Taking a deep breath… First the bad news. Because I used a relational shotgun to handle my mosquito–sized storage needs here, the first version of MTClient, zipped into an archive with a single subdirectory, weighs in at a hefty 3.1 megs. There's a chance that version 1.0 can come in at less than a meg. To compensate for that, you uninstall it by deleting the directory. I just noticed the spell checker leaves an entry in the Registry, but that will change.Now, MTClient: Anyone who's posted to a Movable Type blog should be able to figure out how to work this already. There are only two things I want to be specific about here: To set up a blog account, you click the Configure menu button and select Account Setup. The other thing is, icons are mandatory, but not always clear, so: Mouseover the toolbar buttons to see the hot keys that do the same stuff. Saving a post and the image tag builder aren't implemented yet, but you might not care.

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This is pretty much the last time I'll post something about MTClient here. I have the nerve to think it worthy of a support site and just for the hell of it, here's the blog I'll been testing it on. XREWare is going to be an ongoing experiment.

I've been working on a home for my blogging tool (called MTClient, by the way). It's given me an excuse to try a few things I'd been meaning to try anyway. So I've set up a new Movable Type installation from scratch, set up Yabb SE, a php forum package, mucked around with the configuration…all that will run out of a different domain name, which I will post sometime tomorrow. I've worked on MTClient most of yesterday and a good chunk of today, and right now it works really…I mean really nicely for me. It needs some spit and polish, and it needs to be more configurable. Beyond that, it worls pretty much like a word processor for Movable Type.

No? You mean things can happen for non–economic reasons? Shocking!
Flu vaccine rationed as need grows Shortage in US; demand in area high after death By Raja Mishra and Jenna Russell, Globe Staff, 12/12/2003 Following the death of a Worcester college student, parents and students scrambled for flu protection yesterday after most area doctors and clinics had run out of vaccine. The events reflected a widespread national shortage that has local and federal health officials planning strict rationing of the coveted vaccine. The influenza outbreak has stretched the health care system. In one breath, physicians urged flu shots and then in the next complained they had none, as hundreds of patients darted from office to office in search of vaccine.

Libya's Slow Trek Out of the Shadows After more than three decades of ironfisted rule, Moammar Kadafi is changing course. But it will be a long journey for the pariah nation. By Megan K. Stack Times Staff Writer December 12, 2003 TRIPOLI, Libya — At first, the changes were easy to ignore. Military roadblocks on the long, sun–scalded highways out of town melted away. Pious Muslim men were allowed to grow beards again. Libyans were permitted to carry a second passport after years as pariah travelers. Things like that; little things, one after the next. Improbably, Moammar Kadafi stopped cursing America and the West, and the mercurial Libyan leader took to the national airwaves to hail a "new era." Libyan officials began reminding anybody who cared to listen that this sandy Mediterranean nation issued one of the first arrest warrants for Osama bin Laden. Then, this spring, Kadafi brought in a sharp–tongued, American–educated oil specialist and handed him unlikely instructions: Reform a system engineered by Kadafi himself. Under that newcomer, Prime Minister Shukri Mohammed Ghanim, Libya is undergoing a massive privatization of its socialist economy. "It's trying to become more democratic — quote, unquote," a European diplomat here said. "It will be easier for the West to stomach." Beneath its virgin beaches and its crumbling troves of Roman ruins, Libya is still a shadowy place. After more than three decades of capricious, ironfisted rule by the man known as "The Revolution Leader," or simply "The Leader," most people are afraid to speak with journalists, and international human rights groups are kept away. Allegations of arrests, disappearances and killings continue to darken Kadafi's regime, along with suspicions that Libya is trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, long–standing U.N. sanctions were lifted this fall, and hopeful, fearful Libyans are now blinking about like a people slowly waking from collective slumber. They are telling themselves, as one government official says quietly over a cup of coffee, glancing over both shoulders to see who might be near: "We can be a normal country, even with Kadafi."

Guild: More Minority Writers Find TV Work The Associated Press Friday, December 12, 2003; 1:41 AM LOS ANGELES – The number of minority writers working on television series rose in 2002, part of an overall hiring increase, the Writers Guild of America–West said Thursday. The total number of writers working in prime–time TV increased from 1,334 in 2001 to 1,576, while the number of minority writers rose from 135 to 205 in the same period, the guild said. Minority writers have started to break into non–ethnic sitcoms and dramas but remain concentrated in comedies, especially ethnic ones, the guild said.

Let's face it: a strong EU would mean there's suddenly three superpowers again (do NOT ignore China)
EU Leaders Divided on New Constitution By PAUL AMES The Associated Press Friday, December 12, 2003; 7:02 AM BRUSSELS, Belgium – Leaders from 25 nations struggled Friday to overcome deep divisions on a new constitution to settle the balance of power in the European Union as it opens up to new members from the former Communist east. The talks began with an agreement on a separate deal to boost the bloc's ability to run military operations, including by setting up a EU planning cell at NATO's high command. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi called the defense deal a "fantastic step forward" that would improve relations with the United States. The Europeans have to agree on a draft constitutional treaty to guide an expanded EU that will be bigger and richer than the United States, generating a quarter of the world's economic output with more than 450 million people. The charter aims to strengthen cooperation on defense, foreign policy, immigration and other issues to give the European bloc a political voice to match its formidable economic clout.

Saddam's grand presidential palace likely site for U.S. Embassy JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer Thursday, December 11, 2003 ©2003 Associated Press (12–11) 15:28 PST BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) –– U.S. bombs never hit Saddam Hussein's grandiose presidential palace in Baghdad, making its ample meeting rooms and vast conference tables an ideal headquarters for U.S.–led occupation authorities after the war. Now the building –– the physical seat and biggest symbol of Saddam's 23–year dictatorship –– is the likely site for the next U.S. Embassy in Iraq, U.S. officials in Washington and Iraq said this week. A State Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the palace is among several locations under consideration for the embassy, where the U.S. government's official representative will be based after power is handed over to an Iraqi government by July 1. Critics say the move will show the world that the U.S. intends to remain the true power in Iraq.

A Deliberate Debacle By PAUL KRUGMAN James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on? Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard–liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation. Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq – will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging? And reports suggest a scandal in Bechtel's vaunted school–repair program. But I've always found claims that profiteering was the motive for the Iraq war – as opposed to a fringe benefit – as implausible as claims that the war was about fighting terrorism. There are deeper motives here. Mr. Wolfowitz's official rationale for the contract policy is astonishingly cynical: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts" – future efforts? – and "should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members." Translation: we can bribe other nations to send troops. But I doubt whether even Mr. Wolfowitz believes that. The last year, from the failure to get U.N. approval for the war to the retreat over the steel tariff, has been one long lesson in the limits of U.S. economic leverage. Mr. Wolfowitz knows as well as the rest of us that allies who could really provide useful help won't be swayed by a few lucrative contracts. If the contracts don't provide useful leverage, however, why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation.

