Nuclear Chess Matches to Come

Below the radar of saving the global economy, President Obama was working in London this week to keep the world from blowing itself up with nuclear weapons.

A meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev produced a joint statement that the two countries will begin negotiations to reduce arsenals in anticipation of an Obama visit to Moscow this summer.

Unlike George W. Bush's 2001 first encounter with Vladimir Putin, Obama did not look into Medvedev's eyes to get "a sense of his soul" but held a businesslike meeting to lay the groundwork to extend and strengthen the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires in December.

Nuclear arms control has changed since the Cold War days and, like the economy, is complicated by players beyond the two former superpowers who now have to deal with other nations who have them (China, India, Pakistan et al) as well as non-proliferation to those who want them, such as Iran and North Korea.

The complexity can be seen in the mixed feelings of Japan, the only nation in history to suffer nuclear attack, which nonetheless now wants the US to maintain an effective deterrent against the weapons of its Asian neighbors.

Similarly, India is expressing doubts about a new test-ban treaty "not explicitly linked to the goal of nuclear disarmament" that might create "a permanent division between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states," which translates into fears of Pakistan and China.

What used to be a WMD checkers game between the US and the Soviet Union is now a simultaneous series of chess matches around the world, and it's encouraging to see that Obama is getting ready to play them in Russia, China and wherever else necessary.

Cookie Monster in China

The latest triumph of American cultural imperialism is the rise of Oreos as the best-selling treats in China after a marketing blitz to teach kids there to love milk and cookies.

An "apprentice program" at 30 universities trained 300 students to ride around Beijing on bicycles outfitted with wheel covers shaped like Oreos and hand out hundreds of thousands of samples.

TV commercials promoted the idea of pairing cookies and milk, showing kids twisting apart Oreos, licking the cream center and dipping the cookie halves.

It worked, but local tastes forced the manufacturer to reinvent the almost 100-year-old American favorite as a less sweet, long, thin, four-layered cookie coated in chocolate. No plans as yet to insert slips of paper with predictions for the future, but multiculturalism is on the march.

Revelations

Pat Robertson has returned from his annual State of the Universe meeting with God, and there is good news:

"What I'm praying about is China. I'm asking for 250 million in China. We haven't had that breakthrough yet but I think we're going to get it. God's going to give us China. And China will be the largest Christian nation on the face of the earth. They're going to come to Jesus."

In November, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network received heavenly guidance that led him to endorse Rudy Giuliani as the best candidate for President to defend the country against “the blood lust of Islamic terrorists.”

The devout 76-year-old Robertson claims the ability to leg press 2000 pounds. Is it possible that God is pulling Robertson's leg?

Warriors for Peace

Children are supposed to be guileless enough to speak truths that adults are too compromised to tell. But on going to war with Iran, retired soldiers are taking the lead.

Last weekend, Gen. Wesley Clark wrote a Washington Post OpEd warning against the folly of attacking Iran, as the Bush Administration is clearly preparing to do.

Now another retired military leader, Gen. John Abizaid, who headed Central Command for almost four years, speaks out.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid yesterday told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

The General was referring to such countries as “axis of evil” member North Korea and unstable ally Pakistan. But the Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons are beating the drums for an urgent war against Iran just as they did against Iraq five years ago.

Some years ago, someone I knew was planning a picture book titled “They Must Know What They’re Doing or They Wouldn’t Be Where They Are,” featuring the designer of the Edsel, LBJ directing the war in Vietnam and other perpetrators of huge follies.

The Bushies have earned their place in that volume and, before they can repeat their performance in Iran, Gen. Abizaid has some common sense to impart:

“I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran...can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that...while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power.”

What we need now are politicians who are as dedicated to peacekeeping as the men who were trained to make war.

Murdoch to Buy Bush Administration

On the heels of the Dow Jones deal, Rupert Murdoch has made an offer to acquire the assets of the nearly bankrupt Bush Administration, reliable sources reported today.

Insiders speculate that, among other moves, the media baron plans to merge the White House Press Secretary’s Office with Fox News in a 24/7 effort to counter liberal media bias.

The synergy of the proposed merger is intriguing media analysts, who foresee joint efforts by the newly acquired Wall Street Journal and the Treasury Department to ease trade imbalances and stimulate corporate investment as well as initiatives by the State Department to improve relations with the People’s Republic of China where Mr. Murdoch has been making significant progress in advancing U.S interests.

Off the record, Mr. Murdoch has reassured stockholders of continuity of top management in the White House but has not ruled out lower-level changes such as replacing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with a legal expert of Australian extraction and moving Karl Rove to the New York Post as editor of Page Six, which has lost some of its bite of late.

If negotiations should fail, Mr. Murdoch is prepared to settle for a smaller acquisition, reported to be one or both houses of Congress.

Another possibility is the Supreme Court, where News Corp. has previous ties with a $1 million book advance to Justice Clarence Thomas.

A Large-Hearted Woman

Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.

During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.

Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.

One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.

In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"

A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.

She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.

If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.

Murdoch and More

From his dazzling array of affronts to human decency, it is Rupert Murdoch’s insatiability, his pursuit of “more” as the true meaning of life that repels and fascinates above all else.

At 76, he has money and power to burn, but his greed seems to exist on some plane of quasi-religious fervor.

Clichés about loss of potency and fear of death are too pale to explain him. No Citizen Kane, Murdoch is one of a kind. He seems driven to control all the media in the world, even if it means kowtowing to the Chinese government, as the New York Times reports today.

Compare him to Bill Gates, for example, or to his contemporary, George Soros, a successful speculator, who withdrew to devote his fortune to encouraging “open societies, tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."

Murdoch is not about withdrawing but charging ahead, not about tolerance but conformity, not about encouraging but controlling. He won’t have any troubling getting along with the Chinese regime.

Gates’ and Soros’ sincerity and motives may be subject to debate, but their humanity about the limits of wealth and power offer a contrast to Murdoch, who acts as if he will live forever if only he can keep swallowing companies.

But here is some news for the man who wants to control all the news. In the immortal words of Olympia Dukakis in “Moonstruck”: I just want you to know no matter what you do, you're gonna die, just like everybody else.

But when Murdoch goes, he will get a great obit in the Wall Street Journal.