Wednesday, March 29, 2006 answer.com
Spotlight: Samuel Moore Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart discount store chain, was born on this date in 1918. When the first Wal-Mart opened in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1962, Sam Walton and his brother, Bud, already owned 16 variety stores in Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri. Now Wal-Mart employs well over 1.5 million people and is the world's largest chain of stores. Walton was listed as the richest man in America by Forbes magazine from 1985-1988. He split up his holdings to include his wife and children and this year five Waltons rank #17-21 on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest people.
Quote: "There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." – Sam Walton
Today's Word: retailing: selling products directly to the end-user; Sam Walton was a master retailer.

Thursday, March 30, 2006
Spotlight: Francisco de Goya, the Spanish painter whose works depicted the political upheaval of the times, was born on this date in 1746. Left deaf after an illness (1792), Goya became somewhat isolated and depended more on his imagination, developing a style that was bold and sometimes close to caricature. His Los Caprichos etchings satirized human weakness. Some of his most famous works – including The Third of May 1808 – portray the violence of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. He also painted portraits and frescoes.
Quote: "United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty." – Francisco de Goya
Today's Word: multifarious: diverse, very varied; Francisco de Goya's multifarious works of art influenced other 19th and 20th century painters.

Crazy Cat Terrorizes Connecticut Town Yahoo! NEWS
Residents of the neighborhood of Sunset Circle say they have been terrorized by a crazy cat named Lewis. Lewis for his part has been uniquely cited, personally issued a restraining order by the town's animal control officer. "He looks like Felix the Cat and has six toes on each foot, each with a long claw," Janet Kettman, a neighbor said Monday. "They are formidable weapons." The neighbors said those weapons, along with catlike stealth, have allowed Lewis to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush the Avon lady as she was getting out of her car. Some of those who were bitten and scratched ended up seeking treatment at area hospitals. Animal Control Officer Rachel Solveira placed a restraining order on him. It was the first time such an action was taken against a cat in Fairfield. In effect, Lewis is under house arrest, forbidden to leave his home. Solveira also arrested the cat's owner, Ruth Cisero, charging her with failing to comply with the restraining order and reckless endangerment.

Laws, Funding Thwart Search for Illegal Workers

WASHINGTON-As Congress debates immigration overhaul, its will to
crack down on employers will be tested. By Nicole Gaouette.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeD0E1

Avian Flu Vaccine Falls Short in Trial

Setting back plans to shield the nation from a potential bird flu
pandemic, the first study of a human vaccine showed that even a
massive dose failed to protect nearly half of those inoculated,
according to a study. By Jia-Rui Chong and Denise Gellene.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeE0E2

Staking Out New Lives

It may sound like a housing development, but Ventura's River Haven
is a tent city run by and for the homeless seeking some stability.
By Fred Alvarez.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeF0E3

Cancer Stalks a 'Toxic Triangle'
Scientists disagree about the risks of TCE. But residents near a former air base are dead certain. Second of a two-part series. By
Ralph Vartabedian.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeG0E4

Reporter Testifies at Trial of Ex-Getty Curator

ROME-The Italian court trying the former curator of Los Angeles'
J. Paul Getty Museum heard testimony from a British investigative
journalist whose reports over the last decade helped launch
Italy's crusade to stop the rampant smuggling of its archeological
treasures. By Livia Borghese.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeI0E6

Jamaica's 'Mama' Has Hands Full

KINGSTON, Jamaica-Portia Simpson-Miller, who today will become
prime minister, faces high expectations amid corruption, poverty,
lawlessness and debt. By Carol J. Williams.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeJ0E7

Bush Arrives in Cancun for Talks

CANCUN, Mexico-With the emotions of the immigration debate roiling
politics to the north, President Bush arrived here for meetings
with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper. By James Gerstenzang and Héctor Tobar.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeK0E8

Abramoff Sentenced in Business Fraud Case

MIAMI-Former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to
five years and 10 months in federal prison for business fraud, but
was allowed to remain free for three months so he could continue
assisting in a wide-ranging probe of corruption and
influence-peddling on Capitol Hill. By John-Thor Dahlburg.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeL0EA

Army's Opposition to Ink Fading

WASHINGTON-Some once-forbidden tattoos are now allowed, a nod to a
changing youth culture - and an all-volunteer military hurting for
recruits. By Mark Mazzetti.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeM0EB

Nation's Mayors Put Spotlight on Poverty

City leaders from across the country are meeting in L.A. this week
to brainstorm about ways to help the poor. By Duke Helfand and
Nancy Cleeland.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeR0EG

Garamendi to Probe Blue Cross' Practices

California regulators said that they would investigate accusations
by 10 patients that Blue Cross has a system to retroactively
cancel health coverage for members after they need expensive
medical care. By Lisa Girion.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeT0EI

For Eisner, TV Is Not Such a Wonderful World

Ex-Disney chief draws 95,000 in gabfest debut. But the select few
are "high-powered," CNBC says. By Scott Collins.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeU0EJ

GM Caught in Delphi Crossfire

The dark hole threatening to engulf General Motors Corp. deepened
as its largest parts supplier inched closer to a debilitating
strike and the automaker's stock and many of its bonds fell. By
John O'Dell.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeV0EK

Protests Reshape Race for Governor

SACRAMENTO-As protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles in
record-setting numbers in recent days, the highest-ranking
immigrant in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was asked
what should be done about the millions of people living in
California illegally. By Robert Salladay.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez7...Io30G2B0HPeP0EE

Will The U.S. Nuke Iran?

Professor of Physics Highlights The Dangers

New US policy to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries has been officially formulated in two US government documents Nuclear Posture Review delivered to Congress in December 2001 and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations dated March 15, 2005.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12569.htm

===
Making the World Safe for Christianity

By Congressman Ron Paul

The Muslim world is not fooled by our talk about spreading democracy and values. The evidence is too overwhelming that we do not hesitate to support dictators and install puppet governments when it serves our interests. When democratic elections result in the elevation of a leader or party not to our liking, we do not hesitate for a minute to undermine that government.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12599.htm

===
Leaked memo details US, UK war talks

Reporter: Stephen McDonell

New evidence has emerged which appears to show that the United States and the British governments were set to invade Iraq, regardless o
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12567.htm

===
Bush, Blair had ‘no evidence’ of Iraq WMDs

It's extremely rare, to get this kind of an insight of an extremely private, we should say secret meeting between two leaders preparing for a coming war. Tell us what you think are the main insights to be gained from the so-called White House memo?
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12566.htm

===
"Democracy" For Sale

Mr Abramoff Goes to Washington

Abramoff's testimony threatens not only the most senior politicians in the country but it is also exposing the corrosive influence of lobbyists' money on American democracy. Video and Transcript
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12560.htm

Repairing Rumsfeld's Damage:

Anyone else might be embarrassed when not one but two detailed studies of the way he's doing business conclude that his plans and assumptions are totally wrong, but not Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,92...html?ESRC=eb.nl

===
Manufacturing consent for war:

UN Security Council calls on Iran to suspend enrichment-related activities:

Expressing serious concern that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is unable to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran, the United Nations Security Council today called upon that country to re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=17991

===
UN demands Iran stop uranium enrichment work:

Iran remained defiant, saying that it was not seeking an atomic bomb and regardless of assurances, the United States and others would find new reasons to fault Tehran.
http://tinyurl.com/h2py7

===
Iran rejects call to halt enrichment:

Iran refused Thursday to comply with a UN Security Council demand to freeze uranium enrichment, defying a call by major world powers to curb its nuclear program or face isolation.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?ed...rticle_id=23405

===
World powers discuss next steps in Iran crisis:

Six world powers were gathering in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the next steps in dealing with Iran's nuclear programme, with Russia and China looking for assurances that there are no plans to use force against Tehran.
http://tinyurl.com/jklae

===
Russian warning over Iran crisis :

Russia has warned it will not support any attempts to use force to resolve the stand-off over Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4855644.stm

Wednesday, March 31, 2006 answer.com
Spotlight: René Descartes was born 410 years ago today, in 1596. Called the father of modern philosophy, the French mathematician/scientist/philosopher was famous for his dictum, "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito ergo sum, in Latin). Also considered the founder of analytic geometry, Descartes originated the Cartesian coordinates and Cartesian curves. Some of his research in optics included the refraction and reflection of light.
Quote: "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." – René Descartes
Today's Word: dualism: an explanation of particular phenomena by two opposing principles; Ren?escartes believed in the dualism of mind and matter.