Senate eyes civil union bill for SJC Would ask justices for 'clarification' By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 12/11/2003 The Massachusetts Senate, hoping to find some middle ground in the divisive debate on same-sex marriage, is expected today to send a civil union bill to the state Supreme Judicial Court and ask if the legislation conforms with the court's gay marriage decision. With Senate President Robert E. Travaglini spearheading the move, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary is scheduled to produce a sweeping civil unions bill that the Senate leadership is convinced provides all the protections, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage that the court says the law must grant gay couples. But the bill would not describe the unions as "marriage" -- a key sticking point with gay marriage advocates who say civil unions fall short of offering the full legal benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples. [P6: This is what I'm talking about. If you've got all the protections, obligations and benefits, why let a specific word become a sticking point?]

Pentagon Finds Halliburton Overcharged on Iraq Contracts By DOUGLAS JEHL WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — A Pentagon investigation has found evidence of overcharging and other violations in billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts for Iraq that were awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, military officials said today. The violations by a Halliburton Company subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, could involve "potentially tens of millions of dollars" in overcharging for fuel that the company is trucking into Iraq under one of two contracts, said Michael Thibault, deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. In a draft report, Mr. Thibault said, the agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers seek reimbursement from the company. A second set of violations, in a second contract with the Army, involve unacceptable delays by the Halliburton subsidiary in providing cost estimates to the government for dozens of separate projects already under way in Iraq, Mr. Thibault said. These violations, for work that includes the construction of food, housing and other facilities for the military, could involve overcharging as well, Mr. Thibault said. A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, said in an e-mail message that "it is not the fact that K.B.R. has overcharged." Ms. Hall said she was confident that responses being prepared by the company would satisfy the audit agency.

The MT client now works. Which is to say I found the one random letter that was (but should not have been) capitalized. You'll note (or not) this post has a category. Now it needs a couple of formatting commands to make it useful. That's not all the capabilities I intend to give it, of course. I want spell checking, file uploads and insertion of custom HTML. I have a couple of other weird thoughts, like submitting a post to multiple blogs (sort of a back-up blog arrangement). But now that I have all the remote updating stuff working the rest is straightforward coding.

Big Money's Spigot Will Stay Open By Nick Anderson and Janet Hook Times Staff Writers December 11, 2003 WASHINGTON ? Even though it erected formidable new barriers between politicians and deep-pocketed donors, the election law upheld Wednesday by the Supreme Court has not shut down big money in politics. Instead, creative operatives allied with both parties are constructing new groups to raise and spend political money to get around the law.[P6: emphasis added] The law wiped out a vast source of unregulated funding, known as "soft money," that became a subject of scandal in the 1990s as corporations, unions and wealthy individuals wrote large checks to political parties. But as opponents of the law predicted, much of that money is finding its way back into the political system through other means. "This law will not remove one dime from politics," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the law's leading congressional opponent. "Outside special interest groups have become the modern-day political parties. Soft money is not gone ? it has just changed its address." It is too early to predict the law's full effect, but the unfolding 2003-04 campaign cycle is, to some degree, proving him right.

Click to get the whole story

Click for the answer

…might be my enemy too.

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Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. To Stem Attacks CIA Said to Be Enlisting Hussein Agents By Dana Priest and Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, December 11, 2003; Page A41 The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials. The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials. Badran and Ayad Alawi, leader of the INA, are spending much of this week at CIA headquarters in Langley to work out the details of the new program. Both men have worked closely with the CIA over the past decade in unsuccessful efforts to incite coups against Saddam Hussein. The agency and the two men believe they can effectively screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory, officials said. By contrast, some Pentagon officials and Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, vehemently oppose allowing former intelligence and military officials into the new organization for fear they cannot be trusted. Intelligence experts said Chalabi and his sponsors also fear some former government officials would use the new apparatus to undermine the influence of Chalabi, who wants to play a central role in a new Iraq. Although no deadline has been set, officials hope to have the service running by mid-February. Congress had approved money for the effort in the classified annex of this year's budget. The service will focus largely on domestic intelligence and is seen by some administration officials as a critical step in the administration's effort to hand over the running of the country to Iraqis. The CIA declined to comment on the program.

Court Ruling Affirms New Landscape of Campaign Finance By GLEN JUSTICE ASHINGTON, Dec. 10 ? The Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of last year's campaign finance law quashed any final hopes politicians and their parties had about returning to the days when unlimited contributions flowed freely into their hands. The decision affirmed the core provisions of the largest overhaul of the campaign finance system in the last 30 years, locking in place rules that have been in effect since last November. It upheld the ban on the "soft money" that national political parties collected from corporations, labor unions and anyone wealthy enough to write a large check. And it restricted political advertising around election time. What's left is a system in which regulated contributions known as "hard money" are the official coin of the realm for those who play in federal politics. Candidates can collect up to $2,000 per donor in each election and parties can raise $25,000 per donor each year. Practically speaking, those who have skillfully found ways to raise such contributions in large amounts will hold the largest sword in next year's elections. At the top of the list is President Bush, who has established a vast network of business executives and other loyal Republicans and has amassed roughly $110 million so far this year. Among the Democratic candidates, Howard Dean has far surpassed his party's rivals by building an Internet-based network of contributors who have so far given more than $25 million.

Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals By DAVID E. SANGER and DOUGLAS JEHL WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 … President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects. White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq. Many countries excluded from the list, including close allies like Canada, reacted angrily on Wednesday to the Pentagon action. They were incensed, in part, by the Pentagon's explanation in a memorandum that the restrictions were required "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."

Bidding for Isolation Just when it looked as if there was a chance to expand international involvement in Iraq, President Bush has reversed field again and left the European allies angry, the secretary of state looking out of step, and the rest of us wondering exactly what his policy really is. Late last week, it seemed as if Mr. Bush had decided to seek the global support he needs to free the United States of the demands that come with its unilateral occupation of Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Brussels, expansively inviting NATO and the United Nations to join the security and reconstruction efforts. And President Jacques Chirac was sending the message that he was prepared, finally, to get involved. Then came the news that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had issued a decree, approved by Mr. Bush, barring any country that did not support the invasion ? including France, Germany, Russia and Canada ? from competing for next year's $18.6 billion in prime reconstruction contracts. The document, printed before Mr. Powell was back in Foggy Bottom, said America's "essential security interests" required the move. But it is hard to follow that reasoning when it means cutting out countries that might be able to bid competitively, contribute money, forgive debts and relieve American forces. The approved list of 63 nations includes Britain, Italy and Japan, but quickly tapers off to countries unlikely to help and to struggling nations like Albania and Eritrea. United States officials say the rules apply only to American-financed contracts. But the other sources, like the World Bank, are small. And the American portion covers such things as rebuilding the electric, transportation, communications and oil industries, and what the Wolfowitz memo delicately calls "the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to equip the new Iraqi army." Now the European Union is considering whether the ban violates world trading rules. The Russians say they will refuse to write off their $8 billion in Iraqi debt. And the new Canadian government, which was supposed to have been friendly to Mr. Bush, says it will reconsider its own donations. No amount of preferential bidding and sweet deals for American companies ? including the extra dollar or so a gallon that Halliburton charges for shipping fuel into Iraq ? will repay American taxpayers for the cost of going it largely alone.

