Political pawns - Boycott is a disservice to Latino students

San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

May 1, 2006

Peaceful protests are an essential part of democracy. Advocates of amnesty for illegal immigrants have as much right as anyone else to take to the streets and press their cause. In fact, their doing so is a sign of overdue Latino participation in the political process.

All the same, it's hard to see how any good can come from today's planned “national boycott” to demand amnesty for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. That's because the organizers have gone well beyond peaceful marches and have urged their supporters to skip work and school, right down to the elementary classroom.

For immigrant students struggling to learn an unfamiliar language and become acculturated to a new country, what could be more self-defeating than staying out of school? Boycott advocates are doing a tremendous disservice to Latino schoolchildren by using them as mere political pawns.

Certainly immigrant parents should recognize the value of schooling. Without a good education, their children will be condemned to low-paying jobs and denied the opportunity for upward mobility experienced by previous waves of second-generation Americans. You may believe missing one day of school can't hurt. But the truth is that urging kids to boycott school for political purposes sends the destructive message that school is not important.

Parents, if you won't listen to us, listen to Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, a strong proponent of immigration rights: “Go to work, go to school – and then join us at a major rally afterward.” To their credit, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and San Diego Unified Superintendent Carl Cohn also have called on students not to cut class today.

By contrast, the Democratic majority in the California Senate ought to be ashamed for throwing its support behind this exercise, as it did in a resolution praising “The Great American Boycott of 2006.” Regrettably, teachers unions in several major cities also have encouraged young people to boycott classes today, and have demanded that they not be punished for doing so. This stance only reaffirms the cynical view that teachers unions care very little about the welfare of students.

As for adult workers who stay off the job today, their boycott may stir more backlash than sympathy. Similarly, the appearance of Mexican flags at previous rallies already has prompted harsh reactions from the majority of Americans who believe immigrants have an obligation to become assimilated in the United States. This sentiment underlies President Bush's sensible declaration that the national anthem should be sung in English, not Spanish, as in the new recording called “Nuestro Himno.”

Assimilation as Americans is the paramount principle that all of us, regardless of our ancestry, should embrace on this May Day.

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me@rescam.org

Crisis is not just about oil prices

JIM HOAGLAND
THE WASHINGTON POST

May 1, 2006

BERLIN - German motorists shrug off gasoline prices that have gradually climbed above $6 a gallon. So while President Bush scrambles to show angry voters that he is fighting gas prices of more than $3 a gallon, Chancellor Angela Merkel leisurely turns her thoughts to summit meetings and vision statements.

This seeming contrast will feed the stereotype of car-happy, wasteful Americans getting their comeuppance while energy-circumspect Europeans smugly motor on. Three decades of high gasoline taxes – they are 60 percent or more of the retail price in much of Europe – have apparently numbed Europeans to oil supply shocks and forced them to accept fuel conservation as a way of life.

But take a closer look at Merkel's meeting in Russia with Vladimir Putin last week and her upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., this week. Energy anxiety leads Merkel's summit lists with an urgency and importance that match American desperation on oil. The anxiety is expressed differently – natural gas and nuclear energy are the hot buttons here – but it surfaces throughout the Continent.

Energy resources and shortages, in their many different forms, dominate the global agenda today as dramatically and as dangerously as they did in the multiple “energy crises” of the 1970s. No underlying issue unites and then divides citizens and countries more than do the man-made scarcities and misuse of fossil fuel, nuclear and alternative energy.

Those problems require a global response from consumers rather than the fractured, nation-by-nation competition that currently prevails. Amazingly, the mechanism for such cooperation already exists. What is lacking is the political will to use it effectively.

So Bush scrambles and Merkel broods as she plans her agenda-setting policy declaration to the German Parliament on May 11. The world's leaders are rediscovering that threats to energy supplies reach deep into national psyches, for good reasons.

Disorder and disruption of those supplies suggest to citizens that their leaders have lost control over events, a devastating blow to national confidence and trust.

In London and Berlin last week, I found officials consumed by pronouncements on natural gas supplies coming out of Putin's cash-rich and newly assertive Russia. A threat by Gazprom, the giant Russian energy supplier, to discriminate against Europe on future gas contracts in favor of China and the United States focused minds and brought conciliatory gestures toward Moscow in both capitals.

