"that perfect thing"

Life's Tragedy
from Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903)
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

IT may be misery not to sing at all,
And to go silent through the brimming day;
It may be misery never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.

To sing the perfect song,
And by a half-tone lost the key,
There the potent sorrow, there the grief,
The pale, sad staring of Life's Tragedy.

To have come near to the perfect love,
Not the hot passion of untempered youth,
But that which lies aside its vanity,
And gives, for thy trusting worship, truth.

This, this indeed is to be accursed,
For if we mortals love, or if we sing,
We count our joys not by what we have,
But by what kept us from that perfect thing.

Hu Jintao: Mystery Man at the Helm

Hu Jintao: Mystery Man at the Helm
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/international/asia/15HU.html

BEIJING, Friday, Nov. 15 — Low-profile even by the hermetic standards of China's one-party system, Hu Jintao today took over the most important political position in the world's most populous nation by appealing to the one constituency that counts: elite party insiders.

A merchant's son, Mr. Hu survived a decade-long leadership trial by persuading elders that he was the perfect party mandarin, pragmatic and flexible, yet discreet and fiercely loyal. That he rose to the top while scarcely showing his face even as China opened its economy to the world is testimony to the unresolved contradictions of the Chinese experiment with a one-party market economy.

Mr. Hu, 59, is the enforcer who was the top official in Tibet when China imposed martial law in 1989 to quell unrest. He is the nationalist who supported anti-American protesters after a United States bomb destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999.

Yet he is also the innovator who installed broadband Internet access at the Communist Party school and encouraged academic debates about democracy and separation of powers. How he will deal with the challenges of combining modernization with China's announced goal of continued one-party governance is not clear.

"People think Hu will fulfill their own dreams," said Wu Guoguang, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "The liberals see a reformer; the conservatives see a hard-liner. Sooner or later he will have to make some choices, and people will see his real colors. But it may take years for that to happen."

As yet there are few clues to Mr. Hu's inner convictions, and at least at first he will be watched over closely by loyalists to the man he succeeds as the party's general secretary, Jiang Zemin. Indeed, if Mr. Hu harbors secret plans for change, he is likely to be constrained by a power structure tilted toward Mr. Jiang.

There is, so far, no policy, phrase or point of view clearly associated with Mr. Hu, a veteran Communist Party insider. When he speaks in public, which is rare, he never strays from the party's prescribed oratory.

But his past suggests that he values power over vision. People who have worked with him say they expect him to tinker rather than reinvent and to commit himself only after cultivating broad support.

Even his personal traits — his 100-watt smile, his carefully coiffed hair, his engaging manner with people above and below his rank and his prodigious memory for facts and figures — suggest someone programmed to lead through the consensus of the elite.

Bao Tong, a former senior party official ousted after the violent suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, compares Mr. Hu to the moon, a term of art in Chinese politics. He reflects light or turns dark, depending on circumstances.

"What he will be like after he has steadied his position is something I don't know," Mr. Bao said. "Probably nobody knows, not even himself."

Still, some people who have met Mr. Hu said it would be a mistake to underestimate him. In 1992, when he was plucked from obscurity at the behest of Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, and given a seat on the ruling standing committee of the party's Politburo at the tender age of 49, he became both heir apparent and target No. 1.

Chinese leaders have often elevated loyal apparatchiks to towering posts and, about as often, watched them flounder amid the capital's factional politics. Mr. Hu seemed to face long odds, especially after Deng died in 1997. He needed finely tuned political instincts to survive.

He has built a power base through the Communist Youth League, which he headed in the early 1980's and whose alumni now oversee important party posts nationwide. Unlike Mr. Jiang, who moved unexpectedly to Beijing to become the party chief during political turmoil in 1989 after spending his entire career in Shanghai, Mr. Hu has installed his own protégés in key national positions.

"Hu is a reformer who wants to accomplish things," said a party official who knows him. "He will wait for the right time to bring out his ideas."

Hu Jintao (pronounced who-gin-tow, as in towel), was born in Shanghai in 1942 to a family of itinerant sesame oil merchants. He grew up in Taizhou, about 160 miles northwest of Shanghai. Mr. Hu's mother died when he was young. He was raised by relatives including his great-aunt, Liu Bingxia, who lived with him from infancy until he left to attend college.

Ms. Liu, now 88, describes her nephew as bookish, modest and unfailingly obedient. "He never once interrupted his elders when they were speaking," she said.

Despite a bourgeois family background that might have made him a political target, Mr. Hu earned a spot at Qinghua University in Beijing through his academic performance and received a degree in hydrologic engineering. By the time of his graduation in 1965 he had joined the Communist Party.

During the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, Mr. Hu, like most educated youths, was sent to labor in poor areas. He worked on a hydroelectric project in Gansu in western China. There he caught the eye of a veteran party stalwart named Song Ping, who was recruiting young talent for senior posts.

By 1982 Mr. Hu had moved to Beijing, and a short time later he was named head of the Communist Youth League. He also came to the attention of the party's top official, General Secretary Hu Yaobang, at the time China's leading liberal. It was Hu Yaobang's death in 1989 that rallied students advocating democracy to stage the mass demonstrations at Tiananmen Square that touched off that year's political turmoil.

Hu Yaobang had Hu Jintao — who is no relation — appointed to the party's Central Committee at age 39 and made a provincial party secretary at the age of 42, in both cases the youngest person to achieve those milestones.

Hu Jintao's career overseeing provincial affairs, first in Guizhou and then Tibet, sent mixed signals. Guizhou became a haven for liberal intellectuals who fell out of a favor during Beijing's political mood swings. In Tibet, though, he proved his willingness to use force. Shortly after he took over responsibility for the region in 1989, followers of the Dalai Lama took to the streets of Lhasa, the capital. China declared martial law, and Mr. Hu oversaw three years of what human rights groups described as brutal oppression.

The crackdown appeared to earn him some credit in Beijing. When he joined the Politburo standing committee in 1992, there was already talk that he would succeed Mr. Jiang, who had just consolidated his own power and was soon to add China's presidency to his posts as party and military leader. Mr. Hu became Mr. Jiang's vice president in 1998.

Unlike Mr. Jiang, who speaks a bit of Russian and English, Mr. Hu is comparatively provincial. But he staked out an aggressive foreign policy position two days after the United States bombed China's embassy in Belgrade in 1999, an incident Washington says was an accident. He went on government-run television and pledged to support "all protest activities in accordance with the law." Mr. Hu's address was viewed within the party as a successful maneuver to keep control of surging nationalism.

On his maiden trip to the United States last spring, some people Mr. Hu met privately described him as personable, even funny. James E. McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey, who talked with Mr. Hu in New York, told the Chinese official that with his full head of jet-black hair, he did not look his 59 years. Mr. Hu replied, "China would be happy to share its technology in this area."

In public, though, Mr. Hu took few chances. He gave no interviews, stuck firmly to established policy and read his speeches verbatim. He sometimes recited copious statistics about agricultural policy or auto production, leaving audiences deflated.

At home, within the party, the trip was regarded as a great success.

Florida Boys Admit Killing Father and Get Shorter Sentence in Deal

[what is this world coming to!!?? --pk]

Florida Boys Admit Killing Father and Get Shorter Sentence in Deal
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/national/15FLOR.html

MIAMI, Nov. 14 — Alex and Derek King, the teenage brothers whose second-degree murder convictions for the bludgeoning death of their father were thrown out by a judge last month, pleaded guilty today to third-degree murder. As a result, they will be spared the much lengthier sentences they faced if the jury verdict had stood.

Under an agreement reached after a week of mediation between prosecutors and defense lawyers, Alex, 13, will serve seven years in prison and Derek, 14, will serve eight years for the November 2001 killing of Terry King, who was beaten to death with a baseball bat as he slept in a recliner in the living room of their home in Pensacola, Fla.

As part of the deal, the brothers were required to provide statements admitting to their roles in the killing. They also pleaded guilty to burning the family home to cover up their actions, and the agreement allows concurrent sentences of the same lengths for the arson. They are not eligible for parole but will receive credit for time served, reducing their sentences by about a year.

The prosecutor and defense lawyers said the agreement held the boys accountable for their actions but combined punishment with the possibility for rehabilitation.

"What I wanted out of this case, I got," David Rimmer, the prosecutor, said. "I got the truth. I also wanted them to take responsibility. This is the first step toward rehabilitation."

The brothers, who were tried as adults, had faced sentences of 22 years to life for the second-degree murder convictions and 30-year sentences for the arson conviction.

In court today, the boys, dressed in oversize green prison jumpsuits, stood and answered, "Yes, your honor," when asked repeatedly if they understood the agreement.

The boys told the judge, Frank Bell of Escambia County Circuit Court, that they had been well represented by their lawyers and were satisfied with the sentences they faced.

Judge Bell, who presided over the trials, threw out the brothers' convictions, saying the prosecution's "unusual and bizarre" decision to try an adult family friend for the same killing before the boys were tried violated their rights to due process.

Judge Bell instead ordered the mediation and approved the agreement in a hearing today.

The boys will be sent to a state prison that houses juveniles separately from adults. They will receive counseling and take part in activities including academic and vocational training and sports programs in a heavily guarded, campuslike setting.

The court-appointed mediator said the plea deal was intended to provide structure for the boys, whose mother left them when they were young.

"They have had instability in their life," said Bill Eddins, the mediator. "It became very important to give them structure and stability."

Within hours of their arrest last November, the brothers confessed to smashing their father's head with a baseball bat as he slept. They later blamed the family friend, Ricky Chavis, who prosecutors have charged with sexually abusing Alex. Based on the boys' accusations, prosecutors first tried Mr. Chavis, who has also been charged with lewd and lascivious acts upon a child but denies abusing Alex.

After Mr. Chavis was acquitted of Mr. King's murder, prosecutors tried the boys, based on their confessions. Mr. Chavis's acquittal was not disclosed until the boys' verdict was read. The boys, who were 12 and 13 at the time of the murder, said in their signed statements to the court today that they alone had killed their father but that Mr. Chavis had influenced their decision by providing them with marijuana and suggesting they could live carefree with him if their father were gone.

Judge Bell, who presided over both murder trials, ruled last month on a defense motion for a retrial that the boys' rights were violated because the prosecution presented two theories about the crime, with no clear indication of who prosecutors believed committed the killing.

The case gained national attention because of the boys' ages and the prosecution strategy.

Lawyers for the brothers said the plea deal was the best they could reach and would spare the boys a new trial. "He could face life in prison again or take the offer," Alex King's lawyer, James Stokes, said. "Alex's decision was to take the offer. This is the only way he has got any possibility at rehabilitation."

A lawyer for Derek said the plea was negotiated with the best interest of both boys in mind. "Obviously, there's better alternatives out there, if the boys could walk out of jail," said the lawyer, Sharon Potter.

The boys' mother, Kelly Marino, has recently tried to replace their court-appointed lawyers with lawyers hired by the entertainer Rosie O'Donnell. Ms. Marino said the boys were not competent to agree to the plea deal, and the new lawyers tried to introduce a motion today to have the boys' competency evaluated. Judge Bell said they had no involvement in the case and did not consider the motion.

Ms. Marino, who lives in Kentucky, said she had been shut out of the negotiations and was angry about the outcome. "They're not old enough to make a judgment for the rest of their lives," she said.

The defense lawyers and the prosecutor said Ms. Marino was not motivated by the boys' best interest. "They wouldn't be in the state pen if she had been there when they were in the playpen," Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor, said.

Ms. Marino's lawyer, Ron Johnson, said justice was not served with the plea agreement.

Linda Walker, the boys' maternal grandmother, said she had mixed emotions about the conclusion of the case. "I still believe in their innocence," Ms. Walker said.

Ms. Walker, who exchanged smiles with Derek in the courtroom, said: "They seem to be kind of happy about it. They are getting away from adults, and that's what I wanted."

China Carries Out an Orderly Shift of Its
Leadership

China Carries Out an Orderly Shift of Its
Leadership
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/international/asia/15CHIN.html

BEIJING, Friday, Nov. 15 — Hu Jintao, a 59-year-old insider known as brilliant and bland, was named chief of the Communist Party today, the point man in a sweeping generational shift of the nation's leadership that was achieved through the most orderly transition in the 81-year history of the party.

In what has become a national ritual to reveal the new leaders — who were selected by a small group in total secrecy — Mr. Hu and the eight other members of an expanded ruling council strode before reporters and a national television audience late this morning.

"We will certainly uphold the great trust that the party has placed in us, and the expectations of all the country's people," Mr. Hu promised in a brief inaugural address.

