http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/19/ShowForum.aspxenCommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Debug Build: 2.18)http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183069.aspxSat, 14 Nov 2009 17:09:18 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1183069Anonymous1782http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183069.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1183069Moderate Republicans—yes, they are not yet extinct, though most are in hiding—scoff at Sarah Palin and wish she would go away. But she's not going away. This week she's going on-air with Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey to flog her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, and to promote her brand of in-your-face, power-to-the-people conservatism. President Obama is no doubt happy to have her out there on full display. He cannot help but relish the prospect, no longer farfetched, that the Republicans will nominate Palin to oppose his reelection in 2012. A student of history, Obama could be thinking of his predecessor in presidential coolness, John F. Kennedy. In 1963 Kennedy's advisers counseled against giving Sen. Barry Goldwater national stature by posing with the GOP's conservative insurgent at a White House photo op. "What are you giving that SOB all that publicity for?" demanded White House aide Kenny O'Donnell. "Leave him alone," JFK replied. "He's mine."Obama knows the long odds against a right-wing populist winning the presidency, no matter how good she looks in a skirt (or running clothes), brandishing a gun. He shouldn't be too cocky, however, because the death of the center is ultimately a problem for him and the whole country. If the Palinistas seize the GOP, they probably cannot take the White House. But their brand of no-prisoners partisanship sure can tie up Congress.In modern memory, Capitol Hill has never been so polarized. With conservatives refusing to reach across the aisle, it will be hard to get even the most modest health-insurance reform through the U.S. Senate, where a 41-vote minority can block legislation. Without bipartisanship, forget about reducing the deficit or doing anything meaningful on the environment, immigration, or tax reform.Diehard right-wing congressmen do not deserve all the blame. Obama tried to foster bipartisanship at the outset of his administration, but he didn't try very hard, and his fellow Democrats can be just as rigidly partisan on the left. Obama seems reduced to fencing with Fox News, which won't get him very far or earn him a place in the history books.Governing effectively requires a "big tent" approach to politics. To pass the New Deal and win reelection three times, Franklin D. Roosevelt built a coalition of labor, Northern liberals, and Southern conservatives. In a body politic that swings right, swings left—but never too far without swinging back again—it is impossible to win a governing majority without a coalition of true believers and moderates.The two greatest postwar presidents understood this. Dwight Eisenhower governed in the 1950s by deftly uniting center and right, and Ronald Reagan did the same in the 1980s. They needed to be flexible to the point of gross expediency. To placate the far right, Ike shamefully refused to stand up for his friend and fellow statesman Gen. George Marshall, who was ludicrously attacked by Sen. Joe McCarthy as "soft" on communism. Reagan piously gave lip service to the right-wing social agenda while doing nothing to further it by legislation; he also chose George H.W. Bush to be his vice president and allowed the ultrapragmatic James A. Baker III to run the White House. The "Gipper" talked tough about the Russians—while doing more than any other president to foster détente. With a slyness that belied their smiling patriotism, Eisenhower and Reagan confused and occasionally exasperated their own followers. But it's no coincidence the Eisenhower '50s and Reagan '80s were periods of unusual peace and prosperity.Since taking office, Obama has so far failed to win the battle for the center. The post-election polls show that the country is, if anything, drifting to the right. Obama needs to win some of those drifters back if he wants to get things done. The Republican right, hellbent on preventing that, aims to crush the last scattered remnants of the old moderate GOP establishment—or any Republican who will work with the opposition. The talk-show shouters are cheering on the final purge, demanding purity.By definition, populist movements run on a fervor that confuses honorable compromise with appeasement. Everything is reduced to us and them. This is particularly destructive when it occurs within parties. During the Reagan-Bush administration, the Bushes of Texas (but really Connecticut) were never all that comfortable with the Reagans of Hollywood. But they worked at getting along. The easier course is to rant and rail on The O'Reilly Factor. That will get you a big cable-TV audience. But it risks turning off the larger public to politics altogether. And that can't be good for the country.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/25842.aspxSat, 13 Oct 2007 01:00:57 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:25842Anonymous7http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/25842.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=25842I took the call on my cell phone at the Starbucks in New York's Penn Station. It was from a doctor I barely knew telling me that a CT scan—ordered after three weeks of worsening stomach pain—showed a large mass in my abdomen, with what she said was "considerable lymph node involvement." I rubbed my eyes and sensed the truth instantly: cancer, and not one that had been detected early. I was 46 years old and had not spent a night in the hospital since I was born. Nonsmoker. No junk food beyond the occasional barbecue potato chips. Jogged a couple of times a week. I was not remotely ready for this.It was Super Tuesday, March 2, 2004, the day voters would select most of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Although the complete diagnosis was still several days off, the intense abdominal pain meant that my wife, Emily, and I had no time to stop, absorb and adjust to our twisted new world. We immediately began negotiating the endless round of doctors' appointments and insurance hassles that mark a cancer patient's life. With my head on fire, I quietly endured a festive lunch with political reporters and anchors, then went back to work. My job that day was to analyze the end of John Edwards's presidential campaign.Three years later, I'm in remission and, strangely enough, thinking once more about the future of Edwards and his family. Like the 10.5 million other cancer survivors in the United States, I experienced a bit of extra stress last week. When Elizabeth Edwards's *** cancer recurred in her bones and Tony Snow's colon cancer recurred in his liver, the cold fear that many of us live with every day crept a little closer. The good news is that the candor of Edwards and Snow (who is recuperating from surgery but has been open about his situation from his perch as White House press secretary) has helped stimulate a useful national conversation about how people handle a cancer diagnosis. It has also exposed the foolishness of a few busybodies who don't have cancer, but feel free to judge the complex choices made by those who do.My own story isn't typical, because none is. Every patient reacts a little differently, both biologically and psychologically. The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness. According to the latest projections, a third of all Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes, most likely when they're old. Many will never achieve remission at all, while the lucky ones like me get to live with a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. A friend compares his semiannual scans to visiting a parole officer. When the scans are clean, it's worth another six months of freedom, though with no guarantee of extra time for good behavior.In my case, the news went from bad to worse. To calm my nerves before the laparoscopic surgery (they cut my colon into a semicolon and removed my appendix while they were at it), I heard some happy talk about how the bowel obstruction might be benign. As I recovered and watched the slow gait of my internist down the hospital corridor I knew otherwise. "Time is an illusion," he told me cryptically, explaining that after a certain age, a few years could seem like many, and many could seem like few. I was informed that I had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a blood cancer that would likely shorten my life without ending it any time soon.But we didn't yet know the all-important cell type. The day after being discharged, I grew impatient with the slowness of the pathology report and had the hospital lab fax it to me directly. Big mistake. After Googling "mantle cell lymphoma," I learned it was a rare and nasty form of the disease with a terrifying prognosis.By this time I was in mental free fall. Friends later said I handled it courageously, but they were wrong. American culture rewards cheerful stoicism, a quality that cancer patients usually display in public but find difficult to sustain in private, especially at the beginning. I collapsed in tears only briefly, but retreated into a fog of unshakable misery. My detachment alarmed Emily, who wisely resisted many well-intentioned efforts by family and friends to coddle me. She understood that their instinct to be protective was making me into a weaker person than I needed to be. So she lovingly but firmly pushed me back into some semblance of normal life. "Get off the Internet and get back to your real work!" she insisted on more than one occasion.I slept only with the help of sleeping pills. After taking too many, I botched the disclosure of my condition to our three kids, then ages 14, 12 and 10, stumbling so badly over my words that Emily finally sent me to bed. Our family freely discusses everything but in this case we only told them the extent of the problem when we had a plan in place to try to fix it. They didn't want to know the details, and their self-protective lack of curiosity on this subject (and this subject alone) was a relief to me. We rarely talked about it with them thereafter, an unfashionable approach I would recommend. Physically, I felt OK; emotionally, I was in hell. A woman I knew who was dying of *** cancer told me that none of the pain she was suffering at the end of her life compared with that first month and the daze of diagnosis.I fell back on what I knew—reporting and analysis—and undertook a furious round of investigative phone calls. Everyone agreed that it was critical to be examined at a major cancer center, where doctors would have seen my disease much more often than at other hospitals. (I was even told of studies showing the farther one travels for treatment, the better the chance of survival.) With the help of friends, I finally got an appointment at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. It happened on my wife's birthday, the only present she wanted.After receiving a second opinion on the lab results, the brilliant doctor who became my oncologist administered an excruciating bone-marrow biopsy, which felt as if I were on a medieval rack. The results confirmed that I was Stage Four, the most advanced, though the systemic nature of lymphoma may have made that less dire than in other cancers. He told me that my two-year odds of survival were essentially a coin toss, and that my best chance to improve them lay in four months of accelerated chemotherapy, followed by a bone-marrow transplant, an aggressive regimen previously used mostly for relapsed patients.Many patients place full trust in their physician and never second-guess them. I was constitutionally incapable of that, so I hit him with a barrage of questions. Why this chemo protocol and not another used by a different hospital? Why not enroll me in a clinical trial? Why couldn't he tell me more? Even though I admired him, I continued reporting. With no standard of care for this disease, each expert I managed to get on the phone had a slightly different take on how it should be treated, which I later discovered is common with cancer.I vacuumed up everything I could. (Cancer is unbelievably complex: lymphoma alone is made up of more than 30 different types.) I even became capable of decoding some of the doctors' medical jargon, which is like picking up a foreign language. The more I knew, the more frustrated I grew at the Catch-22 of oncology, which is that the most cutting-edge therapies are used only for the sickest patients, when it's often too late. Newly diagnosed patients get the old stuff, unless they get much sicker, when it's often too late for them, too.But a little knowledge can be a dangerous and depressing thing. The Internet is a fantastic resource for patients, who increasingly use it to ask pertinent questions of their doctors. It can also baffle and disorient. Some of what I read about mantle cell lymphoma was out of date or even wrong, and logging on began to make me feel anxious. I thought Emily was in denial and she thought I was an easy mark for every cancer "cure." We quarreled about it. When I tasted the rank "noni juice" I'd ordered on the Internet, I knew she was right.One Web resource, however, was indispensable. My sister set up an account with a nonprofit site called caringbridge.org that brought order and even pleasure to my communication with the outside world. Instead of having to repeat my story endlessly on the phone or in individual e-mails, I could offer periodic updates, then watch in amazement and gratitude as the good wishes, parodies and embarrassing stories about me from fourth grade rolled in. The site kept practically everyone in my universe informed while easing their sense of helplessness—and mine. The postings of my children and my mother-in-law became particular crowd-pleasers and before long the idea spread through parts of the media world. Even B.D. from "Doonesbury," home from Iraq and hospitalized at Walter Reed, got a caringbridge site.I decided early not to keep my cancer a secret. I felt enough stress already without trying to figure out who knew and who didn't. One morning on the radio, Don Imus, sensing something in my voice, asked in his inimitable way why I sounded awful. I blurted out to a few million listeners that I was headed for chemo that day. But I kept the prognosis under wraps for fear that people would pity me or write me off. By then I knew that for all the new openness about cancer, sick people still get sidelined.The idea of joining a support group held no appeal for me, in part because my disease is so rare and I had little interest in hearing about other kinds of cancer. ("My sister-in-law's cousin had prostate cancer and he's doing fine," I was once told, unhelpfully.) But we mantle cell survivors found each other by phone and e-mail. Unfortunately, many hospitals still do little or nothing to connect newly diagnosed patients with those who have survived the same disease for several years, though this is what we crave.Most people I know—and many I don't—were unbelievably supportive, offering prayers and comfort when I needed it most. I can't even conceive how people without close family (my brother even shaved his head in solidarity), friends and co-workers can survive the ordeal. Millions of Americans live alone and fight the disease mostly alone. They are the heroic ones.The experience changes your relationship with friends, as some who were once mere acquaintances step up magnificently and others who were closer fade away. The long faces and doleful "How are you, really?" false intimacies were less welcome than the cheerful ribbing and sense I was being viewed normally. Emily and I got a laugh out of those people so interested in my initial symptoms that we concluded the inquiries into my health were more about them and whether the indigestion they were experiencing might be cancer. Others just wanted to know whether I had "beaten" it so they could check me off as one less person to worry about. Even now, it's just inaccurate to say that I have.As my chemotherapy continued through the spring, my spirits lifted a bit. One of the worst parts of cancer is the loss of control, the sense that you have no recourse when your body betrays you. That's why nutrition and hygiene became so important to me in that period. For the first time, I actually understood how someone could develop an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving repeated handwashing. My own insistence on it was beginning to drive my family nuts. But I was determined to stay free of infection when my immunity was down during treatment. Chemo brought out the warrior in me, and the obedient servant. If the doctor suggested drinking a gallon of fluids on the first day after treatment, I didn't drink three and three-quarters quarts. I drank the full gallon, for maximum control, or the illusion of it.My luck began to turn when I found I was avoiding the worst side effects, with the help of a dozen pills a day. I suffered fatigue, bone pain, anemia, total hair loss (my family said I looked like an egg), hemorrhoids, numbness and foot cramps, but thanks to anti-nausea drugs, which I popped prophylactically at $70 a pill, no vomiting. I missed my 25th college reunion but made the 2004 Democratic convention, with syringes in my bag and a catheter in my chest that my wife nervously learned to clean and dress. Cancer tests any marriage, trying to work tiny cracks into fissures. But as I slowly checked out of my fog, ours prospered.By this time I had fashioned my own daily recovery plan, which I dubbed Herman. The H stood for humor, a few minutes each day with "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or Will Ferrell or an Ian Frazier story or a friend who would make me laugh. E was—and is—for exercise, which may not fight cancer but clears my head. R represented religion. At the depths, I tried to read something about Judaism or talk to God a little every day, though like a soldier escaped from the foxhole, I've backslid since. (Religion often morphed into superstition, as I avoided the sweater I had worn on the day of a bad test result and refused, long after remission, to refer to my cancer in the past tense for fear of tempting a recurrence.) M was for meditation, which with the help of my friend Barbara helped calm me for a time. A was for attitude. Studies show no connection between a good attitude and reducing tumor size and I can't stand the way our therapeutic society makes people feel that cancer is their own fault because they weren't more chipper. But mind-set is important. By chance, I was already at work on a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the writing offered a useful distraction from cancer. His upbeat attitude after being stricken with polio was inspirational for me, and made me wonder, What Would Franklin Do? N stood for niceness to my family. They bore the brunt of my irritability, which I tried to reduce, not always successfully.As I learned about myself, I also learned a lot about medicine. Most cancer doctors are awe-inspiring in their humanity and dedication. They make, say, hedge-fund billionaires (not to mention journalists) look puny and insignificant. But I also found oncology full of the same mammoth egos and petty jealousies that plague any high-powered field. Doctors from competing institutions are often so competitive that they talk to each other only a couple of times a year at conferences. They do lab work on parallel tracks instead of collaborating. And under pressure from hospital lawyers, they frequently even refuse to share cell lines with other qualified researchers, which retards progress toward cures and is clearly unethical. Thanks to a wealthy mantle cell lymphoma survivor, ours is one of the first subsets of cancer to establish a consortium to get top experts in the field to exchange ideas regularly. Every cancer should have a consortium.And every cancer doctor would do well to recalibrate on occasion the balance he or she strikes between science and hope. While the survival odds they offer might be technically accurate (X percentage with Y cancer will survive five years), they are often misleading and sometimes unnecessarily cruel. Patients and families obsess over these survival-rate statistics, but they reduce the countless variables of a person's genetic makeup and environmental exposure to a number, which is cold and often phony. Depending on the individual (whose age is usually not even factored into the statistics), a 50 percent chance of survival could easily be 80 percent—or 20 percent. Moreover, few patients understand the meaning of the term "median survival." That simply means half live less time and half live more—perhaps much more.Dr. Jerome Groopman, the Harvard Medical School oncologist who became my informal patient advocate (which every patient needs and few get) and later my indispensable friend, told me that he wished he had a nickel for every patient he knew who was told he had an "incurable" disease and is still doing just fine. Groopman's new best seller, "How Doctors Think," explains the self-protective psychology behind the pessimism of so many doctors, who don't like to view the death of a patient as a comment on their abilities. So they resort to saying it's a "bad disease" or "incurable." What doctors should say—and often do—is that a particularly challenging cancer might be incurable now, but if we can keep you alive a while longer, a cure might come, as it did for Lance Armstrong's testicular cancer. Patients need to do their part by enrolling more readily in clinical trials, which most avoid. And they should stop pressing their doctors for an exactitude that doesn't exist.The climax of my treatment was a bone-marrow transplant in August of 2004. There are two kinds: an allogenic transplant—the only true cure—involves a donor. But I had no sibling match, and using an unrelated donor carries a one-third morbidity rate. Because the earlier rounds of chemo had achieved remission, I was eligible for a less dangerous autologous transplant. I was