November 2001

George is dead
Beatlemania hit hard when I was in 6th grade. Some of the girls on the bus loved Paul (the cute one); most of the rest loved John (the intellectual one). Gwen loved Ringo (the funny one). After some wavering between John and Paul, I chose George (the unclassifiable one) as my favorite Beatle.

George Harrison died of cancer yesterday at the age of 58. -- 11/30

Such a deal
"The fight (for Kandahar) has now begun. It is the best opportunity to achieve martyrdom," Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's el supremo, told his followers over the radio, according to a Taliban official.

The guy really knows how to inspire the troops, doesn't he? Apparently the Northern Alliance is attacking Kandahar, not the infidel Marines, but let's hope the mullah's men don't let that stop them from achieving martyrdom. -- 11/30

Blaming Uncle Sam
"America the scapegoat'' relieves smug Australians and Europeans of responsibility and the need to think, writes Meera Atkinson, an Aussie turned New Yorker, writing in Salon.

What bothers me most about the anti-American sentiment I've encountered is not the criticisms themselves, simplistic as they frequently are, but the dogged superciliousness and smugness with which they are frequently expressed. There is a lack of real recognition of America, for better and for worse, inherent in this attitude. And there is an unsettling ease with which the United States of America is made the scapegoat for the flawed policies of the first world, the failings of some nations of the Third World, a library's worth of historical complexities, and the guilt of the privileged first-world individual. -- 11/30

Coal and switches
Anna Quindlen's anti-shopping essay in Newsweek is a big fat target for Andrew Hofer's More than Zero site (via Matt Welch). Quindlen wrote, "Put in the context of current events, how depressing was it to see Afghan citizens celebrating the end of tyranny by buying consumer electronics?" Hofer replies:

NOT AT ALL DEPRESSING!! It was wonderful. It was GREAT! The whole point of ending tyranny is so that you can experience some personal freedom and opportunity. Do what you individually want to do as long as it doesn't involve oppressing each other brutally or blowing up thousands of office workers. Does she not remember that the Taliban had their own version of how people should be spending time? What is so morally inferior about Afghans consuming video media relative to, say, curling up with an Anna Quindlen bestseller?

Let me add one thing. Quindlen should read David Brooks' article on "red" and "blue" America (it's not available online), and remind herself that many Americans live on modest incomes and buy things for need or pleasure, not to one-up the global Joneses. If she sees nothing but conspicuous consumers around her, she should meet new people.

And while the families of the 9-11 victims would rather have their loved ones return from the dead than receive a new sweater or a tie, that's not the choice. -- 11/29

Slow print
I just got my December Harper's and Atlantic. As Glenn Reynolds points out, musings on terrorism written in October seem so out of date. Even The New Republic, published weekly, can't begin to keep up with the news. (Delivery is erratic; sometimes I'll get an issue one or two weeks late.) Now that I'm addicted to online news and weblogs, half the stories in my daily newspapers are stale by the time I read them.

It may turn out that 9-11 will destroy the print magazine. I read many more magazines than before, but I read them online.

On the other hand, during last night's power failure, I had to read the newspaper by candle light -- without setting it on fire. -- 11/29

The classroom is not a comfort zone
Accused of calling Muslim students "terrorists,'' Ken Hearlson was suspended from teaching by Orange Coast College two months ago, without a hearing. The tenured professor was barred from campus. An audiotape of the Sept. 18 contemporary politics class clears Hearlson, says FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). The New York Times agrees. Hearlson did not blame students personally for the attacks, reports the Times.

One, Mooath Saidi, claimed that Mr. Hearlson pointed at him, saying: "You drove two planes into the World Trade Center. You were the cause of what happened Sept. 11." Mr. Saidi said another student, outraged, interrupted the instructor to say he appeared to be blaming a student personally.

According to the tape, the remarks that prompted the student to interrupt Mr. Hearlson and question his use of the word "you" involved Arab nations that struck Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973, not the World Trade Center attacks. On the tape, Mr. Hearlson thanks the student for the interruption and says he "absolutely" did not mean to accuse any student personally. "I am talking about Arab nations," he says.

Now Saidi admits his memory may have been "shady,'' and some of his allegations "were not maybe right.'' But he says it doesn't matter. He knows Hearlson meant to blame him and deserves to be "taught a lesson.''

The college has not yet lifted Hearlson's suspension. Not to mention apologized. Or explained to students that professors have the right to talk about controversial subjects; students have no right to be free from exposure to offensive or distressing opinions.

Orange Coast College officials "want to appease a handful of students who believe they have a right never to be offended and they want to appear to be fair arbiters who have not trashed the Constitution, academic freedom, and due process,'' says Alan Charles Kors, president of FIRE. -- 11/28

Don't tread on me
Flight 93 passengers terrified the terrorists, according to a moving Newsweek story based on audiotapes and cell phone calls. They began planning to fight back not long after the skyjackers killed the pilot and co-pilot. One flight attendant told her husband she was boiling water in the coffeemaker to throw on the skyjackers.

. . . Resistance—fierce, unyielding resistance—was the spirit of Flight 93.

        Beginning at 9:57, the cockpit voice recorder began to pick up the sounds of a death struggle. There is the crash of galley dishes and trays being hurled, a man’s voice screaming loudly. The hijackers can be heard calling on each other to hold the door. One of the passengers cries out, “Let’s get them!” More crashing and screaming. In a desperate measure to control the rebellion, a hijacker suggests cutting off the oxygen. Another one tells his confederates to “take it easy.” The end is near. The hijackers can be heard talking about finishing off the plane, which has begun to dive. The hijackers cry out, “God is great!” The cockpit voice recorder picks up shouting by one of the male passengers. It is unclear whether the passengers have breached the cockpit or are just outside the door. The hijackers apparently begin to fight among themselves for the controls, demanding, “Give it to me.”

Then the plane went down. -- 11/27

Shiloh Bucher's Dropscan has great photos from Afghanistan. Thanks to Matt Welch for the link. -- 11/27

Blowing smoke
Rebecca stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Then Ross, her husband, stepped outside to have a cigarette. "Hey, we're in your home,'' I said. "You're allowed to smoke in your own home.''

Except in Montgomery County, Maryland, which has passed a law banning smokers from lighting up in their own homes, if a neighbor claims to be bothered by the smoke.

Ross and Rebecca's outdoor smoking -- they thought it would help them quit if they set their own outside-only rule --- would be particularly suspect. But even an indoors smoker could face a $750 fine per violation.

In this Washington Post column, Marc Fisher envisions future laws banning scented flowers, loud TVs, bad music and fat people -- if the neighbors object.

ACLU director Arthur Spitzer tells the Post:

"They shouldn't be able to prevent a person from smoking in their home unless they can show that the amount of smoke is harmful to the health of others," he said. "If someone can just say, 'Yuck, I don't like the smell of cigarettes,' that's no different than someone saying, 'Yuck, I don't like the smell of your cooking because you use too much garlic.' "

Update: The Montgomery County executive, unwilling to let the county become a laughing stock, has vetoed the law. -- 11/27

Boondoggle
California 's new military academy for troubled kids is costing $500,000 per student, writes Daniel Weintraub in the Sacramento Bee.

The Davis administration has spent more than $10 million to create and run a military academy for troubled youths that opened in March, but so far has attracted just eight students.

The Turning Point Academy in San Luis Obispo spent about $9 million to get itself up and running. It now has an operating budget that works out to $500,000 per student.

Even if the academy were to somehow attract the 80 students that administrators hope will attend this year -- one-fourth of the original goal -- the state would still be spending about $50,000 for each youth's six-month stint at the camp.

Entry is reserved for students expelled from school for first-time weapons violations and referred by a judge, which turns out to be not very many students. Yet the school has a staff of 34; at full capacity, it's supposed to serve only 40 students at a time. -- 11/27

A precise death toll could not be determined, but the apparently large number of Taliban deaths, compared with the reported killing of about 40 Northern Alliance fighters, raised questions here about whether the violence was less an uprising than massacre orchestrated by alliance troops.

It's hardly surprising that fanatics "fighting to the death" are dying in greater numbers than their non-suicidal foes, especially since the fanatics are being bombed. And what's with this "raised questions'' business? Who's making the charge? What is the charge exactly: That the prisoners didn't stage an uprising? Is there any evidence to support this charge? Or it a claim that the Talibs are firing grenades and mortar rounds from the tower, but it's a massacre if they're killed in disproportionate numbers?

These men haven't surrendered -- at least, not a second time. Of course, nobody would accept their surrender after all the Taliban double-crosses. I think it won't be an issue: They want to die in battle so they can qualify for the 72-Virgin Paradise plan.

Despite the negotiated surrender of Kunduz, some foreign Taliban fighters attacked Northern Alliance troops, who defeated them after several hours of battle. And then shot some of the wounded. That's not cricket, of course. But it's understandable. -- 11/27

Liberated
The Northern Alliance was greeted in liberated Kunduz by cheering crowds, reports the Los Angeles Times.

