Text of Our Day

President Delivers State of the Union Address

2005-02-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

The President's State of the Union Address
The United States Capitol
Washington, D.C.

9:15 P.M. EST

President George W. Bush delivers the State of the Union address before a joint session of congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, Jan 29, 2002.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished guests, fellow citizens: As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger. (Applause.)

We last met in an hour of shock and suffering. In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims, begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon, rallied a great coalition, captured, arrested, and rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression. (Applause.)

The American flag flies again over our embassy in Kabul. Terrorists who once occupied Afghanistan now occupy cells at Guantanamo Bay. (Applause.) And terrorist leaders who urged followers to sacrifice their lives are running for their own. (Applause.)

America and Afghanistan are now allies against terror. We'll be partners in rebuilding that country. And this evening we welcome the distinguished interim leader of a liberated Afghanistan: Chairman Hamid Karzai. (Applause.)

The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan's new government. And we welcome the new Minister of Women's Affairs, Doctor Sima Samar. (Applause.) Timeline Image Map

Our progress is a tribute to the spirit of the Afghan people, to the resolve of our coalition, and to the might of the United States military. (Applause.) When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning the war on terror. (Applause.) The man and women of our Armed Forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States: Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves -- you will not escape the justice of this nation. (Applause.)

For many Americans, these four months have brought sorrow, and pain that will never completely go away. Every day a retired firefighter returns to Ground Zero, to feel closer to his two sons who died there. At a memorial in New York, a little boy left his football with a note for his lost father: Dear Daddy, please take this to heaven. I don't want to play football until I can play with you again some day.

Last month, at the grave of her husband, Michael, a CIA officer and Marine who died in Mazur-e-Sharif, Shannon Spann said these words of farewell: "Semper Fi, my love." Shannon is with us tonight. (Applause.)

Shannon, I assure you and all who have lost a loved one that our cause is just, and our country will never forget the debt we owe Michael and all who gave their lives for freedom.

Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.

What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning. Most of the 19 men who hijacked planes on September the 11th were trained in Afghanistan's camps, and so were tens of thousands of others. Thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder, often supported by outlaw regimes, are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go off without warning.

Thanks to the work of our law enforcement officials and coalition partners, hundreds of terrorists have been arrested. Yet, tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large. These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are. (Applause.) So long as training camps operate, so long as nations harbor terrorists, freedom is at risk. And America and our allies must not, and will not, allow it. (Applause.)

Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent in the pursuit of two great objectives. First, we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice. And, second, we must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world. (Applause.)

Our military has put the terror training camps of Afghanistan out of business, yet camps still exist in at least a dozen countries. A terrorist underworld -- including groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Jaish-i-Mohammed -- operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the centers of large cities.

While the most visible military action is in Afghanistan, America is acting elsewhere. We now have troops in the Philippines, helping to train that country's armed forces to go after terrorist cells that have executed an American, and still hold hostages. Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy. Our Navy is patrolling the coast of Africa to block the shipment of weapons and the establishment of terrorist camps in Somalia.

My hope is that all nations will heed our call, and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own. Many nations are acting forcefully. Pakistan is now cracking down on terror, and I admire the strong leadership of President Musharraf. (Applause.)

But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will. (Applause.)

Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.

We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack. (Applause.) And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.)

Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch -- yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.

We can't stop short. If we stop now -- leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked -- our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight. (Applause.)

Our first priority must always be the security of our nation, and that will be reflected in the budget I send to Congress. My budget supports three great goals for America: We will win this war; we'll protect our homeland; and we will revive our economy.

September the 11th brought out the best in America, and the best in this Congress. And I join the American people in applauding your unity and resolve. (Applause.) Now Americans deserve to have this same spirit directed toward addressing problems here at home. I'm a proud member of my party -- yet as we act to win the war, protect our people, and create jobs in America, we must act, first and foremost, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. (Applause.)

It costs a lot to fight this war. We have spent more than a billion dollars a month -- over $30 million a day -- and we must be prepared for future operations. Afghanistan proved that expensive precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives, and we need more of them. We need to replace aging aircraft and make our military more agile, to put our troops anywhere in the world quickly and safely. Our men and women in uniform deserve the best weapons, the best equipment, the best training -- and they also deserve another pay raise. (Applause.)

My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades -- because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay. (Applause.)

The next priority of my budget is to do everything possible to protect our citizens and strengthen our nation against the ongoing threat of another attack. Time and distance from the events of September the 11th will not make us safer unless we act on its lessons. America is no longer protected by vast oceans. We are protected from attack only by vigorous action abroad, and increased vigilance at home.

My budget nearly doubles funding for a sustained strategy of homeland security, focused on four key areas: bioterrorism, emergency response, airport and border security, and improved intelligence. We will develop vaccines to fight anthrax and other deadly diseases. We'll increase funding to help states and communities train and equip our heroic police and firefighters. (Applause.) We will improve intelligence collection and sharing, expand patrols at our borders, strengthen the security of air travel, and use technology to track the arrivals and departures of visitors to the United States. (Applause.)

Homeland security will make America not only stronger, but, in many ways, better. Knowledge gained from bioterrorism research will improve public health. Stronger police and fire departments will mean safer neighborhoods. Stricter border enforcement will help combat illegal drugs. (Applause.) And as government works to better secure our homeland, America will continue to depend on the eyes and ears of alert citizens.

A few days before Christmas, an airline flight attendant spotted a passenger lighting a match. The crew and passengers quickly subdued the man, who had been trained by al Qaeda and was armed with explosives. The people on that plane were alert and, as a result, likely saved nearly 200 lives. And tonight we welcome and thank flight attendants Hermis Moutardier and Christina Jones. (Applause.)

Once we have funded our national security and our homeland security, the final great priority of my budget is economic security for the American people. (Applause.) To achieve these great national objectives -- to win the war, protect the homeland, and revitalize our economy -- our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term, so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible manner. (Applause.) We have clear priorities and we must act at home with the same purpose and resolve we have shown overseas: We'll prevail in the war, and we will defeat this recession. (Applause.)

Americans who have lost their jobs need our help and I support extending unemployment benefits and direct assistance for health care coverage. (Applause.) Yet, American workers want more than unemployment checks -- they want a steady paycheck. (Applause.) When America works, America prospers, so my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs. (Applause.)

Good jobs begin with good schools, and here we've made a fine start. (Applause.) Republicans and Democrats worked together to achieve historic education reform so that no child is left behind. I was proud to work with members of both parties: Chairman John Boehner and Congressman George Miller. (Applause.) Senator Judd Gregg. (Applause.) And I was so proud of our work, I even had nice things to say about my friend, Ted Kennedy. (Laughter and applause.) I know the folks at the Crawford coffee shop couldn't believe I'd say such a thing -- (laughter) -- but our work on this bill shows what is possible if we set aside posturing and focus on results. (Applause.)

There is more to do. We need to prepare our children to read and succeed in school with improved Head Start and early childhood development programs. (Applause.) We must upgrade our teacher colleges and teacher training and launch a major recruiting drive with a great goal for America: a quality teacher in every classroom. (Applause.)

Good jobs also depend on reliable and affordable energy. This Congress must act to encourage conservation, promote technology, build infrastructure, and it must act to increase energy production at home so America is less dependent on foreign oil. (Applause.)

Good jobs depend on expanded trade. Selling into new markets creates new jobs, so I ask Congress to finally approve trade promotion authority. (Applause.) On these two key issues, trade and energy, the House of Representatives has acted to create jobs, and I urge the Senate to pass this legislation. (Applause.)

Good jobs depend on sound tax policy. (Applause.) Last year, some in this hall thought my tax relief plan was too small; some thought it was too big. (Applause.) But when the checks arrived in the mail, most Americans thought tax relief was just about right. (Applause.) Congress listened to the people and responded by reducing tax rates, doubling the child credit, and ending the death tax. For the sake of long-term growth and to help Americans plan for the future, let's make these tax cuts permanent. (Applause.)

The way out of this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment, and by speeding up tax relief so people have more money to spend. For the sake of American workers, let's pass a stimulus package. (Applause.)

Good jobs must be the aim of welfare reform. As we reauthorize these important reforms, we must always remember the goal is to reduce dependency on government and offer every American the dignity of a job. (Applause.)

Americans know economic security can vanish in an instant without health security. I ask Congress to join me this year to enact a patients' bill of rights -- (applause) -- to give uninsured workers credits to help buy health coverage -- (applause) -- to approve an historic increase in the spending for veterans' health -- (applause) -- and to give seniors a sound and modern Medicare system that includes coverage for prescription drugs. (Applause.)

A good job should lead to security in retirement. I ask Congress to enact new safeguards for 401K and pension plans. (Applause.) Employees who have worked hard and saved all their lives should not have to risk losing everything if their company fails. (Applause.) Through stricter accounting standards and tougher disclosure requirements, corporate America must be made more accountable to employees and shareholders and held to the highest standards of conduct. (Applause.)

Retirement security also depends upon keeping the commitments of Social Security, and we will. We must make Social Security financially stable and allow personal retirement accounts for younger workers who choose them. (Applause.)

Members, you and I will work together in the months ahead on other issues: productive farm policy -- (applause) -- a cleaner environment -- (applause) -- broader home ownership, especially among minorities -- (applause) -- and ways to encourage the good work of charities and faith-based groups. (Applause.) I ask you to join me on these important domestic issues in the same spirit of cooperation we've applied to our war against terrorism. (Applause.)

During these last few months, I've been humbled and privileged to see the true character of this country in a time of testing. Our enemies believed America was weak and materialistic, that we would splinter in fear and selfishness. They were as wrong as they are evil. (Applause.)

The American people have responded magnificently, with courage and compassion, strength and resolve. As I have met the heroes, hugged the families, and looked into the tired faces of rescuers, I have stood in awe of the American people.

And I hope you will join me -- I hope you will join me in expressing thanks to one American for the strength and calm and comfort she brings to our nation in crisis, our First Lady, Laura Bush. (Applause.)

None of us would ever wish the evil that was done on September the 11th. Yet after America was attacked, it was as if our entire country looked into a mirror and saw our better selves. We were reminded that we are citizens, with obligations to each other, to our country, and to history. We began to think less of the goods we can accumulate, and more about the good we can do.

For too long our culture has said, "If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll." (Applause.) In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We've been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass. (Applause.)

My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years -- 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime -- to the service of your neighbors and your nation. (Applause.) Many are already serving, and I thank you. If you aren't sure how to help, I've got a good place to start. To sustain and extend the best that has emerged in America, I invite you to join the new USA Freedom Corps. The Freedom Corps will focus on three areas of need: responding in case of crisis at home; rebuilding our communities; and extending American compassion throughout the world.

One purpose of the USA Freedom Corps will be homeland security. America needs retired doctors and nurses who can be mobilized in major emergencies; volunteers to help police and fire departments; transportation and utility workers well-trained in spotting danger.

Our country also needs citizens working to rebuild our communities. We need mentors to love children, especially children whose parents are in prison. And we need more talented teachers in troubled schools. USA Freedom Corps will expand and improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps to recruit more than 200,000 new volunteers.

And America needs citizens to extend the compassion of our country to every part of the world. So we will renew the promise of the Peace Corps, double its volunteers over the next five years -- (applause) -- and ask it to join a new effort to encourage development and education and opportunity in the Islamic world. (Applause.)

This time of adversity offers a unique moment of opportunity -- a moment we must seize to change our culture. Through the gathering momentum of millions of acts of service and decency and kindness, I know we can overcome evil with greater good. (Applause.) And we have a great opportunity during this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring lasting peace.

All fathers and mothers, in all societies, want their children to be educated, and live free from poverty and violence. No people on Earth yearn to be oppressed, or aspire to servitude, or eagerly await the midnight knock of the secret police.

If anyone doubts this, let them look to Afghanistan, where the Islamic "street" greeted the fall of tyranny with song and celebration. Let the skeptics look to Islam's own rich history, with its centuries of learning, and tolerance and progress. America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. (Applause.)

No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture. But America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance. (Applause.)

America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment. We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.

In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working with Russia and China and India, in ways we have never before, to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia, and Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom. (Applause.)

The last time I spoke here, I expressed the hope that life would return to normal. In some ways, it has. In others, it never will. Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them. We've come to know truths that we will never question: evil is real, and it must be opposed. (Applause.) Beyond all differences of race or creed, we are one country, mourning together and facing danger together. Deep in the American character, there is honor, and it is stronger than cynicism. And many have discovered again that even in tragedy -- especially in tragedy -- God is near. (Applause.)

In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.

Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. (Applause.)

Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.

Thank you all. May God bless. (Applause.)

END 10:03 P.M. EST

Gen X Dad

2005-01-16T13:07:00.000-08:00

Boston.com THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
A group of like-minded fathers who call themselves ''Dads in the Dark'' meet monthly at Conley's in Watertown after their kids are safely tucked in for the night. Sharing a laugh are (from left) James Chung, John Bowe, David Goldberg, Gregg Fowler, Sam Zales, and John Carson. Right: Chung and Bowe banter about their day.
A group of like-minded fathers who call themselves ''Dads in the Dark'' meet monthly at Conley's in Watertown after their kids are safely tucked in for the night. Sharing a laugh are (from left) James Chung, John Bowe, David Goldberg, Gregg Fowler, Sam Zales, and John Carson. Right: Chung and Bowe banter about their day. (Globe Staff Photos / Dina Rudick)
The Boston Globe

Luxury vacations, fast-track careers, and bigger houses used to be a priority for family men, but no longer. Today's young fathers are taking paternity leaves, rejecting overtime, and rushing home after work to do all the things many of their own fathers didn't.

By Patricia Wen | January 16, 2005

As darkness falls on a drizzly autumn day, hundreds of workers spill out of elevators, past potted palm trees standing on marble floors, into the spacious lobby of One Lincoln Street, a downtown office tower. Clutching briefcases, bags, and umbrellas, they brace themselves for Boston's rush-hour traffic. It's 5 p.m. Among the exiting masses is Gregg Fowler. Tall and slender, he's a new dad with new priorities. Kudos from his boss can't compare with hugs from his kids. He arrives early to his job as a software developer so he can leave in time for dinner with his family. At 36, he says, nothing gives him more satisfaction than evenings of bubble baths, blocks, and bedtime stories.

One week earlier, I had met Fowler along with a half-dozen other fathers in their 30s and early 40s who gather monthly at a Watertown bar called Conley's. Everything about them seemed to confirm the latest research trumpeting a new breed of father. They experience, as working women have for decades, the joys and anxieties of wanting it all: the satisfying career and the time with their family. These guys dub themselves "Dads in the Dark," though they see their group as far from unenlightened. They grab paternity leaves and reject overtime even when they could use the money. They are as adept at sculpting Play-Doh as they are at drafting memos. A manager at Fidelity Investments says being home by 6 p.m. is not just a target, "it's firm."

One of the regulars, a market strategist in his late 30s, has studied these trends among fathers in his age group. He says the dads "behave, think, and are wired differently." These men met through their wives, who were in a local mothers' group. The guys liked one another so much that they kept meeting (but only after 8 p.m., when the kids were down), talking about everything from the Patriots and the Sox to the job market and office politics and home renovations. Juggling work and home demands is exhausting, they say, but they refuse to replicate the life of a traditional breadwinner - in many cases, the life their own dads led. Many of them, like Fowler, grew up with parents who followed the breadwinner-homemaker model - only to divorce in their 30s and 40s. The men at Conley's aren't looking to put their feet up at the end of the day.

"It's important for me to see my children," Fowler says as he shares beers and hamburgers with the other men. "And to find balance."

As we ride the Red Line, Fowler talks easily about the routines of his two children, Caitlin, 4, and Kyle, 3, including dinner, cleanup, and teeth brushing. He says his wife was laid off a few years ago as a consultant but is looking to return to work any day. "I don't know many Stepford wives anymore, do you?" he asks while we retrieve his car from the Alewife commuter lot. When we arrive at his home in Belmont shortly after 6 p.m., his children pounce on him, screaming, "Daddy!"