Looking poised but slightly tense, Mr. Hu pledged continuity with the policies of Jiang Zemin, whose drive to broaden the party and overhaul the economy while keeping a tight lid on politics were endorsed by the just-ended 16th Party Congress.

Mr. Hu was formally elected to the top spot this morning at a pro-forma meeting of the newly appointed Central Committee.

The new Standing Committee of the Politburo, which effectively rules the nation, was also formally appointed this morning, with its membership rising to nine from seven.

To the surprise of many observers, Wu Bangguo, who has had a modest profile as a deputy prime minister directing the reform of state enterprises and is a protégé of Jiang Zemin, was given No. 2 ranking in the party elite.

Four other men seen as close allies to Mr. Jiang were also appointed to the inner circle.

Mr. Jiang will remain state president until the Parliament meets in March, when Mr. Hu is expected to take over that title as well. Whether Mr. Jiang will give up his third post, chairman of the military, is unclear.

Mr. Hu takes over a country experiencing dazzling economic and social change, one that is taking a more confident place in world affairs. But he must also cope with official corruption, spreading unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor and bubbling demands for political change.

The turnover in leading party councils this week is enormous, largely thanks to a recent, unwritten rule that officials older than 70 should step down. This does not, however, portend equally striking changes in policy.

Judging by their records, Mr. Hu and his colleagues are likely to proceed cautiously and in unison, with the expanded size of the Standing Committee making radical shifts harder than ever to achieve.

China seeks friendly ties with the United States, expanding economic and technological relations while trying to contain serious differences over Taiwan and human rights. Just Thursday, for example, NATO officials revealed that China had requested a "dialogue," the first contact of any sort in the 53-year history of the American-dominated alliance.

China and the United States have moved closer over the past year in part because of shared interests in combating terrorism.

The country's top priority remains building an advanced market economy, exemplified by China's recent entry into the World Trade Organization, seen here as a risky but necessary step to force the economy to become more competitive.

On paper, the turnover at the top is nearly total. Apart from Mr. Hu, the six other members of the outgoing Standing Committee all are giving up their party posts. These include Li Peng, 74, the former prime minister and the conservative current head of the Parliament, and Zhu Rongji, 74, the prime minister and a prime architect of China's economic success.

Change is also sweeping through the 22-member Politburo and the larger Central Committee. Of 21 members in the outgoing Politburo, two-thirds have retired. The new Politburo of 24 includes just one woman, Wu Yi, known for her role in negotiating China's entry to the World Trade Organization, and two army generals.

Half the 356 voting and alternate members of the just-selected Central Committee are new to that policy body, whose membership indicates the leaders of the future. Most of the new members are in their 50's and they include some younger military officers and a few corporate heads of state industries, though it did not appear that any private entrepreneurs had gained entry.

In general, those now moving into senior positions are younger and better educated than their predecessors, and many have advanced as economic technocrats.

Mr. Jiang's retirement from the new Central Committee scotched months of speculation that he might try to remain in office. But he leaves in triumph and with indications that he may exert considerable influence behind the scenes.

In their final acts on Thursday, the 2,114 delegates voted unanimously for resolutions praising Mr. Jiang's 13-year tenure and putting his "important thought of the Three Represents" into the party constitution alongside the theories of Mao and Deng Xiaoping.

Mr. Jiang's contribution, an effort by the increasingly detached ruling party to reinvent itself in all but name, asserts that the party can represent "advanced forces" like entrepreneurs and, indeed, all of society as it continues to be the vanguard of the working class and peasants. Its untested premise is that the party can maintain its monopoly by incorporating dynamic new groups into the ruling circle.

Beyond the hosannas, Mr. Jiang has placed many associates in senior positions. In addition to Mr. Wu, the new No. 2, these include Zeng Qinghong, 63, a shrewd strategist and bureaucratic infighter who has been Mr. Jiang's close aide and now enters the ruling circle on his own and the recent party secretaries of Beijing and Shanghai.

Another entrant into the inner circle is Wen Jiabao, 60, who has been a respected deputy of Zhu Rongji and will probably be named prime minister in March.

From his new party ranking, it appears likely that Wu Bangguo will take over the National People's Congress, or Parliament, next March.

Speculation continues about whether Mr. Jiang will retain his title as chairman of the military, following in the pattern of Deng. An intense campaign in praise of Mr. Jiang in military publications and speeches over recent months suggested that the army brass wants him to stay.

But all the top generals over 70 were retired from the Politburo and Central Committee this week, an indication that the retirement norm is being enforced in the military as well. This makes it harder to justify the elderly Mr. Jiang staying on as military chairman, some experts believe.

RBJ looking for a websponsor

the ricebowl journals (RBJ) are looking for a websponsor. anyone have any ideas?? carlos has done a totally fantastic job with this community.

their traffic used to be about 60gig/month, however the last two months they were at 88 and 111! i was thinking maybe he could approach asian travel related companies like cathay pacific. or what about media companies with web presence like time, or cnn, or startv.

i would think RBJ's traffic (probably 18-35yr old age bracket) would be a coveted advertising audience.

any ideas anyone? email me.

California coastline in color!

[check this out! --pk]

"A helicopter-flying and digital camera-toting couple has taken photos of nearly the entire California coastline, from swank Malibu palaces to the stark, frightening border with Mexico and desolate windswept coastlines."
Posted on monoki

http://www1.californiacoastline.org/

"and mirrors what it sees"

BY THE STREAM
from Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896)
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

BY the stream I dream in calm delight, and
  watch as in a glass,
How the clouds like crowds of snowy-hued and
  white-robed maidens pass,
And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles
  as it spreads,
Like a host of armored knights with silver
  helmets on their heads.
And I deem the stream an emblem fit of human
  life may go,
For I find a mind may sparkle much and yet
  but shallows show,
And a soul may glow with myriad lights and
  wondrous mysteries,
When it only lies a dormant thing and mirrors
  what it sees.

Better to be Content and Single

Amabelle writes:

"i think that singleness should be a state of mind that should be cherished, not feared. i have friends who ask me, "so, are there any boys in your life?" or questions to that extent, and, recently, i've said, "nope." and then they say, "ohh... that's too bad," as if it's something to be pitied. but realistically, if i had a boyfriend or someone of that stature in my life, i don't think i'd feel the same sort of freedom that i do right now. "

after a lot of discussion (over 15 comment posts) over the benefits of single versus together versus social pressures and stigma, i started writing a lengthy response to the many replies. and then it hit me.

what i really wanted to say boiled down to this -- "although it would be our fortune to be blissfully happy (with a perfect soulmate), it would be better to be simply content by ourselves, than miserable with someone else".

Fed Chief Backs Bush on Tax Cut

Fed Chief Says He Backs Bush on Tax Cut
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/business/14FED.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, weighed in today in favor of President Bush's campaign to make last year's tax cuts permanent, lending a powerful voice to a high priority of the new Republican Congress.

"It would probably be unwise to unwind the long-term tax cut, because it is already built into the system," Mr. Greenspan told members of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.

Mr. Greenspan refuted the Bush administration on a crucial point, however, saying that continuing the planned schedule of tax cuts would provide almost no stimulus to the economy because the move would affect taxes that kick in mostly during the second half of the decade.

Mr. Greenspan's comments on taxes came in response to questions from lawmakers. In his earlier testimony to the committee, the Fed chairman remained cautiously optimistic on the economy, saying it seemed to be in the midst of a "soft patch" rather than a renewed downturn. The recent Fed rate cut, to 1.25 percent from 1.75 percent, he said, was primarily an "insurance premium" in case the economic troubles were worse than Fed officials generally believed.

Mr. Greenspan's support for making the tax cuts permanent is likely to make it even more difficult for those lawmakers, mostly Democrats, who argue that the planned tax cuts should be postponed or scaled back because the government is already facing years of big deficits.

While cautioning that Congress will face difficult choices down the road in bringing government spending more in line with revenues, Mr. Greenspan said that not making the tax cuts permanent would disappoint investors and make things worse.

"There are potential adverse consequences, which I don't think are desirable," he said.

At the White House, Mr. Bush insisted again today on making last year's tax cuts permanent and intimated that he might propose additional tax measures on top of that to stimulate the economy.
"I sent a signal to Congress that I believe that we need to have further discussions how to best stimulate the economy," he told reporters at a news conference today. "And I'm very serious about that."

Largely because of the economic slowdown, the downward plunge of stock markets and the initial round of tax cuts approved by Congress last year, the federal budget swung from a surplus of more than $100 billion last year to a deficit of about $159 billion this year.

Though neither Democrats nor Republicans have any appetite for trying to balance the budget amid the gloom and uncertainty in today's economy, there is a big debate about whether to cut taxes even further in the years ahead.

The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan agency that analyzes the government's trends in taxes and spending, estimates that making last year's tax cuts permanent will reduce federal revenues by nearly $200 billion a year by 2012.

Many budget experts worry that the extension of tax cuts will take hold at the same time that the aging of the baby boom generation begins to create the need for a surge in outlays for Social Security and Medicare.

Mr. Bush reiterated his view that the main reason for the new budget deficit was the faltering economy, and he argued that the best way to balance the budget was to stimulate more economic growth.
"The deficit is caused by the fact that revenues have not come in," he said. "And there's two things we can do about it: one, stimulate the economy to create more revenues; and, two, hold down spending."

Despite repeated hints since August about proposals for additional tax cuts, the Bush administration has so far refrained from offering any specific proposals for new breaks.

Among the ideas under study are additional tax breaks for individual investors, like increasing the amount people can put into tax-deferred retirement plans; increasing the amount people can deduct on their taxes from investment losses; increasing business tax breaks for investment; and possibly reducing taxes on corporate dividends.

"The key will be to maintain cash flow in the private sector," said Lawrence B. Lindsey, head of the White House's National Economic Council, in a speech to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

But Mr. Lindsey cautioned that Mr. Bush was still "evaluating options" and hinted at the administration's own concerns about the rising deficit. "We do not live in an environment in which we have unlimited income," he said. "It is a balancing act."

Among Republicans in Congress, support appears to be considerably stronger for cutting taxes rather than worrying about narrowing the budget deficit. "Nobody is closing the door" to tax cuts, said one Republican staff member on the House Ways and Means Committee, where tax bills originate.

Meanwhile, one of the Senate's most forceful Republican advocates of fiscal austerity — Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico — let it be known today that he will step down as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to become chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

His successor will be Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, who has long been an advocate for tax cuts.

In his testimony today, Mr. Greenspan also expressed confidence that the United States could shoulder the costs of a war with Iraq, arguing that the economic impact would be significantly less than that of the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Less than two weeks after the Fed cut interest rates by an unusually large half a percentage point, Mr. Greenspan acknowledged that the economy was weighed down by uncertainty and "geopolitical risk" — a euphemism for the prospects of a war with Iraq.

Mr. Greenspan said there was no evidence, "at least up to the moment," that an economic downturn was accelerating. And while saying the Federal Reserve remained ready to intervene again if the economy did deteriorate, he said the "most probable path" was one of gradual improvement and that another round of monetary stimulus would not be necessary.

But even if the economy deteriorated further, Mr. Greenspan said, he still disputed economists who worried that the Federal Reserve had exhausted its tools for fighting potential deflation in prices or was close to losing the ability to revive the economy because interest rates had reached such low levels. If need be, he said, the Federal Reserve could still stimulate activity by buying up a wide range of securities in the financial markets.

"Le Mois de la Photo"

Paris catches the photography bug
by Suzy Menkes, International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
http://www.iht.com/articles/76596.html

The French have a new word for their capital city: Photopolis. The biennial monthlong photographic festival culminates this week in "Paris Photo" - a show of classic and contemporary work on view at the Carrousel du Louvre from Nov. 14 to 17. All over the City of Light, there are more than 60 events as varied as the images of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to the classic fashion photography of Henry Clarke, who, like so many of France's lords of the lens, was an American in Paris.

