2005-09-24:
From Greasy Lake: Born to Run and buy this...
Details about Born to Run box set seeping out
It could be a rumor or it could be fact. According to AOL Music, the Born to Run 30th Anniversary edition will include a 44 page, full color booklet of unpublished photos, a digitally remastered version of the CD, Live In London, a never before seen, complete two hour concert from the Born To Run tour that was shot by the BBC in November, 1975 at the Hammersmith Odeon, a second DVD with The Making Of Born To Run, which is supposedly a brand new documentary including new interviews with Bruce, the entire band and recording team, plus extensive archival photos, unreleased versions of songs and historic, previously unseen footage from the Springsteen vaults. As an added bonus, the set includes Bruce's historic 1973 performance from the CBS Records Convention in Los Angeles". The whole shebang is supposedly going to be released on November 15. We've got one word: Awesome!
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Friday, September 23, 2005
Hurricanes and global warming - a link?
Analysis
by Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Here is a recipe for an explosive news cocktail.
Take the president of the world's most powerful nation. Add two intense and damaging natural storms which bring destruction to that country; then mix in the widely held view that the same nation's environmental policies are partially responsible for those storms.
In the polarised world of climate change, this cocktail has proved an irresistible temptation to organisations which campaign against President Bush's administration in support of enhanced action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The latest to succumb was the British newspaper The Independent, which screamed on its front page: "This is global warming", above an alarmingly portentous graphic of Hurricane Rita's projected path.
But is it global warming? What is the evidence that the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are changing weather systems in such a way that hurricanes become more powerful, or more frequent?
Well above average
Certainly, 2005 appears to have been an unusually active year.
The US National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center comments in its August summary that "thus far in 2005, there have been 12 named storms and four hurricanes.
"These numbers are well above the long-term averages of 4.4 storms and 2.1 hurricanes that would normally have formed by this date."
But a single year's observation does not permit the divination of a long-term trend, or the attribution of that trend to a cause such as climatic warming.
"Based on recent research, the consensus view is that we don't expect global warming to make a difference to the frequency of hurricanes," explains Julian Heming, from the UK Meteorological Office.
"Activity is naturally very variable in terms of frequency, intensity and regional occurrence; in the Atlantic, there are active phases and not so active phases, and currently we're in the middle of an active phase.
"It's very dangerous to explain Rita or Katrina through global warming, because we have always had strong hurricanes in the USA - the strongest one on record dates back to 1935."
Regular changes
Records from the 20th Century suggest that hurricane formation over the Atlantic has changed phase every few decades: the 1940s and 50s were active, the 70s and 80s less so, while the currently active phase appears to have commenced in 1995.
A key factor in the formation of a tropical cyclone - a low-pressure region that can turn into a hurricane - is sea-surface temperature, which has to be above about 27 degrees Celsius.
So anything which changes the sea-surface temperature in the right parts of the world could theoretically affect hurricane formation.
The most recent study on the issue, published this month in the journal Science, found that while the incidence of hurricanes and tropical storms has remained roughly constant over the last 30 years, there has been a rise in the number of intense hurricanes with wind speeds above 211km/h (131mph).
The leader of that research project, Dr Peter Webster, believes there may be a link to climate change.
"What I think we can say is that the increase in intensity is probably accounted for by the increase in sea-surface temperature," he told the BBC News website, "and I think probably the sea-surface temperature increase is a manifestation of global warming."
"The problem is," observes Julian Heming, "that we can only look back about 35 years with satellite data; before that the record is somewhat unreliable, and 35 years isn't long enough to draw a definite conclusion.
"Before global satellite coverage, we're pretty sure there are gaps in the record; storms would start at sea and die out at sea, so we never knew about them."
Global connections
The changing phases of Atlantic hurricane activity are not completely understood; but there appears to be a link to fluctuations in the thermohaline circulation, the global pattern of ocean currents which in western Europe appears as the Gulf Stream.
By causing the sea-surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic to change by even a degree Celsius, these fluctuations can bring major differences to the number of hurricanes generated in a particular year.
Other natural climate cycles such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation may also play a role.
The other crucial factor with Katrina and Rita is where they landed.
Some hurricanes never reach land; others will hit a sparsely-populated area, causing minimal damage.
This also appears to be determined by weather systems, in particular the location of a region of high atmospheric pressure, the sub-tropical ridge.