With corpses still strewn about the city center, residents joyously thronged the streets, breaking into cheers and chants as alliance fighters sped through the city in armored vehicles and artillery trucks.

People everywhere like to be free. On to Kandahar. And, apparently, Iraq. -- 11/27

Send in the clones
Are we cloning humans? No. Human embryos? Well, it seems more like we're cloning human stem cells; the next step is grow-your-own replacements for damaged organs. Dynamist Virginia Postrel is a good source on cloning issues. Here's her "Criminalizing science" panel discussion, posted on Reason Online.

Update: Virginia says scientists have cloned only six cells, which means they're at the pre-blastocyst stage; they've got a ways to go before they clone stem cells. -- 11/27

Good-bye, Luci
I was walking in the employee entrance of the Mercury News as Luci Houston was going out for a photo assignment. She said "Hi!'' as though she was delighted to see me. We didn't know each other that well, but Luci treated everyone like a special person. It wasn't an act. She liked people. I'll always remember her friendliness, her warmth, her laughter. Luci was murdered last week; her body was found Sunday near her home in Oakland. -- 11/26

Three fathers
When Kevin Sweeney was three, his father died. At the age of seven, Sweeney worried that he wouldn't know how to be a father himself when he grew up. So he secretly "adopted" three men to be his models of manhood. "Not exactly fatherless,'' a lovely essay, is in Salon. And it's free. -- 11/25

Surrender, then kill
Non-Afghan Taliban soldiers surrendered in Konduz, then blew themselves up, killing their Northern Alliance captors. That must discourage Alliance troops from accepting more surrenders, which may have been the point.

Now foreign Taliban prisoners have rioted in Mazar-i-Sharif, killing dozens of Alliance guards and possibly killing an American. The Time reporter on the scene says U.S., British and Alliance troops fighting to regain control of the prison have no intention of accepting surrenders.

Update: The Northern Alliance has taken part or all of Konduz; the prison revolt is over. The Pentagon says no U.S. soldiers are dead or missing. -- 11/25

Pre-criminals
If little Reginald whacks little Victoria with a toy lorry, he could end up on a pre-criminal data base being compiled in Britain. Here's the story from the Sydney Morning Herald:

British police will set up a secret database of children as young as three who they fear might grow up to become criminals.

Youngsters who behave badly or commit trivial misdemeanours will be put on the confidential register so they can be monitored and supervised throughout childhood.

The controversial initiative is to be pioneered in 11 London boroughs from March and then expanded nationally. Any child who is thought to be at risk of committing a crime by the police, schools or social services will be put on the database.

Children who are cheeky, involved in minor vandalism or causing nuisances will be targeted under the scheme.

Their progress will then be monitored at school and on the streets by special squads of police officers and social workers, even though the children have not committed a crime and will not have been warned that they are being watched.

Americans wouldn't stand for this sort of thing. In Britain, after a half-century of the Nanny State, it's merely "controversial." -- 11/25

Thanksgiving
OK, I'm a few days late, and nowhere near as eloquent as many of the Thanksgiving postings online. But I would like to express my thanks for freedom, family and the self-cleaning oven. Especially after our traditional holiday grease fire. -- 11/24

Wizard!
I saw the "Harry Potter'' movie last night at an all-adult showing at 10:20 pm. I could quibble about a few details, but overall it was a good job of bringing J.K. Rowling's fantasy to life. The kids playing Harry and his pals Ron and Hermione are excellent. Hermione managed to be both a know-it-all and a likeable person; the kid who plays Ron has a wonderfully ordinary face. The nasty Draco Mallfoy also was very well cast, though not given enough to do.

Here's a Washington Post essay by Hank Stuever that laments the popularity of Potter. The "geek ascendancy'' has gone too far, Stuever warns.

We spent the 1990s worshiping the techno-barons -- Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos. People went to fertility clinics and demanded nerd sperm -- they wanted genuine seed from MIT engineers, Nobel-nominated scientists, concert pianists; anyone but pro athletes, career politicians, corporate sharks.

We told our children that it was best to be smart, kind, open-minded -- and yes, that was a good thing. We encouraged their obsessions with dinosaurs, planetary physics, recycling, the trombone, mathletics, Achievement Camp. But it went too far. Is it any wonder that kids today come out so incredibly dorky, that Harry Potter would be the 21st-century version of cool?

Stuever calls for book-hating bullies to beat up the future science fair winners forthwith. It's the American Way. -- 11/24

Adaptable, responsible, free
Writing on Thanksgiving Day, Bjorn Staerk cites a David Brin essay on Futurist.com on empowered citizens in an age of danger. Brin notes that the passengers on Flight 93 changed the "rules of engagement'' in minutes after learning on their cellphones that other hijacked planes had been turned into bombs: "They acted as soldiers, heroes, without waiting for permission. It's called initiative, a civic virtue, part of our national character that doesn't get enough attention. Not from leaders and certainly not from our enemies."

Staerk goes on to explain his optimism.

To adapt and take responsibility! This is why I don't worry a lot about the future. Good laws and forethought can be very useful, but all we really need to keep the ideals of wealth, reason, freedom and pleasure alive for another century, is good people. Capitalism works because individuals adapt to change faster than institutions, and there are always a lot more gifted individuals than dogmatic institutions. Science works the same way. History is full of revolutionary ideas that became common knowledge that became dogma that was pushed aside by other revolutionary ideas. We didn't get computers and quantum physics because we started out with perfect ideas, we got there because there was a neverending supply of good people, gifted individuals able to overthrow the institutions their predecessors left behind.

The spontaneous flowering of warblogs is a cause for optimism too.

I don't like to boast, but I'm a bit proud of this: They tore down the World Trade Center, and we responded by creating something new. They attacked us with ignorance, we replied with curiosity and informed criticism. We didn't want to leave the 90's, but we accepted the irreversible, and turned it into something good.

The cycle continues: progress, dogma, progress, dogma, progress. As long as there are good people who can adapt to change, and are allowed to take responsibility, I don't think we have that much to worry about. -- 11/24

Argumentative
Warbloggers Steven Den Beste, Bjorn Staerk and Matt Welch have postings on the shortage of intelligent, honest, online debate about the response to 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan. Den Beste calls for the scientific method -- test your assumptions -- to be applied:

The strength of the Scientific Method is that it keeps the wheat but discards the chaff, because of the power of criticism. And that is the pattern that all thought should follow; it is criticism which makes the difference between deception and truth.

Which is why it is so disturbing that those subscribing to certain political beliefs (you know who you are) refuse to accept criticism itself as valid, and assault it as being wrong. Without criticism there is no way to differentiate the foolish from the valid. -- 11/24

Flunking science
Twenty-first century American kids don't know much science. Twelfth graders' science scores are declining, according to a national assessment. About 60 percent of fourth and eighth graders achieved a "basic" or better rating in 2000, unchanged from 1996; only 30 percent were considered proficient. By 12th grade, nearly half of students lack basic proficiency.

California was at the bottom compared to other states, and it's not because of all those kids from non-English-speaking families. "California's non-Latino white students--most of whom are fluent in English--were among the lowest-scoring non-Latino whites in the country,'' the Los Angeles Times reported. "Children of college graduates also scored very low compared with their peers elsewhere."

California students are less likely than students elsewhere to be taught science by a teacher who majored or minored in science. That matters On the exam, "students whose teachers were science majors in college did better than those whose teachers were not,'' the Times writes.

Public schools typically pay a hard-to-find physics teacher as much or little as a phys ed teacher. As a result, physics may be taught by teacher who's never studied the subject.

"Science is the quintessential area where not paying differentially has left us all but bereft of well-qualified science teachers," says Chester Finn, an education consultant and head of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. "You'd need to double the pay."

Some blame state testing programs, which emphasize reading and math skills. But the reading and math push affects elementary school the most, and the fourth graders are holding their own. The real problem seems to come in high school.

The scores also indicate that the basic-level science classes that many schools call general science are "worthless," said Robert C. Rice, chief operating officer for the Council for Basic Education. "Students who have not taken any science class score the same as those who had taken a course labeled general science."

All the decline comes in public schools. Twelfth graders in private schools are improving in science. -- 11/23

School turnover flip in Philly
Philadelphia's school district won't be turned over to private management. The governor had wanted to hire Edison Schools, Inc., the country's largest for-profit school management company, to take over central management of district, which has grave financial and academic problems. The mayor refused to agree. Negotiations continue. It's still likely that 60 of the city's worst schools will become charters run by Edison and other private operators.

Unions see this as a great victory. I think Edison has dodged a public relations disaster. The governor's plan wouldn't have given Edison the authority to make radical changes; the company lacked political support and employees were deeply hostile. Edison probably will end up running 45 or so low-performing schools. That will be a tough enough challenge. -- 11/23

Go right ahead, Osama
Osama bin Laden has received permission to commit suicide from a Muslim cleric. Bin Laden has vowed to die rather than be captured by U.S. troops. Islam forbids suicide, though apparently there's a exemption if you kill a lot of infidels at the same time. -- 11/22

Thanks for bombing us
U.S. bombing of Kabul was remarkably accurate, says a Knight-Ridder story, "Damage from stray bombs limited." And even a man who lost two family members and his house -- he lived next to the airport -- said it was worth it if the end of the Taliban means peace for Afghanistan.

