Not that I was exactly a Tragic Mulatto, but we never quite fit in. We were liberal, upper-middle-class (in attitude, not income) Jews, from Canada, surrounded by people descended from Okies from Muskogee. My mother volunteered for the George McGovern campaign in 1972 and I helped stuff envelopes.

What I only realized after I grew up and moved away was how decent and tolerant these boring, suburban neighbors were. They were certainly puzzled by our family's exotic ways; my divorced mother ran her own business out of the house, and installed three phone lines in each room, including each bathroom, by herself.

They were also occasionally shocked by notions like Jesus speaking a foreign language, and now and then there were attempts by concerned classmates to save me from an unpleasant future in hell. One evening, a movie about the Rapture was shown at the local (public) high-school as community entertainment. Still, I never heard that distinct gasp of disbelief and hostile, shocked amazement that I often hear now, when people discover that, yep, I'm voting for Bush.

Go read the whole thing, and then I'll echo her comment and amplify it.

About fifteen years ago, I moved from Venice Beach to Torrance - politically, from deep-Blue to bright Red - and believed that I'd moved from the progressive, tolerant center of the world to a place where I was sure to be a neighborhood outcast for my liberal ways.

And, surprisingly, I wasn't. Many of my neighbors disagreed with me, and we had some interesting debates at the PTA, but on a basic level I was more than tolerated, I was accepted.

Which is more than I often am at dinners in Brentwood or the Pacific Palisades when I explain that I supported the war in Iraq, or that I shoot for sport.

My real epiphany on the subject took place about four years ago, at a December dinner in Arizona with a group with whom I'd just finished a shooting class. This is a group that is - on average - politically so far to the right that they can barely tolerate the un-Christian, statist ways of the GOP. As we've emailed about the election, they point out that GW Bush is a bit of a wimp, but they'll probably vote for him anyway.

This was during the Supreme Court debates over the 2000 elections, and the television before dinner was on the news, as a heated discussion on the election took place. As may be obvious, I was the only defender of Al Gore and the Democratic efforts to win the vote in Florida in a room full of armed men (handguns are never an inappropriate fashion statement in this group).

As we sat down to dinner, the host asked each of us to say a few words of Grace. Most were religious in nature, and then they finally came to me, and I said "Please God, let me survive this meal and get home safely. The property is so large and my unmarked grave would be so small..."

People spilled their drinks laughing, and we went right back into the argument.

And I realized, amazingly, that these men and women - who disagree with almost everything I believe about government and politics - respected my right to take a stand and my opinions far more than people who agreed with me on the issues. They were in fact more tolerant of diversity than my Venice Beach neighbors.

I'm still digesting that.

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IRAN REPORTS

• The U.S. is looking at the possiblity of isolated strike on Iran. The strike bit is challenging enough; the 'isolated' is the real problem though...

• The IAEA is taking a soft line on the rogue state's nuclear program.

• But even that line is too harsh for the Iranians, who are promising to enrich more uranium.

• Perhaps in a sign of things to come, Israel is purchasing some 5,000 smart bombs from the United States, including bunker busters.

• Iran is trying to limit women's rights and foreign investment.

• The Iraqi defence minister says Iran has scaled back its interference in Iraq.

DOMESTIC SECURITY BRIEFINGS

• A small explosive has been found on an Australian passenger jet.

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had a visa to enter Australia in August 2001.

• Yusuf Islam, AKA Cat Stevens, has been forbidden entry in to the United States. The Muslim convert is on the terrorist watch list, and has 'unwittingly' donated to terrorist groups in the past.

THE WIDER WAR

• A Libyan named Abu Faraj al-Libbi has taken charge of al-Qaeda cells in Britain and the US.

• A senior al-Tawhid man has been killed in Iraq by US forces.

• President Hamid Karzai and his vice-president have both survived recent attempts on their lives.

• President Musharraf says there are al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan. Unfortunately, they are getting their act together.

• A teenage suicide bomber has killed two Israeli policemen in Jerusalem.

• Indonesian police believe JI are planning attacks every six months.

• More fighting in Kashmir.

• The FSB says it has stopped an attack in Moscow. The terrorist, ahem, died in custody. The FSB also claim they've busted a suicide bomber recruitment group in Chechnya.

• Syria is moving some 1,000 troops out of Beirut to elsewhere in Lebanon, despite international pressure to withdraw all troops from the country.

• An interesting look at US efforts to train Nigerien soldiers to fight Salafi terrorists.

• Nigerian Islamists have attacked a police station.

• A Russian officer has been arrested for failing to prevent the bombings of two Russian airliners. He briefly detained both suicide bombers.

• Not entirely reliably, Debka reports Russian troops have moved to prevent fighting between North Ossetians and the Ingush.

• An overview of the Islamist campaign in Algeria.

• Al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for the shooting of a Brit in Riyadh last week.

• Saudi police have arrested a wanted extremist in Tabuk.

• A Saudi enemy combatant will be transferred from American to Saudi custody.

• Any Dr Seuss fans out there?

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors passed a resolution on Saturday specifically demanding that Iran freeze all uranium enrichment -- including conversion -- and expressing alarms of Tehran’s plans to start the process.

Describing his country as a victim of “pressures imposed by the United States,” Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh said that of the more than 40 tons of uranium being mined for enrichment “some (already) has been used.”

President Bush made a stirring speech to the U.N. recently. It was about security, Iraq, and exporting democracy in an ideal world. He said nothing about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran is now a neighbor---Americans flank it on two borders. Iran’s nuclear business is our business.

The President panegyrized the UN with assuring words:

History will honor the high ideals of this organization. The charter states them with clarity: "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights," "to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom."

What is perplexing about these times is how far out we have skated upon thin ice, and yet the comforts of 20th century platitudes and rhetoric still define our official world view. Surely, President Bush is aware of the stakes in Iran and North Korea. He must know the pieces of the nuclear proliferation puzzle better than most. Yet, in spite of boldly blazing into the heart of darkness, we impose upon ourselves a tentative policy in the face of our civilization's destruction. At the doorstep of the abyss, we waver. We consult fair-weather friends, taking refuge in the language of diplomacy and consensus, as though we are waiting for the moment to seize upon us. Yet, this is the moment. This is the time---right now.

Preemption in an era of nuclear proliferation may be folly if not acted upon decisively. What realistically can be accomplished, and for how long? At best, preemption buys only time. The nuclear genie has long left the bottle, lurking in many scattered places---too many places to account for. It seems unlikely that a nuclear event can be forestalled indefinitely. So in an era of preemption, we must look at this moment in history as a bridge to another epoch. We live now in that moment between two worlds---the one before 9/11, and the one that will follow the unthinkable. Preemption will be a short moment in our history, whose utility will diminish quickly. It will likely only slow proliferation, not abate it.

Preemption is only a temporary policy, while it is feasible at all. It may already be dead, in a practical sense, as we defer to familiar protocols. Dithering on the border of Iran, the President proclaims hollow commendation for the UN, an organization he must actually despise. Between ourselves and a terrorist’s nuclear assembly line stands the UN, the EU, our own self-doubt and petty politics. High-minded UN-speak doesn’t gel with preemption, which boils down to defensively saving our bacon through offensive means. There’s nothing fancy about it; nothing that can make it sound digestible to bureaucracies predisposed for averaged policy. It doesn’t fit in the Charter, and never will. Consensus is fine for writing the prose of international laws that are easily broken; but preemption is the antithesis of a broad international consensus.

During this period, we should consider how we can prepare ourselves for the hard times that we face. Preemption’s true opportunity is only the time it secures for planning the next stage of our civilization. Who among us inhabits that world with more than trepidation and despair?

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Total war - the kind of war practiced in tribal societies, in which (as an example) the city is sacked and burnt, the men and boys killed, and the women and children taken as slaves - is not terrorism. Strategic war, as threatened through my childhood and young adulthood, in which the possibility that cities would be vaporized, or as practiced in Hamburg and Tokyo and Dresden in World War II - is not terrorism.

Those may be war crimes, as we define them today (although I will point out the unique character of Western society in which we are willing to find our own troops, as well as those of the defeated forces, guilty of war crimes), but they are not terrorism.

They are not terrorism for two simple reasons.

They are carried out by identifiable agents of a power (tribe, city, state) who bears the moral and physical hazard of having carried them out. They are carried out against people who are at least given the sad dignity of being the objects of violence, not bloody Post-It notes left behind to send a message to some abstract 'other'.

Terrorists do neither.

And that matters, for both practical and moral reasons.

Dead is dead, you may say. What possible difference can it make?

But there is a difference. And the difference is both moral and practical.

Let's address practicality first. The hardest part about winning wars is managing them - simply deciding that you won't 'kill everyone and let God take his own', but to stop the violence at some point and let some people live. Wars that don't have rules are called massacres. The notion of tit-for-tat is as old as recorded history. Going to Thucidydes (via Kagen's great retelling):

On a cloudy night early in March 431 over three hundred Thebans sneaked into Platea guided by Nauclided, a leader of the Platean oligarchic faction who, with his traitorous supporters, wanted to destroy the democrats who were in power and turn the town over to Thebes. The Thebans expected the unprepared Plataeans to surrender peacefully and, threatening no reprisals, invited all the townspeople to join them.

[The Plateans fought back, defeating the Thebans]

...the Platean woman and the town's slaves, screaming for blood, climbed to the rooftops and threw stones and tiles at the invaders. The disoriented Thebans fled for their lives, pursued by the natives who knew Platea's every feature. Many were caught and killed, and before long the survivors were forced to surrender.

[The Theban relief couldn't get to the town and withdrew.]

Although the forced withdrew, the Plateans executed 180 of their captives regardless. By the traditional standards of Greek warfare this was an atrocity, the first of many that only grew in horror as the years of war went by. But a sneak attack at night in peacetime was also outside the code of honor of the hoplite warrior and seemed therefore to warrant no protection for its perpetrators.
(emphasis added)

In tit-for-tat, whose who abide by the rules in turn can expect to have the rules upheld for them. Recent neurobiology has suggested that this impulse - to 'fairness' or if treated unfairly, to revenge - is one that is deeply rooted in the brain.

Brian Knutson, a Stanford University psychologist who studies the neural basis of emotion, says the Swiss report is the first to make the neurological link between fairness and the striatum.

"Instead of cold calculated reason, it is passion that may plant the seeds of revenge," he notes in a accompanying commentary.

The study also reveals that revenge seekers are completely blinded by passion, Fehr points out. As volunteers considered whether to pay up to get payback, researchers noted that the medial prefontal cortex became active. In previous studies, this area of the brain has been linked to weighing the costs and benefits of taking action. Even as scientists gain a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of fairness, others are trying to understand its origins.

Sarah Brosnan, an Emory University anthropologist, says an important question is whether a sense of fairness is something people pick up in school, home or church, or whether it's a concept that has been hardwired into the human brain over the eons.

In continuing work with capuchin monkeys, Brosnan and her colleague Frans de Waal of Emory have found compelling evidence of an evolutionary origin. The monkeys, it turns out, know a raw deal when they see one.

We humans are also literally unable to think clearly when blinded by the desire for revenge or to redress perceived unfairness.

Military discipline exists to overcome this monkey rage, both to improve the odds of an army's success and to ensure that the commanders of that army can remain in command once the emotions of battle - rage, fear - revenge - take hold.

The strength of anonymous terrorist attacks - that the weaker target will not use it's superior strength to simply massacre those it believes are at fault - is a brittle one when confronted with those emotions if they mount too far. Russia has been unstintingly brutal in repressing the Chechen guerillas - and may be far more brutal in repressing Chechen terrorists.

But I don't reject terrorism only out of fear that it will make us do bad things - although I worry about that. I reject terrorism, and believe it must be rejected rather than seen as 'diplomacy by another means' because I believe that the states that it would birth would be horror shows.

The existence of discipline over force is itself a key, I believe, to the recognition of a power as a state and the key to the foundation of a state based on political power, rather than terror and tyranny. I talked about Max Weber and the PA, but let me requote him here:

'Every state is founded on force,' said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of 'state' would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as 'anarchy,' in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state--nobody says that--but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions--beginning with the sib--have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the "right" to use violence. Hence, "politics" for us means striving to share power, either among states or among groups within a state.

Because political movements that subscribe to terrorist tactics (and again, I'll make a clear and significant distinction between terrorism and guerilla warfare) explicitly reject the notion that they are the source of the terrorist's right to use violence, the key element needed to support a political state (as opposed to a tyranny) is missing.

Israel was founded in part by terrorists. But when they blew up the Altalena, the government of Ben-Gurion reclaimed its monopoly on violence, and claimed the State of Israel as a political state. Can you imagine a Palestine in which Arafat sunk the Karine A? Or in which the PA officials who he 'arrested' afterward actually spent time in jail?

Terrorism, even if successful, is not a path to liberation. It is instead a path to the kind of tyranny and madness we see today in the West Bank and Gaza, that we saw in Afghanistan's soccer stadiums as crowds gathered to watch the executions.

« ok, I'm done now

Would you believe the infamously liberal L.A. Times? Good reporting, folks - factual, qualified language used where appropriate, and not overboard in either direction. Though it was USA Today who really broke the story. Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt explains why this matters and offers a parallel scenario involving Republicans to make his point.

