The New York Timrs> OP-ED> The Tipping Points

February 27, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Tipping Points
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

he other night on ABC's "Nightline," the host, Ted Koppel, posed an intriguing question to Malcolm Gladwell, the social scientist who wrote the path-breaking book "The Tipping Point," which is about how changes in behavior or perception can reach a critical mass and then suddenly create a whole new reality. Mr. Koppel asked: Can you know you are in the middle of a tipping point, or is it only something you can see in retrospect?
Mr. Gladwell responded that "the most important thing in trying to analyze whether something is at the verge of a tipping point, is whether it - an event - causes people to reframe an issue. ...A dumb example is the Atkins's diet, which reframes dieting from thinking about it in terms of avoiding calories and fat to thinking about it as avoiding carbohydrates, which really changes the way people perceive dieting."
Mr. Koppel was raising the question because he wanted to explore whether the Iraqi elections marked a tipping point in history. I was on the same show, and in mulling over this question more I think that what's so interesting about the Middle East today is that we're actually witnessing three tipping points at once.
Thanks to eight million Iraqis defying "you vote, you die" terrorist threats, Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi "insurgents" trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi "stooges" to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists.
In Lebanon, the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which Syria is widely suspected of having had a hand in, has reframed that drama. A month ago, Lebanon was the story of a tiny Christian minority trying to resist the Syrian occupation, which had the tacit support of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government and a cadre of Lebanese politicians who had sold their souls to Damascus. After the Hariri murder, Lebanese just snapped. Lebanon became the story of a broad majority of Lebanese Christians, Muslims and Druse no longer willing to remain silent, but instead telling the Syrians, and their Lebanese puppet president, to "go home." Lebanon went from a country where few dared whisper "When will Syria leave?" to a country where nearly everyone was shouting it, and Syria was having to answer.
The Israel-Palestine drama has gone from how Ariel Sharon will use any means possible to sustain Israel's hold on Gaza, which he once said was indispensable for the security of the Jewish state, to being about how Mr. Sharon will use any means possible to evacuate Gaza - with its huge Palestinian population - which he now says is necessary for saving Israel as a Jewish state. The issue for the Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there - a Dubai on the Mediterranean. Because if they do, it will fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.
While all three of these situations would constitute tipping points by Mr. Gladwell's definition, I would feel a lot better about all three if I thought that they were irreversible - and couldn't tip back the wrong way.
For Iraq to be tipped in the right direction, it was necessary to have the election we did, but that was not sufficient. The sufficient thing is that a stable, decent Iraqi government emerge that can also quell the Sunni insurgency. That will depend in part on America's willingness to stay the course in Iraq. It will depend in part on the Shiite majority's willingness to share power with the Sunnis - particularly one of the crucial cabinet portfolios of defense, intelligence or interior - and not go on a de-Baathification rampage. And it will depend in part on the Sunni Arab leaders finally supporting the Iraqi majority.
For Lebanon to liberate itself from Syria, the Lebanese opposition groups will have to find a way to translate their aspirations into a withdrawal deal with Damascus. The Syrians will not be pushed out. And for Israelis and Palestinians to really tip toward peace, the moderates on both sides are really going to have to help each other succeed.
Indeed, in the Middle East playground - as Friday's suicide bomb in Israel reminds us - tipping points are sometimes more like teeter-totters: one moment you're riding high and the next minute you're slammed to the ground. Nevertheless, what's happened in the last four weeks is not just important, it's remarkable. And if we can keep all three tipping points tipped, it will be incredible.