I've ignored everyone on and off-line today for no good reason. I started obsessing on my MT client, only to run into a wall that shouldn't be there. The wall is called mt.setPostCategories, and the procedure call and results are in the extended text.Procedure call <?xml version="1.0"?> <methodCall> <methodName>mt.setPostCategories</methodName> <params> <param> <value><string>2501</string></value> </param> <param> <value><string>SomeUser</string></value> </param> <param> <value><string>SomePassword</string></value> </param> <param> <value> <array> <data> <value> <struct> <member> <name>categoryID</name> <value><string>9</string></value> </member> <member> <name>isPrimary</name> <value><boolean>0</boolean></value> </member> </struct> </value> <value> <struct> <member> <name>categoryID</name> <value><string>8</string></value> </member> <member> <name>isPrimary</name> <value><boolean>0</boolean></value> </member> </struct> </value> </data> </array> </value> </param> </params> </methodCall> Result<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <methodResponse> <fault> <value> <struct> <member> <name>faultString</name> <value><string>Saving placement failed: Column 'placement_category_id' cannot be null'#$A'</string></value> </member> <member> <name>faultCode</name> <value><int>1</int></value> </member> </struct> </value> </fault> </methodResponse>

The category ought to be Tech, but… For no apparent reason I've chosen to make this a "live fire" test. Test, you say? Yes. This post is written in my very own Movable Type client. Seriously NOT ready for prime time because I need to add some HTML tagging support. Oh, and there's some stuff I haven't tested, like Trackbacks. And I'll be adding spell-checking and a thesaurus I bought the code for it…there's a limit to my cleverness). In a week or so it'll be ready for my personal use, and I'll be soliciting suggestions for user interface improvements and maybe the occasional additional feature.

The Center for American Progress: Pigs at the Trough The House yesterday passed a massive $373 billion spending bill, laden with pork-barrel spending and controversial provisions as far as the eye could see. As the WSJ reports, "The size of the measure invites abuse. Spending set-asides for home-state projects have grown to extraordinary levels, filling scores of pages in the Congressional Record, and from the National Rifle Association to major corporations, conservative] political allies have added legislative language for their self-interests." For instance, "over the bitter protests of many small ranchers and growers, country-of-origin food labeling rules, scheduled to take effect in September 2004, would be delayed two years after a lobbying campaign by big meatpackers and food marketers. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., whose political action committee tops the list of PAC contributors to federal candidates this year, quietly added its muscle. The United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Association stepped in at the end with Republicans to help seal the deal." Similarly, the gun manufacturers have added a provision which "requires the FBI to destroy records of applicants for gun purchasers after 24 hours instead of current 90 days." WHAT'S IN -- PORK: At a time of massive budget deficits, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, "Lawmakers face so much pork, it can't be counted." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), "said more than 7,000 earmarks worth more than $7.5 billion are in the bill." Some projects included in the bill: $200,000 for "educational outreach" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; The Detroit Free Press notes there is "$225,000 for a Kentucky Civil War theme park, $325,000 for a swimming pool in Salinas, CA., and $2 million for the First Tee youth golf program"; the LA Times points out "$100,000 for street furniture and sidewalks in Laverne, AL., $44 million for a bridge to Treasure Island in Florida and $75,000 for a North Pole Transit System in Alaska"; "Fiscal conservative" Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) secured $225,000 to fix a swimming pool in his hometown that he and childhood friends clogged 60 years ago; and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) -- the same Senator who helped negotiate a Medicare privatization bill to "control costs" -- secured $50 million to build a rainforest in Coralville, IA. The pork barreling is so egregious that even some hometown papers that stand to benefit are outraged. AP reports that last month, an Iowa newspaper columnist wrote that the rainforest project suffers from a "legitimacy crisis," while a recent editorial in another newspaper complained that asking for a federal handout gives Iowa a bad name. "There's nothing Iowa about begging the federal government for ($50) million," a Nov. 21 Iowa City Press Citizen editorial stated. "There's nothing Iowa about a project that won't pay for itself." WHAT'S OUT -- MEDIA OWNERSHIP PROVISIONS: The Financial Times reports that while both Houses passed bills to preserve a national media ownership cap of 35%, the final bill makes it 39% - just high enough so that News Corporation and Viacom do not have to sell any of their local television stations. Right-wing News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch , not surprisingly, hailed the victory, as did many other media companies that contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers to make sure they got their way. Still, the WP reports, "to many lawmakers, consumer advocacy groups and ordinary consumers, Congress is missing the point by focusing on how many stations a network can own and not on other FCC media rules allowing more local television station consolidation and newspaper-television common ownership." Specifically, "unaddressed by the spending bill are five other new media ownership rules adopted by the FCC, including one that largely lifts a ban prohibiting one company from owning a newspaper and television station in most cities, the 'cross ownership rule.'" Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has passed a bill through the Senate that would turn back all of the FCC's regulations -- but that bill is being barred from a vote by House leaders. However, it appears the House is only a handful of votes away from forcing a vote. In the House, 206 members are sponsoring Dorgan's bill -- and if just a few more sign on to a "discharge petition," the bill would be forced to a vote. WHAT'S OUT -- OVERTIME, REIMPORTATION, RADIO FREE EUROPE: Despite passing both houses of Congress by wide margins, the final spending bill stripped out provisions giving seniors access to lower-priced prescription drugs from abroad. It also waters down the House and Senate-passed rollback of the FCC's media ownership deregulation. On overtime, under White House pressure, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) dropped his provision to prevent the Bush Administration from implementing rules that will deny overtime pay to about 8 million workers. And the WP reports that the bill also eliminates Radio Free Europe. The program is a tiny $11 million a year -- and is "one of the cheapest, most effective and most popular tools of U.S. public diplomacy." The cutback comes just weeks after the State Department Advisory Commission called for "an immediate end to the absurd and dangerous underfunding of public diplomacy in a time of peril."

Shockingly, Kristol manages to show a difference between biased and dishonest by providing a decent look at the possibilities while making his preferences clear.

