No Hedging of Hedges' Left-Wing Advocacy
 

     Anti-war reporter Chris Hedges once again uses his "Public Lives" perch to highlight left-wing viewpoints, this one drawing parallels between Hitler and the religious right in America.

     Thursday's entry, "Warning From a Student of Democracy's Collapse," highlights the paranoid views of a European history scholar who warns of fascism in America via the Christian Right, though , it's hard to figure out why the Times considers it newsworthy, given that Stern's speech came last November: "Fritz Stern, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in a speech about the danger posed in this country by the rise of the Christian right. In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as 'the instrument of providence' and fused his 'racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity.'"

     Hedges admits: "He stops short of calling the Christian right fascist but his decision to draw parallels, especially in the uses of propaganda, was controversial.'" But he gives Stern the last paranoid anti-conservative line: "'The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution,' he said, 'but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome.'"

For the rest of Hedges' profile of Fritz Stern, click here:

Yasir Arafat's "Heroic History"?
 

     Thursday's front-page story from Steven Erlanger in the West Bank on the run-up to Sunday's Palestinian elections focuses on frontrunner and media-anointed "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas while giving a "heroic" honorific to deceased terrorist leader Yasir Arafat.

     Erlanger writes of Abbas' obstacles versus anti-Israeli terrorists (or, as Erlanger has it, "warriors"): "Mr. Abbas has a bigger test -- how to convince these fighters like Qazzafi and the younger warriors, with no other skills, to abandon their struggle, with its fierce dangers and popular glamour, and let him try the soft ambiguities of diplomacy to win an independent Palestinian state. Mr. Abbas, with no heroic history like that of his predecessor as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, has been campaigning in Mr. Arafat's footsteps if not in his clothes. But even the besuited Mr. Abbas has taken to wearing a checkered kaffiyeh around his neck, framing his silk tie, and promising the fighters that he will protect them as Palestinian heroes - not crack down on them as Israel demands."

     Erlanger at least provides some balance later, revealing why Israel finds it necessary to raid Gaza, then concluding that young Palestinians "feel like prisoners": "In the last four years, Nablus and its 58 villages and four refugee camps -- some 360,000 people altogether -- have been a steady source of militants and suicide bombers. The Israeli Army is in and out of the city and its surrounding villages nearly every night, while protecting Israeli settlers and keeping a strict system of checkpoints that make travel hard for ordinary Palestinians, even back and forth to school. The raids, regular arrests of suspicious Palestinians and the checkpoints provide the Israelis remarkable intelligence about the militants and have helped stop many potential bombings. But young people feel like prisoners here, and the economy has dwindled."

For Erlanger's full report from the Gaza Strip, click here:

More Gloom in "Chaotic" Pre-Election Iraq
 

     More doom and gloom on the prospects of the upcoming elections in Iraq, in Thursday's story by Dexter Filkins (from Baghdad) and David Sanger (from Washington), focusing on recent phone conversations between President Bush and Iraqi leaders: "Yet the fact that Mr. Bush felt the need to discuss the matter with Iraq's leaders twice within 48 hours suggested a new level of concern in the White House that the movement for delay within the Iraqi cabinet must be cut off. Because Mr. Bush insists that Iraqis are now fully in control of their own country, White House officials say, the president has to move cautiously so as to not appear to be interfering in Iraq's internal politics."

     The Times then helpfully reminds us of the Iraqi president's past dealings with the CIA: "The statements from Mr. Bush and Dr. Allawi, as well as the continuing violence, demonstrated anew the stakes riding on the elections, which both American and Iraqi leaders are hoping will mark a turning point in the attempt to build a stable democratic state here. But the stepped-up campaign by the insurgents, largely dominated by the country's Sunni-Arab minority, has clearly rattled Dr. [Ayad] Allawi, a former C.I.A. confidant known for his bare-knuckle manner, and raised the prospect of an election whose results are diminished by the chaos. Looking more subdued than usual, Dr. Allawi refused to address reports that an overwhelming majority of his own cabinet favors delaying the elections. But he acknowledged disagreements among Iraqi leaders over the wisdom of holding democratic elections with a large portion of the country beset by violence."

For more of Filkins and Sanger on Iraqi election prospects, click here: