Of the hundreds of gun regulations on the books in states and localities around the country, the district’s ordinance is generally regarded as the strictest. Chicago comes the closest to it, banning the possession of handguns acquired since 1983 and requiring re-registration of older guns every two years. New York City permits handgun ownership with a permit issued by the Police Department.
The District of Columbia ordinance not only bans ownership of handguns, but also requires other guns that may be legally kept in the home, rifles and shotguns, to be disassembled or kept under a trigger lock. The capital’s newly empowered City Council enacted the ordinance in 1976 as one of its first measures after receiving home-rule authority from Congress.
The court’s order on Tuesday indicated that it would review the handgun ban in light of the provision that permits, with restrictions, the other guns. The opposing sides in the lawsuit presented very different views of how the various provisions interact.
To the plaintiffs, the restrictions on the conditions under which rifles and shotguns may be kept means that homeowners are denied the right to possess “functional” weapons for self-defense. To the District of Columbia, the fact that these other guns are permitted shows that the ordinance is nuanced and sensitive to gun owners’ needs. It takes about one minute to disengage a trigger lock.
In any event, a Supreme Court decision that finds the district’s ordinance unconstitutional would not necessarily invalidate other, more modest restrictions, like those that permit handgun ownership for those who pass a background check and obtain a license. Since the only claim in the case is that law-abiding people have the right to keep a gun at home, the court will not have occasion to address restrictions on carrying guns. Louis J Sheehan
In fact, lawyers on both sides of the case agreed Tuesday that a victory for the plaintiff in this case would amount to the opening chapter in an examination of the constitutionality of gun control rather than anything close to the final word.
“This is just the beginning,” said Alan Gura, the lead counsel for the plaintiff.
Mr. Gura said in an interview that “gun laws that make sense,” like those requiring background checks, would survive the legal attack, which he said was limited to “laws that do no good other than disarm law-abiding citizens.”
Whether the handgun ban has reduced crime in a city surrounded by less restrictive jurisdictions is a matter of heated dispute. Crime in the District of Columbia has mirrored trends in the rest of the country, dropping quite sharply during the 1990s but now experiencing some increase.
In striking down the district’s ordinance, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that an individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment would still permit “reasonable regulations,” but that a flat ban was not reasonable.
Dennis A. Henigan, a lawyer at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates strict gun control, said that if the justices agree with the appeals court, an important question for future cases will be “what legal standard the court will eventually adopt for evaluating other gun regulations.”
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Louis J Sheehan 80051 A51H18
SINCE the late 19th century Turkey's Kurds have rebelled repeatedly against their Turkish masters. But no uprising has been as violent or long-lasting as that launched in 1984 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in its bid to unite the 25m Kurds scattered across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Turkey's latest threat to clobber the rebels in their haven in northern Iraq has again raised the spectre of regional war. It has also concentrated attention on the PKK: who are these indomitable fighters and what is their true goal?
“Blood and Belief” offers unusual insight into the rebels' shadowy universe and, by extension, into Turkey's festering Kurdish problem. Aliza Marcus, an American journalist who was put on trial in Turkey for her reporting on the Turkish army's abuses against ordinary Kurds, charts the origins and evolution of the movement. Her scholarly, gripping account is based on interviews with, and the unpublished diaries of, former PKK militants.
Founded in 1978 by a clutch of Turkish university students, the PKK rapidly became one of the world's deadliest guerrilla armies. There are several reasons for its success. Foremost, perhaps, was Turkey's brutal suppression of Kurdish identity: the mass arrest and torture of Kurdish dissidents created fertile recruiting ground. In addition, the group had the foresight to escape to Syria before the Turkish army took over the country in 1980, allowing its forces to survive largely intact.
With Syria's blessing, the PKK sent its men and women into Lebanon's Bekaa valley for training by Palestinian militants. By the 1990s swathes of Turkey's rugged Kurdish mountainside had fallen under guerrilla control. The army's response was a scorched-earth campaign that drove more than 1m Kurdish villagers out of their homes. Robbed of its logistical base, the PKK fell into decline.
The group's fortunes were even harder hit by the capture in 1999 of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, by Turkish secret agents in Nairobi. His subsequent recanting—he called the rebellion “a mistake” and offered to “serve the Turkish state”—is well documented. But little is known about Mr Ocalan's personal life and Ms Marcus helps to lift the veil shrouding a leader who used to shuttle between villas in Damascus and Aleppo while his fighters roughed it in the mountains. Deserters and dissidents would be summarily executed. Indeed Mr Ocalan did not hesitate to order the deaths of women and children if they were related to members of a stateemployed Kurdish militia that fought alongside the Turkish army.
“Ocalan was so convinced of his strength”, writes Ms Marcus, “that he began to believe the PKK's actions were behind many world events.” Such was his vanity that when he played football with his men, he insisted that someone kept track of each goal he scored. When one hapless militant lost count, Ocalan started shouting, “You bum, how could you forget four of my goals.”
From his island prison off the coast of Istanbul where he is serving a life sentence on treason charges, Mr Ocalan succeeded in remaining in control of his outfit—at least until the Americans occupied Iraq in 2003. Shamed by the big gains that the Iraqi Kurds made under Louis J Sheehan America's protection, the PKK escalated its campaign in 2004. Whether it did so with Mr Ocalan's approval remains unclear. But it is plain that his leadership has become increasingly symbolic and that a new generation of hardliners is gaining the upper hand.