The New York Timrs> OP-ED> The Tipping Points

February 27, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Tipping Points
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

he other night on ABC's "Nightline," the host, Ted Koppel, posed an intriguing question to Malcolm Gladwell, the social scientist who wrote the path-breaking book "The Tipping Point," which is about how changes in behavior or perception can reach a critical mass and then suddenly create a whole new reality. Mr. Koppel asked: Can you know you are in the middle of a tipping point, or is it only something you can see in retrospect?
Mr. Gladwell responded that "the most important thing in trying to analyze whether something is at the verge of a tipping point, is whether it - an event - causes people to reframe an issue. ...A dumb example is the Atkins's diet, which reframes dieting from thinking about it in terms of avoiding calories and fat to thinking about it as avoiding carbohydrates, which really changes the way people perceive dieting."
Mr. Koppel was raising the question because he wanted to explore whether the Iraqi elections marked a tipping point in history. I was on the same show, and in mulling over this question more I think that what's so interesting about the Middle East today is that we're actually witnessing three tipping points at once.
Thanks to eight million Iraqis defying "you vote, you die" terrorist threats, Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi "insurgents" trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi "stooges" to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists.
In Lebanon, the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which Syria is widely suspected of having had a hand in, has reframed that drama. A month ago, Lebanon was the story of a tiny Christian minority trying to resist the Syrian occupation, which had the tacit support of the pro-Syrian Lebanese government and a cadre of Lebanese politicians who had sold their souls to Damascus. After the Hariri murder, Lebanese just snapped. Lebanon became the story of a broad majority of Lebanese Christians, Muslims and Druse no longer willing to remain silent, but instead telling the Syrians, and their Lebanese puppet president, to "go home." Lebanon went from a country where few dared whisper "When will Syria leave?" to a country where nearly everyone was shouting it, and Syria was having to answer.
The Israel-Palestine drama has gone from how Ariel Sharon will use any means possible to sustain Israel's hold on Gaza, which he once said was indispensable for the security of the Jewish state, to being about how Mr. Sharon will use any means possible to evacuate Gaza - with its huge Palestinian population - which he now says is necessary for saving Israel as a Jewish state. The issue for the Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there - a Dubai on the Mediterranean. Because if they do, it will fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.
While all three of these situations would constitute tipping points by Mr. Gladwell's definition, I would feel a lot better about all three if I thought that they were irreversible - and couldn't tip back the wrong way.
For Iraq to be tipped in the right direction, it was necessary to have the election we did, but that was not sufficient. The sufficient thing is that a stable, decent Iraqi government emerge that can also quell the Sunni insurgency. That will depend in part on America's willingness to stay the course in Iraq. It will depend in part on the Shiite majority's willingness to share power with the Sunnis - particularly one of the crucial cabinet portfolios of defense, intelligence or interior - and not go on a de-Baathification rampage. And it will depend in part on the Sunni Arab leaders finally supporting the Iraqi majority.
For Lebanon to liberate itself from Syria, the Lebanese opposition groups will have to find a way to translate their aspirations into a withdrawal deal with Damascus. The Syrians will not be pushed out. And for Israelis and Palestinians to really tip toward peace, the moderates on both sides are really going to have to help each other succeed.
Indeed, in the Middle East playground - as Friday's suicide bomb in Israel reminds us - tipping points are sometimes more like teeter-totters: one moment you're riding high and the next minute you're slammed to the ground. Nevertheless, what's happened in the last four weeks is not just important, it's remarkable. And if we can keep all three tipping points tipped, it will be incredible.