Within 10 minutes, Fowler has changed out of his work clothes, downed a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at the kitchen table (everyone else has eaten already), and bounded up the stairs to be the evening playmate to his children. His wife, Jules Giggie, is a warm and outgoing woman who met her husband while studying for her master's degree in social work in Austin, Texas. She says she and her husband have typical marital spats, but she describes him as always being "about fairness and respect." They work hard, she says, to break down male-female stereotypes in front of their children. Giggie, who has volunteered at a battered-women's shelter, tells her husband: "Just because I have ovaries doesn't mean I'm better at making meals."

Later in the evening, Caitlin, an exuberant preschooler with a tumble of short curls, races into the kitchen, trying to enlist more adults in her game of hide-and-seek.

Who gives you a bath at night? I ask Caitlin.

"Mommy and Daddy," she says, twirling around the kitchen table.

Who helps you brush your teeth?

"Mommy and Daddy."

Who takes care of you when you are sick?

"Mommy and Daddy!" And then she zooms off into another room.

Even at a time when men are working as hard as ever, much has been made of the emergence of the new nurturing father. Around the time that Dustin Hoffman asked in the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer, "What law is it that says a woman is a better parent simply by virtue of her sex?" sociologists were hailing a new era. Study after study shows that today's men refuse to be stick figures in their children's lives. They recoil at the thought of acting like Distant Dad. When they see celebrities like Eminem and Will Smith embrace their children or Super Bowl winners cradle their babies, they see glamorous reflections of themselves.

No generation is more influenced by this vision of fatherhood than today's men between 26 and 40 - commonly called Generation X - and no male age group has been more scrutinized for its paternal behaviors. As research targets, men of this generation have been asked to keep daily diaries of time spent at work and home, to distinguish between reading bedtime stories (child care) and washing dishes (housework), and to know that being a "domestic manager" is not the same as being a "compliant helper."

These fathers are not the first to show signs of change. Researchers say baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) began to break the traditional mold, but it is only among today's fathers of young children that they see a broad generational shift. New paternal behavior is measured down to fractions of hours. According to research from the Families and Work Institute in New York, a nonprofit that tracks trends in family life, fathers in 2002 spent 2.7 hours each workday caring for children, almost an hour more than fathers in 1977. That reflects a 50 percent increase in male participation. During the same 25-year period, working mothers' hours spent caring for children stayed roughly the same - 3.3 hours a day. Researchers see today's dads, like the men at Conley's, as a distinct group, exposed to such dramatic social shifts that new attitudes toward family life were inevitable.

"The biggest change is in this generation. . . . It's their aspirations to be involved and their actual level of involvement," says James Levine, director of the Fatherhood Project at the New York institute, who has studied family life for more than 30 years. "They're not just talking, they're actually walking the walk."

Levine and others say these men are far more cynical than previous generations about the rewards of the work world, even as they typically clock 45-hour-plus workweeks. They have seen lifetime company employment vanish and the dot-com bubble burst. And these men also grew up as the nation's divorce rate nearly doubled, prompting them to pause longer and perhaps think harder than any earlier generation before marrying and having children. In 1960, US men married at an average age of 22.8 years old; in 2003, it was 27.1 years. They were the first generation in which half of all men and women attended one or more years of college. They dated women who weren't racing to trade their diplomas for diapers. Men and women entered marriage with years of earning power behind them and an established pattern of equal partnership. Today's fathers, says Brad Harrington, head of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, approach family life wanting and expecting to be more involved in day-to-day life. And they are discovering what many of their wives could have told them from across the dining room table: This juggling act is hard work.

But even as they fear being marginalized if they cut back their work hours, more and more young fathers today still refuse to miss those precious years when their children are growing up. It is, Harrington says, a sort of "feminism for men."

Some men knew early on that they would rip up their father's script on parenting. Dressed in a business suit on his way into work one morning, Eric Steinert, 37, a regular at the Conley's gathering, describes his own father as a man who "chased the brass ring" in a banking career without realizing "there's a price to pay." Steinert says his father was the kind of man who would "work 60 percent more for 60 percent more pay." He says he spent his early childhood in Paris and that his parents divorced when he was 3. Although his mother remarried, he feels he grew up without any close paternal connections and, to this day, is in touch only sporadically with his father, usually by e-mail.

A father of two working as a fund-raiser for Babson College in Wellesley, Steinert has vowed since boyhood not to repeat his father's life, pouring endless hours into a job. "We're less naively idealistic about the rewards of sticking to a company," he says. Steinert still works nine or 10 hours a day, including some weekends and evenings, but he makes it to his Belmont home by 6:30 almost every night, and he takes a calculated approach to the distribution of his work and family hours at this stage of his life. His children are 5 and 2, young enough, he says, to benefit especially from some extra hours with their dad; meanwhile, he is a man in his late 30s whose career isn't going to soar or sink based on some extra office hours spread over the week. "The return on the extra time isn't high," he says.

But not all men are so internally driven to become this new nurturer; some admit that if today's fathering icon were Ward Cleaver, they might behave like him. "Men fall into the spirit of the times," says Alex de Frondeville, a 37-year-old father of twins, while sitting in his living room one weekend a few months ago. "It wasn't this huge emotional shift in me that said, 'I need to do this.' . . . It's what's done now. I can't tell if I'm doing it because of society or because I want to do it."

Inside his white Dutch Colonial on a street in Arlington bursting with young families, he admits he might have repeated his father's lifestyle if it weren't for the expectations of his wife and his sense that men who don't change diapers are ridiculed as oppressive ogres. He wonders if other men aren't like him, just floating on the crest of the new wave; after all, he says, "there's no way we've evolved that much in 30 years."

De Frondeville, who manages software development projects for Verizon Communications in Boston, fondly recalls the years after he met Georgia Critsley at a 1993 Christmas party in Charlestown. He instantly fell for the striking blonde with a vibrant personality. Critsley was tough, a prosecutor by profession, but he loved the way she challenged him. They were a handsome couple who traveled to Europe each year, without such distractions as putting up safety gates or paying baby sitters. They married in 1999 with every intention of living a life of equal partnership. Two years later, Critsley gave birth to twins, Catherine and Christian. She planned to take a six-month maternity leave and return to her job as an assistant DA for Suffolk County. But after the six months had passed, she decided she couldn't bear being away from her twins. She stayed home for the next two years. But then Critsley, who is now 37, began missing the courtroom, the law, and she decided she wanted back in. A year ago, she took a full-time job, but with predictable hours, at a law firm.

Now she and her husband share equally all of the household chores and child care involved in raising their 3-year-olds. De Frondeville tends to focus on laundry and cleanup, while his wife cooks most meals. They try to give each other time off - he plays in Ultimate Frisbee tournaments, she sings in a choir. Beyond that, the two of them "survive" each day through a 50-50 distribution of work. Sitting in his living room next to his wife, de Frondeville fiddles with a puzzle piece left on the floor by his children. I ask if life was easier when his wife was home every day with the kids. "It was harder," he says, shaking his head.

His wife adds some insight. "I was meaner," she says with a laugh.

De Frondeville says family life operates more smoothly now that his wife is back at work. They take turns dropping off and picking up at the Arlington Children's Center. He concedes that he sometimes thinks "it would be nice if it was like the old days," when his father, the breadwinner, wasn't expected to do much, if any, household work. But now, he says, such a traditional division of labor almost seems "unnatural."

It's impossible, of course, to generalize about the behavior of an entire generation of fathers. Among today's fathers are men who neglect and even abandon their families, as well as a small but growing number of stay-at-home dads. Other men don't have the option of managing just one job but must juggle two or more, leaving little time for trips to the playground. And some men and women still proudly adhere to the Father Knows Best model of child-rearing and family life. But researchers say the new attitudes among today's fathers are widespread across this generation, articulated most passionately by college-educated men with similarly educated wives. Levine, author of Working Fathers: New Strategies for Balancing Work and Family, travels the country giving talks at company-sponsored events to hundreds of employees. He says there is a vast cross section of men from different socioeconomic levels who want "a different relationship with their own kids" than their fathers had with them. He says that even single men ask questions at his events, anticipating the day their balancing act begins.

