KERRY'S FALSE TESTIMONY?
Were His Words From KGB Literature?

Over the past several weeks there have been more questions about Kerry's testimony before the U.S. Congress. This might grow into a key sticking point against him during his run for the White House. Below is entry from Common Sense and Wonder with key sections bolded:


Speaking of the book "In Denial", Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former chief spy of Romania, reports on the Soviet program of disinformation running full steam during the Vietnam war and asks whether Kerry's reports of war crimes are not just the product of this disinformation campaign.

Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.

As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."

The KGB organized a vitriolic conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in south Vietnam. On Andropov's orders, one of the KGB's paid agents, Romesh Chandra, the chairman of the KGB-financed World Peace Council, created the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. It was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received about $15 million annually from the Communist Party's international department — on top of the WPC's $50 million a year, all delivered in laundered cash dollars. Both groups had Soviet-style secretariats to manage their general activities, Soviet-style working committees to conduct their day-to-day operations, and Soviet-style bureaucratic paperwork. The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very like a direct quote from one of these organizations' propaganda sheets.

As we posted yesterday, there has been little success in verifying Kerry's claims.

AOL DISCONTINUES BUNDLED BROADBAND
Oh, Where? Oh, Where? Has My Underdog Gone?!

America Online Inc. has quietly stopped offering a complete broadband package, requiring subscribers to instead obtain their high-speed Internet connections directly from a cable modem or DSL provider.

The reversal in strategy stands as another black mark against the purported wisdom of the $160 billion merger between America Online and Time Warner at the height of the Internet boom, a deal the companies had described as a perfect marriage of new and old media with the means to deliver it. (full article)

I don't exactly remember when I became an AOL member, but it was about ten years ago. After a year and becoming more Internet savvy by 1995, when I began to create my first websites, I would commonly say that AOL doesn't have a future because it's an enclosed system versus the open wild of the Internet. Later on, AOL added Internet surfing and added more content, but these weren't the reasons why I continued to pay my monthly fees. It was simple laziness.

Over the years, my work email has changed several times and I had a Yahoo! account, which I mainly used for my fantasy sports leagues, but AOL has remained my primary personal email account. I liked keeping the same email address over the past decade and the improving functionality of their address book, which was the main reason I never signed up for Plaxo while trying every online social/professional network service available.

While my laziness saw eye-to-eye with AOL's service, my logical sense thought AOL's days were numbered. What kind of idiots, besides lazy people like me, would stay on with this service or even sign up? But they did and AOL grew from 10 million to 15 million to over 20 million dial-up users... then they merged with Time Warner!

"Ok," I thought, "this is a no-brainer. With the growth of broadband, AOL Time Warner should integrate Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service with AOL, transition their customer base to broadband, sign exclusive content deals, etc... The high-speed service shouldn't be called 'Road Runner' anymore. Just AOL or AOL Broadband..."

When this didn't happen, I thought the people at the company were idiots or the bureaucracy was so thick within the infamous Time Warner corporate culture that this or other ideas to transition AOL into the broaband age would never be executed on. I was guessing the latter.

Soon the AOL name was dropped, 2 million subscribers signed off last year, and now the ridiculous $54.95-a-month package was written off too. AOL never had the proprietary content offerings to ask for such a price, or to compete with regular broadband service providers (should have merged with Road Runner). Why would a new user sign up for AOL's broadband access plan or a current user switch when no clear service or content advantage was identified? The great brand? The "aol.com" that typically identifies you as a non-tech nincompoop? Exclusive access to such great content and services as EA.com (an effort which was seen as dead-on-arrival by any online gamer)?

Good thing for AOL broadband growth in the U.S. is not growing at a rapid pace. They still have a few years to try to stop the bleeding. I hope they do because I'm still a lazy, loyal subscriber who doesn't want to transfer his address book to Plaxo.

WHO WILL BE BRAVE?... REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS?
Greenspan Warns About Social Security... Another Reason to Vote for Bush in 2004

A couple days ago Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before the House Budget Committee on Social Security and Medicare. He warned how the "recent tax cuts had worsened the deficit, but also said he favored cutting spending rather than raising taxes, suggesting tax hikes could hurt the economy" ('Greenspan warns against deficits', CNNMoney Feb. 26th). He emphasized that if we don't deal with the problems related to our Social Security and Medicare systems the situation will be horrific for our economy... you think it was bad a couple years ago?

Shawn Macomber wrote a good piece for The American Spectator, excerpt:

THE SITUATION IS DIRE, however. According to a study by the Cato Institute, Social Security is not only the largest U.S. government program, accounting for 23 percent of total federal spending, it is "the largest government program in the world." And within 15 years, Social Security will begin to spend more on benefits than it takes in. In his testimony Greenspan recommended taking steps to solve this problem.

15 years? I remember when it was a problem blasted over the media a decade ago and various outlets were saying, "30 years... Only 30 years until Social Security dries up and our nation faces a crisis..."

Now it's 15 years. Soon 10 years... Who will be brave enough to stop the bleeding? Practically speaking, if a Democrat is elected in 2004, he will not hurt his party's chances for re-election and touch Social Security and face the wrath of the AARP. If President Bush is reelected, he has more freedom and hopefully the courage to stop the bleeding and deal with our nation's entitlement problems. I hope his principled approach to policy holds steadfast during his second term.

If not, it will simply be a game of leap frog on the road between the Democrats and the Republicans to see who has to deal with this looming crisis when it runs over them in 15 years.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE INTERVIEW

A somewhat informative interview conducted by Hugh Hewitt on his radio show of Dr. Rice. I don't have a strong opinion on her, but part of my reason for posting this is to spite my friend, Dave. He's in the corporate world now, but previously he was getting his Ph.D. in political economy at UC-Berkeley and a foreign policy wonk-wannabe. He's Canadian (from Ottawa), anti-Bush, so far left (delusional), and he hates Condoleezza Rice. We enjoy debating with each other, especially on foreign policy issues, but sometimes we stop because it can get too heated... I think he stops because I can get extremely annoying with some snide comebacks during these debates, or Dave becomes too whacko for me and I have to stop because all I hear is French coming from his mouth... hahahaha, Dave?

Anyway, back to Dr. Rice, I joke around with Dave that she's going to be president in 2008. I really don't know the prospects of her developing into a viable candidate, but I have always believed the the first women and African American president would come from the Republican party. I thought a woman ideally would be white with a non-Congressional background, such as Elizabeth Dole or Christine Todd Whitman. Both these women lost their window of opportunity. I'm not certain if America is ready to elect a woman from the Democratic party, but we'll see what happens in 2008 with Hillary running. In terms of the first African American president, I still think it will come from the Republican party... Yes, commentary without deep analysis. I'm lazy today.

The Passion of The Christ... Following Up

Following up from my Feb. 20th entry, The Passion of The Christ came out yesterday under a storm of controversy and protest. Thomas Lifson from The American Thinker wrote a great review and commentary on the movie.

A "peace-maker" review by Dennis Prager... "It is crucial for Jews and Christians to try to understand what version of 'The Passion' the other is watching and reacting to."

Going negative, My Stupid Dog wrote: "Overkill: Gibson's Passion of the Christ, Exploitation Cinema and Robert Bresson."

Christian view by Rev. Dr. Mark D. Roberts. Pretty Good.

FROM THE TRUE AXIS OF EVIL... BILL GATES
Will RealNetworks Be Netscaped By Microsoft?

Good points by the chairman of Microsoft, the true evil empire, below. Microsoft is simply a juggernaut in the real sense... remember Spider-man's old foe, The Juggernaut? With $50 billion in cash and all those PC desktops at their control, they can enter almost any software/tech market and make it theirs. Scary.

I was recently catching up with an old acquaintance who started one of the leading Internet hosting companies. I remember when he started his company five years ago with a few friends and their savings, and now it's in the top five of the global hosting market. While discussing various aspect of his business, he was telling me how Microsoft is making it awfully hard for them to pay for RealNetworks' products (e.g. Helix Servers) since they were giving out their server software for free. Naturally I assumed his company was encouraging their customers to utilize and promote Windows Media instead of RealPlayer, which they were beginning to do.

So Microsoft first used their "monopoly power to restrict how PC makers install competing media players while forcing every Windows user to take Microsoft's media player" ("Real hits Microsoft with $1 billion antitrust suit"), and now on the back end they are attacking RealNetworks' targeted growth business of providing their software and technology to content owners and network operators to distribute digital content. I chill ran down my spine. They are truly the "Evil Empire."

So I began wondering how long will RealNetworks last? Will they, like Netscape, become marginalized among consumers and the industry?


Losing ground in the innovation race?

By Bill Gates
Special to ZDNet
February 25, 2004, 4:40 AM PT

COMMENTARY--Computers will change our lives more in the next 10 years than they have in the last 20.

Not only are people relying on them for more of the things they do every day, but the pace of computing innovation has never been faster. Processing power continues to advance, according to Moore's Law, while network bandwidth, wireless, storage and graphics capabilities are growing at even faster rates...

Federal support for research and development, particularly through our universities, is crucial. It drives long-term technology advances that help create new companies and jobs--or entire industries--which, in turn, generates tax revenue that can be invested in further innovation. The abundance of hardware and connectivity is making it possible to tackle some of the biggest challenges in computer science. The Internet boom was the result of this cycle of innovation: As a product of government, business and academic work, it accounted for more than one-third of economic growth in the United States during the late 1990s...

But we're losing ground in another part of the innovation process: finding the smart, motivated people that can make these breakthroughs happen. Fewer young people are choosing to study computer science, despite all the challenging problems we have yet to solve and the incredible potential of the technology industry. (full article)

ANTI-SEMITISM'S RISE IN EUROPE

More real than the possibiliy that Gibson's movie might create anti-Semitic feelings is what's going on in Europe. From The Economist:

A Spectre Returns
Feb 20th 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda

Facing up to a resurgence of hatred directed against Europe’s Jews, the European Commission holds a conference on the issue

"...Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and Nobel laureate, said European Jews now “live in fear” and that some were even talking of leaving...." (full article)

NORTH KOREA... HERE WE GO AGAIN
From Mingi... A Good Article From the NY Post

Here's a normal entry after the prior one on spam. I assume most of my regular visitors don't read my blog for such random entries on food or my eating habits, and more for the posts on politics, business, or religion. So thanks for amusing me and dealing with my love of food and stories about food.


KOREAN CONUNDRUM

THE NEW YORK POST
By PETER BROOKES


February 24, 2004 -- NEGOTIATING with North Korea is like banging your head on the wall: It feels so good when you stop.

Well, here we go again. Representatives from the United States, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China and Russia will meet for a second round of Six Party Talks in Beijing tomorrow in another arduous attempt to resolve the Pyongyang nuke problem.

The United States and its allies, Japan and South Korea, want a complete, verifiable and irreversible end to all (yes, all) of North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs - as Pyongyang agreed to do under the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Geneva Agreed Framework.

Today, North Korea acknowledges a plutonium-based nuke program located at Yongbyon. In fact, it brags about it, telling a U.S. delegation last month that it has reprocessed 8,000 uranium fuel rods from the facility's reactor into enough plutonium for up to six nuclear weapons. (U.S. intelligence officials aren't sure whether this is boast or bluster.)

