We can try to wish this away all we want. But the reality is getting harder and harder to ignore. Per capita income in Saudi Arabia fell from $28,600 in 1981 to $6,800 in 2001. The country's birth rate has soared, becoming one of the highest in the world. Its police force is corrupt, and the rule of law is a sham. Saudi Arabia almost certainly leads the world in public beheadings, the venue for which is often a Riyadh plaza popularly known as Chop-Chop Square. Illegal arms routinely flow into and out of the country. Taking into account its murky "off-budget" defense spending, Saudi Arabia may spend more per capita on defense than any other country in the world (some estimates put the figure at 50 percent of its total revenues), and the House of Saud believes this is necessary for its personal protection. The regime is threatened by increasingly hostile neighbors--and by determined enemies within the country's borders. Popular preachers all over Saudi Arabia call openly for a jihad against the West--a designation that clearly includes the royal family itself--in terms as vitriolic as anything heard in Iran at the height of the Islamic revolution there. The kingdom's mosque schools have become a breeding ground for militant Islam. Recent attacks in Bali, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kenya, and the United States, not to mention those against U.S. military personnel within Saudi Arabia, all point back to these schools--and to the House of Saud itself, which, terrified at the prospect of a militant uprising against it, shovels protection money at the fundamentalists and tries to divert their attention abroad. . . .

Most of them lived off his largesse--royal stipends, which ran from $800 to $270,000 a month. The princes knew they were breaking the treasury--all told, their brethren numbered 10,000 to 12,000. . . . Aping the senior members of the family, the lesser princes had fantastic financial expectations, and their stipends didn't suffice. The third-generation princes were getting only about $19,000 a month--a fraction of what they needed for the lifestyles they sought. To keep even a modest yacht on the French Riviera requires a million dollars a year. What were they supposed to do? In order to make ends meet they had been getting into nastier and nastier business, taking bribes from construction firms (mostly the bin Laden family's) seeking government contracts, getting involved in arms deals, expropriating property from commoners, and selling Saudi visas to guest workers. Another trick they'd discovered was borrowing money from private banks and simply refusing to pay it back. It wasn't as if the larger family could somehow discipline or shame them. There were so many princes that they didn't even all know one another. . . .

All the while, throughout the 1990s, the royal family kept growing and growing. A prince might sire forty to seventy children during a lifetime of healthy copulation; however, the resources to support the growing population of the entitled were shrinking, not just in relative terms but in absolute ones. Young royals were pushing up from below, chafing at leaders who were slipping into their late seventies and eighties. . . . The House of Saud currently has some 30,000 members. The number will be 60,000 in a generation, maybe much higher. According to reliable sources, anecdotal evidence, and the Saudi gossip machine, the royal family is obsessed with gambling, alcohol, prostitution, and parties. And the commissions and other outlays to fund their vices are constant. What would the price of oil have to be in 2025 to support even the most basic privileges--for example, free air travel anywhere in the world on Saudia, the Saudi national airline--that the Saudi royals have come to enjoy? Once the family numbers 60,000, or 100,000, will there even be a spare seat for a mere commoner who wants to fly out of Riyadh or Jidda? Reformers among the royal family talk about cutting back the perks, but that's a hard package to sell.

Saudi Arabia operates the world's most advanced welfare state, a kind of anti-Marxian non-workers' paradise. Saudis get free health care and interest-free home and business loans. College education is free within the kingdom, and heavily subsidized for those who study abroad. In one of the world's driest spots water is almost free. Electricity, domestic air travel, gasoline, and telephone service are available at far below cost. Many of the kingdom's best and brightest--the most well-educated and, in theory, the best prepared for the work world--have little motivation to do any work at all.

About a quarter of Saudi Arabia's population, and more than a third of all residents aged fifteen to sixty-four, are foreign nationals, allowed into the kingdom to do the dirty work in the oil fields and to provide domestic help, but also to program the computers and manage the refineries. Seventy percent of all jobs in Saudi Arabia--and close to 90 percent of all private-sector jobs--are filled by foreigners.

Among men, at least, the Saudis have an admirably high literacy rate, especially for a place that only three generations back was inhabited mostly by nomadic tribesmen. About 85 percent of Saudi men aged fifteen and older can read and write, as opposed to less than 70 percent of Saudi women of the same age. But because in recent years the Saudi education system has been largely entrusted to Wahhabi fundamentalists, as a form of appeasement that many in the royal family hope will direct the fundamentalists' animus at foreign targets, its products are generally ill prepared to compete in a technological age or a global economy. Today two out of every three Ph.D.s earned in Saudi Arabia are in Islamic studies. Doctorates are only very rarely granted in computer sciences, engineering, and other worldly vocations. Younger Saudis are being educated to take part in a world that will exist only if the Wahhabi jihadists succeed in turning back the clock not just a few decades but a few centuries.