But Levine also perceives a rise in discontent among men trying to balance work and family demands. According to the latest study from the Families and Work Institute, women experienced about the same amount of conflict in meeting work and family demands from 1977 to 2002, but men's sense of frustration rose sharply. In 1977, about one-third of men reported tension about the juggling act; in 2002, more than half said they did.

Studies over the past few years reveal some of the reasons for this frustration. One 2000 study, by the Radcliffe Public Policy Center, found that the job characteristic most often ranked as very important by men between the ages of 21 and 39 was "having a work schedule which allows me to spend time with my family." At a time when people are being asked to work increasingly long hours, that same study found that some 70 percent of these men wanted to spend more time with their families and were willing to sacrifice pay to do so.

James Chung, a 38-year-old father of two from Belmont, is the market strategist who is among the Conley's group, and his findings show that men of his generation think differently. Chung, who runs a Boston-based company called Reach Advisors, advises companies on how to market their products to various demographic groups. He urges clients to shake the image of ambitious couples trying to earn enough to install Jacuzzis and book their next Caribbean vacation. In his national survey of 3,000 parents between their mid-20s and late 50s, he finds Generation X couples are far more willing to sacrifice money for family time. But like Levine, he also finds today's new fathers struggling far more than previous generations with how to carve out that time. "Fathers are a lot more conflicted as mothers have always been," Chung says.

Perceptions at work are not far from the minds of many fathers. That was evident as I hunted down fathers for this story. A number of men I interviewed declined to have their full names used, fearful they would be perceived by their bosses as weak in their commitment to work if they were quoted about their devotion to family.

Some researchers are skeptical about the extent of the "new fatherhood." Andrew Singleton, a sociologist at Monash University in Australia, believes many of the reported changes are overblown. He says he doesn't trust studies that rely on men to report how much they do around the house. That kind of self-reporting, Singleton thinks, is suspect irrespective of gender. Singleton launched a study of Australian parents in which researchers talked with couples from their mid-20s to their mid-30s inside their homes; only male questioners interviewed men, and female questioners interviewed women. He concluded that today's fathers participate more on the domestic front, but they are mostly "a picture of continuity rather than change with respect to young men's domestic roles, identities, and obligations."

Singleton and other researchers suggest there may also be a limit to the degree men - and women - truly embrace an egalitarian model of parenting. Some fathers complain that their best efforts to load the dishwasher or dress their children are met with "corrections" from their wives, who insist their methods are better. Some women don't want their husbands to arrange all the car pools. Does this mean that women don't want to surrender primary control of home life? And how far do men really want to go in relinquishing their time-honored role as primary breadwinner?

Nicholas Townsend, a Brown University anthropology professor who wrote The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives, says men, raised for generations to care for families through earning money, can't be fundamentally changed in a few decades. In the book, he followed the lives of several dozen high school seniors who graduated from the same San Francisco-area school in the 1970s. Most of these men are in their 40s today, though Townsend believes the same trends hold for younger fathers as well. The men, like their fathers before them, took great pride in earning money as a way of caring for the family, and society still sees this as the dominant contribution of fathers.

"We still measure men by their paychecks and occupational success," Townsend says. "Attitudes don't turn on a dime."

Townsend did find that many men wanted to spend more time at home but could not because of job or logistical constraints. He found men were frustrated by the difficulty of putting together the "package deal" a good job, a wife, children, and home ownership. And a chief frustration was that today's economy forces so many working fathers to buy homes far from their workplaces, imposing long commutes. Many of these men wanted more time with their children, but traveling between work and home cut into those hours.

"The time to be emotionally close to their children just isn't there," Townsend says.

Still, many researchers insist that today's fathers reflect a significant break from the past, though many repeat that "it's an evolution, not a revolution." Some, more ardent social analysts go beyond documenting the time fathers spend folding laundry and elaborately categorize dads into types. In Britain, researchers interviewed dozens of fathers in 2002, finding the traditional role has been replaced by a collection of new father personalities. The Enforcer Dad, a dying breed, is the strict disciplinarian; the Entertainer Dad is the family clown who distracts his kids while the mother attends to household tasks; the Useful Dad pitches in, though rarely takes the initiative; and the Fully Involved Dad jumps into domestic matters equally with his wife.

Beyond these labels, there is another: Exhausted Dad.

John Carson of Belmont is another member of the Dads in the Dark crowd who is among the chronically fatigued. On a November evening after work, the 35-year-old vice president of sales at Fidelity Investments in Boston raced home to greet his three children, a 4-year-old son and twin 2-year-old daughters. He is almost always there by 6 p.m.

As his wife loads food into the microwave, he cuts up chicken and slaps rice on plates for his children. Carson talks about how his own father was a successful juggler of work and family - though it came after a painful divorce. His father was forced to cook, clean, and iron for the first time after the split-up. Carson and his siblings, who lived with their father, also pitched in with an array of chores.

"I know what it takes to run a house," Carson says before racing upstairs to help start the kids' baths.

Just as he reaches the second-floor landing, there is a loud thud in the foyer. One of his girls, having made it up one step, has fallen backward onto the floor. Before the toddler can let out a single cry, Carson flees down the stairs, wraps her in his arms, and showers her with kisses. Within minutes, she is shrieking with delight in the bathtub.

After the children are asleep, Carson and his wife, Kathryn, have some time for relaxing. His wife is at home for now, though she plans to return to work. Carson says it isn't always easy being home by 6, but his bosses have respected his departure time in return for his efficiency during the day. He sees it as the only way he can achieve the life he wants.

"If it means I'm one or two rungs lower on the corporate ladder," he says, "it's worth it."
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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2005-01-12T21:37:00.000-08:00

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JANUARY 17, 2005

COVER STORY

The Future Of The New York Times
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. has his hands full: Weaker earnings. A changing media world. A scandal's aftermath. He also has an ambitious business plan

Since 1896, four generations of the Ochs-Sulzberger family have guided The New York Times through wars, recessions, strikes, and innumerable family crises. In 2003, though, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the current proprietor, faced what seemed to be a publisher's ultimate test after a loosely supervised young reporter named Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated dozens of stories. The revelations sparked a newsroom rebellion that humiliated Sulzberger into firing Executive Editor Howell Raines. "My heart is breaking," Sulzberger admitted to his staff on the day he showed Raines the door.

It turns out, though, that fate was not finished with Arthur Sulzberger, who also is chairman of the newspaper's corporate parent, New York Times Co. (NYT ). The strife that convulsed The New York Times's newsroom under the tyrannical Raines has faded under the measured leadership of his successor, Bill Keller, but now its financial performance is lagging. NYT Co.'s stock is trading at about 40, down 25% from its high of 53.80 in mid-2002 and has trailed the shares of many other newspaper companies for a good year and a half. "Their numbers in this recovery are bordering on the abysmal," says Douglas Arthur, Morgan Stanley's (MWD ) senior publishing analyst.

Meanwhile, the once-Olympian authority of the Times is being eroded not only by its own journalistic screw-ups -- from the Blair scandal to erroneous reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- but also by profound changes in communications technology and in the U.S. political climate. There are those who contend that the paper has been permanently diminished, along with the rest of what now is dismissively known in some circles as "MSM," mainstream media. "The Roman Empire that was mass media is breaking up, and we are entering an almost-feudal period where there will be many more centers of power and influence," says Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley's journalism school. "It's a kind of disaggregation of the molecular structure of the media."

THE PRIDE THAT SULZBERGER takes in his journalistic legacy is palpable, his knowledge of the Times's august history encyclopedic. Yet "Young Arthur," as he is still known to some at age 53, exudes a wisecracking, live-wire vitality more typical of a founding entrepreneur than of an heir. He began an interview for this article by picking up a big hunk of metal from a conference room table and brandishing it menacingly. "Ask any question you'd like," he growled and then deposited the object in a less obtrusive spot. "It's an award," he added softly.

