Sitting In Judgement

It is, of course, easy to blame the occupant of the White House with everything that is wrong in the world. The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful person in the world. What is easy to forget is that the President is also a prisoner in many respects, of the office. Under the US constitution, the President is responsible for executing the laws that Congress passes. Including all the ones already on the books, not just new ones.

So, when it comes to criticizing the President for what is happening right this moment, it would probably be wise to consider how much of what is happening is really the fault of the person holding the office.

Attempts to explain the vehemence of anti-U.S. feeling abroad correctly home in on Iraq and other unpopular policies of the current administration. But over the past three decades the kudzu-like growth of another U.S. practice, used by Congress and by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, has nurtured seething resentment abroad.

This is what might be called "foreign policy by report card," the issuing of public assessments of the performance of other countries, with the threat of economic or political sanctions for those whose performance, in our view, doesn't make the grade. The overuse of these mandated reports makes us seem judgmental, moralistic and bullying.

The degree to which public reports accompanied by the threat of sanctions have been institutionalized in U.S. policy is stunning. A partial list:

Each year we issue detailed human rights reports on every country in the world, including those whose performance appears superior to our own. We judge whether other countries have provided sufficient cooperation in fighting illegal drugs. We place countries whose protection of intellectual property has been insufficient on "watch lists," threatening trade sanctions against those that do not improve. We judge respect for labor rights abroad through a public petition process set up under the System of Generalized (trade) Preferences. We publish annual reports on other countries' respect for religious freedom.

The author was a foreign service officer for 35 years. He also happens to be right on this one. If we are judging other countries on their labor practices - publicly - are we in the right? Probably not, I suspect. Go read the whole piece. The solutions he offers are a good start to actually improving relations with other counties.

Victory?

Charles Krauthammer has an interesting piece up in the Washington Post. It explores the "victory" that Hezbollah won in Lebanon. If Krauthammer is correct, the victory was a grim one. He starts off by noting the same, lame apology by Nasrallah about his misjudgment in starting the war. I said it was an admission that Hezbollah had been hurt a lot more than people realized. Krauthammer takes it further.

So much for the "strategic and historic victory" Nasrallah had claimed less than two weeks earlier. What real victor declares that, had he known, he would not have started the war that ended in triumph?

Nasrallah's admission, vastly underplayed in the West, makes clear what the Lebanese already knew. Hezbollah may have won the propaganda war, but on the ground it lost. Badly.

True, under the inept and indecisive leadership of Ehud Olmert, Israel did miss the opportunity to militarily destroy Hezbollah and make it a non-factor in Israel's security, Lebanon's politics and Iran's foreign policy. Nonetheless, Hezbollah was seriously hurt. It lost hundreds of its best fighters. A deeply entrenched infrastructure on Israel's border is in ruins. The great hero has had to go so deep into hiding that Nasrallah has been called "the underground mullah."

Most important, Hezbollah's political gains within Lebanon during the war have proved illusory. As the dust settles, the Lebanese are furious at Hezbollah for provoking a war that brought them nothing but devastation — and then crowing about victory amid the ruins.

The Western media were once again taken in by the mystique of the "Arab street." The mob came out to cheer Hezbollah for raining rockets on Israel — surprise! — and the Arab governments that had initially criticized Hezbollah went conveniently silent. Now that the mob has gone home, Hezbollah is under renewed attack — in newspapers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, as well as by many Lebanese, including influential Shiite academics and clan leaders. The Arabs know where their interests lie. And they do not lie with a Shiite militia that fights for Iran.

Frankly, if the other Arab countries do not start acting against the Iranian puppets (and Iran itself), they will end up as vassal states to a new Persian Empire. If you do not think that is what Tehran is planning, you have a really big set of blinders on. Read the whole thing and see if you agree with Krauthammer. Basically, I suspect he may be right.

Oh Hell - Redux

If the New York Times is correct - and these days, I am not really all that confident - then this is very bad news indeed.

VIENNA, Aug. 31 — The global nuclear monitoring agency deepened suspicions on Thursday about Iran’s nuclear program, reporting that inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility.