What is missing from Ms Marcus's excellent reporting is the growing appeal of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) party to Turkish Kurds. A mixture of social-welfare schemes and Islamic piety helped AK to trounce the biggest pro-PKK party in many of its former strongholds at the general election last July. One reason for the increase in PKK militancy is to goad the government into a cross-border attack which would, in turn, drain it of its growing support among the Kurds.
Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.
By Aliza Marcus.
New York University Press; 368 pages; $35 and £22.50
“Blood and Belief” offers unusual insight into the rebels' shadowy universe and, by extension, into Turkey's festering Kurdish problem. Aliza Marcus, an American journalist who was put on trial in Turkey for her reporting on the Turkish army's abuses against ordinary Kurds, charts the origins and evolution of the movement. Her scholarly, gripping account is based on interviews with, and the unpublished diaries of, former PKK militants.
Founded in 1978 by a clutch of Turkish university students, the PKK rapidly became one of the world's deadliest guerrilla armies. There are several reasons for its success. Foremost, perhaps, was Turkey's brutal suppression of Kurdish identity: the mass arrest and torture of Kurdish dissidents created fertile recruiting ground. In addition, the group had the foresight to escape to Syria before the Turkish army took over the country in 1980, allowing its forces to survive largely intact.
With Syria's blessing, the PKK sent its men and women into Lebanon's Bekaa valley for training by Palestinian militants. By the 1990s swathes of Turkey's rugged Kurdish mountainside had fallen under guerrilla control. The army's response was a scorched-earth campaign that drove more than 1m Kurdish villagers out of their homes. Robbed of its logistical base, the PKK fell into decline.
The group's fortunes were even harder hit by the capture in 1999 of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, by Turkish secret agents in Nairobi. His subsequent recanting—he called the rebellion “a mistake” and offered to “serve the Turkish state”—is well documented. But little is known about Mr Ocalan's personal life and Ms Marcus helps to lift the veil shrouding a leader who used to shuttle between villas in Damascus and Aleppo while his fighters roughed it in the mountains. Deserters and dissidents would be summarily executed. Indeed Mr Ocalan did not hesitate to order the deaths of women and children if they were related to members of a stateemployed Kurdish militia that fought alongside the Turkish army.
“Ocalan was so convinced of his strength”, writes Ms Marcus, “that he began to believe the PKK's actions were behind many world events.” Such was his vanity that when he played football with his men, he insisted that someone kept track of each goal he scored. When one hapless militant lost count, Ocalan started shouting, “You bum, how could you forget four of my goals.”
From his island prison off the coast of Istanbul where he is serving a life sentence on treason charges, Mr Ocalan succeeded in remaining in control of his outfit—at least until the Americans occupied Iraq in 2003. Shamed by the big gains that the Iraqi Kurds made under Louis J Sheehan America's protection, the PKK escalated its campaign in 2004. Whether it did so with Mr Ocalan's approval remains unclear. But it is plain that his leadership has become increasingly symbolic and that a new generation of hardliners is gaining the upper hand.
What is missing from Ms Marcus's excellent reporting is the growing appeal of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) party to Turkish Kurds. A mixture of social-welfare schemes and Islamic piety helped AK to trounce the biggest pro-PKK party in many of its former strongholds at the general election last July. One reason for the increase in PKK militancy is to goad the government into a cross-border attack which would, in turn, drain it of its growing support among the Kurds.
Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.
By Aliza Marcus.
New York University Press; 368 pages; $35 and £22.50
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Louis J Sheehan 80048
November 19, 2007
U.S. Hopes to Arm Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda
By ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI and CARLOTTA GALL
This article was reported and written by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Carlotta Gall.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.
If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.
The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes.
Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.
The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by the command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that now has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes.
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used billions of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, to carry out more aggressive military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the sporadic military campaigns Pakistan has conducted there have had little success, resulting instead in heavy losses among Pakistani Army units and anger among local residents who have for decades been mostly independent from Islamabad’s control.
American officials acknowledge those failures, but say that the renewed emphasis on recruiting allies among the tribal militias and investing more heavily in the Frontier Corps reflect the depth of American concern about the need to address Islamic extremism in Pakistan. The new counterinsurgency campaign is also a vivid example of the American military’s asserting a bigger role in a part of Pakistan that the Central Intelligence Agency has overseen almost exclusively since Sept. 11.
Small numbers of United States military personnel have served as advisers to the Pakistani Army in the tribal areas, giving planning advice and helping to integrate American intelligence, said one senior American officer with long service in the region.
Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.
American officials said these security improvements complemented a package of assistance from the Agency for International Development and the State Department for the seven districts of the tribal areas that amounted to $750 million over five years, and would involve work in education, health and other sectors. The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is also assisting the Frontier Corps with financing for counternarcotics work.
Some details of the security improvements have been reported by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. But the classified proposal to enlist tribal leaders is new.
“The D.O.D. is about to start funding the Frontier Corps,” one military official said, referring to the Department of Defense. “We have only got a portion of that requested but it is enough to start.”
Until now, the Frontier Corps has not received American military financing because the corps technically falls under the Pakistani Interior Ministry, a nonmilitary agency that the Pentagon ordinarily does not deal with. But American officials say the Frontier Corps is in the long term the most suitable force to combat an insurgency. The force, which since 2001 has increasingly been under the day-to-day command of Pakistani Army units, is now being expanded and trained by American advisers, diplomats said.