``It doesn't matter that two people in my family died,'' Mohammad said. ``I will give this house as a gift to the United States if we have a lasting peace. We want to thank W. Bush for helping get rid of the bearded Taliban. But if peace doesn't come, I'll be upset with him and the United States.''

With the Taliban on the run, Mohammad and other victims of stray bombs in Kabul expressed remarkably little bitterness this week. But their benevolence has a condition: The price for the lost lives and limbs is a durable peace. Almost all expressed hope that the United Nations would send an international security force until Afghanistan could create a broad-based government.

The story goes on to say that the Taliban and relief agencies exaggerated civilian casualties.

The Taliban claimed two weeks ago that up to 1,500 Afghan civilians had been killed. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while expressing regret for civilian deaths, said the Taliban claims were ``fiction.'' The British Defense Ministry said no more than 300 had died nationwide.

In a spot check of 12 stray-bomb sites in Kabul in recent days, witnesses said 29 people had died. A dozen more were said to have been killed when a bomb fell Oct. 19 at Sarai Shamali, an informal market in north Kabul.

It's time to "forget about Sept. 11'' and focus on Afghan casualties caused by U.S. and British "terrorism," said a Taliban spokesman in the appropriately named town of Spinboldak. Thanks for the advice, mullah. Just as soon as hell freezes over, we'll consider it. -- 11/21

Microslick
Microsoft is trying to settle anti-trust lawsuits by offering what the compay says is $1 billion in recycled computers and software to schools serving low-income students. But the old computers may be useless, this Mercury News story says.

The key question is whether the recycled computers would meet California's minimum technology standards. Last year, the state established a Pentium 3 capability as the minimum standard for high schools applying for state grant money to buy computers.

Critics say the recycled computers provided under Microsoft's program would fall far short of the Pentium 3 standard.. .

According to an analysis prepared for the law firm by a University of Michigan professor, the computers Microsoft proposes to provide typically would be four generations old and would be unable to run current software -- including what would be offered under the settlement. The machines likely would run on either early Pentium processors, or even pre-Pentium chips.

Giving away PCs is good business for Microsoft, which gets a tax write-off on the computers and assimilates more schools into the Borg Collective.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who is leading a group of states fighting Microsoft's settlement with the federal government, also criticized the proposed settlement. ``The problem with Microsoft's behavior is they hook people into their bundle of products and services, so giving away free software is a way of expanding their monopoly dominance, not preventing it,'' said Lockyer, who is urging Motz to consider other options.

Tuesday's deal is like ``a tobacco company found guilty of marketing its cigarettes to school kids, and the remedy once they're caught is to volunteer to give them free cigarettes,'' Lockyer said.

ZDNet News notes that Apple, which holds 23 percent of the computer market share in K-12 schools, could be hurt if schools get cheap PCs and free Windows software.

I fear Microsoft's monopoly power. It's why I still use a Mac, despite the inconveniences in being outside the Collective. Through Dan Gillmor's site, I discovered Living Without Microsoft. But I fear resistance is futile. -- 11/21

High-tech teachers
Can we turn laid-off techies into teachers? They need jobs, and schools need math and science teachers who know something about math and science. Gov. Gray Davis is putting $1.6 million of federal aid into credentialing classes, testing fees and counseling for engineers, programmers and dot.commers who want to try teaching.

Many techies will prefer to wait out the recession, but there's bound to be some who are ready to give teaching a try. The question is: Will they stick with it when other opportunities open up again?

What worries me is a conversation I had in late August with Mark, who'd decided to become a teacher after he lost his job for a chain of book stores. He'd just started teaching English and social studies to 6th and 7th graders, and remedial reading to 8th graders. Unlike experienced teachers, who teach five sections of the same subject, he prepares for five different classes each day. Two nights a week, he takes classes for his teaching credential from 5 to 10 pm. His wife is expecting a baby in December. She's the breadwinner so she can't take much time off from work, or stay up every night with a crying baby. "I'm a little worried about how I'll manage when the baby's born,'' Mark said. -- 11/21

Vice again
Al Gore has a job as vice chairman for a California financial services company, MetWest. In a statement, Gore said he was anxious "to learn more about business.'' Starting at the top with what's essentially a no-show job.

MetWest Financial Chairman Richard S. Hollander, who recruited Gore to the firm, said the former vice president's experience in government will provide the company with insights into global economic trends and the biotech and information technology sectors. He said Gore's personal relationships will help to open doors for the company, particularly in Europe and Asia.

"He's going to work with the whole unit to share his views with what's going on with the global economy and where opportunities might be -- more in terms of trends than in terms of specific investments," Hollander said.

According to a snarky New York Post story, Wall Street firms didn't think the former vice president was worth what he was asking -- $2 million to $3 million in base pay. If Gore had a shot at the presidency, he'd be a sound investment. Otherwise, he's a might-have-been who knows little about finance, biotech or information technology.

Executives who interviewed Gore said the former Democratic vice president brought potential problems to the table instead of any solutions their firms could use.

The biggest was that Gore admittedly is a novice in the business world and could hardly be expected to bring in any business.

One source said Gore couldn't provide a good answer to their question: "What can you do for us?" -- 11/21

Symmetry
William Saletan has another good Slate column, this one on symmetry in the takedown of Osama bin Laden. -- 11/21

An F for common sense
Everybody passes the spelling test or the math quiz to the kid in the next row for grading. It happened in the Neanderthal era, when I attended school. It still happens. Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether scoring by students violates privacy rights. Under federal law, schools aren't supposed to release students' educational records without permission.

A Tulsa mother, Kristja Falvo sued, complaining that her son's self-esteem was damaged when a classmate called out his 47 on a quiz in front of the whole class. What about the self-esteem of educators, who need to make decisions without fear of litigation? -- 11/20

Best Western practices
Paul Johnson explains why "West is best'' in the National Review. The rule of law allows personal freedom, which leads to capitalism. Capitalism is

as much a product of Western civilization as the university and the library, the laboratory and the cinema, relativity theory and psychotherapy. Coca-Cola and McDonald's are not alternatives to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Public Library: They are all four products of a wealth-creating and knowledge-producing process based on freedom and legal certainty.

Moreover, because capitalism is based on human nature, not dogma, it is self-correcting. The freedom of the market enables these corrections to be made all the time, to short- and long-term problems. The expression "the crisis of capitalism" is therefore misleading. Capitalism moves through continual crises, major and minor, absorbing their lessons and so continually increasing productivity and living standards in the long run.

Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting — not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities — that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals. And it is protean not least in its ability to detect what other societies do better, and incorporate such methods into its own armory. All the other systems in the world, notably the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Indian, have learned much from the West in turn, and benefited thereby. The Islamic world has been the least willing to adopt the West's fundamental excellences. That is why it remains poor (despite its wealth of raw materials), unfree, and unhappy. Its states are likely to have uneasy relations with the West until Islam reforms itself, embraces the rule of law, introduces its own form of democracy, and so becomes a protean player in the modern world. -- 11/20

Dream on, Omar
In his dreams, Mullah Omar still rules Afghanistan, according to this Independent News story. So the Taliban chief reportedly has changed his mind about handing over Kandahar to Pashtun leaders.

But yesterday Ahmad Karzai, whose brother Hamid has been negotiating with the Taliban for the surrender of the city, said Mullah Omar had changed his mind because he had had a prophetic dream in which he remained in power. "I have had a dream in which I am in charge for as long as I live," Mr Karzai quoted Mullah Omar as saying.

"For as long as I live'' surely are the operative words of the dream. But irony is not the strong suit of the Taliban. -- 11/19

News from Mars
Saturday night, I went to the Friends of the Daily dinner to hobnob with Stanford Daily alumni. The guest speaker was supposed to be Rich Jaroslavsky of the Wall Street Journal but he was kept in New York by the plane crash. So Vlae Kershner, who runs the San Francisco Chronicle's online operation, filled in.

Vlae talked about controversies over press coverage of the war against terrorism: Is it too rah-rah to talk about the "freedom fighters'' of the Northern Alliance? What about Reuters' reluctance to use "terrorist'' to describe the 9-11 attackers? Some Chronicle reporters thought the newspaper compromised its objectivity by putting a large flag on its building and printing a U.S. flag in the paper to alleviate the flag shortage. (Who are all these super-patriots who didn't own a flag before Sept. 11, I wonder.) How many photos of children allegedly injured in U.S. bombing raids is enough? Should they be balanced with photos of mangled victims of 9-11? (Hard to do: Most of the 9-11 victims were incinerated, crushed, turned to ashes and dust.)

In short, should the U.S. press report the struggle against terrorism as Americans, or attempt to be neutral?

No wonder so many people hate the press.

To feel allegiance to one's country -- often represented by a flag -- is natural, normal and good. I remember the wise words of the Beach Boys: "Be true to your school. Just like you would to your girl.''

We're not reporting from Mars. We're Americans, and our values -- American values -- will shape our perceptions. United or not, this is the ground on which we stand. -- 11/19

"Stop the war"
I was hoping Big Game would be a boring rout, with Stanford (6-2) using overwhelming and disproportionate force to defeat winless Cal. It was way too exciting for my taste, thanks, in part, to some bad officiating, but Stanford beat Cal 35-28.

As fans left the stadium, I looked for the stop-the-war rally mentioned in Instapundit. All I saw was a dozen people with leaflets and signs. They had less energy than the guys hired to dispense free footballs as a dot.com promotion. Thousands of fans streamed by, ignoring the protesters and scooping up the little plastic footballs.

I took a yellow "Terrorism for Dummies" leaflet which acknowledged the evil of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban but claimed "they earned their diplomas in terrorism from the CIA.'' The theory is that there was no genuine Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion but rather a CIA operation to recruit foreign "right-wing fundamentalists'' to create the mujahadeen. (I love the absurdly in appropos "right-wing.") "One of these recruits, and a leader of the CIA's Jihad, was none other than Osama bin Laden himself.''

Stanford Community for Peace and Justice wants to be anti-Taliban and anti-U.S. at the same time. However, the argument really is for dummies. The CIA funded and armed Afghan rebels; bin Laden showed up later as a moneybags and recruiter of foreign jihadis, not as a military leader. Furthermore, the mujahadeen -- nasty as they were to any Soviets that fell in to their hands -- were not terrorists. They fought a guerrilla war against enemy soldiers who'd invaded their country.

The protesters' other main line was that bombing must halt to enable food aid to reach Afghans before winter: "Millions may starve in your name, unless the bombing stops!'' The paper was marked "Urgent,'' perhaps because the problem is going to be solved any second now without a bombing halt. While admitting that food aid is flowing in areas liberated by the Northern Alliance, the protesters say only half the aid needed in Taliban-controlled areas can get through. But very little of Afghanistan is now controlled by the Taliban. According to CNN:

The U.N.'s World Food Program has succeeded in reaching its monthly food delivery target in Afghanistan, the program's Executive Director Catherine Bertini said Friday. The agency reached the target of 52,000 metric tons per month, which it considers enough food to feed the country's millions of hungry people.

The oddest sign called for "Liberty, Not War." Sort of like calling for "Prosperity, Not Work.'' I walked past a protester with sign asking something like: "What's yellow and doesn't do any good?'' The answer was cluster bombs and air-dropped food packets. I pointed to the picture of a cluster bomb. "But it does work,'' I said. "We've won.'' She did not respond. Perhaps she didn't hear me in the happy clatter of football fans. I passed a sign about oil, another about smiling arms dealers, a third about the relative value of U.S. and Afghan lives. I took a free football and went home, rejoicing in victory. -- 11/17

Bert strikes back
What was Sesame Street's Bert doing palling around with Osama bin Laden? Now we know. Bert was an undercover operative feeding phony nuclear documents to Al Quaeda's mayhemologists.

According to The Daily Rotten and Politech, the nuclear bomb literature found by British journalists in an Al Quaeda office in Kabul comes from an old parody called the Journal of Irreproducible Results. "Other articles in the series include how to make an antigravity device, and how to clone your neighbor's wife in a weekend using ordinary kitchen utensils," reports Glenn Reynolds.

Osama's boys are not rocket scientists, as they say. -- 11/17

A look in the mirror
Who's the chief oppressor and killer of Muslims? It's not the Israelis. It's not us Americans. In fact, Jews and Christians are pikers when it comes to brutalizing Muslims. I've been thinking this every time I read another quote from a Pakistani, Yemeni, Saudi or Kuwaiti about how terrible the U.S. is to Muslims because we back Israel and strike back against terrorists who vow the "destruction of America."

In "Muslims condemn Israel but ignore their own crimes,'' Muqtedar Khan, a Muslim professor at a Michigan college, takes on the hypocrisy.

 Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinians are central to Muslim grievances against the West. Such feelings are understandable.

But I must remind my fellow Muslims that, in the main, Israel treats its one million Arab citizens with greater respect and dignity than most Arab nations show to their own people. And what happens to the Palestinians who become refugees?

In the United States, they can become citizens; in the Arab world, no Muslim country except Jordan extends this support to them. While we loudly condemn Israel, we are silent when Islamic regimes slaughter thousands of Muslims. Remember Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Muslim Kurds?

The Pakistani army's excesses against Muslim Bengalis? The mujahideen of Afghanistan, and their mutual slaughter? Have we demanded international retribution against these oppressors? The culture of hate is tearing at the moral fabric of Muslim society.

Khan concludes by reminding Muslims that "our beliefs are not contingent on the moral conduct of America or Israel. . . . How can we let the message of Muhammad (praise be upon him), which was sent as mercy to mankind, become a source of horror and fear?" -- 11/17

No surrender
Foreign Taliban troops in Konduz will have to fight to the death, says the Northern Alliance commander besieging the city. Afghan Talibs will be allowed to surrender.

A future massacre? I'd say it looks dicey for the Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis who came to Afghanistan as holy warriors. But there's a reason the attackers won't let foreigners surrender, reports the Times of London.

General Mohammad Khaksar, one of General Dawood’s senior advisers, said that he had given his men orders to shoot every one of the foreigners after a number of non-Afghan Taleban had emerged from their positions with their hands raised, only to kill themselves and their captors with concealed explosives and grenades.

“What else can I do?” he said. “We can’t trust fighters who do not observe the conventions of war. They still want to die after surrender and they want to take my soldiers with them.”

More than 100 Alliance fighters were massacred on Tuesday after being captured by Taleban forces, and a number of civic officials in Konduz, a largely Pashtun city, are said to have been murdered by the Taleban after announcing that they wanted to surrender to the Alliance — most of whose members are ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks. There have been further reports of dozens of Afghan Taleban troops being mown down by their Chechen comrades while trying to surrender to Alliance forces.

The foreign jihadis will have to deal with a no-surrender enemy and kill-to-surrender comrades in arms. And a rain of Ramadam bombs. Paradise may run out of virgins. -- 11/16

What massacre?
"Opposition admits to massacre of 520 soldiers" claims a story in Britain's Independent newspaper. "Northern Alliance soldiers admitted yesterday they had killed hundreds of pro-Taliban fighters holed up in a school, providing the first direct evidence of massacres by the victorious opposition forces."

Actually, it's direct evidence of media bias: Northern Alliance soldiers said they killed hundreds of Taliban fighters in a firefight in Mazar-e-Sharif. The attackers said it wasn't a "massacre'' because the defenders, mostly Pakistanis, had been given a chance to surrender before the battle. They refused. (A Guardian story says they killed the elders sent in to negotiate.)

When the holy warriors held out, the Northern Alliance attacked the school with tanks. As the Independent puts it:

General Dostum's forces, reputed for their brutality from their previous spells in power in Mazar, crushed the resistance.

That is, they attacked armed combatants -- there were about 700 in the school -- with overwhelming force.

Reports had circulated since Monday that Pakistani fighters had been massacred after surrendering, but the British television crew was the first to confirm what happened by talking to the soldiers.

They did not deny having killed the 520 fighters, but refused to describe their actions as a massacre. "They are saying that they were, in fact, trying to make these men give up," Ms (Andrea) Catherwood said.

Human Rights Watch pointed out yesterday that it had to be established whether the Pakistani fighters were killed after surrendering or not. If they were already prisoners or had expressed their intention to surrender, this would constitute a war crime by the Northern Alliance, the organisation said.

What Catherwood's ITN crew "confirmed" was that the attackers say they killed the defenders when they were unable to get them to give up. As Human Rights Watch will confirm, if asked, that's not a war crime. It's war.

When one side has tanks and the other side is a bunch of raw recruits who consider themselves Paradise-bound holy warriors, it's possible to kill 520 before the rest -- about 200, according to ITN -- manage to surrender. Or maybe the recruits tried to surrender in mid-battle -- always a tricky maneuver -- and the Alliance troops, angered at the murder of the negotiators, killed them anyhow.

All we really know is that the Independent is so eager to proclaim the brutality of the Northern Alliance that it's spun "reports have circulated'' into "direct evidence of massacres.'' -- 11/16

Burqa burning
Great, great angle on the rescue of those Christian aid workers: To guide the Special Forces helicopters to their location, the hostages built a bonfire, using the tent-like burqas the women had been forced to wear during their captivity. The Hindustani Times story was spotted by Shiloh Bucher of dropscan.

I must stop posting. I must stop posting. -- 11/15

Violence does solve things
Sometimes, war works, writes Anatole Kaletsky in the Times of London. He cogently explains why the defeat of the Taliban was a highly worthy goal.