Calm Is Urged in Iran Debate

BERLIN-United Nations atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged
the international community to steer away from threats of
sanctions against Iran, saying the country's nuclear program was
not "an imminent threat" and that the time had come to "lower the
pitch" of debate. By Jeffrey Fleishman and Alissa J. Rubin.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPp70Ew

'Good Day' in Iraq for Freed U.S. Journalist

BAGHDAD-The quaking woman in the abaya had tears in her eyes and
spoke English - the first sign to a startled receptionist that
this visitor was different from the usual grieving widow or mother
so common in this violent country. When she finally managed to
explain, in broken Arabic, that she was Jill Carroll, it was not
sympathy but a rare outburst of joy she sparked. By Borzou
Daragahi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPp80Ex

Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz

Youths used a popular website to organize their walkouts. And some
did know what a "sit-in" was. By Scott Gold.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqA0E8

Frist's Senate Leadership Faulted as Self-Serving

WASHINGTON-As he prepares to leave the Senate and position himself
for a presidential bid, Bill Frist faces mounting criticism that
he has proved an ineffectual majority leader whose legislative
agenda increasingly is dictated by his White House ambitions. By
Mary Curtius.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqB0EA

Park's Plan to Shoot Deer Has Critics Up In Arms

POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE, Calif.-A National Park Service plan
to use sharpshooters and contraceptive drugs to eradicate the
nonnative deer population at Point Reyes National Seashore has
outraged some residents of Marin County, who have been joined by
Jane Goodall in opposing the effort.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqC0EB By Julie
Cart.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqD0EC

This UCLA Team Is Full of Blue Grit

Coach Ben Howland's defensive work ethic brings the Bruins back to
the Final Four. By David Wharton.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqE0ED

Protests in Turkey Leave 3 Kurds Dead

ANKARA, Turkey-Thousands of police and demonstrators clashed for a
third day in the worst street violence to hit the country's
restive Kurdish region in more than a decade. By Amberin Zaman.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqF0EE

East Africa's Drought Worsening Rivalries Among Nomadic Tribes

OROPOI, Kenya-Violence has increased as clans vie for scarce water
and grazing land. The clashes have caused alarm in a region awash
in grievances and guns. By Edmund Sanders.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqG0EF

U.S.-Indian Nuclear Deal No Shoo-In

WASHINGTON-The Bush administration's proposed nuclear deal with
India is meeting with a chilly reception from lawmakers, who are
predicting that instead of swift approval, the initiative faces
revisions and delays, if not outright rejection. By Paul Richter.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqH0EG

Gang-Rape Allegations Roil Duke, Durham

DURHAM, N.C.-The campus of Duke University has been awash in
protests and soul-searching over allegations from a police
investigation involving the school lacrosse team: that a black
exotic dancer performed at a party attended by members of the
team, most of whom are white; that the party grew rowdy and racial
slurs were uttered; and that she was cornered, choked and
gang-raped. By Richard Fausset.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqI0EH

Massachusetts Curb on Gay Marriage Upheld

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled that city and town clerks
may not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples from out of
state. By Elizabeth Mehren.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqJ0EI

BUSH'S CARD TRICK: FORGET HIS MEANINGLESS STAFF SWITCH. BUSH IS THE MOST BLINKERED AND RIGID PRESIDENT SINCE DEPRESSION-DENYING HERBERT HOOVER - SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL (SALON, MARCH 30): Like Herbert Hoover, who periodically proclaimed prosperity just around the corner, Bush almost daily announces progress in Iraq.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20.../staff_changes/


IRAQ AT THE 11TH HOUR - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 31): Do not believe any of the Bush team's happy talk. It doesn't matter if Iraq is quiet in the south and quiet in the north. If Baghdad, the heart of the country, is being ripped apart, then there is no Iraq -- because there is no center. If a national unity government is not formed soon, any hope for building a decent Iraq will vanish.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/opinion/31friedman.html

DON'T BLAME ME - DAN FROOMKIN WASHINGTONPOST.COM, MARCH 30): With his vision of Iraq belied not only by an insurgency that he didn't anticipate, but also by sectarian rivalries that he disregarded before the invasion, President Bush has come up with a new rhetorical line of attack: It's not my fault, it's Saddam's.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6033000886.html

A WAR IN SEARCH OF A JUSTIFICATION WAR SUPPORTERS STILL LOOKING FOR A SMOKING GUN - JOSHUA FRANK (ANTIWAR.COM, MARCH 29): Searching out justifications for the Iraq invasion are all the war's backers seem to have left.
http://www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8776

WAR FOES WARMED BY FUKUYAMA'S CHANGE OF HEART - JEFFERSON MORLEY (WORLD OPINION ROUNDUP, WASHINGTONPOST.COM MARCH 29): Francis Fukuyama, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, has another success, albeit with a well-timed repudiation of the neoconservative foreign policy he once championed. The publication of his book (titled "After the Neocons" in its British edition) coincides with a trend in world opinion that few anticipated even two years ago: The war in Iraq is almost as unpopular in the United States as it is in the rest of the world.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinio...ukuyamas_c.html (SCROLL DOWN LINK FOR ITEM)

COMPETENCE WON'T GET US OUT OF IRAQ - ARI BERMAN (NATION, MARCH 30/COMMON DREAMS): If before pro-war Democrats used the incompetence argument to dodge how and why we entered Iraq, today they're using the same language to circumvent any real discussion of how we get out.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0330-29.htm

BUSH WANTED WAR - RICHARD COHEN (WASHINGTON POST, MARCH 30): Whatever Bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted war. He just didn't want the war he got.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2902057_pf.html

ARAB LEAGUE FUTILITY - EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, MARCH 30): The most dramatic -- and pathetic -- failing of the Arab League summit was its effort to address the twin specters of sectarian warfare and Iranian influence in Iraq.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...eague_futility/

COULD SANCTIONS STOP IRAN? RECENT HISTORY SUGGESTS THAT THE PROSPECTS AREN'T GOOD - CARNE ROSS (WASHINGTON POST, MARCH 30)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6032902003.html

'DEMOCRATIZING' IRAN: A CASE OF DÉJÀ VU; THE GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ ARE AT IT AGAIN - LEON HADAR (ANTIWAR.COM, MARCH 30)
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hadar.php?articleid=8780

A DISORIENTED U.S. CAN'T LEAD ON IRAN ? OPINION (BALTIMORE SUN): Washington's Iran policy looks to be almost entirely ad hoc at a crucial time during which any strategy of diplomacy -- let alone a move toward confrontation -- would depend on a strong consensus built around a strong case.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...-oped-headlines

THE ULTIMATE MARTYR - PEPE ESCOBAR (ASIA TIMES, MARCH 31): The last thing Iran's clerical-political establishment need at this delicate moment is for the ultimate "martyr president" to martyr the nation into the status of ultimate global outcast.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC31Ak03.html

Morning Alert -- E-Brief
The Right News, Right Now
Friday, March 31, 2006


NAACP Challenging IRS Probe Into Tax-Exempt Status
(CNSNews.com) - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is basically telling the IRS to put up or shut up. On Thursday, the NAACP said it will challenge the IRS in federal court -- if the IRS does not refund the seventeen-dollar estimated tax the NAACP paid on a controversial speech delivered by NAACP Chairman Julian Bond in July 2004…

Dems to Hurricane Evacuees: ‘You Haven’t Lost the Right to Vote’
(CNSNews.com) – The Democratic National Committee says it will start running ads next week in states surrounding Louisiana to encourage voting in the upcoming New Orleans election: “You may have lost your home. You may have even lost a loved one. But you have not lost your right to vote,” the ad says...

NYC Mayor’s Criticism of Gun Legislation Challenged
(CNSNews.com) – New York City’s mayor is blasting a congressional proposal that would make several temporary gun regulations permanent law. Michael Bloomberg claimed the legislation interfere with efforts to fight illegal gun trafficking...

Gun Campaign Launched on Anniversary of Reagan Shooting
(CNSNews.com) - A gun control group marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on Thursday by announcing a new campaign to clamp down on illegal gun trafficking.~ A Second Amendment group dismissed the effort as another crusade "to trample the Second Amendment into dust.”

Iraq War Frustration Is Key to Dem Victories, Says Rangel
(CNSNews.com) - Democrats are headed for “a very successful political year” in 2006, one of the party's top House Democrats said on Thursday, because Americans no longer believe in the credibility of President Bush; no longer understand the mission in Iraq; and no longer understand why the troops are not going to be coming home...

