AMERICAN FUTURE

In China. The AP reports:

BEIJING—Chinese stocks plunged Wednesday after the government raised a tax on share trades, trying to cool a market boom amid growing concerns about a possible bubble.

The main Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 6.5 percent at 4,071.27 after hitting a record high on Tuesday. The Shenzhen Composite Index for China’s smaller second market fell even more, closing down 7.2 percent at 1,199.45.

The declines came after the Finance Ministry tripled the “stamp tax” on stock trades from 0.1 percent to 0.3 percent, effective Wednesday. The ministry was trying to “cool (the) stock market,” the official Xinhua News Agency said.

“This policy change reveals the government’s concern about a possible stock market bubble,” said Citigroup economist Minggao Shen, describing the tax hike as Beijing’s first formal move to cool the boom. “The market didn’t know what the government was thinking until now.”

Through Tuesday, Shanghai’s benchmark index had climbed 62 percent this year, following a 130 percent surge in 2006.

I’d call that a bubble. Remember NASDAQ 5000?

Jamie Stern-Weiner posts at Daily Kos and ukwatch.net. We’re all familiar with Kos, but what about ukwatch? Here’s how ukwatch describes itself:

In an age dominated by corporate media control, the importance of alternative media – in contesting mainstream interpretations, promoting alternative understandings and supporting the development of a radical popular culture – can hardly be overstated. ukwatch.net is our contribution.

Corporate media control is a bad thing, but government media control—at least in Venezuela—is a good thing, argues Stern-Weiner. Here’s what he (she?) has to say about Chavez’s latest power grab:

There’s an extraordinary spectacle currently playing out in the broadsheets both here and in the United States with regards to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ decision not to renew the license of a major Venezuelan TV channel, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). The move is being portrayed as an attack on freedom of speech and a threat to Venezuelan democracy, and is being cited as proof of Chavez’ authoritarianism by those who have been accusing him of being a would-be dictator from the second he was elected to power.

[ . . . ]

RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected. During the coup, they cooperated in suppressing any news that might portray the putsch in a bad light. [Emphasis added]

Never mind that five years have passed since the abortive coup. If you’re a would-be (or already are) a dictator who’s anti-American and anti-capitalist and anti-globalization, but pro-socialism and pro-Iran and pro-Castro, it’s perfectly OK —even desirable—to suppress freedom of speech.

Pardon the hyperbolic image. It’s from a website—one of many—claiming that America, thanks to George Bush and his cronies, is well on its way to becoming a fascist state. Some of the protesters at the 2004 Republican National Convention carried placards to that effect.

What does fascism mean? Who better to tell us than Mussolini? In one of my travels across the Web, I happened upon an article (no longer available for free) written by Mussolini that was published in the British journal Political Quarterly (PQ) in 1933.

Mussolini’s article, titled “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” can be found here.

It didn’t take long.

From the New York Times:

American, British and Iraqi forces battled fighters from the Mahdi Army militia in Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra today, a day after the militia’s leader, the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, came out of hiding and reiterated his calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The fighting in Baghdad was triggered by a pre-dawn raid by American and Iraqi forces on a suspected Mahdi Army hideout in Sadr City, the sprawling working-class neighborhood that has been a wellspring of support for Mr. Sadr and his militia, officials said.

According to a statement from the American military command, “a suspected terrorist cell leader” was captured in the raid. The suspect is accused of masterminding the transportation of militants from Iraq to Iran for training, and the smuggling of weapons from Iran into Iraq, including the highly lethal improvised bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, the statement said.

[ . . . ] The American raid today appeared to carry the message that regardless of Mr. Sadr’s whereabouts, or his return to active participation in Iraqi politics, the military command would continue to press its campaign against Shiite militants.

From Ynetnews:

LUXEMBOURG - Al-Qaeda is searching for ways to create nuclear weapons for mass destruction, a former UN weapons inspection chief said during a press conference at an international convention ways to prevent a nuclear catastrophe being held in Luxembourg.

