE EMPIRE’S FIRE SALE

--The Deal Story of 2008: Will the US get LBOed? For 2007, foreign buyers have accounted for 20% of M&A in the US… The irony is that the US is, in essence, funding its own potential takeover. … With a weak dollar and the ever-enriched positions of petro-based economies, it’s inevitable that the worries will continue to stew. “We’re moving to a sharecropper economy,” said Mr. Mulloy [of Sloan Foundation] “The other guys are going to be owning, and we’re going tobe working for them.” –WSJ C1, C3, 11-20-07

--Wealthy Nations in Gulf Rethink Peg to Dollar…. Kuwait chose in May to link its currency, the dinar, to a basket of currencies. WSJ, Al, A14 11-20-07. Good thing USA saved Kuwait from Saddam…

--In a recent video [hip hop impresario Jay—Z] cruises New York with a stash of euro banknotes. It’s a statement, and it echoes Warren Buffett’s bet against the dollar and a recent campaign by Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, to promote the euro.—WSJ C10, 11-19-07

--the fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar—it’s the fall of the American empire,” Mr. Chavez said. NYT A1, 11-19-07

THE EMPIRE’S ILLITERACY

--[NEA] Study Links Drop in [USA] Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading. NYT B1, 11-29-07 EXTREME PROUST, sec. 45: Words are perhaps the most mediating of mediating media. Their role in human history has been both complicated and profound, enhancing humanity’s ability to cope with existence, undercutting humanity’s ability to appreciate existence, and then again assisting humanity in its hopes of appreciating existence. One irony is that just as Proust was beginning to explore these issues in depth (with words and words and words) the twilight for words may have been beginning. Proust’s lifetime witnessed a marked increase in the role that images might play in human communication, for better and for worse. Photography became more common. Cinema was invented. It became Benjamin’s “age of mechanical reproduction” for images, with newspapers, posters, and cinematic theaters. The trend has intensified since Proust’s death, with television, computers, DVDs, power point presentations, home theatres, cell phone theatres, and more to come. The irony is that writing may have had its origins in images, as a review of at least Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters might attest. Alphabets abstracted this medium from its more immediate (unmediated?) sources. Yet while writing’s ties to the immediacy of images may now be forever severed, the point now is the degree to which humanity’s new image generating capacities are attempting to make writing and words irrelevant. If more people are not trying to communicate through images or sound bites, certainly more political rulers and commercial hustlers are trying to manipulate through less words and more sight bites.

--In an episode that has embarrassed the Department of Education, thousands of flawed testing booklets forced the invalidation of USA reading scores on an international exam administered without major mishap in 56 other countries.—NYT A16, 11-20-07. We can read MY PET GOAT...

Nov. 16, 2007

--Poor are lagging in hurricane aid from Mississippi; Most money is unspent; US waives a rule that half of grants go to needy residents; NYT A1, 11-16-07; thank you George

--Ruling jolts even Saudis; 200 lashes for rape victim [sic]—NYT A3, 11-16-07—USA ally #1

--Led by robots, roaches abandon instincts. NYT A28, 11-16-07—sexual activity unclear

--“busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”—H4’s advice to H5, according to Shakespeare, NEW YORKER, p. 78, 11-19-07—why we’re in Iraq

when the rain comes

ATLANTA (Nov. 15) - A storm crashed through the Southeast and brought up to an inch of rain in parts of drought-stricken Georgia, but forecasters said the storm likely did little to ease the state's historic drought.
"The ground probably sucked it all up," said Vaughn Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City. "The ground is so dry, I seriously doubt if any of the lakes rose any."
The Wednesday storm packed lashing rain and powerful gusts, injuring at least nine in Tennessee.
The roof of a Baptist church in Tennessee's Marion County was heavily damaged, said Jeremy Heidt of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. Three children were hurt by flying glass and were taken to hospitals, said Heidt

more SAT practice questions

RESPOND TO THE FOLLOWING NEWSCLIP:

ATLANTA, Nov. 14 — A day after Gov. Sonny Perdue asked God to forgive Georgia for being wasteful with its water, county officials in the wealthy suburbs northeast of Atlanta confirmed Wednesday just how profligate one consumer had been.