Village Voice > War Crimes

VOICE in the News
By Nat Hentoff
There cannot be an absence of moral content in American foreign policy. Europeans giggle at this, but we are not European, we are American, and we have different principles. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Telegraph, London, February 5, 2005
It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture . . .Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, a U.S. statute implementing Article 3, International Convention Against Torture, which this country has signed
For three years, there have been sporadic reports in some of the media, including this column, of the CIA's sending detainees (prisoners without charges or lawyers) to countries (among them are Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan) where the CIA knows they will be tortured to extract information the CIA can't dig out of them.
The Washington Post has done the most revealing investigative reporting, along with furious editorials, on this brutal form of kidnapping. And in these columns, I have tried to add to the story from other sources: human rights organizations and reporters around the world. In the February 11 New York Times, Bob Herbert put these actions by our government—in flagrant violation of American and international law—plainly:
"Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it."
Now, in the February 14 New Yorker, there is a long, detailed, clearly documented story, "Outsourcing Torture"—the most important piece run by The New Yorker since John Hersey's internationally resounding essay on what we did to Hiroshima in Japan with the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare.
This report by Jane Mayer should be read by every member of Congress, which has yet to conduct a substantive investigation—with subpoena powers—into these horrific practices. There's talk of only a cursory "review." Much more is needed. The extraditions are so secret that even the 9-11 Commission members were not allowed to ask questions about these "extraordinary renditions," as the CIA bureaucratically calls them.
I know that senators Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Richard Durbin have read Jane Mayer's piece, as has Representative Ed Markey. Durbin, Dodd, and Markey tried to get legislation through in the last term that would throw some initial light on what is happening to detainees, but the bills were killed by the Republican leadership and the White House. (Durbin's was also snuffed out with the help of our new secretary of state.)
As I shall document later in this series, the CIA's "extraordinary renditions" began in the Clinton administration, but have been greatly expanded under George W. Bush, who piously and repeatedly pledges that this country will never, ever condone or practice torture. So do his loyalists, the new attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In my more than 25 years as a New Yorker staff writer (while I was also a Voice columnist), its legendary editor, the late William Shawn, ran many of my pieces. But he killed one because, he told me, it might deleteriously affect our war in Vietnam. The piece was a profile of A.J. Muste, the chief strategist of the anti-war movement.
The present New Yorker editor, David Remnick, has no such reservation about affirming Justice Louis Brandeis's mandate for a free society: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
My one suggestion to Remnick about this crucial Jane Mayer article is that he make it more widely available by publishing it in pamphlet form, or in other readily available formats, and also send it to all members of Congress—along with an invitation to George W. Bush to respond to it. And what does Porter Goss, who runs the CIA, have to say about these kidnappings?
Members of Congress should be especially interested in Mayer's references to John Yoo, who, as deputy assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft, was a principal adviser to the president on how to evade international and American law in the war on terror. (For background on Yoo and other accomplices in these crimes, see the essential new book, the 1,284-page The Torture Papers, Cambridge University Press, edited by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel. It will chill your bones.)
From Jane Mayer's "Outsourcing Torture":
"As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn't have the power to 'tie the President's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique. . . . It's the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can't prevent the President from ordering torture.'
"[Yoo] went on to suggest that President Bush's victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was 'proof that the debate is over. . . . The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.' "
Do you agree that the debate is over? (John Yoo is now a professor at the prestigious UC Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall, presumably teaching the rule of law.)
There will be more in this intermittent series about the special extralegal rules the president has given the CIA, as well as additions to Mayer's article. But I urge you to get this 80th anniversary issue of The New Yorker, and then insist that your members of Congress interrogate the top-level perpetrators of war crimes in this administration.
On the floor of the Senate, as the vote was to be called on Alberto Gonzales's nomination for attorney general, Ted Kennedy—in what may be the most quotable remark of his career—said: "We have a choice. Do we stand for the rule of law, or do we stand for torture? This vote will speak volumes about whether . . . [we] match our lofty rhetoric about fundamental values."
Following the president, a majority of the Senate chose torture. How much do you care?

More Liberty Beat
A U.S. Library vs. Fidel
A library defies Castro and the American Library Association on Freedom to Read

Condi Rice: Misrule of Law
The new secretary of state, the president's confidante, plays by his code of justice

The Ghosts of Torture
New attorney general twists the rule of law to which he is 'deeply committed'

Intimidated Classrooms
New York Civil Liberties Union: students can dissent in class only if professor permits

Targeting Congress on Torture
Making the Bush team responsible for international crimes against detainees

..
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The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Post-Scream Strategizing

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Post-Scream Strategizing: "February 22, 2005
EDITORIAL
February 22, 2005

As the Democrats' newly chosen party chairman, Howard Dean has a fresh opportunity to be remembered as someone other than that presidential candidate who yelped defiantly in the face of defeat. The Democrats' fortunes are obviously at a low point. But Mr. Dean, in his surprising victory in the contest for chairman, showed a revivalist's energy and a new talent for working across the political spectrum in winning over state party leaders.