Then there's the demographic problem. Saudi Arabia has one of the highest birth rates in the world outside Africa--37.25 births for every 1,000 citizens last year, compared with 14.5 per 1,000 in the United States. Ninety-seven percent of all Saudis are sixty-four or younger, and half the population is under eighteen. The simple presence of so many people of working age, and especially so many just now ready to enter the work force, places enormous pressure on an economy--particularly one designed less to accommodate those who want to work than to provide sustenance for those who would rather contemplate original intent in the Koran. A middle class stablilizes society. Saudi Arabia's middle class is imploding. . . .

Just to make sure that no one upsets the workings of this system, perhaps by meddling in internal Saudi affairs, Saudi Arabia now keeps possibly as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks--an agreement worked out in the early eighties by the Reagan Administration, in an effort to get the Saudis to offset U.S. government budget deficits. The Saudis hold another trillion dollars or so in the U.S. stock market. This gives them a remarkable degree of leverage in Washington. If they were suddenly to withdraw all their holdings in this country, the effect, though perhaps not as catastrophic as having a major source of oil shut down, would still be devastating.

Everything of value that Saudi Arabia produces--i.e., oil--comes out of the Eastern Province, on the other side of the country, where supertankers ply the Persian Gulf on their way to refuelling the industrial world. The Jeddah Islamic Seaport, on the other hand, is devoted almost entirely to imports--food, clothing, appliances, furniture, and electronics, which fill the stores in this highly consuming but notoriously unproductive society. . . .

Life in the kingdom changed after the 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque. Wahhabi clerics, with their fear of outside influences, waged war on art and the pleasures of the intellect. Music was the first victim. Umm Kulthum and Fairouz, the songbirds of the Arab world, disappeared from the Saudi television stations. A magnificent concert hall in Riyadh was completed in 1989, but no performance has ever been held there. The Islamic courts have even banned the music played when a telephone call is placed on hold. There had been some movie theatres, but they were all shut down.

Since the mosque attack, religion has become a steadily increasing part of the Saudi school curriculum, so students have less exposure to science, art, and languages. "My kid is in the fifth grade," Omar Bagour, a columnist for Al Madina and a professor of economics at King Abdul Aziz University, told me. "Out of twelve subjects, seven are pure religion. You tell me a system of this nature is going to bring into the labor force a highly qualified Saudi? Bullshit." . . .

The religious establishment makes sure that millions of Islamic books are translated into other languages each year, but very few books are translated into Arabic. "Censorship of books is more rigid now than forty years back," Muhammad Salahuddin, a columnist for Al Madina, told me one night at dinner. "Back then, I could buy a copy of 'Das Kapital' in Mecca. Now you cannot dream of finding such books."

Although there are several popular Saudi painters in the kingdom, the Wahhabi ban on the representation of human beings or animals makes for geometric abstractions and unpeopled landscapes, a studied avoidance of the real. . . .

One evening in Riyadh, I went to the National Museum after evening prayers. It is a spectacular building, made of Arabian limestone and designed, by the Canadian firm Moriyama & Teshima, to resemble the gently bending wall of a desert wadi. I walked through the vast exhibition halls alone, except for a Saudi couple and their young daughter. I could hear their footsteps echoing just behind me, and their voices, hushed in the emptiness. The display cases told the history of the Arabian Peninsula, from the dinosaurs and the early petroglyphs to the triumphant arrival of Islam. Eerily absent from the exhibit are representations of the people who lived there. I suppose that was why there were practically no other visitors in the museum; it was a story with no characters.

In one of the grand halls, I noticed an odd cul-de-sac, under a stairwell, where I found a painting of a human face--the only one in the museum. It was a wall drawing from the village of Al Fao, from the second or third century A.D., depicting a man with a garland around his curly hair. It looked like a Roman Christian icon; at that time, Jews and Christians were making inroads among the polytheists of the peninsula. The man had wide, round eyes, like the figures in the frescoes of Pompeii. I suppose it was a tribute to the importance of this miniature portrait that it was displayed at all; still, to be hidden under the stairs, almost as if it were pornography, made me admire as never before the power of the human form. . . .

A few days later, I was handed the draft of an article by Mamdouh al-Harthy, the new reporter. He was from a prominent Bedouin tribe, but instead of a thobe he usually dressed in upscale casual Western clothes--jeans, oversized T-shirt, and sunglasses--with the name of the designer prominently displayed on every item. "Chicks notice such things," he advised me. When we went to the mall together, he stopped in his tracks like a bird dog and watched a pair of girls, entirely swathed in black, descending an escalator. "Check 'em out!" he said, without irony. . . .

All the reporters had problems writing English--that was what the Indian editors were there for. The editors could sometimes salvage pieces that were inscrutable to me. But I wondered why the paper refused to hire an experienced bilingual reporter. Every other week, it seemed, a new reporter came on board, often someone just out of high school. They weren't really expected to produce. Some reporters went weeks without writing a single story, and when they did it might be about an event that had taken place ten days before. Many mornings, the paper didn't carry any local news at all. I began to wonder if it was an accident that the local reporters were ill-equipped to handle the job. . . .