A new pipeline under the Baltic Sea for Russian gas supplies was a big item for Merkel's meeting with Putin in the western Siberian town of Tomsk on Wednesday. Putin struck the pipeline deal with Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. But Merkel has been careful to confirm the deal and to insulate it from her challenges to Putin on human rights and other political issues. She was more subdued in dealing with a Russian president who sees himself as a much more powerful figure in the world than he did when they first met three months ago.

Putin has increased his leverage over the West by playing hard to get on Iran and its double-edged energy challenge to the world. Iran's ability to disrupt world oil markets provides a shield against international pressure to abandon its nuclear enrichment program. Russia is crucial to the threat of international sanctions that Merkel and Bush hope will dissuade Iran from pursuing enrichment.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the journalistic war chatter coming out of Washington, the diplomatic effort to get Russia and China to support a U.N. Security Council resolution mandating that Iran suspend enrichment has made progress in recent days, according to U.S. and European officials. That resolution and the graduated campaign of new pressures that it would unlock will be discussed in a high-level six-power meeting in Paris on Tuesday.

However the Iranian case is resolved, there is fresh interest in the establishment of an international nuclear fuel bank to plug the loopholes that Iran has exploited in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The best candidate to oversee the fuel bank is the 26-member, Paris-based International Energy Agency.

The IEA, founded in 1974 as a counter to OPEC, has been allowed to languish since then and has a professional staff of only about 150 employees. But it has the potential to become the effective advocate and coordinator for oil-importing countries that U.S. officials foresaw at its outset.

Western leaders urgently need not only to calm their publics about energy supplies but also to begin a long-term program to reduce their vulnerabilities to foreign upheaval and blackmail. Bush and Merkel should put revitalization and redirection of the IEA at the top of their talks, which should cover a lot more than the price of gas.

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me@rescam.org

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Shah of Iran's Heir Plans Overthrow of Regime

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me@rescam.org

Republican leader predicts immigration backlash

By Dan Whitcomb
Reuters

May 1, 2006

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Massive nationwide boycotts and rallies by pro-immigration forces will turn Americans and conservative Republicans against their cause, the leader of congressional opposition to immigrant amnesty said on Monday.

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, leader of House Republicans opposed to a guest-worker program supported by President George W. Bush, said the May 1 walkout by hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and supporters was destined to backfire.

"I couldn't be happier (with the protests) because every single time this kind of thing happens, the polls show that more and more Americans turn against the protesters and whatever it is they are trying to advance," Tancredo told Reuters in an interview.

"My guess is that Americans are going to say 'What are those people doing waving all those other flags and what's this about changing the national anthem into Spanish?" he said, a reference to a furor by the release of a Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Tancredo said his fellow Republican lawmakers in the House have received calls all day from constituents registering their disapproval with the protests and urging a bill that would increase enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The House approved last December a Republican-sponsored bill that would tighten enforcement along the southern border and build a wall to stem the flow of migrants.

But Tancredo faces some opposition even from within his own party, where business-minded Republicans, including Bush, say the economy needs migrant labor to do jobs many Americans don't want.

Tancredo said that the U.S. Senate seemed likely to reach agreement on an opposing bill that would grant amnesty to many of those who were here illegally, which would then require approval in the House -- which he said would be a tough sell.

Tancredo said pro-immigrant activists may have oversold their national day of action after "announcing that they were going to bring America to its knees" and achieving a lesser impact.

"I think 50,000 people protested in Denver, Colorado (on Monday)," he said. "Remember, when the Broncos won the SuperBowl in 1998 there were 600,000 people in the streets."

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me@rescam.org

Radical groups taking control of immigrant movement

By Lou Dobbs
CNN

May 1, 2006

NEW YORK (CNN) -- We all awoke to headlines in our nation's most important newspapers reminding us that this is "A Day Without Immigrants." Not illegal immigrants, mind you, but immigrants.

USA Today headlined today's demonstrations and boycott "On Immigration's Front Lines." The New York Times headlines its story "With Calls for Boycott by Immigrants, Employers Gird for Unknown." The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times are both calling their coverage "The Immigration Debate."

These major newspapers obviously don't want to disturb their readers with the information that today's demonstrations and boycott are about illegal immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens.

