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1. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Target: NRA; Caught in the media's crosshairs
   published by The Weekly Standard
   Target NRA Caught in the medias crosshairs The Weekly Standard HoustonWas the National Rifle Association playing some sort of joke on the media In the press room at the NRAs annual gathering at the Houston convention center was a large cheese plate laid out for the fourth estates snacking pleasure It wasnt just a proletarian platter of cheddar cubes either There was brie and lots of chalky bits that contained herbs and looked like theyd been aged in caves in France I couldnt identify all the varieties because like most journalists Im not nearly as sophisticated as I like to think I am But it sure seemed as if the NRA was subtly reminding the media of the class differences between the cheese eating liberals who populate newsrooms and the gun owners out in the real MericaIt turns out I was the one making unjustified assumptions With 5 million members nationwide and 86000 people attending the convention in Houston the NRA cuts across pretty much all strata of American life Shortly after encountering the cheese plate I walked past a booth on the convention floor for the NRA Wine Club Selections include a perfectly balanced nicely concentrated extraordinary Pinot Noir which is both floral and fruitful a charming and silky French Bordeaux blend and a versatile California Cabernet Sauvignon that showcases impressions of blackberry dark cherry and cocoa Nice pairings for yes a cheese plateThe NRA offers an incredible array of services to members that have nothing to do with guns if you ever need a reverse mortgage the NRA can help Across acres of convention space there were civic and charitable organizations doing all sorts of admirable things for veterans handicapped people and at risk youth You couldnt walk 10 feet without tripping over reams of gun safety information and there were almost as many vendors selling gun safes and other devices to secure firearms as there were guns and ammo manufacturers Yes there were thousands of guns on display but this wasnt a conventional gun show Live ammunition and guns werent for sale and they were all under glass or attached to display cases for safe handlingMost people havent read anything about the NRA that doesnt begin and end with its supposed culpability in mass shootings As the news reports started coming back from the NRA convention it was clear the media still reeling from the failure of gun control legislation in the Senate were out to exact their revenge NPR went with the headline At NRA Convention Dueling Narratives Displayed With Guns Dueling however implies an equal fight In fact there were about 20 40 antigun protesters across the street and some 86000 Second Amendment boosters inside the convention center Yet NPR chronicled the protesters in comically florid prose As the young woman raw with emotion stands in the wind thousands of people stream by without noticing her eager to get inside to the conventionThough no honest person would contend that the NRA crowd was anything but exceptionally polite and orderly journalists venturing inside the convention did their best to discredit the NRA by going freak hunting Some of this was more odd than objectionable see BuzzFeeds slideshow The 20 Most Important Beards at the NRA Convention But among thousands of attendees and over a thousand vendors hawking every imaginable gun related product finding a few objectionable people was a mathematical certainty Sure enough some yahoo was selling a target that looked like a zombie Obama The NRA quickly moved to ban it from the convention but not before every media outlet on the planet picked up the story and Al Sharpton let loose on MSNBCAmid the hyperbole and irrational hatred of gun ownership there might have been a legitimate story Based on the wares at this years NRA convention the gun industry has a faddish and lamentable obsession with zombie and video game inspired products You could say the same of the movie industry thoughMeanwhile the media did their level best to prove they were not in a position to look down their nose at gun owners Guardian columnist Ana Marie Cox took aim at NRA keynote speaker Glenn Beck and misfired badly Beck let loose with a metaphor regarding the full armor of God astonishing for its cohesiveness if not its imagery We will fight by strapping on the full armor of God We will stand firm with the belt of truth the breastplate of righteousness the shield of faith the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit Beck says many ill advised things but the fact Cox didnt know he was quoting a well known passage from Ephesians suggests shes not the person to put him in his placeElspeth Reeve of the Atlantic Wire wrote an even more preposterous account of the convention illustrated with unflattering animated GIFs and conjuring the image of watching Sarah Palin barf Noted Reeve Several speakers devoted part of their speeches to media criticism saying the.
   
2. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Words at Play; Cracking the code of the Workshop for Potential Literature
   published by The Weekly Standard
   Words at Play Cracking the code of the Workshop for Potential Literature The Weekly Standard Did you hear about the Oulipian stripper She delivered a lipogram before vanishing with an invisible winkIf this joke means nothing to you then you are like myself and 999 percent of other humans not a member of the exclusive club of verbal wrestlers jugglers and tightrope walkers who call themselves the OuLiPo the Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle or Workshop for Potential Literature The OuLiPo has a quasi mythical cult status in France partly because it is so exclusive asking to join automatically debars you from membership and because its 38 members have included Marcel Duchamp Italo Calvino and Georges Perec leading lights in the avant garde of postmodern art philosophy and fictionLuckily a young Yale graduate called Daniel Levin Becker has gained membership in this mysterious enclave only the second American ever to do so In Many Subtle Channels he reports from the frontier about the cultural antics of a group that has stimulated some of the most influential as well as some of the most frivolous works of European literature Becker is clearly entranced by the OuLiPo and his likably geeky fascination both with its annals and its ongoing activities draws readers in until we are persuaded that despite its reputation as a historical coterie the OuLiPos ideas remain alive and offer something of potential value to everyoneThe OuLiPo was founded in Paris in 1960 as an invitation only supper club by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais both polymath writers who wanted to explore the multidimensional possibilities of writing through inquiry and experimentation A key feature of the experiments would be structural constraints schemes and forms designed through limitation to force the mind into agile creative responses A lipogram for example is a text that deliberately excludes one or more letters The most famous example is Georges Perecs detective novel The Disappearance which does not use the letter e As Becker explains the OuLiPo is precise about what it is notIt is not a movement or an ism or a school It does not have an agenda aesthetic or political or otherwise It does not purport to tell anyone what literature should or must be What it does is tell anyone who cares to listen about what literature could and might be sometimes by speculation other times by demonstrationOulipians come from different walks of life computer programming telecommunications poetry philosophy and each will approach differently the questions of what literature could be and what could be literature The mesh of scientists and writers is important The early members of the OuLiPo were particularly fascinated by the linkages between mathematics and language One of the first Oulipian works Queneau produced is A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems It is a book of 10 sonnets each with 14 lines of identical scansion and end rhyme chemise frise marquise Each poem fits onto a page cut into 14 strips one for each line The idea is that gingerly flipping the strips back and forward as you may have done in childhood to create animals with varying heads bodies and tails you can create 100 billion potential poems It is a small but also practically bottomless textLater works like Italo Calvinos If On a Winters Night a Traveller and Georges Perecs Life A Users Manual employ more subtle numerical codes to structure their narratives Calvinos novel makes you the reader the protagonist of his story You discover the beginnings of different texts in various genres and styles but each time just as you start to be sucked into the particular tale it breaks off The remaining pages are missing and your pursuit of them involves increasingly desperate visits to a bookshop a publisher and jail Like Scheherazade Calvino teases us with the coitus interruptus of the infinitely deferred story bringing us back to a consciousness of the process of reading as a self referential adventure Such Oulipian texts allow us to enjoy imaginatively what is not there as much as what is they also revel in the potential accidents that constantly occur in and to writing As Calvino musesIt is only through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwritten becomes legible that is through the uncertainties of spelling the occasional lapses oversights unchecked leaps of the word and penAnyone who has ever seen a sign in the street reading Bill Stickers will be Prosecuted and has felt tempted to add the time honored retort Bill Stickers is Innocent has experienced the protean energy of language which allows it to say more than we intend Oulipians love to expose and embrace the accidental pun the misspelling that turns out to be full of suggestive meanings Attempts at censorship inevitably speak of the very matters they seek to repress Oulipians are drawn to exploring via literature the paradoxical relationship between limitation and freedomIn the immediate postwar period that relationship was fraught with historical significance Like Calvino Francois Le Lionnais cofounder of the OuLiPo had been a member of the Resistance Le Lionnais by profession an industrial chemist was interrogated tortured and put to work designing and sometimes sabotaging V2 missiles for the Germans He was sent to concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dora Mittelbau He survived by reconstructing in his minds eye in astonishing detail favorite paintings that he had seen He then imagined characters from one masterpiece visiting and interacting with ones in another He countered the physical confines of imprisonment by creating an imaginative plane in which the boundaries of art time materiality the distinctness of the individual work dissolvedThe OuLiPo was born over a decade later but its playful yet serious postmodern experimentation can in part be traced to the need for escape and renewal that the trauma of Nazi occupation produced That Oulipians are rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape is a powerful metaphor for citizens choosing to revisit by their own volition the notion of constraint as a source of artistic powerBeckers account of the OuLiPo begins with.
   
3. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Mercator swings into the red with US$77.7m loss
   published by The Business Times
   The Business Times Mercator swings into the red with US$77.7m loss One-time hit of US$52.6 million revenue for the year down 26% DRY bulk shipping group Mercator Lines Singapore has posted a US$77.7 million group net loss for the year ended March 31 2013 against a net profit of US$7.8 million the previous year Revenue dropped 26 per cent to US$108.7 million-due mainly to a fall in spot rates and new contracts at rates below the previous rates In addition the group's bottom line took a one-time hit to the tune of US$52.6 million-comprising US$29.4 million compensation for early termination agreements for its long term charter-in vessels and a US$23.2 million loss on disposal of a marine vessel in March this year The sale proceeds were used to reduce the company's debt and liabilities and improve its cashflow In March Mercator sold Sri Prem Putli a very large ore carrier vessel for net proceeds of US$44.4 million below the vessel's book value on date of delivery to its new owners.
   
4. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Relish a Thai high
   published by The Business Times
   The Business Times Relish a Thai high Adam Cliff's overhaul of Kha restaurant's menu puts it in pole position among Thai eateries here writes JAIME EE strong NEW CHEF /strong strong Kha /strong strong Martin No 38 /strong strong 38 Martin Road /strong strong Tel 6476-9000 /strong strong Open for lunch and dinner daily 12pm to 3pm 6pm to 11pm /strong WHEN it comes to Thai food you don't mess with David Thompson He looks Australian on the outside but inside you can't get any more Thai than the chef who made his name first Down Under and then in London's now defunct Nahm which at its peak held a Michelin star He's lived over 20 years in Bangkok and now presides over Nahm in the Metropolitan hotel where his no-holds-barred Thai food isn't just authentic he uses original recipes that even the Thais themselves don't bother to use anymore.
   
5. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Retailers forced to make tough decisions amid labour crunch
   published by The Straits Times
   The Straits Times Retailers forced to make tough decisions amid labour crunch p Some shutting less profitable outlets freezing expansion plans /p WITH no respite expected for the tight labour market some retailers in Singapore are shutting their least profitable outlets freezing expansion plans and even cutting opening hours With rents going up at the same time it seems that they have no choice Rent and labour make up over 70 per cent of a typical retailer's operating costs according to recent estimates by the Singapore Retailers Association SRA A small shift could easily push an outlet into the red Take Masterfix which specialises in key-cutting dry-cleaning and shoe-mending It had nine outlets but the three least profitable ones closed in the past year This also allowed owner Webster Tan to bolster staff numbers at his remaining six outlets now staffed with one employee each at any one time The 40-year-old who personally helps out at three outlets daily lost two foreign workers and three local workers last year and has been trying in vain to replace them.
   
6. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM China tightens ideological screws
   published by The Straits Times
   The Straits Times China tightens ideological screws CHINA is once again tightening the screws of ideological control by barring universities and the media from discussing or writing about seven "dangerous" topics These are universal values press freedom civil society civil rights errors of the Chinese Communist Party CCP crony capitalism and judicial independence Such "dangerous Western influences" are detrimental to the ruling status of the CCP and hence "every cadre should fight earnestly against them" according to a party document The May 13 document entitled Report on the Current Situation of the Ideological Front summarises the main conclusions of a meeting of the National Conference of Chiefs of Propaganda Departments in January It would have been the first national propaganda meeting since Mr Xi Jinping took over as CCP chief last November and should bear his personal imprints.
   
7. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Celebrity Escort Dishes Red Carpet Secrets
   published by CBS Miami
   MIAMI (CBSMiami) – It’s a celebrity secret – red carpet escorts for rich and famous women. As important as the dress, the shoes and the jewelry, the most essential red carpet accessory is one you wouldn’t even know. “It was this whole world nobody even ...
   
8. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Taylor Swift takes 8 trophies
   published by Wilkes-Barre Times Leader
   She walks off with eight of 11 awards, including top artist and top Billboard 200 album. for “Red.” Story Tools Print| EMail | Save | Hear QR Send to Kindle Font size: Font family: Font weight: \ Text align: Translate Page: ...
   
9. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Billboard Music Awards 2013 Best Dressed: Chloe Moretz, Carly Rae Jepsen, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and more
   published by Sugarscape
   It's a red carpet frock off It wouldn't be an awards show without a pile of fancy red carpet dresses to have an ogle of and the celebs weren't ones to disappoint at the 2013 Billboard Music Awards held at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. There were ...
   
10. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Glenn Milgram at Honors Bridge Club
    published by New York Times
    Glenn Milgrim of New York City was the main architect of the Red Hook charity event at the Honors Bridge Club in Manhattan on May 8. It was therefore fitting that he and his partner, R. Jay Becker of New York City, had the highest score. The diagramed deal was declared by Becker.
    
11. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM 'The Voice' to Keep Alternating Its Judges
    published by New York Times
    NBC will bring back its original coach lineup for the fall edition of its biggest hit,'' The Voice,'' the network announced on Friday. That means Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera will be back to join the red-chaired panel with Blake Shelton and Adam Levine for the show's new season, starting in September. Mr. Shelton and Mr. Levine will again appear in both editions of...
    
12. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Late Homers Propel Phillies Past Reds
    published by New York Times
    Freddy Galvis and Erik Kratz each homered off closer Aroldis Chapman in the bottom of the ninth inning Sunday, rallying the Philadelphia Phillies past the visiting Cincinnati Reds for a stunning 3-2 victory. Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee pinch-ran and was caught trying to steal second base, but Chapman did not record another out. BRAVES 5, DODGERS 2 Ramiro Pena...
    
13. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Singing a Happier Tune in Cannes
    published by New York Times
    Kennedy,'' sung by Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver-- who play three bearded 1961 folkies warbling and strumming through a space-race ditty-- the Cannes audience started to laugh and clap. Mr. Isaac, wearing a deadpan expression that wavers between the soulful and soul-sick, plays Llewyn, a New York folk musician groping to find his existential way in the...
    
14. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Who Cares Who Did It? Why Is More the Issue
    published by New York Times
    Set in Vancouver in the same way'' Rookie Blue'' is set in Toronto-- very subtly, so as not to confuse or turn off American viewers-- ABC's new imported crime drama,'' Motive,'' offers a common Canadian trade-off. It's reasonably smart, reasonably interesting and reasonably well acted without being particularly good. Either way, it's likely to stick around: a second season has...
    
15. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Cahill's Late Header Lifts Red Bulls
    published by New York Times
    Tim Cahill scored on a header off a crossing pass from Juninho in second-half stoppage time Sunday, lifting the Red Bulls to a 1-0 victory over the Los Angeles Galaxy at Harrison, N.J. It was the fifth win in the last six games for the Red Bulls.
    
16. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Worth Noting
    published by Credit Union Journal, The
    COLUMBIA, S.C. and RALEIGH, N.C.- The boards of the South Carolina CU League and North Carolina CU League voted to recommend a merger of two groups. The announcement follows the proposed merger of the Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma leagues, the combination of the Florida and Alabama leagues a few years ago, and of the Oregon and Washington leagues the year before that.
    
17. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Radioactive Regime; Iran and its apologists
    published by The Weekly Standard
    Radioactive Regime Iran and its apologists The Weekly Standard The list is long of Occidentals whove fallen for Persia This isnt surprising Compared with Arab lands save Egypt Iran has a longer history Hegel described the Persians as the first Historic people and a more layered modern identity Compared with the Turks whose indefatigable martial spirit is reified in the unadorned stone power of Istanbuls magnificent mosques Iranians are more playful and mercurial Isfahans Sheikh Loftallah Mosque with its delicate polychrome tiles its shifting asymmetrical shapes radiating from the domes apex as a peacock captures brilliantly the Persian love of complexity synthesis and whimsy Its patron Shah Abbas the Great a curious wine loving absolute monarch captured the imagination of contemporary Europeans including ShakespeareStubbornly attached to their Indo European language the people of the Iranian plateau poured their genius into poetry also art architecture and an eclectic blend of faiths which captivated their Greek Arab Turkish Mongol and British conquerors Much like English which resists and absorbs everything thrown at it Persian envelops Before reaching manhood Ottoman princes were forbidden to learn it the language of diplomacy and high culture among Muslims throughout much of the medieval and modern periods since the aesthetic pull and literary range of Persian could lead innocent Turkish speaking Sunni boys to Shiism the faith of the empires most dangerous Muslim foe Its not surprising that the prophet Muhammad was depicted in human form in medieval Persian miniatures a sacrilegious act that would get an artist jailed probably executed in todays Islamic RepublicWhich brings us to the question Why do so many foreign policy types after 34 years of seeing the revolution in action seeing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei endlessly vent their loathing of the United States in the most sincere religious terms stubbornly cling to the idea that the Islamic Republic and this country ought to be able to work out their differences Analysis and policy should be divisible A thorough examination of Khameneis words and actions reveals a tirelessly anti American terrorism addicted Muslim paladin chosen by divine fate and forged by personal suffering Nonetheless many big names in Iran policy still prefer containment of an Iranian nuke to preemption The Brookings Institutions Ken Pollack in his soon to be published book Unthinkable Iran the Bomb and American Strategy advances a powerful if ultimately unsatisfying argument in favor of containment while limning a damning picture of the Islamic Republic This is rare Usually arguments for engagement or containment follow more fiction than fact portraits of the mullahs in power Are Irans many Western apologists analytically challenged deceitful or just scared so stiff of another war in the Middle East that they secularize and sanitize the clerical regimeWashington is now in a self imposed lull on the Iranian nuclear question awaiting the Islamic Republics presidential election on June 14 We know that this election is meaningless for the atomic program that Khamenei not Irans president who will probably be personally approved by the supreme leader before the election has controlled the nuclear dossier from the beginning Hassan Rowhani the former nuclear negotiator a moderate who openly bragged that Tehran had successfully prolonged negotiations to advance its atomic designs was clear in his memoirs about who runs the show Khamenei The White House understandably wants to avoid the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency issues so damning a report on the Islamic Republics advance that the president and his senior advisers are forced to decide whether America preemptively strikes or acquiesces to a bomb in Khameneis handsA plethora of sanctions are scheduled to take effect on July 1 any or all of which can be waived by the president The administration is currently trying to stall new sanctions legislation in the Senate Secretary of State John Kerry wants congressional sources say more diplomatic running room though this go slow approach tried before by the Europeans and the Americans has stopped neither spinning centrifuges nor progress at the plutonium producing heavy water plant at ArakSo Many CentrifugesThe West and the Islamic Republic may finally be nearing the denouement of their nuclear standoff As Tehran gradually replaces its first generation centrifuges with more efficient models and improves the performance of all its machines an undetectable breakout capacity the time needed to enrich enough uranium for a bomb to weapons grade is coming Probably by mid 2014 the regime will have the ability to convert its 20 percent enriched uranium to weapons grade too rapidly for the United States to stop it militarily The Arak facility meanwhile which will produce separated plutonium appears ready to go online by mid 2014 As David Albright the nonproliferation expert at the Institute for Science and International Security has tirelessly pointed out a breakout capacity of three weeks would be almost impossible for Western intelligence and even the IAEA with its weekly and spot inspections of the Iranian facilities to detect And supposing a breakout were detected it is difficult to imagine Washingtons unwieldy foreign policy process and cautious president gearing up a preemptive strike within 21 daysBy 2015 the breakout period could well be one week Olli Heinonen the former number two at the IAEA and now at Harvards Belfer Center worries that the regime may already have secret storage facilities for enriched uranium IAEA inspectors privately confess that they dont know where Iran is building its centrifuges though they have educated guesses Its likely that neither the CIA nor the French foreign intelligence service the DGSE which has been tracking Irans nuclear program fairly seriously for decades has a better idea than the IAEA inspectors According to a plugged in French official France has tried to put centrifuge production on the table at meetings with Tehran Perhaps still hoping for a serious Iranian offer of bilateral talks with the United States and a deal on 20 percent enrichment President Obamas team has so far blocked Paris But unless the production of centrifuges is somehow slowed and the Arak plutonium plant shuttered the United States and Israel will soon have to choose to preempt or acquiesceAs we draw nearer to judgment day those who have assiduously portrayed Iran as nonthreatening or sufficiently hazard free to dismiss military action will surely try to take the foreground Barack Obama has said unequivocally that he will not allow the Islamic Republic to develop an atomic weapon He has alluded to the growing menace of a clandestine nuclear dash We have a sense the president said during the 2012 campaign of when they would get breakout capacity which means that we would not be able to intervene in time to stop their nuclear program and that clock is ticking Democratic doves Republican isolationists and bipartisan realists may grow increasingly anxious that Obama who prides himself on his toughness with drones and his long standing concern about nuclear proliferation just might mean what he says It certainly appears that the presidents visit to Israel in March convinced Benjamin Netanyahu that Obama was sufficiently serious to quiet the prime ministers anxiety about Washingtons intentions The extraordinary military and political challenges of an Israeli preemptive strike against the Islamic Republic may also have helpedBut virtually no one in Washington takes the presidents threat at face value Does anyone in Tehran Given Obamas manifest desire