Inspectors have found such uranium, which at extreme enrichment levels can fuel bombs, twice in the past. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that at least some of those samples came from contaminated equipment that Iran had obtained from Pakistan.

But in this case, the nuclear fingerprint of the particles did not match the other samples, an official familiar with the inspections said, raising questions about their origin. (Emphasis added)

In a six-page report to the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, the agency withheld judgment about where the material came from and whether it could be linked to a secret nuclear program.

Iran says that its nuclear program is intended only for the production of energy, which would use uranium enriched at far lower levels than the sample described in the report.

Once again, for the uninitiated, so-called nuclear fingerprints can tell various samples apart with great accuracy. It has to do with the exact ratio of certain isotopes.

One Sure Sign

That a group knows it is peddling falsehoods is when they try to silence the voice of the group they are attacking. This is nowhere more evident at the moment than in the campaign against Wal-Mart. The union-funded front group that is coordinating the attack wants to try to shut down Wal-Mart from defending itself against scurrilous attacks by that group. So they have tried to get the authorities in two states to cut Wal-Mart's ability to reach people through advertising.

It turns out that organized labor's battle against Wal-Mart is more than a war on the lower-income Americans who depend on the big-box store's "always low prices." The unions are also after the First Amendment. Wal-Mart Watch, an opposition group supported by unions, has sent letters to the attorneys general of Arizona and Nebraska asking them to outlaw television spots Wal-Mart is running in those states. Wal-Mart Watch claims the states can do this thanks to consumer-protection laws that require truth in advertising.

Those laws are targeted at companies' claims about the weight of a Quarter Pounder or the ingredients of a bar of soap, however, and what's at issue in respect of the Wal-Mart ads is something else. Wal-Mart is attempting to counter the attacks of its critics by presenting its case directly to the public. Wal-Mart Watch complains that the TV spots say "Wal-Mart saves the average working family $2300 per year." Wal-Mart Watch claims this is deceptive because that number comes from a Wal-Mart funded study performed by a firm called Global Insight. "This ‘fact' has been discredited," Wal-Mart Watch writes to the attorneys general, "by a leading economic research think tank, the Economic Policy Institute."

It can easily be argued, however, that EPI isn't "objective" either. Nine of its 19 board members, after all, are leaders of labor unions. One of those just happens to be Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which has been a supporter of anti-Wal-Mart efforts. Mr. Stern also serves on another board — that of Wal-Mart Watch, which he chairs. The unions and EPI certainly are entitled to their own analysis of Wal-Mart's economic impacts, but with their latest move they are trying to enlist state attorneys general to substitute the unions' views for, well, public debate.

Gee, no conflict of interest there. The group doing the "discrediting" and the group trying to silence their opposition have the same board members. Like I said - a sure sign.

The Right Words. But.

Reading this article, one becomes quite hopeful that the majority of American Muslims are, indeed, not jihadis waiting to explode. All the right words are here, all the assurances that yes, there are decent people in the majority in the American Muslim world. (I happen to believe that is true, incidentally). Most people who come to this country only want a better life. My grandparents on my mother's side came here right after the first World War, in fact, looking for just that.

After the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, distraught U.S. Muslim leaders feared the next casualty would be their religion.

Islam teaches peace, they told anyone who would listen in news conferences, at interfaith services and, most famously, standing in a mosque with President Bush.

But five years later, the target audience for their pleas has shifted. Now the faith's American leaders are starting to warn fellow Muslims about a threat from within.

The 2005 subway attacks in London that investigators say were committed by British-born and -raised Muslims, and the relentless Muslim-engineered sectarian assaults on Iraqi civilians, are among the events that have convinced some U.S. Muslims to change focus.

"This sentiment of denial, that sort of came as a fever to the Muslim community after 9-11, is fading away," said Muqtedar Khan, a political scientist at the University of Delaware and author of "American Muslims." "They realize that there are Muslims who use terrorism, and the community is beginning to stand up to this."

Muslim leaders point to two stark examples of the new mind-set:

_A Canadian-born Muslim man worked with police for months investigating a group of Islamic men and youths accused in June of plotting terrorist attacks in Ontario. Mubin Shaikh said he feared any violence would ultimately hurt Islam and Canadian Muslims.