"Traditions say that eating alone with your female relatives is shameful," Raid Qusti, a journalist, wrote earlier this year in a daring column for the Arab News. "Where in our religion does it say that sitting with your own family is forbidden?" Qusti complained that many Saudi men thought it was taboo to utter a woman's name in public. "Ask any Saudi male in the street what the names of his wife or daughters are, and you will either have embarrassed him or insulted him. Islamic? Not in any way." There are some parts of the country where a woman never unveils--her husband and children see her face only when she dies. "Women will always be the core issue that will hinder any social progress in Saudi Arabia," Qusti wrote. "We limit their roles in public, ban them from public participation in decision making, we doubt them and confine them because we think they are the source of all seduction and evil in the world. And then we say proudly: 'We are Muslims.'"

A middle-aged Saudi told me, "I am worried about the next generation. They don't see any real women at all. You don't see each other's wives, daughters, sisters. Everything is masculine. And yet they are bombarded by images. They can easily see porn. They live in the imagination of sex all the time. We don't grow naturally, to be loved, not to be loved--we don't undergo these changes. Two-thirds of the marriages here are basically loveless. Many men cheat--there's a lot going on underground." Some Saudi men openly joke about their behavior when they leave the country. "We're all sex maniacs, by the way," one said to me. He regularly flies to Morocco for female companionship. "There's a part of me that I share with all men, where women are concerned. And there's a part I share with Arab men. But there's a big part that only Saudi guys have in common."

The absence of socialization between men and women struck me as a potent factor in terrorist fantasies. The hijackers who killed themselves on September 11th were propelled in part by the notion of being rewarded in the afterlife with the company of virgins. Such abstractions don't seem quite so strange in a country where images of women piped through a satellite dish seem more vivid than actual Saudi women--whom the male reporters at the Gazette liked to call B.M.O.s, or "black moving objects." . . .

Najla's parents agreed to let her finish her bachelor's degree in Kentucky. "My first interest was in politics," she continued. "I spoke to my dad. He said, 'You won't go into politics--I won't spend a penny on you!'" Reluctantly, she began studying microbiology.

After she got her bachelor's degree, Najla wanted to remain in the States for more study, but her family ordered her home to get married. "It was to someone I really didn't want," she said. She had never had a date in her life. The marriage ended quickly. "I had a divorce. I forced him to do that."

Divorce is a drastic step in a country where women's lives are so circumscribed. Without a man in their home, divorced women are shunned in Saudi society. As a consequence, they tend to form their own community; there is even a road in Riyadh called the Street of Divorcees. Nonetheless, a recent study found that more than twenty per cent of Saudi marriages end in divorce within a year. Saudi marriages suffer from all the usual afflictions--infidelity, incompatibility, household violence--but the biggest problem is polygamy. In Islam, a man is allowed up to four wives at a time, and many Saudi husbands continually change partners, a practice that causes constant heartache. . . .

Najla travels quite freely, although she needs her father's written permission to leave town. Her family has a driver, but Najla doesn't like him, so within Jeddah she usually goes by cab. Either way, she thinks that it is improper to be confined in the same vehicle with a man. At the very least, she believes, there should be a partition between the woman and the driver. The best solution, she says, is allowing women to drive. "We have to pay for drivers," she said. "This is a burden on women." . . .

On a warm Saturday morning, I went to the beach with Hasan Hatrash, Hasan Baswaid, and Mamdouh al-Harthy. They took me to a secluded compound north of town, run by the Sheraton. It was designated for Westerners, but nearly everyone there was Arab; it was one of the few places in Jeddah where men and women could mix freely. Hatrash brought his guitar, and a keyboard for me. We spent the day jamming, playing blues and reggae tunes beside the Red Sea. At one point, Hatrash launched into "Redemption Song," by Bob Marley. "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery," he sang. "None but ourselves can free our minds." . . .

One evening in Riyadh, I was climbing into a cab when I noticed something highly unusual: a woman standing on the corner with her head uncovered. She was remarkably beautiful, and looked directly at me. I could see that she was frightened. I almost asked if I could give her a lift, but that would have been an unthinkable breach of custom: as an unmarried couple in the same car, we could both be taken to jail. So I said nothing. My cab had to make a U-turn, and when we came back past the corner I saw the woman running. She now had the hood of her abaya over her hair. She ran to a shop and tried to open the door, but it was closed for prayers. Then I saw that she was being trailed by a Suburban with the emblem of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice on the door. The woman went from door to door, banging on the glass. Every instinct in me cried out to help her, yet I could think of nothing that would not make the situation worse. I rode on, feeling guilty and helpless, as the muttawa'a closed in. . . .