hooked up to a machine that extracted (or "harvested") millions of my stem cells, which were then frozen. Once admitted to Sloan-Kettering for a 23-day stay, I was hit with high-dose chemotherapy, the most toxic in the chemo family. The point was to knock my white blood cell count down to zero, a process that confined me to my room for two weeks. Had I, with no immune system, wandered into the hall and caught something, I would have died. After my stem cells were defrosted and transplanted back into me, along with several other blood transfusions, my blood counts slowly increased.For me, the experience was not as bad as advertised. Before I felt the brunt of it, I even managed to bang out a NEWSWEEK column from the hospital. I avoided the horrible mouth sores and most of the other common side effects. Family and friends visited every day, as long as they washed their hands carefully and stayed on the other side of the room. Even when I was too weak to move or say much, I enjoyed their chatter. When I got home I could walk only a few steps. But within a few weeks I was walking a mile and by Election Night 2004 I was back on TV after eight months, balder if not wiser.During my annus horribilis, NEWSWEEK let me work at home and helped me navigate the insanity of the American health-care system. The claims forms are impenetrable and accompanied by pseudo-sympathetic bill collectors. How do other patients with life-threatening illnesses even begin to handle it? Cancer is seriously expensive, and no insurance company covers all of it. I met a lymphoma survivor whose wife left him after he sold the house to pay for his transplant. Now he's clinically depressed, too. But at least he's not uninsured or bankrupt. The majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States come from medical expenses, not sloth. In its hideous 2005 bankruptcy "reform," Congress sided with credit-card companies and kicked cancer survivors when they were down.Six weeks after my transplant—and again at six months—I received additional infusions of Rituxan, one of the new, less toxic and more targeted cancer therapies. In the two years since, my checkups have consisted of colonoscopies (I've had eight altogether) and CT scans. Recently I graduated from three-month scans to six-month scans. I grow anxious before each one, of course, terrified that I will be exiled once more to the penal colony of the sick.In between, every little ache or pain sends a jolt of dread. But I run three miles a day to stay in shape and I try to channel some of what my father has taught me about being a combat aviator in World War II, where he learned to balance fear and fatalism. At home, my children seem unaffected, insulated by the glorious narcissism of adolescence. I can even envision a time when a day finally passes without my thinking of cancer.Serious illness has a way of crystallizing life, which is why so many people change jobs or spouses or views of the world when they fall ill. On some level, they weren't at peace with their old life and suddenly found the motivation to change it. I was happy with my old life, and all I wanted was to get it back, without having to become a professional cancer survivor or expert on coping.In a taxi en route to lunch on that awful Super Tuesday, I experienced a powerful premonition: I have cancer, it's going to be bad, but I'll live until I'm 90. Probably not, but I turn 50 this year and, full of hope, recall that great line from "The Shawshank Redemption": "You can get busy living, or get busy dying." For me, it's no contest.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189263.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 17:06:51 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189263Anonymous5http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189263.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189263When Clare Boothe Luce, a vehement opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a member of Congress in the 1940s, her legs were voted the second most beautiful in America in a newspaper poll (Marlene Dietrich's came first). Asked by a colleague if this award was beneath the dignity of Congress, she responded: "Don't you realize, Congressman, that you are just falling for some subtle New Deal propaganda designed to distract attention from the end of me that is really functioning?" (Click here to follow Julia Baird).This is why sexism in the media is a problem: it distracts from what is important. By perennially casting women as decorative, not substantive, it sidelines them from debates and trivializes their ideas. Now an ugly new term has entered the lexicon: being Palinized, usually intended to mean being viciously attacked for being female and Republican. GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann wrote in a letter to supporters that she did not want to be "Palinized" with personal attacks or "liberals' scorn." Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean claims she has been "Palinized" by the "liberal media" for her anti-gay-marriage views. And now Palin thinks she has been Palinized by NEWSWEEK, for last week's cover image of her looking fit and posing in running shorts, even though she has been photographed and filmed more than once in aerobic gear (most recently on Oprah just a few days ago).Anyone who observed last year's presidential campaign can have little doubt that the media frequently treat women unfairly. It's not just conservatives or liberals. As Hillary Clinton can attest, Republicans and Democrats alike can be savagely sexist. We have a long, ignoble history of women being demeaned, trivialized, and painted as mothers with little political ability, pinups whose talents lie outside politics, and power-hungry "iron ladies" who fight harder than men.It is wrong, and can be destructive. Ever since Palin arrived on the political stage and was dubbed "Caribou Barbie," debates about her looks have been distracting.But Palin's pins are not her major problem. Her problem is that the end of her that is supposed to be "really functioning" isn't functioning very well at all. She was a popular and tough governor, is forceful and bold, and has a canny knack for speaking to the disenfranchised. But she has made a stunning number of errors, and her claim to celebrity outshines her claim to authority. She has not proved her ability to run a campaign or a country, and she quit her job as governor of Alaska before her time was up, with a lame excuse about being a lame duck.When Palin writes tenderly about her family and her love for Alaska, she seems sincere. The rest of her new book is self-serving, preoccupied with revenge, light on ideas, and full of contradictions. President Obama may tell us "the American system is broken," she writes, but what about Facebook, "which sprang up out of nowhere"? She glosses over the reasons for our economic collapse, just cheering that even though she disagrees with all bailouts, we can get through it. She simply advocates cutting taxes and controlling federal spending, "and then [that we] step aside and watch this economy roar back to life." Right, then. As for Afghanistan and Iraq, she says we should just "complete our missions in these countries." Good-o. Once we stop being distracted by fluffy Palin stories and start concentrating on what she says, you realize why we are so easily distracted.Palin also does not shy from "Palinizing" other women, notably Katie Couric, whom she calls "The Perky One" and "the lowest-rated news anchor in network television." While she writes that her "blond, pretty" McCain campaign adviser, Nicolle Wallace, possesses charm she thinks some other women in politics lack, she blasts Wallace for leading her to believe that her gaffe-laden interview with Couric was going to be a homey chat between women. It is offensive to assume that someone seeking serious political power should not be asked hard questions or critically scrutinized—that it's OK to think an interview with a serious journalist like Couric would simply be a girly chat between working moms. This is embarrassing for women. And working moms.I admire Palin's pluck and steel. She has some legitimate grievances about the way she has been treated. But unless she articulates a coherent vision for America, the most staggering incidence of sexism in this fiasco will be the fact that someone chronically underqualified and unprepared was chosen to run as McCain's VP ahead of the throngs of women who could nail that job.Julia Baird is the author ofMedia Tarts: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1156723.aspxSat, 10 Oct 2009 18:13:33 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1156723Anonymous61http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1156723.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1156723On June 21, two Chinese military helicopters swooped low over Demchok, a tiny Indian hamlet high in the Hima-layas along the northwestern border with China. The helicopters dropped canned food over a barren expanse and then returned to bases in China. India's military scrambled helicopters to the scene but did not seem unduly alarmed. This sort of Cold War cat-and-mouse game has played out on the 4,057-kilometer India-China border for decades. But the incident fed a media frenzy about "the Chinese dragon." Beginning in August, stories about new Chinese incursions into India have dominated the 24-hour TV news networks and the newspaper headlines.China claims some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory. And most of those claims are tangled up with Tibet. Large swaths of India's northern mountains were once part of Tibet. Other stretches belonged to semi-independent kingdoms that paid fealty to Lhasa. Because Beijing now claims Tibet as part of China, it has by extension sought to claim parts of India that it sees as historically Tibetan, a claim that has become increasingly flammable in recent months.Ever since the anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet last year, progress toward settling the border dispute has stalled, and the situation has taken a dangerous turn. The emergence of videos showing Tibetans beating up Han Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities created immense domestic pressure on Beijing to crack down. The Communist Party leadership worries that agitation by Tibetans will only encourage unrest by the country's other ethnic minorities, such as Uighurs in Xinjiang or ethnic Mongolians in Inner Mongolia, threatening China's integrity as a nation. Susan Shirk, a former Clinton-administration official and expert on China, says that "in the past, Taiwan was the 'core issue of sovereignty,' as they call it, and Tibet was not very salient to the public." Now, says Shirk, Tibet is considered a "core issue of national sovereignty" on par with Taiwan.The implications for India's security—and the world's—are ominous. It turns what was once an obscure argument over lines on a 1914 map and some barren, rocky peaks hardly worth fighting over into a flash point that could spark a war between two nuclear-armed neighbors. And that makes the India-China border dispute into an issue of concern to far more than just the two parties involved. The United States and Europe as well as the rest of Asia ought to take notice—a conflict involving India and China could result in a nuclear exchange. And it could suck the West in—either as an ally in the defense of Asian democracy, as in the case of Taiwan, or as a mediator trying to separate the two sides.Beijing appears increasingly concerned about the safe haven India provides to the Dalai Lama and to tens of thousands of Tibetan exiles, including increasingly militant supporters of Tibetan independence. These younger Tibetans, many born outside Tibet, are growing impatient with the Dalai Lama's "middle way" approach—a willingness to accept Chinese sovereignty in return for true autonomy—and commitment to nonviolence. If these groups were to use India as a base for armed insurrection against China, as Tibetan exiles did throughout the 1960s, then China might retaliate against India. By force or demand, Beijing might also seek to gain possession of important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries that lie in Indian territory close to the border. Both politically and culturally, these monasteries are seen as key nodes in the Tibetan resistance to Chinese authority.Already Beijing has launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at undercutting Indian sovereignty over the areas China claims, particularly the northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh and one of its key cities, Tawang, birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama in the 17th century and home to several important Tibetan monasteries. Tibet ceded Tawang and the area around it to British India in 1914. China has recently denied visas to the state's residents; lodged a formal complaint after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the state in 2008; and tried to block a $2.9 billion Asian Development Bank loan to India because some of the money was earmarked for an irrigation project in the state. All these moves are best understood in the context of China's recent troubles in Tibet, with Beijing increasingly concerned that any acceptance of the 1914 border will amount to an implicit acknowledgment that Tibet was once independent of China—a serious blow to the legitimacy of China's control over the region and potentially other minority areas as well.The reports of Chinese incursions can be read as a signal that it is deadly serious about its territorial claims. The exact border has never been mutually agreed on—meaning one side's incursion is another side's routine patrol—but the Chinese have clearly stepped up their activity along the frontier. The Indian military reported a record 270 Chinese border violations last year—nearly double the figure from the year before and more than three times the number of incidents in 2006, says Brahma Chellaney, an expert in strategic studies at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research, an independent think tank. Noting that there was a reported incursion nearly every day this summer, Chellaney says this amounts to "a pattern of Chinese belligerence." In June the People's Daily criticized recent moves by India to strengthen its border defenses and declared: "China will not make any compromises in its border disputes with India." It asked if India had properly weighed "the consequences of a potential confrontation with China."To many Indians, China is an expansionist power bent on thwarting India's rise as a serious challenge to Beijing's influence in Asia. They are haunted by memories of India's 1962 war with China, in which China launched a massive invasion along the length of the frontier, routing the Indians before unilaterally halting at what today remains the de facto border, known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). They are fearful of China's expanding naval presence in the Indian Ocean, seeing its widening network of naval bases as a noose that could be used to strangle India. They blast Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for alleged weakness in the face of this growing threat. Bharat Verma, editor of the Indian Defence Review, predicted in a widely publicized essay this summer that China would attack India sometime before 2012. With social unrest rising within China due to the worldwide economic slump, he says, the leadership in Beijing needs "a small military victory" to unify the nation, and India is "a soft target," due to Singh's fecklessness. In recent weeks India's defense minister and the heads of the Army and Air Force have felt compelled to reassure the public that "there will be no repeat of 1962."These warnings completely misread China's intent. While India worries about the larger army and wealth of China, China worries about the larger military and economy of the United States. In Asia, its stated aim is to follow a "peaceful rise" that benefits all its neighbors, India included, and there's little reason to doubt this goal. Beijing is an insecure power, not an aggressive one, because of the real threat of social and economic unrest at home. China's growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean reflects a legitimate interest in protecting the sea lanes upon which Beijing depends for its supply of oil and natural resources from Africa and the Middle East. The border movements should be seen in the same light: it's not about an external threat from India per se, but India's relationship to the internal threat from Tibet.Still, if Tibet is the new Taiwan, it requires extremely delicate diplomacy. If anything, the West tends to under-estimate China's willingness to fight independence moves in Taiwan—it has fired missile warning shots as recently as 1996—and the same may now be said of Tibet. Taiwan, however, has maintained the parlous status quo by arming itself to the teeth, while avoiding any rhetoric or action that crosses Beijing's red lines.India is trying a similar approach. Last year it denied the Dalai Lama permission to visit Tawang—ostensibly because of parliamentary elections—and now he has scheduled another trip in November. It would be prudent for New Delhi—and perhaps others with influence on the Dalai Lama, such as the United States—to find a face-saving reason for the Dalai Lama to indefinitely postpone the trip. India needs to be especially vigilant against militant activity within the Tibetan exile community, the single most likely trigger for a Chinese attack, and it might be wise to end the policy of simply avoiding any discussion of Tibet in its dealings with China. "There are ways to highlight the centrality of Tibet without being provocative or confrontational," says Chellaney. "If New Delhi were to say in public that Tibet has ceased to be the political buffer between India and China, and India would like Tibet to be the political bridge between New Delhi and Beijing, that, in one stroke, would change the narrative fundamentally."India's position in talks needs to be backed by strength in arms. New Delhi has already started repositioning border forces, launched a road-building program to match the roads and airfields that China has built on its side, and recently conducted a three-day combined air-and-land war game, seemingly designed to show that it is on guard. But India needs to be careful not to overreact: it views with alarm the tens of thousands of troops China has deployed to the border region since the 2008 Lhasa riots, but most of these moves are designed to reassert control over Tibet. M. Taylor Fravel, an MIT expert on the India-China border dispute, says many of the troops deployed in Tibet are internal-security forces, lacking heavy armor or artillery, representing less of a threat to India than Indian hawks believe.India would be wise to invest in -longer-range weapons—such as missiles and advanced-strike aircraft—that allow it to maintain a standoff deterrent, without the need to go toe-to-toe with Chinese troops on the border. India has also begun deploying sophisticated radar systems along its frontier with China—a way to police inhospitable terrain while avoiding direct confrontation. India might also seek to share intelligence with other nations—such as the United States, Japan, and Taiwan—about China's actions and troop movements in Tibet, both to prevent being taken by surprise and to avoid an accidental conflict.A final lesson from Taiwan is that New Delhi should pursue ways to open the border to commerce and communication, binding itself closer to China. Shirk says China is now opening ties to Taiwan, as part of an effort to "win the hearts and minds of the people," raising hopes that China may eventually pursue a more tolerant approach toward Tibet and other minority regions. Amid all the reports of border incursions, both India and China have sought to lower the volume. Chinese military officials invited Indian generals from all three of the regional commands that face off against it across the LAC to visit China for confidence-building measures, including a rare visit to Lhasa. Indian officials have pleaded with news organizations to tone down reporting on border incursions. Indian national-security adviser M. K. Narayanan warned that the beating of war drums might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to "an unwarranted incident or accident" with China. This is now an issue that should be handled at the highest levels—not left to hotheads—on all sides.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189266.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 17:10:17 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189266Anonymous8http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189266.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189266Barack Obama has been criticized for kowtowing to the Chinese and the Russians over the last few months. But so far, this is all about atmospherics. The administration has not made any unilateral concession of substance to either country. It is taking a strategic view that developing strong relationships with both countries, particularly China, will yield long-term benefits. Strangely, however, that strategic focus has been lost in dealing with Asia's other rising giant, India. (Click here to follow Fareed Zakaria).At one level the administration is being extremely friendly. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh comes to Washington this week for the first official state visit of the Obama presidency. There will be toasts and celebrations and many nice words said in public about the ties between the two great democracies. But underneath this lies an unease about the state of the relationship.Indian officials worry that the Obama team does not have the same fundamental orientation as the Bush administration regarding India's role in the 21st century. Some Obama officials publicly criticized the nuclear deal championed by George W. Bush, a deal that the Indians regard as basic recognition of their status as a major power. They worry that a Democratic administration could succumb to protectionism. They worry that it is too cozy with China.These concerns will pass as the two sides get to know each other better. The more lasting danger is that the Obama administration, now intensely focused on the war in Afghanistan, will look at South Asia largely through that prism. Since Washington desperately needs Pakistan's cooperation in that conflict, it is tending to adopt Pakistan's concerns as its own, which is producing a perverse view of the region.In his leaked report, Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that "increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures." This is a bizarre criticism. India is the hegemon of South Asia, with enormous influence throughout the subcontinent. Its GDP is 100 times that of Afghanistan (that is not a typo). As Afghanistan opened itself up after the fall of the Taliban, the cuisine, movies, and money that flowed into the country were, naturally, Indian. This is like noting that the United States has had growing influence in Mexico over the last few decades.The Indian government's aid to Afghanistan has mostly gone to build schools and infrastructure. And while New Delhi is trying to gain influence with the Kabul government, U.S. officials tell me that Indian intelligence has limited operations in Afghanistan. America can't and should not want India to banish itself from its own subcontinent. In fact, India's objectives are exactly aligned with America's—to defeat the Taliban and to support the elected Afghan government.Pakistan's objectives, on the other hand, are not the same as Washington's. Islamabad has long argued that it has a right to see a pro-Pakistani government in Afghanistan. Asia expert Selig Harrison has noted that in an interview with him in 1988, Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq demanded "a regime to our liking" in Kabul. Last year a Pakistani general told the director of national intelligence that Pakistan had to support the Taliban in Afghanistan, "otherwise India will reign." Having created the Afghan Taliban, Pakistan has still not taken any steps to dismantle it. Even now, while attacking the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, it has not disturbed the leadership of the Afghan Taliban in Baluchistan.The Obama administration has also seemed to endorse the idea that if only the dispute over Kashmir were resolved, Pakistan would suddenly attack all the terror groups it has supported over the years. Now, it's fair to say that India is far too prickly about Kashmir, but the only path to any resolution there will lie in building trust between Pakistan and India. That's unlikely to happen while Pakistan refuses to go after the terror group that also planned the Mumbai attacks, Lashkar-e-Taiba.Generals like McChrystal—no matter how smart or tough—should not make policy, because they confuse the imperatives of the battlefield with a broader view. Obama must keep in mind that South Asia is a tar pit filled with failed and dysfunctional states, save for one long-established democracy of 1.2 billion people that is the second-fastest-growing major economy in the world, a check on China's rising ambitions, and a natural ally of the United States. The prize is the relationship with India. The booby prize is governing Afghanistan.Fareed Zakaria is editor of NEWSWEEK International and author of The Post-American World and The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183067.aspxSat, 14 Nov 2009 17:08:22 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1183067Anonymous452http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183067.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1183067Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ernest Gruening: war veteran, former editor of The Nation magazine, and Franklin Roosevelt's nominee for governorship of the then-territory of Alaska in 1939. Having held that post for 14 years, he was elected to the United States Senate for the transition period of Alaskan statehood and went on to hold the seat for a decade. He is best-known to posterity as having cast one of only two Senate votes against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and also for introducing a resolution to establish a nationwide 911 emergency number.This brief historical reflection takes care of the lazy charge, made by Matthew Continetti in his new book, The Persecution of Sarah Palin, that liberal dislike of his heroine is no more than "a distaste for those who hail from outside America's coastal metropolises; a revulsion toward people who do not aspire to adopt the norms, values, politics, and attitudes of the Eastern cultural elite." Gruening's career also illustrates the major difference between a solid résumé and a perilously emaciated one.Sarah Palin herself can apparently never tire of contrasting her folksy provincialism with the pointy-headed intellectuals, and with those in the despised city of "Washington," where her supporters want—it would seem against her own better instincts—to move her. To hear the woman talk, you would imagine that populism was a magic formula that had never been tried before (though Continetti and his colleagues at the conservative Weekly Standard eagerly compare Palin to the raucous demagogue and onetime Klan-fan William Jennings Bryan: remember—they said it, not me).But the problem with populism is not just that it stirs prejudice against the "big cities" where most Americans actually live, or against the academies where many of them would like to send their children. No, the difficulty with populism is that it exploits the very "people" whose grievances it claims to give vent.Look at the charges that surfaced against Palin during the past election, and then look at how they played out. It was alleged that she was a member or supporter of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP); that she had been an endorser of Pat Buchanan's "Reform" Party candidacy in 2000; that she was a skeptic about man-made global warming; that she thought God was on our side in Iraq; that she favored the teaching of creationism in schools; that she attended a wacko church where exorcism of witches was enthusiastically celebrated. Later fact-checking modified a number of these allegations—Continetti is on better ground here—and we can now say that Palin did no more than attend a couple of conventions of the AIP, of which her husband was a member, and send it one friendly video message while she was governor of the state in question. It further turns out that she attended that Buchanan rally, wearing a pro-Buchanan button, only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. As for Iraq, all she meant was that she hoped God would be on our side, or we on his. On global warming she now splits the difference: it could be cyclical or it could be man-made. As for the theory of evolution, the most she really asks is that both sides of the discussion be taught. (On the witch-exorcism stuff, not even her stoutest apologists have been able to help her out: it's all on YouTube, as is the quasi-coherent speech with which she bid farewell to her governorship without a word of warning to her voters or backers. I would urge you to scan both links and see if they don't make you feel suddenly much more elitist.)So there it is: anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be "deniable") to the paranoid fringe elements who darkly suspect that our president is a Kenyan communist. If you object to Kenyans interfering in the internal affairs of these United States, you really ought to raise an eyebrow at a candidate for the governorship of Alaska who accepts anointment from "Bishop" Thomas Muthee, a weird person who claims that witch removal in his Kenyan parish led to a reduction in crime, booze, and traffic violations.The Palin problem, then, might be that she cynically incites a crowd that she has no real intention of pleasing. If she were ever to get herself to the nation's capital, the teabaggers would be just as much on the outside as they are now, and would simply have been the instruments that helped get her elected. In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them. It's also much more dangerous, because it meanwhile involves giving a sort of respectability to ideas that were discredited when William Jennings Bryan was last on the stump. The Weekly Standard (itself not exactly a prairie-based publication) might want to think twice before flirting with popular delusions and resentments that are as impossible to satisfy as the demand for a silver standard or a ban on the teaching of Darwin, and are for that very reason hard to tamp down. Many of Palin's admirers seem to expect that, on receipt of the Republican Party nomination, she would immediately embark on a crusade against Wall Street and the banks. This notion is stupid to much the same degree that it is irresponsible.Then there's the question of character and personality. Decades ago, Walter Dean Burnham pointed out that right-wing populists tended to fail because they projected anger and therefore also attracted it. (He was one of the few on the left to predict that the genial Ronald Reagan would win for this very reason.) Let's admit that Sarah Palin is more attractive—some might even want to say more appealing—than much of her enraged core constituency. But then all we are considering is a point of packaging and marketing, where charm is supposed to make up for what education and experience have failed thus far to supply. We are further obliged to consider the question: exactly how charming is the Joan of Arc of the New Right, who also hears voices speaking to her of "spiritual warfare"?I admit that I have winced at some of the lurid speculations about Governor Palin's family life, and thought them unkind and tasteless even as I lapped them up. She now claims that Levi Johnston is a fabricator when he describes a wildly dysfunctional Palin household. So then: what if she's right about him? It wasn't the liberal elite media who dug up this scapegrace and nudity artist. It was the Republican nominee for the vice presidency who hauled the lad before the cameras and forced us to look at him: a fit husband for her beloved daughter and an example to errant youth in general. Once again, one is compelled to ask which would be worse: a Sarah Palin who really meant what she merely seemed to say, or a Sarah Palin who would say anything at all for a cheap burst of applause?This is not a small matter for the Republican Party. (And again: it was senior Republican operatives, and not jeering liberals, who told my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum about the hectic atmosphere, of hysteria and collapsing scenery, that accompanied their lame attempt to present Sarah Palin as plausible during the last campaign.) The United States has to stand or fall by being the preeminent nation of science, modernity, technology, and higher education. Some of these needful phenomena, for historical reasons, will just happen to concentrate in big cities and in secular institutions and even—yes—on the dreaded East Coast. Modernity can be wrenching, as indeed can capitalism, and there will always be "out" groups who feel themselves disrespected or left behind. The task and duty of a serious politician, as Edmund Burke emphasized so well, is to reason with such people and not to act as their megaphone or ventriloquist. Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.Hitchens is a Newsweek Contributor and a Columnist for Vanity Fair.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189318.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 18:47:48 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189318Anonymous3http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189318.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189318Evin Prison, June 21, 2009 (around 10 a.m.)The interrogator sat me in a wooden chair. It had a writing arm, like the chair I'd had in primary school. He ordered me to look down, even though I was already blindfolded: "Never look up, Mr. Bahari. While you are here—and we don't know how long you're going to be here—never look up." All I could see from under the blindfold was the interrogator's black leather slippers. They worried me. He had settled in for a long session. (Article continued below…) spacer51750838001CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ Profiles Maziar’s Ordeal Nov. 20truetrue638397nobemlPlayerArticleMainArt1/6/2009 3:02:28 PM2009101630228PMTuesdayJanJanuary151/6/2009 8:02:28 PM1/6/2009 8:02:28 PM2009101680228PMTuesdayJanJanuary201/6/2009 8:02:28 PM6336686894800000006336685094800000001/6/2009 3:02:28 PM2009101630228PMTuesdayJanJanuary151/6/2009 8:02:28 PM1/6/2009 8:02:28 PM2009101680228PMTuesdayJanJanuary201/6/2009 8:02:28 PM633668689480000000633668509480000000"Mr. Bahari, you're an agent of foreign intelligence organizations," he began. I had gotten a look at him when he and his men had dragged me out of bed and arrested me a few hours earlier. He was heavyset—I later learned that the guards called him "the big guy"—taller and wider than me, with a massive head. His skin was dark, like someone from southern Iran. He wore thick glasses. But I would know him now only by his voice, his breath, and the rosewater perfume used by men who piously do their ablutions several times a day before prayers, but rarely shower.I could see Mr. Rosewater's slippers right in front of my foot. He was towering over me."Could you let me know which ones?" I mumbled."Speak louder!" he shouted. He bent toward me, his face an inch away from mine. I could feel his breath on my skin. "What did you say?""I was wondering if you could be kind enough to let me know which organizations," I repeated."CIA, MI6, Mossad, and NEWSWEEK." He listed the names one by one, in a low but assured voice.I was struck by Mr. Rosewater's confidence. I did not know then exactly which branch of the fractured Iranian government he worked for. When I was arrested, hundreds of thousands of protesters had been filling the streets of Tehran for a week, outraged over the disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There had been violence. The club-wielding militias known as Basij had inflicted much of it on the marchers, women as well as men. But some of the protesters had fought back too. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, had decreed that the protests stop, but nobody at that point was sure they would. At least, nobody outside Evin Prison was sure. Mr. Rosewater was another matter.I would later discover that I had been picked up by the intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. Before the June election, this unit of the Guards was little known; whenever journalists and intellectuals ran afoul of the authorities they were usually questioned by the official Ministry of Intelligence. But the IRGC, which reports directly to Khamenei, had been growing dramatically more powerful. Many suspect that the Guards rigged the election. Certainly they led the crackdown that followed.spacerTom StoddartGetty Images for NewsweekfalseyesStandardImage98/maziar-bahari-FE01-wide.jpgfalseTom StoddartGetty Images for Newsweektrue980truefalsefalsefalsetruefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalse11/20/2009 6:45:34 PM200911112064534PMFridayNovNovember1811/20/2009 11:45:34 PM11/20/2009 11:45:34 PM2009111120114534PMFridayNovNovember2311/20/2009 11:45:34 PM63394357534000000063394339534000000011/20/2009 6:45:34 PM200911112064534PMFridayNovNovember1811/20/2009 11:45:34 PM11/20/2009 11:45:34 PM2009111120114534PMFridayNovNovember2311/20/2009 11:45:34 PM633943575340000000633943395340000000IRGC intel is now responsible for Iran's internal security, which means that its rampaging paranoias have suffused the regime. There remain players within the system who can make rational decisions about Iran's international interests; if there weren't, I would still be in jail. But the Guards are exacerbating the Islamic Republic's worst instincts, its insecurity and deep suspiciousness. As world powers try to engage Tehran to mitigate the threat of its nuclear program, it's critical that they understand this mindset and the role the IRGC now plays within the Iranian system. I learned all too much about both while in the Guards' hands.Everything was an education inside Evin—from the questions Mr. Rosewater asked, to what answers made him beat me, to physical details. Now, for instance, I studied his slippers and light-gray socks. In Iran, low-ranking functionaries often wear shabby plastic sandals, and they have holes in their socks. That first day I was hoping Mr. Rosewater was only a junior agent, a flunky trying to make himself sound important. I was hoping to find a hole in his socks. But there wasn't one. His slippers looked as if they had been polished.Mr. Rosewater was to be my nemesis for 118 days, 12 hours, and 54 minutes. He never told me his name. I saw his face only twice. The first time was when he led the team that arrested me. "This prison can be the end of the line for you if you don't cooperate" were his welcoming words. The second and last time was after I was freed—and warned by him never to speak of what had happened to me in jail. If I disobeyed, he said, I would be hunted down. "We can put people in a bag no matter where in the world they are," he said menacingly. "No one can escape from us."I did not believe him. I do not believe him. But the doubt lingers, which is what he wanted—what the regime he serves wants from all of us, in fact. They are masters of uncertainty, instilling it among their enemies, their subjects, their friends, perhaps even themselves.If he could, Mr. Rosewater would threaten me for the rest of my life. But 118 days was enough. I do not want to be his captive any longer.Vali Asr Avenue, June 21, 2009 (a few minutes before 8 a.m.)Four of them came for me. They told my mother they had a letter for me, then showed her something resembling a warrant and followed her inside. She woke me gently. "Dear, there are four gentlemen here from...the prosecutor's office? I don't know. They say they want to take you away." Her tone was even. My father had been jailed repeatedly in the 1950s for fighting against the shah's regime. She knew what to say.The men adhered to a strange code of etiquette. They took off their shoes when they entered the apartment, and later, while searching my room, they declined my mother's offer of tea. They told me later that they did not like to impose on the families of those they arrested. One even apologized to my mother for using a Kleenex to wipe away his sweat while going through my personal belongings. The possibility that they might be arresting an innocent man, however, did not seem to trouble them. Early in the revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a decree: "Keeping the [Islamic] system alive is the most important task of a Muslim." In their minds they were simply carrying out their religious duty.Three of the men had bland looks, like accountants. Mr. Rosewater was clearly the boss. He wore a brown suit and a white shirt. When he entered my room he sized me up like prey. I could see a revolver under his jacket, but the way he stared at me made it clear he preferred to use his gaze as his weapon, to pin me down with it. I was going to be watched like that until I broke. "Don't worry," he told my mother with a smile as they led me away. "He's going to be our guest."There were five cars waiting outside, all unmarked. No one wore uniforms or showed badges. As we drove off I asked one of my captors if we were heading to Evin Prison. "Maybe we are. Maybe we are not," he said. Then I was ordered to take off my glasses and don my blindfold. I took a last look around. We were on Kurdistan Highway driving north. We were definitely going to Evin.Built in the late 1960s, during the reign of the shah, as a high-security jail for political prisoners, Evin Prison soon became synonymous with pulled fingernails and broken bones. Its early residents were mostly communists and Islamists. After the 1979 revolution, the Islamists put their captors as well as many of their former leftist cellmates behind bars. They used some of the same techniques as their predecessors, but more efficiently. Many of those who had withstood the shah's torturers broke within days under the new management."Welcome to Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, or whatever it is you Americans build," a guard said to me after we arrived. He spoke with an Azerbaijani accent, and sounded older. "I'm not American, my brother," I said with a smile. "You work for them, so you're one of them," he said. "But don't worry. It's not a bad place here." The old man handed me off to a guard in another building. I was taken to my cell.I once interviewed a former Islamic guerrilla who had become a government minister. The problem with the shah's secret police, he said, was that they thought they could break a prisoner's will through physical pressure, but often that just hardened the victim's resolve. "What our brothers after the revolution have masterminded is how to break a man's soul without using much violence against his body." As I stepped into my cell I wondered how violent was "without much violence."I took off the blindfold.The Quran says that one of the worst punishments Allah inflicts upon sinners is to make their graves smaller. My 20-square-foot cell was like a tomb. The walls were made of faux marble. They were off-white, and the texture of the stone reminded me of an old man's pale, transparent skin. You could see grayish-blue veins. The walls were clean, even spotless, except for some defiant aphorisms and Persian poetry in small, crabbed handwriting. Three sentences were written larger than others: "My God, have mercy on me," "My God, I repent," and "Please help me, God."London, November 2009My wife, Paola, is breast-feeding our 2-week-old daughter, Marianna, on the couch. The little girl is enjoying every drop of milk. No Madonna and child were ever more beautiful. We are listening to one of the songs that kept playing in my head in Evin, that helped me tune out what was happening and find some peace inside myself—"Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," by Leonard Cohen:I loved you in the morning,Our kisses deep and warm,Your hair upon the pillowLike a sleepy golden storm.Those lines became Paola