Netanyahu Asks U.N. 'Have You No Shame' for Giving Ahmadinejad Forum

What’s a Consumer Economy Need in Order to Keep Growing?

by Bill Bonner

You wanna know what is going on? David Rosenberg explains...

"US consumers are cutting back, and where they are not cutting back, they are scaling down. This new cycle is all about 'getting small' and it is deflationary. For yet another in the litany of signs pointing in the direction of social change towards thrift, have a look at what is transpiring at the upper echelons of the income strata – Now Even Millionaires See the Benefits of Budgeting on page B5 of the Saturday NYT is a must read.

"Not only are the rich trading down, but the article quotes a high net worth financial advisor who said 'many of our clients are very happy to be sitting on bond portfolios and cash reserves.' And see the article on page 2 of the Sunday NYT – Beauty Products Lose Some Appeal During Recession. According to the NPD Research Group, total sales of department store beauty products are down 7% from year-ago levels. Women are apparently opting for the 'natural look' – "some people are selectively replacing higher-priced items with cheaper products from drug stores and discount stores."

Right on, David!

And here's the CEO of Pepsico:

"The age of thrift is here."

Even in Japan, after 20 years of coughing and sneezing, people have caught "the thrift bug," says The New York Times.

What's a consumer economy need in order to keep growing?

Uh...it's needs consumer spending.

What do consumers need in order to boost spending?

Uh...they need more money!

Oh, there's where it all starts to come apart, doesn't it? Where do they get more money? They either earn it...or they borrow it. And right now, they can't earn it – not with 12% unemployment in California! Workers have no bargaining power. And they can't borrow it either. The banks won't lend – not with the value of their collateral still falling.

Word comes this morning that mortgage delinquencies have hit a new record. And here's a headline warning of worse to come:

"$30 billion home loan time bomb set for 2010."

Even solvent homeowners who aren't forced into foreclosure still find it beneficial to walk away from their houses. "Strategic defaults," says The Los Angeles Times, are becoming a problem for mortgage lenders.

We didn't read the article. Instead, we began to think. What if we owned a house worth $200,000 with a $300,000 mortgage? What would be the smart thing to do? Easy...walk away from it. Then, buy it back at auction!

Desperate consumers do what they have to do. Canny consumers do what's smart. And now it's smart to walk away from any debt that you don't actually have to pay.

As for adding more debt, you can gage yourself from the comments above, consumers are not eager to borrow. They've seen what happens when they go too far into debt. They're older and wiser than they were in the bubble years. It's been 10 years since the tech bubble exploded. Since then, stock market investors have made nothing – zero. And now houses are falling too.

So, if a fellow needs money for his retirement, where is he going to get it? Not from his house. Not from a pay raise. And not from his stocks either. He needs savings. He needs real money.

Americans aren't so stupid after all. When they need to stop spending, they stop spending. When they need to save, they save. Too bad about the economy.

Yes, what is good for individuals seems to be bad for the economy. When people save instead of spend, the consumer economy stalls. And then economists think there is something wrong. They think an economy needs to expand constantly. And so, they try to find "solutions" to the "problem."

Actually, there is no problem at all. It's just the way capitalism works. There are booms. And there are busts. Periods of growth...and periods when the mistakes made during the boom are corrected. There's a time for every purpose under heaven. That's the way it works. The economy breathes in and it breathes out.

And there's always some dumb economist trying to smother it with a pillow!

Irving Kristol, RIP

The "godfather" of the neocons leaves a legacy of perpetual war

by Justin Raimondo,

To my knowledge, the late Irving Kristol was the only self-admitted neoconservative in existence. With his death, at the age of 89, does this mean the species is extinct? Far from it. In spite of the odd tendency of neoconservatives to deny their ideological heritage, there is no escaping it. The title of Kristol’s 1999 book pinpoints the problem: Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea.

Neoconservatism, the successful promotion of which Kristol devoted a good part of his life to, is biography at least as much as ideology. It is the story of the so-called New York intellectuals, who spent their misbegotten youth as Trotskyists, penning furious polemics against U.S. imperialism, but mostly against each other – and some of whom, including the ex-Trotskyist Kristol, wound up in the pay of the CIA, writing for Encounter and its French and Italian equivalents. (For a fascinating account of the neocon-CIA convergence, see Christopher Lasch’s essay on the Congress of Cultural Freedom, a CIA front that nurtured Kristol in the early days of the Cold War.)

