Gaylan King is Director of Security & Business Development for Gulfconsultec, Ltd., a business consulting firm based in Kuwait. I think you’ll his description of doing business in Iraq fascinating -JW...We drove on to reach Baghdad by dusk. In late afternoon we stopped at a regular truck stop to eat a late lunch; our Iraqi passengers recommended it. The single room was large, clean and filled with 100-150 young Iraqi truck drivers. I was the only obvious Western in the room (I doubt they see many of us at this place). The room quieted and then someone gave me the, "thumbs up", signal, which I returned. Then everyone started smiling and saying, "Welcome!" and so on. That is really a gratifying experience; no one was frowning in the corner and whispering. The food was delicious. Iraq has the best-tasting vegetables and fruit and meat; this is an accepted fact. The waiters immediately cover the whole table with every kind of salad, pasta, vegetable and fruit imaginable, plus several kinds of Arab bread, which is simply delicious! After enough time this is removed and the main course is served. Mine happened to be a large chicken leg on a bowl of really delicious rice. It was the perfect size for a perfect meal. Just then, our waiter, a good-looking 25 year-old man with crew cut hair, no beard or mustache, and a great smile, leaned down to me, gave the "thumbs up" sign and said, "George Bush good!" He then flipped the thumb to the down position and said, "Kerry bad!" We both laughed hysterically! All of his buddies were watching and agreeing it was a great moment. I shook every one of their hands before we left; it was great fun and this kind of humor is one of the reasons I enjoy the Iraqis so much; they are educated, intelligent people and their land is the probable location for the very beginning of everything human. They were never wandering nomadic herdsmen as were the Gulf Arabs.

When John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, he admitted that he had probably broken the law by going to Paris and meeting with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders. (From page 188 of the hearing record: "I realize that even my visits in Paris . . . in a sense are on the borderline of private individuals negotiating, et cetera. I understand these things." The prohibition against private individuals negotiating--which has been on the criminal statute books since John Adams was President--is contained in 18 U.S.C. Section 953 and is a felony.)I was serving my second tour of duty in Vietnam at the time, and while I was painfully aware of the lies Kerry was telling Congress and the American people about what was happening in Vietnam (pretending to speak for "all" Vietnam veterans, calling us "war criminals," saying 60-80 percent of us were "stoned" twenty-four hours a day, and the like), I was unaware until recently that he was also involved in exploiting the families of American POWs in Vietnam.

The Kerry Democrats have in reality proposed the platform most contrary to economic growth and jobs creation in U.S. history. They are betting the news media will be too dumb or willfully blind to notice and the Republicans too incompetent to explain the reality of the Democrats' proposals to the American people. The Democrats have handed the Republicans a golden opportunity to set forth a true economic growth and jobs creation plan. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear the Bush administration and the Republicans have the skills and bold thinking to take advantage of the opportunity presented. The Democrats are good at selling falsehoods, and the Republicans are lousy at selling the truth.

Last Friday, July 30, three suicide bombers blew themselves up next to the U.S. and Israeli Embassies and Prosecutor General's Office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Three Uzbek security men, including the Israeli ambassador's bodyguard, were killed and eight were civilians wounded. The attacks coincided with the start of the trials of radical Islamists accused of perpetrating massive March terrorist attacks killing 35 people and wounding scores. Two terrorist groups, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the attack. The two organizations are well known in the global jihadi movement.

I have known Senator John McCain for 33 years. I have known Senator John Kerry for the same length of time. Sen. McCain I met in person, in a prisoner of war camp. In the Spring of 1971, Senator McCain and I were in a camp the Communists told us was a punishment camp in which we had been placed because we were "reactionaries" with "bad attitudes." In the same camp, I came to know about Senator Kerry, but only by reputation. In the 2000 presidential election I supported John McCain because, from my personal knowledge of him gained in that camp, I knew that he was fit to serve as President. In the 2004 presidential election, again based upon my knowledge gained in that camp, I oppose the election of John Kerry because I believe that he is unfit to serve as President.

