Not bad for melodrama

National Catholic Reporter
A year ago we lamented in this space the disappearance of the U.S. Catholic bishops. Well, we meant that in a metaphorical sense. They hadn’t actually disappeared; they had just become far less visible on the national scene than in an earlier era.
Here’s how we put it: “We are watching the disintegration of a once-great national church, the largest denomination in the United States, into regional groupings bent on avoiding the spotlight and the big issues.”
We noted that there was war and starvation everywhere; fresh clergy sex abuse reports out of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Spokane, Wash., to name a few; 20 percent of U.S. parishes without a pastor; a Congress poised to reduce health care coverage and food stamps; the United States accused of torture and keeping combatants in secret prisons; and so on. And the bishops had nothing to say. They would talk only to each other about internal church matters.
We are compelled, then, to report that the bishops have not entirely disappeared. For they gathered again, in Baltimore this year, and, continuing their trip inward, issued documents on such burning issues as birth control, ministry to persons with “a homosexual inclination,” and how to prepare to receive Communion. Now, none of these matters is unimportant. Don’t get the wrong impression. We’ve had documents aplenty about all of them before. And these topics -- unlike the war in Iraq, say, or what it means to have a president and vice president endorsing torture -- are even covered in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
So why again? Apparently the bishops feel that people just aren’t listening. If that’s their hunch, we’d agree. Why aren’t they listening? Let’s consider for starters the document on contraception. A lot of the U.S. bishops today might say there are a lot of bad, or at least ignorant, Catholics out there, Catholics influenced by the contraceptive culture, for instance, who no longer know good from evil.
Maybe they’re right. More likely, though, it’s because the teaching makes little sense, doesn’t match the experience of lay Catholics and tends to reduce all of human love to the act of breeding.
In short, the bishops aren’t terribly persuasive or clear when they talk about sex, and they tend to want to talk about sex a lot. To be sure, they say lots of lovely and lofty things about marital love, about how it completes people and cooperates with God’s plan and fills married lives with joy and happiness. You can want not to have children, say the bishops, you just can’t do anything “unnatural” about it. It’s a strange concept, like not wanting to die of heart disease while not doing anything “unnatural” about it.
They make the point that if every time a married couple makes love they are not open to having children, then they’re not giving “all” of themselves to each other. If you use birth control, say the bishops, and every single act is not open to having children, then “being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences -- avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.” Whew! So that’s it, eh?
It’s either be open to having kids or married sex is no more significant than an encounter with a prostitute. Such a view of marriage and sexuality and sexual intimacy can only have been written by people straining mightily to fit the mysteries, fullness and candidly human pleasure of sex into a schema that violently divides the human person into unrecognizable parts. There’s a reason 96 percent of Catholics have ignored the birth control teaching for decades. We doubt the new document will significantly change that percentage.
So it is with gays. Here again, church authorities try to fit together two wildly diverging themes. They go something like this: Homosexuals are “objectively disordered” (that’s about as bad as it humanly gets, in our understanding of things), but we love them and want them to be members of our community.
Only this time out, the bishops are not using the term homosexual “orientation” (a definite position) but homosexual “inclination” (a liking for something or a tendency toward). Sly, no? The inference to be drawn, we presume, is that someone inclined one way can just incline another way, whereas someone with an orientation is pretty much stuck there.
That science and human experience generally say otherwise is of little concern, apparently, though the bishops were clear they weren’t suggesting that homosexuals are required to change. This time, too, the bishops, while acknowledging that those with homosexual tendencies should seek supportive friendships, advise homosexuals to be quiet about their inclinations in church. “For some persons, revealing their homosexual tendencies to certain close friends, family members, a spiritual director, confessor, or members of a church support group may provide some spiritual and emotional help and aid them in their growth in Christian life. In the context of parish life, however, general public self-disclosures are not helpful and should not be encouraged.”
The next paragraph in the document, by the way, begins, “Sad to say, there are many persons with a homosexual inclination who feel alienated from the church.” You can’t make this stuff up.
It is difficult to figure out how to approach these documents. They are products of some realm so removed from the real lives of the faithful one has to wonder why any group of busy men administering a church would bother. They ignore science, human experience and the groups they attempt to characterize. The documents are not only embarrassing but insulting and degrading to those the bishops are charged to lead. The saddest thing is that the valuable insights the bishops have into the deficiencies and influences of the wider culture get buried.
Where is this all going?
No one’s come out with a program, but we’ll venture yet one more hunch. It has become apparent in recent years that there’s been an upsurge in historical ecclesiastical finery and other goods. We’ve seen more birettas (those funny three-peak hats with the fuzzy ball on top that come in different colors depending on clerical rank) and cassocks (the kind with real buttons, no zippers for the purists) and ecclesiastically correct color shoes and socks, lots of lacy surplices and even the capa magna (yards and yards of silk, a cape long enough that it has to be attended by two altar boys or seminarians, also in full regalia). In some places they’re even naming monsignors again.
It’s as if someone has discovered a props closet full of old stuff and they’re putting it out all over the stage. Bishops, pestered by the abuse scandal that they’ve avoided looking full in the face, find it easier to try to order others’ lives. They have found the things of a more settled time, a time when their authority wasn’t dependent on persuading or relating to other humans. It was enough to have the office and the clothing. Things worked. Dig a little deeper in the closet and bring out the Latin texts, bring back the old documents, bring back the days when homosexuals were quiet and told no one about who they essentially are. Someone even found a canopy under which the royally clad leader can process.
Now that’s order.
Now that’s the church.
Bring up the lights a little higher so all can see.
Before it all fades to irrelevance.
National Catholic Reporter, November 24, 2006

50 Shots Fired, and the Experts Offer a Theory
Experts suggested that "contagious shooting" played a role in the police shooting of a bridegroom in Queens.
It is known in police parlance as "contagious shooting" - gunfire that spreads among officers who believe that they, or their colleagues, are facing a threat. It spreads like germs, like laughter, or fear. An officer fires, so his colleagues do, too.
The phenomenon appears to have happened last year, when eight officers fired 43 shots at an armed man in Queens, killing him. In July, three officers fired 26 shots at a pit bull that had bitten a chunk out of an officer's leg in a Bronx apartment building. And there have been other episodes: in 1995, in the Bronx, officers fired 125 bullets during a bodega robbery, with one officer firing 45 rounds.
Just what happened on Saturday is still being investigated. Police experts, however, suggested in interviews yesterday that contagious shooting played a role in a fatal police shooting in Queens Saturday morning. According to the police account, five officers fired 50 shots at a bridegroom who, leaving his bachelor party at a strip club, twice drove his car into a minivan carrying plainclothes police officers investigating the club.
The bridegroom, Sean Bell, who was to be married hours later, was killed, and two of his friends were wounded, one critically.
To the layman, and to the loved ones of those who were shot, 50 shots seems a startlingly high number, especially since the men were found to be unarmed. And police experts concede that the number was high. Yet they also note that in those chaotic and frightening fractions of a second between quiet and gunfire, nothing is clear-cut, and blood is pumping furiously. Even 50 shots can be squeezed off in a matter of seconds.
Cooperative agreement between SPIEGEL ONLINE and the "New York Times"SPIEGEL ONLINE and the online version of the "New York Times" offer their readers a special service. Approximately twice a week, you can read selected analyses and commentary from the "New York Times" on SPIEGEL ONLINE. In return, our colleagues in New York will publish selected and translated articles from DER SPIEGEL on their website each week."We can teach as much as we can," said John C. Cerar, a retired commander of the Police Department's firearms training section. "The fog of the moment happens. Different things happen that people don't understand. Most people really believe what it's like in television, that a police officer can take a gun and shoot someone out of the saddle."
The five officers involved in the shooting were placed on administrative duty yesterday - without their guns - as the Police Department and the Queens district attorney investigated the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and relatives of Mr. Bell, joined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, staged a rally and a march to demand answers.
The officers have not yet been interviewed by police investigators or prosecutors to give their account.
Again and again, the focus of the day returned to the number of bullets that went flying.
One of the officers fired more than half the rounds, pausing to reload, and then emptying it again, 31 shots in all, according to the police. Another officer fired 11 shots. The others fired four shots, three shots and one shot apiece, the police said.
But it is the total number of shots that shook and angered the families of the men and community leaders. "How many shots?" Mr. Sharpton asked yesterday, over and over, in a chant at a rally in a park near Mary Immaculate Hospital, where the wounded men were being treated. The crowd called back, "Fifty!"
Statistically, the shooting is an aberration. The number of shots fired per officer who acted in the 112 shooting incidents this year, through Nov. 19, is 3.2, said Paul J. Browne, a department spokesman. Last year, that number was 3.7 shots fired per officer in 109 incidents. They are down from 4.6 in 2000 and 5.0 in 1995.
But shootings with high numbers of shots fired, however rare, call to mind dark events of the city's past, like the 1999 killing of Gidone Busch, who was clutching a hammer when officers fired 12 times, and, most notably, the shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who died in a hail of 41 bullets, also in 1999.
In the 1995 Bronx bodega robbery in which officers fired 125 shots, the suspects did not fire back. "They were shooting to the echo of their own gunfire," a former police official said at the time.
The shooting on Saturday unfolded in a flash. An undercover officer posted inside the Club Kalua, a site of frequent drug, weapon and prostitution complaints in Jamaica, overheard an exchange between a stripper and a man that led the officer to suspect the man was armed, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Saturday. The undercover officer alerted the officers acting as backup outside - there were seven officers in all - about 4 a.m., setting into motion the events to follow later.
Eight men left the club and argued briefly with another man, with one from the group saying, "Yo, get my gun," Mr. Kelly said.
The eight men apparently split into two groups of four, with one group piling into a Nissan Altima driven by Mr. Bell, Commissioner Kelly said. As an undercover detective who had been following the group on foot approached the vehicle, Mr. Bell drove into him, striking his leg, before plowing into a minivan carrying two backup officers, the commissioner said.
The Altima reversed, mounting a sidewalk and hitting the lowered gate of a building before going forward and striking the van again. The officers opened fire, striking Mr. Bell, 23, twice, in the right arm and neck, Commissioner Kelly said. The critically wounded man, Joseph Guzman, 31, was struck 11 times, and the third man, Trent Benefield, 23, three times. Mr. Kelly said it was unclear whether there was a fourth man in the car and what became of him.
A person familiar with the case who knows the detectives' version of events said yesterday that it was Mr. Guzman who asked for his gun, and that the first undercover detective on foot clearly identified himself to the occupants of the car and, gun drawn, told them to get out. Instead, the person said, they roared toward him. That detective fired the first shot.
In the ensuing barrage, one shot struck the window of a house, another a window at an AirTrain platform, injuring two Port Authority police officers with flying glass. It appeared that the Altima was struck by 21 shots, fewer than half of the number fired, the police said.
The whole thing most likely took less than a minute. The officer who fired 31 times could have done so in fewer than 20 seconds, with the act of reloading taking less than one second, Mr. Cerar said. The 49 shots that followed the undercover detective's first may have been contagious shooting, said one former police official who insisted on anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
"He shoots, and you shoot, and the assumption is he has a good reason for shooting. You saw it in Diallo. You see it in a lot of shootings," the official said. "You just chime in. I don't mean the term loosely. But you see your partner, and your reflexes take over."
The phenomenon of officers' firing dozens of shots at a time dates back in part to 1993 and the department's switch from six-shot .38-caliber revolvers, cumbersome to reload, to semiautomatic pistols that hold 15 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. The change, like any of its magnitude, followed years of studies and differences of opinion, and finally came into effect after the 1986 murder of a police officer, Scott Gadell, who was reloading his six-shooter when he was fatally shot.
Commissioner Kelly, during his first term in the office, in 1992 and 1993, ordered a switch to semiautomatics, but ordered the clips modified to hold only 10 rounds. That modification was later undone, prompting him, after Mr. Diallo's shooting six years later, to speculate in a New York Times op-ed article, "Now may be the time to re-impose it and to intensify training that teaches police officers to hold their fire until they know why they are shooting."
Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College, said a high number of shots fired underscores the threat the officers felt.
"The only reason to be shooting in New York City is that you or someone else is going to be killed and it's going to be imminent," he said. "It's highly unlikely you fire a shot or two shots. You fire as many shots as you have to, to extinguish the threat. You don't fire one round and say: 'Did I hit him? Is he hit?' "
Mr. Cerar said, "Until we have some substitute for a firearm, there will always be a situation where more rounds are fired than in other situations."
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006