In his 1977 essay, "Memoirs of a Trotskyist," Kristol describes the denizens of Alcove No. 1 at New York’s City College – the favorite hangout of the anti-Stalinist leftists on campus, including Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and, indeed, an entire generation of social scientists who later became prominent in academia. Here was the birthplace what we know today as the neoconservative movement, an intellectual tendency in modern American politics that has had an outsized impact on the nation, especially our foreign policy.

The intellectual odyssey of the neoconservatives is too well-known to go into here at length: the story has been told, especially by the participants, time and again. They even made a movie out of it, in which Kristol played a starring role. As a dedicated Trotskyist on the eve of World War II, young Kristol was caught up in the internecine feuds that consumed the movement and ultimately ripped it into two then three factions. The question was how to respond to the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the occupation of Europe by the twin totalitarian powers. The side Kristol chose propelled him on an intellectual journey, along with his friends and cohorts, that would take him to the heights of power in the inner councils of the very capitalist class he was once pledged to overthrow.

The debate that broke out in the Socialist Workers Party, the main Trotskyist group in the U.S. at the time, pitted the "orthodox" Trotskyists, led by Trotsky and James P. Cannon – who considered the Soviet Union a "workers state," because property was collectivized – against the revisionists, led by Max Shachtman and James Burnham, who held that the USSR had morphed into "bureaucratic collectivism," a new form of class society based on collectivized property forms, and was no longer worth defending. The movement split, with the Shachtmanite minority going its own way. Kristol went with them, and this was just the beginning of multiple defections.

A few months after the setting up of Shachtman’s group, the Workers Party, Burnham, a professor of philosophy at New York University, resigned. He was well on his way to repudiating Marxism altogether. Burnham took a few party members with him, as was usual in these splits, among them Kristol, who became the editor of the "theoretical journal" of the "Shermanites," who described themselves as "revolutionary anti-Bolsheviks." In the pages of Enquiry, Kristol attacked Sidney Hook for his pro-war stance, yet Professor Hook was just ahead of his time. Soon enough, Kristol and the rest of the Alcove No. 1 gang would follow Hook down the same path, not merely reconciling themselves to what they used to denounce as "imperialism," but becoming its most fervent cheerleaders.

In his "Memoirs" essay, Kristol explicitly gives thanks for the training provided by the Trotskyist movement as the ideal school for an intellectual entrepreneur such as himself. The scholasticism, the organizational discipline, the single-minded devotion to ideas as weapons of combat: all were good preparation for the task that lay ahead of him, which was nothing less than taking over the conservative movement and the Republican Party – and finally, with the election of George W. Bush, taking the White House.

Kristol became known as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, and for a very good reason. He was the quintessential organizer and spark plug of the movement, which took on various organizational forms over the years, and which he best summed up as a "persuasion." The autobiographical details of the various neoconservative intellectuals vary with temperament and circumstance: James Burnham went to work for the CIA and later signed on at National Review, along with several other ex-Communists of one sort or another. Others stayed on the Left but tempered their former radicalism with an emphasis on anti-Stalinism. Shachtman, for example, wound up supporting the Vietnam War while remaining faithful to the doctrine of socialism. His followers found their champion in Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, whose centrist liberalism on domestic issues and ferocious militarism perfectly embodied the ideological parameters of the neoconservative persuasion. Jackson’s aides – Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Elliott Abrams – became the core group that would later have an outsized influence on the course of American foreign policy.

These two tendencies, however, soon met up and reemerged as the Cold War progressed into semi-hotness. The neoconservative movement has always been focused on foreign policy, although Kristol’s journal, The Public Interest, was concerned with domestic policy, seeking to ameliorate the rampant liberalism of the Great Society with a dose of hard-headed realism. The main goal of the neoconservatives during the Cold War era was the elimination, by military means, of their old nemeses, the Stalinists.

Kristol’s role in this was to provide the organizational and – more importantly – the financial framework for the nascent neoconservative ascendancy on the Right. He somehow managed to persuade the old conservative money – the heirs of fortunes that had once supported the "isolationist" America First Committee and opposed the "reforms" of the New Deal tooth and nail – to modify its opposition to the welfare-warfare state, accepting "two cheers for capitalism" instead of three and completely abandoning the old right-wing anti-interventionism of Robert A. Taft and the America Firsters for the Burnhamite vision of a new world war, as outlined in the Fifties tome The Struggle for the World, which advocated a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.

