Dana Milbank comes to appreciate Bush’s under-rated political skills.
UNI-MULTI-LATERALISM: The Financial Times’ Gerard Baker elaborates on the point I was trying to make yesterday. And does it better.
WHAT WONDERFUL ROADS!: A reader sent me this priceless Robert Fisk piece in 1993 – on Osama bin Laden. Puff piece doesn’t begin to describe it. There are breathless paeans to Osama’s construction business! Read every word, and get a clue where this “reporter” is coming from.
THE LEFT AND POWELL: I’ve never been of the view that Powell is some lone ranger in this administration, fighting its policies from day to day. That line, of course, is part of his (and Bush’s) spin, but Powell has always been a team player and the administration’s war strategy is a lot stronger for being a Cheney-Powell combo than either man (or merely the president) alone. I wondered when the left might catch on to this. Maybe they have. Here’s a rant in the San Fancisco Bay Guardian:
Now, journalists tell us that the latest manifestation of Powell’s “moderate” resolve is his stance on Iraq. But the Powell rhetoric about the need for allied support and U.N. Security Council backing can be understood as a fervent desire to line up as many ducks as possible before the shooting starts. Under Powell’s direction, U.S. diplomats – diligently laying down groundwork for war – are brandishing carrots and sticks at numerous countries.
Wow. Intelligence among the San Francisco left. I’m getting worried.
AIDS ACTIVISTS VERSUS RESEARCH: They’re finally having an impact on HIV research. By demonizing drug companies, gutting intellectual property rights, and forcing down drug prices, AIDS activists have now succeeded in dramatically slowing HIV research. Way to go, guys! Here’s a troubling but predictable piece in the Jerusalem Post about this phenomenon. One passage:
One of the rare industry executives who would actually discuss the topic, but did not wish to be identified, agreed that although he didn’t like to admit it, “we have lost the battle with the activists, and now the market is less profitable. The result is that we are spending less R&D time on anti-retrovirals. Why bother to innovate these products when any advance will not be profitable?” he said.
What’s interesting here is that there is a collusion of interests between the leftist campaigners and the publicity-shy drug companies. The lefties want to insist there’s no trade-off in the hounding of pharmaceutical companies; the companies don’t want to admit that their research is fueled by such gross motives as making money. Meanwhile, progress against a fast-mutating virus slows.
THE TIMES CORRECTS: The New York Times is just alerting its syndicated clients of the following correction:
“Newspapers that used the William Safire Op-Ed column sent Sept. 11 for publication Sept. 12 may wish to use the following corrective. A column by William Safire, discussing the royal family of Saudi Arabia, gave an incorrect age for Abdullah al-Aziz bin Fahd, a son of King Fahd. He is 32 years old, not 60.”
To be fair to Safire, he did write “about 60.”
“KILL THE JEWS”: What are the odds that if two Muslim Americans were attacked outside a bar in Los Angeles by a bunch of white ethnics, that we would have heard of it by now? But the equivalent allegedly happened to two Jewish guys in West Hollywood, who were set upon by a gang of Middle Eastern youths last Sunday night:
John Griffith, a resident of Sierra Towers, says he saw more than 20 men surrounding the two victims and witnessed five kicking and beating the victims, repeatedly chanting “Kill the Jews!” When the victims fled to seek safety with Sierra Towers’ security guards, Griffith says, two suspects followed the men and threatened the guards with a metal pipe taken from a nearby sprinkler system and with fists, before the guards fought them off. “It was the worst thing I have ever observed,” Griffith says. “I kept screaming at them, but they were yelling so loudly they couldn’t hear me. I kept yelling, ‘I’ve called the cops.’ “They didn’t budge, they just kept attacking these guys,” he adds.
No coverage yet in the Los Angeles Times. UPDATE: Matt Welch emails to let me know that the LA Times did cover the attacks, but the text shows no reference to their anti-Semitic nature.
TOP TORY BACKS GAY MARRIAGE: In Canada at least. The Canadian government is trying to stop equal marriage rights on the basis that gays cannot procreate. Does that mean that infertile straights won’t be able to get married? Or couples who intend never to have children? Or straight couples who do not procreate but adopt? Of all the arguments for special rights for straights, this seems to me the dumbest.
GERMANS VERSUS JEWS: In another ugly piece of campaign rhetoric, the deputy leader of the Free Democrats has tried to gin up his support by attacking the state of Israel. Until recently there was a taboo on such comments in Germany, but no longer. The leader has been criticized by elites but it’s more revealing, to my mind, that he believes he can pick up votes this way. Not only has Germany helped build Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, it is now doing all it can to ensure he keeps them, and the threat they pose to Israel. Chilling, no?
The Dish 