Emilio Estevez’s movie, “Bobby,” introduces the martyrdom of Robert Kennedy to another generation of Americans, but it was Robert’s reaction to his brother’s death that is really most instructive to the young.
Robert Kennedy was dining at home on Nov. 22, 1963, when J. Edgar Hoover called. “I have news for you,” Hoover began coldly. “The president’s been shot.” Kennedy turned away from his lunch companions, his hand to his mouth and his face twisted in pain.
In the ensuing months, he was devoured by grief. One of his biographers, Evan Thomas, writes: “He literally shrank, until he appeared wasted and gaunt. His clothes no longer fit, especially his brother’s old clothes — an old blue topcoat, a tuxedo, a leather bomber jacket with the presidential seal — which he insisted on wearing and which hung on his narrowing frame.”
But during March 1964, he visited Bunny Mellon’s estate in Antigua, and spent the vacation in his room, reading a book Jackie Kennedy had given him, “The Greek Way,” by Edith Hamilton.
“The Greek Way” contains essays on the great figures of Athenian history and literature, and Kennedy found a worldview that helped him explain and recover from the tragedy that had befallen him. “When the world is storm-driven and the bad that happens and the worse that threatens are so urgent as to shut out everything else from view,” Hamilton writes, “then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.”
Classical scholars often scorn Hamilton because she wrote in a breathless “all the glory that was Greece” mode, but her book changed Robert Kennedy’s life. He carried his beaten, underlined and annotated copy around with him for years, pulling it from his pocket, reading sections aloud to audiences in what Thomas calls “a flat, unrhythmic voice with a mournful edge.”
Kennedy found in the Greeks a sensibility similar to his own — heroic and battle-scarred but also mystical. He shared the awful sense of foreboding that pervades the work of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and that distinctly Greek awareness of the invisible patterns that connect events to one another, how the arrogance men and women show at one moment will twist back and bring agony later on.
Hamilton is at her best describing the tragic sensibility, the strange mixture of doom and exaltation that marks Greek drama. It was based on the conviction that good grows out of bad, virtue out of hardship, and that wisdom is born in suffering. Kennedy memorized a passage from Aeschylus, which Hamilton quotes twice in her book:
“God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”
Kennedy, recovering from his brother’s murder, found in the ancient Greeks a civilization that was eager to look death in the face, but which seemed to draw strength from what it found there. The Greeks seemed more convinced of the dignity and significance of life the more they brooded on the pain and precariousness of it.
Kennedy underlined a passage of Hamilton’s book in which she summarizes the rippled nature of Greek optimism: “Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.” If they were doctors of the spirit, the Greeks’ specialty was to take grief and turn it into resolution.
The story of Kennedy’s grief is the story of a man stepping out of his time and fetching from the past a sturdier ethic. He developed a bit of that quality, which greater leaders like Churchill possessed in abundance, of seeming to step from another age. Kennedy became a figure in the 1960s, but was never really of the ’60s. He promoted many liberal policies but was never a member of a team since he drew strength from somewhere else.
And the lesson, of course, is about the need to step outside your own immediate experience into the past, to learn about the problems that never change, and bring back some of that inheritance. The leaders who founded the country were steeped in the classics, Kennedy found them in crisis, and today’s students are lucky if they stumble on them by happenstance.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Waxman Has Bush Administration in Sights
LOS ANGELES - The lawmaker poised to cause the Bush administration's biggest headaches when Democrats take control of Congress may just be a grocer's son from Watts who's hardly a household name off Capitol Hill.
Rep. Henry Waxman has spent the last six years waging a guerrilla campaign against the White House and its corporate allies, launching searing investigations into everything from military contracts to Medicare prices from his perch on the Government Reform Committee.
In January, Waxman becomes committee chairman - and thus the lead congressional hound of an administration many Democrats feel has blundered badly as it expanded the power of the executive branch.
Waxman's biggest challenge as he mulls what to probe?
"The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose," he said.
The choices he makes could help define Bush's legacy.