Let's be clear. None of these people are not saying that the network got the documents from the Kerry campaign. So far, my Sept. 13 prediction is looking pretty good. That said, the level of collusion after the documents were received is a legitimate issue. Alarmingly, Hewitt notes that this may not be the first time CBS News has done such things.

Meanwhile, some hack at Newsday is repeating the same "the real issue is conservatives intimidating the media" spin that Kevin Drum recently used. I've got to say, reading that drivel really undermined a lot of the respect I had extended to Kevin for his admission that the documents were fake. Protein Wisdom absolutely drops the clue-hammer on these idiotic notions, in a post that ranks as one of the blogosphere's finer fiskings. Read it.

« ok, I'm done now

"Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?"

High Holidays are a time of dedicated reflection, but the Jewish people have been sustained through all of our trials by humour as well as Torah. Even repentance can come from laughter, by recognizing the ridiculousness of the situations that our poor behaviour gets us into. Jerry Seinfeld made a career out of this - so nu, what are you waiting for already?

May we all resolve to keep our senses of humour amidst the coming year's trials.

« ok, I'm done now

In political news:

• The famous (albeit now rapidly aging) Italian porn star Cicciolina (born Ilona Staller in Hungary) is planning a run for the mayor of Milan in 2005 on a platform of making this northern Italian city "an exciting place." Well may we say, she should know how to, but in addition to her other talents, Cicciolina has got plenty of political experience already under her garter belt:
  

  "She entered politics in 1987 when she won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of [Italian] Parliament, on the Radical party ticket. Three years later, Staller publicly offered to have sex with Saddam Hussein if the then-Iraqi leader agreed to free foreigners being held hostage in Iraq before the Gulf War. Staller did not run for re-election at the end of her 5-year term, but her interest in politics remained -- she made a failed bid to get on the ballot for a parliamentary election in her native Hungary in 2002."

• There's a lesson there for all of us: get screwed by Cicciolina, or risk getting screwed by the Americans.
  


• Meanwhile in Belgium, the European Union headquarters is preparing to reopen, true to form, "[s]even years late and three times over budget." It was shut down for renovations in 1991 after asbestos has been discovered in large quantities throughout the building.
  

  "Incoming Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has already decided the new building will house all 25 European Commissioners, to foster team spirit. The new commissioners will enjoy grand offices on the top three floors of the 13-storey Berlaymont. They can expect five windows - on the basis of hierarchy - and an office of at least 75 square metres which will soon be filled with leather sofas and other trappings of euro power. The 230,000 square metre building will also be the workplace of 2,200 of the Commission's 18,000 Brussels-based staff.

  "The large, bright reception hall resembles more a modern airport or shopping mall than the heart of Brussels bureaucracy. The building is also designed to withstand unhappy EU citizens: specially-fitted anti-demonstration windows will keep warring protesters at bay. The command centre of the EU HQ is on the 13th floor, where Barroso and his commissioners will meet for weekly strategy sessions. Entering the room gives the impression of walking into a sci-fi movie. Under a futuristic light fitting shaped like a large egg, an oval table is equipped with James Bond-like pop-up computers. A large, dark wall protrudes out over Europe's capital. Bullet-proof glass and protective walls will hopefully put paid to any terrorist attacks.

  "To boost the Commission's tarnished public image, contractors have installed ground-breaking energy conservation technology. This includes reflective outside panels, which use heat sensors to warm the building in winter and keep it cool in summer. But the Berlaymont has been unable to distance itself completely from Greenpeace accusations that contractors may have used illegal Indonesian timber in the refurbishment process."

• The Commission's public image might become further tarnished when the Euro-citizens learn that the total cost of reconstruction is expected to top 1 billion Euro. Oh well, the Commission will just have to put in even more energy-saving technology to placate the taxpayers (although a cynic might say that with 2,200 Commission employees "working" in the building, there won't be much energy expended anyway).

In international relations news:

• So much for the "ugly American" being the only one with an international image problem: according to a poll conduced by the Emnid Institute, "63% of Germans have felt embarrassed at least once by other Germans while away on holiday. Asked what they found most annoying about other Germans, 88% said it was the noise they made. Excessive complaining (82%) and constant requests for German food (66%) were also frequently criticised, the Berliner Kurier reports. And 65% of people interviewed said they felt embarrassed to witness the bad dress sense of fellow Germans - including the notorious combination of socks and sandals."
  


• Meanwhile, the French are starting to get ignored even in Europe: "European Commission chief-in-waiting Jose Manuel Durao Barroso denied Friday that France had got a bad deal by being given the relatively lightweight transport portfolio in his new EU executive." The Franco-snubbing continues on the grass-roots level, too, with Spain eclipsing last year's favourite France as the biggest tourist destination in Europe. Maybe it's because there are too many noisy, complaining, tastelessly dressed German tourists in France. Then again, maybe not, as the research suggests that Germans like holidaying mostly in Italy, Austria and Turkey. So maybe it's just the French.
  


• And maybe the French are finally getting the hint: "French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier... told his country's 300 ambassadors and chief diplomats around the world to ditch arrogance for influence in their dealings and concentrate on projecting Paris's power through the European Union." After the meeting, the Foreign Minister was taken aside by a few senior officials who explained to him that Paris's power had run out sometime around 1940 and arrogance has been the only economical substitute since then.

In defense and the war on terror news:

• A Belgian airliner was recently forced to make an emergency landing after an "aggressive kitten" escaped from a box into the cockpit. According to another report, "The scared animal was 'very aggressive and scratched the co-pilot'."
  


• The good news though, is that the Europeans are finally waking up to danger: "Governments across the world must step up counter-terror cooperation to prevent a repetition of the Russian school hostage crisis, Dutch Foreign Minister and current European Union spokesman Bernard Bot said Friday. At the same time, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the conflict in Chechnya could only be solved through political means, warning Western governments against being drawn into a clash of civilisations with Muslims, but added: 'We have to defend our values, even under difficult circumstances'." Or maybe not. We might know once Europe makes up its mind.
  


• Overall, European nations can breathe easier: after centuries of military adventurism, German army might finally be too busy having sex to engage in new conquests:
  

  "Germany has introduced a new guideline that allows both heterosexual and homosexual relationships between members of its armed forces, provided it involves two consenting adults. "The Bild Daily has reported that while sex during work hours will continue to be considered a disruption of service operations, the new ruling will be pretty liberal on what soldiers do in their leisure time."

• Blizkrieg might have worked well as a military doctrine, but being on the receiving end of a lightning-fast conquest might leave female soldiers rather unsatisfied.

In economic news:

• >There are signs that Great Britain is catching the Continental disease, as businesswoman Beryl King is "banned from asking for 'hard-working' staff in a job ad because it discriminates against the lazy." Then again, it's a good sign that in the UK even the lazy ones are still looking for work.
  


• Meanwhile, across the Channel, French farmers continue their proud tradition of rent-seeking: "French produce farmers upset by falling revenues due to oversupply and imports are staging disruptive protests to get help from the government, which is considering price-fixing that could violate EU competition rules. Milk producers invaded supermarkets in Lyon and other cities Thursday, putting stickers on milk cartons and bottles showing the prices they are getting paid versus the retail price. In Nancy, groups of farmers pushed shopping carts full of dairy products into the street without paying for them and handed them out for free to passers-by." Ah, the Golden Age when the government officials would push shopping carts full of taxpayers' money into picturesque village lanes and hand out the bundles of francs for free to passing farmers.
  


• The Germans, too, are increasingly in the doldrums: "Poverty levels in Germany are increasing, and greater discrepancy in wealth distribution is expected in coming years, according to Data Report 2004, a survey released by the Federal Statistics Office." As Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung comments: "When it comes to living standards, Germany has also slipped into Europe's mid-field. Not surprisingly then the report also concluded that Germans were among the least satisfied people in the 15 European countries surveyed in the EU before the accession of the 10 recent entrants." So the Germans are becoming an increasingly unhappy bunch: "Pessimism is spreading through German society, a survey released on Tuesday showed. The survey found that 34 percent of all Germans between 14 and 69 considered their situation to be worse today than it was two years ago. Last year, the total was 28 percent. "
  


• But at least the Germans will be able to console themselves, thanks to an ingenuous invention created out of an old slot machine by an artist, Jennifer Baumeister. In the Comfort XxL, "[a]t the push of a button, a screen shows a short video of somebody saying encouraging things... Baumeister videotaped some 100 people, and their messages range from two young women chanting 'You are great! You are beautiful! You are so fantastic!' to a man's more down-to-earth 'Remember, it could be worse'." Other suggested messages include: "Don't worry, you're still an economic superpower," "The future belongs to a Paris-Berlin axis," and "Remember, it could be worse - you could have reunited with the whole of the Eastern Europe, not just East Germany."
  


• Not quite on the economic topic, but Comfort XxL reminds me of the new talking Dutch toilets:
  

  "The citizens of Amsterdam may now take counsel of talking toilets that expound on the perils of smoking or the futility of war and berate them on hygiene and cleanliness. The first such toilets, fitted with sensors to detect exactly what visitors do and to pass comment if appropriate, were installed in a central Amsterdam cafe... Depending on circumstances, the toilet might remind you to wash your hands or ask you to lift the seat."

• The last time a toilet spoke to me was some years ago, when I was really drunk, so unfortunately I can't remember its exact words, but I think it might have been "You are great! You are beautiful! You are so fantastic!" Another thought: has the European Union been getting the ideas for its foreign policy lately from a talking toilet?
  


• Finally, and back on the economic subject, the new European currency is proving too much for some: "A dog in Germany has been treated for an expensive case of indigestion after eating a wad of Euro notes.
  

  "The dog's owner, a woman from Stockstadt, had withdrawn 450 euros (£300) and left them under a bank statement on the passenger seat of her car. Later when she returned to her car after shopping, the money was gone and she found her dog had collapsed in a pool of vomit. "Believing someone had broken into the car, poisoned the dog and stolen her money, the woman called police. Officers took the owner and dog to the nearest veterinary surgery. They quickly realised what had really happened when the dog began coughing up six 50 euro notes. The rest of the money soon followed, along with the bank balance sheets. 'The dog just kept spitting out pieces of money,' said a police spokesman."

• Who needs an Automatic Teller Machine when you have a dog?

In culture and the arts news:

• From the "it had to happen one day" file: "A cleaner at the Tate gallery [in Great Britain] threw out a modern art exhibit because she thought it was rubbish. She thought the piece, cardboard and paper and wrapped in a see-through binliner, was a sack of litter... She had no idea it was all part of an installation by German artist Gustav Metzgerand displayed on the floor at London's Tate Britain. Metzger's work, First Public Demonstration Of Autodestructive Art, stood proudly in the gallery's Art And The Sixties display." We don't need more artists, we need more cleaners.
  


• In Germany, a victory over the American cultural imperialism is achieved: German children no longer have to be intimidated by a Malibu Barbie, now that "James Waldron, head designer for the fashion label Rena Lange, has created a special Oktoberfest Barbie wearing an Alpine dirndl dress - complete with beer jug." Speaking of traditional German fashion, "[d]emand for traditional German clothing such as lederhosen for dogs is said to be increasing in the run up to Oktoberfest." As long as dogs don't wear socks and sandals.

In sensitivity and tolerance news:

• Can it get any more sensitive than this? "A leading German dictionary publisher plans to launch a guide it says will help men translate the subtext of female conversation. The Langenscheidt publishing group, best known for its well-respected yellow foreign language dictionaries, will launch sales of a 128-page book to translate such baffling female banter as: 'Let's just cuddle' into 'No sex tonight please!'." A one-page guide on the subtext of male conversation is coming soon.
  


• In Holland, meanwhile, an attempt at a PC censorship: "A Dutch group wants to ban the word 'thin' from the dictionary because it's insulting to underweight people. The group, called Small Intestines Anonymous, represents people who struggle to put on weight. They say the word 'thin' is a term of abuse used by 'fat over-rulers' to put down slender people." I'm sure the activists will be able to work an anti-American angle into it.
  


• Back in Germany, men are losing their last bastion of masculinity: "German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them. The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as 'Stehpinkeln')." Why not instead manufacture toilets with the seat permanently attached down? And won't the WC ghost simply make German men urinate standing but without lifting the seat?

In education news:

• Teachers at a fundamentalist Christian school in Norway have complained to the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority that the school's headmaster keeps trying to exorcise them. In the past, the school was criticised by the Inspection Authority for listing Jesus Christ as its executive manager (that's not a joke, by the way).
  


• Meanwhile in Germany, when in doubt - sue: "A German teacher ended up in the dock and was ordered to give a pupil higher marks after her parents complained their daughter should have been given better grades... The couple's legal team claimed that the questions posed in assignments were unfair because they were phrased in an ambiguous way, and demanded that the child be marked up and allowed to enter grammar school. The judges agreed - and corrected the marks on one assignment by two grades, giving the girl top marks on the paper. Another assignment was awarded a higher mark as well." At least the American judges only decide the outcome of presidential elections.

In law and order news:

• The classic "Sir, would you like to buy a bridge?" offer became a reality, thanks to seven enterprising thieves in Bosnia: "A rare iron bridge that survived three wars has been stolen by a gang of scrap metal dealers. The bridge near the city of Mostar came through the Balkans war of the 1990s because locals covered it with sandbags. The 40ft bridge had been built by Imperial architects from the Austro-Hungarian empire... [The police] said the bridge sections were sold to a local scrap yard for £90, where most of them were melted down before they could be saved."
  


