Table of Contents — March 30, 2007
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World
Patrolling Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, where 'gators' lurk
(page 1)
The predominantly Sunni Arab district has become a byword for
lawlessness and mayhem.
British on tightrope over captives in Iran (page 1)
London asked the UN Security Council on Thursday to 'deplore'
Iran's seizure of its sailors.
Libya snubs Arab summit (page 4)
Qaddafi's cold shoulder illustrates his country's continued awkward
return to the international community.
Cautious peace steps at Saudi summit (page 4)
The meeting fell short of delivering the progress expected on a
Saudi-led push for peace with Israel.
Reporters on the Job (page 6)
Moves to save the not-so-blue Danube (page 7)
An environmental group has listed the opaque, brown river as one
of the world's 10 most threatened.
USA
Troubling March Madness byproduct: a boom in 'bracketology'
(page 1)
The mix of math, basketball stats, and guts is raising concerns
among addiction counselors, sociologists, and the NCAA itself.
Firing of US attorneys: Was it too political? (page 1)
At issue is whether the Bush administration went too far, pressuring
the attorneys to help the GOP.
Fast-growing Phoenix, beset by dirty air, targets construction
in cleanup plan (page 2)
Maricopa County has proposed 41 air-clearing measures - from
banning leaf blowers to requiring 'dust managers' on job sites.
US detainee tribunals notch wins, raise concerns (page 2)
Successes include David Hicks's guilty plea this week. But experts
say the process is riddled with problems.
The '08 money race hits crucial marker (page 3)
Clinton is expected to top the field of presidential contenders this
quarter, which ends Saturday.
Editorial
NCAA's gambling madness (page 8)
The more the NCAA turns men's basketball into a commercial
event, the more its students lose.
Opinion
Letters (page 8)
Readers write about the new global arms race, US attorney firings,
and the viability of the Yiddish language.
When dissent becomes obstruction (page 9)
In the US Civil War, 'Copperheads' in the North nearly defeated
Lincoln's effort to save the Union. Today's Democrats are similarly
guilty.
The risk of invoking presidential prerogative (page 9)
Executive privilige may set Capitol Hill and the White house on a
collision course.
Key to symbols
(Note: these symbols are active only when connected to the Internet):
e-mail this article: printer-friendly page:
Weekend
Fighting goblins and ogres in a Georgia park (page 11)
For fans of live action role-playing games, true adventure is only a
performance away.
'Blades of Glory' lands a double klutz (page 11)
The male pairs figure skating film starring Will Ferrell and John
Heder is (crackpot) poetry in motion.
Music labels spring leaks - for publicity (page 11)
Indie record companies are using controlled (and sometimes
uncontrolled) leaks of new music to generate buzz.
New on DVD: Happy Feet (page 12)
The 'Footloose'-meets-Greenpeace penguin flick is cute, but
includes enough innuendo to make parents squirm.
Monitor picks (page 12)
Five films we're not ashamed to like.
Page turners: 'Burning Bright' (page 12)
The author of 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' takes a 'Beethoven Lives
Upstairs' approach to William Blake in her latest novel.
Tubegazing: 'The Tudors' and 'Cat-Minster' (page 12)
A Game Show Network competition for cat lovers and Showtime's
lusty Henry VIII historical drama hit small screens this week.
Movie Guide (page 14)
Capule reviews of new releases.
'Lookout' for this noir gem (page 14)
Despite its improbable plot about a slow-witted janitor who assists
a heist, 'The Lookout' feels sharp.
'Pirate Queen' dons Irish dancing shoes (page 16)
A new musical from the 'Riverdance' team makes a bid for a reign
over Broadway.
Backstory: Baseball by the numbers (page 20)
As stats-happy fans wind up for the start of the baseball season,
here's a few figures they may have missed.
The Home Forum
No room for doubt (page 18)
We should strive to understand that everything that matters has
nothing to do with physicality.
The paradox of confidence (page 18)
People sometimes use language to signal what they want to be
true rather than what is true.
The 'timelessness' of old Saigon (page 18)
He fell in love with this Vietnamese city and its people the moment
he arrived - and not just for the many photo opportunities.
News in Brief
World (page 7)
USA (page 3)
Etc... (page 3)
 ‘To injure no man,
but to bless all mankind’
B O S TO N ˙ F R I DAY
MARCH 30, 2007
HEARTS AND MINDS
TOUGH BREAK: Soldiers take a
SAM DAGHER
break at Gator outpost’s
eponymous “Gator Cafe” inside
the main market in Dora.
Patrolling Baghdad’s
Dora neighborhood,
where ‘gators’ lurk
By SAM DAGHER
CORRESPONDENT
BAGHDAD – In the heart of
Dora’s main market, amid the
smashed-up and bullet-
riddled facades of the Juburi
butchery, the Nineva pickle
shop, and the Saudi poultry
store, and inside what was
once the Hope X-ray clinic,
lies combat outpost Gator.
The word “swamp” is
scrawled in green and black
marker on the window of the
outpost’s command room.
“Alligators live in swamps,”
jokes Sgt. Maj. Doug Maddi of
the 2nd Battalion, 12th
Infantry Regiment.
Swamp may not be a far-
fetched metaphor for Dora.
The predominantly Sunni
Arab district in southern
Baghdad has, over the past
few years, become a byword
for lawlessness and mayhem
for Baghdadis.
The US military touts its
success in reducing the level
of violence in the area, which
is home to the capital’s main
oil refinery and power plant
and sits at the crossroads of
several major highways.
Given how bad the situation
was before US intervention in
Dora, some of the soldiers
could be forgiven for being
optimistic. Since troops
See DORA page 6
For the latest news & extended coverage
csmonitor.com
FIRING OF U.S. ATTORNEYS:
WAS IT TOO POLITICAL?
A SENATE PANEL hears
from ex-Justice official
about the dismissals.
By PETER GRIER
and GAIL RUSSELL CHADDOCK
STAFF WRITERS
WASHINGTON – At the heart of the
dispute over the firing of eight
US attorneys may be this
question: Were the reasons for
their dismissal properly polit-
ical or improperly political?
Federal prosecutors serve
at the pleasure of the presi-
dent, after all. It’s appropriate
that they follow the general
political priorities of the chief
executive who appointed
them, say legal experts.
The issue in this case is
First heat of the campaign money race
Presidential contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) raises money in New
York. The first fundraising quarter for the ’08 candidates ends Saturday. PAGE 3.
T O DAY
Detainee justice
Military commissions
at Guantánamo score
wins, but experts say
problems are many. 2
whether Bush administration
officials went too far and
engaged in unacceptable
actions – such as pressuring
the attorneys to use their pow-
ers for the specific electoral
benefit of the GOP.
“US attorneys should be
fair-minded and independent
and not make judgments
about prosecutions or indict-
ments on truly political
grounds,” says Carl Tobias, a
law professor at the University
of Richmond.
For instance, some Demo-
crats have charged that Carol
Lam, the former US attorney
in San Diego, was fired due to
her pursuit of a wide-ranging
public-corruption case that
See FIRINGS page 10
Attack on haze Danube at risk
The Phoenix area Europe’s famous
crafts a plan to sweep Danube is listed as one
the dust from its of the world’s 10 most
dirty skies. 2 threatened rivers. 7
VOL. 99, NO. 86
British on tightrope
over captives in Iran
LONDON ASKED the UN Security Council on
Thursday to ‘deplore’ Iran’s seizure of its sailors.
By MARK RICE-OXLEY – CORRESPONDENT
and SCOTT PETERSON – STAFF WRITER
LONDON – Britain is urging interna-
tional allies to join it in suspend-
ing official business with Iran in a
bid to increase pressure on
Tehran to release a group of
sailors seized a week ago.
The standoff over the 15 naval
personnel captured in the Persian
Gulf last Friday is threatening to
degenerate into the gravest bilat-
eral dispute since the Salman
Rushdie affair. Indeed, escalating
demands by Iran and Britain alike
STEPHEN CHERNIN/AP
COPYRIGHT © 2007 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY — All rights reserved
ONE DOLLAR
are making a trouble-free exit
appear less likely for either side.
“There is no easy way out of
this,” says Mohammad Hadi
Semati, an expert at the University
of Tehran. “One side has to lose
face. Which side? I don’t know.”
Britain has already announced
that all official business with Iran
has been suspended, including
visits, visas, and support for trade
missions. It took its case to the
UN Thursday, asking the Security
Council to “deplore” Iranian
See SAILORS page 10
BASKETBALL
The hazardous
boom in
‘bracketology’
By PATRIK JONSSON
STAFF WRITER
ATLANTA – It started with a $5 pool
as the Midwestern high schooler
filled out a bracket of teams he
predicted would climb to the Val-
halla of college basketball: the
Final Four.
His run ended before he gradu-
ated from college last May, when
he had to pay the mafia $25,000 to
lay off his family and himself. What
happened? Given the prospect of
easy money, his own smarts, and
plenty of time to watch sports on
TV, he’d become the dorm book-
maker, carrying $100,000 a
month in bets, encroaching on
established local rackets.
It’s an extreme tale, but a cau-
tionary one as the growing mania
around “bracketology” – the mix of
math, stats, and guts used to bet on
which teams make it to the cham-
pionship round – is raising con-
cern among addiction counselors,
sociologists, and the NCAA itself.
At the same time, bracketology
has moved out of sports bars and
See FINAL FOUR page 5
2 Friday, March 30, 2007 T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR

usa
US detainee tribunals Constitutional Rights, which
represents several detainees at
Guantánamo. “They are trying

notch wins, raise concerns to show the world that these

SUCCESSES include David
Hicks’s guilty plea this week.
But experts say the process is
riddled with problems.
By WARREN RICHEY
STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON – After years of dispute, legal
wrangling, and false starts, the makeshift
military justice system set up at the Guan-
tánamo Bay, Cuba, naval base is rolling
into action.
Military officials have achieved a string
of recent successes with the guilty plea ear-
lier this week of Australian David Hicks
and public admissions two weeks earlier
from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and two other Al
Qaeda suspects.
But behind these developments lurks a
fundamental question. Can America’s ter-
ror detention camp with its controversial
reputation for harsh treatment remake
itself into a bastion of fairness and justice?
Defense Department officials are hailing
the Hicks guilty plea as an important mile-
stone, marking the first conviction of a
defendant facing a military commission
trial. But human rights advocates and
many legal analysts say Mr. Hicks appears
to have pleaded guilty to avoid a trial he
knew would never be fair.
“I think it is easy to read his guilty plea
as simply a surrender to a system that had
been detaining him without a possibility of
any kind of resolution for a very long time,”
says Diane Amann, a war crimes and inter-
national law expert at the University of Cal-
ifornia at Davis School of Law. “I don’t
think we can say [the plea] proves the com-
missions are legitimate and that they are
going to operate fairly.”
On Monday, Hicks pleaded guilty to a
charge that he provided material support
to Al Qaeda by attending a string of terror
training camps in Afghanistan and taking
up positions armed with an AK-47 assault
rifle to help repel an expected American
offensive after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Earlier this month in a closed hearing
at the naval base, the alleged mastermind
of the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Mohammed,
admitted responsibility “from A to Z” for
the World Trade Center and Pentagon
plots, and confessed to involvement in a
long list of other terror operations. Two
days later, on March 12, Walid bin Attash
told a panel of military officers in a closed
hearing that he was a key organizer of the
2000 attack in Yemen on the USS Cole.
And Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani admitted
in a closed hearing on March 17 that he
purchased and delivered the explosives
used to bomb the US Embassy in Tanza-
nia in 1998. He told the panel he did not
know that the TNT would be used for a ter-
ror attack, but he went on to detail his
later work providing false travel docu-
ments to Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
Some analysts say this recent flurry of
public disclosures from Guantánamo is no
coincidence. “This is an attempt by the
government to legitimize everything that
has happened up to this point,” says J.
Wells Dixon, a lawyer with the Center for
detainees have some measure of
fair process.” He adds, “That is
just not the case.”
Legal analysts say the
detainee procedures at Guantá-
namo are riddled with prob-
lems that will taint and under-
mine the legitimacy of the
process from beginning to end.
For example, Mohammed’s
rambling March 10 confession
was presented to the military
panel assembled to determine
whether he is an enemy com-
batant eligible to be held indefi-
nitely in a cell at Guantánamo.
But it could also be used as evi-
dence against him in a subse-
quent military commission trial.
Although Mohammed said he
was mistreated and tortured
during his interrogation by US
officials, the panel – and any
future military commission – is
empowered to accept coerced
information as valid evidence.
AP/FILE
Mohammed’s admissions, if
proven at trial, would make him GUANTÁNAMO: Detainees say they were tortured,
eligible for a death sentence. But but US commissions can accept coerced testimony.
there is no suggestion that
Mohammed was granted access to legal courts may apply to terror suspects on
counsel prior to making his incriminating trial at Guantánamo.
public admissions. Such criticism underscores the sub-
Legal analysts say the most revealing stantial hurdles faced by the Bush admin-
assessment of the legitimacy of the Guan- istration in seeking to build national and
tánamo procedures will come when a ter- international credibility for its commission
ror suspect and his lawyers test the fair- process. Guantánamo has become for
ness of the system in the crucible of a full many an international symbol of oppres-
war-crimes trial. sion and injustice.
Then it will be largely up to a military Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates is
judge presiding over the military commis- reported to have suggested closing the
sion to determine to what extent trial pro- detention camp and moving all terror sus-
tections taken for granted in American pects to a military brig in the US.

