Friday, October 08, 2004
October 8, 2004
Report Portrays Saddam As GangsterBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take. A report detailing alleged illicit U.N. oil-for-food deals with the former Iraq government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein as an international gangster -- not a nuclear terrorist.
The financial schemes propped up Saddam's regime for more than a decade and involved cloak-and-dagger efforts to hide the alleged graft by dealing in front companies, untraceable accounts, cash sales and smuggling, the report by the top U.S. arms inspector said.
The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, who was charged to investigate the extent of Iraq's weapons programs, relies on internal Iraqi documents and extensive interviews with members of the former regime now imprisoned in Iraq.
Although Saddam opposed the program at first, he quickly realized it could be exploited and did so with mendacious verve until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, former Iraqi officials report.
Saddam was able to ``subvert'' the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997-2003, Duelfer's report says.
In addition to oil-for-food schemes, Iraq brought in over $8 billion in illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt through smuggling or illegal pumping through pipelines during the full period that sanctions were in place from 1991-2003, the report says.
While the United Nations focused on delivering humanitarian goods to an Iraqi population suffering from international sanctions and the totalitarian regime, Saddam's government devised elaborate ways to skim money from deals sending oil out and goods in. The report spells out how kickbacks were solicited and how money got to Baghdad.
Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments, including members of the U.N. Security Council by awarding contracts -- and bribes -- to foreign companies and political figures in countries who showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the report says.
The former head of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, also is accused of receiving bribes in the form of vouchers allowing him or companies tied to him to purchase 7.3 million barrels of oil, which would have netted $700,000 to $2 million, depending on oil prices.
Sevan is among hundreds of companies, groups and individuals on 13 secret lists kept by the Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan and the Oil Minister, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi.
``Saddam himself would recommend a specific recipient,'' the report says, ``and the recommended amount of the allocation.''
Russian and French companies were singled out by the regime for special treatment, according to the report, with politicians close to the French President Jacques Chirac appearing on list, among them former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and businessman Patrick Maugein, ``whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac,'' according to the report.
The report says this allegation is unproven and the governments and officials deny it.
Some of the bribes allegedly paid by Iraq involved cash to covert operatives. Saddam's former secretary and ambassador to Moscow, interviewed by Duelfer's group, claims former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz paid a cash bribe of $15-to-20 million to a female colonel in the Russian Intelligence Service.
``She wanted Aziz to accommodate the companies nominated by the Russian Intelligence,'' according to the official, said Abd Hamid Mahmud Al Khatab al Nasiri.
The most lucrative exploitation of the program involved kickbacks from companies executing legal sales of oil. Under the terms of the U.N resolution establishing the program, Iraq maintained the right to determine who got contracts for oil being exported and the humanitarian goods being imported and to determine market prices.
In what the report calls, ``an open secret,'' the Iraqi government demanded illicit surcharges of 25-to-30 cents on all barrels of oil bought, which buyers had to secretly pay before the deals were sealed. They complied because the Iraqis were selling slightly below market prices.
One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore run by one-time fugitive American financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid over $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax-evasion was pardoned by President Clinton in his last days in office.
The report says that the company denies any inappropriate deals.
Most of the kickbacks were transferred to the Iraqi government through secret bank accounts in Jordan and Lebanon, from which ``trusted Oil Ministry employees'' withdrew an estimated $2 billion, the report said. They hand delivered the cash to Baghdad.
``Oil suppliers and traders, who sometimes brought large suitcases full of hard currency to embassies and Iraqi Ministry offices, so that the payments would be untraceable, filled these illegal bank accounts,'' according to senior Iraqi officials, the report says.
An additional $750 million was recovered in the accounts after the war and returned to Iraq. The report alleges Iraqi embassies in Moscow, Hanoi, Ankara and Bern were also used to collect kickbacks from oil companies with the money shipped back to Iraq in diplomatic pouches.
The Iraqis exploited deals for importing goods in a similar manner. It cites the case of a Jordanian company, the Al-Eman Group, which was made to deposit 10 percent of the value of some deals in a Jordanian account before they were signed.
``When the goods were delivered to Iraq, the U.N. Iraq account would pay the full contract price to Al-Eman,'' the reports says. ``At that point, the Jordan National Bank would automatically kick back the performance bond to an Iraqi account instead of returning it to Al-Eman, as would normally be the case.''
Elaborate methods were used to hide the secret accounts in Jordan and Lebanon. Temporary accounts set up under false names by Iraqi ministries were used for initial transactions before money was spirited into accounts held by the Central Bank of Iraq at the same banks. Iraq also used front companies in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to transfer kickbacks.
Once the money returned to Baghdad, the government had a standard scheme for dividing the spoils. The government routinely allocated 5-to-10 percent of the kickbacks to the ministries who distributed the money to bureaucrats to encourage them to continue soliciting bribes.
Another Iraqi scheme involved signing deals with foreign companies for inferior or spoiled goods, while paying premium prices. The Iraqi government often did this knowingly, according to the report, under the understanding that the differential would be paid in kickbacks.
Report Portrays Saddam As GangsterBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take. A report detailing alleged illicit U.N. oil-for-food deals with the former Iraq government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein as an international gangster -- not a nuclear terrorist.
The financial schemes propped up Saddam's regime for more than a decade and involved cloak-and-dagger efforts to hide the alleged graft by dealing in front companies, untraceable accounts, cash sales and smuggling, the report by the top U.S. arms inspector said.
The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, who was charged to investigate the extent of Iraq's weapons programs, relies on internal Iraqi documents and extensive interviews with members of the former regime now imprisoned in Iraq.
Although Saddam opposed the program at first, he quickly realized it could be exploited and did so with mendacious verve until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, former Iraqi officials report.
Saddam was able to ``subvert'' the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997-2003, Duelfer's report says.
In addition to oil-for-food schemes, Iraq brought in over $8 billion in illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt through smuggling or illegal pumping through pipelines during the full period that sanctions were in place from 1991-2003, the report says.
While the United Nations focused on delivering humanitarian goods to an Iraqi population suffering from international sanctions and the totalitarian regime, Saddam's government devised elaborate ways to skim money from deals sending oil out and goods in. The report spells out how kickbacks were solicited and how money got to Baghdad.
Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments, including members of the U.N. Security Council by awarding contracts -- and bribes -- to foreign companies and political figures in countries who showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the report says.
The former head of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, also is accused of receiving bribes in the form of vouchers allowing him or companies tied to him to purchase 7.3 million barrels of oil, which would have netted $700,000 to $2 million, depending on oil prices.
Sevan is among hundreds of companies, groups and individuals on 13 secret lists kept by the Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan and the Oil Minister, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi.
``Saddam himself would recommend a specific recipient,'' the report says, ``and the recommended amount of the allocation.''
Russian and French companies were singled out by the regime for special treatment, according to the report, with politicians close to the French President Jacques Chirac appearing on list, among them former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and businessman Patrick Maugein, ``whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac,'' according to the report.
The report says this allegation is unproven and the governments and officials deny it.
Some of the bribes allegedly paid by Iraq involved cash to covert operatives. Saddam's former secretary and ambassador to Moscow, interviewed by Duelfer's group, claims former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz paid a cash bribe of $15-to-20 million to a female colonel in the Russian Intelligence Service.
``She wanted Aziz to accommodate the companies nominated by the Russian Intelligence,'' according to the official, said Abd Hamid Mahmud Al Khatab al Nasiri.
The most lucrative exploitation of the program involved kickbacks from companies executing legal sales of oil. Under the terms of the U.N resolution establishing the program, Iraq maintained the right to determine who got contracts for oil being exported and the humanitarian goods being imported and to determine market prices.
In what the report calls, ``an open secret,'' the Iraqi government demanded illicit surcharges of 25-to-30 cents on all barrels of oil bought, which buyers had to secretly pay before the deals were sealed. They complied because the Iraqis were selling slightly below market prices.
One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore run by one-time fugitive American financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid over $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax-evasion was pardoned by President Clinton in his last days in office.
The report says that the company denies any inappropriate deals.
Most of the kickbacks were transferred to the Iraqi government through secret bank accounts in Jordan and Lebanon, from which ``trusted Oil Ministry employees'' withdrew an estimated $2 billion, the report said. They hand delivered the cash to Baghdad.