The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some. NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. “It’s going to take years to turn them into a professional force,” said one Western military official. “Is it worth it now?”
At the same time, military officials fear the assistance to develop a counterinsurgency force is too little, too late. “The advantage is already in the enemy hands,” one Western military official said. Local Taliban and foreign fighters in Waziristan have managed to regroup since negotiating peace deals with the government in 2005 and 2006, and last year they were able to fight all through the winter, he said. Militants have now emerged in force in the Swat area, a scenic tourist region that is a considerable distance inland from the tribal areas on the border.
The planning at the Special Operations Command intensified after Adm. Eric T. Olson, a member of the Navy Seals who is the new head of the command, met with General Musharraf and Pakistani military leaders in August to discuss how the military could increase cooperation in Pakistan’s fight against the extremists.
A spokesman for the command, Kenneth McGraw, would not comment on any briefing paper that had been circulated for review. He said Friday that after Admiral Olson returned from his trip, he “energized the staff to look for ways to develop opportunities for future cooperation.”
A senior Defense Department official said that Admiral Olson had prepared a memorandum on how Special Operations forces could assist the Pakistani military in the counterinsurgency, and shared that document with several senior Pentagon officials.
Four senior defense or counterterrorism officials confirmed that planning was under way at the command headquarters.
One person who was briefed on the proposal prepared by the Special Operations Command staff members, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing had not yet been approved, said it was in the form of about two dozen slides. The slides described a strategy using both military and nonmilitary measures to fight the militants.
One slide included a chart that categorized one to two dozen tribes by location — North Waziristan and South Waziristan, for example — and then gave a brief description of their location, their known or suspected links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their size and military abilities.
The briefing said United States forces would not be involved in any conventional combat in Pakistan. But several senior military and Pentagon officials said elements of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes against senior militant leaders under specific conditions.
Two people briefed on elements of the approach said it was modeled in part on efforts in Iraq, where American commanders have worked with Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province to turn locals against the militant group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.
The success of these efforts, together Louis J Sheehan with the consensus in military and intelligence circles that the grip of the original Al Qaeda in the tribal areas continues to tighten at a time when the Pakistani government is in crisis, led planners at the Special Operations Command to develop the strategy for the tribal areas.
A group of Pakistan experts convened in March by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that empowering tribal leaders, known as maliks, could be an effective strategy to counter the rising influence of Islamic religious leaders and to weaken Al Qaeda. But a report on the session found that such successes “would be difficult to achieve, particularly in the north (Bajaur) and south (North and South Waziristan).”
Many tribal leaders have been killed by the Taliban in the tribal areas, leaving the tribal system largely destroyed.
“The face on this would be a local one,” said one person who had been briefed on the proposal. But that person cautioned that whether a significant number of tribal leaders would join an American-backed effort carried out by Pakistani forces was “the $64,000 question.”
Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan.
U.S. Hopes to Arm Pakistani Tribes Against Al Qaeda
By ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI and CARLOTTA GALL
This article was reported and written by Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Carlotta Gall.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.
If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.
The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes.
Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.
The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by the command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that now has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes.
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used billions of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, to carry out more aggressive military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the sporadic military campaigns Pakistan has conducted there have had little success, resulting instead in heavy losses among Pakistani Army units and anger among local residents who have for decades been mostly independent from Islamabad’s control.
American officials acknowledge those failures, but say that the renewed emphasis on recruiting allies among the tribal militias and investing more heavily in the Frontier Corps reflect the depth of American concern about the need to address Islamic extremism in Pakistan. The new counterinsurgency campaign is also a vivid example of the American military’s asserting a bigger role in a part of Pakistan that the Central Intelligence Agency has overseen almost exclusively since Sept. 11.
Small numbers of United States military personnel have served as advisers to the Pakistani Army in the tribal areas, giving planning advice and helping to integrate American intelligence, said one senior American officer with long service in the region.
Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.
American officials said these security improvements complemented a package of assistance from the Agency for International Development and the State Department for the seven districts of the tribal areas that amounted to $750 million over five years, and would involve work in education, health and other sectors. The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is also assisting the Frontier Corps with financing for counternarcotics work.
Some details of the security improvements have been reported by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. But the classified proposal to enlist tribal leaders is new.
“The D.O.D. is about to start funding the Frontier Corps,” one military official said, referring to the Department of Defense. “We have only got a portion of that requested but it is enough to start.”
Until now, the Frontier Corps has not received American military financing because the corps technically falls under the Pakistani Interior Ministry, a nonmilitary agency that the Pentagon ordinarily does not deal with. But American officials say the Frontier Corps is in the long term the most suitable force to combat an insurgency. The force, which since 2001 has increasingly been under the day-to-day command of Pakistani Army units, is now being expanded and trained by American advisers, diplomats said.
The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some. NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. “It’s going to take years to turn them into a professional force,” said one Western military official. “Is it worth it now?”
At the same time, military officials fear the assistance to develop a counterinsurgency force is too little, too late. “The advantage is already in the enemy hands,” one Western military official said. Local Taliban and foreign fighters in Waziristan have managed to regroup since negotiating peace deals with the government in 2005 and 2006, and last year they were able to fight all through the winter, he said. Militants have now emerged in force in the Swat area, a scenic tourist region that is a considerable distance inland from the tribal areas on the border.