for me, part of a whole musical refuge of lyrics and melodies. Of such stuff is survival made. Thank you, Mr. Cohen.Evin Prison, June 22, 2009 (around 4 a.m.)A guard woke me and told me that after morning prayers I would meet again with my "specialist," which is what the prison guards were told to call the interrogators. This would be my third session in 24 hours.When Mr. Rosewater came into the interrogation room I could hear him yawning. He asked if I wanted half of the peeled-and-salted cucumber he was eating. When I declined, he was insulted. "What? Do you think that interrogators don't wash their hands?" I said OK, and I ate.Mr. Rosewater wanted me to tell him about a dinner I'd attended with eight other journalists and photographers at a friend's house in Tehran in April, several weeks before the election. "You are part of a very American network, Mr. Bahari," he said, as if summing up his case in a courtroom. "Let me correct myself: you are in charge of a secret American network, a group that includes those who came to that dinner party.""It was just a dinner," I murmured."Yes. A very American dinner. It could have happened in…New Jersey, or someplace like that." He paused. "Your own New Jersey in Tehran."The strangeness of the accusation was unsettling. New Jersey?"You've been to New Jersey, haven't you, Mr. Bahari?" The thought seemed to infuriate him, and I was struck by the feeling that for some reason he might have wanted, secretly, to go to New Jersey himself. The worst thing that can happen in any encounter with Islamic Republic officials is for them to think that you're looking down on them."It's not a particularly nice place," I said, trying to sound conversational."I don't care. But it is as godless as what you wanted to create in this country.""I'm sorry. I don't understand.""You were planning to eradicate the pure religion of Muhammad in this country and replace it with 'American' Islam. A New Jersey Islam." He was building his case, and my responses were irrelevant. "Tell me," he said, "did any of the women at the dinner party have their veils on?""No.""Then don't tell me that you didn't have a secret American network. A New Jersey network."I was born in Tehran and lived there the first 19 years of my life, before going to Canada and Britain for my studies and to begin my career as a journalist and documentary filmmaker. I returned in 1998, making movies and reporting for NEWSWEEK. But until my imprisonment I had never fully appreciated the corrosive suspicion that is rotting the Islamic Republic from within. The Guards see real enemies all around them—reformists within the country, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops outside. Even worse are the shadows—supposed agents of Britain, the United States, and Israel—upon whom they impose their own fearful logic and their reinvented history. Only Muslims, only they, are victims.As it happens, I may be the only Iranian or even Muslim filmmaker who has ever made a film about the Holocaust (The Voyage of the Saint Louis, in 1994). Mr. Rosewater was offended by the very idea and worked hard to connect me to what he called Jewish and Zionist "elements." In his lexicon, Jewish persons were rare. There were only "elements."I don't know if Mr. Rosewater had ever seen a Jewish person in his life. I think not. He had never been to New Jersey either. But he believed that he knew everything there was to know about such people and such places, and his faith in his facts was unshakable.Evin Prison, June 26, 2009 (after evening prayers)Mr. Rosewater was not alone. I could hear someone else in the room, another interrogator. He was complaining about my written answers to questions about different individuals. When he came closer I saw he had shiny, polished black shoes on. His trousers were neatly ironed and creased. "Mr. Bahari, your answers are very general. We hope that you can give us more detailed answers," he said. He sounded more mild-mannered than my normal tormentor. He was the good cop today, the voice of reason."I just write what I know, sir. And if I give you more details, that means I'm lying.""Well," said Mr. Rosewater, who had been fairly quiet up to this point, "we have interesting video footage of you. That may persuade you to be more cooperative." I could not imagine what that might be. Something personal? Something that might compromise my friends? But…I reminded myself I had done nothing wrong.I saw the flicker of a laptop monitor under my blindfold. Then I heard someone speaking. It was a recording of another prisoner's confession. "It's not that one," said the second interrogator. "It's the one marked 'Spy in coffee shop.' " Mr. Rosewater fumbled with the computer. The other man stepped in to change the DVD. And then I heard the voice of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.Only a few weeks earlier, hundreds of foreign reporters had been allowed into the country in the run-up to the election. Among them was Jason Jones, a "correspondent" for Stewart's satirical news program. Jason interviewed me in a Tehran coffee shop, pretending to be a thick-skulled American. He dressed like some character out of a B movie about mercenaries in the Middle East—with a checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh around his neck and dark sunglasses. The "interview" was very short. Jason asked me why Iran was evil. I answered that Iran was not evil. I added that, as a matter of fact, Iran and America shared many enemies and interests in common. But the interrogators weren't interested in what I was saying. They were fixated on Jason."Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?" asked the new man."He is pretending to be a spy. It's part of a comedy show," I answered."Tell the truth!" Mr. Rosewater shouted. "What is so funny about sitting in a coffee shop with a kaffiyeh and sunglasses?""It's just a joke. Nothing serious. It's stupid." I was getting worried. "I hope you are not suggesting that he is a real spy.""Can you tell us why an American journalist pretending to be a spy has chosen you to interview?" asked the man with the creases. "We know from your contacts and background that you told them who to interview for their program." The other Iranians interviewed in Jason's report—a former vice president and a former foreign minister—had been ar-rested a week before me as part of the IRGC's sweeping crackdown. "It's just comedy," I said, feeling weak."Do you think it's also funny that you say Iran and America have a lot in common?" Mr. Rosewater asked, declaring that he was losing patience with me. He took my left ear in his hand and started to squeeze it as if he were wringing out a lemon. Then he whispered into it. "This kind of behavior will not help you. Many people have rotted in this prison. You can be one of them."London, November 2009The morning of my "confession," I woke up humming "The Partisan," a Leonard Cohen tune about World War II re-sistance fighters:When they poured across the borderI was cautioned to surrender,This I could not do;I took my gun and vanished.The thought of resisting had crossed my mind, too. But why? I was a journalist, not a freedom fighter. Political prisoners in Iran were forced to make false confessions all the time. I'd always known they had been coerced, and had sympathized with the victims. Surely others would feel similarly about me. But even now, months later, the experience gnaws at me. My father spent four years in prison under the shah without asking for mercy. What would he think of his son apologizing to the Supreme Leader after eight days?Evin Prison, June 29, 2009 (after midnight)I was deep asleep when a guard opened the door to my cell. "Get up! Specialist time!" Mr. Rosewater did not say hello as usual. He dragged me away from the prison guard. "The fun is over!" he said. He pushed me several times so hard that I almost fell on the ground. He then grabbed my arm and started to drag me along rapidly. He was breathing heavily and kept on repeating, "Islamic kindness is over. You little spy, we will show you what we can do with you. You're going to see what we are capable of." He shoved me into a room. There seemed to be several people in it, whispering among themselves. The smell of sweat and rosewater was strong.All of a sudden the room erupted in a cacophony of greetings. Everyone wanted to say hello to someone they called "Haj Agha." The nickname literally means someone who has been to Mecca for pilgrimage, but among Iranian officials it signifies seniority. Someone took my hand and put it in Haj Agha's hand."Salaam, Mr. Bahari," he said. "Do you know why you are here?" His voice sounded familiar, like that of a well-known regime propagandist who has a show on Iranian TV. He definitely did not want to be recognized, and told me to keep my eyes completely covered.He turned aside and asked someone, "Is the car here yet?" Then he addressed me again. "Mr. Bahari, you're suspected of espionage. You have been in contact with a number of known spies." He named a few of my friends, mostly Iranian artists and intellectuals in exile. A car was coming to take me to a counterespionage unit, he said. There I would be interrogated more than 15 hours a day and subjected to "every tactic" until I talked. The investigation would take "between four and six years." I could be sentenced to death.Haj Agha made sure to say the word "death" as if he were talking about a cup of tea. In fact, he immediately said, "Would you like a cup of tea?""Thank you," I said. I could barely get out the words. I was lost in thoughts about my mother, about Paola, about our unborn child. How could I have put them in this situation? I was a bad son, I thought, a bad husband, a bad father."Unless," said Haj Agha, pausing one more time. "Unless you would be interested in a deal, Mr. Bahari."Soon after my arrest, in addition to accusing me of working for various spy agencies, Mr. Rosewater had insisted that I'd "masterminded the coverage of the election by the agents of the Western media in Iran." This played to a familiar fear. Ayatollah Khamenei liked to warn Iranians about a "cultural NATO" as threatening as the military one—a network of journalists, activists, scholars, and lawyers who supposedly sought to undermine the Islamic Republic from within. Anyone on the streets of Tehran in June would have known just how spontaneous—even leaderless—the post-election protests had been. But Khamenei and the Guards clearly believed, or at least wanted Iranians to believe, that they had been orchestrated by foreigners. They called the plot a "velvet revolution" or a "soft overthrow." "You are worse than any saboteur or killer," Mr. Rosewater had raged on that first day. "Those criminals destroy an object or a person. You destroy minds and provoke people against the Leader."In Persian there is a very poetic word, jafaa, that refers to all the wrongs you do to those who love you. According to Mr. Rosewater, I was guilty of jafaa against Khamenei. Now I was to repent.The next morning I was brought to Haj Agha's office. Cameras had been set up on tripods. Mr. Rosewater sat behind a curtain and fed questions to reporters from three state-run media outlets. "Give your answers as clearly and articulately as you can—of course, in your own words," Haj Agha instructed me. I was to explain how a velvet revolution was staged—by foreigners and corrupt elites, using the Western media—and how only the wisdom and munificence of the Supreme Leader had thwarted this latest attempt.I tried to keep my answers as vague as possible, with what I hoped would come across as ironic detachment. (A source in the old Intelligence Ministry told me later that my soliloquy was "a case study in saying nothing.") Inside I seethed as one of the "reporters" joked with Mr. Rose-water and tried to help him devise tougher questions for me.Evin Prison, July 4, 2009 (a few hours after noon prayers)After the "confession," Haj Agha had promised, I would be freed soon. But the next time I saw the burly Mr. Rosewater, he closed the door to the interrogation room and for the first time started to beat me.Some police manuals, even in the West, say that hitting a prisoner with a closed fist constitutes assault, but an open-handed slap does not. Perhaps Mr. Rosewater had read such a guide. His meaty palms slapped me hard across the back of my neck and shoulders. "I thought we had an understanding, sir!" I protested as I tried to protect my body."Move your hands, you little spy!" he screamed. "Understanding? What stupid understandings could we have with a spy like you?"The beatings would continue from that moment until late September. Mr. Rosewater didn't beat me while asking me questions. He beat me before or after, simply to show he was in control. He pretended not to enjoy it. At one point he told me he beat me mainly because he was angry. "What you have done, Mazi, makes my blood boil. I don't want to raise my hand against you, but what do you suggest I do with someone who has insulted the Leader?" He claimed his own father had been a political prisoner before the 1979 revolution, and the shah's torturers had pulled out his toenails so brutally that he still couldn't walk properly. I should feel lucky, Mr. Rosewater implied.I did not. Once or twice a year I am felled by devastating migraines. Mr. Rosewater knew that, from the medication I'd brought with me to Evin, and he took particular pleasure in pounding the back of my head.What I hated most, though, was when he called me "Mazi." Only my close friends and family call me Mazi. The nickname is familiar, affectionate. In his voice it sounded obscene. "I'm really sorry, Mazi, that your days are numbered," Mr. Rosewater would tell me. The next time I saw him, he promised, I'd be standing on a chair with a noose around my neck. He would personally kick the chair out from under me. I would not know the date of my execution in advance. But, he assured me, it would take place after morning prayers, around 4 a.m.Weirdly, after long interrogation sessions Mr. Rosewater would sometimes start to open up. He would appear to grow weary of screaming and hitting me, kicking me, whipping me with his belt, and he would start rambling like a drunk confessing to the bartender after last call. "Many of my friends have had to divorce their wives," he told me one night. "We have to work late shifts. We have to travel without much notice, and the job puts a lot of psychological pressure on us. Not many women accept that. I adore my wife. I kiss her hands and feet for understanding me and putting up with my job."One night about a week before the holy month of Ramadan began, his cell phone rang. It was Mrs. Rosewater. "Hello, dear," he said. "How are you?" He had his hand on my neck. "How is the honeycomb?" She must have been preparing food for the holidays. He moved his hand toward my ear and started to squeeze it. "I know, it's lovely, isn't it? It's much better than the one we had last year...I'm glad your mother liked it, too. How is she, by the way??.?.?.?Well, darling, he is a doctor; he knows what he is talking about…Wait a second." He hit the back of my skull as hard as he could and yelled, "Didn't I tell you to write down the damned answers?" He pushed my head down toward the chair's writing tablet. I started to write again. He continued talking with his wife. "I don't know how long I'll be here tonight. I may just sleep here. Don't wait for me for dinner." He came toward me again. With a crack, his belt hit the writing arm of the desk. "Write!" he roared.London, November 2009Any bruises had faded by the time I arrived in London, but Paola was shocked by how thin I was. One of the first things Mr. Rosewater had promised me was that he would send my skeleton home. He was right. I lost 25 pounds in prison.I quickly realized that to cope with the interrogations I needed to be both physically and mentally fit. I probably exercised five hours a day in my tiny cell. I did 500 sit-ups and 60 push-ups. I did yoga. I lay on my back, kicked my legs up in the air, and bicycled.For a while I was allowed to walk in the prison courtyard for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. They put six or seven of us next to each other, and we strolled back and forth with our blindfolds on. The guards called it hava khori—literally, getting fresh air. That was the only time I could see the sky, by raising my head and squinting from under my blindfold. At first I didn't know how one could walk blindfolded. But I quickly memorized the number of paces between the walls of the courtyard. I even started to jog.My true refuge, though, was music. Once, after a particularly brutal beating, I swallowed three migraine pills and passed out. Two women came to me in a dream. They had kind faces; in fact, they reminded me of my sister Maryam, who had died of leukemia in February."Who are you?" I asked."Sisters of mercy," they answered.They touched my forehead gently to soothe the pain. In the dream I smiled and heard Leonard Cohen singing his song of the same name:Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.I woke humming those words, free of pain. From that moment Leonard Cohen became the guardian of my universe. He was the secret that Mr. Rosewater could never discover.Revolutionary Courthouse, Aug. 1, 2009 (before noon)I was blindfolded as we drove. Mr. Rosewater hadn't told me where we were going, but he had told me my role. "Mazi, you can be a great service to yourself and the country today," he'd said at one of the predawn interrogation sessions he had begun to conduct ever since threatening me with the noose. He slapped the back of my head. "You want to be free, don't you?""Yes," I said quietly."So, all you have to do is repeat what Haj Agha taught you about velvet revolutions, in a press conference." He smacked my legs until they stung. "But this time we need names. We need to know who are the agents of the velvet revolution. We need names, Mazi. No names means the noose. Understood?"Waiting at the courthouse that morning, I had no idea that in another room more than 100 bedraggled prisoners—many of them leading reformist figures and former government ministers—were sitting in the dock as a prosecutor read out a long, outlandish account of their roles in the supposed velvet revolution. Two of them—former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi and former deputy interior minister Mohammad Atrianfar—were later brought out to "confess" their roles to state-media reporters.My turn came after lunch. We ate chicken kebabs and drank dough, a savory yogurt drink similar to lassi. Mr. Rosewater gave me his drink, saying he had to watch out for his blood pressure. "Names, Mazi, names," he reminded me.Again I didn't provide any. Of course I knew several reformist politicians—any veteran Iranian journalist would have. Many of them, in fact, had also been leading revolutionaries; over time they had decided that the system they'd helped put into place could survive only if it was modernized. That was heresy to the new generation of Guard commanders. These hardliners emerged after the Iran-Iraq War convinced that Iran had no friends abroad, only enemies—and was saddled with a corrupt, impious leadership. In their view the old guard needed to be purged from the system as thoroughly as the shah's cronies had been.It was clear that Mr. Rosewater wanted me to implicate these reformists, to link them to my media bosses in the West. Next to me on a dais sat another prisoner: Kian Tajbaksh, an Iranian-American scholar who worked for the Open Society Institute, run by George Soros, a particular bogeyman of the Guards. The fact that the government had licensed both of us to do our jobs only confirmed the Guards' suspicions about the Iranian establishment. "Those who gave you permission are even guiltier than you are," Mr. Rosewater said to me once.When we finished, I knew what awaited me back at Evin. In the interrogation room Mr. Rosewater beat me without saying a word. He didn't have to explain.Evin Prison, August 2009Day after day, hour after endless hour, the interrogations went on, growing surreal in their outlines of nefarious conspiracy, then circling back to more concrete matters, like the names and professions and opinions and connections of anyone I knew or might know. Early on, Mr. Rosewater had demanded my e-mail and Facebook passwords, so he had a very long list of contacts to grill me about, one by one. What did I know about this journalist's links to foreign organizations or governments? What was that one's take on events in Iran? And, if they were women, had I had sex with them?This last subject occupied Mr. Rosewater for several weeks. He was a young man, perhaps in his mid-30s. Sometimes, I think, he used sex as a way to humiliate me. But he also seemed genuinely curious about someone who had spent so much time in the West. Once he asked me how I knew one lady friend:"We met at a party," I said."A sex party?"I was taken aback. "I don't know what a sex party is," I said hesitantly. "I've never been to one.""Yeah, right," he said sarcastically. He was convinced that any party where women went unveiled had to be depraved. His professors, he said, had taught him about free love in the West. "You can't tell me that you can't just take any woman's hand in the Champs-Élysées and have sex with her." He drew out the syllables in "Champs-Élysées," the way he had with "New Jersey."Such nonsense was draining. But at least the questions represented human contact. Other times Mr. Rosewater would order the guards to lock me in my cell for days. By the time they dragged me out, hollow-eyed, I looked forward to his questions. Twice I seriously considered suicide by breaking my glasses and slitting my wrists with the shards. I wondered how long it would take to bleed to death.Evin Prison, Sept. 17, 2009 (around 9 a.m.)"It's very strange that no one has said anything about you yet," Mr. Rosewater told me one day. "Don't you have any friends or relatives?" I thought he was bluffing but couldn't know for sure. The prisoner's worst nightmare is the thought of being forgotten. Then, one morning in September, the friendliest of the prison guards—a man with whom I exchanged obscene jokes—opened my cell door and said, "Mr. Hillary Clinton, you can go have hava khori now."I