Bizarrely, the North still denies the existence of a clandestine, highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. Clearly, nobody told the North Koreans that Pakistan's door-to-door nuclear-weapons salesman, A.Q. Khan, snitched on them a few weeks ago . . .

At an infamous October 2002 meeting in Pyongyang, the Americans confronted the North Koreans on the HEU program - with "he said, she said" results: The U.S. side later said the Koreans had admitted the program's existence - while the North (facing international rebuke) denied it, blaming the translators.

Pyongyang wants energy aid and a nonaggression pact - that is, a U.S. pledge to coexist with the North Korean regime. It also wants to be taken off our list of states that sponsor terrorism. (As long as it's listed, it can't borrow money from international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund.)

To these ends, North Korea last month proposed to freeze its nuclear activities. Again! And the offer doesn't include its not-so-covert-anymore HEU operation. (Can't you overlook that other weapons program, just this once? We need some bargaining chips for future booty . . . ) The United States insists that the HEU program be on the table as well.

But despite the prospects of reaching loggerheads over this issue once again, all is not lost. U.S. diplomats may signal a "bold approach" to resolve the nuclear issue - something similar to what is going on with Libya.

Moammar Khaddafy's deal could stand as evidence that a better future is possible for rogue states that come in from the cold: By swearing off weapons of mass destruction (WMD), he'll reap benefits - such as the lifting of U.S. sanctions - likely leading to significant American investment in Libya's flagging oil industry. And he won't wind up hiding in cave, like
Osama, or a spider hole, like Saddam.

This should appeal to North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il.

Details of the possible U.S. offer haven't leaked, but it's likely to include economic assistance and the establishment of diplomatic relations in exchange for North Korea's agreement to eliminate WMD, shrink its conventional military, stop selling or trading ballistic-missile know-how and make progress on human rights and political reforms.

A breakthrough is possible, but keep your expectations low. Pyongyang's negotiators have little or no authority to deviate from their well-scripted talking points. And Kim Jong Il may be waiting to see how the presidential elections come out, hoping for a change in administration.

The Libyan model opens the door for a better future for 22 million famine-stricken North Koreans (2 million have already starved to death since 1994), not to mention the prospects for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

But North Korea rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. When do dictators do what is in the best interest of their country or their people?

Best bet: Stand by for more head-banging in the months to come.


Peter Brookes is a senior fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation.

SPAM HAIKU
Love Only Hawaiians and Koreans Can Truly Feel

While going to the Blogger homepage I saw in the "Blogs of Note" column a "Spam Poetry" blog. My stomach jumped and a tingle of excitement went through my body. Upon visiting the site, disappointment rapidly flowed through me. It was a site of poetry made from spam emails not about the oddly delicious mystery meat that captivates the state of Hawaii and the nation of South Korea... largest consumers of spam.

Anyway, so this reminded me of haikus on spam I saw a while back and Googled it to find the original one by Michael Lubic (edited for space):


Blue can of steel
What promise do you hold?
Salt flesh so ripe

Can of metal, slick
Soft center, so cool, moistening
I yearn for your salt

Silent, former pig
One communal awareness
Myriad pink bricks

You wait to feed me
Stoic vigil on the shelf
Ah my vibrant pink

Jelly for mortar
Seven hundred tins and more
I build a Spam house

Above all others
Porcine treat without equal
There is but one Spam

Clad in metal, proud
No mere salt-curing for you
You are not bacon

And who dares mock Spam?
You? you? you are not worthy
Of one rich pink fleck

Grotesque pinkish mass
In a blue can on a shelf
Quivering alone

Like some spongy rock
A granite, my piece of Spam
In sunlight on my plate

Oh Argentina!
Your little tin of meat soars
Above the pampas

Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan

Oh tin of pink meat
I ponder what you may be:
Snout or ear or feet?

Pink tender morsel
Glistening with salty gel
What the hell is it?

Ears, snouts, and innards,
A homogenous mass
Pass another slice

Cube of cold pinkness
Yellow specks of porcine fat
Give me a spork please

Old man seeks doctor
"I eat Spam daily", he says.
Angioplasty

Highly unnatural
The tortured shape of this "food"
A small pink coffin

Slicing your sweet self
Salivating in suspense
Sizzle, sizzle..Spam

Pink beefy temptress
I can no longer remain
Vegetarian


I think my Ode to Bacon is slightly better, but that is a writer's bias.

HALOSCAN... COMMENTING ON MY BLOG

I just wanted to try out HaloScan, a commenting and trackback system, for my blog. I new era for my blog I guess. As long as I don't get too many random posts from my weird friends bored at work or the Democrats that I befriended during my Coro Fellowship or graduate school days.

Obviously, any offensive, lewd, or commercial comments on this blog will be deleted... besides the promotion of high-fat, high-cholesterol foods, such as Pete Miller's burgers , Buffalo Joe's wings, twiced-cooked pork, and Chop House's signature prime rib.

NADER RIPPING OFF STUDENTS ACROSS AMERICA
Bawhahahahaha... Baaaawhaahahaha

Okay, it's not that funny if you attended or are attending one of the 140 campuses that basically forces you to paid a few bucks to Nader's organization, but he's shown to be more hypocritical and narcissistic now. Actually, more like a slimy, evil, cheating bastard... how can you deceive students across the U.S. into contributing towards an organization or person that they probably don't want to give to while railing on politicians for selling out to corporate America? Worse thing about these posts below is that I found out that I unknowing gave to Nader during my years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I'm so pissed. I could have knowing contributed to corporate America using my $3-$5 bucks by buying a McDonald's extra value meal or played Midway Games' Mortal Kombat for hours instead of unknowingly contributing to Nader's whacked out campaigns.

Definitely read Radley Baklo's article, Public Shakedown Artist, at Tech Centration Station (excerpt below):

The PIRG scam is short for "Public Interest Research Group," and there are well over a hundred chapters of the organization spread out across the country. The scams vary from campus to campus, but it basically works like this:

Each time your kid registers for classes, the local PIRG chapter has arranged with the school to tack a fee on to his/her tuition. On most every campus, the PIRG chapter has made attempts to make this "contribution" as secretive and misleading as possible. Just how secretive and manipulative the method depends on how much resistance each chapter has met in trying to get the scheme implemented. At most schools, they first attempt to make the fee both mandatory and nonrefundable. If that doesn't work, they lobby for as underhanded and sneaky a scheme as the school will allow.

Other articles and my initial read was found at The Volokh Conspiracy:


Nader and PIRGs: This appears to be the moment to finally establish in everyone's mind the deep fraudulence and corruptness of Ralph Nader's various enterprises. Nobody has an interest in covering up for him now.

See: Mark Kleiman, Jane Galt, Zach Wendling, Radley Balko.

Jane's post in particular sounds like the stories of many, many collegiate idealists I've known who went off for PIRG work and canvassing for a summer and returned with really bitter disgust at the enterprise. It's also noteworthy that the PIRGs are the only major example of mandatory student activity dues getting systematically channeled off-campus into political causes. It's more common for off-campus political organizations to subsidize undergrad activities, so that they can publish newspapers, invite speakers, or work on campaigns that they'd be unable to afford just from their cut of the student activities fee. PIRGs, by contrast, extract money from campusesin order to fund their ongoing operations-- which consist of a little bit of 'organizing' and a lot of further fund-raising.

KERRY MAKES WHISTLE-STOP TOUR FROM THE DECK OF YACHT

LANCASTER, PA—Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) began a seven-day, eight-state whistle-stop tour Monday, addressing a group of Frigidaire factory workers from the all-teak deck of his 60-foot luxury motor cruiser. (full article)

Pretty funny. From the Onion, my favorite newspaper during my college years.

NADER RUNNING AGAIN FOR PRESIDENT
Bawhahahahaha... Baaaawhaahahaha

Nader's Green Party bid won nearly 2.9 million votes in 2000 and was blamed for siphoning support from Democrat Al Gore -- particularly in Florida, where Nader won 97,488 votes and Gore's loss by a bitterly contested 537 votes cost him the presidency. (full article)

Well, we wouldn't have had eight years of Clinton if it wasn't for Ross Perot taking a large chunk of the Republican moderates. The beauty of American politics is that things like this just happen. Nader was a factor in 2000 and maybe he will be a factor in 2004. Who really knows?

I do wonder if he's really running to challenge the two-party system in the U.S. and be a voice for the underrepresented, or if it's because he's more of an egomaniac. In the twilight of his life, Nader doesn't command as much attention or respect so maybe he needs the spotlight to feel the love. I guess I'm almost comparing him to a human groundhog... needs to be in the public eye once every few years, so the presidential elections are perfect timing to rub his ego. Whatever his reason for running, it's only a good thing for President Bush.

ELISABETH ROSENTHAL ANOTHER JAYSON BLAIR?
The New York Times Again

From the InstaPundit:


AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS CREDIBILITY ISSUES? Compare this quote from the Times a couple of weeks ago:

"I don't think I could vote for George Bush again when I think of the 500 people killed in Iraq and what's happened to the economy in this country," said George Meagher, an independent, who runs the American Military Museum in Charleston and said he now favors Mr. Kerry.

with this quote from today:

George Meagher, a Republican who founded and now runs the American Military Museum in Charleston, S.C., said he threw his "heart and soul" into the Bush campaign four years ago. . . . "People like me, we're all choking a bit at not supporting the president. But when I think about 500 people killed and what we've done to Iraq."

This looks suspiciously like the same quote, recycled and relabeled. But thanks to the Internet, we can fact-check your ass. (Originally spotted here, with what I think is an appropriate comment: "Shame on the NYTimes....but then, it says alot that they have to keep interviewing the same guy over and over for different stories, to gather the right soundbite.") Or, more likely, recycling the original quote in a different story.

And as for relabeling the source guy from "independent" to "Republican" to fit the slant of the story, well, that's pretty lame -- especially as the stories are by the same reporter.

ENRON AND THE PRESIDENT
From Tony Perkins at AlwaysOn

A post from Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn, a tech news blog community, in response to a negative attack on President Bush:


Given the fact that this blog’s author, Teds Head, is listed as a sponsor to Bill Clinton’s second inauguration committee, and in celebration of the fact that former Enron CEO, Jeff Skilling was pictured on the front page of the New York Times, I thought I would share the content of an email I just received:

Subject: Enron and the President - Lets help the media spread the truth.

This is an interesting bit of information that you don't hear much about in the media…
• Enron's chairman did meet with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.
• Enron gave $420,000 to the president's party over three years.
• It donated $100,000 to the president's inauguration festivities.
• The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
• The corporation had access to the administration at its highest levels and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it.
• The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction. Scandalous!!

BUT...the president under whom all this happened WASN'T George W. Bush…
SURPRISE…It was Bill Clinton!
****

Frankly Teds Head, this is just one example of why many of us are very happy that we now have a President we can be proud of again.

FROM FUTURE BOY... ITUNES VS. RHAPSODY

Just a comparison article. Pasted below because I don't know if Business 2.0 blocks access to their archives.


iTunes vs. Rhapsody
Music-download store or digital-jukebox subscription? Ultimately, we'll want both.