• In Norway, the authorities have developed a novel way to fight road congestion: "Renathe Opedal was hopelessly stuck in traffic during rush hour when an overeager attendant slapped her with a $73 parking ticket." A speeding ticket would have been more surreal.
  


• Prostitutes in Basel, Switzerland, are taking to wearing roller skates so that they can faster escape the police. Speaking of Eurohookers, "German prostitutes have rejected the first ever employment contract created by union officials. The refused to sign the deal, which includes six weeks holiday and a pension, because they are to embarrassed to admit what they do. The union contract attempts to regulate everything from the duties of a 'sex worker' to working hours and holiday claims." We won't take it laying down, said the prostitutes' representative, announcing the strike action.
  


• In related news, a gang of robbers in Norway was caught on video tape by a crew making a porn movie. I'm sure the tape will be extensively copied and distributed throughout the Norwegian police force - for training purposes, of course.
  


• And in Belgium, identity problems: "Christina Lauwers from Antwerp was informed by the Central Administration for the Registration of Vehicles they could not register the car in her name because she died two years ago. She said: 'They wouldn't accept my word that I was still alive. They said they based their information on official data by the Belgian central administration'." Government after all, knows best.
  


• Finally, one for the legal aficionados: "The Dutch Catholic Church has gone to court to force insurer Aegon to reimburse a damages pay-out to a girl who was sexually abused by a priest. The Bishop of Rotterdam claims the abuse was an industrial accident and was covered by the Church's liability insurance." Better than an Act of God, I guess.

For more of the Euro Abusrdities see the complete post.

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"...over several decades the U.S. Forest Service used taxpayer money to build roads into national forests so logging companies could clearcut forests. This not only artifically lowered the cost of lumber and paper, it led to flooding, soil erosion, and the silting of streams and rivers. In the Pacific Northwest, it destroyed highly productive salmon fisheries. And all of this destruction was underwritten by the taxpayer." [from Eco-Economy]

A Worldwatch paper on subsidies and the environment was part of the source material for the above quote, and its key points make perfect sense to this right-winger.

For more general background on the concept of valuing ecosystem services, The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital, (Robert Constanza and 12 collaborators, Nature: Volume 387 no 6230, 1997) is generally considered to be the seminal piece. For a less academic treatment of the concept, however, try this example on for size:

Who'll Stop the Rain?

In 1998, China's Yangtze River basin in China experienced the worst flooding in its history. 120 million people were driven from their homes, and damage was over $30 billion. That's a lot of rain! Isn't it? Actually, rainfall was above average, but not close to being a record. The missing link? The Yangtze basin has lost 85% of its original tree cover, which would otherwise work to hold in the rain. Result: massive flooding downriver.

Now that's expensive.

Chiense authorities are now banning tree-cutting in the Yangtze basin's upper reaches, and launching a reforestation program. Apparently the state logging companies are now applying their inefficiencies as tree-planting organizations. Progress, of a sort. Meanwhile, China's southern areas are being hit with floods right now. The general predictions are that flood damage in China will continue to rise in future years.

To see the benefits of a broader and smarter strategy, all the Chinese have to do is look slightly east. South Korea's very successful reforestation program has helped it control flood damage, in sharp contrast to North Korea's regular problems in this area (I guess it's hard to keep trees up when your adherence to Marxist economics forces people to eat them).

This problem is absolutely not unique to China, but the Chinese experience is an excellent illustration of just how valuable forests' flood-control services alone can be. In some cases, this service alone may outweigh the value of logging and selling the wood.

Nor is this the only large-scale economic service that forests provide.

Who'll Start The Rain?

Now let's extend our look at the value of forests to another critical area that's likely to have global trouble-spot implications down the road: water transport. From Eco-Economy:

"While deforestation accelerates the flow of water back to the ocean, it also reduces the airborne movement of water to the interior. The world's forests are in effect conduits or systems for transporting water inland. Eneas Salati and Peter Vose, two Brazilian scientists writing in Science, observed that as moisture-laden air from the Atlantic moves westward across the Amazon toward the Andes, it carries moisture inland. As the air cools and this moisture is converted into rainfall, it waters the rainforest below. In a healthy rainforest, roughly one fourth of the rainfall runs off into rivers and back to the Atlantic Ocean. The other three fourths evaporates and is carried further inland, where the process is again repeated. It is this water cycling capacity of rainforests that brings water inland to the Amazon's vast western reaches.

If the rainforest is burned off and planted to grass for cattle raising, then the cycling of rainfall is dramatically altered - three fourths of the rainfall runs off and returns to the sea the first time it falls, leaving little to be carried inland. As more and more of the Amazon is cleared for cattle ranching or farming or is degraded by loggers, the capacity of the rainforest to carry water inland diminishes. As a result, the western part of the forest begins to dry out, changing it into a dryland forest or even a savanna

The burning and cutting of the Amazonian rainforest could also affect agriculture in regions to the south.... Efforts to boost farm output by clearing land in the eastern Amazon basin could reduce farm output in southwestern Brazil.... A similar situation may be developing in Africa.... As the forest area shrinks, the amount of rainfall reaching the interior of Africa is diminishing. A comparable trend is unfolding in China...."

As you can see, the Amazon is just one example. Wang Hongchang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences notes that deforestation in China's south and east is reducing the moisture transported inland, and contributing to a growing dust bowl in the northwest. In April 2001, the dusty haze that hung over a number of western Canadian and American cities was, in fact, soil from this area of China.

Why Should We Care, and What Should We Do?

All very interesting, but why should we care? Two reasons:

1. Some of the problem is subsidized by unwise projects financed by foreign aid or domestic subsidies, and some opportunities to improve our situation are being missed because their returns are being understated.

A model that assesses "environmental impacts" after the fact is better than nothing, but it is vastly inferior to a model that factors in the value of eco-services beforehand.

It's certainly worthwhile to cosider this dimension when evaluating aid and development projects, for instance, and measuring their return. On the domestic front, setting eco-services valuations and factoring them into certain permit costs could have subtle but substantial consequences. In the forestry sector, for instance, it would make damaging logging practices less cost effective, remove subsidies that currently discourage more efficient use of wood and paper, and boost the demand for recycled products. If our economics tell more of the truth, people will act in wiser ways.

Perhaps it's also time to factor these eco-services into a variant of GNP, so their depletion and restoration would both show on a national balance sheet. This move would highlight the depletion of economically valuable natural capital, and also reward efforts like South Korea's tree planting and U.S. subsidies that encourage sequestration of marginal farmland by showing them as the investments that they are.

2. Water is going to be a growing source of conflict, as countries run up against their limits and international disputes over water rights escalate.

In other words, poor environmental practices are storing up international trouble down the road. If I had to look at only one environmental variable to add to The Pentagon's New Map, it would be water availability - and the availability of the services that forests provide can either help to address this problem or act to worsen it.

As a conservative, I believe in economics and free markets. Hayek's point about a distributed market's superior intelligence and ability to respond to signals remains as true today as it was when he wrote The Road to Serfdom.

In order to work properly, however, our market signals have to tell us more of the truth.

The idea of a natural environment that provides us with potential products that can be sold, and existing services that should be accounted for, strikes me as a better and more honest way of managing our resources. Eco-services is an important idea whose time has come.

--- UPDATES ---

• Crumb Trail says "it must be eco-economics week," and steps in with some commentary in Connections - see also my comments there.

• Crumb Trail also have eco-economics posts like Valued Assets, where they note some of the traps to avoid and the need to work with and not against private property holders. Who Pays? takes this theme one step further, noting the importance of local support for successful conservation. You can't just say that the cost part of conservation that is "borne by local people prevented from exploiting the resources around them", they note, and advocate that they just give a free ride to the rest of society. It's unfair and won't happen. Agree. I think eco-services would help that society better understand the value, and so find the price point and conservation point that made sense for all parties. If the market signals are more truthful, that should become less of a political/enforcement task and more of a market/equilibrium task.

• Economist Armnold Kling has some thoughts. My first response is that in many cases, the government is the property owner, so their interest is direct. Plus, their subsidies and aid programs often contribute to the problem. Private coalitions and lawsuits are useful to a point, but they would not remove these issues. The ability to price ecosystem services and factor that into permitting, sales, and program evaluation, however, would address flaws and opportunities that no private system I've yet seen would handle. With that information added to the mix, fire sales, special favours and foolish programs/subsidies could be exposed much more quickly for what they are.

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BRAZIL

• Wages remain stagnant and this has led to a few strikes, including one by the Federal Police a few months ago and an action this week by bank workers. Lula's government is determined to wipe out clandestine slave labor in rural areas, but as a recent two part series in the Miami Herald (Part I here and Part II here, the process is daunting and dangerous.

• Nationwide municipal elections are scheduled for next month in which mayors and city council members will be elected. There are a number of parties and according to my brother-in-laws Marcos and Márcio, the benefit of this is that many people tend to vote for the candidate and less so for the party. Brazil also uses electronic voting (with a paper trail). Voters punch in the number of their candidate, the candidate's face appears on the screen and the voter either affirms or corrects their entry. Signs are everywhere and the television advertising is ubiquitous. I have a couple of cousins running for council in Belo Horizonte and Teófilo Otoni in the state of Minas Gerais on the Green Party and Social Democrat Party, respectively. Good luck Iara and Roberto!

• Finally, I was glad to see in the airports in Belo Horizonte and São Paulo as I was leaving that Embratur, the national tourist board is busy with researchers asking survey questions of foreign travelers to Brazil about their feelings about travel to the country and what they would recommend. I don't see enough of an effort being made to attract visitors from the US and I think that this is a good start.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

• I also spent four days in the Dominican Republic last month visiting Santo Domingo and the baseball mecca of San Pedro de Macoris, and while hardly a thorough visit, I did have the opportunity to talk with some people about the return of Leonel Fernandez to the presidency. The general consensus was that it was a good thing to get rid of Hipolito Mejia. A tour operator I chatted with felt very confident about Fernandez's ability to govern, but many of the other Dominicans who were interested in expressing their thoughts were not so sanguine. Some felt that Fernandez was not a significant improvement and that he was probably more interested in promoting himself than improving the lives of his citizens.

• The challenge for the country is the amount of debt it is carrying and continues to carry. Fernandez in his inauguration speech spoke of austerity, yet many citizens are close to the breaking point. There is great potential here. Tourism has grown nearly exponentially (American Airlines flies to five destinations there: La Romana, Punta Cana, Santo Domingo, Santiago and Puerto Plata) and it's a popular destination for European tourists. Gold, silver, bauxite and other minerals are mined there and unlike its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola (Haiti), the land is fertile and farming is widespread. Only time will tell whether the country will recover from the Mejia administration. I will withhold judgment and try to remain optimistic.

CENTRAL AMERICA

Panama

• Outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso has granted pardons to four terrorists convicted of attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro with thirty-three pounds of explosives at a summit meeting in Panama City four years ago. Three of the pardoned terrorists who happened to be US citizens returned to Florida. The fourth, Luis Posada Carriles escaped to Honduras on a fake US passport and remains at large. He is wanted in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three.

• Marcela Sánchez is asking the right questions about this matter here. Check her out.

El Salvador

• Imperfect justice is better than no justice as someone is finally held accountable for the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The sad facts of the matter is that this was a civil trial, not a criminal trial, the trial was held in the US, not El Salvador and the defendant, Alvaro Rafael Saravia, is currently on the lam. Nevertheless, the facts of Romero's murder are not part of a legal public record and judgment.

Costa Rica

• Why would a nation that has no army, has committed no financial resources toward the Iraq war and a commitment in its constitution to neutrality be part of the Coalition of the Willing. As Central American blogger, David Holliday notes, that's a good question. President Abel Pacheco claims that he only agreed to have his country's name added because they oppose terrorism, but a decision by the country's Consitutional Court called for the removal of the country from the list of the Coalition countries. After more than a week, it was finally removed.

VENEZUELA

• Questions as to the legitimacy of the referendum results that kept Hugo Chávez in power have continued to be raised since the vote. As David Holliday noted, The Wall Street Journal published an article about the work of two Venezuelan academics living in the US, Ricardo Hausman and Roberto Rigobon, who are economists at Harvard's Kennedy School and MIT, respectively who claimed through a statistical analysis that the odds of a clean vote were 1 in 100.

• Meanwhile, two computer scientists make the case here make the case that while electronic voting offers opportunities to cheat, in their simulations they observed no statistical anomalies.

• So what is the answer? I wish I could say with some uncertainty. Caracas Chronicles lists the Carter Center's response and then takes Hausman and Rigobon to task rightfully for missing an obvious anomaly of their own. After all this, in the words of Michael Palin, "My brain hurts!"

• What has changed? Essentially nothing. As Andrés Oppenheimer notes, Chávez is hungry for power and as Michael Shifter writes here, the Bush administration is all too eager to take the bait and seek to clash with Chávez again. No one wants this more than Chávez in his ongoing effort to maintain street cred with his base. Nevertheless Chávez is no idiot. While he will threaten retaliation against the US using petroleum as a cudgel, his history shows that he only tends to pursue these threats against countries like the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. Cutoffs to these nations would do little harm to Venezuela, whereas a cutoff of oil to the US could be devastating and would probably screw up his social programs and alienate his base. The Bush administration should try a different tack with Chávez and ratchet the rhetoric down a little. If nothing else, it will confound Chávez.

