SPEAKING OF JUNK MAIL, can someone please explain to me how hotmail's junk mail filter lets through emails advertising all sorts of unlikely propositions, but decided to kibosh my email subscription to SmarterTimes?
COLBERT KING has an exhaustive description of the events surrounding an Arab Secret Service Agent's being asked to leave Flight 363. It looks like the airline screwed the pooch -- one report says that the flight attendant who reported his "suspicious Arabic print book" rifled the guys stuff until she found an English-print book (the agent doesn't read Arabic) on the Crusades. On the other hand, it was a middle eastern guy with a gun who said he was a Secret Service agent. I've seen Federal Government ID's -- give me half an hour, a computer, and a substandard laminator, and I could make one. Nor, if I were suspicious, would I want to call any number he gave me.
I feel about this the way I feel about racial profiling by cabdrivers -- I'm against it, but then I'm not the one who has to get behind the wheel. One of my dear friends' husband drove a cab while he was in law school, and she couldn't go to sleep until he got in ca. 4:30 am. During that year, he was robbed at gun or knifepoint something like seven times. Would I be courageous enough to stick to my principles? I can't say -- I live in the least physical danger of any generation in history. So I find it hard to judge others in that situation, even though I think that they were wrong.
Patrick Ruffini notes that I haven't any email address on the page, so I've included it on your left, in the recommended format to evade spammers -- although I already get so many emails wanting to refinance my mortgage, offer me a sure-fire way to make money working out of my own home, or show me FREE pictures of hot! hot! hot! teenage girls that I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not somehow sending secret messages to the spammers via my holiday shopping. (Hmmm. . . she ordered a men's extra large heather tweed sweater from Land's End. THAT must mean she wants to see dirty pictures!)
The Economist has its typical thorough and insightful analysis of the Argentina problem. It brought to my attention something I had known -- but not really thought about -- before: most Argentinians keep their long term debt in dollars, since banks (correctly, it turns out) don't trust the government not to impose a little ad hoc debt relief via hyperinflation. Thus, all the ranting about how the United States is crippling Argentina's capital markets is wide of the mark; those markets trade in dollars. Yes, the Government could follow Paul Krugman's advice and convert all those loans into pesos so that the magic of inflation can make all those voters' debts disappear. But like everything else the Argentinian government has done to its economy, these things are one trick ponies -- how will you build any sort of capital market if lenders think that the government will seize investments at will?
"The Operation was a success, but the patient died." Converting debts to inflatable pesos (sounds like a not-very-successful children's game) would solve the immediate problem of stagnation due to crippling deflation only by replacing it with an equally immediate problem: cobbling together any sort of working economy. Economies above the level of agrarian thugocracies are dependant on a functioning capital market of some sort. If the government changed dollar debts into pesos, the capital flight would make the '98 Asian crisis look like a day in the park. Restoring sufficient confidence to build a functioning, entrepreneurial economy after such a step would take exactly the sort of drastic steps that Argentina's political class has been previously unwilling or unable to make -- which is what got the country into this mess in the first place.
The Economist article offers this and several other key insights, but its typically understated style gave me a belly laugh. "They face some tough decisions," says the Economist. Why, yes they do: "The economy is on the brink of collapse and the country is divided by political factionalism and social strife. Since July, Argentina’s economy has contracted at an annual rate of 11% according to one estimate. Nearly a fifth of the workforce is unemployed. The informal economy was also hit by the unpopular decision to limit the amount of cash which savers could withdraw from banks. Unless Mr Duhalde acts decisively, there is a risk that Argentina could slide towards anarchy and mob rule." Impossible choices might be a little closer to the mark.
As I was cruising around Patrick Ruffini's excellent site, what did I see but my name in the links section! It was the first time (as far as I know) that someone's spontaneously linked to the site, and it was quite exciting. So thank you, Mr. Ruffini, if you're reading this, and I hope your readers are enjoying this half as much as I've enjoyed your site.
Cultural Imperialism, says the Economist. I've always wondered, but assumed it was because one week is a quarter (almost) of a lunar month. Turns out the explanation is much more interesting than that.
One of my guilty pleasures is reading the Amazon customer reviews of controversial books, such as Michael Bellesiles' Arming America. The pro-book posts, while heavily larded with fulmination about right wing gun nuts, seem to have some good points, notable among them that the controversial research is actually a small part of the book. So the moral dilemma: do I pay money to find out for myself, thus lining the pockets of someone who has, to all appearances, committed massive scholarly fraud, or do I paddle along in ignorance?