10 November 2006
RUMSFELD - THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT LISTEN
By Christopher Hitchens
IS IT only five years since the society columns in Washington were describing Donald Rumsfeld as “hot”, and printing stories about how ladies of a certain age wanted his phone number?
The aplomb he displayed during the campaign in Afghanistan, and the way he seemed to enjoy his press conferences, were just the tonic that the country appeared to need after the humiliation and panic of 11 September.
It didn’t hurt that the Secretary of Defence had been seen in his shirt-sleeves, helping direct rescue operations after a plane ploughed into the Pentagon.
As the Taliban fled and Afghans greeted American soldiers as liberators, the escape of Osama bin-Laden was a detail that could be taken care of later, and “Rummy” seemed able to do no wrong.
By this month, it seemed not only that he could do nothing right, but that everything that had gone wrong was his fault.
Surveying the hell that is today’s Baghdad, who can avoid wincing at his offhand remark that “stuff happens?” The situation would be just as bad if he had not said that, but his breezy refusal to face facts had come to symbolize an Administration that did not learn from its mistakes.
Or from its crimes – the horrors of Abu Ghreib and the lawlessness of Guantanamo and “extraordinary rendition” also became associated with a Rumsfeldian smile that began to look more like an irritating smirk than a confident grin.
He once told me that he was the only man in Washington who was still doing the same job as he was doing 30 years ago (he was at the Pentagon under President Ford) and that cadets whose graduation he had once attended were now wearing four stars. This ought perhaps to have led him to “bond” better with the soldiers under his command, but the fact is that his subordinates came to resent him.
Stories emerged from the office about his reluctance to listen, about his outbursts of bad temper, and about the now-legendary “snowflakes” – the blizzard of memos with which he showered the building. Rumsfeld is essentially a businessman, and many CEOs have the fond illusion that government departments, and even wars in faraway countries, can be run in the same way as a firm.
It is already obvious that his plan for a leaner and more streamlined military will enter the history books as a calamitous refusal to deploy enough troops to stay any possible course in Iraq.
One does not get a second chance to make a good first impression, and it now looks as if almost everything that went wrong in Iraq went wrong right from the start. This might possibly have been forgivable or correctable, but the continuing under-estimation of the insurgency (and the wave of the hand with which the Iraqi army was dismissed) will always be remembered, as will the complaints from serving soldiers that they were not issued with things – such as body-armour – which a thoughtful chief executive might have been expected to have provided for them.
Much is made of Rumsfeld’s earlier career as a wrestler: a sport in which pinning is all and compromise superfluous. These qualities could actually be very useful in wartime, but not if the original strategy is mistaken. A good wrestler is supposed to be able to use the opponent’s strength against him: something the United States has experienced in reverse in Iraq.
The last time I attended a Rumsfeld briefing, I got a slight glimpse of the problem.
To every question or suggestion or criticism, he responded as if it was a brilliant idea that exactly confirmed what he had just been saying. After a while, this stopped being curious and became slightly alarming. The Secretary of Defence, it occurred to me, had plenty of body-armour but it was protecting him from seeing or hearing anything that he didn’t like.
This is a quality that can get you a long way – including a very long way in the wrong direction.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair
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Disgraced Haggard: I am a "deceiver and a liar"
By Eric GorskiDenver Post Staff Writer DenverPost.com
In a letter of apology read to the congregation of New Life Church Sunday morning, Ted Haggard confessed to sexual immorality and described himself as "a deceiver and a liar."
"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard wrote.
Describing a lifelong battle against temptations that were contrary to his teachings, Haggard said he had sought assistance "in a variety of ways," and while he had stretches of "freedom," nothing proved effective.
Haggard was fired as senior pastor of the church on Saturday by an oversight board of pastors that concluded Haggard committed "sexually immoral conduct." The board had investigated claims by a male prostitute who said publicly this week that Haggard paid him for sex and took methamphetamine over a three-year period.
"The accusations that have been leveled against me are not all true, but enough of them are true that I have been appropriately and lovingly removed from ministry," Haggard wrote.
Haggard asked the congregation of the church he founded 26 years ago to forgive him. He also told church members not to be angry at his accuser, instead urging them to thank God for him.
"He didn't violate you; I did," Haggard said.
While the letter was read, more than 7,000 people in attendance sat in silence, some of them weeping. The letter was read by Larry Stockstill, who leads a church outside Baton Rouge, La., that is considered the "mother church of New Life."
After the letter was read, there was brief applause with a smattering of people standing.
In deciding to dismiss Haggard, the oversight board consulted with several evangelical leaders, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Jack Hayford, a prominent preacher from southern California, Stockstill said.
Stockstill tried to reassure church members their institution was safe and secure, despite Haggard's removal as leader. The decision to dismiss Haggard, rather than discipline him, actually came as a relief to "Pastor Ted" and his wife, Stockstill said.
"That is not a harsh thing, that's a wonderful thing for him," Stockstill said.
In his letter, Haggard said he added to the confusion this week when speaking to reporters about the allegations against him. He acknowledged "inconsistent statements" for which he was solely responsible.
"The fact is, I am guilty of sexual immorality, and I take responsibility for the entire problem," he wrote.
Haggard said he and his wife, Gayle, "need to be gone for a while," and will never return to a leadership role at New Life Church.
Gayle Haggard also released a letter to the congregation. In it, she professed her commitment to her marriage and her belief in the teachings of the church.
"I would not change one iota of what I have been teaching the women of our church," Gayle Haggard wrote. "For those of you who have been concerned that my marriage was so perfect I could not possibly relate to the women who are facing great difficulties, know that this will never again be the case.
"My test has begun; watch me. I will try to prove myself faithful."

Evangelical ousted amid gay sex scandal

KIM NGUYENAssociated Press
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The Rev. Ted Haggard was dismissed Saturday as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed "sexually immoral conduct," the church said.
Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him. He also had placed himself on administrative leave from the New Life Church, but its Overseer Board took the stronger action Saturday.
"Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct," the independent board said in a statement.
Haggard was "informed of this decision," the statement said, and he "agreed as well that he should be dismissed."
Haggard, 50, on Friday acknowledged paying Jones for a massage and for methamphetamine, but said he did not have sex with him and did not take the drug.
The statement from the 14,000-member church said the investigation would continue to determine the extent of the misconduct. The Rev. Mike Ware of Victory Church in Westminster, a member of the board, declined to characterize what investigators found but said the board did not talk to Jones.
Haggard did not answer his home or mobile phones Saturday, and neither was accepting messages. The Rev. Rob Brendle, an associate pastor at New Life, said Haggard was out of town.
"We are fully confident in the board's judgment and decision," Brendle said. "Everyone supports Ted and his family. We stand by him."
Jones said the news of Haggard's dismissal made him sad.
"I feel really bad for his wife and family and his congregation. I know it's a sad day for them, too," Jones said. "I feel bad when someone has so many attachments to others. It affects everyone. I'm certainly not cheering or jumping up and down over what's happened.
"I just hope the family has peace and can come to terms with things. I hope they can continue with a happy life."
The Rev. Ross Parsley will lead the church until a permanent replacement for Haggard is chosen by the end of the year, the statement said. A letter explaining Haggard's removal and an apology from him will be read at Sunday services.
Haggard's situation is a disappointment to Christian conservatives, whom President Bush and other Republicans are courting heavily in the run-up to Tuesday's election.
Many were already disheartened with the president and the Republican-controlled Congress over their failure to deliver big gains on social issues even before the congressional page scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley.
Haggard, who had been president of the evangelical association since 2003, has participated in conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied Congress last year on Supreme Court nominees.
Haggard visited the White House once or twice, Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said Friday.
Richard Cizik, the evangelical association's vice president for governmental affairs, called Haggard's ouster "heartbreaking and unfortunate."
"He is a man who has done a lot of good and who hopefully after a period of repentance and counsel and spiritual restoration will have a future ministry at some point," Cizik said.
The association has named President Leith Anderson, senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minn., as its interim president.
The board's decision cuts Haggard off from leadership of the massive church he founded in the mid-1980s. He held New Life's first services in the unfinished basement of his Colorado Springs home.
Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered who Haggard was and found out that the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage - a key issue in Colorado, with a pair of issues on Tuesday's ballot.
"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," Jones said.
Jones has denied selling drugs but said Haggard snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience. Jones agreed to take a lie-detector test Friday; the administrator of the test said the answers about his sex allegations "indicated deception."
But Jones said Saturday: "Obviously they determined there was sexual indiscretions, so I think that vindicates my claim."
Haggard told reporters he bought meth but never used it; he said he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel. Jones said that no hotel referred Haggard and that he advertises only in gay publications.
In a TV interview this week, Haggard said: "Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife."
Church member Christine Rayes, 47, said the congregation had hoped the allegations "were all lies."
"We all have to move forward now," she said. "This doesn't make what Ted accomplished here any less. The farther up you are, the more you are a target for Satan."