Sulzberger, who succeeded his father as publisher in 1992 and as chairman in 1997, already rescued The New York Times from decline once. With the help of then-CEO Russell T. Lewis, he reinvented the "Gray Lady" by devising a radical solution to the threat of eroding circulation that had imperiled the Times and other big-city dailies for years. Sulzberger changed the paper itself by spending big money to add new sections and a profusion of color illustration. At the same time, he made the Times the first -- and still the only -- metro newspaper in America to broaden its distribution beyond its home city to encompass the entire country. Today, nearly 50% of all subscribers to the weekday Times live somewhere other than Gotham.

The Sulzbergers who preceded him were newspapermen; Arthur Jr., by his own description, is a "platform-agnostic" multimedia man. In the mid-1990s, NYT Co. became one of the first Old Media companies to move into cyberspace. Times reporters also began experimenting with adapting their newspaper stories to another medium new to them -- television. Today, NYTimes.com consistently ranks among the 10 most popular Internet news sites, and New York Times Television is one of the largest independent producers of documentary programming in the U. S. "Within our lifetimes, the distribution of news and information is going to shift to broadband," Sulzberger says. "We must enter the broadband world having mastered the three key skill sets -- print, Internet, and video -- because that's what's going to ensure the future of this news organization in the years ahead."

Sulzberger acknowledges that he and his company are embattled in the present. "These are tough times, and they've been tough times for a while." But he and new CEO Janet L. Robinson (Lewis retired at the end of 2004) are sticking with the long-term plan set nearly a decade ago: enhancing the content of the Times and extending its reach into virgin territories west of the Hudson while also building its multimedia capacity. In 2002, NYT Co. added a global dimension to its growth strategy by acquiring full control of the International Herald Tribune, which is now being upgraded and expanded.

In essence, Sulzberger is doing what his forebears have always done: sink money into the Times in the belief that quality journalism pays in the long run. "The challenge is to remember that our history is to invest during tough times," he says. "And when those times turn -- and they do, inevitably -- we will be well-positioned for recovery."

Will it work this time? Will toughing it out Sulzberger-style revitalize the Times or consign it to creeping irrelevance? "Despite all that has happened, I still think that The New York Times has a stature and a position of journalistic authority that is greater than any news organization in the world. Could that be destroyed? I believe that it could be," says Alex S. Jones, a former Times media critic who is co-author of The Trust, a history of the Sulzbergers and their newspaper. Jones, who now runs the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard University, hastens to add that he hopes that the paper will thrive again. "I tell you, I hate to think of it not succeeding," he says.

THE CONSTANCY OF THEIR COMMITMENT to high-cost journalism has put the Sulzbergers in an increasingly contrarian position. Many of the country's surviving big-city dailies once were owned by similarly high-minded dynastic families that long ago surrendered control to big public corporations that prize earnings per share above all else. Editorial budgets at most newspapers, as well as TV and radio stations, have been squeezed so hard for so long that asphyxiation is a mounting risk. The proliferation of Web sites and cable-TV stations has produced an abundance of commentary and analysis, but the kind of thorough, original reporting in which the Times specializes is, if anything, increasingly scarce.

In effect, the Sulzbergers have subsidized the Times in valuing good journalism and the prestige it confers over profits and the wealth it creates. In fact, for much of its history, the Times barely broke even. Recasting the paper into a publicly held corporation capable of pursuing profit as determinedly as Times editors chase Pulitzers was the signal achievement of Arthur Jr.'s father, Arthur O. "Punch" Sulzberger Sr. Still, NYT Co. consistently fails to post the 25% profit margins of such big newspaper combines as Gannett Co. (GCI ) and Knight-Ridder Inc. (KRI ) mainly because of the Times's outsize editorial spending, which the paper does not disclose but which is thought to exceed $300 million a year.

For a time, Arthur Jr. enthralled Wall Street by adding double-digit growth to the Sulzbergian formula. The value of NYT Co. shares soared 295% from their 1996 low to their 2002 high, boosting the value of the family's 19% holding to $1.5 billion. Like other Old Media families, the Sulzbergers have been able to maintain unquestioned control of their company by creating a new class of voting stock and reserving most of it for themselves. Among them, the various branches of the Sulzberger family control 91% of the Class B voting shares.

The Bancrofts of Dow Jones & Co. (DJ ) and the Grahams of Washington Post Co. (WPO ) share the Sulzbergers' journalism-first philosophy. However the Washington Post has moved beyond newspapering to a greater extent than has NYT Co., which in addition to the Herald Tribune owns The Boston Globe, 15 small daily newspapers, and eight television stations. Actually, Arthur Jr. has increased his company's financial reliance on the Times by selling off magazines and other peripheral properties acquired under his father. In short, NYT Co. is quality journalism's purest traditional play.

In 2004, the company clearly failed to parlay quality into the growth it will need to continue supporting the Times franchise. The Wall Street consensus is that the company will report net income of $290 million for 2004, down 4% from the preceding year and a good 35% below the $445 million it netted in the media industry boom year of 2001. Revenues have plateaued at $3 billion, give or take a few hundred million, for five years running.

It wasn't that long ago -- Apr. 8, 2002, to be precise -- that all seemed right in Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s rarified world. On that day, most of the Times's 1,200 reporters and editors gathered in its newsroom just off Times Square to celebrate the paper's record haul of Pulitzer Prizes. No newspaper had ever before won more than four Pulitzers in a year; the Times won seven in 2002 -- six of which recognized its Herculean coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Sulzberger was ecstatic, not realizing that he already had made the biggest blunder of his tenure as publisher: naming Howell Raines as executive editor.

RAINES, WHO HAD JOINED THE PAPER IN 1978 as a national correspondent, had deeply impressed Sulzberger by shaking the stodginess out of the editorial page as its editor during the Clinton years. Raines campaigned hard for the promotion in 2001, vowing to root out complacency and do whatever was needed to raise the staff's "competitive metabolism." By most accounts, Sulzberger saw Raines, then 58, as his journalistic alter ego and collaborator in transforming the Times into a fully national, multimedia franchise.

Just 18 months after self-proclaimed "change agent" Raines had taken charge, the Times ran a devastatingly self-critical article recounting how Jayson Blair had plagiarized or made up at least 36 stories. Sulzberger, who has often been accused of lacking gravitas, will be a long time living down his flip initial reaction to Blair's transgressions: "It sucks." Worse, Sulzberger had no feel for how Raines was perceived in the newsroom, where resentment of his arbitrary, self-aggrandizing ways had reached the flash point. Three weeks after Sulzberger had unequivocally affirmed his support for Raines, the publisher fired him and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd.

The Blair-Raines fiasco devastated Sulzberger. But after a long period of introspection, he appears to have regained his confidence if not quite his swagger. "There's no question that the experience changed him," says Steven L. Rattner, a prominent private equity investor who has been one of Sulzberger's closest confidants ever since they worked together as young Times reporters in the late 1970s. "It's made him more open to other views and more careful to have a better sense of what's going on," he says. "I think it has been an eye-opening experience for Arthur, and that's never bad for any of us."

Sulzberger swallowed a heaping helping of humble pie in replacing Raines with Keller, a former managing editor whom he had passed over in promoting Raines. Appointed in July, 2003, Keller, 54, has been editor for only as long as Raines was but already has made a number of changes as fundamental as those that his predecessor promulgated yet never implemented. "I cringed every time I read that people thought my job was to come in and calm the place down because it made me sound like the official dispenser of Zoloft," says Keller, whose gracious manner has often been mistaken for passivity. "I saw myself instead as being, in some sense, a change agent without having to wave a revolutionary banner."

Keller has made so many high-level personnel changes that two-thirds of all newsroom workers now report to a new boss. He has also put into practice a string of reforms suggested by several internal committees formed in the wake of the Blair affair. These include the appointment of a standards editor and a public editor, or ombudsman. By most accounts, the Times now is much more responsive to outside complaints and criticism than it was.

