Denial is rampant in 1997, but the truth is this end result was the very goal of the antiwar movement’s continuing efforts in the years after American withdrawal. George McGovern, more forthcoming than most, bluntly stated as much to this writer during a break in taping a 1995 edition of cnn’s "Crossfire." After I had argued that the war was clearly winnable even toward the end if we had changed our strategy, the 1972 presidential candidate who had offered to go to Hanoi on his knees commented, "What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war." Mr. McGovern was not alone. He was part of a small but extremely influential minority who eventually had their way.

After President Nixon resigned in August of 1974, that fall’s congressional elections brought 76 new Democrats to the House, and eight to the Senate. A preponderance of these freshmen had run on McGovernesque platforms. Many had been viewed as weak candidates before Nixon’s resignation, and some were glaringly unqualified, such as then-26-year-old Tom Downey of New York, who had never really held a job in his life and was still living at home with his mother.

This so-called Watergate Congress rode into town with an overriding mission that had become the rallying point of the American Left: to end all American assistance in any form to the besieged government of South Vietnam. Make no mistake—this was not the cry of a few years earlier to stop young Americans from dying. It had been two years since the last American soldiers left Vietnam, and fully four years since the last serious American casualty calls there.

For reasons that escape historical justification, even after America’s military withdrawal the Left continued to try to bring down the incipient South Vietnamese democracy. Future White House aide Harold Ickes and others at "Project Pursestrings"—assisted at one point by an ambitious young Bill Clinton—worked to cut off all congressional funding intended to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves. The Indochina Peace Coalition, run by David Dellinger and headlined by Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, coordinated closely with Hanoi throughout 1973 and 1974, and barnstormed across America’s campuses, rallying students to the supposed evils of the South Vietnamese government. Congressional allies repeatedly added amendments to spending bills to end U.S. support of Vietnamese anti-Communists, precluding even air strikes to help South Vietnamese soldiers under attack by North Vietnamese units that were assisted by Soviet-bloc forces.

Then in early 1975 the Watergate Congress dealt non-Communist Indochina the final blow. The new Congress icily resisted President Gerald Ford’s January request for additional military aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia. This appropriation would have provided the beleaguered Cambodian and South Vietnamese militaries with ammunition, spare parts, and tactical weapons needed to continue their own defense. Despite the fact that the 1973 Paris Peace Accords called specifically for "unlimited military replacement aid" for South Vietnam, by March the House Democratic Caucus voted overwhelmingly, 189-49, against any additional military assistance to Vietnam or Cambodia.

The rhetoric of the antiwar Left during these debates was filled with condemnation of America’s war-torn allies, and promises of a better life for them under the Communism that was sure to follow. Then-Congressman Christopher Dodd typified the hopeless naiveté of his peers when he intoned that "calling the Lon Nol regime an ally is to debase the word.... The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." Tom Downey, having become a foreign policy expert in the two months since being freed from his mother’s apron strings, pooh-poohed the coming Cambodian holocaust that would kill more than one-third of the country’s population, saying, "The administration has warned that if we leave there will be a bloodbath. But to warn of a new bloodbath is no justification for extending the current bloodbath."

On the battlefields of Vietnam the elimination of all U.S. logistical support was stunning and unanticipated news. South Vietnamese commanders had been assured of material support as the American military withdrew—the same sort of aid the U.S. routinely provided allies from South Korea to West Germany—and of renewed U.S. air strikes if the North attacked the South in violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Now they were staring at a terrifyingly uncertain future, even as the Soviets continued to assist the Communist North.

As the shocked and demoralized South Vietnamese military sought to readjust its forces to cope with serious shortages, the newly refurbished North Vietnamese immediately launched a major offensive. Catching many units out of position, the North rolled down the countryside over a 55-day period. In the ensuing years I have interviewed South Vietnamese survivors of these battles, many of whom spent ten years and more in Communist concentration camps after the war. The litany is continuous: "I had no ammunition." "I was down to three artillery rounds per tube per day." "I had nothing to give my soldiers." "I had to turn off my radio because I could no longer bear to hear their calls for help."

The reaction in the United States to this debacle defines two distinct camps that continue to be identifiable in many of the issues we face today. For most of those who fought in Vietnam, and for their families, friends, and political compatriots, this was a dark and deeply depressing month. The faces we saw running in terror from the North Vietnamese assault were real and familiar, not simply video images. The bodies that fell like spinning snowflakes toward cruel deaths after having clung hopelessly to the outer parts of departing helicopters and aircraft may have been people we knew or tried to help. Even for those who had lost their faith in America’s ability to defeat the Communists, this was not the way it was supposed to end.

For those who had evaded the war and come of age believing our country was somehow evil, even as they romanticized the intentions of the Communists, these few weeks brought denials of their own responsibility in the debacle, armchair criticisms of the South Vietnamese military, or open celebrations. At the Georgetown University Law Center where I was a student, the North’s blatant discarding of the promises of peace and elections contained in the 1973 Paris Accords, followed by the rumbling of North Vietnamese tanks through the streets of Saigon, was treated by many as a cause for actual rejoicing.

Denial is rampant in 1997, but the truth is this end result was the very goal of the antiwar movement’s continuing efforts in the years after American withdrawal. George McGovern, more forthcoming than most, bluntly stated as much to this writer during a break in taping a 1995 edition of cnn’s "Crossfire." After I had argued that the war was clearly winnable even toward the end if we had changed our strategy, the 1972 presidential candidate who had offered to go to Hanoi on his knees commented, "What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war." Mr. McGovern was not alone. He was part of a small but extremely influential minority who eventually had their way.

There is perhaps no greater testimony to the celebratory atmosphere that surrounded the Communist victory in Vietnam than the 1975 Academy Awards, which took place on April 8, just three weeks before the South’s final surrender. The award for Best Feature Documentary went to the film Hearts and Minds, a vicious piece of propaganda that assailed American cultural values as well as our effort to assist South Vietnam’s struggle for democracy. The producers, Peter Davis and Bert Schneider [who plays a role in David Horowitz’s story—see page 31], jointly accepted the Oscar. Schneider was frank in his support of the Communists. As he stepped to the mike he commented that "It is ironic that we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated." Then came one of the most stunning—if intentionally forgotten—moments in Hollywood history. As a struggling country many Americans had paid blood and tears to try to preserve was disappearing beneath a tank onslaught, Schneider pulled out a telegram from our enemy, the Vietnamese Communist delegation in Paris, and read aloud its congratulations to his film. Without hesitating, Hollywood’s most powerful people rewarded Schneider’s reading of the telegram with a standing ovation.

Those of us who either fought in Vietnam or supported our efforts there look at this 1975 "movie moment" with unforgetting and unmitigated amazement. Who were these people who so energetically poisoned the rest of the world’s view of us? How had they turned so virulently against their own countrymen? How could they stand and applaud the victory of a Communist enemy who had taken 58,000 American lives and crushed a struggling, pro-democratic ally? Could they and the rest of us be said to be living in the same country anymore?

Not a peep was heard then, or since, from Hollywood regarding the people who disappeared behind Vietnam’s bamboo curtain. No one has ever mentioned the concentration camps into which a million South Vietnamese soldiers were sent; 56,000 to die, 250,000 to stay for more than six years, and some for as long as 18. No one criticized the forced relocations, the corruption, or the continuing police state. More to the point, with the exception of the well-intentioned but artistically weak Hamburger Hill, one searches in vain for a single major film since that time that has portrayed American soldiers in Vietnam with dignity and in a true context.

Why? Because the film community, as with other elites, never liked, respected, or even understood those who answered the call and served. And at a time when a quiet but relentless battle is taking place over how history will remember our country’s involvement in Vietnam, those who ridiculed government policy, avoided military service, and actively supported an enemy who turned out to be vicious and corrupt do not want to be remembered as having been so naive and so wrong.

Sen. Allen’s foe in Nov. is old friend of McCain

Sens. George Allen (Va.) and John McCain (Ariz.) could square off for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination — if an old McCain friend doesn’t get to Allen first.

Former Navy Secretary James Webb, one of McCain’s “oldest friends,” is vying for the Democratic nomination to take on Allen in his reelection bid this November. Although Webb must first get past lobbyist Harris Miller in the Democratic primary, political analysts say his candidacy could end up hampering Allen’s presidential aspirations and bolstering McCain’s.