HAITI

• Hurricane Jeanne has battered Haiti and more than 600 have been killed as a result. This comes four months after more than three thousand were killed in floods along the border with the Dominican Republic. The above link has tips on how you can help, especially if you're in South Florida. This link also takes you to the home page of Haitian Women of Miami, a social services organization that has information on how you can help. Please consider sending something to help those who have so little.

CHILE

• An internal review of Riggs Bank found that former chairman Joe Allbritton was one heck of a personal banker for Augusto Pinochet. Among other special favors, when Pinochet was indicted by Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzón in 1999 and ordered that Pinochet's assets be frozen, Riggs Bank canceled a US$1.6 million CD in its London branch without penalty, transfered the money to Washington then engaged in a labyrinthine attempt to cover the tracks of these transfers. All for a general whose salary was a little over US$10,000 per year.

• Judge Garzón is none too pleased by this and has requested that US authorities file criminal charges against Riggs Bank and seven top executives including Allbritton. This reeks of money laundering and illicit enrichment. In this day and age when terrorism exists because of funding subterfuges like this, there should be no hesitation in vigorously invesitigating this matter and, if the evidence warrants, prosecuting those responsible.

Randinho's Latin America Briefing will be back next month. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Latin American events can be found at Beautiful Horizons.

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Sometimes terrorists hide by wearing the clothes and faces of those they wish to destroy. Palestinian suicide bombers blend in to get as close as they can to Israelis, before blowing them to bits. They dress as soldiers, or as Orthodox Jews. Some bombers have dressed as party girls, according to one account.

Closer to home, spammers, peer-to-peer file swappers, hackers, gamers and Web surfers largely prefer to go incognito. Many bloggers, including this one, prefer pseudonymous identities. Whole industries are now challenged by nameless warriors enabled by modern means of disruption. There's also anonymous dates, anonymous pornography, anonymous raves, anonymous flash mobs, anonymous chats, anonymous workers, anonymous shopping, anonymous customer support and anonymous poll-taking. Anonymity seems to be a rising star in neoteric culture---a kind of anti-celebrity in an age where celebrity has devolved into self-indulgent meaninglessness. Celebrity once represented the apogee of cultural power; but now the harsh x-ray spotlight only betrays human frailty---fodder for the circling sharks of our tabloid culture, but not the stuff of heroes.

The Internet age has created a new kind of community, one where true identity is an option, like a costume party of assumed identities---the oxymoron of public anonymity. Behind the masks lies the safety of anonymity, but also strength. Perhaps anonymity enhances conviction, or perhaps persuasion. Anonymity is powerful because people can unbridle their passions and their true motivations without risk of disillusioning colleagues, friends and family.

Power has often been wielded from the strength of a leader's personality, for good or evil. Personality was often the driving force of great movements throughout history. Leadership from behind the mask risks the creation of cults more than great societies. Events appear to be driven by anonymous players in this age. In a sense, human communities are regrouping, and reforming along different cultural pathways than just ten years ago. Loyalties and interests are not as obviously connected to nation or to traditional identities.

The light that floods from the networks of anonymous communities has recently flooded the dark corners of the news media. Committed bloggers and their legions of empowered readers blew the roof off of Dan Rather's Big Lie. A campaign waged by regular citizens to expose media bias has been achieved at a grassroots level. The Delphi Effect does not require the force of personality; instead, the collective acumen and will of committed people focused on an issue and brought together on the Internet is now driving history's plough. It matters little where these people live, what nationality they are, or even if their names are known.

In contrast to the bright side of the Delphi Effect, the darkness from the network of anonymous communities comes from malevolent cults bent on destruction. For them, it also does not matter if their names are known. They are also committed people focused on an issue. While morally opposite from the bloggers who brought down Mr. Rather's empire of lies, the theater of action has similar aspects: Terrorists are decentralized, largely anonymous, and apply their collective acumen to the task of destroying their enemies, by whatever means. There is no moral equivalence between terrorists and bloggers, but it is worth seeing how both are skating around convention and accepted rules to challenge established authority.

The biggest threat facing the ordered world is a rogue nuclear attack. If carried out effectively, there will be no attribution---no return address on the bomb. The goal of the attacker would be to disrupt and destroy, so keeping the atrocity anonymous would be optimal. Our armies wear uniforms and fly planes with national insignia on them; our enemies strike out from indistinct places---nameless, anonymous and vicious. Perhaps one of the key aspects to asymmetrical warfare is that the rogue half of the equation be anonymous to be as effective as possible. Is there an immutable law at play here, a new meme?

Some questions that relate to anonymity:

1) Was Dan Rather brought down by a grassroots organization of citizens, or a cult? Define the difference.

2) Are anonymous driving forces a new phenomenon? Or are they to be found throughout history? Does the Internet create a new kind of anonymity, more empowered than before?

3) Are cultures created by high-tech networked communities changing our values as citizens of the country we live in? Are our allegiances diverging as a result?

4) Are terrorists, empowered by the age of telecommunications and the Internet, reflecting the same forces that are internally changing western culture? Stripping away the moral contrasts, does that leave us with a new set of rules that affects all of us?

5) Is public anonymity the new fame?

6) How much of your public life is anonymous?

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In the venture capital trade, transactions costs usually turn up in a pitch from a company proposing a better scheme of microtransactions or other technology so that readers can pay for bits of content on the net, a few pennies at a time. While this notion has been kicking around almost as long as the commercial Internet, none of these schemes have been successful, and no investors have cashed out, though they keep trying.

Why not? There's more to transaction costs than the mechanistic elements of the payment mechanism. There are also what are called search costs, the time and effort expended in finding the right thing to buy. And there's that little frisson, wondering if what you've bought will be worth the expense - direct and indirect. This element turns out to be significant. In fact, American slang has an expression for it: "Being nickeled and dimed to death." This is not a positive sentiment, and this visceral embodiment of an economic theory has been sufficient to keep microtransactions a dead letter. (If there are equivalent expressions in other cultures, I'd be interested in hearing about them.)

You may visit Andrew Odlyzko (PDF file) or Clay Shirky for a further dissection of micropayments, but I will pass on to strategies for overcoming these problems. A common way around the nickels and dimes is 'bundling', which is simply selling a number of related items together. Here a real world example may help:

Suppose you'd like a few dozen packets of instant oatmeal in various flavors to feed your child. You don't have shelf space to keep full boxes of all of the flavors, so more than likely you buy two or three cartons of assorted flavors. Each of those cartons is a bundle. You give up the flexibility of picking each packet separately, but also lose the time and minor effort involved in making the selection. The manufacturer and retailer gain the benefits of scale economies in manufacturing and simplicity in stocking. This strategy is so stable that single packets of oatmeal are almost unobtainable.

Note there's a modicum of trust involved in creating this bundle. You may be willing to take the chance that a few packets will be a flavor that will draw a 'yech' from the kid, and you'll end up eating them. But if you ended with an 'assorted' carton that had been half-filled with a dud, you probably wouldn't buy that brand again. Note the brand as a source of trust, and as damaged if the trust is removed by experience.

(Let me acknowledge right here that I'm doing a lot of simplifying to get to the meat of the argument. Bundling can be beneficial to both producer and consumer, but it can also be used strategically as an anti-competitive weapon. I will acknowledge the legal and regulatory side of the issue and move onward.)

Getting on to the media, we can note compact discs, and magazines and newspapers bought off the rack as bundles of content in the real world. Many such bundles have been driven by the physicality of the medium, and the economics of creation and distribution. In days past, I might cheerfully pay a quarter for a copy of the Chron, only to read the sports, one column of classified ads, a few local stories and throw the remainder away unread. All of that wastage was acceptable to both buyer and seller, given the scale economies of printing. Note again a modest element of trust: If tomorrow I buy the same paper, but my interests have changed from sports to movie reviews, I should believe that information will be there and be useful and credible.

These bundling strategies are not stable of themselves, they exist only within the context of technology, distribution and transaction costs surrounding them. When these change, bundles may collapse. The CD is the obvious example. With individual digitized songs now easier to duplicate and distribute than the physical bundle, the albums raison d'etre has disappeared. As the simple playlist replaces the album's remaining value of simplifying choice, CDs commence a slow glide to oblivion, moderated only by the installed base of equipment and consumer habit.

The newspaper bundle, with over 350 years of market experience behind it, is a tougher nut, but it is also starting to crack. Your average newspaper takes over 2/3 of its revenue in the form of advertising, and it's there the damage is deepest, particularly in the classified section. Between eBay, Autotrader, friendster, match.com, monster.com and their competitors, the competition is already large and continues to grow. And it's also obviously growing on the content aggregation side, with services like My Yahoo and Google News, and all the myriad of blogs and other citizens' media.

If these choices were only the equal of those available in the fish wrapper, the bundling argument - "we simplify things" - might still hold. But each of those services has advantages in scope and personalization that the newspaper cannot match. I start to become less happy about the quarter for the Chron when I know I can scratch today's information itch online faster, better and often for free.

But wait, it's actually worse than this. Newspaper and other periodicals would prefer to have a subscription relationship with their readers, rather than rely on newsstand sales. It makes the circulation more predictable for the advertisers, and smoothes out the reader payments, which would otherwise peak around major events and fall off dramatically during slow times like the proverbial August 'silly season'.

A subscription is a bundle of a different sort. It combines multiple transactions into one by collapsing them in time. It therefore adds a futures element to the transaction. More so than the spot transaction of buying a single item, trust becomes an issue. The purchaser is betting that the supplier will be reliable in the future and, in the case of a media periodical, continue to deliver a collection of content of value. Working out the mathematics that express this choice in a given situation can be pretty darn complex. But it's certainly possible to make some obvious qualitative deductions:

If the subscriber observes that the value of the content delivered is decaying over time, either absolutely or compared to competitive sources, then a renewal becomes less likely - the futures bargain no longer works. If this is widely true of a subscriber base, then churn (lost subscribers) will be increasing over time. To keep the revenue line stable, the subscribers must be replaced, incurring subscriber acquisition costs. Since every new subscriber's choice is made in the context of competitive options, including spot purchase as an alternative, the per-subscriber acquisition costs may be rising at the same time. At the point where discounted future value of a subscriber, given churn, becomes less than acquisition costs, the business model that looked like a reliable cash spinner is suddenly upside down. All that is left is to milk the existing subscriber base as it decays.

Up to now I've tacitly assumed that content may be more or less interesting or relevant, but has no valency. Now let's drop that assumption. Suppose the reader discovers through independent means that at least part of the content being purchased is inaccurate, either in fact or through unrepresentative sampling of the reality. And further, let's assume the reader is convinced that the basis for this is not incompetence - which would simply lower the value - but is intent. In short, the buyer has been sold propaganda.

If the buyer is in search of objectivity, the value of the bundle decays. In the case where the ideology of the bias is inimical there will now be a negative value assigned to that part of the bundle. Only in the case where the buyer is aligned and not searching for ground truth will an increase in value result. This will cause a differential churn and subscriber acquisition cost depending on the beliefs of the buyers, and discovering this bias in one element of the bundle is likely to tarnish the reputation and brand of the whole in the eyes of those not in concert. We have just reinvented the party organ newspaper. We might also have invented a way to salvage a decaying legacy business by guiding it into a stable, but ideologically defined niche.

I leave the search for examples as an exercise for the reader.

I've simplified this by focusing on the readers' decisions and on newspapers as a physical bundle. Of course, the actual situation is more complex. Newspapers and networks are also ways in which viewers are bundled for sale to advertisers, who hope for increased sales of their own goods and services. A churning subscriber base will decrease the certainty of this bundle, and send more advertisers to spot purchase vs. long term buys. Introducing ideological bias has the possibility of creating negative splash back on the advertisers - boycotts do work. With the advent of channel surfing, television networks have become bundlers less to consumers, and more to advertisers.

The effects on advertising placed on network branded entertainment shows, of perceived bias in news programming from the same source, is right now an unknown, but the experiment is underway.

The increasing competition from Internet information sources, and the exposure of incompetence and bias via citizens' media, will have a fragmenting effect on existing information bundles. The attempts of many legacy media sites to forbid 'deep linking' and/or set up registration walls is testimony that they are - whether analytically or viscerally - attempting to retain the illusion of bundle, rather than the reality of cherry picking by the audience.

But what of my original premise, that on the average the reader would prefer to avoid the granular choice or purchase of content? If the winds of change have blown apart the legacy media bundles, can the value of transaction cost reduction be recreated in another fashion, and revenue extracted for it? Now that's a question to get a venture capitalist's attention!

If the answer were obvious, we'd already be there. And if I had a lock on it, I'd darn sure get a few investments placed before blabbing around the blogosphere. But neither is true, so let me speculate a bit....