A homeowner in Marietta, Ga., used 440,000 gallons in September, or about 14,700 gallons a day. By comparison, the average consumption in the United States is about 150 gallons a day per person, and in the Atlanta metropolitan area about 183 gallons. –NYT Nov. 15 2007

1) 1)Sonny was praying to the wrong God

2) 2)Sonny always prays to money

3) 3)The rich can buy whatever they want and use it however they want, that’s what Market God sez

4) 4)What’s the problem? Sonny prayed to money and the rich guy turned off the tap

5) 5)Where’s the f%$^&* rain?

solidarity forever

In honor of the writer’s strike, excerpts from WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN (1941) by Schulberg:

--I’ve always been afraid of people who can be agile without grace [4]

----“But as long as you’re going in for it there’s plenty of good, dead authors that’ll hand you terrific plots on a silver platter. Why, I knew a guy who made a nice little pile out of one of DeMaupassant’s stories just the other day. And all he had to do was switch the hooker from a French carriage to a Western stagecoach. If you were smart you’d try to hit on something like that and write yourself an original.” [69]

--“Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on.” [69]

--“Work hard, and, if you can’t work hard, be smart; and, if you can’t be smart, be loud.” [89]

--“If you turn in one treatment with both your names on it and that fat swish lets the producer know he did all the writing, you’re dead. If you want to play it cozy, write a treatment of your own without letting Pancake know and then get to your producer alone and tell him you thought Pancake was so far off the line it seemed faster to straighten it out yourself. That way you’ve got a chance of scaring him into bouncing Pancake off the picture an grabbing yourself a solo screen-play credit” [93]

--“I’ve always like [sex] because it’s just about the most fun you get out of life and because … it’s always seemed like the friendliest thing two people can do in the whole world. That’s why I’ve never wanted to turn pro.” [95]

--The producer encourages as many as a dozen aspiring writers to work on his idea. They knock themselves out over his story for two or three weeks in return for nothing but the vaguest of promises. Then the producer comes out of it with enough free ideas to nourish the one writer he finally hires. [123]

--“Every time a man discovers that a woman thinks, the only way he can explain it is that she happens to have a male mind.” [143]

--“Don’t be serious honey,” she said. “Love is much nicer when it isn’t serious.” [146]

--“Talent can get you just so far. Then you got to start using your head [151]

--…under the bonnet or organized morality lurks a very filthy mind .” [169]

--The program began with Dan Young, the barrel-bodied, red-faced, profanely earnest studio manager, who seemed to feel that the story of how he had risen from truck driver right here at this studio to his present importance was a devastating argument for writers giving up the Guild foolishness and making the studio one big happy family. He even hinted that those who refused to participate in his family life (on his terms) would find themselves led by the hand to the studio gate and told never to darken this payroll again…. Sammy Glick [then] informed us that we would get further by voting the way the studio was asking us. If he had used the first person singular instead of the plural he would have been right. [191-2]

---“Sammy,” I said quietly, “how does it feel? How does it feel to have everything?” He began to smile. It became a smirk, a leer. “It makes me feel kinds … “ And then it came blurting out of nowhere—“patriotic” [285]

Nov. 14

--...[the dollar] has fallen on such hard times .. that even rap moguls are turning on it. In the video for his new song "Blue Magic" (off an album called "American Gangster" no less) Jay-Z can be seen flashing stacks of euos. On the official Web site for Wu-Tang Clan, the New York rappers who coined hte phrase "dolla dolla bill, yall," the group lists its new CD price in euros only. NEWSWEEK, Nov. 19, 2007 p. 14

--Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004. The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.—NYT A1, Nov. 12, 2007