``Oil suppliers and traders, who sometimes brought large suitcases full of hard currency to embassies and Iraqi Ministry offices, so that the payments would be untraceable, filled these illegal bank accounts,'' according to senior Iraqi officials, the report says.
An additional $750 million was recovered in the accounts after the war and returned to Iraq. The report alleges Iraqi embassies in Moscow, Hanoi, Ankara and Bern were also used to collect kickbacks from oil companies with the money shipped back to Iraq in diplomatic pouches.
The Iraqis exploited deals for importing goods in a similar manner. It cites the case of a Jordanian company, the Al-Eman Group, which was made to deposit 10 percent of the value of some deals in a Jordanian account before they were signed.
``When the goods were delivered to Iraq, the U.N. Iraq account would pay the full contract price to Al-Eman,'' the reports says. ``At that point, the Jordan National Bank would automatically kick back the performance bond to an Iraqi account instead of returning it to Al-Eman, as would normally be the case.''
Elaborate methods were used to hide the secret accounts in Jordan and Lebanon. Temporary accounts set up under false names by Iraqi ministries were used for initial transactions before money was spirited into accounts held by the Central Bank of Iraq at the same banks. Iraq also used front companies in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to transfer kickbacks.
Once the money returned to Baghdad, the government had a standard scheme for dividing the spoils. The government routinely allocated 5-to-10 percent of the kickbacks to the ministries who distributed the money to bureaucrats to encourage them to continue soliciting bribes.
Another Iraqi scheme involved signing deals with foreign companies for inferior or spoiled goods, while paying premium prices. The Iraqi government often did this knowingly, according to the report, under the understanding that the differential would be paid in kickbacks.
October 7, 2004
Great Views and Serenity at VolcanoBy ELI SANDERS
OUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL VOLCANIC MONUMENT, Wash., Oct. 6 - They sit for hours, gazing across a mud-caked valley toward the rumbling mountain. Over the last week, since Mount St. Helens reawakened after almost two decades with a huge plume of steam, thousands have come here from across the West Coast and as far away as Texas.
They sleep in nearby hotels or up here in cars, camper-vans and mobile homes and in sleeping bags laid across the rocky soil - all waiting for the earth to reveal its intentions. They have motored up to this mountain carting digital cameras, barbecue grills, coolers, wine, romance novels, telescopes, all in a sort of pilgrimage to the place where, they say, the earth feels more alive - and so do they.
"At our age we're racing the clock," said Gayle Boren, 66, of Midlothian, Tex., who flew here to southwest Washington with her friend Opal French, 75, of Lubbock, Tex. "We're trying to do and see as much as we can before we die."
Like so many others up here who seem content to pass entire days staring at the mostly quiet mountain - as active as it looks on television, it really only erupts once in a while, and then for at most an hour at a time - the pair said they had come in search of a feeling.
They sat together on canvas chairs borrowed from a young couple nearby, under the shade of an alder tree near the Castle Lake Viewpoint, about eight miles from the mountain's crater. They explained the feeling they were after: a thrill that was as much about waiting for a volcano to erupt as it was about the sense of escape.
"It's something we can enjoy without someone being hurt," said Ms. Boren, who was staying at the Comfort Inn in Kelso, Wash.
It was taking their minds off presidential and vice-presidential debates (boring and predictable), they said, the news of the Iraq war and terrorism (depressing) and the 9/11 Commission Report (long, complicated and depressing). Ms. Boren brought the commission report with her up to the mountain but has so far decided not to read it.
There is a rhythm to the volcano-watching day. For those staying in nearby hotels, it begins with the latest reports on television, which on both Monday and Tuesday brought what they had been waiting for: word of eruptions, minor but dramatic. With each breathless broadcast new pilgrims come to the mountain.
For those already up here, some sleeping here for days now, the mountain had already delivered the news from across the valley and into the sky.
Scientists have for days been predicting a more serious eruption of the mountain, which in 1980 produced a large explosion that left 57 dead. But they now say it could take weeks, or may never happen, and after seismic tremors beneath the mountain's lava dome dropped off by Wednesday scientists lowered the volcanic alert level one notch, from "code red'' to "code orange."
The people up here seem to be finding something they need.
Colleen Grant, 46, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, said the experience was helping her get over those "control issues" her husband teases her about. Forced to surrender to geologic time while waiting for the big one, she found it calming, she said, and with a mixture of serenity and pleasant surprise, added, "We have no control."
On Sunday night, in honor of the reddish lava they hoped was rising from within the mountain, Ms. Grant, a lab technologist, and her husband, Rod, a caterer, drank merlot with barbecued steaks and prawns. Late Monday afternoon they sat on chairs atop a fake-grass mat outside their 22-foot mobile home. She was sipping white wine and he was working on a can of Coors.
"We're all here for the same common reason," Mr. Grant said.
By Tuesday afternoon, after three days on the mountain forced them to move from gourmet food to frozen fare, they had decided to leave. They said they were satisfied after seeing two steam explosions.
But a neighbor on the mountain, Judy Ziese, 55, a "retired housewife" from Port Angeles, Wash., said she would hold out for the big one, sleeping in her white Ford Expedition, which she was calling her "Ford Explosion."
Ms. Ziese's husband declined to join her on this trek more than 200 miles from home, so she packed up almond butter, jam, sprouted-wheat bread, string cheese and set out with her Chihuahua, Peekaboo Louise.
"I could live without a man, but I couldn't live without a dog," she said.
In the end, however, it was the sun that Ms. Ziese could not live without. She abandoned the mountain after heavy rains arrived Tuesday night, and she joined many others who had apparently re-evaluated their determination to wait for the next spectacle. By Wednesday morning, with St. Helens veiled in clouds and word of the lull in the rumblings spreading, the crowd on the mountain had thinned to only a few stubborn optimists.
Brian Landry, 48, from Salem, Ore., said news that the alert level had been lowered did not mean anything to him. "It might taper off and then all of a sudden decide to uncork," he said. Mr. Landry, a test-technician for a high-tech tool manufacturer, had driven two hours to get to the mountain on Sunday with his wife. He then drove her back home so she could work on Monday, turned around, and returned alone. He has now been here for three days straight, sleeping through Tuesday night's rain inside a blue tent and eating hot dogs.
"I'd hate to leave and find something went on," he said.
Great Views and Serenity at VolcanoBy ELI SANDERS
OUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL VOLCANIC MONUMENT, Wash., Oct. 6 - They sit for hours, gazing across a mud-caked valley toward the rumbling mountain. Over the last week, since Mount St. Helens reawakened after almost two decades with a huge plume of steam, thousands have come here from across the West Coast and as far away as Texas.
They sleep in nearby hotels or up here in cars, camper-vans and mobile homes and in sleeping bags laid across the rocky soil - all waiting for the earth to reveal its intentions. They have motored up to this mountain carting digital cameras, barbecue grills, coolers, wine, romance novels, telescopes, all in a sort of pilgrimage to the place where, they say, the earth feels more alive - and so do they.
"At our age we're racing the clock," said Gayle Boren, 66, of Midlothian, Tex., who flew here to southwest Washington with her friend Opal French, 75, of Lubbock, Tex. "We're trying to do and see as much as we can before we die."
Like so many others up here who seem content to pass entire days staring at the mostly quiet mountain - as active as it looks on television, it really only erupts once in a while, and then for at most an hour at a time - the pair said they had come in search of a feeling.
They sat together on canvas chairs borrowed from a young couple nearby, under the shade of an alder tree near the Castle Lake Viewpoint, about eight miles from the mountain's crater. They explained the feeling they were after: a thrill that was as much about waiting for a volcano to erupt as it was about the sense of escape.
"It's something we can enjoy without someone being hurt," said Ms. Boren, who was staying at the Comfort Inn in Kelso, Wash.
It was taking their minds off presidential and vice-presidential debates (boring and predictable), they said, the news of the Iraq war and terrorism (depressing) and the 9/11 Commission Report (long, complicated and depressing). Ms. Boren brought the commission report with her up to the mountain but has so far decided not to read it.
There is a rhythm to the volcano-watching day. For those staying in nearby hotels, it begins with the latest reports on television, which on both Monday and Tuesday brought what they had been waiting for: word of eruptions, minor but dramatic. With each breathless broadcast new pilgrims come to the mountain.
For those already up here, some sleeping here for days now, the mountain had already delivered the news from across the valley and into the sky.
