The Da Vinci Code is a mystery/detective novel by American author Dan Brown, published in 2003 by Doubleday Fiction. It is a worldwide bestseller with more than 60.5 million copies in print (as of May 2006) and has been translated into 44 languages. It is thought to be the sixth biggest selling book of all time. Combining the detective, thriller and conspiracy fiction genres, the book is part two of a trilogy that started with Brown's 2000 novel Angels and Demons, which introduced the character Robert Langdon. In November 2004, Random House published a "Special Illustrated Edition", with 160 illustrations interspersed with the text.
The plot of the novel involves a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to cover up the "true" story of Jesus. In the book, the Vatican knows it is living a lie but continues to do so to keep itself in power. The novel has helped generate popular interest in speculation concerning the Holy Grail legend and the role of Mary Magdalene in the history of Christianity. Fans have lauded the book as creative, action-packed and thought-provoking. Critics have attacked it as poorly written, inaccurate and creating confusion between speculation and fact. From a religious point of view, some critics consider it sacrilegious, and decry the many negative implications about the Catholic Church and Opus Dei.
Dan Brown's novel was a smash hit in 2003, even rivaling the sales of the highly popular Harry Potter series [1]. It spawned a number of offspring books and drew glowing reviews from the New York Times, People Magazine and the Washington Post [2]. It also re-ignited interest in the history of the Catholic Church. As well as re-invigorating interest in the church, The Da Vinci Code has also spawned numerous "knockoffs" (as they are referred to by Publishers Weekly) [3], or novels that have a striking resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, including Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar, and The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry.
Sony's Columbia Pictures has adapted the novel to film, with a screenplay written by Akiva Goldsman, and Academy Award winner Ron Howard directing. The film was released on May 18, 2006, and stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, and Sir Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing.
Plot summary
The book concerns the attempts of Robert Langdon, Professor of Religious Symbology at Harvard University, to solve the murder of renowned curator Jacques Saunière (see Bérenger Saunière) of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The title of the novel refers, among other things, to the fact that Saunière's body is found in the Denon Wing of the Louvre naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a Pentagram drawn on his stomach in his own blood. The interpretation of hidden messages inside Leonardo's famous works, (which relate to the concept of the Sacred feminine) including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, figure prominently in the solution to the mystery.
The main conflict in the novel revolves around the solution to two mysteries:
• What secret was Saunière protecting that led to his murder?
• Who is the mastermind behind his murder?
The novel has several concurrent storylines that follow different characters. Eventually all the storylines are brought together and resolved in its denouement.
The unraveling of the mystery requires the solution to a series of brain-teasers, including anagrams and number puzzles. The solution itself is found to be intimately connected with the possible location of the Holy Grail and to a mysterious society called the Priory of Sion, as well as to the Knights Templar. The story also involves a fictional rendition of the Catholic organization Opus Dei.
The novel is the second book of a trilogy by Brown in which Robert Langdon is the main character. The previous book, Angels and Demons, took place in Rome and concerned the Illuminati. Although Angels and Demons is centered on the same character it is not necessary to read the book in order to understand the plot of The Da Vinci Code. The next book is tentatively scheduled for release in 2007. Its working title is The Solomon Key, and it is understood to concern Freemasonry.
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Characters in the book
These are the principal characters that drive the plot of the story. It seems to be Dan Brown's style that many have names that are puns, anagrams or hidden clues:
Sabtu, 31 Mei 2008
Are We Alone in Love?
Only three percent of mammals (aside from the human species) form "family" relationships like we do. The prairie vole is one such animal. This vole mates for life and prefers spending time with its mate over spending time with any other voles. Voles even go to the extreme of avoiding voles of the opposite sex.
When they have offspring, the couple works together to care for them. They spend hours grooming each other and just hanging out together. Studies have been done to try to determine the chemical makeup that might explain why the prairie vole forms this lifelong, monogamous relationship when its very close relative, the montane vole, does not.
According to studies by Larry Young, a social attachment researcher at Emory University, what happens is that when the prairie vole mates, like humans, the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are released. Because the prairie vole has the needed receptors in its brain for these hormones in the regions responsible for reward and reinforcement, it forms a bond with its mate. That bond is for that particular vole based on its smell -- sort of like an imprint. As further reinforcement, dopamine is also released in the brain's reward center when they have sex, making the experience enjoyable and ensuring that they want to do it again. And because of the oxytocin and vasopressin, they want to have sex with the same vole.
Because the montane vole does not have receptors for oxytocin or vasopressin in its brain, those chemicals have no effect, and they continue with their one-night stands. Other than those receptors, the two vole species are almost entirely the same in their physical makeup.
When they have offspring, the couple works together to care for them. They spend hours grooming each other and just hanging out together. Studies have been done to try to determine the chemical makeup that might explain why the prairie vole forms this lifelong, monogamous relationship when its very close relative, the montane vole, does not.
According to studies by Larry Young, a social attachment researcher at Emory University, what happens is that when the prairie vole mates, like humans, the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are released. Because the prairie vole has the needed receptors in its brain for these hormones in the regions responsible for reward and reinforcement, it forms a bond with its mate. That bond is for that particular vole based on its smell -- sort of like an imprint. As further reinforcement, dopamine is also released in the brain's reward center when they have sex, making the experience enjoyable and ensuring that they want to do it again. And because of the oxytocin and vasopressin, they want to have sex with the same vole.
Because the montane vole does not have receptors for oxytocin or vasopressin in its brain, those chemicals have no effect, and they continue with their one-night stands. Other than those receptors, the two vole species are almost entirely the same in their physical makeup.
The Long Haul?
What about when that euphoric feeling is gone? According to Ted Huston at the University of Texas, the speed at which courtship progresses often determines the ultimate success of the relationship. What they found was that the longer the courtship, the stronger the long-term relationship.
The feelings of passionate love, however, do lose their strength over time. Studies have shown that passionate love fades quickly and is nearly gone after two or three years. The chemicals responsible for "that lovin' feeling" (adrenaline, dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, etc.) dwindle. Suddenly your lover has faults. Why has he or she changed, you may wonder. Actually, your partner probably hasn't changed at all; it's just that you're now able to see him or her rationally, rather than through the blinding hormones of infatuation and passionate love. At this stage, the relationship is either strong enough to endure, or the relationship ends.
If the relationship can advance, then other chemicals kick in. Endorphins, for example, are still providing a sense of well-being and security. Additionally, oxytocin is still released when you're having sex, producing feelings of satisfaction and attachment. Vasopressin also continues to play a role in attachment.
The feelings of passionate love, however, do lose their strength over time. Studies have shown that passionate love fades quickly and is nearly gone after two or three years. The chemicals responsible for "that lovin' feeling" (adrenaline, dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, etc.) dwindle. Suddenly your lover has faults. Why has he or she changed, you may wonder. Actually, your partner probably hasn't changed at all; it's just that you're now able to see him or her rationally, rather than through the blinding hormones of infatuation and passionate love. At this stage, the relationship is either strong enough to endure, or the relationship ends.
If the relationship can advance, then other chemicals kick in. Endorphins, for example, are still providing a sense of well-being and security. Additionally, oxytocin is still released when you're having sex, producing feelings of satisfaction and attachment. Vasopressin also continues to play a role in attachment.
Interview
Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani met with TIME’s Scott MacLeod and Nahid Siamdoust to discuss the U.S., Rafsanjani’s presidential campaign and Iran’s nukes. Excerpts:
Time. When you announced your candidacy, you said you had doubts Iran’s future. What did you mean?
We don’t want to give the playing ground to the extremist elements. Those who persuaded me believed that a moderating current in charge in the country could improve our relations with the world. I believed in their logic.
Time. May Iranians criticize you for not standing up with a louder voice for democracy in Iran. Are you in favor of democracy in Iran?
I certainly believe in democracy, but I believe we have to take this course step by step. But in Iran after the revolution, we have always had true democracy. Our constitution was also approved by the overwhelming vote the people. Everything in Iran relies on the vote of the people. What else would be your definition of democracy besides this?
Time. What do you offer to the millions of young people who are impatient and unhappy?
We have to provide educational opportunities, think about their employment, provide them better conditions to many if they’d like to. If they have views and opinions, they shouldn’t have any problems expressing them.
Time. Would you be willing to extend a moratorium on Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for improved cooperation and improved relations with the West?
No, we’re not willing to suspend. But we’re ready to provide greater assurances to the world that we won’t move from peaceful nuclear technology. If we need time and negotiations for creating this confidence, we’re prepared. Our key policy is that the world move toward total nuclear disarmament.
Time. Is it Iran’s interest to insist on your right to a fuel cycle even if it means being taken to the U.N. Security Council?
I don’t see any reason why the international community should take us to the Security Council just because we’re trying to apply our own rights. If that is what you think, then you must interpret the world as very brutal. Now, if they do take such drastic actions, it won’t be just Iran that will lose. Others will lose as well.
Time. You were fore sending of your relatives to discuss the possibility of normalizing relations with the U.S. President Reagan once sent you a bible. Does that say something about your approach to dealing with the U.S.?
This means that we don’t have any problems with the people and the country of the United States. Whenever there has been an opportunity for reasonable cooperation, we’ve seized it. It was America that initiated the cutting of relations with Iran. (In 86) we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages. But even there, the Americans behaved badly and messed up the game.
Time. Are you the statesman to take the initiative and break out of the cold war with the U.S.?
I think if the U.S. come long, it is possible to end hostilities. (The U.S.) has to take a serious step that indicate its goodwill for cooperation.
Time. When you announced your candidacy, you said you had doubts Iran’s future. What did you mean?
We don’t want to give the playing ground to the extremist elements. Those who persuaded me believed that a moderating current in charge in the country could improve our relations with the world. I believed in their logic.
Time. May Iranians criticize you for not standing up with a louder voice for democracy in Iran. Are you in favor of democracy in Iran?
I certainly believe in democracy, but I believe we have to take this course step by step. But in Iran after the revolution, we have always had true democracy. Our constitution was also approved by the overwhelming vote the people. Everything in Iran relies on the vote of the people. What else would be your definition of democracy besides this?
Time. What do you offer to the millions of young people who are impatient and unhappy?
We have to provide educational opportunities, think about their employment, provide them better conditions to many if they’d like to. If they have views and opinions, they shouldn’t have any problems expressing them.
Time. Would you be willing to extend a moratorium on Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for improved cooperation and improved relations with the West?
No, we’re not willing to suspend. But we’re ready to provide greater assurances to the world that we won’t move from peaceful nuclear technology. If we need time and negotiations for creating this confidence, we’re prepared. Our key policy is that the world move toward total nuclear disarmament.
Time. Is it Iran’s interest to insist on your right to a fuel cycle even if it means being taken to the U.N. Security Council?
I don’t see any reason why the international community should take us to the Security Council just because we’re trying to apply our own rights. If that is what you think, then you must interpret the world as very brutal. Now, if they do take such drastic actions, it won’t be just Iran that will lose. Others will lose as well.
Time. You were fore sending of your relatives to discuss the possibility of normalizing relations with the U.S. President Reagan once sent you a bible. Does that say something about your approach to dealing with the U.S.?
This means that we don’t have any problems with the people and the country of the United States. Whenever there has been an opportunity for reasonable cooperation, we’ve seized it. It was America that initiated the cutting of relations with Iran. (In 86) we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages. But even there, the Americans behaved badly and messed up the game.
Time. Are you the statesman to take the initiative and break out of the cold war with the U.S.?
I think if the U.S. come long, it is possible to end hostilities. (The U.S.) has to take a serious step that indicate its goodwill for cooperation.
The Comeback Cleric
Eight years after leaving office, Rafsanjani is poised to become Iran’s President again. Will he win over the West this time?
For a man who has spent nearly a decade out of the spotlight, Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani still knows how to make an entrance. Arriving for an interview with TIME inside a domed marble Tehran palace, Rafsanjani, 70, strides in with the bounce of a man half his age. He’s even accompanied by his film crew. It’s all part of a slick campaign aimed at selling one of Islamic Republic’s old founding fathers as a hip reformer in tune with restless young Iranians, in hopes of returning the former president to the job he left in 1997. As he settles into a gilt trimmed chair, he says he may do a campaign commercial with the Iranian director of the recent film The Lizard, a huge hit that poked rare fun at the righteous clerics who form Iran’s ruling class. “It is an idea,” Rafsanjani says. “There is no script yet.” He laughs when told that his son Mehdi has already jokingly come up with a title the Spot: The Lizard II.”
