Top Ten UK Alternative Energy Projects

Solar Powered CIS Tower in Manchester

The UK’s top ten alternative energy projects have been named by the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). They include offshore turbines in Kent, the solar-powered CIS tower in Manchester and a wave buoy in Cornwall.

A target of supplying 10% of the UK's electricity from renewable energy by 2010 has been set by the British government.

The list includes three wind farms, three solar-power projects, and two examples of microgeneration, or projects with lower outputs.

According to the government, the 30-turbine Kentish Flats wind farm has been described as "the Ferrari of the turbine world".

Black Law A in South Lanarkshire was one of the largest wind farms approved in the UK, and the Cefn Croes project near Aberystwyth the most powerful when it opened in June.

The CIS tower in Manchester - the city's tallest building - was on course to be the biggest user of solar panels in the UK.

The biomass plant in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, was singled out for producing a "revolutionary new wood pellet bio fuel", created by burning sawdust and woodchips.

The wave buoy project off the north Cornwall coast was highlighted as a project that would "speed up the installation of one of the world's first wave farms". The site is being investigated as a possible wave hub location - an offshore electrical socket that would be connected to the national grid.

Cornwall Wave Buoy

“Revolutionary” Northern Ireland Biomass Plant

Top Ten UK Alternative Energy Projects

Solar Powered CIS Tower in Manchester

The UK’s top ten alternative energy projects have been named by the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). They include offshore turbines in Kent, the solar-powered CIS tower in Manchester and a wave buoy in Cornwall.

A target of supplying 10% of the UK's electricity from renewable energy by 2010 has been set by the British government.

The list includes three wind farms, three solar-power projects, and two examples of microgeneration, or projects with lower outputs.

According to the government, the 30-turbine Kentish Flats wind farm has been described as "the Ferrari of the turbine world".

Black Law A in South Lanarkshire was one of the largest wind farms approved in the UK, and the Cefn Croes project near Aberystwyth the most powerful when it opened in June.

The CIS tower in Manchester - the city's tallest building - was on course to be the biggest user of solar panels in the UK.

The biomass plant in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, was singled out for producing a "revolutionary new wood pellet bio fuel", created by burning sawdust and woodchips.

The wave buoy project off the north Cornwall coast was highlighted as a project that would "speed up the installation of one of the world's first wave farms". The site is being investigated as a possible wave hub location - an offshore electrical socket that would be connected to the national grid.

Cornwall Wave Buoy

“Revolutionary” Northern Ireland Biomass Plant

Splash

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Pond at Tallil Airbase (Ali Base) December 2004. The Ziggurat of Ur is in the distance. I watched a pair of Pied Kingfishers, a Kentish (Snowy) Plover, a Grey Heron and a fine Male Black Redstart here. The city of Ur was the traditional home of the prophet Abraham.



Though this blog is focused on Iraqi wildlife I will make a little detour on this entry.

A reader soon to deploy to Afghanistan asked a few questions that I'll try to answer here.

The first is: what resources are there on Afghan birds? I've only found a few references since Afghanistan has been somewhat neglected since the 1979 Russian invasion. A few old British texts describe the wildlife of the region. Birdlife international has a review of the birdlife of Afghanistan which has a mix of palearctic and oriental species and 460 recorded species. There is one Afghan endemic, Afghan Snowfinch (Montifringila theresae). Happily we have one recent trip report of 82 species made by Anssi Kullberg combining the observation of 4 trips through Afghanistan in 2002. Some spectacular birds are to be seen. A birder from Iraq would recognise many of the familiar favorites: Magpies, Hoopoes, Crested Larks, Pied Kingfishers, Indian and European Roller plus many others. They would also be treated to birds of Indian origin like Brahminy Starling, Black Drongo and House Crow. Some truly exotic birds like the Himalayan Monal, a colorful and rare pheasant, are also on the Afghan list. A somewhat pricey two volume guide has been published this year by Lynx in Spain. The Birds of South Asia is the first guide to fully cover the birds of Afghanistan and at slightly less than $100 US is a good investment for someone spending a long time in Afghanistan.

Another question involved digiscoping and blogging from a forward deployed area. Others may want to add their 2 cents here. I did not have a great camera for birds, nor a scope. If I had to do it again I would try to bring both. I missed a lot of birds because they were out of binocular range.

I found that blogging anonymously is the way to go. It simplifies things considerably and makes the command much more comfortable with your blogging in general. My self imposed rules were very strict because of my role in battalion intelligence. I never revealed my name, my unit or my location in the country. We had many incidents that I never wrote about on my other blog because a relatively smart person could identify my location from the incident and perhaps use it for battle damage assessment. When it came to my wildlife watching, any and all my writing was seen as universally innocuous and not an operational security issue.

I've started posting again on HomeRange, my general natural history blog. It started out as my nature observations but I let it slide in back in May. I recently changed the focus to whatever I feel like writing about, from my observations to interesting news items.

Australia: Alternative Energy Grants

Geothermal Plant

From geothermal power to better batteries, millions have been spent on alternative energy research grants in Australia, according to Rod Myer writing for The Age of Australia.

The AUD $23 million (approximately $17 million) spent by the Australian Federal Government under the first tranche of its $100 million (US $73m) pledge to aid the alternative energy sector has highlighted innovations by local companies to cure Australia's fossil fuel addiction.

Two companies awarded grants under the Renewable Energy Development Initiative (REDI) have developed a no-emissions alternative for base-load generation. Geodynamics received $5 million grant to help develop its geothermal electricity plant near Innamincka in the north of South Australia. Scope Energy, another betting its future on geothermal energy, received $3.9 million grant to aid development. Its principal, Roger Massey-Greene, says the grant will help finance a drilling program of 500-metre deep holes to prove up its resource. Scope plans to open a 50-megawatt plant, but Mr Massey-Greene says he hopes to see this expand to 1000 MW in the longer term.

Scope has a geographic advantage, he believes. Its site is near Millicent, in the south-east of South Australia, meaning it is close to transmission lines and the population centres of Melbourne and Adelaide. "We expect the cost to be very competitive with combined-cycle gas power plants," Mr Massey-Greene said.

Scope's geothermal technology will tap hot water heated deep in the earth and run it through a heat exchanger to generate electricity. Mr Massey-Greene likens this process to a "fridge operating in reverse".

Geodynamics' system will pump water through hot rocks and use the resulting steam to generate power. Scope's wells will be as deep as 4.5 kilometres. The technology that Scope is planning has been in use at a plant in Italy that has operated for 101 years, Mr Massey-Greene said.

Stage one of the plant is expected to cost $4 million per megawatt to construct, compared with about $750,000 for a combined-cycle gas plant. "But we have no fuel costs," Mr Massey-Greene said. Geothermal plants run at an output of about 98 per cent of rated capacity. Mr Massey-Green believes geothermal power has a great future. In New Zealand it provides 7 per cent of power needs and this could rise to as much as 15 per cent. Some in the market believe that Scope will float in the first half of 2006.