Whatever might be said about John Kerry's candidacy--one thing for sure is that his choice of John Edwards as his VP running mate should give everyone a reason to reject this ticket--and that is that Kerry has chosen a trial lawyer to sell his philosophy to the American people. I have been a lawyer for almost 40 years. I am generally proud of the profession, notwithstanding the many corny lawyer jokes I've had to suffer. However, there is one segment of the legal profession of which I am not proud, and that is the so-called trial bar--the plaintiff's' attorneys who have for years raped, pillaged and plundered American society, usually in guise of rectifying ills that don't exist.

The political class's Edwards-huffing is like a summer heat rash -- it is mildly irritating but should subside in about a week: Wear loosely fitted clothes, keep out of the heat and ease your way through an adequate provision of gin, tonic, limes and bitters. Tropical drinks served with little umbrellas are acceptable substitutes. Now would be an excellent time to catch up on your genuine summer fiction reading (in other words, avoid Edwards media commentary for a week, which is not quite fiction, nor quite non-fiction. It is not so much fiction as it is faction.)

The conservative movement believes in the American people’s ability to rise to the occasion, in their ingenuity. They believe that entitlement, government programs in mass and laws regulating every aspect of our daily lives infringe on the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that government intervention in our daily lives should be held to a necessary minimum. By contrast, the Left has more ideological factions than a Douglas Fir has needles. There is the NEA, which champions a globalist multicultural agenda in our public schools. Their agenda includes seeing children forced to participate in the study of the Koran in California under the guise of multicultural tolerance while doing everything to banish Christianity from our nations classrooms in total. There is the ACLU who sued the City of Los Angeles in an effort to remove a cross from their city seal and who chose to represent NAMBLA -- a group that advocates pederasty between men and boys -- in a murder trial under the pretext of free speech. There is the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League who, without a mandate by the medical community on when life actually begins, has championed as a natural right the act of partial birth abortion. These are but a very few of the “causes” and “action groups” that effectively comprise the Left and the Liberal-Left.

This week we introduce a new feature to To The Point: The Members' Forum, selected articles submitted by TTPers themselves. We launch this feature with TTPer Wayne Daniels. Publication of such submissions does not imply To The Point's full agreement with them. ---JWJune 30, 2004 marked the "Official" end of the Iraqi occupation. Yes, we will have troops on the ground there for years. Remember it is 59 years and counting that we have had troops stationed in Germany and Japan; 50 years and counting in Korea, etc. I will argue that the only US strategic interests in Iraq are (1) that the Iraqi government not fund or otherwise support terrorist groups; (2) we need military bases on the borders of three of the primary state sponsors of terrorist groups - Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia; and (3) that enough oil reaches the world markets to keep the price of crude in the $25 to $40 range. As long as these interest are satisfied, we really don't care who controls the streets or the government.

As wars go, the conflict in Iraq was -- and is -- as good as it gets. A three week military campaign with minimal casualties, 25 million people liberated from one of the most sadistic tyrants of modern times, the establishment of a military and intelligence base in the heart of the terrorist world. What well-meaning person could oppose this? In addition, two thirds of the Al Qaeda leadership is gone, and there hasn’t been a terrorist attack in America in more than two and a half years, something no one would have predicted after 9/11. By any objective standard, the Bush war on terror is a triumph. These real world considerations are why the campaign waged by the Democratic Party and a Democratic press against the Bush war policy is based not on any analysis of the war itself, but on maliciously concocted claims about the prewar justification for military action. For purely political agendas, the Democrats hope to attempt to convict the Administration of “misleading the American public” and wasting American lives through deception and fraud, and thus to defeat the President at the polls in November. This is the campaign of the Big Lie.

Today, what would Reagan do? He would appeal for the liberation of women in the Muslim world, he would call for the freedom of Sudanese Christians from slavery and genocide, he would demand that the brainwashing of Palestinian and Iraqi youth to become suicide bombers be stopped.