The West's fear of the Arab world was mirrored by many Saudis I talked to. Young people who had been studying in the West were afraid to return there. Businessmen confessed that they would feel humiliated if they tried to travel to the United States and were fingerprinted upon entering the country. These were men who had once enjoyed the nearly universal access that a Saudi passport vouchsafed them. For most of the country's business and intellectual leaders, and for many of the royals, the Western world had been a refuge from the intellectual and sensual sterility of the kingdom. I suspected that many had nurtured a secret escape plan in case the extremists gained complete control--they would retreat to second homes in Santa Barbara or Miami. But now such places seemed hostile to them. These elite men who had prided themselves on living in two worlds felt trapped in their own stern culture, and they were suffocating.

One morning, several of the Gazette reporters admitted to me that they were depressed. "Last night, I didn't even sleep," Hasan Hatrash told me. "I just sat on the beach. Till four in the morning. When I do sleep, it's like I'm dead for three days." . . .

In the Gazette, Baswaid reported on a survey of more than two thousand students in Jeddah, aged thirteen to twenty-five, that was conducted by a researcher at King Abdul Aziz University. Sixty-five per cent of the boys and seventy-two per cent of the girls showed symptoms of depression; seven per cent of the girls admitted that they had attempted suicide (more than twice the rate of the boys). Drug use was nearly five per cent for both sexes, as was the rate of alcoholism. "Five per cent alcoholism among intermediate and high-school students in an Islamic country is jarring to our ears," Dr. Saud Hasan Mukhtar, a professor at the university, told Baswaid.

One afternoon, I went to the gym near my apartment and started doing yoga exercises. A Saudi man saw me doing a headstand; he walked over, bent down, and cranked his head sideways.

"Is that good for depression?" he asked.

"It might be," I said.

"Can you show me how to do it?"

I helped him up against a wall, and after a while he learned to hold the position. When I went back to the locker room, it was prayer time, and four men happened to be praying on the floor directly facing my locker. I waited for them to finish. One of them asked me afterward if I would start a yoga class. "Maybe it will help relieve the stress," he said.

Such polite entreaties caught me off guard. . . .

The professor began talking about the black boxes in the hijacked planes that had struck the World Trade Center. He questioned the Americans' claim that they had not survived. . . .

The conversation inevitably turned toward the notion that the Mossad or the C.I.A. had engineered the hijackings. The logic is based on two assumptions: that these organizations were scheming for an excuse to attack the Arab world, and that Arabs are too incompetent to have pulled off the attacks. I had had the same discussion countless times . . .

Most of the men were professionals: lawyers, editors, doctors. "We were educated in America, and I see the world going against everything I have built," said Dr. Mujahid al-Sawwaf, a lawyer in Jeddah and a former professor at Umm al-Qura University, in Mecca. "We were always for liberalism, but some of the terrorists were my students."

"My daughter is for bin Laden," another of the men admitted. "When I go to wake her up, I see pictures of Palestinian girl martyrs on her wall. It scares me to death. If we go into her room at night, she'll be listening to Britney Spears, but as soon as we close the door she's listening to martyr songs." . . .

"Bin Laden changed our life. He proved that mighty America is vulnerable. To us, we're afraid of our future, but the youth think America is on the verge of collapsing and it's time for us to fight it."

"We are afraid of our children." . . .

There was a sameness to the stories of the hijacker pilots. They had become Muslim extremists in Europe and America--presumably as a way of holding on to their sense of who they were in the engulfing West. Their own cultures offered them no way to be powerful in the world. . . .

Expats hold seven out of ten jobs in the kingdom, and ninety per cent of all private-sector positions. A 1999 study revealed that they sent home about fourteen billion dollars that year. For decades, the Saudi government has been attempting to replace foreigners with native workers, but it has run into resistance from employers who don't want to hire their own people. "Saudis aren't qualified," Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Adbul [sic] Aziz, the secretary-general for tourism, told me. "Showing up for a job is not a priority for them. Even the culture of working as a team is not there." Increasingly, the unemployed natives tend to view the Bangladeshi houseboys, the Lebanese waiters, and the Egyptian barbers with resentment rather than gratitude. "We hate it!" a Saudi friend exclaimed when I asked how he felt when he had to speak English or Urdu just to order coffee. Entry-level service jobs, however, are forms of employment that Saudis refuse to accept. . . .

I recalled the story of Abd al-Karim Mara'i al-Naqshabandi, a Syrian expat worker who had been sentenced to death for allegedly practicing witchcraft against his employer, a nephew of King Fahd. The evidence against him was absurd. Human-rights workers jumped on the case, when they discovered that Naqshabandi's employer had wanted him to falsely testify against another employee, and, when he refused, made the witchcraft charge. Naqshabandi became a cause celebre, but he was preemptorily beheaded--a grisly message to outsiders who meddled in Saudi affairs. . . .

But suspicion darkened the atmosphere in Saudi Arabia, even among people who worked together every day. I asked Mahmoud Shukri, a seventeen-year-old reporter, where his friends were going to school. "We don't tell each other things like that," he said. When he asked my advice about college plans, we had to meet outside the office, to avoid being overheard. "If you let people know what you are up to, they might be envious," he explained. Telephone numbers were especially hard to obtain. One of the more experienced Gazette reporters kept an old ledger with handwritten numbers he had compiled over the years; it was perhaps the most valuable document in the entire office, given the reluctance of many Saudis to be listed. . . .