“Party activists expect a presidential contender to have strong home support, and if Webb (or Miller) could even come close to Allen in 2006, the results would raise questions about Allen’s own base,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Indirectly, any weakening of Allen would help McCain, and some other GOP presidential candidates.”

Despite the longtime friendship between McCain and Webb, a former Republican, the Arizona senator said he is backing Allen. Even so, in an interview outside the Senate chamber last week, McCain called Webb “a war hero” and “a great patriot.”

Last year, McCain went even further. “Jim Webb is one of my oldest friends,” McCain said in a March 2005 speech to the American Ireland Fund’s 13th National Gala, according to a transcript posted on his Senate website. Webb, who is of Irish ancestry, had just introduced McCain, who was receiving an award.

The two were among the subjects profiled in Robert Timberg’s 1995 book The Nightingale’s Song, tracing the careers of five Naval Academy graduates and Vietnam veterans. Iran-Contra scandal figures Oliver North, John Poindexter and Bud McFarlane were the others.

Besides McCain, Webb has at least one more fan among defense-minded Senate Republicans. Allen’s home-state GOP colleague, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman and former Navy Secretary John Warner, tried to recruit Webb to run in a 1994 Virginia Senate primary against eventual Republican nominee Oliver North.

“He has the potential of being a serious and formidable candidate,” Warner said in a recent interview.

Warner, calling himself a great admirer of Webb’s military career, said he is loyal to Allen but will not disparage Webb during the campaign. Perhaps that is because Warner also feels some loyalty to Webb, who once served on Warner’s Navy secretary staff.

In a Senate floor speech about the location of an Air Force memorial in 1997, Warner called Webb “a very solid, fair-minded, and … objective person.”

McCain may not slap a Webb “Born Fighting” campaign bumper sticker on his car — “I’m supporting Senator Allen’s reelection,” he said — but he did offer laudatory words on the dust jacket of Webb’s book of the same name.

“James Webb, a legendary fighting man, tells a remarkable story — how the Scots-Irish and their fighting faith in America shaped the great nation we are today. His profound insights deepen our understanding not only of this unique people, but also of America’s past and present,” McCain wrote.

Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican campaign operative who helped oust former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) in 2004 and will leave his job as Allen’s Senate chief of staff to run his reelection campaign next week, said Allen has a good relationship with McCain and expects “nothing but support” from him.

The political background of the players is even stranger: Webb endorsed Allen in his successful bid to unseat then-Sen. Chuck Robb (D-Va.) in 2000 after endorsing Robb over North in 1994.

Because he was a Republican, questions about his loyalty to Democrats could hinder Webb as he seeks his new party’s nomination.

“I’m like I think a large number of people in this country, who … during the Vietnam War became alienated from the Democratic Party, basically feeling like they weren’t welcomed there, and went to the Republicans on national security issues but never were really comfortable on the social issues over there,” Webb told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball” last month.

More recently, he called his 2000 endorsement of Allen “a mistake,” citing Allen’s subsequent support for the Iraq invasion, according to the Hampton Roads Daily Press.

It is an issue on which McCain and Webb differ sharply.

“Jim has different views on how things stand right now in terms of the country and the direction of the country, especially when it comes to defense and foreign-policy matters,” said Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. “Mr. McCain supports the president, and Jim does not.”

Wadhams predicted that there would be stark differences between Allen and whichever candidate the Democrats nominate, particularly in regards to the Iraq war, on which Allen and McCain agree.

Still, some observers believe Webb’s service record — he won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts — might make him an attractive alternative in military-heavy Virginia.

“In a lot of ways, Webb is a nightmare for George Allen,” Sabato said. “Allen is used to running against traditional Democrats who are vulnerable on a wide range of defense, crime, and cultural issues. Webb isn’t very vulnerable, and on defense he has a big edge on Allen, who never served in the military.”

Allen, a former Virginia governor, won more than 52 percent of the vote when he bested Robb in 2000.

Though a recent Zogby poll placed Webb about seven points behind Allen in a head-to-head match-up, it is difficult to tell how much traction Webb will get with the Democratic faithful. The June 13 primary is still more than two months away.

What also remain unclear are the depth and texture of the McCain-Webb friendship.

In 1995, Timberg wrote of McCain, North, Poindexter and McFarlane: “None could be called Webb’s friend because he bestowed that mantle warily, and only after a long testing period. But they were more than passing acquaintances.”

“He and McCain have a cordial relationship, but he wouldn’t characterize them as buddies or close friends,” Todd said.

Still, she said, Webb is “highly respectful of the service that [McCain] has shown his country” and “thinks he is a good man and a good senator.”

Whatever the relationship, Sabato and others discounted any suggestion that one of the reasons Webb entered the race was to boost McCain’s presidential election chances.

“No one runs for the Senate on such a basis,” Sabato said. “McCain may be helped as a result of Webb’s challenge to Allen, but it is not the motive behind Webb’s challenge.”

Wadhams said that it is too early to presume Webb will make it to the November ballot and that his candidacy does not present an additional obstacle to Allen.

“We expected nothing other than a competitive Senate race in 2006,” he said.

Setting aside the statistical certainty that some of the dead Americans are Jewish (as, in high statistical probability, some were of Arab origins), and at the risk of yet more ill-tempered or abusive emails, I am going to declare that I don’t think these recent outrages can be blamed on the Jews, nor even on pro-Israel American politicians. The root phenomenon is not American involvement in Middle Eastern affairs: the root phenomenon is hesperophobia. [. . .] Hesperophobia is fear or hatred of the West. [. . .] Here is the news: a lot of people out there hate us. The name “Durban” mean anything? In China, in India, in Pakistan, in Indonesia and Malaysia, in Africa and in the Arab countries, European civilization — the West — is widely hated. Matter of fact, quite a lot of Europeans and Americans hate it, too, as you will know if you spend much time on college campuses.

I can’t see any strong reason for believing that if the state of Israel were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, hesperophobia would disappear with it. Not even just Arab hesperophobia would decline. A common word for Europeans in the Arabic language is feringji, from “Frank”, i.e. crusader. Arabs don’t hate us because we support Israel. They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them, and similarly humiliated peoples, we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. Neither the Arabs nor the Chinese, for example, have yet been able to attain rational, constitutional government. [. . .]

If you haven’t spent some time in its company, the depth and bitterness of hesperophobia in these cultures is hard to imagine. As Thomas Friedman points out in today’s New York Times, Palestinian suicide bombers do not target yeshivas, synagogues or religious settlements. They go for shopping malls or Sbarro’s outlets. Sure, they hate the Jews, but they hate the West as much, or more. [. . .]

What, after all, does the Buchananite program offer us, if carried through? We have no troops in Israel to be withdrawn. If we withdraw our aid, the Israelis will be less able to defend themselves against the Arabs. Should we just let the free market take over, U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to them cash on the nail? Apparently not: several of my correspondents have explained to me that what so enrages the Arabs is the sight of their people being killed “by American weapons”. Oh. No weapons, then (and presumably we should try to repatriate the ones they already have — lots of luck with that, guys). But if we don’t arm the Israelis, who will? While other hesperophobic countries — China, for example — are gleefully arming the Arabs and other Israel-haters like Iran, and pocketing the profits?

And the end of it all will be ... what? Inevitably, without our support, it will be the destruction of Israel. They are so few, and the Arabs so many. The Arabs will overwhelm that tiny state, and there will be such an orgy of massacre as has not been seen since the Rape of Nanking. And we shall be doing ... what? Watching it on our TVs, with a six-pack and a bucket of Nacho chips to hand? That’s the Buchananite vision? If so, it is a vision of cowards and fools, and I want no part of it.

Israel’s culture is ours. She is part of the West. If she goes down, we have suffered a defeat, and the howling, jeering forces of barbarism have won a victory. You don’t have to be Zionist, nor even Jewish, to support Israel. You don’t have to be in the pocket of the Israeli congressional lobbies, or a suck-up to “powerful pro-Zionist interests.” You don’t have to pretend not to notice the occasional follies and cruelties of Israeli policy. You don’t have to forget about the U.S.S. Liberty or Jonathan Pollard. You just have to think straight. You just have to understand that the war between civilization and barbarism is being fought today just as it was fought at Chalons and Tours, at the gates of Kiev and Vienna, by the hoplites at Marathon and the legions on the Rhine. It is, as you have heard a thousand times, this past few days, a war; and the thing about war is, you have to take sides, and close your eyes to your allies’ imperfections for the duration. There isn’t any choice. What happened this week was not, or not only, an act of anti-Americanism, anti-Israelism or anti-Semitism. It was in part all those things: but more than anything else, it was an act of hesperophobia.