Despite enormous and continuing denial on the part of left and liberal ideologues and the media, we are facing an exceedingly pathological strain of Islamofascist terrorism. So a crucial question must be asked: from a psychological and anthropological point of view, what kind of culture produces human bombs, glorifies mass murderers, and supports humiliation-based revenge? According to Minnesota based psychoanalyst and Arabist, Dr. Nancy Kobrin, it is a culture in which shame and honor play decisive roles and in which the debasement of women is paramount.

In Moslem culture, during the Daheyah (Sacrifice) feast, Moslems bring a lamb into the home for a ritual slaughter accompanied by the invocation Allahu Akbar, “God is great,” in the presence of the family and the children. Now we see the Daheyah of radical Islam to be Jews such as Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, who were beheaded with no mercy, accompanied by the same pious invocation. This is a perversion of Islam, but don’t expect an apology. To expect the Arab and Moslem leadership to apologize for the barbaric murder of Nick Berg is a reflection of the West’s naive and wrong expectations of Arab culture. In the Arab world to take responsibility and say “sorry” is taken as an unmanly sign of weakness that may get one into more trouble.

My view has been that this man, who is a quasi-traitor and anti-American as well as a vacuous, arrogant snob, could not be elected president, unless perhaps his opponent were falling apart before our eyes, and Bush hasn’t reached that stage yet. Regardless of the polls, regardless of what’s going on in the world of politics, it would be unimaginable and unprecedented for the U.S. to elect such a man. That’s been my position. But now it occurs to me that there is another way of seeing it:

This is a fascinating thesis: That the Nasdaq market movers are radical liberals whose George Soros-like hatred for Bush is influencing the movement of Nasdaq stocks. I don’t know if this is the case, but you simply must read it. Starting next week, Ms. D'Anconia will be submitting a weekly report, exclusive to To The Point, indicating the direction she perceives Nasdaq to be moving. -- Jack Wheeler. I make measurements which indicate the direction the market is moving in the Nasdaq. The data I use are very sensitive indicators of the underlying financial mood of the Nasdaq movers and shakers. I do not try to predict or explain their mood. I just have a way of separating the noise from the signal. In general, the larger indices (DJIA, SPX etc.) follow the same motions as the Nasdaq, but they do so more sluggishly. Nasdaq is the canary in the stock market mine, in that it is more sensitive and shows motion effects more clearly than the larger indices. The stock market is one of the most quintessential symbols of American Capitalism. Thus it was with some surprise that since last fall, I found that inflections upward seemed to happen when bad things happened to America. Over the past several months there has appeared to be a correlation between political events and the direction of the Nasdaq. It is possible that these are all just coincidences. Anecdotal evidence is hard to use scientifically. Nevertheless, there appears to be a pattern.

This is a letter to his friends from Ray Reynolds, a medic in the Iowa Army National Guard, serving in Iraq. To The Point has determined its authenticity and updated its factual claims, verifying them with USAID and the Pentagon: As I head off to Baghdad for the final weeks of my stay in Iraq, I wanted to say thanks to all of you who did not believe the media. They have done a very poor job of covering everything that has happened. I am sorry that I have not been able to visit all of you during my two week leave back home. And just so you can rest at night knowing something is happening in Iraq that is noteworthy, I thought I would pass this on to you. This is the list of things that has happened in Iraq recently:

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution. "As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

On Wednesday, April 7, 2004, the Washington Post ran this headline: U.S. Forces Take Heavy Losses As Violence Spreads Across Iraq About a Dozen Marines Killed; Foreigners, Scores of Iraqis Die To the fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, and children of the Marines who died, the losses are the heavy indeed. There is nothing so precious as the blood of our soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors, and civilians who willingly lay their lives on the line in service to their country. We can never replace them, and we must always remember them. Nevertheless, I am angered at the sensationalist journalism that would lead the uninformed to believe our Army and Marine Corps are being bled white in Iraq.

Sometimes, when I'm weary of the intifada, the occasional terror attacks, the stumbling economy or the political scandals that seem to dominate the public agenda in Israel, I look at the weekend's newspaper magazines and start to breathe again.

