Jon blogs below about winning office with a mere plurality, which touches on issues that political scientists, and theorists of a certain bent, have thought a lot about. Kenneth Arrow’s “impossibility theorem,” which I’ve blogged about before, indicates that if you make certain reasonable assumptions about people’s preferences, no possible voting system (or other means of social choice) can be expected to aggregate people’s preferences without distorting them. This suggests, according to the late William Riker, that democracy is bogus.

Riker argues that there’s no such thing as the “will of the people” - the result of any vote is as much a product of how choices are presented to people as the actual preferences of the electorate. The message is simple - there ain’t no such thing as a perfect electoral system.

…So does this mean that democracy is a sham? That’s certainly the traditional interpretation. However, there’s also an alternative interpretation, which has recently started to generate some buzz among rational choice political scientists. On this interpretation, Riker’s critique points instead to the need to enhance democracy, by privileging deliberation - deep conversation and discussion, where people try to resolve political controversies through reasoned debate - rather than voting. At least in theory, deliberation isn’t vulnerable to the sorts of problems that Arrow and Riker identify.

The argument goes that even if deliberation is unwieldy as a primary form of political decision making - it’s awkward, messy and takes too long - it can work well as a form of “second order choice.” In other words, deliberation is a lousy way for people to take day-to-day political decisions, but it potentially allows people to decide over the different (imperfect) ways in which they can take these day-to-day decisions.

By Bradley Graham and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 9, 2003; Page A01

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that Pentagon officials met secretly with a discredited expatriate Iranian arms merchant who figured prominently in the Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s, characterizing the contact as an unexceptional effort to gain possibly useful information.

While Rumsfeld said that the contact occurred more than a year ago and that nothing came of it, his aides scrambled during the day to piece together more details amid other reports that Rumsfeld's account may have been incomplete.

Last night, a senior defense official disclosed that another meeting with the Iranian arms dealer, Manucher Ghorbanifar, occurred in June in Paris. The official said that, while the first contact, in late 2001, had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism, the second one resulted from "an unplanned, unscheduled encounter."

A senior administration official said, however, that Pentagon staff members held one or two other meetings with Ghorbanifar last year in Italy. The sessions so troubled Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the official said, that he complained to Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser.

Powell maintained that the Pentagon activities were unauthorized and undermined U.S. policy toward Iran by taking place outside the terms defined by Bush and his top advisers. The White House instructed the Pentagon to halt meetings that do not conform to policy decisions, said the official, who requested anonymity.

By Scott Lindlaw
Associated Press
Thursday, August 7, 2003; 1:54 PM

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice likened Iraq's halting path toward self-government to black Americans' struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, imploring black journalists Thursday to reject arguments that some people are incapable of democracy.

"We've heard that argument before, and we more than any should be ready to reject it," Rice told about 1,200 people at the National Association of Black Journalists.

"The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East," she said.

"We should not let our voices waver in speaking out for people seeking freedom and never, never indulge in the condescending voices who say that some people in Africa or the Middle East are just not interested in freedom -- culturally just not ready for freedom," she said.

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Hispanics in New York City are unhappier with their government and more pessimistic about the economy than Hispanics in the nation as a whole, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll has found. In many ways, the poll shows, they hold opinions that are closer to those of their fellow New Yorkers than to those of Hispanics in the rest of the country.

The differences are more pronounced among the city's largest Hispanic subgroup, Puerto Ricans, who are more likely to have been born in the 50 states, or to have lived there longer, than Hispanics from other countries. When their responses are removed from the poll results, the responses of the Dominicans, Mexicans and Ecuadoreans who make up most of the rest of New York's polyglot Hispanic population are often more in line with the responses by Hispanics elsewhere, who are predominantly of Mexican descent.

THE HAGUE - Liberia has asked the United Nations International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, to either cancel or withdraw the indictment and arrest warrant issued by Sierra Leone's war crimes court against Liberian president Charles Taylor, ICJ documents published yesterday show.

"Liberia contends that the arrest warrant of Charles Taylor violates customary international law and impugns the honour and reputation of the presidency and its sovereignty," according to an ICJ statement.

The UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone charged Taylor in June with atrocities committed during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war and issued an international arrest warrant against him.

Liberia has asked the ICJ, the highest judiciary organ of the United Nations set up to deal with disputes between states, to declare that the indictment of Taylor failed to respect the immunity from persecution that Taylor enjoys under international law as a head of state.

A prominent black civil rights lawyer from California quit the NAACP this week after a disagreement with the group over his support of one of President Bush's judicial nominees.

After Leo Terrell appeared at a news conference last week in support of a nominee being blocked by Democrats, two officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People telephoned him and tried "bullying" him over his position, he said.

"They were trying to make me goose-step with them," said Mr. Terrell, who joined the NAACP 13 years ago and has done free legal work for the group. "I felt embarrassed to call myself a member of the NAACP. I was proud to quit."

But Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington office, said he called Mr. Terrell simply to advise him against billing himself as an "NAACP lawyer."

"He's not an NAACP lawyer, not even a former NAACP lawyer," Mr. Shelton said. "He's done volunteer work for us, which we appreciate.

"But when he takes a position that is diametrically opposite from our position, he's not speaking for us," he said.

So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by "have."

See, I can "have" something without actually having it. I can "have" a cold, but I don't own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word "have" has the complicated letter "v" in it. It seems that so many words with the letter "v" are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like "verisimilitude." And "envelope."

Therefore, when you ask me, "Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction," I frankly don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say "did?" Think about "did." What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I'm beginning to think it's just the media's effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question.

And how do I know you're not saying "halve?" "Did Iraq halve weapons of mass destruction?" How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question.

Let me try and clear it up for you. I think what you were trying to say was, "At any time, did anyone in Iraq think about, wish for, dream of, or search the Internet for weapons of mass destruction?"

he Bechtel Group, one of the world's biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says.

The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment.

On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said.

"The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — The Justice Department told a federal court administrator today that it would begin compiling data on judges who give lighter sentences than federal guidelines prescribe, a move that critics see as an effort to limit judicial independence by creating a "blacklist" of judges.

The new policy will require prosecutors to notify Justice Department officials in Washington whenever a federal judge issues a sentence that falls below sentencing guidelines. The notification will set in motion a review of whether an appeal of the judge's sentence should be filed.

"The public in general and crime victims in particular rightly expect that the penalties established by law for specific crimes will be sought and imposed by those who serve in the criminal justice system," Attorney General John Ashcroft wrote in a July 28 memorandum to federal prosecutors outlining the protocol.

The policy, first reported on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, is part of a bill signed into law by President Bush in April that seeks to make it tougher for federal judges to depart from sentencing guidelines.