A couple of days after 9/11 I posted a column with the title “Hesperophobia.” I had borrowed this word from Robert Conquest, who used it to mean “fear and hatred of the West.” My attempt to re-float the word into general circulation didn’t fare any better than Conquest’s introductory effort had. I still think it’s a very handy word, though. It is, for example, the word that comes to mind when I look at those pictures of Muslims in Europe and Islamia, rioting about the Danish cartoons.

Lord, how they hate us! If you think this is just Islam, you are kidding yourself. The West, and Westerners, are hated all over the world. A friend who has been looking into the Nigerian “419 scams” tells me that while the main motivation for them is of course financial, a strong secondary factor among the Nigerian scammers is the desire to humiliate those suckers in the West who (still!) fall for them. The Chinese seem to have slowed down their production of rabidly anti-Western movies recently, but I have no doubt that hesperophobia still lurks just below the surface of Chinese life. In South America, politicians like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are riding to power on anti-Americanism, which is merely a targeted style of hesperophobia. The West is hated all over the rest of the world. Why?

There are all sorts of answers to that question, most of them inspired by wishful thinking of one kind or another. Paleocons tell you that it’s all because of our support for Israel, and if we just cut loose from the Israeli connection, everything between us and the Third World would be tickety-boo. I know people, quite intelligent people, who actually believe this; though why Nigerian con men and Andean coca farmers give a fig, or a coca leaf, about our support for Israel, my paleocon friends find hard to explain. Nor can they explain why Third World hesperophobes were smiling and gloating over the recent riots in France, a nation that has not, let us say, distinguished itself by courageous support for Israel.

Liberals, many of whom hate the West just as much as any Chavez or bin Laden, say it’s all a response to the misdeeds of multinational corporations, and the memories of colonial humiliation, and a reaction to the innate racism of white Europeans. Again, explanations as to why Singapore (say) has not been held back in poverty and chaos by bitter memories of its colonial past, or why some of the wildest manifestations of hesperophobia come out of nations like Saudi Arabia, whose people would be eating sand if not for the efforts and technology of multinational corporations (and which was never colonized by anyone), is left unexplained.

Meanwhile, neocons want you to know that it all springs out of a frustrated yearning for freedom and Western-style good government. These peoples (the neocons explain) suffer under cruel tyrants, who (a) fill their heads with xenophobia, (b) retard their nations’ development, generating envy of the prosperous West, and (c) have often, indeed, been propped up with Western support. Just give them democracy! Since all human beings are just the same in their hopes, aspirations, and abilities—we all “yearn for freedom”—it is just a matter of removing obstacles. So we give them democracy, not to mention boxcar-loads of cash, and they elect… Mugabe, Chavez, Hamas.

As I said, different flavors of wishful thinking. The true reason why the Third World hates us is the one I spelled out for you in my original “Hesperophobia” article, if you’d only paid attention:

["]They hate us because we humiliated them, showed up the gross inferiority of their culture. To them … we are the other, detested and feared in a way we can barely understand. Things got really bad in the 19th century. When European society achieved industrial lift-off, Europeans were suddenly buzzing all over the world like a swarm of bees. They encountered these other cultures, that had been vegetating in a quiet conviction of their own superiority for centuries (or in the case of the Chinese, millennia). When these encounters occurred, the encountered culture collapsed in a cloud of dust. Some of them, like the Turks, managed to reconstitute themselves as more or less modern nations; others, like the Arabs and the Chinese, are still struggling with the trauma of that encounter. Neither the Arabs nor the Chinese, for example, have yet been able to attain rational, constitutional government.["]

That is the whole story. They hate us from wounded ethnic pride. They hate us because of our cultural superiority; which is to say, at one remove, our political superiority. They hate us because they can’t organize societies like ours, in which security, prosperity, and hope for the future are available to all, and creativity flourishes. They can’t, they know they can’t, and the knowledge drives them nuts.

(Well, it drives some of them nuts. We are so media-addled, so used to drawing conclusions about the world from the images we glimpse on our TVs and computers, it needs an effort of will, and arithmetic, to remember that countless millions of people in the non-Western part of the world are not strong hesperophobes. There is some variation in every population, in every kind of characteristic. When you read about 10,000 people rioting in Beirut, just stop for a second and remind yourself that the population of Lebanon is nearly four million. Of that four million there are many who, far from looking on the West with envy and hatred, feel admiration for us. Some of them dream of Westernizing their own countries, and a few, with unimaginable courage, act on those dreams. These brave hesperophiles are going against all the grain of their societies and cultures, though, and if you are in the business of selling life insurance, they are not promising customers. In fact the sanest course for people like them is simply to emigrate to the West, and sooner or later those who can, do—leaving their nations even more depleted of political sense.)

Over most of the non-Western world, government is just an ATM for the clever, ruthless, entrenched, and well-connected. This simple fact is not much appreciated by Americans, though the evidence of it is all around us. Consider the flocks of illegal immigrants gathering at six thirty every morning on some street corner in your town. Why are they here? Fundamentally, because of the sheer excruciating crappiness of government in Central American nations. Citizens of those nations watch their corrupt elites shovel the national wealth into their private bank accounts. They look to the North and see a place where at least a day’s work will get you a day’s pay, which you will not then have to hand over as a bribe to some cop or official. So North they come, often bringing their native hesperophobia along in their baggage. It is humiliating enough to see people in a foreign land living far better than yourself. When the discrepancy is so great you are driven to trek across a desert in order to mow those people’s lawns for them, the humiliation is doubled.

And yet, the neocons purr, if only we could sweep away their crooked, tyrannical, or despotic rulers, these people would rise to the occasion and make prosperous European-style democracies for themselves. Would they, though? How do we know this? Is it, in fact a thing that can be known—known to be true, or known to be false?

Probably it is. Politics is a feature of human society, which arises from human nature. If human nature is not precisely the same—does not have the same averages and variability—everywhere, it may be hopeless to expect that politics will be, either. We now know, with our knowledge expanding very fast, that the processes of natural selection did not suddenly stop dead when human beings left Africa 50,000 or so years ago. The scattered populations of early humans, settled in very different geographical environments, were subject to different selection pressures, and evolved differently; and the evidence is in the structure of our bodies.

That includes our brains. It has long been known, for example, that East Asians have better visual-spatial skills than other peoples. This is true not only in East Asia itself, but outside it, where the toil of learning ideographic languages is not a cultural factor. Now, visual-spatial skills originate in the brain. So, however, do social skills. Man is a social animal, has been for far longer than that 50,000 years. Large areas of our brains are given over to processing social information—recognizing faces, judging the intentions and truthfulness of others, and so on. But if a group of humans with one genetic heritage can differ slightly from some other group in the way they process visual information, might they not also differ in the way they process social information? And if they do so differ, might it not be that forms of society that come easily to one group, might come only with great difficulty, or not at all, to another?

(The matter of range here offers interesting fields for speculation. Surveying history, I think one would have to say that it is not easy for any human group to establish an orderly and open society. Europeans seem better at it than most; but Europeans have produced some pretty nasty social sytems. If this accomplishment does indeed come more easily to some groups than others, the range is more likely to be “difficult to impossible” than “easy to difficult.”)

This, my neocon friends and colleagues would say, is a counsel of despair. It may be, however, that preserving human beings from despair is not a central organizing principle of the universe. Those same friends and colleagues talk a great deal about the history of political thought: about Aristotle and Machiavelli, Montesquieu and de Maistre, Buckley and Strauss. All very instructive, to be sure; and it is of course deplorable of me to fidget and chafe at the coyness with which we all avoid noticing a thing—a rather plain, physical thing—that all those thinkers have in common. The leftist, hesperophobic presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia have a similar thing in common—not with Aristotle and the rest, but with each other.