The electoral overthrow of the Aznar government of Spain is the first major victory of Islamic Terrorism since September 11, 2001. This is a real disaster, folks. So much so that To The Point is sending out this exceptional essay by Barbara J. Stock, who publishes the website Republican and Proud. The Spanish people deserve our contempt for reacting to the terrorist attack on them in such a cowardly manner. This essay explains why. - Jack Wheeler Blame Spain for the Next Terror Attack Barbara J. Stock March 15, 2004 When the next bomb goes off -- perhaps this time in Poland -- the families of the dead should blame the people in Spain who voted to run from terrorists and cower before them instead of standing strong against them. Sound cruel? Perhaps, but it is the sad truth. The majority of Spaniards decided to follow the illogical path of blaming their own government for the attack in Madrid instead of the people who actually carried out mass murder. In doing so, they handed the butchers a victory. Terrorism and murder have been handsomely rewarded this day.

(The following letter was sent to TTP by a Vietnam Veteran familiar with “Swift Boat” tactics in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. He is a Rear Admiral (Ret.) and a Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1959). I was in the Delta shortly after Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used. I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command. Here are my problems and suspicions:

[The following letter was written by a lady on the staff of a United States Senator. She has asked that we only use her first name, Laura. TTP has personally confirmed with her the veracity of her account, which took place on February 8, 2004.] I'm at the 8:00 am service at my church, St. Johns at Lafayette Square, across from the White House. (I wanted to go early because I was going with Alice and Brent for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel in Manassas.) Much of the service was uneventful--nice, but uneventful--until it comes to the part of the service when the priest says, "Greet one another in the name of the Lord." I turn to my right to exchange the peace with my friend Amy, who was on the other end of my pew. I then shake hands with the person in front of me, and turn around to say hello to the person behind me. The person behind me was our 43rd President George W. Bush

The clerical dictatorship in Iran wants the defeat of President Bush because his commitment to political democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his endorsement of freedom for the people of Iran, threatens a regime that knows it is deeply unpopular.Fidel Castro also wants to see Bush defeated because his determination to help democratic allies could threaten the emerging pro-Castro axis in Latin America. Both dictatorships have plans that could result in visible and sharp foreign policy setbacks that might cost President Bush the 2004 election.

Georgians enthusiastically elected Mikheil Saakashvili president of Georgia on Sunday, Jan. 4. He is a the youthful, center-right leader of the Georgian opposition who overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze in the "Rose Revolution" last November. Mr. Saakashvili has received more than 80 percent of the vote in elections that were the most peaceful and transparent since Georgian independence.

In mainstream discussions taxation amounts to little more than the unpleasant burden that comes from government spending, no different from having to earn money so as to buy stuff in any normal household. Politicians make spending decisions, which become public policy and commit government to fund what was promised and the funding comes from taxes. No other source of revenue is even considered.

A recent meeting of top government economists and policy makers at the Washington-based Brookings Institute was addressed by several mainstream thinkers and their message was that unless taxes are increased, or at least the Bush tax cuts are rescinded, the American government will be in serious trouble. It will not be able to spend what it is legally required to spend unless it borrows heavily and prints extra money, which spur rising interest rates, inflation, and eventually leads to the diminution of confidence in the American economy from investors abroad.

OK, none of this ought to have come about. But that is a bit moot now. However, there is an option that seems to be entirely ignored by mainstream policy wonks in these discussions of public finance. Instead of raising taxes, which will have its own devastating impact on the American economy, the federal government must begin to do what many private firms do when they find themselves in economic troubles. They can sell assets.

Doesn’t that make just the best of sense? If you have overspent but are still committed to spending more because of promises you have made – say, to send your kids to college, to pay for life, car and health insurance – you need to sell stuff. Get rid of your expensive home and buy something more modest; get rid of your gas-guzzler and henceforth drive an economy car. Sell that vacation or time-share condo, and quit that membership in the fitness or country club. This is a no-brainer for most of us.

Yet, in mainstream discussions of coping with the results of bad government economic policies no one seems to suggest that the time has come to sell off government assets. This despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing peculiar about this – the governments own millions of acres of land, massive amounts of resources, all kinds of buildings, equipment, and various overhead facilities. Why is it never, never considered – not even so much as mentioned – that government should obtain revenue by selling what it could sell without any great difficulty? In all the discussions at the municipal, county, state and federal levels of public finance, this perfectly sensible option is completely disregarded. But why?