But there is a stark difference between the way the Saudi government treats its own citizens and the way it treats foreign workers. "There is a huge population that is not thought of as human at all," Khaled Abou El Fadl, the U.C.L.A. law professor, told me. "If you exclude Iraq, then Saudi Arabia would be one of the worst offenders in the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, there is a well-established practice of 'disappearances,' people who have been missing for ten or fifteen years." . . .

Many Saudis believed that the invasion of Iraq was the opening act of a drama that would end with their main ally and protector consuming them. "The whole world is undoubtedly seeing the American cowboys as having come for only one aim: killing, destruction, and bloodshed," Khaled's newspaper proclaimed in an editorial that morning. One of the relentless themes of the Saudi media was that the twin objects of American power were oil and murder. . . .

His cousin couldn't find a job, he continued, and he didn't have the connections to get into the military. He himself had experienced the same problems. "Since the first Gulf crisis, I graduated with a good major, and the government promised me a lot of things," he went on. "I have the ambition to have a Ph.D. or a great job, and I suddenly found that the government put a new rule. They stopped any new government employment! The price of electricity and gas doubled, and the phone, and even rice and sugar. But they said be patient, we have to pay the price of the war. They promised it was just for a short period. It's been thirteen years now! I graduated seven years ago and still have no job." He said he often thought about becoming a martyr himself, like his cousin, who must have gone directly to Paradise. "Paradise is better than this miserable life!"

I asked him what he had studied in school.

"Library science."

With all their talk about martyrdom, there was another dark thought in their minds. "It might be government policy to send these guys to Iraq, instead of having them here, acting up," the oldest one said.

"Who are you talking about?" I asked. "Who is sending them?"

"Somebody wants to make moral points around the world. They want to have these guys get killed instead of staying in the country and helping it out."

The others nodded. They saw a conspiracy between the clergy and the government--a plot to eliminate them, the unemployed Saudis. "It's been a holocaust for young people, what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan," the librarian said.

These young men recognized the pointlessness of jihad, at least the way it was being promoted by the bloodthirsty clerics--who were, after all, government employees. There had to be a reason that the government would allow such dangerous talk, and in the minds of these young men the reason was that they were expendable. And a part of them said yes to that. They wanted out, and the only exit was Paradise. . . .

There was a brief farewell party for me, with punch and pastries. Dr. Yusuf gave me a watch. The party was delayed a bit by my insistence that the women be allowed to attend. Najla handed me a card that everyone had signed. I said goodbye without once seeing her face. Hasan Hatrash wasn't there. I found him in the cafeteria, his shoulders hunched, drinking a cup of tea and picking at a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake. He looked shattered. "I just got out of the hospital," he told me. "The doctor told me I shouldn't drive, but I wanted to come here and see you." He said he had low blood pressure, but that wasn't the real problem. "I told the doctor, when I sleep I can't wake up. I can't even put my thoughts together! He said that's depression." He seemed to me like many other young Saudis, whose lives are so unrealized and unexpressed. I wanted to give him some final word of advice, but I could think of nothing useful to say. . . .

Soon after I returned home, Najla wrote me a note saying that she had been fired. She asked for my help in finding a job. Then I heard from Mamdouh al-Harthy, who said that he had quit the Gazette and wanted to go to journalism school in the West. And Hasan Hatrash wrote to say that he'd gone to Malaysia for a vacation. One day in Kuala Lumpur, he was invited to play with a band. "I had the time of my life, and the number of chicks who wanted to talk to me was more than I could handle," he reported. "The good news is, they invited me to play with them in their second gig at a bigger club on Sunday. Wow! Finally, I'm living!" He decided not to go home.

The family of an American captive beheaded by militants in Saudi Arabia on Friday said authorities worked as hard as they could to rescue Paul Johnson Jr., and that his slaying did not dampen their respect for his adopted country.

"Paul considered Saudi Arabia his home. He loved the people and the country," said an FBI agent speaking on behalf of Johnson's relatives.

"They also know this act of terrorism was committed by extremists and does not represent the Saudi Arabia that Paul often spoke and wrote about to his family," said Joseph Billy Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark office.

"They knew the odds were not in the favor of law enforcement," said Joseph Billy Jr., an FBI agent who spoke on the family's behalf. "They also know that the vast majority of citizens of Saudi Arabia also grieves with them at this time."

Johnson, 49, was kidnapped last weekend by militants who followed through on a threat to kill him by Friday if the kingdom did not release its Al Qaeda prisoners. An Al Qaeda group claiming responsibility posted an Internet message that showed photographs of a beheaded body.

Hours later, Saudi security forces tracked down and killed the leader of the terrorist group, according to Saudi and U.S. officials.