By Erick Schonfeld
Business 2.0
February 20, 2004

In the budding digital-music industry -- as Steve Jobs likes to point out ad nauseam -- Apple (AAPL) has the upper hand. It boasts both the most popular music-download store (iTunes) and the most popular digital-music player (the iPod). Pepsi (PEP) is giving away 100 million iTunes songs, and Target (TGT) is going to start selling prepaid cards for iTunes. But while Jobs would like the world to think that he's already won the digital-music game, the truth is that the game has hardly begun.

Right now there are two ways for consumers to pay for digital music: They can buy songs and albums à la carte from a download store like iTunes or they can subscribe to a digital-jukebox service like RealNetworks's (RNWK) Rhapsody. The iTunes store has taken off because it presents a familiar model for buying music online: You pay 99 cents for a track that you can keep, copy, and move around forever, just as you would a CD and its contents. This is a system people feel comfortable with. Thirty million downloads (and counting) don't lie.

The subscription model presented by Rhapsody is not as easy to grasp. Rhapsody is like TiVo (TIVO) in that it is nearly impossible to explain its appeal to someone who has never used it. But Dave Williams, Rhapsody's general manager for music services, warns, "Don't assume that downloads are taking off faster than subscriptions." Rhapsody went from streaming 12 million songs last July to 42 million in January. RealNetworks's music subscribers total 350,000, most of whom are paying $10 a month for Rhapsody. The scrappy music service has inked deals with Best Buy (BBY) and Comcast (CMCSK) to sign up more subscribers. And in January, RealNetworks finally launched its own separate download store, which is integrated into the latest version of its RealPlayer software.

In terms of money and mind share, though, iTunes is lapping the competition. That's because Jobs was able to line up licensing deals with the major music labels and jump-start the digital-music business by proving that people would actually pay for music online. His celebrity status no doubt helped in the negotiations, but one of the main reasons the music industry gave him a chance was that he initially limited the service to the Macintosh market. Licensing to Apple was palatable to the labels because it was a controlled test in a tiny, cordoned-off fraction of the market. Only after a successful outcome did Apple expand the service to the larger Windows world. Now other Windows music stores, from RealNetworks's to Wal-Mart's (WMT) to the new Napster, have piled into the market, and there are more on the way.

As the digital-music business becomes respectable (the folks at Rhapsody figure it will grow from last year's $75 million to as much as $500 million in 2004), two things will happen. There will be a shakeout among all the download stores -- there are already too many of them -- and subscription services will slowly but surely become more popular. That's because nobody makes money off downloads, even at 99 cents a pop. As Tim Quirk, Rhapsody's executive director, puts it, "iTunes sells iPods. Real's music store sells Rhapsody subscriptions."

Upselling and cross-selling seem to be the motives of the digital-music providers, but what will motivate consumers? To attempt to answer that, I can only relate my own experiences with both iTunes and Rhapsody. Since I usually use a Mac, I started buying songs from iTunes when it first came out last spring. The iTunes store is elegantly laid out and easy to use. I'd say I find what I'm looking for about 70 percent of the time, and the selection is getting better. (It's sort of as you'd expect: lots of Prince, no Hüsker Dü.) Searching for songs, artists, or albums is fast. Each artist's page comes with a list of top downloads for that artist, and you can listen to a 30-second clip before buying a song. The ability to buy one track at a time is key. For instance, I was able to save $13 by buying just the seven songs I really like from Outkast's latest double album. I also found a David Bowie cover of the Pixies song "Cactus" on an album I would never have bought in its entirety. And there are clever ways to find new music, such as through celebrity playlists compiled by the likes of Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, and even Burt Bacharach.

After hooking up a pair of decent speakers to my computer, I pretty much stopped buying CDs. iTunes had helped me make the jump to digital music, and I was a happy camper. But then listening to all of those 30-second clips to make sure I was buying the song I wanted started to become a hassle and take up a lot of time. A few weeks ago, I tried out Rhapsody on a PC (it's not available on Macs). It was a completely different way to listen to music, and once I got the hang of it, I began to understand where Quirk gets the cheek to say, "iTunes is yesterday disguised as tomorrow." iTunes may be the best way to purchase music online, but Rhapsody is positively addictive. Since logging on to Rhapsody, I rarely check out iTunes anymore.

As a Rhapsody subscriber, I have access to nearly 600,000 songs. Instead of 30-second clips, the entire songs are streamed to my computer. I can save artists, albums, and radio stations to my playlist and listen all day. I spend more time listening to music than trying to figure out which tracks to buy. Rhapsody's music-genre tree is far more extensive than Apple's (for instance, within the alternative genre, there is a dream-pop subgenre, which, in turn, contains a space-rock subgenre that includes bands like Mazzy Star and Spiritualized -- it can get pretty specific). And there is a custom radio-station feature that allows me to enter five artists and creates a random sample of songs from those artists and all their influencers, contemporaries, and followers. I find myself listening to many songs that I wouldn't necessarily buy but do have the urge to hear, like "Aah ... the Name Is Bootsy, Baby," by Bootsy Collins. I've also discovered lots of great back-catalog albums that I never owned, such as The Byrds Play Bob Dylan. Best of all, Rhapsody makes it easy to explore and take a chance on musicians I might not otherwise have been exposed to, such as Bebel Gilberto, a sultry bossa nova chanteuse from Brazil (and daughter of bossa nova great Joao Gilberto).

What gets you hooked on digital music is the access to a virtually unlimited pool of songs. But filling your iPod with 10,000 songs at 99 cents each will quickly become prohibitively expensive. That's why I believe that, over time, subscriptions will become more popular, especially for serious music fans, savvier Internet users, and older consumers who might enjoy a wider range of genres and styles than that found in many physical record stores. Ultimately, subscription services will have to merge with the store concept, because there will always be that subset of albums that you just have to own.

Right now the problem with Rhapsody, besides the fact that it is not available on Macs, is that you have to be connected to the Internet to enjoy it. It is possible to burn a track to a CD for 79 cents, but RealNetworks offers a better buying experience through the RealPlayer Music Store, which is a separate application that is very similar to iTunes. What we really need is a combination of the iTunes and Rhapsody models. And that is exactly what RealNetworks is planning. Eventually the RealPlayer Music Store will be integrated into Rhapsody, and there is talk of allowing subscribers to download songs to MP3 players (the songs would disappear when a user's subscription ends). Rhapsody will never have the marketing budget of iTunes, but as broadband connections become more common, it should benefit. And then it will be interesting to see if Apple continues to insist that downloads are the only way to go.

POLITICAL BELIEFS ASSESSMENT TEST

Don Hagen made a 'Satirical Political Beliefs Assessment Test' to help you decide whether you're a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or a communist. Check it out.

The Passion of The Christ Misunderstood

"The Passion of the Christ" is opening in theatres on February 25th in the U.S. with a stir of controversy. Mel Gibson's movie initially brought out some strong criticism and reaction from various Jewish leaders and organizations that it was anti-Semitic and would create some hatred towards Jews.

Without seeing the movie (and knowing Billy Graham "okay" it), if it simply follows the story of the New Testament, I don't understand how it can be anti-Semitic. Yes, the Jewish religious leaders called for Jesus Christ's death because he claimed what was outrageous and blasphemous to many of them... that he was the Messiah and also inferred that he and God are one.

In Judaism, it is prophesied that the Messiah ("Christ" is Greek for Messiah) will come to restore Israel and establish his kingdom. Christians believe Jesus is the Messiah and the Jews who believed this during that time (the initial group of Christians) saw the difference in how that prophecy was to be fulfilled. "Kingdom" as many Jews hoped for was a physical kingdom on earth established by their Messiah. While "kingdom" for those initial believers in Jesus Christ was a spiritual kingdom, which even his disciples did not realize until he was crucified. Jesus was a Messiah that most Jews never would have expected during those tumultuous times. He was a meek, humble carpenter not a strong, warrior or ruler who would save them from Rome.

Anyway, this conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees led to his death, but does anyone who believes in Christ and his teaching hold hatred for Jews? It might be an excuse for the really ignorant or really, really stupid, but to simply hate Jews because they "killed Christ" would not make sense and goes against everything within the Christian doctrine and the words that Jesus spoke.

If Christians were to hate all Jews than they should also hate Jesus and all the disciples since they were Jewish. Hence they wouldn't be Christians, just haters... and not political conversatives, just haters. Simple but truthful rebuttal. More convincing is that "hate" should not be within the minds and hearts of Christians. Anyway you slice it, whether today's Jewish leaders or liberal Christian-hating people or supposed-Christians who hate Jews for "killing Christ", those that say the Bible's New Testament encourages or promotes anti-Semitism are idiots. This site gives a more direct and lengthy answer to whether "The Passion of The Christ" is anti-Semitic or not.


On a related note, Gibson's father might be anti-Semitic: Gibson Father: Holocaust Mostly 'Fiction' .

Hutton Gibson follows a tiny wing of traditionalist Catholicism that views the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council as a conspiracy between Jews and Masons to take over the church.

He reminds me of Montana Freemen or people I use to talk to once in a while when I lived in Springfield, IL (truly Middle America). Some of them really believe in the black helicopters of the U.N., seven gnomes of Switzerland ruling the world (Jewish bankers), or how U.S. insurance companies controlled many presidential administrations. Of course, his views and recent public statements don't put people that really are concerned about an anti-Semitic message in the movie at ease.

Sort of timely too since I'm reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Conspiracy cracks must have loved this book. It's been a good read, but I hit some bumps in the road that made me lose my initial excitement. I'm back on track and will soon finish this entertaining book to blog about it. Definitely amusing since it has many historical stretches, logical flaws, poor assumptions about human nature, and the twisting of facts... of course, it's a fiction book so what did I expect, right?

Anyway, I do recommend the book and I'm excited about seeing the movie, "The Passion of The Christ."

PEGGY NOONAN ON BUSH
Normality Versus Hatred

Great article on Bush. Reminds me of her book on the Reagan years, "What I Saw at the Revolution."


Broken Glass Democrats
Can their anger overcome Bush's normality?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BY PEGGY NOONAN
Thursday, February 19, 2004

A few quick thoughts about the president. I saw him this week at a White House event. I'd been looking forward to it. A lot had happened since I'd last spent time with him, in July, for an interview for Ladies Home Journal, and I was eager to get a sense of how he's feeling, thinking and looking as the election gears up. Also I've been tough on him lately and wondered how he treats people under such circumstances.

The president bounded into the Roosevelt Room at 10:30 on a weekday morning with a flurry of aides behind him. He looked tanned, rested and perhaps preoccupied. He walked around the table and shook hands with everyone. Then he did something surprising. He sat down at the big brown meeting table and instead of offering an opening comment and then taking questions, as I'd expected, he simply talked to us about how he sees the world. He did this for 45 minutes. He was funny and frank. He made a point to make and maintain eye contact with each of us, now this one and now that, as he talked. He shared thoughts, observations and stories in a way that seemed both free-associative and thematically linked. The theme was freedom, or rather liberation--liberation in political terms, in personal terms, in the world and at home. I cannot quote him, but since the dozen who were there will soon be sharing their impressions with friends, and since you are my friends . . .