The reason is a basic assumption underlying mainstream public policy discussions. This is that the wealth of the citizenry belongs to the government just as soon as that wealth is required for funding government programs. The idea is that citizens hold their wealth merely as a grant of privilege and if the real owner needs it for various purposes, then it may be reclaimed from the citizenry.

Sure, presidential candidate George W. Bush made reference to how the wealth taken by government is ours and tax cuts amount merely to returning some of that wealth to its rightful owners. Does President Bush actually believe this? No, based on his actual spending plans. For if he really believed the bit about it being our money, not that of the government, he would not agree to massive spending plans such as the recently enacted plan to have the government fund the new prescription drug program or all the subsidies handed to farmers.

No, in fact mainstream politicians and their academic groupies do not believe that when the government taxes us, it is taking – indeed, extorting – our wealth. For if that were the thinking in the mainstream, then there would be a very serious difference between a policy of taxing us and selling off government assets.

Just imagine your own domestic economic situation, the one I described above. If you believed that going to your next-door neighbor and dipping into his resources would be a proper way to cope with your financial shortfalls, you would not even consider selling off your assets to help yourself out of your dire straits. But because you know that that is no option for a decent human being, selling off of assets will be the correct choice to make.

In short, mainstream public policy rests on the morally obtuse conviction that extorting wealth from the public is perfectly OK. That mainstream belief, however, is just as wrong as the belief that citizens of a country are subjects or that workers are serfs. Such was reasonable in a feudal system but not in one in which each citizen, not the government, is sovereign.

Tibor Machan holds the Freedom Communications Professorship of Free Enterprise and Business Ethics at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, CA. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, he is author of 20+ books, most recently, The Passion for Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Witnessing the scramble among Democratic presidential hopefuls to appeal to voters in the various states about to have primaries is not a pleasant experience. What has come to be the main theme of these candidates is the refrain that whoever isn’t rich, whoever has had a brush with poverty at anytime in his or her life, must want and is fully entitled to have governments engage in massive, relentless wealth redistribution. This is a pitiful and quite disgusting message to put out in America, the country to which the poor of the world used to — and often still — flock precisely to escape their poverty through hard work, entrepreneurship, and ingenuity.

In the American South, William Faulkner once wrote, the past isn't dead. It isn't even past. This may become truer the farther south one goes.

If you thought American Universities were repositories of masochistic appeasement of enviers of Western Civilization, compare them to those of Israel’s. If you need to sober up after all those Christmas parties, this article will do it quickly. –JW

“How could you report the war in Iraq if you sided with the Americans?”

“How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?”

These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University’s Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month on my experiences as an embedded reporter with the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division during the Iraq war.

Many of the students were visibly jolted by my assertion that the patriotism of American soldiers was inspirational. The vocal ones among them were appalled when I argued that journalists must be able to make moral distinctions between good and evil, when such distinctions exist, if they wish to provide their readership with an accurate picture of the events they describe in their reports.

“Who are you to make moral judgments? What you say is good may well be bad for someone else.”

“I am a sane human being capable of distinguishing good from evil, just like every other sane human being,” I answered. “As criminal law states, you are criminally insane if you can’t distinguish between good and evil. Unless you are crazy, you should be able to tell the difference.”

When the show was over, and the students began shuffling out of the lecture hall, a young woman approached me.

“Excuse me,” she said with a heavy Russian accent. “How can you say that democracy is better than dictatorial rule?”

“Because it is better to be free than to be a slave,” I answered.

Undeterred, she pressed on, “How can you support America when the US is a totalitarian state?”

“Did you learn that in Russia?” I asked.

“No, here,” she said.

“Here at Tel Aviv University?”

“Yes, that is what my professors say,” she said.