Morality alone is rarely enough to provoke war. Nobody is going to start a war with China because it mistreats racial minorities. But if a regime that is manifestly evil is also militarily weak and stupid enough to connive in the killing of thousands of civilians in other countries, it surely becomes a moral imperative to end this regime, if need be by main force.

In the future, despots will think twice before they let terrorists set up shop in their countries, Kaletsky writes. And Muslim fundamentalism isn't looking so hot.

The sudden collapse of the Taleban has proved more clearly than ever that even Muslim fundamentalists are fundamentally human. They try to be on the winning side. They shun defeat. They respect power. They respond to military force and financial incentives.

The defeat of the Taleban has shown to the entire Muslim world that the mullahs’ vision of an ultra-orthodox Islamic Utopia is a catastrophic delusion. Not only does returning to medievalism lead to economic catastrophe. Even worse, it produces political humiliation and military disgrace.

Writing in Slate on "The Fall of Kabul," Anne Applebaum points out how completely the Taliban/Al Qaeda regime was hated by Afghans.

Mullah Omar tells the BBC he'd rather die -- OK! -- than participate in the new Afghan government and claims his plan for the "destruction of America'' will proceed. Read Ken Layne's rant, starting from "Do your best, Illiterate Cave Boy.''

Also see Andrew Sullivan' s Von Hoffman Awards for outstanding defeatism, stupidity and smugness, and winners of The New Republic's Idiocy Watch poll. -- 11/15

Thank you!
I've been meaning to say to the person who donated $50 through Amazon, thank you! And thanks to all the $1, $5, $10 and $20 givers. Of course, the support for readjacobs.com has been terrible for me. I was up at 3 a.m. the other night posting. Like Ken Layne, I blame the hyperblogger Glenn Reynolds. -- 11/15

Bad news on drop-outs
Be depressed. Be very depressed. The nationwide high school graduation rate is only 74 percent, according to a study by the Manhattan Institute and the Black Alliance for Educational Options. There are huge racial and ethnic gaps: 78 percent of whites, but only 56 percent of blacks and 54 percent of Hispanics earn a high school diploma.

As National Review explains, the study doesn't count GED (General Educational Development) certificates and other equivalency alternatives as high school diplomas, which is why the results are so much worse than the 86 percent graduation rate reported for 1998 by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Should the GED count? It doesn't count for much in the real world. Other studies have found GED holders resemble drop-outs in employment and earnings, researcher Jay Greene writes.

The future prospects for recipients of GEDs are significantly worse than the future prospects for recipients of regular high school diplomas. In fact an analysis of national data by Stephen Cameron and Nobel prize winning economist, James Heckman, concludes that: “Exam-certified high school equivalents are statistically indistinguishable from high school dropouts.” Other researchers find moderate benefits of receiving a GED for certain groups, but no research supports the claim that the GED is equivalent to a regular high school diploma.

Cleveland's school district has one of the lowest graduation rates in the nation: Only 28 percent of students earn a regular diploma. The voucher program there is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. The pro-choice BAEO is a supporter. The Institute for Justice has friend of the court briefs on its site. -- 11/15

Principal problems
Most superintendents and principals say they need more autonomy to reward good teachers and fire bad teachers, Public Agenda reports. Over half of principals say that in their own district even good administrators are "so overwhelmed" by day-to-day management that their ability "to provide vision and leadership is stymied." -- 11/15

Hardship admits
"Comprehensive review'' -- a look at personal experiences and activities as well as grades and test scores -- will determine who gets in to the University of California's elite campuses, such as Berkeley and UCLA. Till now, roughly half of applicants have been admitted on grades and scores alone.

UC analysts say the move won't affect many students' admission outcomes, and will make little difference in racial and ethnic diversity at the elite schools. Of course, it depends on who decides and how. Here's a relevant quote from the San Jose Mercury News:

Two regents expressed concern about the policy based on watching practice evaluation sessions at UC campuses.

Peter Preuss said he grew worried after learning that more than half the evaluators at UC-Irvine worked in the university's outreach program, whose goals include bringing more blacks and Latinos to the university. He said the university might be opening a Pandora's box.

At the evaluation session he saw, Regent John Moores said readers were especially interested in students' written personal statements.

``The personal statements aren't verified,'' he said. ``You can put anything in there you want.''

Yes, indeed. Low-hardship white students can test their creative writing skills by inventing a gay identity conflict or an alcoholic parent. After all, nobody knows the trouble they haven't seen.

Either the evaluators will put a heavy thumb on the race/ethnicity scale, or there'll be an outcry when all those who wanted an end-run around the affirmative action ban discover that Berkeley and UCLA admits are still heavily Asian-American and white. -- 11/15

Atrocities in the headlines
Is the Northern Alliance executing prisoners? The headlines that say so aren't backed by facts.

A New York Times headline declares "P.O.W.'s Were Shot" with a subhead, "Question is How Many?" But the story contains no proof that prisoners were executed. In fact, it implies just the opposite:

Since the beginning of the week, differing accounts of events in Mazar-i-Sharif have focused on an incident, on Saturday, when alliance troops were reported to have opened fire on a school just outside of town where as many as 1,200 "jihadi, or holy warrior, volunteers from Pakistan, Kashmir and Chechnya were said to be hiding.

One account, in Tuesday's editions of the The Guardian in Britain, quoted an alliance commander as saying that "some 200" of the volunteers were killed after they had murdered alliance representatives sent in to demand their surrender.

At the daily United Nations news briefing in Islamabad on Tuesday, Stephanie Bunker, the American spokeswoman for United Nations operations in Afghanistan, said that "over 100 Taliban troops, young recruits hiding in a school" had been killed in the incident. She gave no sources for her account, and no corroborating details.

The real question here is not how many of the 1,200 holy warriors died in the fight for the school. It is: Why doesn't the Times know the difference between executing defenseless prisoners and shooting armed combatants who'd refused to surrender?

The Guardian story, headlined "Hundreds of Pakistanis believed massacred," claims that "hundreds of pro-Taliban Pakistani fighters appear to have been systematically massacred in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif,'' according to sources. Yet there's zero evidence of a massacre; instead the report quotes unidentified sources as saying the Pakistanis "continued to resist for at least 48 hours after Mazar fell."

"We gave them warnings to surrender," Mohammed Muhahiq, a spokesman for the opposition Shia militia, the Hizb-i-Wahdat, said. "They asked us to send representatives over several times, but unfortunately they shot them. Finally we gave the order to attack them. Some 200 of them [Pakistanis] have been killed."

"The atrocities, if any, were committed by the Pakistanis killing the negotiators," points out Iain Murray, who I spotted in Instapundit.

I'm sure some foreign Taliban fighters have been killed after surrendering, either by the alliance's militiamen or by the local population that despised them. But, so far, all we know is that there were a lot of bodies to bury after a battle. -- 11/14

Ha ha ha
Christopher Hitchens mocks with style and substance in "Ha ha ha to the pacifists."

The Taliban will soon be history. Al-Qaida will take longer. There will be other mutants to fight. But if, as the peaceniks like to moan, more Bin Ladens will spring up to take his place, I can offer this assurance: should that be the case, there are many many more who will also spring up to kill him all over again. And there are more of us and we are both smarter and nicer, as well as surprisingly insistent that our culture demands respect, too.

Michael Kelly's "All Negative'' column pokes fun at NPR. -- 11/14

Who's killing whom?
Taliban stragglers, especially Arabs and Pakistanis, are being hunted down and killed by civilians, according to this BBC report of the liberation of Kabul, and this Daily Telegraph story on Taloquan. John Simpson of the BBC walked into Kabul before Northern Alliance soldiers arrived to find happy crowds shouting, "Kill the Talibans.''

In the streets, in the ditches, lay the bodies of foreign volunteers for the Taleban, especially Arabs and Pakistanis. The foreigners were particularly loathed and so they were killed - lynched and shot.

In Taloquan, Afghan defectors from the Taliban shot and burned foreign Taliban fighters, locals told David Rennie. Before the battle, Northern Alliance troops said they'd accept the surrender of Afghan Taliban soldiers. But not foreigners.

Perhaps the Arab and Pakistani jihadi should ask themselves: Why do they hate us?

Yesterday, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to "explain the justification for attacking military troops in retreat." Because they haven't disarmed and surrendered, Rumsfeld said. Duh.

Remember Iraq? If we'd finished destroying the retreating army -- and Saddam Hussein -- Iraqis would have danced in the streets of Baghdad. And probably shaved off their Saddam-alike mustaches. A lot more of them would be alive today. -- 11/14

War is not a garden party
Back in the quagmire era, last week, Michael Ignatieff, author of "Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond," was interviewed by Salon. By bombing instead of sending in the Marines, is the U.S. a "high-tech bully?" Ignatieff, who specializes in human rights policy at Harvard, said many intelligent things, including "Never do anything just to look good."