Scientists have for days been predicting a more serious eruption of the mountain, which in 1980 produced a large explosion that left 57 dead. But they now say it could take weeks, or may never happen, and after seismic tremors beneath the mountain's lava dome dropped off by Wednesday scientists lowered the volcanic alert level one notch, from "code red'' to "code orange."
The people up here seem to be finding something they need.
Colleen Grant, 46, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, said the experience was helping her get over those "control issues" her husband teases her about. Forced to surrender to geologic time while waiting for the big one, she found it calming, she said, and with a mixture of serenity and pleasant surprise, added, "We have no control."
On Sunday night, in honor of the reddish lava they hoped was rising from within the mountain, Ms. Grant, a lab technologist, and her husband, Rod, a caterer, drank merlot with barbecued steaks and prawns. Late Monday afternoon they sat on chairs atop a fake-grass mat outside their 22-foot mobile home. She was sipping white wine and he was working on a can of Coors.
"We're all here for the same common reason," Mr. Grant said.
By Tuesday afternoon, after three days on the mountain forced them to move from gourmet food to frozen fare, they had decided to leave. They said they were satisfied after seeing two steam explosions.
But a neighbor on the mountain, Judy Ziese, 55, a "retired housewife" from Port Angeles, Wash., said she would hold out for the big one, sleeping in her white Ford Expedition, which she was calling her "Ford Explosion."
Ms. Ziese's husband declined to join her on this trek more than 200 miles from home, so she packed up almond butter, jam, sprouted-wheat bread, string cheese and set out with her Chihuahua, Peekaboo Louise.
"I could live without a man, but I couldn't live without a dog," she said.
In the end, however, it was the sun that Ms. Ziese could not live without. She abandoned the mountain after heavy rains arrived Tuesday night, and she joined many others who had apparently re-evaluated their determination to wait for the next spectacle. By Wednesday morning, with St. Helens veiled in clouds and word of the lull in the rumblings spreading, the crowd on the mountain had thinned to only a few stubborn optimists.
Brian Landry, 48, from Salem, Ore., said news that the alert level had been lowered did not mean anything to him. "It might taper off and then all of a sudden decide to uncork," he said. Mr. Landry, a test-technician for a high-tech tool manufacturer, had driven two hours to get to the mountain on Sunday with his wife. He then drove her back home so she could work on Monday, turned around, and returned alone. He has now been here for three days straight, sleeping through Tuesday night's rain inside a blue tent and eating hot dogs.
"I'd hate to leave and find something went on," he said.
Kidnappers Behead British Hostage in Iraq
47 minutes ago
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnappers beheaded hostage Kenneth Bigley after twice releasing videos in which he wept and pleaded with Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) for his life. A brother of the first British captive slain in Iraq (news - web sites) blamed Blair, saying Friday he has "blood on his hands."
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Slideshow: Iraq
U.S. Gunships Target Sadr City(AP Video)
Latest headlines:
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Special Coverage
The 62-year-old civil engineer was at least the 28th hostage killed in Iraq. He was kidnapped three weeks ago, along with two American co-workers. They were beheaded earlier, and grisly footage of their killings was posted on the Internet.
A videotape sent to Abu Dhabi TV showed Bigley kneeling in front of six masked gunmen, according to a witness who saw the footage. One militant, speaking in Arabic, declared the Briton would be slain because his government refused to release women prisoners detained in Iraq.
The speaker then pulled a knife from his belt and severed Bigley's head as three others pinned him down, said the witness, who spoke on condition he not be identified. The tape ended with the killer holding up the severed head.
Bigley was seized at his Baghdad home Sept. 16 by the most feared terrorist group in Iraq, Tawhid and Jihad, along with Americans Eugene Armstrong, 52, and Jack Hensley, 48. The Americans were beheaded days later.
Abu Dhabi TV did not broadcast the videotape of Bigley, saying it refused "to serve as a mouthpiece for such groups or their actions."
U.S. and British officials in Iraq declined to confirm Bigley's death, saying his body had not been found. However, Bigley's brother, Phil, said the family had received "absolute proof" of his death.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Friday that messages were exchanged with Bigley's kidnappers through an intermediary in Iraq. But he said the militants refused to drop their demands, "even though they were fully aware there are no women prisoners in our custody in Iraq."
Straw was asked by reporters to comment on reports that there had been an attempt to rescue Bigley.
"I'm afraid I can't, no," Straw replied.
In Baghdad, a Western official dismissed rumors that Bigley was killed after a rescue attempt and refused to talk about reports of an escape attempt. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, had never established where Bigley was being held and therefore no rescue was planned.
In a statement read on British television, Phil Bigley said the family believed the government had done all it could "to secure the release of Ken."
"The horror of these final days will haunt us forever," he said. "Our only consolation is that Ken is now at peace, away from those who are capable of such atrocities."
But Bigley's other brother, Paul, was critical of the government.
In a written statement to organizers of a Stop the War Coalition rally in Liverpool on Friday evening, he said: "Please, please stop this war and prevent other lives being lost. It is illegal and has to stop. Mr. Blair has blood on his hands."
The Bigley kidnapping and his heart-wrenching appeals to Blair reinvigorated the anti-war movement in Britain just as the Americans were acknowledging that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction no longer existed by the time the war began in March 2003.
Bigley worked for a United Arab Emirates company that provides services for the U.S. military. It was not known when he was beheaded.
More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq, some for ransom and others as leverage against the United States and its allies. Many Iraqis have also been seized, in most cases for money.
Attacks on foreigners, including gruesome beheadings, have crippled reconstruction by discouraging investment and frightening off international engineers, technicians and others.
In other violence, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded when their patrol was attacked with a homemade bomb near Tuz, 105 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. command said Friday. Another soldier died of wounds suffered in a roadside bombing in the capital Oct. 1, the command said.
More than 1,000 U.S. service members have died since the start of the Iraq war.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities are using a combination of persuasion and force to try to curb a mounting insurgency in time for elections in January. Some U.S. military commanders have expressed doubt that voting will be possible in all parts of the country.
Among those areas where voting is unlikely is Fallujah, an insurgent bastion 40 miles west of Baghdad believed to be a stronghold of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad movement.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's interim government, which is determined that all Iraqis should be able to vote, said it was nearing agreement on a plan to bring its forces back into Fallujah after weeks of U.S. airstrikes aimed at militants in the city.
Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said the broad outlines of a deal had been agreed with city representatives, including tribal leaders and clerics.
The plan calls for a three-day halt to attacks, after which Iraqi troops will be allowed into Fallujah without U.S. forces, Shaalan said in an interview published Friday in the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat. Residents would hand over heavy weapons but could keep personal firearms, he said.
Khalid Hamoud, a tribal leader who sits on Fallujah's governing council, confirmed there was broad agreement on these points. But he said not all council members were ready to sign off on the deal. In particular, they are looking for guarantees that raids will stop and the U.S. military will pull back from positions around the city, he said. Further talks were set for Saturday.
Allawi said re-establishment of the rule of law in Fallujah is nonnegotiable.
"Terrorists must either surrender, or we'll bring them by force to justice," he told Al-Arabiya television.
Even as talks progressed, American warplanes struck a building where the U.S. command said leaders of al-Zarqawi's network were meeting early Friday.
Residents said the house was full of people who had gathered for a wedding. The attack killed 13 people, including the groom, said Dr. Ahmed Saeed at the city hospital. Seventeen others were wounded, including the bride, he said.
"This attack shows that there is no safe place in Fallujah, and the Americans are not differentiating between civilians and armed men," sobbed Mohammed Jawad, a neighbor whose house was damaged in the strike. He said his brother and six nephews were killed.
U.S. forces say the attack was the latest in about a dozen "precision strikes" launched since last month against al-Zarqawi's network.