Key Evangelical quits amid gay sex claim
CATHERINE TSAI
Associated Press
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex.
The Rev. Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member association Thursday after being accused of paying the man for monthly trysts over the past three years.
Haggard, a married father of five, denied the allegations, but also stepped aside as head of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation.
"I am voluntarily stepping aside from leadership so that the overseer process can be allowed to proceed with integrity," he said in a statement. "I hope to be able to discuss this matter in more detail at a later date. In the interim, I will seek both spiritual advice and guidance."
Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor's niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.
The acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted that some of the accusations were true.
"I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt," Parsley told the station.
He did not elaborate, and a telephone number for Parsley could not be found late Thursday.
The allegations come as voters in Colorado and seven other states get ready to decide Tuesday on amendments banning gay marriage. Besides the proposed ban on the Colorado ballot, a separate measure would establish the legality of domestic partnerships providing same-sex couples with many of the rights of married couples.
The allegations stunned church members.
"It's political, right before the elections," said Brian Boals, a New Life member for 17 years.
Church member E.J. Cox, 25, called the claims "ridiculous."
"People are always saying stuff about Pastor Ted," she said. "You just sort of blow it off. He's just like anyone else in the public eye."
The accusations were made by Mike Jones, 49, of Denver, who said he decided to go public because of the political fight over the amendments.
"I just want people to step back and take a look and say, 'Look, we're all sinners, we all have faults, but if two people want to get married, just let them, and let them have a happy life,'" said Jones, who added that he isn't working for any political group.
Jones, who said he is gay, said he was also upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.
"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," he said.
Jones claimed Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. He said he advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and was contacted by a man who called himself Art, who snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.
Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard and that the two last had sex in August.
He said he has voice mail messages from Haggard, as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash. He declined to make the voice mails available to the AP, but KUSA-TV reported what it said were excerpts late Thursday that referred to methamphetamine.
"Hi Mike, this is Art," one call began, according to the station. "Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply."
A second message, left a few hours later, began: "Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever."
Haggard, 50, was appointed president of the evangelicals association in March 2003. He has participated in conservative Christian leaders' conference calls with White House staffers and lobbied members of Congress last year on U.S. Supreme Court appointees after Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement.
After Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, Haggard and others began organizing state-by-state opposition. Last year, Haggard and officials from the nearby Christian ministry Focus on the Family announced plans to push Colorado's gay marriage ban for the 2006 ballot.
At the time, Haggard said that he believed marriage is a union between a man and woman rooted in centuries of tradition, and that research shows it's the best family unit for children.
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Associated Press Writer Dan Elliott contributed to this report from Denver.

Last of the apartheid-era hardliners, the 'Great Crocodile' of Afrikaner politics who arguably destroyed the National Party
P. W. BOTHA, the eighth Prime Minister and the first State President of South Africa, was a contradictory figure. Although he admitted that the apartheid state “must adapt or die” and introduced constitutional reforms that brought Coloured and Asian representation into Parliament and the Cabinet, he also ignored the demands of Africans and supervised the brutal crackdown on violent anti-apartheid unrest that had threatened to render South Africa ungovernable. He famously wagged his finger in 1985 during the Rubicon speech, declaring to the opponents as well as to the friends of apartheid South Africa: “Don’t push us too far.”
Nevertheless, history may well judge that P. W. Botha rather than F. W. de Klerk destroyed the unity of the National Party (NP) that had ruled South Africa since 1948. The Groot Krokodil (Great Crocodile) of Afrikaner politics dominated the defence of the nation for 23 years from his appointment as Minister of Defence in 1966 to his retirement in 1989.
Pieter Willem Botha was born in the Orange Free State in 1916. He studied law at Grey University College, later the University of the Orange Free State, leaving without a degree. He quickly became active in National Party politics in the Cape. Legend has it that as a 20-year-old political organiser he broke up United Party meetings while sitting astride a horse. In 1939, he joined the Ossewabrandwag, the extremist paramilitary organisation that supported Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Botha avoided internment when he broke away from the organisation, accusing it of meddling in National Party affairs. After the war his political rise continued: in 1948, after the NP victory over Jan Smuts’s United Party, P. W., Secretary of the Cape National Party, was elected as an MP for the Cape constituency of George.
In 1958 Hendrik Verwoerd,apartheid’s visionary leader, appointed Botha Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, and in 1961 he entered the Cabinet as Minister of Community Development and Coloured Affairs.
In April 1966, five months before Verwoerd’s assassination, Botha became Minister of Defence. In the same year, he was elected leader of the National Party in the Cape. Helen Suzman recalled in her memoir Botha’s vicious reaction to the murder of the Prime Minister. He screamed across the chamber: “It’s you who did this. It’s all you liberals. You incite people. Now we will get you. We will get the lot of you.”
Between 1966 and 1978, Botha built strong power bases in the Cape and the South African military. Despite the embarrassment of presiding over South Africa’s intervention in Angola in 1975 and rapid withdrawal in 1976, Botha was at the centre of a maelstrom of theory and planning in the mid-1970s.
In 1975, launching the Defence White Paper, he declared: “Defence strategy embraces much more than military strategy. It involves economy, ideology, technology, and even social matters and can therefore only be meaningful and valid if proper account is taken of all these other spheres . . . This, in fact, is the meaning of Total Strategy.” During the 1980s, the Total Strategy would lead to “securicrats”, as the security officials became known, interfering in almost every aspect of South African society in a flailing attempt to avoid the collapse of apartheid. At the end of 1976, Botha chaired a special Cabinet Commitee investigating the possibility of constutional change. His report in 1977 recommended an elected executive presidency and separate parliaments for Whites, Coloureds and Asians.
P. W. Botha was elected Prime Minister of South Africa in 1978 during the Information scandal (also known as Muldergate) that eventually destroyed the careers and reputations of Prime Minister John Vorster, the most likely successor, Connie Mulder; Hendrik van den Bergh,the head of Boss, the South African Secret Service; and Eschel Rhoodie, the Secretary of Information. After a closely fought leadership campaign, which opponents likened to a military coup, Botha came to power as the head of a divided NP. Profound tensions existed between the verkramptes, who wanted a return to the rigidly doctrinaire application of apartheid. and the verligtes, who believed that the ideology should be adapted to suit changing circumstances. Botha was numbered among the verligtes despite his muscular image as Minister of Defence. The ideological differences proved intractable and in March 1982 Dr Andries Treurnicht, the leader of the Transvaal NP, established the Conservative Party with 16 MPs. The broedertwis (brotherly conflict) had been exacerbated by Botha’s proposals to allow Coloured and Asian representation in a tricameral Parliament.
Botha rewarded the South African Defence Force (SADF) with a posioned chalice. While the defence budget grew exponentially during both his period as Defence Minister and later as Prime Minister/President, he also expected the military to become involved in South African politics. Preaching “hearts and minds” while waging war at home and in neighbouring countries was never likely to be a recipe for success. Meanwhile, the Military Intelligence Division dominated South Africa’ s international intelligence gathering. For every success such as the meeting with Margaret Thatcher at Chequers in 1984 or the Nkomati Accord (of the same year) under which Mozambique agreed not to allow the African National Congress to operate from its territory and the South Africans undertook to withdraw support for Renamo, there was a multitude of brutal interventions in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lestotho, Botswana and Angola which achieved little. Nicknamed Piet Wapens (Weapons) by NP colleagues during his tenure as Minister of Defence, Botha’s enemies in the Department of Information called him Pangaman (Macheteman), “because you never knew when he was going to lash out at you”.
His standing as a reformist leader at home and abroad disintegrated as the violence, that erupted in the African townships in late 1984 spread throughout the country. In July 1985, Botha declared a partial state of emergency, which in June 1986 was extended to a full state of emergency. As the South African economy collapsed after the Chase Manhattan Bank’s refusal to roll over its loans and the rand lost half its value against sterling, it became obvious to informed observers that the apartheid state would be forced to negotiate with the African opposition. Botha refused to lift the bans on the major African political organisations, the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress, and insisted that they must renounce violence before there could be any question of negotiation or the release of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues.
In addition to the brutal police action that was required to control the insurrection in the townships, the Government instituted press censorship and large-scale detention without trial. Tens of thousands of people were subjected to the full brunt of apartheid justice. Meanwhile, apartheid death squads targeted individuals. One State Security Council document, later discovered by Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) researchers revealed that in July 1985: “The chairman (Botha) points out that he is convinced that the brain behind the unrest situation is situated inside South Africa, and that it must be found and destroyed.”
In May 1986 a delegation of Commonwealth notables, known as the Eminent Persons’ Group, visited South Africa, hoping to facilitate negotiation. The group left South Africa without meeting the President, however, amid rumours of a split between doves and hawks in the Cabinet. While the group was still in Cape Town, the SADF launched raids on neighbouring Commonwealth states. Within months, the United States passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act and sanctions packages were also adopted by Britain, the Commonwealth and the European Community.
Towards the end of 1987 it became clear that Botha was facing critical choices in his regional policy. The SADF, which had invaded Angola on numerous occasions during the 1980s to bolster Jonas Savimbi’s Unita against the Cuban-supported Angolan MPLA government, reached an impasse at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Realising that sanctions had finally had their effect (South Africa had lost air superiority) and that the SADF was risking the loss of many white soldiers, Botha opted for peace, reportedly on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Under pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, South Africa and Angola sought a diplomatic resolution to the Angolan war.
Botha has rarely received praise for his attempts to reform apartheid but it was under his leadership that the South African state abolished the pass laws which restricted the movement of Africans in the country, legalised interracial marriages, and gave the nod to the formation of black trade unions. But he remained contradictory until the end: in February 1988, seventeen anti-apartheid organisations were banned. Three months later, the first formal meetings between the imprisoned Mandela and a government team of negotiators started in Pollsmoor prison.
On 18 January, 1989, Botha suffered a mild stroke and was advised by his doctors to rest for six weeks. Members of his family insist to this day that he was poisoned by a member of his own Cabinet. A few weeks later Botha took the country, and even his closest colleagues, by surprise when he sent a message to the National Party’s parliamentary caucus announcing that he ws resigning as party leader. He intended, however, to retain his position as State President. It was a situation designed for disaster and following the election of F. W. de Klerk, the NP voted in favour of the leader of the party occupying the office of the State President. Botha grudgingly accepted that he would retire after the general election in September 1989 but after a five-month sulk, he appeared on South African television to announce that, since he was being ignored by his Cabinet, he had no choice but to resign. In the midst of this extraordinary interregnum, Botha met Mandela. The two leaders claimed to like each other, Botha later commenting that he believed that Mandela was a communist but he respected him as a gentleman and a Xhosa chief.
Botha retired to the aptly named Wilderness near his former constituency of George. He rarely granted interviews and managed to avoid facing the consequences of his actions in power.
Pieter Willem Botha, first State President of South Africa, 1984-1989, was born on January 12, 1916. He died on October 31, 2006, aged 90