It might as well be “Rafsanjani: The Sequel.” With Iranians set to go to the polls beginning next week for the first presidential election since 2001, Rafsanjani is poised-but with a 36% showing in opinion surveys, not guaranteed-to win a third term as President, having served twice from 1989 to 1997. Known as Iran’s most cunning political actor, he has positioned himself as the most palatable compromise candidate in the eight-man race, a centrist who can act as a bridge between Iran’s hard-line conservatives and its disillusioned reformers. At the same time, he is projecting a conciliatory line toward the U.S. and its European allies, with whom the Iranian regime is engaged in a high-stakes diplomatic showdown over the country’s nuclear ambitions.
In an hour long interviewed with TIME, Rafsanjani brushes aside the enmity that has characterized U.S.-Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and intensified since President George W. Bush inducted Iran into axis of evil in 2002. “We don’t have any problems with the people and the country of the United States, he says, adding that if the U.S. release Iranian assets in America-billions of dollars have been frozen since 1979-it is possible to end hostilities.” Says Rafsanjani: “When ever there has been an opportunity for reasonable cooperation, we’ve seized it.”
Given the Islamic republic’s two-year cat-and-mouse game with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program, the world has reason to be skeptical of Rafsanjani’s emollience. Iranian and European negotiators averted a possible crisis last month in Geneva when Iran agreed to shelve plans to resume uranium enrichment activities in exchange for a European pledge to present a detailed package of economic incentives after Iran’s presidential election. Rafsanjani-who stepped up Iran’s nuclear efforts in the 90s with the construction, assisted by the Russian, of the Bushehr power plant-says he support the talks but warns the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) against dragging them out. He told TIME that Iran will eventually restart work toward completing the nuclear-fuel cycle-insisting, as the Iranian long have, that the intent is to produce energy for civilian use.
“We’re not willing to suspend,” Rafsanjani says. ”But we’re ready to provide greater assurances to the world that we won’t move from peaceful nuclear technology.” However, the Bush Administration believes that he is not likely to abandon what the U.S. regards as the regime’s ultimate goal, a nuclear weapon. “Some people think Rafsanjani is great reformer,’ a senior State Department says. “He has indicated he might want to open up relations with the U.S. But he’s also the father of the Iranian nuclear program.” Notes a senior White House official: “If you look at his past performance, you have to be skeptical, to say the least.
If nothing else, Rafsanjani has proved to be one of Iran’s most durable politicians. A confidant of revolutionary leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani served as the powerful speaker of the Majlis, or National Assembly, for nine years before becoming President two months after Khomeini’s death in 1989. In the mid-80s, he played a pivotal role in the secret arms-for-hostages talks with Reagan Administration officials. Rafsanjani acknowledged to TIME that ”we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages” held by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. He received a leather-bound Bible that Reagan sent as a gift through former aide Oliver North, which Rafsanjani says is inscribed with Reagan’s signature.
Rafsanjani’s resilience has enabled him to survive debacles that would have ruined a lesser pol. Many Iranians blame him for prolonging Iran’s eight –year war with Iraq by encouraging Khomeini to continue fighting after Iran’s decisive recapture of the gulf port of Khorramshahr in 1982. As president, Rafsanjani with stood criticism from human-rights activists and a German court for ignoring, if not approving, the murder by Iranian hit squads of regime opponents in Europe; the Iranian government rejected the accusations outright. Rafsanjani’s critics view him as opportunistic, corrupt in financial dealings and lacking guiding principles. “Have you ever heard of Machiavelli?’ ask Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the Iran Freedom Movement and a former colleague of Rafsanjani’s. His policy is always to be ambiguous. But he is a cleric, and deep down, he is a conservative.
But since announcing his candidacy for President in early May, Rafsanjani has tried to downplay his conservative reputation. When addressing young people, he emphasizes education and job opportunities but acknowledges that generation’s discontent over the lack of freedom. In campaign leaflets, he promises a transition to democracy. His makeover is testament to his ability to read political winds. The landslide re-election in 2001 of current President Mohammed Khatami made the idea of change so popular with voters that in this year’s campaign everyone is posing as reformer of some sort-even hard-line conservative, who appear in campaign posters as smiling, gentle souls.
The question on the minds of Iranians is whether Rafsanjani can deliver as President. His supporters insists that his experience and revolutionary credentials give him the clout to push through reforms-like greater press freedom, fewer dress-code and social restrictions, and better relations with the West-that are opposed by hard-line conservatives, who control the judiciary and security forces and are backed by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In recent years, the mullahs have responded to the rising clamor for change by blocking reform initiatives of the elected leadership. Khatami was so intimidated by Khamenei that in 2000 he wouldn’t shake President Bill Clinton’s hand at the U.N. without calling the Supreme Leader back home for permission, which Khamenei refused.
Sources close to Khatami say Rafsanjani and Khamenei, whose rivalry dates to the revolutionary days, have a poor relationship and that Khamenei sent a message through Khatami instructing Rafsanjani’s response: “ I am the pillar of the revolution. I don’t take permission.” When Khamenei overturned the supervisory Guardian Council’s decision to disqualify reformist presidential candidate Mustafa Moin, some Iranian analysts saw it as an attempt to whittle down Rafsanjani’s vote totals and make him a weakened victor.
Rafsanjani says he plans to reach out to disaffected young Iranians-“If they have views and opinions, they shouldn’t have any problems expressing them,” he says-but he’s likely to risk his position by pushing for radical reform. ‘I certainty believe in democracy, but I believe we have to take this course step by step,” he says. A senior White House official says that given Rafsanjani’s conservative impulses, the U.S. will continue to “talk directly to the Iranian people’ in hopes of strengthening popular opposition to the regime. Yet Rafsanjani’s gradualist approach is finding a receptive audience among some young Iranians who look at Iraq and conclude that regime change isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“Democracy won’t come overnight,” says Mohammed Moaddab, 27, a graduate student in international affairs who voted twice for Khatami but is supporting Rafsanjani. “We need realism.” That may not satisfy idealists in Tehran or Washington. But with Rafsanjani as President, that may be the most they can expect.
For a man who has spent nearly a decade out of the spotlight, Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani still knows how to make an entrance. Arriving for an interview with TIME inside a domed marble Tehran palace, Rafsanjani, 70, strides in with the bounce of a man half his age. He’s even accompanied by his film crew. It’s all part of a slick campaign aimed at selling one of Islamic Republic’s old founding fathers as a hip reformer in tune with restless young Iranians, in hopes of returning the former president to the job he left in 1997. As he settles into a gilt trimmed chair, he says he may do a campaign commercial with the Iranian director of the recent film The Lizard, a huge hit that poked rare fun at the righteous clerics who form Iran’s ruling class. “It is an idea,” Rafsanjani says. “There is no script yet.” He laughs when told that his son Mehdi has already jokingly come up with a title the Spot: The Lizard II.”
It might as well be “Rafsanjani: The Sequel.” With Iranians set to go to the polls beginning next week for the first presidential election since 2001, Rafsanjani is poised-but with a 36% showing in opinion surveys, not guaranteed-to win a third term as President, having served twice from 1989 to 1997. Known as Iran’s most cunning political actor, he has positioned himself as the most palatable compromise candidate in the eight-man race, a centrist who can act as a bridge between Iran’s hard-line conservatives and its disillusioned reformers. At the same time, he is projecting a conciliatory line toward the U.S. and its European allies, with whom the Iranian regime is engaged in a high-stakes diplomatic showdown over the country’s nuclear ambitions.
In an hour long interviewed with TIME, Rafsanjani brushes aside the enmity that has characterized U.S.-Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and intensified since President George W. Bush inducted Iran into axis of evil in 2002. “We don’t have any problems with the people and the country of the United States, he says, adding that if the U.S. release Iranian assets in America-billions of dollars have been frozen since 1979-it is possible to end hostilities.” Says Rafsanjani: “When ever there has been an opportunity for reasonable cooperation, we’ve seized it.”
Given the Islamic republic’s two-year cat-and-mouse game with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program, the world has reason to be skeptical of Rafsanjani’s emollience. Iranian and European negotiators averted a possible crisis last month in Geneva when Iran agreed to shelve plans to resume uranium enrichment activities in exchange for a European pledge to present a detailed package of economic incentives after Iran’s presidential election. Rafsanjani-who stepped up Iran’s nuclear efforts in the 90s with the construction, assisted by the Russian, of the Bushehr power plant-says he support the talks but warns the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) against dragging them out. He told TIME that Iran will eventually restart work toward completing the nuclear-fuel cycle-insisting, as the Iranian long have, that the intent is to produce energy for civilian use.
“We’re not willing to suspend,” Rafsanjani says. ”But we’re ready to provide greater assurances to the world that we won’t move from peaceful nuclear technology.” However, the Bush Administration believes that he is not likely to abandon what the U.S. regards as the regime’s ultimate goal, a nuclear weapon. “Some people think Rafsanjani is great reformer,’ a senior State Department says. “He has indicated he might want to open up relations with the U.S. But he’s also the father of the Iranian nuclear program.” Notes a senior White House official: “If you look at his past performance, you have to be skeptical, to say the least.
If nothing else, Rafsanjani has proved to be one of Iran’s most durable politicians. A confidant of revolutionary leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani served as the powerful speaker of the Majlis, or National Assembly, for nine years before becoming President two months after Khomeini’s death in 1989. In the mid-80s, he played a pivotal role in the secret arms-for-hostages talks with Reagan Administration officials. Rafsanjani acknowledged to TIME that ”we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages” held by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. He received a leather-bound Bible that Reagan sent as a gift through former aide Oliver North, which Rafsanjani says is inscribed with Reagan’s signature.
Rafsanjani’s resilience has enabled him to survive debacles that would have ruined a lesser pol. Many Iranians blame him for prolonging Iran’s eight –year war with Iraq by encouraging Khomeini to continue fighting after Iran’s decisive recapture of the gulf port of Khorramshahr in 1982. As president, Rafsanjani with stood criticism from human-rights activists and a German court for ignoring, if not approving, the murder by Iranian hit squads of regime opponents in Europe; the Iranian government rejected the accusations outright. Rafsanjani’s critics view him as opportunistic, corrupt in financial dealings and lacking guiding principles. “Have you ever heard of Machiavelli?’ ask Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the Iran Freedom Movement and a former colleague of Rafsanjani’s. His policy is always to be ambiguous. But he is a cleric, and deep down, he is a conservative.
But since announcing his candidacy for President in early May, Rafsanjani has tried to downplay his conservative reputation. When addressing young people, he emphasizes education and job opportunities but acknowledges that generation’s discontent over the lack of freedom. In campaign leaflets, he promises a transition to democracy. His makeover is testament to his ability to read political winds. The landslide re-election in 2001 of current President Mohammed Khatami made the idea of change so popular with voters that in this year’s campaign everyone is posing as reformer of some sort-even hard-line conservative, who appear in campaign posters as smiling, gentle souls.
The question on the minds of Iranians is whether Rafsanjani can deliver as President. His supporters insists that his experience and revolutionary credentials give him the clout to push through reforms-like greater press freedom, fewer dress-code and social restrictions, and better relations with the West-that are opposed by hard-line conservatives, who control the judiciary and security forces and are backed by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In recent years, the mullahs have responded to the rising clamor for change by blocking reform initiatives of the elected leadership. Khatami was so intimidated by Khamenei that in 2000 he wouldn’t shake President Bill Clinton’s hand at the U.N. without calling the Supreme Leader back home for permission, which Khamenei refused.
Sources close to Khatami say Rafsanjani and Khamenei, whose rivalry dates to the revolutionary days, have a poor relationship and that Khamenei sent a message through Khatami instructing Rafsanjani’s response: “ I am the pillar of the revolution. I don’t take permission.” When Khamenei overturned the supervisory Guardian Council’s decision to disqualify reformist presidential candidate Mustafa Moin, some Iranian analysts saw it as an attempt to whittle down Rafsanjani’s vote totals and make him a weakened victor.
Rafsanjani says he plans to reach out to disaffected young Iranians-“If they have views and opinions, they shouldn’t have any problems expressing them,” he says-but he’s likely to risk his position by pushing for radical reform. ‘I certainty believe in democracy, but I believe we have to take this course step by step,” he says. A senior White House official says that given Rafsanjani’s conservative impulses, the U.S. will continue to “talk directly to the Iranian people’ in hopes of strengthening popular opposition to the regime. Yet Rafsanjani’s gradualist approach is finding a receptive audience among some young Iranians who look at Iraq and conclude that regime change isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“Democracy won’t come overnight,” says Mohammed Moaddab, 27, a graduate student in international affairs who voted twice for Khatami but is supporting Rafsanjani. “We need realism.” That may not satisfy idealists in Tehran or Washington. But with Rafsanjani as President, that may be the most they can expect.