Straight from the Washington Post, a Green Beret was killed by small-arms fire near the Pakistan border. They're witholding his name until they can notify the family. I don't want to hear any more from the supporters of Taliban Johnny that he wasn't there to kill Americans. That's exactly what he was there for, and I have little doubt that he knew it.
THE NEW YORK POST SAYS that if the government gets involved in the WTC reconstruction all we'll be left with is a hole in the ground.. That being what we have now: I took my first walk through the site for a couple of weeks today, and the scope of the progess is breathtaking; a huge multistory culvert has been revealed, while the rest of the site looks like an enormous quarry. While my personal preference is for a memorial park, such a thing would almost certainly destroy the lower economy of lower Manhattan. Which may be the point for many groups; the article points out that the environmental interest groups would like to see "lower Manhattan returned to its natural state". Which is a joke, since the portion of lower Manhattan in question's "natural state" is the Hudson River Estuary -- the entire thing is built on landfill. The article gives an excellent overview of all the various interest groups that will conspire to see nothing gets built (no, not on purpose -- think gridlock) should the government take over the project.
ALL RIGHT, ENOUGH OF THIS WAR STUFF -- let's talk politics. In the New York Post, Jonathan Podhoretz posits that 2002 will be s surprise to everyone due to gerrymandering, which Mickey Kaus takes down in his latest assignment desk. Meanwhile, Patrick Ruffini brings us Bush/Rice '04. What I want to know is who the Democrats will put up? I've said for a long time that the Democrats would never nominate Gore again, and the numbers seem to confirm it. It seems clear that John Kerry is out of the running. Daschle? Gephardt? The one's too far to the left; the other, IMHO, just shot his campaign in the foot by arranging for the stimulus bill to fail. (For which I humbly thank God every day. Nonetheless, it won't do him any good -- and you can tell he knows it, from the desperate, pleading tone in his voice when he says "a bad stimulus bill is worse than no stimulus bill at all". I'm not sure Daschle will work out in the majority as well as he did in the minority; as Grandma says, "if 'no' is all you have to peddle, go knock on someone else's door.")
This leaves you know who -- the one who looks like she's laying the groundwork for a run the same way she did for her Senate race -- slowly and carefully. I can't stand the lady, kept my voter registration in New York during my years at school solely so that I could vote against her, and doubt that she has the charisma to be elected president. But looking back on the masterful way she built up to victory in New York, I have to give her credit for having a great deal more political savvy than she lets on.
Some guy I've never heard of thinks that the anthrax letters were sent by a bio-defense specialist in order to raise the profile of bio-weapons. The evidence seems a little thin -- the anthrax was well-weaponized, of the same (extremely common) type the US bio-defense program worked with, and the envelopes were tightly taped. While he sounds a little like those guys in Idaho ranting about the black helicopters, I suppose it could be true.
Krugman (natch) says that it's where the democrats are. He bemoans the (well, let's posit it, anyway) fact that the Republicans have shifted to the right while the Democrats have stayed put. This is the same phenomenon that plagues the liberal camp in so many quarters -- choosing your baseline year with exquisite care in order to bolster your position. To wit: the Crusades were a religious war during which we tried to steal land from its rightful owners, the Muslims. Baseline Year, ca. 700 AD. But let's set our baseline year 150 years earlier. Now we note that the Muslims stole that land from its rightful owners, the Christians. 700 years earlier: Rightful owners, the Greeks. Before them, the Persians, Babylonians, Jews, Canaanites (from whom some have argued that the Arabs are descended). . . you get the picture.
Similarly, Paul Krugman is saying that in the 70's, the political spectrum was considerably skewed to the left. He calls that center the "real" center. But I don't like that baseline year. I prefer 1920 (since it's older, it must be more authentic, right?). In which case Krugman is a red-loving nut and I'm a libertine radical. An excellent article linked from FrontPage attributes this to lack of self-reflection or coherent philosophy on the part of liberal intellectuals.
Instapundit can't get to Andrew Sullivan's new website from Netscape, only Explorer. I can't get to it at all, which leads me to believe that the problem is not the browser. I think I'm starting to go into withdrawal. . . the snakes! the snakes!