The planning at the Special Operations Command intensified after Adm. Eric T. Olson, a member of the Navy Seals who is the new head of the command, met with General Musharraf and Pakistani military leaders in August to discuss how the military could increase cooperation in Pakistan’s fight against the extremists.
A spokesman for the command, Kenneth McGraw, would not comment on any briefing paper that had been circulated for review. He said Friday that after Admiral Olson returned from his trip, he “energized the staff to look for ways to develop opportunities for future cooperation.”
A senior Defense Department official said that Admiral Olson had prepared a memorandum on how Special Operations forces could assist the Pakistani military in the counterinsurgency, and shared that document with several senior Pentagon officials.
Four senior defense or counterterrorism officials confirmed that planning was under way at the command headquarters.
One person who was briefed on the proposal prepared by the Special Operations Command staff members, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing had not yet been approved, said it was in the form of about two dozen slides. The slides described a strategy using both military and nonmilitary measures to fight the militants.
One slide included a chart that categorized one to two dozen tribes by location — North Waziristan and South Waziristan, for example — and then gave a brief description of their location, their known or suspected links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their size and military abilities.
The briefing said United States forces would not be involved in any conventional combat in Pakistan. But several senior military and Pentagon officials said elements of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes against senior militant leaders under specific conditions.
Two people briefed on elements of the approach said it was modeled in part on efforts in Iraq, where American commanders have worked with Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province to turn locals against the militant group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.
The success of these efforts, together Louis J Sheehan with the consensus in military and intelligence circles that the grip of the original Al Qaeda in the tribal areas continues to tighten at a time when the Pakistani government is in crisis, led planners at the Special Operations Command to develop the strategy for the tribal areas.
A group of Pakistan experts convened in March by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that empowering tribal leaders, known as maliks, could be an effective strategy to counter the rising influence of Islamic religious leaders and to weaken Al Qaeda. But a report on the session found that such successes “would be difficult to achieve, particularly in the north (Bajaur) and south (North and South Waziristan).”
Many tribal leaders have been killed by the Taliban in the tribal areas, leaving the tribal system largely destroyed.
“The face on this would be a local one,” said one person who had been briefed on the proposal. But that person cautioned that whether a significant number of tribal leaders would join an American-backed effort carried out by Pakistani forces was “the $64,000 question.”
Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan.
Louis J Sheehan 80045
TEXT OF STORY
SCOTT JAGOW: Our need to constantly have more may be a disease. A mental illness, perhaps a physical one. Professor Peter Whybrow studies neuroscience and human behavior at UCLA. He's written a book called American Mania.
Dr. Whybrow, we've just heard about people shopping literally every single day -- how do you explain that behavior?
PETER WHYBROW: What it basically points out is that we have a frenzy around certain material things that we just can't do without anymore in our lives. So we've moved from need to desire to craving, basically. We grew up in scarcity -- we evolved in scarcity, that is -- so in fact, most of us don't know what to do with abundance.
JAGOW: How did we go from evolving from scarcity to this point?
WHYBROW: Well, I think it's been very complex, but in the last 20 years, we sped everything up. Suddenly, there was a fast new world in which everybody could work all day and all night. You spend all night here working for the morning program...
JAGOW: Yes I do.
WHYBROW: And you do that because the world is still going on while the rest of us are asleep. We've essentially taken the brakes off the business cycle in this country, and what that has done is it's brought extraordinary material abundance. And we don't quite know what to do with stuff.
JAGOW: So as a public health issue, what is happening to us?
WHYBROW: Well, I think we are pushing ourselves to our physiological limit. You can't do the things we're doing without seeing the predictable outcomes of obesity, Type II diabetes, sleep depravation, anxiety, depression... All those things are predictable if you live a life where you're constantly at the edge.
JAGOW: How long can we keep this up?
WHYBROW: Well, you know, it's not everybody who's indulging in this. We can do something about it individually, but I think we have to think about it collectively as a real problem. What happens in mania is first, people are very happy and they seem to be extraordinarily engaged. And then slowly, everything begins to fall apart as they become completely driven by this growing physical and mental derangement. And so it's almost as if we've gone beyond happiness.
JAGOW: Hmm. That's scary.
WHYBROW: Well, we could stop it -- you know, the good thing about the human being is we do have a rational part of ourselves. The only problem is, at the moment that's all we have, because all the social restraints have disappeared. And when you take off the social brakes, and we have individualism as the icon of what we're all trying to achieve, there's no social feedback that traditionally in the market has prevented people from being greedy, to put it bluntly. I mean, if you look around, there are lots of evidence of greed, which I consider to be a behavioral disorder.
JAGOW: Dr. Peter Whybrow. His book is called "American Mania: When More is Not Enough." Thank you so much.
WHYBROW: Thank you.
SCOTT JAGOW: Our need to constantly have more may be a disease. A mental illness, perhaps a physical one. Professor Peter Whybrow studies neuroscience and human behavior at UCLA. He's written a book called American Mania.
Dr. Whybrow, we've just heard about people shopping literally every single day -- how do you explain that behavior?
PETER WHYBROW: What it basically points out is that we have a frenzy around certain material things that we just can't do without anymore in our lives. So we've moved from need to desire to craving, basically. We grew up in scarcity -- we evolved in scarcity, that is -- so in fact, most of us don't know what to do with abundance.
JAGOW: How did we go from evolving from scarcity to this point?