Rolf Ekeus, currently High Commissioner at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and formerly Director of the UN Special Commission on Iraq, told reporters that the threat of a nuclear attack on a European city by al-Qaeda was tangible, and that steps are being taken to protect nuclear facilities from which terrorists can obtain enriched uranium.

“Al-Qaeda is searching for nuclear technology,” Ekeus said. “They are looking for simple weapons… for mass destruction,” he added.

Ekeus said al-Qaeda members “cannot be deterred. They are willing to sacrifice themselves,” adding that prevention was the only means to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism.

“Of the 130 research reactors (with highly enriched uranium), very few of them have adequate protection. If I were looking for nuclear weapons, I would know where to go,” the former UN official said. He added that steps were being taken to protect the reactors, and to make the enriched uranium inaccessible.

Former US defense secretary William Perry echoed the view, saying it was “not alarmist” to assume that there was over a 50 percent chance of a nuclear terrorist attack taking place in a European city – a view first expressed in the book ‘Nuclear Terrorism’ by terror expert Graham Allison.

The next time someone uses the phrase “so-called war on terrorism,” send him a link to this post.

“Once Americans get into a funk, there really is no stopping them. It’s an old truth that things are never as good or as bad as they seem and so it is now.”

That’s Gerard Baker of The Times of London talking. He makes the following points:

Start with economics. America is not going to be overtaken by China any time in the next century. So large is the US advantage that, even growing at 3 per cent, the country’s economy adds more to the level of global activity than China does growing at 10 per cent.

Its soft power may have been attenuated these past few years, but not destroyed. Who is there to replace America? China? Do me a favour. Does anyone out there really think they would prefer to live in China rather than America? Europe? Viewed from the comforting perspective of a pavement café in Paris, Europe might look a more appealing place. But the continent is in the midst of a long, slow suicide; falling birthrates and a moral surrender to the forces of relativism have left it an easy prey for less tolerant cultures.

There’s no denying that Iraq is a self-inflicted wound and an energy-sapping one at that. But the scale of the damage to America there can be overstated too. All we’ve really learnt in the past five years is that even the US is probably not powerful enough to remake 700 years of history in five years. That doesn’t mean America is weak, just less strong than it thought it was.

Of course, a president, an inept one, can set back the course of a nation’s progress. Like Mr Carter before him, Mr Bush’s ledger is heavy on the liabilities. But America recovered from Mr Carter, thanks to good leadership and the ingenuity of a people whose great gift is their constant capacity to recreate themselves. Who’s betting it won’t do so again?

A little perspective every now and then is a good idea.

. . . is the title of a not-to-be-missed satire by Iowahawk. Click here.

On Iran, the new French president agrees with Washington, not the IAEA:

French President Nicholas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West’s demands to cease its nuclear agenda. If Iran attains nuclear weapons, Sarkozy warned, a road to an arms race will be paved that could endanger Israel and southeast Europe, he said during an interview with a German magazine. Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.

Referencing ElBaradei’s public statement that he believes it is too late to force Tehran to scrap its enrichment program as demanded by the Security Council, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei proffered these words:

We were indeed surprised by several comments from Mr. ElBaradei over the weekend. We share the gist of concerns expressed by our American partners – along with several other partners, for that matter . . . I can confirm that our permanent representative in Vienna will take part in the American initiative.

In addition, the IAEA director-general referred, in one of his public statements, to analyses from French intelligence services over the time that it would take Iran to have access to a nuclear weapon. We aren’t in the habit of releasing national intelligence analyses publicly – much less through an international organization.

Vive la France!

I’ve long believed that our president’s biggest mistake during the first few weeks after the 9/11 attacks was to beseech us to go about our lives, rather than to tell us that sacrifices would be needed. I think I understand where he was coming from: urging a return to normalcy was a form of reassurance.