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How Dean Could Win . . . By William Kristol Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27 … Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004. But surely the fact that Bush is now a proven president running for reelection changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover under whom there will have been no net job creation, and the first since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S. soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been misleading. And President Bush will be running for reelection after a two-year period in which his party has controlled both houses of Congress. The last two times the American people confronted a president and a Congress controlled by the same party were in 1980 and 1994. The voters decided in both cases to restore what they have consistently preferred for the last two generations: divided government. Since continued GOP control of at least the House of Representatives seems ensured, the easiest way for voters to re-divide government would be to replace President Bush in 2004. And with a plurality of voters believing the country is on the wrong track, why shouldn't they boot out the incumbent president?

This article notwithstanding, I have no problems treating North Korea as a major problem. It's one thing to act on merely suggestive intelligence when a country is denying they have what your intel suggests, another when the country openly declared your intel is correct.

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N. Korea's Nuclear Success Is Doubted Experts question U.S. claims about the North's atomic abilities, warning a showdown based on dubious evidence could further damage trust. By Douglas Frantz Times Staff Writer December 9, 2003 SEOUL — The Bush administration has asserted in recent months that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs and is rapidly developing the means to make more. The statements have raised anxiety about a nuclear arms race in Asia and the possibility that terrorists could obtain atomic weapons from the North Korean regime. But the administration's assessment rests on meager fresh evidence and limited, sometimes dated, intelligence, according to current and former U.S. and foreign officials. Outside the administration, and in some quiet corners within it, there is nothing close to a consensus that North Korean scientists have succeeded in fabricating atomic bombs from plutonium, as the CIA concluded in a document made public last month. Independent experts and some U.S. officials also are skeptical of administration claims that North Korea is within months of manufacturing material for more weapons at a secret uranium-enrichment plant. Interviews with more than 30 current and former intelligence officials and diplomats in Asia, Europe and the United States provide an in-depth look at the development of North Korea's nuclear program, the regime's elaborate efforts to conceal it and the behind-the-scenes debate over how much danger it poses. According to these officials:

• The U.S. has failed to find the North Korean plant that the Bush administration says will soon start producing highly enriched uranium.
• North Korea's attempts to reprocess plutonium recently hit a roadblock, raising new questions about its technical capabilities.
• China rushed 40,000 troops to its border with North Korea last summer after the U.S. warned that the regime of Kim Jong Il might try to smuggle "a grapefruit-size" quantity of plutonium out of the country. No signs of smuggling have been discovered.

The doubts about U.S. intelligence come as the administration engages in a high-wire diplomatic battle over its demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program and open the country to inspectors.

City looks to get drugs via Canada (By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff) Beginning next July, Boston plans to import prescription drugs from Canada for thousands of city workers and retirees, under a cost-saving proposal Mayor Thomas M. Menino will announce today.

The San Francisco Chronicle:

The store that brought you t-shirts bearing offensive Asian characature washing clothes with the slogan "Two Wongs Make It White" continues it's enlightened policies. In the article, Larry Elder…long at or close to the top of the Troublesome Negro list…has the most precious quote:

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Retailer's image problem: Racism Joan Ryan Tuesday, December 9, 2003 I didn't get her name, but I'm guessing Brittany or Jordan. She was standing at the check-out counter yesterday of the Abercrombie & Fitch store at the San Francisco Center on Market Street. She was blond, thin and wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole and a cutoff-jeans miniskirt low enough on her hips to reveal the waistband of her Abercrombie & Fitch long johns. "Can I help you?'' "I'd like to apply for job,'' I said. "Oh,'' she said, momentarily flustered. "You want to check on an application?'' "No, I'd like an application.'' She handed me the form, then at my request left to fetch the manager. Huge photographs of fresh-faced blonds covered the walls. As I waited, two actual fresh-faced blond employees, trying not to be obvious, peeked around the wall to take a look at me for themselves. Word had spread: A middle-aged woman in a turtle-neck and slacks was asking for an application. To work here. With us. I must have seemed to them like a slab of headcheese trying to sneak on to a plate of petits fours. The fresh-faced blond manager couldn't have been nicer. He said all the right things: The store was always looking for good people, so drop off the finished application any time. But I haven't turned in the application. I don't need another job, and I know -- and the surely manager knows -- I don't embody the carefully and expensively created A&F persona. Neither, apparently, do young minority applicants, according to a class- action suit filed against the 602-store chain. The plaintiffs claim Abercrombie & Fitch discriminates against minorities by pressuring stores to hire sales associates who fit the "A&F look,'' which from their catalogs, advertisements and looping videos in their stores, is white, young and preferably blond. The plaintiffs claim they were denied jobs or squeezed out of jobs because of their race or ethnicity.

Governor abandons groping inquiry Stuntwoman sues, alleges a smear Bob Egelko, Christian Berthelsen, Chronicle Staff Writers Tuesday, December 9, 2003 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised after his election to seek an independent investigation into allegations that he groped or harassed women during his acting career, has changed his mind, an aide to the governor said Monday. "After consulting with legal counsel and advisors, the governor has concluded that given the political nature of the allegations, an investigation would only provide more fodder for his political opponents,'' said Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman. The announcement came hours after a former movie stuntwoman sued Schwarzenegger for libel, claiming that one of his campaign operatives had smeared her after she accused the actor of sexually abusing her on two movie sets. She said the operative, Sean Walsh, had led reporters to believe that she was a convicted felon.

ABC News: Gore to Endorse Dean in Harlem Tuesday (New York-WABC, December 8, 2003) ? ABCNews has confirmed that former Vice President Al Gore is about to endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination. A so-far unnamed Democratic source "close to Gore" dropped the word Monday. It's a dramatic move that could cement Dean's position in the fight for the party's nod. The source reports Gore agreed to endorse Dean in Harlem in New York City on Tuesday, and then travel with the former Vermont governor to Iowa. That's the site of the January 19th caucuses which kick off the nominating process.

ABC News just finished an interesting special titled "How To Get Fat Without Really Trying." It seems the transcript is already online. It's another long one and it has grist for the two major mills around here—progressives and libertarians.