Fast-growing Phoenix, beset by dirty air, targets construction in cleanup plan

By FAYE BOWERS
CORRESPONDENT
PHOENIX – A new plan to
clear the skies in the
Phoenix area, which has
some of the dirtiest air
UTAH measures may be added Under the Five Percent Plan, Maricopa air within.
NEV. in the months ahead, County must cut its particulate emissions In 2002, the San Joaquin Valley was
but that’s the blueprint by 5 percent a year, until it reaches the fed- required to submit to the EPA a plan to
as of Wednesday eral standard of 150 micrograms of fugi- reduce airborne particulates by 5 percent
ARIZONA evening, when the tive dust per cubic meter of air, as mea- a year, says Jaime Holt, public information
regional Maricopa Asso- sured within a 24-hour period. That administrator in Fresno for the San
N.M.

in the nation, calls for
major shifts in the way CALIF.
people here live and do
business.
Cozy wood-burning
fires? Not a good idea,
because of the soot.
Leaf blowers? Ver-
boten, at least on “bad 0 100 mi
air” days. They kick up 0 100 km
dust.
And on construction
Phoenix ciation of Governments
(MAG) approved the
cleanup plan.
Maricopa County is
only the second locale in
MARICOPA
the US to have the dubi-
COUNTY ous distinction of being
listed on the US Envi-
ronmental Protection
MEXICO Agency’s Five Percent
RICH CLABAUGH – STAFF
Plan – a move that trig-
gered the need for a
means 4,594 fewer tons of airborne dust
each year until at least 2009.
The plan MAG has put forward con-
centrates on construction-related activities
– for good reason, experts say.
“Construction sites contribute most of
the particles into the atmosphere,” says
Joe Fernando, a professor at Arizona State
University in Tempe who works on parti-
cle dispersion problems. “It is realistic
[and] possible to reduce those.”
Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control Dis-
trict. After finding that the San Joaquin
Valley reached its goals in 2003, 2004, and
2005, the EPA in October 2006 said the
valley attained standards for particulates.
The district’s cleanup program
included an intensive public-education
campaign through the media, says Ms.
Holt. “One of our initial strategies was to
regulate fugitive dust – dust kicked up dur-
ing agricultural or construction operations
– like, 30 various things,” she says. “On the

T
sites where more than 50 acres of land will cleanup plan. The EPA tagged the county he good news is that California’s San individual level … on certain days in win-
be disturbed, someone there must be the at the end of 2006, after pollution from Joaquin Valley, the other region to ter when the air-quality index is over 150,
designated “dust manager.” particulates – known to experts as “fugitive fall under the Five Percent Plan we prohibit residential wood-burning.”
Those are three on a list of 41 measures dust” – exceeded the emissions standard because of particulate matter, has shown MAG’s measures appear to be similar.
that may soon be required of businesses for two years running. In 2005, the area that dust-reduction measures can work. The top two involve public education and
and residents in Phoenix, Scottsdale, had 19 days over the federal limit; in 2006, Moreover, the topography there resembles training programs. Some address unpaved
Mesa, and other communities within it broke that record with 27 days over the that of metropolitan Phoenix – a valley sur- roads, unpaved parking lots, and vacant
America’s fastest-growing county. More limit. rounded by mountains that trap the dirty See AIR page 5
T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 3

IN
USA NEWS BRIEF
The ’08 money race hits crucial marker The gross domestic product the scientists said, to determine
CLINTON IS EXPECTED to top the cratic National Committee, Dodd has good growth rate remained lethargic the impact on sea-level rise.
field of presidential contenders nationwide contacts. for a third straight quarter, ris-
On the Republican side, the top three – for- ing at a 2.5 percent pace during Members of the Tuskegee Air-
this quarter, which ends Saturday. mer New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Senator the October-to-December pe- men, the black aviators who
McCain, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt riod, the Commerce Department were trained as a segregated
By LINDA FELDMANN Romney – are expected to finish roughly equal. said Thursday. A slumping unit in Alabama during World
STAFF WRITER It’s possible that Mr. Romney, by far the least housing market was cited as a War II, received Congressional
WASHINGTON – At the stroke of midnight on Satur- well-known nationally and lowest in the polls of significant drag on growth. Gold Medals during ceremonies
day, the music will stop, and each presidential the three will win the GOP first-quarter “money in the Capitol Rotunda Thurs-
candidate will push the proverbial button on a primary.” Romney, a former venture capitalist, is President Bush called congres- day. Hundreds of Tuskegee
key indicator of how he or she is doing: the wired toward fundraising and is even offering sional Republicans to the White fighter pilots flew combat mis-
fundraising totals for the first quarter of 2007. college students a cut of whatever they take in House Thursday as he braces sions after President Franklin
Ask any of the top-tier candidates how they from their fundraising calls. for a likely veto fight with Demo- Roosevelt overruled his top gen-
think the fundraising is going, and they are likely Among the lower-tier Republican candidates, crats over separate House and erals to establish the unit.
to provide a lowball estimate. For the campaign people such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Senate bills that set troop with- Below, retired airmen Wilbur
of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) of New York, Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, drawal deadlines as a condition Mason (l.) and R. Val Archer left
that means tamping down expectations that she are hoping to catch fire among religious conser- of funding the Iraq war. Atlanta to receive Congress’s
could report more than $30 million for the first vatives and become “their” candidate, which highest honor.
TAMI CHAPPELL/REUTERS
quarter – topping both parties’ fields – and hint- could help create a snowball effect in fundrais- By a 426-to-0 vote, the House
ing that Sen. Barack Obama (D) of Illinois could ing. Still, for both parties’ fields, the old trick of approved the Wounded War
even beat her. getting hot, raking in lots of money after the first Assistance Act Wednesday that
For Sen. John McCain is intended to improve care for
(R) of Arizona, it has some of the more than 25,000
meant warning that his US service members wounded
first-quarter totals could in Iraq and Afghanistan. The leg-
be relatively low, blaming islation, which responds to con-
a “late start” and Senate cerns raised recently at Walter
duties that have kept him Reed Army Medical Center, calls
in Washington rather for trimming red tape involved
than out on the fundrais- in treating disabled soldiers.
ing circuit.
For the second-tier Discount retailer TJX Compa-
Compiled from wire service reports
candidates, the trick is to nies, Inc., which owns T.J. Maxx, by Ross Atkin
convince donors that they Marshall’s, and other stores,
are worth the investment, said Wednesday that informa-

etc...
despite low poll numbers tion from at least 45.7 million
– and then do better than credit and debit cards was
expected. For all the can- stolen over an 18-month period.
didates, beating expecta- It was the first detailed disclo-
tions is the name of the sure of computer hacking first
game. But the ultimate revealed in January. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.
bottom line is that, in the As a publishing venture, Harlequin
2008 presidential cycle, The number of naturalized US Enterprises has almost everything
already in high gear, the citizens reached 12.8 million in going for it that a business could
amounts of money VERNON BRYANT/THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS/AP
2005, a record, according to a hope for. Except, perhaps, one. It
needed to be competitive EYE ON THE BALL: GOP presidential contender and former New York study released Wednesday by cranks out more romance novels
dwarf what was required Mayor Rudolph Giuliani held a fundraising event at a golf course in the Pew Hispanic Center. The than any of its competitors. Last
even four years ago. McKinney, Texas, on Tuesday. proportion of legal foreign-born year, it sold 131 million copies in 94
“Four years ago, in the residents who’ve become citi- countries. In the US alone, an esti-
first quarter, John Edwards raised $7.4 million, quarter, and then riding a wave of support zens rose to 52 percent, the mated one-third of women have
and everybody was oohing and aahing,” says toward the nomination remains as difficult as highest in a quarter of a century. read at least one of its titles.
Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the ever, even with the Internet. What’s more, these readers fit one
American Enterprise Institute. “Now, to say $10 To be sure, Internet fundraising has become International polar experts at- of the most desirable demograph-
million is a bare threshold of acceptability is central to any campaign. For Obama, it has been tending a conference in Austin, ics; most are in their peak spend-
probably pushing it a bit. But if you’re not in the especially key, as he seeks to tap grass-roots Texas, said that changing wind ing years. So, where could Harle-
$5 [million] to $6 million range, you’ll have trou- excitement around his candidacy and defeat patterns, probably caused by quin possibly be lacking? Well, in
ble.” Clinton, the Democratic establishment favorite. global warming, among other attracting “real men” to pose for its
While in 2000, McCain could wow the political factors, have led to “surprisingly covers. Thus, in Toronto, its base, a
casting call went out for “iconic ...

S
till, he and other analysts do not expect any world with a $1 million day of Internet fundrais- rapid changes” in a massive,
candidates to be forced out of the race by ing, and in 2004, Democratic nominee John two-mile-thick, Antarctic ice sensitive, beautiful, and fit” males
their first-quarter totals. But for those not Kerry could do the same with a $5 million day, shelf. Further study is needed, to audition as models. Said com-
in the top tier of each major party, the goal now now there’s no reason for a candidate not to have VICTOR CALZADA/EL PASO TIMES/AP pany representatives, “We want ex-
is to become the fourth candidate – and to make a $10 million day. actly what you think [of] ... when
a strong push in the second quarter to break into Internet fundraising has solved the old prob- you’re imagining that ideal man.”
the top tier. lem of the time lag in mailing and cashing Some of the heroes in Harlequin’s
On the Democratic side, with a top tier of Sen- checks. But now there’s a new problem: the com- stories are captains of industry – in
ators Clinton and Obama and former North Car- pressed calendar of primaries and caucuses. other words, hard-charging, high-
olina Senator Edwards, analysts will be watch- “Even if you get a wave of funding after New earning types. In contrast, “A lot of
ing to see how New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson Hampshire [the first primary], you don’t really the models were too young – in
and Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Christo- have time to put it to work in the large number their 20s. Our audience likes men
pher Dodd of Connecticut fare. of states you will be facing on Feb. 5,” the day in a little older, a bit bigger than the
Among those three, the candidate to watch is 2008 that is shaping up to be almost a national runway models.” Anyway, last Sat-
EXITING: Chief Warrant urday, roughly 200 hopefuls showed
Senator Dodd – if not in the first quarter, then in primary, says Anthony Corrado, an expert on Officer Robert Rangel, one of
the second. As chairman of the Senate Banking, campaign finance at Colby College in Waterville, up to audition as a panel of judges
just 10 draftees still in the watched via closed-circuit TV from
Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, he has Maine. Army, posed before a missile
access to big money from the financial sector. He says that money will probably be available an adjacent room. Several were in-
at Fort Bliss, Texas, as he vited to return for an opportunity to
Also, as a senator from Connecticut, with many for media buys, but not for staff and ground sup- retired Wednesday. The draft
well-heeled residents, there’s another pool of port, another essential ingredient in building a complement the heroines and earn
ended in 1973. up to $215 an hour.
donors. And as former chairman of the Demo- successful campaign.
4 Friday, March 30, 2007
Cautious peace steps at Saudi summit
By DAN MURPHY
STAFF WRITER
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – A meeting of Arab and
Muslim leaders here that ended Thursday
provided a venue for Saudi Arabia to put
some distance between itself and the US,
hand-wringing about the possible spread
of Iraq’s civil war, and negotiations to
resolve the growing crisis between Iran
and Britain.
But it didn’t deliver as much progress
as expected on the key issue everyone was
talking about: a revived push for peace
with Israel led by Saudi Arabia.
The so-called Arab Peace Initiative was
proposed by Saudi King Abdullah – then
the crown prince – and accepted by the
Arab League in 2002. At Thursday’s sum-
mit, Arab leaders reaffirmed their support
for the Saudi proposal, which offers full
recognition of Israel by the Arab states in
exchange for a return of Palestinian land
seized in the 1967 war, East Jerusalem as
Palestine’s capital, and the return of Pales-
tinian refugees to their former homes.
Saudi Arabia is convinced that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key issue
inflaming Islamist revolutionaries in Arab
countries, and gives Iran a wedge in gain-
ing regional influence by inflaming anti-
‘THE OBJECT OF THE MONITOR IS TO INJURE
NO MAN, BUT TO BLESS ALL MANKIND.’
– Mary Baker Eddy
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world
regime sentiments. That potential threat,
along with instability in Iraq, make the
Saudi kingdom more eager for peace.
Securing a deal that Palestinians can
live with would appear to go a long way to
securing its interests in the region, Saudi
experts say.
But Israel considers that last demand –
called the right of return – a threat to its
survival, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
called for Arab concessions before moving
forward. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Shimon Peres has called for negotiations.
“You come with your positions, and we will
come with ours,” he told Israel Radio.
Representatives of the US, the Euro-
pean Union, United Nations, and Russia –
who together comprise the so-called Quar-
tet of Middle East mediators – plan to meet
with various Arab states and Israel in the
next few months. But until there is signif-
icant compromise on both sides, the bar
for progress on the Saudi plan is still high.
King Abdullah called for a lifting of
Israel and America’s “unjust embargo” on
the Palestinian territories, which would
allow the “peace process to move in an
atmosphere of justice away from humilia-
tion and compulsion."
He also described the US presence in
Libya snubs Arab summit
Noticeably absent from this
TRIPOLI, LIBYA –
week’s Arab summit was Libya, a snub by
the Arab country led by the perpetually
unconventional Col. Muammar Qaddafi.
“The empty chair is an answer to this
summit that there is no respect for it,”
said Colonel Qaddafi in an interview with
Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “Libya has turned
its back to Arabs ... Libya is an African
nation. As for Arabs, may God keep them
happy and far away.”
Qaddafi’s cold shoulder toward his
neighbors – and his rebuff of the summit
agenda as serving only the interest of the
“American empire” – points to that coun-
try’s continued awkward return to the
international community.
While Libya has transformed its pub-
lic face since 2003 – it denounced ter-
rorism and gave up a program for
weapons of mass destruction in exchange
for normal diplomatic ties with the US –
little appears to have changed in this
north African country.
Along Tripoli’s main shopping area,
watches bearing Qaddafi’s image gleam
from shop windows. The streets are dot-
ted with loitering young men, all of whom
are supposed have jobs that make them
“partners, not wage workers,” a much-
propagandized principle of Qaddafi’s 30-
year-old political system.
Today, as much as 30 percent of the
population remains jobless, according to
2004 estimates by the US government.
Despite reforms to its foreign policy,
domestic governance comprises a series
of hierarchical people’s committees
which, according to Qaddafi’s Green
Book that outlines the political system,
devolves all the country’s decisionmaking
power to the public. He declared in 1980
T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR
mise on the refugee
question would be the
key to hammering out
any eventual agreement.
Daniel Levy, a key
Iraq as an “illegal foreign member of Israeli negoti-
occupation,’’ unusually ating teams with the
harsh words from a Palestinians in the 1990s
close ally that come at a and now senior fellow at
time when Saudi Arabia the New America Foun-
is increasingly decou- dation in Washington,
pling its diplomatic says Israel should make
efforts from America’s, clear that it will meet all
unhappy that its advice the land demands in
ALI JAREKJI/REUTERS
to not invade Iraq was exchange for compro-
ignored and seeking to SAUDI ARABIA’S KING ABDULLAH mise on the return of
solve problems like Palestinians.
Iran’s nuclear program through direct “Every time [Foreign Minister] Livni
talks with the Iranians rather than through says ‘refugee’ someone sitting next to her
isolation. should say ‘67,’ ” says Mr. Levy. He also
But with all that, the Israel-Palestinian says a more careful tone from Israel could
conflict once again dominated the agenda. be helpful. “If you want the Saudis and the
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al- Arab League to make certain modifications
Faisal was even clearer in insisting that the … is sending the foreign minister to say,
ball is in Israel’s court, and they will be ‘This is what you have to do, Arabs,’ the
putting their future not in the hands of the right way to go about it?”
peacemakers but in the hands of “the lords Though the Saudi effort has been seen
of war.” in some quarters as a turning point, this is
“This has always been the course of far from the first time that Israel’s erstwhile
Israel. Whenever the Arabs come with Arab enemies have pushed for peace. And
frank and clear cut steps towards peace unlike now, past efforts have come when
they reject it,” he said. the Israeli and Palestinian leaders were
Arab leaders have said they refuse to stronger. Today, a divided Palestinian lead-
amend the Arab Peace Initiative. But many ership and a weak Israeli prime minister
analysts say Arab and Palestinian compro- make reaching a final agreement harder.
ALI JAREKJI/REUTERS
ABSENT: Col. Muammar Qaddafi did not show up for a summit in Saudi Arabia.
He charged that Arab leaders wanted to “sell the Palestinians like sheep.”
that he no longer had any official job with year’s end, there were no new develop-
the government, and it was up to the ments to the foundation’s initiatives,” the
Libyans to govern themselves. US State Department pronounced.
Special courts that tried political pris- “The US engagement with Libya was
oners were disbanded in 2005, 132 polit- not meant to [change] Libya – it was
ical prisoners were freed last year, some meant to get rid of the nukes,” says Jon
foreign journalists have been allowed into Alterman, director of the Middle East
the country, and Human Rights Watch program at the Center for Strategic and
was granted access to the country in International Studies in Washington.
2005. But more substantial reforms are Indeed, in May 2006, the US restored
not on the horizon, analysts say. full diplomatic ties with Tripoli. “Libya is
Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, an important model as nations around the
has spoken about reforms via his world press for changes in behavior by the
Qaddafi International Development Iranian and North Korean regimes –
Foundation, which includes allowing pri- changes that could be vital to international
vately owned media, releasing political peace and security,” said US Secretary of
prisoners, and granting reparations to State Condoleezza Rice in a statement.
those harmed by the government. But “at – Jill Carroll
T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR
Air: Phoenix’s clear-sky plan
Continued from page 2
lots where, when the earth is disturbed,
dust particles can be carried aloft by the
wind. Others address equipment used to
move sand and gravel, and how they
should operate. Still others deal with the
use of all terrain vehicles, leaf blowers, and
wood-burning stoves. Moreover, Maricopa
County has hired an official involved in
San Joaquin Valley’s pollution-abatement
effort.
A key, though, will be enforcement of
any new measures, says Joe Anderson of
Arizona State University, an expert on air-
quality issues. “One of the biggest prob-
lems in [Maricopa] county has been a com-
plete lack of enforcement. It’s mostly about
the political will to do what’s needed.”
The area’s air-quality plan is still a work
in progress. Maricopa County needs to
Final Four: The hazards of ‘bracketology’
Continued from page 1
cubicle mazes and into university math labs.
There, Pythagorean theorems are leveraged
against Joakim Noah’s stats and the dynas-
tic influence of Patrick Ewing Jr. on the
Georgetown squad to draw math-wary
students into problems that matter to them.
“[Bracketology] cuts as deep sociologi-
cally as anything I can come up with,” says
Tim Otteman, a researcher at Central
Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, a
perch from where he gathered the real-life
story about the college bookie who ran
afoul of the mob. “It’s almost a runaway
train that can’t be stopped.”
After the NCAA established the national
bracket of 64 teams (later 65) in 1985, the
office pool existed chiefly among sports-
crazy working men who pasted their cubi-
cles and favorite sports joints with printed
brackets. In essence, bettors receive an
ascending number of points for each round
that their chosen teams advance, all the way
up to the champion. The one with the most
points at the end takes the pool. Across
America, brackets are right now either
falling apart or holding steady as the Final
Four – Georgetown, Florida, Ohio State,
and UCLA – march to Atlanta this weekend.
Today, social networking sites such as
Facebook have added brackets, and many
of the some 2,200 gambling sites offer their
own versions. The NCAA estimates that
1 out of 10 Americans placed at least one
wager on a bracket this year. A growing
number are women and nonsports fans.
“I would say bracketology is a social
phenomenon,” says Jack Salisbury, an
avid bracketologist and a Stanford Uni-
versity undergrad. “There’s a girl in my
dorm who I’m pretty sure is not into bas-
ketball, and she’s coming into my room at
10 a.m. asking, ‘Did Georgia Tech beat
UNLV, do you know?’ ”
Though technically illegal in most of the
US, such “social gambling” is still widely
accepted, and, in 21 states, is tolerated as
long as a bookie isn’t involved. But what’s
driving bracketology is easy access to stats
and commentary online, as well as the
Friday, March 30, 2007 5
usa
DIRTY-SKY DAY: Phoenix
is barely visible from
Piestewa Peak on a
December day in 2005,
submit to the EPA a one of that year’s worst
comprehensive plan to for particulate pollution
reduce fugitive dust by in the area.
the end of the year, and
the EPA would have to woman.
sign off on it before mea- If the cities or other
sures would go into local governments offer
effect. changes, those will be
The stakes are signif- incorporated by MAG’s
icant. If the county does- air-quality technical advi-
n’t meet these require- sory team, which runs
ments, it faces sanctions computer models to
– potentially losing some determine if the measures
$1.1 billion in federal will decrease airborne
highway grants. particulates to the
The measures MAG required level, says Ms.
DEIRDRE HAMILL/ARIZONA REPUBLIC/AP
approved on Wednesday Taft. The bottom line is
will now be distributed to local govern- June 15 to agree to the measures or offer that the plan MAG offers the EPA in
ments within the regional council, such as changes. December 2007 must guarantee a 5 per-
the cities of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, and “Once they approve it, it becomes legally cent reduction in particles per year, begin-
others. Those governments have until binding,” says Kelly Taft, MAG spokes- ning in 2008.
mathematics fits into everyday American
life. And that can galvanize get-togethers.
“It’s kind of a recreation,” says John
Gordian knot. Mr. Menachof’s bracketology
machine picked 80 percent of teams com-
ing out of the first round, including upsets.
Griggs, who teaches the “Mathematics of Griggs pulled Menachof aside and only
plethora of college games available all sea- Sports” at North Carolina State University half-jokingly told him that, if the machine
son on cable TV. in Raleigh. Still, Mr. Griggs is aware it can works, “ ‘You need to insulate yourself
Moreover, Mr. Otteman says, bracketol- get much more intense. When a student of somehow,’ that some of a different element
ogy is an activity that occupies the fast- his, R.J. Menachof, came up with a would be coming after him.”
clicking minds of the “Millennials genera- Pythagorean algorithm that weighted the 65 He needn’t have worried. Menachof’s
tion.” What’s more, there are enough easy teams on 22 offensive and defensive factors, theorem fell apart, failing to predict any of
rules of thumb – the 12th seed, for exam- he came close to unraveling sports betting’s the Final Four. He still got an A.
ple, beats the fifth seed 25 percent of the
time – for novices to quickly ramp up. Oth-
ers rely on superstition, such as letting
their cat make the pick. Whatever the case,
once the pick is made, there’s a rooting
interest in the game.
That’s exactly the danger, addiction coun-
selors say. Hardly a harmless diversion,
bracketology is a “gateway” activity that can
lead to compulsive gambling. “We’re build-
ing a nation of gamblers,” says Arnie Wexler,
former executive director of the Council on
Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey.
T
hat puts the NCAA in a corner, since
bracket-betting drives viewers,
which in turn drives TV contracts,
worth billions of dollars. “CBS is only on
board because everybody watches, and
everybody watches because everybody fills
out brackets,” says Otteman.
For its part, the NCAA prohibits athletes
and coaches from making any wagers, and
metes out punishment if necessary. “We’re
aware of office pools that are in excess of
$100,000, and that’s a lot of revenue that
could impact sport,” says Stacey Osburn,
an NCAA spokeswoman in Indianapolis.
At the same time, many college stu-
dents, as well as professors, see bracketol-
ogy as an introduction on how higher-order
CORRECTION
A story on Americans’ unequal sacrifice
for the war (March 26, page 11) included a
momentary mathematical lapse, which
implied that the Millennials generation was
serving in Iraq before it had learned to drive
– or shave. In fact, Millennials were born at
least as far back as the early ’80s, plenty of
time to reach adulthood before taking up
arms.
6 Friday, March 30, 2007
world