Johnson had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade and over the week his friends and family had described him as devoted to the culture of his adopted land.

A tactic to consider: So, we've got a problem with Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs using the holiest shrine in Shia Islam as an armory and a safe haven for staging attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. The simplest solution is to make the shrine a parking lot, but that wouldn't go over too well with the shiites -- a majority of the Iraqi people.

What to do?

Clear out all the civilians. Give the thugs the opportunity to lay down their arms and surrender. Then...

Drop a couple of neutron bombs near the shrine. Make sure the compound is outside the blast radius, but within the area for lethal doses of radiation.

The Shrine still stands. Bad guys are dead. The radiation quickly dissipates.

Of course, the threat of its use may be enough too.

If you know nothing about Brazilian politics, the television advertising for next October's local elections, first aired on August 17th, is likely to confuse you. If you know a little, it will confuse you even more. The free advertising, mandated by law, comes in two half-hour chunks in which candidates appear one after the other like fishmongers; another half hour is spread throughout the day. . . .

"All parties have lost their ideological edge," says Gaudencio Torquato, a political analyst. That goes for most of the "Communist" parties. One of them has, by dint of removing the hammer and adding two circles to the traditional symbol of world revolution, turned the sickle into a smiley face.

Thank you very much for that warm welcome.

Thank you for inviting me.

This is the first Republican Convention I have ever attended.

I am grateful that you should invite me, a lifelong Democrat. On the other hand, I realize that you are inviting many lifelong Democrats to join this common cause. . . .

And at each step of the way, the same people who were responsible for America's decline have insisted that the president's policies would fail. . . .

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

The American people know better. . . .

The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.

They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self-criticism and self-denigration.

He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."

With the election of Ronald Reagan, the American people declared to the world that we have the necessary energy and conviction to defend ourselves, and that we have as well a deep commitment to peace.

The most important woman in President Bush's political life is back on the payroll as of today.

Longtime adviser and friend Karen Hughes traveled with Bush on the campaign trail this past week for the first time in the current election cycle.

UNMIK

European Union [followed by four logos whose print is too small to read]

HEAD OF FISCAL POLICY ADVISORY OFFICE
Kosovo

The European Union Pillar of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is the primary agent for the economic change and restructuring in the Province.
Within the Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General (DSRSG), the Fiscal Policy Advisory Office (FAO) advises and supports the DSRSG on the formulation of the parameters of the Kosovo Consolidated Budget, including revenue, trade and expenditure policy. Taking the lead in providing policy advice the Head of the FAO will carry out the overall management of the unit.

The scope of work for this position includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Monitor and provide advice with regards to Kosovo's budget development and expenditures policy, as well as on revenue and trade policy issues.

Overall management and supervision of the staff and functions of the Unit.

Internal Auditor - Kosovo

The European Union Pillar (EU Pillar) of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo is the primary agent for economic change and restructuring in the Province. Within the EU Pillar, the Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA) takes action to preserve or enhance the value, viability, and corporate governance of Socially and Publicly Owned enterprises. The Socially Owned Enterprises Division of the KTA adminsters and takes the lead in the privatisation of the approximately 400 Socially Owned Enterprises (SOEs) of a commercial and industrial nature on the territory of Kosovo. With the aim to foster sustainable development based on commercial principles the Publicly Owned Enterprises Division administers and oversees over 50 enterprises ranging from public utility providers to transport and telecommunications.

The selection criteria and background for the position are:

- Advanced University Degree, preferably in accounting, finance, economics or management. Professional certification (CPA / ACCA/CIA or equivalent) in accounting or auditing is desirable.
- Five years' professional experience in auditing or a closely related field preferably acquired in transition economies context. Experience of working in Central and Eastern Europe or in the Balkans is an added advantage.
- Self-starters motivated to excellence and wanting to contribute to the objectives of the Organisation
- Excellent speaking and writing ability in English.
- Computer literate, hands on experience with Audit / Data Analysis Software (IDEA) is an advantage.
- Prior international experience preferably in a start up environment, enabling candidates to provide the knowledge frameworks and transitional modalities in the job area.
- Strong communication and team player skills. Proven ability to operate independently and effectively, with minimum support facilities working with tight deadlines and handling multiple concurrent activities.

An internationally competitive compensation package is offered for the post.

CV and cover letter in English are to be submitted to eupillar-recruitment@eumik.org. Closing date for applications is August 27, 2004. Applicants must be nationals of a EU member state or CARDS (PHARE, OBNOVA) countries. Nationals of candidate countries for accession to EU are also eligible. Only candidates selected for interview will be contacted. The UNMIK EU Pillar is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from female candidates.

Detailed job descriptions and election criteria for all vacancies are found at www.euinkosovo.org

Just noticed something interesting when comparing Kerry's campaign contributions against President Bush's over at OpenSecrets.org. The OpenSecrets folks track the "quality of disclosure" associated with campaign contributions . . . Bush's 93% compliance seems quite in line with OpenSecrets' 91% average from past Congressional campaigns, but Kerry's number, at 76%, is wildly out of wack. . . . So other than Wes Clark, Kerry's campaign is significantly below (by over 10%) any other candidate (even the less-than-serious ones) in this year's race.