Galleries and even fashion stores have caught the bug, while specialist bookshops are dusting off their vintage photographic tomes. Book and exhibition often go together, as with Peter Lindbergh's images of the actress Milla Jovovich from adolescence to womanhood and Yohji Yamamoto's "May I Help You?"
.
At the heart of this body of work is "Paris Photo," with 100 exhibitors from 12 countries. An Ansel Adams exhibition shows 20 years of Polaroid images from the 1950s to '70s. Since "Paris Photo" was established in 1997, the event has become Europe's premier photographic forum. For example, says Rik Gadella, the show's founder and design director, after last year's focus on young German photographers, 70 new German talents applied to show this season.
.
Gadella says that German photography is much discussed, especially at auctions in the Untied States, but that he thinks the Dutch have something new to offer. So the focus in the "Statement" section is on young Dutch artists. "What interests me is that from the very young artists to Inez Van Lamsweerde, Dutch art directors give much more freedom than in France," Gadella says. "It is hard to tell apart the commissioned and the private style."
.
Gadella, who is Dutch, says his nation's artists are marked by their use of light, their industrial landscapes and their individual visions. He singles out Desiree Doiron for her documentary style with a personal approach and praises her previous work depicting blind people and those in religious retreats. Gadella sees some general trends, citing "less sex," and the emergence of South American photographers and Iranian artists who "cross over" between still and moving images.
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Gallery owners who come from around the world to exhibit at "Paris Photo" share Gadella's view that it is an exceptional event - partly because of the city's artistic interest in photography. "The French are so much better at supporting young photographers," says Genevieve Janvrin, gallery manager of the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London, which will exhibit some of its "Before There Was Marilyn" photos, early images of Monroe by Andre de Dienes that went on display in London last week.
.
"Le Mois de la Photo" (Photography Month) has been divided into categories and one is fashion, curated by Alice Morgaine. It was an inspired choice to bring the images of "Citizen K" magazine to the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie (5/7 Rue de Fourcy 75004, to Dec. 1). Among the arresting photos, there are original takes on beauty: Guido Mocafico's flower whorled out of Clinique anti-aging cream decorating a slab of steak; drops of water on a celestial blue ground to capture the essence of Thierry Mugler's "Angel" fragrance. Striking, too, is Federico Cimatti's Chanel "Allure," pictured in its steely graphic packaging against a high-rise skyline.
.
In the same gallery, also to Dec. 1, the Yamamoto pictures offer an example of a designer whose self-image is so strong that the chosen photographers pay homage to it. The Japanese designer left the photographers alone, saying, "I want to be surprised." The result could be a leg in thick hose and sturdy shoe (by Max Vadukul) or Lindbergh's 1984 image of a model cartwheeling along a shoreline. Two great romantics - Sarah Moon and Paolo Roversi - steal the show, with their bleeding colors, deep shadows and evanescent silhouettes that catch Yamamoto's special poetry.
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At Galerie 213 (213 Boulevard Raspail 75014, to Jan. 18), Lindbergh's images of Jovovich are poignant because they are the reverse of Norma Jean morphing into Monroe. At age 13, Jovovich was cavorting on a Los Angles beach dressed as a Barbie doll version of womanhood; by 1998 she is stripped down to her current gamine self in nude pictures for French Vogue. The poster-size images (average price $25,000) catch her elfin beauty, as she acts out a surreal UFO scene for Italian Vogue in 2000. The accompanying book, "Stories," emphasizes Lindbergh's narrative approach to fashion photography.
.
It is rare to find such an intelligent and well-realized fashion-photo exhibit as "Henry Clarke" at the Musee Galliera (10 Rue Pierre 1er de Serbie, 75116, to March 2). The show emphasizes Clarke's skill in coaxing the sensuality of the female body through a stiffly constructed gown, by juxtaposing the museum's historic dresses with the images. The same crimson velvet, fur-trimmed Dior coat or Jean Desses Grecian draped gown appears beside its photograph.
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The exhibition also uses Clarke's long collaboration with Conde Nast by printing the original Vogue magazine captions with the names of models - Bettina, Dovima or Barbara Goalen - that seem like a roll call of Paris fashion in its postwar glory days. Yet Clarke was not trapped in that black-and-white '50s era. In collaboration with Vogue's editor, Diana Vreeland, in the 1960s, he traveled to far-flung places, capturing the colorful images of models among the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India and tiled walls in Iran.
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In Colette's tiny gallery area (213 Rue Saint Honore 75001, to Nov. 30), three photographers reflect their times: urban Tokyo, by Takashi Homma, Jordan Tinker of the United States, known for his gas-station images, and Mark Borthwick of Britain, whose photographs of sidewalks are meant to symbolize a different brand. As though in a fashion walk of fame, Borthwick suggests the image of Calvin Klein or Jil Sander in the weeds growing through cracked paving stones.
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Giorgio Armani turned to the British photographer Roger Hutchings, more often found recording war in Bosnia or the plight of Kurdish children, for the images that hang in the store (6 Place Vendome 75001, to Nov. 19). "Backstage Armani" captures the sweat and fears behind the glamour of the podium, the tension in the faces of makeup artists, hairdressers and models and the melancholy of Armani himself. Hung like garments between the racks of clothes, the exhibition proves how Paris has incorporated photography into different aspects of city life. - Suzy Menkes

Two China IPOs set for debuts

Two China IPOs set for debuts
by Shu-Ching Jean Chen in Hong Kong
Updated 02:54 PM EST, Nov-13-2002
http://www.thedeal.com

Two closely watched Chinese initial public offerings — Hainan Meilan Airport Co. Ltd. and the recently embattled China Telecom — closed their books smoothly Wednesday, Nov. 13.

China Telecom overcame a flurry of recent missteps by confirming in a public statement that it received a definitive 3.7 times subscription rate in its second push for a public offering in Hong Kong.

The confirmation came after the fixed-line phone giant was forced to call off the first round of its global offering at the end of October because of a lack of confidence by institutional investors.

In response, China Telecom cut the share size by more than half and hastily embarked on the second attempt last week.

Now the company says it has received applications for a total of nearly 1.4 billion shares. That is 3.7 times the size of its public offer to retail investors in Hong Kong of 377.8 million shares, or 5% of its global offer. Trading for China Telecom shares is slated to begin today in New York and Friday in Hong Kong.

Unlike China Telecom, Hainan Meilan Airport, has had a comfortable ride on its way to its IPO.

The operator of the eight largest airport in China, Hainan Meilan escaped the misfortune plaguing China Telecom's IPO because the scale of its share sale was "much smaller," an industry source close to the underwriting syndicate said. "You don't have to line up a huge order," the source added. Hainan Meilan works from a base on the fringe of the South China resort island of Hainan.

The airport company priced its initial public offering at HK$3.78, close to the top end of its per share price range of between HK$3.15 and HK$3.79 per share, reflecting the increased demand for its shares. The IPO received a 10 times subscription rate from institutional investors and was five times subscribed by retail investors. Orders came mostly from institutional investors in Asia, which made up 55% of the demand. European investors constituted 30% of the sale while the remainder came from investors in the United States.

The IPO price represents 11 times the company's 2002 earnings. The key draw of the deal was the endorsement Hainan Meilan received from Copenhagen Airports A/S. The Danish airport operator took a 20% stake in the IPO, or 43.5 million based on the IPO price. Copenhagen Airports boasts a solid record running several overseas airports outside of Denmark.

"Investors are very interested in having Copenhagen Airports as a strategic investor," the source said. "That gives them comfort."

Hainan Meilan Airport now expects to raise HK$762.4 million ($98 million). It is selling 201.7 million shares, excluding the 12.5% over-allotment option it granted to book runner, Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Of the total offer, 3.7% are existing shares while the rest are new.

Jonathan Orders, head of Asia's equity capital markets at HSBC, led the team advising Hainan Meilan. The joint lead managers are Oriental Patron Asia Ltd. and ICEA Capital Ltd.

Trading for Hainan Meilan shares will begin Nov. 18 in Hong Kong.

Jiang ousts an old rival

Jiang's Liberal Rival May Be Ousted in China's Transfer of Power
By John Pomfret and Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 14, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51166-2002Nov13.html

BEIJING, Nov. 13 -- Days before he is expected to step down as chief of the Chinese Communist Party, President Jiang Zemin appears to have succeeded in forcing the early retirement of a longtime rival and political maverick whom some consider the most liberal of the nation's top leaders, Chinese sources and Western diplomats said today.

The ouster of Li Ruihuan, who ranks fifth in the Communist hierarchy and had been tapped to take control of the parliament, would mean six of the seven members of the party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee are retiring at the end of this week's party congress in favor of younger leaders. The only member to stay on would be Vice President Hu Jintao, 59, Jiang's heir apparent, in what may be the smoothest and, at least on paper, the most complete transfer of power in the party's tumultuous history.

Li's expected exit follows a subdued and prolonged political struggle with Jiang and makes it easier for Jiang to stack the new leadership with allies who can protect his interests and through whom he can continue to exert influence, according to a senior journalist at a party-run newspaper and other Chinese sources.

Official confirmation of Li's departure was expected Thursday, when the party's 16th National Congress is scheduled to announce the approximately 300 members of a new Central Committee -- and leave Li's name off the list. The new Politburo and its standing committee will be introduced to the world after the Central Committee concludes its first meeting, probably Thursday night or Friday morning.

The congress is also scheduled to approve a set of amendments to the party constitution that would enshrine Jiang's efforts to expand the party's base to include businessmen and other members of the elite. According to a pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong, one amendment says the party is the "vanguard of the working class and simultaneously the vanguard of the Chinese people."

At age 68, Li is two years shy of the informal retirement age of 70 that Jiang and other party elders set five years ago. He had been expected to take the helm of the National People's Congress and serve as the party's number two leader behind Hu. From those positions, some party officials hoped, he might lead experiments in political reform that Jiang apparently has found too risky.

It is unclear when and how Jiang maneuvered Li out of a job, but one of Li's close relatives discussed his retirement as early as last month, an associate said.

A senior West European diplomat said it appeared that Li had agreed to step down as part of a deal with Jiang, who is said to have made a surprise bid to remain in power over the summer. The diplomat said Jiang, 76, agreed to retire from all his positions -- party chief, state president and chairman of the Central Military Commission -- if Li stepped aside as well.

Several other top leaders are also scheduled to retire this week, including Li Peng, the second highest ranking party official and architect of the violent 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, and Zhu Rongji, the premier who has managed the nation's booming economy for the past five years.

A carpenter and a former mayor of the coastal city of Tianjin, Li Ruihuan is the only official at the pinnacle of Chinese power from a working-class background. His fall removes one of China's most interesting leaders, who associates said possesses a strongly developed sense of humor. At a dinner with foreign dignitaries, Li listed Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, China's first two leaders, and then pretended to forget Jiang's name, an act that sparked howls of laughter, a participant said.

His tense relationship with Jiang is the stuff of legend in Beijing and appears to date to 1989, when Jiang was elevated to China's top leadership post ahead of Li following the Tiananmen Square crackdown. As head of a party-controlled advisory congress of non-Communist dignitaries, Li often issued veiled criticisms of Jiang's leadership.

He is believed to have limited the crackdown on intellectuals after the suppression of the Tiananmen Square movement, and his brain trust was rumored to be planning to push limited political reforms at the National People's Congress after Jiang retired. A new book by an anonymous author who appears to be a former aide to Zhu Rongji and who says he had access to internal party personnel files describes Li as the senior Chinese leader most willing to talk about political reform, including expanding elections and reducing censorship of the state media.

The English-language presentation of the material in the book, "China's New Rulers: The Secret Files," says Li is quoted in party documents urging a moderate response to student protests that swept China in 1986: "The year before last, the college students created a disturbance. Was that a big deal? I think not. It was nothing but a few college students. The soldiers, the workers, and especially the 800 million peasants did not join in. So what's the fuss?"

Li is also quoted promoting greater artistic freedom, urging the party to acknowledge and apologize for its errors, and criticizing party officials who "put themselves on display like flowerpots on a stand." The author of the book, who also may have been involved in compiling the set of purported internal party documents known as the Tiananmen Papers, predicted Li would stay in power.

In his only significant comments during the party congress, which began Friday, Li appeared to offer a subtle criticism of Jiang's campaign to turn the party toward the nation's elite and away from workers and peasants. "Leading cadres at all levels must bear the people's interests in mind, do everything for the people and never divorce themselves from the people," the official New China News Agency quoted Li as telling delegates from Tianjin. "We must not ignore, despise and evade these problems."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

White House Web site gives tour

[check out these video tours of the white house. very cool...]
President George W. Bush shows the oval office
First Lady Laura Bush shows the diplomatic reception room
Chief of Staff Andy Card shows the Cabinet Room

White House Web site gives tour of Oval Office
Thursday, November 14, 2002
http://www.iht.com/articles/76923.html

WASHINGTON The White House opened its doors Wednesday for guided tours by President George W. Bush and the first lady - but only in cyberspace.

Its Web site includes video tours of the West Wing by Vice President Dick Cheney. Started to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the West Wing, http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/life/ substitutes for the public White House tours that were curtailed last year after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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Bush's seven-minute Oval Office tour, recorded in June, shows the president pointing out features such as the rug that "helps make this room an open and optimistic place."