It’s the same way with Iraq. Much has been asked of a small minority of Americans, while, for the rest of us, no sacrifice has been required. A segment of this evening’s PBS NewsHour really brings this home:

. . . as NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman reported last night, the growing price of the war goes well beyond what it’s costing the government. In the second of his reports, Paul looks at some American families who are paying the price.

JAVIER LAROSA, Father of Marine (pointing to a photograph): This is our son, and this is his squad.

PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour Economics Correspondent: A recent Saturday at a Harley dealership in Tennessee, for months, Javier and Marian LaRosa have been raising money to privately buy body armor for their son, and for the other Marines in his squadron, before they deploy to Iraq in June.

JAVIER LAROSA: We feel that, if these guys are going to go and put their lives on the line, the least that we can do to bring them back alive.

PAUL SOLMAN: The LaRosas are a symbol of the roughly one million American families paying for the war in Iraq.

JAVIER LAROSA: And God bless you.

PAUL SOLMAN: Or at least this man thinks they’re a symbol of those paying for the war: Robert Hormats, who served under Presidents Bush I, Reagan, and Carter, and has for years been vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, a wing of the world’s largest investment bank.

To Hormats, families buying body armor for their children vividly shows why the Iraq war differs from any other in American history, that those fighting it are bearing nearly all of the costs, while the rest of us aren’t paying at all.

ROBERT HORMATS, Investment Banker: Americans haven’t paid higher taxes. They haven’t engaged in the purchase of war bonds. They haven’t had to sacrifice through rationing. They haven’t planted victory gardens. Every other war, there’s been a sacrifice on the homefront to help those people, support those people fighting abroad. None this time.

PAUL SOLMAN: In fact, claims Hormats, the cost of the war, at least $400 billion thus far, and eventually perhaps $2 trillion or more, has been hidden from the vast majority of Americans.

ROBERT HORMATS: This war has been financed essentially with borrowing, which has been off the books through supplementals.

PAUL SOLMAN: Indeed, points out Joe Stiglitz, once a key economic adviser to President Clinton…

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, Columbia University: The richest Americans have had huge tax cuts. No sacrifice at all.

PAUL SOLMAN: For a big-city reporter then, with no family or friends in Iraq, a beneficiary of tax cuts every year of the war, it felt almost embarrassing to be in Tennessee with the LaRosas.

I don’t mean to personalize this too much, but are you in some sense resentful that people like, say, myself, bear no costs in this war?

JAVIER LAROSA: I’m not angry at you, because you personally bear no sacrifice, OK? I am calling on the nation. We did it in World War II. I am angry that the rest of the nation is not sacrificing more.

PAUL SOLMAN: This is Hormats’ point, almost exactly, made in detail in his new book, “The Price of Liberty.”

ROBERT HORMATS: The people who are fighting the war are not getting as much as they need. They’re not getting as much armor. And, of course, as we see, when they’re injured, they’re not getting the help they need at home.

PAUL SOLMAN: Given that the total cost, big as it may be, is just a small fraction of our almost $14 trillion-a-year economy, perhaps that’s not so surprising.

ROBERT HORMATS: As a portion of GDP, as a portion of the economy, this war is very small compared to, say, Vietnam, which was 10 percent of GDP, Korea, which was 15 percent of GDP, World War II, 45 percent of GDP. The whole military budget this time is less than 5 percent of GDP, so it’s easier to sidestep that issue.

The full text is here.

The summary:

18. Although the Agency is able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, the Agency remains unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify certain aspects relevant to the scope and nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. Pursuant to its NPT Safeguards Agreement, Iran has been providing the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and facilities. Iran has, however, ceased to implement the modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements with respect to the early provision of design information, and has not permitted the Agency to perform design information verification at the IR-40 reactor.

19. As previously stated, unless Iran addresses the long outstanding verification issues, and implements the Additional Protocol and the required transparency measures, the Agency will not be able to fully reconstruct the history of Iran’s nuclear programme and provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran or about the exclusively peaceful nature of that programme. It should be noted that because the Agency has not been receiving for over a year information that Iran used to provide, including under the Additional Protocol, the Agency’s level of knowledge of certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear related activities has deteriorated.

20. Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities. Iran has continued with the operation of PFEP. It has also continued with the construction of FEP and has started feeding cascades with UF6. Iran has also continued with its heavy water related projects. Construction of the IR-40 reactor and the operation of the Heavy Water Production Plant are continuing.

Emphases added.

Here’s Victor Davis Hanson’s take on the Pew survey of American Muslims:

I think someone should make it clear to the Muslim-American community that despite all the spin following the disturbing Pew Poll, most Americans are appalled at the findings for a variety of unspoken reasons.

The findings reflect a successful minority, at income and educational levels indistinguishable from the American majority—despite 40% arriving since 1990.

Yet, one in four young adult Muslims supports the idea of suicide bombing to “defend Islam” and only four in ten think Arabs had anything to do with the 9/11 suicide bombing.

Despite explanations from academics and religious figures—youth sound off, war is increasingly acceptable to Americans, Black Muslims may be a different subset of the polled, etc—one could interpret this as very bad news: the US just recently welcomed in tens of thousands of Muslims from the failed states of the Middle East, offering them an opportunity for a vastly different life, which apparently they embraced with open arms. And the views of some of that community to the most devastating attack on American shores in its history apparently include that 25% of its youth approve of suicide tactics, and only 40% on the entire community accept that Arabs carried out the mass murder.

Polls are unreliable. But one cannot praise them on the one hand for showing real signs of Muslim success, and then not be more candid that well over 1 million Muslims here don’t believe Arabs were involved in destroying the World Trade Center, and several hundred thousand apparently approve in theory of the generic tactic of suicide bombing.

Yet for any to confess that reality, or to worry that the 25% number might explain oddities like those arrested in the Fort Dix conspiracy, is usually to be found guilty of “Islamophobia” or some such illiberal prejudice by CAIR.

Why such disturbing news from such a successful minority? No doubt the globalized hatred flowing on television from the Middle East, and on the Internet from the Islamists.

But there is also a sense that there are no social or cultural consequences to expressing such radicalism. And why should there be?

At a time of war, our senators compare our troops to Nazis or claim they are no different from Saddam’s. Conspiracy theory about 9/11 is embraced by a large minority in the Democratic party, and dreams of shooting the President are the topics of novels and docu-dramas. That lends a climate or reassurance to go one step further and approve of blowing someone else to “defend” Islam.

But why worry about 25% of Muslim youth in America when you can go to the moronic “View” and hear Rosie et al defend jihadism through moral equivalence and argue that because someone blows himself up he must de facto have some sort of legitimate reason (akin to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s logic that superior Confederate zeal was proof of the inherent righteousness of being left alone to hold slaves.)

That’s why the “View” is so valuable, because it is our window on the moronic affluent American mindset, the perfect result of abject ignorance colliding with unchecked affluence.

Agreed.

A surprisingly small number of bloggers have posted on Pew Research Center’s survey of American Muslim attitudes. Because they seem to be less concerned about the survey’s results than I am, two posts are worth noting.

At Dean’s World, my blogfriend Dave Schuler avers:

I think that the report is mostly good news but there are some in the blogosphere who, presumably on a half empty/half full basis see it as bad news, noting that roughly 5% of American Muslims believe that terrorism is justified under some circumstances. While I find it appalling that anyone can think terrorism is justified under any circumstances, having read the report I don’t find much cause for concern—you can’t draw the conclusions that some people are drawing on the basis of this report. The sad fact is that in a large enough group you can find 5% who believe in any fool thing.

Abu Aardvark’s Mark Lynch says:

26% of young Muslim Americans saying that suicide bombings are sometimes justifiable is certainly something to which we should pay attention. But some context, please.

Mark then asks us to look at the results when Pew has asked the same question among Muslims in a number of other countries:

Of equal interest are some of the comments appended to these two posts:

“I wonder what a similar poll would have found in 1947 if it had polled American Jews on whether terrorism is ever acceptable. 5% may not be all that worrisome.”