Black Publishing Company Closes Doors - and Three Magazines by George E. Curry NNPA Editor-in-Chief WASHINGTON (NNPA) - Vanguarde Media, the company that shut down Emerge: Black America's Newsmagazine and BET Weekend, a Sunday supplement that was second only to Ebony magazine in circulation, to make room for Savoy, a new feature-oriented publication that targeted the Black middle class, has filed for bankruptcy. The filing kills Savoy and two other magazines, throwing more than 75 full-time employees out of work and leaving fewer places for Black writers, photographers and illustrators to showcase their work. Keith Clinkscales, the CEO of Vanguarde, made the unexpected announcement to magazine employees during a meeting in New York just two days before Thanksgiving.In a statement issued later that day, Clinkscales said, ''Today Vanguarde Media regrets to announce a decision to cease publication of HONEY, SAVOY and heart&soul magazines and to liquidate the assets of the company. While this is no easy decision for any of us, our most recent efforts at securing funding proved unsuccessful, and we are no longer able to sustain operations.'' All three magazines had a respectable number of readers. Honey had a paid circulation of 387,999, heart&soul had 359,215 and Savoy had a listed circulation of 302,070, according to a national auditing agency. Advertising revenues in the magazine industry have declined in recent years, forcing many magazines to decrease the number of pages they produce, merge or go out of business. In the case of Vanguarde, their financial woes were compounded by the decision to simultaneously publish three, and sometimes four, struggling magazines. At different times, the magazines were redefining themselves, confusing some readers, turning off long-time subscribers while attracting some news ones. Some journalists worry that raising capital for new publications, already a difficult task, may become harder in the wake of Vanguarde�s failure. Yanick Rice Lamb, the former editor-in-chief of both heart&soul and BET Weekend, said new Black magazines can succeed if they are infused with what she calls �patient money.� Rice Lamb explains, �Investors must understand that it may take a while before a magazine breaks even or turns a profit. You hear so many stories of entrepreneurs starting magazines that are under-financed and investors pulling the plug prematurely. Magazine publishing is a capital-intensive business, and it�s not for the faint-hearted.� Lack of sustained funding was only part of Vanguarde�s difficulties. Emerge, BET Weekend and heart&soul magazines were owned by Black Entertainment Television until 2000. At the time, unknown to the public, BET head Robert L. Johnson was positioning his company to be sold for $3 billion to Viacom. In the process, Johnson transferred operational authority over some of his subsidiaries to others. BET's magazine division was placed in the hands of Clinkscales, who had recently formed Vanguarde Media with the goal of quickly building an African-American media conglomerate. When BET was eventually sold, Viacom did not buy its magazines, restaurants or other non-television properties. Clinkscales closed Emerge and BET Weekend shortly after taking over in 2000 and changed the focus of heart&soul magazine. According the industry experts, Clinkscales� strategy was to make inroads into Essence older readership with heart&soul and capture part of its younger audience with Honey magazine. Rice Lamb disagrees with that strategy. �Under Vanguarde, heart&soul evolved from a health and fitness magazine to a lifestyle publication with some health and fitness in it,� she recalls. �What made heart&soul unique from the outset was its focus on healthy living � especifically health and fitness. It was the clear leader and authority in this area, which is why so many other publications scrambled to enhance their health and fitness editorial along with pursuing advertisers in these categories.� Florestine Purnell, managing editor of Emerge magazine, says it was also a mistake to close the only national Black newsmagazine. �The Black community supported Emerge,� she said. �Like most political magazines, it did not have huge circulation numbers but its circulation was larger than the better-funded and better-promoted Nation, New Republic and Weekly Standard magazines. Emerge and BET Weekend were closed to make way for Vanguarde�s new products.� Along the way, Vanguarde bought Impact magazine, an urban music trade magazine that Clinkscales thought could attract companies that normally advertise in Black Enterprise magazine. Bleeding financially, Clinkscales quietly closed Impact after it had no impact. Rice Lamb, who now teaches journalism at Howard University, says Vanguarde�s collapse does not mean Black readers are disinterested in quality magazines. �Readers want more, not less. They always have,� explains Rice Lamb. �We don't have a critical mass of magazines with variety and depth. A few years ago, I thought we were moving in that direction. As of late, we've had a lot of the same-old, same-old. For example, we have a disproportionate number of entertainment magazines.'' More than 17,000 consumer magazines are published in the United States, according to the American Society of Magazine Editors. Only four Black national magazines � Ebony, Jet, Essence and Black Enterprise � have been around at least a quarter of a century. Purnell of Emerge fears the closing of Vanguarde might send the wrong signal to serious African-American readers. �Black readers will be confused, as well as surprised and saddened by this development,� she says. �They�ll be confused because of the promises made to them, which some felt were not realized. They were told to expect content that was relevant to the intelligent, upwardly mobile African-American readers. A lot of former Emerge subscribers who were sent Savoy were disappointed to get a �life-style� magazine. Now they won�t even get that. The sad part is that readers come up empty-handed again, so they may also be angry.� Rice Lamb and Purnell agree that a Black newsmagazine can still be successful if properly funded, aggressively promoted and given enough time to grow its circulation. �The need for a cutting-edge news magazine is greater than ever,� Purnell states. �It�s crucial that Black America have a publication that gives voice to the crucial issues and developments in these troubled times. The mainstream news magazines may touch on the issues that are important to African-Americans, but there is a need for a publication that gives full attention � and a swift kick when necessary � to decision makers and policies that impact the Black community.� One personal note: I was editor-in-chief of Emerge: Black America's News magazine when Vanguarde took over from BET and closed the magazine that I had edited for seven of its 10 years. In the days immediately following the shutdown, I was vocal in my public my criticism of Vanguarde's decision to close Emerge while pretending that it was merely being placed on a ''hiatus.'' Over time, I met separately with Clinkscales and Roy Johnson; we discussed what each of us had done wrong during that tense transition period and wished each other well. That did not alter my view that it was poor decision to close Emerge, but I acknowledged Clinkscales' right to run his company as he saw fit. Johnson, an accomplished journalist and author, returned to Sports Illustrated a year ago as an assistant managing editor, and was succeeded by Ron Stodghill II, a Time magazine correspondent. As disappointed as I was that Vanguarde closed Emerge, I take no joy in seeing six Black magazines killed in the wake of Vanguarde's failure: Emerge, BET Weekend, Savoy, heart&soul, Honey and Impact. We've always had too few magazines. Now, we have even fewer.

Help the Jobless Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A24 THE HOUSE PLANS to show up today for what looks to be its sole day of work this month; the Senate will put in an appearance Tuesday. After that, lawmakers will likely leave for a long Christmas break, but unless Republican leaders change their minds, Congress will leave a major task undone: extending emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed. The emergency program will begin to phase out starting Dec. 21; as a result, an estimated half million of the nation's jobless will be without benefits by the time lawmakers come back to town Jan. 20. Ordinarily, unemployed workers are entitled to about 26 weeks of state benefits. But in tough economic times, when jobs aren't to be found even with diligent searching, the federal government has stepped in to provide extra, temporary help. The current federal program, which was started in March 2002 and has been extended twice since, gives unemployed workers an additional 13 weeks of benefits after their state assistance runs out. It should be extended again.

