Gotta Love that Kevin

College basketball season is upon us, and I'm going all atavistic as usual, focused on my UCLA Bruins. They're ranked number 2 in the country now, and it could be their year (I know that's perhaps a bit boring to non-Bruins, but you can skip this one if you like.)

They hit the Final Four last year and the Final Two the year before, but didn't take it all. But this year they have Kevin Love from Oregon. The 6'10", 270-lb. Freshman was either the first or second-rated high school prospect in the country last year, and everybody figures he'll give the Bruins a dominant inside presence this year that they didn't really have previously (although Lorenzo Mata-Real came through big in a few games). Most of the sportswriters think he'll spend only a single year at UCLA and move right into the NBA.

Anyway, I watched them on TV tonight, and if anything this Kevin Love is better than advertised. He had averaged 21 points in his first two games, and tonight against Cal State San Bernardino (Division II but deep into the playoffs last year) he got 19, and I think 9 rebounds. What's impressive is that he seems like a complete, mature player, and in his first few games as a Freshman he looks as if he's emerged as the clear team leader. He does just about everything well. And he's strong, which not all players that big are.

The Bruins got at least six points off pinpoint outlet passes to a streaking player downcourt after Love got the defensive rebound. He plays hard and hustles, plays good defense and blocks shots. He's a team player, looking to feed other players and taking his own shot only if it's really the best one on the floor. I think he'll turn out to be one of those players, like Magic Johnson, who makes everybody on the team better just by being there, setting an example, and being aware of the entire court.

Whether you care a whit about UCLA or not, if you like basketball even a llittle bit, you would do well to watch this kid -- kid? he seemed like the oldest, most experienced player on the floor -- play the game.

Marijuana eradication backfires

Thanks to the invaluable Bruce Mirken at the Marijuana Policy Project for this one. (Drug reformers feud among themselves but I try to talk to all of them.)

The U.S. Department of Justice has released an assessment of the marijuana "eradication" campaigns such as California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP, ain't that cute?). Despite a huge -- 1,200 percent -- increase in seizures over the past decade, the report assesses that production operations in Northern California "are extensive, widespread, becoming more sophisticated, and increasing in size," and "marijuana availability is widespread." So the campaign has not accomplished the goal of reducing the supply to users substantially. Full report available here.

But the side-effects of this unsuccessful campaign are even more perverse. Enforcement has been more vigorous, even though it hasn't done the primary job, so it has "caused major marijuana producers, particularly Caucasion groups, to relocate indoors, even in leading outdoor grow states such as California and Tennessee." Especially striking has been the increase in the use of suburban houses, and the trend is likely to continue. The growers and distributors "will adapt to the increasing law enforcement pressure and improved detection capabilities associated with outdoor grow sites and will most likely shift operations indoors . . . [T]he groups will increase higher-potency marijuana year-round, allowing for an exponential increase in profits derived."

So in other words, if the goal was to have more high-potency pot available and those who grow it wealthier, the eradication program has been working just fine.

Actually, this is the inevitable result of almost every step-up in drug-law enforcement. My friend Dick Cowan -- he's doing marijuananews.com again -- coined the term the "iron law of prohibition" to descibe the phenomenon (all these years I thought it had been Arnold Trebach, but I talked to Dick recently). Increase enforcement, and the producers/dealers move to drugs that are more potent and more easily concealable and more profitable -- more potent marijuana or "hard" drugs like heroin and cocaine. As long as some people desire the stuff enough to pay the "drug war premium" for substances, heavy-duty enforcement will have this seemingly perverse effect. Or is it perverse? If the drug war actually worked -- i.e., eradicated drugs to the point that users couldn't acquire them -- the drug warriors might have to find honest work. Like most government programs, the result is to prolong and increase the social evil it targets, because as long as the problem persists the government agency will have to stay in existence and ask for a higher budget. Nothing succeeds like failure.

"Nightline" remarkable on Afghan war

I have complained before and I will no doubt complain again that "Nightline" since Ted Koppel is mostly tirvialities and banalities (each anchor annoying in his or her own special way). But tonight's program which follows a platoon ofAmericans in Afghanistan, is remarkable. Gets you about as close to real war as I'd ever like to be, and shows just how brutal and often inconclusive war can be. Why some people see war as noble or ennobling, or fantasize that it can actually settle important issues for very long, is beyond me.

Politovskaya's killer known, but . . .

This story is more than a month old, and I haven't seen any follow-up. Early in October, the editor of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, announced that the identity of Anna Poitovskaya's killer was known, but the Russian police weren't revealing the identity until they wrapped up a few loose investigational ends.