“If you were a Jew in Germany in 1944 you wouldn’t think terrorism was justified?

“If you are a Muslim and you believe such a thing, this indicates that you are pretty sure Muslims were innocent and someone else did it. Now who you think did it may be diverse—the US Government, Da Jooz, the Vatican, Halliburton, whoever—but the #1 thing it indicates is that you do not want to believe such a horrible thing [the 9/11 attacks] would be done by your brethren”.

I published my post on the Pew survey at The Moderate Voice. Here’s some of the comments it has elicited:

“Not quite as disturbing as the 25+% of Americans who think George W. Bush is doing a good job . . . What about the 43% of Americans who think that torture is often or sometimes justified as opposed to rarely or never?”

“There was bound to be a number of Muslims who believe that suicide bombings are justified. Are there not a number of Americans who believed that carpet bombing Europe was justified? Are there not many Americans who believe that dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was justified? (hell, I’m one of em)”

“I am not terribly alarmed by that finding. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a similar number of devout christians in the U.S. who would see a conflict between being a devout christian and living in a modern society.”

“I’m always intrigued by the alarm that many feel when someone states that they believe their religion is more important than their nation. Doesn’t virtually every religious person think God is more important than the nation they belong to?”

“There are about 250 million native born Americans and I would not be surprised if 1% of them thought we should nuke all muslim countries. My G-d, that’s about 2.5 million crazies. The sky is falling – what should we do – oh dear, what should we do.”

No review of the reaction to the survey would be complete without calling attention to Glenn Greenwald who, in his typically scathing, long-winded manner, attacks the blogosphere’s right-wing, denies that there’s any reason at all to be concerned about the survey’s results, and in an attempt to prove his point, segues into a heated discussion of Christians’ approval of torture, allegiance to their religion above that of allegiance to the U.S., rejection of evolution and support of Zionism. Jews come in for a similar but thankfully shorter raking across the coals. He also works indefinite detention and emergency presidential powers into the mix.

Whether willful or not (in Greenwald’s case, it certainly is willful), these reactions are efforts to redirect attention from the issue at hand. The attitudes of American Muslims compared to those of Muslims in other countries, comparisons of Muslim with Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and accusations (whether true or not) pertaining to the policies (torture, detention, rendition, emergency presidential powers) of the Bush Administration have a common denominator: denial.

To minimize or dismiss one threat by diverting the discourse to other threats, whether real or imagined, is an exercise in pure sophistry. To put the threat of Muslim terrorism in America on the same plane as those of Christian and Jewish terrorism is to ignore not only 9/11, but the Millennium Plot and other aborted terrorist acts, as well. There have, of course, been individual acts of terrorism on our soil by Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, but they have not been undertaken by or in the name of a worldwide network of fanatics whose announced goal is the destruction of Western civilization.

Have you noticed that the Left hasn’t had much if anything to say about the Lebanese army’s shelling of Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut? Gabriel Schoenfeld has:

“A crime of especial notoriety,” is what the Guardian called it in 2002 when Israel entered a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin to root out terrorists who had organized a suicide bombing that killed 29 at their seder tables in a hotel in Netanya on the first night of Passover. In all, 52 Palestinians, almost all of them terrorists, died in this supposed genocide, while Israel, in a costly effort to to conduct itself in the most humane fashion possible, lost 23 soldiers of its own.

In Tripoli right now, the Lebanese army is pounding a Palestinian refugee camp with tank shells and other heavy weapons far less discriminating in their lethal effects than anything fired by Israeli ground troops in Jenin—and many Lebanese are cheering them on. The choir of Europeans and American leftists who routinely champion the Palestinian cause is strangely silent—or maybe not so strangely silent. Perhaps their real interest lies not in defending Palestinian rights but in bashing Israel—and Israel, of course, is not engaged in this particular fray.