Healing Iraq
Opinions on the war in Iraq fall along bitter and increasingly tiresome partisan lines. One side argues that the U.S. should never have gone to war and that the situation is rapidly falling apart. The other side claims these are just bumps in the road to a freshly democratized Iraq. As pundits opine from the plush comfort of TV studios, thanks to the Internet and blogs, we can read what the Iraqi people are really feeling and saying. This web log from an Iraqi dentist still living in Iraq offers reasoned opinions and news about the goings-on in his homeland. Read first-person accounts of recent events in Baghdad and Fallujah, life in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, and the progress of Iraqi women's groups. It's time for you to break out of the spin cycle with one man's local perspective on history in the making. (in Communications & Writing)
vidblogs.com
Over time, we develop a certain affinity with the bloggers who labor daily to bring us their thoughts and opinions. We eagerly read their chronicles and gain a sense of their lives and personalities. Vidblogs, touted as the "ultimate public voyeur experiment," is a directory that offers a tangible portrait of the wide world of bloggers, better than any static link or image ever could. The premise is to turn the spotlight on the bloggers who then create mini-films (up to six minutes long) about their lives and the people in them. Here creativity knows no bounds. Bloggers everywhere -- from Norway to Hawaii to California to Nowheresville U.S.A. -- ham it up, show off their editing techniques, and expose their off-hours exploits by way of video journal. Anyone with a blog and an exhibitionist streak can join, so those itching for a taste of reality fame know what to do. (in Weblogs)
Frisbee
At first blush, the humble Frisbee conjures up images of hippies tossing it around while waiting for someone to find the Hacky Sack. Or maybe a group of pie-eyed men trying to avoid spilling their beer while going for a birdie in a spirited game of disc golf. This site celebrates the plastic disc beyond those perceptions, elevating it into an object of art that should be appreciated for its staying power and range of imagery. With over 100 Frisbees on display here, it's apparent the plastic plate has long outgrown its roots as a late '50s fad. The site features Frisbees emblazoned with the faces of presidents, kings, and droids. Many of the discs on display celebrate Ultimate Frisbee, a "sport" that took the plain platter beyond mere child's play to international competition. After visiting this high-flying site, you'll be hard-pressed to identify the Frisbee with anything but good times. (in Sports)
Songs To Wear Pants To
If writing a successful song is as difficult as composers claim, imagine what went through John Mayer's head when he came up with "Your Body is a Wonderland." Ditties that precious don't just fall from the sky...or perhaps they do. What if you could simply make up a song title and send it to a site to be turned into a musical composition? Enter Andrew from Canada, a man more than willing to take your idea and turn it into a tune. While he's no Mayer (or even Jason Mraz), his refreshing refrains display a certain slap-dash panache the product-moving music industry lacks these days. We suggest listening to "Celtic Techno Burrito" as an introduction to Andrew's genius, "Rename Your Rabbit" to lift your spirits, and "The TV Trilogy" to make you love the Internet again. If you don't have the chops to complete an opus, you should submit your ideas now -- songs praising Yahoo! Picks are highly recommended. (in Music)
Derelict London
The seedy underbelly of one of the world's most regal and outwardly pristine cities is exposed to all in this poignant depiction of London's decidedly unseemly parts. Londoner Paul Talling has created a record of his many walkabouts and fashioned a rare portrait of the posh city that cannot be seen via public transport or guided tour. By foregoing the usual palatial pomp and circumstance and heading straight for the gutter shot, a grittier and more vivid (dare we say more interesting?) London emerges. Her abandoned cinemas and forgotten hospitals loom with quiet majesty, while her shoddy domiciles, unkempt corners, and pubs gone bust reveal an aging grand dame's "liver spots." Yet, even at her worst, London retains a hint of the glory we're more accustomed to seeing. (in Europe)
Meta-Efficient
In an age when we have less time on our hands and more possessions than we know what to do with, simplifying our immediate environment is essential. These reviewers critique and rate the efficiency of everyday items such as household products, appliances, electronics, and vehicles. They seek to endorse goods that create minimal waste, cost the least, and require little effort to maintain. Learn the benefits of deep-cycle batteries, composting toilets, and the best all-around indoor plants. Planning on remodeling? Find the best paints, lighting, and "air conditioning" products. While "living green" can seem overwhelming, small adjustments can make a huge difference in your wallet and your sanity. Why not streamline your life? (in Environment & Nature)
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Sharks
We have all experienced a museum exhibit that admirably tries (but usually fails) to get us excited about things that, well, aren't very exciting. Five minutes of staring at prehistoric rocks or the official dinnerware of Buckingham Palace and you'd probably rather be somewhere (anywhere!) else. Not so at the Monterey Bay Aquarium -- they've launched a smashing new shark exhibit. If your experience with the killer fish is limited to Jaws flicks and San Jose hockey, you'll want to sink your teeth in and bite off all you can chew. Visitors to the site can explore the deep sea, get up close with the deadly creatures, and even watch a live "shark cam" -- all from the safety of their dry desks. The site also offers practical tips on how you can help ensure the sharks' survival in the face of increased commercial fishing. Jump in and check it out. (Protective diving cage not included.) (in Science > Animals, Insects, and Pets)
Comments or suggestions?
Opinions on the war in Iraq fall along bitter and increasingly tiresome partisan lines. One side argues that the U.S. should never have gone to war and that the situation is rapidly falling apart. The other side claims these are just bumps in the road to a freshly democratized Iraq. As pundits opine from the plush comfort of TV studios, thanks to the Internet and blogs, we can read what the Iraqi people are really feeling and saying. This web log from an Iraqi dentist still living in Iraq offers reasoned opinions and news about the goings-on in his homeland. Read first-person accounts of recent events in Baghdad and Fallujah, life in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, and the progress of Iraqi women's groups. It's time for you to break out of the spin cycle with one man's local perspective on history in the making. (in Communications & Writing)
vidblogs.com
Over time, we develop a certain affinity with the bloggers who labor daily to bring us their thoughts and opinions. We eagerly read their chronicles and gain a sense of their lives and personalities. Vidblogs, touted as the "ultimate public voyeur experiment," is a directory that offers a tangible portrait of the wide world of bloggers, better than any static link or image ever could. The premise is to turn the spotlight on the bloggers who then create mini-films (up to six minutes long) about their lives and the people in them. Here creativity knows no bounds. Bloggers everywhere -- from Norway to Hawaii to California to Nowheresville U.S.A. -- ham it up, show off their editing techniques, and expose their off-hours exploits by way of video journal. Anyone with a blog and an exhibitionist streak can join, so those itching for a taste of reality fame know what to do. (in Weblogs)
Frisbee
At first blush, the humble Frisbee conjures up images of hippies tossing it around while waiting for someone to find the Hacky Sack. Or maybe a group of pie-eyed men trying to avoid spilling their beer while going for a birdie in a spirited game of disc golf. This site celebrates the plastic disc beyond those perceptions, elevating it into an object of art that should be appreciated for its staying power and range of imagery. With over 100 Frisbees on display here, it's apparent the plastic plate has long outgrown its roots as a late '50s fad. The site features Frisbees emblazoned with the faces of presidents, kings, and droids. Many of the discs on display celebrate Ultimate Frisbee, a "sport" that took the plain platter beyond mere child's play to international competition. After visiting this high-flying site, you'll be hard-pressed to identify the Frisbee with anything but good times. (in Sports)
Songs To Wear Pants To
If writing a successful song is as difficult as composers claim, imagine what went through John Mayer's head when he came up with "Your Body is a Wonderland." Ditties that precious don't just fall from the sky...or perhaps they do. What if you could simply make up a song title and send it to a site to be turned into a musical composition? Enter Andrew from Canada, a man more than willing to take your idea and turn it into a tune. While he's no Mayer (or even Jason Mraz), his refreshing refrains display a certain slap-dash panache the product-moving music industry lacks these days. We suggest listening to "Celtic Techno Burrito" as an introduction to Andrew's genius, "Rename Your Rabbit" to lift your spirits, and "The TV Trilogy" to make you love the Internet again. If you don't have the chops to complete an opus, you should submit your ideas now -- songs praising Yahoo! Picks are highly recommended. (in Music)
Derelict London
The seedy underbelly of one of the world's most regal and outwardly pristine cities is exposed to all in this poignant depiction of London's decidedly unseemly parts. Londoner Paul Talling has created a record of his many walkabouts and fashioned a rare portrait of the posh city that cannot be seen via public transport or guided tour. By foregoing the usual palatial pomp and circumstance and heading straight for the gutter shot, a grittier and more vivid (dare we say more interesting?) London emerges. Her abandoned cinemas and forgotten hospitals loom with quiet majesty, while her shoddy domiciles, unkempt corners, and pubs gone bust reveal an aging grand dame's "liver spots." Yet, even at her worst, London retains a hint of the glory we're more accustomed to seeing. (in Europe)
Meta-Efficient
In an age when we have less time on our hands and more possessions than we know what to do with, simplifying our immediate environment is essential. These reviewers critique and rate the efficiency of everyday items such as household products, appliances, electronics, and vehicles. They seek to endorse goods that create minimal waste, cost the least, and require little effort to maintain. Learn the benefits of deep-cycle batteries, composting toilets, and the best all-around indoor plants. Planning on remodeling? Find the best paints, lighting, and "air conditioning" products. While "living green" can seem overwhelming, small adjustments can make a huge difference in your wallet and your sanity. Why not streamline your life? (in Environment & Nature)
Monterey Bay Aquarium: Sharks
We have all experienced a museum exhibit that admirably tries (but usually fails) to get us excited about things that, well, aren't very exciting. Five minutes of staring at prehistoric rocks or the official dinnerware of Buckingham Palace and you'd probably rather be somewhere (anywhere!) else. Not so at the Monterey Bay Aquarium -- they've launched a smashing new shark exhibit. If your experience with the killer fish is limited to Jaws flicks and San Jose hockey, you'll want to sink your teeth in and bite off all you can chew. Visitors to the site can explore the deep sea, get up close with the deadly creatures, and even watch a live "shark cam" -- all from the safety of their dry desks. The site also offers practical tips on how you can help ensure the sharks' survival in the face of increased commercial fishing. Jump in and check it out. (Protective diving cage not included.) (in Science > Animals, Insects, and Pets)
Comments or suggestions?