Republicans Indulging in Pork Along With Power By Nick Anderson Times Staff Writer December 8, 2003 WASHINGTON ? Before they took control of Congress nearly nine years ago, Republicans often mocked the Democratic practice of larding government spending bills with provisions that earmarked funds for pet projects in particular lawmakers' districts and states. But a $328.1-billion bill that the Republican-led House expects to pass today, funding a grab bag of government agencies, takes earmarking to greater heights and uses it for what Democrats claim are new, partisan purposes. The bill includes an eye-popping number of earmarks ? around 7,000 by one estimate, at a cost of several billion dollars. Other spending bills bring the grand total for the year to more than 10,000. In that long list are items big and small, from $100,000 for street furniture and sidewalks in Laverne, Ala., to $44 million for a bridge to Treasure Island in Florida ? a plum for the Tampa Bay district of House Appropriations Chairman C.W. "Bill" Young. But more than that, to a degree unseen since their 1995 takeover, the majority Republicans are publicly flaunting their power to use pork for explicitly partisan purposes. Traditionally, the dominant party oils the legislative machinery by setting aside a healthy fraction of earmarked funds for the minority. This year, in a key section of the spending bill, the Republicans got stingy. They were irate when House Democrats voted en masse in July against their version of the annual spending bill for the Labor, Education and Health and Human Services departments. As punishment, in the labor, health and education provisions of the pending bill, they are denying Democrats the customary minority share of what are euphemistically known on Capitol Hill as "member projects."

Democracy, Not Off-the-Shelf By William Raspberry Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A25 …It isn't that I don't favor democracy. I do, and I'd love to see more of it in the world. But because of America's peculiar history (excluding that unpleasant little episode called slavery), we may be thinking of democracy as a lot easier, more natural and more inevitable than it is. We sometimes behave as though, if we can only get democracy on the supermarket shelf alongside other forms of government, the world will choose it the way it would choose fresh-squeezed orange juice over canned. … Still, there is reason for caution. After all, it takes a lot more than theoretical availability to get nations to choose democracy, and it takes a lot more than elections, however free or fair, to produce it. I'm reminded of an observation uttered more than 10 years ago by someone who understood the point. "Elections are not automatically the establishment of democracy. . . . Democracy is a process, painful to establish in a land that has never known democracy, where suspicions are high, where absolutism has been the way of life. In a way it's a cultural thing that needs to be based upon respect for human rights, for other people's opinions, for institutions, including the courts. Elections are only a step -- a necessary step -- toward the goal of democracy." The words were from Francois Benoit, a representative of Haiti's government during the exile of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But they are worth noting and remembering. So is this: Democracies are not necessarily engines of great morality. The Communitarian Network recently invited responses to the Bush proposal that America reconsider its 60-year support of autocracies in the Middle East. Here is what one respondent, a Canadian professor, had to say: "Democracies can be worse than autocracies. To be poor in democratic Mexico or Brazil is certainly worse than to be unrepresented in Cuba or Saudi Arabia. We should know better than to put much stock in the form of government. That it is necessary even to say this shows how tightly we are in the grip of a clichéd ideology." That is professor Michael Neumann's caution. Here is mine: When you combine overwhelming military might with the utter certainty that your way is the one true way, the temptation can be very strong to impose truth -- political or religious -- at gunpoint. We could do with a bit less cocksure certainty on both counts.

Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop By BOB HERBERT Published: December 8, 2003 …Think of Medicare as a giant chicken coop. Keep in mind that the hostile-to-Medicare Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress. Now you decide who the foxes and the chickens are. (Hint: we're not talking about spring chickens.) …The bill that President Bush will sign today is a giant windfall for the drug companies, opening up a huge new market with virtually no effort to restrain prices. It will give Medicare recipients a modest drug benefit, but at a potentially dreadful cost. The bill starts the process of undermining Medicare by turning parts of it over to insurance companies, H.M.O.'s and other private contractors. The drug benefit will be delivered almost entirely through private insurance plans. It would have been more efficient and cheaper to deliver it the same way other Medicare benefits are delivered. But that's not the idea. The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money ? the people's money ? are hijacked and handed over to the special interests. Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad. And then there's the "demonstration" project, to begin in 2010, in which Medicare will be forced in several cities to compete against private, profit-making health plans. It will be a rigged competition in that, among other things, the private plans will be heavily subsidized by Medicare money and will be able to cherry-pick the healthiest patients. As one Capitol Hill staffer told me last week: "This is more than the camel's nose under the tent. This is like the head, the hump and everything else."

New York's Federal Judges Protest Sentencing Procedures By IAN URBINA To most people, they might seem like minor outbursts. But in the last few months, federal judges in New York, who tend to steer judiciously clear of politics and public debate, have been surprisingly vocal in their criticism of a new sentencing law that they say represents a breach in the separation of powers and bullies them into handing down harsher sentences. In June, Judge John S. Martin Jr. of United States District Court in Manhattan announced that he was taking early retirement, relinquishing his lifetime appointment, in part, he said, to protest what he called the unjust nature of the sentencing process. Three months later, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, John M. Walker Jr., and 26 colleagues from around the country signed a statement calling for repeal of the law. Judge Thomas C. Platt of Federal District Court in Brooklyn was so reluctant to follow the sentencing procedures that an appellate panel unanimously removed him from a routine drug case, saying that his decisions were "improperly affected" by his "annoyance" with the sentencing guidelines and with the United States attorney's office. And in perhaps the boldest criticism of the law, another federal judge in Brooklyn, Sterling Johnson Jr., who was New York City's special narcotics prosecutor from 1975 until 1991, recently issued a wide-ranging order that directly contradicts the law's provision granting Congress more direct access, without the need for judicial permission, to a variety of case documents. Judge Johnson placed a blanket seal on all such documents in cases before him, forbidding Congress to examine these materials without his approval.

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Looks more and more like the neocons picked the wrong section of the world to represent as a threat, don't it?

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Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01 TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb. The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared. The last known repository was here, in a tiny separatist enclave known as Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova 12 years ago. The Transdniester Moldovan Republic is a sliver of land no bigger than Rhode Island located along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. Its government is recognized by no other nation. But its weapons stocks -- new, used and modified -- have attracted the attention of black-market arms dealers worldwide. And they're for sale, according to U.S. and Moldovan officials and weapons experts.

The title will make sense to Isaac Asimov fans The link is one of those non-expiring ones because it's a NY Times Magazine article, which tend too be good but too damn long to effectively quote or read in one sitting.