What the president's associates and allies had been telling me seemed completely true. His spirits were high, and at points he seemed loaded for bear. He has rock confidence that his actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been right and have helped the world. He suggested that you've got to stand your ground when it's the high ground. He made it clear he intends to.

He wound it all up, took no questions, and left with the flurry.

We left inspirited. Most everyone there if not everyone was a supporter of the president, but I think each came out more so.

How did he treat me? I'd like to say he was cool because that would suggest he's been reading my columns and they've had a huge impact. In fact he was friendly as ever. There are several ways to interpret this. I choose to believe he is hiding his pain.

It's left me thinking about the importance of the coming election in terms of choosing a path, or staying on and continuing down a path. If you think of the great questions of this great and dangerous era--cloning, terrorism, how to achieve peace, the ability of Americans to build not just stable lives but fruitful lives economically and what might be called culturally--you realize they will all be dealt with in this election. Or rather the outcome will affect these issues and more, and so effect the future in the deepest possible way.

It is fascinating to me that after two months of the Democratic Party demonstrating what appears to be dynamism, and the Republicans struggling with such questions as the weapons of mass destruction, and the president fighting back charges regarding his military service, the smartest read on where we are came this week from a a Zogby poll that said the Democrats are leading in the Democratic areas and the Republicans are leading in the Republican areas. Mr. Bush's poll numbers are down, but the blue states are blue and the red states are red. And no one knows what will change that.

Here are two dynamics that are emerging, and will have impact. First, we all know the party that has not been in the White House is always hungry, highly energized, and has a lot of arguments on its side. They've had a lot of time to refine those arguments while they've been out in the cold. But this year the Democrats do seem hungrier than usual, in part because of the continuing wound of the 2000 election, in which their candidate had a plurality of the popular vote despite losing in the electoral college. They think they won, and lost. They feel a heightened passion.

Have you seen them out there? Teddy Kennedy revitalized and refocused, as if this is his last great campaign; the entertainment-industrial complex in full battle cry; television producers energized by the battle, political wives making passionate speeches, young voters entering the process, whether for Howard Dean or someone else. This is rise of the Broken Glass Democrats. Remember Broken Glass Republicans in 2000? They'd crawl over broken glass to help their guy and get the change they wanted. I think we are seeing the beginning of that with the Democrats.

What may turn out to be the Republicans' secret weapon, or the secret ingredient of their success? I think that, as always, it comes down to issues. People want higher taxes or lower, seek more personal authority over their social security accounts or not, support the effort in Iraq or do not. But there will also be their sense of who the candidates are as men, in terms of character, personality, gifts and predilections. And that will factor in too. I was asked this week why the president seems so attractive to the heartland, to what used to be called Middle America. A big question. I found my mind going to this word: normal.

Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" He's responsible. He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. Bush ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy.

Someone said to me: But how can you call him normal when he came from such privilege? Indeed he did. But there's nothing lemonade-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-links-at-the-country-club about Mr. Bush. He isn't smooth. He actually has some of the roughness and the resentments of the self-made man. I think the reason for this is Texas. He grew up in a white T-shirt and jeans playing ball in the street with the other kids in the subdivision. Barbara Bush wasn't exactly fancy. They lived like everyone else. She spoke to me once with great nostalgia of her early days in Texas, when she and her husband and young George slept in the same bed in an apartment in Midland. A prostitute lived in the complex. Barbara Bush just thought she was popular. Then they lived in a series of suburban houses.

George W. Bush didn't grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else. That's a gift, to think you're just like everyone else in America. It can be the making of you.


Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

Eli Noam: Market failure in the media sector

I came across Eli Noam's article in the Financial Times while visiting Kevin Werbach's blog. I haven't seen or heard about Eli Noam in a long while since I interned at his institute, the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, during graduate school. Anyway, Kevin's comments follow and read Noam's article if you're interested in information technology, telecom, and their related policy issues:

The fundamental business challenge of our times
Eli Noam of Columbia Business School has an important Financial Times column pointing out the fundamental business challenge facing the tech sector: commoditization.

"The market failure of the entire information sector is one of the fundamental trends of our time, with far-reaching long-term effects, and it is happening right in front of our eyes."

Eli is by nature a cynic, so what he has to say is often not pleasant. But he has the unfortunate habit of being right much of the time, and ahead of the curve virtually all the time. I've disagreed with some of his conclusions, but I'm with him on the core insight: there is a basic structural disconnect in the economics of information industries, with painful consequences. We saw it first in telecom, where VOIP is now bringing the issue to a boil, but it's broader than that.

PLUG FOR NETFLIX
Blockbuster... A Fading Dinosaur?

Last month, when I visited my younger brother he was ranting about Netflix, an online DVD subscription service. He didn't have to bother with returning movies to Blockbuster anymore or dealing with their exorbitant late fees. He told me how you can keep up to 3 DVDs as long as you want as long as you pay the monthly subscription fee, and it was easy to receive and return the DVDs through snail mail.

"Blockbuster is in trouble, huh?" I said.

Since I've been primarily in Asia for the past four years, I haven't kept an eye on all the changes in the movie & video industry. I remember Netflix from a few years back, but I almost thought they died out. When I was I doing a video-on-demand startup back in 1998 and 1999, Blockbuster was the juggernaut in the movie industry.

By 1998, video sales and rental made up 50% of the movie studios revenues and Blockbuster held almost 20% of the rental market. Before 1998, the leading video rental chains were forced to change their business model to a revenue-sharing system with the movie studios since they were facing growing competition from cable and satellite pay-per-view service, video-on-demand services in the horizon, and the growing "disappointment factor" of their customers. This last factor was the most important. Approximately 20 percent of Blockbuster?s customers were leaving their stores without a selection and their sales were freefalling in 1997.

Blockbuster turned around all of this. Instead of purchasing the videotapes for $60-$75, which limited each store to approximately 40 copies of each hit movie and lead to the "disappointment factor," they leased each video tape for $8-$12 and received as many as 120 copies. In return, the movie studios or wholesalers received 30%-40% of the rental revenue. Blockbuster continued to grow from its $3.9 billion in revenues to last year's $5.9 billion, but it's power in the movie industry has waned dramatically in recent years.

The company use to hold the movie industry to at least a 50-day release window advantage over cable and satellite pay-per-services. Now that release window is slowly shrinking, cable and satellite pay-per-view and NVOD services are increasing, video-on-demand might finally be a reality in many homes (maybe in a decade?), and its revenues are being assaulted from all angles, especially from Netflix (CBS Marketwatch: "Netflix zooms to new all-time high")

Netflix has 1.5 million customers and growing... like roaches (196,000 net subscribers in Q4 2003) . Customers who don't want to pay for late fees, which make up to 30% of the video rental industry's revenue are fighting back by joining Netflix. Blockbuster and Wal-Mart have tried to fight back or get a piece of the action, but Netflix still holds 95% of this online market and has a patent for a barrier if needed.

How will Blockbuster respond now? Its parent, Viacom, already responded by shedding its stake in the company last week. Will Blockbuster become a dinosaur and a faded memory within a decade? Probably not, but its growth will taper off and become more and more limited to dense urban cities. How it reinvents itself will be interesting to watch over the next few years.

MOORE'S LAW... FUTURE OF MULTICORE PROCESSORS

From News.com, an article by David Yen, EVP at Sun Microsystems: "End of Moore's Law? Wrong question"

For non-tech people, Moore's Law was formed by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, who predicted that the density of microprocessors (speed & performance) would double every 18 months.

BIOMETRIC PASSPORTS

Pretty cool... Finnish Co. to Make Biometric Passports.

GREG MADDUX SIGN 3-YEAR DEAL WITH CUBS!
Pleasant Past Two Years and More to Come

Since I'm from Chicago, I gotta post this one up. Though Maddux, isn't on top of his game any more, he does make the Cubs' rotation one of the best, and he will pass his wisdom to the young guys there. When he was in his prime, he was amazing, especially how he dominated as a non-power pitcher. I love this quote from Sports Illustrated a few years back:

On Greg Maddux, the best pitcher since Walter Johnson and Cy Young:
"I understand how he knows when I'm going to swing. But how the hell does he know when I'm not swinging?"
- Len Dykstra

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER'S IRVING KRISTOL LECTURE
A Good Overview of U.S. Foreign Policy

Charles Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Washington Post and he recently gave a speech on U.S. foreign policy at AEI's annual dinner. I first came across this on OxBlog and here is their commentary below:

CRYSTALIZING THE FOREIGN POLICY CONVERSATION: Charles Krauthammer presented the Irving Kristol lecture at AEI last week, which was a quite good analysis of the four most noticeable currents within the contemporary American foreign policy conversation (i.e., isolationism, liberal internationalism, realism, and global democratization). One of his more interesting moves in this lecture is to propose the rechristening (errr, brising) of neoconservatism as democratic globalism - which, inasmuch as it makes muscular, idealistic democracy promotion into more of an option which both political parties can adopt, is something of which we who are the tradition's partisans can wholeheartedly approve.

AFTER WEDDING PLUG
My Parents Crack Me Up

My parents are simply awesome people. Warm, kind-hearted, cool... All my friends have told me so while growing up. Many of my women friends or acquaintances from Chicago have told me that my mother is their role model for an Asian American woman. People say my father is 'cool', or if they are Korean they say 'muh-shi-ssuh' (read juice man story). Both of them have been generous to their friends, family, and strangers. In all my years living with them in Chicago, we must have had house guests at least two months out of each year. Their friends passing through for work or leisure, or my friends from Northwestern University or University of Chicago (who were on quarter systems) staying at our house even when I was already on my campus. Friends, family, and random out-of-town guests over for Thanksgiving every year. They would volunteer at a soup kitchen for the homeless together or help out numerous local organizations if they believe in their cause.

For these reasons and more, they have had a tremendous influence and impact on the lives of my younger brother and I, so I wanted to pay an indirectly tribute to them during my toast at my brother's wedding. At my friend Peter's wedding, I gave a serious, heart-felt toast, but for my brother I wanted to make it light-hearted. I decided to include some stories about my parents that would naturally make it humorous not just light-hearted.

During one part of the toast I described how my parents had different expectations and views between my brother and I. When my brother went on his mission program last year, my mother would say it me, "Dear, isn't it wonderful that he's going through such a great spiritual experience..."

After he got back from his mission trip, my brother lost 30 lbs. A few days later my dad calls me over, "Bernard... You know Lenny lost 30 lbs. through his mission trip... maybe you should go on a mission trip... (serious silence)"

I continued to talk about how my mother was more direct with me. Ever since I was in college people, especially the engineering students from Hong Kong in my dorm, thought I looked like a young Chow Yun-Fat. A year after graduation, I gain almost 30 lbs. from sitting at a desk, which produced horror in my mother's eyes. One time my friend said to my mom, "Mrs. Moon, do you know a lot of people think Bernard looks like Chow Yun-Fat?"

She turns to me and say, "Dear, you don't look like Chow Yun-Fat. You're just FAT! So please lose some weight!"

I went on to talk about some things my mother use to say to my bro and ended it on a cheerful note.