The Justice Department, in a letter today to the head of the administrative office of the United States Courts, said it developed the policy as part of the new law's requirements rather than accept a more "onerous" option allowed by Congress. That option would have required the Justice Department to go to Congress with a detailed report each time a judge broke from the sentencing guidelines.

WASHINGTON Aug. 7 - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing could not be ruled out forever but there was no need to test now.

"The president has no intention of testing nuclear weapons," Powell said at a news conference. "We have no need to."

While the United States and other nuclear powers have a responsibility to keep their nuclear weapons stockpiles safe and reliable, "we see no need to test in order to do that at the moment," Powell said.

"We can't rule it out forever," he said, but "we have no plans to test" and the topic is not likely to be discussed by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their meeting next month at Camp David in Maryland.

Using a complex algorithm involving one’s IQ, the results from various logic tests and the weight of the sun divided by the total number of Canadians named Steve, we have calculated the definitive list of the 10 smartest people in the entire Bay Area. Do not bother refuting the almighty list. Your efforts will be in vain.

…While we can refute the scientific concept of "race" as much as we like, the material experience of racism in South Africa is still everywhere to be seen. While we can deny the concept of race as a myth, the discrimination on the basis of that myth in the apartheid system wrought effects that are undeniably still lived today. In a society structured along these lines, it is not surprising to find that race is still a powerful signifier.

This is why, as recently pointed out by political scientist Amanda Gouws and quoted by Mbeki, the concept of reconciliation between races would have to take place not only on attitudinal, but on grassroots level as well.

Of course we want to get away from defining ourselves in terms of the categories set by apartheid. Of course we want, someday, to be a non-racial society in which identity is based on other determinants than skin colour and essentialist notions of racial origin.

In some ways this is already happening. In the embryonic cross-cultural forays in art forms like kwaito, hip-hop, the emergence of post-apartheid literature and theatre and homegrown soapies, new forms of identity are being experimented with. But identity and cultural transformation cannot be divorced from material factors and historical legacies. Material factors mitigate against new identities coming into being, since cross-cultural movement is hampered by the structural divisions in South African society. Geographically, socially, culturally, South Africa is still divided along racial lines. Race might not be the overriding issue in post-1994 South Africa, since formal apartheid legislation has been scrapped. However, race is important insofar as it points to the extent to which material inequalities still remain in our society, and how that precludes greater social and cultural changes from taking place.

Census 2001 has shown us that race and class still coincide in South African society, almost 10 years after the formal end of apartheid. It is important that "playing the race card" should not be a way of escaping criticism or denying interlocutors a position from where to constructively engage in a dialogue to change things for the better. But race as a determinant in South African society cannot be wished away. While it should inform the approach to redressing material inequalities, this should not be restricted to changing faces in boardrooms - it should also take the form of a restructuring on ground level, so that the legacies of the past may someday be erased. Only by changing material circumstances in the country will we be able to change the ways we experience each other and define ourselves as South Africans. Only then will we be able to shape new identities without being encumbered by the ghosts of the past.

By JEFFREY McMURRAY

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One dramatic historical moment is fueling arguments for and against a black history and culture museum on the National Mall: the 1963 March on Washington.

For one-time civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, a museum telling the story of his people from slavery to the present would memorialize the moment when hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the open green space between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.

To critics, cluttering that space with another building would detract from it original purpose of openness and a place for people to air their grievances en masse -- no better dramatized than by the 1963 march.

"Civil rights really have made the Mall an embodiment of the Constitution by showing the constitutional guarantees of freedom were not extended to the black community," said Judy Feldman, president of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall. "The fact we have a Mall where people can go and make their case means it's filling a function. That function is not by filling it with buildings, it's by filling it with people."

Lewis, D-Ga., agrees the Mall shouldn't be cluttered. But if anything deserves to be situated on some of Washington's most-coveted real estate, he says it's this project.

"The Mall represents the front door to the symbol of our democracy," said Lewis, who was beaten during the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. "An African-American Museum shouldn't be up to the side or in the back. It should be as close to the other museums as possible."

Other Smithsonian museums currently open on the Mall are the Art and Industries Building, the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery, National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of African Art, National Museum of American History and National Museum of Natural History.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As peacekeeping forces moved into Liberia's capital Thursday, the Bush administration announced it will extend the temporary immigration status for thousands of people who have fled that war-ravaged country.
In a Federal Register notice Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said the temporary protected status for Liberians has been extended until October 1, 2004.

The 12-month extension is warranted, according to DHS, "due to ongoing armed conflict within Liberia that would pose a serious threat to the personal safety of returning nationals of Liberia."

MONROVIA, Liberia — President Charles Taylor announced his successor Thursday, a step toward his much-anticipated resignation and ending two months of bloody warfare in Monrovia that has killed at least 1,000 people.

In a letter to Congress, Taylor said he would hand power to his vice-president, Moses Blah. Legislators approved the decision, paving the way for Taylor's stepping down Monday, as promised.

Meanwhile, West African peacekeeping forces drove into the rebel-besieged and famished capital to deafening cheers from the city's people.

…Taylor has hedged on when he would take up an offer of asylum in Nigeria - setting new conditions for his departure in recent days. His government has said he would leave only after enough foreign peacekeepers are on the ground and if a war crimes indictment against him is dropped.

Nigerian officials told The Associated Press that the Liberian leader had indicated he hoped to leave around Aug. 16 or 17. But South African President Thabo Mbeki said Taylor assured him he would leave within 24 hours of handing over power Monday.

Jacques Paul Klein, the top UN envoy for Liberia, urged Taylor to leave before he is arrested. A UN-backed court has indicted Taylor on war crimes charges for allegedly supporting rebels during a brutal decade-long war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

"The warrant never goes away, and the court will be there for a number of years," he advised Taylor. "So go while the getting is good."

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a group of African journalists visiting the country that Kenya would use the funds to secure the border with Somalia, largely suspected to be the main route for terrorists entering Kenya and the source of small arms used by criminals.

"We are very concerned with the continued situation of Somalia as a failed state because terrorists are entering the country and getting refuge there and using the country as a springboard for their attacks," Mr Boucher said.

…Appeals to bi-partisan consensus will likely be offered by the Republicans, who will have both 2002 and Grover Norquist's "Bi-partisanship is date rape" line thrown back in their faces. The media will focus less on the rhetoric, and more on the war. Civility is out the window; Republican calls for it will likely be quickly rebutted as well by the "Bourgeous riot" of 2000, where the Republicans proved that they have little taste for civility where it doesn't benefit them. Dirty tricks are out of bound only insofar as they might be found out.