The right way to do this is to minimize civilian casualties on the other side and minimize our own casualties to the maximum possible. The cutoff is at what point that strategy simply becomes incapable of securing our objectives, namely the fall of the Taliban, the consolidation of a government of national unity, the creation of a U.N. infrastructure and U.N. peacekeepers. I don't think that those are bad objectives.

Salon: The tide seems to be shifting on this, though.

Almost everybody's jumping off the train at the moment. There's a tremendous amount of defeatism around. I just don't think it's justified. What do they think war is? War is a scary, difficult business and victory goes to those who take the risks necessary to get the job done, but don't take stupid risks simply in order to prove some moral point.

Salon: One of the things that a British journalist suggested in his essay in Salon is that we'll have no right to talk about al-Qaida's courage if we continue to bomb from up high.

Yeah, but all that's just crap. It's not about giving anybody lectures on courage. -- 11/14

Evil ones on the run
To read the New York Times, our war in Afghanistan is going badly. The Northern Alliance has taken Kabul, without waiting for a multi-ethnic government or a multi-Muslim force of U.N. peacekeepers. They've shot some captured Taliban soldiers in Mazar-e-Sharif and looted their bodies and bunkers. What if the Pashtuns rally against the northerners? (But, reportedly, anti-Taliban Pashtuns have taken Kandahar's airport.)

Andrew Sullivan speculates on the gloomy tone of the Times, BBC and NPR. Perhaps media elites are depressed because they feel disempowered.

(The real arbiters of our fate) are warriors from barbaric places in distant continents, hard-headed generals and Air Force pilots, commanders of Special Forces units, and elected officials. In this war, the pundits and editorialists and cable news executives have been knocked down a few pegs in the social hierarchy. . . . My prediction: the media elites will get even angrier about this and will soon step up initiatives to throw doubt on the war, undermine it, and generally disparage it. Ignore them.

However, the BBC is reporting on a Taliban massacre of Hazaras in Bamiyan. (An earlier Taliban massacre of Hazars in Mazar may have led to the nastier mood in that city.)

And here's a Fox/AP report on "Joy in Kabul."

Freshly shaven residents of the Afghan capital of Kabul blared music in the streets Tuesday, flouting the Spartan rules that an unwelcome Taliban, now departed, had so stringently imposed."We are free!" shouted Noor Mohammed, as he danced with the tape player pressed to his ear.

The Northern Alliance isn't made up of Boy Scouts. There are difficulties ahead. But our abundantly evil enemy is on the run. That is good. -- 11/13

Fast-moving quagmire
I thought Kabul was supposed to be filled with hostile Pashtuns, who were going to force the Northern Alliance into bloody house-by-house battles. So why are the residents celebrating the Taliban withdrawal with horn honking, music playing and beard trimming? Refugees are going home; aid trucks are on the move. The Pakistanis aren't too happy, but everyone else seems delighted to see the backs of the mullahs.

The latest is that the Taliban have abandoned Kandahar, which was said to be their spiritual center and power base. They're going to hole up in caves, which seems appropriate.

James Lileks has a funny column, already a bit dated, about media pessimism.

"Ramadan bombing will turn the Muslim world against us!" What will they chant next - Additional Death to America?

I predict future hand-wringing over the difficulties of smoking out the cavemen, the prospect of U.S. casualties, the slow pace of cave clearing, etc. Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

We'll get there. -- 11/13

Uncounted
Crunching those Florida recount numbers leads to unexpected results: Black Republicans' votes were more than 50 times more likely to be invalidated than black Democrats' votes, say John R. Lott, Jr. and James K. Glassman in the Los Angeles Times. Furthermore, "Among white voters, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to have spoiled ballots."

In addition, we found that the overall rate of spoiled ballots was 14% higher when the county election supervisor was a Democrat, and 31% higher when the supervisor was an African American Democrat.

So, if spoilage should be viewed as disenfranchising African American Democrats, the new figures strongly suggest that Democrats were disenfranchising African American Republicans.

Hmmmm. I think their point is that spoiled ballots should not be viewed as a plot to disenfranchise blacks or others.

By the way, poor Al Gore made a brief, classy concession statement in response to the media recount. "We are a nation of laws and the presidential election of 2000 is over," Gore said Sunday. "Right now, our country faces a great challenge as we seek to successfully combat terrorism. I fully support President Bush's efforts to achieve that goal." He's not a sore loser after all. -- 11/12

El Dildo unmasked
El Dildo Bandito has turned himself in, returning the string of ceramic penises he stole from an art exhibit at the Boulder Library. He substituted a U.S. flag. An InstaPundit reader attributes the flag-for-penis switch to "guerilla deconstructionist art critics." I prefer to think of the bandito as a performance artist transcending boundaries to stimulate dialogue. -- 11/12

Who won Florida? (Who cares?)
Just when nobody cares, the grand media consortium of vote recounters is ready to tell us who really won the presidency. The answer: Well, it depends on which votes you count and how you count them, and whether you count votes that couldn't have been recounted in time to matter. But at least the Supremes are off the hook, reports the New York Times. Gore's strategy was a loser, regardless of the court decisions.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.

Gore said he wanted to "count all the votes,'' but only asked the court to order hand counts of "undervotes" in counties using punch cards. Turns out he might have won if it had been feasible to recount all the "overvotes'' in optical scan counties.

Joshua Micah Marshall objects to the media's Bush-won spin, preferring AP's lede: "George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome – by the barest of margins – had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount."

I guess the result is interesting in an abstract way. But it's so beside the point. The chad has swung to George W. Bush. As the Washington Post points out, "A Gallup survey this month found that voters, if they had to decide the 2000 election today, would favor Bush by 61 percent to 35 percent for Gore." -- 11/12

Too sensible
Jordan's King Abdullah has a Mideast peace proposal that makes far too much sense to survive: In exchange for a Palestinian state, Arab countries would recognize Israel's right to exist and guarantee its security.

But who would serve as a scapegoat to distract the Arab masses, if Israel loses its Little Satan status? Response to Abdullah's plan will show who really wants a Palestinian state and who just wants an excuse.

By the way, here's a link to an article by Tom Gross on anti-Israel bias in the European press.

A good deal of the selective reporting derives from the fact that both the print and broadcast media rely heavily on the Associated Press and Reuters to provide text, photos, and footage from the West Bank and Gaza. The news agencies, in turn, depend heavily on a whole network of Palestinian stringers, freelancers, and fixers all over the territories for reports.-- 11/12

The best offense
"El Dildo Bandito'' stole the string of brightly colored ceramic penises displayed at the Boulder Public Library, replacing the art exhibit with an American flag.

The library took flak earlier for refusing to display a large flag in its entrance, while displaying the penile art, part of an art exhibit by battered women. The librarian was quoted as saying the flag might offend foreign-born library patrons; now she says it was too big.

Are there immigrants who are offended by Americans flying the American flag in America? I read a lot of news stories from around the country. I've yet to read a single quote from an immigrant complaining about U.S. flag displays. I know plenty of immigrants who are flying the Stars and Stripes.

Note that the AP story in the Daily Camera on the theft doesn't quote the thief's note. Apparently "dildo" is a no no. -- 11/11

Dead is fine
Osama bin Laden won't be taken alive, he vows in a story published Sunday in a Pakistani newspaper. "America can't get me alive," bin Laden says in part two of the interview with reporter Hamid Mir.

Not a problem.

The chuckling caveman also denied any connection to the anthrax mailers in the U.S.

Many Sunday newspaper columns were written in the quagmire era of a few days ago. Now those tough Taliban fighters are fleeing or surrendering; we're worrying that the Northern Alliance will take Kabul too quickly. The bombing clearly works, with a few dozen Americans on the ground to coordinate strikes. And we can truck in tons of food to help Afghans through the winter. -- 11/11

Guilty, guilty, guilty
Osama bin Laden brags about ordering the 9-11 attacks in a video made for his followers, according to a Daily Telegraph story. The newspaper claims to have a copy of the video, made in late October.

In the video, bin Laden says: "The Twin Towers were legitimate targets, they were supporting US economic power. These events were great by all measurement. What was destroyed were not only the towers, but the towers of morale in that country."

The hijackers were "blessed by Allah to destroy America's economic and military landmarks". He freely admits to being behind the attacks: "If avenging the killing of our people is terrorism then history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically."

In a contradictory section, however, bin Laden justifies killing the occupants of the Twin Towers because they were not civilians - Islam forbids the killing of innocent civilians even in a holy war.

He says: "The towers were supposed to be filled with supporters of the economical powers of the United States who are abusing the world. Those who talk about civilians should change their stand and reconsider their position. We are treating them like they treated us."

Bin Laden goes on to justify his entire terror campaign. "There are two types of terror, good and bad. What we are practising is good terror. We will not stop killing them and whoever supports them."

Bin Laden also notes, "Killing Jews is top priority."