Melbourne-based Katrix will use its $811,000 Renewable Energy Development Initiative grant to further develop its new fluid expander that may enable solar energy to be harnessed for electricity. Founder Attilio Demichelli says the expander, which does the job of a turbine, will allow solar thermal energy to be adapted for small-scale use far more cheaply than photovoltaic systems.

Katrix is developing units in which solar energy will heat refrigeration fluid that will run through an expander linked to a generator to produce power. The expander is cheaper than a miniature turbine to build and has a number of advantages, including its ability to take gas or steam at 22 atmospheres (twenty two times atmospheric pressure) back to one atmosphere in one step.

Katrix projects that in the Californian market — once government solar energy grants are factored in — its system will return its cost to consumers in two to three years, compared with 15 years for photovoltaic systems. Mr Demichelli, a private investor, and inventor Yannis Tropalis have invested over $3 million in the technology in three years.

Another REDI grant, of $290,000, has gone to V-Fuel, which is developing a vanadium bromide redox battery. The funding will help develop a prototype of a battery that its promoters hope will be efficient enough to use to store power from renewable energy plants. Efficient storage would enable technologies such as wind power and solar energy to get over a bugbear — unpredictability, because no one knows when the sun will shine or the wind will blow.

V-Fuel principal Michael Kazacos says the grant is crucial to the company, which has raised only $400,000 up to now. V-Fuel has developed a five-kilowatt battery but is aiming to produce a 50-kilowatt prototype. That, he says, will cost $1 million, and further funding is being sought from another federal grant scheme.

"There is a lot of interest in Europe," Mr Kazacos said. "We have had offers of collaboration from there." The battery was 85 per cent efficient, he said, and "we are aiming at having a $200-per-kilowatt production cost". The vanadium bromide process was developed at the University of NSW by Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, who is a principal of V-Fuel.


according to Origin - Sliver Cells are "long, ultra thin, quite flexible & perfectly bifacial"

Origin Energy received a $5 million grant to aid development of its facilities for manufacturing solar energy cells using photovoltaic sliver technology. The technology aims to cut the cost of solar energy cells by reducing silicon usage by up to 90 per cent. Sliver cells are micromachined to less than 70 microns thick with solar cell efficiency running at over 19%. Silicon is the most expensive part of a solar energy cell. Origin Energy says it costs $11,000 to fit a house with a one-kilowatt unit. This would take 20 years or more to pay itself off. However, as energy prices rise and production costs fall, this payback time will be cut. Origin Energy also owns a 19% stake in Geodynamics and offers Green Earth electricity from 100% renewable sources to Australian electricity consumers. For more green energy in Australia see the government Green Power website.

Geothermal Energy: Hot Dry Rock

Article in The Age on Australian Alternative Energy Grants

Australia: Alternative Energy Grants

Geothermal Plant

From geothermal power to better batteries, millions have been spent on alternative energy research grants in Australia, according to Rod Myer writing for The Age of Australia.

The AUD $23 million (approximately $17 million) spent by the Australian Federal Government under the first tranche of its $100 million (US $73m) pledge to aid the alternative energy sector has highlighted innovations by local companies to cure Australia's fossil fuel addiction.

Two companies awarded grants under the Renewable Energy Development Initiative (REDI) have developed a no-emissions alternative for base-load generation. Geodynamics received $5 million grant to help develop its geothermal electricity plant near Innamincka in the north of South Australia. Scope Energy, another betting its future on geothermal energy, received $3.9 million grant to aid development. Its principal, Roger Massey-Greene, says the grant will help finance a drilling program of 500-metre deep holes to prove up its resource. Scope plans to open a 50-megawatt plant, but Mr Massey-Greene says he hopes to see this expand to 1000 MW in the longer term.

Scope has a geographic advantage, he believes. Its site is near Millicent, in the south-east of South Australia, meaning it is close to transmission lines and the population centres of Melbourne and Adelaide. "We expect the cost to be very competitive with combined-cycle gas power plants," Mr Massey-Greene said.

Scope's geothermal technology will tap hot water heated deep in the earth and run it through a heat exchanger to generate electricity. Mr Massey-Greene likens this process to a "fridge operating in reverse".

Geodynamics' system will pump water through hot rocks and use the resulting steam to generate power. Scope's wells will be as deep as 4.5 kilometres. The technology that Scope is planning has been in use at a plant in Italy that has operated for 101 years, Mr Massey-Greene said.

Stage one of the plant is expected to cost $4 million per megawatt to construct, compared with about $750,000 for a combined-cycle gas plant. "But we have no fuel costs," Mr Massey-Greene said. Geothermal plants run at an output of about 98 per cent of rated capacity. Mr Massey-Green believes geothermal power has a great future. In New Zealand it provides 7 per cent of power needs and this could rise to as much as 15 per cent. Some in the market believe that Scope will float in the first half of 2006.

Melbourne-based Katrix will use its $811,000 Renewable Energy Development Initiative grant to further develop its new fluid expander that may enable solar energy to be harnessed for electricity. Founder Attilio Demichelli says the expander, which does the job of a turbine, will allow solar thermal energy to be adapted for small-scale use far more cheaply than photovoltaic systems.

Katrix is developing units in which solar energy will heat refrigeration fluid that will run through an expander linked to a generator to produce power. The expander is cheaper than a miniature turbine to build and has a number of advantages, including its ability to take gas or steam at 22 atmospheres (twenty two times atmospheric pressure) back to one atmosphere in one step.

Katrix projects that in the Californian market — once government solar energy grants are factored in — its system will return its cost to consumers in two to three years, compared with 15 years for photovoltaic systems. Mr Demichelli, a private investor, and inventor Yannis Tropalis have invested over $3 million in the technology in three years.

Another REDI grant, of $290,000, has gone to V-Fuel, which is developing a vanadium bromide redox battery. The funding will help develop a prototype of a battery that its promoters hope will be efficient enough to use to store power from renewable energy plants. Efficient storage would enable technologies such as wind power and solar energy to get over a bugbear — unpredictability, because no one knows when the sun will shine or the wind will blow.

V-Fuel principal Michael Kazacos says the grant is crucial to the company, which has raised only $400,000 up to now. V-Fuel has developed a five-kilowatt battery but is aiming to produce a 50-kilowatt prototype. That, he says, will cost $1 million, and further funding is being sought from another federal grant scheme.

"There is a lot of interest in Europe," Mr Kazacos said. "We have had offers of collaboration from there." The battery was 85 per cent efficient, he said, and "we are aiming at having a $200-per-kilowatt production cost". The vanadium bromide process was developed at the University of NSW by Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, who is a principal of V-Fuel.


according to Origin - Sliver Cells are "long, ultra thin, quite flexible & perfectly bifacial"

Origin Energy received a $5 million grant to aid development of its facilities for manufacturing solar energy cells using photovoltaic sliver technology. The technology aims to cut the cost of solar energy cells by reducing silicon usage by up to 90 per cent. Sliver cells are micromachined to less than 70 microns thick with solar cell efficiency running at over 19%. Silicon is the most expensive part of a solar energy cell. Origin Energy says it costs $11,000 to fit a house with a one-kilowatt unit. This would take 20 years or more to pay itself off. However, as energy prices rise and production costs fall, this payback time will be cut. Origin Energy also owns a 19% stake in Geodynamics and offers Green Earth electricity from 100% renewable sources to Australian electricity consumers. For more green energy in Australia see the government Green Power website.