"There is just no question that life is going to be different for the administration," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the current committee chairman. "Henry is going to be tough. ... And he's been waiting a long time to be able to do this."...
Rep. Henry Waxman has spent the last six years waging a guerrilla campaign against the White House and its corporate allies, launching searing investigations into everything from military contracts to Medicare prices from his perch on the Government Reform Committee.
In January, Waxman becomes committee chairman - and thus the lead congressional hound of an administration many Democrats feel has blundered badly as it expanded the power of the executive branch.
Waxman's biggest challenge as he mulls what to probe?
"The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose," he said.
The choices he makes could help define Bush's legacy.
"There is just no question that life is going to be different for the administration," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the current committee chairman. "Henry is going to be tough. ... And he's been waiting a long time to be able to do this."...
Friday, November 24, 2006
THOMAS B. EDSALL: The Struggle Within
Can the Democratic Party become fully competitive? Is American liberalism dead, the 2006 election a last twitch of life before rigor mortis sets in? The answer to both questions is yes. (More on this next week.)
For the Democratic Party to revive, major tenets of American liberalism, economic and sociocultural, will have to be discarded. The party can join Studebaker and the Glass Bottle Blowers union, it can trudge along as No. 2, or it can undergo a painful transformation — without guarantee of success.
To stay in the fight, Democratic leaders will have to acknowledge political realities affirmed by the electorate in 1994 and 2006. Many Democratic constituencies — organized labor, minority advocacy organizations, reproductive- and sexual-rights proponents — are reliving battles of a decade or more ago, not the more subtle disputes of today. Public sector unions, for example, at a time of wide distrust of government, are consistently pressing to enlarge the state. For these players, adapting to a re-emergent center will be costly.
Democrats won on Nov. 7 by carrying a 59 percent majority of independent, moderate voters angered by the Iraq war and Republican corruption. These voters demonstrated 12 years ago that they can easily turn against Democrats.
An example of the reality that Democrats refused to face the last time they had a shot at consolidating power materialized during the fight to pass Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, legislation that sought to burnish the party’s justice credentials by increasing the number of felonies subject to the death penalty. Instead, amendments added to win support from the left — most visibly, $40 million for midnight basketball leagues — caught fire on conservative talk radio, spread to the establishment media, and soon became a liability.
When Democrats bend to the will of liberal interest groups, even in pursuit of laudable goals, the damage to the party’s credibility can be devastating. President Clinton succumbed to such pressure, and Democrats in the House and Senate paid the price. Democrats now have a chance to regain public trust, but even a minor miscalculation can push the party off the tightrope. Its House majority is tenuous: 17 of the new Democrats represent districts that voted for Bush in 2004 by at least 54 percent, according to the political scientist Gary Jacobson.
The public will desert Democrats placing a disputed cultural or spending agenda above the broader public interest. This is especially true at a time of extreme uncertainty: lethal struggle in the Mideast, nuclear proliferation, mounting skepticism toward free trade, and a rising non-marital birthrate — now at 37 percent — that concerns moderate voters.
The potential for an incendiary controversy to engulf the Democratic left has sharply escalated with Web access to each committee and floor vote under new Congressional transparency rules, and the development of aggressively partisan outlets in the blogosphere. An army of conservative media is determined to recreate the political climate so advantageous to the G.O.P. in 1994. At the same time, very liberal senior House Democrats now have vastly enhanced power to add inflammatory provisions to bills moving through their committees (think Rangel and the draft).
Nancy Pelosi and her closest advisers in the House are more likely to support such radioactive amendments than to serve as guard dogs protecting a slender Democratic majority. The first test of Pelosi’s ability to distinguish between broad-based and special interests will be when she decides whether to appoint Alcee Hastings, the once-impeached federal judge, to head the House Intelligence Committee.
Only two members of the House leadership are intuitively attuned to such problems: Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic caucus, and Steny Hoyer, the majority leader. But Emanuel has limited influence, and relations between Pelosi and Hoyer are distant at best.