Mr. Dean's task is to build concretely on that base while disappointing Republican expectations that he will prove to be a radioactive chairman, given to upstaging his party's candidates with fresh variations on The Scream.

To calm doubters, Mr. Dean talks more as the party's ranking machinist than its chief ideologue. He vows, for example, to "grow" the party in each state and knit it more closely together by having the national committee pay state executive directors' salaries. The party's organizing and fund-raising powers were upgraded in the last elections, but the G.O.P. still outhustled Democrats in critical areas.

Ultimately, Mr. Dean will be judged on the presidential election of 2008. The first benchmark in this task comes next month, when a 40-member party commission begins studying what is right and wrong about the primary process that produced Senator John Kerry as the nominee. The helter-skelter process clearly needs fixing, starting with its overemphasis on front-loading contests. The tight calendar of winner-take-all bouts allows scant opportunity for shopper's remorse.

One of the commission's leaders, Representative David Price of North Carolina, was right when he noted that the party "needs to provide something other than a rush to judgment." Mr. Price, a political science professor at Duke University, has been through this before, serving as director of the Hunt Commission, which helped tune up the rules in the 1980's. Now he is wise to emphasize that a more deliberative pace would hardly hurt the Democrats' next search for the strongest nominee.

The New York Times > New York Region > Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans

The New York Times > New York Region > Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans: "February 22, 2005
Clinton's Popularity Up in State, Even Among Republicans
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
February 22, 2005

Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and the conventional wisdom about how polarizing a figure she is? Well, think again.

Recent polls have shown that Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, may have turned a corner politically, sharply reducing the number of voters in the state who harbor negative views of her.

Pollsters say the change is remarkable for a woman who has long been shadowed by a seemingly implacable group of voters - commonly referred to as Hillary haters - who dislike her, no matter what she does, and who pose a potential obstacle to any presidential ambitions she may harbor.

A measure of how far Senator Clinton has come was on display Sunday when Senator John McCain, Republican from Arizona, said on "Meet the Press" that he thought Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, would make a good president, although he said that he would support his party's nominee. She returned the compliment, saying when asked by the program's host, Tim Russert, that Senator McCain would be a good president.

The changing view of Mrs. Clinton coincides with a period following the November election in which she offered a series of speeches filled with references to faith and prayer, while putting less emphasis on polarizing social issues like gay marriage and abortion.

The result of these comments has been an emerging image of Senator Clinton that is far different from the caricature that Republicans have painted of her: that of a secular liberal whose stances are largely at odds with a public that they say is concerned about the nation's moral direction.

Political analysts say the themes Senator Clinton has emphasized - combined with the hard-working image she has sought to project - appear to be causing large numbers of voters to re-evaluate her in New York, although not nationally, where the number of people who disapprove of her is still high. In a Marist poll last fall, roughly 4 in 10 Americans had negative views of her.

Her progress appealing to once skeptical New Yorkers was illuminated by a New York Times poll released last week that showed that 21 percent of New Yorkers had an unfavorable opinion of how she is handling her job, down significantly from the 29 percent of voters who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.

(In two recent back-to-back surveys, pollsters for Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn., also found a notable decline in the number of New York voters who expressed a negative view of Mrs. Clinton.)

At the same time, Senator Clinton's job approval rating has increased to 69 percent from 58 percent in October 2002, according to the Times poll. That is higher even than the 63 percent approval rating of Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York who was re-elected last year to a second term with a record 71 percent of the vote and who is known for his attention to upstate concerns.

The new attitudes toward Mrs. Clinton may be forcing Republicans to reconsider how to deal with an opponent they had until now viewed as an enticing target because of the depth of negative feelings she inspires among large numbers of New York voters.