Gays abuse Australian restrooms

Sydney Morning News

The closure of customer toilets in a Myer store due to rampant homosexual activity has exposed a massive list of venues being used by members of a gay website as hook-up points.
Among the places listed as meeting spots for men "cruising for sex", on squirt.org, is the Royal Australian Air Force's Richmond base and Sydney Opera House's toilets.
Management at Myer's Sydney city store in Pitt Street were forced to close its level one toilet to the public because homosexuals were using the facility as a meeting point, often having sex in full view of other horrified users.
A Myer spokesman, Mark West, confirmed he had heard that the retailer had been mentioned on a hardcore gay porn website called squirt.org, which men used to arrange meetings at the toilet, and one month ago the store's management decided to make it a staff-only facility.The website claims to list more than 15,000 locations around Australia "where gay and bisexual guys meet for sex" and still has the Myer city store's toilet listed as a meeting place. A search of the site yielded hundreds of well-known Sydney buildings, parks and beaches.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Defence said she would look into the matter after being told about the RAAF listing, and possibly make a comment by 5pm.
A Myer staff member who spoke to smh.com.au said she had seen men running out of the toilet alerting employees about homosexual activity, while others had complained about being propositioned.
"I wouldn't let my friend's young son go in there, no way. I was really worried about his safety," she said. "There were men going in and out all the time. You'd see them come out, and say 'Woops, I forgot my mobile or wallet', and then go back in. I'd see men sitting on the chair near the toilet just waiting.
"It's been happening for years. I know they were making plans on a website to meet here."
A security guard in the store said the toilet had to be closed because "we had problems with people in there ... there were safety issues". Asked if the problem was due to men using the toilet as a hook-up point, he replied: "The whole city has got that problem."
Mr West said: "There has been a range of security concerns surrounding that toilet and we have closed it pending a review. There were some customer concerns about anti-social activity in there. Ideally we wouldn't have had to close it; it is a temporary measure."We are reviewing security, there is certainly no risk for customers."
Other prominent places used by subscribers of the website include the toilets of Westfield stores and Marrickville Metro, the library at the University of NSW, various Fitness First gyms, and Bankstown Airport's rest area.Comment is awaited from various Fitness First gyms and Westfield stores.
Another is the Crows Nest Community Centre, which it seems is extremely popular, with 100 comments posted from the website's users regarding the site. The centre's chief executive officer, Michelle Boston, was unaware of any incidents in the listed ground floor toilets, and was appalled when told by smh.com.au.
"This is awful," she said. "We have so many vulnerable people that come here."
Within 30 minutes of being informed, Ms Boston phoned smh.com.au back and said: "I have taken immediate action. All toilets are now locked. People will have to report to reception to get a key. All children who use the facility will have to be accompanied by a parent. We care about our community and do not want them put at risk."

The Sunday Times
October 22, 2006
Conrad the Barbarian
Tom Bower reveals the childhood traumas behind the excesses of Conrad Black, the former press baron facing a multi-million fraud trial and prison
Domestic life was remarkably agreeable for the newly married Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel in 1990s London. Both tended to work late into the night and rise at noon. Drinking ginger tea and eating chocolate biscuits made by his chef, the proprietor of The Daily Telegraph spent hours on the telephone while Amiel struggled with her newspaper column, sometimes taking three days to complete 1,300 words in her office on the top floor of their mansion in Cottesmore Gardens, Kensington.
The huge house bought in 1992 brazenly suggested the wealth and influence of a billionaire. Their audience — London’s rich and powerful — took the impersonation seriously. But those who observed them closely were less impressed.
Simon Heffer, a columnist on Black’s Telegraph, observed: “Barbara has turned Conrad from an homme sérieux into a society petal. He’s besotted with her, like a spaniel.”
Hal Jackman, a rich investor and disillusioned old friend, labelled Black “a parvenu drifting away from reality. I can’t understand his priorities. He does too much entertaining and not enough business”.
Black was unrepentant. He had other homes — and other friends — in New York, Toronto and Palm Beach.
The facade lasted for a decade. In 2001, about to be ennobled, Black showed a real billionaire, the Canadian gold magnate Peter Munk, his beautifully refurbished Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith. It had purple leather “like the Queen’s”.
“How can you afford it?” asked Munk. Black smiled.
In reality, the wheels were coming off for the new Lord and Lady Black; and friends were deserting them. Last year, accused of defrauding his companies of hundreds of millions of dollars to support his extravagant lifestyle, and facing a fight to stay out of jail, Black needed money. He called several friends in New York.
“Do you think you can get a group of people together if the need arises,” he asked one billionaire, “and get me some funds secured against my property?” “How much do you want from everyone, Conrad?” asked the businessman.
“About $1m each,” said Black.
There was a pause. “You’re my best friend,” continued Black. “Surely you can lend me $1m?”
“Well, Conrad,” said the man, “what’s my private telephone number?”
“I don’t know,” replied Black. “Why?”
“Well, if I were your best friend, you’d have it.”
The first to refuse any contribution outright was Alfred Taubman, who had himself done jail-time for price-fixing while chairman of Sotheby’s. The rest followed suit. They were disdainful of a man famous for his excesses and the collapse of his empire rather than for his achievements.
Black remained unrepentant. At 1.15am on April 1 this year he sent me an e-mail. I had known him since the mid-1980s, and now I was writing a book about him. Well over 200 people had agreed to be interviewed for it. Their generosity is a principal source of my information.
“Dear Tom,” Black wrote. “Many people have contacted Barbara and me asking if they should talk with you.
“Our usual response is that you have made it clear that you consider this whole matter a heart-warming story of two sleazy, spivvy, contemptible people, who enjoyed a fraudulent and unjust elevation; were exposed, and ground to powder in a just system; have been ostracised, and largely impoverished; and that I am on my way to the prison cell where I belong.
“The rough facts are that I am an honest businessman; the chances of my committing an illegality are less than zero, this will be clear when my accusers have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of innocent people and not just manipulate the agencies of the US and Canadian governments to act on the pre-emptive presumption of guilt and conduct a prolonged assassination of careers and reputations.”
Convinced of his acquittal, Black pledged himself in the second e-mail of the night to wreak vengeance upon those responsible for his demise: “We will bring this entire, gigantic, malicious persecution down around the ears of its authors.”
He was, he wrote later that night, proud of his robustness. And in yet another e-mail the same night, he keenly anticipated the stardom that he would achieve at his trial, due to start in Chicago in March 2007. It would be “spectacular”.
Black’s life story is not the familiar tale of a tycoon’s rise and fall, or the tragedy of a self-delusional fantasist. Rather, it is the drama of a plutocrat who stands accused as a kleptocrat. The riddle is just how he has found himself in this position.
Privilege and prejudice were Conrad Black’s roots from his birth on August 25, 1944. By the age of five, he was cosseted by cooks, butlers, nannies and chauffeurs. In the winter holidays he escaped Toronto’s freeze in the Bahamas where he gazed with his father, George Black, at the Mellons, du Ponts and other American magnates.
Although George Black did not rank among the super-rich, he was a successful businessman with an astute intellect. He noted his son’s exceptional memory and became preoccupied with creating an extraordinary individual out of him.
Obsessively he ordered Conrad to recall facts, both relevant and irrelevant. After intensive games of chess, his son was encouraged to read encyclopedias and recall what he read. His bedrooms were filled with books about the military, wars and politics. In the midst of the Korean war the boy sat transfixed listening to radio news broadcasts, and watched television reports of the McCarthy hearings in Washington targeted at unearthing communist sympathisers.
During all-night sessions, which started in Conrad’s childhood, George Black regaled his son with stories of his business struggles as president of Canadian Breweries. He had savagely cut costs, dismissed staff and created phenomenal growth. Sales and profits had tripled, and it had become the world’s biggest brewery, embracing Canada, the USA and Britain.
There was a downside to this story, however. Insomniac and increasingly intoxicated, George Black would arrive in his office at midday, boasting that because he delegated authority his presence was not required. In reality, “delegation” had become his excuse to recover from hangovers and the morning’s vodka.
When in 1958 George Black challenged the trade unions to remove their restrictive practices, they responded with an acrimonious strike that hit profits, and he was fired by the owners of the company.
Henceforth at their all-night sessions, he imbued his son with a mission to exact revenge. There would be many bitter lectures over the years on history, power and finance which inculcated in Conrad the importance of supremacy and manipulation.
Stifled by depression, George Black failed to appreciate the burden he was inflicting upon his son. He offered no physical affection, and his wife was similarly cold and remote. In that loveless atmosphere, Conrad compensated for his emotional insecurity by revelling in the lives of historic heroes. Entitlement bred defiance and insolence, fashioning a personality that enjoyed a fight and savoured inflicting defeat.
At the time that his father was fired, the unsporting, overweight boy was 14 and a pupil at Toronto’s Upper Canada College, one of the country’s elite private schools, taken there every day in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac. Months later, he was expelled for stealing exam papers and selling them. His father excused him as a “compulsive insubordinate” eager to prove his credentials as a capitalist.
Black passed through two more schools — leaving each because of misbehaviour — before being coached in a crammer to scrape a pass in his final school exams in 1962. His mediocrity reflected his laziness. He graduated from university with a poor degree three years later and failed his law exams.
His schoolboy notions of genius had been shattered. Now he had other things on his mind.
One of the men his father railed against in their nightly sessions was John “Bud” McDougald, president of the Argus corporation, the conglomerate that owned Canadian Breweries.
McDougald, championed as Canada’s supreme business leader, was in reality a financial cowboy who enjoyed a reckless lifestyle, avoiding taxes and cheating the minority shareholders. He used intimidation and flattery to disguise rampant dishonesty. Argus, a company floated on the Canadian stock exchange, was his private piggy bank.
Argus was controlled by the six principal shareholders of a private company called Ravelston, named after a Scottish estate owned by McDougald’s ancestors. While McDougald owned 23.6% of Ravelston’s shares, George Black still owned 22.4%. As a result, McDougald understood the benefits of flattering George Black’s son.
On Conrad’s 21st birthday, McDougald gave him membership of the Toronto Club, where the city’s elite fixed commercial life as they ate, drank and played.
His loyalties split, the young man practically worshipped McDougald’s mystique and power. Steeped in the minutiae of Argus’s personality conflicts and financial dubieties, he emerged with a sophisticated understanding of the inherent deception of the way in which the company was run.
Patience, planning and perfidy would be required to destroy his father’s tormentors. Meanwhile, he began in a small way as an independent businessman, buying up small weekly newspapers.
A friend introduced David Radler, a 26-year-old business-school graduate. Radler was a rough, ambitious fortune-hunter. His ratty, sharp manner and his spartan lifestyle emphasised his preoccupation with money. They complemented each other’s ambitions. Black wanted influence and wealth, while Radler enjoyed mastering the mechanics of creating that wealth. Black brought the vision of a strategy, while Radler was keen to sweat their assets. At one of their first newspapers, written complaints from staff resulted in two-cent fines for wasting paper.
The partners rarely met. “I know exactly what he’s going to do without going near what he’s doing,” said Radler. Their shared ambition for money — and Black’s for fame — cemented their relationship.
The handicap to Black’s quest for affluence was his psychological turmoil. In March 1970, he awoke to a massive anxiety attack. Sweating profusely, hyperventilating and racked by apprehension about his fate, he was on the verge, some believed, of committing suicide. The accumulation of his loveless childhood, his academic failure and his social insecurity had become an intolerable burden.
He sought help in psychoanalysis. One diagnosis suggested a narcissistic personality disorder — defined as an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance and uniqueness. Others diagnosed Black’s problems as arising from his loveless, dysfunctional home. Intense psychiatry cured him of his immediate self-destructive urge, but several personality traits remained, including a sense of his entitlement and a lack of conscience.
Later, inspired by influential figures in the Catholic Church, Black began a conversation with God. His Maker’s approval was crucial if Black was to face down those who vilified him. And God always gave His approval.
His psychological journey was interrupted by his parents’ deaths. His mother succumbed to liver cancer on June 19, 1976. Ten days later, flopped in his armchair, regularly refilling his glass with neat vodka, George Black sermonised 31-year-old Conrad on wealth and power late into the night.
In the early hours, he slowly climbed the stairs to bed. As he reached the top, Conrad Black heard cracking wood and saw his father fall over the banister onto the ground floor. Carried by Conrad into the library, George Black said that he no longer had the will to live. “Life is hell,” he told his son as they awaited the doctor. “Most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit.”
The doctor said he was unlikely to survive. Despite the prognosis, Conrad returned to his own home and watched a Charlie Chan film. He was interrupted by a telephone call. George Black was dead. Many, occasionally including his son, believed he had committed suicide.
Conrad Black was now an orphan with a purpose: to seize Ravelston, the key to the Argus corporation’s assets. McDougald and the other big shareholders, he noted, had no children. Their wives were uninterested in business. When McDougald died two years later, Black moved carefully.
McDougald’s widow, Maude, and her sister Doris, widow of another major Ravelston shareholder, lived together in Palm Beach, the Florida haven of the super-rich. Neither woman was blessed with intelligence or an understanding of business. McDougald had never bothered to explain to his wife how to cope after his death.
Black arrived to offer his assistance to the sisters, who now owned nearly half of Ravelston. The other major shareholders, he claimed, were crudely manoeuvring against the widows. “We must do something about this.”
He persuaded them to sign a contract empowering his use of their shares in any vote against the other factions. To their consternation, he then used their proxy votes to seize control of the company. Bay Street, Toronto’s financial heart, had never witnessed such a coup.
There was one more hurdle. To achieve complete ownership he needed to buy out the shocked widows’ shares. After a battle involving intimidation, stormy meetings and vicious threats, the deal was settled. For a total of $30m, he now owned a corporation controlling assets worth $4 billion.
“If my father knew what I’ve done,” he confided with pleasure, “he’d roll in his grave.”
Some “old money” families recalled his theft of examination papers. Others dubbed him “Conrad the Barbarian”. Such judgments were buried when The Globe and Mail, Toronto’s leading newspaper, made him Businessman of the Year.
It is no small irony that within a few years The Globe and Mail’s journalists were, Black believed, unfairly scrutinising his business. He complained that the newspaper was planning an article describing him as “a rapacious, right-wing Bay Street baron” who “milked” his businesses, “destroyed public companies” and oppressed minority shareholders “in a series of complex corporate shuffles designed primarily to fill his own coffers”.
In 1982, the American authorities accused him of fraudulent practices. To avoid prosecution he signed a “consent decree” promising to abide by US law. He also narrowly escaped prosecution in Canada for conspiring to defraud Argus’s shareholders.
Three years later, when he restructured his business in a succession of complicated transactions, Black appeared to his critics to have legitimately profited from asset stripping and insider dealing. Many millions of dollars were transferred from his public companies into Ravelston.
This spurred The Globe to publish its investigation. With delight, Black announced that he would sue the newspaper to “painfully punish” his critics by forcing them to prove that his dealings were dishonest. That hurdle, as The Globe’s lawyers soon discovered, would be more than difficult to surmount.
That year, 1985, was significant in other ways too. In January, he attended a party in Toronto to celebrate the third wedding of a prominent Canadian political pundit, the beautiful Barbara Amiel. Secondly, he attended the annual Bilderberg conference, a gathering of the world’s rich, famous and influential personalities.
Black and Radler were on their way to ownership of 80 newspapers across North America, and fantasised about creating an empire. To Black, buying papers meant becoming a broker of influence. He particularly enjoyed the entrée they gave him to the Bilderberg.
That year among his fellow guests was Andrew Knight, the editor of The Economist. Knight was more than a genial, successful editor. As a global networker, he was entrusted with secrets.
“Let’s have another fiery armagnac,” Black suggested to him. Over several drinks after midnight, Black confided his frustration at having failed to buy a major Canadian newspaper. Naturally, he omitted mentioning the distrust of himself in his own country.
“Canada’s a backwater,” he complained.
“If you’re looking for a big newspaper, Conrad,” replied Knight, in what would undoubtedly be the most decisive sentence ever uttered in Black’s career, “The Daily Telegraph might be a possible target.”
Too much armagnac had flowed for Knight to notice Black’s initial reaction.
© Tom Bower 2006
Extracted from Conrad and Lady Black by Tom Bower, to be published by HarperCollins on November 6 at £20. Copies can be purchased at Amazon.com