Crisis Pregnancy Centers Targeted in ‘Crackdown on Deceit’
(CNSNews.com) - Women seeking information on family planning and abortion would be protected from “being lured into anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers” if a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday becomes law...

Taiwan Watches, Waits As Vatican Reaches Out to China
(CNSNews.com) – As Catholics prepare to mark the anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death, the Vatican is signaling moves that could lead to a first-ever papal visit to China. But such moves also could have significant, negative implications for Taiwan and its 300,000 Roman Catholics...

Blair Seeks to Improve Understanding Between West, Islam
(CNSNews.com) – As Britain becomes the latest Western country to reach out to Indonesia, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Indonesian counterpart agreed to set up a joint “forum” intended to reduce misunderstandings between Islam and the West...

Hamas Justifies First Suicide Bombing Since Taking Power
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) – A suicide bombing and an earlier Katyusha rocket attack on southern Israel this week should prompt the Israeli government to take more aggressive action against terrorism, an Israeli intelligence expert said on Friday...

Migrant Issue Divides GOP

WASHINGTON - As massive pro-immigrant rallies have grabbed center
stage in Southern California, the state's congressional delegation
remains sharply divided over what to do about illegal immigration,
with many Republicans - including those from districts with
substantial Latino populations - holding firm in support of a
get-tough approach. By Richard Simon.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4H0EF

News Analysis: Immigrant Bill's Benefits May Be Elusive
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4I0EG

Half the Conversation Conveys Horror of 9/11

NEW YORK - It was 9:50 a.m., and the caller simply refused to hang
up. He was trapped on the 105th floor of one of the World Trade
Center towers, and the 911 dispatcher was trying to get him off
the phone. By Ellen Barry.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4L0EJ

Neighborhood Militias Add Another Armed Layer

BAGHDAD - Amid attacks by Shiites, the minority group is stocking
weapons to protect its mosques. Some fear an increase in sectarian
violence. By Megan K. Stack.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4M0EK

Summit Fails to Resolve Key Issues

MEXICO - Bush and the leaders of Canada and Mexico agree to boost
economic ties but remain divided on immigration and other border
matters. By James Gerstenzang.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4N0EL

Chirac Says He Will Sign Labor Law but Vows to Seek Changes

PARIS - Seeking compromise after weeks of protests against labor
reform legislation, President Jacques Chirac announced that he
would sign the law but quickly seek modifications to meet the
concerns of angry students and labor unions. By Sebastian Rotella.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4O0EM

Jill Carroll - What an Inspiration Is

BOSTON - The former Iraq captive's friends and colleagues rejoice
after 82 days of unease. By Elizabeth Mehren.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4P0EN

Seats Notably Empty at Censure Hearing

WASHINGTON - The Senate heard the first detailed arguments on the
merits of formally censuring President Bush during a frequently
testy committee hearing that highlighted Republican opposition and
Democratic ambivalence toward the idea. By Ronald Brownstein.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4Q0EO

Former DeLay Aide Pleads Guilty in Influence-Peddling Case

WASHINGTON - Tony Rudy admits to accepting gifts and favors while
working in Congress and as a lobbying associate of Jack
Abramoff's. By Richard B. Schmitt.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4R0EP

Editorial: Intel Inside Where?

Ho Chi Minh City, whose very name is meant to evoke the defeat of
American imperialism, is about to get Intel inside. The Silicon
Valley microchip maker - and icon of triumphant American
capitalism - is building a $300-million factory in the city once
called Saigon, a place most Americans associate with images of
terrified people hanging on to evacuating U.S. choppers.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4f0Ej

Civil Rights? How About Lawlessness?

The protesters seem intent on ending border restraints, not
improving immigrants' lives. By Joe R. Hicks.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP4g0Ek

Shiites Call On Premier to Quit

BAGHDAD - Ibrahim Jafari loses key supporters over his inability
to form a new Iraqi government. The U.S. blames inaction for the
growing violence. By Solomon Moore.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5B0EE

Bringing Back the Wounded With Heart, Soul and Surgery

Injured troops are swept up in a lifesaving process unmatched in
past wars - reaching hospitals in minutes and the U.S. in days.
But their agony doesn't end on the battlefield. By David Zucchino.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5C0EF

Immigrant Issues Are Personal for Bush

MIDLAND, Texas - Associates say he has long had a comfort level
with Mexicans and their culture. In a 2004 campaign video, he
waved a Mexican flag. By Peter Wallsten.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5D0EG

Fissures Erupt Over S.F. Earthquake Observances

SAN FRANCISCO - The city struggles to mark one of its defining
stories, which saw both heroism and cruelty. By Lee Romney and
John M. Glionna.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5E0EH

Buick Sales Epitomize GM's Woes

The company ignored warnings 20 years ago that changes were
needed. Is it too late? By John O'Dell.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5F0EI

UCLA Never Looks Back on Its Way to Title Game

INDIANAPOLIS - UCLA, behind its tenacious defense, precision
offense and the confidence from a winning streak that has now
reached 12 games, defeated Louisiana State, 59-45, to reach the
championship game of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. By
Steve Springer.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5G0EJ

Ex-Hostage Is Free to Speak Her Mind Now

WASHINGTON - Journalist Jill Carroll, safe in U.S. jurisdiction,
says she was forced by her captors in Iraq to make anti-American
statements in a video. By Jonathan Peterson.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5J0EM

Getting Out the Displaced Vote

HOUSTON - Volunteers work to provide New Orleans election
information to Katrina evacuees now living far from their home
polling places.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5K0EN
ory By Lianne Hart.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5L0EO

Web of Scandal Ensnares Florida Prison System

MIAMI - Florida's Department of Corrections, the nation's
third-largest with 128 prisons and other facilities housing more
than 85,000 inmates, is in the throes of a multifaceted scandal
that shows no sign of stopping. By John-Thor Dahlburg.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP5M0EP

Iran Test-Fires High-Speed Underwater Missile
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_Test_...er_Missile.html

Tehran (AFP) Apr 03, 2006 - Iran successfully test-fired on Sunday a new high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines, a top military commander announced.

Border Accord Faces 'Chasm'

WASHINGTON - The Senate may vote this week on a bill creating a
residency path for illegal immigrants. The House has taken a
harder line, and the GOP is split. By Jonathan Peterson.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6A0E8

The Journey Through Trauma

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - U.S. troops who survive the critical
"golden hour" after being seriously wounded in Iraq owe their
lives to a fast-acting team of battlefield medics, pilots, nurses
and surgeons. By David Zucchino.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6B0EA

A Diva Defends the Law

SAN SALVADOR - The ombudswoman for human rights has a flashy look
but is plain about her mission to clean up El Salvador's judicial
institutions. By Héctor Tobar.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6C0EB

The Private Side of His Governance

SACRAMENTO - Away from the public, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is
more freewheeling and hard to predict, aides say. By Peter
Nicholas.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6D0EC

In Court, Two 20th Hijackers Stand Up

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Zacarias Moussaoui is on trial for his role in
9/11, but officials now agree it's likely another detainee was to
play a part in the attacks. By Richard A. Serrano.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6E0ED

Bonds' Bid for Baseball Glory Not Exactly a Solid Hit

The tainted slugger's pursuit of home run record is being met by
ambivalence. "It will be an awkward moment," Dodger broadcaster
Vin Scully says. By Bill Shaikin and Steve Henson.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6F0EE

In Baghdad, Rice Questions Leadership of Iraqi Premier

BAGHDAD - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on an
unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital amid a months-long
political crisis, publicly questioned the leadership of interim
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, the strongest indication yet that
the United States wants him out of contention as head of Iraq's
permanent government. By John Johnson Jr.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6G0EF

Thailand Vote Not Likely to Resolve Impasse

BANGKOK - Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's party appeared to
win an easy reelection victory, but the one-sided vote resulting
from a boycott by opposition parties did little to end Thailand's
2-month-old political crisis. By Richard C. Paddock.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1D...Io30G2B0HP6H0EG

DeLay Quits His Drive for Reelection

WASHINGTON - Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, once one of
the most influential Republicans in Congress, told colleagues that
he was dropping plans to seek reelection - a surprise move that
will end his tumultuous congressional career. By Richard Simon,
Janet Hook and Mary Curtius.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQKz0E4

Terrorist a Step Closer to Death

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A federal jury concluded that terrorist Zacarias
Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, sending his trial
into a final stage that will decide whether he deserves to forfeit
his life for the deaths of Sept. 11, 2001, or is too unstable
mentally to warrant execution. By Richard A. Serrano.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK10Eq