Which leads us to that aspect of hesperophobia I did not mention in my earlier piece. When the envious, resentful, humiliated masses of the Third World hate us, what is it they are hating? What, actually, is in their minds? Our maddening cultural superiority is in their minds, as I have said, but what else about us? I think we know, though we are shy to talk about it. They surely know, and are much less shy. According to my friend, when those Nigerian 419 scammers gloat over the gullibility of their “marks,” they do not refer to them as “Westerners.” They use a different designation.

I believe that our shyness in these matters has outlived its usefulness. (And it was useful, for a while.) Time is short. We may not, to borrow a rhetorical figure from Trotsky, be interested in the reality of human nature, but it is interested in us. The angry, resentful masses are in arms—nuclear arms, very nearly.

They are also in numbers—what numbers! Too many of us are still stuck in a 19th-century cast of mind, when the wretched of the non-Western earth lived in small scattered settlements spread across vast deserts, jungles, and savannahs, and so could be safely patronized, or colonized, or ignored. Look at the numbers now: France—61m, Pakistan—162m; U.K.—60m, Iran—68m; Australia—20m, Nigeria—129m; Russia—143m, Indonesia—212m; and so on. They are growing; we are dwindling. They hate us; we fear them. (If you don’t think we fear them, read some of the responses by people like the British Foreign Secretary to the recent Muslim riots.) They are full of passion and rage; we are full of smug illusions. They dream of slaughter and sacrifice; we dream of celebrities and gadgets.

As I said, time is short. The Hun is at the gate. In the case of most European countries, in fact, the Hun, the hesperophobe, is inside the gate. We can dream on for a while, dream that our cultural superiority, our technological superiority, our political superiority, will preserve us against all assaults. Perhaps we should remember that the Huns were cultural illiterates, technological ignoramuses, and political incompetents. It doesn’t take much in the way of culture, technology, or statecraft to deliver a crippling blow to a weary, sybaritic, over-governed civilization that is near the end of its allotted span and has lost all faith in its own founding values. Time is short.

Racism row lecturer is suspended

A lecturer who suggested ethnicity could influence average intelligence levels has been suspended from his job.

Dr Frank Ellis was suspended from his post as a lecturer at Leeds University pending disciplinary procedures.

The university emphasised that the suspension was not itself a penalty but said it had been deemed appropriate given "the seriousness of the issues".

The lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies told a student newspaper there was a "persistent gap" in IQ levels.

More than 500 students signed a petition calling for him to be sacked.

Many of them later demonstrated in Leeds against his views.

Leeds University had previously said that those views were "abhorrent" but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students.

[. . .] Dr Ellis has expressed support for the Bell Curve theory, examined in a book by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray, which concludes that ethnicity can play a part in IQ levels.

He has previously maintained he has never treated a black student differently to a white student, and said he had "done nothing wrong".

Labelling him a racist was "an attempt to close down any discussion" and an attack on his freedom of speech, he said.

The disciplinary process might take some time to complete - possibly months.

The university said it intended to make no further public comment until it had been concluded.

Tutor defends 'racist' stance

The Leeds University academic at the centre of a racism row has defended his view that black people have a lower average IQ than white people.
Dr Frank Ellis, a Russian tutor, says data stretching back 100 years points to a "persistent deviation" in the average IQ of black and white people.

More than 500 students have signed a petition calling for him to be sacked.

Leeds University said his views were "abhorrent" but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students.

Differences

Dr Ellis has expressed support for the Bell Curve theory, examined in a book by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray, which concludes that ethnicity can play a part in IQ levels.

"I have read an enormous amount of literature on this subject and I find it extremely convincing," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

He praised the work of scholars such as Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen who have come to similar conclusions.

Their opponents were worried about the implications for equal opportunities, he said.

He said these ideas do not preclude the existence of some black people of exceptional intelligence.

"But we have to accept, I believe, that there are these differences," he continued.

"The way to deal with this is not to treat people as groups, but to treat them as individuals."

'Dirty little secret'

Dr Ellis said the assumption that IQ tests are the most valid way of testing intelligence was the "dirty little secret" of psychology, because society as a whole did not accept this.

He said he became interested in the issue of censoring sensitive debates through his studies of the media under Soviet and post-Soviet regimes.

He added that labelling him a racist was "an attempt to close down any discussion" and an attack on his freedom of speech.

"These days a racist is anything you don't like - it's a hate word. I have no strong feelings towards black people either way."

He said he had never treated any black student in a different way to any white student, and he had "done absolutely nothing wrong".

'Lazy discussion'

Dr Munira Mirza, a tutor in multiculturalism and community relations at the University of Kent, told 5 Live she believed IQ differences could be explained by social and historical factors and did not exist for biological reasons.

But she said: "I don't agree with his views but do defend his right to express them. That is the lifeblood of the campus - people can express views and be held to account for them.

"He's not calling all black people stupid - that is a caricature.

"Academics and students are resorting to lazy, blame-game discussion and not engaging in the debate," she continued.

"I would rather disagree with him openly and explain why his theories do not stand up."

Leeds University Secretary Roger Gair said: "Dr Ellis has a right to his personal opinions, but he does not have the right to treat students or colleagues in a prejudicial or discriminatory manner.

"The university has no evidence yet that this has happened, but we will look carefully at any such evidence presented to us."

He said the university's values included mutual respect, diversity and equal opportunity, but its staff had "freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, put forward new ideas, controversial and unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs".

The university has not confirmed whether Dr Ellis will face any disciplinary action.

Students stage demo against tutor

Students from the University of Leeds have demonstrated against a lecturer who claims black people have a genetically lower IQ than white people. Dr Frank Ellis, a Russian tutor, said data stretching back 100 years pointed to a "persistent deviation" in the average IQ of black and white people.

The Students' Union claim Dr Ellis has breeched requirements for staff to promote equality and want him sacked.

More than 200 students gathered at the city campus to make their views known.

Dr Ellis has expressed support for the Bell Curve theory, examined in a book by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray, which concludes that ethnicity can play a part in IQ levels.

'Abhorrent' views

He has also praised the work of scholars such as Hans Eysenck and Arthur Jensen who have come to similar conclusions and said their opponents were worried about the implications for equal opportunities.

But he said these ideas did not preclude the existence of some black people of exceptional intelligence.

The University of Leeds said Dr Ellis's view were "abhorrent" and it had written to him asking him to stop making any further public comment.

It said it had to be satisfied that he was not undermining its commitment to equality and diversity but added that it intended to discharge its full responsibility under the Race Relations Act.

Dr Ellis said he was unable to comment on the demonstration but has previously denied doing anything wrong and said that labelling him as a racist was an attack on his freedom of speech.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"
March 4, 2006

On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these “apathetic” heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.

In an age dominated by hype and sex, neither Moore nor Vonnegut seems a likely candidate to rock a campus whose biggest news has been the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ joint assault on Big Ten championships.

But maybe there’s more going on here than Fox wants us to think.

Vonnegut takes an easy chair across from Prof. Manuel Luis Martinez, a poet and teacher of writing. He grabs Martinez and semi-whispers into his ear (and the mike) “What can I say here?”

Martinez urges candor.

“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

The students seem to agree.

“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”

“You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here.”

Off to a flying start, Vonnegut explains that this will be his “last speech for money.” He can’t remember the first one, but it was on a campus long, long ago, and this will be the end.

The students are hushed with the prospect of the final appearance of America’s greatest living novelist. Alongside Mark Twain and Ben Franklin, Will Rogers and Joseph Heller and a very short list of immortal satirists and storytellers, there stands Kurt Vonnegut, author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and SIRENS OF TITAN, CAT’S CRADLE and GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, books these students are studying now, as did their parents, as will their children and grandchildren, with a deeply felt mixture of gratitude and awe.

Nobody tonight seems to think they are in for a detached, scholarly presentation from a disengaged academic genius coasting on his incomparable laurels

“I’m lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really cared about ALL the people, rich and poor. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a traitor.

“We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries,” he says. “They run everything.

“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.

“So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever.

“I’m trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It’s becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil.

“Bush used that line recently,” Vonnegut adds. “I should sue him for plagiarism.”

Things have gotten so bad, he says, “people are in revolt again life itself.”

Our economy has been making money, but “all the money that should have gone into research and development has gone into executive compensation. If people insist on living as if there’s no tomorrow, there really won’t be one.

“As the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a few moments. The best way to do that is with music. You should practice once a night.

“If you want really want to hurt your parents and don’t want to be gay, go into the arts,” he says.