"In the Atlantic, storms form in the east and move towards the west," says Julian Heming, "and at some point they turn northwards.
"Where they turn northwards has much to do with the weather conditions further north; 1995, for example, was a very active season with 19 named storms, but the US got away very lightly because the sub-tropical ridge did not extend right across the Atlantic, and many storms turned north before reaching the US.
"Last year it did extend across the Atlantic, and so hurricanes were forced much further west - hence Ivan, Jean, Charlie and Francis all hit the US."
Bigger and bolder
Every time a hurricane comes along - or a flood, or a drought, or a freeze, or a heatwave - the question is now asked "is it linked to global warming?"
A decade ago, that was not the case - a clear signal that climate change is now firmly established in the public mind and in the political arena.
Now that climate scientists are being taken seriously, they are also under pressure to produce instant answers.
One problem is that not all of those answers exist. Another problem is that some scientists - not to mention lobby groups, environmental organisations, politicians, newspapers and commentators - will go much further in their public statements than the data allow.
With such incendiary material, that is unlikely to change; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we would all benefit from people on both wings of the issue looking rather more to research, however laboured its progress, and rather less to screaming headlines and easy quotes.
Analysis
by Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Here is a recipe for an explosive news cocktail.
Take the president of the world's most powerful nation. Add two intense and damaging natural storms which bring destruction to that country; then mix in the widely held view that the same nation's environmental policies are partially responsible for those storms.
In the polarised world of climate change, this cocktail has proved an irresistible temptation to organisations which campaign against President Bush's administration in support of enhanced action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The latest to succumb was the British newspaper The Independent, which screamed on its front page: "This is global warming", above an alarmingly portentous graphic of Hurricane Rita's projected path.
But is it global warming? What is the evidence that the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are changing weather systems in such a way that hurricanes become more powerful, or more frequent?
Well above average
Certainly, 2005 appears to have been an unusually active year.
The US National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center comments in its August summary that "thus far in 2005, there have been 12 named storms and four hurricanes.
"These numbers are well above the long-term averages of 4.4 storms and 2.1 hurricanes that would normally have formed by this date."
But a single year's observation does not permit the divination of a long-term trend, or the attribution of that trend to a cause such as climatic warming.
"Based on recent research, the consensus view is that we don't expect global warming to make a difference to the frequency of hurricanes," explains Julian Heming, from the UK Meteorological Office.
"Activity is naturally very variable in terms of frequency, intensity and regional occurrence; in the Atlantic, there are active phases and not so active phases, and currently we're in the middle of an active phase.
"It's very dangerous to explain Rita or Katrina through global warming, because we have always had strong hurricanes in the USA - the strongest one on record dates back to 1935."
Regular changes
Records from the 20th Century suggest that hurricane formation over the Atlantic has changed phase every few decades: the 1940s and 50s were active, the 70s and 80s less so, while the currently active phase appears to have commenced in 1995.
A key factor in the formation of a tropical cyclone - a low-pressure region that can turn into a hurricane - is sea-surface temperature, which has to be above about 27 degrees Celsius.
So anything which changes the sea-surface temperature in the right parts of the world could theoretically affect hurricane formation.
The most recent study on the issue, published this month in the journal Science, found that while the incidence of hurricanes and tropical storms has remained roughly constant over the last 30 years, there has been a rise in the number of intense hurricanes with wind speeds above 211km/h (131mph).
The leader of that research project, Dr Peter Webster, believes there may be a link to climate change.
"What I think we can say is that the increase in intensity is probably accounted for by the increase in sea-surface temperature," he told the BBC News website, "and I think probably the sea-surface temperature increase is a manifestation of global warming."
"The problem is," observes Julian Heming, "that we can only look back about 35 years with satellite data; before that the record is somewhat unreliable, and 35 years isn't long enough to draw a definite conclusion.
"Before global satellite coverage, we're pretty sure there are gaps in the record; storms would start at sea and die out at sea, so we never knew about them."
Global connections
The changing phases of Atlantic hurricane activity are not completely understood; but there appears to be a link to fluctuations in the thermohaline circulation, the global pattern of ocean currents which in western Europe appears as the Gulf Stream.
By causing the sea-surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic to change by even a degree Celsius, these fluctuations can bring major differences to the number of hurricanes generated in a particular year.