Geothermal Energy: Hot Dry Rock

Article in The Age on Australian Alternative Energy Grants

Alternative Energy Hungary: First Windfarm in Hungary

Kaposvar

Austrian company Öko-Energia GmbH is to invest Ft60 billion ($284.6 million) in establishing the first wind farm in Hungary, in the south Rábaköz region, 150km west of Budapest. Forty-eight wind turbines will be built, at a price of between Ft500-800m ($2.37-3.79m) and producing 2,000 kilowatts per hour.

Although the company has yet to sign any agreements with the landowners, according to Lajos Takács, the mayor of Dénesfa, this won't hinder the project. "I am sure the company will be able to come to an agreement with the property owners," Takács said.

Budapest Sun Article on Hungary's First Windfarm

Alternative Energy Hungary: First Windfarm in Hungary

Kaposvar

Austrian company Öko-Energia GmbH is to invest Ft60 billion ($284.6 million) in establishing the first wind farm in Hungary, in the south Rábaköz region, 150km west of Budapest. Forty-eight wind turbines will be built, at a price of between Ft500-800m ($2.37-3.79m) and producing 2,000 kilowatts per hour.

Although the company has yet to sign any agreements with the landowners, according to Lajos Takács, the mayor of Dénesfa, this won't hinder the project. "I am sure the company will be able to come to an agreement with the property owners," Takács said.

Budapest Sun Article on Hungary's First Windfarm

Alternative Energy in Central America

Managua, Nicaragua

Cancún, Mexico - With the signing of an energy partnership with Mexico, Central America is poised to see a steady supply of oil and natural gas from its northern neighbor.

Mexico's focus on hydrocarbons was clear in the plan, drafted by Mexican officials, which ranked development of alternative energy as only the seventh out of eight priorities for the region.

"Petroleum is an addiction; it's like a drug," Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco retorted during the meeting. "We have to understand that it's not going to be available forever."

Costa Rica has led the region in alternative energy, with 90 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric, geothermal and wind-powered generators, according to Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Costa Rica's energy and environment minister.

Nicaragua and El Salvador have also been investing in alternative energy projects. El Salvador gets 50 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources, according to Ismael Sánchez, a professor of energy sciences at the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Cañas in El Salvador.

Alternative Energy in Central America

Managua, Nicaragua

Cancún, Mexico - With the signing of an energy partnership with Mexico, Central America is poised to see a steady supply of oil and natural gas from its northern neighbor.

Mexico's focus on hydrocarbons was clear in the plan, drafted by Mexican officials, which ranked development of alternative energy as only the seventh out of eight priorities for the region.

"Petroleum is an addiction; it's like a drug," Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco retorted during the meeting. "We have to understand that it's not going to be available forever."

Costa Rica has led the region in alternative energy, with 90 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric, geothermal and wind-powered generators, according to Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Costa Rica's energy and environment minister.

Nicaragua and El Salvador have also been investing in alternative energy projects. El Salvador gets 50 percent of its energy from renewable energy sources, according to Ismael Sánchez, a professor of energy sciences at the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Cañas in El Salvador.

Michael Yon, one of my favorite bloggers in Iraq, has a contemplative post with lots of bird pictures he's taken in the last year. These include White-cheeked Bulbuls, Mesopotamian Crow and Spur-winged and White-tailed Plovers. I'm always pleased when I find someone, especially a soldier or former soldier in Michael's case, is interested in birds. It is an indicator to me of a person who can get outside of their immediate personal concerns. I guess it reminds me of the archetypal gentleman soldiers, renaissance men like the some of the British soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign who compiled their observations of birds, mammals, plants and archeology into reports published by the Bombay Natural History Society. Or General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General staff, enjoying a short walk watching goldfinch and stonechats on the eve of the Normandy invasion. I'm not sure if its coincidence or not but many of these multidimensional characters that I've met have been Marines. I'm not sure if there is something about the Marines that draws the soldier-scholar. Several I have met have been incredible students of history and culture and impressive intellectuals.

On another note I bought a copy of A Systematic List of the Vertebrates of Iraq by Mahdi and Georg (1969). There are 385 species of birds listed. Its a start to a comprehensive Iraq list. Avibase lists 416 species. It will probably be a few years before there is an Iraq Rare Records Committee and an official Iraq list.

Pure

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Singapore Skyline

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Howling Wolf

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Pink Flowers

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Jacksonville

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Lost

Moved to another URL

The Belmont Club has moved to this URL: http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/.
The underlying cause of the outage was probably that the blog had gotten too
big. I finally got Blogger to publish through the expedient of deleting some
very old and forgettable posts. But I won't push my luck. Henceforward, all new
posts will be at the new site http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

Choose your Ghetto

KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate
Center, asks whether a de facto test of political correctness is being required
of prospective teachers. In an article in

Higher-Ed Views, Johnson writes:

The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how
application of NCATE’s new approach can easily be used to screen out potential
public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn’s
education faculty, which assumes as fact that “an education centered on social
justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers,” recently launched a
pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are
“knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and
social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture,
relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and
candidates’ analysis of student work and behavior.”

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been
translated into practice through a required class called “Language and
Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students,
the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the
“oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session
before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several
students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content,
they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed”
on matters relating to race and social justice.

Johnson argues that a required commitment to "social justice" is sometimes
used as a proxy to require a set of political beliefs. But in a sense this
requirement only sets the seal on a long-term trend. Citing a survey "of 1,643
faculty members at 183 four-year colleges and universities" by three political
scientists, he noted that the great majority of faculty members were
self-described liberals.

Faculty members in the study were asked to place themselves on the
political spectrum, and 72 percent identified as liberal while only 15 percent
identified as conservative, with the remainder in the middle. The professors
were also asked about party affiliation, and here the breakdown was 50 percent
Democrats, 11 percent Republicans, and the rest independent and third parties.
The study also broke down the findings by academic discipline, and found that
humanities faculty members were the most likely (81 percent) to be liberal.
The liberal percentage was at its highest in English literature (88 percent),
followed by performing arts and psychology (both 84 percent), fine arts (83
percent), political science (81 percent). Other fields have more balance. The
liberal-conservative split is 61-29 in education, 55-39 in economics, 53-47 in
nursing, 51-19 in engineering, and 49-39 in business.

Some reviewers of Johnson's

work sharply disagree. One Modern Languages professor said "I have worked
with many colleagues over the years whose political and religious affiliations
remained unknown to me. When I recommended hiring candidates, I always did so
based on their academic credentials." Another basically argued that
conservativism is positively correlated with intellectual inferiority. Hence
there was no bias.