"To celebrate the West Wing's 100th anniversary, the White House presents Life in the White House, an exclusive presentation of the rich history of the White House and West Wing."

Schoolgirl sex slave an 8-month captive

Schoolgirl sex slave an 8-month captive to 'evil'
By Ryann Connell, Staff writer
November 14, 2002
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0211/021114slave.html

Sweet sixteen should be a time when people talk about you as though you've never been kissed. But the early November arrest of a middle-aged Osaka man and a teen-age has since revealed a lurid horror story of how they allegedly forced a 16-year-old girl into prostitution, holding her captive for eight months and coercing her into providing sexual services to about 800 men for no more than 500 yen a day.
"They're totally evil, they are," an Osaka police officer says to Asahi Geino (11/21), referring to the suspects -- 44-year-old antiques dealer Takayuki Miura and a 17-year-old boy who can't be named for legal reasons. "They did nothing while they forced the poor little 16-year-old girl to make all their money for them."

A reporter for a daily newspaper outlines the details of the case.

"About the middle of November last year, the girl, who was in her first year of high school in Tokushima Prefecture at the time, used an online matchmaking site to arrange to meet with a guy. She ran away from home to meet him. She apparently spent a few days in a hotel in Osaka waiting for the guy she had arranged to meet, but instead of him, it was Miura who turned up. Miura told her that the guy had built up debts of 3 million yen with him and that she would have to sell her body to pay off the debt," the hack tells Asahi Geino. "In the eight months from then up until July this year, the girl was kept captive in the teen-age boy's apartment. They would make her call telephone dating services in Osaka and arrange to meet clients at love hotels, where she would give them sex for money. That's bad enough, but Miura also used to force her to accompany him on business trips to places like Kobe and Nagoya so she could also service johns there."

It was virtually impossible for the young girl to escape her position as a sex slave.

"Miura had the 17-year-old boy guard her 24 hours a day and issued him with strict orders not to let her escape under any circumstances. Miura made the girl wake up at 8 o'clock every morning and work a full, nine-hour day where she was expected to service a minimum of six clients, or about 800 people for the duration of her confinement," the reporter tells Asahi Geino. "All the while, the teen was keeping incredibly detailed records of all the girl's clients, including their phone and license plate numbers and a description of their physical appearance."

While sufficient to make the hair stand on end, things got worse.

"Miura made clients pay 15,000 yen per session with the girl and, at first, they gave her 10,000 yen a day," the scribe says. "But from about February this year, they only let her have about 500 yen a day, which was just about enough for her to buy lunch. She was totally haggard by the time she was rescued."

It must be noted that authorities were delighted to catch the diligent teen accused of working with Miura.

"Based on the notes he took of the girl's customers, police were able to report 33 guys to the prosecutors, accusing them of breaking the law banning child prostitution and child pornography," a different reporter tells Asahi Geino. "Among those reported was a deputy section manager with the Osaka Prefectural Government. Officials were disgusted to learn that their boss had been using teen-age prostitutes. The government suspended him for one month, but he resigned. It's just a shame that he's still going to get his severance pay."

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WaiWai stories are transcriptions of articles that originally appeared in Japanese language publications. The Mainichi Daily News cannot be held responsible for the contents of the original articles, nor does it guarantee their accuracy. Views expressed in the WaiWai column are not necessarily those held by the Mainichi Daily News or Mainichi Newspapers Co.

Jiang Ensures Party Endures

Jiang Ensures Party Endures at the 16th Party Congress
By Susan V. Lawrence/BEIJING
Issue cover-dated November 21, 2002
http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0211_21/p034china.html

Before he leaves, Communist Party boss Jiang Zemin unveils a raft of reforms to please business and foreign investors. His legacy lies in his dismantling of ideological barriers to the party's survival

'Boston University political scientist Joseph Fewsmith, who closely follows China's ideological battles, said Jiang's speech last year now looked like an inspired move. "You put all that stuff out front, and then you work you way up to the 16th party congress and it doesn't seem so startling," he says.

In fact, Jiang's speech was the finale of a long intellectual journey for the 76-year-old who became party chief in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Back then, Jiang appeared to subscribe to the view, inherited from Marx, that anyone who harnesses the labour of others for private profit is by definition "exploiting" them, and that wealth derived from anything other than one's own physical labour is illegitimate. . . .

Then, in 1992, leader Deng Xiaoping urged the nation to stop asking whether policies were "surnamed socialism or surnamed capitalism." He set off a surge of economic activity that stunned everyone--Jiang included.'

JIANG'S BIG PROMISES
-- The party will allow private businesses to compete on a more level playing field with state-owned firms.
-- Private capital will be allowed in more areas.
-- Discriminatory rules on investment, financing, taxation, land use and foreign trade will be revised.
-- Fuller legal protection for private property.

FINALLY, PRIVATE-SECTOR tycoons got invited to a Communist Party ball, and they wanted everyone to know they had arrived. Men such as Jiang Xipei, who made a fortune producing power cables, and Qiu Jibao, whose Feiyue sewing machines racked up $100 million in exports last year, sneaked out of staid, stuffed-armchair meetings at the party's 16th congress to speak to scrums of reporters in hallways. They energetically handed out name cards and company publicity, and even held press conferences to propound, a little recklessly, their interpretations of party doctrine.

Of the 2,114 delegates to the congress, which meets every five years to endorse the party's policy blueprint and approve a new leadership, Jiang and Qiu were among a handful from the private sector. But as the first private businessmen to be delegates to a party congress, they were the most high-profile people there after the political leaders, headed by outgoing General Secretary Jiang Zemin.

The party's goal in inviting such irrepressible capitalists to its premier political event was to highlight a significant stage in China's transformation from impoverished icon of collectivized farming and inefficient state industry to the world's most dynamic economy.

In his report to the congress, which will guide his successors for the next five years, Jiang said the party intends to allow businesses to compete on a more level playing field with state-owned firms. Private capital will be allowed into more sectors. Discriminatory regulations on investment, financing, taxation, land use and foreign trade will be overhauled. Private property will have fuller legal protection.

The embrace of capitalism isn't total. State-ownership, Jiang said, should still play the "dominant role" in the economy. Expanding the state sector and having it control "the lifeline of the national economy," he said, "is of crucial importance in displaying the superiority of the socialist system." In a November 10 press conference, Li Rongrong, director of the State Economic and Trade Commission, said the party would, in fact, put private businesses on a completely equal footing only with foreign business, not with state-owned firms.

But by dismantling many of the remaining ideological barriers hindering growth of the private economy, Jiang's report opened the way for legal and regulatory moves that promise to change the business landscape of China.

For foreign business, it is undoubtedly good news. With the private economy powering China's growth and responsible for the bulk of new job creation, foreign investors are looking to the private sector's continued rapid expansion to keep China an attractive place to invest.

Foreign institutional investors eagerly await the listing of a large group of private companies domestically and eventually on foreign exchanges, through which they can invest in China's growth. So far, official bias against the private sector meant almost all companies that qualified for listings were state-owned. But Jiang's report looks set to change that.

He first raised many of the same ideas he outlined at the congress in a speech in July last year for the party's 80th birthday. But he did not first run the proposals past the Central Committee for approval, and they provoked heated controversy within the party. The significance of Jiang's report to congress is that it makes them official party policy, which his successors must commit to carrying out.

Boston University political scientist Joseph Fewsmith, who closely follows China's ideological battles, said Jiang's speech last year now looked like an inspired move. "You put all that stuff out front, and then you work you way up to the 16th party congress and it doesn't seem so startling," he says.

In fact, Jiang's speech was the finale of a long intellectual journey for the 76-year-old who became party chief in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Back then, Jiang appeared to subscribe to the view, inherited from Marx, that anyone who harnesses the labour of others for private profit is by definition "exploiting" them, and that wealth derived from anything other than one's own physical labour is illegitimate. He insisted to a party meeting in 1989 that private business owners were "exploiters" who could never be allowed to join the party because if they did, "what kind of party would we be building?"

Then, in 1992, leader Deng Xiaoping urged the nation to stop asking whether policies were "surnamed socialism or surnamed capitalism." He set off a surge of economic activity that stunned everyone--Jiang included.

So by the 15th party congress in 1997, Jiang recognized just how much economic dynamism could be unleashed through a well-thought-through ideological fudge. His contribution to China's economic transformation in his congress report that year was the notion that state ownership could be exercised through majority or even minority stakes in companies, rather than 100% ownership.

A corollary was that selling off the state's stake in struggling companies was an effective way to preserve state assets, which would otherwise haemorrhage away. In addition, bringing outside shareholders into other state firms was seen as a useful method of expanding state assets, because the outsiders would invigorate the company's management and the state's share would grow in value.

The result of that set of ideas was on display when delegates from China's largest state enterprises met during the congress. After an obligatory few minutes praising Jiang, Li Yizhong, president of oil giant Sinopec, reported on the company's progress since the 15th congress. Stock listings in Hong Kong, New York, London, and Shanghai, he told them, raised 40 billion renminbi ($4.83 billion) and "more importantly" diversified ownership, so the group itself now controls only 55% of its shares.

Sinopec has lined up some of the world's most powerful companies as strategic investors, laid off 21% of its workforce, or 260,000 employees, joined the Fortune 500 in 1999 and last year was ranked No. 86, Li reported. His presentation wouldn't have sounded out of place at a corporate board meeting.

Jiang's big fudge this year is that those employed in the private sector, including bosses, contribute to China's prosperity, and so should be treated for ideological purposes as fellow "builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics." He is "saying that the interests of the whole society are uniform," Fewsmith says. "The elimination of class struggle, as an element of what socialism is about, is really fundamental."

For those who complain tycoons shouldn't be in the party because they aren't members of the working class, Jiang has adjusted the party's stated identity. It is now the vanguard not just of the working class, but "also of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation."

On the ground, Jiang's report, combined with revisions to the party charter, should produce stronger protection for private property. And that should encourage bankers to lend to private businesses, says Andy Rothman, China head for CLSA Emerging Markets. That matters because the lack of access to formal lines of credit is the biggest constraint on private-sector growth in China. Private-property protection will also make it easier for private firms to list on stockmarkets and eventually issue bonds, he adds.

Jiang's words should also deter corrupt local officials from preying on private firms with the idea that they had no official protection, Rothman says. Also look for a greater willingness by local governments to sanction the sale of stakes in state enterprises to private companies. The private sector has complained bitterly in recent months that the state has allowed foreigners to buy stakes in once-sensitive parts of the state sector, such as banks, while barring domestic private capital from doing the same.

Writing in a leading financial newspaper on November 11, an official with the State Council's Development Research Office argued for speeding up the privatization of state enterprises by selling assets to both private domestic and foreign investors. Highlighting the uneven state of privatization, he noted that 80%-90% of state enterprises in Chongqing city in western China had either sold stakes to nonstate actors or privatized entirely since the 1997 congress. In the central province of Anhui, however, only 15% of 472 state enterprises had undergone similar reforms, with only 5.5% ending majority state ownership.

The flamboyant private-sector delegates were a very visible reminder at the congress of the degree to which the party has changed its stripes. Qiu Jibao, the sole private-sector delegate from private-economy-dominated Zhejiang province, began his press conference by distributing copies of his in-house newspaper. It boasted of his delegate status, quoted him as saying the responsibility was "heavier than Mount Tai," and touted the company's new meat slicer as an unlikely "gift to the 16th party congress."

Qiu said: "The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people are not just giving this honour to me, Qiu Jibao. It is showing its trust in entrepreneurs all over the country."

Then he took a punt at explaining the party's revised membership policy. He joined in 1988, when his firm was registered as a local government affiliate so as to receive policy breaks denied to private companies.

"The party isn't just the vanguard of the working class. It is also the vanguard of the Chinese people and it is the vanguard of the Chinese nation," Qiu began. He then plunged on with an answer bound to anger the party's Organization Department. "As I understand it, so long as you are on Chinese soil, or in fact on soil anywhere in the world, and are of Chinese descent, so long as you accept the party's programme and will make contributions to the Chinese nation, the party will welcome you."

A Real Economic Plan for HK?

HK – Give Us a Real Economic Plan
By Philip Segal/HONG KONG
Issue cover-dated November 21, 2002
http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0211_21/p053money.html

Analysts predict a looming financial crisis for Hong Kong, but so far the government hasn't come up with a viable plan to prevent disaster

HONG KONG'S PARTY IS OVER, but the territory's government, adrift in a sea of policy options, wants to order more champagne.