Since then a couple people have approached me and told me how funny I was during the toast, and they assumed I made those conversations and stories up. Obviously, they didn't know my parents well, so I just nodded while thinking, "No, I wasn't that funny. My parents really said those things to us."

THE BEAUTY OF DEMOCRACY
Wolfowitz's Vision Coming to Fruition

From Andrew Sullivan's blog (pasted article below. sorry that this week's blogging has a lot of text/scrolling):

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ: It can work. Of course it can. Don't miss this astonishing story in yesterday's Washington Post about how a young American is making history.


In Iraqi Towns, Electoral Experiment Finds Some Success

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, February 16, 2004; Page A01


CHEBAYISH, Iraq -- The banner outside declared the occasion: the first free elections in this hardscrabble southern town, battered by President Saddam Hussein and neglected in the disarray that followed. Campaign posters of men in turbans, suits and street clothes crowded for space along the wall of the polling station, peering at the gathering crowds. Inside was Tobin Bradley, a 29-year-old American trying to pull off the vote and, in the process, possibly reshape Iraq's transition from occupation.

"Ask them if they read and write," Bradley called out in Arabic to volunteers and staff. He positioned police to keep order. "One officer goes here," he said. "One goes there." To a handful of candidates gathered at the door, he lifted up a ballot box, painted in white. "You can see the boxes are empty." He caught his breath, rolled up his sleeves, then called out, "Yalla, let's go."

"We'll see how it works out," Bradley said, as voters surged through the doors. "It's always figure-it-out-as-we-go."

With a knack for improvisation and little help from Baghdad, Bradley, the political adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Nasiriyah, has carried out what may stand as one of the most ambitious democratic experiments in Iraq's history, a project that goes to the heart of the debate about how Iraq's next government should be chosen. In the province of Dhi Qar, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad and a backwater even by Iraq's standards, residents voting as families will have elected city councils in 16 of the 20 biggest cities by next month. Bradley will have organized 11, more than half of them this month.

At every turn, the elections have set precedents, some of them unanticipated. Voters have typically elected professionals rather than tribal or religious leaders, although the process has energized Islamic parties. Activists have gone door to door to organize women, who turned out in their largest numbers this past week in some of Iraq's most conservative towns. Most important is the way residents qualify to cast ballots -- cards issued by Hussein's government to distribute monthly rations.

In the debate over the U.S.-administered transfer of power to an Iraqi government, those cards have emerged as a crux of the dispute. U.S. authorities have resisted elections for choosing the next government, fearing that -- in the absence of up-to-date voter rolls -- logistical challenges and the potential for fraud could not be addressed before June 30, the date of the scheduled handover. But Iraq's most influential religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has suggested that ration cards could substitute for voter rolls.

While making clear they are not endorsing the idea for all of Iraq, U.S. and British officials say the ration-card system works strikingly well in this province, Iraq's fourth-largest. "In principle, we here are quite in favor of it, and people like it," said John Bourne, the British coordinator in the province. "The question is, will it work on a larger scale here, and the next question is, will it work elsewhere?"

So far, Bourne has not advocated widening the voting experiment to the entire province.

"If we jump into it now, there would be a big splash," he said.

Bradley, too, stopped short of endorsing the system for the rest of the country. But in Dhi Qar province, which is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim, it has proved the surest way to ensure the councils that run the towns are viewed as legitimate -- unlike many U.S.-appointed councils elsewhere in Iraq.

"I think we need to trust Iraqis a little bit," Bradley said. "If it works here, what does that say? It's worked in one city, it's worked in 11 cities, it could work in more. But we're taking it one city at a time."

$600 Elections

With about a month of planning -- at a cost of about $600 each -- Bradley organized back-to-back elections this past week in Chebayish and Fuhud, towns of dirt roads, stagnant puddles and cinder-block huts that border the resurrected marshes Hussein sought to drain in the 1990s. Banners in Fuhud that called voting "a moral, religious and national duty" competed with Hussein-era slogans still painted on walls of the one-story girls' school. "Down with the Jews," one intoned.

Hundreds lined up outside the school, carrying the sometimes smudged, creased or torn ration cards issued to their families, plus one other form of identification. In this election, each family was allowed two votes -- one for a man, one for a woman. Ration cards were marked with two stamps, and voters then sat at battered school desks, choosing between five and 10 names from a list of 44 candidates.

"One at a time, one at a time, organization is beautiful," shouted one of the judges running the voting, Kamil Rashad Fleih.

Naim Aboud, wearing the checkered headdress of tribal Iraqis, showed up only with his ration card, asking for a ballot.

"You have to bring identification," Fleih said.

"It's far away," said an exasperated Aboud, throwing up his arms.

"You must," Fleih answered. "That's the law today."

Another man brought his wife's identification, trying to cast her vote for Fuhud's 10-member council.

"She has the children at home," he protested to the judges.

Bradley interrupted. "You go home, you stay with the children, and she comes," he said in Arabic.

For a civilian administration often criticized for its isolation and disproportionate presence in Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Dhi Qar has demonstrated a flexibility and improvisation more commonly exhibited by the U.S. military in Iraq.

In each election, Bradley has started with a preparation committee of unaffiliated residents. Beginning a month before the vote, they come up with conditions for candidates: minimum age, no Baath Party affiliation and an often contentious education requirement. Judges from outside run the voting, and lately, nongovernmental organizations have played a growing role.

The hard-to-forge ration cards, a slip of computer-generated paper, identify the head of the household. While some have contended the former government abused the system, Bradley said he believes 95 percent of families in the province have ration cards. Voters with the cards then prove they belong to the family. In the early elections, Iraq's patriarchal society meant only men voted, so Bradley changed the rules to give two votes to each family -- a red stamp for women, a blue stamp for men.

"It's not a perfect system," he acknowledged.

The Female Vote

Women's participation was a particular problem. A total of three women voted in the two elections before the rule change. In the election after the revision, in Batha, 62 women -- from a total of 1,200 -- cast ballots. Then female activists from Nasiriyah, the provincial capital, got involved, going door to door with leaflets and broadcasting a message from the mosque loudspeaker after the noon prayers.

"To all respected women of the town of Fuhud, to every housewife, teacher and doctor, to the educated and uneducated, we would like to tell you that your presence at the elections center is a duty," called out 26-year-old Rasha Muhsin Aboudi.

Within an hour, dozens of women showed up at the polling station, some carrying barefoot children. More than half were completely veiled, their faces hidden. The judges cast a cursory, futile glance at their identification cards.

"I think we'll be a little lax on that one," Bradley said.

The activists from Nasiriyah read out the candidates' names to the illiterate women, marking off their choices for them. Aboudi, herself veiled, hunched over the ballot with 31-year-old Samira Geitan, who chose only two names.

"You have to choose at least five," Aboudi said, shaking her head. "Fewer than that won't work."

"I don't know any other names," Geitan complained. "I should know the person I choose."

At that, her friends crowded around and helped her select three more names.

In all, 145 women voted in Fuhud, out of a total of 1,221 votes cast. The next day in Chebayish, 231 women voted, out of a total of 1,264 votes.

For many of the women -- and men, as well -- the act of voting was perceived less as a conscious exercise of newfound rights and more as a means to better conditions in one of Iraq's most deprived regions. Complaints ran rife -- most residents lacked jobs, tomatoes cost four times their prewar price, rice and sugar were missing from rations and three times more expensive in the market.

"We're tired, and we're weary, very weary," Wabria Thahid, 54, the mother of three and draped in a black abaya, said after voting. "We need help from God and from the people who will lead us. We'll choose the people who can understand us."

In Chebayish, in the region where the 1991 Shiite uprising began, the complaints verged on exasperation, even anger.

"There's freedom, but there's pressure on the people. There's no one caring for the people," said Dakhil Rihan, a 52-year-old dressed in a tribal headdress. Others crowded around, shouting their grievances.

"This place is worn out, really worn out -- not 99 percent, but 100 percent," said Ahmed Hussein, a day laborer.

"We hear they're exporting oil. Where's the revenue?" asked Rihan.

"Freedom without a leader is meaningless," interjected Ahmed Rizaq, 28, a policeman.

Bradley said he views that frustration as the greatest threat to the experiment underway in the province. Through elections -- even Dhi Qar's abbreviated sort -- he has guaranteed legitimacy, he said, and turnout runs between 30 percent and 40 percent.

What he lacks, he said, is credibility.

"It's been nine, 10 months, with no results, really," Bradley said. "We don't want people losing faith in the democratic process. There's no point in having elections if there are no tangible results after the elections."

Idealism and Frustration

In town after town, Bradley brings an earnestness tinged with authority that allows him to navigate innumerable hassles. A graduate of Georgetown University, with fluency in Arabic and French, Bradley is a Foreign Service officer who served at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, from 1999 to 2001. He was brought from the U.S. mission to NATO in Brussels and arrived in Nasiriyah in September. His father was a city manager, and he says his job now is "dealing with the same problems, but in a different place."

He is righteous but frustrated -- the two qualities that perhaps best define the American experience in Iraq. His view of the country he is trying to change is grim, and he said he never expected to find "such a broken society."

"There's no national pride, it seems like to me. People want to take," he said in an interview at his office, guarded by Italian troops. "Everybody's thinking about themselves. That's what Saddam encouraged, that's what he rewarded."

But to him, the stakes are higher. He recalled working in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research for four nights after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He was angry and, with a bent of idealism, he was determined to bring about change, he said.

"We have an opportunity to start something good here. Whatever you think of the war, I have the opportunity to build a stable democracy here in Iraq," he said. "It doesn't matter whether you were for it or against it. The fact of the matter is we're here."

At times, his frustrations have overshadowed his idealism. The election Wednesday in Fuhud almost didn't come off. It had been scheduled for Feb. 6, but when he arrived at 7:40 a.m. that day, the only other person there was a man pushing a cart.

"I said, 'What about the elections?' He said, 'They've been broken.' "

The night before, as Bradley was helping count votes in another election, the preparation committee in Fuhud had canceled the vote. The committee had struggled with political parties over candidates suspected of ties to the Baath Party or security forces. As the fight dragged on, the committee feared the wrath of the parties if they went one way, tribal vendettas if they went the other.

Bradley convened a meeting that day. It lasted three hours, replete with shouting matches. Some were with candidates. Others were between secular residents and representatives of the clergy. Some protested that a 36-year-old candidate with a genetic condition that gave him the appearance of an 8-year-old couldn't run for office. "That's discrimination," Bradley said. To the puzzled crowd, he went on to cite the example of actor Gary Coleman's candidacy in the California gubernatorial election.

After a break for noon prayers and round after round of Pepsis and tea, the elections were rescheduled.

"It was almost like, what was the problem, there was no problem," Bradley said.

The next day, the preparation committee resigned anyway. The chairman said he feared for the lives of his six children. Bradley had to scramble to get the assistance of political parties, then looked for help from nongovernmental organizations.

There was none of that discord on Wednesday, as the elections went on without a hitch. The mood was festive, and workers with the nongovernmental organizations weaved through the voters, bantering with men voting in their first free elections. "If you have a question, ask me," called out Hassan Ajil, 32. "Don't be embarrassed."