to extricate the United States from Middle Eastern adventures his caution in Syria his choice of dovish senior officials his defense cuts his parsimony in expressing his willingness to use force abroad the queasiness of liberals about the legality of preemptive action and the boldness of the Quds Force the terrorist unit within the Revolutionary Guard Corps in planning a bombing run against the Saudi ambassador in Washington in 2011 the punishment for which was more sanctions Khamenei is no more concerned about this issue than the American leftBut the supreme leader has shown repeatedly that he has no intention of allowing this American president to punt the problem with honor The recently concluded nuclear discussions in Almaty like all previous sessions failed And this time round the Iranians really should have compromised if the regime were worried about an American strike The Americans and Europeans came very close to recognizing an Iranian right to enrich uranium to 5 percent According to both American and European officials negotiations focused exclusively on 20 percent enrichment leaving low enriched uranium off the table As the Council on Foreign Relationss Ray Takeyh has commented American recognition of Tehrans right to enrich uranium to 5 percent would have insulated all of Irans enrichment facilities against either American or Israeli preemptive raids The regime would then have been free to install new centrifuges and swap out old ones and serenely shrink the calendar for an undetectable breakout Granting Tehran this right which does not exist in the Non Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory and which violates UN Security Council resolution 1696 would also have collapsed international sanctions against dual use imports and perhaps fatally weakened the EU sanctions regime which is already under stress from court challenges Tehran could have openly purchased all the centrifuge parts it desired setting an example for other nuke hungry statesThe Obama administration may not have even realized all of the aftershocks that would follow from an Iranian right to enrich to 5 percent The White House offered Tehran an oil for gold deal allowing the Islamic Republic to sell crude in exchange for bullion According to American and European officials this arrangement could have been sufficiently lucrative that Washington effectively was offering Tehran a hard currency lifeline Whatever coercive utility American and European sanctions have had on the nuclear question would have ceased since hard currency reserves keep Irans currency from cratering Whats more Irans ability to pocket Western concessions is probably greater than the Wests ability to rescind them Foreign gold traders once fearful of Washington are again trading more with Tehran If the Iranian regime had been less ideological read religious and more pragmatic it could have aggressively used the gold loophole to gut the most crippling financial sanctions and possibly fracture the trans atlantic alliance against itIts unimaginable now that Washington could offer more than it did in Almaty There simply are limits to how forthcoming the White House can be in its willingness to let the Iranian regime go nuclear past presidential rhetoric cannot be wished away Nor can North Korean nuclear nuttiness which underscores the scariness of third world rogue states having atomic weapons Pyongyang has been essential to the development of Irans ballistic missiles and probably critical to its nuclear quest The North Koreans helped build an undeclared weapons capable nuclear fuel plant in Syria which the Israelis destroyed in 2007 its likely that Iran backed if not initiated the North Korean Syrian deal as a means to further its own nuclearization Ironically North Korean behavior has now made the Islamic Republics pursuit of the bomb more problematicKhameneis and Kim Jong uns resolute defiance of the West has put Obama into a pickle that could conceivably oblige the president to strike It will become increasingly difficult to ignore the enormous centrifuge buildup and the progress at Arak Although the president likes to highlight an Iranian decision to weaponize as the immovable red line knowledgeable senior administration officials say privately that American intelligence can only reliably monitor thanks to the IAEA inspection system uranium enrichment and plutonium processing Human sources and intercepts Washingtons only means of monitoring Iranian intentions have been depressingly inadequate The CIA need we recall missed the nuclear weaponization of every nonallied state the USSR Communist China South Africa India Pakistan and North Korea and probably didnt guess well with Israel On Iran the National Intelligence Estimates especially the much disputed 2007 assessment which claimed that nuclear weaponization had stopped after the Anglo American invasion of Iraq in 2003 show in their sliding scale of equivocation and assertion the gaping holes in Washingtons information on the Islamic Republics nuclear establishment Any active duty or former senior official who suggests that American intelligence can successfully monitor Iranian intentions for example the director of national intelligence James Clapper or former ambassador Thomas Pickering who has made Iran engagement a personal hobby is fibbing to himself and to othersAs the Israelis and the French have always contended enrichment and plutonium processing are the de facto benchmarks for weaponization If the Israelis have any intention of striking the Islamic Republics nuclear sites they will have to do so before the increasing number of advanced centrifuges makes such an action ineffectual and too dangerous It is probably already too late for a raid certainly in Europe and Washington there is palpably less fear of Israeli preemption since the Islamic Republics progress on centrifuges and the limitations of Israeli airpower have become more apparent If Jerusalem is still serious about striking and the White House knows the Israeli cabinet has decided to take the risk its possible the president will actually prefer to see Jerusalem preempt knowing that an angry Iranian response could oblige Washington to defend its interests in the region An American raid on Iran first could be too difficult for Obama to swallow finishing off the Islamic Republics nuclear program after the Israelis had struck would be politically and spiritually much easier In any case as fear of an Israeli strike diminishes and as a result European and American unity against Tehran frays the American discussion of preemption will grow more seriousThe savvy parts of the antiwar American left can see the writing on the wall The Ploughshares Fund a leading funder of nonproliferation projects is already shifting its focus to containment And for the left containment means a nonaggressive policy toward the Islamic Republic the bloody reality of Cold War containment being long forgotten Obamas legendary caution and deep discomfort with the use of American power abroad may not be enough to overcome the logic and responsibility of the presidency where risks to national security are difficult to downplay Obamas pledge to stop an Iranian nuke may have initially been bluff But presidential bellicosity as George W Bush learned has more to do with supervening events than with a presidents preexisting proclivities If the president doesnt punt on Syria where Bashar al Assad appears to have crossed the White Houses red line on using poison gas then the odds that Obama isnt bluffing about an Iranian nuke go up The reverse is also true And even if the president doesnt manfully follow through in the Levant Iran still may be a special case The strategic magnitude of Khameneis having a nuke is so great that even caution in Syria might not imply American timidity with the Islamic RepublicSo the