…So we get a war. The Republican base against the Democrat base. The Wurlitzer against Dean's army. (I would not be overly surprised if we hear that term first being used in the mainstream media before the year is out.) The immovable object against the irresistable force, with no concept of civility, fairness, or restraint accepted, let alone followed. All of this, too, against a backdrop of an American populace that is newly re-engaged with politics, which understands how important this is, and which will likely be as evenly divided as it was in the past. I have a vision of the most brutal election campaign that the Republic has ever seen, and I don't think I like it, and even less like that it may be necessary.

And that's not even getting into what the anti-globo types will do. Or, God forbid, Al Qaeda.

And I'm not speaking about charity here, but investments. The same money that when taxed goes to some social program, but with lower efficiency, because of administrative overhead and fraud, (and with the risk of creating perverse incentives) can be invested when not taxed with higher efficiency, creating jobs.

But you know, there's a HUGE difference between what CAN be done and what IS done. Maybe investment CAN create jobs but if you look at the market in the USofA you'll be hard pressed to find evidence of it.

Compare fraud in social programs to the obscene salaries non-productive CEOs receive.

Much of what you call administrative overhead is employment expense. Compare that to tax breaks that cost more than the payroll of the jobs the receiving corporation creates, Or better, compare it to the taxes generated by those jobs. Talk about your perverse incentives.

All things being equal, people want cars, consumer goods, medicines, and the like.

It's pretty plain that it's better to have people producing these goods and services that they and others want, instead of having them sitting at home unemployed.

But the same goes for the civil servant who does not deliver a popular service but who's function is to cut down on fraud: He is not producing wealth, but (in the best case) part of some complicated mini-max equation to increase the efficiency of a social program. Without fraud-detection, the efficiency could be as low as 20%, so we add civil servants until we reach a maximum efficiency of 70%, after which point adding yet another civil servant will cost more than any extra fraud prevented, and the efficiency starts dropping again.

Yes, it's nice for those civils servants to have a job, instead of also being unemployed, but however you look at it, the cost of the social program must be payed by the remaining taxpayers working in the private sector.

I'm also talking in terms of social programs. If corporate welfare isn't a social program, what is it? If it is a social program, it must therefore be subject to the same level and kinds of scrutiny you'd subject any other social program to. If it's not, then it's an unconstitutional confiscation and transfer of wealth and should be halted before even considering shutting down any program than benefits humans.

By the way, the Cato Intitute is of the latter opinion. See Cutting Corporate Welfare Could Fund a Bush Social Security Plan and The Cato Handbook for Congress. The latter states:

Corporate welfare programs are often purported to be pro-business. They are not. Such programs do nothing to promote a freer economy. They make it less free. Here are seven reasons why such policies are misguided and dangerous:

1. The federal government has a disappointing record of picking industrial winners and losers. The average delinquency rate for government loan programs (8 percent) is almost three times higher than that for commercial lenders (3 percent). The Small Business Administration delinquency rate reached over 20 percent in the 1980s, and the Farmers Home Administration delinquency rate has approached 50 percent.

2. Corporate welfare is a huge drain on the federal treasury. Every year $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent on programs that subsidize businesses. Meanwhile, politicians proclaim that we can't afford a tax cut. [p6: note this was directed to the 105th Congress. This means the amount has increased by now, and they got the tax cut(s) anyway]

3. Corporate welfare creates an uneven playing field. By giving selected businesses and industries special advantages, corporate subsidies put businesses and industries that are less politically well connected at a disadvantage.

4. Corporate welfare fosters an incestuous relationship between business and government. All too often, the firms and industries that contribute the most to political campaign coffers are the largest recipients of government handouts.

5. Corporate welfare programs are anti-consumer. For instance, the Commerce Department has estimated that the sugar subsidy program costs consumers several billion dollars a year in higher prices.

6. Corporate welfare is anti-capitalist. As Wall Street financier Theodore J. Forstmann has put it, corporate welfare has led to the creation in America of the ``statist businessman,'' who has been converted from a capitalist into a lobbyist.

7. Corporate welfare is unconstitutional. Corporate subsidy programs lie outside Congress's limited spending authority under the Constitution.

I wouldn't want to put the latter under the header "Corporate Welfare", just because you're taxed less than the maximum you've ever been taxed before, but it is applicable for the first part, because corporations that aren't subsidized will eventually have to pay higher taxes to make up for it.

There is a discrepancy here that there's usually no complaint when corporate taxes are raised all across the board, but when they are lowered, some people on the left start to argue there should not be "free gifts", but advocate only rewarding those corporations that create new jobs.

None of us have a crystal ball, but there are law of averages here, and just as we can safely predict that when corporate taxes are raised, some corporations will stop to be profitable and end up bankrupt, the reverse holds that when lowering taxes previously unprofitable ventures will become profitable again.

Exporting jobs isn't something new. If it is cheaper to produce goods abroad and ship the finished product, consumers will vote with their wallets.

The "lost" part is an impression I get from left rhetoric. In part, it's the dogmatic "raising taxes good, lowering taxes bad" attitude, where in my opinion it makes more sense to have a tax regimen following the economic cycle.

Another pet peeve with lefty rhetoric is the narrow focus on only the demand side of the economy. There's this strange denial that more efficient corporations can produce either the same goods at lower cost, or better goods at the same price, so while people may have the same income in dollar terms, they are wealthier in purchasing power.

By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 8/6/2003

WALDORF, Md. -- Surnita Jefferson-Jones walked into a J.C. Penney's yesterday morning with four young children and the promise of four tax credits from President Bush -- part of Bush's plan to stimulate the economy by returning cash to taxpayers. She's looking forward to the money, but come November of next year, Jefferson-Jones isn't likely to repay Bush with her vote.

''I think it's a ploy to build people's confidence,'' Jefferson-Jones said of the child-credit checks.

For Bush, having the country get an economic boost from the child-credit checks coming out this week could be crucial, as Democratic opponents hammer away, decrying the millions in job losses and the slow growth they attribute to the president's policies. But Bush and his campaign clearly hope the tax credits do more than stimulate the economy -- they want them to become almost a personal expression of Bush's concern for families.

Just last week, Bush stood in the White House Rose Garden and smiled like a TV pitchman as he told Americans: ''The check is in the mail.''

But while few are willing to return them to sender, the checks don't appear to have shifted opinions about Bush or his policies, at least not in this area of suburban Maryland, where Penney's and other retailers in the local mall are cashing the child-credit checks for free.

By Robert Kuttner, 8/6/2003

GEORGE W. BUSH faces a race between the ill-advised economic policies sown in the first half of his term and the bitter fruit that those policies are starting to bear. If the sour effects of his economic policies are evident by mid-2004, he is in deep political trouble.

