Discovery Blog

Here is Al Jazeera, of all news sources, covering the fence-mending meeting of President Karzai of Afghanistan and President Musharaf of Pakistan that just held under the auspices of Turkey.

It was an important meeting, and perhaps not the last the heads of Pakistan and Afghanistan may hold in Turkey. It is significant on two scores. First, it shows a fascinating diplomatic effort to resolve a major obstacle to cooperation against terrorism in the region. And second, it shows Turkey as the honest broker, an interesting role for that country to take openly.

Turkey right now is immersed in its own election for President--under the possible threat of military intervention--and yet its government manages to support attempts to gain closer cooperation between Karzai and Musharaf, two frequently feuding leaders whose countries each contain huge terrorist populations. Pakistan, indeed, could become a flash point for further regional destabilization if the US (thanks to the Democratic Congress) opts out of Iraq. Afghanistan, meanwhile, already is facing such a fierce revival of the Taliban forces that this supposedly "good war" is beginning to lose
support from countries fighting there, such as Canada.

That Turkey has a part to play is usually neglected in coverage of the war on terrorists. That Al Jazeera would run this story, and run it straight--shows that there is at least one editor with the network who has a perspicacious nose for news behind the news.

Yes, you have heard a lot about global warming. But the following analysis by Mary Ellen Tiffany Gilder offers some truly novel insights I strongly commend to you. “Melly” Gilder is a graduate student in medicine, daughter of Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder and an experienced overseas medical missionary in South East Asia. --Bruce Chapman

Click here to download the essay.

The besetting temptation of American media on foreign policy is to serve up over-simplified accounts of overseas developments and to follow the conventional script that already is in the reader’s or viewer’s mind. (Foreign media do it to us, too. One such trope is that America is such a violent, gun-crazed society that one dare not walk down most city streets at night. Every story of a killing in the U.S. supposedly proves this point.) The more I have traveled around the world, and having served abroad, the more I regret this tendency to mislead by wrong-headed generalities. I see it now in Iraq, in Russia and Mexico. The recent developments in Turkey suggest that the same cliched, un-nuanced coverage often obtains there, too. As an excellent corrective, read this fine article from the Turkish Daily Times by our firend, Mustafa Akyol. Oddly, Christians who are badly discriminated against in Turkey (they cannot even build a church or operate a seminary) might do better with a nominally Islamic government than a nominally “secular” regime that oppresses all religious groups. In any case, the political story in Turkey is not as easily understood as many news accounts suggest.

It is the view of Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society that mankind acts like a “virus” that is threatening the planet. Accordingly, the present world population, he proposes, should be reduced from the current 4.5 billion to under one billion. Mr. Dan Gainor, Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Business and Media Institute, is indignant about Mr. Watson’s platform.

Fortunately, there is a simple cure for this conflict. All critics of over-population, such as Mr. Watson, should stop having children. They should have none.

That way, within another generation the conflict will disappear and we won’t have to deal with it any more.

If a presidential election were held today and George Bush were the Republican
candidate, he probably would lose. But, fortunately for Republicans, the election is a year and a half away and much can change in the estimation of Bush's record and its legacy for his GOP successor. Right now the economy looks strong and the Bush Boom is bigger than people realize. That will matter as tax policy becomes an inevitable issue in '08. (The transformative Bush tax cuts of 2001 expire in 2010.)

Iraq is another matter, but there, too, one detects a potential shift of opinion
as voters begin to re-assess the Bush policy in light of the left's sanguine call for withdrawal of US troops. Everyone knows what carnage would follow a US pull out now. That galls the left, but the sober among them know it's true. Democrats therefore are stuck with opposing a policy for which they have no responsible alternative.

Slowly, it also is dawning on people that what we are risking in Iraq is part of a much bigger contest against militant Islamists world-wide. And in that context the American burden--unevenly distributed and terribly painful for those who pay the greatest sacrifice--is yet necessary to bear because the stakes are so high. The war against terrorists must be won and it may take a long time. That realization, if it takes hold, will help the party that has been relatively more resolute and clear headed about the
threat.

In the midst of our own domestic political drama there also comes a parade of relatively good news for conservatives in other parts of the world. France, much reviled by conservatives only a few years ago, has just elected an openly pro-American President, Nicolas Sarkozy. Swedes threw out their Socialist government earlier. Mexico elected Felipe Calderon, who at least seems to be a genuine reformer (though we've been down that path before), and certainly a man of the right. (And his left wing opponent would have been a huge thorn in America's side.) Germany chose Christian Democrat Angela Merkel, waving off the anti-American Gerhard Schroeder. Japan stays conservative under Shinzo Abe.

The French case is especially instructive. American conservatives had really given up on the French. This happens periodically, come to think of it. Maybe we should now be respectful and accept our good fortune with grace? And gratitude?

The new center-left government in Italy has not turned out to be anti-American at all. We have friends there.

And Hugo Chavez not only seems likely to bankrupt Venezuela, but his own political position, as inflation soars.

Then there is Cuba.....

The following is the perfect stimulus to reflection this Memorial Day weekend.
Lizzie Palmer is 15 years old. Youtube has seen millions of hits for it.

ABC, CBS, and NBC apparently have closed their bureaus in Moscow, or greatly reduced them. CNN has shrunk to one reporter, and Western print media also have reduced staff lately. The big exception among the international media is Bloomberg News. Speaking recently to fellow expats on Bloomberg's elegant terrace overlooking the Kremlin two blocks away, James Brooke, Enterprise Reporter, said that the Moscow bureau has doubled in the past year to 22 reporters and editors. There is a new Bloomberg bureau in St. Petersburg and another coming in Kazakhstan. There is even a stringer now for Georgia-Armenia and there may be another soon for Azerbaijan. Bloomberg also boasts Russian speakers and writers, a small but up-to-date TV studio in Moscow and excellent connections in London.

The Moscow bureau alone is Bloomberg's fourth largest overseas unit (among 50)--after London, Frankfurt, and Paris. "We are investing in the personnel to make Bloomberg the premier source of business news for Russia," Brooke states.