Other natural climate cycles such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation may also play a role.
The other crucial factor with Katrina and Rita is where they landed.
Some hurricanes never reach land; others will hit a sparsely-populated area, causing minimal damage.
This also appears to be determined by weather systems, in particular the location of a region of high atmospheric pressure, the sub-tropical ridge.
"In the Atlantic, storms form in the east and move towards the west," says Julian Heming, "and at some point they turn northwards.
"Where they turn northwards has much to do with the weather conditions further north; 1995, for example, was a very active season with 19 named storms, but the US got away very lightly because the sub-tropical ridge did not extend right across the Atlantic, and many storms turned north before reaching the US.
"Last year it did extend across the Atlantic, and so hurricanes were forced much further west - hence Ivan, Jean, Charlie and Francis all hit the US."
Bigger and bolder
Every time a hurricane comes along - or a flood, or a drought, or a freeze, or a heatwave - the question is now asked "is it linked to global warming?"
A decade ago, that was not the case - a clear signal that climate change is now firmly established in the public mind and in the political arena.
Now that climate scientists are being taken seriously, they are also under pressure to produce instant answers.
One problem is that not all of those answers exist. Another problem is that some scientists - not to mention lobby groups, environmental organisations, politicians, newspapers and commentators - will go much further in their public statements than the data allow.
With such incendiary material, that is unlikely to change; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we would all benefit from people on both wings of the issue looking rather more to research, however laboured its progress, and rather less to screaming headlines and easy quotes.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Great post from The Corner by Rod Dreher. He raises a number of legitimate questions about Bush the Lesser, and for doing so was characterized by Republican lickspittle John Podhoretz as "hysterical" and "doing the President a disservice." What a crock.
RE: THE OSTRICH EFFECT
[Rod Dreher]
I don't at all get this attitude among many on the right that our sworn duty is to back anything President Bush andthe GOP choose to do. We are conservatives before we are Republicans, are we not? Facts are better than dreams, and the fact is, the president is acting like the second coming of Lyndon B. Johnson with his spending proposals on Katrina thing, and it is past time for the grassroots to have hit the wall on the spendthrift Republican president and the spendthrift Republican Congress.
What is the point of electing Republicans if they're going to spend worse than Democrats? Moreover, I'm absolutely with Michelle Malkin on this outrageous Bush cronyism regarding the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief over at the Department of Homeland Security. I find it impossible to believe that this administration or their GOP Congressional enablers care about enforcing the immigration laws of this country. And I find it impossible to believe that this doesn't matter. A lot.
At some point, we conservatives have got to ask ourselves if we stand for principles, or merely maintaining power. We have got to ask ourselves just which conservative goals are being served by the Republican governing status quo. We have got to ask ourselves if our conservatism stands for much more than The Democrats Must Lose.
I was having a beer with a fellow religious and social conservative that first Friday after Katrina, and we were both just livid about the administration's response. We both agreed that we'd vote in a heartbeat in 2008 for a social liberal like Rudy Giuliani, who inspires confidence in his competence and judgment, over the present crowd that we both helped vote into power.
I hope next year brings forth a raft of primary challengers to GOP Congressional incumbents. If we go on like this for much longer, it will be a long time before the American people trust the government to our side again. The Democrats aren't going to remain more hapless than the Republicans forever, and the denial in which too many Republicans wish to live in right now does the cause of conservatism no good.
RE: THE OSTRICH EFFECT
[Rod Dreher]
I don't at all get this attitude among many on the right that our sworn duty is to back anything President Bush andthe GOP choose to do. We are conservatives before we are Republicans, are we not? Facts are better than dreams, and the fact is, the president is acting like the second coming of Lyndon B. Johnson with his spending proposals on Katrina thing, and it is past time for the grassroots to have hit the wall on the spendthrift Republican president and the spendthrift Republican Congress.
What is the point of electing Republicans if they're going to spend worse than Democrats? Moreover, I'm absolutely with Michelle Malkin on this outrageous Bush cronyism regarding the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief over at the Department of Homeland Security. I find it impossible to believe that this administration or their GOP Congressional enablers care about enforcing the immigration laws of this country. And I find it impossible to believe that this doesn't matter. A lot.
At some point, we conservatives have got to ask ourselves if we stand for principles, or merely maintaining power. We have got to ask ourselves just which conservative goals are being served by the Republican governing status quo. We have got to ask ourselves if our conservatism stands for much more than The Democrats Must Lose.