Chemical Bonding
In romantic love, when two people have sex, oxytocin is released, which helps bond the relationship. According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, the hormone oxytocin has been shown to be "associated with the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships and healthy psychological boundaries with other people." When it is released during orgasm, it begins creating an emotional bond -- the more sex, the greater the bond. Oxytocin is also associated with mother/infant bonding, uterine contractions during labor in childbirth and the "let down" reflex necessary for breastfeeding.
Vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone, is another chemical that has been associated with the formation of long-term, monogamous relationships (see "Are We Alone in Love?"). Dr. Fisher believes that oxytocin and vasopressin interfere with the dopamine and norepinephrine pathways, which might explain why passionate love fades as attachment grows.
Endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, also play a key role in long-term relationships. They produce a general sense of well-being, including feeling soothed, peaceful and secure. Like dopamine and norepinephrine, endorphins are released during sex; they are also released during physical contact, exercise and other activities. According to Michel Odent of London's Primal Health Research Center, endorphins induce a "drug-like dependency.
Vasopressin, an antidiuretic hormone, is another chemical that has been associated with the formation of long-term, monogamous relationships (see "Are We Alone in Love?"). Dr. Fisher believes that oxytocin and vasopressin interfere with the dopamine and norepinephrine pathways, which might explain why passionate love fades as attachment grows.
Endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, also play a key role in long-term relationships. They produce a general sense of well-being, including feeling soothed, peaceful and secure. Like dopamine and norepinephrine, endorphins are released during sex; they are also released during physical contact, exercise and other activities. According to Michel Odent of London's Primal Health Research Center, endorphins induce a "drug-like dependency.
The big question about Barack Obama
That's Barack Obama's political résumé. Is it enough to qualify him to be president?
Sure, says Carol Hood, Democratic Party chairman in Calhoun County, Iowa. "Anymore, that might be a good factor," she says. "He doesn't have a lot of people he owes things to."
Probably not, says Matt Pearson, Democratic Party chairman in Buena Vista County, Iowa. "He could use a little more experience," he says. "A lot of the people I know say they really like him, but just don't think it's his time yet."
Obama said Tuesday that this could be his time to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama, 45, said in a statement released as he created a presidential exploratory committee. "But as I've spoken to many of you in my travels … I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."
Obama's personal story, eloquence and hopeful approach to politics have made the only black in the U.S. Senate a top prospective 2008 candidate. When a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll asked Democrats and independents who lean toward Democratic candidates to choose among 15 presidential prospects last weekend, 18% said they would be most likely to support Obama. He ranked second to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the choice of 29%, and ahead of Al Gore, the 2000 presidential nominee; John Kerry, the 2004 nominee; and Kerry's running mate, John Edwards.
Edwards was a presidential candidate before he became Kerry's running mate in 2004. During his campaign, Edwards, who served one Senate term, also faced the experience issue.
"Of course" Obama will have to answer similar questions, Edwards told USA TODAY in December. "Just as I did and will, and as anybody else who wants to be president of the United States will have to do," Edwards said. "The test applies to all of us."
Obama wouldn't be the youngest presidential nominee or chief executive. William Jennings Bryan was 36 when he first became a Democratic nominee. John F. Kennedy was 43 when he was elected. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he was sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley.
Nor would Obama be the least experienced nominee or president. Wendell Wilkie had never been elected to any office before he became the Republican presidential nominee in 1940. Woodrow Wilson had been New Jersey's governor for two years when he was elected in 1912. George W. Bush served six years as Texas governor before being elected president.
Still, some Democrats say they need a more seasoned nominee who's prepared to tackle foreign policy issues such as the war in Iraq and dangerous relationships with Iran and North Korea.
Obama's inexperience is "the big question mark" about his candidacy, says Rep. Beth Arsenault, a Democrat who was just elected to the New Hampshire Legislature.
"It's not a deal-stopper necessarily," she says, "but two years in the Senate? It's not a lot."
The campaign crucible
David Axelrod, Obama's political strategist, says presidential campaigns aren't ultimately about candidates' job histories.
"Campaigns themselves are a gantlet in which you get tested," he says. "People get to see how you handle pressure and how you react to complicated questions. It's an imperfect and sometimes maddening system, but at the end of the day it works, because you have to be tough and smart and skilled to survive that process."
Some legislators who worked with Obama in the Illinois Senate say he proved he can overcome gaps in experience with his ability to quickly grasp complicated issues.
Republican Sen. Kirk Dillard, who took office in 1993, says he gravitated to Obama when the rookie arrived in Springfield in 1997.
"Sen. Obama was someone who I thought — and I was right — could tackle extremely complex things like ethics reform, the death penalty or racial profiling by law enforcement," Dillard says.
Obama was "a full partner" in drafting and passing the state's first major ethics law in 25 years, Dillard says. Obama also helped pass laws requiring that police interrogations and confessions in capital cases be videotaped and creating a state earned-income tax credit.
Such successes are rare, "especially in a rough-and-tumble place driven by seniority like Illinois is," he says.
State Sen. Donne Trotter, a Democrat, says Obama is "a quick read, a quick study."
Obama's tenure as a constitutional lawyer, he says, "prepares him to learn the intricacies and nuances of what the federal government is all about."
Trotter watched the newcomer research a universal health care system, educate other senators and become the architect of the legislation. Obama "is a reader, a learner of different approaches and philosophies," he says. "He has the brainpower to absorb the facts … and make good decisions."
'Managed to get it right on Iraq'
Obama has proved that, Axelrod says, with one decision that sets him apart from other possible Democratic presidential candidates, including Clinton: His opposition from the start to the war in Iraq. "However many gray hairs he has, he managed to get it right on Iraq," Axelrod told Chicago's WTTW-TV last week.
Experience doesn't guarantee success in the White House, historians and political scientists say.
Lyndon Johnson had a long career in Congress before becoming president, but history considers his White House record mixed because of the Vietnam War, says Dean Spiliotes, a political scientist at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Phil Gramm was a veteran senator and Lamar Alexander a former governor and Cabinet member when they ran for president in 1996, but neither won the Republican nomination, he notes.
"What really matters is your temperament and your ability to make good decisions," Spiliotes says. Voters, he says, "make their decision at a very intuitive, gut level. … They have a mental checklist of what a president looks like, sounds like and acts like."
Richard Norton Smith, a historian who has run several presidential libraries and museums, says it would be better "for Obama's sake, not to mention for the country's" if he had more experience. It would also be better if the campaign season were long enough for voters to fully gauge his character and aptitude for the presidency, Smith says.
As Obama's supporters often point out, Lincoln was a former member of the Illinois Legislature who had served briefly in Congress before becoming president. But the parallels in the men's careers are no indication of success for Obama, Smith says. Sometimes the election of inexperienced candidates whose charisma is their greatest asset "produced great presidents, and sometimes it produced decidedly mediocre ones," he says.
Nicole Schilling, chairman of the Democratic Party in Greene County, Iowa, says Obama's lack of a long political record will work to his advantage. "Some people are saying he's young, he needs to wait," she says. "I think it's going to work to his advantage here. … He's kind of a blank slate, and people are projecting what they think onto him."
'Not your Mayflower Americans'
Obama's experience is broader than his time in elected office. He was a community organizer in Chicago and led voter-registration drives. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He lived for a time in Indonesia, a Muslim country. He has traveled to the Middle East, Africa and Iraq.
"He has lived abroad and has relatives who are certainly not your Mayflower Americans and understands different cultures," Dillard says. "Many presidents with foreign-policy experience have not lived firsthand the type of life that Barack has."
None of the Democratic activists interviewed about Obama's chances suggested that his ethnicity matters, and the fact that he is black has not been a dominant factor in his campaigns.
In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote that "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America" and said it's not always easy for black politicians "to gauge the right tone to take — Too angry? Not angry enough? — when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents."
Obama's rawness has sometimes been evident since he went to Washington.
Last year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent Obama a biting letter accusing the Illinois senator of playing partisan politics in wrangling over an overhaul of ethics rules. "I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions," McCain, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2008, wrote to Obama. The two later reconciled.
At a town meeting last year in Wheeling, Ill., Obama was asked by a youngster what he would do if someone gave him $1 billion. First, Obama said he'd pay off his mortgage and give the rest to his wife. He thought a moment and revised his reply, adding that he'd give "most of it" to charity. Then he said he'd put "several hundred million into buying mosquito nets" to prevent malaria in Africa.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote about his ambition. He describes his failed 2000 campaign for Congress as a consequence of "restlessness." He described feeling "envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed, moving into higher offices, getting more things done."
Obama also wrote about his distaste for "the meaner tasks" of politics: "the begging for money, the long drives home after the banquet had run two hours longer than scheduled, the bad food and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife … who was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities."
Last fall, Obama sounded like a man planning to run for president in an interview with Men's Vogue. "My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don't want to just be the president," he said. "You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president."
Mell Brooks, Democratic chairman in Littleton, N.H., says he thinks Obama can achieve that goal despite his inexperience.
"No doubt 20 years' experience is better than 10," he says." For some individuals, it might well be a drawback, but it depends on the intellect, the knowledge and the ability of the candidate," he says. "For Obama, inexperience is not a big drawback."
Sure, says Carol Hood, Democratic Party chairman in Calhoun County, Iowa. "Anymore, that might be a good factor," she says. "He doesn't have a lot of people he owes things to."
Probably not, says Matt Pearson, Democratic Party chairman in Buena Vista County, Iowa. "He could use a little more experience," he says. "A lot of the people I know say they really like him, but just don't think it's his time yet."
Obama said Tuesday that this could be his time to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," Obama, 45, said in a statement released as he created a presidential exploratory committee. "But as I've spoken to many of you in my travels … I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."
Obama's personal story, eloquence and hopeful approach to politics have made the only black in the U.S. Senate a top prospective 2008 candidate. When a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll asked Democrats and independents who lean toward Democratic candidates to choose among 15 presidential prospects last weekend, 18% said they would be most likely to support Obama. He ranked second to New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the choice of 29%, and ahead of Al Gore, the 2000 presidential nominee; John Kerry, the 2004 nominee; and Kerry's running mate, John Edwards.
Edwards was a presidential candidate before he became Kerry's running mate in 2004. During his campaign, Edwards, who served one Senate term, also faced the experience issue.
"Of course" Obama will have to answer similar questions, Edwards told USA TODAY in December. "Just as I did and will, and as anybody else who wants to be president of the United States will have to do," Edwards said. "The test applies to all of us."
Obama wouldn't be the youngest presidential nominee or chief executive. William Jennings Bryan was 36 when he first became a Democratic nominee. John F. Kennedy was 43 when he was elected. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he was sworn in after the assassination of William McKinley.
Nor would Obama be the least experienced nominee or president. Wendell Wilkie had never been elected to any office before he became the Republican presidential nominee in 1940. Woodrow Wilson had been New Jersey's governor for two years when he was elected in 1912. George W. Bush served six years as Texas governor before being elected president.
Still, some Democrats say they need a more seasoned nominee who's prepared to tackle foreign policy issues such as the war in Iraq and dangerous relationships with Iran and North Korea.
Obama's inexperience is "the big question mark" about his candidacy, says Rep. Beth Arsenault, a Democrat who was just elected to the New Hampshire Legislature.
"It's not a deal-stopper necessarily," she says, "but two years in the Senate? It's not a lot."
The campaign crucible
David Axelrod, Obama's political strategist, says presidential campaigns aren't ultimately about candidates' job histories.
"Campaigns themselves are a gantlet in which you get tested," he says. "People get to see how you handle pressure and how you react to complicated questions. It's an imperfect and sometimes maddening system, but at the end of the day it works, because you have to be tough and smart and skilled to survive that process."
Some legislators who worked with Obama in the Illinois Senate say he proved he can overcome gaps in experience with his ability to quickly grasp complicated issues.
Republican Sen. Kirk Dillard, who took office in 1993, says he gravitated to Obama when the rookie arrived in Springfield in 1997.
"Sen. Obama was someone who I thought — and I was right — could tackle extremely complex things like ethics reform, the death penalty or racial profiling by law enforcement," Dillard says.