He moved the voters along. "Less than five names and more than 10 won't do," he said.

"What about six or seven?" one voter called out. "That's fine," Ajil answered.

As some voters left, they made the point that they were doing what Sistani, the grand ayatollah, had urged. Others were encouraged that if elections could take place in a town like Fuhud, they could take place anywhere. An undercurrent in the conversations was that, given the success in Dhi Qar, the U.S. administration had less of an excuse to refuse to allow a vote soon.

"If the Americans reject the elections, we'll reject them," Faraj Alaywi, a 26-year-old nurse, said as a gusty wind blew through the town. "The Iraqi people want elections, 200 percent. The world says elections aren't possible, but we want them."

One reservation cited by opponents of quick elections is the fear that religious extremists would emerge victorious. But in many of the elections in Dhi Qar, Bradley said, teachers, doctors, lawyers and others have won. In the town of Rifai, professionals won seven of 10 races. In Batha, only two representatives of Islamic parties won seats on the 10-member council.

In the elections this past week, though, there were signs that the parties were beginning to mobilize. In Chebayish, members of the two strongest Islamic parties -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party -- passed out lists of candidates. Some were handwritten, others typed. Many voters brought the lists inside and obediently marked off the choices.

In Fuhud, the candidates sat patiently as the vote was tallied. The count began at 3:30 p.m. and wrapped up three hours later, as a few fluorescent lights cast a pale glow over the desks. The top vote-getter was Zaki Hanoun, a member of the Supreme Council who fled Iraq in 1999 and returned after the war. Two of the next three most popular candidates had ties to the Dawa party.

In a dark courtyard of the school, the candidates put a hand on a green Koran and took the oath, one by one. "I swear to Almighty God to do my work, to serve my country and to implement the law." Afterward, supporters kissed winners on both cheeks.

"This is the first step toward democracy," Hanoun said. "It's a wonderful example for the other provinces in Iraq."

COMCAST TAKEOVER BID OF DISNEY
Eisner Should Just Step Down

Disney's board just rejected Comcast's takeover bid. From the initial offer, I thought it was a good marriage and a needed change at Disney. Unlike AOL and Time Warner, Comcast will take the clear leadership role with a strong broadband consumer base as an outlet for Disney's content. AOL had too many dial-up users and both companies didn't know how to transition into a broadband base...Road Runner AND AOL Broadband? Ummm... should have integrated Time Warner Cable and its high-speed service into AOL from the beginning. It will be interesting to see what will happen next between Comcast and Disney.

Anyway, here's a column by the San Francisco Chronicle's Tim Goodman on Eisner, "CEO Eisner seen as Cruella."

Case Against Same Sex Marriage?

I keep forgetting to post this article that was in The Weekly Standard a couple weeks again on same-sex marriage. I wrote about this before and I was undecided on same-sex marriage issue because I was uncertain if it had an adverse affect on our society, which includes an increase in homosexual acts and an increase in broken homes. Maybe the studies and facts Kurtz's article brings up will lead to a certainty for me that same-sex marriage leads to broken homes. This is a concern for me because whether heterosexual or homosexual, single-family homes do have a significant statistical effect on numerous individual for children and social problems for our greater society. If same-sex marriage does not lead to an increase in divorce, the breakdown of heterosexual marriage, or whatever direct or indirect negative effect, then I wouldn't have much to protest since I generally believe morality cannot really be legislated. There is still a lack of information for me whether the problems and decline of marriage in Scandinavia is a direct correlation with their acceptance of gay marriage a decade ago, or whether some other factors in their nation/culture led to their current decline.


The End of Marriage in Scandinavia
The "conservative case" for same-sex marriage collapses.


The Weekly Standard
by Stanley Kurtz
02/02/2004, Volume 009, Issue 20

MARRIAGE IS SLOWLY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern--including gay marriage--is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.

More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.

This is not how the situation has been portrayed by prominent gay marriage advocates journalist Andrew Sullivan and Yale law professor William Eskridge Jr. Sullivan and Eskridge have made much of an unpublished study of Danish same-sex registered partnerships by Darren Spedale, an independent researcher with an undergraduate degree who visited Denmark in 1996 on a Fulbright scholarship. In 1989, Denmark had legalized de facto gay marriage (Norway followed in 1993 and Sweden in 1994). Drawing on Spedale, Sullivan and Eskridge cite evidence that since then, marriage has strengthened. Spedale reported that in the six years following the establishment of registered partnerships in Denmark (1990-1996), heterosexual marriage rates climbed by 10 percent, while heterosexual divorce rates declined by 12 percent. Writing in the McGeorge Law Review, Eskridge claimed that Spedale's study had exposed the "hysteria and irresponsibility" of those who predicted gay marriage would undermine marriage. Andrew Sullivan's Spedale-inspired piece was subtitled, "The case against same-sex marriage crumbles."

Yet the half-page statistical analysis of heterosexual marriage in Darren Spedale's unpublished paper doesn't begin to get at the truth about the decline of marriage in Scandinavia during the nineties. Scandinavian marriage is now so weak that statistics on marriage and divorce no longer mean what they used to.

Take divorce. It's true that in Denmark, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, divorce numbers looked better in the nineties. But that's because the pool of married people has been shrinking for some time. You can't divorce without first getting married. Moreover, a closer look at Danish divorce in the post-gay marriage decade reveals disturbing trends. Many Danes have stopped holding off divorce until their kids are grown. And Denmark in the nineties saw a 25 percent increase in cohabiting couples with children. With fewer parents marrying, what used to show up in statistical tables as early divorce is now the unrecorded breakup of a cohabiting couple with children.

What about Spedale's report that the Danish marriage rate increased 10 percent from 1990 to 1996? Again, the news only appears to be good. First, there is no trend. Eurostat's just-released marriage rates for 2001 show declines in Sweden and Denmark (Norway hasn't reported). Second, marriage statistics in societies with very low rates (Sweden registered the lowest marriage rate in recorded history in 1997) must be carefully parsed. In his study of the Norwegian family in the nineties, for example, Christer Hyggen shows that a small increase in Norway's marriage rate over the past decade has more to do with the institution's decline than with any renaissance. Much of the increase in Norway's marriage rate is driven by older couples "catching up." These couples belong to the first generation that accepts rearing the first born child out of wedlock. As they bear second children, some finally get married. (And even this tendency to marry at the birth of a second child is weakening.) As for the rest of the increase in the Norwegian marriage rate, it is largely attributable to remarriage among the large number of divorced.

Spedale's report of lower divorce rates and higher marriage rates in post-gay marriage Denmark is thus misleading. Marriage is now so weak in Scandinavia that shifts in these rates no longer mean what they would in America. In Scandinavian demography, what counts is the out-of-wedlock birthrate, and the family dissolution rate.

The family dissolution rate is different from the divorce rate. Because so many Scandinavians now rear children outside of marriage, divorce rates are unreliable measures of family weakness. Instead, we need to know the rate at which parents (married or not) split up. Precise statistics on family dissolution are unfortunately rare. Yet the studies that have been done show that throughout Scandinavia (and the West) cohabiting couples with children break up at two to three times the rate of married parents. So rising rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth stand as proxy for rising rates of family dissolution.

By that measure, Scandinavian family dissolution has only been worsening. Between 1990 and 2000, Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39 to 50 percent, while Sweden's rose from 47 to 55 percent. In Denmark out-of-wedlock births stayed level during the nineties (beginning at 46 percent and ending at 45 percent). But the leveling off seems to be a function of a slight increase in fertility among older couples, who marry only after multiple births (if they don't break up first). That shift masks the 25 percent increase during the nineties in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood among Danish couples (many of them young). About 60 percent of first born children in Denmark now have unmarried parents. The rise of fragile families based on cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing means that during the nineties, the total rate of family dissolution in Scandinavia significantly increased.

Scandinavia's out-of-wedlock birthrates may have risen more rapidly in the seventies, when marriage began its slide. But the push of that rate past the 50 percent mark during the nineties was in many ways more disturbing. Growth in the out-of-wedlock birthrate is limited by the tendency of parents to marry after a couple of births, and also by the persistence of relatively conservative and religious districts. So as out-of-wedlock childbearing pushes beyond 50 percent, it is reaching the toughest areas of cultural resistance. The most important trend of the post-gay marriage decade may be the erosion of the tendency to marry at the birth of a second child. Once even that marker disappears, the path to the complete disappearance of marriage is open.

And now that married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon, it has lost the critical mass required to have socially normative force. As Danish sociologists Wehner, Kambskard, and Abrahamson describe it, in the wake of the changes of the nineties, "Marriage is no longer a precondition for settling a family--neither legally nor normatively. . . . What defines and makes the foundation of the Danish family can be said to have moved from marriage to parenthood."

So the highly touted half-page of analysis from an unpublished paper that supposedly helps validate the "conservative case" for gay marriage--i.e., that it will encourage stable marriage for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike--does no such thing. Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline--an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood--can be linked to gay marriage. To see this, we need to understand why marriage is in trouble in Scandinavia to begin with.

SCANDINAVIA has long been a bellwether of family change. Scholars take the Swedish experience as a prototype for family developments that will, or could, spread throughout the world. So let's have a look at the decline of Swedish marriage.

In Sweden, as elsewhere, the sixties brought contraception, abortion, and growing individualism. Sex was separated from procreation, reducing the need for "shotgun weddings." These changes, along with the movement of women into the workforce, enabled and encouraged people to marry at later ages. With married couples putting off parenthood, early divorce had fewer consequences for children. That weakened the taboo against divorce. Since young couples were putting off children, the next step was to dispense with marriage and cohabit until children were desired. Americans have lived through this transformation. The Swedes have simply drawn the final conclusion: If we've come so far without marriage, why marry at all? Our love is what matters, not a piece of paper. Why should children change that?

Two things prompted the Swedes to take this extra step--the welfare state and cultural attitudes. No Western economy has a higher percentage of public employees, public expenditures--or higher tax rates--than Sweden. The massive Swedish welfare state has largely displaced the family as provider. By guaranteeing jobs and income to every citizen (even children), the welfare state renders each individual independent. It's easier to divorce your spouse when the state will support you instead.

The taxes necessary to support the welfare state have had an enormous impact on the family. With taxes so high, women must work. This reduces the time available for child rearing, thus encouraging the expansion of a day-care system that takes a large part in raising nearly all Swedish children over age one. Here is at least a partial realization of Simone de Beauvoir's dream of an enforced androgyny that pushes women from the home by turning children over to the state.

Yet the Swedish welfare state may encourage traditionalism in one respect. The lone teen pregnancies common in the British and American underclass are rare in Sweden, which has no underclass to speak of. Even when Swedish couples bear a child out of wedlock, they tend to reside together when the child is born. Strong state enforcement of child support is another factor discouraging single motherhood by teens. Whatever the causes, the discouragement of lone motherhood is a short-term effect. Ultimately, mothers and fathers can get along financially alone. So children born out of wedlock are raised, initially, by two cohabiting parents, many of whom later break up.