_In England, it's been widely reported that a tip from a British Muslim helped lead investigators to uncover what they said was a plan by homegrown extremists to use liquid explosives to destroy U.S.-bound planes.

I noted that the British arrests came because of a tip from a Muslim at the time and was quite appreciative of it. As I said, these are all the right words. As the title of this post says, there is also a "but" here.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, ran a TV ad campaign and a petition-drive called "Not in the Name of Islam," which repudiates terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of people have endorsed it, according to Ibrahim Hooper, the group's spokesman.

After the London subway bombings, the Fiqh Council of North America, which advises Muslims on Islamic law, issued a fatwa — or edict — declaring that nothing in Islam justifies terrorism. The council said Muslims were obligated to help law enforcement protect civilians from attacks.

"I think everyone now agrees that silence isn't an option," Hooper said. "You have to speak out in defense of civil liberties, but you also have to speak out against any kind of extremism or violence that's carried out in the name of Islam."

Those words are not the issue. Other actions by CAIR are, however. For that, you need to juxtapose this article with this piece by a Bahraini author commenting on the Muslim Groups in America:

The basic narrative of these self-described civil-rights groups is twofold: The United States provokes terrorism because of its foreign policy, and Muslims in the West face a backlash in the wake of terror.

On July 31, for example, Salam al-Marayati, executive director of MPAC, penned an op-ed piece in the Denver Post arguing that "we should not be surprised" when Islamist extremists "respond with belligerence to their continued humiliation and not-quite-human treatment by the international community." He made no mention of the Saudi religious schools that indoctrinate generations of children into a philosophy of hate and violence.

After law enforcement stopped the mid-Atlantic massacre, Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, warned, "We ought to take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslim." He called on Muslims to step up security at mosques and community centers to counter negative backlash to news of the plot.

But does such a backlash exist? According to the 2004 FBI hate-crimes report, the latest published, there were 156 incidents of anti-Muslim hate crimes; in comparison, there were 95 anti-Christian, and 954 anti-Jewish attacks in the United States. Rather than fear American freedom, most Muslims embrace it. At more than $42,000, average income for Muslim families is higher than the American average.

Rather than help Muslims in America, most Muslim organizations hinder them. Self-appointed representatives downplay religious extremism and focus more on the image of Muslims rather than on the loss of innocent life. They remain silent on the assault waged on liberalism by Islamists. Most Muslims in America, though, fled the Middle East for the liberal values of their adopted country.

On Aug. 7, Bush condemned this extremist assault on liberal values, defining it as "Islamo-fascist" in nature. He chose his words carefully. For most Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. But rather than side with these Muslim victims, MPAC criticized Bush for saying that the British plot was a "stark reminder" the United States is "at war with Islamic fascists."

Edina Lekovic, MPAC spokeswoman, issued a statement saying, "The problem with the phrase is it attaches the religion of Islam to tyranny and fascism, rather than isolating the threat to a specific group of individuals." It is not Bush's wording that makes this attachment, though, but the 24 terrorists in Britain and the imams who instructed them.

Parvez Ahmed, CAIR chairman, sent an open letter to Bush: "You have on many occasions said Islam is a 'religion of peace.' Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism." But what would Ahmed suggest calling people who intend to blow themselves up in commercial airplanes, taking thousands of innocent lives with them? Flying angels? Kamikazes?

Therein, I think, lies the "but". While the first article is saying the right things, sometimes groups like CAIR are not doing the right things in other matters. The constant drumbeat of having to guard against anti-Muslim backlash, that has not really occurred, is counterproductive. Stop trying to take offense at every statement a non-Muslim politician makes and keep up the other good things instead. Then the "but" goes away.

Trouble in (The Worker’s) Paradise

If one needs proof that socialism, or communism light, is an unworkable system, one need look no further than Bolivia. The newest Chavez client state and its leftist president, Evo Morales, is starting to get pretty shaky. It is not collapsing yet, but there are signs of increasing unrest with Morales' failure to deliver on his populist leftist promises.

BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 30 — Intensifying labor strife, political infighting and budgetary pressures are threatening to chip away at the domestic support of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who took office in January promising to nationalize the natural gas industry and to achieve social equality for the country's indigenous majority.

During his first months in office, Morales announced a series of sweeping reforms that have helped make him one of the most popular presidents in modern Bolivian history and heightened expectations in a country eager to shed its label as South America's poorest. In May, he donned a hard hat and announced that all foreign energy companies had to surrender operational control to the state's energy company. This month, he celebrated the creation of a newly elected assembly to rewrite the country's constitution, a key demand of indigenous supporters who view Morales, of Aymara Indian heritage, as an advocate.

But days after that celebration, the government quietly issued a statement announcing the temporary suspension of the "full effect" of the nationalization program because of a lack of funds. On Monday, the president of the state energy company resigned after being accused of violating the nationalization decree by exporting oil through a Brazilian firm. A day later, members of the Constituent Assembly suspended voting amid tense debate over charges that Morales and his supporters were trying to manipulate the assembly to circumvent Congress and the courts.

Before he was elected president, Morales was the leader of a coca growers' union and was known for leading public demonstrations, including some that helped topple two presidents between 2003 and 2005. But this week, Morales found himself on the receiving end of the same sort of social and labor protests that he used to organize.

The only way communism worked at all was under an authoritarian dictator (witness what countries are still communist). It is a disastrous system for a country like Bolivia, They are on a path that will either lead to Morales being thrown from office, or to Morales seizing absolute power and silencing those who once supported him.

Oh Hell

From the IAEA report on Iran issued today to the UNSC (H/T Vital Perspective):

17. The depleted uranium targets which had been irradiated in the course of the plutonium
experiments are stored in containers located at the Karaj Waste Storage Facility (GOV/2005/67, para. 24). On 8 August 2005, the Agency took environmental samples from one of those containers. The results from their analysis, recently finalized by the Agency, indicate the presence of high enriched uranium particles. On 15 August 2006, Iran was requested to provide information about the source of the contamination and the past use of the containers.

For those readers who are not conversant with nuclear technology, the fact that Iran has highly enriched uranium particles kicking about indicates that there is more of this stuff around. The fact that they have been bombarding depleted uranium targets indicates weapon production - this is a way to make weapons grade plutonium if you do not have a state of the art plutonium production reactor.

The CIA supposedly thinks they are five years away. They are probably much, much closer. They may well already have an untested device.

Is AMLO Folding?

An interesting story from Reuters just came across the wires. One of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's closest advisers admitted that AMLO believes the Mexican election court will declare Felipe Calderon to be the winner of the election. AMLO still believes he was cheated. But no mention was made at all that AMLO would form a parallel fake government or continue his protests.

Mexico's top electoral tribunal this week rejected most of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's claims of vote fraud, almost guaranteeing Calderon the presidency.

Manuel Camacho Solis, one of Lopez Obrador's top advisors, said the leftist believed the court would seal his fate in the next few days by ruling the election was clean and formally announcing Calderon as the winner.

"Yes, that's the evaluation That's the way it will be," he told Reuters when asked if Lopez Obrador feared the court would declare Calderon president-elect.

So maybe he'll back down on this. We'll see.

Freddy Mercury Celebration Forced To Cancel

A birthday bash in honor of the late Freddy Mercury has been canceled. The party was to have been held on Zanzibar, the place of Mercury's birth. Islamists threatened to disrupt the party saying the former frontman for Queen lived a lifestyle that was offensive to them.

Faced with fierce opposition from Islamists, who complained the flamboyant Queen lead singer's lifestyle was offensive to many on the overwhelmingly Muslim archipelago, organizers said they had no choice but to call it off.

"We have decided to cancel the party after misleading and erroneous information was spread about it," said organizer Simai Mohamed Saidi, who runs a Freddie Mercury theme restaurant in the capital.

"I urge Muslim groups in the future to seek correct information from us instead of relying on rumors," he said in an open letter, adding the event was intended to be celebration to honor Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1991.

Saidi also lamented that the cancellation would hurt his intention to use the party to raise money for HIV/AIDS victims on Zanzibar.