America's Last Honest Place
by Marc Cooper
Las Vegas
This city is often described as one of dreams and fantasy, of tinselish
make-believe. But this is getting it backward. Vegas is instead the
American
market ethic stripped bare, a mini-world totally free of the pretenses
and
protocols of modern consumer capitalism. As one local gambling
researcher
says gleefully: "What other city in America puts up giant roadside
billboards promoting 97 percent guaranteed payback on slot play? In
other
words, you give us a buck and we'll give you back 97 cents. That's why
I
love my hometown."
Even that stomach-churning instant when the last chip is swept away can
be
charged with an existential frisson. Maybe that's why they say that the
difference between praying here and praying anywhere else is that here
you
really mean it. All the previous hours of over-the-table chitchat, of
know-it-all exchanges between the ice-cool dealer and the cynical
writer
from the big city, the kibitzing with the T-shirted rubes and the
open-shirted sharpies to my right and left, the false promises of the
coins
clanging into the trays behind me, the little stories I tell myself
while my
stack of chips shrinks and swells and then shrivels some more--all of
this
comes to an abrupt, crashing halt when the last chip goes back in the
dealer's tray. "No seats for the onlookers, sir." And the other players
at
the table--the dealer who a moment ago was my buddy, the solicitous pit
boss, the guy from Iowa in short khakis and topsiders peering over my
shoulder--no longer give a fuck whether I live or die. And while
winning is
always better, it's even in moments of loss like this that I feel a
certain
perverse thrill. It's one of the few totally honest interludes you can
have
in modern America. All the pretense, all the sentimentality, the
euphemisms,
hypocrisies, come-ons, loss leaders, warranties and guarantees, all the
fairy tales are out the window. You're out of money? OK, good--now get
lost.
In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level
democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind,
class-free
place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one
gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual
orientation,
address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal
arrest
record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you
as
the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America's
manifold
unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place
guaranteed
to come through--even if it's for a fleeting weekend. You may never, in
fact, surpass the Joneses, but with the two-night, three-day special at
the
Sahara, buffet and show included, free valet parking and maybe a comped
breakfast at the coffee shop, you can certainly live like them for
seventy-two hours--while never having to as much as change out of your
flip-flops, tank top or NASCAR cap.
"Las Vegas as America, America as Las Vegas. It's like what came first?
The
chicken or the egg?" says Vegas historian Michael Green. "Fresno,
California, doesn't have a row of casinos, but you can be sure it has
some
part of town where you can go for vice even though it's supposed to be
illegal. Here it's not necessarily vice in the first place, but it's
certainly not illegal. We have the same sort of stuff and more. Except
that
unlike in most places, here it's just out in the open." What
extraordinary
prescience social critic Neil Postman displayed when he wrote in his
1985
book Amusing Ourselves to Death that Las Vegas--where Wall Street
corporations had replaced mafias and mobs--should be considered the
"symbolic capital" of America. "At different times in our history,"
Postman
wrote, "different cities have been the focal point of a radiating
American
spirit." In the era of the Revolutionary War, Boston embodied the
ideals of
freedom; in the mid-nineteenth century, "New York became the symbol of
a
melting-pot America." In the early twentieth century, the brawn and
inventiveness of American industry and culture were captured in the
energy
of Chicago. "Today," Postman concluded, "we must look to the city of
Las
Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration,
its
symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a
chorus
girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of
entertainment,
and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse
increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, our
religion,
news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into
congenial
adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular
notice."
When Postman penned these words, little could he imagine that the Vegas
he
was writing about was the "old" Las Vegas and that Sin City was just a
few
years away from a radical makeover. Nor could Postman fully fathom that
America itself was in the throes of a cataclysmic transformation. The
more
both places changed, the more they mirrored each other. In 1989 Steve
Wynn--with junk-bond financing from Michael Milken--stunned the Strip
with
his $700 million Mirage Hotel and Casino and touched off a revolution.
One
after another, the old Rat Pack-era hotels were dynamited and in their
place
rose staggering Leviathans of modern, market-based entertainment: the
biggest casino in the world, then the biggest hotel in the world, then
the
most expensive hotel in the world, the biggest man-made hotel lake in
the
world, the hotel with the biggest rooms in the world, and so on.
If economist Joseph Schumpeter was correct in theorizing that "creative
destruction is the essential fact about capitalism," then capitalism as
practiced in Las Vegas is the purest strain. The erection of the Vegas
mega-resorts was not only heralded by the televised dynamiting of their
predecessors but also accompanied by the concurrent collapse of much of
the
rest of America's urban, industrial and employment infrastructure.
Isn't it
logical or at least fitting that Las Vegas, the City of the Eternal
Now, the
town that every few years seems to slather yet one more layer of
pavement
and glitz over its own scant history, tradition and roots, would expand
just
as long-entrenched communities from Southeast Los Angeles to Lima,
Ohio,
evaporated into the deindustrialized dust of globalization?
Indeed, just as quickly as Las Vegas consumes and erases the past and
scrambles the present, it now shines to many as an attractive beacon of
the
future. Unlike almost any other place in America, Las Vegas is one city
where unskilled labor can still--thanks to vibrant unions and wealthy
and
efficient employers--earn middle-class wages. Vegas food servers, car
parkers, cashiers, even maids, can still buy into the new American
dream,
purchasing a house and putting their kids through school. A high school
grad
can become a professional dealer for three hundred bucks' worth of
tuition
and a few weeks of practice pitching cards--and most likely get a job.
Where
else in America can you regularly find 60-year-old, bouffant-coiffed
cocktail waitresses proudly wearing union buttons (those of the mighty
Culinary Workers Local 226) and going home to peruse the statements of
their
fattening pension accounts?
Even though the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center slowed
(slightly) what has traditionally been the recession-proof Vegas
economy, a
steady stream of 5,000-6,000 domestic economic refugees a month still
pour
into and around the city. Only 6 percent of adults living in Vegas's
Clark
County were born here--the lowest such figure anywhere in America. And
although water supplies are drying up, schools are strained and suicide
and
domestic violence rates are among the highest in the nation, they keep
pouring in. Purchasers of new houses--at prices far below those of the
two
coasts--are wait-listed. Vegas's population doubled during the 1980s,
and
doubled again in the '90s. Vegas continues to be the fastest-growing
metropolitan area in America.
This generation of immigrants, however, is different in many ways from
the
grifters, hustlers and outcasts who huddled here over the past century.
Sure, there will always be a certain batch of trimmers, fugitives and
shakedown artists looking to launder themselves in the Vegas sun. But
most
of those now crowding into Las Vegas are fleeing from an America where
everyday life has become too much of a gamble--where either the Reagan
recession of 1981, the Bush slump of 1990 or the burst bubble of a
decade
later has left them as devastated as a blackjack player who bet it all
only
to have his pair of tens get trounced by the dealer's Ace-King. The
only
risk they are interested in now is the off chance that Vegas can
provide the
normalcy, the security, the certainty, that once underpinned their
lives, or
at least their dreams.