Obama was "a full partner" in drafting and passing the state's first major ethics law in 25 years, Dillard says. Obama also helped pass laws requiring that police interrogations and confessions in capital cases be videotaped and creating a state earned-income tax credit.
Such successes are rare, "especially in a rough-and-tumble place driven by seniority like Illinois is," he says.
State Sen. Donne Trotter, a Democrat, says Obama is "a quick read, a quick study."
Obama's tenure as a constitutional lawyer, he says, "prepares him to learn the intricacies and nuances of what the federal government is all about."
Trotter watched the newcomer research a universal health care system, educate other senators and become the architect of the legislation. Obama "is a reader, a learner of different approaches and philosophies," he says. "He has the brainpower to absorb the facts … and make good decisions."
'Managed to get it right on Iraq'
Obama has proved that, Axelrod says, with one decision that sets him apart from other possible Democratic presidential candidates, including Clinton: His opposition from the start to the war in Iraq. "However many gray hairs he has, he managed to get it right on Iraq," Axelrod told Chicago's WTTW-TV last week.
Experience doesn't guarantee success in the White House, historians and political scientists say.
Lyndon Johnson had a long career in Congress before becoming president, but history considers his White House record mixed because of the Vietnam War, says Dean Spiliotes, a political scientist at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Phil Gramm was a veteran senator and Lamar Alexander a former governor and Cabinet member when they ran for president in 1996, but neither won the Republican nomination, he notes.
"What really matters is your temperament and your ability to make good decisions," Spiliotes says. Voters, he says, "make their decision at a very intuitive, gut level. … They have a mental checklist of what a president looks like, sounds like and acts like."
Richard Norton Smith, a historian who has run several presidential libraries and museums, says it would be better "for Obama's sake, not to mention for the country's" if he had more experience. It would also be better if the campaign season were long enough for voters to fully gauge his character and aptitude for the presidency, Smith says.
As Obama's supporters often point out, Lincoln was a former member of the Illinois Legislature who had served briefly in Congress before becoming president. But the parallels in the men's careers are no indication of success for Obama, Smith says. Sometimes the election of inexperienced candidates whose charisma is their greatest asset "produced great presidents, and sometimes it produced decidedly mediocre ones," he says.
Nicole Schilling, chairman of the Democratic Party in Greene County, Iowa, says Obama's lack of a long political record will work to his advantage. "Some people are saying he's young, he needs to wait," she says. "I think it's going to work to his advantage here. … He's kind of a blank slate, and people are projecting what they think onto him."
'Not your Mayflower Americans'
Obama's experience is broader than his time in elected office. He was a community organizer in Chicago and led voter-registration drives. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He lived for a time in Indonesia, a Muslim country. He has traveled to the Middle East, Africa and Iraq.
"He has lived abroad and has relatives who are certainly not your Mayflower Americans and understands different cultures," Dillard says. "Many presidents with foreign-policy experience have not lived firsthand the type of life that Barack has."
None of the Democratic activists interviewed about Obama's chances suggested that his ethnicity matters, and the fact that he is black has not been a dominant factor in his campaigns.
In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote that "white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America" and said it's not always easy for black politicians "to gauge the right tone to take — Too angry? Not angry enough? — when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents."
Obama's rawness has sometimes been evident since he went to Washington.
Last year, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sent Obama a biting letter accusing the Illinois senator of playing partisan politics in wrangling over an overhaul of ethics rules. "I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions," McCain, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2008, wrote to Obama. The two later reconciled.
At a town meeting last year in Wheeling, Ill., Obama was asked by a youngster what he would do if someone gave him $1 billion. First, Obama said he'd pay off his mortgage and give the rest to his wife. He thought a moment and revised his reply, adding that he'd give "most of it" to charity. Then he said he'd put "several hundred million into buying mosquito nets" to prevent malaria in Africa.
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote about his ambition. He describes his failed 2000 campaign for Congress as a consequence of "restlessness." He described feeling "envy of seeing younger politicians succeed where I had failed, moving into higher offices, getting more things done."
Obama also wrote about his distaste for "the meaner tasks" of politics: "the begging for money, the long drives home after the banquet had run two hours longer than scheduled, the bad food and stale air and clipped phone conversations with a wife … who was pretty fed up with raising our children alone and was beginning to question my priorities."
Last fall, Obama sounded like a man planning to run for president in an interview with Men's Vogue. "My attitude about something like the presidency is that you don't want to just be the president," he said. "You want to change the country. You want to make a unique contribution. You want to be a great president."
Mell Brooks, Democratic chairman in Littleton, N.H., says he thinks Obama can achieve that goal despite his inexperience.
"No doubt 20 years' experience is better than 10," he says." For some individuals, it might well be a drawback, but it depends on the intellect, the knowledge and the ability of the candidate," he says. "For Obama, inexperience is not a big drawback."
The Chemistry of Love
There are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you're in love. Researchers are gradually learning more and more about the roles they play both when we are falling in love and when we're in long-term relationships. Of course, estrogen and testosterone play a role in the sex drive area (see How Sex Works). Without them, we might never venture into the "real love" arena.
That initial giddiness that comes when we're first falling in love includes a racing heart, flushed skin and sweaty palms. Researchers say this is due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we're releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the "pleasure chemical," producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, "The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and ... men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature."
Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people's brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection. According to Helen Fisher, a well-known love researcher and an anthropologist at Rutgers University, what they see in those scans during that "crazed, can't-think-of-anything-but stage of romance" -- the attraction stage -- is the biological drive to focus on one person. The scans showed increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine -- associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction. High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples in this stage of love focus intently on the relationship and often on little else.
Another possible explanation for the intense focus and idealizing view that occurs in the attraction stage comes from researchers at University College London. They discovered that people in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love "obsess" about their partner.
That initial giddiness that comes when we're first falling in love includes a racing heart, flushed skin and sweaty palms. Researchers say this is due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we're releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the "pleasure chemical," producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, "The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and ... men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature."
Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people's brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection. According to Helen Fisher, a well-known love researcher and an anthropologist at Rutgers University, what they see in those scans during that "crazed, can't-think-of-anything-but stage of romance" -- the attraction stage -- is the biological drive to focus on one person. The scans showed increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine -- associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction. High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples in this stage of love focus intently on the relationship and often on little else.
Another possible explanation for the intense focus and idealizing view that occurs in the attraction stage comes from researchers at University College London. They discovered that people in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love "obsess" about their partner.
The New Age of Terror
Soldiers in the war on terror have learned much since 9/11. So, too, has the enemy. How the London plot was foiled-and where we are in five-year struggle.
Have we learned anything since 9/11? President George W. Bush has apparently learned not to overreact. In the panicky days after the September 11 attacks, the president wanted to see ant scrap of information, no matter how thinly sourced. As a result, raw and unfiltered intelligence gushed into the Oval Office. A few weeks after 9/11, for instance, authorities in Pennsylvania received a frightening tip from an FBI office overseas: terrorist had a nuclear device on a train somewhere between Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The report went a straight to the White House, where the president was anxiously consuming threat traffic like a midlevel CIA analyst. The information, while terrifying, turned out to be bogus. Within a day it had been traced back to a conversation between two men overheard at a urinal in Ukraine.
Characteristically, some time later, Bush made a mordant joke of the scare. “Is this another Ukrainian urinal incident?” he would sarcastically inquire when some alarming but shaky intelligence came across his desk. His briefers learned to screen out the more lurid but unchecked tidbits, like the poison pen or jilted love letters that sometimes arrive at the FBI to falsely accuse a former spouse or boyfriend of conspiring with terrorist. Bush now trust his team to weed out such speculative intelligence, said senior Bush aide. The aide, who declined to be identified discussing the president’s state of mind, implied, perhaps without meaning to, that earlier in his administration the president was warier of intelligence advisers.
Though Bush can still probe the minutiae in intelligence briefings (He’s like a street cop, say Rep. Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House), the president took fairly hands-off approach to the biggest terror investigation since 9/11. Over the past several months, although British intelligence was closely tracking a plot to blow up as many as 10 airliners headed toward United States from Britain, Bush was kept only loosely in the loop. At a briefing on August.3, he was basically told,” This is happening and you should know about it, but we don’t have a lot of details yet,’ said a senior White House aide who asked to remain anonymous discussing intelligence briefings. The next day, the president was given a fuller picture. On Sunday, August. 6, Bush spent 45 minutes talking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about timing-when to alert the airlines?-but he was informed of the impending arrest only they were about to happen. At the time. He was at his Texas ranch, building a dock on the lake and riding his bike. While British intel was closing in on the alleged plotters, Bush was egging his junior aides to join the “100 Degree Club,” an annual run in the scorching heat. Bush, who has quit jogging because of bad knees, rides a bike around his panting staffers, shouting, “Keep going! You can do it!”.
Five years after 9/11, The President’s advisers say they have learned a great deal about how to fight a war on terror, and they are no doubt correct. Bush was right to step back and to let his intelligence officials do their jobs. Before 9/11, America and its allies had few, if any, spies capable of penetrating jihadist cells. Although U.S. officials knocked down press reports that the Brits were able to plan a mole inside the plot, they do say that British intelligence had help-presumably one tip and maybe more-from Britain’s large and disaffected Muslim community. And although rival intelligence agencies at home and abroad still sometimes squabble and spar (and deny and deceive), they also cooperate better than they did Al Qaeda became a truly menace. “Everything flowed and worked as it needed to,” said the Senior Bush aide. “That’s what made this a seamless operation, from start to finish.”
Unfortunately, the enemy has also learned much in this new age of terror. No matter how often the United States or its allies capture a high-value-target- a top Al Qaeda leader- a new one seems to emerge as the shadowy terror network metastasizes. It is unclear if Al Qaeda Central, a hierarchical command structure, still exerts authority, but it may no matter: with the internet and fanatical inspiration, Al Qaeda can morph and spread. The new jihadists learn from the experiments and mistakes of their predecessors. The most recent bombing against radical Islam. A plot was foiled. But a look back at recent history shows how the terrorists can turn old plots into new ones.
Back before there was a war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials could not imagine that scale of what they now face. Steven Simon was a White House national-security official who went around the world meeting with counter terror operatives in other countries, or fingernail pullers, as he jokingly called them. He was in the Philippines in the fall of 1994, chatting with some embassy officials, when he became intrigued by the strange case of a Philippines Airlines flight to Japan that had been target of a terrorist bomb over the Pacific. The Pilot had been able to land the damaged plane, but a Japanese businessman had been blown in half by the bomb planted under his seat. Law-enforcement officials couldn’t figure out a motive. The businessman didn’t seem to be the target of an assassination. Only later did Simon realize that the explosion was a test run for something much more ambitious and horrible, and that the business was only the first casualty of what the terrorist hoped would be a steep butcher’s bill.
Have we learned anything since 9/11? President George W. Bush has apparently learned not to overreact. In the panicky days after the September 11 attacks, the president wanted to see ant scrap of information, no matter how thinly sourced. As a result, raw and unfiltered intelligence gushed into the Oval Office. A few weeks after 9/11, for instance, authorities in Pennsylvania received a frightening tip from an FBI office overseas: terrorist had a nuclear device on a train somewhere between Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The report went a straight to the White House, where the president was anxiously consuming threat traffic like a midlevel CIA analyst. The information, while terrifying, turned out to be bogus. Within a day it had been traced back to a conversation between two men overheard at a urinal in Ukraine.
Characteristically, some time later, Bush made a mordant joke of the scare. “Is this another Ukrainian urinal incident?” he would sarcastically inquire when some alarming but shaky intelligence came across his desk. His briefers learned to screen out the more lurid but unchecked tidbits, like the poison pen or jilted love letters that sometimes arrive at the FBI to falsely accuse a former spouse or boyfriend of conspiring with terrorist. Bush now trust his team to weed out such speculative intelligence, said senior Bush aide. The aide, who declined to be identified discussing the president’s state of mind, implied, perhaps without meaning to, that earlier in his administration the president was warier of intelligence advisers.
Though Bush can still probe the minutiae in intelligence briefings (He’s like a street cop, say Rep. Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House), the president took fairly hands-off approach to the biggest terror investigation since 9/11. Over the past several months, although British intelligence was closely tracking a plot to blow up as many as 10 airliners headed toward United States from Britain, Bush was kept only loosely in the loop. At a briefing on August.3, he was basically told,” This is happening and you should know about it, but we don’t have a lot of details yet,’ said a senior White House aide who asked to remain anonymous discussing intelligence briefings. The next day, the president was given a fuller picture. On Sunday, August. 6, Bush spent 45 minutes talking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about timing-when to alert the airlines?-but he was informed of the impending arrest only they were about to happen. At the time. He was at his Texas ranch, building a dock on the lake and riding his bike. While British intel was closing in on the alleged plotters, Bush was egging his junior aides to join the “100 Degree Club,” an annual run in the scorching heat. Bush, who has quit jogging because of bad knees, rides a bike around his panting staffers, shouting, “Keep going! You can do it!”.