struggle among those who want to acquiesce to an Iranian bomb and withdraw from the Middle East those who want to acquiesce but try to contain Tehran and those who want to preempt will soon begin in earnest Although Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards may make it difficult to minimize the menace of a nuclear armed Islamic Republic we can expect to see many attempts to downplay the clerical regimes fusion of faith and ideology As with Iraq in 1990 and 2003 the closer we come to war the more energetic will be the efforts to blur in shades of gray the history and nature of the foe The rich complexity and contradictions of Iranian society will aid those who just want to let Khamenei and his guards have their weaponThe ApologistsThose who will excuse the regime are not all intellectually flippant Flynt and Hillary Leverett and Trita Parsi come to mind Nor are they Iranian Americans like the writer and Charlie Rose favorite Hooman Majd and the Rutgers academic turned Iranian presidential candidate Hooshang Amirahmadi who play and proselytize among the two countries progressive elites always trying to keep the door open to the beloved Old World Nor are they in general folks who are profoundly uncomfortable with American power They arent for the most part those who reflexively give the moral high ground to third worlders jousting with the West Many of this hopeful set are accomplished even hard nosed diplomats soldiers scholars journalists and pundits who appear to believe that a bargain is still possible between the United States and the Islamic RepublicThe Iranian regimes love affair with violence no state with the possible exception of Syria under the Assads has so actively promoted terrorism usually makes small ripples in these folks assessments The theocracys penchant for what the military historian David Crist calls covert war is regularly depicted by the hopeful as the defensive reaction of an insecure regime as if the supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards were in need of psychiatric help But Tehran embraces terrorism Not even the former Soviet Union with its affection for hard left revolutionary groups and the Palestine Liberation Organization aided anti Western terrorist organizations as energetically as the Islamic Republic This the apologists see as realpolitik Even Tehrans flirtation with the Sunni killer elite the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization of Ayman al Zawahiri and al Qaeda see the 911 Commission Report and more recent Treasury designations is seldom brought up Tehrans fondness for creating Hezbollahs Parties of God wherever it has the reach and can find the local talent usually gets misconstrued as bad boy Shiite solidarity around local grievances rather than a manifestation of Irans transnational revolutionary ideology The regimes exuberant embrace of anti Semitism and Holocaust denial that is Holocaust approval gets downplayed as an annoying subset of the Israeli Palestinian confrontationKhameneis crackdown on the pro democracy Green Movement in the summer of 2009 led to thousands jailed and tortured and according to credible Iranian sources around 150 killed it also turned the ruling elite against itself Yet even this only dented the diplomacy is possible mindset which sees Irans internal affairs as largely extraneous to whether the United States and the Islamic Republic can achieve anything like normal relations The supreme leader damned the millions who hit the streets as agents of America They werent Even under Ronald Reagan who used covert action more than his successors America never had a regime change policy for the mullahs or even soft power pro democracy operations that went beyond nostalgia tweaking in country TV broadcasts and the publishing of Persian editions of liberal booksKhamenei obsessed since youth with the insidious sensual attraction of the West sincerely believes the gravamen he hurled at the Green Movement Yet three and a half years later we still find serious people writing op eds policy papers and books reflecting on mutual mistrust mutual demonization years of suspicion and the American missteps that have kept the clerical regime and US presidents from realizing the obvious geostrategic interests their countries shareThese apologists dont persevere for the money often the reason adults in the West especially in Washington say exculpatory things about foreign tyrannies even if Tehran does bankroll a few think tankers and university scholars through private cut out philanthropy the Alavi Foundation in New York pursued by federal prosecutors in 2009 is a case in point And the Islamic Republic certainly isnt Saudi Arabia Theres not a soul in Washington or New York or London who would defend the sybaritic Saudi royals and their head and hand chopping Wahhabi clergy were it not for cash Without oil Saudis would have the same appeal as the Afghan TalibanIn the past before the Islamic Republics less radical set around former president Mohammad Khatami 1997 2005 got stuffed American corporate money could encourage a sympathetic disposition towards Tehran A prestigious American think tank could organize a major study that supported expanding US Iranian commerce and innocently have a principal organizer and drafter of the study make calls from her Exxon office Former ambassador Pickering a senior vice president at Boeing from 2001 to 2006 has urged the United States to keep trying to normalize relations with the Islamic Republic Pickering however rarely acknowledges his Boeing link in op eds and articles even though the company was until recently a big fan of lifting sanctions so as to sell airplanes and parts to an eager Persian clientele Take away Boeing and Ambassador Pickering would surely have had the same views toward the Islamic Republic But the unacknowledged overlap is disconcertingThe Cultural ApologistsPart of the reason so many Americans and Europeans have been charitably disposed towards the Iranian regime is cultural spillover The magnificence of the Persian past and the warmth of the Iranian people still attract Western journalists and scholars who have been given permission to travel in Iran the list keeps shrinking are particularly susceptible The International Herald Tribune and New York Times columnist Roger Cohen who visited the Islamic Republic before the crackdown in the summer of 2009 and wrote pieces extolling the tolerant hospitable side of the Iranian character is an eloquent example of this cultural critique among aesthetically sensitive Westerners Cohen extended his analysis even to Persian Jews whove emigrated and fled in large numbers since the revolution and whose leadership can get hit hard when the regime feels angry with charges of espionage for example or sodomy a capital offense Time in Iran led Cohen to write The reality of Iranian civility toward the Jews tells us more about Iran its sophistication and culture than all the inflammatory rhetoric This may be because Im a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in IranCohen had a point which he did not make Shiite Iranians have been tortured and killed far more frequently than Jewish Iranians since Shiites are expected to embrace fully the Islamic Republics mission civilisatrice at home and abroad religious minorities are not Jews in Iran if they keep silent about Israel and show public fidelity to the Islamic order are museum pieces a part of Persian history that revolutionary mullahs tolerate but rarely esteemCohens commendable appreciation of Persian culture and history led him to the British Museum to see Cyrus the Greats Cylinder the cuneiform on baked clay legal guide and panegyric with its timeless message of tolerance The cylinder is coming soon to the Smithsonian an event Cohen noted that occurs with the United States and Iran still locked in.
    