was mystified. "Why 'Hillary Clinton'?" I asked him. "She talked about you last night," he said, referring to comments the U.S. secretary of state had made to her Canadian counterpart. I was ecstatic. This meant there was international pressure to free me. I wanted to hug the guard. Instead I told him one of the funniest and most obscene jokes I knew.Early on I'd had conversations in my head with friends and colleagues, in which I made suggestions about how to go about getting me released. As time went on these seemed ever more futile. But in September, I began to see signs that the Guards were under pressure to free me. First they allowed me to call my mother, then to share an iftar dinner with her during Ramadan. Then they let me call Paola—to warn her to stop giving interviews. (Bless her, she knew that the message meant she should do more.) Mr. Rosewater began claiming he wanted to free me before our baby was born at the end of October, a key part of the publicity campaign on my behalf. Eleven days before my release, I was moved out of solitary confinement and into a cell with four leading reformists, including Atrianfar. We had TV.One disenchanted Iranian official told me recently that the Guards blocked my release for weeks; Mr. Rosewater was among the loudest calling for me to be tried swiftly and harshly. I doubt he ever cared about the multilayered pressure campaign that NEWSWEEK and others had put together on my behalf—the editorials and petitions, the diplomatic démarches, the quiet personal efforts of world leaders. But there were Iranian officials who also disagreed with my detention. Soon after the election they might have been too hesitant or too powerless to do much. But by September, with Iran on the verge of nuclear talks, they could make the case that I had become a distraction. "You were more of a liability than an asset in jail," the disenchanted official told me.I still don't know what finally broke the deadlock. A few years from now, after the Guards have consolidated their position, I'm not sure anything would.London, November 2009I am nervous but exhilarated as I type out the words on my laptop:Don't contact me anymore. I have never spied for anyone. I am not going to start by spying for you.I send the e-mail to the address Mr. Rosewater gave me. In the days leading up to my release from Evin he had forced me to sign documents saying I would "cooperate with the brothers in the Revolutionary Guards" once outside the country. He'd given me a list of names to report on, including most of my Iranian friends in London and other Western cities. He'd given me the e-mail address to use.The night before I left the country, he asked to meet me at a hotel in downtown Tehran. His glare was just as menacing as on the day he arrested me. When the waiter told him our tea would be delayed, that the water needed time to boil, Mr. Rosewater shot him a spine-chilling look. The tea was ready within minutes.We made awkward small talk. He had brought a colleague with him, an older man whose voice I had heard occasionally during interrogations. "We hope to have constructive cooperation with you in the future," the man said soothingly. I smiled and nodded politely. Mr. Rosewater was more blunt as he reminded me that the Guards could find me anywhere in the world. "Remember the bag, Mr. Bahari. Remember the bag" were his last words.I'm remembering something else instead. In my dream, when the two sisters of mercy came to my aid, it was comforting to think that one of them was Maryam, my own beloved sister. At the time I wondered who the other could be. Now, holding my newborn daughter in my arms, I know. Her name is Marianna Maryam Bahari.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1182239.aspxThu, 12 Nov 2009 23:30:00 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1182239Anonymous32http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1182239.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1182239The question is asked in every language, in every era: "So, dear, when will you give me grandchildren?" Darwin would approve. (Click here to follow Sharon Begley)At least he would if the "grandma hypothesis" is right. According to this idea, the reason women—uniquely among primates—outlive their child-bearing years is that a female who survives past menopause can contribute to the care of her children's children, improving their chances of reaching adulthood. Natural selection favors behavior that increases an individual's genetic contribution to future generations; surviving long enough to help grandkids is thus an evolutionary adaptation.Too bad data don't support this intriguing notion. In some studies, a grandmother living nearby was indeed associated with better survival of grandchildren, as the hypothesis predicts. But other studies found no such benefit. Leslie Knapp, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, and her graduate student Molly Fox wondered if the inconsistency reflected a basic fact of genetics—namely, that because of how the X chromosome is passed down from parents to children, grandmothers are more closely related to some grandkids than to others.Here's why. A paternal grandmother, like all women, has two X chromosomes. She passes one to her son (who gets his Y chromosome from Dad, which is why he's a he). He then passes grandma's X—the one and only X he has—to his daughter. But Dad passes his Y chromosome to his son, who therefore does not carry his paternal grandma's X. A maternal grandmother, too, passes one of her X's to her daughter; there is a 50–50 chance that that X will be transmitted to the daughter's child, of either sex. A maternal grandmother, therefore, has only a 50–50 chance that her X will be transmitted to a grandchild. A little math shows that maternal grandmothers are related to granddaughters and grandsons equally, for an "X-relatedness" of 25 percent. But paternal grandmothers are twice as close to granddaughters (50 percent) and not at all to grandsons (zero percent), explains Knapp. It may seem arbitrary to focus on X, one of 23 chromosomes, but it has 8 percent (1,529) of all our genes, including some for fertility and intelligence, which affect reproductive success.Many of those earlier, inconsistent tests of the grandma hypothesis lumped together both kinds of grandmas (maternal and paternal) and both sexes of grandkids. Given the different degrees of X-relatedness, says Knapp, "we decided to look at the data from a genetic perspective. Since it is adaptive to favor those with whom we share the most genes, evolution should favor women who invest in grandchildren in a way that mirrors X-relatedness."She, Fox, and colleagues analyzed existing data on the survival of 43,000 children in seven traditional societies, from rural farming villages in Japan and Malawi to towns in Germany and Canada, from the 1600s to today. "The most striking effect was of the paternal grandmother," says Fox. In six of the seven societies, having a paternal grandmother nearby improved the survival of granddaughters (50 percent X-relatedness) by up to 4.5-fold, but for some unknown reason decreased the survival of grandsons (zero percent) by 8 to 29 percent. And a boy had a greater chance of survival if he lived with his maternal grandmother (25 percent X-relatedness) than with his paternal grandmother (zero percent). In four of the seven societies, a girl had a better chance of survival if she lived with her paternal grandmother (50 percent) than her maternal grandmother (25 percent).In other words, the effect of a grandmother perfectly tracked the DNA. "The higher the X-relatedness," the scientists write in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, "the more beneficial effect the grandmother has on that child's" survival. That the correlation held across four continents and four centuries suggests a biological, not cultural, explanation.But what? There is no evidence grandmothers consciously treat grandsons and granddaughters differently, or a son's children different from a daughter's. The best guess is that grandchildren transmit some signal of genetic relatedness, such as resemblance or a pheromone, which Grandma unconsciously uses to apportion how much she invests in different grandkids. Grandmothers will surely recoil at the very idea, which is why the reader is advised not to leave this column lying around during a multigenerational Thanksgiving.Sharon Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor and author of The Plastic Mind: New science reveals our extraordinary potential to transform ourselvesand Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189210.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 14:45:36 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189210Anonymous5http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189210.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189210Wearing a white kurta and a blue turban, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 77, appeared relaxed on the eve of his state visit to Washington, which takes place this week. Many Indians worry that the Obama White House, unlike the previous two American administrations, may tilt toward China instead of India. Singh sat down in his Delhi residence last week to discuss with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth how he believes India and the United States can work together to further their strategic partnership and why he believes it is critical that the U.S. not leave Afghanistan. Excerpts:Weymouth:What ideas do you have on how India and the U.S. might cooperate in the future?Singh: We have a watershed and landmark agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation. We would like to operationalize it and ensure that the objectives for the nuclear deal are realized in full. My sincere hope is that we can persuade the U.S. administration to be more liberal when it comes to transferring [nuclear] technologies to us. The [current] restrictions make no sense. India has an impeccable record of not participating in any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I also think that India and the United States could be partners in refocusing our attention on an equitable, balanced global order.What does that mean?We would like to strengthen energy cooperation with the United States [in] clean coal technology and in renewable energy resources. Similarly, there is concern for food security. In the first green revolution, technology which was a byproduct of the U.S. public sector played a major role in transforming Indian agriculture. We need another new green revolution to carry forward that process.How do you see Afghanistan? Are you concerned that the U.S. will not stay involved in this conflict, and what are the implications for India?I sincerely hope the United States and the global community will stay involved in Afghanistan. A victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan would have catastrophic consequences for the world, particularly for South Asia, for Central Asia, for the Middle East. Religious fundamentalism in the '80s was used to defeat the Soviet Union. If this same group of people that defeated the Soviet Union now defeats the other major power [America], this would embolden them in a manner which could have catastrophic consequences for the world at large.Do you believe there is a close connection between Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban?There is a close connection. They are chips off the same block.How do you feel about President Karzai?Let me say that President Karzai's regime is not perfect. There are problems of improving governance. But you cannot transform Afghanistan overnight. It is going to be a long-term affair.How do you assess the situation in Pakistan?We are concerned about the rise of terrorism in Pakistan. We have been the victims of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism for a long period of time. Now, if the Taliban and Al Qaeda type of terror, which in the past was located in the [tribal] area of Pakistan, gets transferred to the mainland of Pakistan, I think it has very serious consequences for our own security. We would not like terrorism to lead to a situation where the [Pakistani] civilian government is only a nominal government.Don't you think that's the situation now?I'm not saying that's the situation now. We would like democracy to succeed in Pakistan. But obviously now Al Qaeda and the terrorists have a grip over several parts of Pakistan.Do you think the Pakistanis are trying as hard as they can?Our feeling is that as far as Afghanistan is concerned, I'm not sure whether the U.S. and Pakistan have the same objectives. Pakistan would like Afghanistan to be under its control. And they would like the United States to get out soon.So does that leave India and the U.S. able to cooperate against the Taliban?We have supported the strong presence of the international community in Afghanistan. We have provided a substantial amount of resources for the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, about $1.2 billion. We would like to do more for the construction and development of Afghanistan and believe we can do it more effectively than any other aid donors. We are active in building infrastructure in Afghanistan.Many people in the U.S. don't understand w hy we are in Afghanistan.I hope the U.S. public understands where it all started after 9/11. If Al Qaeda did not have a home in Afghanistan, maybe 9/11 would never have taken place. God forbid if Al Qaeda gets another strong foothold in Afghanistan.And that's what you believe will happen if the U.S. leaves?I'm not an astrologer, but there's a great worry that it could happen.Might there be a civil war in Afghanistan if the U.S. withdraws?There is that danger.Regarding Pakistan, from your point of view is the most important matter to see the terror groups brought under control?Yes, the terror groups in Pakistan. As I said, we have been the victims of Pakistan-aided, -abetted, and -inspired terrorism for nearly 25 years. We would like the United States to use all its influence [to persuade] Pakistan to desist from that path. Pakistan has nothing to fear from India. I have said on many public occasions that the destinies of our two countries are interlinked. We should both be waging war against poverty, ignorance, and disease, which afflicts millions of people in our poor countries. It's a tragedy that Pakistan has come to the point of using terror as an instrument of state policy.Do you worry about Iran getting a nuclear weapon? India has a much better relationship with Iran than the U.S. does.I met yesterday with the Iranian foreign minister here. We did discuss the nuclear question. The message he left with me was that they feel encouraged by the messages they are receiving from the Obama administration. I see a glimmer of hope in what the Iranian minister told me yesterday.It depends what your aim is: is it to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or not?We have taken a consistent position on this. Iran is a signatory to the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]. It must have all the privileges that go with being a member of the NPT, [including] the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It also has all the obligations that go with membership in the NPT. Therefore, I think nuclear weapons are not an option that Iran is entitled to under its membership of NPT.But many astute observers believe that Iran is pursuing a nuclear-weapons program.I had the pleasure of [meeting] the director-general of the IAEA a few weeks ago, and he was not so sure that Iran is definitely working towards a nuclear weapon.You entered into talks with Pakistan's former president Pervez Musharraf, when he was head of Pakistan, for two years. Are there any steps to be taken now with Pakistan?We are committed to resolve all the outstanding issues with Pakistan through purposeful, meaningful bilateral negotiations. Our only condition is that Pakistan should not allow its territory to be used for acts of terrorism against India. This is the commitment that General Musharraf had given to my predecessor when he visited Pakistan in 2004. This is the commitment that was given to me whenever I met General Musharraf; this is the commitment given to me at Sharm al-Sheikh by [Pakistan's] Prime Minister [Yousuf Raza] Gilani. If Pakistan really honors that commitment, we can go back to negotiations to resolve all outstanding issues between us.If you look at last year's attack in Mumbai, the Pakistanis apparently were not honoring the agreement.As far as the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre are concerned, they [Pakistan] have taken some steps but not enough. As far as Lashkar-e-Taiba is concerned, [it operates] under a different name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. They are the perpetrators of terror in our country, and Pakistan has the obligation to take effective actions to prevent them continuing to indulge in these undesirable acts.Do you worry about another Mumbai?Every day I receive intelligence reports saying that terrorists based in Pakistan are planning other similar acts.How do you see China—as a threat, a trading partner, or both?The peaceful rise of China creates new opportunities for the world to engage China. China has emerged as a major trading partner with us. But we have problems with China with regard to our boundary dispute [in the northeast]. I believe there is enough space in the world to accommodate the ambitions of both India and China. But there are certain areas where there will be competition in trade and investment, and that's healthy.Do you believe that the economic crisis that struck the U.S. last year has eroded its leadership role in Asia?With the entrepreneurial skills of the U.S. business class, the U.S. educational system, which encourages innovation and invention, I have no doubt the U.S. will overcome this temporary setback.What about India? You seem to have escaped the downturn.Our export growth rate has sharply declined. Before the crisis, our growth rate was at 8.5 to 9 percent per annum in the previous four years. Since then it has declined to 6.7 percent, and this year it will be about 6.5 percent. In two years' time, we should go back to 9 percent growth rates. I'm confident because our domestic savings rate is as high as 35 percent of our GDP.What would like to achieve in the next few years?A growth rate of about 9 percent per annum, and to ensure that this growth is an inclusive growth—that the benefits of development reach out to all sections of our population, and that the disparities between rural and urban India are reduced and ultimately eliminated.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/25667.aspxFri, 12 Oct 2007 02:10:50 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:25667Anonymous34http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/25667.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=25667Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited."There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [Senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe ... that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183098.aspxSat, 14 Nov 2009 18:46:07 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1183098Anonymous41http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183098.