Five years after 9/11, The President’s advisers say they have learned a great deal about how to fight a war on terror, and they are no doubt correct. Bush was right to step back and to let his intelligence officials do their jobs. Before 9/11, America and its allies had few, if any, spies capable of penetrating jihadist cells. Although U.S. officials knocked down press reports that the Brits were able to plan a mole inside the plot, they do say that British intelligence had help-presumably one tip and maybe more-from Britain’s large and disaffected Muslim community. And although rival intelligence agencies at home and abroad still sometimes squabble and spar (and deny and deceive), they also cooperate better than they did Al Qaeda became a truly menace. “Everything flowed and worked as it needed to,” said the Senior Bush aide. “That’s what made this a seamless operation, from start to finish.”
Unfortunately, the enemy has also learned much in this new age of terror. No matter how often the United States or its allies capture a high-value-target- a top Al Qaeda leader- a new one seems to emerge as the shadowy terror network metastasizes. It is unclear if Al Qaeda Central, a hierarchical command structure, still exerts authority, but it may no matter: with the internet and fanatical inspiration, Al Qaeda can morph and spread. The new jihadists learn from the experiments and mistakes of their predecessors. The most recent bombing against radical Islam. A plot was foiled. But a look back at recent history shows how the terrorists can turn old plots into new ones.
Back before there was a war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials could not imagine that scale of what they now face. Steven Simon was a White House national-security official who went around the world meeting with counter terror operatives in other countries, or fingernail pullers, as he jokingly called them. He was in the Philippines in the fall of 1994, chatting with some embassy officials, when he became intrigued by the strange case of a Philippines Airlines flight to Japan that had been target of a terrorist bomb over the Pacific. The Pilot had been able to land the damaged plane, but a Japanese businessman had been blown in half by the bomb planted under his seat. Law-enforcement officials couldn’t figure out a motive. The businessman didn’t seem to be the target of an assassination. Only later did Simon realize that the explosion was a test run for something much more ambitious and horrible, and that the business was only the first casualty of what the terrorist hoped would be a steep butcher’s bill.
Types/Stages of Love: Attachment
The attachment, or commitment, stage is love for the duration. You've passed fantasy love and are entering into real love. This stage of love has to be strong enough to withstand many problems and distractions. Studies by University of Minnesota researcher Ellen Berscheid and others have shown that the more we idealize the one we love, the stronger the relationship during the attachment stage.
Psychologists at the University of Texas in Austin have come to the same conclusion. They found that idealization appears to keep people together and keep them happier in marriage. "Usually, this is a matter of one person putting a good spin on the partner, seeing the partner as more responsive than he or she really is," says Ted Huston, the study's lead investigator. "People who do that tend to stay in relationships longer than those who can't or don't."
Playing a key role in this stage are oxytocin, vasopressin and endorphins, which are released when having sex (more on this later).
Let's find out more about the chemistry of love.
Psychologists at the University of Texas in Austin have come to the same conclusion. They found that idealization appears to keep people together and keep them happier in marriage. "Usually, this is a matter of one person putting a good spin on the partner, seeing the partner as more responsive than he or she really is," says Ted Huston, the study's lead investigator. "People who do that tend to stay in relationships longer than those who can't or don't."
Playing a key role in this stage are oxytocin, vasopressin and endorphins, which are released when having sex (more on this later).
Let's find out more about the chemistry of love.
Types/Stages of Love: Lust and Attraction
There are three distinct types or stages of "love":
1. Lust, or erotic passion
2. Attraction, or romantic passion
3. Attachment, or commitment
When all three of these happen with the same person, you have a very strong bond. Sometimes, however, the one we lust after isn't the one we're actually in love with.
Lust
When we're teenagers, just after puberty, estrogen and testosterone become active in our bodies for the first time and create the desire to experience "love." These desires, a.k.a. lust, play a big role both during puberty and throughout our lives. According to an article by Lisa Diamond, entitled "Love and Sexual Desire" (Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol 13 no. 3), lust and romantic love are two different things caused by different underlying substrates. Lust evolved for the purpose of sexual mating, while romantic love evolved because of the need for infant/child bonding. So even though we often experience lust for our romantic partner, sometimes we don't -- and that's okay. Or, maybe we do, but we also lust after someone else. According to Dr. Diamond, that's normal.
Sexologist John Money draws the line between love and lust in this way: "Love exists above the belt, lust below. Love is lyrical. Lust is lewd."
Pheromones, looks and our own learned predispositions for what we look for in a mate play an important role in whom we lust after, as well. Without lust, we might never find that special someone. But, while lust keeps us "looking around," it is our desire for romance that leads us to attraction.
Attraction
While the initial feelings may (or may not) come from lust, what happens next -- if the relationship is to progress -- is attraction. When attraction, or romantic passion, comes into play, we often lose our ability to think rationally -- at least when it comes to the object of our attraction. The old saying "love is blind" is really accurate in this stage. We are often oblivious to any flaws our partner might have. We idealize them and can't get them off our minds. This overwhelming preoccupation and drive is part of our biology. We'll go deeper into the chemicals involved in attraction in The Chemistry of Love.
In this stage, couples spend many hours getting to know each other. If this attraction remains strong and is felt by both of them, then they usually enter the third stage: attachment.
1. Lust, or erotic passion
2. Attraction, or romantic passion
3. Attachment, or commitment
When all three of these happen with the same person, you have a very strong bond. Sometimes, however, the one we lust after isn't the one we're actually in love with.
Lust
When we're teenagers, just after puberty, estrogen and testosterone become active in our bodies for the first time and create the desire to experience "love." These desires, a.k.a. lust, play a big role both during puberty and throughout our lives. According to an article by Lisa Diamond, entitled "Love and Sexual Desire" (Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol 13 no. 3), lust and romantic love are two different things caused by different underlying substrates. Lust evolved for the purpose of sexual mating, while romantic love evolved because of the need for infant/child bonding. So even though we often experience lust for our romantic partner, sometimes we don't -- and that's okay. Or, maybe we do, but we also lust after someone else. According to Dr. Diamond, that's normal.
Sexologist John Money draws the line between love and lust in this way: "Love exists above the belt, lust below. Love is lyrical. Lust is lewd."
Pheromones, looks and our own learned predispositions for what we look for in a mate play an important role in whom we lust after, as well. Without lust, we might never find that special someone. But, while lust keeps us "looking around," it is our desire for romance that leads us to attraction.
Attraction
While the initial feelings may (or may not) come from lust, what happens next -- if the relationship is to progress -- is attraction. When attraction, or romantic passion, comes into play, we often lose our ability to think rationally -- at least when it comes to the object of our attraction. The old saying "love is blind" is really accurate in this stage. We are often oblivious to any flaws our partner might have. We idealize them and can't get them off our minds. This overwhelming preoccupation and drive is part of our biology. We'll go deeper into the chemicals involved in attraction in The Chemistry of Love.
In this stage, couples spend many hours getting to know each other. If this attraction remains strong and is felt by both of them, then they usually enter the third stage: attachment.
Terror management theory
Terror management theory (TMT) is a developing area of study within the academic study of psychology. It looks at what researchers claim to be the implicit emotional reactions of people when confronted with the psychological terror of knowing we will eventually die (it is widely believed that our awareness of mortality is a trait that is unique to humans). The theory was first developed in the late 1980s by Skidmore College psychology professor Sheldon Solomon, University of Arizona psychology professor Jeff Greenberg, and Colorado University @ Colorado Springs psychology professor Tom Pyszczynski, who were graduate students at the University of Kansas at the time. The trio were inspired by the theories of Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) and Freud, on how potent reminders of one's own ultimate death often provoke a belief in some form of mystical transcendence (heaven, reincarnation, spiritualism, etc.).
The theory builds from the assumption that the capability of self-reflection and the consciousness of one’s own mortality, can be regarded as a continuous source for existential anguish. Culture diminishes this psychological terror by providing meaning, organization and continuity to men's and women's lives. Compliance with cultural values enhances one's feeling of security and self-esteem, provided that the individual is capable of living in accordance with whatever particular cultural standards apply to him or her. The belief in the rightness of the cultural values and standards creates the conviction necessary to live a reasonable and meaningful life. Because of this men and women strive to have their cultural worldview confirmed by others, thereby receiving the community’s esteem. However, when one’s worldview is threatened by the weltanschauungen of another, it often results in one’s self-respect being endangered as well. In such a situation people not only endeavour to deny or devalue the importance third party weltanschauung, but try to controvert the ideas and opinions of others which may, as a consequence, escalate into a conflict.
Research has shown that people, when reminded of their own inevitable death, will cling more strongly to their cultural worldviews. The data appears to show that nations or persons who have experienced traumas (e.g. 9/11) are more attracted to strong leaders who express traditional, pro-establishment, authoritarian viewpoints. They will also be hyper-aware of the possibility of external threats, and may be more hostile to those who threaten them.
The theory gained media attention in the aftermath of 9/11, and after the re-election of President George Bush in the USA, Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK, and John Howard in Australia.
Terror management researchers have shown that making research participants think about death will lead to such changes in behaviors and beliefs that seemingly protect worldview and self-esteem. Nevertheless, these researchers have not yet demonstrated that this happens for the reason they propose, namely to alleviate unconscious fears of death. Direct tests of this hypothesis are likely to soon emerge in the scholarly literature.
The theory builds from the assumption that the capability of self-reflection and the consciousness of one’s own mortality, can be regarded as a continuous source for existential anguish. Culture diminishes this psychological terror by providing meaning, organization and continuity to men's and women's lives. Compliance with cultural values enhances one's feeling of security and self-esteem, provided that the individual is capable of living in accordance with whatever particular cultural standards apply to him or her. The belief in the rightness of the cultural values and standards creates the conviction necessary to live a reasonable and meaningful life. Because of this men and women strive to have their cultural worldview confirmed by others, thereby receiving the community’s esteem. However, when one’s worldview is threatened by the weltanschauungen of another, it often results in one’s self-respect being endangered as well. In such a situation people not only endeavour to deny or devalue the importance third party weltanschauung, but try to controvert the ideas and opinions of others which may, as a consequence, escalate into a conflict.
Research has shown that people, when reminded of their own inevitable death, will cling more strongly to their cultural worldviews. The data appears to show that nations or persons who have experienced traumas (e.g. 9/11) are more attracted to strong leaders who express traditional, pro-establishment, authoritarian viewpoints. They will also be hyper-aware of the possibility of external threats, and may be more hostile to those who threaten them.
The theory gained media attention in the aftermath of 9/11, and after the re-election of President George Bush in the USA, Prime Minister Tony Blair in the UK, and John Howard in Australia.
Terror management researchers have shown that making research participants think about death will lead to such changes in behaviors and beliefs that seemingly protect worldview and self-esteem. Nevertheless, these researchers have not yet demonstrated that this happens for the reason they propose, namely to alleviate unconscious fears of death. Direct tests of this hypothesis are likely to soon emerge in the scholarly literature.
Taking Aim at Mao :A New Biography of Mao Zedong Claims that The Chinese Leader was beyond redemption
Just so you know where they stand, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday declare in the very first sentence of their impeccably detailed biography of Mao Zedong that he “was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th-century leader.” And that’s one of the more positive things they have to say about the man who is still widely revered as the founder of the modern China. To Chang and Halliday, Mao was a scheming opportunist who butchered his way to the top, then squandered the lives and wealth of his people ina bungled quest for global influence.
The authors make an impressively strong case. Chang, a former Red Guard and barefoot doctor now married to Halliday, a British Historian, is known for her 1991 memoir Wild Swans, one the biggest-selling books of all time (10 million copies, 30 languages). Since its publication Chang has done little except delve into the life of the man who devastated her family in Wild Swans. (Her parents, dedicated Communists, were denounced as class traitors during Mao’s Cultural Revolutions; her father was tortured, driven insane and worked to death in a labor camp). Chang’s obsession is evident. About one-sixth of the 800-page Mao: The Unknown Story cites the diaries, intelligence reports, diplomatic messages and other documents she and Halliday unearthed in China, Russia and elsewhere, plus the 150 or so former Mao minions, victims and acquaintances they interviewed, including a dozen heads of state and government as well as the nurse who heard the Great Helmsamn’s last words (“I feel ill; call the doctors”). It’s difficult to gauge the reliability of all this research, but it builds a case sure to anger Mao fans everywhere, especially his successors in Beijing. Among the charges:
During China’s civil war, Mao did not organize and lead the 1934-35 Long March of Red Army remnants to safety from pursuing Nationalists. Instead, the authors say, his relatively small force was left behind by disdainful colleagues and then decimated by his own scheming and incompetence.