What a turnaround it has been for once lowly Las Vegas--and for the
nation
around it. Barely fifteen years ago, the august Citicorp was queasy
about
publicly admitting that its major credit-card processing center had
been
relocated to an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. A deal with state
authorities allowed the banking corporation to postmark and camouflage
its
mail as coming from "The Lakes, Nevada" instead of from sinful Vegas.
Today,
that same neighborhood sports several high-end casinos and luxury
hotels.
And Citicorp's own credibility, in the aftermath of the great Wall
Street
accounting scandals, ranks somewhere below that of a midtown
three-card-monte hustler.
Nor could Neil Postman have known back in 1985 that casino gambling was
about to be fully destigmatized within a decade--and delicately renamed
"gaming." The resulting shift in public attitudes would not only
definitively cleanse Vegas's image but also net it a growing bonanza.
As
recently as 1988, casino gambling was legal only in Nevada and in
Atlantic
City. But as American industry continued to wash up offshore and the
commercial tax base atrophied, one strapped state and municipality
after
another turned its forlorn eyes toward the gaming tables and slot
machines.
Impoverished Indian tribes were more than willing to sign gambling
compacts
with state governments. The result: Now twenty-seven states have
Nevada-style casinos, and forty-eight states have at least some form of
legal gambling. With local budgets again being squeezed by burgeoning
deficits, government itself is thinking about going into the casino
business. In the spring of 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he'd
like
to open a municipal casino. Before the 1989 opening of the Mirage
unleashed
the New Vegas revolution, only 15 percent of Americans had ever visited
the
city. By mid-decade that number had doubled. In its 1996 annual report,
Circus Circus celebrated the news: "In an era when social attitudes
toward
play, and the means to afford it, have dramatically changed, so has the
role
of the casino."
The past seven years have shown an ever more dramatic shift toward the
mainstreaming of gambling. A gambling-industry poll claimed that in the
single year of 2001, 51 million Americans--more than a quarter of the
population over age 21--visited a casino, chalking up a national total
of
almost 300 million visits. More than 430 commercial casinos nationwide
brought in $26.5 billon in revenue--two and a half times what Americans
spent on movie tickets, $5 billion more than they spent on DVDs and
videos,
and $3 billion more than on cosmetics and toiletries. The explosion of
legalized gambling nationwide has had little but positive impact on Las
Vegas. "All it did was increase the average Joe's appetite for
gambling,"
says a veteran Vegas Strip pit boss. "You know, it's like baseball. We
see
all those local Indian casinos and riverboat casinos and local slot
parlors
as our farm teams. They suck in a lot of average American types who
never
thought about gambling before. But once you play on the farm team, who
doesn't want to play in the majors? And Las Vegas is the friggin' World
Series. It's kind of like, You build the casinos out there and they'll
come.
But eventually they'll come here."
The difference between the marketing of Vegas a half-century ago and
today
is precisely the difference in mainstream American attitudes. "Fifty
years
ago, Lucille Ball was pregnant, and they couldn't say that word on I
Love
Lucy,'' says historian Green. "Today we have lesbian kisses on TV. We
have
the word 'bullshit' on prime time, not to talk about cable programming.
As
the culture has become more open, Las Vegas can market itself more
honestly." And, Green might add, there's a whole new line of
Lucy-themed
slot machines now out on casino floors.
In a time when Martha Stewart gets busted, Mark McGwire is on chemicals
and
Sammy Sosa gets caught with a corker; when everyday economic life in
America
has become a breathtaking risk and it's an all-out crapshoot whether
you'll
still have a job next month or your HMO will cover your spinal tap or
you
can hock the house for enough to pay for your kid's college tuition,
who can
say whether it would have really been that stupid to let it all ride on
18
Red? Was it smarter to invest ten years of savings in an Enron-backed
401(k)
or to spend your time studying the probability charts for single-deck
blackjack? Is the integrity of the roulette wheels at the Bellagio more
tainted than the quarterly corporate reports coming out of WorldCom?
Both
are iffy propositions, but at least in Vegas the rules of the game are
clear-cut, the industry tightly regulated and the unfavorable odds
publicly
posted. There are no multimillion-dollar-a-year cable TV touts telling
you
that red or black or double-zero green is the next best thing or that
life
somehow owes you an eternal double-digit annual return. Haven't we, in
fact,
reached a point in our culture where the button-down bankers and
arbitrageurs have become the reckless "casino capitalists," while those
who
actually run the casinos can get away with labeling themselves
responsible
and conservative "entertainment visionaries"? Even if they are,
increasingly, often the same people?
A couple of years back at a gambling industry convention in Las Vegas,
the
chief financial officers of three major casinos sat on a public panel.
When
someone from the floor asked if investment in the casino business was a
good
bet, one of the CFOs answered, essentially: The difference between us
and
Enron is that at least our money is real. That globally recognized icon
of
Las Vegas, the neon-lit, hand-waving cowboy Vegas Vic, unveiled in 1947
and
still presiding over downtown's Fremont Street, used to regularly and
electronically call out "Howdy, pardner" until the complaints of
card-groggy
hotel guests got him permanently muted. But if Vic could speak today,
he
might well be saying, "Welcome to Las Vegas, pardner. The last honest
place
in America."
by Marc Cooper
Las Vegas
This city is often described as one of dreams and fantasy, of tinselish
make-believe. But this is getting it backward. Vegas is instead the
American
market ethic stripped bare, a mini-world totally free of the pretenses
and
protocols of modern consumer capitalism. As one local gambling
researcher
says gleefully: "What other city in America puts up giant roadside
billboards promoting 97 percent guaranteed payback on slot play? In
other
words, you give us a buck and we'll give you back 97 cents. That's why
I
love my hometown."
Even that stomach-churning instant when the last chip is swept away can
be
charged with an existential frisson. Maybe that's why they say that the
difference between praying here and praying anywhere else is that here
you
really mean it. All the previous hours of over-the-table chitchat, of
know-it-all exchanges between the ice-cool dealer and the cynical
writer
from the big city, the kibitzing with the T-shirted rubes and the
open-shirted sharpies to my right and left, the false promises of the
coins
clanging into the trays behind me, the little stories I tell myself
while my
stack of chips shrinks and swells and then shrivels some more--all of
this
comes to an abrupt, crashing halt when the last chip goes back in the
dealer's tray. "No seats for the onlookers, sir." And the other players
at
the table--the dealer who a moment ago was my buddy, the solicitous pit
boss, the guy from Iowa in short khakis and topsiders peering over my
shoulder--no longer give a fuck whether I live or die. And while
winning is
always better, it's even in moments of loss like this that I feel a
certain
perverse thrill. It's one of the few totally honest interludes you can
have
in modern America. All the pretense, all the sentimentality, the
euphemisms,
hypocrisies, come-ons, loss leaders, warranties and guarantees, all the
fairy tales are out the window. You're out of money? OK, good--now get
lost.
In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level
democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind,
class-free
place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one
gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual
orientation,
address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal
arrest
record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you
as
the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America's
manifold
unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place
guaranteed
to come through--even if it's for a fleeting weekend. You may never, in
fact, surpass the Joneses, but with the two-night, three-day special at
the
Sahara, buffet and show included, free valet parking and maybe a comped
breakfast at the coffee shop, you can certainly live like them for
seventy-two hours--while never having to as much as change out of your
flip-flops, tank top or NASCAR cap.
"Las Vegas as America, America as Las Vegas. It's like what came first?
The
chicken or the egg?" says Vegas historian Michael Green. "Fresno,
California, doesn't have a row of casinos, but you can be sure it has
some
part of town where you can go for vice even though it's supposed to be
illegal. Here it's not necessarily vice in the first place, but it's
certainly not illegal. We have the same sort of stuff and more. Except
that
unlike in most places, here it's just out in the open." What
extraordinary
prescience social critic Neil Postman displayed when he wrote in his
1985
book Amusing Ourselves to Death that Las Vegas--where Wall Street
corporations had replaced mafias and mobs--should be considered the
"symbolic capital" of America. "At different times in our history,"
Postman
wrote, "different cities have been the focal point of a radiating
American
spirit." In the era of the Revolutionary War, Boston embodied the
ideals of
freedom; in the mid-nineteenth century, "New York became the symbol of
a
melting-pot America." In the early twentieth century, the brawn and
inventiveness of American industry and culture were captured in the
energy
of Chicago. "Today," Postman concluded, "we must look to the city of
Las
Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration,
its
symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a
chorus
girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of
entertainment,
and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse
increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, our
religion,
news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into
congenial
adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular
notice."