I think that a more thorough and unbiased study will reveal that far fewer
conservative Christians opt to pursue academic careers (outside of religiously
affiliated schools) than other groups. This, as I’ve noted previously, is
because scholarship in prestigious research universities IMPLIES skepticism,
questioning, challenging assumptions, revising traditions, and subverting
dominant ideologies—goals that the most conservative scholars and students
resist. ... The real dispute is whether or not this isn’t the way that it’s
supposed to be. Just as the media must remain “liberal” enough to question and
challenge political authority, universities are, in fact, one of the remaining
bastions of liberal thinking. Conservative beliefs and attitudes already
dominate the political, religious, and social spheres in America (not to
mention public school boards around the country), and it’s quite obvious that
these recent attacks on “liberal academia” are an attempt to spread that
dominant influence into our colleges and universities. So let’s be clear on
where and why the battle lines are being drawn.

Another commentator also believed that self-selection was a factor in
creating a liberal-conservative imbalance. But he did not put it down to 'smart
people choosing a smart career'. He argued that liberals and conservatives
diverged in their job choices because they valued different kinds of careers.

there also is the issue of the pool for recruitment. Why are there no
conservatives? Probably because conservatives tend to seek private sector jobs
that pay more. In every field, the liberals are those paid the least. In
physics or political science or english, teaching faculty are paid
significantly less than those finding either private sector jobs or those in
academic administration. So, the pool for junior faculty is more liberal
because conservatives get higher paying positions in the private sector.
Inside the university, conservatives become administrators (and again, are
paid more).

To this way of thinking, each political persuasion creates its own ghetto by
self-selection in which a liberalism is as unlikely to be found in some settings
as conservativism in others. But while this may be the case it would be
different from formally requiring a political point of view as a pre-requisite
for entering into a career.

Gorgeous George Galloway 2

A number of readers (JG) and commenters have written to say that the Senate
only posts prepared statements. Therefore under those terms, Galloway will not
have submitted a statement and there is nothing unusual about it not being on
the Senate Website and I apologize for the dramatic flourish. More
interestingly, commenter

Rick Ballard suggests (I think) that the Senate OFF hearings aren't really
going anywhere. The

Belmont Club post said, "Unless the Oil for Food hearings have come to a
complete dead end, Coleman and Levin's examination of Galloway aren't the
pointless thrashings of Senators at a loss to respond to the devastating wit of
the British MP but tantalizing clues to the direction they wish the
investigations to take," to which Rick Ballard said:

I rarely disagree with your analysis but I see zero evidence that calling
Mr. Galloway in response to his taunting of the committee served any purpose
whatsoever. Look at the lead up to his appearance and you see pure spotlight
politics, if he comes the committee gets ink if he refuses, the committee gets
ink. On top of that add the leak of the minority report to the Guardian prior
to its publication but after the invitation to Galloway and all I see is
Washington politics as usual.

To anyone thinking that the minority report was "innoculation" against
charges that the Senate was ignoring American misdeeds wrt OFF I would ask -
why did the Dem staff spend the majority of 128 pages on transactions that
amounted to far less than 1% of the stolen OFF funds? Sen. Coleman may indeed
be a bright and honorable man but Carl Levin hisses when he speaks and can
slide through grass undetected. The Galloway/Pasqua report is here and the
minority report is

here. Until I see full exploration of the Strong/Desmarais/Paribas links
by this committee I'm afraid that I'm going to regard it as a smokescreen. Don
Kofi is a sottocapo figurehead being set up to take a fall for Mr. Big. The
PowerCorp/Total/Final/Elf connections are where the real trail leads - that
and the material supplier kick backs - not the oil surcharges.

Maybe they are headed for a dead end. It's entirely possible that Rick
Ballard is essentially right about the Senate Committee, that it is hunting with blanks.
In this scenario there are too many places that the Oil For Food scandal
shouldn't go; owing to the extremely sensitive nature of the connections, so
only low-hanging fruit like Kojo Annan, Zhirinovsky and George Galloway are
going to take the heat. Galloway, with a kind of perverted sense of honor, may
have felt the kind of outrage a small timer feels when being made to hold the
bag and lashed out at the Senate investigation because he knows he was low man
on the totem. It would be sad if Rick Ballard were right, though it is entirely
possible. In the case the Oil For Food scandal isn't the road to justice, but
simply a fuzzy glimpse into the corrupt world of international politics in the
last years of the 20th century.

Gorgeous George Galloway

Reader KM points out in a private email that the testimony of George Galloway
before the US Senate has gone missing. According to VUNet:

The website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government
Affairs has removed testimony from UK MP George Galloway from its website. All
other witness testimonies for the hearings on the Oil for Food scandal are
available on the Committee's website in PDF form. But Galloway's testimony is
the only document not on the site. ... Press representatives for the Committee
had no comment.

The Senate Committee website
itself has these terse entries, here reproduced verbatim which does not say
that the testimony has been removed but that "Mr Galloway did not submit
a statement".

Panel 1

Mark L. Greenblatt [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

Steven A. Groves [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

Dan M. Berkovitz [View PDF] , Counsel to the Minority , U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations



Panel 2

George Galloway , Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow , Great Britain

Mr Galloway did not submit a statement



Panel 3

Thomas A. Schweich [View PDF] , Chief of Staff, U.S. Mission to the United Nations , U. S. Department of State

Robert W. Werner [View PDF] , Director, Office of Foreign Assets Control , U. S. Department of the Treasury

Peter Reddaway [View PDF] , Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs , George Washington University

The declaration that "Mr Galloway did not submit a statement" is
curious given the fact that he spoke for 47 minutes before the Senate, a
performance which Christopher
Hitchens, no admirer of Galloway, believed was a rhetorical
"humiliation" of the Senate. A verbatim transcript of Galloway's
testimony, together with a video record of the proceedings can be found at the Information
Clearing House. To account for the discrepancy between the factual existence
of Galloway's testimony and its nonappearance in the Senate website raises the
possibility that Mr. Galloway's oral testimony is considered distinct from a
written statement by the Senate rules or it has been expunged from the record
because it puts the Senators in a bad light. But there is a third
possibility.

The really striking thing about the Galloway's testimony as transcribed by
the Information Clearing House is how the Senators and the Member of Parliament
for Bethnal Green and Bow were pursuing a non-collision course. Galloway had
come to score press and public relations points at which, by all accounts, he
was successful at doing. But Senator Coleman and Levin seemed totally
uninterested in responding to Galloway's sharp political jibes. It was almost as
if the Senators were deaf to his political posturing. Instead, they focused
exclusively and repeatedly on two things: Galloway's relationship with Fawaz
Zureikat and Tariq Aziz. Zureikat was a board member of Galloway's Mariam
foundation who is also implicated in the Oil For Food deals. Tariq Aziz was
Saddam's vice president.

SEN. COLEMAN: If I can get back to Mr. Zureikat one more time. Do you
recall a time when he specifically -- when you had a conversation with him
about oil dealings in Iraq?

GALLOWAY: I have already answered that question. I can assure you, Mr.
Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a
bread deal, or from any deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we
publicly brandished on all of our literature, along with the other donors to
the campaign.

SEN. COLEMAN: Again, Mr. Galloway, a simple question. I'm looking for
either a yes or no. Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Zureikat where
he informed you that he had oil dealings with Iraq, yes or no?