Mao survived the Long March largely because Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek made a secret deal with Stalin: Chiang let the Red Army escape in exchange for the Russian’s release of the Generalissimo’s son and eventual successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, held hostage in Moscow. Mao, meanwhile, solidified his power by luring a rival Red Army faction to its destruction and burying the survivors alive.
Mao didn’t fight the Japanese during World War II, according to Chang and Halliday, but instead welcomed their invasion of the mainland. He and Stalin Planned to divide China with Japan; Mao would end up running a Soviet puppet state much smaller than today’s People’s Republic.
To fund the Red Army in the early 1940s, Mao grew opium, bringing in as much as $ 60 million a year. He stopped after over-production drove down the price and Party officials-thought not Mao-decided the practice was unseemly.
Mao made a fortune in royalties from his writings, which Chinese were forced to read while other authors’ works were suppressed. According to Chang and Halliday: “ Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao’s China.”
Some of the news in the book is not new. Mao’s womanizing, gourmandizing and peculiar personal habits-his aversion to bathing and teeth brushing, for instance-surfaced in the entertaining 1994 memoir by his physician Li Zhisui. Evidence of Mao’s Machiavellian ruthlessness has been seeping out of China for years. Journalist Jasper Becker that China’s granaries were bulging during the 1958-61 famine, the worst in history.
But Chang and Halliday have some genuine scoops-on Mao’s wartime conniving with the Japanese, his key role in fomenting the Korean War and, thanks to Halliday’s excavation in newly opened Russian archives, his complex dealings with Stalin. As with Chiang, Stalin held Mao’s son Anying hostage in Moscow for four years until Mao freed a pro-Soviet Chinese official.
Chang and Halliday also connect a few dots. While 38 million Chinese were starving to death during 1958-61, much of the grain they produced was being shipped to the Soviet Union, where it accounted for two-thirds of all food imports. It was a weapons-technology-for-food program, a demonic bargain to make China a military superpower even at the cost of its own citizens’ lives. “Half of China may well have to die,” Mao said of this deal to his inner circle in 1958, according to Party documents. China’s acquisition of the atom bomb. The authors calculate, caused 100 times as many deaths as the ones dropped by the U.S. on Japan.”
The authors make an impressively strong case. Chang, a former Red Guard and barefoot doctor now married to Halliday, a British Historian, is known for her 1991 memoir Wild Swans, one the biggest-selling books of all time (10 million copies, 30 languages). Since its publication Chang has done little except delve into the life of the man who devastated her family in Wild Swans. (Her parents, dedicated Communists, were denounced as class traitors during Mao’s Cultural Revolutions; her father was tortured, driven insane and worked to death in a labor camp). Chang’s obsession is evident. About one-sixth of the 800-page Mao: The Unknown Story cites the diaries, intelligence reports, diplomatic messages and other documents she and Halliday unearthed in China, Russia and elsewhere, plus the 150 or so former Mao minions, victims and acquaintances they interviewed, including a dozen heads of state and government as well as the nurse who heard the Great Helmsamn’s last words (“I feel ill; call the doctors”). It’s difficult to gauge the reliability of all this research, but it builds a case sure to anger Mao fans everywhere, especially his successors in Beijing. Among the charges:
During China’s civil war, Mao did not organize and lead the 1934-35 Long March of Red Army remnants to safety from pursuing Nationalists. Instead, the authors say, his relatively small force was left behind by disdainful colleagues and then decimated by his own scheming and incompetence.
Mao survived the Long March largely because Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek made a secret deal with Stalin: Chiang let the Red Army escape in exchange for the Russian’s release of the Generalissimo’s son and eventual successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, held hostage in Moscow. Mao, meanwhile, solidified his power by luring a rival Red Army faction to its destruction and burying the survivors alive.
Mao didn’t fight the Japanese during World War II, according to Chang and Halliday, but instead welcomed their invasion of the mainland. He and Stalin Planned to divide China with Japan; Mao would end up running a Soviet puppet state much smaller than today’s People’s Republic.
To fund the Red Army in the early 1940s, Mao grew opium, bringing in as much as $ 60 million a year. He stopped after over-production drove down the price and Party officials-thought not Mao-decided the practice was unseemly.
Mao made a fortune in royalties from his writings, which Chinese were forced to read while other authors’ works were suppressed. According to Chang and Halliday: “ Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao’s China.”
Some of the news in the book is not new. Mao’s womanizing, gourmandizing and peculiar personal habits-his aversion to bathing and teeth brushing, for instance-surfaced in the entertaining 1994 memoir by his physician Li Zhisui. Evidence of Mao’s Machiavellian ruthlessness has been seeping out of China for years. Journalist Jasper Becker that China’s granaries were bulging during the 1958-61 famine, the worst in history.
But Chang and Halliday have some genuine scoops-on Mao’s wartime conniving with the Japanese, his key role in fomenting the Korean War and, thanks to Halliday’s excavation in newly opened Russian archives, his complex dealings with Stalin. As with Chiang, Stalin held Mao’s son Anying hostage in Moscow for four years until Mao freed a pro-Soviet Chinese official.
Chang and Halliday also connect a few dots. While 38 million Chinese were starving to death during 1958-61, much of the grain they produced was being shipped to the Soviet Union, where it accounted for two-thirds of all food imports. It was a weapons-technology-for-food program, a demonic bargain to make China a military superpower even at the cost of its own citizens’ lives. “Half of China may well have to die,” Mao said of this deal to his inner circle in 1958, according to Party documents. China’s acquisition of the atom bomb. The authors calculate, caused 100 times as many deaths as the ones dropped by the U.S. on Japan.”
Aphrodisiacs
According to the Food and Drug Administration, aphrodisiacs are based in "folklore, not fact." Still, people continue to believe in the love-inducing effects of certain foods, herbs and extracts. There are several common aphrodisiacs that may or may not have actual effects on your love life. Discovery Health listed some of these:
* Asparagus: The vitamin E in this vegetable is said to stimulate sex hormones.
* Chili peppers: Some researchers say that eating hot peppers makes us release endorphins, which might lead to "other things."
* Chocolate: This favorite for Valentine's Day contains phenylethylamine, one of the chemicals your body produces naturally when you're in love (see The Chemistry of Love).
* Oysters: Oysters contain high levels of zinc, which reportedly increased the production of testosterone. Testosterone increases libido for both sexes.
Others include Ginkgo, Spanish fly (dead beetle parts) and Damiana.
Most of these are supposed to create the desire for sex or improve male sexual ability rather than attract a mate. But, if you're stimulating hormones that make you more interested, then you're more likely to meet someone and fall in love. And, even if they don't actually work, some say that if you think it's going to work, you're halfway there.
* Asparagus: The vitamin E in this vegetable is said to stimulate sex hormones.
* Chili peppers: Some researchers say that eating hot peppers makes us release endorphins, which might lead to "other things."
* Chocolate: This favorite for Valentine's Day contains phenylethylamine, one of the chemicals your body produces naturally when you're in love (see The Chemistry of Love).
* Oysters: Oysters contain high levels of zinc, which reportedly increased the production of testosterone. Testosterone increases libido for both sexes.
Others include Ginkgo, Spanish fly (dead beetle parts) and Damiana.
Most of these are supposed to create the desire for sex or improve male sexual ability rather than attract a mate. But, if you're stimulating hormones that make you more interested, then you're more likely to meet someone and fall in love. And, even if they don't actually work, some say that if you think it's going to work, you're halfway there.
Take good care on 3 unexpected factors
Today is the last part for my post of 5 Tips to prepare yourself for risk. So I make a conclusion on the right procedure that you should care about before you invest.
First of all, you do all the research and learn A to Z of the investment. Then you do all the preparation that you should do ( Those that I mention in my tip 2). Since, now, you have the great idea on the investment, and then you should have the ability to process and make your own strategy to invest and use the benefits of the investment options that you can get. You think all the things you do is complete and the investment is 100% safe and profitable. However, I means sometimes life is not that easy, you still have the risk to lost money. Why?
When comes to investment, there are a lot of factors that outside our prediction, here is 3 that I want to share:
1. Human Factors - When comes to money, there are a lot of party involved. So as your investments. For example, you invest in a stock and you know the price will raise. However, because of a mistake that made by the CEO, the stock price is going down unexpected. So this considered human factors.
2. Timing - Timing is very important for investing. When you want to invest and at what level you must exit and take the profit. This is what we always call entry and exit level. If you enter the market or exit at the wrong timing, you probably will drop down the profit or even lost in the investment.
3. Yourself - Yes, yourself is the biggest unexpected factor. Sometimes, our emotion is the hardest to control. When comes to money, we always bring along our emotion. And the funny thing is, emotion does always affect our decision making. Even you have your own investing plan or strategy, because of your emotion you will forget the plan and make your wrong decision. I experienced this before!
PS: If you have any new suggestion, you are always welcome to give comment on this to add more tips.
Anyway we are not a god, so sometime there are a lot of thing that we can control. But 1 thing I believe and this is also what I learnt from my mentor - Experience will train you up and make your prediction and decision more accurate!
First of all, you do all the research and learn A to Z of the investment. Then you do all the preparation that you should do ( Those that I mention in my tip 2). Since, now, you have the great idea on the investment, and then you should have the ability to process and make your own strategy to invest and use the benefits of the investment options that you can get. You think all the things you do is complete and the investment is 100% safe and profitable. However, I means sometimes life is not that easy, you still have the risk to lost money. Why?
When comes to investment, there are a lot of factors that outside our prediction, here is 3 that I want to share:
1. Human Factors - When comes to money, there are a lot of party involved. So as your investments. For example, you invest in a stock and you know the price will raise. However, because of a mistake that made by the CEO, the stock price is going down unexpected. So this considered human factors.
2. Timing - Timing is very important for investing. When you want to invest and at what level you must exit and take the profit. This is what we always call entry and exit level. If you enter the market or exit at the wrong timing, you probably will drop down the profit or even lost in the investment.
3. Yourself - Yes, yourself is the biggest unexpected factor. Sometimes, our emotion is the hardest to control. When comes to money, we always bring along our emotion. And the funny thing is, emotion does always affect our decision making. Even you have your own investing plan or strategy, because of your emotion you will forget the plan and make your wrong decision. I experienced this before!
PS: If you have any new suggestion, you are always welcome to give comment on this to add more tips.
Anyway we are not a god, so sometime there are a lot of thing that we can control. But 1 thing I believe and this is also what I learnt from my mentor - Experience will train you up and make your prediction and decision more accurate!
What Makes us Fall in Love?
We all have a template for the ideal partner buried somewhere in our subconscious. It is this love map that decides which person in that crowded room catches our eye. But how is this template formed?
Appearance
Many researchers have speculated that we tend to go for members of the opposite sex who remind us of our parents. Some have even found that we tend to be attracted to those who remind us of ourselves. In fact, cognitive psychologist David Perrett, at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, did an experiment in which he morphed a digitized photo of the subject's own face into a face of the opposite sex. Then, he had the subject select from a series of photos which one he or she found most attractive. According to Dr. Perrett, his subjects always preferred the morphed version of their own face (and they didn't recognize it as their own).
Personality
Like appearance, we tend to form preferences for those who remind us of our parents (or others close to us through childhood) because of their personality, sense of humor, likes and dislikes, etc.
Pheromones
The debated topic of human pheromones still carries some weight in the field of love research. The word "pheromone" comes from the Greek words pherein and hormone, meaning "excitement carrier".
In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.
The existence of human pheromones was discovered in 1986 by scientists at the Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and its counterpart in France. They found these chemicals in human sweat. A human VNO has also been found in some, but not all, people. Even if the VNO isn't present in all of us -- and may not be working in those who do have it -- there is still evidence that smell is an important aspect of love (note the booming perfume industry). An experiment was conducted where a group of females smelled the unwashed tee shirts of a group of sweaty males, and each had to select the one to whom she was most "attracted." Just like in the animal world, the majority of the females chose a shirt from the male whose immune system was the most different from their own.