• Google's business model is provocative in partially reassembling the bundle from the advertisers' point of view. Through search related ads, bundling around declared interests rather than demographics can be achieved. Adsense goes further in attempting juxtaposition of ads with actual content on the same basis. I'm awaiting with interest the form that advertising will finally take on Google News. Google is leveraging cheap cycles and a lot of algorithms research against the bundling needs of advertisers, but largely leaving the readers to fend for themselves. But, it has the advantage of a clear business proposition.
• RSS aggregating software and services are a provocative attempt to let the readers build their own bundles. This is impossible in the legacy media, and creates a sharp differentiation from the old style of bundling. The juxtaposition of citizens' media (blog posts) with legacy media content ripped from its home site goes one step further in exploding the apparent value of the old bundle. Reader side aggregation can thus destroy old value, but hasn't so far shown an ability to extract serious revenue from readers.
• Technorati is another cut. It's not a bundling solution at all. Instead it seeks to reduce the 'search costs' associated with following threads of interesting discussion across the Web. If the transaction costs of retrieving individual information bits is reduced, the need and attraction of bundling is reduced. But, there's also the problem of a lacking business case. Perhaps that can be found from the advertisers' side. If promotion to demographic or general interest bundles is giving way to selling by influence, then tracking the conversation becomes of value. Technorati appears to be a radical unbundling hypothesis on both the reader and advertiser sides.

Some part of the media value chain is becoming collateral damage of the Internet, further accelerated by war and politics. Motivated by business opportunity, ideology, and just plain fun, the insurgents are gunning for the legacy media. The game is afoot!

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TURKESTAN REGION

• Both Japan and Korea are trying to get a piece of the pie in Central Asia.

• Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Apostolou agree that the US should abandon Uzbekistan, though only one of them comes out and says it. Those who know me would rightly guess I strongly disagree with each. For the respectful, letter to the editor type of response, see my co-blogger, Laurence Jarvik's response in the IHT to a similar argument. I have a hard time being as polite.

• The Uzbek government has ordered Internews to close on a technicality. Internews promotes open media worldwide and supports independent media outlets in Uzbekistan. A US official said that the decision highlights the nervousness of the Uzbek government right now.

• Now that schoolchildren have been in class for all of about a few weeks in Uzbekistan, it is high time to turn them out to harvest cotton for a couple months. The timing is probably about the same in neighboring Turkmenistan. Not all schools are required to report, but the labor is considered absolutely essential to harvest the cotton. Harvesters are manufactured locally but not used.

• Following this year's suicide bombings in Uzbekistan, investigators have taken a closer look at how radicals are using Kazakh territory to train for and organize attacks. In response, Kazakhstan has tightened border and immigration controls.

• Ruslan Sharipov, independent journalist and human rights activist imprisoned for homosexuality and pedophilia in Uzbekistan, has reportedly been freed and is applying for asylum in the United States.

• A secret mission to remove uranium from Uzbekistan to a facility in Russia where it will be down-blended was a success.

• In Kazakh parliamentary elections held over the weekend, President Nazarbayev's Otan Pary was far ahead in preliminary counts of votes cast on electronic voting machines. In second place was Asar, led by the Dariga Nazarabayeva, the daughter of the President. Asar ran as an opposition party, though some feel its rhetoric aimed to take votes away from other opposition parties. Prior to the election the OSCE and opposition parties charged that the fix was already in and that the media showed significant bias in its reporting.

• Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" character has apparently gotten under the skin of Kazakh officialdom. The press secretary for the Kazakh Embassy saw fit to separate fact from fiction. Essentially, nothing about Borat's Kazakhstan resembles the truth, but might the joke be on Western audiences and not Kazakhstan?

• If all goes according to plan, Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, will be divided by a might river just in time for President Niyazov/Turkmenbashi's birthday in 2006.

CAUCASUS REGION

• Azeri opposition groups suffered major setbacks after last year's presidential election. They hope to make a comeback in December's municipal elections.

• After much tension, Georgian and South Ossetian leaders have agreed to meet.

• Following the attack in Beslan, Russia threatened preemptive strikes on targets beyond its borders. Many speculated that one potential target was Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. In a case of seriously uncoordinated messaging, State Department officials said that Pankisi both is and is not being used as a terrorist haven. The confusion aside, Georgian and Russian border guards have intensified cooperation in the Pankisi area.

AFGHANISTAN

• I'm sure that regular readers were sure to catch Good News from Afghanistan. If not, go back and take a look.

• Jonathan Idema, the American bounty hunter arrested for kidnapping, jailing, and torturing Afghans in Kabul has been convicted. His statement after the trial appears to be par for the course. He maintained throughout the trial that he had daily contact with the highest officials at the Department of Defense, including Donald Rumsfeld. He has been sentenced to 10 years along with his co-defendants.

• President Karzai and one of his vice presidents narrowly escaped recent assassination attempts. The US warns that more attacks are coming in an attempt to derail the October 9 presidential election.

• Unsurprisingly, the Taliban is threatening voters in addition to pledging to attack each of the 18 candidates.

• In response, the US plans to deploy 1,100 additional troops to Afghanistan before the election. The UK is considering sending 8,000 additional troops early next year.

• Highlighting the depth of the split within the group, 150 commanders from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami party have pledged support to Karzai in the upcoming election.

• For those who want to keep an eye on stories in the Afghan press, IWPR has launched the Afghan Press Monitor. The daily survey has the country's top 7 stories and a political cartoon.

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• Republicans: Innocents Abroad summarizes Cesar & DiSalvo's "A New GOP?" which offers an in-depth examination of the Republican base and the party's emerging foundational message. Will that message survive 2004?

• Democrats: Mike also recommends "Democrats Adrift" by Clinton Staffer William Galston. The New Deal Coalition, he says, is dead. Judis and Teixeira's "Emerging Democratic Majority" thesis may be a beginning, but at the moment the Democrats are still stuck in performantive contraditions between incompatible interests within their base.

I'll repeat: The 60s are dead - and so are the 80s. For now, the Republicans definitely appear to be in better shape. Nevertheless, both of America's political parties are going to have to find a new way forward in a new era - and both are currently works in progress. Whether they admit it or not.

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Along with the desecration of Jewish cemeteries by neo-Nazis and the assaults on Jews by Arab youth, some European left-wingers now sense a sympathetic climate in which to publicly indulge their anti-Semitism. In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Greek composer and left-wing activist Mikis Theodorakis denounced "the Jews" for their dominance of banks, U.S. foreign policy, and even the world's leading orchestras, adding that the Jews were "at the root of evil." In the Arab world, a culture of denial that repudiates the most basic facts of Jewish history — from the existence of the Jerusalem Temple to the existence of the gas chambers — has become mainstream in intellectual discourse and the media. Government TV stations in Egypt and Syria have produced dramatizations based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Boycotts of Israel are multiplying: The nonaligned states recently voted to bar "settlers" — including Israelis who live in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem — from their borders. Among young Israelis across the political spectrum, there's growing doubt about the country's future and widespread talk of emigration.

In its victories and its defeats, Israel is a test case of what happens to a democracy forced to confront nonstop terrorism. In their daily lives, Israelis must contend with the most pressing questions of the global war against terrorism: Can terrorism be defeated? And, in doing so, can basic democratic principles be maintained? Finally, does the moral necessity to defeat terrorism supersede the moral necessity to address the grievances of those in whose name terrorism is committed?

Read the whole thing.

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Down under, Aussie historians are circling the wagons and trying to figure out how to counteract the menace posed by Keith Windschuttle, whose book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History,

[strikes] at the heart of the accepted view of Australian colonial history in the past 30 years - that the settler society had engaged in a pattern of conquest, dispossession and killing of the indigenous inhabitants. The facts, he said, did not stack up.
The Sydney-based writer, among other things, questioned the references used by academic historian Lyndall Ryan to justify her claims that the British massacred large numbers of Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land in the early 1800s. Her footnotes supporting the claims did not do so, he wrote. He also took on Henry Reynolds, the venerable historian of the Left, whose depiction of a brutal British conquest of Tasmania had been the accepted norm.

Why should ordinary Aussies care? Because faked and biased academic reports have real-world consequences>:

Reynolds's work on the concept of terra nullius -- that the British seized Aboriginal land based on a policy that it was owned by no one -- developed such currency that it is believed to have influenced critical High Court judgments on land rights, including the Mabo decision. The thrust of Windschuttle's thesis was that political correctness had triumphed over historical fact.

Dr. Ryan, for her part, blames the media:

At the recent conference, Ryan made some effort, though ultimately unsuccessful, to avoid media coverage for a talk she gave entitled How the Print Media Marketed Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Implications for Academic Historians.

She said the media had taken up Windschuttle as representing the real history of colonists' relations with Aborigines, grabbing the view that Australians had been hoodwinked by the academic left-wing historians' version. "I don't think the media owns free speech," Ryan said. She had also been shocked, she said, that Stuart Macintyre, the influential left-leaning University of Melbourne historian, had appeared to criticise her over footnote inaccuracies.

She did admit to five footnote errors, but said the primary sources verified her thesis and "the simple fact is that footnote errors do occur".

Fake, but accurate??? While we are all human, Dr. Ryan, it is a cardinal sin to allow an important work to go out with deeply misleading citations and footnotes. The scholarly apparatus of citations and footnotes are central to doctoral-level scholarship -- so much so that in my own doctoral studies, an entire term-long seminar is centered on the existing literature and the citation and keyword classification schemes that are important parts of that apparatus.

But some believe the real issue is that conservative media are pushing a political agenda:

Ryan was not alone in promoting the Windschuttle-media conspiracy. The AHA president, David Carment, said the The Australian had deliberately timed the publication of its review of Windschuttle's work for the summer of 2002. During holidays more academics were on leave, Carment said, and "less able to defend themselves," and it was "a time when people were reading newspapers". (In fact, newspaper circulations fall away over summer holidays.)

It might be time, Carment said, for the association to "defend its people on the basis of their professional integrity" while not taking sides in the debate.

Carment also raised, though he did not fully support, the concept put forward by West Australian historian Cathie Clement for a code of ethics that would gag historians from criticising the integrity of their peers in public. Several in the audience said everyone had to be ready to counter-attack when Windschuttle came out with his next book.

Richard Waterhouse from the University of Sydney, said academics took Windschuttle too seriously. "Sometimes we have tended to treat him as an intellectual equal," Waterhouse said, adding that sarcasm might be more appropriate. (Windschuttle earned a first-class honours degree in history from the University of Sydney in the 1960s, lectured in the subject, earned a masters in politics and left Macquarie University in 1992 when he set up a publishing house.)

Not everyone there was prepared to circle the wagons, however.

There were a couple of muted mutterings from the audience about how it would be necessary to learn media skills, and not attempt to look like academics defending their own cabal. But nobody at the session publicly asked the key question which was in some of their minds: was the academic historians' fear of Windschuttle and newspaper opinion pages absolutely paranoid?

Greg Melleuish, from the University of Wollongong, says he is intimidated by the pack mentality of the Newcastle meeting. "I was quite astonished," he says. "It was like 'let's get a group of people together to ambush Windschuttle'. I think they feel under threat and that's why they concoct these conspiracy theories."
....
The question is why academic historians are so concerned about the impact of Windschuttle.

Macintyre, while he does not accept Windschuttle's suggestion of a fabrication, does warn that mistakes can have a broader effect.

"There is an understandable public concern about the accuracy of historians' work," he says. At the same time, Macintyre maintains, Windschuttle fits with a conservative agenda to lift a burden of national shame from Australian shoulders over the Aboriginal issue.

Macintyre told the conference the history wars fitted in with broader "political dimensions" of the Howard Government's "abandonment of reconciliation, denial of the stolen generations, its retreat from multiculturalism and creation of a refugee crisis".

"Windschuttle was the first conservative intellectual to base his case on substantial historical research," he says.

Windschuttle says this is precisely why the academic community is still so scared of him. "There is a whole generation who have invested not just their academic capital but also their political capital in the Henry Reynolds view," he says. And, says Windschuttle, he has made Australian history interesting again for high school students who are more likely to go on to study it in universities.

Meanwhile, back in the States, several data-faking scandals from recent years still reverberate among acdemic historians. Professor Michael Bellesiles resigned his post at Emory after it was shown that his study debunking gun ownership in the colonial and revolutionary period cited original historical records that do not exist. Events in that case sound familiar today:

The announcement was released along with the long-awaited results of an Investigative Committee's inquiry into allegations of scholarly fraud against Bellesiles.

The Committee, headed by Stanley Katz, a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University (N.J.), concluded that Bellesiles was guilty of both substandard research methodology and of willfully misrepresenting specific evidence in Arming America.

The scope of the Committee was limited to five questions that revolved around probate records in Vermont, Rhode Island and San Francisco, as well as one particular table of data. Finally, the Committee was asked if Bellesiles committed "other serious deviations "from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research.'"

Bellesiles disputed the Committee's findings in his statement, claiming he has followed all pertinent scholarly guidelines and corrected all errors of fact known to him.

...

The University took the unusual step of releasing the results of the Committee's report, an action Paul said was necessitated by the "intense scholarly interest" in the matter. Not released, however, were the supporting documents in the case.

Paul said in the University's statement the Committee's report was "authoritative" and upheld stringent scholarly requirements in conducting such academic investigations. The case, Paul said, was concluded.

Arming America, which addresses the history of gun culture in America, posited that guns were not nearly as prevalent throughout American history than previously thought. Praised for its innovative use of probate materials as evidence, the book was awarded Columbia University's (N.Y.) Bancroft Prize.