AT CONSIDERABLE EXPENSE, THE PAPER also has redesigned a half-dozen of its sections and upgraded its global culture coverage with the addition of 20 writing and editing jobs. "In the last year, there has been more change in a packed period of time than I've seen at this paper ever," says Sulzberger, who also credits Keller with "steadying our culture and lowering the temperature here." It is no mean feat to simultaneously improve morale and shake things up, but Keller is going to have to make certain that a happier newsroom does not again make for a more complacent newsroom. What Raines derided as "the Times's defining myth of effortless superiority" might now be in remission -- but has it been eradicated?

While the Times appears to be regaining its stride journalistically, it has not been rewarded with circulation gains. In 2004, the paper posted an infinitesimal 0.2% increase in the circulation of both the daily edition, which now stands at about 1.1 million, and the Sunday paper, which is just under 1.7 million. Since the national expansion began in 1998, the Times has added 150,000 daily subscribers outside New York but is thought to have lost about 96,000 subscribers in its home market. The net increase of 54,000 represents a 5.1% uptick, which compares with the 3.5% decline in U.S. daily newspaper circulation over this period. What's more, the Times posted its gains despite boosting the price of a subscription by more than 25% on average.

New subscribers are increasingly hard to come by for all newspapers as advances in digital communications spur the proliferation of alternative sources of news and information. For the under-30 set in particular, digital accessibility and interactivity tend to trump the familiarity of long-established names like The New York Times, CBS, or CNN.

The growing polarization of the body politic along ideological lines also is hurting the Times and its big-media brethren. One of the few things on which Bush and Kerry supporters agreed during the Presidential campaign was that the press was unfair in its coverage of their candidate. Keller says the Times was deluged with "ferocious letters berating us for either being stooges of the Bush Administration or agents of Michael Moore." Complaints from the Right were far more numerous, even before the newspaper painted a bull's-eye on itself in running a column by public editor Daniel Okrent headlined "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" Okrent's short answer: "Of course it is."

What a growing, or at least increasingly strident, segment of the population seems to want is not journalism untainted by the personal views of journalists but coverage that affirms their partisan beliefs -- in the way that many Fox News (FOX ) shows cater to a conservative constituency. For years, major news organizations have been accused of falling short of the ideal of impartiality that they espouse. Now, the very notion of impartiality is under assault, blurring the line between journalism and propaganda.

For its part, the Bush White House has succeeded to a degree in marginalizing the national or "elite" press by walling off public access to much of the workings of the government and by treating the Fourth Estate as merely another special interest group that can be safely ignored when it isn't being exploited. The Bushies particularly dislike the Times, which, in their view, epitomizes the Eastern liberal Establishment. In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, George W. Bush mocked the Times for what he considered its overly pessimistic coverage of post-World War II Germany. "Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials," he joked.

The Times also is under attack from another branch of the federal government -- the judiciary. The paper figures centrally in most of a half-dozen pending court cases that collectively pose a dire threat to the traditional journalistic practice of assuring confidentiality to whistle-blowers and other informants. In October, a federal judge ordered Judith Miller of the Times imprisoned for up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Miller, who researched the Plame affair but never wrote about it, remains free pending a review by the federal Court of Appeals in Washington.

Sulzberger, who spent six years as a reporter, is outraged that journalists are being slapped with contempt charges for refusing to yield confidential sources to prosecutors. "Reporters are going to jail for doing their jobs, and that's just wrong," he says. The publisher has been less outspoken in responding to the paper's political assailants. In an interview with BusinessWeek, though, he denied his paper is biased in its coverage of national politics or the war in Iraq or even that it is liberal. The term he prefers is "urban," says Sulzberger. "What we saw play out in this election was urban vs. suburban-rural, not red state vs. blue state," he says. "We are from an urban environment; it comes with the territory. We recognize that, and we can't walk away from it, but neither can we play it politically. I don't think we do."

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE became publisher 12 years ago, Sulzberger must carry on without Russ Lewis at his side. Lewis, a loquacious lawyer who got his start as a Times copy boy in 1966, stepped down on Dec. 26 after seven years as president and CEO of NYT Co. His replacement is the 54-year-old Janet Robinson, a former schoolteacher who joined the company in 1983 and worked her way up through advertising sales. She played an important role in the national expansion of the Times as its president and general manager from 1996 into 2004. On the Street, Robinson is known as a formidable manager who relentlessly puts NYT Co.'s best foot forward. "She's never met a number she couldn't spin positively," one analyst says.

The most pressing business problem the new CEO faces is a paucity of advertising. Through November, the Times's ad revenues were just 2.3% ahead of the previous year -- a surprisingly weak performance, considering that the newspaper industry as a whole reported a 9.7% gain in national advertising revenues during the first nine months, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Expenditures on local newspaper advertising in the industry rose 6.6%.

A strengthening U. S. economy would help the Times in 2005 but wouldn't necessarily restore it to competitive parity. The huge runup in advertising rates over the last decade is forcing more U.S. companies to economize, either by shifting into lower-cost media or by homing in more precisely on their target markets. Neither trend bodes well for the Times, whose unique status as America's only metro daily with national reach appears to be putting it at a tactical disadvantage in some ways.

THE TIMES HAS MANY FEWER READERS outside of New York City than do the two largest national newspapers -- USA Today and The Wall Street Journal -- both of which have circulations far in excess of 2 million. "Those two papers tend to be a more cost-effective buy than the Times just because their circulation across the country is so much larger," says Jeff Piper, vice-president and general manager of Carat Press, a big media buyer. Even in the New York region, where the Times reaches only 14% of all adult readers, the paper's circulation is too diffuse to allow for effective targeting by ZIP Code -- a technique that has enriched many other metro dailies with revenue from inserts.

Robinson maintains that there is nothing wrong with the Times' market position that a growing national and New York economy can't fix. Underscoring her confidence, the paper just imposed what is now an annual Jan. 1 ad rate increase, layering a 5% hike atop a cumulative 38% increase since 2000. "We feel that premium quality equals premium price," Robinson says.

At the same time, the Times continues to move out from the 312 markets in which the paper is available into adjacent precincts. In October, it began printing the national edition in Dayton, Ohio, in a plant owned by the local daily. That enabled it to sell papers in 100 new ZIP Codes while raising its presence in existing markets as far afield as Louisville. It plans to add seven new contract sites to its network of 20 printing plants by the end of 2006.

The reinvention of the Times as a national paper has been accompanied by a steady loss of subscribers in the New York metro area. Its dwindling presence at home has been caused in part by forces beyond its control, including a big influx of non-English-speaking immigrants. However, taking the paper further upscale in pursuit of an elite nationwide readership priced it out of some New Yorkers' reach (a seven-day subscription goes for about $480 a year) and constrained its spending on local marketing and promotion. In addition, the Times has declined to join in the trend of introducing foreign-language editions or free editions for young adult readers. (It may be rethinking its free-paper aversion, as evidenced by The Boston Globe's recent purchase of a 49% stake in Metro Boston, a giveaway tabloid.)

The substitution of national for local subscribers benefited the Times financially even beyond the sizable premium it earns on national advertising. On average it costs the Times about one-third more to produce and deliver a newspaper in its home market (the only place where it owns its printing plants) than in the rest of America. But Sulzberger bristles at the notion that the Times is writing off its hometown readers or that a declining New York circulation is the inevitable result of national expansion. "We are not walking away from New York," he says. "But we are growing elsewhere."

The sphere of NYT Co's ambitions widened to encompass the globe when it muscled Washington Post Co. aside to gain full control of the International Herald Tribune, America's broadsheet voice abroad since 1887. The Post reluctantly agreed to relinquish its 50% interest for $65 million after NYT Co. threatened to start a new paper to drive the IHT out of business. "The thing was going sideways and sooner or later was going to die," says Sulzberger, who was harshly criticized by some for lacking the gentlemanliness of his father.

The company considered making the Tribune over into a foreign edition of the Times, but decided in the end to maintain IHT's separate, international identity. "This needs to be a European paper for Europeans," says Michael Golden, a NYT Co. vice-chairman who was named publisher of IHT in 2003. Actually, the Trib's 240,000 subscribers are concentrated in Europe but spread among 180 countries.