REPORTERS ON THE JOB
Thank You, but I’ll Pay: When staff
writer Jill Carroll signed up for a trip to
Libya sponsored by the Libyan govern-
ment (page 4) she made it clear that,
as a journalist with an independent
newspaper, she would need to cover her
own expenses.
She knew it might take a little finess-
ing to pull that off in a country where
hospitality is highly prized, but she was
still surprised by the hotel’s response
when she went to pay her bill.
“There was a huge uproar – the
employees were very agitated,” says Jill.
“To pay for something that has been
given to you as a gift means there’s
some sort of huge problem. It’s a sign of
a major break in relations.”
That created a personal problem for
the man in charge of media relations on
the trip. “He was worried about his own
reputation in the hotel,” says Jill.
To mollify the employees, Jill had to
write a note to him to accompany her
payment explaining who she was, who
she worked for, and why she was paying.
“Then I had to have tea with him – for
a couple of hours – to show that we had
good relations. It was a very long
process.”
That wasn’t the only tricky part of the
trip, however. Though the Libyan minders
assigned to the trip couldn’t keep track
of all 400 journalists at once, Jill had to
be creative about getting some unmoni-
tored reporting done.
She’d slip away from the hotel and
head down to the market, but people
were very nervous about talking to for-
eigners, let alone Western journalists.
She’d planned to meet a brother of a
friend of hers, but even he was too skit-
tish to be seen in public with her, unfor-
tunately. “He told me he wanted to
speak honestly and bring his friends.
They are really eager to get the outside
world to hear what it’s like there.”
– Christa Case
Europe editor
C U LT U R A L S N A P S H O T
KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS
CAN’T TOUCH THIS: Washington’s cherry
trees, whose blossoms draw hordes of
tourists every spring, were a gift from
Japan – home to 400 varieties of cherry
trees, including this specimen in Tokyo.
LET US HEAR FROM YOU.
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T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR
Dora: Baghdad neighborhood at a crossroads
Continued from page 1 national police. They accuse it of com- rein in the national police.
mitting innumerable atrocities over the “You have a moral duty,” says a man,
began aggressively patrolling the Dora past year of sectarian bloodletting. who did not wish to give his name,
market in December and setting up sev- Several US Army officers say the recounting how children had been
eral garrisons, including Gator, two prime enemy in Dora now is angry and killed and wounded the day before at
weeks ago, some merchants have increasingly militant young Sunnis the Al Amal (Hope) school by indis-
returned to the market. seeking revenge. Some are swayed by Al criminate gunfire from the national
But all signs indicate that it may be Qaeda and takfeeri ideology, they say. police. The Iraqi Army confirms that
too late to reverse the dynamic on the The most extreme of the fighters are one child was killed and two others
ground and bring peace to this trou- believed to be holed up a few miles away wounded in the incident.
bled, yet strategic, corner of Baghdad. in the orchards of Abu Aitha and Arab Maddi gets word on his radio that
Dora, which was traditionally popu- Jubur along the bend of the Tigris. men from his company were engaging
lar with government employees during In a further twist, residents now look gunmen in Toama, a particularly violent
Saddam Hussein’s regime, began its to the US military as a buffer between section of Dora.
descent in early 2004 as attacks esca- them and Iraqi forces, something that On his arrival in the area, a soldier
lated on police stations and
public infrastructure. Two
churches were bombed in
August 2004, driving out most
of the tiny, but once thriving,
Christian community.
The following year saw the
start of a local campaign to
drive out the Shiites. Sunni mil-
itants stepped up attacks
against Shiite pilgrims passing
through Dora on their way to
shrines in Najaf and Karbala
further south. Sectarian killing
reached an apex last year, and
now most Shiites have been
squeezed into the Abu Dsheir
neighborhood south of Dora.
Sunni residents who hold
government or municipal func-
tions, or who are believed to be
assisting Iraqi and US forces,
have not been spared from the
killings and kidnappings. Most
have fled to Jordan and Syria.
SAM DAGHER
A no-go neighborhood HEADING OUT: Georgette Yousif, one of the few Christians remaining in Dora, shops at a
“I am here to work with you to market that is guarded and patrolled by US forces. She says she plans to leave Dora soon.
clean up the takfeer in the area,”
Col. Ricky Gibbs, commander of the 4th has infuriated many in the national explains to Maddi that their patrol
Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, to which police, even prompting accusations that encountered six young men on the
Sergeant Major Maddi’s unit is attached, the US sides with the Sunni militants. street with AK-47s. US soldiers weren’t
tells his Iraqi counterparts at a joint secu- taking any chances.
rity station not far from the Gator out- ‘Full spectrum operations’ “We saw six guys with AKs, our gun-
post. The Iraqis smile. Back at the Gator outpost, Maddi ner lit them up,” says the soldier. One
Takfeer is the generic Arabic word talks about his plans to erect a wire man was killed, another wounded.
for a hard-line brand of Sunni Islam fence around the Dora market at a cost Maddi and his men advance cau-
whose followers excommunicate all of $1.1 million to protect it from insur- tiously. The risk of sniper fire is high. A
those they deem to be nonbelievers. gent attacks. “This is the little island of pair of leather slippers lie next to an
A representative of Prime Minister hope,” says the native of San overturned motorbike. They follow a
Nouri al-Maliki, who is visiting Dora, Bernardino, Calif. trail of blood that leads them to the
begins a litany of complaints by Iraqi He beams with pride about the fact blood-stained metal gate of one the
forces. that some 100 shops out of an estimated homes. Other US soldiers are already
“I need your timely cooperation … 700 have reopened in the market. He inside.
many officers complain about delays in hopes more merchants will be encour- The blood trail continues to the roof.
backup. Please do not be stingy with aged return once the fence is built. There they find the unit’s medic wear-
your support, the enemy is targeting Economic activity will dissuade resi- ing blue latex gloves and treating the
you and us, no exception,” Brig. Gen. dents, especially young men, he says, gunshot wounds of a waif-like man
Khalid Hamoud tells Colonel Gibbs. from becoming “part-time insurgents.” turned on his side with an AK-47 at his
Gibbs, who took official command of Maddi’s outpost also acts as a feet. He is moaning from pain. Maddi
Dora in early March as part of the surge municipality of sorts in Dora, given the says the wounded gunman will be an
in US troops, shoots back and tells him complete absence of municipal ser- invaluable source of intelligence on
that the main obstacle to security is the vices. He has contracted a company to insurgent activities in the area.
fact that at least 30 percent of the pick up the trash, but workers don’t Back at the outpost, a military trans-
national police in Dora are on leave at show up regularly for fear of being tar- lator goes through what was found in
all times. The government, says Gibbs, geted by insurgents if seen collaborating the dead man’s pockets – Syrian busi-
has yet to send enough forces to the with US forces. ness cards and a folded handwritten
area to help pacify the neighborhoods. On a stroll in the market, Maddi is piece of paper that lists “10 reasons for
Several sections of Dora continue to greeted with smiles. Vendors are hawk- excommunication” which include being
be no-go zones for government forces. ing everything from heaps of minced a Shiite and collaborating with non-
Most of the battle-hardened residents meat and fresh vegetables to colorful Muslims.
reject government authority and are plastic slippers and wedding gowns. “This is what I call full spectrum
enraged with the predominantly Shiite Almost everyone pleads with him to operations,” says Maddi.
T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 7

world
IN
COLIN WOODARD

ICON AT RISK: The

Danube River runs
WORLD NEWS BRIEF
under the famous
Chain Bridge in Opposition leader Morgan Tsvan- last fall, when the EU sus-
Budapest, Hungary. girai appeared to be free again pended them to punish Turkey
Europe’s grandest after being held for hours for refusing to open its ports to
river is at a Wednesday by police in Zim- traffic from the Greek sector of
crossroads: will babwe. But his Movement for Cyprus. An EU official told the
environmental gains Democratic Change was accused BBC that the bloc hoped to open
since the collapse of stockpiling weapons for a three more sets of talks with
of Communism be “terror campaign” against Presi- Turkey by the end of June.
lost with Eastern dent Robert Mugabe’s govern-
Europe’s rapid ment. Mugabe was attending a GUILLERMO GRANJA/REUTERS

economic regional emergency summit

development? called to discuss Zimbabwe’s
turmoil. His spokesman said the
solution was to remove sanc-
tions against the struggling
country by Western govern-
ments, not to punish Mugabe.