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1183098It doesn't look like much from the outside—just a drab, 10-story building on the campus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about an hour's drive east of San Francisco. But as I'm walking across the parking lot on a sunny day in October I can't help thinking that someday I might be telling my grandchildren about the time I came to this lab and met Edward Moses and saw the technology that was about to change the world.Maybe this means I'm an optimist. Or even a sucker; a fool. All I know is that when I meet Moses, the 60-year-old scientist who runs this place, and he shows me a tiny pellet, about the size of the multivitamin I take every morning, and swears it will provide an endless supply of safe, clean energy, I want to believe him. It seems so ridiculously simple, so utterly doable. The pellet Moses holds is a model, but the real version will contain a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water. If you blast the pellet with a powerful laser, you can create a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun. Harness that reaction, and you've created a star on earth, and with the heat from that star you can generate electricity without creating any pollution. Forget about nuke plants, coal, oil, or wind and solar. "This is the real solar power," says Moses.What Moses is talking about is controlled nuclear fusion—fusing nuclei rather than splitting a nucleus, as happens in ordinary nuclear-fission power plants. In a fission reaction, the nucleus of a uranium atom is split into two smaller atoms, releasing energy in the form of heat. The heat is used to make steam, which drives a turbine and generates electricity. In fusion energy, the second half of this process (heat makes steam makes electricity) remains the same. But instead of splitting the nucleus of an atom, you're trying to force a deuterium nucleus to merge, or fuse, with a tritium nucleus. When that happens, you produce helium and throw off energy.Scientists have been trying to produce energy with fusion for decades. So far, they keep failing. It's not that fusion itself can't be achieved. Fusion takes place in every hydrogen-bomb explosion. The trick is controlling fusion so that instead of a one-time blast you get a series of tiny, controllable explosions. The joke is that fusion energy is only 40 years away, and will always be only 40 years away.Moses believes, however, that his lab, which is called the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, has cracked the problem. The big challenge fusion has faced is lack of power. Even the biggest lasers in the world could not generate enough energy to smash nuclei together and make them stick. But the reason the building we're in is so huge—it covers the area of three football fields—is that it contains an enormous laser, or actually a system that combines 192 identical lasers and zaps them into a round chamber, about 30 feet in diameter, where the tiny pellet of fuel awaits the blast. NIF's laser, which took a decade to build and was completed earlier this year, can produce 60 times more energy than any other laser ever built. Right now it's still being tested. But next year Moses and his scientists will fire it up with a full load of deuterium-tritium fuel, and Moses feels confident it will achieve "ignition," meaning a controlled burn in which you get out more energy than you put in. Moses, an award-winning laser scientist with a wry sense of humor, explains the whole thing as he leads me on a tour through the NIF facility. It's a vast, beautiful, awe-inspiring machine, mind-blowing in its complexity, with miles of metal tubes—all part of a system that starts with a tiny pulse of light, channels that light through machines that amplify its intensity and rocket the beam along using specially grown crystals and thousands of lenses and mirrors, and finally focuses these beams down to hit a target that is the size of a peppercorn—all in one millionth of a second.But other scientists warn me that this is all just a high-tech fantasy. They say Moses is full of a certain kind of non-nuclear fuel, and that I should not believe anything he and his colleagues tell me. "They're snake-oil salesmen," says Thomas Cochran, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has tracked the NIF project from its inception in 1997. Cochran says the NIF laser is still not powerful enough. Even if it were, he says, "these machines are just going to be too big, and too costly, and they'll never be competitive." Other critics, like Stephen Bodner, a Ph.D. physicist who was director of laser-fusion research at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., until his retirement in 1999, say Moses's team has downplayed such technical problems as its inability to focus NIF's laser on a tiny target.spacerfalseyesStandardImage55/fe04_img1.jpgfalsefalse980falsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalse11/13/2009 5:18:11 PM200911111351811PMFridayNovNovember1711/13/2009 10:18:11 PM11/13/2009 10:18:11 PM2009111113101811PMFridayNovNovember2211/13/2009 10:18:11 PM63393747491000000063393729491000000011/13/2009 5:18:11 PM200911111351811PMFridayNovNovember1711/13/2009 10:18:11 PM11/13/2009 10:18:11 PM2009111113101811PMFridayNovNovember2211/13/2009 10:18:11 PM633937474910000000633937294910000000Moses says NIF has already demonstrated the ability to focus onto the target. He's aware of the skepticism but says he's confident that his team, which consists of 500 scientists and engineers, will succeed. His boss, George Miller, the director of Lawrence Livermore, holds a doctorate in physics and is well aware of the difficulties Moses must overcome. "Nothing is a sure game until you've actually done it," he says. But he makes the case for trying. "You have to build NIF to find out whether or not this is going to work."He's got a point. Big technological breakthroughs require taking big risks. They always seem hopeless and expensive—until they work. Sequencing the human genome seemed impossible until thousands of researchers around the world got it done—in 13 years, with $3 billion in government funding, plus investments by private companies. Like the genome project, fusion energy is something that requires a long-term sustained effort. This isn't like creating the next version of the iPod, or a new application for Facebook. These are scientists operating at the very edge of our knowledge about how to manipulate tiny particles of matter.If fusion works, it's the ultimate green energy source. But NIF has other goals, one being to help scientists gain greater understanding of the universe itself; for example, they will be able to study conditions that exist inside stars.Given all that, even if NIF fails—if the whole place turns out to have been a $3.5 billion fiasco—it seems to me that the risk will have been worth taking. The NIF team still will have made lots of smaller breakthroughs in laser design, optics, and materials science. They will have advanced the state of laser science. Then they will go looking for money to build an even bigger laser so they can try again.And if Moses is right, and NIF succeeds, well, the scientists at NIF will go down in history. That is why labs in Japan, France, the U.K., and China are all pursuing fusion energy too. For his part, Moses really seems not to harbor any doubt. Yes, there are lots of big technical challenges; but one by one, his team is ticking them down, he says. "If someone offered me the job to build a commercial prototype fusion plant and they said, 'You've only got 10 years,' I'd take that job," Moses says. He and a colleague have already branded the product they're building—they call it Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, or LIFE, a name that at least indicates that some scientists also know a bit about marketing. Moses believes that by 2020 utility companies could be building prototype power plants called "LIFE engines." By 2030, he says, real fusion plants could be up and running, and by 2050 they could be common. By 2100, as many as 1,000 fusion reactors could be operating in the United States, if utilities embrace the technology and invest in it.If Moses is right, this may be the biggest technological breakthrough of the century. LIFE would produce energy with no carbon emissions, from a fuel that is cheap and abundant. One comparison fusion proponents like to use is that 10 gallons of water could produce as much energy as a supertanker of oil. We're talking about a solution to global warming, less dependence on foreign oil, and no more need to enrich uranium for nuclear fission—hence no uranium that could be further enriched to make nuclear weapons.spacerfalseyesStandardImage85/fe04_img2.jpgfalsefalse980falsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalse11/13/2009 5:21:14 PM200911111352114PMFridayNovNovember1711/13/2009 10:21:14 PM11/13/2009 10:21:14 PM2009111113102114PMFridayNovNovember2211/13/2009 10:21:14 PM63393747674000000063393729674000000011/13/2009 5:21:14 PM200911111352114PMFridayNovNovember1711/13/2009 10:21:14 PM11/13/2009 10:21:14 PM2009111113102114PMFridayNovNovember2211/13/2009 10:21:14 PM633937476740000000633937296740000000Fusion would be a disruptive technology like the Internet, touching every part of the economy. If the United States can be the first to commercialize fusion, we'll rule the market for green energy and create jobs for half a century as we build and sell power plants to the rest of the world. If someone else gets there first, we'll be buying our power plants from them. Fusion energy represents a potential solution to a looming crisis. The world's population is growing by about 100 million people each year. China and India now use much less energy per capita than we do, but as developing nations industrialize, demand for electricity will skyrocket. Add to that the likelihood that transportation will increasingly be powered by electricity, and we're faced with an insatiable demand. By 2030, global electricity generation will grow nearly 80 percent from 2006 levels, according to the World Resources Institute.Power companies are already making the pilgrimage to Lawrence Livermore. "Utilities are looking at the future, and they do not have a story for how they're going to make carbon-free energy. Right now, renewables are difficult and expensive," Moses says. The good news is that in March of this year, when Moses and his team fired up the giant laser, they were able to produce more energy than anyone ever had before—just over a megajoule, which, Moses says, "was like breaking the four-minute mile." NIF fires the laser only a few times a day, and scientists are blasting capsules that contain just a tiny bit of deuterium and no tritium. The idea is to test the system and bring it up slowly. Moses says it's like getting behind a Ferrari for the first time; you go easy at first. In a few months NIF will move to a more potent fuel capsule that contains tritium and just a tiny bit of deuterium. By the fall of 2010 the team aims to start blasting capsules that contain the full dose of -deuterium-tritium fuel, and they will crank up the laser power to 1.4 megajoules.If all goes well, by 2012 NIF will produce what Moses calls "a repeatable, re-liable platform." That means it will have worked out a system that utilities could use to start building prototype fusion re-actors. Moses distributes literature with ambitious timelines and even an artist's rendition of a commercial LIFE-engine power plant that looks as if it came from The Jetsons. As for the people who say NIF is a fiasco that will never work no matter how many billions of dollars are spent on it, Moses shrugs and says, "People live in a state of arrested development. They get stuck in one place. They say this can't be done because we couldn't do it in the 1960s. It's like saying we can't have cell phones because we couldn't do cell phones in the 1960s."Of course, making fusion energy work will be a tad more difficult than making a cell phone. But if Moses and his team succeed, their creation will benefit virtually everyone on the planet. Even if NIF fails, that's a goal worth pursuing.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189271.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 17:17:17 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189271Anonymous2http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189271.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189271Everybody loves a catfight. So it was no surprise that the recent video of a University of New Mexico soccer player yanking a rival to the ground by her ponytail went viral. I, for one, watched Elizabeth Lambert, 20, throwing punches and pulling hair several times. (Click here to follow Kathleen Deveny).What was surprising was that the incident sparked a sanctimonious debate on women and sportsmanship. What Lambert did was wrong. Her team suspended her—indefinitely. Lambert quickly apologized to practically everyone in New Mexico—and last week told The New York Times: "I have so much regret. I can't believe I did that." But by then my media colleagues had already worked themselves into a frenzy. The Today show, among others, tsk-tsked at Lambert's shameful behavior. In the U.K., where they know something about red cards, SkyTV called her the "dirtiest ever" female soccer player.If it had been two men in a Division 1 college game, I doubt we would have gotten so exercised. When Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount punched an opposing player in the face earlier this season, his video also made the rounds. But while Blount was initially suspended for the season, he has already been reinstated. Even Michael Vick is playing football again—and he killed puppies!The difference is that we expect bad behavior from men—on the field and off. (In some ways, men justify our low opinion of them: they are 10 times more likely to murder, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.) But we expect better from women. We didn't fight this hard to be involved in organized sports just so we could act like a bunch of dumb jocks, right? We want women to be honest, compassionate, and nice—you know, like our moms.So what's the harm in expecting the fairer sex to play fairer? It's what George W. Bush might call the soft bigotry of high expectations. If we insist on holding women and girls to higher standards than men, we set them up to disappoint us. It makes me worry about my 9-year-old daughter, and not because I hope she will someday pull hair with the best of them. I think she is sometimes held to stricter behavior standards than her boys-will-be-boys classmates. Those higher expectations follow us onto the job, where women are allegedly not only better behaved and more honest but cheaper—you only have to pay us 80 cents on the dollar! So why aren't we represented at the highest levels of business? One problem is that women aren't supposed to be aggressive or self-promoting—that's nasty male behavior—even though it's often rewarded. And yet if professional women are too nice and cuddly, they don't seem decisive or tough enough to be leaders. "The 'women are wonderful' effect does have a terrible downside," says Alice H. Eagly, a psychology professor and coauthor of Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders. "If you're too nice, you're seen as not really appropriate for high-level positions."Our more virtuous status certainly hasn't been translated into success in politics. Women make up only 17 percent of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate; the White House has remained out of reach. When it comes to being honest, intelligent, and hardworking—traits voters value in elected officials—the public rates women as superior to men, according to a 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center. Yet only 6 percent of those queried say women make better political leaders.We may have only ourselves to blame for our supposed moral superiority. During the 19th century, American women were judged by themselves (and their husbands) largely by four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Called the Cult of True Womanhood, the code held that a woman's "proper sphere" was the home. But suffragists themselves later used women's supposed piety and purity to bolster their case for voting rights, reasoning that women would make morally superior choices. Even today some advocates argue that companies should promote women because they will help make organizations more ethical, transparent, and family friendly.I'd like to think that when women are finally sufficiently represented in the executive suite and on the field, we will stop viewing them as proxies for their entire gender—superior or not. What I hope for my daughter, and for Elizabeth Lambert, is that we will be able to see them as individuals, flaws and all.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1104057.aspxSat, 15 Aug 2009 14:46:26 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1104057Anonymous3136http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1104057.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1104057America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that’s the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: “Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.” A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur’an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life”—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves “spiritual, not religious,” according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for “the divine-deli-cafeteria religion” as “very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You’re not picking and choosing from different religions, because they’re all the same,” he says. “It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.”Then there’s the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the “self,” and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we’re burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. “I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection,” agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say “om.”http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1187861.aspxThu, 19 Nov 2009 20:20:09 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1187861Anonymous49http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1187861.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1187861For what seems like forever, I have waited for The Princess and The Frog. This is the first Disney animated film about an African-American princess, and this delightful fairy tale couldn't come at a better time, what with the two little African-American princesses who live in the White House. The newest Disney royal is named Tiana, and she's a young woman with pools for eyes, a figure straight out of a fashion magazine, and a big dream. Tiana wants to own a restaurant—she makes a mean beignet—but she's so busy working to save money for it that she barely notices when a prince comes to her corner of 1920s New Orleans. Like every Disney prince, Naveen seems completely unattainable, though for reasons that have less to do with his station or his dreamy French accent than with our own, more modern concerns. Prince Naveen has a tannish complexion, but he clearly isn't African-American. My fear is that for many in the black community, the fairy tale may just end right there.Since the 1960s, marriages between black men and white women have been steadily increasing—14 percent of all black men are now married outside the race. Yet only 4 percent of black women do the same. Why? Black women, for better or worse, have always seemed to maintain a loyalty to the ideal of the black family unit. That's understandable, even noble, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense when so many black men don't feel the same way. Combined with the disturbing number of black men in prison, that means 47 percent of all African-American women today never marry. With those numbers, I say it's time for many black women to start thinking, and acting, like Tiana.I'm certainly not suggesting that we all follow in the steps of a fictional character, but I am proposing that we take a good, long look at what the fairy tale is trying to teach the children of the world—and us. In The Princess and the Frog, we see a young girl not inhibited by the color of her skin or her suitor's. Of course, the film makes that easy by changing them both into frogs—it's a long story—so that color becomes the least of their concerns (after, say, the whole eating flies thing). This gives them the opportunity to get to know each other without the added pressure of who comes from where and who looks like what. The don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover idea may be a Disney cliché (see also Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, etc.), but it comes at a time when, as Prince Naveen might say, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Just last month, a judge in Louisiana was forced to resign after he refused to marry an interracial couple in his courtroom. It would be wonderful if the black family could stay together to face down society's prejudices, but black women can't shoulder that responsibility by themselves. And they certainly shouldn't be consigned to a lifetime of loneliness. Princess Tiana is able to find happiness by wishing upon a star, but all that black women have to do is open their minds.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189270.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 17:12:56 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189270Anonymous1http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189270.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189270A democratic president, you'd think, would stick to Franklin D. Roosevelt or Jack Kennedy as role models. Not Barack Obama. As he faces tough times—economically and politically—I am told that he and his advisers are turning to an unusual source for inspiration: Ronald Reagan. Looking back, it shouldn't be a total surprise. On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama said nice things about the Gipper. Reagan, Obama said, "tapped into what people were already feeling, which was: we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to a sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." (Click here to follow Dahlia Lithwick).At the time, Obama's ode to Ronald seemed nothing more than a jab at the Clintons (who were infuriated), and a bid for Republican votes. But now I see that it was Obama's tell: the clue to how he views himself, politics, and the presidency. He thinks he is Reagan in reverse—a patient, genial game changer for the ages—and his confidence helped soothe the economic panic of a year ago. But it isn't clear whether the president really understands the causes of the Old Man's successes, or the sobering lessons of his failures.There are some remarkable affinities, personal and historical. Like Reagan, Obama shares a celebrity's sense of comfort on the (public) stage, a belief in sticking to the script, and a faith in the power of the written word spoken from an imposing rostrum. He also shares Reagan's reverence for the power of a narrative in politics—Reagan, because he was an actor; Obama, because he is a writer. Obama came of age politically when he arrived on the mainland in the Reagan years. He watched Reagan attack with bold ideas the Carter era's sense of hopelessness and "malaise"; saw him and his party get hammered in the first midterm election in 1982; saw him, during a severe economic downturn, rebound to a sweeping second-term "morning in America" victory in 1984. Around the White House right now—beset by a weak economy and dire midterm election prospects—the story of the Gipper is uplifting, at least to the man in the center chair at the cabinet table.As much as anything, the Reagan-Obama harmonic explains the president's decision to launch his tenure with a mammoth health-care-reform bill in the midst of economic chaos and heavy military commitments. Health care is his statist remix of Reagan's first-term launch party: the antigovernment supply-side income-tax cuts of 1981. And although a massive "stimulus" bill wasn't part of Obama's campaign plan, the measure was folded into his Reagan-in-reverse strategy. Obama fully expects Democrats to get clobbered in 2010, and then, he hopes, a revived economy will validate his decisions and win him reelection in 2012.But following Reagan's script is harder than it looks. It requires an obstinate clarity of message that the current president has not always achieved, and an outsider's agitating stance that does not fit Obama's equable insider mentality. And while mimicking Reagan may be politically shrewd, it may not be fiscally wise. The Old Man's sunny optimism had a dark underside: a penchant for insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 5, and a willingness to ignore inconvenient facts.There are signs that Obama shares these Gipperish traits. Reagan proclaimed that he could simultaneously cut taxes, double defense spending, and balance the budget. This was impossible, of course, as even his budget director eventually confessed. When he left office, Reagan had not shrunk the size of government, but he did spawn a new era of scary deficits. A generation later, Obama insists that his $850 billion health-care-reform bill will "bend the cost curve" in the long run. Almost no one in Washington believes this. I am waiting for his budget director to confess as much.Obama isn't looking to Reagan—but should—as he deals with global security dangers. Reagan was a hawk. Yet he was very cautious about deploying troops without a "clear mission or strong odds of success," as Obama's own secretary of defense, Bob Gates, said recently, It is a lesson Obama should remember in Afghanistan. He might also study Reagan's dealings with the Evil Empire. He cornered the Soviet Union by amping up defense spending, then cut a deal to unwind the Cold War. Today the pressing issue is Iran. If Obama wants to be Reagan in reverse, he must find a way to use his Nobel street cred to rally the world against the bullies of Tehran. That might make us all safer, and make Obama a role model of his own.Howard Fineman is also the author of The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188878.aspxFri, 20 Nov 2009 22:59:35 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1188878Anonymous68http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188878.