--But even those who hailed absinthe saw unsettling shadows. Wilde explained: “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

happy veterans day

--Nov. 11, 2002-- KHAWR AL AMAYA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq -- The U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf. … the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry. … That is a sea change for the U.S., which has patrolled these waters for decades. In the past, American warships and their allies flexed the West's military might in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate a broad commitment to protect the region, which produces almost a third of the world's oil. …N ow, amid rising prices -- oil futures finished Friday at $96.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 86 cents -- and new vulnerabilities in the world's stretched oil-supply chain -- from militants in Nigeria to occasional Iranian threats to disrupt Persian Gulf shipping -- the Navy finds itself with an additional, much more specific role: playing security guard to Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure—WSJ A2

emergency review of books blog

--November 10, 2007--TV Writers’ Strike Leaves Jilted Authors Looking for a Bully Pulpit. David Levy’s publisher had built his entire book tour around a scheduled appearance on “The Colbert Report” last Monday. But then the members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike, and Mr. Colbert’s show went to repeats, leaving Mr. Levy to promote his book “Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships” (HarperCollins) through radio interviews and answering questions from about 70 people who attended a reading at the Museum of Sex in Manhattan. NYT

--LEADERSHIP, Rudolf Giuliani: There is an entire chapter in Rudy Giuliani’s famous book “Leadership” that is titled “Loyalty, the Vital Virtue.” In it, he pats himself on the back for making a man named Robert Harding the city’s budget director even though he knew the ever-feckless news media would point out that Harding’s father, Ray, was the chairman of the city’s Liberal Party, whose endorsement had done a great deal to get Giuliani elected mayor. “I wasn’t going to choose a lesser candidate simply to quiet the critics,” he said. For some mysterious reason, the book skips over a much better loyalty lesson involving the very same family. Giuliani demonstrated his loyalty to Ray Harding, giver of the Liberal Party endorsement, not only by giving his qualified son a good job, but also by turning over the New York City Housing Development Corporation to another son, Russell, who wound up embezzling more than $400,000 for vacations, gifts and parties. We will not even go into the pornography part, except to point out in his defense that of the 15,000 sexually explicit images found on his computer, only a few were of children. --NYT Gail Collins,

--THE LETTERS OF NOEL COWARD---"How foolish to think that one can ever slam the door in the face of age. Much wiser to be polite and gracious and ask him to lunch in advance." –Noel Coward, WSJ 11-10-07

Nov. 8, 2007

--Stock Markets Tumble as Dollar’s Decline Adds to Anxiety…. “This is a critical juncture,” said Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs. “The dollar is behaving in the past couple days as though the market is testing its reserve-currency status.” On Wednesday, the dollar took a sharp turn lower against several major currencies, sliding to a new record low against the euro and hitting its lowest level in decades against the Canadian dollar. One dollar now buys only about 93 Canadian cents. At one point in 2000, the euro was worth only 85 cents. Now one euro buys $1.46. One spark behind the dollar’s latest downturn was a comment by a Chinese lawmaker suggesting that the country should buy more euros. … Today it’s oil-producing countries and emerging economies like China that find themselves sitting on mountains of dollar reserve that are losing value. WSJ A1, A20, 11-8-07

--What are we learning about the role of government? Ditch the cliché that government should be run more like a business. It’s too flattering to business.—WSJ A2 Nov. 8, 2007

--The US is recalling over 4 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots toys after reports of children being sickened by a chemical contained in beads they swallowed. WSJ A1, 11-8-07

-The Pentagon blocked a Marine lawyer from testifying before Congress that severe interrogation techniques had derailed his prosecution of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist. -- WSJ A1, 11-8-07

--Oregon voters defeated a plan to fund a children’s health-care program by boosting tobacco taxes, following an expensive [tobacco] industry campaign against the ballot measure. WSJ A1, 11-8-07

The arts

…the Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs sponsored a collaboration between members of Enslaved and the noisy electronic duo Fe-mail. …Extreme metal, which once seemed like a threat to Norway’s cultural heritage, is inevitably coming to be seen as part of it. How long before the government finances an ad campaign, inviting black-metal fans from around the world to come to the most evil country on Earth?—NYT B5, Nov. 8, 2007—thanks be to Odin

--[warning to teen girls against taking up with guys in 20s or 30s ] You may think you’re pretty cool for having an older boyfriend, but what you have to remember is he’s not cool for dating you. He’s a loser. And you can find plenty of losers to date at school.—WSJ B1, Nov. 8, 2007-- thanks be to “The Midwest Teen Sex Show”

--Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to books clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.-NYT B1, Nov. 7, 2007—thanks be to the Market God of Justice!!