For now, at least, Bush can say that the economic news is mixed. The unemployment rate went up to 6.4 percent in May. It dropped slightly, to 6.2 percent, in June - but only because more and more people have dropped out of the labor force entirely as payrolls continued to shrink.

Economic growth came in at 2.4 percent for the second quarter of 2003. That was better than expected, but it needs to hit 4 percent or higher to reduce unemployment. Bush's cheerleaders say that will happen, in well-choreographed fashion, in the election year.

But will it? Timing is everything. George Bush the first missed his rendezvous with prosperity in 1992. And the policies of Bush I were not as damaging as those of Bush II.

By Derrick Z. Jackson, 8/6/2003

I RECENTLY WROTE a piece saying America should apologize for slavery. This resulted in an expected deluge of e-mails castigating me for dredging up events that most white Americans today deny any tie to.

Most e-mails did not touch with a 10-foot American flagpole whether their white privilege of today is in any way due to the fact that America grew fat on slavery for nearly 250 years and white immigrants moved past black folks for another 100 years in housing and education under government-sanctioned segregation and repression.

This was on top of columns defending affirmative action for African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans at the University of Michigan. It's over, the e-mails said. Get over it. Get a life.

So imagine my feigned surprise that even as many white readers continue to vent their anger at me, Congress is openly entertaining reparations for white people in the plains, the prairies, the swamps, and the mountains. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and 16 other Democratic and Republican senators representing South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Georgia, Louisiana, and West Virginia have introduced the New Homestead Act.

In 1862 the federal government established the original Homestead Act, which used free land to lure people out West (well, free once it was stolen by slaughtering the Indians). One hundred forty-one years later, the rural parts of America's heartland, once so fertile for so many small farmers and mom-and-pop entrepreneurs, changed as agribusiness and Wal-Mart moved in. Small factories lost jobs overseas. Young people with fewer opportunities fled for the bright lights and computer-oriented work of the cities.

In the heartland, 70 percent of rural counties have lost an average of 30 percent of their population in the last 20 years. The states that have lost the most people since 1980 have been the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, and Iowa. ''The heartland of our country is being relentlessly depopulated, and we need to do something about it,'' Dorgan has said.

When factories and mills left the black community in the Northern Rust Belt or the Southern mills, America said tough luck, that's how the global economy crumbles. No one did anything about the redlining that froze home values in black communities while prices soared in the suburbs. Decimated black farmers say it is still hard to get loans from the US Department of Agriculture despite a 1999 settlement (there were black farmers who took advantage of the Homestead Act, but their communities withered away a long time ago). For years the Urban League called for a Marshall Plan to rescue inner cities.

The response of Capitol Hill and the states to lack of opportunity for African-Americans was an unprecedented prison boom. Ten percent of African-American men ages 25 through 29 are in jail, compared with 1.2 percent of white Americans the same age.

Dorgan and his fellow senators are not so heartless for the heartland. For recent college graduates who resettle for at least five years in depopulated plains counties, the government would repay up 50 percent of their college loans up to $10,000.

Home buyers who stayed five years would get a $5,000 tax credit on their purchase. Any losses in value could be deducted from their taxes. New businesses would get tax credits. A $3 billion venture capital fund would guarantee up to 40 percent of the smaller start-ups and up to 60 percent of large manufacturing ventures.

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has also suggested tax incentives that would make it easier for banks to make loans to new small farmers. ''No one county or state can turn this around on its own,'' Dorgan has said. ''But the country as a whole can do it if it decides the heartland is important to save.''

A new survey of the nation's Hispanics finds they are far more optimistic about life in the United States and their children's prospects than are non-Latinos, despite the fact that many are much poorer and many do not intend to gain the full benefits of citizenship.

The New York Times/CBS News poll found that nearly 70 percent of foreign-born Hispanics say they identify more with the United States than with their country of origin. Still, many continue to send money to family members even though they rarely visit their home countries.

Sixty-four percent of Latinos said there was no specific instance when they felt discriminated against because of their ethnicity. Those who said they had had such an experience said it involved employment or a general sense of exclusion.

The finding was in sharp contrast to that of the poll's non-Hispanic blacks. Seventy-three percent of them said they had experienced discrimination, while 25 percent said they had not.

Much of the optimism expressed by Latinos appears to be related to the fact that most, 57 percent, said they were immigrants. Just 39 percent said they were born in the United States, making it clear that the expectation of better economic circumstances for themselves and their children was inherent in their decision to uproot their lives and come to the United States.

WASHINGTON — African-Americans have historically been skeptical of military intervention by their country in the affairs of others, at least when compared with other Americans. It is not surprising, then, that a New York Times survey being issued today, which asked whether the United States should try to change a dictatorship to democracy or stay out, found that 82 percent of African-American respondents wanted America to mind its own business, as opposed to 58 percent of all others.

Carroll Doherty, editor of the Pew Research Center, said there had been a consistent gap between whites and blacks in recent military undertakings.

The Iraq war has proved especially divisive, he said, with 72 percent of whites saying Washington was right to attack Iraq, compared with 41 percent of blacks, according to a June poll. But he noted that African-Americans were similarly skeptical during the first Persian Gulf War and the battle for Kosovo.

Even when it comes to Liberia there is disagreement within the black community over what the United States should do — despite the fact that the Congressional Black Caucus last week called on the Bush administration to act.

The president has so far balked at sending in troops, opting instead to offer cash and logistical assistance to West African peacekeeping forces, while positioning ships off the Liberian coast with 2,300 Marines on board.

A number of African-Americans support that stance — though not always for the same reasons as the administration. They include some with a radical, pro-Africa agenda, who are nonetheless urging the United States to keep out of Liberia, or limit its role to helping international peacekeepers.

"Our view is that the Liberian situation is part of a West African crisis and ultimately needs to be settled by West Africans," said Bill Fletcher, president of the TransAfrica Forum, an organization that fought apartheid in South Africa and fosters contacts between Africa and the United States.

A decade ago, when the Clinton administration agonized over whether to intervene in Haiti to restore its elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, TransAfrica's founder, Randall Robinson went on a hunger strike and black lawmakers raised a daily ruckus that compelled the administration to send in troops. But when it comes to Liberia, that unity is missing, Mr. Fletcher noted.

To be sure, some of the strongest advocates for American intervention are African-American. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has voiced remorse at the administration's reticence and the Rev. Jesse Jackson has chided Washington for keeping "a killing field on the back burner."

But some black Americans say they would support deploying troops only if they were assured of a peaceful reception.

"If you told us were going to fight a war, we'd oppose it," said one Congressional aide who is close to the Black Caucus.