There are also cultural-ideological causes of Swedish family decline. Even more than in the United States, radical feminist and socialist ideas pervade the universities and the media. Many Scandinavian social scientists see marriage as a barrier to full equality between the sexes, and would not be sorry to see marriage replaced by unmarried cohabitation. A related cultural-ideological agent of marital decline is secularism. Sweden is probably the most secular country in the world. Secular social scientists (most of them quite radical) have largely replaced clerics as arbiters of public morality. Swedes themselves link the decline of marriage to secularism. And many studies confirm that, throughout the West, religiosity is associated with institutionally strong marriage, while heightened secularism is correlated with a weakening of marriage. Scholars have long suggested that the relatively thin Christianization of the Nordic countries explains a lot about why the decline of marriage in Scandinavia is a decade ahead of the rest of the West.

Are Scandinavians concerned about rising out-of-wedlock births, the decline of marriage, and ever-rising rates of family dissolution? No, and yes. For over 15 years, an American outsider, Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, has played Cassandra on these issues. Popenoe's 1988 book, "Disturbing the Nest," is still the definitive treatment of Scandinavian family change and its meaning for the Western world. Popenoe is no toe-the-line conservative. He has praise for the Swedish welfare state, and criticizes American opposition to some child welfare programs. Yet Popenoe has documented the slow motion collapse of the Swedish family, and emphasized the link between Swedish family decline and welfare policy.

For years, Popenoe's was a lone voice. Yet by the end of the nineties, the problem was too obvious to ignore. In 2000, Danish sociologist Mai Heide Ottosen published a study, "Samboskab, Aegteskab og Foraeldrebrud" ("Cohabitation, Marriage and Parental Breakup"), which confirmed the increased risk of family dissolution to children of unmarried parents, and gently chided Scandinavian social scientists for ignoring the "quiet revolution" of out-of-wedlock parenting.

Despite the reluctance of Scandinavian social scientists to study the consequences of family dissolution for children, we do have an excellent study that followed the life experiences of all children born in Stockholm in 1953. (Not coincidentally, the research was conducted by a British scholar, Duncan W.G. Timms.) That study found that regardless of income or social status, parental breakup had negative effects on children's mental health. Boys living with single, separated, or divorced mothers had particularly high rates of impairment in adolescence. An important 2003 study by Gunilla Ringb?ck Weitoft, et al. found that children of single parents in Sweden have more than double the rates of mortality, severe morbidity, and injury of children in two parent households. This held true after controlling for a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic circumstances.

THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE and the rise of unstable cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbirth are not confined to Scandinavia. The Scandinavian welfare state aggravates these problems. Yet none of the forces weakening marriage there are unique to the region. Contraception, abortion, women in the workforce, spreading secularism, ascendant individualism, and a substantial welfare state are found in every Western country. That is why the Nordic pattern is spreading.

Yet the pattern is spreading unevenly. And scholars agree that cultural tradition plays a central role in determining whether a given country moves toward the Nordic family system. Religion is a key variable. A 2002 study by the Max Planck Institute, for example, concluded that countries with the lowest rates of family dissolution and out-of-wedlock births are "strongly dominated by the Catholic confession." The same study found that in countries with high levels of family dissolution, religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, had little influence.

British demographer Kathleen Kiernan, the acknowledged authority on the spread of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births across Europe, divides the continent into three zones. The Nordic countries are the leaders in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births. They are followed by a middle group that includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany. Until recently, France was a member of this middle group, but France's rising out-of-wedlock birthrate has moved it into the Nordic category. North American rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth put the United States and Canada into this middle group. Most resistant to cohabitation, family dissolution, and out-of-wedlock births are the southern European countries of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, and, until recently, Switzerland and Ireland. (Ireland's rising out-of-wedlock birthrate has just pushed it into the middle group.)

These three groupings closely track the movement for gay marriage. In the early nineties, gay marriage came to the Nordic countries, where the out-of-wedlock birthrate was already high. Ten years later, out-of-wedlock birth rates have risen significantly in the middle group of nations. Not coincidentally, nearly every country in that middle group has recently either legalized some form of gay marriage, or is seriously considering doing so. Only in the group with low out-of-wedlock birthrates has the gay marriage movement achieved relatively little success.

This suggests that gay marriage is both an effect and a cause of the increasing separation between marriage and parenthood. As rising out-of-wedlock birthrates disassociate heterosexual marriage from parenting, gay marriage becomes conceivable. If marriage is only about a relationship between two people, and is not intrinsically connected to parenthood, why shouldn't same-sex couples be allowed to marry? It follows that once marriage is redefined to accommodate same-sex couples, that change cannot help but lock in and reinforce the very cultural separation between marriage and parenthood that makes gay marriage conceivable to begin with.

We see this process at work in the radical separation of marriage and parenthood that swept across Scandinavia in the nineties. If Scandinavian out-of-wedlock birthrates had not already been high in the late eighties, gay marriage would have been far more difficult to imagine. More than a decade into post-gay marriage Scandinavia, out-of-wedlock birthrates have passed 50 percent, and the effective end of marriage as a protective shield for children has become thinkable. Gay marriage hasn't blocked the separation of marriage and parenthood; it has advanced it.

WE SEE THIS most clearly in Norway. In 1989, a couple of years after Sweden broke ground by offering gay couples the first domestic partnership package in Europe, Denmark legalized de facto gay marriage. This kicked off a debate in Norway (traditionally more conservative than either Sweden or Denmark), which legalized de facto gay marriage in 1993. (Sweden expanded its benefits packages into de facto gay marriage in 1994.) In liberal Denmark, where out-of-wedlock birthrates were already very high, the public favored same-sex marriage. But in Norway, where the out-of-wedlock birthrate was lower--and religion traditionally stronger--gay marriage was imposed, against the public will, by the political elite.

Norway's gay marriage debate, which ran most intensely from 1991 through 1993, was a culture-shifting event. And once enacted, gay marriage had a decidedly unconservative impact on Norway's cultural contests, weakening marriage's defenders, and placing a weapon in the hands of those who sought to replace marriage with cohabitation. Since its adoption, gay marriage has brought division and decline to Norway's Lutheran Church. Meanwhile, Norway's fast-rising out-of-wedlock birthrate has shot past Denmark's. Particularly in Norway--once relatively conservative--gay marriage has undermined marriage's institutional standing for everyone.

Norway's Lutheran state church has been riven by conflict in the decade since the approval of de facto gay marriage, with the ordination of registered partners the most divisive issue. The church's agonies have been intensively covered in the Norwegian media, which have taken every opportunity to paint the church as hidebound and divided. The nineties began with conservative churchmen in control. By the end of the decade, liberals had seized the reins.

While the most public disputes of the nineties were over homosexuality, Norway's Lutheran church was also divided over the question of heterosexual cohabitation. Asked directly, liberal and conservative clerics alike voice a preference for marriage over cohabitation--especially for couples with children. In practice, however, conservative churchmen speak out against the trend toward unmarried cohabitation and childbirth, while liberals acquiesce.

This division over heterosexual cohabitation broke into the open in 2000, at the height of the church's split over gay partnerships, when Prince Haakon, heir to Norway's throne, began to live with his lover, a single mother. From the start of the prince's controversial relationship to its eventual culmination in marriage, the future head of the Norwegian state church received tokens of public support or understanding from the very same bishops who were leading the fight to permit the ordination of homosexual partners.

So rather than strengthening Norwegian marriage against the rise of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth, same-sex marriage had the opposite effect. Gay marriage lessened the church's authority by splitting it into warring factions and providing the secular media with occasions to mock and expose divisions. Gay marriage also elevated the church's openly rebellious minority liberal faction to national visibility, allowing Norwegians to feel that their proclivity for unmarried parenthood, if not fully approved by the church, was at least not strongly condemned. If the "conservative case" for gay marriage had been valid, clergy who were supportive of gay marriage would have taken a strong public stand against unmarried heterosexual parenthood. This didn't happen. It was the conservative clergy who criticized the prince, while the liberal supporters of gay marriage tolerated his decisions. The message was not lost on ordinary Norwegians, who continued their flight to unmarried parenthood.

Gay marriage is both an effect and a reinforcing cause of the separation of marriage and parenthood. In states like Sweden and Denmark, where out-of-wedlock birthrates were already very high, and the public favored gay marriage, gay unions were an effect of earlier changes. Once in place, gay marriage symbolically ratified the separation of marriage and parenthood. And once established, gay marriage became one of several factors contributing to further increases in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birthrates, as well as to early divorce. But in Norway, where out-of-wedlock birthrates were lower, religion stronger, and the public opposed same-sex unions, gay marriage had an even greater role in precipitating marital decline.

SWEDEN'S POSITION as the world leader in family decline is associated with a weak clergy, and the prominence of secular and left-leaning social scientists. In the post-gay marriage nineties, as Norway's once relatively low out-of-wedlock birthrate was climbing to unprecedented heights, and as the gay marriage controversy weakened and split the once respected Lutheran state church, secular social scientists took center stage.

Kari Moxnes, a feminist sociologist specializing in divorce, is one of the most prominent of Norway's newly emerging group of public social scientists. As a scholar who sees both marriage and at-home motherhood as inherently oppressive to women, Moxnes is a proponent of nonmarital cohabitation and parenthood. In 1993, as the Norwegian legislature was debating gay marriage, Moxnes published an article, "Det tomme ekteskap" ("Empty Marriage"), in the influential liberal paper Dagbladet. She argued that Norwegian gay marriage was a sign of marriage's growing emptiness, not its strength. Although Moxnes spoke in favor of gay marriage, she treated its creation as a (welcome) death knell for marriage itself. Moxnes identified homosexuals--with their experience in forging relationships unencumbered by children--as social pioneers in the separation of marriage from parenthood. In recognizing homosexual relationships, Moxnes said, society was ratifying the division of marriage from parenthood that had spurred the rise of out-of-wedlock births to begin with.

A frequent public presence, Moxnes enjoyed her big moment in 1999, when she was embroiled in a dispute with Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, minister of children and family affairs in Norway's Christian Democrat government. Moxnes had criticized Christian marriage classes for teaching children the importance of wedding vows. This brought a sharp public rebuke from Haugland. Responding to Haugland's criticisms, Moxnes invoked homosexual families as proof that "relationships" were now more important than institutional marriage.

This is not what proponents of the conservative case for gay marriage had in mind. In Norway, gay marriage has given ammunition to those who wish to put an end to marriage. And the steady rise of Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate during the nineties proves that the opponents of marriage are succeeding. Nor is Kari Moxnes an isolated case.

Months before Moxnes clashed with Haugland, social historian Kari Melby had a very public quarrel with a leader of the Christian Democratic party over the conduct of Norway's energy minister, Marit Arnstad. Arnstad had gotten pregnant in office and had declined to name the father. Melby defended Arnstad, and publicly challenged the claim that children do best with both a mother and a father. In making her case, Melby praised gay parenting, along with voluntary single motherhood, as equally worthy alternatives to the traditional family. So instead of noting that an expectant mother might want to follow the example of marriage that even gays were now setting, Melby invoked homosexual families as proof that a child can do as well with one parent as two.