GALLOWAY: Not before this Daily Telegraph report, no. ...

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D): Thank you, Mr. Galloway.

Mr. Galloway, could you take a look at the Exhibit Number 12...

GALLOWAY: Yes.

SEN. LEVIN: ... where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat's?--

GALLOWAY: Before Mr. Zureikat's, if I'm looking at the right exhibit--

SEN. LEVIN: I'm sorry. I was going to finish my sentence -- my question,
though. My question was, where your name is in parenthesis after Mr.
Zureikat's company.

GALLOWAY: I apologize, Senator.

SEN. LEVIN: That's all right. Now, that document--assuming it's an accurate
translation of the document underneath it--would you... you're not alleging
here today that the document is a forgery, I gather?

GALLOWAY: Well, I have no idea, Senator, if it's a forgery or not.

SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging.

GALLOWAY: I'm saying that the information insofar as it relates to me is
fake.

SEN. LEVIN: I -- is wrong?

GALLOWAY: It's wrong.

SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging that the document...

GALLOWAY: Well, I have no way of knowing, Senator.

SEN. LEVIN: That's fine. So you're not alleging?

GALLOWAY: No, I have no way -- I have no way of knowing. This is the first
time...

SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say since you don't know, you're not alleging?

GALLOWAY: Well, it would have been nice to have seen it before today.

SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say, though, that either because you've not seen
it before or because -- otherwise, you don't know. You're not alleging the
document's a fake. Is that fair to say?

GALLOWAY: I haven't had it in my possession long enough to form a view
about that.

SEN. LEVIN: All right. Would you let the subcommittee know after you've had
it in your possession long enough whether you consider the document a fake.

GALLOWAY: Yes, although there is a -- there is an academic quality about
it, Senator Levin, because you have already found me guilty before you --
before you actually allowed me to come here and speak for myself.

SEN. LEVIN: Well, in order to attempt to clear your name, would you...

GALLOWAY: Well, let's be clear about something.

SEN. LEVIN: Well, let me finish my question. Let me be clear about that,
first of all. Would you submit to the subcommittee after you've had a chance
to review this document whether or not, in your judgment, it is a forgery?
Will you do that?

GALLOWAY: Well, if you will give me the original. I mean, this is not --
presumably, you wrote this English translation.

SEN. LEVIN: Yes, and there's a copy underneath it of the...

GALLOWAY: Well, yes, there is a copy of a gray blur. If you'll give me --
if you'll give me the original ...

SEN. LEVIN: The copy of the original.

(CROSSTALK)

GALLOWAY: Give me the original in a decipherable way, then of course
I'll...

SEN. LEVIN: That would be fine. We appreciate that.

GALLOWAY: Yes.

It is clear that Coleman and Levin were attempting to pin Galloway down on
what he knew and when he knew it. They were also attempting to get him to
categorically declare himself on the veracity of the Zureikat document. In the
end, Galloway denied talking to Zureikat about oil deals with Saddam before it
became a public issue. He also undertook to evaluate the veracity of the
document which named him -- in parenthesis admittedly -- in one a document
related to Oil for Food.

SEN. LEVIN: ... I wanted just to ask you about Tariq Aziz.

GALLOWAY: Yeah.

SEN. LEVIN: Tariq Aziz. You've indicated you, you--who you didn't talk to
and who you did talk to. Did you have conversations with Tariq Aziz about the
award of oil allocations? That's my question.

GALLOWAY: Never.

SEN. LEVIN: Thank you. I'm done. Thank you.

SEN. COLEMAN: Just one follow-up on the Tariq Aziz question. How often did
you uh ... Can you describe the relation with Tariq Aziz?

GALLOWAY: Friendly.

SEN. COLEMAN: How often did you meet him?

GALLOWAY: Many times.

SEN. COLEMAN: Can you give an estimate of that?

GALLOWAY: No. Many times.

SEN. COLEMAN: Is it more than five?

GALLOWAY: Yes, sir.

SEN. COLEMAN: More than ten?

GALLOWAY: Yes.

SEN. COLEMAN: Fifteen? Around fifteen?

GALLOWAY: Well, we're getting nearer, but I haven't counted. But many
times. I'm saying to you "Many times," and I'm saying to you that I
was friendly with him.

SEN. COLEMAN: And you describe him as "a very dear friend"?

GALLOWAY: I think you've quoted me as saying "a dear, dear
friend." I don't often use the double adjective, but--

SEN. COLEMAN: --I was looking into your heart on that.--

GALLOWAY: --but "friend" I have no problem with. Senator, just
before you go on--I do hope that you'll avail yourself of this dossier that I
have produced. And I am really speaking through you to Senator Levin. This is
what I have said about Saddam Hussein.

SEN. COLEMAN: Well, we'll enter that into the record without objection. I
have no further questions of the witness. You're excused, Mr. Galloway.

GALLOWAY: Thank you very much.

In the exchange above it is abundantly clear that both Coleman and Levin
simply wanted to enter Galloway's denial of having discussed Oil for Food
business with Tariq Aziz in the record. Levin immediately ends his questioning
after eliciting Galloway's "Never". Coleman is content to merely
establish that Aziz and Galloway were
"friends" who had met "many times" before saying "I
have no further questions of the witness".

Unless the Oil for Food hearings have come to a complete dead end, Coleman
and Levin's examination of Galloway aren't the pointless thrashings of Senators
at a loss to respond to the devastating wit of the British MP but
tantalizing clues to the direction they wish the investigations to take. The
question that must have been in Galloway's mind -- and which is uppermost in
mine -- is what else did the Senators know? The persons named by the Senate investigation so far -- Zhirinovsky, Pasqua and Galloway -- reads less like a list of principals than a list of fixers. The truly remarkable thing about Galloway's many meetings with Tariq Aziz was how much time the Iraqi was willing to devote to an obscure British backbencher with no official power. The unspoken question is why Saddam should take the trouble to bribe Galloway, if it were Galloway who was being bribed. The Senators were building a causal bridge to something, but to what? I am in no position to say, but will guess that Galloway's testimony and its disappearance from the Senate website can only be understood in the context of what Coleman and Levin were trying to achieve. My own sense is that the investigations are cautiously nearing far bigger game than George Galloway; but that his evidence or his refusal to give it is somehow crucial to achieving this larger goal. Other pieces of the puzzle may exist but there are two the public know about which may cast an interesting light in hindsight on Galloway's words. The first is contained in the Volcker Commission files which investigator Robert Parton turned over to the Senate Committee and the second is the forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz. George Galloway may have appeared in the Senate but even he must be uncertain, until
the missing pieces are played on the board, what he really said.