Appearance
Many researchers have speculated that we tend to go for members of the opposite sex who remind us of our parents. Some have even found that we tend to be attracted to those who remind us of ourselves. In fact, cognitive psychologist David Perrett, at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, did an experiment in which he morphed a digitized photo of the subject's own face into a face of the opposite sex. Then, he had the subject select from a series of photos which one he or she found most attractive. According to Dr. Perrett, his subjects always preferred the morphed version of their own face (and they didn't recognize it as their own).
Personality
Like appearance, we tend to form preferences for those who remind us of our parents (or others close to us through childhood) because of their personality, sense of humor, likes and dislikes, etc.
Pheromones
The debated topic of human pheromones still carries some weight in the field of love research. The word "pheromone" comes from the Greek words pherein and hormone, meaning "excitement carrier".
In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.
The existence of human pheromones was discovered in 1986 by scientists at the Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and its counterpart in France. They found these chemicals in human sweat. A human VNO has also been found in some, but not all, people. Even if the VNO isn't present in all of us -- and may not be working in those who do have it -- there is still evidence that smell is an important aspect of love (note the booming perfume industry). An experiment was conducted where a group of females smelled the unwashed tee shirts of a group of sweaty males, and each had to select the one to whom she was most "attracted." Just like in the animal world, the majority of the females chose a shirt from the male whose immune system was the most different from their own.
How does love works?
If you've ever been in love, you've probably at least considered classifying the feeling as an addiction. And guess what: You were right. As it turns out, scientists are discovering that the same chemical process that takes place with addiction takes place when we fall in love.
Love is a chemical state of mind that's part of our genes and influenced by our upbringing. We are wired for romance in part because we are supposed to be loving parents who care diligently for our helpless babies.
In this article, we'll find out what love really is and what happens in our bodies that makes us fall in love -- and ensures we stay there. We'll also look at what attracts us to someone in the first place. Is it their pheromones, or do they just fit the right "love template?"
Love is a chemical state of mind that's part of our genes and influenced by our upbringing. We are wired for romance in part because we are supposed to be loving parents who care diligently for our helpless babies.
In this article, we'll find out what love really is and what happens in our bodies that makes us fall in love -- and ensures we stay there. We'll also look at what attracts us to someone in the first place. Is it their pheromones, or do they just fit the right "love template?"
What is Love?
Romantic love both exhilarates and motivates us. It is also critical to the continuation of our species. Without the attachment of romantic love, we would live in an entirely different society that more closely resembled some (but not all) of those social circles in the animal world. The chemicals that race around in our brain when we're in love serve several purposes, and the primary goal is the continuation of our species. Those chemicals are what make us want to form families and have children. Once we have children, those chemicals change to encourage us to stay together to raise those children. So in a sense, love really is a chemical addiction that occurs to keep us reproducing.
Regardless of the country or culture, romantic love plays an important part. While cultural differences in how that love is displayed vary greatly, the fact that romantic love exists is undisputed.
But let's get down to the nitty gritty. What is it that makes us fall in love with someone in the first place?
Regardless of the country or culture, romantic love plays an important part. While cultural differences in how that love is displayed vary greatly, the fact that romantic love exists is undisputed.
But let's get down to the nitty gritty. What is it that makes us fall in love with someone in the first place?
\volume 3- Growth Investment
Through its subsidiaries, Florida-based GeoPharma Inc. (Nasdaq: GORX; Recent Price: $4.35; Market Capitalization: $42.9 million) manufactures, packages and markets over-the-counter and generic pharmaceuticals, health and beauty care, dietary supplements and convenience foods products. GeoPharma also operates a wholly owned subsidiary that is the exclusive pharmacy benefit manager for certain union health plans, insurance companies, and other self-insured companies.
The company's strategy is to build a multi-faceted company that's able to capitalize on efficiencies and synergies arising from vertically integrated operations. GeoPharma's vertical operations include the capabilities of manufacturing and distribution, sales and marketing, an in-house formulation laboratory and other chemical analysis services, customer service and public relations.
A vertically integrated model could prove to be a key advantage in the highly competitive generic pharmaceutical market where, in addition to cost efficiencies, success is often determined by the amount of time to market. According to the Generic Pharmaceutical Industry Association, generic drugs usually enter the market 30% below the brand price and decline to 60% or 70% of the brand price after two years. The market of generics has seen tremendous expansion of late, growing to $28.0 billion in 2005 from $12.0 billion in 2001, representing over half of all prescriptions. However, with intense competition quickly eroding profit margins, a vertically integrated firm stands to benefit from getting its product to market faster and from having lower unit costs associated with that product.
GeoPharma's primary manufacturing facility is a 33,222 square foot leased space in Largo, Florida. The second manufacturing facility is also located in Largo, at a size of 10,000 square feet. Combined, GeoPharma's two FDA registered facilities can manufacture approximately 900 million tablets and capsules annually. For the year ended March 31, 2005, these plants operated at 40% of capacity.
Subsidiary Belcher Pharmaceuticals, which is the prime manufacturing entity, produces over-the-counter and generic drugs as well as the company's dietary supplements. Belcher Pharmaceuticals entered the generic drug segment in March 2003. Since that time, it has acquired manufacturing rights to several key off-patent drugs for human and veterinary use.
For example, Belcher has filed a patent on a unique method to stabilize the drug Levothyroxine, sold under the brand names Synthroid (Abbott) and Soloxine/Levoxyl (King Pharmaceutical). Belcher has also filed an animal Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for Carprofen, the generic version of Pfizer's Rimadyl, arthritis and joint-ailment products prescribed for both the animal and human markets. Pfizer's patent expired in 2004.
Sales of private label pharma- and nutraceuticals, manufactured by the Belcher division, accounted for approximately 36% of total revenues, or $17.9 million for the year ended March 31, 2006. One of GeoPharma's advantages is that its private label business is not dependent on any one customer for more than 5% of its revenues.
GeoPharma Inc. subsidiary Go2PBM Services is the pharmacy benefit manager for Careplus Health Plan, a New York-based Prepaid Service Plan (PHSP) that also provides healthcare to individuals through Medicaid Managed Care, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus. Go2PBM generated one-third of GeoPharma's total revenues for the March 31, 2006, year-end, or $16.5 million.
GeoPharma Inc. subsidiary Breakthrough Engineered Nutrition markets its own branded line of dietary supplements: Lean Protein Bites, Carbslim, Lean Protein and Thermo ZXE. Roughly 29.7% of GeoPharma's total sales, or approximately $14.7 million, came from its branded products sold through the Breakthrough Nutrition subsidiary in the year ended March 31, 2006.
In August 2005, GeoPharma formed American Antibiotics to manufacture and distribute Beta-Lactam antibiotic pharmaceutical products. For the year ended March 31, 2006, revenues from the newly formed American Antibiotics totaled $0.5 million, or 3.9% of total revenues.
GeoPharma's consolidated operating revenues for the year ended March 31, 2006, were $49.74 million, up 76.2% from the year before. Likewise, gross profit increased 115.6% to $12.46 million year-over-year. Net income for the year was $1.79 million, a reversal from the net loss of $0.9 million in 2005.
GeoPharma is shifting its revenue streams along different lines, moving toward becoming vertically integrated, and in the process, improving margins significantly. For the trailing twelve months (ttm), GeoPharma's earnings totaled $0.20 per diluted share. At a price of $4.48, this translates into a pricing multiple of 22X ttm earnings. Rising Star Stocks currently rates GeoPharma a Buy with a price target of $6.00, which represents a pricing multiple of 30x ttm earnings.
The company's strategy is to build a multi-faceted company that's able to capitalize on efficiencies and synergies arising from vertically integrated operations. GeoPharma's vertical operations include the capabilities of manufacturing and distribution, sales and marketing, an in-house formulation laboratory and other chemical analysis services, customer service and public relations.
A vertically integrated model could prove to be a key advantage in the highly competitive generic pharmaceutical market where, in addition to cost efficiencies, success is often determined by the amount of time to market. According to the Generic Pharmaceutical Industry Association, generic drugs usually enter the market 30% below the brand price and decline to 60% or 70% of the brand price after two years. The market of generics has seen tremendous expansion of late, growing to $28.0 billion in 2005 from $12.0 billion in 2001, representing over half of all prescriptions. However, with intense competition quickly eroding profit margins, a vertically integrated firm stands to benefit from getting its product to market faster and from having lower unit costs associated with that product.
GeoPharma's primary manufacturing facility is a 33,222 square foot leased space in Largo, Florida. The second manufacturing facility is also located in Largo, at a size of 10,000 square feet. Combined, GeoPharma's two FDA registered facilities can manufacture approximately 900 million tablets and capsules annually. For the year ended March 31, 2005, these plants operated at 40% of capacity.
Subsidiary Belcher Pharmaceuticals, which is the prime manufacturing entity, produces over-the-counter and generic drugs as well as the company's dietary supplements. Belcher Pharmaceuticals entered the generic drug segment in March 2003. Since that time, it has acquired manufacturing rights to several key off-patent drugs for human and veterinary use.
For example, Belcher has filed a patent on a unique method to stabilize the drug Levothyroxine, sold under the brand names Synthroid (Abbott) and Soloxine/Levoxyl (King Pharmaceutical). Belcher has also filed an animal Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for Carprofen, the generic version of Pfizer's Rimadyl, arthritis and joint-ailment products prescribed for both the animal and human markets. Pfizer's patent expired in 2004.
Sales of private label pharma- and nutraceuticals, manufactured by the Belcher division, accounted for approximately 36% of total revenues, or $17.9 million for the year ended March 31, 2006. One of GeoPharma's advantages is that its private label business is not dependent on any one customer for more than 5% of its revenues.
GeoPharma Inc. subsidiary Go2PBM Services is the pharmacy benefit manager for Careplus Health Plan, a New York-based Prepaid Service Plan (PHSP) that also provides healthcare to individuals through Medicaid Managed Care, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus. Go2PBM generated one-third of GeoPharma's total revenues for the March 31, 2006, year-end, or $16.5 million.
GeoPharma Inc. subsidiary Breakthrough Engineered Nutrition markets its own branded line of dietary supplements: Lean Protein Bites, Carbslim, Lean Protein and Thermo ZXE. Roughly 29.7% of GeoPharma's total sales, or approximately $14.7 million, came from its branded products sold through the Breakthrough Nutrition subsidiary in the year ended March 31, 2006.
In August 2005, GeoPharma formed American Antibiotics to manufacture and distribute Beta-Lactam antibiotic pharmaceutical products. For the year ended March 31, 2006, revenues from the newly formed American Antibiotics totaled $0.5 million, or 3.9% of total revenues.
GeoPharma's consolidated operating revenues for the year ended March 31, 2006, were $49.74 million, up 76.2% from the year before. Likewise, gross profit increased 115.6% to $12.46 million year-over-year. Net income for the year was $1.79 million, a reversal from the net loss of $0.9 million in 2005.
GeoPharma is shifting its revenue streams along different lines, moving toward becoming vertically integrated, and in the process, improving margins significantly. For the trailing twelve months (ttm), GeoPharma's earnings totaled $0.20 per diluted share. At a price of $4.48, this translates into a pricing multiple of 22X ttm earnings. Rising Star Stocks currently rates GeoPharma a Buy with a price target of $6.00, which represents a pricing multiple of 30x ttm earnings.
Viven A. Schmidt
WHEN GEORGE BUSH ANNOUNCED the beginning of a new world order, he had in mind a world in which democratic governments would together keep peace in the world and make it possible for everyone to be free to prosper in a liberalizing international economy. Peace, as we quickly came to see, was a pipe dream, as has been global prosperity. The only part of the agenda that has been continuing on schedule is the liberalizing. Capital has become increasingly mobile and business increasingly international as borders that act as barriers to trade fall and as regulations that constrain commerce are lifted.
This has largely been the product of the concerted efforts of nation-states that, through international trade organizations such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), international financial entities such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and regional bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have sacrificed their own independence as they have increased that of business. It has also resulted from the political and economic reforms internal to nation-states, such as privatization, deregulation, and decentralization, which have diminished central governments' powers at the same time that they have freed business even more.
What are the consequences of this liberalized new world order for the nation-state? In this essay I argue that however beneficial it may be for global prosperity and business, the jury is still out regarding its effects on global democracy and government generally. Because the international and regional organizations in no way constitute supranational governments, and because they quite narrowly focus on trade, they are freeing business from the traditional constraints imposed by national governments and societal interests without substituting some equivalent at the supranational level. The result is a strengthening of business, with transnational corporations less tied to nations and national interests, and a weakening of the nation-state overall, in particular of the voice of the people through legislatures and nonbusiness, societal interests.
