Global

AUSTIN , Texas -- Some who read Sunday's New York Times magazine on "The Education of a Holy Warrior'' -- about a Muslim religious seminary in Pakistan that is deeply influenced by the Taliban of Afghanistan -- found it profoundly disturbing. As well they might. The Taliban itself is one of the most disturbing phenomenon in the world today.

The horrors perpetrated against women there continue. The latest reports from human rights organizations concern a wave a suicides by women deeply depressed over their virtual enslavement.

The article by Jeffrey Goldberg, however, focused more on the ideology of jihad, which means either holy war or struggle, depending on who is doing the defining. Goldberg spent quite a bit of time with the students at the Haqqania madrasa in northwest Pakistan, helpfully armed with a considerable knowledge of the Koran himself. Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist, is a great hero to these students, and most of them said they would like to see bin Laden armed with atomic weapons.

AUSTIN, Texas -- So you're going along thinking it's the year 2000, Information Age, digital revolution, high-tech economy, all that jazz, and then you look at the headlines.

American General, one of the biggest insurance companies in the country, right up until this April was charging black customers up to 33 percent more than white customers for policies designed to cover burial costs. Huh?!

Coca-Cola -- not exactly a hick, backwater organization -- has just settled a race-discrimination suit filed by current and former employees. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but it was enough to knock 38 cents off Coke's stock price.

Nextel Communications Inc., a wireless communications company, just got hit with a suit by 300 current and former employees complaining about racial and sexual discrimination.

Thirty-nine current and former agents of State Farm are asking Congress to investigate "deceptive, predatory and illegal conduct" by the country's largest insurance company. State Farm says the allegations are "unfounded." The agents are complaining about red-lining and overcharging.

It's media spin in overdrive: Major security breaches have jeopardized the vital work going on at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where scientists toil to protect America.

But after many years of monitoring key weapons policies, Jacqueline Cabasso dismisses the uproar as "a sideshow." Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, is a perceptive expert on nuclear arms issues. Her views don't come near the conventional media wisdom.

"The real scandal," she told me, "is that while the media focuses attention on a couple of lost and found hard drives, the U.S. weapons labs -- Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia -- are spending billions of taxpayer dollars busily developing new and improved nuclear weapons, almost completely shielded from public scrutiny or even awareness. Moreover, the U.S. is continuing to brandish these weapons on a daily basis."

We're just about 31 years away from the great Stonewall riot, which set the tone for years of defiant gay insurgency. Stonewall was about defiance against the forces of repression, the forces of the state. So, where's this spirit of defiance today?

Here's a clue. In early June, we were able to read in our national newspapers that about 60 gay employees of the CIA were joined by a busload of Intelligence workers from the National Security Agency for a event designed to evince gay pride. Present were top officials, including George J. Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence. Addressing the gay spooks was Rep. Barney Frank, the noted gay rep from Massachusetts.

The Supremes are probably right about prayer at football games in the Santa Fe School District case, but you must admit that there's a slight cultural gap here. The court's decision noted that the Fifth Circuit had ruled that students could offer prayers at graduation, but not in the far less solemn and extraordinary setting of a football game. That's all they know about Friday nights.

I've heard a good many proselytizing public prayers offered in this state, as opposed to the "To Whom it may concern: Let no one get injured in tonight's game, Amen" variety, but I doubt you could prove that this increases intolerance. On the other hand, in May, three Santa Fe High students were arrested on accusations that they threatened to hang a 13-year-old Jewish boy, an eighth-grader at the middle school. If true, we would have to say that the three have failed to grasp some of the central tenets of the Christian faith, let alone the principles on which the country is founded.

HOUSTON -- My favorite thing at the Texas Republican Convention was the advertising in the back of the hall that constituted an almost perfect record of the major scandals, conflicts of interest and bad public policy that have occurred during the W. Bush gubernatorial administration. There they all were, proudly displaying their gratitude to Bush and the party. It was a near-perfect metaphor for American politics today.