Still, the vigilance of Hoyer and Emanuel will be crucial to a party whose renewal could easily be stillborn. Congressional leaders are not all-powerful, but they can set the stage for a successful presidential candidate, or lay waste to the center-left, dooming the nominee.
The Democratic Party can secure its 2006 gains, but to do so will require abandoning a decades-long willingness to indulge pressure groups on the left that no longer command broad popular allegiance.
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.
For the Democratic Party to revive, major tenets of American liberalism, economic and sociocultural, will have to be discarded. The party can join Studebaker and the Glass Bottle Blowers union, it can trudge along as No. 2, or it can undergo a painful transformation — without guarantee of success.
To stay in the fight, Democratic leaders will have to acknowledge political realities affirmed by the electorate in 1994 and 2006. Many Democratic constituencies — organized labor, minority advocacy organizations, reproductive- and sexual-rights proponents — are reliving battles of a decade or more ago, not the more subtle disputes of today. Public sector unions, for example, at a time of wide distrust of government, are consistently pressing to enlarge the state. For these players, adapting to a re-emergent center will be costly.
Democrats won on Nov. 7 by carrying a 59 percent majority of independent, moderate voters angered by the Iraq war and Republican corruption. These voters demonstrated 12 years ago that they can easily turn against Democrats.
An example of the reality that Democrats refused to face the last time they had a shot at consolidating power materialized during the fight to pass Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, legislation that sought to burnish the party’s justice credentials by increasing the number of felonies subject to the death penalty. Instead, amendments added to win support from the left — most visibly, $40 million for midnight basketball leagues — caught fire on conservative talk radio, spread to the establishment media, and soon became a liability.
When Democrats bend to the will of liberal interest groups, even in pursuit of laudable goals, the damage to the party’s credibility can be devastating. President Clinton succumbed to such pressure, and Democrats in the House and Senate paid the price. Democrats now have a chance to regain public trust, but even a minor miscalculation can push the party off the tightrope. Its House majority is tenuous: 17 of the new Democrats represent districts that voted for Bush in 2004 by at least 54 percent, according to the political scientist Gary Jacobson.
The public will desert Democrats placing a disputed cultural or spending agenda above the broader public interest. This is especially true at a time of extreme uncertainty: lethal struggle in the Mideast, nuclear proliferation, mounting skepticism toward free trade, and a rising non-marital birthrate — now at 37 percent — that concerns moderate voters.
The potential for an incendiary controversy to engulf the Democratic left has sharply escalated with Web access to each committee and floor vote under new Congressional transparency rules, and the development of aggressively partisan outlets in the blogosphere. An army of conservative media is determined to recreate the political climate so advantageous to the G.O.P. in 1994. At the same time, very liberal senior House Democrats now have vastly enhanced power to add inflammatory provisions to bills moving through their committees (think Rangel and the draft).
Nancy Pelosi and her closest advisers in the House are more likely to support such radioactive amendments than to serve as guard dogs protecting a slender Democratic majority. The first test of Pelosi’s ability to distinguish between broad-based and special interests will be when she decides whether to appoint Alcee Hastings, the once-impeached federal judge, to head the House Intelligence Committee.
Only two members of the House leadership are intuitively attuned to such problems: Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic caucus, and Steny Hoyer, the majority leader. But Emanuel has limited influence, and relations between Pelosi and Hoyer are distant at best.
Still, the vigilance of Hoyer and Emanuel will be crucial to a party whose renewal could easily be stillborn. Congressional leaders are not all-powerful, but they can set the stage for a successful presidential candidate, or lay waste to the center-left, dooming the nominee.
The Democratic Party can secure its 2006 gains, but to do so will require abandoning a decades-long willingness to indulge pressure groups on the left that no longer command broad popular allegiance.
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.
MAUREEN DOWD : No One to Lose to
After the Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Shiites by Sunnis, President Bush should go on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and give an interview headlined: “If I did it, here’s how the civil war in Iraq happened.”
