Investigating a Different Kind of Suicide Mission: “Although virtually unnoticed by the outside world, since last autumn Turkey

has been the site of the longest — and now the deadliest — hunger strike

against a government in modern history. At the time of my first visit to the

houses of resistance in Kucuk Armutlu in mid-July, the 29th striker had just

perished, and the deaths of at least eight more — including Fatma, Yildiz

and Osman — were imminent.

But even these numbers don’t prepare you for the deluge to come…” NY Times Magazine [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

A Summers day — this Boston Phoenix writer is less than impressed by the pageantry of the installation of a new Harvard University president, which is “supposed to be as close to a coronation as America gets”; and no more impressed by the man himself:

…(I)n 1983 he

became one of the youngest tenured

professors in the school’s history

when he took the post of Nathaniel

Ropes Professor of Political Economy.

In 1991, he left Harvard and went to

Washington, taking on a leading role at the World Bank. In 1993, he joined the

Treasury Department, and six years later he was named secretary of the

Treasury. While at the Treasury, Summers became one of President Clinton’s

most trusted advisers — not to mention a frequent tennis partner of Alan

Greenspan.

Summers is the local boy made good — the local boy made bloody great, in fact.

Anything less than this would’ve been a disappointment. Summers was born into

a family of financial wizards. His mother and father were economics professors,

and two of his uncles — MIT’s Paul Samuelson and Stanford University’s

Kenneth Arrow — are Nobel laureates in economics. Summers is the

consummate overachiever, an inveterate smarty-pants. And he’ll have to be to

take on this job.

Don’t Need a Weatherman. After 9-11, is it too late for a reappraisal of the Weathermen? Weekly Standard

This is how it feels to me. “Last week James Wood blasted modern fiction,

calling for a return to feeling from self-conscious

cleverness in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Zadie

Smith, one of the novelists he cited, replies.

The critic James Wood appeared in this paper last Saturday

aiming a hefty, well-timed kick at what he called “hysterical

realism”. It is a painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown,

manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth and

a few others he was sweet enough to mention. These are

hysterical times; any novel that aims at hysteria will now be

effortlessly outstripped – this was Wood’s point, and I’m with him

on it. In fact, I have agreed with him several times before, in

public and in private, but I appreciate that he feared I needed

extra warning; that I might be sitting in my Kilburn bunker

planning some 700-page generational saga set on an

incorporated McDonald’s island north of Tonga. Actually, I am

sitting here in my pants, looking at a blank screen, finding

nothing funny, scared out of my mind like everybody else,

smoking a family-sized pouch of Golden Virginia. Guardian UK

UK ponders troop deployment. British Defence secretary will decide soon whether British troops will be used in an Afghan ground war. Defence sources say that more than 1000 British troops are being readied for deployment; forces currently on exercise in Oman could easily be sent there.

In related news, for those wondering about the official target list, the Defence secretary said that the air attacks in Afghanistan had destroyed all nine al Qaeda training camps. Nine airfields were put out of commission and 24 military garrisons hit hard. BBC

Signs of hope: confirmation of the first act of IRA decommissioning; may forestall imminent colapse of power-sharing between Sinn Fein and the Unionists in Northern Ireland. So what happens next? BBC

Meanwhile, Israel rebuffs US on call to leave newly occupied Palestinian territory and stop West Bank Raids, despite conferences by both Dubya and Sec’y of State Colin Powell with Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in Washington today. Reportedly, the Americans imposed upon Peres for the sake of the fragility of Arab participation in the ‘coalition against terrorism.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Progress in fight against anthrax?. In separate research developments, a US team has determined how anthrax toxins enter the cells of the body, suggesting a means of blocking their entry; and international researchers have identified the three-dimensional structure of one of the components of the anthrax toxin, pointing to ways to design drugs to block its action. BBC [It goes without saying, however, that such upbeat reports offer no hope for the postal workers currently suffering from inhalation anthrax infection…]

CIA’s licence to kill — ‘(G)iven leave to do “whatever is

necessary” to shut down al-Qaeda, is it

about to return to the business of

assassination for the first time in a

generation?’ BBC

Doug Ireland:
Why the Democrats will Get Trounced in 2002: ‘Five days before the bombing of Afghanistan began—in announcing the reopening of Washington to air traffic—George W. Bush

declared, “This Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan airport.”

It was of this president with the addled tongue whom Al Gore spoke when, deploying the drawl he turns on when trying to seem folksy,

he hollered to Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner that “George Bush is mah commander-in-chief!”… Gore’s frothy nationalism symbolized the degree to which the Democratic leadership has

abdicated its responsibility as watchdog on a president who is, to much of the world, out of control.’ In These Times via CommonDreams

Arundhati Roy:
‘Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter’: Why America Must Stop the War Now: “People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments molt and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and smother thought, and then as

ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions

of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond – they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable

terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about

anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.” CommonDreams

Officials Worry as Anthrax Spreads to Off-Site White House Mailroom; ‘more “hot spots” had also

been found at the capital’s main mail sorting center,

necessitating intensified treatment of workers.

“I’m confident when I come to work tomorrow that

I’ll be safe,” ‘ says Dubya; does he think we’re mostly worried about his health? Does he think his courage in facing the anthrax scare will inspire those ordinary mortals truly at risk? Does he read, much less open, any of his own mail, or even come close to a mailroom? NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Bioweapons alerts may cause lasting psychological

harm: “Mounting fear over anthrax attacks and the potential for other

biological and chemical weapons attacks could have a long-lasting

psychological effect on many people, even if the incidents

themselves remain sporadic, say medical researchers in the UK

and US.

They warn that authorities in many countries could inadvertently

worsen the situation by over-reacting and proposing

countermeasures, such as chemical sensors on subway systems.” New Scientist

“The first anthrax attack outside the US has been confirmed in

Kenya. Three people in Nairobi have tested positive to the

bacterium after coming into contact with a contaminated letter sent

from the US.” New Scientist

Ambidextrous tendencies may mean better memory: “Having a close left-handed relative makes right-handers better at

remembering events than those from exclusively right-handed

families, new research suggests. There is a downside, however, as

members of these ambidextrous families may be relatively

impaired in their ability to recall facts.

According to the study, having a left-handed sibling or parent means

the organisation of your brain is intermediate between a pure ‘lefty’

and a pure ‘righty’.

Specifically, Stephen Christman and Ruth Propper at the University

of Toledo, Ohio claim that people with ‘lefties’ in the family have a

larger corpus callosum – the connection between the brain

hemispheres. This makes you better at certain memory tasks, but

worse at others, they believe.” New Scientist

Car that detects driver’s emotions unveiled in Tokyo: “…gets to know its driver and can warn them to calm

down or cheer up…” New Scientist