This Strangelovian mindset permeated neoconservative circles in the Cold War years, but the collapse of the Soviet Union took them by surprise. At first, they excoriated Ronald Reagan, their former hero, for welcoming Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to make concessions: the whole thing was a trap, they said, and the Soviets would soon resume their dastardly ways. When the Soviet empire collapsed, it left a void at the center of a movement that was, in very large part, autobiographical. All these embittered ex-commies and renegade Trotskyists had nothing to direct their considerable ire at, and the post-Soviet era saw them largely dormant. Kristol and Co. kept busy, however, filling the rather large intellectual vacuum that constituted the "mainstream" conservative movement and kicking William F. Buckley upstairs at his own magazine, where he descended from time to time to utter an irrelevant homily.

At this point, the neocons held the organizational and financial reins of the American Right in their hands, and by the time George W. Bush was on his way to the White House, they had managed to inveigle themselves into the inner councils of the administration’s foreign policy team. They arrived with a firm commitment to a vastly increased military budget and an expansive foreign policy of "democracy-promotion" – by force of arms if need be. They were perfectly positioned, when the 9/11 terrorist attacked occurred, to take full advantage of the power persistence and providence had delivered into their hands. Their agenda had been set out years ago by Kristol’s son, William, in an essay co-authored with Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," in which they summed up the goal of U.S. foreign policy in a single evocative phrase: "benevolent global hegemony." 9/11 provided the perfect context in which to launch a war to implement the neoconservative dream of world conquest. The results are all around us – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and beyond.

It’s funny, but to describe someone as a neoconservative is practically considered a hate crime in certain quarters – in neoconservative quarters, that is. The reason is that many of the original neocons were Jewish, and one major doctrinal pillar of the persuasion is fealty to Israel and its perceived interests. To call out the neocons, to even describe them as such, is therefore evidence of "anti-Semitism," as Jonah Goldberg once complained. Of course, now that conservatives are complaining that all opposition to President Obama’s policies is being caricatured as "racist," the neocons can hardly take this tack.

In any case, the lasting legacy of Irving Kristol is that he was instrumental in turning the conservative movement away from its radical anti-statism and toward an almost exclusive concentration on the moral imperative of an aggressively interventionist foreign policy. His followers and epigones, who carry on the work in his wake, are the warmongers at the Weekly Standard and the Limbaugh-Hannity know-nothing Right, which sees every recognition of the limitations of American power – government power – as a "betrayal." This is surely a most unconservative – even anti-conservative – vision, a form of radicalism that resembles nothing so much as Trotskyism-turned-inside-out.

One of the big differences between Stalin and Trotsky was the former’s conception of "socialism in one country" – the idea that communism could survive only in the Soviet Union and its satellites, without inciting a world revolution. Trotsky, sticking to the orthodox Marxist-Leninist position, held that a world revolution was imperative, or else the Soviet Union was doomed to fail, encircled as it was by the hostile, capitalist West.

What the neocons did was simply switch allegiances from the old Soviet Union to the United States, taking their hotheaded Trotskyist temperament with them – and finally aspiring to lead a world revolution with the United States government at its head. When George W. Bush announced the launching of what he called a "global democratic revolution," he was merely echoing the neo-Trotskyist rhetoric of his closest advisers and the intellectual movement from which they sprang.

The prospects of that revolution grow dimmer by the day, but the idea lives on, as does neoconservatism. In the age of Obama, it takes on new forms – as I explained in my last column – but the essence remains the same: war, war, and yet more war, as far as the eye can see. That, in brief, is the program of the neoconservatives, and Kristol’s legacy for the ages.

Faber: Fed Will Destroy Dollar, Buy Gold

By: Julie Crawshaw Article Font Size

Investing guru Marc Faber advises investors to switch off Ben Bernanke, ignore his government-sponsored “We will keep inflation in check” line — and be sure to buy gold to protect yourself. “Government is there to do something for itself, not for people,” he observes. Faber says the government will have no choice but to print money like crazy and soon. He points out the huge existing debt and the financial crunch that’s coming by 2018 when more retiring Baby Boomers make demands on Social Security and Medicare, Don’t buy bonds or keep your money in cash, Faber counsels: Put money instead into things that will hold their value, like gold, preferably stored outside the U.S. “With a chairman like Mr. Bernanke, I would assume that cash will be worth zero,” he says. “Gold … has been a relatively stable commodity, unlike oil, which (last year) went from $147 to $32 a barrel.” “I repeat what I have said in the past,” Faber says. “No decent citizen should trust the Federal Reserve for one second. It’s very important that everyone own some gold because the government will make the dollar useless.” President Barack Obama said that when it comes to declaring the recession over, he’ll defer to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, The Wall Street Journal reports. “I’ll leave that up to the Fed chairman to pronounce whether it’s officially over or not,” Obama told CNN. “What’s absolutely clear is that the financial markets are working again.”