In the weeks that have passed since I gave that lecture, I have not been able to get those students out of my mind. While campuses throughout the Western world are known as hotbeds for radicalism, it is still hard to believe that Israeli students, who themselves served in the IDF, and who as civilians have experienced more than three years of unrelenting terrorist attacks on their cafes, night clubs, campuses, highways and public buses, could subscribe to such views.

How can they believe it is impossible to make moral distinctions between those fighting terrorism and totalitarian regimes and those perpetrating terrorism and leading such dictatorships?

It is an open secret that many of the most prominent Israeli academics and professors are also identified with the radical leftist fringes of the Israeli political spectrum.

The Hebrew University’s Political Science Department was dominated for years by the leaders of Peace Now. Tel Aviv University’s Social Science and Humanities Faculties are the professional home to some of the leaders of the even more radical Ta’ayush and Yesh Gvul organizations.

Israeli professors have signed petitions calling for boycotts of Israeli goods. Some have even supported the boycott of Israeli academics by foreign universities and academic publications.

Israel Radio reported this week that the letter written by 13 reservists from the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit in which they announced their refusal to serve in the territories was written for them by a Tel Aviv University professor.

Prof. Rafi Yisraeli from the Hebrew University notes, “It is ironic that the university presidents and Minister Natan Sharansky are now organizing a campaign to stop the boycott of Israeli academics in foreign universities.

A year ago, I discussed the issue, as well as the rampant anti-Semitism on European campuses ,with the president of the University of Paris. He told me, ‘What do you want from us? All we are doing is repeating what we hear from Israeli professors.'”

Case in point is Tel Aviv University law professor Andrei Marmor. Marmor is currently a visiting faculty member at the University of Southern California Law School. Recently he published a policy paper at USC where he argues that Israel’s territorial claims to land it secured during the 1948-49 War of Independence are no different from its claims to land secured in the 1967 Six Day War. In his view, both are illegitimate. Marmor goes on to argue that Zionism cannot claim to be a liberal movement unless it accepts the “right of return” of Palestinians to Israel.

In the mid-1990s, a Tel Aviv University graduate student conducted a survey of the political views of university professors. The student discovered that not only were the professors overwhelmingly self-identified with far left and Arab political parties, most also expressed absolute intolerance for the notion that professors with right-wing or even centrist views should be allowed to teach in their departments. “Over my dead body,” said one.

All of this is well known. Yet knowing of the professors’ radicalism, and seeing the effects of such dogmatic views on university students, are different things.

Since my exchange with those students, I have spoken to professors and students at the five major liberal arts universities in Israel to try to understand how the intellectual tyranny of the radical Left on campuses impacts their educational and professional experiences.

Students speak of a regime of fear and intimidation in the classroom. Ofra Gracier, a doctoral student in Tel-Aviv University’s humanities faculty explains the process as follows:

“It starts with the course syllabus. In a class on introduction to political theory for instance, you will never see the likes of Leo Strauss or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman. You will only get Marx and Rousseau and people like that. So, if you want to argue with Marx, you are on your own. You don’t know anything else.

“But say you want to dispute your professor. I was taught this class by Yoav Peled, an avowed communist. He was explaining why capitalism is evil. I mentioned the Asian economic miracle – South Korea, Japan, Singapore. He went nuts and spent the rest of the class screaming at me.

“Then there is the grading system. In a history course I took, I took a Zionist line in a research paper. My professor gave me a low grade and explained that my grade was the result of my argument.

“Most people toe the leftist line even when they disagree because of the grade discrimination. If you get low grades, you can’t get accepted to a master’s program and if, in the master’s program you get low grades you won’t be accepted into a doctoral program.”

Avi Bell, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University’s Law School, relates a separate but related problem. “Last year I taught a course on the legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Most of my students were clearly Zionists and also knowledgeable about Israeli history.

And yet, when I received their seminar papers at the end of the term, I saw that most of them wrote anti-Zionist arguments. “The reason this happened is because there is a dire lack of scholarship in certain areas. For instance, if you want to research the issue of Palestinian policies of land discrimination against Jews, you have to go to primary sources.

No one has written a book about it even though it is a huge issue. But if you want to research the question of alleged Jewish land discrimination against Arabs, you have a bookshelf full of books at your disposal.”