Shortly after its release, several researchers, including law professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University (Ill.), alleged Bellesiles falsified evidence to support his thesis. The allegations eventually forced Emory's hand into conducting both an internal inquiry and the appointing of the external Investigative Committee.

Another historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, plagiarized extensively in several of her books, including her Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time. Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke, fabricated an entire Vietnam service story for himself and claimed that DNA proves Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by his slave Sally Heming, a claim that Accuracy in Media says is unproven.

In these latter cases, the academic community took steps to investigate the alleged frauds, albeit sometimes only after intense pressure from critics. All three of these historians resigned or were otherwise sanctioned as the standards of the profession were upheld.

The boundaries between objective scholarship and political agenda have grown overly porous, it would seem. The good news is that many in these professions care about the integrity of their disciplines and have reacted by enforcing standards of proof based on accurate and legitimate data and of well-founded reasoning from that data.

It will be interesting to see if CBS will take similar action re: Rathergate.

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• If you prefer visual representations, PoliDock.com put up a picture/flowchart showing all of the key players, and their reputed involvement at various points in getting the memos to air. Can't vouch for it, but it looks interesting.

• On a less serious note, how about this picture of the Eye of CBS perched atop the falling tower of Barad-Dur? And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling hobbits in pajamas!

• The latest retraction or refutation from CBS' "supporting" experts and claimed protagonists: how about General Staudt, whose influence was supposedly responsible for the memos (except that he had already left the Guard when they were "written")?

• Allah says CBS is going to finally cave in. As the title of his post so eloquently puts it: "CBS: Duh" But can we trust them now to come clean on their sources? Not unless several heads roll. If further pressure is required, you'll find what you need here.

• A Congressional investiation? I agree with these folks. Dumb idea.

• Meanwhile, a talk radio host at a CBS affiliate in Seattle was apparently fired for criticizing CBS and suggesting that Rather should resign.

• Viacom's CEO (CBS' parent company) just announced the sale of about $12 million worth of stock. Insider trading, programmed move, or something else? Hey, maybe he's been reading the Viacom message boards on Yahoo! Finance. But this also brings up an important question: just where the hell has Viacom's Board of Directors been this whole time, as CBS' brand burned and the stock slid? These folks put the "derelict" in dereliction!

• Kevin Drum is upset that so many of us are spending so much time on Rathergate. I guess he'd like us to stop. Short answer, Kevin: No. But your post's lack of clue was pretty funny, so thanks for that.

• INDCJournal, who played a big role in this scandal, notes that blogs are a complement for the MSM, not a replacement for it. He also warns bloggers not to get too cocky. Some long knives are being sharpened now that blogs have shown themselves to be serious players.

• On a related issue, reader JC made a point in the comments section last week, and discussed FOX News' showing forged photos of Jane Fonda & John Kerry. We said that if he researched that and gave us URLs, we'd run it too. Now along comes a blog post (of course) showing that FOX acknowledged the displayed photo as a forgery. Case closed - even by Kevin Drum.

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SOCIETY:

• Afghanistan is preparing to take the first step towards democracy with the presidential elections still scheduled to take place on October 9. The current president Hamid Karzai and 17 other candidates are now competing for the country's top job in a campaign that officially commenced on September 7. As one report reminds us, "Afghanistan has never before experienced a one-man, one-vote democratic election. Past political systems mainly consisted of elected tribal assemblies and district councils, under a monarch."
  


• Illustrative of the logistical challenges involved in sowing the seeds of democracy on this previously rocky ground is this story of the efforts by a voter registration team to reach one of the most remote parts of Afghanistan and enroll to vote "people [who] had no TV, no telephones, no way to contact - or really know about - the outside world. The only modern conveniences, it seemed, were their weapons: The AK-47 was the accessory of choice for every turbaned man, and the Toyota Hilux the standard vehicle."

• While it hasn't been as difficult for all other voter registration teams, the overall effort has nevertheless been quite colossal: "Take all the roads out of France, remove the phone network, and the plumbing, add in 80 percent illiteracy, and you get a picture of what we are dealing with," says David Avery, chief of operations for joint Afghan-UN electoral commission. "Organising the first presidential election in Afghanistan, a country largely without power, roads or literacy, has required a leap of imagination that has encompassed everything from donkeys to satellite phones." This fascinating story shows how the experts got to plan everything from planning security to design and production of ballot papers.

• Meanwhile, the world's largest democracy, India, is helping with its expertise at conducting elections, as well as with more tangible aid in the form of indelible ink pens to prevent fraud.
  


• With the voter registration now finished inside Afghanistan, the efforts continue to register Afghan refugees still remaining in Pakistan: "The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) would start registration of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan from October 1, which would continue till October 3... [T]he IOM would increase the period by a day or two if needed. The registration will enable thousands of Afghan refugees living in camps to cast their vote in the first Afghan presidential elections... 'The Afghans living as refugees in Pakistan will be educated about the method of casting votes,' said [the IOM official]. The IOM has recruited more than 400 workers for the registration campaign.
  

  "The source said around 800,000 Afghan voters would be registered for the presidential election in October and for the Olasee Jirga (National Assembly) elections in April... ®egistration would be carried out at more than 1,000 places in refugee camps."

• With the voter registration thus almost over and election campaign already underway, the efforts are being made to provide the Afghan voters and politicians with support and expertise to help them make the most of their new opportunities. One group currently involved in such work in Afghanistan is the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a non-profit organization based in Washington: "This group has opened six offices in Afghanistan to teach the public about political campaigns and fair elections. Another group, Internews, is working with local media and Internet providers to help guarantee freedom of expression."
  


• Afghanistan's previously persecuted minority Hazaras continue to prosper, hoping that one day the giant world-famous Buddha statutes destroyed by the iconoclastic Taliban will rise again from the rubble:
  

  " 'This was a ruined place, but now everything is being rebuilt,' said Azizullah, 31, a policeman who fled the fighting in 1999. He returned two years ago and has constructed a solid mud house by a stream that rushes past the Buddhas, irrigates acres of golden wheat and quenches flocks of goats festooned with bright ribbons. " 'The militias have put down their guns and gone home to their fields,' he said. 'We have the best security in Afghanistan, and we welcome everyone who wants to visit and help. Our people want only unity and peace, and they ask only for their rightful share in national life'."

• The work to reconstruct the giant Buddhas is already commencing: "[L]ittle by little, what remains of the ancient treasures is being restored, with iron rods shoring up their niches and concrete being pumped into cracks across the crumbling stone." Meanwhile, the search for the world's largest Buddha statue, hidden and untouched by the Taliban, has begun around Bamian. At the forefront, archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi: "It's hard to believe that the sculpture ever went missing. According to the writings of a Chinese pilgrim who reported seeing the reclining Buddha in the year 629, it stretched 1,000 feet... Should Tarzi locate it, the discovery would mean more than uncovering the largest known statue of Buddha. It could be a psychic balm and a financial boon for Afghanistan, easing a collective guilt over the Taliban's destructive acts and reviving Bamian's fortunes as the tourism capital of the nation."
  


• And Hazara women, too, are sharing in the new opportunities: "Sabera Sakhi, who runs a small social welfare program in Bamian, the region's capital, is trying to promote several changes at once: the economic emancipation of Hazara women, the cultivation of crops no one has grown here before, and the benefits of vegetarian cuisine to a population that survives on starch." These new initiatives are not only improving the local nutrition and health, but are also bringing unprecedented economic independence to Hazara women: "Within months, the women in Fuladi went from being the neediest members of their community to being among the top income earners. They developed farming skills unknown to local men, learned how to prepare and cook vegetables for their children, and discovered their own stamina improving in the process."
  


• Everywhere around the country, efforts continue to deal with consequences of decades of conflict:
  

  "The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Afghanistan New Beginning Programme (ANBP) have joined forces to identify qualified military officers, who have entered the Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration programme (DDR) to fill vacant teaching posts. The DDR process helps soldiers to fit back into society through training and employment. " 'It is good to have these officers who have witnessed war in Afghanistan,' Denise Duclaux, ANBP's public information officer told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday. 'These officers are able to teach a new generation not only basic skills necessary but also about Afghanistan’s past and how they can create a new future for themselves'."

• Thanks to a grant provided by the Japan Social Development Fund, this valuable three year program "will provide immediate wage labor employment for 10,000 unskilled ex-combatants while providing around 100 to 300 ex-officers and ex-commanders with employment, training and equipment (under a lease-purchase arrangement) to start up small scale labor based contractor businesses. The program will also provide vocational training to 1,500 ex-combatants and will train 1,000 more in operating and maintaining road construction equipment. It expects to generate 3 million labor days of employment for ex-combatants, rural workers in poppy-growing areas, and others who are living in poverty."
  


• The other legacy of war are, of course, the refugees. So far this year, 200,000 Afghans have returned home from Pakistan, bringing the total for repatriations from that country to 2.2 million since 2002. "The numbers in August have been boosted by Afghans who asked to return from the 'new' camps established to shelter those fleeing the 2001 war in their country."

• Meanwhile, on the other refugee front, "[t]he United Nations refugee agency today marked a symbolic milestone with the return home of the one millionth Afghan from Iran since the start of voluntary repatriation to their war-ravaged country in April 2002, reducing by half the overall Afghan refugee population there." Says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers: "Behind this figure there are 1 million individual stories, 1 million people who made the choice to go back, and are now rebuilding not just their own lives, but also their homeland." And the agency's representative in Iran, Philippe Lavanchy comments that "[m]any Afghan refugees in Iran are very educated. They have professional skills that are essential to the future of Afghanistan... Every teacher who goes back will teach hundreds of Afghan children to read, every doctor will save lives, all will be an integral part of the reconstruction of Afghanistan."
  


• Yet another legacy of lawlessness is now receiving attention: "Thousands of Afghan people whose only livelihood has been combat or the growing of illegal opium poppies will be given the opportunity to enter Afghanistan's new economy with help from a US$19.6 million grant to be provided by the Government of Japan and administered by the World Bank." And to further build up Afghanistan's criminal justice system, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) is planning to conduct a capacity building program, which according to the UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva will "increase the capacity of the criminal justice institutions to deal with serious crimes in particular with drug-related crimes," and will involve "train[ing] judges, prosecutors and the counter-narcotics police of Afghanistan in the area of arresting criminals, investigation, detaining and imprisonment of serious criminal offenders."
  


• In education news, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in conjunction with the Afghan Education Ministry, has commenced a community-based schools programme in remote areas of the country to provide learning opportunities for Afghan girls who cannot attend formal schools. The report notes that "Afghanistan has seen a steady increase in the number of children attending school since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than four million children are now enrolled in schools - a third of them girls."

• A lot of challenges still remain: more than a million of school-age girls are not attending school at the moment; the UNICEF program is aiming to reach half of them. Overall, though, more children are coming back to school:
  

  "As millions of school children across the world return to the classroom this week, an anticipated half a million boys and girls from the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan will also be going back to study, as the second annual phase of the country's Back to School campaign begins.

  "Afghanistan has two academic years - one running from March until December in areas affected by cold winters, and the second beginning in September in areas where the summers are too hot to hold classes. Most of these 'warm weather' schools are in the south and east of Afghanistan.

  "The Afghan Ministry of Education, supported by UNICEF, has been mobilizing supplies of learning and teaching materials for some 580,000 children and 5,500 teachers during the last two months in preparation for the September return."

• The UNICEF is also starting a major push to increase the overall literacy rates in this country where only 49% of men and just over 19% of women can read and write. "The UNESCO official said the main activities of [the program in question] Land Afghan included the development of a curriculum in both Dari and Pashto for basic literacy and a post-literacy teachers' guide; providing literacy-related capacity building training to government agencies and NGOs; and establishing community learning centres where literacy and non-formal education courses were offered. Land Afghan was also aiming to develop resources for visually impaired and deaf Afghans."
  


• In media news, Kabul's Arman FM radio station is providing a valuable service to listeners:
  

  "Sitting in the middle of the young men and women working together - a sight that would have given the Taliban apoplexy - is a balding, overweight, 42-year-old man in ill-fitting jeans and a checked shirt. He doesn’t look as if he has superstar status, but Humayoon Daneshyar’s daily radio phone-in show has revolutionised Afghanistan’s staid world of dismal talk-in shows about dry politics. The format has never been heard before, and has taken the battered city by storm. His show, The Youth And Their Problems, may be Western in style, but the problems are definitely Afghan. Daneshyar is called on daily to sort out matters of life and death. "His army of fans consult him about arguments between brothers, which can be deadly when so many people are armed with Kalashnikovs. Desperate lovers driven to the brink of suicide come to him as their last resort; he has talked people out of taking their own lives. And despairing young people who survived war and the Taliban but can’t cope in an Afghanistan striving for peace, seek his assistance in finding a job. Many have been bitterly disappointed by an economy that has failed to deliver the opportunities they had hoped for. All this sound advice and avuncular help has been delivered live on air, making Daneshyar a sort of good-natured Frasier Crane of Kabul."

• In sports news, the Afghan athletes might not have won any medals at the Olympic Games but they have made an important statement by simply competing in the games:
  

  "Her hair was blowing free behind her. Robina Muqimyar was falling way behind the pack Friday in the Olympic 100-meter sprint, but that didn't matter. She never really had a chance to win, and her gold medal was waiting for her at the starting line. There she was on the world's grandest stage, the Olympic Stadium, losing hopelessly in a race against superstars, including American Gail Devers."