Conservative Zanzibari Islamists last week demanded that authorities ban the party and then vowed to stage mass demonstrations if it went ahead, saying it would tarnish the islands' reputation and culture and promote homosexuality.

"We were ready to join forces against the party because we had information that a number of gays from abroad had come to take part," said Sheikh Azzan Hamdani of the association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation (UAMSHO).

"We had also written letters to the tourist commission and the owner of the Mercury restaurant, demanding that they stop the party," he told AFP.

The authorities, who have long tip-toed between secular constitutional ideals, the demands of a booming tourist industry and the wishes of conservative Muslims, never formally responded to Islamists.

But Zanzibar's information ministry this week ordered local state-run media not to give the event any coverage.

Few on Zanzibar are aware of Queen or Freddie Mercury, who was born Farrokh Bulsara on the main island of Unguja to Persian parents employed by the British colonial administration on September 5, 1946.

Draw your own conclusions here.

Forward Into The Past

Mimicking an old line from a Firesign Theater skit, NASA awarded a contract to Lockheed-Martin to build the next space capsule to hopefully go to the moon. The problem is, it is a huge step backward to the capsule concept and basically looks like the Apollo capsule with a hefty dose of steroids. Compound that by the fact that Lockheed-Martin has never built a manned system and I foresee some problems down the line.

The nation's space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet, take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Reusable and like Apollo and earlier spacecraft, it is perched atop the rocket.

The last time NASA awarded a manned spaceship contract to Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Md., was in 1996 for a spaceplane that was supposed to replace the space shuttle. NASA spent $912 million and the ship, called X-33, never got built because of technical problems.

The only other competitors for the contract were a team made up of Northrop Grumman Corp., the world's largest shipbuilder and third-largest military contractor, and Boeing Co.

"We feel we have an achievable design," said Doug Cooke, a deputy associate administrator when asked why Lockheed Martin was chosen over the competing team. "This is a design that is based on known capabilities. We know that this can be built so there are some differences there, perhaps."

While I am very glad to see the space program get off of top dead center, I am not at all sure this was a good move. The General Accounting Office also warned about this.

Orion is just part of an exploration program called Constellation that includes the Ares I and V rockets that will power the Orion capsule and a cargo vehicle into orbit and beyond.

The program will reduce the risk of a fatal accident to astronauts from 1-in-200 currently for the shuttle to 1-in-2000 for the new Constellation program, Orion project manager Skip Hatfield said last week.

In July, the GAO warned that NASA was heading down the wrong path in choosing an Orion-builder by late August or early September. The auditors said the space agency would be choosing a contractor before it had "well-defined requirements, a preliminary design, mature technology and firm cost estimates for the project."

"This approach increases the risk that the project will encounter significant cost overruns, schedule delays and decreased capability," the GAO warned.

The competition involved the three largest aerospace companies in the United States.

Northrop Grumman's proposal to NASA appeared to be far more detailed in technical choices than the Lockheed Martin version, which left key decisions such as reusability and landing sites up to NASA.

But others see no difference between the two.

"It's between tweedledum and tweedledee," said American University public policy professor Howard McCurdy, author of several books about the American space program. "They're both using the same management systems and the same technical systems that got us to the moon the first time."

McCurdy is quite harsh in his assessment, frankly. He sees both of these contractors as innovation averse and imbued with a cost-overrun mindset. We'll see. NASA has got to be on top of whoever is building the next generation.

Wave Of Terror Bombings In Thailand

Islamist terrorists in Thailand have set off a wave of bombings across Southern Thailand targeting banks. 22 banks were hit, killing one (so far) and wounding at least 29 people. This is NOT coming up on the top stories on the Yahoo news aggregater.

Militants, many of them dressed as students, left the bombs hidden inside books at commercial banks across the province of Yala, the regional army commander, Lieutenant General Ong-korn Thongprasom told Thai television on Thursday.

"Two suspects were arrested in connection with the bomb attacks. Mostly the militants used young men dressed in student uniforms to plant small bombs which were hidden inside books," he said on Thursday.

Nopporn Thammasart, branch manager of the Bank of Ayudhya in Yala, said his staff received a telephone call warning of a bomb just minutes before the blast injured two of his customers.