Then he breaks into song, doing a passable, tender rendition of “Stardust Memories.”

By this time this packed hall has grown reverential. The sound system is appropriately tenuous. Straining to hear every word is both an effort and a meditation.

“To hell with the advances in computers,” he says after he finishes singing. “YOU are supposed to advance and become, not the computers. Find out what’s inside you. And don’t kill anybody.

“There are no factories any more. Where are the jobs supposed to come from? There’s nothing for people to do anymore. We need to ask the Seminoles: ‘what the hell did you do?’’ after the tribe’s traditional livelihood was taken away.

Answering questions written in by students, he explains the meaning of life. “We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate the good moments by saying ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’

“You’re awful cute” he says to someone in the front row. He grins and looks around. “If this isn’t nice, what is?

“You’re all perfectly safe, by the way. I took off my shoes at the airport. The terrorists hate the smell of feet.

“We are here on Earth to fart around,” he explains, and then embarks on a soliloquy about the joys of going to the store to buy an envelope. One talks to the people there, comments on the “silly-looking dog,” finds all sorts of adventures along the way.

As for being a midwesterner, he recalls his roots in nearby Indianapolis, a heartland town, the next one west of here. “I’m a fresh water person. When I swim in the ocean, I feel like I’m swimming in chicken soup. Who wants to swim in flavored water?”

A key to great writing, he adds, is to “never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You’re reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you’ve been to college.”

Make sure, he adds, “that your reader is having a good time. Get to the who, when, where, what right away, so the reader knows what is going on.”

As for making money, “war is a very profitable thing for a few people. Jesus used to be so merciful and loving of the poor. But now he’s a Republican.

“Our economy today is not capitalism. It’s casino-ism. That’s all the stock market is about. Gambling.

“Live one day at a time. Say ‘if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!’

“You meet saints every where. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.

“I’m going to sue the cigarette companies because they haven’t killed me,” he says. His son lived out his dream to be a pilot and has spent his career flying for Continental. Now they’ve “screwed up his pension.”

The greatest peace, Vonnegut wraps up, “comes from the knowledge that I have enough. Joe Heller told me that.

“I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what I wrote and I said ‘How the hell did I do that?’

“We may all be possessed. I hope so.”

He accepts the students’ standing ovation with characteristic dignity and grace. Not a few tears flow from young people with the wisdom to appreciate what they are seeing. “If this isn’t nice, we don’t know what is.”

Not long ago we spoke on the phone. I asked Kurt how he was. “Too fucking old,” he replied.

Maybe so. But the mind and soul are still there, powerful and penetrating as ever. Just as they’ll ever be in his books and stories and the precious records of his wonderful talks.

Thankfully, Kurt Vonnegut is still possessed by the genius of seeing and describing the world as only Kurt Vonnegut can.

He is still sharp and clear, full of love and life and light. May he be with us yet for a long long time to come.

--
Harvey Wasserman read CAT’S CRADLE, SIRENS OF TITAN and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE in college, sought Boku-Maru, and has never been the same.

Over the weekend C-Span3 reaired an appearance by onetime CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, who spoke at George Washington University on Sept. 22, 2002. [. . .]

[Cronkite:] That's exactly the reason that those Arabs are so mad at us. We are--they see our television. I blame television for a lot of the problems we have today. Before television, they didn't know what we were like [audience laughter and applause]. But now they do. They see these riches, these riches pouring out of us. Every doxy on the air has gold and diamonds and sapphires, and they drive great big cars; we live in these magnificent houses. And they're starving to death. They're watching a television set energized by a hand--by a foot pump, one set to the village. They gather there every night. What do they see? I dunno, "Sex in the City," for heaven's sake [audience laughter].

I think if I were hungry, if I were starving, if my family were dying of AIDS or any other illness, and there was no medical help there, and I was watching this rich nation play at its own fashion, I'd be pretty damn mad. I'd be pretty damn mad [audience applause].

So I'm just saying that I'd like to see this very rich nation of ours work on the diplomatic front, the diplomatic wars if you please, fight those diplomatic wars to get this world straightened out and make it work. And I think that's going to take an international body, like the United Nations, for that to be a true world government. It means giving up sovereignty; it means a lot of sacrifices. But aren't we prepared, for heaven's sakes, to make those sacrifices in order for a better world? I would like to think so.

Hillary, Cronkite call for world government

There was not a blip on the main-stream news media radar when Hillary Clinton introduced Walter Cronkite to the World Federalist Association (WFA) on October 19. Not until the Washington Times reprinted the Cronkite speech Friday, December 3, did Americans discover that both Hillary and Walter are avid advocates of world government.

Cronkite says "democracy, civilization itself, is at stake," unless the "basic structure of our global community" is changed in the next few years. Cronkite's appeal for world government came only five days before the release of the Charter for Global Democracy which embodies the version of world government preferred by the United Nations Association (UNA).

Both the UNA and the WFA have been promoting world government for years. Cronkite's group, the WFA, prefers a "federalist" system which would create a weighted system of voting in the U.N. General Assembly to create a legislative body roughly akin to the American Congress. The UNA prefers a "consensus" process that takes into account recommendations offered by civil society (non-government organizations accredited by the U.N.).

Both organizations want to elevate the U.N. to world government status and empower the U.N. to enforce all international law. In fact, in 1986, the WFA filed suit against the United States over U.S. foreign policy, arguing that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution made the U.N. Charter as well as other U.N. treaties, the "supreme law of the land." The courts ruled against the WFA in 1989.

Hillary's presence at the WFA meeting, and her introduction of Cronkite, directly aligns her with the world government movement, and particularly with the WFA's world government aspirations.

Cronkite called for the "revision" and limitation of the veto power of permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The Commission on Global Governance and the Charter for Global Democracy, call for the elimination of both the veto and permanent member status on the Security Council. This latter recommendation will be presented as the needed "reform" to the Millennium Assembly next September. Cronkite's more timid approach, as well as his "federalism" ideas have been overwhelmed by the U.N.'s "consensus" process now on a fast track toward adoption.

Cronkite called for the immediate ratification of a laundry list of U.N. treaties, including the infamous Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); and "most important," Cronkite says, the International Criminal Court, which empowers the U.N. to prosecute American citizens whether or not it is ratified by the Senate.

Hillary made her support for these positions clear when she attended the U.N. Beijing Conference on Women in 1995.

Cronkite said in order to achieve world government, "Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty." He said "the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy."

Under the world government scheme embodied in the Charter for Global Democracy, any individual nation could wield only the power assigned to it by the U.N. National armies would be disarmed to the level of a national police force. The U.N. would maintain a "directly recruited" standing army under the direct authority of the U.N. Secretary-General. Private citizens would be disarmed, and the U.N. would control the manufacture, sale, licensing and distribution of all fire arms.

To finance this expanded world government, the U.N. would be given the authority to impose taxes on the exchange of currency, on the use of resources, including the air, outer space, and the seas. Taxing authority is seen not only as the source of unlimited revenue, but also as a way to force a reduction of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, water, trees, and minerals.

Like the Clinton administration, and other world government advocates, Cronkite demeans opponents. He says that like America's rejection of the League of Nations, current opposition to world government is "led by a handful of willful Senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience."

He goes even further to single out the "Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing" as the culprits who have kept the world in a state of sovereign anarchy and prevented the emergence of a "civilized force of law" administered by the United Nations.

The fact that people of the stature of Hillary Clinton and Walter Cronkite are now willing to publicly advocate world government is an indication of their confidence that the world is now ready to accept their plan. World government is no longer the exclusive domain of the "black helicopter crowd." Finally, the sinister plans to rule the world are being exposed by those who expect to rule.

The time line is, indeed, short. After decades of silent and denied preparation, the United Nations has made public the millennium year agenda which is crowned by the largest gathering of heads of state in the history of the world next September.

World government, called "global governance" by the U.N., will not occur on a day certain. It is a process that has been underway for years. The Millennium Assembly and Summit next September, with the adoption of the Charter for Global Democracy, is seen to be the point from which there is no turning back.

In a new fund-raising letter for the World Federalist Association, former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, known for a generation as "the most trusted man in America," calls for the creation of a standing United Nations army and U.S. Senate ratification of the International Criminal Court.