Politovskaya, you may remember, was the Russian investigative reporter who drove the regime crazy with reports of outrages and brutality in Chechnya and incomptenec and corruption all over. Last October she was found murdered execuion-style outside her apartment door. The government -- or somebody to whom Putin may have issued a hint of what would be a nice outcome -- is hardly above suspicion.

So when will we be told more about this killer who is presumably known to the authorities.

Soviet spy unveiled

The NYT has a fascinating story today about one George Koval, who was apparently the most significant Soviet spy working on stealing atomic technology secrets during the Manhattan Project back in WW II and for a short time thereafter. Koval died last year at 92-94, and on Nov. 2 Vladimir Putin, old KGB man that he is, posthumously gave him the highest Russian state award, praising him as "the only Soviet intelligence officer" to inflitrate the Manhattan Project's secret plants, saying his work "helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own."

The U.S., you may remember, demonstrated the awesome power of a nuclear bomb over two Japanese cities in August 1945. The Soviets tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, surprising everybody with the speed at which they had made one.

This award tells us a little something about Putin. He may be a post-communist-system leader, but he was a KGB agent back before the Soviet Union collapsed, he has never renounced that past, and he obviously still admires certain aspects of communism, especially its authoritarian approach to society. Russia, whose only experience with a rudimentary brand of democracy (without benefit of an existing civil society and marred by the kleptocratic way certain elites approached what passed for capitalism), seems to respond to an assured leader, and Putin is nothing if not assured.

Anyway, back in the day, having been impressed by "Witness" and being convinced a real struggle for the soul of the world was underway, I used to devour books about communists operating as spies, agents of influence and the like, from Freda Utley's memoirs to Ralph de Toledano's books to Jan Valtin's "Out of the Night, to personal memoirs of spies from all ideological persuasions. I never heard of George Koval. Apparently that was because while the U.S. got onto him after WW II, forcing him to leave for Russia, the gummint swore to secrecy everybody it interviewed about his activities, and never made public what it knew about his role.

He was apparently the perfect spy -- born in Iowa in 1913, he had an impeccable American accent and loved baseball and other sports. But his family moved back to Russia during the Depression, he was a brilliant student of technical sciences and was recruited by the GRU (military intelligence) and carefully trained. He was sent back to the U.S. where he worked at technical jobs under an assumed name. Then the GRU took a chance and let him use his real name. He was drafted, the Army recognized his technical abilities, and he was assigned to the Manhattan Project. Assigned to health safety (checking for radiation leaks) he had access to everything. Since actually making an atomic bomb that works is much harder than understanding the theory (still is) he must have been invaluable to the Soviets, having been around and knowing almost everybody while they were figuring out the manufacturing. difficulties.

Fascinating historical sidelight.

R.C. Hoiles's principles

Since R.C. Hoiles, founder of Freedom Newspapers, which grew into Freedom Communications, which still owns the Register, was born in November, we like to do a little bit of celebrating and explaining his legacy each November. Here's a piece he wrote sometime in the 1960s, apparently in response to requests from other publishers in the chain for an explanmation of what the company stood for.

Bottom line? No individual or group has the right to use force or coerceion on any other individual or group. Everything else flows from that basic axiom.

Don't want to talk about it

Is it basketball season yet? It's tough for an atavistically loyal old Bruin (though I know full well the loyalty is neither especially rational or reciprocated). Did OK for having a third-stringer? Maybe, but it's still a "L." Frustrating. I've always liked Karl Dorell and have scoffed at those who want him fired. But could it be that he lacks some intangible for being a head football coach?

Musharraf promises elections but . . .

So Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said there will be election in Pakistan in January. Maybe, maybe not, but is there anything to cheer about? A great number of opposition activists have been arrested, and who knows how long the "state of emergency" will last? Meanwhile the army and army courts have been given broad new powers , cince Musharraf has essentially decimated a civilian court system that was threatening to be a little too independent. Perhaps the most significant development is Musharraf saying he doesn't expect any serious repercussions from the West, including the U.S. He has so mismanaged the country that it's become something of a political tinderbox, and nobody wants to strike a spark. But somebody will, I expect, and probably somebody few had thought about.

To the level of the competition

We'll see if I'm any kind of athletic prophet. It seems to me that the UCLA football team this year has generally played to the level of the competition -- or perhaps to the level of the competition's reputation. Thus they lose games they should win -- Utah State, Notre Dame, Arizona last week -- and win games they might have been expected to lose, notably at Cal. This week they're playing Arizona State, which I think is still ranked 9th despite a loss last week, so even though their top two quartarbacks are injured and they're going with a guy who was a bench-sitting wide receiver at the beginning of the year (though he played quarterback in high school) I expect the Bruins to at least be respectable this week, and perhaps even to win.