"I had no time to inform the police, because within two minutes of the phone call, the bomb exploded," he said.

The blasts shattered windows but caused relatively little damage at the banks. Most of the banks in the region closed immediately, and the Bank of Thailand said most would remain closed Friday to make repairs.

Gateway Pundit has a roundup. Warning, the photos are not for the squeamish. Nothing up on Agam's Gecko  (who lives in Thailand) yet, but I expect he will have something fairly soon.

An Anchoress And A Woodshed

The Anchoress has a tour de force reflection on hate and where it will lead for those who wallow in it. She takes more than a few people to the virtual woodshed with this post. She reflects on this particular made for TV movie that is going to be shown in Britain. Described by the people involved as a "thought-provoking, powerful drama" about murdering the President of the United States. Never mind that this may finally be the point where the vast majority of the public recoils in utter revulsion from the left. The thought it may provoke is not going to be what the folks who embrace and fawn over this kind of sewage believe it will be.

And there have been, here and there, in London and NY, small theatre productions all about how “Bush is bad and Bush is dumb and Bush is the worst person ever and Bush is evil and he should be killed,” yadda, yadda. Little flashpoints of malice offered up as entertainment for people for whom malice is a drug and a way to get through the day.

Those were just little appetizers to the great hunger of Bush hatred which has been fed for five years on forgettable books, tired jokes and Bill Maher. Now, finally here comes the main course, the piece de resistance (or what AJ Strata refers to - correctly - as a Bush-hater’s wet dream): The Assassination of President Bush in a TV “Docudrama!” Ta-da! Applause, applause - what a masterful chef to concoct so enticing a recipe, so desirable a meal! The haters will feed on it ravenously, as though they’ve had no Bush Hate to gnaw on for long years.

And when they eat it, it will destroy them. This meal will taste delicious in the mouth, and it will go down easier than a California mudslide, but after a while - not immediately, but after a while - they will realize they’ve poisoned themselves, willingly, lasciviously, voraciously, luxuriously. Bloated and gaseous they’ll look for an antidote, but there is no antidote to this much hate, except full-scale surrender, contrition and conversion - not necessarily to a religious idea, but to a more humbled mindset, one willing to be taught to love…and these poor folks will probably be too weakened and too ill to manage all that.

This much hate backfires on the hater. You’d think they’d know it by now, but they don’t, of course. They always overplay their hand. They can be counted on to do it.

I feel kind of sorry for the people who - undoubtedly - are multiple-orgasming over this story today. You know what sites to visit to find them, if you must seek them out. I feel sorry for them because this is all they are, loyal subjects enthralled to a Kingship of Hate, which is an evil and a real oppressor, although they don’t think they’re oppressed - well, except by that evil moron, Bush, who is keeping them from living freely or speaking out while they sip their lattes.

The Anchoress thinks this may well be the final straw where the left has finally jumped the shark. All the vitriol leading up to this final orgasm of hatred may show them for what they are and finally discredit this vile behavior. All the projection in the world will not hide what they have become. They speak of a right-wing attack machine. What, then is this? A veritable cesspool for them to wallow in. They simply do not understand what this will do to them in the eyes of the majority of people. I suspect they will be shocked and disbelieving when it becomes apparent how horribly this has backfired on them.

For they will have swallowed their poison, and in turn, been swallowed by it.

UPDATE: Curt at Flopping Aces has some reaction from the DU. Wear hip waders.

UPDATE: It gets worse. AFP reports that the film will debut at the Toronto Film Festival, which starts on September 7th. The premiere is scheduled for September 10th. I feel an international incident coming on.

Usury

Usury: … 2 : the lending of money with an interest charge for its use; especially : the lending of money at exorbitant interest rates
3 : an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest; specifically : interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money

Here is a situation that must be addressed. The obscene finance charges that some "payday loan" operations need to be curtailed - for everyone. An article in USA Today focuses on soldiers and the problems these "services" can cause for them, but it really needs to be fixed for everyone who uses these kinds of loans.

 As many as one in five members of the armed services are being preyed on by loan centers set up near military bases that can charge cash-strapped military families interest of 400% or more, a new Pentagon report has found.