The commission says Al Jazeera doesn't compete with existing channels. True enough. We don't have a 24-hour Arabic news network that bubbles with anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. We do, however, have a public broadcaster with barely concealed anti-American and anti-Israeli biases. Canadians should perhaps be grateful their taxes don't fund Al Jazeera as they do the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

What Canadians most certainly do not have is a conservative news network. Yet Fox News was told in 2000 that it could broadcast in Canada only if it offered a schedule with 15 percent Canadian content. I'm grateful this proposal never took off, particularly when I see the Canadian version of MSNBC - Mathews, Scarborough, et al., interspersed with a distressing array of Northern talking heads singing the praises of Canadian multiculturalism, social programs, and niceness.

CRTC defenders - and there are many in Canada's arts community - say the agency is simply trying to shield Canadian sensibilities from nefarious outside influences. (Read: conservative American influences.) The reluctance to allow access to a network that might shake up the status quo is a reflection of national insecurity.

While no one here expects the increasing use of sharia to lead to some of the more radical rulings associated with Islamic law - stonings or amputations - critics worry that the rights of women are being sacrificed for the sake of multiculturalism.

"It's shocking to see the seeds of an Islamic republic being sown here in Canada," one young woman shouted to vocifierous applause at a recent Toronto rally, organized to denounce the practice of sharia in Ontario. "Sharia doesn't work anywhere else in the world. Why does the government believe it will work here?"

Al-Jazeera "no more than other news organisations, has a slant", Kenton Keith, a former US ambassador to Qatar, acknowledged recently. "Its slant happens to be one most Americans are not comfortable with ..."

. . . It was a step that prompted the New York Times recently to assert in an editorial that al-Jazeera is the "the kind of television station we should encourage".

According to Rifkind, the Tories should stand on an anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-UN platform. Tony Blair's promotion of public service choice is apparently such a good idea that it will play to the Tories' advantage because the public will know that only the Tories can deliver it. On Europe, the UK Independence Party has apparently sunk Blair's strategy because it shows that only the Tories are the sensible pragmatists. And finally, the Tories should outflank Labour on civil liberties and stand up for personal freedom against the intolerance of the Home Office.

Ye gods. If the Tories believe this, they really are in deep, systemic trouble. Let's take these points in reverse order. The idea that Britons are somehow unfree is ludicrous. Virtually all our social ills derive, on the contrary, from a libertine free-for-all: a collapse of social order and all respect for authority. . . . On Europe, the UKIP is about to split the Tory vote with disastrous effects. The idea that it is doing the Tories a favour is simply extraordinary. On public services, voters view the Tories' pronouncements with at best indifference and at worst contempt. The idea that voters are going to say:' You know this Blair stuff about choice? Well you've gotta hand it to the Tories; they got there first and they're clearly going to do the business' is risible. And as for the war and America, the Tories are already turning into the John Kerry/Michael Moore glee club, an opportunism which will earn them only derision from the voters -- apart from being a fundamentally wrong-headed, spineless and morally repellent position.

The Tories' problem lies far deeper than any of them seems to realise. At this rate, they really do deserve to have no future at all.

. . . "Preparing for Emergencies: What You Need to Know", which will land on every British doormat in the next few weeks, is also rare for another reason: it is the first attempt to address fears of foreign threats since the much-ridiculed "Protect and Survive" pamphlet of 1980 . . .

The main message is faith in government: in short, get inside a building and await instructions from a regime that has, presumably, not been blown to bits. This advice has been a staple of civil defence publications ever since the second world war, suggesting an enduring belief in the powers of officialdom. In 1958, a publication entitled "Home Defence and the Farmer" promised that agricultural bureaucrats would visit farms as soon as radioactive dust had stopped falling--in a few days, it was assumed.

That contrasts sharply with American advice, which is imbued with a pioneering spirit. After a catastrophe, the Department of Homeland Security explains, local officials "may or may not" be capable of communicating with citizens. Families must decide whether or not to get out, and should always keep half a tank of petrol in their cars. Any other message would probably be hooted down. Jay Baker of Florida State University, who studies responses to hurricanes, says that Americans are well prepared for disaster, and dislike officials who try to tell them where they can and cannot go. No propaganda, it seems, can allay such suspicions of government, or cure Britons of their clingy ways.

CAUGHT OUT

I was enjoying a Saturday afternoon off the other day, I had decided to amuse myself by shooting a few clays at a nearby gun club. As I entered the clubhouse I saw my inspector.

"Hello," I said, "You've discovered my secret."

"And you mine", he replied.

I said to Mrs C:" This is Insp... err...Dave."

My wife said hello and then there was an uncomfortable silence as we both reflected guiltily on where we were. I did not think I would have been more embarrassed if my inspector had caught me at a neo-nazi rally, the only saving grace of the situation was that he had been caught out as well. After a short while, I said: "Beretta?"