When Postman penned these words, little could he imagine that the Vegas
he
was writing about was the "old" Las Vegas and that Sin City was just a
few
years away from a radical makeover. Nor could Postman fully fathom that
America itself was in the throes of a cataclysmic transformation. The
more
both places changed, the more they mirrored each other. In 1989 Steve
Wynn--with junk-bond financing from Michael Milken--stunned the Strip
with
his $700 million Mirage Hotel and Casino and touched off a revolution.
One
after another, the old Rat Pack-era hotels were dynamited and in their
place
rose staggering Leviathans of modern, market-based entertainment: the
biggest casino in the world, then the biggest hotel in the world, then
the
most expensive hotel in the world, the biggest man-made hotel lake in
the
world, the hotel with the biggest rooms in the world, and so on.
If economist Joseph Schumpeter was correct in theorizing that "creative
destruction is the essential fact about capitalism," then capitalism as
practiced in Las Vegas is the purest strain. The erection of the Vegas
mega-resorts was not only heralded by the televised dynamiting of their
predecessors but also accompanied by the concurrent collapse of much of
the
rest of America's urban, industrial and employment infrastructure.
Isn't it
logical or at least fitting that Las Vegas, the City of the Eternal
Now, the
town that every few years seems to slather yet one more layer of
pavement
and glitz over its own scant history, tradition and roots, would expand
just
as long-entrenched communities from Southeast Los Angeles to Lima,
Ohio,
evaporated into the deindustrialized dust of globalization?
Indeed, just as quickly as Las Vegas consumes and erases the past and
scrambles the present, it now shines to many as an attractive beacon of
the
future. Unlike almost any other place in America, Las Vegas is one city
where unskilled labor can still--thanks to vibrant unions and wealthy
and
efficient employers--earn middle-class wages. Vegas food servers, car
parkers, cashiers, even maids, can still buy into the new American
dream,
purchasing a house and putting their kids through school. A high school
grad
can become a professional dealer for three hundred bucks' worth of
tuition
and a few weeks of practice pitching cards--and most likely get a job.
Where
else in America can you regularly find 60-year-old, bouffant-coiffed
cocktail waitresses proudly wearing union buttons (those of the mighty
Culinary Workers Local 226) and going home to peruse the statements of
their
fattening pension accounts?
Even though the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center slowed
(slightly) what has traditionally been the recession-proof Vegas
economy, a
steady stream of 5,000-6,000 domestic economic refugees a month still
pour
into and around the city. Only 6 percent of adults living in Vegas's
Clark
County were born here--the lowest such figure anywhere in America. And
although water supplies are drying up, schools are strained and suicide
and
domestic violence rates are among the highest in the nation, they keep
pouring in. Purchasers of new houses--at prices far below those of the
two
coasts--are wait-listed. Vegas's population doubled during the 1980s,
and
doubled again in the '90s. Vegas continues to be the fastest-growing
metropolitan area in America.
This generation of immigrants, however, is different in many ways from
the
grifters, hustlers and outcasts who huddled here over the past century.
Sure, there will always be a certain batch of trimmers, fugitives and
shakedown artists looking to launder themselves in the Vegas sun. But
most
of those now crowding into Las Vegas are fleeing from an America where
everyday life has become too much of a gamble--where either the Reagan
recession of 1981, the Bush slump of 1990 or the burst bubble of a
decade
later has left them as devastated as a blackjack player who bet it all
only
to have his pair of tens get trounced by the dealer's Ace-King. The
only
risk they are interested in now is the off chance that Vegas can
provide the
normalcy, the security, the certainty, that once underpinned their
lives, or
at least their dreams.
What a turnaround it has been for once lowly Las Vegas--and for the
nation
around it. Barely fifteen years ago, the august Citicorp was queasy
about
publicly admitting that its major credit-card processing center had
been
relocated to an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. A deal with state
authorities allowed the banking corporation to postmark and camouflage
its
mail as coming from "The Lakes, Nevada" instead of from sinful Vegas.
Today,
that same neighborhood sports several high-end casinos and luxury
hotels.
And Citicorp's own credibility, in the aftermath of the great Wall
Street
accounting scandals, ranks somewhere below that of a midtown
three-card-monte hustler.
Nor could Neil Postman have known back in 1985 that casino gambling was
about to be fully destigmatized within a decade--and delicately renamed
"gaming." The resulting shift in public attitudes would not only
definitively cleanse Vegas's image but also net it a growing bonanza.
As
recently as 1988, casino gambling was legal only in Nevada and in
Atlantic
City. But as American industry continued to wash up offshore and the
commercial tax base atrophied, one strapped state and municipality
after
another turned its forlorn eyes toward the gaming tables and slot
machines.
Impoverished Indian tribes were more than willing to sign gambling
compacts
with state governments. The result: Now twenty-seven states have
Nevada-style casinos, and forty-eight states have at least some form of
legal gambling. With local budgets again being squeezed by burgeoning
deficits, government itself is thinking about going into the casino
business. In the spring of 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he'd
like
to open a municipal casino. Before the 1989 opening of the Mirage
unleashed
the New Vegas revolution, only 15 percent of Americans had ever visited
the
city. By mid-decade that number had doubled. In its 1996 annual report,
Circus Circus celebrated the news: "In an era when social attitudes
toward
play, and the means to afford it, have dramatically changed, so has the
role
of the casino."
The past seven years have shown an ever more dramatic shift toward the
mainstreaming of gambling. A gambling-industry poll claimed that in the
single year of 2001, 51 million Americans--more than a quarter of the
population over age 21--visited a casino, chalking up a national total
of
almost 300 million visits. More than 430 commercial casinos nationwide
brought in $26.5 billon in revenue--two and a half times what Americans
spent on movie tickets, $5 billion more than they spent on DVDs and
videos,
and $3 billion more than on cosmetics and toiletries. The explosion of
legalized gambling nationwide has had little but positive impact on Las
Vegas. "All it did was increase the average Joe's appetite for
gambling,"
says a veteran Vegas Strip pit boss. "You know, it's like baseball. We
see
all those local Indian casinos and riverboat casinos and local slot
parlors
as our farm teams. They suck in a lot of average American types who
never
thought about gambling before. But once you play on the farm team, who
doesn't want to play in the majors? And Las Vegas is the friggin' World
Series. It's kind of like, You build the casinos out there and they'll
come.
But eventually they'll come here."
The difference between the marketing of Vegas a half-century ago and
today
is precisely the difference in mainstream American attitudes. "Fifty
years
ago, Lucille Ball was pregnant, and they couldn't say that word on I
Love
Lucy,'' says historian Green. "Today we have lesbian kisses on TV. We
have
the word 'bullshit' on prime time, not to talk about cable programming.
As
the culture has become more open, Las Vegas can market itself more
honestly." And, Green might add, there's a whole new line of
Lucy-themed
slot machines now out on casino floors.
In a time when Martha Stewart gets busted, Mark McGwire is on chemicals
and
Sammy Sosa gets caught with a corker; when everyday economic life in
America
has become a breathtaking risk and it's an all-out crapshoot whether
you'll
still have a job next month or your HMO will cover your spinal tap or
you
can hock the house for enough to pay for your kid's college tuition,
who can
say whether it would have really been that stupid to let it all ride on
18
Red? Was it smarter to invest ten years of savings in an Enron-backed
401(k)
or to spend your time studying the probability charts for single-deck
blackjack? Is the integrity of the roulette wheels at the Bellagio more
tainted than the quarterly corporate reports coming out of WorldCom?
Both
are iffy propositions, but at least in Vegas the rules of the game are
clear-cut, the industry tightly regulated and the unfavorable odds
publicly
posted. There are no multimillion-dollar-a-year cable TV touts telling
you
that red or black or double-zero green is the next best thing or that
life
somehow owes you an eternal double-digit annual return. Haven't we, in
fact,
reached a point in our culture where the button-down bankers and
arbitrageurs have become the reckless "casino capitalists," while those
who
actually run the casinos can get away with labeling themselves
responsible
and conservative "entertainment visionaries"? Even if they are,
increasingly, often the same people?
A couple of years back at a gambling industry convention in Las Vegas,
the
chief financial officers of three major casinos sat on a public panel.