He could describe, hypothetically, a series of naïve, arrogant and self-defeating blunders, including his team’s failure to comprehend that in the Arab world, revenge and religious zealotry can be stronger compulsions than democracy and prosperity.
But W. is not yet able to view his actions in subjunctive terms, much less objective ones. Bush family retainers are working to deprogram him, but the president is loath to strip off his delusions of adequacy.
W. declined to tear himself away from his free-range turkey and pumpkin mousse trifle at Camp David and reassure Americans about the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the U.S. invaded. More than 200 Shiites were killed and hundreds more wounded by car bombs and a mortar attack in Sadr City. October was the bloodiest month yet for civilians, and in the last four months, some 13,000 men, women and children have died.
American helicopters and Iraqi troops did not arrive for two hours after Sunni gunmen began a siege on the Health Ministry controlled by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has a militia that kills Sunnis and is married to the Maliki government.
Continuing the cycle of revenge yesterday, Shiite militiamen threw kerosene on six Sunnis and set them on fire, as Iraqi soldiers watched, and killed 19 more.
The New York Times and other news outlets have been figuring out if it’s time to break with the administration’s use of euphemisms like “sectarian conflict.” How long can you have an ever-descending descent without actually reaching the civil war?
Some analysts are calling it genocide or clash of civilizations, arguing that civil war is too genteel a term for the butchery that is destroying a nation before our very eyes. Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Iraq coverage, went back recently and described “the final, frenzied maturity of once-inchoate forces unleashed more than three years ago by the invasion. There was civil-war-style sectarian killing, its echoes in Lebanon a generation ago. Alongside it were gangland turf battles over money, power and survival; a raft of political parties and their militias fighting a zero-sum game; a raging insurgency; the collapse of authority; social services a chimera; and no way forward for an Iraqi government ordered to act by Americans who themselves are still seen as the final arbiter and, as a result, still depriving that government of legitimacy. Civil war was perhaps too easy a term, a little too tidy.”
It will be harder to sell Congress on the idea that America’s troops should be in the middle of somebody else’s civil war than to convince them that we need to hang tough in the so-called front line of the so-called war on terror against Al Qaeda.
With Iraq splitting, Tony Snow indulges in the ludicrous exercise of hair-splitting. He said that in past civil wars, “people break up into clearly identifiable feuding sides clashing for supremacy.” In Iraq, “you do have a lot of different forces that are trying to put pressure on the government and trying to undermine it. But it’s not clear that they are operating as a unified force.” But Lebanon was a shambles with multiple factions, and everybody called that a civil war.
Mr. Snow has said this is not a civil war because the fighting is not taking place in every province and because Iraqis voted in free elections. But that’s like saying that the Battle of Gettysburg only took place in one small corner of the country, so there was no real American Civil War. And there were elections during our civil war too. President Lincoln was re-elected months before the war’s end.
The president’s comparison to how Vietnam turned out a generation later, his happy talk that Iraq is going to be fine, is preposterous.
As Neil Sheehan, a former Times reporter in Vietnam who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Bright Shining Lie,” told me: “In Vietnam, there were just two sides to the civil war. You had a government in Hanoi with a structure of command and an army and a guerrilla movement that would obey what they were told to do. So you had law and order in Saigon immediately after the war ended. In Iraq, there’s no one like that for us to lose to and then do business with.”
The questions are no longer whether there’s a civil war or whether we can achieve a military victory. The only question is, who can we turn the country over to?
At the moment, that would be no one.
He could describe, hypothetically, a series of naïve, arrogant and self-defeating blunders, including his team’s failure to comprehend that in the Arab world, revenge and religious zealotry can be stronger compulsions than democracy and prosperity.
But W. is not yet able to view his actions in subjunctive terms, much less objective ones. Bush family retainers are working to deprogram him, but the president is loath to strip off his delusions of adequacy.
W. declined to tear himself away from his free-range turkey and pumpkin mousse trifle at Camp David and reassure Americans about the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the U.S. invaded. More than 200 Shiites were killed and hundreds more wounded by car bombs and a mortar attack in Sadr City. October was the bloodiest month yet for civilians, and in the last four months, some 13,000 men, women and children have died.