"Yes," he replied, "You?"

"Oh yes, definitely a Beretta."

We went our separate ways.

As an NRA member (see link on sidebar) I'm in favour of liberal gun laws and I think it's irresponsible of the state to take away an innocent person's right to self-defence. As a Police Officer, I get tired of having to investigate crime that is unsolvable, yet has only occurred because the victim is weak and the perpetrator is a bully and knows he will get away with it.

To American readers, the British attitude to guns must seem very strange. On the one hand we want to ban law-abiding people from having guns, on the other hand it has never been easier for a criminal to obtain an illegal handgun. We worry about thugs and crime on our Council estates and at the same time refuse to give ordinary people the means to defend themselves and their property.

The Police have long since given up the traditional role of "law enforcement" and have now become professional "evidence gatherers". That's not a problem for the Police, but it does pose a difficulty if you live in an area where you have a lot of crime. So who does the "law enforcement" nowadays?

Nobody.

That's where widespread ownership of guns comes in. Together with sensible laws on self defence, guns have a habit of cutting through all kinds of complex arguments about the causes of crime. If I try and burgle your home, you might shoot me: that concentrates the mind. It also reduces reliance on the state and it makes people responsible for their own actions. Best of all though, it gives victims a chance against offenders, something they'll never get if they involve the Police. All we do is "gather the evidence."

Royal folly

Small minded

Prince Charles puts his big foot in tiny matters

Last weekend, readers of the Independent on Sunday were treated to an article warning them over the risks posed by the science of nanotechnology. Authors of such pieces rarely find their words echoing around the globe; but this one did, because it was none other than Prince Charles.

Before last Sunday, only 30% of people in Britain recognised the term nanotechnology. More probably do now. Prince Charles has given them, and everybody else, something new to worry about.

Why is the prince agitating about a broad area of study where the common thread is things that are a billionth of a metre in size? Remove the "nano" prefix and you probably get to the heart of his concerns: technology. Or rather, what he termed in his article the "so called 'technological advances' of recent years".

Over the years, Charles has expressed concerns over genetically modified food, and promoted alternative medicine and organic food (which, fortuitously, he also produces under his Duchy brand). He provoked controversy recently when he suggested that a cancer patient was cured by a regimen of vegetable juice and coffee enemas.

Whether the royal brow furrows in response to technological innovations or contemporary architecture, the prince's theme appears to be a fear of modernity. Innovation has, of course, ensured a longer and less painful life for the prince as well as to the commoners. But progress has probably benefited the peasants more than it has the aristocracy. And change is, on balance, hazardous for the next incumbent of an office built on mystical tradition and continuity.

Prince Charles's adherence to traditional ways is understandable as a self-preservation mechanism, and has served him well when it comes to making biscuits. It does not, however, make him a suitable commentator on some of the more innovative things his subjects get up to.

Another key to Flushing's success has been the Korean Christian churches, which are as vital to the community as Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues were for previous Queens generations. Judging by the numbers, the Korean saying that when three or more Koreans get together, the first thing they do is start a church is only a slight exaggeration. The 300 or so Korean Christian churches in New York in the mid-1980s doubled to nearly 600 ten years later. Kyeyoung Park, author of The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City, says that what distinguishes these churches is how fervently they work to transmit American values to the community. In addition, they often sponsor gaes, or lending pools, in which successful immigrants contribute to a general fund that others can tap for loans to open businesses. Korean churches also serve as clearinghouses for information about business opportunities. Koreans have brought new life to old Queens houses of worship, like the First Presbyterian Church, founded by early Scottish settlers, just as Taiwanese immigrants have revived the Reformed Church of Newtown, established by Dutch Protestants in 1731.

Manchurian Candidate

Remember this film? The new version released today has a soldier who was brainwashed, not by Communists, but by a company called "Manchurian Global." So, in other words, capitalism is the enemy of the current age.

Joe Morgenstern says, "that's startling stuff for a feature film, and especially for a film, produced by a large corporation, that is opening in the midst of of a real-life election campaign."

Not really so startling -- it's in line with my theory of business in film, Film and Firms, posted here and here. As I discuss in my paper, with many examples, business-bashing has a long history in film.

I also explain why it's not so odd that "large corporations" produce films with an anti-business message: Focus on the incentives of the people who make them.

The just-released remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" spins the politics of the original. Whereas the 1962 film imagined that the Red Chinese were plotting to kill a president, in the new film the villainous would-be assassins are capitalists, not Communists. . . .

Of course, Manchurian, in all its bloodthirsty ambition, is intended as a parody of two firms closely associated with the Bush-Cheney administration, The Carlyle Group and Halliburton. . . .

So here's a question: Which is more real, the prospect that right-wing corporate warmongers will try to steal the 2004 election through murder, or the prospect that liberal-left activists will seek to influence the election using their preponderance in the news and entertainment media?