From:Reuters
Tuesday, 5th August, 2003

By Ed Stoddard

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - It's good for your country to have a coast -- or at least lots of its population in close proximity to the sea -- and not just for trips to the beach.

Recent studies are confirming what many economists have long known: that geography matters. Size does too.

This may be especially relevant to Africa, helping to explain why it is the world's poorest continent and why the wealth gap between it and the rest of the planet is growing.

"More countries are land-locked (in Africa), with small populations, than in any other region," says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

"This impedes growth by making exports costly and limiting incentives for foreign direct investment," it says.

In its 2003 Human Development Report, the UNDP looks at economic growth rates by population size and geographical factors between 1980 and 1998.

Small countries are classified as those with fewer than 40 million people in 1990 while those with three quarters of the population living more than 60 miles from the coast are classified as inland -- even if they have a coastline.

"Small and inland countries enjoyed much less economic success over the same period (than large or coastal countries)," the report says.

"The findings are particularly relevant for Africa, since 33 of the 55 countries counted as small and inland are on that continent," it says.

GEOGRAPHY IMPORTANT, BUT NOT A STRAIT-JACKET

Economists going back to Adam Smith in the 18th century have argued that geography is a vital ingredient of economic success, and analysts have in recent years been closely examining its impact on development.

"Nearly all landlocked countries in the world are poor, except for a handful in Western Europe that are deeply integrated into the regional European market," says a 1998 paper by John Luke Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs which was presented to the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics.

Botswana, according to Gallup and Sachs, was the richest non-European landlocked country with a population of more than a million in 1998, and is widely seen as an African success story.

But as they point out, it "owes its pride of place to well-managed diamond mines."

…Analysts also point to unfair trade practices that prevent many African goods, particularly food products, from penetrating rich markets. High debt loads are another millstone.

And many African countries have suffered from shoddy governance, rampant corruption and brutal dictatorships.

But geography does seem to be playing significant a role. The trick is to build the ladders that breach this natural obstacle to prosperity -- such as regional cooperation -- and give Africans the opportunity to climb out of their poverty.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is preparing to notify Israel that it may reduce recently approved loan guarantees in proportion to the amount Israel spends on a new security fence and on Jewish settlements, U.S. officials said Monday.

The move, meant to make clear the administration's objections to the fact that the fence is being built partly inside the West Bank, would mark a rare instance of Washington penalizing Israel for its policies.

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Columnist, 8/5/2003

WASHINGTON -- They filled the second floor of the Capitol Hilton, rumpled soldiers of the academic left, lining up behind microphones, and well-groomed former Clinton officials, their arms extended in a perpetual handshake. The first convention of the American Constitution Society, devoted to connecting left-leaning law professors, politicians, and practicing attorneys, drew a crowd of 800 under a banner proclaiming ''Human Dignity, Individual Rights, and Genuine Equality.''

Founded to ''counter the conservative dominance of the law,'' the group aims to be a counterweight to the right-leaning Federalist Society, which over the last 20 years has promoted conservative thinkers, including scores of Bush judicial appointees.

… There is more than a desire for payback behind these efforts. They are part of a broader recognition that conservatives have created a dominant network linking politics and private organizations. GOP fund-raisers support a shelf-full of right-wing magazines, which in turn promote provocative conservative authors like Ann Coulter. These writers then bestow the movement's approval on chosen thinkers, many identified by the powerful 30,000-member Federalist Society.

Last year, at the Federalist Society's 20th-anniversary banquet, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia regaled the crowd with memories of mentoring the first Federalist chapter at the University of Chicago. Since Scalia was the driving force behind the Supreme Court's decision granting George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore, the potential reach of a broad ideological network cannot be underestimated.

But as the liberals start to hook up the cars in their own ideological train, much of the political world is awaiting the inevitable crash. While conservatives answer a call to order like the members of a Moose Lodge, liberals fall to cat-fighting like contestants on a reality-TV dating show. Or so the thinking goes.

So it was a surprise that the convention, a mix of seminars and get-togethers, including a ''Janet Reno Dance Party'' hosted by the former attorney general, went off over the weekend without missing a beat.

''They're confronted with a conservative ascendancy now, and the question is how they'll respond,'' said David Lyle, the deputy director. ''What they need is a means for responding. Not responding is not an option now.''

Surprisingly, most members seemed to understand the need to band together, not challenge one another's orthodoxy. Many exulted over a session at which people from the same geographic areas were introduced, forging the first links in a grass-roots network.

August 4 2003

A device that produces electricity from blood could be used to turn people into "human batteries".

Researchers in Japan are developing a method of drawing power from blood glucose, mimicking the way the body generates energy from food.

Theoretically, it could allow a person to pump out 100 watts - enough to illuminate a light bulb.

But that would entail converting all the food eaten by the individual into electricity. In practice, less power would be generated since food is needed by the body.

However the scientists say the "bio-nano" generator could be used to run devices embedded in the body, or sugar-fed robots.

The team at electronics giant Panasonic's Nanotechnology Research Laboratory near Kyoto has so far only managed to produce very low power levels.

But the scientists ultimately expect to gain much greater performance from the device.

The battery is based on an enzyme capable of stripping glucose of its electrons, The Engineer magazine reported.

Dr Kazuo Eda, heading the research, said: "It is like the metabolism of food. Human bodies can process glucose and obtain energy. When glucose is oxidised, electrons can be obtained."

He believed bio-nano fuel cells were the next step for researchers after generators powered by hydrogen, natural gas and methanol now being developed for the car and energy industries.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Congress is hammering out a final prescription drug benefit program for seniors. But that may spur employers to drop their own coverage to current and future retirees, possibly boosting their drug costs.

…a July 22 Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House and Senate bills found: "Under both acts, employers would have incentives to restructure their drug coverage and other forms of compensation so as to maximize federal subsidy payments."

The CBO estimated 32% of Medicare beneficiaries who have employer coverage under current law wouldn't get it under the House bill. Under the Senate bill, the loss was higher: 37%.

A Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation study of large private employers found that 23% would scale back their drug coverage if Medicare offered a benefit.

Those numbers make seniors' groups wary, as about 30% of Medicare beneficiaries have employer-sponsored health coverage.

The AARP calls it a "critical concern" and has hinted it may oppose a benefit if Congress doesn't fix that.

The National Association of Retired Federal Employees opposes a Medicare drug benefit. It's worried the federal government may use that to cut back on coverage to its own retirees.

"We believe it could easily become an incentive for . . . employer plans to reduce or eliminate prescription drug coverage currently provided," it said in a statement.

The problem, says Heritage Foundation analyst Edmund Haislmaier, is how the drug benefit would be set up. Both the House and Senate bills would make it easier for employers to push retirees into the new benefit than to maintain their current coverage.