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School Away From School By EMILY WHITE Published: December 7, 2003 Andy Markishtum's hair reaches past his shoulders, thick and shining. He speaks in a low monotone, a rocker growl, and his favorite band is Cradle of Filth. As a student at McKay High School in Salem, Ore., Andy was part of the stoner crowd -- a self-described slacker with a backpack full of half-finished assignments. ''I'd get too distracted,'' he says. ''There would be kids sitting right next to me talking or something, and instead of paying attention to the teacher, I would drift off. Someone would drop a book, and I'd have to look.'' Attention-deficit disorder was diagnosed; for a while, Andy took Ritalin, but it gave him migraines. His mom decided he needed to get out of McKay and leave behind his old scene, his old messed-up self. Andy enrolled in Salem-Keizer Online high school, and he says, ''Now I can really concentrate.'' Salem-Keizer Online, or S.K.O., is one in a growing number of public, private and charter schools available to kids who are looking for an alternative to a traditional education. Commonly called ''virtual school,'' it's a way of attending school at home without the hovering claustrophobia of home-schooling. S.K.O. has 131 students enrolled in the Salem area. Nationwide, there were about 50,000 students in virtual courses last year. As a business, virtual school is booming. Jim Cramer, co-host of CNBC's ''Kudlow & Cramer,'' calls online-school-software companies a hot commodity. Andy Markishtum says that without virtual school, he ''probably would have dropped out.'' Now he will graduate almost on time. The biggest problem was that ''too many people were too dumb.'' The teachers bored him, the homework flummoxed him, he hated the mandatory pep assemblies ''that were really prep assemblies.'' Walking through his old school, Andy points out the cafeteria table he and his friends used to sit at. ''People would shun us, even though we had never done anything to them,'' he says. A sign reads ''Drug and Gang Free: McKay Togetherness.'' The bell rings, and the hall floods with bodies. A few clean-cut kids grimace at Andy's flowing hair. It's not so hard to understand why Andy would want to get out of here, why he would rather enroll in a school he can log into anywhere -- the public library or his mother's house. Now instead of walking through the dreaded double doors past a suspicious security officer, Andy enters a Web site where a plain white screen welcomes him: ''Sign in!'' He checks his e-mail and clicks on the day's assignments, blasting music from his stereo, free of the tyranny of class periods. Virtual school seems like an ideal choice for kids who don't fit in or can't cope. ''I'm a nervous, strung-out sort of person,'' says Erin Bryan, who attends the online Oregon-based CoolSchool. Erin used to attend public school in Hood River, Ore., but ''I didn't like the environment,'' she says. ''I am afraid of public speaking, and I would get really freaked out in the mornings.'' Kyle Drew, 16, a junior at S.K.O., says: ''I couldn't get it together. I was skipping more and more classes, until I was afraid to go to school.'' Leavitt Wells, 13, from Las Vegas, was an ostracized girl with revenge on her mind. ''The other kids didn't want anything to do with me,'' she says. ''I'd put exploded gel pens in their drawers.'' Now she attends the Las Vegas Odyssey Charter School online during the day, and when her adrenaline starts pumping, she charges out into the backyard and jumps on the trampoline. On S.K.O.'s Web site, students can enter a classroom without being noticed by their classmates by clicking the ''make yourself invisible'' icon -- a good description of what these kids are actually doing. Before the Internet, they would have had little choice but to muddle through. Now they have disappeared from the school building altogether, a new breed of outsider, loners for the wired age.

Funds for Iraq Are Far Short of Pledges, Figures Show By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 ? Six weeks after organizers of an international donors conference in Madrid said that more than $3 billion in grants had been pledged to help Iraq with immediate needs, a new World Bank tally verifies grants of only $685 million for 2004. The vast gap seems to have occurred largely for two reasons: some countries, like Japan, changed the nature of their commitment after the conference from immediate aid to slower, long-term help; and some that had left their intentions unclear were incorrectly assumed to be giving immediate aid. Many experts also say that donation pledges often do not materialize in the end, or come in the harder-to-tally form of credits for the purchase of commodities. The grant money for immediate needs was part of a total $13 billion that organizers said was raised at the conference. The Bush administration does not dispute the gap, but officials say it is too early for an accurate count, asserting that the number of grants will probably grow. Some United Nations officials concur. "We know the Japanese are rethinking what they're going to do," said Julia Taft, director of the Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery at the United Nations Development Fund. "But once we get our trust funds up and running, about 15 donors will come forward. It's like, the money is in the bank, but the bank doesn't exist yet." An independent trust fund was promised at the Madrid conference and is due to be set up next week.