Netanyahu Asks U.N. 'Have You No Shame' for Giving Ahmadinejad Forum

Congressman Alan Grayson-K Street Whore is Going to Teach Me about Economics

The Media Elite Admit They are Lazy, Incompetent, and Can't Be Trusted

Full Netanyahu UN Speech Part 2 of 4

Full Netanyahu UN Speech Part 1 of 4

What Do We Owe Exonerated Inmates?

Why justice demands full atonement when we punish the innocent

Steve Chapman

Editor's Note: Steve Chapman is on vacation. The following column was originally published in August 2006.

Michael Evans won an Illinois lottery. The state presented him with a check for $162,000. But forgive him if he's not as grateful as most Lotto winners. His payout didn't come to him because he selected some winning numbers. It came because he spent 27 years in prison for a rape and murder committed by someone else.

That amount of money wouldn't be a bad return on a $2 wager. But for the time he spent behind bars, it comes to about $6,000 a year. He could have made more working for minimum wage.

Evans thought someone owed him more than that for all he endured. He filed a $60 million lawsuit against 10 former Chicago police officers whom he accused of framing him. But a federal jury rejected his claim, which meant Evans got nothing—except that state check. The maximum allowed by law, it amounts to less than $17 per day he spent behind bars.

He took the verdict hard, saying, "In my case, I don't really see how justice has been done." Bad as his treatment was, though, it could have been worse. Illinois furnishes modest compensation for inmates who are exonerated. But many states that allow compensation offer even less—and most states provide nothing at all.

Some states are reasonably generous. Utah provides $70,000 for each year spent on death row. Tennessee allows awards as high as $1 million. Alabama, Vermont, Michigan, and Hawaii offer up to $50,000 for each year of mistaken imprisonment. California pays $100 per day.

But others think inmates should be content with breathing fresh air. Wisconsin caps payouts at $25,000, and New Hampshire has a limit of $20,000. Montana grants only tuition, room, and board at any community college in the state.

And 29 states have no laws aimed at making the injured person whole. In those places, if you get locked up by mistake and want financial compensation, you have to go to court or to the legislature, neither of which is obligated to give it. All you're guaranteed in Florida, for example, is $100 and a bus ticket, which is provided to the guilty as well as the innocent.

Florida's legislature has sometimes approved financial redress, but, as in other states, obtaining it can be harder than getting off death row. Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee spent 12 years in prison before being pardoned in 1975. But the state rebuffed 19 separate petitions before finally agreeing to give them each $500,000—in 1998.

Lawsuits can be even harder. To win damages, the former inmate has to demonstrate not only that he was convicted in error, but that the police were guilty of misconduct. Ineptitude or carelessness isn't enough.

Even states that have set up systems for compensation don't necessarily make it easy. Illinois is one of several states that say it doesn't suffice to be cleared by DNA or other compelling evidence: A pardon by the governor on grounds of innocence is also required.

Discovering wrongful convictions is not exactly a freakish occurrence anymore. Since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 123 death row inmates have been cleared. Many other inmates have been exonerated of lesser felonies, usually through DNA analysis.

It's hard to envision a more nightmarish experience than being convicted of a heinous crime that you didn't commit and then sent to prison for years or decades. On top of this, death row inmates spend every hour anticipating the day when they will be escorted from their cells, strapped to a gurney, and injected with lethal poison. When freed, inmates face huge hurdles in trying to rebuild the lives that were taken from them. Most of us wouldn't go through that for all the money in Microsoft.

The 5th Amendment to the Constitution says the government may not take your property without paying just compensation. But if you're entitled to fair market value for being deprived of your house, shouldn't losing a large share of your time on Earth be worth more than $6,000 per year?

In Illinois and most other places, the answer is no. But if justice demands that we punish the guilty, it also calls for full atonement when we punish the innocent.

Iran Under Ahmadinejad

Three scenes from the coming military dictatorship

Iraj Isaac Rahmim

I stand at the arrival hall of the Imam Khomeini Airport south of Tehran in December 2005, thinking about how it has taken me 27 years to get up the courage to return to Iran. There were practical obstacles but also fear. Having lived most of my life in the United States, my apprehension was fed by my family with whispers of the they will arrest you in the airport and don't you know what they do to Jews and somebody will just grab you and no one will ever hear from you again variety. My youthful rebellion, at least in this regard, took unusually long to fruit and, after some toe-dipping trips to Dubai and other neighboring states and with much scene-setting—including arranging for well-connected friends to whisk me through the airport—I return to Iran for a visit, by coincidence, only months after Mahmood Ahmadinejad's election to the presidency.