Like a proud noble family living on past riches in a slowly-crumbling mansion, the government is running a chronic and fast-growing deficit worth a worrying 5% of GDP and is looking at what could be the first of several credit downgrades. The nobles in government hope that if they just stay the course, the good old days will soon be back.

The best alternative the territory's great and good have for plugging the gaping financial hole? Propping up prices of what's already some of the world's most expensive land (that's the champagne); selling off the family silver, in the form of subways, the airport and hospitals; and punishing the servants--the civil servants who are well paid but worth it, who keep Hong Kong running like a top, and have made it among the least-corrupt business centres in the world, according to Transparency International.

There's a better way, but it means recognizing that Hong Kong could become not so different from the world's other rich economies. Land prices in the territory are lower than they were but are still sky-high, and taxes are too low to pay for the social services the territory's people want and deserve. Gone for ever are the days when flipping insanely priced apartments made Hong Kong's citizens and its government rich. Hong Kong is built on just a tiny fraction of its usable land, and could use more of it to make the territory a more pleasant place to live. Since the government owns nearly all the land, that needn't be hard to pull off.

LOOMING FISCAL CRISIS
Hong Kong needs to stimulate its distorted economy by making its land policy more like land policies elsewhere. If Hong Kong won't devalue its currency and is out of money with which to spend, it can still cut the price of land. Hong Kong's per-capita GDP is $24,700, but its people live in badly made apartments that cost a lifetime to finance--space that could only be thought of as generous in comparison to the public housing doled out to economic refugees, precisely where most of Hong Kong's private homeowners have come from.

The clock for Hong Kong is ticking. Standard & Poor's recently revised its outlook on Hong Kong's long-term local currency credit rating to negative from stable. "In three months or so if things don't improve there could be a downgrade," says Joan Zheng, deputy head of Asia-Pacific economic and policy research at JPMorgan in Hong Kong. More alarmingly, UBS Warburg talks about a "looming fiscal crisis."

"What we need is a strategy," says Zheng. "At the moment, what we don't have [from the government] is the vision." Instead, as the world recovers from the bursting of the greatest financial bubble Wall Street has ever produced, Hong Kong officials look back fondly on their property bubble in 1997, in which an apartment-trading frenzy sent stamp duties and other property-related revenue pouring into the public treasury, and allowed a series of personal tax cuts. Financial Secretary Antony Leung said in September that it was "rather difficult for the government to push up the market but there are some measures we can take and the chief executive is thinking about this."

It won't work. The changing economic structure of Hong Kong means "it can no longer support the operation of the Hong Kong government under the current tax system," says Vincent Chan, head of China economics and strategy at UBS Warburg in Hong Kong. That system gives it some of the lowest personal taxes anywhere, but doubles the reliance on nontax revenues, mainly what it charges developers to lease land, a cost passed on to people who buy apartments from the developers, and to merchants who lease retail space and then charge high prices to shoppers. It makes for tiny, expensive apartments, high retail prices and a handful of extremely wealthy property developers.

Freeing the property market would transform Hong Kong. It would be a shock, but none of the other budgeting solutions will get the job done:

Spending cuts: Proponents never find it that easy to come up with hard numbers in money they could save by chopping spending. Civil servants are very well paid, sure, but given the quality of the poorly paid civil service just a few miles away in China, it helps to remember that you get what you pay for. The well-paid regulator is less inclined to take a bribe than one who isn't. Without clean government, Hong Kong would lose its greatest advantage over most of Asia.

Government spending as a percentage of GDP is just 18%, says Chan at UBS. That's low: less than Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Mexico, China, Malaysia or Taiwan. Besides, with a fixed currency and no monetary stimulus possible, fiscal policy is all the government's got. Is slashing spending in a recession really the best way out of this mess?

A sales tax: Among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Hong Kong is the only economy without one. A fine idea, say economists, but it would take three years to implement, and anyway recessions aren't the very best time to soak people for more money, unless you give them something back--as in slashing the cost of housing.

Widen the income tax net: The reliance on property meant that the government gave earners too easy a ride when times were good. Since 1997, the number of employees in Hong Kong has risen 1.3%, but the taxpaying population has fallen by almost 10%. Only 0.3% of individuals pay the maximum 15% rate of tax. Five years ago, 2% of the working population paid the top rate and contributed 44% of total tax receipts. That proportion is now down to 20%.

Raising taxes may be difficult, but consider this: A single person with an annual income of HK$220,000 (at $28,205, that's more than the average income), would have paid HK$18,200 in tax five years ago, a rate of 8.3%. Today, that same earner would pay HK$8,540, or a rate of less than 4%. Zheng at JPMorgan estimates that for every percentage point increase in salaries tax, the government could raise HK$2.2 billion. With a return to the income tax of old and a sales tax, the budget hole gets smaller but isn't completely plugged. From a competitive point of view, Hong Kong has the room. Singapore is lowering its top income tax rate to 20%, but has raised its sales tax rate to 5%.

How about a supply-side solution? Lower housing prices might boost tax revenue, because there would be transactions again, as well as more construction and the need to furnish all those new apartments. The added benefit: Hong Kong could become a much nicer place to live and the 50% of residents of who still don't own their home might have a chance to do so.

The land to do it is there. Two-thirds of Hong Kong's territory is "woodland, shrubland or grassland," according to the government's Yearbook. Public and private residential land together make up just 3.8% of Hong Kong's area.

But if the government is scared of marching civil servants getting their wages cut, what about all those people who bought apartments that are now worth less than their mortgages--known as "negative equity"? Solution: The government's been up to its neck in the property market thus far and needs one more interventionist coup to get out. It should make a one-time payment to compensate current owners caught out by what would be a radical change in land policy.

There are HK$115 billion worth of residential mortgage loans in negative equity. Translation: Buying out all these entirely would cost just 13% of total foreign-currency reserves to pay off every negative equity mortgage.

Even if you double the cost of converting Hong Kong's property market from a controlled one to a free one, its foreign reserves would still place it as No. 7 in the world instead of No. 5, where it is now. Hong Kong would still have 30% more reserves than France, a country more than seven times more populous than Hong Kong.

So why not scrap the champagne and switch to beer? Hong Kong's people deserve a break, and beer serves a lot more people.

Japan Turning a Blind Eye

Turning a Blind Eye
By Ben Dolven/TOKYO
Issue cover-dated November 21, 2002
http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0211_21/p060current.html

The infamous Yasukuni Shrine evokes many things for Japanese. But foremost among them is neither militarism nor guilt. It's sentimentality--and denial

IT'S A CRISP late-autumn afternoon at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and the vendors are starting to put away their oil paintings of Japanese soldiers in heroic poses or airmen hurtling headlong towards martyrdom. That's when the old fighter pilot walks up. He's 88 years old, and he wears no patch to cover the empty socket where he lost his right eye in 1944.

The man politely greets a Western visitor, and then pulls out a photo album. His enthusiasm rising, he starts to show photos from a dinner in Tokyo several years ago when he and several other World War II fighter pilots met some American counterparts. "There are many things that happen in times of war," he says. "It is important that we are now friends with Americans." Earnest handshakes ensue.

This is a festival day at the shrine, where nearly 2.5 million Japanese who died in battle or "on duty" for the nation since 1868 are commemorated, including several convicted of war crimes in World War II. Leaders of nearly every Asian country view the shrine as a notorious, gut-wrenching symbol of Japan's wartime atrocities, yet families still troop their children through its inner sanctum.

Wandering along the shrine's sombre, tree-lined paths, it's hard not to be the struck by the myriad reactions that Japanese visitors have to the place. Everyone from nostalgic veterans to appalled pacifists strolls the grounds. A middle-aged Japanese woman, here for the first time in her life, approaches an American visitor and says: "Most Japanese believe this is a terrible place." She's angry about the people who toss donations into the wooden container in front of the shrine--on this sunny autumn afternoon, an almost constant stream of coins is clicking into the box. She says Hideki Tojo--Japan's prime minister and military commander during World War II--who is among those enshrined here, is "like Hitler."

The biggest impression is how out of step it all seems with modern Japan, which has adopted a pacifism that's almost as knee-jerk and absolute as the militarism of the pre-war years. Most of the visitors to Yasukuni are elderly. One of the men selling paintings notes that few Japanese below the age of 70 had friends who died in war, so "they only come for their families." Indeed, a young woman in a fashionable cashmere sweater, fishnet stockings and leather boots says she's here because her parents bring her twice a year to pay respects to her grandfather, who died in the war. She's brought a friend and as soon as they can get away they're going out for coffee.

Among those who do come willingly and enthusiastically, there is a sense of trying to have history two ways: Japan has a right to memorialize its war dead, but can't we all just be friends now? One young Tokyo engineer, here out of curiosity, reflects on the row that always erupt when Japanese prime ministers visit the shrine. "I don't know why the Chinese always complain," he remarks.

The shrine's management group, the Association of Shinto Shrines, continues to fight a rearguard action, trying to put forth a version of history that glorifies Japan's wartime aggression. The association has built an elaborate, expensive museum of military history right next to the shrine. Beautifully curated, the displays begin in an elegant vestibule containing a lone sword that's surrounded by strikingly lit scrolls with quotes from famed military leaders. One, from the 14th-century samurai noble Prince Munenaga, reads, "For the sovereign and the world, would I spare my life when sacrificing it is so worthwhile?"

Visitors pass through halls describing the military build-up that began with the Meiji Restoration in the mid-1800s, when Japanese leaders used the threat of foreign domination to begin modernizing Japan and remaking it into a military power. Several rooms later, a display states that the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in 1937--during which, according to historians, more than 100,000 Chinese died at the hands of Japanese soldiers--"allowed the people to live in peace." A huge graph explains why Japan needed to invade Southeast Asia after the United States imposed sanctions, detailing the scant number of months it could survive on its existing supplies of oil, nickel, tungsten and other resources.

At the end, visitors walk through a hall filled with photos, sketches and letters from some of the more-than-2,400 soldiers who are enshrined here, and then pass into a hall with photos of Japanese prime ministers visiting. Some have heads bowed respectfully, but the picture of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi shows him dressed in a formal tailcoat and striding proudly away, head raised. Last comes a gift shop with kamikaze headbands, dozens of model aircraft and battleships, and decorative plates with World War II bombers on them.

Outside, the festival proceeds. This year, some 89 members of parliament visited the shrine during the four-day celebration. Children frolic with white pigeons that regularly visit the grounds. A troop of men in antiquated blue uniforms, carrying bayonets and blowing trumpets, marches to the front of the main shrine carrying Japan's wartime flag. Their movements are a bit sloppy, and the sword-bearing captain has to talk to one of the trumpeters between songs to ensure things go smoothly. The men, mostly in their 70s, salute and march off for group photos.

Nearby, three men are selling patriotic calendars with images of Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms and black-and-white photographs of soldiers. One, 83 years old, says he worked in China for an electric-power company in the years ahead of World War II. Then he was drafted into military service. Where did he serve? Near Shanghai, he says, in Nanjing.

The REVIEW asks delicately: In China, many say that bad things happened in Nanjing in those years. Is this true? The man doesn't acknowledge the question. "The Chinese were good at business," he says. "I think they still are . . . better then we Japanese." He speaks about how Chinese businessmen don't stick to contracts that aren't in their interest--even in the 1930s, they didn't. But he enjoyed life in China in those days.

The question is asked again: Isn't it true that Japanese soldiers killed many Chinese, even after Chinese troops left? The man doesn't flinch. "I have not been to China since shortly after the war," he says. One last try: Did he or didn't he see Japanese soldiers killing Chinese people? One of his colleagues selling calendars jumps in, cutting off the conversation with an offering of a small package covered with an inscription that begins, "Have you forgotten the heroic spirits who died for the country?"

It's a gift packet, filled with Band-Aids.

Beginnings

been working on my implementation of "movable type".
http://www.movabletype.org/

its at once exciting and frustrating and makes my head hurt. but when it's done, i'll have learned alot!

i'm using it to implement a new part of my site that will detail the various broadcasts i send out, so that i can phase out my PQ email list. actually, i'll still use the email list, but this will enable the content to reside on my site (instead of in each sent email as it is now). and will alleviate both email traffic and inbox size.

e.g. some people who don't check their email every day might check their mail and find 20 messages from me at 10k each, which would be 200k (potentially 10% of their email limit on a free hotmail account).

I know why the caged bird sings

Sympathy
from Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899)
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!