Finally, consider a case that made even more news in Norway, that of handball star Mia Hundvin (yes, handball prowess makes for celebrity in Norway). Hundvin had been in a registered gay partnership with fellow handballer Camilla Andersen. These days, however, having publicly announced her bisexuality, Hundvin is linked with Norwegian snowboarder Terje Haakonsen. Inspired by her time with Haakonsen's son, Hundvin decided to have a child. The father of Hundvin's child may well be Haakonsen, but neither Hundvin nor Haakonsen is saying.

Did Hundvin divorce her registered partner before deciding to become a single mother by (probably) her new boyfriend? The story in Norway's premiere paper, Aftenposten, doesn't bother to mention. After noting that Hundvin and Andersen were registered partners, the paper simply says that the two women are no longer "romantically involved." Hundvin has only been with Haakonsen about a year. She obviously decided to become a single mother without bothering to see whether she and Haakonsen might someday marry. Nor has Hundvin appeared to consider that her affection for Haakonsen's child (also apparently born out of wedlock) might better be expressed by marrying Haakonsen and becoming his son's new mother.

Certainly, you can chalk up more than a little of this saga to celebrity culture. But celebrity culture is both a product and influencer of the larger culture that gives rise to it. Clearly, the idea of parenthood here has been radically individualized, and utterly detached from marriage. Registered partnerships have reinforced existing trends. The press treats gay partnerships more as relationships than as marriages. The symbolic message of registered partnerships--for social scientists, handball players, and bishops alike--has been that most any nontraditional family is just fine. Gay marriage has served to validate the belief that individual choice trumps family form.

The Scandinavian experience rebuts the so-called conservative case for gay marriage in more than one way. Noteworthy, too, is the lack of a movement toward marriage and monogamy among gays. Take-up rates on gay marriage are exceedingly small. Yale's William Eskridge acknowledged this when he reported in 2000 that 2,372 couples had registered after nine years of the Danish law, 674 after four years of the Norwegian law, and 749 after four years of the Swedish law.

Danish social theorist Henning Bech and Norwegian sociologist Rune Halvorsen offer excellent accounts of the gay marriage debates in Denmark and Norway. Despite the regnant social liberalism in these countries, proposals to recognize gay unions generated tremendous controversy, and have reshaped the meaning of marriage in the years since. Both Bech and Halvorsen stress that the conservative case for gay marriage, while put forward by a few, was rejected by many in the gay community. Bech, perhaps Scandinavia's most prominent gay thinker, dismisses as an "implausible" claim the idea that gay marriage promotes monogamy. He treats the "conservative case" as something that served chiefly tactical purposes during a difficult political debate. According to Halvorsen, many of Norway's gays imposed self-censorship during the marriage debate, so as to hide their opposition to marriage itself. The goal of the gay marriage movements in both Norway and Denmark, say Halvorsen and Bech, was not marriage but social approval for homosexuality. Halvorsen suggests that the low numbers of registered gay couples may be understood as a collective protest against the expectations (presumably, monogamy) embodied in marriage.

SINCE LIBERALIZING DIVORCE in the first decades of the twentieth century, the Nordic countries have been the leading edge of marital change. Drawing on the Swedish experience, Kathleen Kiernan, the British demographer, uses a four-stage model by which to gauge a country's movement toward Swedish levels of out-of-wedlock births.

In stage one, cohabitation is seen as a deviant or avant-garde practice, and the vast majority of the population produces children within marriage. Italy is at this first stage. In the second stage, cohabitation serves as a testing period before marriage, and is generally a childless phase. Bracketing the problem of underclass single parenthood, America is largely at this second stage. In stage three, cohabitation becomes increasingly acceptable, and parenting is no longer automatically associated with marriage. Norway was at this third stage, but with recent demographic and legal changes has entered stage four. In the fourth stage (Sweden and Denmark), marriage and cohabitation become practically indistinguishable, with many, perhaps even most, children born and raised outside of marriage. According to Kiernan, these stages may vary in duration, yet once a country has reached a stage, return to an earlier phase is unlikely. (She offers no examples of stage reversal.) Yet once a stage has been reached, earlier phases coexist.

The forces pushing nations toward the Nordic model are almost universal. True, by preserving legal distinctions between marriage and cohabitation, reining in the welfare state, and preserving at least some traditional values, a given country might forestall or prevent the normalization of nonmarital parenthood. Yet every Western country is susceptible to the pull of the Nordic model. Nor does Catholicism guarantee immunity. Ireland, perhaps because of its geographic, linguistic, and cultural proximity to England, is now suffering from out-of-wedlock birthrates far in excess of the rest of Catholic Europe. Without deeming a shift inevitable, Kiernan openly wonders how long America can resist the pull of stages three and four.

Although Sweden leads the world in family decline, the United States is runner-up. Swedes marry less, and bear more children out of wedlock, than any other industrialized nation. But Americans lead the world in single parenthood and divorce. If we bracket the crisis of single parenthood among African-Americans, the picture is somewhat different. Yet even among non-Hispanic whites, the American divorce rate is extremely high by world standards.

The American mix of family traditionalism and family instability is unusual. In comparison to Europe, Americans are more religious and more likely to turn to the family than the state for a wide array of needs--from child care, to financial support, to care for the elderly. Yet America's individualism cuts two ways. Our cultural libertarianism protects the family as a bulwark against the state, yet it also breaks individuals loose from the family. The danger we face is a combination of America's divorce rate with unstable, Scandinavian-style out-of-wedlock parenthood. With a growing tendency for cohabiting couples to have children outside of marriage, America is headed in that direction.

Young Americans are more likely to favor gay marriage than their elders. That oft-noted fact is directly related to another. Less than half of America's twentysomethings consider it wrong to bear children outside marriage. There is a growing tendency for even middle class cohabiting couples to have children without marrying.

Nonetheless, although cohabiting parenthood is growing in America, levels here are still far short of those in Europe. America's situation is not unlike Norway's in the early nineties, with religiosity relatively strong, the out-of-wedlock birthrate still relatively low (yet rising), and the public opposed to gay marriage. If, as in Norway, gay marriage were imposed here by a socially liberal cultural elite, it would likely speed us on the way toward the classic Nordic pattern of less frequent marriage, more frequent out-of-wedlock birth, and skyrocketing family dissolution.

In the American context, this would be a disaster. Beyond raising rates of middle class family dissolution, a further separation of marriage from parenthood would reverse the healthy turn away from single-parenting that we have begun to see since welfare reform. And cross-class family decline would bring intense pressure for a new expansion of the American welfare state.

All this is happening in Britain. With the Nordic pattern's spread across Europe, Britain's out-of-wedlock birthrate has risen to 40 percent. Most of that increase is among cohabiting couples. Yet a significant number of out-of-wedlock births in Britain are to lone teenage mothers. This a function of Britain's class divisions. Remember that although the Scandinavian welfare state encourages family dissolution in the long term, in the short term, Scandinavian parents giving birth out of wedlock tend to stay together. But given the presence of a substantial underclass in Britain, the spread of Nordic cohabitation there has sent lone teen parenting rates way up. As Britain's rates of single parenting and family dissolution have grown, so has pressure to expand the welfare state to compensate for economic help that families can no longer provide. But of course, an expansion of the welfare state would only lock the weakening of Britain's family system into place.

If America is to avoid being forced into a similar choice, we'll have to resist the separation of marriage from parenthood. Yet even now we are being pushed in the Scandinavian direction. Stimulated by rising rates of unmarried parenthood, the influential American Law Institute (ALI) has proposed a series of legal reforms ("Principles of Family Dissolution") designed to equalize marriage and cohabitation. Adoption of the ALI principles would be a giant step toward the Scandinavian system.

AMERICANS take it for granted that, despite its recent troubles, marriage will always exist. This is a mistake. Marriage is disappearing in Scandinavia, and the forces undermining it there are active throughout the West. Perhaps the most disturbing sign for the future is the collapse of the Scandinavian tendency to marry after the second child. At the start of the nineties, 60 percent of unmarried Norwegian parents who lived together had only one child. By 2001, 56 percent of unmarried, cohabiting parents in Norway had two or more children. This suggests that someday, Scandinavian parents might simply stop getting married altogether, no matter how many children they have.

The death of marriage is not inevitable. In a given country, public policy decisions and cultural values could slow, and perhaps halt, the process of marital decline. Nor are we faced with an all-or-nothing choice between the marital system of, say, the 1950s and marriage's disappearance. Kiernan's model posits stopping points. So repealing no-fault divorce, or even eliminating premarital cohabitation, are not what's at issue. With no-fault divorce, Americans traded away some of the marital stability that protects children to gain more freedom for adults. Yet we can accept that trade-off, while still drawing a line against descent into a Nordic-style system. And cohabitation as a premarital testing phase is not the same as unmarried parenting. Potentially, a line between the two can hold.

Developments in the last half-century have surely weakened the links between American marriage and parenthood. Yet to a remarkable degree, Americans still take it for granted that parents should marry. Scandinavia shocks us. Still, who can deny that gay marriage will accustom us to a more Scandinavian-style separation of marriage and parenthood? And with our underclass, the social pathologies this produces in America are bound to be more severe than they already are in wealthy and socially homogeneous Scandinavia.

All of these considerations suggest that the gay marriage debate in America is too important to duck. Kiernan maintains that as societies progressively detach marriage from parenthood, stage reversal is impossible. That makes sense. The association between marriage and parenthood is partly a mystique. Disenchanted mystiques cannot be restored on demand.

What about a patchwork in which some American states have gay marriage while others do not? A state-by-state patchwork would practically guarantee a shift toward the Nordic family system. Movies and television, which do not respect state borders, would embrace gay marriage. The cultural effects would be national.

What about Vermont-style civil unions? Would that be a workable compromise? Clearly not. Scandinavian registered partnerships are Vermont-style civil unions. They are not called marriage, yet resemble marriage in almost every other respect. The key differences are that registered partnerships do not permit adoption or artificial insemination, and cannot be celebrated in state-affiliated churches. These limitations are gradually being repealed. The lesson of the Scandinavian experience is that even de facto same-sex marriage undermines marriage.

The Scandinavian example also proves that gay marriage is not interracial marriage in a new guise. The miscegenation analogy was never convincing. There are plenty of reasons to think that, in contrast to race, sexual orientation will have profound effects on marriage. But with Scandinavia, we are well beyond the realm of even educated speculation. The post-gay marriage changes in the Scandinavian family are significant. This is not like the fantasy about interracial birth defects. There is a serious scholarly debate about the spread of the Nordic family pattern. Since gay marriage is a part of that pattern, it needs to be part of that debate.

Conservative advocates of gay marriage want to test it in a few states. The implication is that, should the experiment go bad, we can call it off. Yet the effects, even in a few American states, will be neither containable nor revocable. It took about 15 years after the change hit Sweden and Denmark for Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate to begin to move from "European" to "Nordic" levels. It took another 15 years (and the advent of gay marriage) for Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate to shoot past even Denmark's. By the time we see the effects of gay marriage in America, it will be too late to do anything about it. Yet we needn't wait that long. In effect, Scandinavia has run our experiment for us. The results are in.


Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His "Beyond Gay Marriage" appeared in our August 4, 2003, issue.