Moves to save the not-so-blue Danube Optimism over North Korea’s

agreement to halt its nuclear
program has yet to “translate”
New political fireworks in Ecua-
dor cost a provincial judge his
AN ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP listed the life in the Black Sea in the early 1990s. into donations of food for the job Wednesday after he tried to
the Danube last week as one of the Solving these problems is complicated by the communist nation, a senior UN reinstate 57 members of Con-
fact that the Danube basin is shared by 19 coun- aid official lamented Thursday. gress. An angry President Ed-
world’s 10 most threatened rivers. tries. Cooperation on environmental issues was He ended a six-day visit to the uardo Correa (above, giving sup-
all but impossible during the cold war, which North, saying the government porters in Quito his version of
By COLIN WOODARD divided the basin in two, and little better in the acknowledged a 1 million ton the situation) blasted the jurist’s
CORRESPONDENT 1990s, when the Yugsolav wars turned swaths of shortfall and has asked the effort as “illegitimate,” and the
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – When Johann Strauss gazed it into a battleground. World Food Program (WFP) to Supreme Electoral Tribunal
upon Europe’s grandest waterway 140 years ago, The past five years have seen considerable increase efforts to close that gap. stripped him of his post. The
it inspired him to compose the Blue Danube progress, however, as the European Union – with its Two years ago, the North set high court ousted the legislators
Waltz, went on to become an unofficial anthem of strict environmental regulations – has expanded to new limits on the monitoring of earlier this month for trying to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. include Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and food distribution, scaling back block the referendum that Cor-
Today, the river that flows beneath the bridges other nations located in the middle and lower basin. the WFP’s activities. rea scheduled on rewriting the
of the Hungarian capital is anything but blue. “When these countries joined the EU, they also Constitution. Most of them have
Befouled with sewage, fertilizers, and industrial had to adopt new environmental policies and reg- A joint force of Ethiopian and been replaced by alternates.
waste, the opaque, brown Danube has become a ulations, which has had the benefit of improving Somali troops, backed by heli-
drainage canal for half a continent, so poisonous the overall water quality situation in the Danube copters, attacked the strong- A controversial affirmative ac-
that it has devastated life in the Black Sea, which basin,” says Ivan Zavadsky, director of the holds of Islamist militant rem- tion program that reserves
lies at the end of the 1,800-mile long river. Danube/Black Sea Regional Program in Vienna, a nants and Mogadishu’s domi- spaces in top Indian universities
Last week, the Switzerland-based environ- joint project of the United Nations and World nant clan in the biggest push so for low-caste students was sus-
mental group WWF-International (a branch of the Bank that has pumped $70 million into cleanup far to put down a growing insur- pended until at least August on
World Wildlife Fund) named the Danube one of projects in the region. gency. Witnesses said at least 11 orders of the Supreme Court.
the world’s 10 most threatened rivers, along with New sewage treatment plants have been built noncombatants died in the fight- Implementation must wait until
the Yangtze, Nile, Ganges, and Rio Grande. in recent years, while many of the most polluting ing. Two-thirds of the Ethiopian its legality can be ruled upon,
“Some of the rivers on the list are so damaged factories and agricultural enterprises collapsed in troops reportedly have pulled the court said, citing plans to set
that they may really be lost, but others are in a bet- the early 1990s. As a result, Mr. Zavadsky notes, out of Somalia since the Islam- quotas for students based on
concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen – ists were defeated at the begin- 1931 census data, the last time
the nutrients that ravaged the Black Sea – have ning of the year. Some of the re- India’s population was counted
Danube River Basin
NETH. BELARUS
gone down 50 percent and 20 percent respec- maining Ethiopians brokered a on the basis of caste. The pro-
The area (in orange) drained by the Danube is home to 81 tively since 1989. truce last weekend with Moga- gram has angered upper-caste
million people in 19 different countries (in bold).
GIUM “We’re witnessing the first dishu’s Hawiye clan, but it hasn’t students, whose ranks would be
signs of a recovery of the Black held. cut from 78 percent to 51 per-
LUX. GERMANY POLAND Sea ecosystem,” Zavadsky says. cent if it is implemented.
CZECH REPUBLIC UKRAINE
SLOVAKIA “But the situation remains on a A state of emergency to quell
REUTERS
FRANCE knife’s edge.” dissent in Thailand’s capital is
AUSTRIA HUNGARY
LIECH.
Danube River Basin MOLDOVA János Zlinszky of the Regional not necessary, Prime Minister
SWITZERLAND Environmental Center for Central Surayud Chulanont said, reject-
SLOVENIA ROMANIA and Eastern Europe is concerned ing a demand by leaders of the
CROATIA
Danube River that the gains could be lost if the coup who installed him in the
BOSNIA– region’s economic recovery out- post. But he said the situation
ITALY HERZEGOVINA SERBIA
paces its environmental invest- would continue to be “evaluated”
MONTENEGRO BULGARIA ments. “Romania and Bulgaria as supporters of his ousted pre-
0 500
00 mmi
have just joined the EU,” he says decessor, Thaksin Shinawatra,
ALBANIA MACEDONIA TURKEY – which means they no longer prepare for another in a series
0 GREECE
face the EU’s tough agricultural of antigovernment protests Fri-
RICH CLABAUGH – STAFF
trade barriers. “If they decide to day. The rallies began small but Gas exploded in another Chi-
focus on intensive agriculture have been growing in size. Sura- nese coal mine whose operating
ter state and could still be saved if correct action rather than the organic market, we could see great yud also said the first national license had expired, killing 26
is taken,” says Christine Bratrich of WWF’s Vienna- increases in fertilizer and pesticide use.” election since Thaksin was top- men, the Xinhua news agency
based Danube-Carpathian Programme. “The WWF’s primary concern is an EU plan to pled last summer will be held reported Thursday. Eighty oth-
Danube still has the potential to be preserved.” improve navigation on the middle and lower Dec. 16 or Dec. 22. ers made it to safety. The acci-
More than 80 percent of the Danube’s flood- Danube, an effort they say will destroy some of the dent was the second of its type
plains and wetlands have been lost to development last ecologically sound portions of the river. “They One set of negotiations – out of involving heavy casualties in
and navigational projects, exterminating the want to make the Danube into a ‘highway to the 35 – for Muslim-majority Turkey northern Shanxi Province in 10
river’s sturgeon stocks and lowering water quality sea’ but they are not taking into account how it will to join the European Union was days. Above, one miner’s wife
in the main channel. Extensive sewage and agri- affect the ecological status of the river,” Ms. Bra- reopened Thursday when dele- reacts to word of his fate.
cultural pollution – particularly in the former trich says. “We shouldn’t make the same mistakes gates met in Brussels to discuss
Communist nations of the middle and lower basin in the lower Danube that we [Western European “enterprise and industry policy.” Compiled from wire service reports
by Robert Kilborn
– triggered algae blooms that snuffed out much of nations] made in the upper stretch.” The talks were the first since
8 Friday, March 30, 2007 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

EDITOR: Richard Bergenheim

MANAGING EDITOR: Marshall Ingwerson
SENIOR EDITOR: David Cook
CHIEF EDITORIAL WRITER: Clayton Jones
MANAGING PUBLISHER: Jonathan Wells
The Christian Science Publishing Society
EDITOR IN CHIEF: Mary Trammell
BOARD OF TRUSTEES: Don Adams,
Founded in 1908 Walter Jones, Judy Wolff
by Mary Baker Eddy
MANAGER: Paul Bermel

“First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”

THE MONITOR’S VIEW

NCAA’S GAMBLING MADNESS

T
he Final Four of NCAA men’s basketball is
the nation’s fourth-largest gambling event.
And the bigger it gets, the more the NCAA
tries to counteract the potential bad effects
of all this wagering on its “scholar-athletes.”
Public interest in NCAA bas- athletes to estimate how many are
ketball largely centers on informal betting on games, taking bribes to
contests among family, friends, and influence a game, or revealing in-
colleagues to guess the winners by formation about their teams to pro- An arms race can Beware ‘allies’ who aren’t friends
filling out a chart for the 127 games. fessional bookies. have peaceful ends Regarding your March 26 editorial, “A
Saudi-US fence around Iran”: So Saudi Ara-
This “bracketology,” as it’s called, The organization has had some
In response to the March 26 article, “It’s bia is now eager to help curb the spread of
easily slips into making bets. For success in making sure more ath-
back: the global arms race”: One reason we radical Islam. What wonderful allies! But
many people, it also leads to big fi- letes actually keep up their studies spend more on our military is simple. It is does anyone remember that the 9/11 mur-
nancial losses or a spiral into gam- and graduate from college, although because we should never be in a race, per se, derers were nearly all Saudi citizens?
bling addiction. the record remains much better for but always dominant in current and future For the past generation, Saudi Arabia has
The NCAA knows that gam- whites than for blacks. conflicts; anything less is negligent and puts been one of the primary sources of funding
bling is corrupting its The NCAA needs to our soldiers in peril. for radical Islam. Our great Saudi allies have
big sports, or at least keep reminding its col- To summarize Sun Tzu, the noted Chi- spent a good chunk of their oil revenues to
The more the nese war strategist, “To subdue the enemy spread their anti-Western version of Islam.
its image. A 2004 poll leges, the public – and
found 35 percent of
NCAA turns men’s itself – that the primary
without fighting is the acme of skill.” While we Americans must surely wel-
We should always try the olive come any help we can get in find-
male college athletes basketball into purpose of school sports branch, but keeping a dominant ing a diplomatic solution to Irani-
and 10 percent of fe- a commercial is educational. stick deters those who do not an ambitions, let us not forget that
male athletes gambled Fortunately, colleges want peace. “allies” does not mean “friends.”
on college or pro sports
event, the more or students wanting to DOUG HOUSTON The Saudis will be our allies
events. Another poll, its students lose. opt out of the NCAA Wichita Falls, Texas only as long as it serves their own
ambitions. They are not friends.
done last year by New “madness” can find a
BONNIE MILANI Encino, Calif.
Jersey-based Seton Hall University, nice contrast in the much smaller US attorney firings in context
found that about one-fifth of Ameri- National Association of Intercolle- In response to the March 27 article, “Why
cans believed college basketball giate Athletics (NAIA). US attorneys were fired: the evidence so The Yiddish language is still viable
players intentionally influenced the That 282-member group has far”: The firing of eight US attorneys by the Regarding the March 21 article, “Last of
outcome of games because of gam- recently been promoting itself as Bush administration broke no laws. the Yiddish Mohicans”: I want to express
bling interests. the “anti-NCAA” with a “charac- What we have is a Congress controlled my appreciation for this interesting and in-
by the opposition Democratic Party that is formative story. As it notes, here in Jerusa-
Yet despite such worrisome fig- ter” program for its intercollegiate
using the occasion to harass President Bush lem, Yiddish is widely spoken by the ultra-
ures, the association has become athletics. Both fans and athletes and his inner circle of executive advisers Orthodox community. There must be tens of
overcommercialized, such as sign- are taught how to behave at games and administrators for political gain. thousands of native speakers here, so much
ing a $6 billion contract with CBS, and afterward, while colleges pur- The needs and maintenance of the Unit- so that we routinely hear it spoken by chil-
the biggest single sports deal in posely try not to turn games into ed States come first, not this corrupt use of dren, on the street, in shops, on the bus, etc.
history. The basketball finals are money-driven entertainment. In its congressional power to conduct show trials. I guess the prevalence of the language
now a major media event, earn- seminars for coaches and athletes, ARTHUR G. SHADFORTH is a good indicator of its viability. If a lan-
Merritt Island, Fla. guage is not a natural part of the fabric of
ing so much money that critics say NAIA also emphasizes the values
daily community life, it must be very hard to
the NCAA and its more than 1,000 of sports – such as leadership and “preserve” it artificially.
members are exploiting students. responsibility – unlike the NCAA’s Regarding the March 27 article about RAYMOND COHEN Jerusalem
To its credit, the NCAA enforces primary emphasis on winning – and the US attorneys being fired: This story
its rules well with member schools, earnings. about the controversial firing process isn’t
and recently it set up a website Gambling can find little foothold complete without reviewing how the Bush The Monitor welcomes your letters and
(www.dontbetonit.org) to warn in sports run with educational val- administration seems to have attempted to opinion articles. Because of the volume of
politicize all parts of the government. mail we receive, we can neither acknowledge
both players and the public about ues at the forefront. And colleges
Science, law enforcement, economics, nor return unpublished submissions. All
the dangers of gambling on NCAA that put the interests of athletes the military, and many other disciplines have submissions are subject to editing. Letters
games. The site includes testimony first will find they are less addicted been used, or ignored, in what appears to be must be signed and include your mailing
from convicted offenders. to royalties from TV contracts. an attempt to strengthen the administration address and telephone number. Any letter
To prevent the players from As the NCAA tries to curb gam- and weaken its opponents. accepted will appear in print and on our
gambling, the NCAA even brought bling among its players, it should The firing of those prosecutors needs to website, www.csmonitor.com.
in the FBI to speak to its top bas- also try to reduce the commercial be added to the list of questionable actions Mail letters to ‘Readers Write’ and opinion
in which the Bush administration has en- articles to Opinion Page, One Norway St.,
ketball teams. And it is taking a incentives that help drive such
gaged. Boston, MA 02115, or fax to (617) 450-
new national survey of its student- gambling. r 2317, or e-mail to oped@csps.com.
ERWIN LEVING South Range, Wis.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
opinion
When dissent becomes obstruction
By MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS tion – including armed resistance in some
NEWPORT, R.I. places and the infamous draft riots in New
D
ISSENT IN wartime is as Ameri- York City – that the Army was forced to
can as apple pie. There is not a divert resources from the battlefield to
single war in US history that did the hotbeds of Copperhead activity in or-
not face opposition from some part of der to maintain order. Many Copperheads
the citizenry. But at some point, dissent actively supported the Confederate cause,
becomes something else altogether – ob- materially as well as rhetorically.
struction of the war effort. The Copperheads were particularly
The most egregious case of this oc- dangerous because of the substantial influ-
curred during the Civil War when “peace ence they exerted on the Democratic Par-
Democrats,” called “Copperheads,” nearly ty. During the election of 1864, the peace
succeeded in defeating President Lincoln’s Democrats wrote the party platform, and
attempt to save the Union. one of their own, Rep. George Pendleton
It’s a largely forgotten element of the of Ohio, was the party’s candidate for vice
Civil War, but it bears striking – and omi- president. Until Adm. David Farragut’s
nous – similarity to the obstruction we see victory at Alabama’s Mobile Bay, Gen.
in Washington today over the Iraq war. In- William Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, and
deed, as Democrats in Congress this week Gen. Philip Sheridan’s success in driving
imposed withdrawal deadlines, it’s clear the Confederates from the Shenandoah
that Copperhead syndrome is Valley in the summer and fall
alive and well. of 1864, hostility toward the
The Copperhead is, of
In the US Civil War, war was so profound in the
course, a poisonous snake, ‘Copperheads’ in North that Lincoln believed
which is how the Civil War-era
the North nearly he would lose the election.
opponents of the peace Demo- Fortunately for the coun-
crats portrayed them: Con- defeated Lincoln’s try, the turn of events on the
federate sympathizers and effort to save the battlefield permitted a coali-
obstructers of the Union war tion of Republicans and “war
effort. But “Copperhead” was Union. Democrats Democrats” to reelect Lincoln
also a contemporary term for today are guilty of in 1864. Of particular impor-
the penny, which at the time tance was the fact that Union
bore the likeness of Lady Lib- a similar disgrace. soldiers voted overwhelm-
erty. Peace Democrats often ingly for Lincoln, abandoning
rendered these pennies into the once-beloved Gen. George
lapel pins to portray themselves as defend- McClellan because of the perception that
ers of states’ rights and civil liberties. he had become a tool of the Copperheads.
Self-image aside, Lincoln criticized the
Copperhead effort as “the fire in the rear.” ...and Copperhead obstruction now
Some historians have dismissed the Cop- Today’s Democratic Party seems to
perhead threat as, according to one author, have inherited the mantle, if not the name,
“a fairy tale,” a “figment of Republican of their Copperhead forebears. Like the
imagination,” made up of “lies, conjecture Copperheads of old, today’s Democrats
and political malignancy.” But a fine new put the entire blame for the war and its
book, “Copperheads: The Rise and Fall conduct on the administration. While the
of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North,” by Copperheads of old assured the Union sol-
journalist-turned-academic-historian Jen- diers that the Rebels could not be defeat-
nifer Weber, shows that the Northern anti- ed, today’s Copperheads assure us that
war movement was far from a peripheral the Iraqi insurgents are invincible.
phenomenon. The Copperheads of old described Lin-
coln as a bloodthirsty tyrant, trampling
Copperhead obstruction then... the rights of Southerners and Northerners
The Copperheads exploited the North’s alike. And they portrayed Union soldiers as
widespread antiwar sentiment. instruments of his tyrannical administra-
They actively interfered with recruiting tion. Invoking the USA Patriot Act, Guan-
and encouraged desertion. Indeed, they tánamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, today’s Cop-
generated so much opposition to conscrip- perheads – from lawmakeres to bloggers
The risk of invoking
presidential prerogative
WASHINGTON voked executive privilege in defying a sub-
INTERESTING WORD, “privilege.” Its poena from Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Presi-
original dictionary meaning: the rights dent Nixon invoked executive privilege
enjoyed by the very rich. Then, there unsuccessfully, trying to withhold the Oval
are special rights of confidentiality such Office tapes that proved to be his undoing.
as doctor-patient, lawyer-client, priest- A unanimous Supreme Court then held
penitent. And the privilege being con- that executive privilege could not prevail
tested in Washington now – executive against a criminal investigation.
privilege – refers to the president’s right to But the court did recognize that there is
keep confidential his deliberations in the such a thing as executive privilege, cover-
course of formulating his policies. ing presidential deliberations, stemming
President Eisenhower successfully in- from the assumption that the president
– call President Bush
a tyrant and a terror-
ist. Some have even
suggested similarity
between US soldiers
serving in Iraq and
Nazis in World War
II. Rarely do they
censure the enemy
in such terms.
Like the Copper-
heads of old, today’s
Democrats offer no
viable alternative
to their respective
president’s policy
except to “end the
war now.” And just
as former Copper-
heads preferred
Lincoln’s failure to saving the Union, the
current ones would rather see Bush lose
than the country win in Iraq.
Of course, rhetoric is one thing. An ac-
tion to obstruct the war effort is another.
With the recent shameful vote in Congress
to hamstring the commander in chief’s
authority and ability to conduct the war in
Iraq, the Democrats have assumed Cop-
perhead status by moving from the former
to the latter.
The bill they passed is a disgrace, but it
is certainly in the best Copperhead tradi-
tion. It is a variant of what some call the
“slow bleed approach”: tie the president’s
hands while avoiding the responsibility
that would go with an action that is within
Congress’s constitutional authority – cut-
ting off spending for the war.
The principle that once Congress funds
a military force, it has no further authority
to direct or limit its employment was estab-
lished during the administration of Presi-
dent Adams and the Quasi-War against
France (1798-1800). Congress’s action in
this case is clearly unconstitutional.
What helped save Lincoln politically
was the fact that there were “war Demo-
crats” who contested Copperhead control
of the Democratic Party. Sadly, Copper-
head behavior has become institution-
alized in today’s Democratic Party and
among a disturbingly high proportion of
that party’s voters. Democrats who can
challenge the Copperhead influence are
few and far between.
The Associated Press called last week’s
needs confidential and candid
advice from his aides in order
Daniel
Schorr
to be able to perform his func-
tion.
The White House and Cap- Executive privilege
itol Hill may be squaring off
for another test over congres-
may set Capitol
sional demands to investigate Hill and the White
how the discharge of eight US
attorneys came about. White
House on a collision
House Counsel Fred Field- course.
ing (who served in the Nixon
White House and the Reagan
White House) implied as much in his com-
promise offer to congressional Democrats
when he referred to “the constitutional
prerogatives of the presidency.”
It is hard to tell how this situation will
Friday, March 30, 2007 9
DEAN ROHRER
vote in the House to order the troops home
by next year “a triumph” for House Speak-
er Nancy Pelosi. She must be so proud.
Democrats may well pay a high price
But Democratic Party leaders should
heed a cautionary note. The late 19th-
century Democratic Party paid a high price
for the influence of the Copperheads dur-
ing the Civil War, permitting Republicans
to “wave the bloody shirt” of rebellion and
to vilify the party with the charge of dis-
union and treason for years after the war.
The actions of the Copperheads radi-
cally politicized Union soldiers, turning
many Democrats into lifelong, stalwart
Republicans. Many Union soldiers came
to despise the Copperheads more than
they disdained the Rebels. As the Demo-
crats were reminded for many years af-
ter the war, the Copperheads had made a
powerful enemy of the Union veterans.
Americans are clearly dissatisfied with
the progress of the Iraq war. But most
Americans do not want to see the United
States defeated in Iraq. And there are en-
couraging signs that the US troop surge in
Baghdad is working. Because of the per-
ception that defeat – not victory – is the
goal of today’s Copperheads, the Demo-
cratic Party may well pay the same price
as its predecessor did after the Civil War.
r Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor
of national security affairs at the Naval
War College. The views expressed here are
his own.
play itself out. The closest
thing to an executive power
precedent in the Bush admin-
istration was a suit to compel
the release of details about the
Energy Task Force headed by
Vice President Dick Cheney.
In a Supreme Court deci-
sion in 2004, Justice Anthony
Kennedy warned that execu-
tive privilege can set “coequal
branches of the government
... on a collision course.”
It may be that we are getting to collision-
course time again.
r Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at
National Public Radio.
10 Friday, March 30, 2007 T HE C HRISTIAN S CIENCE M ONITOR
usa/world