JUVENILE JUSTICE
New claims of abuse at boys camp
As law enforcement investigates allegations of abuse, officials at the governor's office sent a team to a North Florida town to ensure the safety of juvenile delinquents.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND MARC CAPUTO
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com
GREENVILLE - Three separate state agencies are investigating whether caretakers used banned, excessive and harmful restraints at a camp for delinquent boys, some of whom are mentally retarded or have other special needs.
At least one youth might have suffered a broken collarbone at the Greenville Hills Academy in Greenville just last week, according to records obtained by The Miami Herald. One 16-year-old claimed he was ``choked.''
And in another episode, guards also reported using a technique called a wrist lock that was banned two years ago by Anthony Schembri, secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Justice, an agency still reeling from the death of a 14year-old at another Panhandle facility earlier this year.
The DJJ is investigating Greenville along with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Department of Children & Families. The agencies declined to give any details other than to confirm the investigation into the academy, which has been the subject of 30 verified abuse or neglect claims made to a state telephone hot line in two years.
''Certainly, the agency takes these allegations very seriously,'' said DJJ chief of staff Cynthia Lorenzo. ``Our top priority is the safety of youth in our care. Unfortunately, with open investigations we are unable to provide details. Once we do have all of the facts, we will take swift and appropriate action as needed, if any of our staff was involved in any wrongdoing.''
Donnie Read, who heads the youth camp's operator, Twin Oaks Juvenile Development, did not return calls from a reporter. Twin Oaks has faced unsustained allegations of abuse at another facility in Apalachicola.
`THE ACADEMY'
Simply known as ''the Academy'' in Greenville, an old railroad stop of a town in Madison County, the complex of brick buildings is topped with bright-blue roofs. It is surrounded by rolling lawns immaculately kept behind barbed wire fencing off a rural road. From a distance, the juveniles, wearing purple shirts and gray pants, look like average kids herded about summer camp by overseers clad in brick-red shirts.
One employee, who wouldn't give his name, said workers have whispered about the probe. And some think it's unfair.
''It's tough managing some of these kids. They can just go wild,'' the worker said.
Academy officers also filed three incident reports with the juvenile justice agency last week, including the one in which a teen alleged a guard ``choked him.''
PREVIOUS PROBLEMS
The camp has a history of complaints from the teens housed there. Youths filed 286 reports of abuse or neglect with the DCF child abuse hot line from September 2004 through June 2006 -- an average of about 13 reports each month, according to DCF abuse records obtained by The Miami Herald. Thirty reports were verified.
The investigation of Greenville Hills comes at a particularly sensitive time for Florida's troubled juvenile justice agency.
A special prosecutor in Tampa is nearing the end of a nearly yearlong investigation into the Jan. 6 death of Martin Lee Anderson, who officials say was asphyxiated by guards restraining him at a Panama City boot camp. An earlier official autopsy concluded that Martin died of natural causes.
BOOT CAMPS CLOSED
Lawmakers passed legislation to curb the use of physical force at five Florida boot camps, resulting in the closure of all but one.
''These are the most vulnerable kids in the system, and they're being abused,'' state Rep. Gus Barreiro, a Miami Beach Republican who heads a juvenile justice oversight committee, said of the boys housed at the moderate-risk program for ''the mentally challenged'' in Greenville, a small junction-town between Tallahassee and Jacksonville.
''These are the kids who really need our protection the most,'' he added. ``But they are being abused the most.''
A 2006 inspection of the academy, which Twin Oaks took over in July 2005, found that the camp used a behavior modification program in which youths were rewarded when they exhibited ''pro-social'' behaviors.
Though state records say Greenville Hills houses boys aged 14-18, the inspection suggested some of the boys are so young they still wet their beds.
''It should be noted that Madison cottage houses the little boys and it appears that there may be a bedwetting problem,'' the March 2006 report said, noting the cottage ``smelled of urine.''
Roy Miller, whose Tallahassee-based Florida Children's Campaign has been a vocal critic of the state's youth corrections effort, called the allegations ``very upsetting.''
'The administration has described every abuse incident as `isolated.' They are not isolated. The system is in crisis. We have gone on record as saying these programs cannot guarantee the health and safety of our children,'' Miller said.
State Rep. Mitch Needelman, a Melbourne Republican who is vice chair of the House Juvenile Justice Committee and sits on a separate DJJ oversight committee, said he was ''disappointed'' that DJJ officials failed to alert him to the investigation before a reporter started asking questions.
UNSUSTAINED CLAIMS
In May, DCF's inspector general concluded there was no evidence to sustain allegations that youths at another Twin Oaks-run facility, Apalachicola Forest Youth Camp, ''sustained serious injury'' as a result of excessive force at that Florida Panhandle camp for youths incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness or disability.
The report said, however, that eight youths had broken bones at the camp between October 2003 and March 2006, including four broken arms and two broken elbows. At least four of the injuries occurred during restraints. Twice, on Feb. 4, 2004 and Sept. 13, 2004, youths fractured elbows during ''elbow control'' restraints, the report says.
HURT DURING RESTRAINT
One Miami youth, a then-15-year-old with mental retardation who was detained at Apalachicola after being charged with molestation, suffered a spiral fracture to his left arm in December 2005, according to records obtained by The Miami Herald. A report from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital said the injury occurred during a restraint.
In all, DCF received 219 child abuse reports involving the camp since January 2002. Twenty-six of the reports were closed with either verified abuse or some ''indicators'' of abuse.
''These are somebody's kids,'' Barreiro said. ``We just can't continue to hurt these kids and expect them to come back to the community and not want to hurt other people.''