CNN and Fox News are both using a banner calling their coverage "A Day Without Immigrants," while MSNBC is titling its coverage "Immigrant Anger."

Most of the mainstream media has been absolutely co-opted by the open borders and illegal immigration advocates. I'm not opposed to demonstrations and protests of any kind, even by those who are not citizens of this country, because one way or another, demonstrations and protests enrich and invigorate the national debate and raise the public consciousness of truth.

But only one newspaper, to its credit, reported that illegal aliens and their supporters' boycott of the national economy on the First of May is clear evidence that radical elements have seized control of the movement. The Washington Post, alone among national papers, reported that ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) has become an active promoter of the national boycott.

Some illegal immigration and open borders activists in the Hispanic community are deeply concerned about the involvement of the left-wing radical group. But others, like Juan Jose Gutierrez, whom I've interviewed a number of times over the past several months, manages to be both director of Latino Movement USA and a representative of ANSWER.

As Gutierrez told us on my show, "The time has come...where we need to stand up and make a statement. We need to do what the American people did when they pulled away from the British crown. And I am sure that back in those days many people were concerned that was radical action."

Just how significant is the impact of leftists within the illegal immigration movement? It is no accident that they chose May 1 as their day of demonstration and boycott. It is the worldwide day of commemorative demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and even anarchic organizations.

Supporters of the boycott have made no secret of their determination to try to shut down schools, businesses and entire cities. Much of Los Angeles' Seventh Street produce market, which supplies thousands of local restaurants and markets, is closed today. Many meat-packing companies like Cargill and Tyson are also closing many of their plants.

"The meat packers are confirming what we know," says University of Maryland economics professor Peter Morici, "and that is that this large group of illegal aliens in the United States is lowering the wage rate of semiskilled workers, people who are high school dropouts or high school graduates with minimal training."

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

Radicalism is not confined to Gutierrez and Latino Movement USA. Ernesto Nevarez of the L.A. Port Collective is promising to shut down the Port of Los Angeles today: "[Transportation and commerce] will come to a grinding halt. ...They are going to put a wall along the border with Mexico. We're going to put a wall between us and the ocean. And those containers ain't going to move."

No matter which flag demonstrators and protesters carry today, their leadership is showing its true colors to all who will see.

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me@rescam.org

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Fiddling with oil - Political pandering supplants sound strategy

San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

May 2, 2006

Gasoline prices are outrageous, but the response in Washington is just shameful.

A worldwide energy crisis may be unfolding, but the Republicans who control Congress are largely focused on topping Democrats in pandering to voters ahead of the November elections. Worse, most of the proposals swirling around are certain to do more harm than good.

The most cynical is a plan put together by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to send taxpayers $100 of their own money to somehow ease the pain at the pump. No better is the Democrats' push for a 60-day suspension of the federal tax on gasoline, which is 18.4 cents a gallon.

This isn't tax relief. At most, the pandering politicians are talking about subsidizing two or three fill-ups at today's prices. And the proposals already are falling flat: Congressional offices have been buried with scorn from angry voters, who know deep down that any cash coming from Washington is theirs in the first place.

Speaking of taxes, Congress just eight months ago passed an energy bill that gave away $5 billion in special tax breaks to the oil industry. President Bush has called for taking away such goodies, noting correctly that with crude oil at $70 a barrel, the industry doesn't need extra incentives to drill.

But Frist fancies himself a candidate for president in 2008. He doesn't want a tax hike on his record going into a Republican primary season. So Frist has instead called for outlawing an arcane accounting convention known as “last in, first out.” Oil companies use it, and it shrinks tax bills when prices are going up. Elimination would amount to a giant tax hike. But it would also hurt companies in dozens of other industries, ranging from retail to manufacturing, that also use the accounting convention.

Equally foolish are the Democrats, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who advocate outright price controls or a “windfall profits” tax on the oil industry. Let's pause to review: Both political parties in Washington are backing token relief measures for consumers that, if more money was involved, could stimulate demand for gasoline by either lowering pump prices or rebating cash. At the same time, both parties want to jack up taxes on producers, thus removing incentives to produce greater supplies. This is a recipe for even higher prices.