Firings: Attorneys suspect politics behind dismissals

Continued from page 1 in his view the distinction between “politi- In Albuquerque, Mr. Iglesias last fall Gonzales, to complain about Iglesias.
cal” and “performance-related” reasons for received phone calls from Rep. Heather Thousands of pages of e-mails and doc-
snared a former Republican congressman, removing a US attorney is largely artificial. Wilson (R) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R) of uments released by the Justice Depart-
Randy “Duke” Cunningham of California. ‘Performance-related’ is a plastic term New Mexico inquiring as to whether he ment in recent days make clear that the
John McKay, the former US attorney in that includes a lot of things to a lot of peo- would soon bring indictments in a politi- White House was consulted throughout the
Seattle, has himself said indications are he ple,” said Mr. Sampson. cally charged corruption case involving process of drawing up lists of US attorneys
was fired because of his refusal to bring As political appointees, for dismissal.
voter fraud cases after the 2004 Washing- the federal prosecutors A Feb. 22, 2007, e-mail
ton gubernatorial election, which the should promote such initia- from Sampson noted that
Democratic candidate won narrowly. tives as the president’s Pro- the draft of a letter respond-
David Iglesias, former US attorney in ject Safe Neighborhoods to ing to Congress on the US
Albuquerque, N.M., similarly has said he get guns off city streets, said attorney matter needed to
received phone calls from congressional Mr. Gonzales’s former chief be forwarded to the White
Republicans rebuking him for not pursu- of staff. House counsel’s office, since
ing Democrats more aggressively in Yet Ms. Lam in San Diego political adviser Karl Rove
election-year investigations. “simply did not devote any was involved.
“The dismissed US attorneys have tes- resources to that,” said “The plot continues to
tified under oath and said in public that Sampson. thicken. It seems the Jus-
they believe political influence was applied. Lam also did not bring as tice Department rarely
They have given chapter and verse and many immigration cases as acted without the knowl-
specific examples,” said Sen. Patrick the administration wanted, edge and approval of the
Leahy (D) of Vermont, chairman of the Sampson added. White House,” said Sen.
Senate Judiciary Committee, at a Thurs- Yet critics have noted that Charles Schumer (D) of
day hearing. “If they are right, that mixing there is no indication that New York on Thursday.
ANDY NELSON – STAFF
of partisan political goals into federal law the Justice Department ever Also, Gonzales was
enforcement is highly improper.” confronted Lam with their UNDER OATH: Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General wrong when he stated that
The former Justice Department official complaints about her per- Alberto Gonzales, testified before a Senate committee Thursday. he was not involved in dis-
who was at the center of the effort to iden- formance in regard to gun cussions about the firings
tify US attorneys for dismissal has publicly control or immigration. Democrats. Iglesias has written that he felt before they occurred, according to his for-
maintained that in his view none of them After her dismissal, the chief of the FBI the calls constituted political pressure, mer chief of staff and documentary evi-
was fired for improper reasons. bureau in San Diego told a reporter that coming as they did shortly before the fall dence. “I remember discussing with him
Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to the firing would hamper key investiga- elections. this process of asking certain US attorneys
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, said at tions, and that politics was surely Moreover, Senator Domenici called to resign,” said Sampson during his Sen-
Thursday’s Senate Judiciary hearing that involved. Justice Department officials, including ate appearance.

INSURANCE PLANS
Sailors: Britain and Iran escalate their rhetoric over standoff
actions. The UN was expected to sign off
on the statement Thursday. Iran, mean-
SCS CARE INSURANCE FOR while, suspended a promised release of a
CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS* female British sailor and insisted that
Britain admit it was in Iranian waters.
Benefits Include: “They [the British] are now in the
region in which, with the excuse of con-
trolling ships that go to Iraq, they want to
• Economical Rates make it a norm to violate other countries’
sovereignty,” the head of Iran’s Supreme
• Christian Science Facility National Security Council, Ali Larijani,
and Home Nursing Care said Thursday. “But they should know
that the cost of this is not cheap.”
• Absent Practitioner Analysts warn that a more aggressive
Treatments stance towards Tehran – a total visa ban,
for example, or an asset freeze or trade
sanctions – could be counterproductive.
• $50,000 Accident “No one is going to rush into any other
Benefit & More! punitive measures,” says Alex Bigham, an
Iran expert at the Foreign Policy Centre, a
Featuring: London think-tank with ties to the Labour
Party. “Further down the line, you’d look at
•Health Insurance Plans suspending all relations.... But there’s no
great appetite to do that in the short term.”
For Families Britain believes that it can get the EU
to signal strong support at a foreign min-
• Life Insurance Plans isters meeting Friday. EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana has already told the
• Charitable Giving Iranians that the EU viewed the detention
of the sailors as unacceptable.
“The overall game plan is to encourage
*Underwritten by Monumental Life Insurance Company the EU countries to consider what we’ve
done, suspending business with Iranian
Call for RATES with no obligation! government,” says a Foreign Office official,
on condition of anonymity.
1-800-631-7980 Analysts are not sure if all European
countries will be eager to impair their ties
www.SCSinsurance.com with Iran. “The British are already trying
to bring the Europeans on board, and
they may or may not be successful,” says
George Joffe, a Middle East expert at the
Centre for International Studies at Cam-
bridge University. “The Europeans may
say enough is enough, it’s your own fault.
After all, Britain has offended the Iranians
by leading the demand for sanctions.”
Few expect an early resolution to the
stand-off. Three years ago, when Iran
seized eight British servicemen off the
Iran-Iraq coast, the dispute was over in
three days; the British acknowledged the
personnel might have been in the wrong
place and they were quickly released.
This time, British officials are adamant
that the unit was inside Iraqi waters, under
a UN mandate, when it was seized. The Ira-
nians say the crew strayed into Iranian
waters, and want London to admit as much.
Impossible, say the British, scoffing at
the way that Tehran changed the coordi-
nates of the spot where it says the March
23 incident occurred, having first pin-
pointed a location in Iraqi waters. Officials
are also furious that Leading Seaman Faye
Turney was put on TV and made a state-
ment that the British say amounted to a
forced confession of trespassing.
“The British aren’t going to comply”
with Iranian demands to admit a mistake,
says Professor Joffe. “Now we’ll see a
ratcheting up and it will be a question of
who will blink first. The British will prob-
ably go next to commercial sanctions. The
problem then is that the Iranians will
become more and more intransigent.”
The intervention by Iran’s Mr. Larijani,
a conservative close to the supreme reli-
gious leader, appeared to indicate a move
in that direction, trumping the role
played by Iran’s foreign ministry, which is
often seen as more pragmatic.
“It’s a classic Iranian problem with
diplomacy,” says Professor Semati, noting
that Iran has been under pressure from
Washington and from UN sanctions over
its nuclear program. “If things ratchet up,
[Iranian officials] tend to stand firmer,
and domestic impulses become more
involved in ending the dispute.
“The more public [the British] make
it,” he adds, “the more difficult it will be
to be resolved, from the domestic Iranian
political context.”
British officials are aware of the need to
tread delicately. They acknowledge that a
heavy-handed approach could bolster sup-
port for the hard-line camp and the Iran-
ian Revolutionary Guards Corps which
seized the sailors.
Privately, they are at a loss to explain Iran’s
motives. Analysts link it to British involve-
ment in UN efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear
ambitions, or to the capture of five Iranians
in northern Iraq by US forces in January. A
surge in oil prices since the spike in tensions
has not gone unnoticed in London.
But some see a more general bravado,
a show to the “Great Satan” and “Little
Satan.” Mr. Bigham notes that the video
of the sailors appeared on an interna-
tional Arabic channel and not on the
domestic one. “It’s a message to the inter-
national community that says ‘we are
prepared to take any action we want.’ ”
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 11

WEEKENDEYE Aye, me hearties! Back to the future

Five guilty-pleasure films ‘The Pirate Queen,’ Broad- In Disney’s ‘Meet the
(we blushingly admit to liking way’s new musical, tells Robinsons,’ a brilliant kid
‘Ishtar’).... ‘Cat-Minster’ is the story of a swashbuck- inventor travels in a time
like ‘Best in Show,’ but with ling Irish matriarch. 16 machine. (Mind
felines.... Tracy Chevalier’s the T-rex!) 14
take on William Blake.... 12
COURTESY OF DISNEY ENTERPRISES

buzz market ing

m o v i e re v i e w

Music labels ‘Blades’ lands a double klutz

spring leaks By PETER RAINER
FILM CRITIC
not even very good. The codirectors, Will Speck
and Josh Gordon, are so carried away with the
SUZANNE HANOVER/PARAMOUNT

THE IDEA OF MALE pairs figure skaters is such a funniness of its concept that they often settle for
By JUDY COLEMAN funny concept that it would have taken a consider- half measures. The timing is slack and the jokes
CONTRIBUTOR ably worse movie than “Blades of Glory” to flatten repetitive. But, like most Will Ferrell movies, it has
THIS YEAR’S MOST interesting Bill- it. Throw in the fact that Will Ferrell and Jon Hed- enough riotous moments to carry you through the
board successes have been staged by er play the two skaters and you have a potentially dull stretches.
one very unlikely hit machine – the great comedy. Things begin promisingly as we see a young
scrappy independent scene, once the Well, “Blades of Glory” is not great – it’s often boy executing triple lutzes on the frozen pond at
province of self-professed rock geeks. an orphanage. Flash forward to the present and
In recent weeks, albums from indie ICE CAPADES: Will Ferrell and Jon Heder team up in ‘Blades of Glory.’ See GLORY page 14
acts The Shins and Arcade Fire both re-
cently debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard
charts, selling about 90,000 units each.

HAVE SWORD,
The two bands soared past releases by
FOR FANS OF LIVE ACTION
entrenched mainstream artists such as
Christina Aguilera and Nickelback. And role-playing games,
this week, Modest Mouse, a longtime true adventure is only a
independent powerhouse – now signed
performance away.