Under Golden, a slightly older first cousin of Sulzberger's, the Trib has adopted the Times's playbook, if not its name. The transatlantic flow of copy from the Times has increased, but the Trib has enlarged its own news staff, too. It has also added pages, color photos, and new printing sites in Sydney, São Paulo, and Kuwait City. The Trib scored impressively in recent reader surveys in Europe and Asia and ad sales are rising, but they still amount to less than $100 million a year. Golden and his cousin yearn to turn the Trib's operating losses into profits, but the general track record of English-language newspapers and magazines abroad is discouraging. Even if the IHT flourishes, it will be a long time before it contributes significantly to its parent company's top or bottom lines.

The same is true of NYT Co.'s investment in television news. The Times has built a cadre of television professionals who, in collaboration with a revolving cast of print reporters, have produced much fine work for Frontline, Nova, and other programs. In 2003, the Times moved beyond production into distribution, laying out $100 million for half-ownership of a digital cable channel, Discovery Times, operated in partnership with Discovery Communications Inc. Discovery Times reaches 35 million homes -- an impressive total for a fledgling channel -- but its ratings are minuscule: In October, just 27,000 people tuned in during prime time, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

ONLINE, THE TIMES ALREADY is making serious money. New York Times Digital (which includes Boston.com as well as NYTimes.com) netted an enviable $17.3 million on revenues of $53.1 million during the first half of 2004, the last period for which its financials have been disclosed. All indications are that the digital unit is continuing to grow at 30% to 40% a year, making it NYT Co.'s fastest-revving growth engine.

Advertising accounts for almost all of the digital operation's revenues, but disagreement rages within the company over whether NYTimes.com should emulate The Wall Street Journal and begin charging a subscription fee. Undoubtedly, many of the site's 18 million unique monthly visitors would flee if hit with a $39.95 or even a $9.95 monthly charge. One camp within the NYT Co. argues that such a massive loss of Web traffic would cost the Times dearly in the long run, both by shrinking the audience for its journalism and by depriving it of untold millions in ad revenue. The counterargument is that the Times would more than make up for lost ad dollars by boosting circulation revenue -- both from online fees and new print subscriptions paid for by people who now read for free on the Web.

Sulzberger declines to take a side in this debate, but sounds as if he is leaning toward a pay site. "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free," he says. "That is troubling."

What's a platform agnostic to do? The New York Times, like all print publications, faces a quandary. A majority of the paper's readership now views the paper online, but the company still derives 90% of its revenues from newspapering. "The business model that seems to justify the expense of producing quality journalism is the one that isn't growing, and the one that is growing -- the Internet -- isn't producing enough revenue to produce journalism of the same quality," says John Battelle, a co-founder of Wired and other magazines and Web sites.

Today, Sulzberger faces an even bigger challenge than when he took charge of the Times in the mid-1990s. Can he find a way to rekindle growth while preserving the primacy of the Times's journalism? The answer will go a long way toward determining not only the fate of America's most important newspaper but also whether traditional, reporting-intensive journalism has a central place in the Digital Age.

By Anthony Bianco with John Rossant in Paris and Lauren Gard in New York

Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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Business Week Article on NYT

2005-01-12T21:34:00.000-08:00

Duchamp's urinal tops art survey

2004-12-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS

A white gentlemen's urinal has been named the most influential modern art work of all time.

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain came top of a poll of 500 art experts in the run-up to this year's Turner Prize which takes place on Monday.

Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) was second, with Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych from 1962 coming third.

Duchamp shocked the art establishment when he took the urinal, signed it and put it on display in 1917.

"The choice of Duchamp's Fountain as the most influential work of modern art ahead of works by Picasso and Matisse comes as a bit of a shock," said art expert Simon Wilson.

Ahead of time

"But it reflects the dynamic nature of art today and the idea that the creative process that goes into a work of art is the most important thing - the work itself can be made of anything and can take any form."

Duchamp has influenced many contemporary artists, including Tracey Emin - her unmade bed was inspired by the French artist.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4059997.stm

Published: 2004/12/01 17:56:19 GMT

© BBC MMIV

'There's Something Strange Happening With the Sea'

2004-12-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 26, 2004; 11:31 AM

WELLIGAMA, Sri Lanka, Dec. 26 -- Disaster struck with no warning out of a faultlessly clear blue sky.

I was taking my morning swim around the island that my businessman-brother Geoffrey bought on a whim a decade ago and turned into a tropical paradise just 200 yards from one of the world's most beautiful beaches on the Sri Lankan mainland.

I was a quarter way around the island when I heard my brother shouting at me, "Come back! Come back! There's something strange happening with the sea." He was swimming behind me, but closer to the shore.

I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. All seemed peaceful. There was barely a ripple in the sea.

Then I noticed that the water around me was rising, climbing up the rock walls of the island with astonishing speed. The vast circle of golden sand around Welligama Bay was disappearing rapidly, and the water had reached the level of the coastal road fringed with palm trees.

As I swam to shore, my mind was momentarily befuddled by two conflicting impressions: the idyllic blue sky and the rapidly rising waters.

In less than a minute, the water level had risen at least 15 feet -- but the sea itself remained calm, barely a wave in sight.

Within minutes, the beach and the area behind it had become an inland sea, rushing over the road and pouring into the flimsy houses on the other side. The speed with which it all happened seemed like a scene from the Bible -- a natural phenomenon unlike anything I had experienced before.

As the waters rose at an incredible rate, I half expected to catch sight of Noah's Ark.

Instead of the Ark, I grabbed hold of a wooden catamaran that the local people used as a fishing boat. My brother jumped on the boat, next to me. We bobbed up and down on the catamaran, as the water rushed past us into the village beyond the road.

After a few minutes, the water stopped rising, and I felt it was safe to swim to the shore. What I didn't realize was that the floodwaters would recede as dramatically as they had risen.

All of a sudden, I found myself being swept out to sea with startling speed. Although I am a fairly strong swimmer, I was unable to withstand the current. The fishing boats around me had been torn from their moorings and were furiously bobbing up and down.

For the first time, I felt afraid, powerless to prevent myself from being swept out to sea.

I swam in the direction of one of the loose catamarans, grabbed hold of the hull, and pulled myself to safety. My weight must have slowed the boat down and soon I was stranded on the sand.

As the water rushed out of the bay, I scrambled onto the main road. Screams and yells were coming from the houses behind the road, many of which were still half full of water, trapping the inhabitants inside. Villagers were walking dazed along the road, unable to comprehend what had taken place.

I was worried about my wife who had been on the beach at the time I went for my swim. I eventually found her walking along the road, dazed and happy to be alive. She had been trying to wade back to our island, when the water had carried her across the road and into someone's back yard. At one point she was underwater, struggling for breath. She finally grabbed onto a piece of rope and climbed into a tree, while the waters raged beneath her.

Our children were still asleep when the tidal wave struck this morning at 9:15 am. They woke up to find the bay practically drained of water and their parents walking back across the narrow channel to safety.

The waves have been raging around the island for the rest of the day -- alternatively rising and receding.

It took us many hours to realize the scale of the disaster of which we had witnessed a tiny part. The road from Welligama to Galle is cut in many places. There are reports of hundreds, perhaps thousands of people missing and drowned in southern Sri Lanka.

The coastal road is littered with carcasses of boats and dead dogs. Even a few dead sharks have washed up on the road. Helicopters are flying overhead and loudspeaker vans warning local residents to leave low-lying areas for fear of more tidal waves.

My brothers' little island -- called Tapbrobane after the ancient name of Sri Lanka -- is largely intact, although a piece of our gate ended up on the seashore half a mile away.

His house rests on a rock 60 feet above the level of the sea, which rose a maximum of 20 feet.

We have no water, and no electricity and are practically cut off from the rest of Sri Lanka. It is impossible to buy food, we are existing on cold ham and turkey sandwiches, leftovers from last night's Christmas Dinner.

The holiday that we planned and dreamed about for many months is in ruins. We feel fortunate -- fortunate to be alive.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Barack Obama's Speech to the Democratic National Convention, 2004

2004-11-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

State Senator Barack Obama

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place; America which stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor he signed up for duty, joined Patton’s army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA, and moved west in search of opportunity.