Plug is new contraceptive for men

By David Rose
The huge interest in trials of a possible reversible alternative to vasectomy has surprised scientists

TRIALS of a new male contraceptive are being expanded after overwhelming interest from the public.
Scientists in the United States have been taken aback by the number of men who are eager to test the method, which is potentially reversible and designed as an alternative to surgical vasectomy.
The Intra Vas Device or IVD, which is inserted via a small hole made in the scrotum, uses a tiny plug of silicone gel that blocks sperm from travelling along the each of the tubes connecting the testicles and the penis, known as the vas deferens.
In a pilot study involving 30 men the IVD was effective in preventing conception. Studies in monkeys have also shown that it is reversible.
Extensive tests are now needed to check if the method is reversible in men using the device for years rather than months.
A traditional vasectomy, where the vasa deferntia are tied or cut, can be reversed in some men, but it is designed to be permanent.
Elaine Lissner, of the non-profit Male Contraceptive Information Project in San Francisco, said: “It is a lot easier to pull the plugs out than to find the best, most expensive microsurgeon to sew a vas deferens back together. But even if you can get sperm flowing again, the chances of pregnancy go down by about 10 per cent for each year the man had the vasectomy. Only time will tell if it’s the same for IVD.”
Ms Lissner said men increasingly want to take responsibility and control for the use of contraception. A recent study of more than 9,000 men in nine countries suggested more than 60 per cent of men in countries such as Spain, Germany, Mexico and Brazil would like to relieve their partners of some of the burden of using contraception in their relationship or would like a reliable back-up to condoms.
Surgeons testing the IVD injected a silicone gel through the skin of the scrotum directly into the vas deferens, where it will block the sperm. The main concern is the build- up of pressure behind the silicone plug, which could damage the sperm production glands in the testes.
Shepherd Medical Company will begin testing its IVD next week. Originally the researchers had planned to include male volunteers from St Paul, Minnesota, but have expanded the trials because of the high demand.
All the men taking part have finished having families and would otherwise have desired a vasectomy, the researchers said. The evaluation group will test the IVD for two years.
British regulators said they were not aware of any similar trials planned.
Other scientists have been searching for less invasive and reversible male contraceptives based on hormones that could be taken in the same way as the female Pill.
Richard Anderson, of the University of Edinburgh, who has been investigating hormonal male contraceptives, said: “This would be a very attractive alternative to vasectomy. But even if it is potentially reversible after a few years, it would still not be a contraceptive that could be put in and taken out repeatedly for spacing your family, for example.”
Researchers in China are working on a mesh-like vas deferens plug that allows small amounts of sperm through, not enough to cause a pregnancy, which could get round problems from sperm build-up.
BIRTH CONTROL WITHOUT TEARS
About 18 per cent of men aged 16 to 69 have had a vasectomy, which involves cutting the vas deferens tubes between the testicles and the groin and sealing them with stitches, knots or heat
The procedure usually takes place under local anaesthetic and is not considered effective for 2-3 months. The testes and penis are not affected, so there is no change in libido, virility or ejaculation
Vasectomy was designed in the 19th century to control sections of society such as “delinquents, degenerates, drug habitués and idiots”. It came into common use for family planning in the late 1960s

London Calling Freaks, lunatics, and Labour MPs.