• For Muqimyar, the victory was symbolic: "I had no opportunities to do anything during the Taliban. I was living at home, not doing anything, just doing homework and chores. This was the biggest memorable moment for me in my life because I competed at the Olympics."

ECONOMY AND RECONSTRUCTION:

• The Afghan economy continues to power ahead:
  

  "Afghanistan's economy will maintain its robust growth this year but security, better roads and lower oil prices are needed to keep a lid on inflation, the Governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan said on Wednesday. Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady said refugees returning home to work the land and generous international largesse fuelled strong growth. " 'This year, growth will be 16 percent, maybe a little more,' he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an annual Islamic Development Bank meeting in Tehran. He said this was a slight cooling from 18 percent growth in 2003 and 29 percent in 2002."

• The economy is obviously starting from a very low base line; as Ahady notes, the current reliance on aid is unsustainable, and many problems, such as inflation and trade deficit loom ahead. But so do many opportunities.
  



"With another few years of foreign assistance he said the economy could settle into the mould of Yemen or Bangladesh. At that stage it would be running growth at three or four percent. The private sector is getting off the ground in areas such as bottling and food oils. Further advances would demand legal adjustments and better security. "Ahady had no reliable unemployment data but said there was evidence jobs were being created at a healthy rate. Semi-skilled Pakistani labourers have been crossing the border for work. The key to any future investment was the high rate of return from Afghanistan's cheap labour, he added."

• In the new Afghanistan, previously unheard of opportunities are opening up; including many for Afghan women:
  

  "A few, determined Afghan women are making the most of whatever economic opportunities are open to them - mostly in home-related spheres such as craft making. Fahimeh, a 23-year-old former refugee who returned from Iran, is one such entrepreneur, who has overcome numerous obstacles to establish a successful small business. The photos in this essay document a day in the life of her beauty salon named Aroos’e Golha (Bride of Flowers)."

• See the photo-essay accompanying the story. But it's not just women; take for example this story of a mullah who wants to become a mogul:
  

  "He was 19 when he took up the gun, firing potshots at the Soviet soldiers who came to swim near his village. Now, after 23 years of fighting, the mujahedeen commander is perched again above the dusty brown shores of Lake Qargha and plotting strategy. His new mission: building an Alpine resort.

  "Scores of his former comrades in arms toil at the waterside Moon Cafe, laying stone walkways and painting the dining room in cheery pastels. Others are refurbishing several nearby guesthouses.

  "By year's end, four model chalets, prefabricated in Switzerland and priced from $183,000, should be built and ready for inspection by well-heeled Kabulis looking for their own slice of Lucerne just six miles northwest of the Afghan capital.

  "And that's just the beginning, if the former commander, Ezatullah Rooz, has his way. His plans call for condos on the nearby - albeit war-ravaged - golf course, a shopping center, hotels and perhaps even a short ski run, kept white with snow machines."

• As Afghanistan's newest convert to capitalism says, "This is the only way to bring peace to Afghanistan. We cannot bring it with guns, or even the United Nations. Only with jobs." Amen.
  


• Speaking of tourism, a new training initiative aims to combine potential future benefits for the industry with benefits for Afghan women:
  

  "The Afghan Government is piloting a scheme to teach widowed women the kind of skills necessary to work in the country's tourist industry, which is re-emerging after more than two decades of dormancy due to war and Taliban hostility, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported today.

  "More than 30 women are learning skills such as cooking, literacy and home-making, to take advantage of the growing interest from tourists in the site of the Bamiyan Buddha statues and the Band-i-Amir Lake in Afghanistan's central region.

  "If the pilot phase works, the scheme will be expanded to help more widowed women left financially vulnerable by the loss of their family's breadwinner, UNAMA spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said."

• Doing their bit for the rebirth of Afghan tourism is this group of American tourists - average age 74 - who decided to be among the first Westerners to visit Afghanistan for pleasure. "The tourists have encountered only generosity from ordinary Afghans. 'We make quite a stir wherever we go,' said Dick Bogart, a retired computer salesman from San Francisco and grandfather of 10. 'It's been very touching'."
  


• Another industry is also returning to Afghanistan after years of absence: "War in Afghanistan drove the carpet weavers into exile in Pakistan, peace has drawn these refugees home. The result is an industry straddling the border, providing jobs for both countries and reinforcing their economic inter-dependence...
  

  "Inside Afghanistan, some returnees have established factories; [one of them,] Allahbirdi employs about 90 people, themselves former refugees, in his Kabul Magu Village Carpets. But most production, as before in Pakistan and earlier in a peaceful Afghanistan, is done in homes. The skill rests with the Turkoman, Uzbek, Hazara and Tajik populations - not the Pashtuns who constitute the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan... "The industry has also become more sophisticated since the days when the carpet business was centred in Kabul and there was little production in Pakistan. Both countries are more conscious they are part of a worldwide market."

• While the work continues in every workshop and factory, elsewhere, bigger plans are being hatched too. Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah has recently unveiled his vision for Afghanistan as part of the greater Central Asian region:
  

  "The future of our country depends on the level of relations with our neighbors. We are striving to revive the Great Silk Road in its new modern concept... Afghanistan wants to become a transit country between the countries of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, and is interested in putting various economic projects into practice."

• One cannot imagine any more romantic and exotic an economic plan than a "new Silk Road." It's not a pipe dream - to achieve it, considerable planning and work are already taking place:
  

  "Afghanistan and Uzbekistan agreed on Sunday to push ahead with a mammoth road-building project intended to make their countries a lucrative trade link between Asia and the Persian Gulf. 'A unique opportunity has appeared for Afghanistan to serve as a transit country between South-East Asia and the Persian Gulf,' Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told journalists.

  "Meeting in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, Abdullah and his Uzbek counterpart, Sadyk Safayev outlined plans for Uzbek contractors to build a road across northern Afghanistan between the towns of Andhoi and Herat. The eventual aim - agreed last summer at a summit of Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan’s presidents - is to extend the road from Uzbekistan southwards through Afghanistan to Iran’s Gulf Coast, possibly supplemented by a railway.

  "Uzbekistan has simultaneously been pushing for construction of a rail link eastward through Kyrgyzstan and deep into China in order to create a complete oil transit route between China and the Persian Gulf."

• In other transport infrastructure news, other projects to link Afghanistan with its neighbors are currently in planning stages:
  

  "The Asian Development Bank has offered Pakistan $2 billion to help create 'regional connectivity' into Afghanistan and India with a road and railway network... The objective is to help create a transportation network that's connected with Afghanistan through Chaman on the western border of Pakistan, and India through its eastern parts."

• A high level Asian Development Bank team is expected in Pakistan in September for talks with the government.
  


• Afghanistan's neighbors are already assisting with development of communication links: "Iran has allocated a grant of 60 billion rials [$7 million] to Sangan-Herat railway project which is currently under construction in Afghanistan. A report released by the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Roads and Transportation on Saturday said that the project was launched in late March and is expected to be finalized by 2007." Dogharoun-Herat and Milak-Zarang links are already under construction as part of Iran's "non-return financial aid" to Afghanistan. Overall, 36 road projects are currently underway in Iran and six others in Afghanistan to complete the transit corridor that will give Afghanistan and Tadjikistan access to warm waters of the Persian Gulf.
  


• Speaking of Iran, the two governments have recently signed a mutual economic cooperation agreement: "Under the agreement, Afghan technicians would undergo training courses in Iran or Afghanistan, Afghan ministries would have access to Iranian state-run Persian language softwares and public libraries and those located at universities would be provided with their needed books. Iran would contribute to building Sangan-Harat and Harat-Meymaneh roads. The Afghan party would provide Iran with necessary information of its reconstruction projects and Iran would have necessary cooperation with Afghanistan in implementing the related projects."
  


• Pakistan, too, is helping with the transport infrastructure to link Afghanistan with the rest of the region. Says Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasuri: "We are pursuing development of transport and communications network linking Pakistan to Central Asia. The laying of railway tracks from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan is an important part of it. Our Ministry of Railways has completed feasibility study of Chaman-Kandahar rail project. Its report will be discussed in the next meeting of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Economic Commission which will be held in Islamabad shortly." Meanwhile, Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz has welcomed some of the infrastructure initiatives proposed by the Afghan government: "[Aziz] said that Pakistan will be too happy to consider the request of building airports at Khost and the Ghulam Kha-Spin Boldak road. On the rail link [between Chaman and Kandhar via Spin Boldak] he said pre-feasibility report was ready a firmed up detailed feasibility study would be undertaken. He said that Pakistan would be keen to participate in the regional power grid station [linking Central Asian states through Afghanistan] so that additional power can be made available in Pakistan. He welcomed the ring road between Mazar Sharif and Heart as it would facilitate the quicker link between Pakistan and Central Asian States."
  


• The foreign assistance is of course not limited just to transport. The Asian Development Bank has recently announced a $600 million assistance package to Afghanistan, to be provided over three years, "to support economic growth, poverty reduction, and reconstruction and development." According to the Bank, [t]he 12 projects and programs planned during the period span five sectors, including natural resources, transport, energy, the financial sector and public sector. The ADB is following a three-pronged approach to supporting Afghanistan's post-conflict reconstruction: building capacity, establishing an appropriate policy and institutional framework, and rehabilitating essential infrastructure."
  


• India is also providing aid: the government in New Dehli will provide $400 million "to improve Afghanistan's infrastructure, health facilities, transportation networks, power transmission and educational institutions." As part of the aid measures, India has agreed to train Afghan diplomats at the Foreign Service Institute of India.
  


• In energy news, the electricity line which will carry power from Iran to Herat is ready for launch. Mohsen Darmani, the Afghan official in charge of the project, "added that the first phase of the project has come to an end and Iran was waiting for Afghan minister to officially inaugurate the line. He added that the project has cost about 80.792 billion Rls. [$9.2 million] while 29.5 billion Rls. [$3.3 million] have been spent on building electricity posts... Iran-Afghanistan power line comprises two phases. The first phase includes a 20kv line from Taibad in Iran to Herat in Afghanistan while the second phase includes a 132kv line and a 132/20kv electricity station."
  


• And read this story of three young Swiss architects who had won a competition against 48 other entrants to build a tower block which will house student meeting rooms and accommodation at Bamiyan University in Afghanistan:
  

  "It is similar in style to traditional buildings found in Afghanistan’s second-biggest city of Kandahar, which lies in a region prone to earthquakes... The building is technically complex but uses material from the area and relies on local craftsmen... "The architects intend to leave the building management to local experts, hoping to contribute to the transfer of Western architectural know-how to Afghanistan. 'It is important to involve locals in our project. At the moment all the effort in reconstructing Afghanistan goes into engineering work,' said [one of the architects] Graf."

HUMANITARIAN AID:

• Well represented on the ground, the Coalition forces continue to provide aid to people of Afghanistan. The US forces, for instance, engage in a charm offensive:
  

  "The villagers were on edge. Two hours earlier the Americans' had arrived in terrifying style... What happened next left the villagers bemused. What did they want the most, Colonel McBride demanded - a new school, a well to be dug, a doctor for the derelict clinic? 'Just tell us what you want and how we can help you,' he urged while the villagers furiously stroked their long Taliban-style beards and stared as if unable to believe their luck. " 'Have you come to build or come to destroy?' one of them had nervously asked before the meeting. They remember Soviet soldiers whose policy was to carpet-bomb villages, not build schools for them."

• According to US military, the strategy is working: "Villagers sick of war and Taliban banditry are increasingly tipping them off about hideouts, ambush plans and arms caches - usually of weapons supplied to anti-Soviet guerillas by the CIA's 1980s covert operation and now turned against American boys in scrappy firefights."
  


• Then there is North Carolina's Donna Horosko:
  

  "At Southern Guilford High School, Donna Horosko liked basketball and biology, had a long list of friends and entered every dance contest that came along. Twenty-five years later, she's an Army lieutenant colonel, stationed in Afghanistan and helping to rebuild that war-torn country... "Horosko, as part of the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade out of Portland, Ore., is working with the country's new Ministry of Women's Affairs to offer educational and cultural opportunities to a long-neglected segment of the Afghan population... Since her unit arrived in Afghanistan nine months ago, Horosko has helped in strategic planning, but especially in efforts to bolster the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Army officials have given away thousands of crank-powered radios to families in rural areas, where no electricity is available. Much of the programming targets female audiences, telling women it's OK to register to vote and that they have equal rights."

• And Wally Hopkins, the director of Amarillo's Department of Veteran's Affairs Medical Center of Amarillo, Texas, who has assisted in bringing the Afghan hospitals out of the Middle Ages:
  

  "Hopkins and Rose Bolza, a midwife from an Arizona Indian reservation who was also volunteering in Afghanistan, worked together to set up a new, clean labor triage room in the main facility.

  "Hopkins oversaw installation of emergency lighting in the operating room where doctors had improvised with cell phone light. The new system replaced a risky backup system. 'They were using kerosene lamps,' he said. 'In a room where they used 100 percent oxygen, you can imagine what a catastrophic situation that might cause.'