Lebanese pot boiling

As I posted today on the Register blog, "Eye on the Empire," there are so many potential conflicts brewing in Lebanon that you need a scorecard. There's the upcoming presidential replacement vote in parliament -- they'll try again on Monday but a resolution is unlikely and without a resolution civil war is likely. Then there's Hezbollah holding maneuvers and saying it fully expects war with Israel soon -- and Israel holding maneuvers close to the Lebanese border and reportedly sending jets on reconaissance missions over southern Lebanese cities. And Syria meddling in the election process and the U.S. warning Syria not to. And the possibility that the UN "peacekeeping" force may be reduced in size, which could unleash various militias. Serious trouble is probably brewing, and there's almost nothing the U.S. can do about it.

Hope for an Arab-Israeli settlement

The "summit" called for by U.S. SecState Condi Rice in Annapolis in late November doesn't look as if it is likely to bring anything like a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. However, there is just a chance it could contribute to a larger Arab-Israeli settlement -- something short of a real peace deal, but potentially important nonetheless, perhaps more important..

I've posted about Dennis Ross's suggestions for a more modest agenda. Here are a couple of articles by Arab journalists (courtesy of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, which started as an Israeli-oriented outfit, translating especially provocative Arab writings and sermons but has become broader and more useful in scope). They suggest that it is in the Arabs' interest to attend the summit and work diligently toward a settlement. Such a settlement, they argue, could contribute to regional stability, something in the interest of all Arab governments (which fear the Iraqi Shia-Sunni civil war in Iraq spreading) and help get the Arab states together to contain Iran and prevent it from becoming a nuclear state.

Mamoun Fandy, author of a recently published book on the Arab media ("(Un)Civil War of Words"), warns that such a settlement would not mean an end to Hamas rockets into Israel, but it could help to isolate Hamas and Hezbollah and pull Syria out of Iran' s orbit and into the other Arab states'. Lebanese columnist Khairallah Khairallah argues that just because the AMericans called the summit doesn't mean it's a bad idea for Arabs. He also writes, "Is there anything worse than what is happening in Gaza, which has been transformed into a kind of Islamic emirate, ruled by Hamas in the Taliban style? The Gaza Strip has been turned into one big prison for a million and a half Palestinians who are, for all intents and purposes, under siege."

I don't know how widespread such bitterness about Hamas is among Arabs, But the fact that a couple of prominent columnists express such feelings strikes one as at least somewhat significant.

Deal not a Turkey

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the deal that just might prevent a Turkish military incursion (at least on a large scale) into northern Iraq. We reluctantly suggest that the Bush administration, which we have criticized harshly in the past -- and which has richly deserved it -- might have done someethingpretty close to right this time.

Bleak prospects for Pakistan

The Economist has, unfortunately, a rather bleak assessment of the possible future in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf has proven himself to be a tinpot dictator who has as much as admitted, to 80 foreign diplomats, that he declared martial law as a matter of self-preservation. All the talk about saving Pakistan from Islamists was bogus. Yet because many Western governments do fear an Islamist takeover, pressure has been limited from abroad. The Bushlet has tut-tutted and treated Musharraf like a schoolboy (one bully knows another?) but hasn't cut off U.S. aid, which has fueled something of an economic boomlet. So Musharraf is mainly opposed by lawyers -- lawyers! -- who march in the street, get arrested and are then able to offer eloquent arguments as to why their detention is unjust, which they almost certainly will never get a chance to offer in a court. The poor in Pakistan (still far and away the vast majority) have so far been unwilling to protest. So the Perv is likely to maintain himself in power a bit longer and anything remotely resembling democracy is more than a little unlikely.

Robertson and Giuliani

So televangelist Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Giuliani. Guess it's more important to kill foreigners than to save babies from abortion. A strange transmogrification.

The Mike Carona mess

It's never a bad week when a public official gets indicted. The federal indictment of Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona last week caused a good deal of excitement at the newspaper and around the county. Innocent until proven guilty, of course, and some of the charges seem kind of ticky-tack. But as personable and likeable as Mike Carona is -- he's always been more than pleasant to me -- a whiff of corruption has hung around his office for a long time. His two top aides -- friends forever -- have been convicted of various malfeasances already, and he was known to enjoy the perks of the office and some perks that looked more like abuse of power then responsible use of it.