Perhaps this will satisfy those demanding evidence of bin Laden's guilt. But don't count on it. -- 11/11

Paradise express
Even the madrass-trained fanatics may not be as eager to reach Paradise as they claim. Here's an odd sentence from a New York Times story by John Burns, reporting on Pakistan's crackdown on Taliban supporters:

One issue certain to cause fury among the militants was the assertion by one of the Pakistani militant groups, Harakat Jihad-I-Islami, that 85 of its members who had joined Taliban military forces were killed today by an American B-52 bomber strike in Afghanistan.

Why the fury? Their guys enlisted in a war, vowing to kill infidels and proclaiming their eagerness to die on the 72 Virgins Plan. Sure enough, they got a one-way ticket to paradise, courtesy of the infidels.

Australia's Courier-Mail reports on one such holy warrior, a U.S. citizen who told British TV reporters that he's en route to Afghanistan to kill Americans. Mohammad Junaid also said his Pakistani-born mother survived the World Trade Center attack.

I agree with Glenn Reynolds: Encourage everyone who wants to kill Americans, Christians, Jews, unveiled women, etc. to go to Afghanistan, where we can kill them first. (Reynolds, by the way, gets credit for proposing the Hashemite Restoration, replacing the Saudi royals with Jordan's monarchs.) -- 11/9

Crusader guilt
Here's a transcript of Bill Clinton's Georgetown speech, thanks to Andrew Sullivan. I don't think the added context helps much. Clinton should not be advancing a muddled definition of terrorism that equates an attack on our country designed to kill civilians with everything from the Crusades (Americans "who come from various European lineages are not blameless") to Sherman's march to the sea ("mild" terrorism).

For contrast, read President Bush's Atlanta speech, which is shorter. I like the president's stress on "courage and optimism." -- 11/9

Don't cut the grass
Tracking anthrax mailers and terrorist moles is supposed to be the FBI's top priority, writes David Broder. So why divert scarce manpower to raiding a well-run medical marijuana clinic that has the approval of local authorities?

On Oct. 25, some 30 Drug Enforcement Agency agents searched the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center for six hours, confiscating "marijuana plants, processed marijuana, 3,000 medical records and all the business documents on the site," Broder writes. The next day they "seized the organization's bank accounts, effectively shutting down its normal operations."

At the time of the raid, 960 people -- most of them with AIDS, the rest with cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease and other serious illnesses -- were alleviating pain and nausea with marijuana from Imler's center. No arrest warrants have been issued since the raid, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office told me it will be ``some time'' before any prosecutions are decided. But the center has closed its dispensary because, as Imler said, ``we do not want to distribute black market products.'' Now, Duran added, ``we have 960 patients out in the parks, looking for drug dealers to get their marijuana, which is exactly what the city didn't want.''

No one has alleged -- let alone proved -- that anyone obtained marijuana without a medical prescription. Why in the world is the Bush administration fighting this battle, when there are so many more important wars to be won?

For that matter, why is Attorney General John Ashcroft attacking Oregon's assisted suicide law? The law seems to be working as the voters intended, giving terminally ill patients the assurance they can decide how and when to die. Since 1997, 70 Oregonians have used it. Doesn't Ashcroft have enough to do preventing homicides?-- 11/9

Digital myth
Non-whites don't need government help to adopt new technologies, argues MIT's Benjamin M. Compaine in "The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth?" The "digital divide" rhetoric stigmatizes blacks and other minorities as techno-dummies, doing more harm than good, he believes.

While blacks are less likely to have Internet-linked computers at home, they use computers at libraries and schools, and are more likely to be online job-hunting, less likely than whites to be playing games or gabbing in chat rooms. -- 11/9

Edison's Philly folly
They've got guts at Edison Schools, Inc., the country's largest school-management corporation. But do they have brains?

Pennsylvania is taking over Philadelphia's utterly messed-up school system and hiring a private manager -- certain to be Edison -- to run the district, reports the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition to staffing the top 55 administration jobs, Edison will directly run 45 of the city's worst 60 schools; other companies or community groups will run the other 15 very low-performing schools. It will be a very tough job -- like turning around the Titanic, after it's hit the iceberg.

As the Post writes, school reform plans have been failing in Philly for years.

Through it all, there has been one constant: the dismal performance of the city's 210,000 public school students. Some 57 percent of them fail state-mandated math and reading tests. As Schweiker, a Republican, noted ruefully in a recent speech, "only 13 percent of the district's high school juniors are able to read the newspapers with basic comprehension." And that, he noted, does not include the 50 percent who drop out.

On any given day, nearly one in four high school students hasn't bothered to show up.

For Edison, taking over a deeply dysfunctional school system is a very high-risk venture. The for-profit company, which never has made a profit, is promising to cut the district's administrative costs by 30 percent, while fixing up crumbling schools. Its academic program is based on a longer school day and year, which boosts costs. Yet it will be stuck with the current contract with the teachers' union, severely limiting flexibility.

Some say the system is so bad it can't do any worse -- either in managing finances or educating students. But can it do better under new management? I'm not sure.

Gov. Mark Schweiker promises the state will boost funding for the city's schools. Currently, the district is running a huge deficit. Under the state plan, Edison would get 2.25 percent of the budget to pay administrative staff and -- if possible -- make a profit. If the company missed its goals, it would lose some of its fees.

Mayor John Street is negotiating with Schweiker, but if they don't reach agreement by Nov. 30, the state will implement its plan as is. There's not much local buy-in, except for some black politicians, who are desperate for change in dreadful inner-city schools. The teachers like the promise of big raises for taking on extra work, but their union's stance is increasingly hostile to Edison management.

The 10-year-old company now runs 136 schools nationwide, either under contract or as charter schools. But not all those schools are successful. And Edison's never tackled a problem as huge as Philadelphia.

Edison founder Chris Whittle predicts taking over Philadelphia will push his company into profitability. But if Philadelphia schools fail to improve -- as they've failed so often in the past -- the system could drag Edison Schools Inc. down with it. -- 11/8

Killing on purpose and by accident
Read "Afghanistan Highjacked,'' a great Slate column by Will Saletan.

On Sept. 11, agents of the al-Qaida terrorist network hijacked four planes and used three of them to kill 5,000 Americans. The fourth plane crashed short of its target. Afterward, U.S. officials disclosed that if the fourth plane had made it to Washington, D.C., they would have shot it down. They were prepared to kill some civilians, if necessary, in order to prevent the terrorists from killing many more.

A similar scenario is now unfolding in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida and its Taliban agents have hijacked a nation, making it a base of operations for mass murder and terror. They're using the civilian inhabitants of this base as human shields. If we refuse to attack the terrorists, many more civilians around the world will die. So we have attacked, and some of our bombs have killed innocent people. Each of those deaths is terrible and tragic. But we're no more responsible for them than we would have been for shooting down that plane full of innocent Americans. We didn't put the lives of Afghan civilians at risk. Afghanistan's hijackers did. -- 11/8

Mr. Bill talks
The U.S. is "paying a price" for killing innocent slaves and Indians, said ex-President Bill Clinton in an oddly squishy speech at Georgetown Wednesday. And "we'' are to blame for Crusaders' brutality to Muslims and Jews. According to the Washington Times:

Mr. Clinton said the international terrorism that has only just reached the United States dates back thousands of years.

"In the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was a Muslim on the Temple Mount. I can tell you that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it."

Surely, a former president shouldn't be making the America-haters' case for them. And it's downright dumb to imply that Osama bin Laden cares about the slaves or the Sioux. (At least, the U.S. ended slavery, unlike bin Laden's buddies in Sudan.) Also:

Mr. Clinton referred to stories in the media about some American citizens cheering the terrorist attacks and suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden.

"This debate is going on all over America. We've got to stop pretending this isn't out there," he said.

There's a debate "all over America'' about whether the terrorists attacks should be cheered by U.S. citizens? Maybe he means a debate about whether citizens who cheer for bin Laden should be tried for treason, burned like a U.S. flag in Peshawar or simply treated like useless idiots.

Clinton called for Americans to look inward for causes of the attack, points out Andrew Sullivan. But the ex-president showed no sign of looking at his own responsibility. -- 11/8

Chelsea talks
Chelsea Clinton was thinking about the tax cut as she walked through Manhattan on Sept. 11? It's in her four-page Talk article, which also claims she thanked God her mother was senator (why?) and Rudy Giuliani -- not yet recognized as the hero of the crisis -- was mayor. Chelsea writes she hadn't thought she had "innocences'' to lose before the attack. No surprise, given her parents, but why couldn't a copy editor fix that faulty plural for her? -- 11/8

Fee for firing
In the annals of bad corporate PR, Valiant Networks merits a special place: The company is demanding that workers laid-off before they put in 12 months on the job refund hiring bonuses, reports Peter Delevett in the San Jose Mercury News. The company, which is in the telecommunications and networking business, was hiring six months ago, and handing out hefty bonuses contingent on employees staying for a full year. Last month, Valiant cut its staff from 120 people to 29. The letter asking unemployed workers for the money threatens Valiant will call in a collection agency if they don't pay up.