Chemical had several of the small billboards for each part of the hall. Dow and the rest of the chemical industry were given one-third of the seats on the Texas equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency when Bush got into office.

He appointed a lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. This citizen had spent 30 years working for Monsanto. He used his position as one of the top environmental officials of Texas to go to Washington to testify that ozone is benign and to oppose strengthening federal air quality standards. Being in Houston during the lovely summer ozone season reminds us all how grateful we must be for this kind of zealous watchdoggery of our air quality.

A public-interest group is urging sportswriters to resist a free-enterprise wave of the future. "Corporations are seizing the names of our beloved parks and stadiums, and replacing these with their own," Commercial Alert complains in a letter that has just arrived at newspaper offices across North America. The organization adds: "There is no law that says that you have to call a sports venue what a big corporation wants you to call it."

In recent years, several dozen companies have bought major-league naming rights. Baseball teams now play in Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay), Bank One Ballpark (Phoenix), Coors Field (Denver), Network Associates Coliseum (Oakland), Pacific Bell Park (San Francisco) and Safeco Field (Seattle). Pro basketball games are happening at branded sites from Continental Airlines Arena in northern New Jersey to American Airlines Arena in Miami to Arco Arena in Sacramento. Football and hockey are in the same groove.

Here's an idea. Since the House of Representatives thinks it's so important to give a $30-billion-a-year tax break to the richest 2 percent of Americans, why doesn't it do the same thing for the poorest 2 percent, as well? For the sake of symmetry. As a member of the Texas Lege once said, "In a artistic sense, it works."

Thirty billion to the richest, 30 billion to the poorest -- and boy, will that ever boost the incomes of the poor. And then, just for the complete balance of the whole, how about $30 billion for the middle? All in favor, vote aye.

You have to admit, that House of Reps -- they used to call it "the People's House" -- what an imagination, what a sense of humor. Here we are looking at an income gap between the rich and the rest of us that is almost beyond human comprehension -- the richest fifth of Americans now have 80 percent of all the total wealth of the nation, leaving 20 percent of the wealth for the other 80 percent of us in a practically harmonic convergence -- and the House thinks the rich need a big tax break.

Here's a tiny legal notice in the ad section of the Philadelphia Inquirer for June 7, sent to me by an alert citizen of that city, John Jonik. The box, in what looks like 6-point type, is headed City of Philadelphia, and then, on the next line, Public Hearing Notice. "Public Hearing on June 12, 2000, 12.00 p.m., Room 400, City Hall to hear testimony on the following item: An Ordinance amending Title 10 of the Philadelphia Code entitled 'Regulation of Individual Conduct and Activity' prohibiting concealed identities in certain instances. Immediately following the public hearing, a meeting of the Committee on Public Safety, open to the public, will be held to consider the action to be taken on the above listed item."

What we have here is clearly preliminary clearing of the decks for the demonstrations expected to take place during the Republican convention in Philadelphia in July. Constitutional protections for free speech and assembly will be swept aside, with police permitted to arrest anyone wearing ski masks, hooded sweatshirts, scarves acting in a suspicious manner, and so forth. As Jonik wryly asks, "Some women's hats include net veils. Included? Illegal in a demo?

So you're going along thinking it's the year 2000, Information Age, digital revolution, high-tech economy, all that jazz, and then you look at the headlines.

American General, one of the biggest insurance companies in the country, right up until this April was charging black customers up to 33 percent more than white customers for policies designed to cover burial costs. Huh?!

Coca-Cola -- not exactly a hick, backwater organization -- has just settled a race-discrimination suit filed by current and former employees. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but it was enough to knock 38 cents off Coke's stock price.

Nextel Communications Inc., a wireless communications company, just got hit with a suit by 300 current and former employees complaining about racial and sexual discrimination.

Thirty-nine current and former agents of State Farm are asking Congress to investigate "deceptive, predatory and illegal conduct" by the country's largest insurance company. State Farm says the allegations are "unfounded." The agents are complaining about red-lining and overcharging.