My first few days are a whirlwind of rediscovery—of old neighborhoods and schools and hang-outs—and acclimatization to crowds and Tehran's demented traffic and speaking Persian all the time. The city is full of hustle and bustle. Everyone I meet (including taxi and car service drivers) seems to have an engineering degree and hold two jobs. The driving is maddening—crossing some streets on foot is nearly impossible—and the smog suffocating. There are young people all around and Internet cafes often have waiting lists.

The people seem hardened at first—I suppose like in most large cities—but open up instantly upon finding that I am from the U.S. There is a charming insecurity that causes nearly everyone to try and put their best foot forward. The local dry cleaner-a young engineer by training-presents a four-page glossy brochure ("VIP-Service," "Today's European Standard Dry Cleaning with Natural Ingredients") and stresses that "don't think, sir, you from America, that we do a bad job; we use European machines and methods."

At the pizza and fast food restaurant run by several young men, a semicircle forms at my table with the waiter carrying my pizza and diet Coke, followed by the manager, the cook, the cashier, and a couple of their hanger-on friends. "Since you are from America," the manager says in a hushed tone, "you know what good pizza should taste like," and only after I signal my approval—with noisy chewing and vigorous head movements and "bah bah, how wonderful"—do they sigh in relief and return to their stations.

There is also a hunger for information from the outside world, particularly America and Europe. The local bookshop owner turns out to be mostly interested in space flight and NASA and aliens. "Are there UFOs flying around, like they say, in America?" he asks, holding my hand tight as we drink tea with sugar cubes. "Do you think they have really found aliens in that desert city, what was it"—he turns to his shop assistant—"Mexico?"

The other thing noticeable about Tehran is that no outdoor visual space is left without a banner slogan or picture of a war martyr or multi-story portrait of Imam Khomeini—the spiritual leader of the Islamic Revolution—or Ayatollah Khamenei who replaced him as the Leader in 1989. One is admonished at every turn toward Islamic behavior and cover (mainly women, of course). "Please follow Islamic hijab," says the handwritten sign on the milk and yogurt refrigerator at the local grocery store. "We are unable to serve sisters with bad hijab," reads the beautifully calligraphed notice behind the cashier at the McBurger sandwich shop (the one with the large logo of a black African fighter, scantily covered with leaves and holding a shield and a giant speared burger). So does the sign in the fast food joint with the smiling, horn-helmeted Viking insignia. Nowhere else in the Moslem world—including Saudi Arabia—have I seen so many slogans, posters, correctives, directives, and reminders of who the Leader is.

As expected, of course, people escape, bend, or break the rules.

A young café owner keeps the lights low, playing classical music and sitting at a corner table whispering with his beautiful, hijabbed girlfriend. They steal tip-of-finger touches when no one seems to be watching. He later tells me that every few months he gets shut down and arrested but always reopens when he's released.

The young pizza shop owner, whom I befriend and use his restaurant as my late night reading hangout, serves me homemade whisky from a plastic gallon ("the opposite of smooth, like drinking a fistful of nails" I report to my friends back home, "but what delight").

And they all escape inside their homes. Visit after visit, I find a paradise of rugs, foods, flowers, poetry, music, and women's beautiful, black, wavy hair, unnaturally full and springy as if rushing out from a tight daily prison. They tune to illegal satellite television channels, drink alcohol, play western music, surf the web, laugh out loud, dance, and commit a dozen other acts that are, at the very least, frowned upon or, depending on the daily winds, arresting offenses. All the prohibitions and punishments, a quarter of a century's worth, have not eliminated fun but, rather, driven it indoors, underground and, in fact, have concentrated it, heightened its joy.

Some look for a way out. Routinely I am asked about what it takes to move to the west. One day, the pizza restaurant waiter shows me a clipped advertisement on the U.S. visa lottery and asks if it is real and do I know how good his chances are. The grocery store owner asks about moving to Canada. The bookshop owner points out one of his assistants ("a very gifted musician but cannot work in Iran") and asks if I can do anything for him.

Many, so battered over the decades, no longer care about either moving elsewhere or following the rules. Over lunch, some female Baha'i relatives, poor and dignified, tell me about arrests and tortures, about how the government built over their cemetery, how their children are not allowed to attend the university, and how their property was confiscated. (One piece of grabbed land was turned, in that nasty, rub-your-nose-in-it habit of the Islamic Republic, into a police station.) During goodbyes, they kiss and hug me in public, illegality of unmarried male-female contact be damned.