If Valiant survives the recession and needs to start hiring again, it's going to have trouble finding loyal employees. -- 11/6

Saudis love us
Saudis like America, grieve for the 9-11 victims and just want peace in the Mideast to stop the deaths on both sides, writes Mahmoud bin Abd Al-Ghani Sabbagh. I quoted a column by Sabbagh, translated by the Middle East Media and Research Institute, on Oct. 28:

Because the governor [sic] of the Big Apple is a Jew, he refused [to accept the donation] and caused a storm."'Giuliani said: 'The Prince's declarations are grievous and irresponsible; these Arabs have lost the right to dictate [to us what to do]. What we (America) must do is kill 6,000 innocent people.'" By Allah, I am amazed at your act, you Jew; everything Prince Al-Walid said was true… If democracy means a governor who is a homosexual in a city in which dance clubs, prostitution, homosexuality, and stripping proliferate – the U.S. can keep its democracy.

A sophomore at the George Washington University, Sabbagh wrote an article for the reader opinion section of the Al-Riyadh newspaper web site. Half his article was mis-translated, he says. (I've asked for his own translation.) The U.S. media is wrong about Saudi reaction to the terrorist attack, Sabbagh told me.

We all were hurt and shocked from the 11th of september terrorist attack. These planes slammed on our hearts as they slammed on your hearts too.
Killing innocents people never was allowed or acceptable in Islam. . .

America i have a message to announce, we love you, we grief for you, and i swear that this is most people's opinion back home. On the other hand, we are so happy that you are recovering and that you proved that you are the best nation in the whole world.

And i have no idea why after all that we are criticized in the American's media. And that's so sad.

One last thing, We don't hate Jew."you are our cousins". We just want peace in the middle east because we know that hundreds of innocent people on both sides are dying there.

America please don't be unfair with us (Saudi Arabia). Because 10 or even 100 stupid do not represent the 22 million Saudis.

In saudi arabia we are so ambitions to improve our nation, especially my generation. We are asking for more democracy in Saudi Arabia, for more resonable women and human rights, and for equality. Because we all believe that these never conflicted with Islam's rules.

Believe me, our only ambition is to develop our country and make it more opened to the world, and to show how peaceful and friendly we are as a nation and Muslims.

God Bless America!!

I'm sure there are some Saudis who are pro-American, pro-democracy and pro-modernity. But they're not running the country. They're not able to make their case in Saudi Arabia, without fear of imprisonment.

Matt Welch's Warblog quotes another column, "U.S. Media Dancing to Zionist Tune," in Arab News, which bills itself as "Saudi Arabia's first English language daily.'' They must do their own translation. After describing New York Times columnist Tom Friedman as a Jew and warning of the designs of "world Jewry,'' Hassan Tahsin goes on to say:

Moreover, as Zionism is surviving on lies, it exploits every opportunity to target Islam and this is evident following the September attacks on the US. Therefore, the US media that are controlled or dominated by Zionists continue attacking Islam, Muslims and Arabs taking advantage of the fact that the prime suspects in the attacks are Arab or Muslim.

The enmity between the West and Islam is growing due to the lies spread by Zionism. Zionists claim that Arabs and Muslims are against Israel.

Arabs and Muslims aren't against Israel? It's just a Zionist lie? Wow! There really is news in Arab News.

I can't remember which blogger came up with the idea of replacing the Saudis with the Hashemite monarchy, who are descended from Muhammed, and were supposed to get Arabia instead of Jordan. Was it Welch? Glenn Reynolds? Andrew Sullivan?

In The New Republic, Sullivan reports on vicious anti-Semitism in the (non-Saudi) Arab press. -- 11/6

A sensitive war
Here's a funny John Leo column on that looks at World War II with modern eyes. Should we have halted bombing of Germany during Oktoberfest? -- 11/6

Friendly skies
I'm back from my first post-September plane trip. Other than a 20-minute line to go through security in San Jose, and the sight of rifle-toting National Guardsmen at the airports, it was uneventful. My daughter was even allowed to take a nail clipper in her carry-on bag.

I was impressed by the patience, courtesy and good humor of the travelers. We knew why we were waiting in line. Nobody complained -- not even those chosen randomly for an extra search. It was the nicest I've ever seen people behave in an airport. I guess we realized that we're all in this together. -- 11/5

Will it be on the test?
For years, California schools weren't held accountable for teaching English to students labeled "Limited English Proficient'' or, in the current euphemism, "English Language Learners.'' There was no state test measuring students' progress in mastering English. There was wild variation from district to district and school to school in how students were labeled LEPs or ELLs, and in how they were relabeled as fluent. If they ever were.

So now there's a state test, a huge step forward in accountability. And educators are complaining about it, reports the Los Angeles Times. They say it takes too much time away from teaching -- about two to three hours every year.

Antonio Sauza, an 8-year-old who recently immigrated from Mexico, was being tested at the Garden Grove district Friday.

When asked by a reporter how the oral portion went, he responded in Spanish that "it was easy." Sauza could describe in Spanish the story he heard in English about "house pets having a party."

But his spoken English was so poor that he could not tell the tester about the story. That told the district all it wanted to know about his English skills. Even so, after he is placed in his third-grade class, he will have to be pulled out to complete the writing and reading sections.

"That is unnecessary," said Jay Heck, supervisor of the district's assessment center. "If they do poorly in listening and speaking, why do we have to pull them out of class and give them reading and writing, something we already know they can't do?"

Well, maybe because some people can read a foreign language better than they can speak it. That's certainly true for my Spanish. Or maybe because testing Antonio now creates a baseline to measure his progress.

Garden Grove used to test kids when they entered the district and "before reclassifying them as fluent in English,'' the Times reports. Statewide, fewer than five percent of students were reclassified each year. The odds are good that kids like Antonio never would be retested. Especially if reclassifying them as fluent meant losing extra state funds.

Educators have two legitimate beefs: The state isn't paying the full cost of the new testing, and it's incredibly slow in reporting scores back to the schools. -- 11/5

Tech toys
In response to my earlier item on a Palo Alto school asking parents to buy $2,000 laptops for their sixth graders, reader Doug Levene writes:

I love my computer, it's a great toy, lots of fun. So's my car. Neither has much educational value. Kids should learn to word-process (what I called "typing" in the Dark Ages), how to research on the net (especially how to separate out trustworthy material from all the junk and misinformation), and starting at around 6th grade how to use spreadsheets, which are valuable mathematical tools. I don't see any educational value in teaching them how to do PowerPoint presentations. I can't imagine why any school child needs a laptop.

I'd say the computer is more than a toy. But the value of laptops is greatly exaggerated. Kids can write down their assigments in a datebook, and call a friend if they need clarification. They can surf for information on a home or library PC. And they can write essays instead of assembling PowerPoint slides. -- 11/5

No fear
I'm going out of town for a few days -- a visit to my parents -- so I won't be posting again till Sunday. I can't feel brave about flying: The new threat, according to our governor, is crossing suspension bridges. And by Saturday it will be something else. I've reached my paranoia limit. I'm too fed up to be scared.

Peggy Noonan says we're all soldiers. She wants me to buy a digital camera so I can photograph Middle Eastern men scoping out nuclear power plants. And duct tape for the "safe room.'' And gas masks for the guests.

Maybe it's the fact that she lives in New York City, and I'm in California. But it seems way over the top to me. I'll be happy to battle any skyjackers on the flight today. But I'm bringing a book along just in case they don't show up. -- 11/2

The ruins are still smoking
Journalists with short attention spans are threatening to declare Afghanistan a Vietnam-style "quagmire" if we don't win the war by Ramadan. Will Saletan in Slate explains why the press is pressing for more action and casting vaguely attributed doubt. Michael Kelly explains why it's not another Vietnam.

Thanks to Instapundit, here's a blunt statement from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who's impatient with the impatience of the press. Rumsfeld points out that the ruins of the World Trade Center are still smoking, and argues that we're making progress on all our goals. "We are now fighting a new kind of war. It is unlike any America has ever fought before. Many things about this war are different from wars past-but, as I have said, one of those differences is not the possibility of instant victory."

A friend of mine saw Rumsfeld's answer to a question on why the U.S. is using cluster bombs. Rumsfeld replied that we are trying to kill enemy soldiers. -- 11/1

Now it's a recession
The Jacobs Rule of Economics states: It's not a recession if my brother-in-law has a job. Well, as of Monday, it's a recession. In fact, nobody in the family over the age of 21 is employed. My sister and brother also are out of work; I'm working but not actually getting paid. (That Amazon tip jar only generates money when I remind readers it's there.)

The bright news is child labor. My daughter is working two part-time jobs, though she'll be a full-time student again in January. And my two-year-old niece, the world's cutest child, earned some money modeling clothes. All those photo ops with Grandpa paid off. Maybe she could get one of those airport security jobs playing "find the tweezer'' in carry-on luggage. She's great at rummaging.

I have it better than the newly laid-off tech workers. I planned to be earning nothing this year. And my plan is working! -- 11/01