The World Federalist Association, directed by former presidential candidate John Anderson, promotes the idea of global government as the solution for many of the world's problems.

"The recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have shown that we must stand together, united as citizens of the world, if we are to create a world free of intolerance, injustice and violence," Cronkite says in his letter. "An empowered U.N. is our best hope for achieving such a goal – a global community that can solve our problems effectively, democratically and peacefully."

Specifically, Cronkite calls for:


"permanent U.N. peacekeeping forces for rapid responses to ruptures of peace";

"U.S. Senate ratification of the International Criminal Court treaty in order to bring international lawbreakers to justice";

"a strong and well-funded Commission for Sustainable Development to protect the earth's atmosphere and oceans";

"full and on-time payments of all U.S. financial obligations to the U.N. – which amounts to only $1.11 per U.S. citizen"; and

"a more democratic and representative U.N. that provides a voice for the world's citizens, not just governments."

Cronkite adds that "until we have effective international law to forge genuine, enforceable international solutions, many of the most vexing problems we face will continue to defy remedy."

The letter on behalf of the World Federalist Association's "Campaign for Global Change" is hardly the first time Cronkite has spoken out on such a controversial issue since stepping down as CBS News managing editor.

In October 1999, Cronkite spoke at the U.N. and called openly for world government – and an end to the notion of U.S. sovereignty.

"It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace," he said to those assembled including then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. "To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order."

Though Cronkite was known largely for his dispassionate coverage of the news during his tenure as CBS anchorman, he was recommended for the job by influential socialist journalist Blair Clark, late editor of the Nation magazine, according to Clark's obituary in that magazine in July 2000.

Blair Clark: Turtle Bay Enthusiast

I am sorry to report to the membership that Blair Clark, a longtime director on the board of the Turtle Bay Association, and in fact, the last of its founding members, died on June 6th. He was also a longtime friend of mine and my wife Colleen (and was indirectly responsible for our meeting each other).

In the course of doing the business of the board, I at times spoke to Blair on a daily basis, and he was interested and active in, not only the big issues of the board, but the day-to-day workings. Always up for a neighborhood challenge, I can hear him say, "Be proactive dear boy!" He did all of this with what another board member called, "humor, tact, and wisdom."

I knew that Blair had been the head of CBS News, and that he regularly consulted with Democratic politicians, both on the local and national scenes. While I thought I knew Blair quite well, I only learned at his memorial of the amazing wide-ranging influence his character and lifework had on all the people around him. After seeing the extraordinary number and breadth of family, friends, and others from the world of journalism and broadcasting, I had to accept that I had not really known the whole story of Blair Clark. (He owned and rode a motorcycle at his Princeton home!)

TBA member Walter Cronkite has said that in the CBS years Blair "was instrumental in assigning [him] to anchor the CBS Evening News." Dan Rather said, "[Blair] laid the foundation for the modern television era at CBS News." He played large and pivotal roles in reporting on the Berlin Wall, the leaders of the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.

Later, he was involved in Democratic campaigns for President, most notably with Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful bid.

He was associate publisher of The New York Post, editor of The Nation, worked on projects for PBS, New York University, and Hunter College, and chaired the Committee to Restore Roosevelt House.

Rose Dobrof, professor at Hunter College, said he was, "patrician by birth, and reformer by spirit and style, writing and working to correct inequities in our society."

It is clear that Blair was concerned enough about this nation and its people to work actively in the country's political arena to try to better it. But I do not think it started there for him, as he had a much wider view of social concern than most of us. It is apparent that it was important to him to sit on the board of the Turtle Bay Association, and grapple with the concerns of local community life. Blair liked to get a view of things from the grassroots looking up.

TBA President and Coalition Co-chair Bill Curtis is determined to demonstrate that opponents to Trump's colossal tower number far more than a few. On June 23, the day of the hearing before the Board of Standards & Appeals, TBA organized a press conference on the steps of City Hall and arranged busses to transport protesters. Walter Cronkite served as the spokeperson at that conference, speaking eloquently on behalf of the neighborhood. TBA board member Blair Clark lined up some of Turtle Bay's most distinguished residents and the Municipal Art Society to add weight to the Coalition's case.

The World Federalist Association (WFA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the empowerment of the United Nations so it is capable of preventing war, protecting the global environment, and ending international terrorism. WFA’s accomplishments include stimulating debate on the proposal for an International Criminal Court, participating in the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, sponsoring the Global Structures Convocation on Human Rights, and authoring legislation proposed in both houses of Congress. Interns work on WFA’s national activist program, The Partners for Global Change, as well as policy research, communications, fundraising, and student outreach. WFA was founded in 1947 and has 10,000 members.

New World Order
An image makeover helps a peace group face the future

When the World Federalist Association began reinventing itself last year, most of its staff members, trustees, and constituents thought it was a great idea.

Most agreed that the Washington nonprofit organization's name was outdated and didn't reflect its mission of promoting peaceful solutions to global problems. Because the public didn't understand the name, the group was having difficulty getting its message out. To make matters worse, the organization was often confused with another international-affairs group that shared the same office space.

"People who knew us liked what we did," says Heather Hamilton, vice president for programs. But the group had an image problem.

So in March 2003, the association began to change -- revamping its name, mission, vision, organizational structure, Web site, informational materials, and staff. The result was a new look, a new image, a new organizational chart, and a new name: Citizens for Global Solutions.

Winning New Gifts

Since its makeover, the group has found a more hospitable climate for its efforts to tap foundation grants and other support. "Some foundations had written us off before," says Ms. Hamilton.

Among the most promising signs was a $25,000 gift from a new donor -- someone who had been familiar with the group for years, had even worked with its staff, but who said he never would have written out a check to an organization named "World Federalist Association." Online fund raising is also beginning to pick up: Although the group never had much luck raising money through its old, hard-to-navigate Web site, the revamped site brought in $12,976 in the second quarter of this year.

The change reaches all the way to the top: The group's new chief executive officer, Charles J. Brown, a veteran of the Clinton administration and of Amnesty International USA, takes the reins next week.

Overhauling a nonprofit group, while continuing to operate day to day, was an enormous juggling act, says Aaron Knight, Citizens for Global Solutions' interim chief executive officer, who will soon serve as its chief operating officer. The process took long hours of staff and board time and stirred sometimes contentious debate among people whose ties to the organization had been long and deeply felt. But for an institution that was decades old and had not kept up with the times, he says, the change was sorely needed.

And, says Ms. Hamilton, it has been greatly beneficial to the group's work. "Within months of the changes, we've seen a lot of new doors open to us," she says. "It wasn't even that they were shut before, but they weren't even hearing us knocking."

Postwar Origins

The World Federalist Association was founded by military veterans and peace activists -- including the physicist Albert Einstein -- in 1947 as an effort to forge peace in the world. Back then, just after World War II, the word "federalist" called to mind a popular movement to unite nations of the world for peace.

"In 1947, most people knew what 'federalist' meant," says Mr. Knight. Decades later, instead of conjuring up images of world peace, the name was more likely to produce blank stares. "We weren't getting through to people," he says.

The group's newsletter, Ms. Hamilton says, didn't help convey the message. It was geared toward sharing information about its members, such as accounts of meetings and interviews with the group's founders, rather than promoting the organization's work on international-affairs issues. The Web site, she adds, didn't have a professional look or promote the association's work. "It wasn't very good at communicating anything," she says. "We didn't really use it for a lot."

The organization had two spinoff Web sites that focused on specific issues, such as its campaign to end genocide, but the sites weren't well coordinated. "We had a proliferation of Web sites and communications without a 'brand,'" she says.

In addition to its name and communication problems, the organization was often confused with a group that rented the basement of its town-house office. For years, the World Federalist Association had had close ties with the Campaign for U.N. Reform, a group that supports the United Nations' mission and works on improving its ability to carry it out. In addition to sharing office space, the two groups shared a similar vision and mission. They held specific interests in common, such as U.N. financing. Supporters would occasionally call to suggest the two combine as one permanently.

It made sense. Besides sharing the same goals, the organizations shared some of the same donors and volunteers. But each had its own staff, fund-raising appeals, newsletter, board, and logo. Each had a separate set of auditors and lawyers. Joining forces could save money, reduce overlapping demands on the staff, and create a larger, more powerful organization with far greater reach and influence.