There is a glimmer of hope that the nation's leaders grasp the laws of supply and demand. For example, Frist is again pushing to allow oil exploration in a small sliver of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. If President Clinton had signed the last bill to open up ANWAR, the United States would have dramatically more crude oil today.

On the other hand, President Bush has steadfastly refused to cut demand. Congress is talking openly about raising mileage standards for cars and trucks, but Bush says he will support only a program that carves out exceptions for gas-guzzling SUVs.

Like the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s, today's spasm of high prices could end in short order. But some analysts predict a long epoch of dwindling supplies and ruinous prices.

If they are right, the American people will suffer this generation of leaders who value political stunts over sound, long-term strategy.

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me@rescam.org

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Equally foolish are the Democrats, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who advocate outright price controls or a “windfall profits” tax on the oil industry. Let's pause to review: Both political parties in Washington are backing token relief measures for consumers that, if more money was involved, could stimulate demand for gasoline by either lowering pump prices or rebating cash. At the same time, both parties want to jack up taxes on producers, thus removing incentives to produce greater supplies. This is a recipe for even higher prices.

Some of you here are clearly of the "tax people to fix things" philosophy. So here's a question for you: should the gov't pass a "windfall profits" tax, do you think prices would go higher or go lower? Do you think that the oil companies would pass that tax directly onto the consumer in the form of higher prices? I'm mean that's exactly what they do now. Or do you think the company would lower prices to avoid paying the tax? Heh heh.

On the other hand, President Bush has steadfastly refused to cut demand. Congress is talking openly about raising mileage standards for cars and trucks, but Bush says he will support only a program that carves out exceptions for gas-guzzling SUVs.

Dubya has nothing to do with demand, but this one is interesting for another reason. If you raise the mileage standards for vehicles, you make gasoline cheaper for the miles driven. For example, say a 20 gallon tank in X car would originally take you 400 miles. After "raising the mileage standards" car X will now take you 600 miles. Sure the car uses less gasoline per mile, but your cost to use the car has fallen, it has become cheaper. Do you think people use more or less gasoline when it becomes cheaper?

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Labor shortage?
Falling wages debunk claims on immigrant labor

By Alan Tonelson; a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation, is a columnist for the americaneconomicalert.org Web site and the author of “The Race to the Bottom.”

May 3, 2006

Ever since President Bush unveiled his first guest-worker plan, employer claims of labor shortages have dominated the economic side of the national immigration debate.

Representatives of numerous industries have warned that without an ever-greater inflow of immigrants, their sectors will literally run out of workers. Indeed, these business leaders insist, U.S. immigration policy has been so restrictive that they have been forced to hire illegal immigrants simply to stay in business.

These views, and related calls to open U.S. borders wider, have been reinforced by much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the American economy. The native-born population's birthrate is relatively low, and consequently this population is aging and stabilizing. Moreover, as President Bush and his allies keep repeating, legal and illegal immigrants alike are mainly doing “the jobs Americans won't do” – physically demanding labor in low-paying but essential industries.

The most important statistics available, however, show conclusively that, far from easing shortages, illegal immigrants are adding to labor gluts in America. Specifically, when adjusted for inflation, wages in sectors highly dependent on illegals have either been stagnant or have actually fallen.

Both textbook economics and common sense teach that wages are a surefire measure of labor abundance or shortage. When labor is genuinely scarce, and too many employers are chasing too few workers, businesses typically bid wages up in the competition to fill jobs. When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can't be choosers. What U.S. Labor Department data reveal is that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy's illegal immigrant-heavy sectors.

Take restaurants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, illegal immigrants represent 17 percent of the nation's food preparation workers, 20 percent of its cooks and 23 percent of its dishwashers. National Restaurant Association spokesman John Gay recently stated that his industry will need about 1.9 million workers in the near future though he “doesn't know where they will come from.”

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though, inflation-adjusted wages for the broad Food Services and Drinking Establishments category fell 1.65 percent between 2000 and 2005.

Urging Congress to loosen immigration controls, Marriott International Chairman J.W. Marriott Jr. insists that the hospitality industry “needed a supply of immigrant workers to fill jobs” and condemned those “in Congress [who] want to criminalize the undocumented and their employers.” Ten percent of the nation's hotel workers are illegal immigrants, the Pew Center estimates. But the BLS data show that their inflation-adjusted wages fell nearly 1 percent from 2000-05.