Indeed, Dr. Martin Sherman of Tel-Aviv University’s Political Science Department was unable to get the university’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies to publish his original work on the hydro-strategic impact of a Palestinian state on Israel.

Sherman, with degrees in physics and geology and practical experience as a water adviser in the Ministry of Agriculture, is a recognized expert in the field.

“My paper showed conclusively that the establishment of such a state would involve the transfer of control over 60 percent-70 percent of Israel’s water sources to the Palestinians. They wouldn’t have it. I was strung along by Shai Feldman [the head of the Jaffee Center] for months and months, until it was finally made clear that it wouldn’t be published.”

Citing alternate publications in research papers is also not allowed. Another graduate student explained that her professor gave her a low grade on a paper because she cited research published in Netiv magazine. “That is a right-wing propaganda sheet, published in the Occupied Territories,” she was told. Her argument that most of Netiv’s articles are written by academics and are based on original research didn’t matter.

She ran into a similar problem when she cited an article published in the Shalem Center’s journal Azure.

Most of the academics and students that I spoke with were happy to discuss their situations and yet averse to the notion of being quoted by name. “I am up for tenure,” and “I still need my dissertation proposal approved,” were some of the most frequent explanations.

A survey carried out by the left-wing Israel Democracy Institute on Israeli attitudes toward the state was published on Thursday in Haaretz. According to the findings, a mere 58% of Israelis are proud of being Israeli, while 97% of Americans and Poles are proud of their national identity.

Mexicans, Chileans, Norwegians, and Indians all have higher degrees of pride in their national identities than Israelis. Is it possible that our academic tyrants have something to do with the inability of 42% of Israelis to take pride in who they are?

The United Nations' global warming bureaucracy is meeting (vacationing?) in Milan this week pondering how to revive the beleaguered international global warming treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol. This week's news that Russia might say "nyet" to the treaty all but seals its doom.

The latest proposed victim in our struggle against terrorism is Army Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, recently named Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. His mission is to reinvigorate the search for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other leaders of global terrorism. By training and experience, he is marvelously prepared for his new duties - having risen from a Delta Force commando to top-secret Joint Special Operations Command, through the CIA, to command of the Army's Special Forces. For a quarter century, he has been fighting terror with his bare hands, his fine mind and his faith-shaped soul.

Please note that the following is an Associated Press story.  Did any news outlet you know of (other than ToThePoint!) carry it?

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance…

[Editor's Note: Last Tuesday night, September 9, a Palestinian suicide-terrorrist set off a bomb at Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem.  The following was written by Jan Medved, an Israeli businessman whose son was one of the first upon the scene.] Last night's terror struck close to home. The boom of the blast at Cafe Hillel on Emek Refaim Street shook the windows of our house and left no doubt that we were hit again -- this time in our own neighborhood.

Russia's ambition to become an alternative oil supplier to the United States instead of the unstable Middle East and Russian integration into the global economy are under threat. For the last month, YUKOS, the largest Russian oil company -- fourth-largest in the world -- has been under a relentless attack from the Kremlin.

Whether the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein were self-inflicted or not, the military operation to capture them was immaculate.   There were no American deaths, 10 minutes of warnings were given over loudspeakers, and it was the Iraqis who opened fire. So sensitive was the American approach, they even rang the bell of the house before entering. The neat operation fits squarely with the tenor of the whole American campaign, contrary to the popular negative depiction of its armed forces:  that they are spoilt, well-equipped, steroid-pumped, crudely patriotic yokels who are trigger-happy yet cowardly in their application of overwhelming force.

Do We Really Seek Freedom? The entire world is perplexed about us - the Arabs - and no longer knows whether we truly live on this planet or came from another planet. Are all the Arab peoples in need of psychological treatment, or are we a hopeless case for which psychological treatment will make no difference?

Billed by the Government as nothing more than a toothless "declaration" at the Nice summit in December 2000, the Charter of Fundamental Rights is now to be enshrined as a legally-binding document in Part II of the new European Constitution, with profound effects on Britain's enterprise culture and legal system.