by Greg Gutfeld 10/02/2006, Volume 012, Issue 03
London The British are funny people, and the funniest thing about them is how seriously they take being British.
The Brits still see themselves as somewhat valuable to civilization: a sophisticated bastion of intelligence and wit, home of those programs recycled on Masterpiece Theater, Dame Judi Dench reciting passages from Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Jeremy Paxman sneering at anything that isn't actually Jeremy Paxman. The fact that most Brits think they sound smart somehow allows them to judge Americans, their bastard offspring, as idiots. And racist.
"It's good to see an American show with a black hero," observes the Observer's Andrew Anthony, upon observing the show Sleeper Cell--without apparently observing the last three decades of American television. But we can forgive him, for he lives in a land where Yanks are seen as rank, racist, and selfish--un-British qualities exemplified in thought and deed by George W., the dumbest man alive since Ronald Reagan, another knucklehead somehow responsible for upending the cruelest ideological machine known to man.
But come spend some time in England, and you realize that England's reputation for high culture is, in their own words, crap. England may pretend to be the posh hotel, but once inside, you find it to be nothing more than a bilious brothel teeming with pop-star pervs, park-bench fiddlers, and frantic finger-sniffers. And that's just on my block.
England is a country as delusional as a 35-year-old stripper--everyone in the room but her sees that her powers of attraction have faded. Her life is a loose coalition of press-on nails, fake tan, hair extensions, and implants, all held together by the duct tape of delusion. Which is not at all unlike Lea, a star of my favorite U.K. show, Big Brother.
I love Lea because I used to draw her when I was 12. Lea is shaped like a puberty-stricken boy's feeble sketch of a desirable female: A large clump of blonde hair, big curves, bulbous lips, massive breasts. Proportionally--it's the only thing a hormone could draw. But Lea is nothing special. For if I described her as a bimbo with implants, regular Big Brother viewers would need more specifics. Because, on the top-rated U.K. reality show, implants are as common as pimples at Pizza Hut.
I start with Lea--a divorced, leathery sex performer with a teenage daughter--not because of the appeal of the "oilys," the nickname for two slippery and massive artificially enhanced missiles, but because both are individually bigger than her head. A latecomer to the porn industry, Lea's harrowing hardcore movie has already made the email rounds (to repulse, not to titillate). It wasn't pretty, even by the fourth viewing. Lea came on BB, she said, to simultaneously flaunt her giant breasts, and to prove she is more than a woman who flaunts her giant breasts. On the floor of the BB house, you could see her hair, falling out. In clumps.
I loved Lea, but I loved all the characters. I am a hopeless addict, infatuated with a program that caters to the British need for ridiculing anyone who attempts to rise above their station with the hope of becoming famous. These "housemates" exemplify the new British entertainer: grotesque but often likable failures, willing to do almost anything to get their name in print. My favorites so far: The family comic linked to a horrible sex crime; a manic-depressive gay cruiser; a crotch-fondling date rapist; a self-pronounced "sexual terrorist" currently serving time as a Canadian waiter; two sickly she-males (one Scottish); a high-priced female escort; an aging housewife/dancer from the Robert Palmer video "Addicted to Love"; and the Rt. Hon. George Galloway, MP.
And then there's the lady who did that thing with the bottle. (More later.) Big Brother is wildly successful in the U.K. Like Dallas during the who-shot-JR period, but without Mary Crosby. BB's enjoyable hysteria is fatigue-resistant, knocking major stories off the front of the tabloids as it effortlessly builds toward a frenzied finale when an audience comprising 60 percent of the entire British viewing public tunes in. Banner-waving crowds turn up, jeering and cheering. I watched it twice--in case I missed anything. I also voted to evict housemates every single week (at roughly 50 pence a pop). And yes, I am still married. The series is so popular that it has spawned three companion shows, including Big Brother's Little Brother, Big Brother's Big Brain, and Big Brother's Big Mouth. I record and watch them all, even on beautiful days, which are rare in London. I can no longer fit into my trousers.
As for the American version of Big Brother, there can be no comparison. The U.S. version is crass, formulaic, and dull. The U.K. version is crass, inventive, and smart. Its story lines are as ingenious as those for a scripted show, and the producers treat the characters with the same disdain and affection as viewers do, toying with them the way a cat does a crippled baby bird. Housemates veer from jittery excitement to abject misery (based on assigned tasks) and Big Brother is everywhere, characterized by an emotionless voice--sometimes male, sometimes female, and once or twice Welsh.
By banning books, television, and cell phones, the cast members are forced to deal with each other, creating a magnetic mini-hell that is both riveting and tedious, if that's possible. Because the noncelebrity version lasts three months, it self-selects for volunteers who have three months to spare. Meaning the unemployed and incompetent. I laugh at their uselessness; but then again, I watch every episode (90 plus) as well as the live, overnight feed. And yes, I don't bathe much anymore.
I first became hooked on BB during its sixth series, which featured a group of housemates so perverse and obsessive I felt like I was back in Los Angeles. This crew included a leggy transvestite named Kemal, an obsessive gay stalker, a psycho nurse, a gay black Tory, and something called Kinga, a fat blonde monstrosity. Celebrity Big Brother 4 followed, featuring an awesome selection of troubled, egocentric, and mildly insane C-listers, all verging on breakdown. The housemates included an aging television presenter named Michael Barrymore, who had run off to New Zealand after a man was found dead in his swimming pool. On the show, Barrymore wept like a child, but possessing the soul of a true entertainer, still attempted to rouse housemates by performing a dance number dressed as Hitler. It wasn't half bad.
The cast also included Pete Burns, the former singer of Dead or Alive (known for the addictive but aggravating "You Spin Me Round") who stole the show as an increasingly spiteful she-male, an alien destroyed and then rebuilt by cosmetic surgeons. Dressed in little more than a piece of fabric and heels, with a face full of collagen injections and implants, Burns appeared like a sci-fi hooker from another galaxy--one you'd never visit sober. He bragged that his favorite coat was made of gorilla skin, prompting the police to storm the house to confiscate the jacket. It turned out it was not gorilla at all but Colobus monkey! Animal rights activists hated him, which made him even more endearing.
There was also Dennis Rodman. An unknown in London, his newfound obscurity forced him to act out, scaring housemates by soliciting sex from them at every opportunity. Rodman injected lurid overtones into every conversation, and in a press conference following the end of BB, told a reporter that he would be up "in his ass." And George Galloway, the left-wing politician and Respect party member of Parliament, who still laments the loss of the Soviet Union. George thought that joining BB would help gain him a "younger audience."
Instead it destroyed his career. And for that BB deserves its greatest praise. In one stellar episode, housemates had to place themselves in order of fame from most famous to least famous. George put himself near the top, explaining that over a billion Muslims know him, so technically he's more famous than everyone. Later, he pretended to be a cat, prowling on all floors, lapping up make-believe milk from the willing hands of faded stage star Rula Lenska. He also danced like a robot in red spandex. At his eviction, when host Davina McCall revealed the staggering amount of horrible press headlines he received, George looked like he was going to cry. I hate the guy, but even I felt bad for him.
And now, sadly, the most recent BB (7) series has ended, the winner of the show being Tourette's Syndrome sufferer Pete Bennett. He beat out Nikki, the anorexic former escort, a gay waiter named Richard, and an 18-year-old Welsh lifeguard. Among the other housemates waiting to greet him at the end were Shahbaz, a psychopath who admits to being arrested for cruising in parks for anonymous sex. Shahbaz was forced off the show after experiencing as close to a mental breakdown you can have without swallowing your tongue. Who wasn't there? Sezer, for legal reasons. A housemate evicted early on, he's already been under investigation for rape.
I, like everyone else, really liked Pete Bennett. And his appearance on the show revealed an interesting truth: Whenever anyone with a disability goes on a reality TV show, there are initial complaints that they are being exploited. These pass only when everyone realizes (quickly) that the disability in question isn't that funny: If no one is laughing, it's not exploitation. But once you realize that the exposure of the disability is seen as "raising awareness," you can laugh all you want, and imitate the verbal tics and twitches, which was happening all over Britain, due to Pete's manic outbursts and grimaces. Oh yeah, he also exposed himself in the pool. But I think we've had enough.
Not everyone watches Big Brother, of course. You do get your share of pseudo-intellectuals who make a point of telling you they never watch it--much like their same counterparts in America who say they never watch TV in general, as if they've been spending all that saved time knocking out cures for cancer or inventing a flying toaster.
But I don't watch BB to make myself feel smarter. I watch it to remind myself that I'm not British. And not being British means I don't need a TV show to express my disdain for idiots. BB gives Britain--a country paralyzed by multiculturalism--the chance to stare at the freaks and judge them, laugh at them, berate them. Contrast this with the real lives of Brits: Living in a culture that must tolerate chavs, criminals, lager louts, benefit fraudsters, hooligans, and Islamic nut-bags, often at their own peril. This is a country that allows mullahs to preach the demise of their own country, all in the name of tolerance.
Still, the good news is that Celebrity Big Brother 5 is practically upon us. I predict the cast will include Boy George, the guitarist from Status Quo, Cindy Sheehan, Siamese Twins, and a four-pound bag of brine shrimp. I put my money on the shrimp.
Greg Gutfeld is a writer in London.
© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Nihilism
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This article is about the philosophical position. For the Russian political and revolutionary movement, see Nihilist movement.
Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable.Please check for any inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.
Nihilism is a philosophical position which argues that the world, and especially human existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following: there is no reasonable proof of the existence of a higher ruler or creator, a "true morality" is unknown, and secular ethics are impossible; therefore, life has no truth, and no action is known to be preferable to any other.[1]
Nihilism is often more a charge leveled against a particular idea, movement, or group, than it is an actual philosophical position to which someone overtly subscribes. Movements such as Dadaism as well as Futurism[2] and deconstructionism,[3] among others, have been described by commentators as "nihilist" at various times in various contexts. Often this means or is meant to imply that the beliefs of the accuser are more substantial or truthful, whereas the beliefs of the accused are nihilistic, and thereby comparatively amount to nothing.
Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,[4] and some Christian theologians and figures of authority have asserted that modernity[3] and postmodernity[5] represent the rejection of God, and therefore are nihilistic.
Prominent philosophers who have written on the subject of nihilism include Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Nietzsche described Christianity as a nihilistic religion because it evaded the challenge of finding meaning in earthly life, creating instead a spiritual projection where mortality and suffering were removed instead of transcended. He believed nihilism resulted from the "death of God", and insisted that it was something to be overcome, by returning meaning to a monistic reality. (He sought instead a "pragmatic idealism," in contrast to the prominent influence of Schopenhauer's "cosmic idealism.") Heidegger argued that the term "nihilism has a very specific meaning. What remains unquestioned and forgotten in metaphysics is being; and hence, it is nihilistic,"[6] and that nihilism rested on the reduction of Being to "mere value."[citation needed]
Contents[hide]
1 Etymology
2 Nihilism in Philosophy
2.1 Nihilism in Ethics and Morality
2.2 Postmodernism and the Breakdown of Knowledge
2.2.1 Lyotard and Meta-narratives
2.3 Nihilism and Nietzsche
2.4 Nihilism, Self-consistency, and Paradox
3 Nihilism in Art
3.1 Dadaism
3.2 Nihilism in Literature
4 See also
5 External links
6 References
7 Further reading
8 Books on Nihilism
//
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Etymology
The term comes from the Latin nihil, meaning "nothing". The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1817 as its earliest use in English, and Alain Rey's Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (rev. ed. 1995) gives 1787 as the first use of the word in French, noting that nihiliste was used in 1761, though in a religious sense of 'heretic' that is now obsolete. Rey also argues that the Russian equivalent nighilizm (нигилизм) that appeared in 1829 was an impulse to the penetration of the term into modern language.
The Latin indefinite pronoun nihili ('nothing') is a reduced form of nihilum, a term that derives from ne-hilom, an emphatic form of the negation ne by means of hilum, meaning 'the slightest amount' and of uncertain origin. [citation needed]
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Nihilism in Philosophy
Certainty series
Nihilism
Agnosticism
Uncertainty
Probability
Estimation
Belief
Justified true belief
Certainty
Determinism
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Though the term nihilism was first popularized by Ivan Turgenev (see below), it was first introduced into philosophical discourse by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), who used the term to characterize rationalism, and in particular Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to nihilism, and thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some type of faith and revelation. (See also fideism.)
Friedrich Nietzsche's later work displays a preoccupation with nihilism. Book One of the posthumous collection The Will to Power (a highly selective arrangement of jottings from various notebooks and from an incomplete project begun by Nietzsche himself, then posthumously edited and released by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche) is entitled "European Nihilism" which he calls "the problem of the nineteenth century." [citation needed] Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. He hints that nihilism can become a false belief, when it leads individuals to discard any hope of meaning in the world and thus to invent some compensatory alternate measure of significance.
Though some deride it as nihilistic, postmodernism can be contrasted with the above formulation of nihilism in that the most common type of nihilism tends toward defeatism or fatalism, while postmodern philosophers tend to find strength and reason for celebration in the varied and unique human relationships it explores.[citation needed] Nihilism can also readily be compared to skepticism as both reject claims to knowledge and truth, though skepticism does not necessarily come to any conclusions about the reality of moral concepts nor does it deal so intimately with questions about the meaning of an existence without knowable truth.[citation needed]
In a very different vein than just given, contemporary analytic philosophers have been engaged in a very active discussion over the past few years about what is called mereological nihilism. This is the position that objects with parts do not exist, and only basic building blocks without parts exist (e.g., electrons, quarks), and thus the world we see and experience full of objects with parts is a product of human misperception. Jeffrey Grupp of Purdue University [7], argues for a doctrine of mereological nihilism, maintaining that there are no objects whatsoever which have parts. Grupp argues that nihilism is the standard position of many ancient atomists, such as Democritus of ancient Greece, Dharmakirti of ancient India, that it is the position held by Kant in his transcendental idealism, and that it is the position actually found in quantum observational physics.[8] The other contemporary mereological nihilists are not atomists, such as the mereological nihilists Trenton Merricks of the University of Virginia, and Peter van Inwagen of Notre Dame.