Sexual Tension, Platonic Relationships

amabelle writes (and van commented later) --

"jl's an interesting guy. he's very unique. for example... he believes that women and men can't be "just friends". he doesn't believe in platonic opposite-sex relationships. thusly, he doesn't have any women friends so that he doesn't have to deal with it. while we were talking about it yesterday, i wondered if i'd be able to do that... to not have any male friends."

haven't had time to completely go through van's link. however, i actually agree with the sense of what it seems to say -- that there *usually* (if not always) exists sexual tension between men & women (or people in general), conscious or latent. that is not to say that this tension, when it does exist, always trumps all other non-sexual intents. or that sexual tension cannot be tempered or controlled.

for myself, almost all of my best friends are women (including ex's). i seem to get along with them a whole lot better and generally find more to talk about, as most of my general guy friends often do not care about culture, the arts, or aesthetic things. that is not to say that there is no sexual tension, because i am sure there is. but that does not mean that everything i do *must* be tainted by a desire to get them into bed.

often, despite its existence, sexual tension can be covered or trivialized by other issues/intents that transcend it in importance/motivation. [for example, a person who is much more interested in someone else, or someone who is so consumed with creative or abstract productivity (e.g. their work) that they do not have the time or energy for the latent tension to surface.]

however, i think it is dishonest to deny that sexual tension does not exist in a far reaching sense, or to deny that motivations even seemingly platonic, might still have a hidden layer of latent sexuality.

to live honestly (and avoid costly therapy later!), i think it is better to acknowledge/recognize the potentiality of hidden layers, while acting rationally and responsibly, than to deny their existence. curiously, many people often do try to deny its existence, as if that would devalue their "fully-platonic" relationships or themselves. [note that the opposite reaction would be to insist that one can never be rational or mature enough to transcend sexual tension, as your friend asserts.]

the thing to do in my opinion is to accept that there is sexual tension when it exists. but to then act responsibly and make sure everyone is playing of their own free will with an open hand and full disclosure. [which is really just a corollary to our earlier discussion on friends and ex's]

[as an aside, i saw this quotation the other day that is somewhat relevant to this last point -- "What you pursue, you don't get. But what you allow to grow slowly in its own way, comes to you. Rabbi Pinhas (Ben Yair?)"]

A Bulletproof Mind

A Bulletproof Mind
By PETER MAASS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/10SPECIAL.html

Maj. Christopher Miller lay awake on a cot in a filthy room, no larger than a prison cell and cluttered with weapons and ammunition. He couldn't sleep. It was a cold January night at the Special Forces base in Kandahar, and Miller was on the verge of commanding an assault against six Qaeda fighters barricaded inside a nearby Afghan hospital. So many things could go wrong, Miller realized, and it could be disastrous if any of them did. For the first time in his life, Miller would be engaging in C.Q.B. -- a military abbreviation for ''close-quarters battle.'' After years of training, he would finally become, as he told me recently, a ''manager of violence.'' An eight-year veteran of the Special Forces, he had never killed before, had never given an order to kill, had not even seen a dead soldier. All that would change at dawn, because men would surely die in an attack he would initiate with a one-word command: execute.

''That was the first time when I really thought of the human dimension of it,'' Miller recalled. ''At first, it's an intellectual challenge. Then you go, 'We're really going to do this.' All of a sudden it dawned on me, Those bastards are in there right now and they don't have a clue what's fixing to come their way. It was the oddest damn thing.''

I first met Miller last December in Kandahar. We had several conversations, but he was under strict orders not to discuss his job. Yet his job -- that of a new kind of soldier -- interested me. The Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan looked different, with their thick beards, fleece jackets, wraparound sunglasses and high-tech weaponry. Did they think and feel differently than the traditional foot soldier? Earlier this fall, I caught up with Miller at Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Special Forces Fifth Group is based. Safely back from battle, Miller was allowed to discuss his brand of warfare -- and how he was built to carry it out.

Miller's dawn assault on the Qaeda fighters in Kandahar, I learned, was but one step away from hand-to-hand combat. It involved grenade exchanges from a distance of just a few feet, and it finished with Miller and his men standing amid their dead and bloodied foes. ''They fought to the last minute,'' he recalled. ''For these guys, surrender was not an option.'' He later added, ''It was amazing to see the carnage.''

The attack was the kind of urban warfare American soldiers will be engaged in should the United States have to shoot its way into Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. When the Cold War ended, many thought that C.Q.B. would become a thing of the past. Conflicts would be fewer, and any interventions undertaken would rely on overwhelming force and precision munitions, not house-to-house fighting. Yet since 9/11 we have begun a war that may draw our soldiers into many battles involving intimate killing. What will that mean for Miller and his men?

The last time this kind of fighting occurred on a grand scale, in Vietnam, 50,000 Americans died, and many survivors had injuries that were not just physical but emotional. The clunky phrase ''post-traumatic stress disorder'' entered the national lexicon. Today, the military believes, the United States is fighting an intimate war in the right way, because soldiers have been prepared and equipped in a manner that increases the prospect of their victory and decreases the prospect of their injury -- whether physical or psychological. Just as smart bombs are less likely to go astray, 21st-century warriors are more lethal than before, yet less likely to suffer P.T.S.D., according to military instructors and psychologists. Dave Grossman, a former Army Ranger and West Point professor of psychology, refers to this phenomenon as ''the bulletproof mind.''

Such confident assertions may seem surprising, considering what happened this summer at Fort Bragg, N.C. Four soldiers there murdered their wives; three of the soldiers had Special Forces training and had served in Afghanistan. The news media rushed to link the murders to post-combat stress, although there is little proof and investigations continue. Military officers, not surprisingly, doubt the idea that P.T.S.D. played a significant role, and they may have a point. Fatal spouse abuse, sadly, plagues the military even in peacetime. As they see it, the furor over this incident has obscured a broader truth. Today's Special Forces soldiers, they claim, have been unusually well trained to succeed not only at war -- but also after war.

Chris Miller, the son of an Iowa cop, joined the Army Reserve after high school in 1983. He attended George Washington University on an R.O.T.C. scholarship and became, after graduation, an infantry officer. But it wasn't long before Miller became bored with his life in the Army.

''All you have to be is physically strong,'' Miller, who is the size of a linebacker, told me, sitting in his ramshackle Fort Campbell office. ''Infantry's brain-dead. It has nothing to do with mental agility. I wanted to try the Special Forces because I was driven by the challenge, man.''

The Special Forces are a highly trained elite within the Army, specializing in unconventional warfare, which is anything from operating behind enemy lines to fighting with guerrillas in the jungle. There are about 10,000 soldiers in the Special Forces, who are also known as Green Berets. They are the core of the military's Special Operations community, which includes what are believed to be hundreds in Delta Force, a secretive unit that performs classified counterterrorism missions, as well as Navy Seals and Special Operations units in the Air Force.

Special Forces soldiers are trained principally in North Carolina, at the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. Known informally as the Schoolhouse, it's the nerve center for an arduous two- to three-year training course. Skills taught to Special Forces soldiers include how to survive in jungles and deserts, how to leap from a plane in the jet stream and wait until the last second to open your parachute, how to stage ambushes behind enemy lines, how to escape a P.O.W. camp, how to speak foreign languages and how to kill with rifles, grenade launchers, shoulder-fired rockets and your bare hands.

When I stopped by the Schoolhouse in September, about 200 soldiers were starting their third day of training. In a dirt pit, they were hoisting logs over their heads, then shifting the logs from one shoulder to the other, then crawling through the dirt, then carrying one another on their shoulders, then doing push-ups and cartwheels, then hoisting the logs again -- over and over, until some began weeping.

It was boot-camp misery multiplied by 10. Yet there was a twist, because physical misery was not the end point, as it might be in the infantry, but the starting point. I realized this as I talked beside the pit with Captain Smith, who assesses aspiring Special Forces soldiers (and insisted that I not use his first name). Smith wants to find out who can endure pain and sleep deprivation and situational uncertainty -- and still make the right choices. ''We never inform them what they're going to do, how long it's going to go on,'' he said. ''We set the conditions for ambiguity from the start. A lot of these guys are not comfortable not knowing what they're going to do next. But a lot of times on our operations, there's no way that you can know exactly what you'll be doing. Strength must be combined with intelligence.''

Miller recalls his experience at the Schoolhouse vividly. ''It was the most outrageous thing,'' he said, laughing loudly. ''You're smoked, you're physically and mentally drained, and then, boom, there's a decision you have to make. Do I go left or right? And there's only one right answer.''

Because Special Forces work requires nerves of steel, training never really ends. After graduating from the Schoolhouse, active soldiers on operational teams train regularly in urban environments. Every 18 months they must complete a course established at Fort Bragg called Advanced Urban Combat -- that is, the storming of buildings. Of course, all Army units train for battle, but the Special Forces say they do it with far greater frequency and under conditions that are a good deal more realistic. They use live ammunition much more often. And instead of being shown once or twice how to, say, clear a room without firing guns, the Special Forces do it again and again and again, firing real bullets, until every move they might need to make in a Baghdad-type scenario becomes a reflex.

''It's so instantaneous,'' explained Master Sgt. Danny Leonard, who joined the Special Forces in 1989 and engaged in urban warfare in the Gulf War and in Afghanistan. ''You don't even realize you did it.''

American soldiers have not always pulled the trigger with such reliability. During World War II, according to the military historian S.L.A. Marshall, as many as 80 percent of the American infantrymen he interviewed failed to fire their weapons in combat. Marshall attributed the low ''fire ratio'' to a mixture of poor training and a natural reluctance to kill. Even though his methodology has come under attack -- critics say his numbers are exaggerated -- his premise is generally accepted, and his book, ''Men Against Fire,'' is read throughout the military establishment. After it was published in 1947, the military revamped its training to make G.I.'s more comfortable firing at humans; soldiers shot at targets shaped like people rather than at bull's-eyes, for example. Today, Special Forces units make their training as realistic as possible, using pop-up targets with human faces, and setting off smoke bombs and small explosions to simulate the battlefield experience.

Dave Grossman, who spoke to me about ''the bulletproof mind,'' has written about the hidden logic behind military training. In his controversial book ''On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society,'' he writes: ''It is entirely possible that no one intentionally sat down to use operant conditioning or behavior modification techniques to train soldiers in this area. But from the standpoint of a psychologist who is also a historian and a career soldier, it has become increasingly obvious to me that this is exactly what has been achieved.'' Grossman interprets the process of a target popping up, a soldier's shooting the target and the soldier being praised or criticized for accuracy, as a classic conditioning model. ''What makes this training process work is the same thing that made Pavlov's dogs salivate and B. F. Skinner's rats push their bars,'' he writes. ''What makes it work is the single most powerful and reliable behavior modification process yet discovered by the field of psychology, and now applied to the field of warfare: operant conditioning.''

Indeed, Special Forces officers openly discuss the use of ''stress inoculation'' -- in which they are exposed to heartbeat-racing drills that raise their threshold for staying calm. It doesn't mean Special Forces soldiers are immune to stress or the mistakes that stress causes, but it takes a lot more to rattle one of them than an old-time draftee.

An important dose of stress inoculation occurs during a three-week training nightmare that comes at the end of the Schoolhouse course. It goes by the acronym SERE, which stands for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. SERE teaches Special Forces soldiers how to avoid and endure capture by the enemy. The exercise places them in a ''resistance-training laboratory'' that is, essentially, a prisoner-of-war camp, with guard towers, barbed-wire fences, blindfolds, putrid food, irregular sleep intervals, abusive guards and brutal interrogations. Details about SERE, such as the types of punishment inflicted on the ''prisoners,'' are classified; Special Forces officers told me that torture is not practiced, though they did not deny that physical pressure is applied. The unpleasantness apparently includes being buried in wood barrels. When I asked Miller about SERE, he shook his head and said, ''It is imprinted on my brain.''

Making a soldier stronger and better through stress inoculation and operant conditioning seems a bit Kubrickian -- and unsettling. I wasn't sure what to think when Col. Charles King, who commands the First Special Warfare Training Group at Fort Bragg, told me that he trains his soldiers in negotiation and combat -- and that they can turn from one to the other in a split second. ''These guys have got to be able not only to work with you but to shoot you, if necessary,'' he said. We laughed awkwardly, and he quickly added that Special Forces soldiers would never shoot a journalist. We laughed again, awkwardly, and I chose not to mention that a U.S. military commander had threatened to shoot a Washington Post journalist who was trying to visit a site in Afghanistan where an American airstrike appeared to have killed civilians.