WILL
to Sony – made a splash with “We Were
Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.”
The commercial explosion is no ac-
cident. Indie labels may have finally
found a way to harness the Internet’s

TRAVEL
sizable community of tastemakers.
These music labels are bringing blog-
gers – known for illegally trading music
online – into the fold by purposefully
leaking albums ahead of the release.
See LEAKS page 15

By ETHAN GILSDORF

I
CORRESPONDENT

t’s Saturday night. I’m in the

tavern, feasting on roasted
meat and potatoes, and lis-
tening to Leif, one of three
boisterous Thorsson brothers,
describe how he attacked a troll
in the forest earlier in the day.
Merriment abounds.
“We are the Thorsson Broth-
ers!” they shout in unison, bang-
ing their swords – clank, clank,
clank! – on the table. “Huhh!” THAT MASKED MAN: Player
You never know who you’ll Matthew Malis prepares for an attack.
meet at the local watering hole
in the Forest of Doors, both an imaginary place and the name of
a weekend-long live action role-playing game, or LARP, taking
place at a Georgia state park campground.
A LARP is like a hybrid between Dungeons & Dragons and
playing make believe. But “tabletop” role-playing games like
D&D exist largely in the imagination. Player actions are de-
scribed verbally, as in, “My character will strike the goblin.”
LARPs take the fantasy a step beyond. You create a charac-
ter, invent a back story, dress the part, and physically wander
around a real setting, looking for adventure.
The men and women who play these games – students, wait-
resses, salesmen, lab researchers – say the ephemeral heroism,
random interaction with each other, and fantasy violence on a
sprawling, amorphous stage are LARPs’ primary allure.
“We’re one step removed from community theater,” says For-
PHOTOS BY TAMI CHAPPELL/SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
est of Doors ringleader Christopher Tang upon my arrival. “If
HERE BE MONSTERS: Chris Cowan (top) in goblin garb during a recent live action role- you want to have a good time at LARPs, you need to have a little
playing game at Indian Springs Park in Flovilla, Ga. Ashley Moore (above, in the red dress) self-direction.”
walks alongside a handful of LARP players in the same park. LARPs are growing in popularity. See LARP page 13
12 Friday, March 30, 2007 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

The Tudors (Show- Cat-Minster (GSN,

MONITOR PICKS
TUBEGAZING

time, April 1, 10 p.m. April 1, 7 p.m. EDT):

EDT): Now that Animal competitions
lusty and incred- are as much about FIVE FILMS WE’RE NOT ASHAMED TO LIKE
ibly bloodthirsty people as pets. So

1
historical dramas tune into the Cat THE CORE (PG-13)
have proven their Fanciers Association This update of Jules Verne’s “Journey to
power on premium International Cat the Center of the Earth” follows a group
of “terranauts” who detonate a nuke in
cable (think HBO’s Show for the gor- the planet’s core to restore gravity. As
“Rome”), Showtime JONATHAN HESSION/SHOWTIME
geous Persians, cheesy as the melted-cheddar look of
is jumping in the Ocicats, and Birmans, the magma, the film is also proof that
act with a portrait of one of history’s most but also for the folks who feed a Hilary Swank deserves her Oscars.
notorious womanizers and political schem- Burmese raw buffalo and turkey meat or Just watch her keep a straight face as
ers. Henry VIII’s appetite for power and give up on men to focus on their felines. she crash lands a space shuttle in Los
personal indulgence changed the course of Since cats scarcely care about pleasing Angeles at the start of the film.

the known world, so of course we start with
his early, most intemperate days. True to
form for this new take on an old genre, we
see Henry (the eminently watchable Jona-
than Rhys Meyers) strip countless times – to
wrestle lovers as well as the French King.
2
humans, part of the fun here is watching HAIRSPRAY (PG)
owners and judges fight the natural apathy This classic from the always subversive John Waters is feath-
of the feted, petted, and pampered pets. erlight in its picture of a 1962 pleasantly plump teen who
Grade: A just has to get on a TV dance competition. But like a certain
– Gloria Goodale aerosol can, the story covers the important stuff – racism and
sexism – with the glue of snap, crackle, and pop dance tunes.

3
Uneasy may lie the head that wears
A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY (PG-13)
a crown, as Shakespeare wrote, but Not the first (or last) Saturday Night Live skit to go big-
this distracted and hormonal Henry screen, this campy 1998
certainly didn’t help matters much. nightclub farce didn’t de-
Grade: A– serve its skewering – “a long
version of its poster,” sniped
CNN. Will Ferrell and Chris
Kattan head-bob as the self-
BOOKS/BURNING BRIGHT deluded, unhip Butabi broth-
ers, obsessing over admis-

S
ince her breakthrough “Girl With a Pearl sion to the club in the title.
Earring,” Tracy Chevalier has created a cot- Cue Haddaway’s punchy
tage industry of literate, highly readable nov- single, “What is Love?” MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS/PARAMOUNT PICTURES

4
els that hinge around the creation of
a work of art – from a Johannes Vermeer painting to the Brughes
tapestries in “The Lady and the Unicorn.”
“Burning Bright” also hews to her winning recipe: Chevalier
brilliantly re-creates Georgian London, specifically Lambeth,
home of poet, engraver, and radical William Blake. But instead
of focusing on the creation of his most famous works, Chevalier
crafts a story about Blake’s new neighbors, the Kellaways, who
ISHTAR (PG-13)
Released in 1987, “Ishtar” was a spectacular bomb. We still
don’t understand why. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman
play the abysmal singers “Rogers and Clark” (“If you admit
that you play the accordion, no one’ll hire you in a rock
’n’ roll band”), who survive desert adventures with a blind
camel amid international intrigue. In other words, it has all
the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster.

5
DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? (PG-13)
take jobs at Astley’s Amphitheatre, a circus run by gregarious im- Most viewers were too enraptured by the thin plot of “Dude,
presario Philip Astley. Thomas, a hard-working chairmaker, seeks Where’s My Car?” – dudes lose car, dudes wonder where
a fresh start for his family after the death of one of his boys; grief- car went, dudes search for car – to realize that this flick is a
stricken Anne just wants to lose herself in the wonders of the deftly executed metaphor
for the plight of modern
COURTESY OF SVEN ARNSTEIN/DUTTON circus; while teenage Maisie has a crush on the owner’s son. man in the last gasps of the
Blake is seen only through the eyes of two children: country mouse Jem Kel- 20th century. OK, we kid.
laway, the innocent of the equation; and city mouse Maggie Butterfield, the voice There is absolutely nothing
of experience. This “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” approach unfortunately makes right about the film, which
is also the reason there is
Blake tangential to the story, and Chevalier’s attempts to focus on his themes at
absolutely nothing wrong
times feel forced. Fans may not even notice the deficiencies in plot, though, given with it. Has unintentional
the lovingly etched characters and polished prose. Grade: B –Yvonne Zipp farce ever looked so good? TRACY BENNETT/20TH CENTURY FOX

Winter’s hottest DVDREVIEW

Broadway tickets HAPPY FEET (PG)
Top shows by percentage of seats filled: When confronted with a tap-dancing baby penguin do you (a) cuddle it and
feed it fish or (b) declare it the work of the devil and banish it? Their
hearts clearly frozen solid by the minus 70 degree F. tempera-
tures, the emperor penguins in the Oscar-winning “Happy
100.7%*
s Feet” go with choice (b) when confronted with Mumble, a
Jersey Boy 99.3% baby who’s just got to dance. The story line is “Footloose”
Wicked 93.5% meets Greenpeace, with the second hour sending the
Spamalot 92.7%
grown-up Mumble in search of the “aliens” who
ins have stolen all the fish. The dance sequences are
Mary Popp 92.2% dazzling, but don’t let Mumble’s cuteness quotient
ine
A Chorus L fool you: There’s a seal and two orcas that could ter-
rify the under-6 set, and enough innuendo to make
parents squirm as if they were sitting on sardines.
Extras: Savion Glover offers kids a tap lesson, and COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.
*Percentages over 100 indicate standing room only.
a new animated scene stars the late Steve Irwin as
SOURCES: The League of American Theatres and Producers USA TODAY
data for weeks ending Dec. 3, 2006, through Feb. 25, 2007 an albatross. Grade: B
– Yvonne Zipp
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
LARP: A very different stage
Continued from page 11
Mr. Tang, a real estate lawyer, is one of a
team of staff members who dream up the
adventures, puzzles, and monsters that
players can encounter during the game.
No matter what the LARP genre – espio-
nage, historical reenactment, science fic-
tion, swords and sorcery – the concept is
the same. There is no script. The better
an improv actor you are, the more fun
you’ll have. And, in the Forest of Doors,
if you want to kill a “terrorbeak” (an
“extra” wearing black and a bird mask),
unsheathe your foam and PVC pipe “bof-
fer” weapon and whack away until it keels
over with a shriek and “dies.”
There are hundreds of LARP groups
worldwide. The largest, such as Eng-
land’s Lorien Trust, can draw as many
as a thousand players. Forest of Doors is
much smaller. In late March, Tang’s group
rented a campsite at Indian Springs State
Park, about an hour southeast of Atlanta,
for their weekend game. Players pretend-
ed the lawns and ramshackle collection of
wooden cabins scattered in a pine wood
were ruins, caverns, and battlefields.
“We understand these things aren’t
real. But that is the value in it. We are part
of this shared ritual,” says Charles Kel-
ley, one of the game directors, who calls
LARPs a form of “secular ritualism.”
Barbarians inside the gates
My first evening, the place reminded me
of summer camp. Backpack slung over my
shoulders, the weight of my hesitations felt
even heavier. I was to play the role of Ethor,
a humble monk from the Realm of Castles.
I’m reserved, learned, a man of the cloth. I
avoid violence. Nonetheless, I was handed
a mace upon my arrival. While donning a
blue monk’s tunic, I looked around at the
other residents: about 40 other bantering
barbarians, snickering goblins, giggling
fairies, and nodding sages. We’d all have
to stay in character for two days.
I wanted to go home.
Yet home was far away. In the Forest of
Doors, characters from eight Homeworlds
– places such as the Dark Mountains,
Empire of Perfect Unity, and Enchanted
Glade – have supposedly passed through
magical doors, à la Narnia, to appear in
this “place of infinite secrets.” They don’t
know how to get back.
But the 239-page rule book promises,
“you may forge a new destiny for your-
self.” Hence the appeal of the game: The
freedom to be someone else.
Nick Perretta, who works in network
TV sales when not playing a warrior char-
acter called Wolf, says the game gives him
a chance to inhabit a crude and outspoken
character. “Drama is wonderful,” he says.
“I don’t do what anyone wants.”
Talk about a weekend getaway.
“The performers are of course playing
themselves, but at the same time they’re
playing an imaginary construct influenced
by characters, scenes, and situations found
throughout popular culture,” says Kurt
Lancaster, professor at Colorado’s Fort
Lewis College and author of two books on
“imaginary entertainment environments,”
in an e-mail interview. “Just as a reader
Friday, March 30, 2007 13
weekend
depicts imaginary situations when
they’re reading a novel, role-players
are visualizing through the imagina-
tion the fantasy setting.”
Mr. Lancaster believes no other
form of entertainment immerses an
individual so deeply into an imaginary
world. “At its best, [LARPing] is col-
lective storytelling,” he writes. “You
can have deeply humanistic transfor-
mative experiences in role-playing
games, just as you do when exposed
to good literature.”
Back in the forest, Wolf is bent on
vanquishing the bands of marauders
threatening our town. “Bandits are
definitely on my list of things to do to-
day,” he exclaims. “LARPs get a lot of TAMI CHAPPELL/SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
bad spin,” admits player Lauren Mas- EN GARDE: John Nunn, dressed as a serpent mole, is held off by a handful of LARP players at
sengill. “It’s not merited. It teaches Indian Springs Park in Flovilla, Ga. The game’s weapons are built of foam and plastic.
leadership and social skills. I’ve seen
shy people who, after a few games,
became leaders.” “What is needed is two councils,” As for me, Ethor, I began to miss the
Within the first hour of play, I watched Saphrin said, arguing for a plan. “A coun- quieter moments, like comparing made-
an inarticulate young man blossom into cil of war, and one for domestic matters.” up worlds with a pointy-eared goblin
an English-accented, chivalrous knight. Nothing was resolved. The story would named Heinrich. Completely in character,
have to be continued at another weekend. I described mine, dotted with alabaster
Hark! A quest worthy of Frodo Chris Jones, who is in a seminary, will fortresses. He told me of his, a subterra-
By Day 2, I was getting the hang of likely be at a future event to reprise his nean Goblin City with belching factories
this new world. I had witnessed a battle roles as both Magnus and Leif Thorsson. straight out of Dickens.
between nasty, half-humanoid, half-plant He credits his wife, Rachel, for drawing I hoped Heinrich would stay. He seemed
mandrakes (in green costumes) and 20 him into LARPs. “She’s the reason I do happier in the Forest of Doors than back
defenders. I watched a goblin throw fire- this,” he says. “She wanted to be a fairy.” home – wherever that was.
balls (little cloth bundles) and saw a fairy
named Dusk Whisper (“Triage Healer”)
patch up the wounded fighters.
We were beginning to bond.
But adventure had still eluded me. Un-
til, that is, an armored knight stumbled
into the tavern. “I have a quest,” he said. “I
seek the most beautiful thing.”
What the heck. I tagged along with a
quickly assembled fellowship. After a
short walk, we came to a dungeon whose
door was bound by four different colored
ribbons: red, yellow, black, and white
– and a riddle: “Sought by those of wicked
arts, hidden within loathsome hearts.”
Pull the wrong ribbon and who knew
what would happen. We guessed “black”
might be the answer and yanked the corre-
sponding ribbon. The door opened and we
entered the cave unscathed. Ahead stood
a frozen statue in the gloom. If we didn’t
answer the second clue correctly, it would
attack. We guessed all three riddles, and
brought back the booty: something called
the Idol of Forbidden Knowledge. Uh-oh.
That night, the moon rose like a Viking
ship on a sea of clouds. I didn’t sleep well.
When a black-shrouded spirit wandered
past my bunk, wielding a white sword, I
couldn’t tell if it was real or a dream.
A battle for hearts and minds
By weekend’s end, even a man of peace
such as myself could appreciate the rush
of battle. But what had ultimately made
the LARP alluring was not the play vio-
lence, but the camaraderie.
It was Sunday morning. Saphrin, from
the Arabian-like Desert of Brass kingdom,
complained to Magnus, a bull-headed war-
rior, about how to best rule their town.
“Your world extends no farther than
the end of your sword,” Magnus said to
the gathered crowd.
14 Friday, March 30, 2007
MOVIE GUIDE
NEW IN THEATERS
Air Guitar Nation (R)
Director: Alexandra Lipsitz. With Dan
Crane, Gordon Hintz, Zac Munro. (81
min.)
Here’s yet another documentary
about competitions. But this competi-
tion is one you may never have heard
of: the annual air guitar global champi-
onship – in Oulu, Finland, of all places.
As reality shows go, this one’s pretty
amusing. Los Angeles-based David
Jung, who performs under the name
C-Diddy and sports a Hello Kitty pouch
on his costume, goes up against,
among others, New York-based Dan
Crane, aka Bjorn Turoque. (Born to
Rock. Get it?) Director Alexandra Lipsitz
doesn’t do much more than chronicle
the noise, but it’s intermittently fun
stuff. Grade: B– – Peter Rainer
Killer of Sheep (Not Rated)
Director: Charles Burnett. With Henry G.
Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy.
(83 min.)
Charles Burnett’s legendary, rarely
seen 1977 movie about a family in
the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts has
been newly restored and is opening in
selected theaters around the country.
(In New York, it’s showing at the IFC
Center.) Begun as a thesis film while
Burnett was a student at University of
California, Los Angeles, film school
– the UCLA Film & Television
Archive is responsible for
the restoration – “Killer
of Sheep” is a lyrical, yet
intensely rooted, tragic
vision. Events are viewed
through the eyes of Stan,
a slaughterhouse worker
ground down by poverty.
Henry Gayle Sanders,
one of America’s finest and
most unappreciated ac-
tors, has the lead role. “Killer of
Sheep” was declared a national trea-
sure in 1990 by the Library of Congress.
I agree. Grade: A – P.R.
Meet the Robinsons (G)
Director: Stephen J. Anderson. With the
voices of Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen,
Gordon Fry. (102 min.)
In Disney's computer-animated feature,
a small boy named Lewis lives in an
orphanage and may be unadoptable.
No one seems to want a kid who’s
driven to build weird inventions – no
one except a mysterious guy in a
bowler hat. This bungling, but danger-
ous, villain from the future threatens
not only Lewis’s happiness, but society
itself. Lewis teams up with Wilbur, a kid
in a time machine hot on the trail of
the bad guy, to save Wilbur’s family and
civilization. This 3-D digital adventure
cribs from several other films, but its
pace, wittiness, and technical brilliance
may help you forget all that. Shown
with a vintage Disney 3-D cartoon.
Grade: B – M.K. Terrell
For our complete Movie Guide, go to:
csmonitor.com/movies
weekend
‘Lookout’ for this
noir gem
By PETER RAINER
“T
FILM CRITIC
he Lookout” has a prem-
ise that, on paper at least,
might seem contrived. A
Midwestern high school
star, Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt),
almost dies in a car accident while joy rid-
ing with friends and suffers serious brain
damage. He goes from being the school’s
hockey star to working as the night janitor
in a small local bank, which, it turns out, is
being cased for a robbery by a high school
acquaintance, Gary (Matthew Goode).
If you think you can see where this is
going, you’d be only half right. Although
writer-director Scott Frank, making his di-
rectorial debut, plays out a series of film-
noir conventions, he rejiggers the genre by
making Chris a hero more akin to, say, a
character in “Awakenings,” than to one in
“Double Indemnity.”
Chris is from a wealthy family but pre-
fers living in a rundown apartment he
shares with a blind roommate (Jeff Daniels)
who compensates for his condition
by zeroing in on everybody’s
frailties. He is, however, pro-
tective of Chris, who is not
as self-sustaining as he
would like to believe he
is. Although Chris has
ambitions to become a
bank teller, his short-
term memory is so bad
that he needs to carry
around a notepad just to jot
down essential information
in order to get him through the
day. In conversation, such as the one
he has at the beginning of the film with his
attractive case worker (Carla Gugino, in a
Glory: Ice capades fall flat
Continued from page 11
that boy is now champion figure skater Jimmy MacElroy
(Heder), who favors sequined outfits with tufted plumage.
His rival and nemesis is Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell),
who is the ying to Jimmy’s yang. With his leather duds and
cowboy swagger, Chazz is so macho
that his female fans can barely con-
tain themselves as he swivels his way
across the ice. When he and Jimmy tie
for first place at the world champion-
ships (the film is careful to avoid any
prominent reference to the Olympics),
they break into a slugfest on the win-
ner’s podium and are banned from the
sport for life.
Both skaters go on the skids. Jim-
my works in the shoe department of a
sporting-goods store; Chazz dresses
up as a meanie in a kiddie ice review. MEN IN TIGHTS: Scott Hamilton (c.) plays himself
Then Jimmy’s resident stalker fig- in the comedy'Blades of Glory.'
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
DESPITE ITS
IMPROBABLE
plot about a
slow-witted
janitor who
assists a heist,
‘The Lookout’
feels sharp.
too brief appearance),
he often blurts out un-
censored and inappro-
priate comments.
When Gary, trying
to cozy up to Chris, in-
troduces him to local
stripper (Isla Fisher)
Luvlee Lemons, the
sadness of Chris’s situ-
ation comes full circle.
He thinks that being
the inside man in the
robbery will bring him
the cash he needs to
become a new person.
Chris doesn’t see what
we do – that his dreams ALLEN FRASER/COURTESY OF MIRAMAX
are largely delusional. CORNERED: In 'The Lookout,' Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a
But – and here’s slow-witted janitor, becomes involved in a bank heist.
where the film throws
us a curve – he is also far more enterpris- ready have a surfeit of movie wiseguys.
ing than we might have expected. As the Gordon-Levitt, best known for TV’s “3rd
story plays out, he turns his disability into Rock From the Sun” and offbeat indies
an advantage through sheer force of will. such as “Brick” and “Mysterious Skin,”
At times “The Lookout” stretches cre- is affable but also carries a suggestion
dulity. Having a brain-damaged ex-golden of something dark and inchoate. Daniels
boy team up with a jokester blind man is a transforms what might have been a one-
bit much even by noir standards. note role into a many-layered marvel.
Frank wrote the film adaptations of El- Nobody can play stupid better than Dan-
more Leonard's “Out of Sight” and “Get iels – think “Dumb and Dumber” – and, as
Shorty,” and at times he seems to be try- it turns out, few can play smarter. He’s a
ing for a similar tough-tender tone. But sharp asset in a sharp movie. Grade: B+
the material here is more fragile than
Leonard’s, more touchy-feely. r Rated R for language, some violence,
In the end, that’s a good thing. We al- and sexual content.
ures out a loophole that will get his idol back in the rink: The
skating bylaws don’t prohibit him from pairs competition. Of
course, we know who his partner will be.
The best sequences in “Blades of Glory” are the odd couple
confrontations between these two loonies as they attempt to
overcome their intense dislike for each other and grab the gold.
Ferrell and Heder are such polar opposites that just seeing them
stand side by side is often enough to provoke titters. Jimmy, with
his blond coif, is as fey as Chazz is surly. When they do their flips
and lutzes, their slapstick ballet is (crackpot) poetry in motion.
Even though these skating scenes
employ ample computer-generated
effects, there are still plenty of side-
splitting close-ups of Ferrell at his
most mock intense. Heder is a less-
skilled comic performer, so there’s
a mismatch in this duet. But it’s dif-
ficult for anybody to go up against
Ferrell when he’s really cooking.
And even though he’s only at half
boil here, that’s plenty. Grade: B
SUZANNE HANOVER/PARAMOUNT PICTURES r Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual
humor, language, a comic violent
image, and some drug references.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 15