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Nihilism in Ethics and Morality
Main article: Moral nihilism
In the world of ethics, nihilist or nihilistic is often used as a derogatory term referring to a complete rejection of all systems of authority, morality, and social custom, or one who purportedly makes such a rejection. Either through the rejection of previously accepted bases of belief or through extreme relativism or skepticism, the nihilist is construed as one who believes that none of these claims to power are valid. Nihilism not only dismisses received moral values, but rejects 'morality' outright, viewing it as baseless.
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Postmodernism and the Breakdown of Knowledge
Postmodern thought is colored by the perception of a degeneration of systems of epistemology and ethics into extreme relativism, especially evident in the writings of Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Derrida. These philosophers tend to deny the very grounds on which Western cultures have based their 'truths': absolute knowledge and meaning, the accumulation of positive knowledge, historical progress, and the ideals of humanism and the Enlightenment. Though it is often described as a fundamentally nihilist philosophy, before entering a brief discussion on postmodern thought it is important to note that nihilism itself is open to postmodern criticism: nihilism is a claim to a universal truth, exactly what postmodernism rejects.
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Lyotard and Meta-narratives
Lyotard argues that, rather than relying on an objective truth or method to prove their claims, philosophers legitimize their truths by reference to a story about the world which is inseparable from the age and system the stories belong to. Lyotard calls them meta-narratives. He then goes on to define the postmodern condition as one characterized by a rejection both of these meta-narratives and of the process of legitimization by meta-narratives.
"In lieu of meta-narratives we have created new language-games in order to legitimize our claims which rely on changing relationships and mutable truths, none of which is privileged over the other to speak to ultimate truth." It is this unstable concept of truth and meaning that leads one close to nihilism, though in the same move that plunges toward meaninglessness, Lyotard suspends his philosophy just above its surface.
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Nihilism and Nietzsche
'To the clean are all things clean' — thus say the people. I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things become swinish! Therefore preach the visionaries and bowed-heads (whose hearts are also bowed down): 'The world itself is a filthy monster.' For these are all unclean spirits; especially those, however, who have no peace or rest, unless they see the world FROM THE BACKSIDE — the backworldsmen! TO THOSE do I say it to the face, although it sound unpleasantly: the world resembleth man, in that it hath a backside, — SO MUCH is true! There is in the world much filth: SO MUCH is true! But the world itself is not therefore a filthy monster!
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche defined the term as any philosophy that, rejecting the real world around us and physical existence along with it, results in an apathy toward life and a poisoning of the human soul — and opposed it vehemently. He describes it as "the will to nothingness" or, more specifically:
A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos—at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 585, Walter Kaufmann
In this sense it is the philosophical equivalent to the Russian political movement mentioned above: the irrational leap beyond skepticism — the desire to destroy meaning, knowledge, and value. To him, it was irrational because the human soul thrives on value. Nihilism, then, was in a sense like suicide and mass murder all at once. He saw this philosophy as present in Christianity (which he describes as slave morality), Buddhism, morality, asceticism and any excessively skeptical philosophy.
Nietzsche is referred to as a nihilist in part because he famously announced "God is dead!" What he meant by this oft-repeated statement has been the subject of much heated debate, because Nietzsche simply declared this position in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra without actually arguing for it. Some argue that Nietzsche meant not that God has died in a literal sense, or even necessarily that God doesn't exist, but that we don't believe in God anymore, that even those of us who profess faith in God don't really believe. God is dead, then, in the sense that his existence is now irrelevant to the bulk of humanity. "And we," he says in The Gay Science, "have killed him."
Alternately, some have interpreted Nietzsche's comment to be a statement of faith that the world has no rational order. Nietzsche also believed that, even though Christian morality is nihilistic, without God humanity is left with no epistemological or moral base from which we can derive absolute beliefs. Thus, even though nihilism has been a threat in the past, through Christianity, Platonism, and various political movements that aim toward a distant utopian future, and any other philosophy that devalues human life and the world around us (and any philosophy that devalues the world around us by privileging some other or future world necessarily devalues human life), Nietzsche tells us it is also a threat for humanity's future. This warning can also be taken as a polemic against 19th and 20th century scientism.
Nietzsche advocated a remedy for nihilism's destructive effects and a hope for humanity's future in the form of the Übermensch, a position especially apparent in his works Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Antichrist. The Übermensch is an exercise of action and life: one must give value to their existence by behaving as if one's very existence were a work of art. Nietzsche believed that the Übermensch "exercise" would be a necessity for human survival in the post-religious era.
Another part of Nietzsche's remedy for nihilism is a revaluation of morals — he hoped that we are able to discard the old morality of equality and servitude and adopt a new code, turning Judeo-Christian morality on its head. Excess, carelessness, callousness, and sin, then, are not the damning acts of a person with no regard for his salvation, nor that which plummets a society toward decadence and decline, but the signifier of a soul already withering and the sign that a society is in decline. The only true sin to Nietzsche is that which is against a human nature aimed at the expression and venting of one's power over oneself. Virtue, likewise, is not to act according to what has been commanded, but to contribute to all that betters a human soul.
Nietzsche attempts to reintroduce what he calls a master morality, which values personal excellence over forced compassion and creative acts of will over the herd instinct, a moral outlook he attributes to the ancient Greeks. The Christian moral ideals developed in opposition to this master morality, he says, as the reversal of the value system of the elite social class due to the oppressed class' resentment of their Roman masters. Nietzsche, however, did not believe that humans should adopt master morality as the be-all-end-all code of behavior - he believed that the revaluation of morals would correct the inconsistencies in both master and slave morality - but simply that master morality was preferable to slave morality, although this is debatable. Walter Kaufmann, for one, disagrees that Nietzsche actually preferred master morality to slave morality. He certainly gives slave morality a much harder time, but this is partly because he believes that slave morality is modern society's more imminent danger. The Antichrist had been meant as the first book in a four-book series, "Toward a Re-Evaluation of All Morals", which might have made his views more explicit, but Nietzsche did not survive to write the later three books.
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Nihilism, Self-consistency, and Paradox
Nihilism is often described as a belief in the nonexistence of truth. In its more extreme forms, such a belief is difficult to justify, because it contains a variation on the liar paradox: if it is true that truth does not exist, the statement "truth does not exist" is itself a truth, therefore showing itself to be inconsistent. A formally identical criticism has been leveled against relativism and the verifiability theory of meaning of logical positivism.
A more sophisticated interpretation of the claim might be that while truth may exist, it is inaccessible in practice, but this leaves open the problem of how the nihilist has accessed it. It may be a reasonable reply that the nihilist has not accessed truth directly, but has come to the conclusion, based on past experience, that truth is ultimately unattainable within the confines of human circumstance. Thus, since nihilists believe they have learned that truth cannot be attained in this life, they look upon the activities of those rigorously seeking truth as futile. However, this interpretation is open to the same criticism as above, since, barring mystical revelation, the only way the "truth" of nihilism can have been learned is from within the confines of human experience. An attempt at reconciliation may be made in the following way:
To logically deduce that one cannot realise objective (certain) truth as opposed to subjective (assumed) truth, one requires logic. Logic is an artefact of the human mind, which is a finite, subjective apparatus of observation and "experience". Thus, from within the confines of "human experience", it is possible to be convinced (by logical and therefore subjective means) that it is not possible to realise objective truth. The nihilist, then, cannot profess to know something objectively and without bias, but he can submit that he is subjectively convinced that he will never be certain in his knowledge of anything. Therefore, nihilism is a type of cosmic agnosticism ( 'agnostic' meaning 'without knowledge' ) in which the nihilist merely admits that he can never be certain of anything, not for lack of evidence, but for the fallibility inherent to consciousness.
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Nihilism in Art
There have been various movements in art, such as surrealism and cubism, which have been criticized for touching on nihilism, and others like Dada which have embraced it openly. More generally, modern art has been criticized as nihilistic due to its often non-representative nature, as happened with the Nazi party's Degenerate art exhibit.
Nihilistic themes can be found in literature and music as well. This is especially true of contemporary music and literature, where the uncertainty following what some perceive as the demise of modernism is explored in detail.
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Dadaism
The term Dada was first used during World War I, an event that precipitated the movement, which lasted from approximately 1916 to 1923. The Dada Movement began in the old town of Zürich, Switzerland known as the "Niederdorf" or "Niederdörfli," which is now sporadically inhabited by dadaist squatters. The Dadaists claimed that Dada was not an art movement, but an anti-art movement, sometimes using found objects in a manner similar to found poetry and labeling them art, thus undermining ideas of what art is and what it can be. The "anti-art" drive is thought of to have stemmed from a post-war emptiness that lacked passion or meaning in life. Sometimes Dadaists paid attention to aesthetic guidelines only so they could be avoided, attempting to render their works devoid of meaning and aesthetic value. This tendency toward devaluation of art has led many to claim that Dada was essentially a nihilist movement; a destruction without creation. War and destruction had washed away peoples' mindset of creation and aesthetic.
Because they attempted to undermine the way art was viewed in the 20th century, the dadaists chose to name their movement after a baby phrase to show the way their anti-art was shaking everything up. Several myths regarding the invention of the name "Dada" exist, including that it was a form of mockery against Tzara, who is widely viewed as the father of the movement (in Russian "da, da" is "yes, yes", a name that still offers no indication of the art that bears it). (http://www.hyperdictionary.com/search.aspx?define=tzara">Tristan Tzara (see Samuel Rosenstock), Jewish poet (born in Romania; moved to France) who was one of the co-founders of the Dada movement (1896-1963).
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Nihilism in Literature
Although the word nihilism is of recent historical vintage, the attitude it represents is not, as is seen in a famous passage near the end of Shakespeare's Macbeth — though Macbeth is not speaking of universal collapse or expansion but the brute and more immediate fact of human death:
Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more; it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
— William Shakespeare , Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5
In nineteenth-century culture, nihilism was given wide currency by the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1862) to describe the views of an emerging radical Russian intelligentsia. These consisted primarily of upper-class students who had grown disillusioned with the slow pace of reformism. The primary spokesman for this new philosophy was D. I. Pisarev (1840-1868) who articulated a program of Revolutionary Utilitarianism and advocated violence as a tool for social change. Pisarev was cast as Bazarov in Fathers and Sons much to his own delight; he proudly embraced his new status as a fictionalized hero and villain. [citation needed]
After its popularization in the character of Bazarov, the word quickly became a catch-all term of derision for younger, more radical generations, and continues in this vein to modern times. [citation needed] It is often used to indicate a group or philosophy the speaker intends to characterize as having no moral sensibility, no belief in truth, beauty, love, or whatever else the speaker and his presumed audience values, and no regard for the current social conventions.
In Germinal (1885), by Émile Zola, the nihilist character Souvarine dramatizes the danger of nihilism when, in a climactic scene, he sabotages a coal mine and causes a catastrophic accident, then slips away. Souvarine's lack of belief, frequently expressed, is a foil to the optimistic socialism that fuels the coal miners' revolt. [citation needed]
In Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov embraces a nihilist sort of utilitarianism. Dostoevsky ultimately points out the emptiness of nihilism with the epilogue of the novel. [citation needed] In fact, many of Dostoevsky's novels dealt with nihilism. Another major example of nihilism is found in The Possessed (or The Devils), in which Kirilov sees no solution to nihilism but suicide and ultimately kills himself. The main protagonist, Stavrogin, finally sees Kirilov's dilemma and follows suit at the end of the book with his own elaborate suicide. [citation needed]
The works of Albert Camus can be read as a sustained engagement with nihilism. [citation needed] Camus was highly influenced by the works and thoughts of Dostoevsky, even writing his own play based on Dostoevsky's novel, "The Devils". [citation needed]Yukio Mishima is another example of engagement with nihilism. [citation needed]Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote several novels of a strongly nihilist bent, most notably Journey to the End of the Night. [citation needed]
The works of Samuel Beckett, especially the play Waiting for Godot, exhibit elements of nihilism. This play has subsequently been made into a cinematic film which visually deals with the more pessimistic and cynical aspects of nihilism. [citation needed]
In contemporary literature, themes of nihilism can also be found in many of Kurt Vonnegut's books. [citation needed] Robert Stone, additionally, is a contemporary American novelist who has often thematized nihilism in his work. In A Flag for Sunrise (1981), for example, the anthropologist Holliwell is a protagonist struggling against his own nihilistic tendencies. [citation needed] Another American author who is commonly believed to deal with themes of nihilism is Chuck Palahniuk. In his 1996 novel Fight Club, for example, the ultimate goal of the book's 'project mayhem' is the destruction of modern civilization in order to rebuild humanity. [citation needed] Palahniuk, however, claims that he does not deliberately focus on the subject. [citation needed] Nathan Tyree's Novel, Mr. Overby is Falling, is another current example of nihilism in literature. In that book the main character longs for the destruction of all society, so that the world can be cleansed of evil. [citation needed] Nihilism is also a common theme in the worldview and writings of horror author Thomas Ligotti, as well as Bret Easton Ellis[9][10].
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