I was having a beer with a fellow religious and social conservative that first Friday after Katrina, and we were both just livid about the administration's response. We both agreed that we'd vote in a heartbeat in 2008 for a social liberal like Rudy Giuliani, who inspires confidence in his competence and judgment, over the present crowd that we both helped vote into power.
I hope next year brings forth a raft of primary challengers to GOP Congressional incumbents. If we go on like this for much longer, it will be a long time before the American people trust the government to our side again. The Democrats aren't going to remain more hapless than the Republicans forever, and the denial in which too many Republicans wish to live in right now does the cause of conservatism no good.
An emotional moment and a misunderstanding
Story of a mother’s desperate calls from nursing home skewed
MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 10:55 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Jefferson Parish president's emotional retelling of a mother's desperate calls from a New Orleans nursing home included details that conflict with the timeline of the tragedy.
The story, of a colleague's mother begging her son for rescue as flood waters rose after Hurricane Katrina, came to prominence on Sunday, Sept. 4, when Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
New details and interviews with the son whose mother died in the flood show that the tragedy unfolded from Saturday through Monday, Aug. 29 — not Monday through Friday, Sept. 2 as recounted by Broussard. The owners of the nursing home were indicted Tuesday for the deaths of more than 30 residents, which officials say occurred on Aug. 29.
In the course of the interview, in which Broussard was expressing frustration with the slow-footed response by the federal government to the hurricane, he related the personal story of a man whose mother had died in the flooding caused by Katrina. Broussard, who did not identify the man by name at the time, broke down in tears as he related the story. As the Meet the Press transcript shows, Russert paused the interview to allow Broussard to compose himself.
BROUSSARD: ... The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
RUSSERT: Mr. President...
BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.
RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
Since the broadcast of the interview, which elevated Broussard to national prominence, a number of bloggers have questioned the validity of Broussard’s story.
Subsequent reporting identified the man whom Broussard was referring to in the Meet the Press interview as Thomas Rodrigue, the Jefferson Parish emergency services director. Contacted on Friday by MSNBC.com, Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old mother and more than 30 other people died in the St. Rita nursing home. They had not been evacuated and the flood waters overtook the residence.
The chronology of the phone calls described by Broussard came under particular scrutiny by bloggers.
Rodrigue said he didn’t see or hear Broussard’s comments on Meet the Press. When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard described on Meet the Press, Rodrigue said “No, no, that’s not true.”
“I can’t tell you what he said that day, why he was confused, I’m assuming he was under a tremendous amount of pressure,” Rodrigue told MSNBC.
“I contacted the nursing home two days before the storm [on Aug. 27th] and again on the 28th of August,” Rodrigue said. “At the same time I talked to the nursing home I also talked to the emergency manager for St. Bernard Parish,” Rodrigue said, “to encourage that nursing home to evacuate like they were supposed to and they didn’t until it was too late.”
Broussard must have been confused “because I was calling, not my mother calling me, I was calling her,” Rodrigue said. Further, Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he figures his mother died, based on conversations he’s had with another person who had a family member perish inside St. Rita’s. Officials believe that the residents of St. Rita’s died on Monday, Aug. 29, not on Friday, Sept. 2, as Broussard had suggested.
Broussard could not be reached for comment Friday, but Jackie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Broussard who was present during the Meet the Press interview, said "it was a misunderstanding."
Late on Friday, Bauer told MSNBC.com: "I was there when he (Broussard) was doing that, when he was saying that, I think he was meaning that he was calling, he was calling and trying to talk to Tommy and telling him ‘don’t worry,' trying to console Tommy, 'don’t worry, we’ll get her out, don’t worry we’ll get her out.'"
When asked how Broussard could have gotten the details of his mother’s story so wrong, Rodrigue said, Broussard “was emotional, absolutely and he was from the time that he found out that, you know, that my mother had died and I was here doing what I’m required to do for the citizens for Jefferson Parish.”
Rodrigue said he hasn’t spoken with Broussard since the Meet the Press broadcast. “He’s been busy, I’ve been busy,” Rodrigue said. “I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and talk to him.”
The husband and wife owners of St. Rita’s nursing home in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette have been charged with homicide in the case.