The New York Times says that the most important thing Argentina's new president must do is build consensus. Not find a way out of the currency crisis. Not meet the challenges the nation faces in the wake of its foreign debt default. Not, God forbid, liberalize its moribund regulations, regularize its tax system, and provide the framework for stable, entrepreneurial growth. No, what Argentina really needs is a big bipartisan hug, cuddle, and smooch to get itself out of this mess.
What's particularly odd to me (although not, I admit, to the editorial board of the Times) is that the article takes no interest in what this consensus would enable the new president to accomplish. While there is an argument to be made that the president will require as broad a coalition as possible in order to avoid rioting following the strong measures necessary in order to put the economy in order, the Times scrupulously avoids making it. No, consensus is an end in itself, like peace on earth or chocolate ice cream.
1. Businesses start investing again, especially in technology
Mmm. . . yes and no. Certainly we won't see the recession end without a pick up in investment. But looking for technology to end the recession may be a mistake. Software, maybe -- but my professional judgement is that the heydey of firms turning over their technology infrastructure every two years are over.
2. When companies start warning of better, instead of worse, profits.
Sounds good to me.
3. When stores and dealers start complaining that inventories are low
Okay. . . but while the tone of the article is optimistic that the end of the recession may be near, here the authors admit that in fact the only business where inventories are currently tight is autos. As I've said elsewhere, 0% financing is not a reliable guage of where the economy is.
Interesting side note -- Just-in-Time production was supposed to reduce the role of inventory in the business cycle. Turns out inventories still play a big part -- but I suspect that if this recession is short, a lower build-up of inventory due to JIP will be part of the reason.
4. When sales of high-end homes strengthen in high-tech hotbeds.
Er -- not. Those homes were MONSTROUSLY overvalued. Friends on the west coast report that many owners are stuck in an equity trap, where the mortgaged value of the home is higher than its current value, and owners are grimly holding on to avoid losing everything -- a fate avoided in Manhattan only because co-op boards usually won't allow you to mortgage up more than 25%-50% of the value of your home. If they were sensible, of course, they'd let the homes go -- but then the raft of defaults would make it hard to get a mortgage in the Bay Area anyway, not to mention the damage to credit ratings. . .
This article is terribly sure that the next boom will be as tied to technology as the last one was. Follow this logic too well and we'd all be plowing our money into whalers and railroad stocks.
5. When aluminum smelters start making aluminum again
This is a reference to the California energy crisis, which drove prices so high that aluminum producers with long-term contracts found it more profitable to shut down their smelters and resell the power than to make aluminum. Now that energy prices are falling, they still aren't -- because the global recession has left aluminum prices weak. Seems a minor point, but it's certainly an interesting one.
6. When Gary Condit returns to the Headlines
I don't even want to discuss this one. The only way I want to see this man in the headlines again is if he's arrested or dead. (No, I am not wishing for his death. May it be many years off and may I never hear his name again until that sorrowful day.)
Perry DeHavilland predicts disaster for the euro. I can't argue with his conclusion -- he's closer to it than I am, and he thinks, per my post below, that the eurocrats will succeed in forcing social policy to the greatest common denominator.
Now that the Euro is a fait accompli, the long slow glide begins, perpetually pointed just below the distant horizon. The interest rates prevailing across a very significant area of the industrialised world will now be set to suit the business cycles of France and Germany. Many predict that once the economies of Europe are integrated like that of the United States, that will cease to be a matter of concern. And of course they are correct, once the fringe economies are flattened.
However, I have to take issue with his monetary analysis:
All that is different in Europe because whereas NAFTA has purely economic objectives, the Euro has mostly political ones. Sophisticated and relatively efficient European core economies will no longer have to deal with defensive depreciation of Spanish, Italian, Greek or Irish etc. currencies and will simply wipe out pools of local capital that might have buoyed up less effective local producers. This in and of itself is not automatically a bad thing, provided the local capital markets can adjust... which of course they will not be able to do. The mid to late 1990's surge in the US economy was a disaster for Argentina, whose currency was pegged to the greenback, because unlike the US, it was not experiencing an economic surge. No mechanism was readily and incrementally available to off-set the asymmetries by allowing the currency to naturally devalue. With the Euro, which is in effect an ersatz Deutschmark/Franc hybrid, this same toxic effect will happen to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal etc. with one big difference... it will probably happen to many of them at once when the cycle begins, as it surely will.