American helicopters and Iraqi troops did not arrive for two hours after Sunni gunmen began a siege on the Health Ministry controlled by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has a militia that kills Sunnis and is married to the Maliki government.
Continuing the cycle of revenge yesterday, Shiite militiamen threw kerosene on six Sunnis and set them on fire, as Iraqi soldiers watched, and killed 19 more.
The New York Times and other news outlets have been figuring out if it’s time to break with the administration’s use of euphemisms like “sectarian conflict.” How long can you have an ever-descending descent without actually reaching the civil war?
Some analysts are calling it genocide or clash of civilizations, arguing that civil war is too genteel a term for the butchery that is destroying a nation before our very eyes. Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Iraq coverage, went back recently and described “the final, frenzied maturity of once-inchoate forces unleashed more than three years ago by the invasion. There was civil-war-style sectarian killing, its echoes in Lebanon a generation ago. Alongside it were gangland turf battles over money, power and survival; a raft of political parties and their militias fighting a zero-sum game; a raging insurgency; the collapse of authority; social services a chimera; and no way forward for an Iraqi government ordered to act by Americans who themselves are still seen as the final arbiter and, as a result, still depriving that government of legitimacy. Civil war was perhaps too easy a term, a little too tidy.”
It will be harder to sell Congress on the idea that America’s troops should be in the middle of somebody else’s civil war than to convince them that we need to hang tough in the so-called front line of the so-called war on terror against Al Qaeda.
With Iraq splitting, Tony Snow indulges in the ludicrous exercise of hair-splitting. He said that in past civil wars, “people break up into clearly identifiable feuding sides clashing for supremacy.” In Iraq, “you do have a lot of different forces that are trying to put pressure on the government and trying to undermine it. But it’s not clear that they are operating as a unified force.” But Lebanon was a shambles with multiple factions, and everybody called that a civil war.
Mr. Snow has said this is not a civil war because the fighting is not taking place in every province and because Iraqis voted in free elections. But that’s like saying that the Battle of Gettysburg only took place in one small corner of the country, so there was no real American Civil War. And there were elections during our civil war too. President Lincoln was re-elected months before the war’s end.
The president’s comparison to how Vietnam turned out a generation later, his happy talk that Iraq is going to be fine, is preposterous.
As Neil Sheehan, a former Times reporter in Vietnam who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Bright Shining Lie,” told me: “In Vietnam, there were just two sides to the civil war. You had a government in Hanoi with a structure of command and an army and a guerrilla movement that would obey what they were told to do. So you had law and order in Saigon immediately after the war ended. In Iraq, there’s no one like that for us to lose to and then do business with.”
The questions are no longer whether there’s a civil war or whether we can achieve a military victory. The only question is, who can we turn the country over to?
At the moment, that would be no one.
US helicopter fires on Iraqi funeral party-ministry
BAGHDAD, Nov 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. helicopter fired on a funeral party in Baghdad, one of dozens taking place after Thursday's devastating bombings in Sadr City, in response to ritual shooting, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.
A ministry official said two people were wounded in Friday's air strike, which came after mourners fired into the air.
Earlier, some residents and a Shi'ite lawmaker reported clashes between gunmen and U.S.-led forces in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia in the Iraqi capital.
A U.S. military spokesman said he could not comment on specific operations but U.S. forces were helping Iraqi army and police enforce a curfew imposed after the Sadr City attacks on Thursday which killed more than 200 people.
A ministry official said two people were wounded in Friday's air strike, which came after mourners fired into the air.
Earlier, some residents and a Shi'ite lawmaker reported clashes between gunmen and U.S.-led forces in Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia in the Iraqi capital.
A U.S. military spokesman said he could not comment on specific operations but U.S. forces were helping Iraqi army and police enforce a curfew imposed after the Sadr City attacks on Thursday which killed more than 200 people.