JUNE 2007

Two years into the Ahmadinejad presidency and I am back in Iran. According to the writer and journalist Roya Hakakian, the political situation in Iran can always be inferred from the status of women's hijab. Which means things have surely changed. In 2005, the manteau, worn by women who prefer not to don the tent-like chador, had become colorful and shorter and even form-fitting, often over tight jeans. Now, a year and a half later, curves are once more outlawed, and the manteau has reverted to its intended rice-sack bagginess. The choice in colors reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quip ("any color...so long as it is black").

But this is not the first thing I notice. It is my taxi driver on the first morning, a weary, middle aged man who unleashes a string of mild expletives, cursing the government and the president and even Islam. "We had our own religion," he froths. "What was wrong with Zoroastrianism before these Arabs came? We had everything we needed. 'Good thoughts, good words, good deeds,' the Avesta said, and now we have to pray three times a day for show and pretend to listen to the Friday sermon of some stinky cloth-head."

Indeed, my 2007 trip is as a tour through the land of the discontented. Day after day, the car service drivers complain to me about the high prices and rationing of gasoline, as well as the accompanying riots. Restaurateurs tell me about the rising cost of beef and tomatoes. The beet seller just stands beside his steaming handcart and looks down, seemingly depressed and defeated. The cherry seller, his produce on the back of a truck, finds out that my friend works for the government and asks, cynically, that we take a message to aghayoon ("the gentlemen") about how bad everything is. I listen to them all. I buy two kilos of beets instead of one; I buy three kilos of cherries instead of two; I tip the taxis and restaurant waiters high, and their eyes practically pop out in surprise and they smile in gratitude before slipping back into melancholy.

The economy has gone downhill. The newspapers talk about 20 percent annual inflation. Except for basic staples such as bread or rice, prices have soared. Everyone I meet seems to have a day job and a night job and a late night or a weekend job. They crave sympathy and, when they find out I am from the outside, they lay out their income and expenses in front of me without being asked.

"I make here 200,000 Toman"-around $200-"per month and my rent for a room and kitchenette is 400,000 a month," the worker at a music and video shop tells me. "Of course I have to have other jobs."

"Do you have any business with government offices? I know people and can help you get things done," he later offers as we drink tea and again as we part, giving me his card. A few days later, passing by, I decide to pay him a visit and take him out for a chat but the tea shop is closed with a banner stating that they are shut due to illegal activities. A neighbor tells me that officials from the city found proscribed material—a few Western music CDs, I imagine—and took everyone and everything away.

Despite the repression and arrests and closing of the opposition newspapers, Iranians are brave and there are those who speak out. A group of economists send an open letter to Ahmadinejad after he summarily orders banks, including private ones, to reduce their interest rates a few percentage points and throws everything into chaos. The president then travels to the provinces and, like a monarch from centuries past, announces spur-of-the-moment handouts to the citizens. He sets up one crony after another in government posts-many from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or the Islamic Basij. Government contracts, including important ones having to do with the oil and gas sector (80 percent of the country's export) are given to insiders who know nothing about oil, gas, technology, or economics.

And, of course, everywhere there is politics: the nuclear quest, Holocaust denial, the incessant talk about "A world without Zionism," the destruction of Israel. A friend in Iran's banking sector reports that every time Ahmadinejad opens his mouth, nervous Iranians shuffle a billion dollars into Dubai banks.

Still, I try to ignore everything; I am intent on being a tourist and playing at homecoming and going from place to place, making friends. I am still charmed by those I meet.

One afternoon I go to a lecture at the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue, which was founded by former president Khatami. It is in a quiet side street in leafy northern Tehran. The group is small—only 20 of us at the most—and includes a top former official whose angelic-faced daughter presides. With a nervousness appropriate to her age, she calls us to order and at length introduces the speaker and runs the question and answer discussion afterwards. Later, she seemingly floats on her chador during the meet and greet, going from group to group and inviting us to have more tea and sweets.

But what stands out most is the former official himself, a cleric in full attire, who sits impassively as the speaker, an academic, waxes poetic about "Islamic globalism" (as opposed to "Western globalization") and then, politely but unmistakably, rebukes him for his careless analysis and for glossing over the mixed and troubled history of Islam as it, violently and quickly, expanded during its early years. That night, again, as with my 2005 trip, I wishfully imagine a maturation of the Islamic Republic, with even high-level leaders seeking dialogue and moderation. This is within three months of the so-called Saffron uprising by the people of Burma—led by monks and violently suppressed by the ruling generals and, when that happens, I reflect on how different Iran is, how Iran is carving a different path to the future.