By Brian Riedl and Robert Rector

Should Congress make work requirements for welfare recipients stricter? That's what would happen under a bill the House of Representatives has passed. It would require more recipients to work 40 hours a week instead of the current 30 and stop vocational training from counting as "work."

Bad idea, the critics say. They claim that education and training programs lead to successful, high-paying careers, while putting welfare recipients to work immediately traps them in low-paying, dead-end jobs.

Wrong.

Welfare recipients assigned to immediate work see their earnings increase more than twice as fast over the following five years as those first placed in education-based programs, according to calculations we made using data from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp., a New York-based nonprofit group. In fact, most government-run job training programs barely raise hourly wage rates at all, a report commissioned by the U.S. Labor Department reveals.

If the goal of welfare reform is to raise earnings while reducing dependency, then quickly moving welfare recipients into real jobs is the answer. Prolonged classroom training tends to be the dead end.

The unemployment rate dropped to 6.2% last month! Yippee!

[now comes the small print.]

The economy is still bleeding jobs; 44,000 net lost, with 71,000 in manufacturing and 16,000 in transportation. But, hey, there's a boom in temporary employment! Lose a good paying, good benefits, union factory job, and be happy with your new low paying, no bennies temp job. Sweet.

So how did the Administration do it? How did the economy lose jobs, and yet the unemployment rate managed to creep down two tenths of a percentage point?

Well, they shifted a record number of workers off the books; the civilian labor force decreased by 556,000.

The undeniable success of this approach is demonstrated by the more than 5 million people (including 3 million children) who have risen out of poverty since the law was enacted. After remaining static for nearly a quarter-century, the poverty rate of black children has dropped by a third and is now at the lowest point in U.S. history. The poverty rate for single mothers has plummeted in a similar manner since 1996; it, too, is at the lowest point in national history.

But welfare reform wasn't perfect. Today less than half of TANF adult recipients are employed or preparing for employment in any way. Most remain idle and continue to collect welfare checks.

A team of researchers at MDRC and the University of Texas at Austin is examining New Hope's effects in a large scale random assignment study. This interim report from the study focuses on the families and children of the 745 sample members who had at least one child between the ages of 1 and 10 when they entered the study. The new findings draw on administrative records and survey data covering the period up to five years after study entry (Year 5), that is, two years after the program ended. A final report will examine New Hope's effects after eight years.

Key Findings

• Employment and Income. Parents in the New Hope group worked more and earned more than did parents in the control group. Although the effects diminished after Year 3, when the program ended, they did persist for some parents. The provision of community service jobs was important to increasing employment: 30 percent of program group members worked in a community service job while in New Hope. The program reduced poverty rates through Year 5.
• Parents' Well-Being. Although New Hope had few effects on levels of material and financial hardship, it did increase parents' instrumental and coping skills. Program group members were more aware of "helping" resources in the community, such as where to find assistance with energy costs or housing problems, and more of them knew about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). They also reported better physical health and fewer signs of depression than did control group members.
• Parenting and Children's Activities. Although New Hope had few effects on parenting, it did increase children's time in formal center-based child care and after-school programs. Even in Year 5, after eligibility for New Hope's child care subsidies had ended, children in New Hope families spent more time than their control group counterparts in center-based child care and after-school programs and correspondingly less time in home-based and unsupervised care. New Hope also increased adolescents' participation in structured out of school activities, such as youth groups and clubs.
• Children's Outcomes. At the end of both Year 2 and Year 5, children in the New Hope group performed better than control group children on several measures of academic achievement, and their parents reported that the children got higher grades in reading and literacy skills. New Hope also improved children's positive social behavior. All these effects were more pronounced for boys than for girls.

Myth: A Huge Chunk of My Tax Dollars Supports Welfare Recipients
Fact: Welfare Costs 1 Percent of the Federal Budget

Myth: People on Welfare Become Permanently Dependent on the Support
Fact: Movement off Welfare Rolls Is Frequent

Myth: Most Welfare Recipients Are African American Women
Fact: Most Welfare Recipients Are Children-Most Women on Welfare Are White

Myth: Welfare Encourages Out-of-Wedlock Births and Large Families
Fact: The Average Welfare Family Is No Bigger Than the Average Nonwelfare Family

Myth: Welfare Families Use Their Benefits to Fund Extravagance
Fact: Welfare Families Live Far Below the Poverty Line

America has warned the Niger government to keep out of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme from the impoverished West African state.

…American officials denied that there had been any attempt to "gag" the Niger government. The Niamey official, however, said that there was "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger".

Some of the contracts traded on AAM will be based on objective data and observable events, as on a horse track, e.g.

• the next White House lie to break into the news
• the next country the White House will threaten, and when
• the next foreign leader to move from the CIA payroll to White House "most wanted" list
• the lifespan of various DARPA projects, such as Total Information Awareness and Babylon
• the first White House staffer to resign in disgrace, and when

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 4, 2003; Page A01

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.

Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said. Powell has indicated to associates that a commitment made to his wife, rather than any dismay at the administration's foreign policy, is a key factor in his desire to limit his tenure to one presidential term.

Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell, according to sources inside and outside the administration. Rice appears to have an edge because of her closeness to the president, though it is unclear whether she would be interested in running the State Department's vast bureaucracy.

Given Bush's track record, Powell's perception of moderation is more important than ever. Word that he's on the way out will not do Bush any favors.

"I can't see that his going would make much difference. It might be that the administration has learned from its mistake and would put in a more openly committed ideologue."

At this crucial time in American life, President Bush has before him a number of options that call for supreme boldness but are well within the realm of possibility.

Bush needs to contemplate something I once saw when Jack Kemp, then the U.S. housing secretary, Bertha Gilke, a black community leader and the first President George Bush spoke together in St. Louis. At one point, Gilke said that as a life-long Democrat, she had never expected to be on a stage with two Republicans, but she had to admit that Bush and Kemp had made it possible for working-class black people to own their homes.

Back then, the GOP was bent on taking black votes away from the Democrats. But that interest seems to have waned, and now bitter black Republicans don't believe the party has any intention of engaging blacks by moving on inarguable problems.

So I trot over to Instapundit for the first time in several months and find the latest version of “The absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” defence for the lack of Iraqi WMDs. (It’s been interesting to see the Hawks all become experts on the subtle metaphysics of causation, events and omissions, incidentally. They sound quite Hegelian with that line.)

See ya in another few months.

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday left open the prospect of a system of civil unions for same-sex couples amid the raging debate over homosexual "marriage."

Mr. Ashcroft said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday" that he supported President Bush's call to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

But he declined to comment on the Bush administration's stance on civil unions, which would grant same-sex couples many of the same rights enjoyed by married couples.