Shiite bloc threatens walkout if Iraq PM meets Bush
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is threatening to withdraw support from Iraq's government if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki meets President Bush next week, an al-Sadr representative said Friday. Such a move could jeopardize the stability of the administration of al-Maliki who has relied on the support of both the United States and his fellow Shiites.
The White House said talks between Bush and al-Maliki in Jordan next week would go ahead as planned. Al-Maliki's office has not responded to the threat by Salih al-Akeili, a member of the al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's parliament, that aired on Iraqi TV. The move came as attacks on Sunni mosques were reported in apparent retaliation for a bloodbath in a Shiite area on Thursday.
Coordinated attacks killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's Sadr City slum in what is considered the worst attack of the Iraq war. More than 250 also were wounded, an Iraqi Health Ministry official said Friday after an updated count from local hospitals. It is widely assumed that Sunni militants were responsible for the attacks, which targeted the bastion of support for al-Sadr. U.S. commanders believe al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army, has been involved in revenge attacks against Sunnis, although al-Sadr has denounced such attacks.
Al-Sadr's representative al-Akeili blamed U.S.-led forces for fostering conditions that led to the massacre Thursday in Baghdad's Sadr City. "We announce that if the security situation and the basic services do not improve, and if the prime minister goes ahead and meets with the criminal Bush in Amman, then we will suspend our memberships with the Iraqi parliament and the government," he said. Al-Akeili said his bloc -- which occupies 30 seats in the 275-member parliament -- is demanding an end to the occupation and a withdrawal from Iraq, with a timetable for such a departure. He also uttered a common chant heard on the streets of Baghdad: "No, no to America. Yes, yes to Islam." ...
The White House said talks between Bush and al-Maliki in Jordan next week would go ahead as planned. Al-Maliki's office has not responded to the threat by Salih al-Akeili, a member of the al-Sadr bloc in Iraq's parliament, that aired on Iraqi TV. The move came as attacks on Sunni mosques were reported in apparent retaliation for a bloodbath in a Shiite area on Thursday.
Coordinated attacks killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's Sadr City slum in what is considered the worst attack of the Iraq war. More than 250 also were wounded, an Iraqi Health Ministry official said Friday after an updated count from local hospitals. It is widely assumed that Sunni militants were responsible for the attacks, which targeted the bastion of support for al-Sadr. U.S. commanders believe al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army, has been involved in revenge attacks against Sunnis, although al-Sadr has denounced such attacks.
Al-Sadr's representative al-Akeili blamed U.S.-led forces for fostering conditions that led to the massacre Thursday in Baghdad's Sadr City. "We announce that if the security situation and the basic services do not improve, and if the prime minister goes ahead and meets with the criminal Bush in Amman, then we will suspend our memberships with the Iraqi parliament and the government," he said. Al-Akeili said his bloc -- which occupies 30 seats in the 275-member parliament -- is demanding an end to the occupation and a withdrawal from Iraq, with a timetable for such a departure. He also uttered a common chant heard on the streets of Baghdad: "No, no to America. Yes, yes to Islam." ...
Italian right 'tried to rig poll' --- Electronic Voting
BBCItalian prosecutors have launched an inquiry into claims that the government of ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to rig April's general elections.
The allegation is made in a documentary entitled Kill Democracy being given out on Friday with a left-wing magazine.
The authors say blank ballots were fraudulently counted in favour of Mr Berlusconi's centre-right coalition.
Former Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, who oversaw the vote, said the claims were "false and libellous".
Mr Pisanu said he welcomed the investigation "because it will surely serve to erase even the remotest of doubts".
Blank ballots
The official election results gave a razor-thin majority to the centre-left, while opinion and exit polls had suggested Mr Berlusconi's party would be soundly beaten.
The authors of the documentary are Beppe Cremagnani, a TV journalist, and Enrico Deaglio, editor of Diario, the magazine distributing it on DVD.
They point to a number of allegedly suspicious data, including a sharp drop in the number of blank ballots.
The film notes that every election in the past 60 years has seen about 1.5 million blank votes, while there were fewer than 500,000 in April's election.