Getting Started

The idea for change had been around for a long time, says Mr. Knight. A dozen years earlier, before Mr. Knight came to work for the organization, several staff and board members had tried to modernize it, he says, but they weren't able to get a consensus. Those interested in change were too small a minority back then, he says, and lacked a unified vision for the group's future.

It was Don Kraus -- then executive director of the Campaign for U.N. Reform and now executive vice president of Citizens for Global Solutions -- who prompted change this time around.

"It seemed because of the attitude of the [World Federalist Association] staff, it was really time to make this happen," he says. "We pulled together a proposal, and it was passed by my board and pretty much remained intact through the end of the process."

The trustees, staff members, and volunteers who were behind the change decided to enlist the help of experienced consultants to lead them through the thicket of decisions that lay ahead.

"We swallowed hard and got good advice -- and spent a lot of money," says Ms. Hamilton.

The group spent about $100,000 on consultants, who helped with market research and on restructuring the organization, says Mr. Knight.

Consulting longtime trustees from the start helped smooth the way for change, he says.

"A number of founders were 100 percent behind this from the very beginning, so it was not a pitting of new ideas versus longstanding ideas. This wasn't a battle of, 'Well, you've only been with the organization for five years, so you don't really care what this organization is and what it stands for.'"

The boards of both organizations, which each numbered just under 25 members, led the process, forming two committees to pursue two paths leading to change, says Ms. Hamilton: One was to work on the organization's name, identity, and message, the other on its structure.

The Name Game

The revamping effort began with cautious steps, and the association's staff members and committees took pains to keep all interested parties informed. The World Federalist Association had 12,000 members at the time, 300 of whom were particularly active. Print surveys and e-mail messages went out to those 300, asking how they felt about the organization.

Of all the steps that were taken to carry the group into the 21st century, the name change would prove the thorniest, says Ms. Hamilton. Some members were wedded to the old name, she says, and even those who agreed that it needed changing disagreed on what should go into the new name. The new name needed to be concise but descriptive -- a tall order since the organization seeks to influence many issues. It needed to convey a group involved in world affairs, peace, justice, democracy, and political action.

Of the 300 questionnaires sent out, about 120 responses came back, says Ms. Hamilton. "The overwhelming majority hated the word 'federalist' in the name -- and these were some of our most active, older members," she notes.

The response was so strong, says Mr. Knight, that he thinks the change should have taken place years before it did. The survey showed "much more strong enthusiasm for the name change and realignment than suspected, because we'd been hearing only from people who were opposed to it for the past several years. I think we might have been at a point to take action on this 5 or 10 years ago, but we didn't know the opinions of our core supporters as well as we should."

But a few people disagreed with the proposed changes, he says. Some members who had been involved since the late 1940s clung to the old name, he says.

"They said, 'This is my religion. This is my identity, '" he says. "It was hard for them to let go. It was like changing who they were personally."

Most people were eventually swayed, says Mr. Knight -- some by their peers, others by the results of market research, which involved focus groups with the public and telephone interviews with influential people, such as members of Congress, the news media, and foreign-policy experts.

The World Federalist Associations's peers in the public-policy field had long been lobbying for a name change. Eli Pariser, founder of the advocacy group MoveOn.org, once told Ms. Hamilton, "You'd probably be better off with something that doesn't immediately make people think of conspiracy theories."

For the focus groups, consultants chose participants who fit the profile of people who were likely to join the organization -- those who had voted in the most recent election, had college degrees, and were interested in foreign affairs. Some board members watched from behind a one-way mirror as participants commented on four choices of names for the organization. The original name conjured up a variety of inappropriate images. "Blue-haired old ladies," said one participant. "The World Wrestling Federation," said another.

Watching the focus groups "solidified the support of those who may have been slightly wavering or questioning 'do we really need to do this?'" says Mr. Knight. "After that experience, the sense was, 'We really need to do this. How we were communicating for the past 30 years is not working anymore.'"

Combining Forces

In January, the new name became official, and two months later, the group started using its new letterhead. The World Federalist Association and the Campaign for U.N. Reform have ceased to exist, though the new organization has both an educational unit -- the charitable Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund -- and a membership arm, the Citizens for Global Communication, which registered as an advocacy group under Section 501 (c)(4) of the federal tax code. Such groups are allowed to pursue more aggressive forms of lobbying than charities and foundations, but their donors cannot take a tax deduction, as can donors to groups classified under Section 501 (c)(3).

Each organization has its own board, and the number of active members in each group has been growing, says Ms. Hamilton -- and many of those members, she says, are people who would not probably have joined in the past.

More members, for instance, have participated in the organization's e-mail advocacy campaigns. Before the makeover, says Valerie Schrock, who oversees online advocacy efforts for Citizens for Global Solutions, about 1,000 members sent messages to their Congressional representatives per month. Since the group's new Web site went online in April, that number has increased tenfold.

The combined group has a single interactive Web site (http://www.globalsolutions.org) and a free e-mail newsletter that readers can use to learn about its programs and events, keep up with pending bills in Congress, e-mail legislators, and download reports and articles.

The quarterly print newsletter has a new design, and the articles are now written with an eye toward educating people about issues such as terrorism. The difference between new and old, says Ms. Hamilton, reflects "the difference between an issue advocacy organization and what is essentially a club."

The coordinated communications effort has helped Global Solutions gain more media attention for its work -- such as in The Washington Post, on CNN, and by recent mentions in Walter Cronkite's newspaper column.

"We've ramped up our media presence," says Ms. Hamilton. "In the past, we occasionally would have gotten a media hit, but not with this intensity."

A New Leader

The new staff is slightly smaller than the combined staffs of the former organizations, which numbered about 14 and now number 11, and the priorities have shifted. For example, one new employee spends half of her time focusing on communications.

The new combined staff will have a new leader: Mr. Brown, who was selected last month and whose appointment represents the culmination of the long process of transforming the organization, says Mr. Knight.

Mr. Brown "knows how Washington works and he really 'gets' the idea of how a national membership, education, and advocacy organization does its job," says Mr. Knight.

Mr. Brown says he was attracted to the job in part because of the recent changes, which he saw as emblems of a dynamic organization prepared to engage with important issues. "As CEO," he says, "my priorities will be to move the organization to the next level -- expanding the membership base, expanding our support, and enhancing the already terrific work that the staff has been doing."

The revitalized group's presence is being noticed by public-affairs groups and grant makers.

"Citizens for Global Solutions' new name and related communications efforts demonstrate an impressive commitment to applying some crucial lessons learned about how to reach broad audiences of Americans on global issues," says P.J. Simmons, project director and special adviser at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in New York.

The group's new attention to communicating its message -- along with its overhaul of its identity and its managerial restructuring -- cover the areas that a group needs to address to remake itself, says David B. Drake, a consultant in Portland, Ore., who specializes in organizational change.

But the work isn't done, he says. Before what he calls the "entrepreneurial buzz" wears off, Mr. Drake says, Citizens for Global Solutions must ask itself, "What are we doing well here and what do we keep doing to sustain some of these early gains?"

In the wake of its makeover, Ms. Hamilton says, the organization is better equipped to convey the importance of its mission.

"Now that we have a new name and mission and structure, we're more likely to send that kind of message," says Ms. Hamilton. "We're doing the same work, but we're not hampered by an outdated name and internal structure."

On her Relapsed Catholic blog, Kathy Shaidle points to Mark Steyn’s reprint of his column (December 12, 2002) on the anniversary of a mass murder committed in Canada in December 1989 by an Algerian-Canadian named Gamil Gharbi. A few years previous to the murder, he had changed his name to the Marc Lepine, to blend in to French-Canadian society. Steyn said:

“M. Lepine was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, whose brutalized spouse told the court at their divorce hearing that her husband ‘had a total disdain for women and believed they were intended only to serve men.’ At 18, young Gamil took his mother’s maiden name. The Gazette in Montreal mentioned this in its immediate reports of the massacre. The name ‘Gamil Gharbi’ has not sullied its pages in the 12 years since.”

Gharbi/Lepine killed 14 women, and only women, in an engineering class in Montreal University, using a Ruger Mini-14, a semi-automatic rifle in .223 caliber.

I recall reading about this at the time and wondering how he had done this without killing any men.

The answer is that he entered a lecture hall containing about 60 students, holding a rifle with at most 30 rounds of not very powerful ammunition. That is, it was lethal, but it didn't have stopping power, and he could have been disarmed by someone willing to fight back.