  "He also enlisted the help of the Army Corps of Engineers to repair a pathological incinerator that had not worked for weeks. Uteri, placentas and other body parts sat waiting to be disposed of, Hopkins said."

• The challenges are truly daunting, but fortunately there are many people of good will and experience willing to help.
  


• Often, the humanitarian aid is part of the official military mission; but sometimes the efforts result from individual initiative, like the case of Oregon's Army Spc Moises Salgado, who motivated his family and friends to provide Afghan children with school supplies such as pens, pencils, notebooks and backpacks - "To date almost 2,000 pounds of much needed items have been sent, with more on its way." Says Salgado:
  

  "Basically, when I first met the Afghanis Nationalist people I wasn't sure what to expect, because of how the media had pictured them... Since working with them I have found they are very friendly people. When they come to work on the base it is my responsibility to make sure none of them wonder off where they were not supposed to be. "The news media had led me to believe these people could not be trusted. But the more I was around them the more learned of their truthfulness and honesty. As time went by I became increasingly aware of their living situation. When the Taliban was in rule these people were not even allowed to write. This simple task that Americans do without fear would bring severe punishment if caught doing it. Now that the Taliban is no longer in rule, things are changing. It's amazing the little things these people are grateful for. Even a simple ball-point pen. When I passed them out to some women they would make a mark on their hand and sniff it. They were so excited about having a pen."

• More on Moises Salgado's action, as well as details of how you can help can be found here.
  


• There are also people like Jenni Birker of Garrison, Iowa, who has started the Shoes for Kids drive to collect shoes for Afghan orphans. Jenni "started the campaign after her father, who is stationed near an orphanage in Afghanistan, asked her in an e-mail to send more than 300 pairs of shoes for the orphans. Now Birker has put collection boxes in Vinton area businesses and is accepting monetary donations to help with shipping costs." More on Jenni here, including the details of how you can contribute.
  


• Then there are Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, both September 11 widows, who decided to reach out to Afghan women. "Retik and Quigley were struck by how women, especially widows, were marginalized by the former Taliban regime and by Afghan society in general: They had no life insurance and often no money or property to help them carry on after their husbands' deaths. 'I thought - look at all the support we're getting,' said Retik... 'What must it be like for widows in Afghanistan?'"
  

  "Earlier this year, [Retik and Quigley] created Beyond the 11th, a nonprofit foundation to aid widows in areas touched by conflict, and they plan to mark the third anniversary of the attacks by riding their bikes from New York, where their husbands' lives ended, to Boston, where their final flights began...

  "The two women plan to ride the first 220 miles of the route together, making their way through back roads of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and into Massachusetts, where they hope to be met by another 200 riders for the final 30 miles to Boston. Each rider will represent one of the 202 New Englanders killed in the attacks...

  "The ride will begin Sept. 9 at the former site of the World Trade Center and end on Sept. 11 at a new memorial in the Boston Public Garden. They are hoping to raise $100,000 for food, clothing, education and job training for Afghan widows and their children.

  "With less than three weeks to go before the ride, about 75 riders have signed up to do the final leg with Retik and Quigley. The riders have pledged a total of $30,000 so far to help Afghan widows."

• You can find more about the ride on this website.
  


• Hawa Meskinyar, formerly of Atlanta, Georgia, has set up another charity organization: "[She] hopes to change that through the work of JAHAN (Join and Help Afghanistan Now), a nonprofit humanitarian organization she formed in 2001. The Washington-based organization, run by volunteers in the United States and Kabul, helps needy women and children become self-sufficient...
  

  "JAHAN's initial goal was a program that would pair a sponsor with an Afghan child. So far, more than 80 sponsors have signed on. Meskinyar distributes the funds - $30 to $50 a month. She asks only that the family receiving the money make every effort to send the child to school. 'Education is the key,' she said.

  "She scours Kabul's ethnically diverse neighborhoods, its tent cities and low-income housing, to make sure the money reaches as many children as possible. Soon, she plans to start a sewing and literacy center to help Afghan women become self-sufficient. She worries that the country will become too dependent on handouts.

  "She hopes to market the products in the United States and other countries through retail outlets or the Internet. The women will earn a salary and their children will also be placed in the sponsorship program."

• Read also this story of Brian Murtagh, Australian farmer who celebrated his 70th birthday in Afghanistan last year. Murtagh worked for six months in logistics coordination for the Oxfam charity. This meant "procuring and transporting goods ranging from communications equipment, including large satellite dishes to 14km of poly pipe for irrigation and cooking utensils." The work gave Murtagh a valuable new perspective on life: "I am constantly amazed at the things we complain about in Australia which on a scale of one to 10 are about minus 475 in importance."
  


• You might remember the story from one of the previous updates, about Djamshid Djan Popal, a nine year old Afghan boy receiving, thanks to generosity of private benefactors, life-saving treatment in Canada. The latest news is that Djamshid is now slowly recovering after a successful surgery.
  


• It's not just the West, though; other Muslim countries are also helping. The Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates is sending another two planeloads of aid for needy Afghan families as part of their long-standing humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan.

SECURITY:

• The new Afghan army is proving to be increasingly effective as a force for stability in the country:
  
  

  "Rivals in western Afghanistan agreed to a cease-fire last week after the arrival of the Afghan National Army (ANA). With 13,700 soldiers, the fledgling ANA has become a force that President Hamid Karzai has used to douse flareups between warlords who still rule a majority of the country. "The recent fighting in Afghanistan's western province of Herat is seen by many as an effort to mar the country's first democratic presidential elections, but for Karzai it has also provided the opportunity to flex his muscle and show how far his government has come in the last three years."

• The Afghan government's new get-tough policy on warlords has already resulted in unseating from power one of the most famous and influential of the lot: Isamail Khan who previously controlled the city of Herat. "For the first time in Afghanistan the American military has made it clear that they are backing moves to push out a warlord, and Mr Khan's support is unlikely to prove strong enough to resist determined action by the US-backed Afghan National Army."
  


• Kabul, meanwhile, has been declared free of heavy weapons - the first time in a quarter of a century - and a positive step along the road to elections. " 'Bulldozers should replace tanks and cannons,' Deputy Defense Minister Rahim Wardak told the ceremony in a dusty compound north of Kabul containing dozens of tanks and artillery pieces. 'AK-47's and pistols should make way for saws and axes'... Wardak said 2,300 heavy weapons had been rounded up around Kabul, the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and the southeastern city of Gardez."
  


• Among other recent successes on the Afghan front of the war on terror: three suspected Taliban fighters including "a senior commander" are killed during an action in Ghazni province; in Uruzgan province, the US-trained Afghan National Army arrest 16 Taliban fugitives in the latest sweep; in Khost and Zabul provinces, 22 more suspected Taliban fighters are detained; and the US forces kill 22 insurgents, among them several Arab fighters, in a firefight in the Zabul province.
  


• In another incident, the US special forces have cornered and killed one of top Taliban commanders, Roze Khan, who was leading the Islamist guerrillas in southern Afghanistan. A CBS reporter who accompanied the troops on this operation writes:
  

  "The coalition soldiers came in with overwhelming force, but they used it sparingly. Because there were shots fired, they handcuffed some 22 men in the village of fighting age and above. Then they were searched and questioned. But contrary to popular perceptions, soldiers here operate with very strict rules, and unless they find weapons or other evidence on someone, they cannot be detained, which is similar to how the police operate in the U.S. So after several hours, only two men were detained while the rest had their plastic cuffs cut free and were left to ponder the American soldiers actions, that seemed to have taken them completely by surprise."

• In the continuing effort to provide assistance to the new Afghan armed forces, teams of American officers are currently working with their Afghan counterparts to establish the National Military Academy of Afghanistan, modeled on the West Point. "The purpose of the NMAA is to provide the Afghan National Army with professional officers who support and defend the Constitution of Afghanistan."
  


• Meanwhile, Holland has sent additional fighter planes to reinforce the NATO security force for the October election. Great Britain, too, is sending in more jets. On the ground, a Georgian Mountain-Rifle battalion is on its way to perform peacekeeping duties, going via Germany, where the Georgian troops will receive two week of additional training.
  


• To strengthen border security and to combat smuggling, Pakistan is setting up more checkpoints along the border. Pakistan is also currently providing training for Afghan customs officials. The Pakistani armed forces have also bombarded a terrorist training camp near the Afghan border, killing 50.
  


• And in a development which might have some positive long term indirect flow-on effects, the Pakistani government "with US help, has embarked on several initiatives to combat zealotry by broadening educational offerings. A little over 300 madrassahs have introduced elementary subjects like English, math, science, and computers, and US funds have revitalized some government schools." It's a slow start to tackle a huge problem - in the past, Pakistani madrassahs have proven to be a fertile breeding ground for Islamic radicalism, for which Afghanistan in particular had paid a high price. Any attempts to "drain the swamp" are only to be encouraged.

The venerable "Economist" has summed up its commentary about the coming presidential elections in Afghanistan in one sentence: "A triumph for nation-building, if it succeeds." Somebody else might say, a triumph for Afghanistan that it already got so far. An even greater triumph, as the "Economist" says, if it succeeds. For their sake of the long suffering people of Afghanistan, let's hope that will be the case.

If you have any tips for future editions of “Good news from Afghanistan” send an email to goodnewsafghanistan “at” windsofchange “dot” net.

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REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• Captain's Quarters has a report from a USMC Major on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. It's straightforward and clear, and largely positive.

• The Carnival of the Liberated, a round-up of interesting posts from Iraqi bloggers, has returned to the blogosphere.

• Terrorists kidnapped two Americans and a Briton in the upscale Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday. The victims are said to be contractors with Gulf Services Company, a construction firm based in the United Arab Emirates.

• A relative of Alaa, at The Mesopotamian was kidnapped by "insurgents". In the case of her family member, the "insurgents" allowed him to keep his head in return for a large sum of money. Alaa makes it clear that the fight is not against "insurgents" or "freedom fighters", but against terrorists.

• Healing Iraq is always a great source of on-the-ground news. Zeyad has discovered a pattern, which could be generated into a decent conspiracy theory of cooperation between cleric-thug al-Sadr and terror-thug al-Zarqawi.

• Last week, winds offered 3 different views from the front lines of Iraq: [1] Christopher Albritton of Back to Iraq is unhappy; [2] Reports on the 1st Infantry's unconventional "Boss Tweed" stylre approach in Tikrit; and [3] Rick Sackett's unusual way of telling people about his Iraq experiences. Each sees a different picture. Read and decide.

RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY

• The Iraqi Ministry of Countruction and Housing has announced milestones on several projects to build new housing complexes in Baghdad and Kirkuk. The Iraqi government, with coalition assistance, estimates it will build 2.5 million units by 2007.

• The Army Corps of Engineers reports enhancements to Iraq's electrical grid, coupled with bringing on two new generators, has provided electrical service to an additional 72,000 homes.

• Hamzan, a small hamlet in Northern Iraq, is experiencing certain amenities for the first time.The 133rd Engineer Battalion has replaced the mud schoolhouse with a concrete structure, brought in electricity and a 20K gallon water tank. These National Guard Soldiers from Belfast, Maine, are also teaching the local Peshmerga the construction techniques necessary to continue the work after the soldiers have left.

IRAQI POLITICS

• Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi insists that the January elections will not be delayed by the wave of violence unleashed by terrorists over the past week. That's probably a good thing, as Allawi's popularity is so low Iraqis will welcome a change in leaders as soon as possible. President Bush echoed Allawi's promise while acknowledging that the going is getting difficult in Iraq.

• Kirkuk is the recipient of nearly 500 Kurds each day, as they stream into the area and set up ever-growing "tent
  cities"in order to establish residency so they may vote in the upcoming elections - indicating a possible shift in power in the area. Kurds were forced into exile to the far North duing the Hussein regime.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• UN Secretary General, Koffi Annan, has stirred the ire of several world leaders by calling the war in Iraq "Illegal". However, Mr. Annan's spokesman did say "Mr Annan was "quite reluctant" to use the word 'illegal' and did so only "after repeated pressure" from the BBC interviewer." Annan's claim drew umbrage from the U.S. and its allies.

• ...And from Matthew Yglesias, too.

• An Australian citizen was kidnapped, held for three days, and released after his family paid a $25,000 ransom. In Iraq today, this would not raise a lot of eyebrows, except this Australian citizen was The Imam of the Auburn Shia mosque, Sheikh Mohomad Naji al-Sibiani.

• Victor Davis Hanson explains why he thinks that a "pull-out" strategy for Iraq would be a really bad idea.

WMD HUNT

• A report by the Iraq Survey Group will state that Iraq did not have WMD stockpiles, but instead was importing banned materials and maintaining the capability to shift production to WMDs once sanctions are lifted. Expect to hear this report trumpeted to the rooftops over the next few weeks, although without much (if any) discussion of how the problem might be fixed.

ETCETERA

• Sandy Berger (Docs-in-Socs-gate), former Clinton National Security Advisor, owns Stonebridge International. Stonebridge will be assisting Gulfsands Petroleum Ltd. Gulfsands has been invovled in "oil and gas exploration and development interests in Syria. And now Gulfsands is looking to Iraq." However, Gulfsands is not pursuing any government contracts, according to Stonebridge Vice Chairman H.P. Goldfield.

• The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian & Polish. Anyone out there with more information, contact us!

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

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