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1188878It is still too early to tell what exactly motivated Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan to open fire on fellow American soldiers earlier this month, but the massacre came on the heels of a series of foiled terrorist plots involving Americans. In light of revelations that Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist American cleric based in Yemen, had e-mailed with Hasan, it is worth asking whether America faces a growing threat from domestic terrorism, and to what degree those involved in terrorism are becoming radicalized not in some far-flung locale, but right here in the United States.In the years after 9/11, Muslims in the United States were widely assumed to be less sympathetic to Islamist radicalism than their European counterparts. This has been attributed to the high skill level of many Muslim immigrants, their relative economic success, the peaceful form of Islam being preached in nearly all American mosques, the American principles of free speech and religious pluralism, and the melting-pot culture of the United States. And, indeed, the danger from homegrown terrorism in the years after 9/11 was less acute in the U.S. than in Europe, where many more serious plots were disrupted.But recent events suggest that things may be changing. As Mitchell D. Silber, the director of intelligence analysis for the New York City Police Department, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday, "U.S. authorities have uncovered a significant and increasing number of radicalized clusters or individuals intent on committing violent jihad either in the U.S. or abroad," and that arrests during the last 12 months and intelligence gained by the U.S. government "indicate that radicalization to violence is taking place in the United States."In the last six months there have been nine cases of Muslims in United States allegedly becoming involved in Islamist terrorism. On June 1, in what some have called the first post-9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S., Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American Muslim convert upset by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly opened fire on soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock with a semiautomatic rifle, killing one. According to court documents, he had "recently viewed a video pertaining to subversive activities which spurred him to commit this act."In July it was announced that Bryant Neal Vinas, a Muslim convert, had pleaded guilty to involvement in a plot by Al Qaeda to target the Long Island Rail Road in New York, and the FBI arrested seven American Muslim men in North Carolina in connection with an alleged plot to attack the Quantico Marine base in Virginia. In September the FBI broke up what it says was a Qaeda plot to bomb New York (allegedly orchestrated by a group of longtime American residents), and conducted successful sting operations against two Islamist extremists in Springfield, Ill., and Dallas. And just last month, FBI agents arrested two Chicago-area residents of Pakistani descent suspected of being involved in an Al Qaeda-linked plot to target a controversial Danish newspaper.Before the recent spike, the incidences of terrorism and national security charges against American residents publicly linked to jihadi groups were actually on a downward trajectory, according to a database maintained by the NYU Center on Law and Security (with which I am affiliated). There have been more than 60 people convicted in the United States on such charges since 9/11.Obviously, the Muslim individuals involved in alleged terror plots make up a tiny, unrepresentative fraction of America's Muslim community as a whole. A 2007 Pew poll found that the estimated 1.5 million adult American Muslims are "largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world." Nonetheless, the same poll also found that a higher percentage of U.S.-born Muslims look kindly on Al Qaeda than do non-U.S. born Muslims. According to Pew, 7 percent of American-born Muslims held a "favorable" view of Al Qaeda in 2007, compared with only 3 percent of foreign-born Muslims who did, with 51 percent of American-born Muslims having a "very unfavorable" view of the terror group, compared with 63 percent of foreign-born Muslims who felt that way.There is also some evidence that radical Islamist preachers are becoming increasingly active in the United States, and that, as the NYPD's Silber testified, "the Internet has become an even more important venue and driver for radicalization" of American Muslims. In Britain, a decade of proselytizing since the mid-1990s by a number of pro-Qaeda preachers radicalized a small but significant number of young British Muslims. Since 9/11 more than 200 individuals have been convicted in the U.K. on terrorism and terror-related charges. In the late 1990s, a number of radical British preachers traveled across the Atlantic to the United States. One of them was Anjem Choudhary, then the deputy leader of Al Muhajiroun, a British pro-Qaeda support group. Earlier this month, Choudhary told me that in 1999 and 2000 he spent time in several parts of the United States, including New York, where he helped set up an American wing of his organization, which was disbanded in 2004. In the U.K., his leader, the firebrand Syrian-Cockney cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, had already been preaching to hundreds of young British Muslims for more than half a decade.Until the late 1990s, most pockets of extremism in the U.S. had been associated with Arabic-speaking clerics such as Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind Sheikh," who in the early 1990s briefly took over the Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y. Leaders of Al Muhajiroun proselytized in English, making Al Qaeda's ideology accessible to second-generation Muslims and converts who could not speak languages such as Arabic and Urdu. Although Al Muhajiroun was formally disbanded, Choudhary says that dozens of Americans tune into the online lectures of Bakri Mohammed, now based in Lebanon, every day.Al Awlaki, the Yemen-based preacher who had contact with Fort Hood shooter Hasan, developed ties to Al Muhajiroun when he lived in Britain after leaving the United States, according to former members of the organization in the U.K. Awlaki, who as a preacher in a Virginia mosque had contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers in the months before the attacks, has in the past several years emerged as an online guide to a generation of radical-leaning young Muslims in the United States. Like American Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, he translates the group's ideology into a vernacular that radical-leaning Muslims in the United States can understand through video sermons posted on his Web site. One of those suspects arrested for plotting to attack the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey in 2007 decided to move forward with the plan after viewing one of Awlaki's videos, according to the testimony of an informant. Until very recently, Awlaki continued to preach online from Yemen; he praised the Fort Hood shooting just hours after it took place. Awlaki's Web site went down shortly after that, replaced with an Islamic greeting and this message: "The Web site will be back to normal with a few days time."Other American radical preachers have been active closer to home. The founders of Revolution Muslim, Yousef Al-Khattab and Younus Abdullah Muhammad, regularly preach and leaflet outside New York–area mosques about the need for Muslims to "rise up" against a United States engaged in a "war on Islam." While they say they don't encourage attacks in the U.S., neither do they hide their admiration for Osama bin Laden. "I love him more than I love myself," Khattab told CNN in an interview earlier this month. The founders of Revolution Muslim appear to be fans of Awlaki. In October they posted a statement from him on their blog that warned, "America cannot and will not win. The tables have turned and there is no rolling back of the worldwide Jihad movement."Fortunately, America's Muslim community is largely immune to such messages. But, as in every Western country, there are some who feel alienated and frustrated, and who may be susceptible to radical ideologies. The recent experiences of some European countries suggest that the United States may have a problem if radical preachers continue to be able to proselytize on these shores. Consider the different cases of Britain and France. Young Muslims in Britain are arguably as well, if not better, integrated into society than their French counterparts and have better economic opportunities, but according to European counterterrorism sources, Al Qaeda's violent, extremist ideology has significantly more followers in Britain than across the English Channel. Perhaps that's because until recently, British authorities tolerated the presence of radical preachers, while France took a zero-tolerance approach, expelling extremist preachers from mosques and deporting foreign radical clerics from the country.After the 2005 London terrorist attacks, Britain adopted tougher laws on radical preaching and arrested or banned from the country several extremist clerics, including Bakri Mohammed. (Clearly, concerns about civil liberties in the United States make restricting certain types of speech more difficult than it might be in France or Britain, which have less lenient free-speech regulations.)It would be a nightmare for U.S. counterterrorism officials if what happened in the U.K. in the years before the London bombings were now playing out in the United States, especially because the growth of radical Web sites has made it much more difficult to counter extremist preaching. Could the United States simply be lagging behind in terms of domestic radicalization? That is what Anjem Choudhary, the U.K.-based extremist preacher, believes. In an interview with CNN's Nic Robertson earlier this month, he said, "I do believe that the Muslims in America are five or 10 years behind in terms of the struggle they are engaging in." If true, there's still time for Americans, of all faiths, to fight the extremist movement.Paul Cruickshank, a fellow at the NYU Center on Law & Security, is working on a CNN investigative series on the homegrown terrorist threat.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189255.aspxSat, 21 Nov 2009 16:54:38 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1189255Anonymous2http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1189255.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1189255Your cover image was clearly intended to erode her credibility by placing her in the role of a sex object.Larry Hillis, Moab, UtahSarah Palin is a college-educated mother and former mayor, governor, and VP candidate. She deserves a respectful discourse of her political views and professional work. Women have worked too hard and too long for their respect to tolerate this type of treatment. She deserves better, and women deserve better.Carla Birk, Austin, TexasYour sexist cover offends not just Sarah Palin, but women everywhere. The efforts to reduce her to a cartoon are the same misogynist garbage thrown at Senator Clinton in the 2008 presidential campaign. You ridicule her, post offensive pictures of her, talk about her clothes, but you do not view her as a serious person.David Stewart, National Organization for Women, Davenport, IowaWhy did NEWSWEEK pick this image for the cover? Would you have put a picture of President Obama shirtless at the beach on the cover with a headline about his economic policy?Jim Pratt, St. Louis, Mo.I am not a Palin supporter. But what NEWSWEEK did by choosing that photo of her for the cover is beyond a disgrace. Love her or hate her, there's no denying she has accomplished more than most women or men will in their lives and deserves to be treated with the same courtesy that would be granted to any man in a similar position.Angela Parsons, Philadelphia, Pa."How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?" Certainly not by giving her another cover!Jeff Crandall, Canastota, N.Y.You did not spark a debate in my mind about Palin, but instead opened up doubt about your ability to deliver the highest level of journalism.Victoria del Mundo Dainas, San Francisco, Calif.Thank you for showing Sarah Palin for who she really is—the Paris Hilton of politics, now famous for being famous and nothing more.Margo Fox Picou, Towanda, Pa.Palin and her handlers are clearly not averse to leveraging her physical appeal. Isn't it time we admit that, in a visual era, a beautiful woman just might have an advantage that has little to do with her credentials or her politics?Liz Batchelder, Portland, Ore.I could not be happier to see Palin on the cover in her running gear! I find her very inspirational. She has a large family, a great career, and still finds time to run. Perhaps this photo will motivate one more American to hit the road to good health.Shirin Farahani, houston, TexasI love the cover. She should be proud of how she looks and needs to realize that when they stop talking about her is when she should worry.Molly Hoover, Pittsburgh, Pa.Clarification In "The Surprising Lessons of Vietnam," we said there are 35,000 European troops in Afghanistan. There are 35,000 NATO troops, which include Canadian and European forces.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188894.aspxFri, 20 Nov 2009 23:33:42 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1188894Anonymous6http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188894.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1188894Just when we thought nothing could distract from the reintroduction of the supernova that is Sarah Palin, Oprah Winfrey announced this week that she would be ending her long-running daytime talk show, just days after an interview with Palin led the show to its best ratings in two years. Oprah will end her wildly popular show in 2011, exactly 25 years after it began. In that quarter century, Oprah has parlayed her show into an empire, and made her name synonymous with influence, ubiquity, and gob-smacking wealth. So, the legions of Oprah devotees are probably asking themselves, "What now?"So far, Oprah's not saying exactly, except that she will be focusing on a new cable venture, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). I find it hard to believe that someone as naturally telegenic and warm as Oprah will shrink completely from working in front of the camera; she'll likely just come up with a way to bring her talents to bear in a new show on her network. Worry not, Oprah dittoheads. You won't have to wander aimlessly through shelves packed with unfamiliar titles at the bookstore, nor will you have to figure out your own favorite things. The Oprah you love, the tastemaker of your lives, will probably still be around, in some form or another.spacerfalse300falsefalsefalseBoxWhiterightfalsefalsefalsefalsefalsespacerLive Your Best Life Ever!Weston Kosova and Pat WingertfalsefalseWhy health advice on Oprah could make you sick.falsefalsefalsefalsePhotofalseVideofalseInteractivefalsespacerWhat Oprah Gets Right On Dieting and Nutrition http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/05/30/what-oprah-gets-right-on-dieting-and-nutrition.aspxGeneric_selfnolinkedlistitem5/22/2009 9:37:29 AM20095052293729AMFridayMayMay95/22/2009 1:37:29 PM5/22/2009 1:37:29 PM20095052213729PMFridayMayMay135/22/2009 1:37:29 PM6337859624900000006337858184900000005/22/2009 9:37:29 AM20095052293729AMFridayMayMay95/22/2009 1:37:29 PM5/22/2009 1:37:29 PM20095052213729PMFridayMayMay135/22/2009 1:37:29 PM633785962490000000633785818490000000false14/OprahSLAH.jpgfalse-edit3notruefeaturewellarticle5/30/2009 1:35:14 PM20095053013514PMSaturdayMayMay135/30/2009 5:35:14 PM5/30/2009 5:35:14 PM20095053053514PMSaturdayMayMay175/30/2009 5:35:14 PM6337930171400000006337928731400000005/30/2009 1:35:14 PM20095053013514PMSaturdayMayMay135/30/2009 5:35:14 PM5/30/2009 5:35:14 PM20095053053514PMSaturdayMayMay175/30/2009 5:35:14 PM633793017140000000633792873140000000spacerBest Life or Risky Advice?http://www.newsweek.com/id/199678Things you should know about Oprah's health tips notrueheadlinebullet5/30/2009 3:03:27 PM20095053030327PMSaturdayMayMay155/30/2009 7:03:27 PM5/30/2009 7:03:27 PM20095053070327PMSaturdayMayMay195/30/2009 7:03:27 PM6337930700700000006337929260700000005/30/2009 3:03:27 PM20095053030327PMSaturdayMayMay155/30/2009 7:03:27 PM5/30/2009 7:03:27 PM20095053070327PMSaturdayMayMay195/30/2009 7:03:27 PM633793070070000000633792926070000000spacer The World's Most Powerful Celebritiesnotrueheadlinebullet6/4/2009 11:47:30 AM20096064114730AMThursdayJunJune116/4/2009 3:47:30 PM6/4/2009 3:47:30 PM2009606434730PMThursdayJunJune156/4/2009 3:47:30 PM6337972725000000006337971285000000006/4/2009 11:47:30 AM20096064114730AMThursdayJunJune116/4/2009 3:47:30 PM6/4/2009 3:47:30 PM2009606434730PMThursdayJunJune156/4/2009 3:47:30 PM633797272500000000633797128500000000spacerRead More About Oprah Winfreyhttp://topics.newsweek.com/entertainment/movies/actresses/oprah-winfrey.htmThings you should know about Oprah's health tips _selfnotrueheadlinebullet5/30/2009 3:03:27 PM20095053030327PMSaturdayMayMay155/30/2009 7:03:27 PM5/30/2009 7:03:27 PM20095053070327PMSaturdayMayMay195/30/2009 7:03:27 PM6337930700700000006337929260700000005/30/2009 3:03:27 PM20095053030327PMSaturdayMayMay155/30/2009 7:03:27 PM5/30/2009 7:03:27 PM20095053070327PMSaturdayMayMay195/30/2009 7:03:27 PM63379307007000000063379292607000000011/20/2009 4:54:42 PM200911112045442PMFridayNovNovember1611/20/2009 9:54:42 PM11/20/2009 9:54:42 PM200911112095442PMFridayNovNovember2111/20/2009 9:54:42 PM63394350882000000063394332882000000011/20/2009 4:54:42 PM200911112045442PMFridayNovNovember1611/20/2009 9:54:42 PM11/20/2009 9:54:42 PM200911112095442PMFridayNovNovember2111/20/2009 9:54:42 PM633943508820000000633943328820000000The risk here is not for Oprah's viewership, the mom-and-pop shops that hope for a mention of their products, or even the TV affiliates who will lose her draw. They'll find a new way to fill the hole, like they always do, and Tyra Banks and Wendy Williams both have a product, even if they have a different vibe and less cachet than the woman who laid the tracks ahead of them. The risk, of course, is for Oprah herself.Obviously she's thought all this through; Oprah wouldn't be where she is if she weren't shrewd about such things. And this is not her first dabble into the world of cable television. Oprah cofounded the Oxygen Network in 1998 and contributed Oprah After the Show, a half-hour of audience interaction that she turned into a show in lieu of allowing the network to broadcast repeats of her regular program. In 2007 NBC Universal bought Oxygen, Oprah's share included, and After the Show went with it. But Oprah's image was so intertwined with the Oxygen brand early on, some people are under the impression that such seedy shows as Bad Girls Club,Tori & Dean: Inn Love, and The Naughty Kitchen are still somehow affiliated with Oprah.Oprah's power lies in her uplifting, generous, female-centric brand, which is easy enough to distill from a show into a magazine, but much more difficult to spread across a 24-hour cable channel, a ravenous beast that can never be satiated. Almost every ad-supported network has a stable of trash that people actually watch, which mitigates the financial damage caused by the great, little shows that no one watches. And Oprah can't do trash. She can't even really do conflict, as evidenced from her attempt at non–talk television, Oprah's Big Give. The concept—a sort of philanthropic The Apprentice—is one that probably sounded good on paper, but in execution it didn't quite feel right. Contestants who had just scrambled to give money to people in need were eliminated if their generosity wasn't creative enough … or something. It was an attempt to split the difference between the feel-good Oprah brand and the treachery of reality competition. It failed, and was canceled after one eight-episode season.So far, the OWN strategy seems to be to branch off the talk show. The network has announced shows featuring Dr. Laura Berman, Lisa Ling, and Peter Walsh, all frequent Oprah guests who will be familiar and welcome to her audience. Assuming those are hourlongs, she's got three down and 21 to go. If she approaches this new challenge with the same gusto as she has the rest of her career, OWN can be a potential windfall for Oprah, giving her audience new reasons to jump on the couch that have nothing to do with a Tom Cruise impression.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/500556.aspxWed, 16 Jul 2008 21:00:23 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:500556Anonymous11http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/500556.