However, a proposal that the Board of Supervisors, if four of five agreed, should be able to remove any other countywide elected official from office, was ill-advised (even if John Moorlach, who's normally one of the good guys as politicians go, proposed it), as the Register argued in this editorial. Miike stepped aside for 60 days and the resolution was defeated. Expect a lot more fireworks.

Karen Hughes' impossible mission

Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the resignation of longtime Bush consigliere Karen Hughes from her State Department post in charge of improving the U.S. (is that GWB's?) image abroad. Oh, yes. Public diplomacy they call it. Whatever it is, she didn't do it very well, but in fairness to her the U.S. image abroad is inextricably tied to policies most people in the world resent, and until U.S. policies become more "humble" and less interventionist we'll be alienating a good deal of the world. I don't doubt that many interventionists sincerely believe they are bringing enlightenment and democracy, but military force is not only not a shortcut to the hard slogging of education, setting an example, and understanding other cultures, but it flat-out doesn't work, except in circumstances in which a semblance of civil society is already present, even if battered by war, economic hard times or whatever.

Cutting off Musharraf

It's a little dated now, what with calls from Dubya and the house arrest of Benazir Bhutto and continuing protests, but here's a link to the Register's editorial on Pakistani President Musharraf's decision to impose a wholly unnecessary state of emergency in Pakistan. It suggests that U.S. aid should not continue to a tyrant, no matter how "vital" to a "war on terro" the U.S. doesn't seem to take seriously anyway, what with so many resources being tied down in Iraq.

Musharraf arrests Bhutto

The reports aren't necessarily completely reliable, but apparently Pakistani president "Perv" Musharraf has had former prime minister Benazir Bhutto placed under house arrest, a day in advance of a planned rally against Musharraf's state-of-emergency/martial law decree. Her party memebers also report that as many as 5,000 party activists have been arrested. This reinforces the suspicion/certainty that the decree was much more about Musharraf shoring up his power by eliminating many of those opposed to his rule/policies, despite his assurance that elections will happen in February at the latest, no more than a month after the original schedule. People are guessing the emergency won't last more than a month or so, but you won't catch me speculating. Almost nothing would surprise me now,

Ron Paul's accomplishment

It will be fascinating to see just what becomes of the Ron Paul candidacy in the next few months. As Howard Kurtz at the WaPo put it, he's gotten the attention of the media in a currency the media can understand: money. (I know bloggers aren't supposed to direct readers away from their site for more than a click or two, but Howard's piece has links to responses from others, across what passes for a political spectrum these days. Worth checking out.) Some are already talking about him having the wherewithal to mount a reasonably viable third-party candidacy, and speculating on whether he would take more votes from the Republicans or Democrats. Way too early to speculate intelligently. Good stuff from Glenn Greenwald.

Unless it's done with one of the established parties, however, gaining ballot access will not be easy, even with money. I haven't paid close attention to ballot-access rules in a few years, but last time I looked they were pretty convoluted, and there were states in which it was virtually impossible to get on the ballot without starting a year or so in advance. I'd welcome more up-to-date information, and will probably make some efforts to get at it myself, or talk to people who know. At the least, gaining ballot access for a new entity will require a good deal of concerted effort that could detract from spreading the policy/phslosophy word.

Anyway, here's a link to the Register's editorial today on the Ron Paul phenomenon, noting particularly how much of an all-volunteer, bottom-up, spontaneous-order manifestation the fundraising day was. We sense a hunger for freedom and straight talking out there. I promised earlier I wouldn't say in advance that he has no chance and I won't now. He -- and the movement he's inspired -- has already accomplished more than I could have imagined, and I think we're still in the beginning stages.

Bush lectures Musharraf

So now Dubya, after several days of shilly-shallying, has told Pakistani President Musharraf he has to take his uniform off and hold elecetions close to when they are scheduled, in January. Maybe that will happen. Having sent more than $10 billion to Pakistan and created a certain dependency, Bush has at least a little hammer. But bending to the U.S. won't help Musharraf's popularity in Pakistan; he might look better to at least some Pakistanis if he defies Bush. That's why Bush's leverage is not all that great unless he's ready to stop the dole. It could well be that other factors (including resistance that has made the country less stable, not more) will militate an end to quasi-martial law before too long, however, no matter what Bush says.

By the way, Bush's defense of his treating Pakistan and Burma differently -- Pakistan is already on the road to democracy -- is incredibly lame. Why not just be more or less honest and say America's interests in the two countries differ, especially because Pakistan has nukes? Or is honesty an option only when everything else has been tried and come a cropper?