New Battle on the Home Front

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - When wounded U.S. troops return from Iraq,
nearly everything has changed. Except, for many, the drive to keep
on fighting. By David Zucchino.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK20Er

Pellicano Inquiry Expands to Snare Director of 'Predator'

Director John McTiernan was charged with lying to the FBI,
becoming the first entertainment industry figure accused in the
unfolding federal investigation of wiretapping and other alleged
wrongdoing by Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano. By Greg
Krikorian and Kim Christensen.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK30Es

Lab-Grown Bladders Successful in Humans

In a major advance toward the development of artificial organs,
bladders grown from patients' own cells in the laboratory have
been successfully implanted in seven children with spina bifida
and shown to function for five years or longer, researchers
reported today. By Thomas H. Maugh II.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK40Et

Bruins Swamped

INDIANAPOLIS - Florida won its first national title in basketball
at the RCA Dome, 73-57, in a game UCLA never got to sink its
titles into. By Chris Dufresne.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK50Eu

Bill Plaschke: Losing to This Team Not Exactly a Crying Shame
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK60Ev

Suicide Bomber Hits Baghdad Mosque

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber rammed a pickup truck filled with
explosives into a Shiite mosque here, killing at least 10 Iraqis,
while the U.S. military reported the deaths of nine Americans on
Sunday in this country's volatile Al Anbar province. By Borzou
Daragahi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK70Ew

U.S., Britain Try to Ease Shiites' Worries

BAGHDAD - As pressure mounts on interim Prime Minister Ibrahim
Jafari to step down, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells
Iraq's majority group that it still has the power to pick his
replacement. By Borzou Daragahi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQK80Ex

London Mayor Badgers U.S. Envoy Over Fee

LONDON - He defends his demand that commuters to the embassy pay
city traffic charges. The Americans say they won't stoop to his
level by responding. By Vanora McWalters.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLA0E8

High Court Declines to Take Up 'Dirty Bomber' Case

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court decided against hearing the
celebrated case of Jose Padilla, the supposed "dirty bomber," but
only because the Bush administration had freed him from military
custody. By David G. Savage.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLB0EA

Transcripts Give a View of Those at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON - In tribunal testimony, detainees offer varied
accounts of how they have come to be in U.S. custody and what
their treatment has been like. By Peter Spiegel, Greg Miller and
Josh Meyer.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLC0EB

GOP Senators Trying to Shape a Compromise on Immigration

WASHINGTON - Facing a self-imposed Friday deadline for reaching
agreement on the thorny issue of immigration, GOP senators worked
toward a possible compromise that would permit some illegal
immigrants to remain in the country and apply for citizenship but
would deny that opportunity to others. By Maura Reynolds and
Nicole Gaouette.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLD0EC

GM Agrees to Sell 51% of Finance Unit

General Motors Corp. agreed Monday to sell a majority share of its
credit arm for $14 billion, a defensive move that analysts said
would fund employee buyouts and help the beleaguered automaker's
balance sheet. By David Streitfeld.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLG0EF

Wal-Mart Sells 'Brokeback' Amid Conservative Protest

Christian group accuses the retailer of "pushing an agenda" by
featuring the gay-themed film. By Claire Hoffman.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1H...Io30G2B0HQLI0EH

Papers: Cheney Aide Says Bush OK'd Leak Yahoo! NEWS
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney authorized Cheney's top aide to launch a counterattack of leaks against administration critics on Iraq by feeding intelligence information to reporters, according to court papers citing the aide's testimony in the CIA leak case. In a court filing, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stopped short of accusing Cheney of authorizing his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the CIA identity of Valerie Plame. But the prosecutor, detailing the evidence he has gathered, raised the possibility that the vice president was trying to use Plame's CIA employment to discredit her husband, administration critic Joseph Wilson. Cheney, according to an indictment against Libby, knew that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as early as June 12, 2003, more than a month before that fact turned up in a column by Robert Novak. Fitzgerald quoted Libby as saying he was authorized to tell New York Times reporter Judith Miller that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium. Fitzgerald said Libby told him it "was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the president's authorization that it be disclosed." The process was so secretive that other Cabinet-level officials did not know about it, according to the court papers, which point to Bush and Cheney as setting in motion a leak campaign to the press that ended in Plame's blown cover. In 2003, when the public furor erupted over the disclosure of a CIA operative's status, Bush said he wanted to get to the bottom of the affair. "I want to know the truth," he said at the time. Libby's testimony puts the president and the vice president in the awkward position of authorizing leaks. Both men have long said they abhor such practices, so much so that the administration has put in motion criminal investigations at their behest to hunt down leakers. The most recent instance is the administration's probe into who disclosed to the Times the existence of the warrantless domestic surveillance program. On Thursday, Democrats criticized the roles of Bush and Cheney. Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House would have no comment on the investigation. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the president has the "inherent authority to decide who should have classified information." Libby faces trial next January on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about how he learned of the CIA identity of Wilson's wife and what he told reporters about it. The indictment says Cheney told Libby in June 2003 that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. The authorization by Bush and Cheney in July 2003 for disclosing sensitive prewar intelligence assessments came amid a growing public realization that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The failure to find such weapons undermined the primary rationale Bush and Cheney had used for taking the country to war. According to Fitzgerald's court filing, Cheney, in a conversation with Libby, expressed concerns on whether a CIA-sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger by Wilson "was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." After Wilson's 2002 trip, the former ambassador said he had concluded that Iraq did not have an agreement to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. The subsequent embrace of information that Iraq and Niger did have a deal for uranium was evidence that the administration had twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat, Wilson said. Wilson's public criticism on July 6, 2003, "was viewed in the office of vice president as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president, and the president, on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," Fitzgerald stated. In the court filing, drawn in part from Libby's own grand jury testimony before his indictment, Fitzgerald indicated that:

• A July 8, 2003, Libby conversation with the Times' Miller occurred "only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information" from a then-classified intelligence estimate on Iraq. Libby is alleged to have mentioned the CIA status of Wilson's wife in the conversation.
• Cheney's chief of staff at first told the vice president that he could not have the July 8, 2003, conversation with Miller because of the classified nature of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
• Libby "testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions" of the NIE.
• The White House aide testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then counsel to the vice president, "whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."
• Cheney's then-chief of staff "understood that the vice president specifically selected him to talk to the press about the NIE and Mr. Wilson on July 12, 2003." In conversations that day with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and again with Miller, Libby referred to the CIA status of Wilson's wife.

Fitzgerald's court papers are an effort to limit Libby's demand that he be given voluminous amounts of classified information to defend himself in his criminal case.
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