“The pathetic thing in this case was that they were asked if they wanted to move them and they did not,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said Tuesday. “They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people.”
“They had a duty and a standard of care to people who could not care for themselves,” Foti said of the owners. “If you or I decided we are going to stay, we do it of our own free will. ... The people at the nursing home don’t have that choice.”
“Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home when it should have been evacuated. I cannot say it any plainer than that,” Foti said, his voice rising with anger.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9368952/
Story of a mother’s desperate calls from nursing home skewed
MSNBC and NBC News
Updated: 10:55 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Jefferson Parish president's emotional retelling of a mother's desperate calls from a New Orleans nursing home included details that conflict with the timeline of the tragedy.
The story, of a colleague's mother begging her son for rescue as flood waters rose after Hurricane Katrina, came to prominence on Sunday, Sept. 4, when Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish in New Orleans, was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
New details and interviews with the son whose mother died in the flood show that the tragedy unfolded from Saturday through Monday, Aug. 29 — not Monday through Friday, Sept. 2 as recounted by Broussard. The owners of the nursing home were indicted Tuesday for the deaths of more than 30 residents, which officials say occurred on Aug. 29.
In the course of the interview, in which Broussard was expressing frustration with the slow-footed response by the federal government to the hurricane, he related the personal story of a man whose mother had died in the flooding caused by Katrina. Broussard, who did not identify the man by name at the time, broke down in tears as he related the story. As the Meet the Press transcript shows, Russert paused the interview to allow Broussard to compose himself.
BROUSSARD: ... The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
RUSSERT: Mr. President...
BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.
RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
Since the broadcast of the interview, which elevated Broussard to national prominence, a number of bloggers have questioned the validity of Broussard’s story.
Subsequent reporting identified the man whom Broussard was referring to in the Meet the Press interview as Thomas Rodrigue, the Jefferson Parish emergency services director. Contacted on Friday by MSNBC.com, Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old mother and more than 30 other people died in the St. Rita nursing home. They had not been evacuated and the flood waters overtook the residence.
The chronology of the phone calls described by Broussard came under particular scrutiny by bloggers.
Rodrigue said he didn’t see or hear Broussard’s comments on Meet the Press. When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard described on Meet the Press, Rodrigue said “No, no, that’s not true.”
“I can’t tell you what he said that day, why he was confused, I’m assuming he was under a tremendous amount of pressure,” Rodrigue told MSNBC.
“I contacted the nursing home two days before the storm [on Aug. 27th] and again on the 28th of August,” Rodrigue said. “At the same time I talked to the nursing home I also talked to the emergency manager for St. Bernard Parish,” Rodrigue said, “to encourage that nursing home to evacuate like they were supposed to and they didn’t until it was too late.”
Broussard must have been confused “because I was calling, not my mother calling me, I was calling her,” Rodrigue said. Further, Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he figures his mother died, based on conversations he’s had with another person who had a family member perish inside St. Rita’s. Officials believe that the residents of St. Rita’s died on Monday, Aug. 29, not on Friday, Sept. 2, as Broussard had suggested.
Broussard could not be reached for comment Friday, but Jackie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Broussard who was present during the Meet the Press interview, said "it was a misunderstanding."
Late on Friday, Bauer told MSNBC.com: "I was there when he (Broussard) was doing that, when he was saying that, I think he was meaning that he was calling, he was calling and trying to talk to Tommy and telling him ‘don’t worry,' trying to console Tommy, 'don’t worry, we’ll get her out, don’t worry we’ll get her out.'"
When asked how Broussard could have gotten the details of his mother’s story so wrong, Rodrigue said, Broussard “was emotional, absolutely and he was from the time that he found out that, you know, that my mother had died and I was here doing what I’m required to do for the citizens for Jefferson Parish.”
Rodrigue said he hasn’t spoken with Broussard since the Meet the Press broadcast. “He’s been busy, I’ve been busy,” Rodrigue said. “I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and talk to him.”
The husband and wife owners of St. Rita’s nursing home in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette have been charged with homicide in the case.
“The pathetic thing in this case was that they were asked if they wanted to move them and they did not,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said Tuesday. “They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people.”
“They had a duty and a standard of care to people who could not care for themselves,” Foti said of the owners. “If you or I decided we are going to stay, we do it of our own free will. ... The people at the nursing home don’t have that choice.”
“Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home when it should have been evacuated. I cannot say it any plainer than that,” Foti said, his voice rising with anger.
© 2005 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9368952/
Monday, September 19, 2005
More evidence, if any is needed, of Bush's conservative betrayal.
Recycled liberal cliches
at the United Nations?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Reading the president's speech to the United Nations last week, the question came to mind: Is George Bush a conservative at all?
At the United Nations, writes the Washington Post's Colum Lynch, Bush "linked his campaign against terrorism to the anti-poverty agenda advanced by other nations, although he shied away from adopting some of the specific commitments sought by allies."
Thank Bolton for that one. For one of those commitments, agreed to at the Millennium Summit in Monterey, Mexico, in 2000, was that America should commit 0.7 percent of its GNP to foreign aid.
That would be $100 billion each year from Uncle Sam, sent to Third World regimes, the United Nations and the international aid agencies.
Yet, Bush clearly believes poverty and terror are inextricably tied. "We must help raise up the failing states that provide fertile ground for the terrorists," said Bush, and "change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish."
But where is the hard historical evidence that people turn to terror because of poverty? Almost all of today's terrorists are young men who could easily make their way in the world. When has any of them blown himself up to demand an increase in foreign aid or to protest the plight of the African poor?
At the United Nations, Bush repeated another of his unproven assumptions. "Bush used his speech," writes the Post's Glenn Kessler, "to explain why ... democracy thwarts the growth of terrorism."
But if democracy thwarts terror, why did terrorists strike Britain, Spain, Russia and the United States? If democracy is the antidote to terror, why was there not one terror attack inside Iraq under the dictator Saddam? Yet, with Iraq free, we can get a dozen terror attacks in Baghdad in a day.
If democracy thwarts terror, why were there, as F. Gregory Gause III writes in Foreign Affairs, 203 terror attacks in India, the world's most populous democracy, from 2000 to 2003, but none in authoritarian China?
Israel is the most democratic nation in the Middle East, with the least poverty. Yet, Israel is a primary target of terror attacks. Why? When Hezbollah fires a Katyusha rocket or Hamas blows up a bus, do they accompany the attack with an Al-Jazeera broadcast demanding money for the Arab poor or greater democracy for Palestinians in Israel?
Said Bush, "Democratic nations uphold the rule of law, impose limits on the power of the state, treat women and minorities as full citizens."
Yes, they do. But what has this to do with whether democracies are victimized by terrorists, or whether terrorists operate in democratic societies?
Terror, the murder of innocents for political ends, has been with us for over a century. The Russian narodniki assassinated the Czar Liberator Alexander II to strike a blow at autocracy. But when terrorism moved west, it was not just kings and queens, but the leader of the freest country on earth, President McKinley, who was assassinated by an anarchist. Nor did common folk have any immunity.
Emile Henry blew up a working-class bar in Paris. Asked by his trial judge why he attacked the bourgeois, but not the rich, Henry shot back, "There are no innocent bourgeois!"
Were the enlistees in the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the IRA in Britain, the Red Brigades in Italy and the Puerto Rican FLN in the United States killing to protest a lack of democracy or a stingy welfare state?
Terrorism is a weapon of war. And as Clausewitz reminds us, war is the extension of politics by other means. Almost every terrorist movement today has a political agenda. The FLN terrorists who blew up Fraunces Tavern wanted the Americans out of Puerto Rico. They failed. Hezbollah wanted the Israelis out of Lebanon; Hamas wanted them out of Gaza. Both used terror. Both succeeded.
In the Middle East, as scholar Robert Pape, who has analyzed suicide bombings from 1980 to 2004, writes, the suicide bombers are men on a mission: to kill and die until all U.S. forces are off their land. No foreign aid or free election will cause them to give it up.
In Europe, as Tony Blankley writes in his provocative new book, "The West's Last Chance," a new type of threat has arisen: home-grown terrorists, dead souls, deracinated young Muslims, born, bred and educated in Europe, but alienated from society – like the orphaned boys of Weimar Germany after the Great War, searching for a family and a cause to live for, and finding both in the Nazi Party.
These young Muslims, disgusted or bored with La Dolce Vita that the West offers, seek a cause to live and die for. And the radical imams of Europe are providing them with what no democratic election or Consumer Society can match: a heroic death – and life eternal.