The High Hand

Glenn
Reynolds notes that the New York Times coverage of prisoner abuse in
Afghanistan may not really be about prisoner abuse or even Afghanistan, but
about maintaining the prestige of Newsweek. He calls it "circling
the wagons", the idea being to teach press critics an object lesson in how
expensive it is to humiliate the mass media by catching them at sloppy reporting
by flooding the zone with stories similar to the one which was discredited .
That may or may not be the case, but it is nearly undeniable that the effect of
the media's coverage of American misdeeds has been to make the slightest
infraction against enemy combatants ruinously expensive. Not only the treatment
of the enemy combatants themselves, but their articles of religious worship have
become the subject of such scrutiny that Korans must handled with actual gloves
in a ceremonial fashion, a fact that must be triumph for the jihadi cause
in and of itself. While nothing is wrong with ensuring the proper treatment of
enemy prisoners, the implicit moral superiority that has been accorded America's
enemy and his effects recalls Rudyard Kipling's The
Grave of the Hundred Dead.

Kipling described how the 19th century Indian Army maintained the myth of the
Raj and upheld his prestige to compensate for their small numbers and military
weakness. When a Subaltern of the First Shikaris is slain in a jungle ambush,
his men know that they must teach the Burmans, first and foremost, how blasphemous
it was to hurt one of the elect. For the sake of their masters and themselves
the Shikaris raid the home village of the foe and slay them to the last man.
"And Sniders squibbed no more; for the Burmans said that a white man's
head must be paid for with heads five-score". Kipling's verse finds its
modern analogue not in punitive visitations against "insurgent"
strongholds in Afghanistan or Iraq -- which would be eagerly reported by the
press if they could at all find them -- but in calls for the arrest of the
American President or the dismissal of the the Secretary of Defense for a
handful of cases of prisoner abuse gleaned from a global battlefield.

For example,
a court in The Hague turned down a demand by a dozen plaintiffs who wanted to
force the Dutch government to arrest US President George W Bush when he visits
the Netherlands. Donald Rumsfeld has been repeatedly asked to resign over
'widespread prison' abuse in Abu Ghraib. The point of these calls for lopsided
retribution is to drive home just how dangerous it is to trifle with sacred
person and belief system of the enemy. It aims to paralyze anyone who even
contemplates such an act of lese majeste. The modern "grave of a hundred
dead" isn't a pyramid of skulls over the tomb of British Subaltern: it's an
American Secretary of Defense's head on a stake over a photograph of a jihadi
wearing a pair of panties as a hat. It is front-page calls for an abject
American apology for flushing a Koran down a toilet even if it was never
flushed down a toilet at all, except on the pages of Newsweek. It is
calls for an admission of guilt if only the mere possibility of guilt existed.
And if that were not psychological domination at par with the worst the British
Empire could offer in its heyday then nothing is. There are Empires today of a
different sort, but they maintain the power by much the same means.

There'll be some who say that toppling Saddam was meant to be an object lesson to the Arab world. If so, it has sent mixed messages because it was never prosecuted with the kind of frightening brutality that some have advocated. The image of the US after OIF is one of a giant afraid to hurt or even give offense to its enemies. Even in the battles of the First and Second Fallujah there were always extraordinary efforts to preserve mosques and similar places, probably to the glee and wonderment of the enemy. If the Kevin Sites incident and the subsequent investigation proved
anything it was that the Marines were no Shikaris.



But if the US has been at pains to avoid the image of ruthlessness, the enemy by contrast has made a special effort to magnify his brutality by attacking mosques, beheading women, mutilating children, etc. often on camera. And the really disappointing thing it is that the intended intimidation works. If George Galloway's standard response to his critics is a lawsuit and radical Islam's first recourse is a
fatwa then terror's first answer to insult is always the Grave of a Hundred Dead. Intimidation brings them respect from the very people who style themselves immune to intimidation.
It is plain to the lowliest stringer from the most obscure tabloid
that to insult America is cheap but to insult the local 'militants' very, very expensive. Kipling's cynical dictum is proven again and the lesson not forgotten.



We live in a strange world where the Beslan story vanishes in weeks while Abu Ghraib lives on for years. Maybe it reflects the inherent importance of the stories but it more probably demonstrates the media's ability to prolong the life of some stories while ignoring others. I hope it is not impertinent to observe that the media's demeanor towards terrorism bears more than a passing resemblance to cheap cowardice; but though outwardly similar it really springs from a high-minded idealism, deep courage and profound learning. Or so I hope.

The Grave of a Hundred Dead

There's a widow in sleepy Chester Who weeps for her only son; There's a grave on the Pabeng River, A grave that the Burmans shun; And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tells how the work was done. A Snider squibbed in the jungle- Somebody laughed and fled, And the men of the First Shikaris Picked up their Subaltern dead, With a big blue mark in his forehead And the back blown out of his head. Subadar Prag Tewarri, Jemadar Hira Lal, Took command of the party, Twenty rifles in all, Marched them down to the river As the day was beginning to fall. They buried the boy by the river, A blanket over his face- They wept for their dead Lieutenant, The men of an alien race- They made a samadh in his honour, A mark for his resting-place. For they swore by the Holy Water, They swore by the salt they ate, That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib Should go to his God in state, With fifty file of Burmans To open him Heaven's Gate. The men of the First Shikaris Marched till the break of day, Till they came to the rebel village The village of Pabengmay- A jingal covered the clearing, Caltrops hampered the way. Subadar Prag Tewarri, Bidding them load with ball, Halted a dozen rifles Under the village wall; Sent out a flanking-party With Jemadar Hira Lal. The men of the First Shikaris Shouted and smote and slew, Turning the grinning jingal On to the howling crew. The Jemadar's flanking-party Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter, Long was the list of slain, Five score heads were taken, Five score heads and twain; And the men of the First Shikaris Went back to their grave again, Each man bearing a basket Red as his palms that day, Red as the blazing village- The village of Pabengmay And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets Reddened the grass by the way They made a pile of their trophies High as a tall man's chin, Head upon head distorted, Set in a sightless grin, Anger and pain and terror Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin. Subadar Prag Tewarri Put the head of the Boh On the top of the mound of triumph, The head of his son below- With the sword and the peacock banner That the world might behold and know. Thus the samadh was perfect, Thus was the lesson plain Of the wrath of the First Shikaris- The price of white man slain; And the men of the First Shikaris Went back into camp again. Then a silence came to the river, A hush fell over the shore, And Bohs that were brave departed, And Sniders squibbed no more; For the Burmans said That a white man's head Must be paid for with heads five-score. There's a widow in sleepy Chester Who weeps for her only son; There's a grave on the Pabeng River, A grave that the Burmans shun; And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tells how the work was done.

The Great White North

The drama surrounding attempts by Canadian PM Paul Martin to hang on to power
by ignoring a no confidence vote and then offering a Conservative oppositionist
a Cabinet post to switch sides has taken an dramatic turn. Conservative
Canadian MP Gurmant Grewal tape recorded an attempt by the Prime Minister's
chief of staff, Tim Murphy to bribe him to change his vote. Andrew
Coyne highlights some snippets of the recorded conversation which are best
heard against the background of squeezebox music playing  'Speak softly, love, so no one hears us but the sky.
...'

Murphy: "if anybody is asked the question, 'Well is there a deal?' and
you say, 'No.' Well you want that to be the truth. ... So you didn't
approach. We didn't approach."

A recent Belmont
Club post noted that 'victories' won by the Left with these tactics were
more properly understood as acts of desperation by those who feared their long
term decline, as if in slipping from the pinnacle, they despaired of ever
regaining it again.