The Culture [so to speak]

--From 2004 through 2006, Americans pulled about $840 billion a year out of residential real estate, via sales, home equity lines of credit and refinanced mortgages…---NYT A1 Nov. 8, 2007

--Myth: Americans are Educated. … in the formal sense, fewer than half of us have graduated from college… The upshot, in business and political communications, is that complexity or intricacy of any degree almost always fails.—Frank Luntz, WORDS THAT WORK (2007) p 184 [Luntz is GOP political pollster and consultant who helped on “Contract With America,” the Davis recall, and the Clinton Impeachment language]

--Myth: Americans Read. … I’ve found again and again that nobody reads. Ibid., 187

Nov. 6, 2007

Nov. 6, 2007—Lawyers resist emergency rule by Musharraf.—NYT A1 [you know it’s bad when the lawyers hit the streets…]

—Defense Secretary Gates looked directly on Monday into two of the most striking facets of modern China. One is what Pentagon officials say is China’s aggressive modernization of its armed forces. The other is its even more aggressive expansion of the economy and its growing global role.—NYT A5 [you know it’s bad when a GWB official--finally--notes reality]

—Bush urges Musharraf to reverse course but signals no penalty if he doesn’t.—NYT A6 [you know it’s bad when USA can’t control its own puppet]

—Regarding Tom Brokaw’s new book BOOM!—about the sixties generation—a large print edition is available for purchase. NYT B12

—Unregulated electricity costs more, studies say. –NYT C4 [Market God flops again]

—Gisele Bundchen demands payment in euros, not dollars.—WSJ C14 [you know it’s official when the WSJ reports it]

—Some 21,000 people who should not have been allowed to enter the US came through official border crossing points between Oct. 1, 2005, and Sept. 30, 2006, according to a government report released Monday. (AP, SBT A6) [for this I endure anal probes at airports?!?!]

—Unless and until Congress stops prattling about “usurpation”of power and asserts its own, it will remain derelict regarding its duty of mutual participation in warmaking—George Will [sic] SBT B4 [you know it’s bad when Will calls Democrats pussies for not restraining GWB]

history of the 1960s

We lost, they won. --Mark Rudd, NYT B6, Nov. 5, 2007

he'll find a war in there somewhere...

Nov. 4, 2007 — The Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declared a state of emergency on Saturday night, suspending the country’s Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of this capital city with police officers. … The emergency declaration was in direct defiance of repeated calls this week from senior American officials, including Secretary of State Concoleezza Rice, not to do so. NYT A1

Oct. 20, 2007,— The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called “the nightmare scenario” for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play. … other current and former officials cautioned that six years after the United States forced General Musharraf to choose sides in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, American leverage over Pakistan is now limited. Similarly, they and Pakistan experts said that a series of policy miscalculations had left the administration with few good options. NYT A1

Nov. 4, 2007, NYT A12--— Guided by American legal advisers, the Iraqi government has canceled a controversial development contract with the Russian company Lukoil for a vast oil field in Iraq’s southern desert, freeing it up for potential international investment in the future.

In response, Russian authorities have threatened to revoke a 2004 deal under the Paris Club of creditor nations to forgive $13 billion in Iraqi debt, a senior Iraqi official said.

NEW REPUBLIC, Oct. 22, 2007, HOW OSAMA BIN LADEN BEAT GWB, Peter Bergen: …America's most formidable foe--once practically dead-- is back. This is one of the most historically significant legacies of President Bush. At nearly every turn, he has made the wrong strategic choices in battling Al Qaeda. … According to a study by RAND, "Afghanistan has received the least amount of resources out of any major American-led, nation-building operation over the last 60 years." … You get what you pay for, and, today, Afghanistan resembles nothing so much as Iraq in the fall of 2003, when the descent into chaos began. In 2006, IED attacks doubled, assaults on international forces tripled, and suicide bombings quintupled. In fact, last year saw the highest number of U.S. military and NATO casualties since the fall of the Taliban. And 2007 is shaping up to be even worse, with suicide bombings up 69 percent from last year. What's more, Afghanistan is now supplying almost all of the world's heroin. In Helmand and Kandahar--provinces in southern Afghanistan--more than a quarter of the population supports the Tali- ban, according to a poll released in March. Just one in ten Afghans has access to electricity, while the capital, Kabul, only has electricity for a few hours a day. Amer ica's neglect of Afghanistan since 2001 can only be described as an enormous missed opportunity.