"That's a very complex question that I'm not going to make a recommendation on. We're doing research on that now," Mr. Ashcroft told the television program.

Most libertarians broadly defined and thinkers who influenced them including Ayn Rand, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and the " Chicago School" of Economics generally acknowledge the value of the rule of law and an orderly if sharply limited government. Not buying into government ownership of Amtrak or confiscatory tax rates is not to be equated with a desire to restore feudalism or become a gun-totin'warlord in a Hobbesian fight to the finish.

Your problem is that the meaning of "libertarian" has been hijacked just as surely as the true meaning of "conservative" has been. We live in an age of extremists, Mark. Though for different reasons than Dickens, we can just as surely call this "the best of times, the worst of times."

Teenie Harris died on June 12, 1998, two weeks shy of his 90th birthday. I bring this up now because recently a friend alerted me to this web page which includes 200 of Harris' pictures from the documentary, "One Shot - The Life and Work of Teenie Harris." My friend has a personal link to Harris' photography. You see, his aunt appears in one of Harris' most famous photographs. She's the young woman on the far left.

There is another reason I mention Teenie Harris. Here is a man whose career spanned over 40 years and who was one of the most prolific photographers in America, and yet I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT HIM. I'm sorry to say I hadn't even recognized his name. As a white person living in America, I have to say this is just another example of why I feel continually undereducated.

This to me is one of the greatest and worst effects of racism. Invisibility. We've all heard of Ansel Adams. We celebrate the photography of Mathew Brady. The photographic work of Harold Edgerton is internationally known. I'm certain that it isn't just because Teenie Harris was black that his work has been overlooked in mainstream, i.e. "white" circles. But also because he concentrated mainly on black subjects. A double whammy of invisibility. Because you see, we white folks tend not to notice black folks unless they are playing sports, singing and dancing, selling drugs, or moving in next door. Now, granted, white people do all those things too, only we also are permitted to do all sorts of other things too.

OK, that's rather simplistic. And the more I think about it, maybe even untrue. That invisibility I so blithely mentioned seems to really be about an acute racist VISIBILITY. We white people only SEE black people either when they are doing what we expect them to be doing--playing basketball, for instance, or rapping on BET. Or even more acutely, when they're doing something we presumed only white people should be doing.

…They come from a culture where violence, revenge, and honor are paramount. Their values, rooted in ancient, barbaric superstition, can best be described as primitive. And yet they insist, almost to a man, that their special culture is worth defending and promoting, and loudly condemn any attempts to drag them into the modern world as “bigotry” and “discrimination.”

Though the Civil Rights acts of the Sixties created the initial impetus, Dems have been visibly moving towards an umbrella that does not require that constituency for the past four presidential elections. It was not till the last, with Gore - a borderline Southerner - that the Dems came within a whisker of victory without a single Southern state in their column.

The polarization and hostility of American politics has escalated during this shift, much as it did in a previous time in US history, when it culminated in the election of a despised Northerner and a poorly named 'Civil' War erupted. The one day losses occurring in several battles of the Civil War remain the deadliest in our history, far surpassing the two worst in the 138 years since: Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks.

Clearly, we face the sobering reality that it's time to stop glossing over this part of the national character and ask some hard questions. Some will protest this introspection, accusing those of us asking the questions of a regional bias.

…I'm certain I'll hear critics a'plenty for even raising these issues at the crux of the matter. After all, whether looking at the longer history or the past half century, it's clear that matters of regionalism and race have produced some of the most hateful and shameful acts in our history. From assassination attempts on Lincoln, to Long, Malcolm X, King, JFK, RFK, Wallace and others, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act and beyond, race hatred crops up repeatedly. But isolating these events to race alone continues to gloss over the clear evidence of the regionalistic differences that have been present in most of them.

Asking these questions and exploring these roots, I wonder if the polarization in American politics will again reach the explosiveness we've seen so many times before. After all, some politicians continue to exploit these divisions and fan the fires of race and regional hatred for their political gain. Yet even the cynical Machiavellian greed of such politicians relies on the existing raw material of a significant portion of the Southern citizenry.

At each of these historical junctures, the "progressives" of the time were urged to appease the ranting, rich white men of the Party and the stupid, racist poor white men and women who follow them. Lincoln tried, but (fortunately) the slaveholders insisted on war. In the following century, national Democrats resisted a civil rights platform as long as they could, but it took one speech from Hubert Humphrey to cause the Dixiecrats to bolt in 1948, anyway. Substantive civil rights legislation drove southern whites decisively to the GOP after 1964, firmly establishing the Republicans as the White Man’s Party of the South.

I'm a frikin' capitalist. I think the market is a fabulous idea. But it's simply a tool. And it's a tool that does whatever we tell it to. Like nuclear power, it can either be used for "good" or it can be used for "evil". And the question we have to answer is what do we want our government/economy/internet to turn out to be. It is a complete fantasy to believe that if we just "let things be", they will be the beautiful butterfly that is yearning to be free.

And believing in this fantasy world is simply complete lunacy. Just my opinion.

The default state of human organization is not democracy. People who believe the Libertarian fantasy of zero regulation simply have not noticed that a Liberal Democracy like the US is a singular event. Pretty much every government that came before was brutish, thuggish and despotic. And those were during the good times. The rest of the time - the majority of the time, it seems - humans have been ruled by roving bands of warlords.

And it's only through a lot of hard work by really dedicated, smart people that the US is still in the wonderful state that it is. That we've managed to keep our land as free as it is and as prosperous as it has become is that we've done a really good job of regulating things. Yea, regulating things.

I completely agree that the best regulation is the regulation you don't even notice. I'm not someone who believes we should just pile up money on the most oppressive regulation you can imagine. This is an idiotic, moronic belief.

Let's put it another way. If I start a garden, I weed the heck out of it. I'm out there ever other day pulling those bastard weeds out of my garden. I take care of the things I'm growing and make sure that they have all the nutrients they need. And I make sure they get the right amount. Not too much, not too little. I check on the plants every day to make sure they're doing all right. I worry over them and fuss over them.

In short, I'm regulating the entire environment.

The Associated Press
8/3/03 10:39 AM

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) -- Niger's president demanded the U.N. nuclear agency exonerate it of any claims it had any uranium dealings with Iraq, a widely discounted accusation included in President Bush state of the union address.

Ahead of the U.S.-led of invasion of Iraq, Bush said British intelligence possessed a document showing that Iraq had approached Niger to obtain uranium. The claim was used to suggest Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

U.N. officials have called the document a forgery, and Bush administration officials have since said it should not have been cited in the president's speech.