The survival of Paul Martin's government, shaken by scandal after scandal,
has been bought at the price of violating the spirit of the Westminister
system by ignoring what was effectively a vote of no-confidence until
they could bribe someone to cross the aisle to square the count. Martin
survived but only by bending the rulebook. A Canadian conservative victory
without Martin's shennanigans would have been an unremarkable and narrow
electoral triumph. But the Liberal Party of Canada's actions now mean that the
issues dividing political factions in the Great White North are fundamental.
By demonstrating a determination to hold on to power at all costs Martin is
increasing the likelihood of a radical, rather than an incremental solution to
the Canadian crisis.

Mark Steyn has more in his article A
Constitutional Coup

In the forthcoming Western Standard , I make the point that “the big flaw
at the heart of the Westminster system is that in order to function as
intended – by codes and conventions – it depends on a certain modesty and
circumspection from the political class.” Perhaps it was always a long shot
to expect a man as hollow as Paul Martin to understand that. ... But the fact
remains: by any understanding of our system of government, if the effect of
“an extra week’s delay” is to maintain themselves in power by one vote
they otherwise would not have had, it’s hard to see this as anything other
than a constitutional coup. Like Robert Mugabe, Paul Martin has simply
declared that the constitution is whatever he says it is.

What characterizes much of the Left today as exemplified by behavior from
George Galloway to Paul Martin is the increasing necessity to maintain their
position By Any Means Necessary. While that is dangerous and infuriating, it is
a reliable indicator that they have lost control of the system. Things just
aren't working the way they used to. And that, despite everything, is cause for
hope.

The Road to Perdition

Two factors that are normally considered in evaluating the outcome of a
contemplated action are encapsulated in the notion of an expected value.
An expected value is calculated from two independent components: the probability
of an outcome and the 'payoff' of that outcome, where a 'payoff' can be
negative: that is, a loss. But into the mathematics comes the human factor,
expressed in our risk/return profile. People can choose between two
mathematically equal expected values depending on their degree of risk aversion.
For example, in making a wager, one might be willing to accept a large risk of
losing a small amount and but be unwilling to take a small risk of losing a very
large amount, even though they may have the same expected value. That's why few
people are willing to play Russian roulette even for large sums of money.

In relation to the Newsweek Koran story fiasco, the existence of a
wartime situation distorts the editorial process to the degree that it increases
the consequences of a mistake. The probability of making an editorial mistake
may be the same as it was ten years ago, given the same standards of news
confirmation, but the consequences of an error may have drastically increased in
a post-September 11 world where news is disseminated to distant combat zones in
the blink of an eye. Newspapers are not alone in facing drastically changed
payoff profiles for traditionally accepted practices. By the standards of World
War 2 the modern US military has objectively reduced the probability of
civilian casualties, prisoner abuse, etc to a degree that General Eisenhower or
MacArthur would never have dreamed possible. Unfortunately, the political
consequences of those events have grown to such an extent that their increase
dominates the reduction in probability in the final product -- the expected
value.

All of this is common sense, but it is easy to forget when one is blamed for
doing what has always been done. The consequential difference between Woodward's
'Deep Throat' and Isikoff's 'anonymous source' is not necessarily the character
or competence of one over the other; nor even the veracity of their informants.
It's the thirty years between their stories: it's the fact that there's a war
on. In the world of probability times payoff, good intentions are not a factor.
Whether one means well or acts maliciously is irrelevant to changing the
practical outcome of an event. Thus, the US military has learned it is not
enough not to desire reducing collateral damage, it is important to
create systems and procedures to achieve this. The

small diameter bomb, special targeting software to reduce the footprint of
blasts, training, and many other programs costing billions are a more serous
proof that avoiding civilian casualties is a priority than any number of
heartfelt declarations, however sincere. Because if the size of the payoff has
grown, one had better damn well lower the probability to keep the expected value
constant.

So when Newsweek went to press with the Koran story on the basis of an
anonymous informant and no confirmation (other one denial from an official and
the absence of a denial from another) it was not really doing anything
untraditional, but it had failed to take into account the changed nature of the
world. The US Air Force could well have argued that sending massed formations of
heavy bombers to carpet-bomb the Muslim world was not any different from what
Curtis Le May and Air Marshall Arthur Harris did during the 'Good War'; but that
would have been absurd. The amazing thing is how long it took to understand how
the times had changed for the Press as well. That may be in part because the Press is spared the immediate and terrible
feedback of combat, to which the military is continuously subjected. The
military effort to reduce collateral damage is driven largely by self-interest:
the need to avoid unnecessary hostility from civilians in combat zones and to
maintain political acceptability for its assigned missions. The requirements of
survival have forced the military to evolve. But the Press in holding itself
above responsibility has escaped into a kind of Lost World which is even now
being shaken by a cataclysm.

The Agent 2

The
Drudgereport carried a report of this strangely shrill exchange at a press
briefing between Bush spokesman Scott McClellan and reporters. The words in the
exchange are important, but not nearly as significant as the atmospherics which
evoke Edvard Munch's

The Scream.

Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's
appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the
President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should
print?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage
them to help --

Q You're pressuring them.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --

Q It's not pressure?

MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the
United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think
Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that
they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward
and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this
report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not
my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report....

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American
military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me
have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the
Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in
place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And
so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part
to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see
best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies
and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where
this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image
of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so
that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help
repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing
that. That's all I'm saying.

Q As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the
story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really
happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.

The resentment is palpable. Not the resentment of the spokesman of a
Commander in Chief of a military vilified in an article that has already been
retracted, but the resentment of reporters whose prerogatives have been
questioned. "With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek?", one asks.
McClellan actually cannot finish a sentence in answer, because one of the
prerogatives of this particular reporter is to ask the questions. "You've
already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends." And the question,
although put in different words each time, is monomanaically the same: when did
you stop beating your wife? "As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first,
how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if
it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a
story." And because "somebody wrote a story" the presumption was that the story
had to be true, the retraction notwithstanding, as if it never existed, as if
the retraction were completely irrelevant from the discussion. In a sense it is,
because there was never a retraction. There may have been words which resembled
a retraction, but it was never, ever really made because it is absolutely impossible to ever make it.

Three Weddings and a Funeral

Four apparently disconnected events in the past few days have served as the
bellweather in the crisis called the Global War on Terror, a name now too narrow to
be apt, because it has entailed a confrontation not only between terror and
civilization but also Muslims and Christians, Left and Right, Democracy and
Facism, the Old World and the New and much else. The four events are the George
Galloway testimony before the US Senate; the survival through questionable
constitutional tactics of the Liberal Government in Canada; the retraction by
Newsweek of its Koran-flushing story and finally, the events in Uzbekistan.