Independent political analysts say her strong standing may give pause to any big-name Republican thinking about challenging her in 2006, chief among them Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki. In fact, a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month found that Mrs. Clinton would defeat both Mr. Pataki and Mr. Giuliani in head-to-head contests.

"There isn't a long line of opponents forming to take her on in 2006," said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

But New York Republican leaders say that they are eager to challenge Senator Clinton, especially since Republicans from around the country will almost certainly provide plenty of money and other campaign support to defeat her, as they did in 2000.

New York Republicans also say that the senator has had a free ride so far and that her opponent in the campaign will have an easy time driving up her negative ratings - and halting her rise in the polls - by pointing out what they describe as her poor record of accomplishment and her liberal ideology.

"Clinton has been operating in a vacuum and there's been nobody taking her on," said the New York State Republican Party chairman, Stephen Minarik. "Frankly, her numbers don't intimidate me whatsoever. I'm looking forward to this challenge."

Mrs. Clinton's advisers say they are taking nothing for granted. "We know that Republicans are preparing to wage a well-funded and negative campaign," said Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton. "Senator Clinton's continued hard work and strong record will serve as the best antidote to their groundless attacks."

Mrs. Clinton's current standing is a far cry from her situation in 2000, when her Republican opponent, Representative Rick A. Lazio, sought to build much of his campaign around the large number of New Yorkers who had a negative opinion of her, then about one in three.

The senator's closest advisers say her popularity stems from her success at swaying voters to her side with frequent trips around the state and attention to local concerns.

But other political analysts argue that the lift Mrs. Clinton is enjoying reflects a growing comfort with her among New Yorkers who may not have entirely believed her when she pledged in 2000 to serve out a full term and not seek a higher office.

During the race in 2000, Republicans constantly attacked Mrs. Clinton as a carpetbagger who was seeking to use the Senate seat in New York as springboard to the presidency, perhaps as early as 2004. But in the end, Mrs. Clinton kept a low profile during the last presidential election, even as many Democrats argued that she could have won her party's nomination handily.

"The No. 1 concern many people had about her - that she would run for president before finishing her term - has not happened," observed one Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "She kept her word and the worst suspicions about her have turned out not to be true."

As for the inevitable questions about Mrs. Clinton's future presidential ambitions, that does not seem to trouble New York voters nearly as much as it did in 2000. The recent Times poll showed that of the voters who do expect Senator Clinton to run for president in 2008, 67 percent said it would make no difference in whether or not they would vote for her for Senate in 2006, and 18 percent said it would make them more likely to vote for her.

The New York Times > Books > An Appreciation: The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage

The New York Times > Books > An Appreciation: The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage: "February 22, 2005
February 22, 2005
AN APPRECIATION
The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage
By DAVID CARR

Hunter S. Thompson died on Sunday, alone with a gun in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colo. In doing so, he added heft to a legend that came to obscure his gifts as one of journalism's most influential practitioners.

Somewhere beneath the cartoon - he was Uncle Duke in the Doonesbury strip, of course, but Bill Murray inked him well in the 1980 film "Where the Buffalo Roam" - and a lifestyle dominated by a long and sophisticated romance with drugs, Mr. Thompson managed to change the course of American journalism.

Of all of the so-called practitioners of New Journalism, Mr. Thompson was the one who was willing to insert himself and his capacious reserve of outrage into the middle of every story. In his articles for Rolling Stone and his seminal 1973 book, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" Mr. Thompson threw himself at the conventions of political reporting. Not only was he not neutral, he was angry, an avenging proxy for the American polity. Brick by brick, he tore away a wall - since rebuilt - that made politics seem like a low-stakes minstrel show.

"He spent his life in search of an honest man, and he seldom found any," said James Silberman, his longtime editor and publisher at Random House and Summit Books.