But the truth is despite the many stories you hear about Ahmadinejad's stupidity and incompetence, he is a clever and successful populist. Like his friend Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Ahmadinejad has tapped into the large reserve of resentment among Iran's poor and the provincial populations—two groups long mocked and ignored by the country's elites. He takes his cabinet meetings on regular tours of the country. He has his officials accept hand-written notes with requests from the people at rallies. He is a good speaker and, to the Iranian ear, charming. He kisses children, talks to the families of the war martyrs, and liberally doles out oil money. He is said to still live in his modest house in central Tehran rather than the Presidential Palace, and people are impressed by this. He has even championed the occasional progressive reform, such as trying to open soccer matches to female fans and kissing the hand of his old female school teacher in respect. Fundamentalists attacked him both times.

One night, towards the end of my stay, a relative and I go to one of the few restaurants that features live music. It is—as with most fun in Tehran—physically underground. We take a long flight of dangerously steep, no-handrail stairs down into the outlandishly appointed space. The traditional Iranian music—performed by middle-aged male musicians—is played with a special joy, a bit faster than it is supposed to be. As the night wears on, the singer begins to snap his fingers, the hips of the tonbaki shake as he beats at his hand-held drum, and we all gyrate in place, men and women, laughing, clapping rhythmically, talking a bit too loudly.

Suddenly, at five minutes to 10, the music stops, bright lights come on, and everyone quiets down with an air of conspiracy. At 10 sharp, two men walk down the stairs. They are warmly welcomed by the proprietor, quickly seated, and fluttered about by the waiters who set down tea and cake. They stay for only a few minutes and then leave. Presently, the lights dim again, the musicians jump on stage, the music starts, our breath—seemingly held for all those minutes—is once more let out in chatter and singing, and the proprietor goes from table to table explaining. He tells me, the obvious newcomer: "It costs us around twenty of your dollars per night and the Promotion of Virtue and Proscription of Vice inspectors come at the appointed time."

Towards the end of the night, the last song is a version of Ey Iran, the informal national anthem with nary a reference to Islam ("Oh Iran, oh bejeweled land/Oh, your soil is the wellspring of the arts") but this, too, is played and sung faster than the weighty, respectful way it is supposed to be and, in fact, become faster with every verse and repetition, minute after minute, until we are all on feet, singing along, laughing, dancing with abandon, arms swinging, hips free, hijabs ignored, hair down, limits and prohibitions forgotten. I look around and in that tempo and that singing and that momentary absence of forced piety, I can hear a repudiation of political Islam. Thirty years of state-enforced religiosity, of Orwellian-named government agencies, of children encouraged to report on their parents, of thugs in the street wiping off girls' makeup with sandpaper or shoving their bared feet into swarming buckets of cockroaches, of lashing of men and stoning of women, has had the opposite effect and, as if an accelerated natural selection is at work, Iranians have become smarter and more resistant to the sloganeering, hiding behind a morose, fake façade of Islam in the light of day and the street, reverting back to their true selves in the dark of night and the underground.

Power to the People

I was planning another visit in 2009, but scheduling difficulties kept getting in the way. My friends in Iran suggested I visit "after the elections." What happened next needs little retelling. The circumstantial evidence points to a stolen electionhttp—the aftermath of which, according to one observer, resembled "a crime scene." The popular will, in the street and the ballot box, seems to have been violently suppressed for the moment. There is a split among high level clerics and leading figures of the Islamic Republic, with some insiders, including Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, even questioning the legitimacy of the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad government. The Revolutionary Guards (under whose formal control the Basiji blackshirts were put early in 2009) have bared their teeth, stating that "the eye of mischief must be blinded completely and gouged out," and have set out to do this with killings and midnight raids and roundup of former officials and opposition figures, all while trying to jam satellite signals and arrest reporters and blame everything on the usual suspects—to wit, the U.S. and U.K. There are also the show-trials, with pajama-clad prisoners in the hundreds filed into an auditorium to confess their "crimes." There is evidence of torture and rape in the prisons—as even some government entities have been forced to admit—as well as deaths under torture.