I've done a little classwork on the Argentinian crisis (a couple of my professors saw this coming last spring), and my impression is that the capital markets are not the greatest problem Argentina faces. Argentina's inability to issue debt was due to its moribund economy, which in turn was due to a competitive devaluation by Brazil which Argentina was unable to follow, and a combination of idiotic social and economic policies that left the government unable to cut spending or get rid of vast inefficient tracts of the economy. With its own currency, its a (fairly) easy bet that Argentina might be still solvent -- but only because they would be inflating their way out of the problem, destroying the value of financial assets and devastating their capital markets much more thoroughly than dollarization did. We might also explore the "death spiral" effect of repeated competitive devalutations; check Europe in the 1930's. Argentina's currency did not appreciate relative to Brazil's because of the natural processes of economic fluctuation; they did so because Brazil's government thought they could get an edge.
Yes, Argentina suffered from deflation. But deflation doesn't have to cause suffering -- we had it for quite some time without serious damage, both in the 19th century and in parts of the 20th. Deflation is a problem when it is a) sudden and unexpected and b) accompanied by structural problems in the economy: a speculative bubble and subsequent problems with the banking system in 1930's America, combined with an idiotic obsession with Keynsian economics manipulating gold; a speculative bubble and subsequent problems with the banking system in present-day Japan, combined with an all-too realistic obsession with Keynsian economics and the demographic disaster heading down the pike (their incredibly low birth rate: they're not even replacing themselves. The Japanese thus are determined to save! save! save! for their retirement.) This causes what is known as a "Liquidity Trap", in which the government is powerless to reverse deflation through traditional means because (this is a gross simplification, but well. . . ) because any money they inject into the economy gets stuffed under mattresses instead of spent.
All of which is to say that while I agree that rigidity in the labor and (possibly, if the governments are really slow and stupid) capital markets will make local monetary policy extremely problematic -- as it already did in Ireland (outrageous tax surpluses as they tried to substitute fiscal policiy for monetary policy to keep growth at a sustainable level). Nonetheless, I'm betting Ireland will do okay, just as I'm betting Spain and Portugal will not. The reason, of course, is that Spain's social and economic policies are extremely destructive to their economy. This effect will be much more pronounced, IMHO, than transient currency issues. Business cycles DO harmonize -- witness that Ireland moved off Britain's cycle onto Europe's without major disaster (I think -- I may be treading on thin ground). They can't harmonize if the government interferes. So I predict that government policies will be much more important than monetary fluctuation in the coming years.
Euro: Surreptitious Capitalist Revolt or Power-Grab By EuroCrats?
Sorry for all the links to a subscribers-only site (highly recommend getting a subscription, though), but this article on the euro is too good to pass up.
It's authors make several great points:
1) Transparent purchasing decisions mean the effective end of individual governments to offload social costs onto businesses and consumers. Make your VAT too high and ALL your buyers -- and investors -- will decamp elsewhere.
2) Labor, on the other hand, will remain largely immobile for some time. This could be disastrous for regions like Spain, with high unemployment and now no ability to affect monetary policy. The authors fret that these regions could become permanent wards of the EU.
3) Their most interesting suggestion is that people who know that their labor markets are too rigid and social spending is too high, but despair of changing it, are using the Euro to, as they put it, "Bring in Thatcherism by the back door."
The idea that the Euro will create a Thatcher-like revolution is interesting -- and certainly possible. I think it is also possible, however, that the pressures will work the other way, forcing all member states near to the most rigid and repressive in the union, rather than the least. I do think that whichever way it goes, all governments will have to go to one standard or the other. Which one they choose will depend on how badly powerful decision-makers like France fare under the new regime, and whether or not they can get the Eurocrats enough power to drag everyone else down with them.
Having only recently convinced my mother that the reason drug prices are so high is that the US is funding all the drug research for the world, rather than because drug companies are evil price gougers, I was happy to see this article in the WSJ saying that drug companies have threatened to pull some drugs off the market rather than sell at marginal-cost pricing (subscription required. As the article notes, the average cost of research and developement for a new drug is $800 million; for political reasons, monopoly health providers in Europe try to force companies to sell the drugs based on what it cost to make them, rather than what it cost to develop them in the first place, leaving the drug companies to recoup the entire cost of development in the only remaining free market: the US. Now that US consumers are starting to rebel, drug makers have threatened to pull some of their patented products off the shelf in key nations like France rather than accept such below-market prices. The WSJ, and I, applaud.