When
someone from the floor asked if investment in the casino business was a
good
bet, one of the CFOs answered, essentially: The difference between us
and
Enron is that at least our money is real. That globally recognized icon
of
Las Vegas, the neon-lit, hand-waving cowboy Vegas Vic, unveiled in 1947
and
still presiding over downtown's Fremont Street, used to regularly and
electronically call out "Howdy, pardner" until the complaints of
card-groggy
hotel guests got him permanently muted. But if Vic could speak today,
he
might well be saying, "Welcome to Las Vegas, pardner. The last honest
place
in America."
The magnitude of this year's presidential election has produced a record number of voter registrations. Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax says his office has processed more than 260,000 voter registration forms this year. That is 160,000 more than the last presidential election.
Lomax says he attributes the surge to Nevada's status as a battleground state and an increased number of groups signing up voters. The main thrust of the voter drive effort ended Saturday, with the postmark deadline for mail-in registration. While those forms are being received, the county Election Department will continue to take walk-in registrations through October 12th.
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
Lomax says he attributes the surge to Nevada's status as a battleground state and an increased number of groups signing up voters. The main thrust of the voter drive effort ended Saturday, with the postmark deadline for mail-in registration. While those forms are being received, the county Election Department will continue to take walk-in registrations through October 12th.
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
Polls: Bush, Kerry in Tight Race in 3 Key States
1 hour, 4 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) and Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites) are in a dead heat in Colorado while the president holds a slim lead in New Mexico and Wisconsin, according to USA Today/CNN/Gallup polls in battleground states released on Thursday.
Latest Headlines:
·
Bush, Kerry Neck and Neck in Time Poll Reuters - 20 minutes ago
·
AdWatch: Bush Touts Job Creation in TV Ad AP - 29 minutes ago
·
Fla. Judge Delays Voting Machine Lawsuit AP - 33 minutes ago
All Election Coverage
In Colorado, the presidential race was even with both candidates picking up 49 percent of support among likely voters and 48 percent support among registered voters, according to the poll.
The poll of likely voters in Wisconsin found Bush leading Kerry by three percentage points, 49 percent to 46 percent. Among registered voters, 48 percent back Bush and 45 percent support Kerry.
A September poll in Wisconsin showed Bush leading with 52 percent of support from likely voters compared to 44 percent backing Kerry.
In New Mexico, Bush was ahead among likely voters with 50 percent support to 47 percent for Kerry. Among registered voters, Bush led Kerry by one percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent.
The telephone surveys were conducted between Oct. 3 and Oct. 6. All three have a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
The Colorado poll involved 820 registered voters and 667 likely voters. In New Mexico, 885 registered voters and 673 likely voters were polled. The Wisconsin survey included 837 registered voters and 704 likely voters.
1 hour, 4 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) and Democratic rival John Kerry (news - web sites) are in a dead heat in Colorado while the president holds a slim lead in New Mexico and Wisconsin, according to USA Today/CNN/Gallup polls in battleground states released on Thursday.
Latest Headlines:
·
Bush, Kerry Neck and Neck in Time Poll Reuters - 20 minutes ago
·
AdWatch: Bush Touts Job Creation in TV Ad AP - 29 minutes ago
·
Fla. Judge Delays Voting Machine Lawsuit AP - 33 minutes ago
All Election Coverage
In Colorado, the presidential race was even with both candidates picking up 49 percent of support among likely voters and 48 percent support among registered voters, according to the poll.
The poll of likely voters in Wisconsin found Bush leading Kerry by three percentage points, 49 percent to 46 percent. Among registered voters, 48 percent back Bush and 45 percent support Kerry.
A September poll in Wisconsin showed Bush leading with 52 percent of support from likely voters compared to 44 percent backing Kerry.
In New Mexico, Bush was ahead among likely voters with 50 percent support to 47 percent for Kerry. Among registered voters, Bush led Kerry by one percentage point, 47 percent to 46 percent.
The telephone surveys were conducted between Oct. 3 and Oct. 6. All three have a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
The Colorado poll involved 820 registered voters and 667 likely voters. In New Mexico, 885 registered voters and 673 likely voters were polled. The Wisconsin survey included 837 registered voters and 704 likely voters.
On this day in 1931 Virginia Woolf's The Waves was published. She was just forty-nine, and she would live and write for another decade, but this was the last of her major works -- a series of six books over nine years that would change the face of modern fiction. A journal entry from eight months earlier, written on the morning that she finished the last chapter, shows that Woolf had some sense of her latest accomplishment:
Here in the few minutes that remain, I must record, heaven be praised, the end of The Waves. I wrote the words O Death fifteen minutes ago, having reeled across the last ten pages with some moments of such intensity and intoxication that I seemed only to stumble after my own voice, or almost, after some sort of speaker (as when I was mad). I was almost afraid, remembering the voices that used to fly ahead. Anyhow, it is done; and I have been sitting these 15 minutes in a state of glory, and calm.... How physical the sense of triumph and relief is!... I have netted the fin in the waste of water which appeared to me over the marshes out of my window at Rodmell when I was coming to an end of To the Lighthouse. In his biography, nephew Quentin Bell writes, "If, as many critics assert, The Waves was Virginia's masterpiece, then that [journal moment] may be accounted the culminating point in her career as an artist."Woolf's allusion to madness was not made lightly. Earlier journal entries express her anguish over the psychological and narrative problems which she encountered during the writing of The Waves. It must certainly have occurred to her that a book which tries to voice the lives and sensibilities of six fragmented characters might not be healthy for a writer with her psychological history, one who feels how "difficult it is to collect oneself into one Virginia; even though the special Virginia in whose body I live for the moment is violently susceptible to all sorts of separate feelings." The central event of the book required her to once again revisit the trauma of her brother Thoby's premature death -- some critics say the trauma of her own sexual abuse, also. There were constant waves of illness and health, despair and buoyancy, and resolve: "One will not perhaps go to the writing table & write the simple & profound paper upon suicide which I see myself leaving for my friends" and "The only way I keep afloat is by working" and "If I never felt these extraordinarily pervasive strains –- of unrest, or rest, or happiness, or discomfort –- I should float down into acquiescence. Here is something to fight: & when I wake early I say to myself, Fight, fight. If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world."The following passage is from the very end of the novel. The italicized lines are on a plaque which Leonard Woolf put beneath a sculpture of his wife in the garden of their Rodmell, Sussex; her ashes were scattered there after her suicide in 1941:
"And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"The waves broke on the shore.
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Here in the few minutes that remain, I must record, heaven be praised, the end of The Waves. I wrote the words O Death fifteen minutes ago, having reeled across the last ten pages with some moments of such intensity and intoxication that I seemed only to stumble after my own voice, or almost, after some sort of speaker (as when I was mad). I was almost afraid, remembering the voices that used to fly ahead. Anyhow, it is done; and I have been sitting these 15 minutes in a state of glory, and calm.... How physical the sense of triumph and relief is!... I have netted the fin in the waste of water which appeared to me over the marshes out of my window at Rodmell when I was coming to an end of To the Lighthouse. In his biography, nephew Quentin Bell writes, "If, as many critics assert, The Waves was Virginia's masterpiece, then that [journal moment] may be accounted the culminating point in her career as an artist."Woolf's allusion to madness was not made lightly. Earlier journal entries express her anguish over the psychological and narrative problems which she encountered during the writing of The Waves. It must certainly have occurred to her that a book which tries to voice the lives and sensibilities of six fragmented characters might not be healthy for a writer with her psychological history, one who feels how "difficult it is to collect oneself into one Virginia; even though the special Virginia in whose body I live for the moment is violently susceptible to all sorts of separate feelings." The central event of the book required her to once again revisit the trauma of her brother Thoby's premature death -- some critics say the trauma of her own sexual abuse, also. There were constant waves of illness and health, despair and buoyancy, and resolve: "One will not perhaps go to the writing table & write the simple & profound paper upon suicide which I see myself leaving for my friends" and "The only way I keep afloat is by working" and "If I never felt these extraordinarily pervasive strains –- of unrest, or rest, or happiness, or discomfort –- I should float down into acquiescence. Here is something to fight: & when I wake early I say to myself, Fight, fight. If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world."The following passage is from the very end of the novel. The italicized lines are on a plaque which Leonard Woolf put beneath a sculpture of his wife in the garden of their Rodmell, Sussex; her ashes were scattered there after her suicide in 1941:
"And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"The waves broke on the shore.
site map privacy policy terms of use comments?
