Global

Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor, and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants, the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets. Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I am indebted to Jon Stewart of the Comedy Channel and to "The Daily Show," the last real news program on cable television, for the idea of a collection of quotes from Sen. Jesse Helms:

-- On the subject of President Clinton visiting North Carolina: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."

-- "I'm going to sing 'Dixie' to her until she cries," of Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun after a debating her on the merits of the Confederate flag."

-- "The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves."

-- "The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to socialism.

They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New Deals, and Fair Deals, and New Frontiers, and Great Society."

The current uproar over the posture of the Bush administration on global warming and, most recently, on power plant emissions vividly illustrates the political hypocrisy and opportunism imbuing debates on environmental issues.

First take global warming. The charge that the current phase of global warming can be attributed to greenhouse gases generated by humans and their livestock is an article of faith among liberals as sturdy as missile defense is among the conservative crowd. The Democrats have seized on the issue of global warming as indicative of President Bush's willful refusal to confront a global crisis that properly agitates all of America's major allies. Almost daily the major green groups reap rich political capital (and donations) on the issue.

AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, let's try this again, Texans. We now have one of the highest execution rates in the entire world.

Here are the numbers according to Amnesty International and some math: In 2000, four countries around the world accounted for 88 percent of all the executions --- the United States, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia. Nobody else is even in the game, though there is no reliable information from Iraq. In 2000, Texas alone, one state out of 50, was responsible for 47 percent of the executions in America. Here are the best estimates for numbers per capita (using the highest guess, not from Amnesty, of 1,700 executions in China -- the number that sent the human-rights people into a frenzy over the Beijing Olympics): Iran executes one for every 874,000 people, China executes one for every 742,000 people, Texas executes one for every 521,000, and the Saudis one for every 170,000. So we're not rock bottom, we're doing better than the Saudis -- a role normally played for us by Mississippi. Let's not try for the Olympics anytime soon.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Mexican truck debate is a pip because it reveals so much about globalization and its attendant problems.

I have a dog in this fight: I live nestled on the shores of I-35, the main route north from Mexico, and spend a lot of time driving up and down it. To say that NAFTA trucks are already a problem is like calling a dwarf short. Driving south from Waco Tuesday night, I counted over 300 of them stacked up in one traffic jam.

This silly circus of a debate continues, with charges of isolationism and protectionism being volleyed back and forth, unmoored from reality in the ideological void. Look, if the windmill is running, the wind is blowing. Here's the question: Have you ever spent much time in Mexico? Pretty much answers the Mexican truck question, don't you think?

The war in Colombia isn't about drugs. It's about the annihilation of popular uprisings by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla groups, or Indian peasants fending off the ravages of oil companies, cattle barons and mining firms. A good old-fashioned counterinsurgency war, designed to clear the way for American corporations to set up shop in Colombia, with cocaine as the scare tactic.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is a national organization looking out for us critters throughout the world. Below is an excerpt from their website about what I believe is an important animal rights issue that many people never considered -- are the animals at the circus happy? Are they actually having fun? Or are they tortured, abused, humiliated and forced to do unnatural acts? There is a growing list of circuses that do not use animals for this very reason. If humans want to dress in sparkly costumes and spin by their teeth high up in air, or wear oversized shoes and noses and squirt water at each other - let them. Leave us out of it!

PETA’s Report

In contrast to the glitter associated with circuses, performing animals’ lives are pretty miserable. Because animals do not naturally ride bicycles, stand on their heads, or jump through rings of fire, whips, electric prods, and other tools are often used to force them to perform. The smaller and poorer the circus, the more limited the animals’ access may be to water, food, and veterinary care.

FREEP HERO

U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords

Not since the Nazi Party ascended to power with only a third of the vote in the early 1930’s has there been such a shameless political power grab as that of George W. Bush. Despite losing the popular vote, and the appearance that family and friends rigged the results in Florida, Bush embarked on a five-month blitzkreig to make the world safe for fossil fuels and global warming. Under his so-called “charm offensive” that comes across as Jethro Bodine on downers, he undermined the U.S. tax system and was well on his way to building an unneeded and brand new missile defense system. He appeared unstoppable. And then Senator Jim Jeffords uprooted the shrub and moved the country back to the center with his bold and beautiful defection from the Republican Party. Jeffords’ action is not only heroic, it’s historic. Too bad he didn’t get to confront Junior and ask him the same question asked Senator Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no shame, sir?”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeiffer

As difficult as it is for me to admit, I’m getting old. Some say that our social culture repeats itself about every twenty years or so. If that’s the case I now have to realize that I’m experiencing déjà vu for the second time around. Such is the case when I look at our new form of civil disobedience. You see, I remember the sit-ins and the shut ins. I remember the marching and the social justice rebellion of the 60’s, the me generation rebellion of the 80’s and now the hi-tech low risk civil obedient disobedience of the new millennium. From the hippies to the yuppies, buppies and now techies, it has all been some sort of call for a shift in the social paradigm. Though today’s form of civil disobedience is a far cry from the Montgomery boycott, the march on Washington, Woodstock or hostile takeovers (yes hostile takeovers were a form of rebellion), there are still some vague similarities that exist.

Some of those similarities are best characterized by the “what’s in it for me” mentality. Or rather, “how do I protect their rights before they infringe on my rights” thinking.

AUSTIN — What a glorious year for the summer reading list! Enough gems to stock any list — fiction and non-, funny and tragic, sometimes both simultaneously; plus a perfect plethora of peppy public policy books.

But there are two books I especially want to recommend, both by women I admire and know slightly: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Washington by the late Meg Greenfield of The Washington Post. If you read them in conjunction, it more than doubles the strength of each.

Ehrenreich’s book, it seems to me, is the stronger of the two. She did what reporters used to do before they became so unbearably self-important: She reports what the society actually looks like from the bottom. Starting in 1998, she went out and got successive and sometimes simultaneous no-skills, close-to-minimum wage jobs and tried to make it from one month to the next. She couldn’t do it. As she so painfully shows, the joker in the deck for low-wage workers is the cost of housing.