Tomorrow, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to confirm Iran’s rapid progress in advancing its uranium enrichment program.

Is it a coincidence, then, that ABC News chose today to report, based on information obtained from “current and former officials in the intelligence community,” that the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government? Was this information leaked with or without the Administration’s approval? We won’t know until the Administration reacts (or doesn’t react) to the disclosure.

Here are excerpts from the ABC story:

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

[ . . . ]The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.

Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.

[ . . . ] Current and former intelligence officials say the approval of the covert action means the Bush administration, for the time being, has decided not to pursue a military option against Iran.

[ . . . ] The covert action plan comes as U.S. officials have confirmed Iran had dramatically increased its ability to produce nuclear weapons material, at a pace that experts said would give them the ability to build a nuclear bomb in two years.

The emphases are mine.

From the Jamestown Foundation:

On May 14, jihadi forum users Abu Kandahar and Roslan al-Shami posted a five-point scenario for the collapse of the United States and the rise of the Islamic ummah, entitled, “The Next Strikes in the Heart of America, When and How.” It appeared on the al-ommh.net forum, although at least one other jihadi forum, alhanein.com, reposted the scenario. The posting outlines a scenario for attacking the United States, although the sheer size of the operation suggests that it is jihadi propaganda and not an actual plan that could be operationalized. The alleged operation is dedicated to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq.

The first stage in the scenario involves multiple terrorist attacks on three major U.S. cities, preferably with nuclear weapons, using an unspecified number of trucks. The scenario places priority on attacking New York City because it is the central artery of the U.S. economy and it would prove that the mujahideen are capable of recurrent attacks on the same target. The second city to attack is Los Angeles, an important West Coast “atheist” city. The third “city” to be attacked is Florida because, they argue, it is an East Coast congregation city and has the Kennedy Space Center (considering the description, the statement’s authors probably meant Orlando). While those are the three primary cities for attack, the writers of the document suggest that if the mujahideen wish to expedite the collapse of the United States, they should also conduct attacks in Seattle since it is a strategic border city; Washington, DC, the political center of the United States; and cities in Texas, since the “biggest oil companies” are located there.

According to the writers, the purpose of attacking these specific cities is to cause a sharp decline in the U.S. economy; mass amounts of casualties; the support for the mujahideen by anti-U.S. countries such as Cuba and Venezuela; a decrease in American support for their own government; the withdrawal of the “blasphemous” U.S. military from Islamic territories; mass military desertions; and the inability to fuel U.S. military fighter jets. The document also outlines how the fallout from such large-scale attacks would cause the U.S. military to return to the United States in order to conduct massive relief operations. They refer to the example of how Hurricane Katrina overburdened the U.S. National Guard, calling the hurricane a “Soldier of God.”

After such attacks, they argue that the Islamic State of Iraq will seize the opportunity to launch mass strikes on the apostates in the Iraqi military and police, paving the way for the third stage of the scenario: the commencement of the golden era of the triumphant Islamic conquests that includes the implementation of Sharia, the liberation of the Arabian Peninsula, the removal from power of “the U.S. ruling family” in Jordan and, finally, the big march toward Palestine. In the end, even Washington DC will fall to the mujahideen and that will conclude the final stage of Islamic control of the globe.

The scenario appears less of a planned operation than a hope for the fulfillment of a prophecy. The supposed factuality of the scenario is based on various verses in the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. Nevertheless, some of the users on the forums who discussed the scenario asserted that all of the details to execute the operation had already been prepared. One such user, by the alias of Abu Nedal, said, “For your knowledge, the operations are ready and awaiting the orders from our leader Osama bin Laden, God protect him, to decide what he deems appropriate either to strike now or to wait.”

The article’s author then inserts a few words of caution:

Islamist extremists have always fabricated factitious scenarios for victory over the West based on their own interpretations of Quranic prophecies in times of crisis and defeat. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda has shown prior interest in acquiring nuclear materials for use in an attack, and it is necessary to take such forum postings seriously as they display the mindset and the intent, although perhaps not the capability, of al-Qaeda-affiliated militants.