"This affair represents nothing other than accusations without foundation," Niger President Mamadou Tandja said in a televised address late Saturday in the arid West African nation.

The Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency should "publicly wash Niger of all suspicions before the U.N. Security Council," Tandja declared.

"Without that, our country can only remain harmed and hampered by a situation in which it isn't implicated in any way," Tandja said in the speech, which marked the 43rd anniversary of Niger's independence from France.

…It seems to have happened that the African period during which the hundred flowers bloomed came to an end. The contending voices representing the hundred schools of thought fell silent.

This happened as Africa fell victim to a seemingly interminable succession of military coups d'etat. The promise of a people-driven process of African transformation turned into a nightmare of misrule by a rapacious elite.

These fellow Africans, acting in collusion with others outside our continent, destroyed what small economies we had, and contributed to the further impoverishment of the African masses that were already overburdened with intolerable poverty.

They supervised the destruction of the universities; worked for the regimentation of African thought; imprisoned, killed and drove into exile those among Africa's intellectuals who sought lasting African solutions to Africa's problems; and co-opted many who survived the tyrannical search-and-destroy campaigns of those among us who saw the purpose of the exercise of state power as self-enrichment.

In the end, a deadly silence fell on our continent, only broken by what could not be killed, the unwavering commitment of the peoples of Africa to the total liberation of our continent from colonialism and apartheid. Outside this, the only other voice that could be heard was the voice of orthodoxy.

So dependent did we become on foreign donors that we felt obliged to proclaim as loudly as we could, the messages, the words and phrases the donors needed to hear, so that they could approve official development assistance for the following year. And so we studied the textbooks and the manuals, to understand what the benefactors wanted of us.

Having memorised the words, we sought never to lose any opportunity to deliver our impeccable oratorical presentations of our prescribed texts, hopefully in the presence and languages of the benefactors.

The bright African sun that had caused a hundred flowers to bloom had set. In the night, the contending hundred schools of thought ceased to exist. It seemed that a dream of hope of an entire people had vanished in an African night without a moon and without even a dim light, a diminished sense of hope which the natural seasons of the bright African sun could not restore to life.

But what has happened tells us that the appearance, however long its duration, and dramatic in its essence and presentation, told a story about Africa that was not true. Once more, all around us, the hundred flowers have begun to bloom, again. Once more, the voices have started to contend. Africa is regaining the vigour and dynamism she needs, to address the compelling circumstances that surround her, to use the words of Suzanne Awenti. What happened in Sao Tome and Cape Town tell us that the African sun is shining once more.

We see these processes in our country as well. Gradually, a serious and difficult battle of ideas is being joined. It is serious and difficult because its outcome will determine the future of our country for a long period of time.

Its outcome will provide the answers about whether we will succeed or fail, in the struggle to build a South Africa defined by an entrenched democratic system and genuine popular participation, non-racism, non-sexism, prosperity for all, safety and security, national reconciliation, national unity and solidarity, the flowering of all our cultures and languages, the affirmation of our African identity, and the location of Africa among the rest of the continents as an equal partner with the rest. …

The emergence of Hip Hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons as an establishment-endorsed political leader of the new generation of Blacks gives me pause. Being a member of this new generation, I think this should be put on the table for discussion.

1 August – The United Nations panel monitoring progress on worldwide efforts to prevent racism and racial discrimination is set to open its second substantive session of 2003 next week in Geneva.

The 18-member Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – the first body created by the UN to review actions by States to fulfil obligations under a specific human rights agreement – will meet from 4 to 22 August to review national anti-discrimination efforts and discuss ways to prevent racial discrimination.

The Governments of Albania, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Czech Republic, Finland, Iran, Latvia, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and the United Kingdom, are expected to send representatives to present reports on national efforts to give effect to their treaty obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. These countries are among the 169 States parties to the Convention, which took effect in 1969.

Espousing a twisted kind of Black “solidarity” that mirrors the “patriotism” of the white Right in the U.S., these groups claim that criticism of Mugabe gives aid and comfort to American and British schemes against the national independence of Zimbabwe. Since the Americans and British are always scheming to commit crimes against Africa, the threat to Black American critics of Mugabe and other African Strong Men is meant to be a permanent injunction. Under these terms, the time will never be right for progressives in the Diaspora to make common cause with the African people, if that involves strong critiques of specific African governments.

This crude gag rule was invoked in June against signatories to an Open Letter to President Robert Mugabe – men and women who rightfully claim “strong historical ties to the liberation movements in Zimbabwe, which included material and political support, as well as opposition to U.S. government policies that supported white minority rule.” The ongoing slanders against the signatories are designed to shut down African American discourse on the subject of African development and democracy, itself. This is absolutely unacceptable.

There are stooges of imperialism among the Zimbabwean opposition to Mugabe’s rule, including at the very top of the Movement for Democratic Change. That is to be expected. Mugabe’s war against civil society in Zimbabwe has succeeded in driving broad sections of his nation into a very small social space. Within that confined and crowded space, he brands all opponents as stooges. His supporters in the U.S seek to replicate those tactics in Black America, so that they can appear to be the true defenders of African liberation. Everyone else is warned to remain silent.

When a man says “Shut up,” you defeat him by refusing to do so. The best way to counter this ugly, thuggish and politically vacuous campaign against progressive Black Americans is to speak the Truth about all the parties in Zimbabwe. Our contribution to the debate revolves around five documents, listed and linked below. We invite readers to study the documents in depth.

Strong Man rule creates weak civil societies that are, ultimately, helpless to defend the nation against imperial power. Robert Mugabe has sought to strengthen his regime by weakening Zimbabwean civil society, thus making the nation more vulnerable to American and British subversion.

Black America is not Zimbabwe. This debate will not be throttled.

Historically speaking, Charleston, South Carolina would have been a better locale for the Democratic Leadership Council’s secessionist-minded “National Conversation,” this week. Instead, the party’s corporate extortionists chose Philadelphia to make a stand for the American White Man, whose every idiocy must be accommodated lest the party fall into the hands of…you know who: them!

White men are terrified of them – which explains why the poor fellows get all confused and vote against their own interests every time it is imagined that they – “special interests,” Blacks, unions, and the dangerous people who call for health care, jobs, peace and justice – are about to intrude on the “national conversation.”

…That’s what the “national conversation” in Philadelphia was all about – what the despicable Evan Bayh (whose late Senator father, Birch Bayh, was a leading party liberal) means when he raises the specter of a takeover from the “far left.” The DLC is panicked over the candidacy of former Vermont Senator Howard Dean, now the top fundraiser in the primary race. But the forces they fear in the party are minorities, organized labor, women’s organizations, environmentalists and the peace movement.