weekend

Leaks: Where should labels draw the line?

Continued from page 11
Much as iTunes created a palatable model of digital download-
ing, these labels increasingly rely on carefully controlled – and
sometimes uncontrolled – leaks of MP3 files to publicize upcom-
ing records. Ever since the arrival of file-sharing sites such as
Napster and Grokster, entertainment firms have grappled with
the question of whether to crack down on the sharing of copy-
right material or find a way to harness its spread to boost music
sales. Even as major entertainment firms mull similar questions
relating to the spread of unauthorized clips on YouTube, the pop-
ular video-sharing site, they will be keeping close watch on the
effectiveness of such “leak” strategies by small labels.
“We’ll release an MP3 early into a campaign,” says Sonya
Kolowrat, a publicist at The Beggars Group, an indie label that’s
home to the Pixies and Blonde Redhead. The label will post
tracks on a special page of its website and give music bloggers
individual codes to access the page.
So far, bloggers have been willing to cooperate with labels
in exchange for access to songs. “A lot of the labels have been
easy to work with and have been very transparent about what
they want,” says David Greenwald, who posts tracks from com-
ing indie albums on his blog The Rawking Refuses to Stop. “If
the label says, ‘We don’t want you to leak this record,’ that’s not
something I’m going to do,” he adds.
The system that has developed strongly resembles the cur-
rent rapport between radio stations and record labels – the blogs,
like radio stations, receive early access to promotional singles as
long as they agree not to play the entire album. Because most
commercial radio stays away from rough-around-the-edges in-
die rock, the blogs may be the only outlets available.
The promotions firm Cornerstone, with clients such as Gnarls
Barkley and Lily Allen, has an entire department devoted to
working with music bloggers and Internet tastemakers. Accord-
ing to copresident Jon Cohen, the firm identifies an artist’s exist-
ing fans among music bloggers and “empowers” them, as he puts
it, by providing them with audio and video content, or tickets and
prizes for contests. The firm tracks over 1,600 blogs.
Major labels frequently “watermark” promotional CDs sent
to reviewers with a digital signature traceable to the recipient in
case of an unauthorized leak. But some smaller labels may even
be taking the next step and leaking en-
tire albums themselves.
Kris Gillespie, who manages Domi-
no Records, says leaking wasn’t out of
the question for his label, the home of
the rockers Franz Ferdinand and indie
buzzmakers the Arctic Monkeys.
“We were seriously considering
leaking tracks,” Gillespie says of the
latest Franz Ferdinand album, “be-
cause the watermarks and copy pro-
tection were almost doing too good a
job.”
Gillespie says he checks peer-to-
peer trading sites every day to see if
the new Arctic Monkeys album has
leaked, “but more out of curiosity than
out of vigilance,” he notes.
With the formation of this new
Internet-industrial complex, the ab-
sence of music trading can signal se-
rious problems. “If no one’s bothered
leaking the album the week before the
release date, the fear would be that
no one cares,” says Brendan Bourke,
of the music publicity firm TagTeam.
“When you’re getting within a few
weeks of a release, you want people
to start talking about it. It almost be-
hooves you to leak.”
The multimillion dollar question, of
COURTESY OF DAVIDA NEMEROFF/MERGE RECORDS
course, is whether leaks and free sin-
gles, for all their publicity payoff, can later hurt an artist’s sales. INDIE SUPERSTARS: The Arcade Fire’s
No one can say for sure, but there is one point where the blogger, new album, ‘Neon Bible,’ was leaked
industry executive, and PR guru agree: In the recording industry, to the Internet long before the official
there may well be such a thing as bad publicity. March release date.
“A leak is only going to hurt album sales if the album itself is
bad,” says blogger Greenwald. For the major record labels, who
are invested heavily in retail, he notes, the fear is that no one will
buy the album. “That happens,” he says, “because a lot of the
bands are not very good.”

By Hannah Duston
Edited by Charles Preston 43 Old scrolls 22 Revival pamphlet
ACROSS 46 Nothing, in Napoli 23 Should
SHAKE A LEG! 1 All hands 47 Mach 1 24 Bar order
5 “Enterprise” navigator 51 Singer Lena 27 Mr. Politically
9 Hawaiian movers? 52 Tropical wreaths Incorrect
13 Antimob acronym 53 Majorca, e.g. 28 Brackish
14 Greek aitches 57 Northern highway, 29 He carried a heavy
15 “___ a Hot Tin Roof” formerly burden
16 Melville novel 58 Irish tongue 32 Babble
17 Disney lion 59 Take a quick look 33 Cereal box stat.
18 Charlotte ___ 60 Tribulations 34 Make amends
19 Pen a quick message 61 Herbicide target 36 A piece of bric-a-brac
22 Rumple, as hair 62 Sock away 37 Coleslaw, maybe
25 Dog’s tongue, often 39 Weigh down
26 Controversial radio DOWN 40 Nabokov novel
talk host 1 ___-Magnon 41 Safari sight
30 Sick feelings 2 Wheel part 42 Brand-new
31 Ars gratia ___ 3 Author Umberto 43 Nonsense!
32 Genetic material 4 Log cabin? 44 Speed skater ___
letters 5 Karate teacher Anton Ohno
35 Onetime FL election 6 Rainbow Bridge state 45 Nez ___: Snake River
problem 7 Composer Schifrin tribe
36 Foodie Julia 8 Top gun’s gr. 48 Winged it?
37 Fatty bird treat 9 Hip 49 Parched
38 Type of phot. 10 No problem! 50 River to the Seine
exposure meter 11 Mail, in Marseille 54 School subj.
39 ___ Vista: Mexican 12 Scornful look 55 Terhune’s dog
battlefield 15 Claiborne and 56 What makes a den
40 Spotted horse Kilborne Eden?
41 Caine/Fonda film of 20 ___ fair in . . .
1967 21 Flowing substance

The solution to this crossword appears on page 16.