He fired two rounds into the ceiling and asked all the men in the room to leave. And they left. Here's the report, from crimelibrary.com

“Lifting his rifle, he shot twice into the ceiling. It was no joke.

“‘You’re all a bunch of feminists!’ the man shouted, his eyes now alight with anger. ‘And I hate feminists!’

“This time, he ordered the women to get up from their seats and the men to leave. A few moved to obey, but others remained confused. They wondered whether they should try to overpower the gunman, protect the women, or leave. The choice as to what was best was unclear. But after a few moments, the male students and teachers walked outside. In weeks to come, many of them would have nightmares about this moment, reliving it over and over, wishing they had acted differently.”

People have been told for years not to fight back, and these young men listened.

Steyn goes on to cite the other way of dealing with mass murderers: fighting back, preferably with a gun of your own.

“This spring, [2002] there was an attempted gun massacre at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia. But, alas for the Appalachians’ M. Lepine, there were two gun-totin’ students present who were able to pin down the would-be mass murderer until the cops arrived.”

There was a backstory to this one too, though. What Steyn doesn’t say here, because probably he didn’t know, is that the Appalachian School of Law gunman was a mental case from Nigeria named Peter Odighizuwa.

The late Sam Francis wrote about it at the time. He, somewhat harshly, blamed one of the victims, Dean Anthony Sutin, a liberal who was responsible for readmitting Odighizuwa after he flunked out. Sam wrote:

“When what really happened at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, earlier this month was the shooting of three whites by a black, however, there was no national crisis. The Rev. Jackson had more important business elsewhere; no local (let alone national) church leaders showed up to visit the families of the victims and demand justice; no FBI, no government officials, no politicians, and not much press, save the locals who quickly buried the story.

‘What really happened is that a man named Peter Odighizuwa, a native of Nigeria who had flunked out of Appalachian twice, blew away a white professor at the school, a white student and the white dean who had admitted him to the school a second time after he had flunked out once. There was a flutter of national news about the story before it sank into its grave, but only because the dean happened to be a former official in the Clinton Justice Department, a Harvard Law School graduate and something of a professional do-gooder. Apart from the death of a member of America’s ruling class, the story had little interest.” [Diversity vs. Safety (contd.): Innocents Pay Price In Appalachia Killings]

What Sam had to say about Sutin was that he was a liberal who simply refused to admit that Odighizuwa didn't belong in that school, both because he couldn't handle the work, and because he was showing obvious mental symptoms” "Because he insisted on ignoring the obvious truth that Mr. Odighizuwa didn't have the brains to stay in school and didn't belong there, Dean Sutin and two others are dead.”

And the media, reporting it, ignored all those factors.

You see, there's a tendency to ignore or suppress any details that don't fit the liberal worldview. For example Canadian feminists tend to think of the murders in Montreal as an example of Canadian misogyny, rather than Arab misogyny, of which it's more typical.

By the same token, they tend to think of this particular massacre as an example of "gun violence" rather than Arab violence, of which it is, again, more typical.

In the same way, the Odighizuwa case was spun by the MSM as a case of gun violence, a typical "school shooting," rather than as a case of immigrant violence, or African violence, or mentally ill violence, of which it was more typical. And even Steyn didn't realize this. [. . .]

In his review of Bowling for Columbine, Steyn said that Canadian blogger Colby Cosh was "a braver man" than he was for pointing out why there are fewer gunshot murders in Canada, which has gun control and no death penalty, both of which tend to increase gun crime. Cosh pointed out that Canada has fewer blacks, who commit more than half of US murders.

One of Latin America's most extraordinary political families is poised to produce another of the continent's Left-wing authoritarian leaders with no love for Washington.

Ollanta Humala is one of two favourites to become Peru's next president, a role for which, to believe his mother, he has been groomed from birth. [. . .]

But the father's real enthusiasm is for the eccentric philosophy of "Etnocacerismo".

This racist creed, which Isaac founded, calls on indigenous Americans, whom he calls "coppers", to take on the "whites", and their sidekicks the "blacks", and keep the "yellows" at a safe distance.

"Isaac Humala should be investigated by child care agencies," said a former interior minister, Fernando Rospigliosi. "God only knows what he put into his children's heads during their formative years."

Whatever it was, it prompted his children to take radical action, although Ollanta, 43, is now coy about his own attitude to his father's philosophy.

US Supreme Court's decision on "sodomy" will worsen the AIDS epidemic
(ACN) The fatal and horrific Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first identified among sodomites in the "queer" Castro community of San Francisco. It was here that the viral disease first took hold in the USA and than rapidly spread to other parts of the country. The infectious disease, primarily spread by the practice of sodomy, reached epidemic proportions in the predominantly "gay" Castro community of San Francisco because of promiscuous homosexual activities in the area's bath houses and public restrooms.

AIDS is still a predominantly homosexual disease but at times it can infect and threaten the normal heterosexual community through the sharing of dirty needles with a homosexual by drug addicts and through bi-sexuals. Approximately 98% of those infected with AIDS are homosexuals, bi-sexuals, drug users sharing needles with infected homosexuals, the wives or female lovers of infected bi-sexuals, those heterosexual men that have sex with a female partner of an infected bi-sexual, and some hemophiliacs that require constant blood transfusions. It all starts, however, through the practice of sodomy. The "anus" is one of the most filthiest parts of the human body where all types of germs and viruses exist. The practice of "sodomy", which consists in a "queer" inserting his penis in another man's anus, tears the delicate tissue surrounding the orifice, allowing infected blood or semen to be transferred from one person to the other. A person's anus was not meant by God for sexual intercourse but for the excretion of human waste products.

Today, it was announced that the US Supreme Court said it was OK for "queers" to practice sodomy by a 6-3 vote. This is no big surprise to those who are attuned to the nature of the "Jewish/Homosexual Agenda in the USA". Of the six votes in favor of sodomy, two, Ginsburg and Breyer are Jewish and three are homosexuals ( two of them in the closet and the other is latent).

The American people have been asleep for a long time and only wake up once in a while when they are hit in the head as was done by this horrendous decision by the US Supreme Court. Another "wack on the head" occurred recently when the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled to remove "One Nation Under God" from the US Pledge of Allegiance. The principal organization behind this effort, and behind the effort to legitimize sodomy, was the Jewish organization called the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU with headquarters in New York City has a Jewish controlled Board of Directors. Approximately 85% of their court cases are to defend so called "gay rights" and pretty much the remainder are cases to remove "Jesus Christ" and "Christmas" from the public schools. In the three judge panel that ruled 2-1 to remove "One Nation Under God" from the US Pledge of Allegiance, Judge Stephen Reinhardt is the husband of the Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California, Ramona Ripston. In addition, Supreme Court Judge Ruth Blader Ginsburg who ruled in favor of sodomy, was a former national head of the ACLU.

The increase of AIDS through the legitimization of "sodomy" will greatly benefit the Jewish dominated biological research laboratories. They are already receiving billions of dollars in research grants from the federal government. Many believe that the AIDS virus was actually engineered in one of these laboratories. It is possible that they already have the cure but are waiting to market the cure when AIDS reaches its peak. La Voz de Aztlan believes that some clandestine Jewish laboratories are inventing and spreading diseases in order to profit by marketing their cures. An example of this is "diabetes" that has reached sudden epidemic proportions in the Mexican-American community and "autism" among children. There is already a multi-billion dollar market in questionable diabetic pharmaceuticals such as "Glucophage". Also, there have been extensive reports in the alternative media of numerous high altitude airplanes over major cities in the USA "spraying" unknown substances into the atmosphere. The reports call the "spray patterns" contrails and the reports are saying that these sprayed substances are causing certain illnesses among the populations.

There is no question that America is not what it used to be. Many have lamented the lackeys in the federal legislative branch. The congressmen and senators are nothing more than "yes men" for the wealthy lobbies that bribe them. Things in the executive branch are worse. We now have a presidential administration full of shameless liars. The last hope was a strong and moral judicial branch. With this decision on "sodomy", however, it looks like there may be no hope for the USA. God "burned" the sodomites of Sodom and Gomorrah. Later the "Roman Empire" sunk into the gutter when the Roman Legions turned to sodomy. The USA will soon suffer the same consequences.