Steep lending charges have long plagued servicemembers, but the problem has become a more urgent concern to the military as it has struggled to fill its ranks during the Iraq war. That's because debt troubles can keep troops from going overseas.

“We're seeing a growing trend of folks who are not eligible to deploy because of financial problems,” says Capt. Mark Patton, commander of Naval Base Point Loma in California. Patton says debt problems can cost some servicemembers their security clearances.

The report says “payday loan” stores (so named because their loans are often due on a borrower's next payday) have sprung up by the thousands around military bases and elsewhere in the past decade.

Lenders typically charge $15 to $25 per $100 loan for two weeks, and most loans are extended for several weeks. The report says the average loan is $350 and has an annual interest rate of 390% to 780%. The average borrower, it says, pays back $834 for a $339 loan. (Emphasis added)

The report cites estimates that 13% to 19% of servicemembers — at least 175,000 people — took out high-interest, short-term loans last year. It said nine out of 10 loans go to borrowers who get five or more over a year.

This is robbery. Period. Whether the victims are service members or civilians, this is loan sharking, writ large and needs to be stamped out.

This is robbery. Period. Whether the victims are service members or civilians, this is loan sharking, writ large and needs to be stamped out.

UN Fails To Act

A European diplomat, speaking anonymously, says that a European delegation will meet with Iran in a "last ditch" effort to avoid UN sanctions.

VIENNA, Austria - Key European nations will meet with Iran in September in a last-ditch effort to seek a negotiated solution to the standoff over Tehran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a senior U.N. diplomat said Thursday.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his information was confidential, said the U.N. Security Council will await the results of that meeting before acting on sanctions.

That may have been the last chance to avoid a confrontation. Had the UN Security Council actually lived up to its word and started applying sanctions, Iran may have blinked.

Now Tehran knows the UN has done so. Not at all a smart move.

Yearning For The Good Old Days

Andrew Rosenthal, in the New York Times, makes a plaintive lament about the lack of protesters in the streets today. Ah, the good old days of marching in the streets, revolution in the air, teach-ins, sit-ins and all the est of the fun and games of that era.

It was almost painful the other night to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sing about a war whose purpose Americans never really understood, started by a president who didn’t tell the truth and then waged the war ineptly. And that was before they sang about Iraq.

The audience rose for Neil Young’s blast at George Bush, “Let’s Impeach the President,” and sang the words displayed on a huge TV screen, even the 20-something in front of us who had been text-messaging throughout the concert. That same screen also displayed thumbnail photos of slain soldiers while a counter ran up the most recent toll. It takes longer than you might think to count to 2,600.

It was a surprisingly political moment for a rock concert in 2006. But when those four men sang their protest songs four decades ago, their lyrics echoed and personified a powerful political movement sweeping America. Now they are entertainment, something to leave behind in the concert hall.

There were a few political booths outside the Theater at Madison Square Garden. But the concert-tour T-shirt salesmen were getting all the business. The most noticeable sound was the cellphones being restarted by those few who had bothered to turn them off during the concert.

This, perhaps, is the ultimate difference between the Vietnam generation and the Iraq generation: When you hear Young and Company sing of “four dead in Ohio,” their Kent State anthem, it’s hard to imagine anyone on today’s campuses willing to face armed troops. Is there anything they care about that much?

Student protesters helped drive Lyndon Johnson — in so many ways a powerful, progressive president — out of office because of his war. In 2004, George W. Bush — in so many ways a weak, regressive president — was re-elected despite his war. And the campuses were silent.

Laments like this reveal more about the person making the comments than about the world as it is. Rosenthal mourns that there is no draft to motivate the young to rise up. What Rosenthal doesn't admit, or remember is that it wasn't all heady idealism. There were also riots and bombings in some places. Many of the protests had much more than just an anti-war agenda, many were openly pro-communist. Many more protesters wanted not just the end to the Vietnam war, they had other political irons in the fire. A good portion of the protesters were swept along by the enthusiasm - they were not really true believers.

In the rose-tinged hindsight of people like Rosenthal, it was all good and driven by people with high ideals. It was not quite as he would paint the picture.