16 Friday, March 30, 2007
‘Queen’ dons Irish
dancing shoes
By IRIS FANGER
CORRESPONDENT
A
NEW YORK
woman stands cen-
ter stage at the wheel
of a sailing ship, built
with two-story rigging,
masts, and white sheets billowing
in the wind. Within moments she
leaps onto a rope ladder, swings
down on the deck, and brandish-
es her sword to help the ship’s
crew fight off a dreaded enemy.
But this isn’t a Broadway version
of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
The character, Grace O’Malley, is
based on the 16th-century Irish
chieftain who defied the Navy of
England’s Queen Elizabeth I. Fit-
SHAKE A LEG!
weekend
tingly, the 42 performers in “The
Pirate Queen,” a new musical
opening next week at the Hilton
Theatre on 42nd Street, infuse
their dance moves with Irish
steps, to melodies that pulse with
the strains of lilting Irish folk mu-
sic.
If the musical seems like a
first cousin of “Riverdance,” well,
it is. The show’s producers, Moya
Doherty and John McColgan,
launched that Irish music and
dance spectacle 12 years ago.
Now, the duo is making a bold,
not to mention expensive, bid to
translate the aura of “Riverdance”
into musical drama by telling the
story of O’Malley’s fight against
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
JOAN MARCUS
DANCING QUEEN: Stephanie J. Block (l.) plays the title character
in ‘The Pirate Queen,’ which also stars Jeff McCarthy and Marcus
Chait.
wrote to Queen Elizabeth taught the Gaelic stiff-postured
(Linda Balgord) to request patterns. “The modern dancers
a meeting. After their en- were so excited when they put on
counter – which is por- the hard shoes,” says McColgan.
trayed in silhouette behind Also in the cast: Áine Uí
a screen – O’Malley was Cheallaigh, an award-winning
granted her freedom, her traditional Irish singer. The score
lands, and her ships “for was written by Alain Boublil and
the duration of her life- Claude-Michel Schönberg, the
time.” writer-composer team of “Miss
Creating a musical with Saigon” and “Les Misérables.” “I
elements of Irish sent them dozens of al-
step dancing has the ate r bums of old-style Irish
proved to be as singing,” McGolgan
ambitious an endeavor as says. The writers were hooked by
“Riverdance,” which has the Celtic sounds and wrote the
attracted audiences of 18 musical for Irish instruments.
million people around the After last fall’s uneven try-out
globe and has four troupes in Chicago, the show was retooled
still on the road. “The thing for Broadway. The question for
most challenging for us the producers is whether the half-
was to integrate the dance million hits to the production’s
into the story,” admits Mc- website, ThePirateQueen.com,
Colgan. One solution was will translate into ticket sales.
to incorporate dancing into Doherty and McColgan, however,
scenes such as a funeral are satisfied with the musical’s
ritual, a wedding, and a take on this significant chapter of
the English subjugation of Ire- christening. The dancing corps is Irish history.
land. led by eight champion Irish step “We tried to stay true to her
“After ‘Riverdance’ opened, dancers who also have “River- story within the confines of a 2-
the promoters asked us to do an- dance” credits. The other Ameri- 1/2-hour musical,” says McCol-
other one. We have a worldwide can cast members had to be gan.
structure in place, but we asked
ourselves, ‘What could we do
that’s creatively challenging and
satisfying?’ ” says Mr. McColgan,
prior to a recent preview per-
formance at the Hilton theater.
“We are never driven by money;
a Broadway musical was what
we wanted to do,” continues Ms.
Doherty, who is married to Mc-
Colgan.
The pair, veterans of Dublin
television and theater, set about
looking for an appropriate sub-
ject, “Something that would be
from our history,” recalls Doherty.
“O’Malley was a strong woman
– ahead of her time.” The Irish
leader, portrayed by Stephanie
J. Block, inherited the leadership
of her clan following her father’s
death and continued his legacy of
menacing the British navy. When
she was captured, the chieftan
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 17
18 Friday, March 30, 2007
r A Christian Science perspective on daily life r
No room for doubt
DURING THE ERA when Germa-
ny was divided, a friend and I were
taking a train from Rome to Berlin.
Through a complicated set of cir-
cumstances, we arrived in Munich,
and as it turned out, we weren’t able
to get to Berlin in time for a confer-
ence we’d planned to attend.
Munich is a beautiful city, and
neither of us had been there before,
so it wasn’t a hardship to be there,
but we were very disappointed to
miss the conference.
In the late afternoon while wan-
dering through an art museum just
before closing time, I was struck
when I saw a painting of Jesus and
the disciple who has come to be
known as “doubting
Thomas.”
Thomas was kneel-
I CAN RELATE TO
ing at the feet of the THE DISCIPLE’S
resurrected Jesus,
looking up and reach-
NEED TO TOUCH
ing toward the wound JESUS’ WOUND
in Jesus’ side. To me,
the expression on Thomas’s face
said, “Could this be for real?”
Jesus was looking at him with great
compassion and an expression that
said, “Yes, it’s for real. I’m glad you
understand now.”
As we visited more museums
and churches during our time in
Europe in the weeks that followed,
I saw many depictions of that
encounter between Jesus and
Thomas, none of which moved me
as that one had.
The painting’s message for me
that day was, Do I really need to
know why I’m in Munich and not
at the conference? Isn’t it enough
to know that I’m in God’s presence
right where I am?
I also saw a lesson for all time
– not to doubt that all the activities
of my life are in God’s hands and
that I can trust His care wherever
I am, whatever the circumstances,
whenever plans go awry.
I’d been hoping that there might
be an obvious reason for having
ended up in Munich – that I’d see
the beginning of a new academic
or career direction, or even a new
friendship with someone from that
city. But there was none of that.
Now, the fact that I remember the
message of that painting 30 years
later is significant enough.
I can certainly relate to
Thomas’s need to touch the
wound to be sure that it was really
Jesus who stood before him. But
I also love Jesus’ comment on the
situation as recorded in the Bible:
“Thomas, because thou hast seen
me, thou hast believed: blessed are
they that have not seen, and yet
have believed” (John 20:29).
I appreciate Mary Baker Eddy’s
insight on the scene: “Nothing but
a display of matter could make ex-
istence real to Thomas. For him to
believe in matter was no task, but
for him to conceive of the substan-
tiality of Spirit – to know that noth-
ing can efface Mind and immortali-
ty, in which Spirit reigns – was more
difficult” (“Science and Health with
Key to the Scriptures,”
pp. 317-318).
The ensuing years
for me have been an
effort to learn to trust
the reality of Spirit – to
understand more fully
that life and love and
everything that matters have noth-
ing to do with physicality.
But I’m grateful that Jesus
understood the needs of the
Thomases of this world, including
myself, and had compassion on
them.
Trust the Eternal when the
shadows gather,
When joys of daylight seem so
like a dream;
God the unchanging pities like
a father;
Trust on and wait, the daystar
yet shall gleam.
William P. McKenzie,
“Christian Science Hymnal,”
No. 359
THE PARADOX
OF CONFIDENCE
H
ave you ever noticed that the
more certain you are of some-
thing, the fewer words it takes
to say it? And conversely, the
more you have to insist on your confidence
of something or in someone, the more you
call that confidence into question?
So it was the other day when I heard
news that a young Boy Scout named
Michael Auberry had gone missing while on attorneys around the country.
a camping trip in western North Carolina.
(It may take a village to raise a child, but in
the 24-hour news cycle, it can take an entire Snow’s briefing ran under headlines saying
nation to worry about one who is lost.)
As the search was going into its third
night, a National Park Service spokes-
woman said, “We’re still confident that this
is a search-and-rescue operation,” delicately reminded the public how he had enjoyed
deflecting the question of the
boy’s survival.
In the next report I heard,
she was “confident” the lad
had been found. If he has
been found, I wondered, why
not just say, “We’ve got him”?
At that point, “We’re confident
we’ve got him” didn’t inspire
the same confidence as the
simpler utterance would have
done.
I didn’t really relax until more details
came out, including word that the boy was
dehydrated but otherwise in good condition. the context of the play, she’s complaining
And the spokeswoman’s announcement at
the end was simply, “We have our missing
Boy Scout.”
The principle here is that people some-
times use language to signal what they want
to be true rather than what is true. Oh, the
paradox of such “confidence”! To have to
articulate it at all is to call into question
whatever it is you are confident of.
A woman fishing for her keys at the bot-
tom of a capacious bag insists to herself, “I
know they’re in here somewhere. I’m sure
I picked them up off the kitchen counter as
I was heading out....” Once they’re actually
located, of course, the dialogue-with-self
becomes simpler. “Oh, here they are.”
On the same day that rescuers were
locating the missing scout in the North
Carolina mountains, another sort of rescue
The solution to this Sudoku appears on page 16.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
operation was under way in Washington.
President Bush made an early morn-
ing call March 20 to Alberto Gonzales, the
beleaguered attorney general. Tony Snow,
briefing the White House press corps later
that morning, characterized the call as a
“very strong vote of confidence” in Mr.
Gonzales, despite the ongoing controversy
over the dismissals of eight United States
But I couldn’t help noticing that much
of the reporting on Mr. Bush’s call and Mr.
things like “Bush phone call fails to defuse
pressure on Gonzales to resign.”
And the death of former Sen. Thomas
Eagleton of Missouri earlier this month
“1,000 percent” confidence of
George McGovern, the Demo-
cratic presidential nominee
in 1972 – confidence, that is,
right until McGovern dropped
him from the ticket 18 days
after naming him, after some
revelations came out about
By Ruth Walker Eagleton’s medical history.
There’s an idiom in English
for situations like this. The
source – as happens so often – is Shake-
speare. In “Hamlet,” the queen says, “The
lady doth protest too much, methinks.” In
that “the lady” – the figure in Hamlet’s “play
within a play” who is meant to represent her
– asserts her love for her husband so aggres-
sively that she invites suspicion.
“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch
the conscience of a king,” Hamlet himself
says at the end of Act II. And so it proves.
By their response to the play within the play,
Gertrude and the new king, Claudius, give
themselves away as the murderers of the
late king.
“Protesting too much” has made its way
into the language. It describes those who, by
aggressively asserting their own confidence
in what they say, manage to shake ours.
r This weekly column appears with links at
http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/verbal
_energy.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Friday, March 30, 2007 19

The HOME FORUM

IT WAS ALMOST SUNSET, ing I could not photograph

and the day had been won- while my negotiating skills
derful. The Vietnamese gov- were in top order – I took
ernment could have hung an afternoon bus to Cholon,
me upside down outside the the district also known as
War Remnants Museum, Chinatown. It was a gritty
and I’d still have enjoyed side of the city I hadn’t seen
myself. I would’ve watched before, and there were no
the passing motorcycles other tourists in sight.
and waved hello to the folks With an excitement sim-
who would be staring at ilar to what Columbus may
me. I would have pondered have felt upon first seeing
the life of a bat, the shape the Americas, I discovered
of Earth, and the points of the rice depot. It was an en-
the residents’ conical hats. tire street devoted to pack-
Never had I been to a aging rice – and a reminder
place where I had so quickly that Vietnam is a large rice
fallen in love with the people. While for many Americans the exporter. Graceful women wearing colorful clothes and conical
word Vietnam will always be synonymous with war, for me – at hats sat in piles of the product, their bare feet mingling with the
least after my visit here – the word would conjure up something symmetrical grains as they scooped up basketfuls to sift out im-
else: a nation where the glances, laughter, and good wishes of purities.
a people had fused into a gentle caress that ran over my entire I fell head over heels for this street, filled as it was with rice,
being, leaving me befuddled at how merely being with strangers laughter, and photo-willing people.
could delight me so. Only with effort did I pull myself away in order to explore
The morning had begun with a search for good photo oppor- other parts of Cholon. I wiggled my way through a market (the
tunities on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, a city I still refer to literal meaning of Cholon is “big market”), talked with a man
as Saigon. I crouched low over a curb to capture the resting in his hammock, and bought boiled corn on
reflection of Notre Dame Cathedral in a puddle of travel the cob from a street vendor.
the previous night’s rain. I sheepishly entered a sa- Then, seeing the steeple of a Catholic church off in
lon to beg – successfully – to be able to take photos of hairdos in the distance, I headed that way.
progress. I took pictures of a family slurping noodles, a woman Pushing open the creaking door, I slid into the empty sanctu-
selling bread, and a poster of Brad Pitt hanging on the wall of a ary and took a seat in the back row. The silence was palpable,
grocery store. and I appreciated the respite from the hustle and bustle of the
Finally, with my confidence at its peak, I meandered into a nearby market.
manicure and pedicure shop, requesting to photograph people’s But what I will remember most about this church is the sen-
freshly painted fingers and toes. tence I found inscribed on a plaque embedded in my pew. It said
In pursuit of more pictures – and feeling that there was noth- that this was the pew on which the President Ngo Dinh Diem
and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had sat before they
were taken on a tank and killed on the way to Saigon

The ‘timelessness’ of old Saigon

on Nov. 2, 1963.
I struggled to take in what I had just learned. Once,
the president of South Vietnam sat on this very pew
and watched his world turn upside down and prepare
to crush him. And now, 44 years later, an American
backpacker was in the same pew, finding it a con-
venient place to change a roll of film and spend some peaceful
moments.
As I sat in the small church, time stood still for a moment
– just long enough to show me that, really, it never stands still.
Time moves slowly, but it does so with the force of an ocean’s
tide. It sweeps away past realities even as it brings in that which
is new.
As I sat there, I felt its subtle force.
I’ve seen beaches at sunset, the sand uneven and disturbed
by the thousands of feet that had trod there during the day. But
in the morning, after the tide had come and gone, the sand was
smooth and new, awaiting new steps to be taken.
To say that time is like an ocean’s tide is not a perfect anal-
ogy, but it is what came to mind as I packed my camera and left
the church. Outside there were no soldiers waiting to execute
me, only an old woman sitting on a bench, asking that I take her
photo. And so I did.
Joel Carillet

HO CHI MINH CITY: A woman, at left, sifts through rice to remove

impurities in the Cholon district of the Vietnamese city formerly
known as Saigon, where local food items such as corn on the cob,
PHOTOS BY JOEL CARILLET at top, are sold by street vendors.
20 Friday, March 30, 2007 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

US CELLULAR FIELD, Chicago – Front row

of the upper deck is farther from the plate than
MILESTONES TO WATCH FOR the last row in the second deck of old Comis-
Barry Bonds is 22 home runs away from passing key Park.
Hank Aaron for most career home runs, 755. METRODOME, Minneapolis – Balls get lost
Craig Biggio is 70 hits away from 3,000. in the white roof and bounce off speakers. The
Barry Bonds is 159 hits away from 3,000. right-field wall is known as the Hefty Bag, and
Manny Ramírez needs 3 more grand slams to the grass is a football carpet.
tie Lou Gehrig for the all-time lead with 23. DOLPHINS STADIUM, Miami – The name
15 more wins by Roger Clemens will tie him says it all: Nobody even pretends this is a base-
with Warren Spahn for the most career victories ball stadium.
by a pitcher since the 1920s, with 363. CHASE FIELD, Phoenix – When a ballpark’s
major attractions are a swimming pool and
HIGHEST-PAID PLAYERS IN 2006 an ugly roof, you know it’s not much of a venue.
(in millions)
1. Alex Rodriguez, $21.7, New York RULE CHANGES
Yankees Time between pitches: To speed up the game,
2. Derek Jeter, $20.6, Yankees a pitcher will have 12 seconds to deliver the
3. Jason Giambi, $20.4, Yankees
New rule mandates ball when no runner is on base, down from 20
4. Jeff Bagwell (now retired), $19.4,
only 12 seconds seconds now. The price for each violation: a
Houston Astros
between pitches called ball.
5. Barry Bonds, $19.3, San Francisco Giants Batter’s box presence: A hitter will have to
keep one foot in the batter’s box throughout his
MINIMUM STARTING SALARY time at the plate, except for certain game-play
$380,000 conditions, such as after he swings at a pitch or
if a timeout is called. This is another attempt
TEAMS THAT HAVE NEVER WON to move the game along. Scofflaws will be as-
THE WORLD SERIES sessed a strike.
Montreal Expos/Washington
Nationals HEAD GAMES
Houston Astros Big league baseball caps are no longer made
Milwaukee Brewers of 100-percent wool. They‘re now all polyester,
Texas Rangers designed to wick away perspiration.
San Diego Padres
Seattle Mariners AVERAGE ATTENDANCE (2006)
Colorado Rockies Highest:
Tampa Bay Devil Rays New York Yankees: 51,858
Los Angeles Dodgers: 46,400
AMERICA’S FAVORITE SPORTS New York Mets: 43,327
TO WATCH St. Louis Cardinals: 42,588
Football – 43 percent Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 42,059
Basketball – 12 percent
No Favorite Sport – 12 percent Lowest:
Baseball – 11 percent Oakland Athletics: 24,402
Auto Racing – 4 percent Pittsburgh Pirates: 23,269
Golf – 3 percent BEST AND WORST BALLPARKS Kansas City Royals: 17,158
Figure Skating – 3 percent (according to Philip J. Lowry, author of Tampa Bay Devil Rays: 16,901
Soccer – 2 percent “Green Cathedrals”) Florida Marlins: 14,384
Ice Hockey – 2 percent
Boxing – 2 percent TOP FIVE: MOST EXPENSIVE TICKETS (2006 average)
WRIGLEY FIELD, Chicago – Your own time 1. Boston Red Sox– $46
machine. The ivy on the outfield walls and the 2. Chicago Cubs – $34
bleachers transport you blissfully back to the 3. St. Louis Cardinals– $30
1930s. 4. New York Yankees – $28
FENWAY PARK, Boston – The Green Monster 5. Philadelphia Phillies – $27
in left field ensures you never need to wonder
where you are: You’re in ballpark heaven. See LEAST EXPENSIVE TICKETS
a game here, and you’ll understand why fans 1. Kansas City Royals – $14
view ballparks as cathedrals. 2. Colorado Rockies – $15
YANKEE STADIUM, New York – Listen closely, 3. Texas Rangers – $16
and you can hear the ghosts of Babe Ruth and 4. Florida Marlins – $17
Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb and Cy Young, Satchel 5. Atlanta Braves – $17
Paige and Josh Gibson, Mickey Mantle and
Roger Maris. DIVERSITY IN THE DUGOUT
PNC PARK, Pittsburgh – Arriving by boat on 27.4 – Percentage of foreign-born players on
the river, you know this is going to be a magical the 2006 opening day rosters of the 30 Major
experience. The architects got everything just League Baseball teams. The Dominican Repub-
right here, including the imposing view of the lic, with 85 players (10.5 percent of the league),
Pittsburgh skyline. produced the most players born outside the US.
MINUTE MAID PARK, Houston – Tal’s Hill in Venezuela was next with 43 players followed
center field echoes the outfield embankments by Puerto Rico with 33. Mexico and Canada
of such vaunted past venues as Crosley Field in had 14 each, Japan 9, and Cuba 6.
Cincinnati.
PRESIDENTIAL LOB
ILLUSTRATIONS JOHN KEHE – STAFF
BOTTOM FIVE: William H. Taft was the first president to throw
ROGERS CENTRE, Toronto – Even with a new out the first pitch, a toss from the stands in the
Football fans outnumber name, this is still the SkyDome, the ugliest Washington Senators’ game on April 14, 1910.
baseball fans nearly 4 to 1 shopping mall to ever be called a ballpark. – Compiled by Jared Flesher

Major League Baseball; Gallup Poll; USA Today; ESPN;

www.whitehouse.gov; www.wikipedia.org; Team Marketing Report.