In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up about 12 percent of the work force. But from 1993 – when median home prices began surging at a record pace – through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02 percent. And from 2000 to 2005 – the height of the boom – inflation-adjusted construction wages actually fell by 1.59 percent.

Illegal immigrants are even more prominent in food manufacturing, where they represent 14 percent of the work force. From 2000 to 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in this sector dropped by 2.24 percent. And in the “animal processing and slaughtering” sub-category, where Pew research contends illegal immigrants make up fully 27 percent of all workers, inflation-adjusted wages fell 1.41 percent between 2000 and 2005. Similar figures emerge for many other illegal immigrant-heavy sectors as well, ranging from dry cleaning and laundry services, to parking facilities, golf courses, and country clubs.

These wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make clear that these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers. They're facing shortages of native-born workers who can accept poverty-level pay.

If the President and Congress have any interest in ensuring that American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout American history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren't good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.

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me@rescam.org

Learning our lesson on oil prices

ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
NEWSWEEK

May 3, 2006

The United States has the energy policy it deserves, though not the one it needs. Having been told for years that their addiction to cheap gasoline was on a collision course with increasingly insecure supplies of foreign oil, Americans are horrified to discover that this is actually the case. But for all the public outcry and political hysteria, high gasoline prices haven't significantly hurt the economy – and may not do so. Since 2003, the economy has grown about 3.6 percent annually. It's still advancing briskly. That may be the real news.

But first, how did we get to $3 a gallon? The basic story is simple enough. Oil was cheap in the 1990s. From 1993 to 1999, crude prices averaged about $17 a barrel. Low prices discouraged exploration and encouraged consumption. China emerged as a big user. In 1995, global demand was about 70 million barrels daily; now it's 84 million barrels.

Spare production capacity slowly vanished, meaning that now any supply interruption – or rumor of interruption – sends prices up sharply. An Iraqi pipeline is attacked; prices jump. Nigerian rebels menace oil fields; prices jump.

These pressures get transmitted quickly to the pump, because there are few fixed-price contracts in the oil business. At each stage of distribution – from producers to refiners, from refiners to retailers – prices are adjusted quickly. They're often tied to prices on commodities exchanges, where oil and other raw materials are traded.

“A gas station will get a delivery every four to eight days at a different price,” says Mary Novak of Global Insight. Even between deliveries, station owners may push prices up because they know that “for my next tank-load, I'll have to pay the market price.”

Of course, profits have exploded. Production and refining costs haven't risen in tandem with prices. To the extent that oil companies have their own crude reserves – as opposed to buying from producing nations – they've reaped a bonanza. From 2002 to 2005, profits for most U.S. oil companies more than quadrupled to nearly $140 billion a year, reports the American Petroleum Institute. But the really big winners are the oil-producing countries. In 2005, their oil revenues exceeded $750 billion, up from $300 billion in 2002.

It's conventional wisdom that big oil-price increases usually trigger a recession – or at least a sharp slowdown. Why haven't they? One oft-cited reason is that the economy has become more energy-efficient. True. Compared with 1973, Americans use 57 percent less oil and natural gas per dollar of output; compared with 1990, the decline is 24 percent. Cars and trucks have gotten more efficient, though not much more so since 1990. New industries (software programming, health clubs) use less energy than the old (steel-making, farming). But there's a larger reason: The conventional wisdom is wrong.

Big oil-price increases in the past (1973-74, 1979-80 and 1990-91) did not cause recessions, though recessions occurred at roughly the same time. The connection has been repeated so often that most people probably accept it as gospel. But much economic research has concluded it's a myth. These recessions resulted mainly from rising inflation – inflation that preceded higher oil prices – and the Federal Reserve's efforts to suppress it. Higher oil prices merely made matters slightly worse. In 1980, for instance, consumer prices rose 12.5 percent; excluding energy prices, they increased 11.7 percent.

This may explain the economy's resilience. One hopeful sign: most non-energy companies aren't yet passing along higher energy costs to their customers. “Businesses have had wide profit margins,” says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. “They may be willing to eat the higher costs.” In 2006, he expects the economy to grow 3.5 percent, with average unemployment of 4.7 percent.