The thread common to Galloway, the manuevers of the Canadian Paul Martin
administration and Newsweek article is the extent to which the
once-magisterial Left is now resorting to the shrillest and cheapest tactics as
defensive maneuvers. Take George Galloway. His grandstand performance before the
Coleman committee was brilliant employment of a weak hand. Galloway understood
his weakness on substantive issues and turned his testimony into a screed,
attempting to change the ground of the debate. It was wonderful theater, but
still a weak hand. The Coleman hearings are about Oil For Food; lost in the
noise is the essential fact that Galloway was a loose cannon under oath. In his
blather he has connected some dots which are going to stay connected, long after
Galloway's fifteen minutes of media fame have faded. I think George Galloway
will see his theatrical performance replayed more often than he would like.

The survival of Paul Martin's government, shaken by scandal after scandal, 
has been bought at the price of violating the spirit of the Westminister system
by ignoring after what was effectively a vote of no-confidence until they could
bribe someone to cross the aisle to square the count. Martin survived but only
by bending the rulebook. A Canadian conservative victory without Martin's
shennanigans would have been an unremarkable and narrow electoral triumph. But
the Liberal Party of Canada's actions now mean that the issues dividing
political factions in the Great White North are fundamental. By demonstrating a
determination to hold on to power at all costs Martin is increasing the
likelihood of a radical, rather than an incremental solution to the Canadian
crisis.

The Newsweek affair was, in its way, a demonstration of how the mighty
have fallen. The Koran-flushing story can only be understood in the context of
the media's unexpected failure to play is accustomed role in the shaping the
agenda on the War on Terror, the debate over the United Nations and above all,
the 2004 elections. Watching Newsweek build a vaporous story and getting
caught out is like seeing a once great prize-fighter resorting to eye-gouging,
headbutting and ear-biting on his inevitable slide down into the undercard. Like
Galloway and Martin, the Newsweek performance is one of ferocity, but
ferocity in decline. There was a time when the Left was represented by the
Jaures and the Jean Paul Sartres. Franco Molina once wrote a line for a Para general in the Battle of
Algiers: 'Why is it that the Sartres are all born on the other side?" The
Left could afford to speak down to its critics. But if Solina had waited a few
decades more he would have seen them replaced by George Galloway, Michael Moore,
Robert Fisk and Ward Churchill, who now await only the arrival of Bozo the Clown
to become the Five Amigos.

The bad news comes not from the headlines but the backpages, in Uzbekistan
where it is possible that the United States, in throwing in with President
Karimov, has entered into a tactical alliance with a tyrant against radical
Islamism: making him an ally -- yes -- but a tyrant just the same. Dan Darling
at
Winds of Change lays the case out dispassionately for his quondam utility
and possible future liability.

Karimov runs an exceedingly tight and draconian ship, but until quite
recently ... the majority of the population was hesitant about standing up to
him either because they thought that he may be a tyrant and a strongman, but
that in so doing he held the country together and prevented it from descending
into chaos. ... This is one of the reasons why this protest/rebellion,
regardless of the cause, is such a significant development: it means that for
a growing number of Uzbeks, the view of Karimov as being a necessary evil has
now weakened to the point where large numbers of them are able to protest or
even take up arms against his government, with the latter in particular being
a pretty big indication that somebody in Uzbekistan thinks they have a chance
of bringing down his regime. ... The willingness to stand up to Karimov (the
fact that these protests are even occurring is a sign of the impotency of his
fearsome police state) is probably a good thing in the long run in the sense
of eventually producing a stable democracy in the country. On the flip side,
it also provides some definite windows of opportunity for Hizb-ut-Tahrir and
the IMU to exploit if they can move quickly, since both groups have been at
the forefront of visible opposition to the regime.

This survey of events suggests (and it just my opinion) that the real strategic
danger to the cause of freedom and democracy isn't from the noisemakers of the Left
but from the temptation to betray principles for tactical gain. It lies on the
very same path that Galloway, Martin and Newsweek, in their cunning, have
taken. The Left hitched its wagon to the worst men of the 20th and 21st century
and it is dragging them into the dustbin of history. Let's go the other way.

The Agent

The Agency Problem arises when a conflict of interest arises between a
principal and his agent. The press often represents itself as an 'agent' of the
larger society, a seeker after the truth on behalf of the public. It is
perfectly legitimate to ask whether a conflict of interest can arise between the
media and the public. A moment's reflection is enough to establish it is not
always the case that the press -- whether a newspaper or an individual blogger
-- has interests which completely coincide with the general public because any
media entity is a proper subset of the public: being a part it cannot be the
whole. In the case of the Newsweek decision to print a poorly sourced
story on the descreation of a Koran at Guantanamo Naval Base it is pertinent to
ask how the costs and benefits of the magazine's action would be distributed;
whether the interests of the agent substantially coincide with the principal --
the public -- in whose name the press often claims to act. But any boost in
circulation would accrue benefits to the employees and stockholders of
Newsweek and not to general members of the public unless they had shares. It
is equally clear that any externalities arising from the Koran story would not
normally be borne by Newsweek. Though people might die, places destroyed
or riots occur they would not likely happen to people or places associated with
Newsweek.

The fallacy in the argument, of course, is the premise that Newsweek
acts as an agent for the general public. It isn't, and is free from any
responsibility as a public agent in the uproar it has caused by its retracted
story. Newsweek is not an agent, but the purveyor of a product for which
there happens to be a market protected by the First Amendment. This should be
clear, and there is nothing wrong with it. But the question arises: to what
extent is a commercial organization free to dump the external costs of their
business on others. For historical and political reasons, society has been
reluctant to make the purveyors of this sort of information accountable for the
full cost of their speech, reasoning it would be better for society -- the
Commons -- to bear the externality than to risk restricting expression. As in
any case where an economic actor does not bear the entire cost of its actions,
there is a tendency to overexploit the capacity of the Commons; to privately
appropriate the gains and leave the effluent on the village green to be swept up
by everyone else.

In this specific case, it is possible to entirely dispose of the argument
that responsbility is somehow the "Bush Adminstration's" because Newsweek
itself has retracted the Koran story. Whatever else the "Bush Administration"
may be guilty of, it is not guilty in this particular case; but since
Newsweek will not bear the costs of its mistake (because it is under no
agency obligation to do so) it is equally clear that the costs must be borne by
someone else in this particular case also: by the Commons; in this instance
largely by the elected agents of the public, i.e. the government and its
representatives, that is, by someone in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The interesting question is what should prevent this from happening again and
the answer, insofar as I can see, is nothing. The system works that way by
design choice. One thing that may create pressure for change is the increasing
cost of dumping such externalities onto the Commons. In a world where certain
groups are likely to detonate car bombs or radiological devices in response to
any real or imagined slight, the Commons may be unable to bear the external
costs of news organizations mindlessly purveying inflammatory and poorly-sourced
news products. That is essentially the argument for censorship in wartime. Yet
censorship itself imposes such huge costs that it is questionable whether such a
cure would be better than the disease. In the past the choice of evils was
avoided by resorting to social pressure like appeals to patriotism or personal
requests. A newsmagazine in 1944 would probably not even considered publishing
the equivalent of the Koran story on the basis of the slightest of sources and
without any collateral confirmation whatsoever. But we're not in Kansas any
more. Without that self restraint there is nothing for it but for the Commons to
keep bearing the full cost of Newsweek-type journalism until the system
snaps, to the detriment of all.