The Secret Art of Power - Part V Global Politician
Dear Roberto,
Allow me to deviate from my usual behaviour by extensively quoting an article published in "The Economist" dated October 30th, 1999. The article is titled "Politics and Silicone Valley - Liberty.com":Test
"The rise of Americas high-tech industry is not just a windfall for presidential hopefuls. It could also be a godsend for the liberal political tradition.
...
After years when it looked as if computers favoured big organisations over small ones, and companies such as IBM appeared to be breeding grounds for conformism, the high-tech industry is arguably putting technology back on the side of individual liberty.
...
The average computer geek is convinced that the rise of clever machines and interlinked networks is inexorably shifting power from organisations to individuals, decentralising authority and accelerating innovation. Not only big companies and big unions, but also big government, seem to be on the point of disappearing. The sort of world the geeks are now conjuring up is a throwback to that of the Founding Fathers, so admired by Republican revolutionaries of the Gingrich mould, where (morally upright) yeomen farmers pursued happiness quite undisturbed by government.
...
Yet ... there is a growing feeling in some quarters that - as in the case against Microsoft - government is not always a force for evil. Indeed, the public sector may hold the key to solving the social problems that now plague the high-tech industry: the shortage of educated labour, the over-strained transport system and the rapidly growing gap between rich and poor.
...
Some computer bosses are already appealing to politicians to get their act together. Andy Grove, the head of Intel, has told congressmen that the Internet is about to wipe out entire sections of the economy - and has warned them that, unless politicians start moving at 'Internet rather than Washington speed', America may see a repeat of the social disaster that followed the mechanisation of agriculture. The high-tech industry is beginning to realise that it is doing nothing less than 'defining the economic structure of the world', says Eric Schmidt, the boss of Novell. And with that realisation comes, for some at least, a heavy sense of responsibility.
...
Libertarians are represented by men like T.J. Rodgers, the boss of Cypress Semiconductor, and Scott McNealy, the head of Sun Microsystems, who argue that government is being rendered largely irrelevant by the power and speed of computers, and that the best way to deal with problems such as the 'digital divide' may well be to extend the market, not invent new government programmes. This is 'compassionate conservatism' - perhaps operating even through beneficent computer companies themselves, offering training and education
...
The progressives, who originally appeared under Bill Packard at Hewlett-Packard in the 1990s, have now fanned out to a growing number of institutions, from Joint Venture-Silicon Valley, a think-tank dedicated to tackling local problems, to TechNet, which now consists of no fewer than 140 high-tech bosses. They argue that there is still an important place for the government in a computer-driven economy - albeit a much smaller and more intelligent government than the one that currently resides in Washington. They love to point out that government funded the research that gave birth to the Internet, and one of their key complaints is that the federal government's R&D spending over the past 30 years has declined dramatically.
...
It is tempting to conclude that the high-tech industry, flush with its new success, is claiming an impact on politics that goes far beyond the facts. Yet politics is a theoretical discipline, as well as a practical one; and here the collusion with high-tech is leading in fascinating directions. Computer-folk are beginning to look outside cyber-land for the answers to their questions about the future of society and government. At the same time, the intellectual and policy establishments are increasingly looking to the Valley, and other high-tech corners, for clues as to the shape of things to come.
...
The latest think-tank in Washington, DC , the New America Foundation, is largely funded by Silicon Valley money and is devoted to exploring the sort of political topics that will be at the heart of the digital age: digital democracy, the future of privacy and the digital divide. New America is in one of the few funky bits of Washington, Dupont Circle. It has scooped up a good proportion of the brightest American thinkers under 40 in its fellowship programme, including Michael Lind, Jonathan Chait and Gregory Rodriguez, and it is making sure that these bright young things interact with the cyber-elite at regular retreats and discussions.
...
So far, the person who has straddled the worlds of social theory and Silicon Valley most successfully is Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the University of California. Mr Castells enjoys a growing reputation as the first significant philosopher of cyberspace—a big thinker in the European tradition who nevertheless knows the difference between a gigabit and a gigabyte. His immense three-volume study, 'The Information Age' (Blackwell), echoes Max Weber in its ambition and less happily in its style (the 'spirit of informationalism', for example). He writes about the way in which global networks of computers and people are reducing the power of nation states, destabilising elites, transforming work and leisure and changing how people identify themselves.
...
Mr. Castells ruminates obscurely about 'the culture of real virtuality', 'the space of flows' and 'timeless time'. He also castigates the cyber-elite for sealing themselves off in information cocoons and leaving the poor behind. But this former Marxist and student activist cannot restrain his enthusiasm for the way that IT is diffusing 1960s libertarianism 'through the material culture of our societies'. The result is that his sprawling book is now an important fashion accessory in Palo Alto cafes.
...
Will the views it enshrines be more than a passing trend? Very probably. The last time America underwent a fundamental economic change, a fundamental political realignment rapidly followed: the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society in the mid-19th century soon gave rise to mass political parties with their city bosses and umbilical ties to labour and capital. The cyber-elite not only suspects that changes of a similar magnitude are inevitable. It hopes to be able to help shape the new politics.
...
Today's sharpest intellectuals are fascinated by Silicon Valley for the same reason that thinkers early in this century were intrigued by Henry Ford: the smell of huge amounts of money made in new ways. But the Valley has more interest for them than Motown ever had, because it deals in the very stuff of intellectual life, information: and because this, more than any other place, is a laboratory of the future.
...
Individualism has been losing out as a practical doctrine for the past century because the invention of mass production encouraged the creation of big business, big labour and, triangulated between the two, big government. This has been the age not of Jefferson's yeoman farmer, but of William Whyte's Organisation Man. Now, however, computers are shifting the balance of power from collective entities such as 'society' or 'the general good' and handing it back to those whom governments once condescendingly referred to as their 'subjects'.
...
This cult of individual effort, completely detached from the old hierarchical or social structures, can be found everywhere in Silicon Valley. The place is full of bright immigrants willing to sacrifice their ancestral ties for a seat at the table; almost 30% of the 4,000 companies started between 1900-96, for example, were founded by Chinese or Indians. The Valley takes the idea of individual merit extremely seriously. People are judged on their brainpower, rather than their sex or seniority; many of the new Internet firms are headed by people in their mid-20s.
...
The Valley's 6,000 firms exist in a ruthlessly entrepreneurial environment. It is the world's best example of what Joseph Schumpeter called 'creative destruction': old companies die and new ones emerge, allowing capital, ideas and people to be reallocated. The companies are mostly small and nimble, and the workers are as different as you can get from old-fashioned company men. As the saying goes in the Valley, when you want to change your job, you simply point your car into a different driveway.
...
This twofold Siliconisation - the spread of both the Valley's products and its way of doing business - is beginning to challenge the rules of political life in several fundamental ways. And it is doing so, of course, not merely in America but the world over - though America is both farther ahead, and represents more fertile ground.
...
First, the cyber-revolution is challenging the expansionary tendencies of the state. Over the past century the state has grown relentlessly, often with the enthusiastic support of big business. But corporatism has no future in the new world of creative destruction. (It is a safe bet that imitation Silicon Valleys that have been planned by politicians are going to hit the buffers.)
...
The spread of computer networks is also moving commerce from the physical world to an ethereal plane that is hard for the state to tax and regulate. The United States Treasury, for example, is currently agonising over the fact that e-commerce doesn't seem to occur in any physical location, but instead takes place in the nebulous world of 'cyberspace'. The Internet also makes it easier to move businesses out of high-taxation zones and into low ones.
...
One of the state's main claims to power is that it 'knows better what is good for people than the people know themselves'. But the Siliconisation of the world has up-ended this, putting both information and power into the hands of individuals. Innovation is now so fast and furious that big organisations increasingly look like dinosaurs, while wired individuals race past them. And decision-making is dispersed around global networks that fall beyond the control of particular national governments.
...
The web is also challenging traditional ideas about communities. Americans are accustomed to thinking that there is an uncomfortable trade-off between individual freedom and community ties: in the same breath that he praises America's faith in individualism, Tocqueville warns that there is a danger each man may be 'shut up in the solitude of his own heart'. Yet the Internet is arguably helping millions of spontaneous communities to bloom: communities defined by common interests rather than the accident of physical proximity.
...
Information technology may be giving birth, too, to an economy that is close to the theoretical models of capitalism imagined by Adam Smith and his admirers. Those models assumed that the world was made up of rational individuals who were able to pursue their economic interests in the light of perfect information and relatively free from government and geographical obstacles. Geography is becoming less of a constraint; governments are becoming less interventionist; and information is more easily and rapidly available.
...
So far - Mr Castells apart - Silicon Valley has not produced a social thinker of any real stature. Technologists tend not to be philosophers. But at the very least, computerisation is helping to push political debate in the right direction: linking market freedoms with wider personal freedoms and suggesting that the only way that government can continue to be useful is by radically streamlining itself for a more decentralised age.
...
It is a little early to expect that this sort of thinking will colour next year's campaigns; the new alliances between politicians and the cyber-elite have mostly sprung up for the most ancient and pragmatic of reasons. But it may only be a matter of time before America sees, on the back of the computer age, a great new flowering of liberal politics."
To this I wish to add the following facts:
Electronic trading networks allow trading in shares, commodities and goods which is distributed in both time and space. It challenges the old, centralized, models of distribution. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are examples of the New Business model: their inventories are "warehoused" virtually by thousands of small publishers all over the world. E-Trade is an example of the New Stockbroker - no central location, just connections and interactions. The traditional stock exchanges and financial houses - highly centralized affairs - are going through a massive process of de-centralization to cope with these newly emergent threats. An excellent example of the challenge this poses to central government posed by the distributive model is the virtual supercomputer: thousands of PCs all over the world, linked together by the internet and tackling computational problems on a scale hitherto limited to the likes of the National Security Agency (NSA). The SETI project is one such case.
In the near past, to publish a book, or a magazine, or a newsletter - was a major undertaking. Today, tens of millions of people make their work available to tens of millions of people around the world through the web. And there is almost no censorship (except the self censorship - rarely enforced - known as "netiquette").
And the entry barriers have been almost eliminated. Very little time, labour, investment and knowledge are needed today to completely and faithfully replicate businesses that in the past required a lot of resources. So, anyone can "enter". There are no "barriers". You can publish a complete book today and have 300 new readers DAILY - I have done it with my "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited". It takes a few hours and about 300 US dollars in communications charges. That's all. More than 30,000 people have read my book hitherto. This far exceeds anything I could have achieved with a print edition.
And this is also the big difference between the printing press and the internet: the barriers to entry were much much higher in the former. For a long time the technology (printing presses) was nationalized and heavily censored. It can happen with any technology (the Chinese do this to their internet) - but with the web it is so very difficult that it verges on the impossible. Witness the failed American attempts to control their encryption technology by banning the export of encryption software.
Zapatistas, Neo-Nazis, rabbis, Muslim terrorists, psychiatrists, physicists, government agencies - all share the same space on totally equal footing. I repeat: totally equal footing. This is what I call decentralization and it is bound to spill over into the real world.
I will write more about codes in my next letter.
Revolutionary Sam
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/11/2006
(continued)
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. Sam Vaknin's Web site is at http://samvak.tripod.com
You can download 22 of his free ebooks in our bookstore