Of course, the commander hadn't actually fired his weapon. Special Forces soldiers may develop cold-blooded reflexes, but they are also trained to know when not to kill. Targets that pop up during shooting drills include women and children who are not supposed to be shot. Being able to remain steady in combat doesn't just mean you will be a quick draw; it also means that you will do a better job of deciding when to hold your fire. As Grossman writes of the calibration of aggression: ''This is a delicate and dangerous process. Too much, and you end up with a My Lai. . . . Too little, and your soldiers will be defeated and killed by someone who is more aggressively disposed.'' Colonel King put it like this: ''Our guys have got to be confident in their ability to use lethal force. But they've got to be principled enough to know when not to use it. We're not training pirates.''

In Kandahar last January, the Special Forces tried to avoid a head-on clash with the Qaeda holdouts at Mirwais Hospital. A small group of Qaeda soldiers, wounded before the city fell to American-backed forces, were left behind when their fellow fighters headed for the hills. The men barricaded themselves inside a wing of the hospital and vowed a fight to the death if challenged. For more than a month, the Special Forces detachment, of which Miller was third in command, patiently waited for them to surrender.

Then one night in mid-January, one of the Qaeda fighters slipped out of the hospital, only to be surrounded by Afghan guards. He blew himself up with a grenade. Soon after, senior officers decided that any members of Al Qaeda who were in Kandahar should be in custody or dead. The Special Forces contingent was ordered to attack the six men who remained.

The Americans didn't consider an airstrike on the building or using rocket-propelled grenades; those would have been loud and messy solutions, which the Special Forces, who refer to themselves as ''the quiet professionals,'' disdain. Miller, who has a master's degree in national security studies from the Naval War College, relishes devising fresh solutions.

During a meeting at their base in Kandahar, the Special Forces brain trust, which was led by Lt. Col. Dave Fox and included Miller and several other officers, didn't consider a brute American assault on an Afghan hospital. Instead, the decision was made to train a squad of local Afghan soldiers to do the job, backed by the Special Forces. Miller would be the ''ground tactical commander'' -- that is, the manager of violence.

On the outskirts of Kandahar, at the former residence of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, an ''A team'' -- a 12-man group that is the core fighting unit of the Special Forces -- began training 25 Afghan soldiers in the finer points of storming a hostile building. A mock-up of the hospital wing was built, and the Afghans were taught to rush through the hole -- the fatal funnel'' -- that would be blasted through a wall. They were taught to stay away from doors and windows, to clear rooms one by one before moving down a corridor and so on. Language was a problem, but translators were used and the Americans picked up essential Pashto words, such as ''shoot,'' ''stop shooting'' and ''grenade.''

Just before dawn on Jan. 28, everything was set. Capt. Matthew Peaks, leader of the A team that trained the Afghans, was ready. Using his code name, Python 33, he got on the radio to Miller, code-named Rambo 70, who was at a command post 150 feet away. Miller gave the order to execute the assault. The explosives blasted a hole in the wall, and a wave of Afghan soldiers rushed inside, tossing grenades down a corridor leading to the Qaeda room. The Afghans were promptly halted by an explosion, most likely of their own doing; in their eagerness to attack, they had run over their own grenades. The injured men were dragged out.

''We've got a bit of a problem,'' Peaks radioed to Miller. ''We've got six guys down. The assault has stalled.''

One of Miller's favorite words is ''knucklehead,'' which he applies to most anyone he is talking about -- the Taliban, his commanders, himself. When the assault stalled, Miller said he felt like the knucklehead of the moment.

A military axiom says a plan of attack rarely survives its first contact with the enemy, and it is particularly true for unconventional warfare. This is what the Special Forces are taught to expect, as I learned from Colonel King. ''You can sit people down and teach them that in situation A you do B, but what do you do when you get into a situation you never anticipated?'' he said. That pretty much describes the predicament Miller was in. The first assault had failed. The Qaeda soldiers were riled up. Moreover, the grenade explosions had inadvertently started a fire inside the building. This was a problem because a building that was torched courtesy of the Special Forces would not look good on CNN.

Then something unexpected happened. Smoke prompted two Qaeda fighters to stand next to a window for fresh air. Miller had placed snipers at nearby vantage points, and one of them, just a few feet away from him, leaned over and said, ''Sir, I've got a guy who keeps poking his head up.''

Miller immediately told him to fire. He got on the radio and told the other sniper to shoot. One Qaeda soldier was dropped, then another. Miller gave the order for smoke grenades to be thrown inside the building, to encourage window visits by the others. But the remaining Qaeda men realized the cost of fresh air and stayed put.

They were given a final warning. ''We can end this right now!'' a Special Forces soldier shouted to them in Arabic. ''We promise you won't be mistreated.'' Arabic curses were shouted back.

Miller ordered another Afghan assault. A squad of Afghans rushed inside the building but rushed out after a small explosion was heard. Peaks, who enjoys an absurd moment as much as Miller, told me, with a good laugh, what happened: ''These Afghan guys come running back to us with big wide eyes going, 'They got grenades!' We said, 'Well, yes.' ''

That's when the decision was made for the Special Forces to go inside. This would be the real thing, C.Q.B., against an enemy eager to kill Americans. Three Special Forces fighters moved down the main corridor with three Afghans, closing in on the room where the Qaeda fighters were barricaded. The Special Forces tossed several grenades into the room, but the Qaeda men scooped them up and tossed them back. It was a lethal game of hot potato. The American team dove for cover. Staff Sgt. Joe Haralson was one of the grenade dodgers. I met him at Fort Campbell, and we talked under a gazebo as he calmly cleaned an M-4 assault rifle. He explained that before throwing the next grenade, he held onto it after releasing the pin, so that the enemy wouldn't have time to toss it back.

''We started cookin' them off,'' Haralson said. ''Pop the pin, wait a second or two, then throw them in.''

I asked, ''The delay is how long on the grenade?''

''About three or four seconds.''

''Not much margin for error.''

''Yeah,'' he replied.

Haralson's training -- or, as Grossman might describe it, his operant conditioning -- helps explain why he had the presence of mind to instantly fling himself to the ground when his grenades were thrown back at him. Ordinary soldiers might freeze for a split second, and this could cost them their lives. Then Haralson, amid the violence, was able to calmly figure out, as though fine-tuning a tennis stroke, that he needed to hold a live grenade in his hand for a couple of seconds before throwing it, and then do just that.

The battle was won and months later I asked Haralson how he felt about the mission. ''Nobody is acting out of anger,'' he said. ''He's the bad guy, we're the good guy. It's just the way it is.''

As Sergeant Leonard told me, ''We understand the importance of what we're doing, so if we've got to cap a guy, we'll do it.'' He continued: ''You're in a zone. You're trying to keep your people safe. So there's a sense of elation: 'I got him before he got me.' I never felt sad for any of those guys. It doesn't bother me a bit.''

It's possible that these men were more disturbed by the killing than they let on; then again, if they were haunted by what they did, they probably would not have talked so openly about the violence they engaged in. And in general, the soldiers did not hide the after-effects of spending time in combat zones. Leonard told me that upon returning from the Gulf War, he woke up one night and noticed a red beam; thinking it was a laser, he rolled out of bed and reached for a weapon. The beam was his stereo's power light.

The issue of post-combat stress was widely discussed after the three Special Operations soldiers returned from Afghanistan to Fort Bragg and killed their wives last summer. Those killings, and our military's latest involvement in C.Q.B., have resurrected an old debate: is it possible to be an efficient killer one day and a good citizen the next?

''The theory that interspecies homicide is unnatural -- go watch 'Animal Planet' for a while,'' said Maj. Gary Hazlett, a psychologist at Fort Bragg. ''It's common. We sent millions of people into combat situations in World War II and we didn't have busloads of Charlie Mansons coming back. We had people who had gone out and done this grisly job, done it extremely well and then came back and now we're calling them the greatest generation.'' That may be true, but Vietnam veterans are a different story. It was a nastier conflict than World War II or Afghanistan: G.I.'s were killed in grisly ways by men, women and even children who did not wear uniforms, and at the same time, many Vietnamese who didn't wear uniforms were killed. Psychologists believe that the likelihood of being haunted by killing is greatly increased when the carnage a soldier sees or engages in is hard to justify.

A recent article in Military Review, a magazine published every other month by the Army, warned that reflex-quick killing can be a psychological time bomb. ''Training soldiers to kill efficiently is good for them because it helps them survive on the battlefield,'' wrote Maj. Peter Kilner, who teaches philosophy at West Point. ''However, training soldiers to kill without explaining to them why it is morally permissible to kill in combat is harmful. . . . When soldiers kill reflexively -- when military training has effectively undermined their moral autonomy -- they morally deliberate their actions only after the fact. If they are unable to justify what they have done, they often suffer guilt and psychological trauma.''

Miller says his sleepless night before the assault in Kandahar was his way of confronting the ethics of his actions. He zeroed in on two things -- the targets were terrorists, and they had been given ample opportunity to surrender. Killing them, if it came to that, was justified. ''I needed to go through the moral calculus,'' he told me. ''Once I did, I was steeled for combat. But I felt I owed it to myself to consider the implications of what was about to happen.''

Miller let out a knucklehead laugh as he said this; for him, it was a foolishly obvious point. Indeed, when the Kandahar assault was completed and he left his command post to survey the carnage he had managed, he said he did not feel horror or regret -- just a grim awareness that there will be a lot more C.Q.B. for American soldiers in coming years. ''We're going to have to hunt 'em down,'' Miller said.

Miller remained in Afghanistan for almost four months and did everything he trained for: combat, patrols, surveillance, negotiations. For several crucial days, he was even in charge of security for the new leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. He completed his duties and returned home in March to his wife and three children.

That said, the experience has left its marks on Miller. North of Kandahar, before the Taliban fled, a Special Forces team was hit accidentally by a misguided smart bomb. Three men were killed, and two of them were good friends of his. ''If I could have those guys back, I would gladly give it all up,'' Miller said as we sat in a planning room at his battalion headquarters, which is a surprisingly unimpressive place, with leaking pipes and mold growing on the ceiling tiles. The United States military is a $355-billion-a-year outfit, but few of those dollars are lavished on the aged cinder block buildings housing the Fifth Group. Miller continued: ''There's probably a little guilt, like, Jesus, I wanted to see action so bad. . . . ''

Suddenly he stopped talking. He took several deep breaths, looking down at the floor. Then he hurriedly got up and headed for the bathroom. Through tears, he said, ''I promised I wasn't going to do this.''

Several minutes elapsed. I poured myself some coffee as I waited for him to return. I was not terribly surprised by his lapse into sadness. I spent three days with him at Fort Campbell, grabbing meals with him and his Special Forces colleagues, going on a five-mile run with him in the Kentucky backwoods. I heard him laugh at himself and his commanders and the absurdity of the world around him. But I also heard him turn cold serious when the phone rang in his office and he answered with his usual greeting, ''Hello, this is not a secure line.'' His temperament was adaptive, exquisitely calibrated to the moment. And here was a moment where Miller was allowing himself to be reflective.

In Special Forces training, flexibility is sought out and reinforced in recruits. Respond to the situation, they are taught; don't be rigid, stay aware of your environment. In the model Special Forces soldier -- and not all of them are, not by a long shot -- those maxims apply to emotions too. Block them out in combat, but don't ignore them afterward.

Miller emerged from the bathroom and said: ''I don't feel guilty for wanting to do something. We wanted to go, hell, yeah. Everybody wanted to. The big lesson I took was, Be careful what you ask for, because it's a horribly costly business. I don't have any doubt about the value of the sacrifice. I'm not sitting here gnashing my teeth like Vietnam or something, going, 'God, it's such a waste, the flower of our youth.' I mean, it was necessary. A friendly-fire accident -- that happens. It's the nature of war.'' Miller had a logical argument, but emotions don't always respond to logic.

Miller talked about other difficulties he had faced in Afghanistan. In January, Special Forces soldiers discovered a series of Taliban ammunition depots. The decision was made to blow up the dumps so that fugitive Taliban or Qaeda fighters could not sneak back and re-arm. Two ordnance experts and a medic were assigned to the job. They were all blown up doing it; either they mishandled the explosives or were killed by a booby trap.

''The most wonderful guys in the world,'' Miller told me. ''We could have waited and handed it off to an engineer unit and said, 'It's your problem.' We made the decision to do it ourselves right away. It was the wrong thing to do. We should have just left it. Two guys I knew really well. It shows the seriousness of the business, which I had never fully internalized. I would just laugh when my bosses would say, 'This is a serious business.' Well, guess what? Now I'm the moron going, 'This is serious business.' ''

The Special Forces are well trained, but that does not mean they will come back alive or sound, especially if they fight a war that should not be fought or embark on missions that are poorly planned. Their bodies are not bulletproof, nor are their minds. The discipline that is driven into them in training and at their bases can wear down if a war is long enough or murky enough or if they see too many of their comrades killed or injured. The ousting of the Taliban (though not what followed it) had the merit of being well executed and mercifully brief, yet still there was a price to pay.