WHYBROW: Well, I think it's been very complex, but in the last 20 years, we sped everything up. Suddenly, there was a fast new world in which everybody could work all day and all night. You spend all night here working for the morning program...
JAGOW: Yes I do.
WHYBROW: And you do that because the world is still going on while the rest of us are asleep. We've essentially taken the brakes off the business cycle in this country, and what that has done is it's brought extraordinary material abundance. And we don't quite know what to do with stuff.
JAGOW: So as a public health issue, what is happening to us?
WHYBROW: Well, I think we are pushing ourselves to our physiological limit. You can't do the things we're doing without seeing the predictable outcomes of obesity, Type II diabetes, sleep depravation, anxiety, depression... All those things are predictable if you live a life where you're constantly at the edge.
JAGOW: How long can we keep this up?
WHYBROW: Well, you know, it's not everybody who's indulging in this. We can do something about it individually, but I think we have to think about it collectively as a real problem. What happens in mania is first, people are very happy and they seem to be extraordinarily engaged. And then slowly, everything begins to fall apart as they become completely driven by this growing physical and mental derangement. And so it's almost as if we've gone beyond happiness.
JAGOW: Hmm. That's scary.
WHYBROW: Well, we could stop it -- you know, the good thing about the human being is we do have a rational part of ourselves. The only problem is, at the moment that's all we have, because all the social restraints have disappeared. And when you take off the social brakes, and we have individualism as the icon of what we're all trying to achieve, there's no social feedback that traditionally in the market has prevented people from being greedy, to put it bluntly. I mean, if you look around, there are lots of evidence of greed, which I consider to be a behavioral disorder.
JAGOW: Dr. Peter Whybrow. His book is called "American Mania: When More is Not Enough." Thank you so much.
WHYBROW: Thank you.
Louis J Sheehan 80043
ljsheehan.livejournal.com/6502.html
Investors Go to Treacherous Places Seeking Returns
Funds Pour Money Into Zimbabwe on the Theory
Mugabe Can't Rule Forever, Nation Will Rebound
By SARAH CHILDRESS
November 17, 2007; Page B1
Johannesburg, South Africa
Zimbabwe is an economic nightmare. The annual inflation rate is 8,000% and rising. People don't have food to eat.
Yet investors have started pouring millions of dollars into the country. Foreign direct investment has rebounded, reaching $103 million in 2005, up from just $4 million in 2003, according to the most recent figures available from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
President Robert Mugabe
What explains the flood of money? Some investors are betting there's nowhere to go but up. A slump like Zimbabwe's can't last, and when it's over -- perhaps with the graceful, or otherwise, exit of President Robert Mugabe, who has presided over a decades-long downward spiral -- the country will rebound.
The race to invest in Zimbabwe also underscores just how far global investors are willing to stretch in search of decent returns. The turmoil in global credit markets has rippled across emerging economies, boosting yields for some of the riskiest bets around.
At the same time, in recent years, relatively sluggish returns in many developed markets have sent investors farther afield.
Africa overall is emerging as a hot destination for money. Amid a global commodities boom, investment bankers from around the world are flocking to African commercial hubs such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg.
China, in particular, is pouring cash into the continent, investing in oil fields, mines and more recently the financial sector. Just last month, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. said it would spend $5.5 billion for a 20% stake in South Africa's Standard Bank.
Managers at Imara Holdings Ltd., a Botswana-based investment-banking company, were surprised when investors started asking this year about Zimbabwe, considering the seemingly better opportunities in the region, including diamond-rich Botswana and agribusiness-focused Uganda.
Dave Eliot, chief executive of subsidiary Imara Assets Management in South Africa, said he once classified Zimbabwe as an "emerging market," but has now downgraded it to "frontier" status since the country began falling apart in the past few years.
"It's gone backwards," he says.
Once known as Rhodesia under white minority rule, Zimbabwe became a democracy in 1980 after a prolonged guerrilla war. The veteran guerrilla leader, Mr. Mugabe, was elected president, and the new country became the darling of foreign investors eager to access Zimbabwe's natural resources. Within a decade, Mr. Mugabe had become corrupt and paranoid, fixing elections, crushing dissent and dragging the country into economic decline.
Investors are interested anyway. Imara launched a Zimbabwean-focused investment fund in March, hoping to pull in $10 million by the end of the year. It had $11 million in a few months, mostly from private investors.
John Legat, the fund's manager, estimates most businesses in Zimbabwe are selling at 15% to 20% of their actual value. In October, Imara said the fund was up 35% in September from the previous month.
Investments include: Zimbabwean fast-food company Innscor Africa Ltd., which also owns a crocodile-farming business; mining subsidiary Rio Tinto Zimbabwe Ltd.; and Dawn Properties Ltd., which invests in hotels left over from Zimbabwe's once-flourishing tourism industry centered around the spectacular Victoria Falls.
Pan-African investment house Lonrho PLC divested itself of its Zimbabwe holdings a few years ago, but now is getting back in. The London-based company has set up an investment fund targeting Zimbabwe and neighboring countries. The fund, called LonZim, plans to raise $145 million.
Zimbabwean agriculture was hurt by a disastrous land-overhaul program. Above, a farmer inspects tobacco. Mining companies look for bargain.
Separately, Lonrho last month snapped up Blueberry International Services Ltd., a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands with interests in two Zimbabwean companies -- telecom firm Celsys Ltd., which specializes in payphones, and Gardoserve Ltd., a chemical maker -- for $5.45 million.