Power Failure ARTVOICE
In the introduction to her book Power Failure: Politics, Patronage and the Economic Future of Buffalo, New York, released this week by Amherst-based Prometheus Books, author Diana Dillaway notes that those who hold political and economic power—and who are in a position to lead by virtue of that power—are not always willing or able to provide leadership. “In fact,” she writes, “Buffalo’s business, political and community leaders—with some rare but interesting exceptions­—were zealous in their defense of the status quo in the face of an economic slowdown, and, later, spiraling decline.” Power Failure offers a series of case studies in Buffalo’s failures of leadership and missed opportunities over the past half century. The decisions that Dillaway chooses to profile represent a Wailing Wall of Buffalo’s past miscues: locating UB’s new campus in Amherst instead of downtown; hemming and hawing on the rapid transit system; turning away the possibility of a downtown football stadium; thumb-twiddling on waterfront development; failing to engage the city’s African-American community in decision-making processes, such as they were; refusing to face the decline in the city’s heavy industrial base, and the consequences of that decline, until it was far too late. The power failures that Dillaway’s book describes are failures of initiative and vision which she attributes to fear of change in the city’s power structures. But change, she notes, was inevitable: “Both the economic decline in the 1960s and the loss of the steel industry through the 1970s represent a crisis that brought unimaginable change to Buffalo,” Dillaway writes. “The irony here is readily apparent. Major change—the very thing Buffalo’s leadership hoped to avoid—came, in part, as a result of the leadership’s unwillingness to risk change.” Although politicians make easy marks, Dillaway’s studies place the lion’s share of the blame for these failures with the power elite—the city’s oldest and wealthiest families, the heads of banks and influential law firms and insurance companies, those who sit on boards of directors for various companies—whose money and control of the city’s institutions have always lent their decisions (or lack of decisions) special weight.

About the author
In this, Dillaway is indicting her own class. Though she has resided in California for the past 30 years, she is a member of Buffalo’s Wendt family. Born here in 1941, Dillaway spent her first five years in Derby, until her family moved into the city, living first on West Ferry and then on Argyle Park. Like many children in her family’s social circle, she attended the Elmwood-Franklin School until eighth grade. Then, rather than follow the typical path—the Buffalo Seminary for girls, the Nichols School for boys—she went away to Miss Hall’s School for girls in Pittsfield, Massachussetts. After a year of finishing school, she returned to Buffalo, married and had two sons. She lived in Buffalo for the next 15 years, a firsthand witness to the decline which she chronicles in Power Failure. “All those years it was clear that so many businesses were leaving town, and it just amazed me that all the powers that were couldn’t come together on a vision or plan,” Dillaway said in a recent interview with Artvoice. “I don’t think I was in any position to figure out how or why they could do it. But the lack of a vision or a plan among the business and political leadership was evident to me then.” In 1974 she drove cross-country with her two sons and her second husband to California, where she worked for the San Francisco Symphony and later for Mother Jones magazine. Eventually she became involved with nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area that had regional concerns. As a result, she was invited to speak at a roundtable on regional planning at UCLA, a sort of accidental expert. “I really didn’t know what I was talking about,” she admits. “I mean, I had written a great proposal. But that’s all.” So, in her mid-40s, Dillaway applied and was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley to study urban planning. There she studied with sociologist and urban planner Manuel Castells, whose work would inspire the research methodology for Power Failure. She laid the groundwork for the book while at Berkeley, too, in a statistical comparative study of Buffalo and Pittsburgh and their industrial declines. In fact, at one point Power Failure was to have been a comparative history of the two cities; in the end, however, Dillaway chose to focus on Buffalo alone. She did her first round of interviews with 35 business and political leaders in 1987. She picked up her research again nearly 10 years later, in 1996, adding another 35 interviews. She promised anonymity to everyone she spoke with—an interesting consideration, given that so many of the decisions she talks about are done deals, and the people who remember how and why they were made are somewhat removed from their former positions of influence. Asked why she made that promise, she laughed: “Do you think I would have gotten that story if I’d said I was going to use names?” In fact, she said, her interviewees still feel that they have much at stake—and that is illustrative of the problem she chronicles in the book. “You know, the social community—and it doesn’t matter if it’s the political community or the establishment—they protect their own,” she said. “One can argue, as I do in the book, that this leads to protection of the status quo, because no one is going to call someone on something. They are going to see each other at the social club tomorrow, or they’re going to see each other at the next Democratic Party gathering, or whatever, and they’re not going to call each other to task. “I think what people are always afraid of is that it’s going to be a muckraking piece. And this for me is a very serious attempt to get the story and to tell it. Not to make it sensational. And you know, of the 70 people, there were only three who wouldn’t be interviewed. But the reason they didn’t want to be is, they said, ‘Look we don’t want our dirty linen out there.’ Of course, I feel that’s been part of the problem—an unwillingness to look deeply at what’s been going on, and to name it.” Which, of course, is precisely what Dillaway has set out to do. Reading Power Failure is a head-shaking experience—a painful reminder for the civic-minded of what might have been.

How UB ended up in Amherst
“The biggest [missed opportunity] would be the university,” Dillaway said, of the debate over whether to build a new campus for SUNY at Buffalo on the waterfront downtown or on a suburban site. In 1962 Governor Nelson D. Rockefeller had announced that SUNY would build a second, larger campus for UB. Though he never committed fully to any one location, Rockefeller seemed to suggest that he favored a downtown campus. “This was the greatest opportunity handed to [the city’s business and political leaders],” Dillaway said. “Not only did the governor propose that this could be a possibility, but you had all the available urban renewal funds that could have helped with the development downtown around the new campus.” The city’s small business owners backed a downtown campus, as did the city’s African-American community, whose leadership recognized that the proximity of a waterfront campus to the city’s East Side would mean job opportunities for blacks and much-needed investment in the surrounding neighborhoods, which were already feeling the consequences of the shrinking industrial base and the loss of high-paying jobs. But, according to one of her anonymous interviewees, downtown interests “turned their back on the university…they fought Rockefeller. And partly they resisted because they saw it as a threat. If there’s two or three billion dollars of stuff going on [either downtown or out there]…it was going to become the power center, and it was going to bring in new people and new money, and overwhelm them.” Buffalo’s Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation took no formal positions on the issue—not surprising, Dillaway suggests, except that a downtown campus was so clearly a boon for a city that had been on the decline for 50 years already. A new campus meant, among other things, 10,000 students in the city’s downtown core; 2,000 university-related jobs; in-fill development in city neighborhoods to handle the university’s housing needs; an addition to the city’s already rich cultural life; and research centers that might spawn new businesses that would diversify the city’s flagging economy. Just as important, Dillaway points out, a downtown campus would have provided the city’s business and political communities with access to tremendous planning resources that might have helped them to steer the city through the changes that attended the death of the region’s heavy industry. “The big thing about the university for me is, not only does it help the ecomony, it also helps the business and political leaders, because you have such incredible resources and expertise,” she said. “I remember at Berkeley doing all kinds of studies and plans for different outlying areas in the Bay Area—and then we would turn them over to the city government and say, ‘Here’s your plan.’ “Why give the money to some consulting firm when you can get [plans and studies] for free, from the best minds going, with the most up-to-date analysis tools?” The very thing that doomed the downtown campus, according to Dillaway’s anonymous interviewee—that the university’s enormous economic and politcal presence would disrupt the existing power structure—also might have provided cover for politicians and community leaders who hoped to buck the status quo and embrace radical changes to manage or even reverse the city’s decline. Instead, the supporters of a downtown campus where marginalized. This was possible, according to Dillaway, because the organizations that should have been driving the planning process and championing the city—the Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation—instead sat out the debate, most likely due to pressure from powerful interests opposed to a downtown campus. In the absence of a cohesive, empowered and proactive organization, individuals opposed to a downtown campus were able to hijack the debate—and those in favor were left on the periphery, with no recognized, established organization through which to agitate for their cause. “The structure of power and the planning process directly impact the political and economic outcomes,” Dillaway said. “The Greater Buffalo Development Foundation, which was the seat of power supposedly, did not include a couple of the major players. They might have been a part of it in name, but from what I saw they were not party to a lot of decisions and what the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation did. And when not all of the parties are brought to the table, then it allows those few individuals to impact from the outside the decisions that might have been made.” The city’s mayor, Chester Kowal, made little effort to win the campus for the waterfront. The Buffalo Evening News played down the issue. The Courier-Express covered the issue thoroughly but did not endorse one site over another. The tone of the debate was, at times, quite heated. Dillaway writes: During the increasingly rancorous debate, a banker, who also chaired the Albright-Knox Art Gallery board, blocked the display of a model of the proposed downtown university at the Gallery. It was displayed instead at the Buffalo Public Library at the base of the main stairwell. “As a consequence, the rest of the political and social establishment was cowed into silence…The unanswered insult sent a strong message to anyone who might harbor modern ideas for Buffalo.” Another banker made his feelings known to anyone who would listen, but most especially among the the social networks of the establishment: “We don’t want all those [New York radicals and people of color] running around downtown.” As fate would have it, both leaders sat on the University’s Board of Trustees—one headed the Board and the other chaired the Construction Fund.