The authors suggest that a computer program allowed the interior ministry to change blank votes.
Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia colleagues have denied any wrongdoing and say they are considering legal action against the magazine.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Ecuador's Leftist Candidate Slams Bush
QUITO, Ecuador - Leftist economist Rafael Correa, in a tight race to win Sunday's presidential runoff, criticized President Bush Thursday for the Iraq invasion and claimed his policies led to the Republicans' congressional defeat.
"The American people have been the first to speak their minds in an overwhelming fashion on the errors committed by the Bush administration, above all in Iraq," he said. "I think all citizens of the world have a right to express ourselves about that mistake, which put world peace in danger."
Correa, 43, has promised radical political reforms if elected and is an admirer of Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez. He faces pro-U.S. populist Alvaro Noboa, 56, Ecuador's wealthiest man, in Sunday's runoff.
Later, at his closing campaign rally in northern Quito, Correa again accused his opponent of using child labor on his banana plantations and evading taxes on some of the 114 companies he operates.
"At stake here is whether to have a nation or be just one more plantation for the conceited Noboa," he told thousands of cheering supporters.
Noboa, owner of the world's fourth-biggest banana company, has crisscrossed Ecuador handing out computers, wheelchairs and money, and pledging to boost the economy by persuading his rich foreign friends to invest in Ecuador.
At his closing rally in coastal city of Guayaquil, Noboa dismissed Correa's campaign as a "dirty and diabolical war" against him.
"He runs with communists but he isn't man enough to call himself communist," Noboa said of his opponent. "Here I have you totally naked Correa, showing Ecuador what you are."
Correa, who has a doctorate from the University of Illinois, said he hoped to have good relations with the United States "within a framework of mutual respect." But he repeated his pledge not to extend the U.S. military's use of the Manta air base on the Pacific coast for drug surveillance flights when a treaty runs out in 2009.
During his news conference, Correa also reiterated his opposition to a free trade agreement with the United States. He said he would seek to increase trade with nations in the Middle East and the Far East, as well as Europe, Brazil, Argentina and other nations.
Correa said he planned to reduce payments on the foreign debt to free up money for social programs "without ruling out a moratorium if necessary" - a position that has alarmed Wall Street.
"The American people have been the first to speak their minds in an overwhelming fashion on the errors committed by the Bush administration, above all in Iraq," he said. "I think all citizens of the world have a right to express ourselves about that mistake, which put world peace in danger."
Correa, 43, has promised radical political reforms if elected and is an admirer of Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez. He faces pro-U.S. populist Alvaro Noboa, 56, Ecuador's wealthiest man, in Sunday's runoff.
Later, at his closing campaign rally in northern Quito, Correa again accused his opponent of using child labor on his banana plantations and evading taxes on some of the 114 companies he operates.
"At stake here is whether to have a nation or be just one more plantation for the conceited Noboa," he told thousands of cheering supporters.
Noboa, owner of the world's fourth-biggest banana company, has crisscrossed Ecuador handing out computers, wheelchairs and money, and pledging to boost the economy by persuading his rich foreign friends to invest in Ecuador.
At his closing rally in coastal city of Guayaquil, Noboa dismissed Correa's campaign as a "dirty and diabolical war" against him.
"He runs with communists but he isn't man enough to call himself communist," Noboa said of his opponent. "Here I have you totally naked Correa, showing Ecuador what you are."
Correa, who has a doctorate from the University of Illinois, said he hoped to have good relations with the United States "within a framework of mutual respect." But he repeated his pledge not to extend the U.S. military's use of the Manta air base on the Pacific coast for drug surveillance flights when a treaty runs out in 2009.
During his news conference, Correa also reiterated his opposition to a free trade agreement with the United States. He said he would seek to increase trade with nations in the Middle East and the Far East, as well as Europe, Brazil, Argentina and other nations.
Correa said he planned to reduce payments on the foreign debt to free up money for social programs "without ruling out a moratorium if necessary" - a position that has alarmed Wall Street.
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