One irony of Zimbabwe's slump is that it is home to some of the richest gold and platinum reserves in the world. As a result, natural-resource investors -- who are used to operating amid political instability -- are looking closely at Zimbabwe, too.
South Africa-based Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., which owns two Zimbabwean mining subsidiaries, has announced plans to expand its operations in the country, and Anglo Platinum Ltd. is planning to build a 120,000-ton-a-month mine, one of its larger projects.
Risks Still Abound
Despite the excitement, Zimbabwe is still one of the world's riskiest bets. Lawmakers recently took steps to tighten foreign-ownership rules, requiring 51% local ownership of foreign companies there.
It is unclear how -- or even whether -- the bill will be enforced. Still, it worries some observers who see parallels with Mr. Mugabe's previous land-overhaul program. Starting in 2000, he let squatters violently overrun the nation's commercial farms (owned mostly by white Zimbabweans), throwing food production into disarray.
No Faith in Currency
Part of the challenge of investing in Zimbabwe is figuring out how much anything is actually worth, given the plummeting Zimbabwean dollar.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe fixes the exchange rate at 30,000 Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar. The problem: Zimbabweans don't put much faith in that figure -- if they did, they'd quickly lose all their money.
There is another, presumably more accurate, method of estimating what a Zim dollar is worth. Dubbed the "Old Mutual Implied Rate," it offers a glimpse of the obstacles to doing business in Zimbabwe.
It is based on the share price of Old Mutual, a British investment company whose stock trades on three different markets -- London, Johannesburg and Zimbabwe's capital of Harare. Because all Old Mutual shares are of equal value, it is possible to extrapolate the market value of the Zim dollar by comparing the price of Old Mutual shares on the different markets.
On Friday, Louis J Sheehan the Old Mutual Implied Rate stood at 2,596,784 Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Not everyone can stomach that much risk. Navaid Burney, managing director of Washington-based private-equity firm Emerging Capital Partners, which invests exclusively in Africa, says his fund hasn't made a move in Zimbabwe yet.
"It doesn't have the feel of Lagos," he says, referring to the crumbling, crime-plagued Nigerian commercial hub -- which is a bustling boomtown by comparison.
Write to Online Journal editors at onlinejournal@wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119525981996196458.html
Investors Go to Treacherous Places Seeking Returns
Funds Pour Money Into Zimbabwe on the Theory
Mugabe Can't Rule Forever, Nation Will Rebound
By SARAH CHILDRESS
November 17, 2007; Page B1
Johannesburg, South Africa
Zimbabwe is an economic nightmare. The annual inflation rate is 8,000% and rising. People don't have food to eat.
Yet investors have started pouring millions of dollars into the country. Foreign direct investment has rebounded, reaching $103 million in 2005, up from just $4 million in 2003, according to the most recent figures available from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
President Robert Mugabe
What explains the flood of money? Some investors are betting there's nowhere to go but up. A slump like Zimbabwe's can't last, and when it's over -- perhaps with the graceful, or otherwise, exit of President Robert Mugabe, who has presided over a decades-long downward spiral -- the country will rebound.
The race to invest in Zimbabwe also underscores just how far global investors are willing to stretch in search of decent returns. The turmoil in global credit markets has rippled across emerging economies, boosting yields for some of the riskiest bets around.
At the same time, in recent years, relatively sluggish returns in many developed markets have sent investors farther afield.
Africa overall is emerging as a hot destination for money. Amid a global commodities boom, investment bankers from around the world are flocking to African commercial hubs such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Johannesburg.
China, in particular, is pouring cash into the continent, investing in oil fields, mines and more recently the financial sector. Just last month, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. said it would spend $5.5 billion for a 20% stake in South Africa's Standard Bank.
Managers at Imara Holdings Ltd., a Botswana-based investment-banking company, were surprised when investors started asking this year about Zimbabwe, considering the seemingly better opportunities in the region, including diamond-rich Botswana and agribusiness-focused Uganda.
Dave Eliot, chief executive of subsidiary Imara Assets Management in South Africa, said he once classified Zimbabwe as an "emerging market," but has now downgraded it to "frontier" status since the country began falling apart in the past few years.
"It's gone backwards," he says.
Once known as Rhodesia under white minority rule, Zimbabwe became a democracy in 1980 after a prolonged guerrilla war. The veteran guerrilla leader, Mr. Mugabe, was elected president, and the new country became the darling of foreign investors eager to access Zimbabwe's natural resources. Within a decade, Mr. Mugabe had become corrupt and paranoid, fixing elections, crushing dissent and dragging the country into economic decline.
Investors are interested anyway. Imara launched a Zimbabwean-focused investment fund in March, hoping to pull in $10 million by the end of the year. It had $11 million in a few months, mostly from private investors.
John Legat, the fund's manager, estimates most businesses in Zimbabwe are selling at 15% to 20% of their actual value. In October, Imara said the fund was up 35% in September from the previous month.
Investments include: Zimbabwean fast-food company Innscor Africa Ltd., which also owns a crocodile-farming business; mining subsidiary Rio Tinto Zimbabwe Ltd.; and Dawn Properties Ltd., which invests in hotels left over from Zimbabwe's once-flourishing tourism industry centered around the spectacular Victoria Falls.