18. 5/20/2013 12:00:00 AM Truth to Tell; A 35th-anniversary revision of a Cold War classic
    published by The Weekly Standard
    Truth to Tell A 35th anniversary revision of a Cold War classic The Weekly Standard The historian Allen Weinstein has had by any standard an illustrious career For some years he was a professor of history at Smith Moving on he created and served as director of the Center for Democracy which promoted democracy abroad and played a major role in validating the critical election in the Philippines that led to the demise of the Marcos dictatorship and helped Boris Yeltsin during the downfall of the Soviet Union He was also a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post and served as archivist of the United States during 2005 08These achievements are outstanding but his most significant contribution was writing the pathbreaking account of the Hiss Chambers case Perjury first published by Knopf in 1978 A revised edition of this classic has now been published by the Hoover Institution which serves as the repository for Weinsteins papers including those related to the work he did while preparing Perjury in the 1970sAn entire generation has come of age knowing little if anything about the Hiss case its significance during the Cold War and its repercussions in American life Now with the addition of interviews and profiles of significant figures involved todays students of history can discover for themselves the importance of the case and why so many had their assumptions shattered upon Perjurys appearanceOf course Weinstein started out believing that Alger Hiss was innocent and had likely been framed a largely standard belief for liberal intellectuals of the day who loathed Richard Nixon As a member of the House Committee on Un American Activities Nixon had come to believe that Hisss accuser Whittaker Chambers and not Hiss was the man telling the truth when testifying before the committeeAlger Hiss was a former State Department official who had accompanied President Franklin Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference and who when Chambers accused him of espionage was director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Had Hiss actually spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s as Chambers claimed many liberals believed that conservatives might succeed in their attempt to tarnish the reputation of American liberalism in its heyday Indeed rather than accept the evidence indicating that Hiss had been working for the Soviets mainstream liberal spokesmen believed that Hiss had been framed by Republicans looking to use the case to smear the administrations of FDR and Harry Truman Dean Acheson Trumans secretary of state defended Hiss and Truman referred to the Hiss trial as a red herringHisss conviction of perjury in his second trial the espionage statute having expired led most Americans to believe that Hiss had been guilty of spying for Stalin The liberal mainstream however continued to argue that Hiss was innocent and backed up Hisss own professions of innocence with scores of books and articles over the years positing how the conspiracy to frame Hiss had been put in place We learned about forgery by.
    
19. 5/19/2013 11:59:00 PM New Albany, Jeffersonville celebrate Armed Forces Day
    published by Evening News and The Tribune, The (Jeffersonville, IN)
    May 19--> SOUTHERN INDIANA-- While a group of motorcycle riders, many of whom are veterans, took to the streets of New Albany to mark Armed Forces Day, a collection of groups offering assistance to former members of the military hosted a Stand Down event in Jeffersonville. Harshey, a Vietnam veteran, contacted the American Legion Riders Chapter 28 and came up with the...
    
20. 5/19/2013 11:59:00 PM Leelanau Birding Festival runs May 29-June 2
    published by Record-Eagle, The (Traverse City, MI)
    May 19-- TRAVERSE CITY-- Robert Parsons has traveled to Texas, Arizona, Florida and even Costa Rica to seek out unusual birds. Now Parsons is adding Michigan to that list. "In my mind, he's the best birder in Michigan," said festival co-chairman Kay Charter, referring to Allen, a former member of the Michigan Bird Records Committee and an editor of the American Birding...