However, I'm not sure it will work. If Pfizer pulls Viagra, will France just stop offering it because it's under patent -- or proclaim the right of the people to have -- er, ahem, anyway, proclaim the right of the people, and authorize a generic manufacturer to produce it? My bet is the latter. I don't know how possible it is -- but mightn't the drug companies start refusing to patent their product, selling it only by mail from some unregulated island? After all, if the governments of the world succeed, they'll legislate the companies out of existance anyway, for the short-term political gain of lower prices. An interesting thought, anyway.
OpinionJournal has a piece on the meteoric success of Bias, the CBS insider expose of the practices which skew the media to the left.
Priceless line: "Bias--is flying off the shelves and headed, this coming weekend, to sixth place on the New York Times best seller list."
One can only imagine the consternation at the Times. Tee-hee.
You should also follow the link to the original story that started Mr. Goldberg's exodus, which has a great deal on Mr. Forbes flat tax. Points to remember:
1) Mr. Forbes is a wing-nut who hopelessly exaggerates the cost of a flat tax. 2) Most tax experts agree that the corporate tax costs the economy far more just in preparer's fees, not to mention all the money and effort spent doing otherwise pointless things to avoid taxes, than it reaps in tax revenue. Forget corporate fat cats -- that's your retirement money they're spending. (Unless you think your pension fund/401k is invested only in non-fat-cat type companies). 3) The estimated cost of tax preparation just in fees is apparently on the order of $300 billion dollars -- money that could be a) practically painlessly recouped through higher tax rates or b) spent on actually making or doing things people want, rather than the non-wealth creating activity of avoiding taxes. (Granted it's wealth creating for the individuals in question, usually, not to mention H&R Block. But for the economy as a whole, it's not.) 4) Generous standard deductions could mitigate the effect on the poor.
I've never understood the vehement liberal objection to the flat tax. Any (reputable) economist will tell you that it's the best thing for society as a whole; the elimination of deductions means that those rich bastards at the top will pay quite a lot more of their income than those at the bottom, especially with generous exemptions. Even a progressive (but otherwise deduction free) tax would free up a ton of wealth currently dedicated to the tax system. Unless you're one of those idiots who believes that a better economy can only be built on the backs of the poor (I actually saw a radio host on Fox News the other night saying that she believed that rising unemployment over the next year would cause the economy to grow. Workers of the world, unite!) I don't see what the problem is. Except that you're more concerned with who has more of what than ensuring that everyone has enough of what they need. But that's a different post. . .
Fascinating article in the WSJ (subscription required) on says major long-distance carriers are raising the rates. It seems that AT&T is trying the same strategy as big-city mayors during the 70's -- as they lose rate payers (mayors to the suburbs; major carriers to wireless and email), they're making up the revenue by raising rates. If it worked in Detroit. . .
Even more interesting is the payments to the "Universal Service Fund". These are mandatory lump sums the carriers have to pay into the fund that subsidizes rural telephone service. Leaving aside the question of whether land lines are the appropriate technology in the age of wireless, that subsidy is apparently 10-11% of the original bill. Lesson on Why Things the Government Gives Away are Not Free: Next time you open your phone bill, say to yourself "Approximately 10% of my long distance bill every month goes to the fund that makes sure Harrison Ford et al have phones on their Montana ranches."
Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve, the much maligned inspiration behind much of Ronald Reagan's tax policy, has an article in the op-ed section of today's Wall Street Journal arguing that Europe must intervene to keep the Euro strong (Subscription required).
Some of his points are interesting: for example, that while the Euro has already depreciated 30% against the dollar (meaning it takes more Euros to buy a given amount of dollars, for the non-economically minded), the only thing that's kept it from depreciating further is the spike in demand pending switchover. Friends abroad report that a stunning volume of old currency is tumbling out from underneath European mattresses during the run-up to the change -- let's hear it for the grey economy! He's certainly right to hope that we'll see an economic spurt from lowered transaction costs (although some of those transaction costs, such as those Italian debt issuance, or smuggling, probably should be kept high). And he is right to ask whether businesses will be willing to hold a depreciating asset, although confident assertions that Europe will suffer capital flight (the run on currencies that caused the '98 meltdown in Asia) seem a little extreme. Most interesting is his assertion that a single strong currency, while good for the US government, isn't necessarily good for US businesses or consumers, because it enables the Treasury to manipulate monetary policy to benefit the Treasury rather than those who hold the currency.