Who Wins and Who Loses as Jobs Move Overseas? By ERIKA KINETZ The outsourcing of jobs to China and India is not new, but lately it has earned a chilling new adjective: professional. Advances in communications technology have enabled white-collar jobs to be shipped from the United States and Europe as never before, and the outcry from workers who once considered themselves invulnerable is creating a potent political force. After falling by 2.8 million jobs since early 2001, employment has risen by 240,000 jobs since August. That gain, less than some expected, has not resolved whether the nation is suffering cyclical losses or permanent job destruction. Last month, The International Herald Tribune convened a roundtable at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan to discuss how job migration is changing the landscape. The participants were Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group in Washington that receives a third of its financing from labor unions; Diana Farrell, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, which is McKinsey & Company's internal economics research group; Edmund Harriss, the portfolio manager of the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong fund and the Guinness Atkinson Asia Focus fund; M. Eric Johnson, director of Tuck's Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College; and, via conference call from Singapore, Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley . Following are excerpts from their conversation.Q. How big an issue is job migration? MR. ROACH Offshore outsourcing is a huge deal. We do not have a data series called jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, but 23 months into the recovery, private sector jobs are running nearly seven million workers below the norm of the typical hiring cycle. Something new is going on. America is short of jobs as never before, and the major candidates for our offshore outsourcing are ramping up employment as never before. So yes, I think two and two is four. MS. FARRELL This is a big deal in the sense that we see something structural happening. But I would react to the notion that it is a big deal we should try to stop or recognize as anything other than the economic process of change. I think the bigger deal is the fact that we are going to have very serious curtailment of the working age population. MR. BIVENS I'm curious about Steve's assertion that outsourcing can explain the sluggish employment situation. If you just look at slow growth plus fast productivity, you've got the sluggish labor market right there. MR. ROACH A pickup in productivity does not have to be accompanied by sluggish employment. There are countless examples, like the 1960's and again the 1990's, of rapid productivity growth accompanied by rapid employment. The point is that the relationship between aggregate demand and employment growth looks to me as if it has broken down. That breakdown reflects not just the rapid growth and maturation of outsourcing platforms in places like China and India, but also the accelerated pace by which these platforms can now be connected to the developed world through the Internet. These are brand-new developments. This is a huge challenge for service-based economies, like the United States. MR. BIVENS How much of the insecurity that people think is caused by service sector outsourcing is in fact just the business cycle as usual? Every time there's a recession people want to blame it on some underlying structural factor, when sometimes recessions are just recessions, shortfalls in demand that work themselves out. MR. ROACH Over the September to November period, employment has turned up, but many of those jobs came from the temporary hiring industry. These are service jobs, contingent workers without benefits and significantly lower pay scales. We're getting the G.D.P. growth, and by now any recovery in the past would be flashing green on the hiring front. This one isn't. With all due respect, I don't know what you guys are talking about. This is a profoundly different relationship between hiring and the business cycle. And I think these jobs are, by in large, lost forever. Q. Who wins in offshoring and who loses? MS. FARRELL There is an assumption by protectionists that these jobs are going somewhere else, and all this money has been pocketed by C.E.O.'s who take it home. A little more sophisticated version is: It's being pocketed by companies in the form of profits. One step further and you say those profits are either going to go as returns to the investors in those companies, or they're going to go into new investment by those companies. Those savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore contribute to job recreation, and if I am a company, to re-invest and create jobs. That's important because I agree that we are migrating jobs away, some of which will never return, nor should they. MR. BIVENS Within nations, trade tends to redistribute a lot of income. The gains get pretty concentrated in the pockets of capital owners. The people who lose out are the blue-collar workers. Now you've got this class of white-collar workers who are much more insecure about their job prospects, and their labor market bargaining power is being undermined. It doesn't mean we need walls all around the economy, but it does mean we need to get really serious about making sure all these gains are distributed. MR. HARRISS Look at what's gone on in China over the last 10 years: There are 300 million people in those eastern coastal provinces who have seen an extraordinary pickup in their standard of living. And you're seeing an economy that is just about to take wing because you now have consumers who were never able to participate in the economy before. Now it is people in the developed world who are being left behind. That is very difficult to resolve. Q. One key piece of the win-win theory seems to be that displaced workers do find new jobs. What does history teach us about how well displaced manufacturing workers have been reintegrated into the work force? MR. BIVENS The best research on what happens to people displaced from manufacturing is that they eventually find a new job, but they take an average wage cut of 13 to 14 percent. The people who are hit hardest are older workers. Also, it's not just the worker who is directly displaced from a sector that is hurt by international trade, it is also every other worker in the economy who has a similar skills profile. Q. For labor, is outsourcing a race to the bottom? MR. ROACH It's a race to the bottom if we spend all our energy trying to protect existing sources of job creation, as the politicians in the U.S. Congress are inclined to do. The problem is that globalization is growing asymmetrically, so initially it creates more supply than demand. We're living through that asymmetry right now, and that has caused a potentially dangerous political backlash. The Chinese, for example, are reluctant to transform their habits from savers to consumers because they're losing jobs through the reform of their own economy, and they don't have social security or retirement. Over time there is a rising tide. But the political process is not that patient. Q. If protectionism is the wrong answer, explain how the market will solve this. Does government need to intervene at all? MR. ROACH This is classic election-year posturing by a Congress that is basically responsible for the problem itself and doesn't want to admit it. We have trade deficits with China and Japan because Washington is running the most reckless fiscal policy we've seen in the United States since the late 1960's. They are the problem. It's not the Chinas and Japans and Indias of the world. Moreover, there are a lot of assumptions being made, especially by political leaders, that the rapid growth of Chinese exports and production is the smoking gun of the threat to traditional sources of job creation. About two-thirds of the export growth China has realized over the last 10 years has come from Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations headquartered in Japan, the U.S. and Europe and their joint venture partners. These are our companies. It's us; it's not necessarily them. MR. JOHNSON It's all about innovation and productivity. As long as we maintain those two engines, we'll continue to have a very high standard of living. Out in the Bay Area there are plenty of folks who would love to create a little bit of protectionism around their I.T. jobs, but we are far better off letting a lot of those jobs go. Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs. MS. FARRELL We will require different services, medical devices, all kinds of things to support an aging population. Fifteen years ago, you would not have been able to fathom many of the jobs that exist today. MR. HARRISS There is not much new radical innovation in Asia of the kind we're looking at to create jobs in the U.S. Apart from a very few exceptions, what Asia does well is take the latest innovations and production techniques, invest in the most recent equipment and then bring in their powerful advantages in low-cost labor, and start to produce. For the most part, the benefits to Asia are just going to come with more people coming off the poverty line and into the global economy. Q. What happens when China ceases to be an endless pit of poverty? MR. ROACH China for all practical purposes has an infinite supply of labor: 400 million in its urban population and another 900 million in the rural area. The average wage of a Chinese worker is still 2.5 to 3 percent of the counterpart in the developed world. Those are disparities that will be around for a long time. Q. Can China keep labor costs so low and still grow a critical mass of domestic consumers? MS. FARRELL You are still talking about a pretty significant critical mass of people who are now entering consumption level incomes: $7,000 to $10,000 G.D.P. per capita. Car sales in China are growing at 26 to 30 percent compound annual growth rates. Televisions, refrigerators, mobile handsets all have the same kind of J-curve. You only need 10 percent of the population to have a critical mass of income. Q. What do you see in the future? MR. BIVENS Globalization is good at increasing the productive capacity of the world, but to make sure there are enough jobs for everybody, you need demand to keep pace with that increase in supply. That's where globalization presents a real challenge. Government's big roles in the future are to make sure global demand matches supply, and to provide social insurance schemes to make sure the living standards of the workers being left behind aren't sacrificed on the altar of global progress. MR. ROACH In the future there are two roads. One is to look backward and hang on to what we think we're entitled to. The other is to recognize what has made America. Our virtues lie in a flexible and open, technology friendly, risk-taking, entrepreneurial, market-driven system. This is exactly the same type of challenge farmers went through in the late 1800's, sweatshop workers went through in the early 1900's, and manufacturing workers did in the first half of the 80's. We've got to focus on setting in motion a debate that pushes us into new sources of job creation rather than bemoaning the loss. There are Republicans and Democrats alike who are involved in this protectionist backlash. They're very vocal right now, and they need to be challenged.

Ruse in Toyland: Chinese Workers' Hidden Woe By JOSEPH KAHN SHENZHEN, China ? Workers at Kin Ki Industrial, a leading Chinese toy maker, make a decent salary, rarely work nights or weekends and often "hang out along the street, play Ping-Pong and watch TV." They all have work contracts, pensions and medical benefits. The factory canteen offers tasty food. The dormitories are comfortable. These are the official working conditions at Kin Ki as they are described on paper ? crib sheets ? handed to workers just before inspections. Those occur when big American clients, like the Ohio company that uses Kin Ki to produce the iconic toy Etch A Sketch, visit to make sure that the factory has good labor standards. Real-world Kin Ki employees, mostly teenage migrants from internal provinces, say they work many more hours and earn about 40 percent less than the company claims. They sleep head-to-toe in tiny rooms. They staged two strikes recently demanding they get paid closer to the legal minimum wage. Most do not have pensions, medical insurance or work contracts. The company's crib sheet recommends if inspectors press to see such documents, workers should "intentionally waste time and then say they can't find them," according to company memos provided to The New York Times by employees. After first saying that Kin Ki strictly abides by all Chinese labor laws, Johnson Tao, a senior executive with the privately owned company, acknowledged that Kin Ki's wages and benefits fell short of legal levels and vowed to address the issue soon. He said that the memos might have reflected attempts by factory managers to deceive inspectors, but that such behavior "did not have the support of senior management." William C. Killgallon, the chief executive of Ohio Art Company, the owner of Etch A Sketch, said that he considered Kin Ki executives honest and that he had no knowledge of labor problems there. But he said he intended to visit China soon to "make sure they understand what we expect."

…by 18 inches of snow, 32 degrees of cold, 22 degrees of wind chill! ARRRRRRRGGHHHH!