And the reason for that missed opportunity was simple: By the time the Taliban fell, the Bush administration's attention was already elsewhere. …

The removal of Saddam Hussein would prove to be a boon to Al Qaeda--creating a base for the terrorist organization where none had existed before, energizing jihadists around the word, and confirming for many Muslims bin Laden's contention that the United States was at war with Islam. …

Paul Cruickshank of New York University and I compared the period after September 11 through the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 with the period from March 2003 through September 2006. Using numbers from the authoritative rand terrorism database, we found that the rate of deadly attacks by jihadists had increased sevenfold since the invasion. And, even excluding terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, fatal attacks by jihadists in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third since March 2003.,

…. Bush's approach to Pakistan: showering Musharraf with affection and largesse, only to receive progressively less in return with each passing year. America has handed $10 billion to the Pakistani government since September 11. Yet the Taliban and Al Qaeda remain headquartered in Pakistan.

… Daniel Colman [former] FBI special agent regarded as one of the nation’s leading Al Qaeda authorities] thinks the Bush administration's treatment of captured terrorists--holding so many outside the traditional justice system at Guantánamo while authorizing interrogation techniques that some observers would consider torture--has been largely a bust. He told me that most of the information he saw coming out of Guantánamo until his retirement in 2004 "was of no particular value." …Coleman isn't the only one who feels this way. Michael Rolince, who, from 2002 to 2005, was special agent in charge of counterterrorism in the FBI's Washington field office--which handles not just threats to the capital region, but also many overseas cases--told me, "I don't recall any information that was relevant [to my office] coming out of Guantánamo." He also points out that "torture and coercion gets you, in the vast majority of cases, wrong information that takes you off on wild goose chases." And Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent who obtained uncoerced confessions from two notorious terrorists--Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Mir Aimal Kansi, killer of two CIA employees outside agency headquarters that same year--told me that "coercive interrogation techniques have proven to be ineffective in producing reliable intelligence."

Nov. 2, 2007

Nov. 2, 2007—Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain followed the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point. The Gulf states’ exchange rates are pegged to the dollar, whose decline has diluted the benefit of record oil prices. Rampant inflation in the region has increased pressure, particularly on the UAE, to sever ties with the dollar, which could further add to the dollar’s woes. WSJ A2

--The military has punished nine Marine Corps recruiters who arranged for stand-ins to take Armed Services entrance exams for new enlistees. NYT A17

--“What is [in the case of torture] confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured; not to the informing of the Torturer: and therefore ought not to have the credit of sufficient Testimony: for whether he deliver himself by true, or false Accusation, he does it by the Right of preserving his own life.”—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

Nov. 1, 2007

Nov. 1, 2007—The Army began its recruiting year Oct 1 with the lowerst number of enlistees on the books since it became an all-volunteer force in 1973. –WSJ A1

--Foreign Service Officers Resist Mandatory Iraq Postings. …one [State Dept] Foreign Service officer likened the Iraq order to a “potential death sentence” NYT A8

--“If you can’t say something good about someone sit right here by me.”—Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s needlepoint pillow, NYT B11

from the heartland...

Bad news for Congressman Joe Donnelly.Seems some Minor problems resulted in one of the shortest congressional candidacies ever for a potential Donnelly opponent in Indiana's 2nd District. Chris Minor, a retired Army officer from Kokomo, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2nd District on Oct. 1 and already has withdrawn as a candidate.

Minor says he's heading back to Iraq, where he has been, in his description, an intelligence analyst for the State Department. The Kokomo Tribune found that his pay came from Blackwater, the controversial private security firm.

Then, after detractors in Kokomo began what he called "a smear campaign," Minor admitted resigning from the Kokomo Police Department after an off-duty altercation at a Halloween party in 1991. He said drinking was involved, as it also was when he was arrested on a drunk driving charge in 1994.

Minor, a staunch supporter of military action in Iraq, was regarded initially by some Republicans as nominee with a chance to defeat Donnelly. Having an opponent with such Minor problems would have been a dream come true for Donnelly.

SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE, Oct. 28, 2007