Pan-African investment house Lonrho PLC divested itself of its Zimbabwe holdings a few years ago, but now is getting back in. The London-based company has set up an investment fund targeting Zimbabwe and neighboring countries. The fund, called LonZim, plans to raise $145 million.
Zimbabwean agriculture was hurt by a disastrous land-overhaul program. Above, a farmer inspects tobacco. Mining companies look for bargain.
Separately, Lonrho last month snapped up Blueberry International Services Ltd., a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands with interests in two Zimbabwean companies -- telecom firm Celsys Ltd., which specializes in payphones, and Gardoserve Ltd., a chemical maker -- for $5.45 million.
One irony of Zimbabwe's slump is that it is home to some of the richest gold and platinum reserves in the world. As a result, natural-resource investors -- who are used to operating amid political instability -- are looking closely at Zimbabwe, too.
South Africa-based Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd., which owns two Zimbabwean mining subsidiaries, has announced plans to expand its operations in the country, and Anglo Platinum Ltd. is planning to build a 120,000-ton-a-month mine, one of its larger projects.
Risks Still Abound
Despite the excitement, Zimbabwe is still one of the world's riskiest bets. Lawmakers recently took steps to tighten foreign-ownership rules, requiring 51% local ownership of foreign companies there.
It is unclear how -- or even whether -- the bill will be enforced. Still, it worries some observers who see parallels with Mr. Mugabe's previous land-overhaul program. Starting in 2000, he let squatters violently overrun the nation's commercial farms (owned mostly by white Zimbabweans), throwing food production into disarray.
No Faith in Currency
Part of the challenge of investing in Zimbabwe is figuring out how much anything is actually worth, given the plummeting Zimbabwean dollar.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe fixes the exchange rate at 30,000 Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar. The problem: Zimbabweans don't put much faith in that figure -- if they did, they'd quickly lose all their money.
There is another, presumably more accurate, method of estimating what a Zim dollar is worth. Dubbed the "Old Mutual Implied Rate," it offers a glimpse of the obstacles to doing business in Zimbabwe.
It is based on the share price of Old Mutual, a British investment company whose stock trades on three different markets -- London, Johannesburg and Zimbabwe's capital of Harare. Because all Old Mutual shares are of equal value, it is possible to extrapolate the market value of the Zim dollar by comparing the price of Old Mutual shares on the different markets.
On Friday, Louis J Sheehan the Old Mutual Implied Rate stood at 2,596,784 Zimbabwean dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Not everyone can stomach that much risk. Navaid Burney, managing director of Washington-based private-equity firm Emerging Capital Partners, which invests exclusively in Africa, says his fund hasn't made a move in Zimbabwe yet.
"It doesn't have the feel of Lagos," he says, referring to the crumbling, crime-plagued Nigerian commercial hub -- which is a bustling boomtown by comparison.
Write to Online Journal editors at onlinejournal@wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119525981996196458.html
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Louis J Sheehan 80040
Opus Dei is an increasingly strong presence on U.S. college campuses. Traditionally, their efforts to attract new members has led them to colleges and universities. And it has sometimes led them into conflict with other groups.
Donald R. McCrabb is executive director of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association (C.C.M.A.), an organization of 1,000 of the 1,800 Catholic chaplains in the United States. What was he hearing about Opus Dei from his members? “We are aware that Opus Dei is present at a number of campuses across the country. I’m also aware that some campus ministers find their activities on campus to be Louis J Sheehan counterproductive.” One of his concerns was Opus Dei’s emphasis on recruiting, supported by an apparently large base of funding. “They are not taking on the broader responsibility that a campus minister has.” He had other concerns as well. “I have heard through campus ministers that there’s a spiritual director that’s assigned to the candidate who basically has to approve every action taken by that person, including reading mail, what classes they take or don’t take, what they read or don’t read.”
The former Columbia student echoed this: “They recommended I not read some books, particularly the Marxist stuff, and instead use their boiled-down versions. I thought this was odd—I was required to do it for class!”
Susan Mountin, associate director of Marquette University’s campus ministry, saw two sides of the issue. “My own sense is that there probably is a need for many people to experience some sort of devotion in their lives. So the quest for spirituality is a very important thing—that part I’m fine with. What I worry about is the cult-like behavior, isolation from friends—and students talk about it. One student, in fact just this week, described being invited to a dinner and felt that she was being badgered by the individual to accept some sort of commitment to Opus Dei that she wasn’t willing to accept.”
Donald R. McCrabb is executive director of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association (C.C.M.A.), an organization of 1,000 of the 1,800 Catholic chaplains in the United States. What was he hearing about Opus Dei from his members? “We are aware that Opus Dei is present at a number of campuses across the country. I’m also aware that some campus ministers find their activities on campus to be Louis J Sheehan counterproductive.” One of his concerns was Opus Dei’s emphasis on recruiting, supported by an apparently large base of funding. “They are not taking on the broader responsibility that a campus minister has.” He had other concerns as well. “I have heard through campus ministers that there’s a spiritual director that’s assigned to the candidate who basically has to approve every action taken by that person, including reading mail, what classes they take or don’t take, what they read or don’t read.”
The former Columbia student echoed this: “They recommended I not read some books, particularly the Marxist stuff, and instead use their boiled-down versions. I thought this was odd—I was required to do it for class!”