Some would counter that the rise of regional and international trade organizations will have strengthened the nation-state by reinforcing executive power and reinvigorating the rule of law;(1) and that business will always be subject to national regulation, whatever the origin of that regulation. This is, no doubt, true, but it suggests a partial view of what constitutes strength for the executive and implies a limited definition of the nation-state, since it ignores the role of legislatures and societal interests. Moreover, it entirely overlooks the potential impact of all of this on the state-society relationship, and it denies the effect on nations of multinational corporations that put global profits before community interests.
To begin with, while the power of the executive may be enhanced, autonomy will be diminished, as governments must negotiate with others on the formulation of policies that in the past had been their purview alone. Moreover, the strengthening of the executive and the judiciary refers primarily to powers over legislative and societal interests, not to state capacity, which will in many cases be weakened. By liberalizing their trade policies, by deregulating their economies, and by privatizing their enterprises, national governments have much less control over what goes on in their own territory or what their own multinationals do elsewhere, and they no longer have the resources they had in the past to solve social problems. At the same time, multinational corporations are less bound economically, politically, and morally to nation-states, while supranational bodies such as GATT, NAFTA, and the EU, by concentrating on trade, have given scant attention to the social spillovers.
Most importantly for issues of democracy in the nation-state is the fact that at the same time that the executive may very well have been strengthened, the legislature is likely to be weakened, to say nothing of the societal interests that will have increasing difficulty gaining a voice in decisions made at the supranational level that cannot be modified at the nation-state or local levels. In other words, deliberative democracy may also suffer as a result of this new economic world order. But it will suffer differently, depending upon the nation's particular characteristics as well as the extent to which it had to change in order to meet the competitive challenges created by the new international economic environment. Within Europe, the smaller European countries and France have suffered more disruption than Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. The two most powerful economies in the world, the United States and Japan, have so far felt very little of all this, although they are likely to feel the effects increasingly over the next few years, as regional trade bodies such as NAFTA or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gather momentum, and as the World Trade Organization (WTO) develops.
Thus, nation-states are experiencing the disruptive effects of the new economic world order at different rates, and although many will undergo a weakening of the nation-state and of the voice of the people, a few may find one or the other strengthened--Italy and Japan being cases in point. Overall, however, democracy is at risk.
None of this is to suggest that we should turn back the clock and abandon the international and regional attempts at coordinating economic policy. It is, rather, to point to the dangers inherent in these attempts and to recommend that governments begin thinking of ways to overcome the greatest threats to national democracy and, by extension, to global stability. The real challenge is not so much to establish supranational bodies capable of ruling on the whole panoply of social and economic problems involved in the internationalization of trade as to ensure that nation-states provide new vehicles for democratic expression at the national level that also provide national democratic access to supranational decisionmaking.
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURES ON THE NATION-STATE
In recent years, the editorial pages of newspapers have been covered with impassioned accounts of the problems confronting nation-states. Some have been concerned that the internationalization of the financial markets has left governments with minimal influence and little to do other than stabilize prices and government spending in order to avoid pressures on their currency and to attract investment. Others have expressed alarm over the growing power and concentration of multinational business (the top five hundred of which control two-thirds of world trade). Yet others have warned of the potential labor adjustment difficulties and the threat to national labor and environmental standards resulting from the efforts of international and regional trade organizations, in particular with regard to NAFTA. And some have even linked the internationalization of trade to the breakup of the nation-state, not only by reference to the relatively benign cases of separatist movements in places such as Quebec, Catalonia, and the Basque region, but also in terms of fundamentalist religious and communitarian movements.
In response to many of these problems have come increasing calls for the creation of supranational political institutions to deal with the social spillovers resulting from the decisions of supranational economic institutions. So far, such calls have fallen on deaf ears. No one wants to meddle with the markets.
The Pressures from the Rise of Business
There is little new in the argument that the increasing internationalization of business has freed it from the constraints of national governments. In the 1960s and 1970s, a vast literature developed on multinationals that saw the increasing economic interdependence and technological advances in communications and transportation as contributing to the escape of large corporations from nation-state control, and even to the rise of a new transnational corporation that would lose all national identification.(2) Very quickly, however, scholars found that the view of the overarching power of the multinational corporation and the concomitant decline of the nation-state, whether seen in a positive or negative light,(3) was overstated. Much of it overestimated the power of the multinational corporation and underestimated that of the nation-state.(4)
The predictions of the 1970s appear more relevant today, as home and host countries have been giving up their traditional controls over business in a wide range of areas in the context of international and regional trade agreements. As a result, multinationals have been coming closer to the "stateless" ideal that in recent years has come to symbolize the escape of business from nation-state control, where companies aspiring to status as global corporations seek to dissociate themselves from their countries of origin, with their operations scattered around the world and their subsidiaries lobbying as members of whatever country in which they are located.(5)
The statelessness of the multinational manifests itself in a variety of ways: the dispersion of operations; the loss of loyalty to home or host country when it comes to jobs and operations; and the ability to avoid burdensome taxes. As US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has argued, the dispersion of operations through the growing numbers of joint ventures, the increasing importance of capital markets for financing, the multinational character of production, and so forth, make corporations part of a "global web" that increasingly defies categorization by national origin.(6) Moreover, along with this dispersion of operations, multinationals have increasingly lost any sense of obligation to stay in communities in which they have invested. Even multinationals from countries such as Germany, where corporations have traditionally felt a social obligation to the community in which they operate, have increasingly been relocating with an eye to lower taxes and lower wages. And whether they stay or move, multinationals successfully use their mobility to pressure workers and to gain wage concessions. Finally, multinationals have also been quite adept at minimizing their tax liabilities through transfer pricing, setting profits or losses in countries where tax laws are beneficial to the company, despite the best efforts by countries such as Japan and the United States to limit this practice.
This has largely been the product of the concerted efforts of nation-states that, through international trade organizations such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), international financial entities such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and regional bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have sacrificed their own independence as they have increased that of business. It has also resulted from the political and economic reforms internal to nation-states, such as privatization, deregulation, and decentralization, which have diminished central governments' powers at the same time that they have freed business even more.
What are the consequences of this liberalized new world order for the nation-state? In this essay I argue that however beneficial it may be for global prosperity and business, the jury is still out regarding its effects on global democracy and government generally. Because the international and regional organizations in no way constitute supranational governments, and because they quite narrowly focus on trade, they are freeing business from the traditional constraints imposed by national governments and societal interests without substituting some equivalent at the supranational level. The result is a strengthening of business, with transnational corporations less tied to nations and national interests, and a weakening of the nation-state overall, in particular of the voice of the people through legislatures and nonbusiness, societal interests.
Some would counter that the rise of regional and international trade organizations will have strengthened the nation-state by reinforcing executive power and reinvigorating the rule of law;(1) and that business will always be subject to national regulation, whatever the origin of that regulation. This is, no doubt, true, but it suggests a partial view of what constitutes strength for the executive and implies a limited definition of the nation-state, since it ignores the role of legislatures and societal interests. Moreover, it entirely overlooks the potential impact of all of this on the state-society relationship, and it denies the effect on nations of multinational corporations that put global profits before community interests.
To begin with, while the power of the executive may be enhanced, autonomy will be diminished, as governments must negotiate with others on the formulation of policies that in the past had been their purview alone. Moreover, the strengthening of the executive and the judiciary refers primarily to powers over legislative and societal interests, not to state capacity, which will in many cases be weakened. By liberalizing their trade policies, by deregulating their economies, and by privatizing their enterprises, national governments have much less control over what goes on in their own territory or what their own multinationals do elsewhere, and they no longer have the resources they had in the past to solve social problems. At the same time, multinational corporations are less bound economically, politically, and morally to nation-states, while supranational bodies such as GATT, NAFTA, and the EU, by concentrating on trade, have given scant attention to the social spillovers.
Most importantly for issues of democracy in the nation-state is the fact that at the same time that the executive may very well have been strengthened, the legislature is likely to be weakened, to say nothing of the societal interests that will have increasing difficulty gaining a voice in decisions made at the supranational level that cannot be modified at the nation-state or local levels. In other words, deliberative democracy may also suffer as a result of this new economic world order. But it will suffer differently, depending upon the nation's particular characteristics as well as the extent to which it had to change in order to meet the competitive challenges created by the new international economic environment. Within Europe, the smaller European countries and France have suffered more disruption than Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. The two most powerful economies in the world, the United States and Japan, have so far felt very little of all this, although they are likely to feel the effects increasingly over the next few years, as regional trade bodies such as NAFTA or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gather momentum, and as the World Trade Organization (WTO) develops.
Thus, nation-states are experiencing the disruptive effects of the new economic world order at different rates, and although many will undergo a weakening of the nation-state and of the voice of the people, a few may find one or the other strengthened--Italy and Japan being cases in point. Overall, however, democracy is at risk.
None of this is to suggest that we should turn back the clock and abandon the international and regional attempts at coordinating economic policy. It is, rather, to point to the dangers inherent in these attempts and to recommend that governments begin thinking of ways to overcome the greatest threats to national democracy and, by extension, to global stability. The real challenge is not so much to establish supranational bodies capable of ruling on the whole panoply of social and economic problems involved in the internationalization of trade as to ensure that nation-states provide new vehicles for democratic expression at the national level that also provide national democratic access to supranational decisionmaking.
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURES ON THE NATION-STATE
In recent years, the editorial pages of newspapers have been covered with impassioned accounts of the problems confronting nation-states. Some have been concerned that the internationalization of the financial markets has left governments with minimal influence and little to do other than stabilize prices and government spending in order to avoid pressures on their currency and to attract investment. Others have expressed alarm over the growing power and concentration of multinational business (the top five hundred of which control two-thirds of world trade). Yet others have warned of the potential labor adjustment difficulties and the threat to national labor and environmental standards resulting from the efforts of international and regional trade organizations, in particular with regard to NAFTA. And some have even linked the internationalization of trade to the breakup of the nation-state, not only by reference to the relatively benign cases of separatist movements in places such as Quebec, Catalonia, and the Basque region, but also in terms of fundamentalist religious and communitarian movements.
In response to many of these problems have come increasing calls for the creation of supranational political institutions to deal with the social spillovers resulting from the decisions of supranational economic institutions. So far, such calls have fallen on deaf ears. No one wants to meddle with the markets.
The Pressures from the Rise of Business
There is little new in the argument that the increasing internationalization of business has freed it from the constraints of national governments. In the 1960s and 1970s, a vast literature developed on multinationals that saw the increasing economic interdependence and technological advances in communications and transportation as contributing to the escape of large corporations from nation-state control, and even to the rise of a new transnational corporation that would lose all national identification.(2) Very quickly, however, scholars found that the view of the overarching power of the multinational corporation and the concomitant decline of the nation-state, whether seen in a positive or negative light,(3) was overstated. Much of it overestimated the power of the multinational corporation and underestimated that of the nation-state.(4)
The predictions of the 1970s appear more relevant today, as home and host countries have been giving up their traditional controls over business in a wide range of areas in the context of international and regional trade agreements. As a result, multinationals have been coming closer to the "stateless" ideal that in recent years has come to symbolize the escape of business from nation-state control, where companies aspiring to status as global corporations seek to dissociate themselves from their countries of origin, with their operations scattered around the world and their subsidiaries lobbying as members of whatever country in which they are located.(5)
The statelessness of the multinational manifests itself in a variety of ways: the dispersion of operations; the loss of loyalty to home or host country when it comes to jobs and operations; and the ability to avoid burdensome taxes. As US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has argued, the dispersion of operations through the growing numbers of joint ventures, the increasing importance of capital markets for financing, the multinational character of production, and so forth, make corporations part of a "global web" that increasingly defies categorization by national origin.(6) Moreover, along with this dispersion of operations, multinationals have increasingly lost any sense of obligation to stay in communities in which they have invested. Even multinationals from countries such as Germany, where corporations have traditionally felt a social obligation to the community in which they operate, have increasingly been relocating with an eye to lower taxes and lower wages. And whether they stay or move, multinationals successfully use their mobility to pressure workers and to gain wage concessions. Finally, multinationals have also been quite adept at minimizing their tax liabilities through transfer pricing, setting profits or losses in countries where tax laws are beneficial to the company, despite the best efforts by countries such as Japan and the United States to limit this practice.
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