It is a war of faith and beliefs we are in, and the president's speechwriters ought to round-file the Kerner Commission cliches. They weren't even right about the 1960s.
Recycled liberal cliches
at the United Nations?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Reading the president's speech to the United Nations last week, the question came to mind: Is George Bush a conservative at all?
At the United Nations, writes the Washington Post's Colum Lynch, Bush "linked his campaign against terrorism to the anti-poverty agenda advanced by other nations, although he shied away from adopting some of the specific commitments sought by allies."
Thank Bolton for that one. For one of those commitments, agreed to at the Millennium Summit in Monterey, Mexico, in 2000, was that America should commit 0.7 percent of its GNP to foreign aid.
That would be $100 billion each year from Uncle Sam, sent to Third World regimes, the United Nations and the international aid agencies.
Yet, Bush clearly believes poverty and terror are inextricably tied. "We must help raise up the failing states that provide fertile ground for the terrorists," said Bush, and "change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish."
But where is the hard historical evidence that people turn to terror because of poverty? Almost all of today's terrorists are young men who could easily make their way in the world. When has any of them blown himself up to demand an increase in foreign aid or to protest the plight of the African poor?
At the United Nations, Bush repeated another of his unproven assumptions. "Bush used his speech," writes the Post's Glenn Kessler, "to explain why ... democracy thwarts the growth of terrorism."
But if democracy thwarts terror, why did terrorists strike Britain, Spain, Russia and the United States? If democracy is the antidote to terror, why was there not one terror attack inside Iraq under the dictator Saddam? Yet, with Iraq free, we can get a dozen terror attacks in Baghdad in a day.
If democracy thwarts terror, why were there, as F. Gregory Gause III writes in Foreign Affairs, 203 terror attacks in India, the world's most populous democracy, from 2000 to 2003, but none in authoritarian China?
Israel is the most democratic nation in the Middle East, with the least poverty. Yet, Israel is a primary target of terror attacks. Why? When Hezbollah fires a Katyusha rocket or Hamas blows up a bus, do they accompany the attack with an Al-Jazeera broadcast demanding money for the Arab poor or greater democracy for Palestinians in Israel?
Said Bush, "Democratic nations uphold the rule of law, impose limits on the power of the state, treat women and minorities as full citizens."
Yes, they do. But what has this to do with whether democracies are victimized by terrorists, or whether terrorists operate in democratic societies?
Terror, the murder of innocents for political ends, has been with us for over a century. The Russian narodniki assassinated the Czar Liberator Alexander II to strike a blow at autocracy. But when terrorism moved west, it was not just kings and queens, but the leader of the freest country on earth, President McKinley, who was assassinated by an anarchist. Nor did common folk have any immunity.
Emile Henry blew up a working-class bar in Paris. Asked by his trial judge why he attacked the bourgeois, but not the rich, Henry shot back, "There are no innocent bourgeois!"
Were the enlistees in the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the IRA in Britain, the Red Brigades in Italy and the Puerto Rican FLN in the United States killing to protest a lack of democracy or a stingy welfare state?
Terrorism is a weapon of war. And as Clausewitz reminds us, war is the extension of politics by other means. Almost every terrorist movement today has a political agenda. The FLN terrorists who blew up Fraunces Tavern wanted the Americans out of Puerto Rico. They failed. Hezbollah wanted the Israelis out of Lebanon; Hamas wanted them out of Gaza. Both used terror. Both succeeded.
In the Middle East, as scholar Robert Pape, who has analyzed suicide bombings from 1980 to 2004, writes, the suicide bombers are men on a mission: to kill and die until all U.S. forces are off their land. No foreign aid or free election will cause them to give it up.
In Europe, as Tony Blankley writes in his provocative new book, "The West's Last Chance," a new type of threat has arisen: home-grown terrorists, dead souls, deracinated young Muslims, born, bred and educated in Europe, but alienated from society – like the orphaned boys of Weimar Germany after the Great War, searching for a family and a cause to live for, and finding both in the Nazi Party.
These young Muslims, disgusted or bored with La Dolce Vita that the West offers, seek a cause to live and die for. And the radical imams of Europe are providing them with what no democratic election or Consumer Society can match: a heroic death – and life eternal.
It is a war of faith and beliefs we are in, and the president's speechwriters ought to round-file the Kerner Commission cliches. They weren't even right about the 1960s.
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