Susan Mountin, associate director of Marquette University’s campus ministry, saw two sides of the issue. “My own sense is that there probably is a need for many people to experience some sort of devotion in their lives. So the quest for spirituality is a very important thing—that part I’m fine with. What I worry about is the cult-like behavior, isolation from friends—and students talk about it. One student, in fact just this week, described being invited to a dinner and felt that she was being badgered by the individual to accept some sort of commitment to Opus Dei that she wasn’t willing to accept.”
Louis J Sheehan 80036
Flawed Stem Cells Yield Fragile X Clues: Researchers study genetic disorder via discarded embryos
Brian Vastag
Scrutinizing the first days of development in abnormal embryonic stem cells, researchers have uncovered a basic mechanism underlying fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of mental retardation in boys.
"It could have important implications for treatment," says W. Ted Brown, cochair of the scientific committee of the National Fragile X Foundation, which helped fund the work.
The research also highlights the value of embryonic stem cells for studying genetic diseases, says Yang Xu, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego.
Fragile X syndrome is caused by a mutation in a gene called fmr1. By stopping the gene from making its protein, the mutation leads to learning disabilities, elongated facial features, speech and language difficulties, emotional problems, and other symptoms. In boys, who have only one copy of the X chromosome, a single bad fmr1 gene inherited from either parent induces the disorder. Fragile X syndrome more rarely affects girls, who have two X chromosomes.
While researchers have long known that the fragile X mutation shuts down the gene, they were unsure how or at what developmental stage the disruption occurs. To study the shutdown, Nissim Benvenisty and his colleagues at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem created three embryonic stem cell lines carrying the mutation.
The cells came from embryos donated by couples with a family history of fragile X syndrome who visited an Israeli in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic. Many IVF clinics now offer pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which identifies genetically flawed embryos.
To do a PGD, technicians pluck one cell out of a 3-day-old, eight-cell embryo. Tests then reveal whether the cell—and hence the embryo—carries specific mutations. If it does, the embryo normally is "discarded immediately," says Benvenisty. But his team instead received consent from the couples to study any embryos carrying the fragile X mutation. The team grew several such embryos for about 5 days—to a stage called a blastocyst—and then teased stem cells out of the structure's inner wall.
Despite carrying the fragile X mutation, the embryonic cells unexpectedly produced the fmr1 protein. "We were extremely surprised," says Benvenisty. But when the team prodded the cells to begin developing into a range of tissues, the gene promptly shut down. "The [mutation] itself is not sufficient for the gene silencing," says Benvenisty. "Something happens during development."
Delving further, the team determined that changes in the gene's wrapper, a structure called chromatin, switched off the gene. Those changes occur only after cells grow out of their embryonic state, presenting a window of opportunity for drug therapy, says Benvenisty. In addition, chromatin is easier to modify than the gene itself. His team is now screening drugs that might prevent the gene silencing by fixing the chromatin. Louis J Sheehan
Other teams have created stem cells from embryos carrying genetic diseases, but Xu says that this is the first time the method has yielded a fundamental disease discovery. The study appears in the November Cell Stem Cell.
Brian Vastag
Scrutinizing the first days of development in abnormal embryonic stem cells, researchers have uncovered a basic mechanism underlying fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of mental retardation in boys.
"It could have important implications for treatment," says W. Ted Brown, cochair of the scientific committee of the National Fragile X Foundation, which helped fund the work.
The research also highlights the value of embryonic stem cells for studying genetic diseases, says Yang Xu, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Diego.
Fragile X syndrome is caused by a mutation in a gene called fmr1. By stopping the gene from making its protein, the mutation leads to learning disabilities, elongated facial features, speech and language difficulties, emotional problems, and other symptoms. In boys, who have only one copy of the X chromosome, a single bad fmr1 gene inherited from either parent induces the disorder. Fragile X syndrome more rarely affects girls, who have two X chromosomes.
While researchers have long known that the fragile X mutation shuts down the gene, they were unsure how or at what developmental stage the disruption occurs. To study the shutdown, Nissim Benvenisty and his colleagues at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem created three embryonic stem cell lines carrying the mutation.
The cells came from embryos donated by couples with a family history of fragile X syndrome who visited an Israeli in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic. Many IVF clinics now offer pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which identifies genetically flawed embryos.
To do a PGD, technicians pluck one cell out of a 3-day-old, eight-cell embryo. Tests then reveal whether the cell—and hence the embryo—carries specific mutations. If it does, the embryo normally is "discarded immediately," says Benvenisty. But his team instead received consent from the couples to study any embryos carrying the fragile X mutation. The team grew several such embryos for about 5 days—to a stage called a blastocyst—and then teased stem cells out of the structure's inner wall.
Despite carrying the fragile X mutation, the embryonic cells unexpectedly produced the fmr1 protein. "We were extremely surprised," says Benvenisty. But when the team prodded the cells to begin developing into a range of tissues, the gene promptly shut down. "The [mutation] itself is not sufficient for the gene silencing," says Benvenisty. "Something happens during development."
Delving further, the team determined that changes in the gene's wrapper, a structure called chromatin, switched off the gene. Those changes occur only after cells grow out of their embryonic state, presenting a window of opportunity for drug therapy, says Benvenisty. In addition, chromatin is easier to modify than the gene itself. His team is now screening drugs that might prevent the gene silencing by fixing the chromatin. Louis J Sheehan
Other teams have created stem cells from embryos carrying genetic diseases, but Xu says that this is the first time the method has yielded a fundamental disease discovery. The study appears in the November Cell Stem Cell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