How the football stadium went to Orchard Park and the LRRT went nowhere
“Leadership,” Dillaway writes, “requires the commitment to see a project through.” Buffalo’s light-rail transit system, which took more than 20 years to be planned and built, is another example of a decentralized planning process hung up on the rocks of indecision, indifference and individual agendas. Slow and creaking from the start, the planning for the LRRT gained almost no local support among the power elite—no local dollars were committed to its construction—and as a result the plans were modified in ways that compromised its original intent. The downtown part of the LRRT was supposed to be underground; the suburban part, which was to extend all the way to UB’s Amherst campus, was to travel aboveground. “That whole point was to have an underrgound line downtown that would bring people downtown for shopping, and in inclement weather they could get around,” Dillaway said. “Or people from businesses downtown could go from one business to another, hop the line and go two stops and go to a business appointment in a snowstorm.” Dillaway says that one major proponent of the LLRT, an associate of the board members of the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation, told her that if that body had taken a stand when the transit sytem was being challenged out in the neighborhoods—where neighborhood leaders were fighting, with good reason, the overhead rail going through their living rooms—if the foundation had taken a strong stand and then bargained with the community leaders, a deal might have been struck. And Buffalo might have had a more reasonable light-rail system that extended all the way to the northern suburbs, that would not have left Main Street closed to automobile traffic—and it would not have taken 20 years. The story of the football stadium is appalling. In 1964 a report determined that the best place for a new football stadium would be in or near the urban core. Three years later, Buffalo’s Chamber of Commerce issued a report suggesting that a two-stadium complex be built in Amherst instead. In this fight, nearly everyone took a side, Dillaway writes, and for a variety of reasons. But the basic reason for opposition to a downtown stadium was that a handful of people in the city’s business elite stood to make more money on the construction of a stadium in the suburbs. Of this debate, Dillaway writes: …when one bank executive looked like he might agree that a stadium should be built downtown, “he went into his board meeting, and came out a changed man,” and was not heard to assert himself on the stadium issue again. Implicit among the business leadership was the understanding that “if you [want to] build it downtown, you will be destroyed,” according to one longtime political insider. “The battle raged from the summer of ’68 over a plan to build a domed stadium in Lancaster, New York. The proposal fell apart in 1970…[It was] a massive, searing debate involving every major power figure in Buffalo ranging from the owner of the dominant newspaper, bankers, local governments, politicians, editors, law firms…Two people died of heart attacks, politicians quit, two went to prison. The proposal fell apart in 1970.” In the end, the city’s leaders, realizing that they could not settle the issue for themselves, threw the decision to the New York State Urban Development Corporation. The UDC, more concerned with economic factors than with revitalizing the city, choose the current site of Rich Stadium in Orchard Park. Ten years later the State Supreme Court ruled that Erie County had breached its contract with the developer of the proposed Lancaster stadium.

The transactions of decline
Power Failure traces these stories and the city’s institutions through three decades of decline. One of the most interesting threads include the Democratic Party’s habit of alternating ethnic groups in leadership positions, in order to keep its constituents happy. This excluded the African-American community, of course, whose only outlet for representation was the Common Council. This is a shame, according to Dillaway, because Buffalo’s black leadership in the 1950s was amenable to cooperating with city leaders on urban renewal. Buffalo’s solid black middle class, built on high-wage jobs in the steel and other heavy industries, comprised a very civil society, committed to bettering its lot through existing institutions. Dillaway notes that when Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky—never a friend to existing institutions—visited Buffalo in 1966, he wrote, “I keep sort of rubbing my eyes from time to time. Buffalo is about the only community in America in which I have seen a certain number of middle-class professional Negroes committed to their people.” But real change never stood a chance in Buffalo, Dillaway says, until the 1980s, when new investment began to come into the city, attracted by subsidies. The new investors demanded, and received, a seat at the decision-making table. “Around 1975, when things did hit rock bottom and the city was days away from bankruptcy, it was that period when new investment came in, private investment, and that was because of the low cost of capital, through all the subsidies—low cost of capital, the low cost of land,” Dillaway explains. “And labor had taken such a hit, too—they realized that they were a part of the problem, and they backed off some of the high wages and they even tried to help. That’s when the new investors came along, and that wouldn’t have happened if the city hadn’t come to the bottom. I find it difficult sometimes to say that something is good or something is bad, because sometimes something that looks bad turns out to be good. It’s just the catalyst you need. Jesse E. Nash, Jr., program director for the Model City revitalization program and sociology professor at Canisius College, with a skeptical Mayor Frank Sedita in 1967. “During the Griffin years, downtown they did accomplish quite a bit, but it was all with subsidized funds and very little private investment—and then, of course, when the money ran out everybody disappeared. “These are transactions of decline, as Jane Jacobs says, and once they are going it’s hard to get off of them. On the one hand, you had Griffin setting up all these nonprofits to take funds and actually getting- things done, and that was the good side. The bad side was the acrimony [caused by] the process that left out his Council—which has really affected the city for decades afterward. It set up a dynamic that I don’t know is even over.” The failure to embrace change, Dillaway says, is certainly a negative, too. But it says something positive about the city as well. “You had the ethnic communities not wanting change at all, because their lives were settled and quite wonderful, in the sense that everything revolved around the parish church—and then, of course, the Democratic Party machine, patronage. The schools were right there, and the parish priest was right there. They didn’t want change. And the establishment didn’t want change, because life was very, very good for all of us. The black community, of course, wanted change, and for good reason. “The one thing it does say for the city is that it is a wonderful, wonderful place to live. The thing is that, unless a city is willing to risk change, they are going to be forced by circumstances into change, because change is inevitable.”
by Geoff Kelly

Fundraising via download: Sweet music to nonprofits Yahoo! News
When Amnesty International wanted to raise awareness about violence against women in Mexico, it turned to Jaguares, one of the country's most popular rock bands. The group recorded a cover of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" and made it available as a digital download via the organization's Make Some Noise music service. It proved so popular that the number of Mexicans signing up to support the initiative exceeded Amnesty's entire membership in the country. It's just one of many examples of nonprofit social activists turning to digital music to raise funds and awareness. The digital milieu is quicker, cheaper and more relevant to the younger generation than past music initiatives. And getting acts, labels and publishers to donate an exclusive track to a download service is much easier and ultimately faster to turn around than getting physical product released or organizing a benefit concert. "It's really cost-effective," says Stephanie Newman, senior manager for Amnesty International's Make Some Noise campaign. "It's a more accessible cost of entry for most nonprofits, and it's more accessible for the audience as well." Newman declined to say how much money has been raised. The digital approach to fund raising is proving popular. British-based global hunger relief organization Oxfam built a download music store called Big Noise Music and collects about 15 percent from every track sold. U.K.-based War Child Music -- which advocates an end to the practice of using children as soldiers -- operates a similar service. It landed a major coup last year when Radiohead donated its entire back catalog to the site, representing the first time the group made its music available digitally. Tracks sell for 99 pence ($1.77). Amnesty International's Make Some Noise store exclusively features covers of Lennon solo tracks that Yoko Ono donated to the cause. Other participating acts include the Black Eyed Peas, the Cure and Snow Patrol. The price per download is 99 cents.