Other of his points are a little wacky. To wit: "Strong economies don't have weak currencies." Except, you know, Japan in the 80's. Or "Many of the euro's nascent problems might have been avoided if Europe just latched on to the German mark and made it the common currency". Or if the money fairy had just waved her magic wand and made Italy fiscally responsible, Spain's labor market liquid, and France willing to accept Germany as its central bank. . . Laffer strikes me as the kind of economist who spends a little too much time staring at those curves. But it's nice to see him getting out and about again.
"Rodriguez Saa said with bitterness that he had lost crucial support within his own Peronist party. Senate leader Ramon Puerta, who was technically in line to take office and had already served as acting president for 48 hours last week, immediately resigned his leadership post to avoid being forced to reassume the presidency."
It seems that Mr. Raa had been in power only a few days before the violent street protests began targeting his administration instead of the previous one, though he'd barely had time to make a few disastrous decisions about Argentina's economic future, much less get used to answering when people said "Mr. President". Now Argentinian political leaders are engaged in a lightning-fast game of "not it!", and interim leadership may devolve on whoever's too stupid or slow to duck -- say, the Argentinian equivalent of the most junior Senate page.
Links work! At least, sort of! Included at the bottom, note the link to evil Princetonian Dave Tepper ;-) who tried to sneak Cornel West onto the cool green hills of Penn.
For the New Year, I've decided to shake things up a bit. Since I'm still figuring out how to make those darn links work -- yes, I know how sad it is to see a former networking professional who can't code simple web page -- no great loss. Here goes!
The New Republic has a curiously crowing article on the defection of Jim Jeffords. It seems that now he's actually made the switch, Jeffords has less power than he did under the Republicans, for the following reasons:
1) The Democrats are pissed that Jeffords helped the tax cut pass 2) Trent Lott will never, ever stop hounding him for switching. The Republicans in both House and Senate are going after every pet project of Jeffords for the sheer pleasure of making him pay. 3) Daschle can't ride to the rescue because a) He's in a little trouble himself right now (think of all those Republicans now gleefully planning a 2002 campaign on "The Daschle Economy". b) The Northeastern Dairy Compact don't play in South Dakota 4) His pet projects are stupid. I come from a long line of Northeastern dairy farmers, and while I'm glad my fellow citizens are helping them hold out a little longer, they're still having to sell out to the corporate farms that reap the lion's share of the subsidies. His other pet project, more money for special education, would be nice in an ideal world, but in New York at least, special education money is already the fastest growing segment of the school budget (except, of course, for administration.) 5) (This isn't actually in the article) The Democrats are very, very worried about Zell Miller. Unlike Jeffords, he's been getting very little from them, and hence has less to suffer by switching. Nor do the Democrats have a nasty lower house to punish Miller with if he does switch.
Tee-hee. There's nothing so much fun as seeing the punctured pride of someone who would actually write a book titled My Declaration of Independance.
Al-Quaeda is Even More Terrifying than We Thought!
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an article about memos found on a captured Al-Quaeda computer. Excerpts from the memos show that they have mastered not only conventional military weapons of terror, but also the equally deadly corporate blatherspeak. It turns out that even if you are crouching in a cave, you have to dress up your documents with double-talk and euphemism. Some excerpts:
Files outlining al Qaeda efforts to launch a program of chemical and biological weapons, code-named al Zabadi, Arabic for curdled milk. As part of the plan to develop a "home-brew nerve gas," members were given a long reading list that included a study titled "Current Concepts: Napalm."
[Coming soon, "Best Practices: Torture and Mutilation in a Field Environment]
A video file in which Osama bin Laden speaks for 23 minutes, focusing on what he calls America's anti-Muslim crusade and mentioning the Sept. 11 attacks. Another video shows a top al Qaeda cleric and spokesman, Sheikh Abu Gaith, appearing to acknowledge al Qaeda responsibility for the strikes. "God Almighty has enabled our brothers to carry out these strikes," he says, "and make the enemies of God taste what they made our brothers taste."
A letter in which a militant using the name Abu Yaser stresses that "hitting the Americans and Jews is a target of great value and has its rewards in this life and, God willing, the afterlife." The letter is addressed to top al Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri and the author says he has written to Mr. bin Laden separately.
A memo referring to a "legal study" on "the killing of civilians." The writer, acknowledging this is "a sensitive issue," says he has found ways to keep "the enemy" from using the killing of "civilians, specifically women and children," to undermine the militants' cause.
All that's missing is this memo, now a legend on the internet.