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=500556Tomorrow morning, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will announce the nominees for the 60th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. But it's not too early for a little fist-shaking. That's because between leaks and formal NATAS announcements, there is a list of "pre-nominees"—a widely used informal industry term—for the major categories. The pre-nominations are lists of 10 potential nominees in each category, selected by an academy popular vote. We won't know until tomorrow which five out of every 10 will become finalists. But we do know anybody not on the semifinalist list doesn't have a snowball's chance in mid-July. The following is a list of the major categories, and the contenders who were overlooked, in this critic's humble opinion.Best Comedy Series: 'Desperate Housewives'Emmy voters sure know how to hold a grudge. "Desperate Housewives" has never been able to get back into their good graces following its disastrous second season. The third season was a marked improvement, and this year, the show has started to resemble the quality of its award-winning maiden season, due largely to the zesty addition of Dana Delany as a series regular. Of course it's not purely a comedy, but neither is "Weeds," which made it into the pre-nominations despite a lackluster season. What's it gonna take to get "Housewives" out of the dog house?Best Drama Series: 'Breaking Bad'Chances are AMC, newcomers to the original programming game, will have nothing to complain about when the nominations are announced. "Mad Men," a look at America through the prism of a 1960s advertising agency, is almost certain to be nominated in this category. That doesn't make it any more fair to overlook the equally compelling "Breaking Bad," about a high-school chemistry teacher who starts to cook and sell crystal meth to finance his fight against cancer. Sure it's dark, and sure, the writers' strike truncated its debut season. But the writing and performances are spectacular--particularly in the pilot, which is impossible to avert your eyes from, starting with that image of a pair of Dockers flying through the air.Lead Actor in a Drama Series: Christopher Meloni, 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'"Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf has always prided himself on making his franchises characterproof, allowing even its stalwarts to exit without the house crumbling around them. He erred with "SVU," which, while as focused on the procedural element as the other shows, is completely entangled in the complex relationship between Mariska Hargitay's Olivia Benson and Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler. Hargitay has been widely recognized for her work, but Meloni's intense performance has been often overlooked. The last season found Meloni's character dealing with a near-fatal car accident involving his pregnant wife, a storyline that gave him the emotional moments that Emmy typically jumps at.Lead Actress in a Drama Series: Evangeline Lilly, 'Lost'Katherine Heigl caused a fuss when she announced she wasn't submitting to the Emmys because "Grey's Anatomy" didn't give her good enough material this season. Maybe she should consider hopping aboard ABC's other multiculti ensemble, "Lost," as its stellar fourth season gave nearly all its stars plenty to chew on. Lilly, who plays the fugitive Kate Austen, had perhaps the most dynamic arc, as she was forced to figure out how she was going to assimilate back into society after being rescued from the island. Lilly brought a heft to her many emotional scenes this season, partly because the plotline forced her character to become more mature in a hurry.Lead Actor in a Comedy Series: Kelsey Grammer, 'Back to You'If the multicamera comedy format completes its march toward extinction, the failure of "Back to You" will be an important point on the timeline. With its pedigree of veteran writers and directors, and Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as its leads, the show seemed destined for greatness. It stumbled, failing to find an audience, but it was through no fault of Grammer, who turned in a performance as hilarious and layered as his lauded work on "Frasier."Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: Amy Pietz, 'liens in America'When "Aliens in America" premiered, I was skeptical, to say the least. The premise of a narrow-minded Midwestern family struggling to relate to a Pakistani Muslim exchange student was at first bumpy and broadly drawn. But it settled into one of the smartest and sweetest comedies on the air, thanks to Amy Pietz. Pietz played Franny Tolchuck, a mother who is initially cold to Raja (Adhir Kalyan) until she realizes that another child in the house means one more person to smother. She's pitch-perfect in every scene, which is why it's a shame that "Aliens" won't return in the fall and that Pietz won't be recognized for her worthy, if short-lived, performance.Supporting Actor in a Drama Series: Jamie Hector, 'The Wire'The hardest part of making this list was figuring out where "The Wire" entry would go. A list of Emmy snubs could consist exclusively of the show's cast members. The show itself still has yet to be nominated for Best Drama. (And don't hold your breath for a nomination this year: the over-under is grim.) But of all the performances to highlight in "The Wire's" final season, I kept coming back to Jamie Hector, whose intensity as drug lord Marlo Stansfield is unparalleled. Even when dispatching his enemies, he never raised his voice above a whisper, making it that much more terrifying when, in the second-to-last episode, his rage rises to the surface.Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: January Jones, 'Mad Men'Emmy voting tends to work to the disadvantage of actors who aren't well-known names, and that's about the only explanation I can come up with for why January Jones, who played dissatisfied housewife Betty Draper, was scorned. Betty's arc over the season was about sadness and disillusionment, the frustration that comes with getting what she thought she wanted only to find out that she still wasn't happy. Few scenes affected me as much last year as when Betty tried to return to modeling in an effort to reclaim some of her former glory, only to find herself with silent tears running down her face when things don't go to plan.Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: Andy Samberg, 'Saturday Night Live'The cast members of "SNL" tried something daring this year, submitting themselves in the Supporting Actor category rather than their usual Variety category. The only "SNL" player it worked for was Amy Poehler, who eked out a pre-nomination. But the more deserving Andy Samberg was left in the cold. Poehler is great, but anyone who's been following "SNL" for the past couple of years knows that the funniest parts of the typically flaccid show are the digital shorts. The shorts are Samberg's fiefdom, allowing him to execute ideas that might not work in front of an audience. (See: "Laser Cats.") If anyone from "SNL" is recognized, it should be the guy who consistently brings the funny.Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series: Jennifer Esposito, 'Samantha Who?'Who says blondes have more fun? Christina Applegate is practically a lock for lead actress in a comedy for her performance on "Samantha," but it's her co-star Jennifer Esposito who gets tossed the tartest one-liners, and she spikes every last one. Applegate plays a selfish, inconsiderate jerk who awakens from a coma with amnesia and a desire to change her ways. Esposito plays Andrea, Sam's best friend from the pre-coma, alpha-female days and has so much fun swilling vodka and belittling people, it's hard not to love her.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1187609.aspxThu, 19 Nov 2009 17:05:33 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1187609Anonymous57http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1187609.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1187609Pop quiz: which of the following names represents a non-sectarian, universal deity? Allah, Dios, Gott, Dieu, Elohim, Gud, or Jesus?If you answered "none of the above," you are right as a matter of fact but not law. If you answered "Allah," you are right as a matter of law but not fact. And if you answered "Jesus," you might have been trying to filibuster David Hamilton, Barack Obama's first judicial nominee. (Click here to follow Dahlia Lithwick).Hamilton, nominated last March, has seen his confirmation stalled until last week in the U.S. Senate, in part because his opponents claim he's a judicial activist for an opinion he wrote about God's proper secular title. In a 2005 case, Hinrichs v. Bosma, Hamilton determined that those who pray in the Indiana House of Representatives "should refrain from using Christ's name or title or any other denominational appeal," and that such prayer must hereinafter be "nonsectarian."Bosma questioned the practice of opening state legislative sessions with sectarian Christian prayers that included a prayer for worldwide conversion to Christianity. Hamilton found this to be a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause because it was government speech that favored one religious sect over another. In a post-judgment order, Hamilton also wrote that the "Arabic word 'Allah' is used for 'God' in Arabic translations of Jewish and Christian scriptures" and that 'Allah' was closer to "the Spanish Dios, the German Gott, the French Dieu, the Swedish Gud, the Greek Theos, the Hebrew Elohim, the Italian Dio, or any other language's terms in addressing the God who is the focus of the non-sectarian prayers" than Jesus Christ. Hamilton, himself a Christian, also added that "if and when the prayer practices in the Indiana House of Representatives ever seem to be advancing Islam, an appropriate party can bring the problem to the attention of this or another court."For these words of clarification, Hamilton has been pilloried for months as a judge determined to chase Christians out of the public square in order to make more space for Muslims. In an interview last spring with Christianity Today, former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich said Hamilton had ruled that "saying the words Jesus Christ in a prayer is a sign of inappropriate behavior, but saying Allah would be OK." That's factually true but hopelessly misleading, which was of course the point. But as a result, Hamilton is still awaiting an up-or-down vote despite a distinguished record as a U.S. district judge in Indiana for more than 15 years, the highest ABA rating, as well as endorsements from the president of the Indianapolis chapter of the Federalist Society and his home-state senator Richard Lugar.The real problem here isn't Hamilton but the fiction, built into the Supreme Court's religion jurisprudence, that there can be such a thing as a neutral, nonsectarian religious invocation that will make everyone present feel both included and respected. It has led to a crazy quilt of Establishment Clause doctrine that, depending on the judge and the weather, permits public Christmas displays of secular religious symbols (Santas, reindeers, teddy bears in Santa hats) so long as they have been drained of any strong sectarian meaning. This compromise leaves both deeply religious and deeply skeptical Americans outraged in about equal measure. It also leads to bizarre claims about secular religious symbols, such as Justice Antonin Scalia's insistence at a recent oral argument that it's "outrageous" to conclude that "the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead." In his view, a Christian cross on government land honors Christians and non-Christians alike. It's a secular symbol, in his view, because it doesn't offend him.The Supreme Court has sliced and diced religious symbols and prayers into the impossible-to-apply paradoxes of secular-religious and heartfelt-thus-unconstitutional. For the millions of Americans, both religious and secular, left standing out in the public square with just a teddy bear in a Santa hat, this is an insult.Opponents of Judge Hamilton should acknowledge that he was not privileging Allah over Jesus. He was trying to thread the constitutional needle that deems God's name—whatever the language—secular, but Jesus' name sectarian. The truth is, Hamilton has gone out of his way to impose a constitutional test that defies both logic and common sense. That makes him more "neutral umpire" than "judicial activist" by my lights. It takes a brave man to impose a test guaranteed to promote the unpopular fiction that America is one nation, under a secular deity to be named later, indivisible.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188747.aspxFri, 20 Nov 2009 20:09:45 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1188747Anonymous12http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1188747.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1188747Technically, the nation's financial health is getting better. But statistics are cold comfort for Americans who are still struggling to make ends meet. http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/858588.aspxFri, 02 Jan 2009 18:57:23 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:858588Anonymous3http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/858588.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=858588The past year was a precarious one.Not only is growth in many developed countries stagnating, but many developing countries are also now in an economic danger zone. As always, the poor are the most defenseless. Voices around the world are blaming free markets. Others are asking about the failures of governmental institutions. Storm clouds hang over multilateralism and world markets.We cannot turn back the clock on globalization. Even as the United States and the world dig out of the present financial hole, we need to look further ahead.There is an opportunity now for President Obama to steer the world toward modernizing multilateralism and markets for a new global economy. In doing so, the goal must be to build a more inclusive and sustainable globalization.The work must involve new economic powers that are on the rise—for example, India and China. Their engagement with the global economy has made them stakeholders in the system, and they want to be heard. Private financial markets and businesses will continue to be the strongest drivers of worldwide growth and development. But the developed world's financial systems have revealed glaring weaknesses. The architecture designed to deal with global markets is creaking.To deal with all this, we need a new multilateralism, one that suits the times. It should be a flexible network, not a fixed system—a network that maximizes the strengths of interconnecting actors, public and private. It should reach beyond the traditional focus on finance and trade. Today, energy, climate change and stabilizing fragile and postconflict states are economic as well as political issues. They are already part of the international security and environmental dialogue. They must be included in the larger economic conversation as well.To guide multilateral problem-solving in this world of complex interdependence, we need a steering group that recognizes the interconnections, identifies challenges at the intersection of topics and connects new and existing machinery among governments to solve problems. For a start, we need a core group of finance ministers who would assume responsibility for anticipating issues, sharing information, solving problems and managing differences. The G7 already does some of this, but it is not sufficient. We need a better group for a different time—a new steering group that includes rising economic powers as well as established ones. This steering group should not just replace or expand the G7 with a new fixed number; it should evolve to fit changing circumstances. The World Bank and the IMF, perhaps with the WTO, could help support this steering group and draw on our broader membership to propose new coalitions to address issues.This new network must assure a sound economic recovery and tackle the reform of financial systems. It must continue to push forward a global trade agenda. It needs to interconnect energy and climate change. World energy markets are a mess. The steering group could help forge a "global bargain" among major energy producers and consumers. At a minimum, such a bargain should involve sharing plans for expanding supplies, including options other than oil and gas; improving efficiency and lessening demand; assisting with energy for the poor; and considering how these policies relate to carbon production and climate change. A climate-change accord would benefit from new tools such as green technologies and mechanisms to support forestation and avoid deforestation. Financial support should be given to poorer countries to help them adapt. The steering group might also assist the U.N. negotiations on the implementation of a global climate-change treaty.Multilateralism, at its best, is a means for solving problems among countries, with the group at the table willing and able to take constructive action together. Fate presents the new president with an opportunity wrapped in a necessity: to modernize both multilateralism and global markets.Zoellick is president of the World Bank.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183084.aspxSat, 14 Nov 2009 17:41:24 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1183084pj615993http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1183084.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1183084http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1178014.aspxThu, 05 Nov 2009 20:26:30 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1178014Anonymous22http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1178014.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1178014Depending on who you are, where you grew up, and, frankly, the color of your skin, you'll most likely react in one of two ways to Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire. The film tells the story of Claireece (Precious) Jones and her struggle to survive a life overfull with misery. Pregnant for the second time with a child fathered by her own father, abused physically, emotionally, and sexually by her mother, Precious is also illiterate, obese, and friendless. Precious is not an easy movie to watch, and there are people in the black community who wish that you wouldn't. They insist that it is yet another stereotypical, demonizing representation of black people. The other camp, however, is thrilled to see a depiction of a young African-American woman that, while heartbreaking, is a portrait of the black experience that has been overlooked on the sunny horizon that stretches from The Cosby Show to House of Payne. Unfortunately, both of those reactions miss the movie's most searing message.I wish I could agree with those who say Precious is just one more movie that feeds our vision of ourselves as victims. Even that would have been better than what lies underneath: the fact that black people have begun to accept as unchangeable the lot of those stuck in the ghetto. How else to explain that while the film is set in 1987, no one seems outraged that so little has changed in the inner city in the more than 20 years since? Precious is a period piece that feels like a documentary. The public-education system is still failing to raise graduation rates above 50 percent in the worst neighborhoods. The public-welfare system has yet to offer a real path out of poverty, and child-protection services is still struggling to protect children. While I agree that we've gotten too comfortable seeing ourselves on film as martyrs and underdogs, so what? The real devastation at the heart of this film is that it can't offer Precious a more concrete way out of her predicament. Yes, Precious is changed at the end of the movie, able not only to read and write but also to move toward a better life. But that isn't enough. I wanted just a hint that she would also escape the hell that was (is) urban poverty. Precious was lucky to find the alternative school that could help her. But that's fiction. In reality, there are far more Preciouses than there are teachers to help them. Movies such as this one allow us to forget that.Still, I understand people who complain about the lack of positive role models more than those who applaud just for telling this story. In their admiration of Precious's strength and resilience, these people also implicitly accept the status quo. Precious's parents are certainly villains, but they are also red herrings. Her situation feels so extreme that we lose sight of the bigger picture. It becomes too hard to summon up any more outrage at the social worker who never figures out that something awful is happening in Precious's home, or at the well-meaning civil servant who can't help Precious beyond finding her a job for $2.12 an hour, or at the teacher who gave Precious an A-minus in English when she can't read. I'm tired of movies presenting black people as grateful to find a helping hand to rise above their abusers. Not because we've seen this movie before—starring Sidney Poitier, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hillary Swank, Morgan Freeman, and even Matthew Perry—but because the story never changes. How about a "based on a true story" tear-jerker that ends with some tangible improvements in the lives of impoverished children? Where's the African-American Norma Rae or Silkwood? Hell, I'd even take an all-black remake of Brubaker. Anything that sends the message that one person—even one who is poor, black, fat, female, and abused—can change the system. Then, I won't feel like my tears have gone to waste.http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1169807.aspxTue, 27 Oct 2009 21:30:49 GMT544c64cf-7058-4151-925a-a0fd041e73dd:1169807Anonymous24http://blog.newsweek.com/forums/thread/1169807.aspxhttp://blog.newsweek.com/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=19&PostID=1169807How much do you know about the Ebola virus? 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