MOBILE DONATIONS
And like any other digital music service, these efforts are going mobile as well. On April 28, Sweet Relief Musicians Fund began a three-month fund-raising campaign focusing on selling master ringtones donated by Pearl Jam, Jars of Clay and OK Go, among others. Fans text the word "heal" to a short code dedicated to each ringtone to receive the download in exchange for a $5 charge to their phone bill. Music for Charity Productions is running the campaign. Scott Dudelson, the company's founder, says other acts will soon have the opportunity to conduct similar donate-to-download initiatives using the same platform. "I'd like to make all my campaigns digitally related," Dudelson says. "I hope this revolutionizes fund raising, and I hope it's a tool every artist will have and can use for whatever cause they support." Amnesty International also plans to extend the Make Some Noise effort to include mobile full-track and ringtone downloads. Mobile content developer Airborne Entertainment has created an entire suite of mobile content focused on socially conscious themes called Just Cause. These online and mobile channels are most attractive to charities simply because they are where the next generation of donors are. While digital downloads of songs or ringtones certainly add to their war chest, nonprofits are most interested in collecting buyers' contact information and converting them into lifetime contributors. "We need to inject Amnesty International into the popular culture, because we're not there at the moment," Newman says. Such artists as OK Go frontman Damian Kulash say that these efforts humanize today's technology -- a necessary evolution for digital music. "As the Internet and digital technology has helped democratize music, it also helps separate us into our own little worlds," he says. "We need to make sure to put as much emphasis on the parts that bring people together."
By Antony Bruno

Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Великая Княжна Анастасия Николаевна Романова Anwers.com
Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, in Russian: Великая Княжна Анастасия Николаевна Романова) (June 18 [O.S. June 5] 1901 – July 17, 1918) or sometimes nicknamed Nastya, or Nastas, or Nastenka, was the youngest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and Princess Alix of Hesse. She was a younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia and Grand Duchess Maria of Russia. She was an older sister of Tsarevich Alexei of Russia.



Personal Life
She shared her name with Tsaritsa Anastasia of Russia, a 16th century Russian aristocrat whose marriage to the first Tsar Ivan the Terrible gave the Romanov family their claim to the throne. She and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair" and also shared a room together like their two older sisters. All affectionately went by the group name, OTMA. She was said to be a tomboy and very intelligent, to have been comically good at impersonations and to possess a sharp wit and appreciation for sarcastic jokes, although she was never interested in the restrictions of school. She loved animals and always had her two dogs with her, Shvybzik and Jimmy. She spent time playing her record player, writing letters, watching movies, photography, playing the balalaika with her brother Aleksei and laying in the sun doing nothing. She also suffered from stomach ailments and the painful medical condition hallux valgus, which affected both joints of her big toes. She also smoked in the garden secretly, and sometimes her sister Olga joined her.

From Mystery to Legend
She was presumed executed along with the rest of her family in the cellar room of the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 when she was only 17 years old. The extra-judicial execution was carried out by forces of the Bolshevik secret police under Yakov Yurovsky.The reason for this legend is that because the family sewed their jewels and diamonds in her dress, the gun's bullets bounced off of her and she simply acted dead with the rest of her family. Her possible survival is one of the celebrated mysteries of the 20th century. Several years after the murder as rumors spread like wildfire that one of the grand duchesses had survived, a woman called Anna Anderson appeared in 1922 claiming to be Anastasia. Subsequent DNA tests in 1994 seemed to prove she was not who she claimed to be, although some supporters have rejected these tests. Another claimant, Eugenia Smith appeared in 1968 at the wake of the 'Anastasia' controversy, but her story was inconsistent. In 1991, it was discovered that two bodies, Alexei and, according to Dr. William Maples, Anastasia, were missing from the family's grave. They are believed by some to have been burned in the woods nearby. In 2000, she and her family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Media appearances
The possible survival of Anastasia has been the subject of several films. Although the earliest such film was made in 1928 and the most recent an 1997 animated musical version, the most famous is probably the 1956 Anastasia starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes. Anastasia's possible survival is also the subject of the song "Yes Anastasia" by contemporary musician Tori Amos. Anastasia also appears as a playable character in the 2004 PlayStation 2 Computer role-playing game Shadow Hearts: Covenant

Older namesake
Another Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Великая Княжна Анастасия Михайловна) (July 28, 1860 - March 11, 1922) was the daughter of Grand Duke Mikhail of Russia. She was married to Grand Duke Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110008527



Vietnam, Watergate and Rove
Left-wing nostalgia dies hard, but can it survive the events of this week?

BY MICHAEL BARONE
Friday, June 16, 2006 12:01 a.m.

It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004.
Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available to gloat over American setbacks or our allies' defeat, as the leaders of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam did.

Third, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced that he would not seek an indictment of Karl Rove. The leftward blogosphere had Mr. Rove pegged for the role of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Theories were spun about plea bargains that would implicate Vice President Dick Cheney. Talk of impeachment was in the air. But it turns out that history doesn't repeat itself. George W. Bush, whether you like it or not, is not a second Richard Nixon.





It is hard in retrospect to understand why the left put so much psychic energy into the notion that Mr. Rove would be indicted. He certainly was an important target. No one in American history has been as powerful an aide to a president, both on politics and on public policy, as Karl Rove. Only Robert Kennedy in his brother's administration and Hamilton Jordan in Jimmy Carter's come close, and neither was as involved in electoral politics as Mr. Rove has been.
Still, it was clear early on that the likelihood that Mr. Rove violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was near zero. Under the law, the agent whose name was disclosed would have had to have served overseas within the preceding five years (Valerie Plame, according to her husband's book, had been stationed in the U.S. since 1997), and Mr. Rove would have had to know that she was undercover (not very likely). The left enjoyed raising an issue on which, for once, it could charge that a Republican administration had undermined national security. But that rang hollow when the left gleefully seized on the New York Times' disclosure of NSA surveillance of phone calls from suspected al Qaeda operatives abroad to persons in the U.S.

In all this a key role was played by the press. Cries went up early for the appointment of a special prosecutor: Patrick Fitzgerald would be another Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski. Eager to bring down another Republican administration, the editorialists of the New York Times evidently failed to realize that the case could not be pursued without asking reporters to reveal the names of sources who had been promised confidentiality. America's newsrooms are populated largely by liberals who regard the Vietnam and Watergate stories as the great achievements of their profession. The peak of their ambition is to achieve the fame and wealth of great reporters like David Halberstam and Bob Woodward. But this time it was not Republican administration officials who went to prison. It was Judith Miller, then of the New York Times itself.

Interestingly, Bob Woodward himself contradicted Mr. Fitzgerald's statement, made the day that he announced the one indictment he has obtained, of former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, that Mr. Libby was the first to disclose Ms. Plame's name to a reporter. The press reaction was to turn on Mr. Woodward, who has been covering this administration as a new story rather than as a reprise of Vietnam and Watergate.





Historians may regard it as a curious thing that the left and the press have been so determined to fit current events into templates based on events that occurred 30 to 40 years ago. The people who effectively framed the issues raised by Vietnam and Watergate did something like the opposite; they insisted that Vietnam was not a reprise of World War II or Korea and that Watergate was something different from the operations J. Edgar Hoover conducted for Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy. Journalists in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s tended to believe they had a duty to buttress Americans' faith in their leaders and their government. Journalists since Vietnam and Watergate have tended to believe that they have a duty to undermine such faith, especially when the wrong party is in office.
That belief has its perils for journalism, as the Fitzgerald investigation has shown. The peril that the press may find itself in the hot seat, but even more the peril that it will get the story wrong. The visible slavering over the prospect of a Rove indictment is just another item in the list of reasons why the credibility of the "mainstream media" has been plunging. There's also a peril for the political left. Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them. The pursuit of Karl Rove by the left and the press has been just the latest episode in the attempted criminalization of political differences. Is there any hope that it might turn out to be the last?

Mr. Barone is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report.


Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Daily Highlights Thursday, September 14, 2006 Answers.com
Ivan Pavlov developed the concept of conditioned response. The Russian physiologist worked with dogs conditioning them to expect food at the sound of a bell. Pavlov's dogs began to salivate just hearing the bell ring. His work was influential in the development of behaviorism in neurology and psychology. Pavlov, born on this date in 1849, won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on the digestive system.

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