The Pew Research Center’s summary of its just-released survey of Muslim Americans begins with these reassuring words:

The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

Key findings include:

Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.

A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard.

The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.

While Pew considers the finding that two-thirds of an estimated 2.35 million Muslim Americans don’t see a conflict between devotion and modernity in a positive light, I find it highly disturbing that about 800,000 of them do see a conflict.

These additional poll results make for sobering reading:

• While nearly 80 percent of U.S. Muslims say suicide bombings of civilians to defend Islam can not be justified, 13 percent say they can be, at least rarely. That sentiment is strongest among those younger than 30. Two percent of them say it can often be justified, 13 percent say sometimes and 11 percent say rarely. About 300,000 Muslim Americans aren’t totally unsympathetic to suicide bombings.

• Five percent expressed favorable views of al-Qaeda, though about a fourth did not express an opinion. This suggests there is a reservoir of over 100,000 potential terrorist recruits.

• Three of four (1.8 million) believe that the U.S. war on terrorism is not a sincere attempt to curtail international terror, and just 40 percent (over 900,000) believe Arab men carried out the 9/11 attacks.

• Eighty-five percent (2 million) say the U.S. was wrong to invade Iraq, while a third (800,000) say the same about Afghanistan.

• Sixty percent (more than 900,000) are concerned about a rise in Islamic extremism in the U.S., while three in four (in excess of 1.7 million) expressed similar worries about extremism around the world.

The full report is available here. After reading it, I may have more to say.

Since 9/11, the Brits have suffered from terrorism far more than we have. They have good reason to be concerned about internal security, and as this article from the Christian Science Monitor shows, the Labour government is considering a new surveillance program far more intrusive than anything undertaken by the Bush administration:

The British government is weighing a plan that would require civil servants – including social workers and doctors – to report people deemed likely to commit acts of violence in the interest of stopping crimes before they are committed, according to a leaked official document.

The Times of London reports that the British Home Office’s internal document on “multi-agency information sharing” – which the newspaper received from a senior British official – would allow government agencies better access to information on potential threats.

Public bodies will have access to valuable information about people at risk of becoming either perpetrators or victims of serious violence. Professionals will obviously alert police or other relevant authority if they have good reason to believe [an] act of serious violence is about to be committed. However, our proposal goes beyond that, and is that, when they become sufficiently concerned about an individual, they must consider initial risk assessment of risk to/from that person, and refer [the] case to [a] multi-agency body.

The Guardian compares a society with the plan enacted to the science fiction film Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise stars as a policeman in a “’pre-crime’ unit who arrests would-be perpetrators before they can carry out crimes.” Privacy advocates’ criticism shows similar concerns.

A [spokesman for the British human rights group Liberty] said the reports were worrying. ‘What does the Home Office propose to do with the people who have committed no crime, but who fit a worrying profile? How far are we willing to go in pursuit of the unrealistic promise of a risk-free society?’

A Home Office spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph that it didn’t want to comment on leaked documents, but that the proposals are still in development, by a working group it has convened.

Unless you’ve been living on another planet, you know that the Democrats that matter—the presidential candidates, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate majority leader—are against Bush’s Iraq policy, against American unilateralism, against NSA surveillance programs, against the CIA rendition program, against the Guantanamo prison camp—the list goes on and on. More succinctly, if Bush is for it, the weightier Democrats are against it.

Fair enough. It’s to be expected—especially as an election year nears—that the out-of-power party will ever-more-vocally criticize the in-power party’s policies. But the public deserves and should demand more than condemnations. In particular, the weightier Democrats should tell us what they are for and why the policies they favor will be better for us. To do this, of course, they’ll have to let us know what they believe will happen if their policies are implemented. Simply saying that they will result in a better, safer world and restore respect for America won’t do. Those are conclusions, not arguments. How do these conclusions follow from setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, placing greater faith in the wisdom of the UN Security Council, weakening the surveillance and rendition programs, and bulldozing Gitmo?