I stayed in touch with Miller after my visit to Fort Campbell. We had developed a running joke, because he couldn't talk to me about his next mission, which I knew was Iraq, and which he knew I knew was Iraq. The soldiers of the Fifth Group specialize in the Middle East, and they wear desert fatigues even at Fort Campbell, with their names printed above their breast pockets in Arabic. I would ask, when I called Miller, how things were going, and as September became October and Congress passed a resolution authorizing war, his responses went from ''not doing much'' to ''it's getting busier'' to ''real busy.''

''If there's going to be a fight, we want to be in it,'' he said last month. ''But it's more deliberate this time. Last time, it really was naivete.'' He mentioned that the widows and children of his fallen friends still live in his close community; he is reminded of their sacrifice every day. ''The cost is huge and it requires serious deliberation. I'm privileged and truly want to be a part of it, but it's not cheap. It's not a big laugh.''

Peter Maass is the author of ''Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War,'' his memoir of the conflict in Bosnia. He is a contributing writer for the magazine.

Falling From Grace to the A-List

Falling From Grace, Often to the A-List
By LESLIE WAYNE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/business/yourmoney/10FALL.html

For anyone in the private sector, the rise and very public fall of Harvey L. Pitt as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission would appear to be a career-stopping performance. Mr. Pitt had earned a stellar reputation in Washington as a securities lawyer with ample blue-chip corporate ties. Then, after a stormy 15 months laden with missteps, he made an election-night resignation that appeared as if he wanted to sneak out of town while no one was looking.

Who would hire someone who failed so publicly, who was excoriated by the same business publications that once sang his praises?

But if history is any indication, the outlook for Mr. Pitt may not be so bleak. Many in business — as well as old Washington hands — who have had their names tarnished and reputations sullied have discovered that there is life in the private sector after public disgrace, and a potentially profitable one at that.

Members of Congress who have resigned or who have been forced out are making money as lobbyists for Fortune 500 companies. Wall Street executives who went to the White House and were caught up in the Clinton scandal machine have bounced back, more successful and richer than ever. Cabinet secretaries and other politicians whose lurid sexcapades were grist for the tabloids are active in major corporations. Even nannygate dust-ups that scuttled cabinet appointments in both the Clinton administration and the first Bush administration are now distant memories for the businesswomen involved.

Just last Thursday night, at a glittery black-tie dinner in New York sponsored by the Aspen Institute, a study group, talk turned to Mr. Pitt. During predinner cocktails, one prominent New York lawyer said Mr. Pitt had a promising future, made even stronger by his S.E.C. tenure and the insights he picked up there.

"Harvey Pitt is going to be the hottest ticket coming out of Washington," said the lawyer, Robert A. Profusek, a partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, sipping from his drink. "I know his phone is ringing off the hook with law firms trying to hire him. He's an excellent lawyer, and a lot of people think he is a victim. People don't look at him here the way they do in Washington. I also think, from his point of view, he's going to want to prove that he is not damaged goods."

Others may disagree. In fact, there is no clear picture of life after a public tumble; the future is often determined by what caused the fall, like simple poor performance and a political tin ear, as in the case of Mr. Pitt, or more serious mistakes, as in the cases of disgraced politicians and executives who faced criminal charges. A person's network of contacts is also a factor, not to mention sheer likability.

Even professional headhunters have a hard time divining that line.

"Life diminishes when you go to Washington and you stumble," said E. Pendleton James, a senior adviser at Whitehead Mann, an executive recruitment firm, and a former head of personnel in the Reagan White House. "There is a diminution in the value of your acumen to corporate America. But, having said that, it depends on how one falls or fails."

In dozens and dozens of cases, Americans have been a forgiving lot. The half-life of a scandal can be short, redemption can be swift and the main lingering effect of a public downfall is often the celebrity it brings.

"Washington has a long and honored history of forgiving and forgetting when it comes to getting knocked around in public positions," said Kenneth A. Gross, a partner in the Washington office of Skadden Arps Meagher Slate & Flom, who has represented many prominent politicians. "Short of being actually convicted, after a period of time in which there is some delicacy on the issue, all that people remember is that you are famous. Then they want you at all the A-list cocktail parties."

That may shock some people, who believe that malfeasance or mistakes in public service should not be overlooked so easily, let alone rewarded. They bemoan the cavalier way in which people are often welcomed back with open arms and minimal consequences.

Of course, Mr. Pitt, or anyone else in his position, is unlikely to receive an invitation to rejoin an administration. Washington is too much the fishbowl for that.

"The vetting process for top government jobs is getting extremely complicated," said James J. Albertine, president of the American League of Lobbyists. "You are talking about basically standing naked in front of the world and having every blemish you ever dealt with shown to the world. And that increases the higher the job is. It's becoming a real issue because no one is perfect and even if they are a perfect person, they often get killed by the scrutiny anyway."

But the private sector often shrugs off Washington's scandals and bungling.

The Clinton scandals caught two prominent Wall Streeters, who incurred only minor bruises. One was Roger C. Altman, who was forced to resign as deputy Treasury secretary in 1994 amid a cloud of criticism over his inaccurate testimony in Congressional hearings about the Whitewater scandal. After leaving Washington, Mr. Altman founded Evercore Partners, a boutique investment bank that had no trouble lining up clients like CBS, Dow Jones, NBC and AOL Time Warner. And though Mr. Altman cited the news media as a cause of his problems, Evercore later bought American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer, the splashy tabloid.

Mr. Altman declined to be interviewed.

The other big Wall Streeter was Bernard W. Nussbaum, a veteran corporate lawyer, who resigned as the Clinton White House counsel after questions were raised about his role in Whitewater. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

"Life hereafter is fine," said Mr. Nussbaum, who returned to his desk as a partner at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz. By the accounts of many who know Mr. Nussbaum, his business has only grown since leaving Washington. Mr. Nussbaum, too, agrees that memories are short when it comes to Washington headlines.

"People get driven out over public relations things," he said. "Things are twisted to make them seem egregious when it is really nothing. That is why other areas around the country are not like Washington. People in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco are sophisticated" and quickly forget, he added.

Obviously, executives flame out within the corporate world, as well, sometimes almost as publicly. The last year has produced a bumper crop of chief executives who have been charged with running afoul of the law. And hardly anyone expects the likes of Samuel D. Waksal, the former chief executive of ImClone Systems, L. Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief of Tyco International, or Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron — all indicted — to find jobs in public companies anytime soon, if ever.

Albert J. Dunlap, the former chief of Sunbeam who was despised by many and nicknamed Chainsaw Al for his slash-and-burn treatment of employees, is probably equally unemployable.

Still, corporate America has often been forgiving of its own. Several executives who have left in disgrace, even after civil charges, have been rehabilitated. After a time in purgatory, when they set themselves up as consultants or investors, people like John H. Gutfreund, the former chairman of Salomon Brothers who was forced out after failing to inform the authorities about illegal bidding at the firm, and Lawrence Kudlow, who had worked as chief economist at Bear, Stearns and in economic posts in Washington before his troubles with illegal drugs were revealed, have rebounded. Mr. Gutfreund now works as senior managing partner at C. E. Unterberg, Towbin, while Mr. Kudlow is co-host of "Kudlow & Cramer" on CNBC.

Who knows what will happen to Martha Stewart over the long haul? It's unclear whether her legal problems will force her out or taint her brand.

Though incompetence or disagreement with management have also caused the public fall of many top executives, oddly their fate is less predictable. Jacques A. Nasser, forced out of the top post at Ford Motor in October 2001, by the Ford family, has yet to land a new job. Nor has Jill E. Barad, who was drummed out of Mattel's top job, nor Robert W. Pittman of AOL Time Warner.

In fact, some of these executives may be treated more harshly by their brethen than those who have tripped up in the capital. "There is more understanding for someone who has stumbled in Washington than for someone who has taken a company and driven it downhill," said Gerard R. Roche, senior chairman at Heidrick & Struggles, an executive search firm.

Unlike Mr. Pitt and other public servants, most of these ousted executives can find comfort in their overstuffed golden handshakes, which can run into the tens of millions; they don't need to work. But Washington awards a trump card — lasting access to power. Many corporations are willing to overlook an ethical lapse or a subpar performance and put those with Washington expertise on their boards, to use them as lobbyists or to make them partners in business deals.

Consider Robert L. Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who was on the verge of becoming the House speaker but who resigned from Congress in 1998 after confessing to adultery. Today, he is one of Washington's most sought-after lobbyists, heading the Livingston Group, which took in $3 million in 2000, the most recent data available, with a client roster that has included General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Oracle and 44 others.

"I was almost speaker of the House and I could have been if I had chosen to stay," Mr. Livingston said. "I was in demand then, and I've been in demand ever since I've left."

The same is true for Bob Packwood, a Republican from Oregon who resigned in disgrace in 1995 after an ethics committee unanimously found he had forced himself on nearly two dozen women in his office, including a 17-year old intern. Mr. Packwood reported lobbying income of $1.4 million in 2000 and his client list includes Northwest Airlines, United Airlines and Verizon Communications.

"It takes a while," Mr. Packwood said. Reflecting on the process, he added: "In the real world, they're not going to touch you if you go about moaning and complaining. But if you just go about your life, the real world is pretty forgiving."

So forgiving, in fact, that former Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a Chicago Democrat who served time in prison for misuse of public funds (he was later pardoned by President Clinton), was even appointed to a corporate board. His opinions on tax issues — drawn from his long tenure as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — appear on the op-ed pages of major newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal.

Last year, when Mr. Rostenkowski was named to the board of American Ecology, a radioactive- and hazardous waste services company, where he served until last April. In announcing Mr. Rostenkowski's selection, the company made it clear that it was looking to capitalize on his connections in the capital.

"We look forward to Mr. Rostenkowski's contributions based on his 36 years of outstanding Congressional service," said Jack K. Lemley, the company's chief executive at the time. "His knowledge and expertise is particularly valuable to American Ecology's efforts to further penetrate the expanding federal government services market."

Henry G. Cisneros, a former Clinton cabinet secretary, pleaded guilty in 1999 to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about payments to a former mistress, but he has decidedly recovered from charges that could have resulted in a 90-year prison term.

First, Mr. Cisneros became president and chief operating officer at Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language television broadcaster. In August, he formed a partnership with the Kaufman & Broad Home Corporation, one of the largest homebuilders in the United States, to develop low-cost housing in San Antonio.

Many other examples date from earlier years.

Tony Coelho, who resigned from Congress in 1989 over a controversial junk-bond investment, has made millions as a businessman and even returned to politics when Al Gore hired him to be his campaign chairman before the 2000 election. After resurrecting himself with a brief stint on Wall Street, Mr. Coelho has held positions on 11 corporate boards, the most prominent being Kistler Aerospace.

Michael K. Deaver, who was chief of staff in the Reagan White House, is now one of Washington's most powerful public relations executives; he heads the Washington office of Edelman Public Relations. His conviction on felony perjury charges in 1987 for lying to Congress and to a federal grand jury, and a suspended prison sentence, matter not at all.

Michael P. Castine, who also worked in the Reagan inner circle and is now a managing partner in TMP Worldwide, an executive recruiting firm, recalls the day he brought an old friend — one caught up in a Washington scandal — to the Senate dining room. "Six or seven senators of both parties came up to him," Mr. Castine recalled. "Rather than avoiding him, they embraced him." The man simply had too much influence and too many connections to ignore.

Of course, someone who is tainted, yet has successfully regained footing as a lobbyist or by starting a business, hasn't necessarily gained full redemption. Cracking A-list corporate boards is a taller order, and is likely to be even more so now that the spate of corporate scandals has made all boards more sensitive to public opinion.

"With the enormous scrutiny taking place, corporations only want people who are squeaky clean on their board," said Mr. Roche, the executive recruiter. "It used to be that boards could wink at some of these folks. Not any more. And if you want to put someone on the audit committee, they've got to be up for sainthood. We do work for the AT&T's and the Alcoas of the world. They are not looking for the Bob Packwoods."

Some people applaud the trend. Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, bemoans America's forgetfulness about transgressions by public officials. "They have a public trust, and if they violate it, they should be on the hook," he said. "It's a privilege and a magnificent opportunity to serve the public in these important positions. If they can't cut the mustard, then goodbye."