Indeed, he thinks oil prices may retreat to about $50 a barrel, from today's levels of about $70, later this year. Higher prices would slightly dampen demand, and added supplies would create some spare production capacity. Naturally, he could be wrong. Energy economist Philip K. Verleger Jr. thinks oil could be headed for $100 a barrel, with inflation going to 5 percent and inducing a recession. Continuing strong oil demand will collide with rigid supply (both production and refining).

Whatever happens, the larger question is how Americans build on this episode. It may feel good to vilify the major oil companies and the oil cartel. But that won't help. We now import 60 percent of our oil; large imports will continue indefinitely.

But we could minimize our vulnerabilities to supply interruptions and price increases. We could open up more acreage (including Alaska) to drilling. We could orchestrate – through tougher fuel-economy standards and a gradually rising energy tax – a big shift toward more-efficient vehicles. Once again, we've been warned. Will we continue to ignore it?

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me@rescam.org

"Even though Steve Ballmer does his monkey dance every time we say it, this is the SETI@home forum for BOINC users only!" - misfit


Huh. You know, I have been wondering why my MSFT holdings have done absolutely nothing for the last 5 years. It has all become clear to me now.

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- Skeptic - "... and there is no intelligent life in Washington D.C. either."

"Even though Steve Ballmer does his monkey dance every time we say it, this is the SETI@home forum for BOINC users only!"

Misattribution.

You're welcome.

And here's the video.

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Ain't it da' truth...

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"Even though Steve Ballmer does his monkey dance every time we say it, this is the SETI@home forum for BOINC users only!"

Misattribution.

You're welcome.

And here's the video.

I have no idea what you're talking about. It's copied from your disclaimer. And the video link I provide works just fine.

Click the pic!

The Iran challenge
There is breathing room to pursue diplomacy

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

May 5, 2006

How the rest of the world deals with Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons is one of the great challenges of the early 21st century. If Iran succeeds, the best-case scenario is a nightmare: a nuclear arms race among Mideast oil states (and, perhaps, other mid-tier powers) as well as an Iranian leadership emboldened to sponsor far more terrorism and undertake regional wars because it has a nuclear trump card. The worst-case scenario is an apocalyptic confrontation between Iran and Israel, with, perhaps, the United States involved as well. Plainly, the stakes could not be higher.

Nevertheless, as frustrating as diplomatic efforts to contain Iran have been, the United States must pursue such an approach and eschew its recent saber-rattling.

Iran's nuclear program, after all, is estimated by U.S. intelligence to be at least five years from being able to produce nuclear weapons. There is some breathing room – and an influential, relatively cohesive group of nations is working to thwart Tehran. The resolution introduced Wednesday that would move the U.N. Security Council one step closer to sanctions against Iran unless it halted uranium enrichment was put forward not by the United States but by Britain, France and Germany.

The problem, unfortunately, is that European and U.S. resolve is not shared by China and Russia. The resolution says only that if Iran defies the Security Council, the council would “consider such further measures as may be necessary to ensure compliance” – in other words, China and Russia still could block sanctions down the road. But even an incremental step toward punishing Iran may be too much for two nations that have extensive economic ties to Tehran and are leery of being seen as U.S. lackeys. The best hope is that China and Russia will abstain – thus letting the Security Council ratchet up the pressure without committing to something more profound.

This will only push the day of reckoning down the line – not just for Tehran, but for Beijing, Moscow and the United Nations itself. The evidence that Iran has violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is building, and the reasons to assume it has malign intent are obvious.

In the meantime, the United States should continue to try to build international support for sanctions. Even if they ultimately failed to win a U.N. imprimatur, such sanctions still could be effective if enough nations cooperated in a U.S.-led effort. Beyond that, perhaps President Bush should consider direct talks with Tehran. Some observers believe such talks could yield a grand deal: Iran would let outside watchdogs ensure that its nuclear program only be directed toward producing nuclear power in return for full U.S.-Iranian economic relations and some sign from the White House that it was no longer eager to pursue regime change in Tehran.

Given Iran's history of mendacity, such a deal would be uncomfortable. But the alternative is much worse – and if Tehran didn't honor the bargain, Washington could return to its previous, more assertive ways.

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me@rescam.org