As a writer though, Mr. Thompson met plenty of honest digressions, and engaged them all to their fullest. He would begin with a premise - Richard Nixon was doing Satan's handiwork, for instance - and then in writing about it, tumble through the Tet Offensive, the drugs from the previous night he was trying to fight through, Hubert Humphrey's alleged spinelessness, Nixon's surprising knowledge of the N.F.L., and the fecklessness of his editors, before landing the entire rococo mix in one tidy package, like a gift.

His assignments always became quests. It was not enough for him to journey south to Cozumel off the Yucatán Peninsula to write about rich white men hunting sharks; he also had to retrieve 50 doses of MDA, a drug he was fond of, that he had stashed in the shark pool of the aquarium the last time he was on the island. Mr. Thompson managed to live and write his own version of the Heisenberg principle: That the observer not only changes events by his presence, but his presence also frequently surpasses the event in terms of importance. Like many contemporary American writers, Mr. Thompson lived the bell curve of a writer's life. Long after the "Fear and Loathing" rubric had been arrayed over everything from shark fishing, the Hell's Angels and Las Vegas, he was hounded by the fact that his moment - a white hot one where in which he found himself face to face with a shark or George McGovern - had passed.

His friends would continue to drop by Woody Creek, his remote, mountainous salon near Aspen for smart, engaging talk accompanied by the explosives, narcotics and weaponry Mr. Thompson counted as enduring hobbies. Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" was one of them, and said yesterday that Thompson's menace was overestimated, that it was frequently overwhelmed by courtliness. George Plimpton was a frequent visitor, as was Walter Isaacson. Even the town sheriff was welcome, as long as he called ahead so Mr. Thompson could tidy the premises.

For a generation of American students, Mr. Thompson made journalism seem like a dangerous, fantastic occupation, in the process transforming an avocation that was mostly populated by doughy white men in short-sleeve white button-downs and bad ties into something fit for those who smoked Dunhills at the end of cigarette holders and wore sunglasses regardless of the time of day. It is to his credit or blame that many aspiring journalists showed up to cover their first, second, and sometimes third local city council meetings in bowling shirts and bad sunglasses (no names need be mentioned here), along with their notebooks.

For all of the pharmacological foundations of his stories, Mr. Thompson was a reporter, taking to the task of finding out what other people knew with an avidity that earned the respect of even those who found his personal hobbies reprehensible. Hunter S. Thompson knew stuff and wrote about it in a way that could leave his colleagues breathless and vowing to do better.

He had a gift for sentence writing, and he tended to write a lot of them. But his loquaciousness was not restricted to articles and books. In "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist," his memoir published in 2000 which was composed of correspondence, it became clear how in his hands even the lowly expense report, usually a relentlessly banal document, could be a thing of beauty.

To Mr. Thompson, it was all true, every word of it. Maybe not literally, you-can-look-it-up true, but true in a way that the bean counters would never understand. Friends say that he appeared to be relatively happy of late, and was fully engaged in the writing projects he had before him. But a chronic series of physical infirmities - he had to use a wheelchair at times - left him feeling that he was finally being maneuvered by forces he could not medicate or write into obscurity.

And his suicide had its own terrible logic. A man who was so intent on generating a remarkable voice that he retyped Hemingway's novels just to understand how it was done, gave a final bit of dramatic tribute in turning a gun on himself.

DenverPost.com - Spin Cycled > Tancredo bill on Taiwan angers China

DenverPost.com - Spin Cycled: "ticle Published: Sunday, February 20, 2005

spin cycled
Tancredo bill on Taiwan angers China
By The Denver Post

Rep. Tom Tancredo seems to always be able to cause a stir, even if he has to go halfway around the world to do it. Few on this side of the Pacific took much notice last week when the Littleton Republican introduced a bill to end the United States' 'one China' policy and resume normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

But his move was front-page news in Asia. According to the Xinhua Financial Network, the Chinese government 'angrily condemned' Tancredo's bill and demanded that the Bush administration block the bill. The Xinhua network is affiliated with the official Chinese news agency with a slightly different name.

'This is a gross interference in China's internal affairs and sends a mistaken signal to Taiwan independence forces,' foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan was quoted as saying by Xinhua. 'The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and staunch opposition to this.'"

DenverPost.com - Spin Cycled > Tancredo bill on Taiwan angers China

DenverPost.com - Spin Cycled: "ticle Published: Sunday, February 20, 2005

spin cycled
Tancredo bill on Taiwan angers China
By The Denver Post

Rep. Tom Tancredo seems to always be able to cause a stir, even if he has to go halfway around the world to do it. Few on this side of the Pacific took much notice last week when the Littleton Republican introduced a bill to end the United States' 'one China' policy and resume normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

But his move was front-page news in Asia. According to the Xinhua Financial Network, the Chinese government 'angrily condemned' Tancredo's bill and demanded that the Bush administration block the bill. The Xinhua network is affiliated with the official Chinese news agency with a slightly different name.

'This is a gross interference in China's internal affairs and sends a mistaken signal to Taiwan independence forces,' foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan was quoted as saying by Xinhua. 'The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and staunch opposition to this.'"

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "US, Japan close ranks in bid to restrain China from moving on Taiwan
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 19, 2005
US, Japan close ranks in bid to restrain China from moving on Taiwan

Shared concern about China and its threat to use force against Taiwan are drawing Japan and the United States closer in their determination to maintain peace and stability in East Asia.

While the Bush administration says it supports China's emergence as an economic power in the region and the world, the overriding US message to Beijing is, as State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday: "Play by the rules."
Increasingly, Japan is growing bolder in publicly seconding that view.

During talks Saturday in Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono are expected to make strong statements in support of ensuring security in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula.

They also were expected to renew demands that North Korea halt development of nuclear weapons while exploring strategy to persuade Pyongyang to drop its opposition to resuming negotiations with China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Rice and the two Japanese ministers are new to their jobs, so it is an occasion for wide-ranging discussions, said Hatsuhisa Takashima, spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Besides Taiwan, he said in an interview Friday, based on "our long-standing alliance" the two sides were seeking a common strategy to deal with terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the continuing problem of conventional weapons.

Reflecting growing US unease about China's aims, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said Thursday that "for a country like China, the fundamental choice is whether it wishes to join the group of advanced economies whose relationships are governed by the `rules of the road' of the international state system."

Feith, who helps formulate Pentagon policy, said of all the countries growing in power, China is most likely to have the greatest effect on international relations in the years ahead.

When President George W. Bush travels to Europe next week, he will try, in what probably will be a futile effort, to persuade European Union nations to leave in place a 15-year-old arms embargo against China. It was imposed after the June 1989 Tiananmen incident.

"The president has real concerns about it," his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said in a speech Thursday.

As for China's behavior, Hadley said, "We all have an interest in China continuing to move in the direction of democracy and freedom and being a constructive member of the international community."

The Europeans, he said, share US concerns about human rights in China.

In East Asia, Japan is showing a growing inclination to stand with the United States on Taiwan.

Praising Japan as a steadfast ally, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific region was a shared goal, and she looked forward to a joint effort with Japan to restrain China from using force against Taiwan.

Rice said the mutual goal of ensuring stability reflected a "very deep and broad relationship" between Washington and Tokyo.

Until now, Japan mostly has left it to the United States to deal with China's wrath and threats to use force against Taiwan, which Beijing views as a renegade province that eventually must be recovered by the mainland.

Rice, in a joint news conference Friday with visiting Foreign Minister Bernard Bot of the Netherlands, reiterated the long-standing US admonition to China.

"There should be no attempt to change the status quo unilaterally," she said.

The United States' security alliance with Japan has formed the backbone of US foreign policy in Asia. The two allies long have disagreed, however, about how to deal with China's territorial claim over self-ruled Taiwan, which split with Beijing after nationalists fled to the island in 1949 as the communists were winning the civil war.

Washington has indicated it would intervene if China were to try to take Taiwan by force. A cautious Japan traditionally has sought to avoid involvement.

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