But the people are not done, either. Demonstrations continued for weeks—albeit smaller ones. There are strikes and flyers and YouTube videos and Twitter and Facebook communications and the nightly retreat to the rooftops, a communion of neighbors, ceding the ground level, as always, to the thugs, but remaining true with shouts to God and against dictators.

And so I sit comfortably in my adopted country, unable to shake the images of the shocked and disbelieving faces after the "results" were announced; of the demonstrators—mature and orderly and, above all, dignified—with a belief in their own inalienable rights; not privileges doled out from time-to-time to release pressure but rights inalienable; rights theirs by virtue of their humanity. I see those faces attacked by the club-wielding, knife-slashing Islamic Basij blackshirts. I see the woman in front of Tehran University's main gate—always in front of the university—pivoting on her right heal and giving a left-footed kick to a thug three times her size. I see the other young woman who, by the virtue of a single grainy video of her death, has become a symbol of the end of some sort of innocence, bleeding on her hijab—that damned forced hijab, that true symbol of political Islam—as her pupils fixate upward in death. I see those I met and befriended during my trips—the young café owner with his hopes and his girlfriend; the cherry-seller with his complaints; the old taxi driver with his frustrations and expletives—and hang on to the fast-fading hope that this is, by some miracle, a zag in the road to democracy. But I also fear, deep down, that Iran is headed towards a military dictatorship, ruthless, its veil of legitimacy lifted for all to see, and with nothing to lose.

Iraj Isaac Rahmim is working on a novel set in Dubai and a book of memoirs. His recent essays and fiction have appeared in Antioch Review, Commentary, Commonweal, and Rosebud.

The Truth About Media Bias

Every reporter has political beliefs

John Stossel

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."

Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias?

The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington, D.C., referred to "protests that began with an opposition to health care. ..."

Apparently, in the Times reporter's and editors' view, opponents of the Obama health care plan oppose health care itself. (The online article was later changed.)

Economic-policy reporters usually present the views of supporters of new regulations as objective and public-spirited. For a contrary view, at best they'll ask a Republican or a representative of the regulated business, who is portrayed as self-serving. (Republicans tend to offer a watered-down version of the Democrats' proposals.)

A recent Bloomberg report on President Obama's plans to rewrite financial regulations is typical: "Obama has proposed new regulations overseeing the systemic risk posed by large financial institutions." The reporter quoted White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers in support of the plan. Although there are plenty of reasons to doubt that regulators are competent at judging systemic risk, no skeptical economist was quoted. Readers are led to believe the program is perfectly feasible.

Most reporting on the "stimulus" package has the same flaw. Just to call it "stimulus" is to editorialize, since the idea that government spending can truly stimulate an economy is at best doubtful. Many good economists say it can't be done. After all, the money is taken from somewhere else. But the economists rarely are quoted.

In addition, reporters seem to think they've done their job if they merely describe the intentions behind the proposed "reform." But the burden of proof should be on the sponsors of regulation and spending. They should have to make a convincing case that their new rules are superior to the free market. Who cares about intentions?

Fuel-efficiency standards, intended to save gasoline, give us less crashworthy cars, so more people die. Subsidies to American farmers destroy Third World markets. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac encouraged shaky subprime mortgages and helped cause the housing and financial turmoil.

The long list of bad results that have emerged from well-intended regulation ought to dim reporters' enthusiasm. But it hasn't.

I admit that my guiding political and economic philosophy—libertarianism—now shapes my reporting, in this way: It prompts me to ask questions that others don't ask.

I don't claim to be the expert. But some of my colleagues who write about business know nothing about economics. Many are comically hostile to profit—they dismiss it as "greed" (although they bargain for the highest salaries possible).

On my former ABC blog, some people called me a biased "conservative."

"Your (sic) a shill anyways John. dont (sic) let the door hit you in the you know what."

I'm surprised that the self-described enemies of intolerance can't tolerate even one MSM reporter who doesn't share their statist premises. The interventionist state has been the status quo for generations, so I must be something other than "conservative." "Liberal" is what my philosophy used to be called. It's the statists who are the reactionaries.

Not all the blog comments were hostile:

"Congratulations. The mind boggles at the thought of giving free reign on air to someone who actually understands economics."

"Stossel challenges conventional wisdom, so I hope Fox lets him do that."

I assume Fox will. My points of view on things like immigration, nation-building, and the war on drugs differ from those of many at Fox, but libertarians like Judge Andrew Napolitano still seem to thrive there. The alleged "conservatives" are pretty tolerant.

I think they'll tolerate me. See you there next month.

John Stossel joins Fox News on October 19. He's the author of Give Me a Break and of Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.