This the Democrats haven’t done—at least to my satisfaction.

This problem isn’t unique to the U.S. Here’s Nick Cohen on the situation in Britain:

However far it is from achieving power, a serious political ideology has to have a positive programme to live. For example, it is perfectly possible to imagine what a green government would do, while realising that the greens cannot conceivably win an election. By contrast, the Labour left talked at length about what it wouldn’t do – keep British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan – but had no coherent principles, no guiding programme.

[ . . . ] The same question haunts the Liberal Democrats, who benefited so greatly from the anti-war wave of 2003.

[ . . . ] If Liberals and leftists had stuck by what outsiders assumed were their core principles, they wouldn’t seem so vacuous now. They might have opposed Blair and Bush while allying with Iraqis who wanted something better after 35 years of murderous tyranny than being blown to pieces by al-Qaeda.

The short-term political gains of ignoring victims of Baathism and choosing isolationism were obvious: fury, much of it justified, could be concentrated on the organisers of a disastrous war. But opportunism has its price. All that remains is a selfish, consumerist leftist culture without commitment.

When I go to the homes of the richest people I know, I see the works of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky and I think: ‘Well, of course you can read them because they’re no threat to you.’ They, along with millionaire comedians, stockbrokers and the aristocrats on the board of the ENO, strike leftish poses safe in the knowledge that the political left no longer threatens their interests or demands anything from them. All they have to be is against British and American policy, which Bush and Blair have given ample reasons for so doing.

We thought they’d never end. The fortieth anniversary of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album is only days away. I was 21 at the time, and I was absolutely blown away. Everybody bought the “record” (an ancient term no longer in use) the day it was released.

In the Wall Street Journal (subscription), Russ Smith has some far more extensive reflections:

Including this Wall Street Journal editorial on John Edwards:

Let us say right up front that it’s terrific that John Edwards lives in a country where he can lose an election and still land a $480,000 part-time job as a consultant to an investment firm that keeps its hedge funds in the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter for its clients. This truly is the land of opportunity.

We’re also encouraged to hear that, according to the former Senator’s spokesman, “John Edwards is running for President to give every American the opportunities that he’s had.” While there may not be enough half-a-million-dollar-a-year part-time consulting gigs to go around just yet, the hedge fund industry is growing. And there’s always private equity if you find yourself, as Mr. Edwards described his 2005 circumstance, making $40,000 a year at an antipoverty think tank and wanting to learn something about “capital markets.” Thus did he turn, in his time of need, to Fortress Investment Group LLC, pride of the Caymans.

It would also be churlish to repeat the by now tired line about which of his “Two Americas” Mr. Edwards lives in—notwithstanding his $30 million in assets, about $16 million of which is invested in Fortress. And in any case, no one should have to apologize for his wealth and success.

That said, we can understand why the former Senator’s campaign wants to change the subject. Mr. Edwards has campaigned, both in 2004 and now, against the use of offshore tax shelters, the supposed rising tide of U.S. inequality and the plight of the American worker. Mr. Edwards’ employment at an investment firm that headquarters most of its hedge and private equity funds in one of the world’s most notorious tax shelters underscores all of those themes—albeit not quite in the way the Edwards campaign has chosen to emphasize.

Mr. Edwards did tell the Associated Press that he took the job not merely to make money, but also to learn about the relationship between the capital markets and poverty. How refreshing it would have been, then, for Mr. Edwards to have emerged from his toil in the crucible of high finance to explain that all is not moral darkness in the upper reaches of the investing class; that people who invest in businesses help alleviate poverty and make the economy strong; and that it is risk-taking that offers Americans their best—indeed, their only—chance to have “the opportunities he’s had.”

It was not to be, alas. Mr. Edwards said instead that if he’s elected President he’ll still try to abolish offshore tax shelters. At least he’ll have already made his money.

Ouch.