And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream, born of two continents. My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or “blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential. They are both passed away now. Yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with pride.

I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible. Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring somebody’s son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted—or at least, most of the time.

This year, in this election, we are called to reaffirm our values and commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we are measuring up, to the legacy of our forbearers, and the promise of future generations. And fellow Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Independents—I say to you tonight: we have more work to do. More to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour. More to do for the father I met who was losing his job and choking back tears, wondering how he would pay $4,500 a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits he counted on. More to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.

Don’t get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks, they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or the Pentagon. Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach kids to learn. They know that parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

In this election, we offer that choice. Our party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. That man is John Kerry. John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and sacrifice, because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service in Vietnam to his years as prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he has devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available. His values and his record affirm what is best in us.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded. So instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he’ll offer them to companies creating jobs here at home. John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves. John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies or the sabotage of foreign oil fields. John Kerry believes in the constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties nor use faith as a wedge to divide us. And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world, war must be an option, but it should never be the first option.

A while back, I met a young man named Shamus at the VFW Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid, six-two or six-three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. As I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, his absolute faith in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all any of us might hope for in a child. But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us? I thought of more than 900 service men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who will not be returning to their hometowns. I thought of families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or with nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists. When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure. John Kerry believes in America. And he knows it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga.

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It’s that fundamental belief—I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper—that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism here—the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation; the belief in things not seen; the belief that there are better days ahead. I believe we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity. I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair. I believe that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us. America!

Tonight, if you feel the same energy I do, the same urgency I do, the same passion I do, the same hopefulness I do—if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come. Thank you and God bless you.

© Copyright 2004 Democratic National Convention Committee, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Paid for 2004 Democratic National Convention Committee. www.Dems2004.org not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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BIN LADEN TRANSCRIPT, FRI OCT 29 2004 17:45:46 ET

2004-10-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

Newsreader: A new message from Bin Laden to the American people about the reasons and resulats of the 9/11 attacks.

Newsreader 2: The head of AL Qaeda says the continuation of us policy will lead to the repetition of what happened.

Male presenter: The head of AL Qaeda organization directed a message to the American people and this video and audio apearence in this tape which Jezeera required for the first time for two years. In the beginning of his message, he spoke about the reasons why they chose the US to execute 9/11..

OBL: You American people, my speech to you is the best way to avoid another conflict about the war and its reasons and results. I am telling you security is an important pillar of human life. And free people don't let go of their security contrary to Bush's claims that we hate freedom. He should tell us why we didn't hit Sweden for instance. Its known that those who hate freedom don't have dignified souls.like the 19 who were blessed. But we fought you because we are free people, we don't sleep on our oppression. We want to regain the freedom of our Muslim nation as you spill our security, we spill your security.

Female presenter: Bin Laden spoke for the first time about the main reasons he thought of executing Sept 11 attacks, confirming that the Israeli operation in Lebanon was the first incident where he thought of it.

OBL: I am so surprised by you. Although we are in the fourth year after the events of sept 11, Bush is still practicing distortion and misleading on you, and obscuring the main reasons and therefore the reasons are still existing to repeat what happened before. I will tell you the reasons behind theses incidents.

I will be honest with you on the moment when the decision was taken to understand. We never thought of hitting the towers. But after we were so fed up, and we saw the oppression of the American Israeli coalition on our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind and the incidents that really touched me directly goes back to 1982 and the following incidents. When the US permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon with the assistance of the 6th fleet. In these hard moments, it occurred to me so many meanings I cant explain but it resulted in a general feeling of rejecting oppression and gave me a hard determination to punish the oppressors. While I was looking at the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it came to my mind to punish the oppressor the same way and destroy towers in the US to get a taste of what they tasted, and quit killing our children and women.

Male presenter: Bin Laden considered in his message that the results of Sept 11 were successful in his opinion and as a reason of that, he said that the similarity between the administration of Bush the father and the arab regimes said Bush learned so much from them during his visits.

OBL: We didn't find difficulty dealing with Bush and his administration due to the similarity of his regime and the regims in our countries. Whish half of them are ruled by military and the other half by sons of kings and presidents and our experience with them is long. Both parties are arrogant and stubborn and the greediness and taking money without right and that similarity appeared during the visits of Bush to the region while people from our side were impressed by the US and hoped that these visits would influence our countries. Here he is being influenced by these regimes, Royal and military. And was feeling jealous they were staying for decades in power stealing the nations finances without anybody overseeing them. So he transferred the oppression of freedom and tyranny to his son and they call it th e Patriot Law to fight terrorism. He was bright in putting his sons as governors in states and he didn't forget to transfer his experience from the rulers of our region to Florida to falsify elections to benefit from it in critical times.

Female Presenter: Bin Laden considered the way Bush dealt with the first moments of Sept. 11, giving a good chance to the executors of Sept. 11 to complete it.

OBL: We agreed with Mohamed Atta, god bless him, to execute the whole operation in 20 minutes. Before Bush and his administration would pay attention and we never thought that the high commander of the US armies would leave 50 thousand of his citizens in both towers to face the horrors by themselves when they most needed him because it seemed to distract his attention from listening to the girl telling him about her goat butting was more important than paying attention to airplanes butting the towers which gave us three times the time to execute the operation thank god.

Male presenter: the final part of the message is that the security of the Americans depends on the policy that they execute despite the winner of the elections.

OBL: Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Each state that doenst mess with our security has automatically secured their security.

Female Presenter: In Bin Laden's message he approached other points. He pointed to the contradiction which considers oppression and killing of innocents a legal act. They formed an international law as bush the father did with the children of iraq according to bin laden. Bin Laden pointed to the millions of pounds of explosives dropped on Iraqi children as bush his son had done, as he said to remove an old agent and install a new agent to help instealing the oil of iraq. And bin laden said the events of 9/11 came as an answer to this oppression and said that if the answer to this oppression is considered bad terror, then we need to do it. And he stressed that he wants to deliver this message to the Americans in words and in deeds since the 9/11 events. He reminded Americans of a few warning messages through various news media like Time Magazine and CNN and other Arab and correspondents since 1996. He warned them of the conswquences of their countries policies. He talked abou t the damage Sept 11 caused the US economy and that it cost close to a trillion dollars. He talked about President Bush and that the emergency law requires more money.

END

Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech
by
Saturday 30 October 2004 11:28 AM GMT

Bin Ladin directed his message at the American people

Following is the full English transcript of Usama bin Ladin's speech in a videotape sent to Aljazeera. In the interests of authenticity, the content of the transcript, which appeared as subtitles at the foot of the screen, has been left unedited.

Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed:

Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan, and deals with the war and its causes and results.

Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom.

If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.

No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.

But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred.

So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to consider.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors.

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th.

And you can read this, if you wish, in my interview with Scott in Time Magazine in 1996, or with Peter Arnett on CNN in 1997, or my meeting with John Weiner in 1998.

You can observe it practically, if you wish, in Kenya and Tanzania and in Aden. And you can read it in my interview with Abdul Bari Atwan, as well as my interviews with Robert Fisk.

The latter is one of your compatriots and co-religionists and I consider him to be neutral. So are the pretenders of freedom at the White House and the channels controlled by them able to run an interview with him? So that he may relay to the American people what he has understood from us to be the reasons for our fight against you?

If you were to avoid these reasons, you will have taken the correct path that will lead America to the security that it was in before September 11th. This concerned the causes of the war.

As for it's results, they have been, by the grace of Allah, positive and enormous, and have, by all standards, exceeded all expectations. This is due to many factors, chief among them, that we have found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents.

Our experience with them is lengthy, and both types are replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of wealth. This resemblance began after the visits of Bush Sr to the region.

At a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by America and hoping that these visits would have an effect on our countries, all of a sudden he was affected by those monarchies and military regimes, and became envious of their remaining decades in their positions, to embezzle the public wealth of the nation without supervision or accounting.

So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot Act, under the pretence of fighting terrorism. In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors, and didn't forget to import expertise in election fraud from the region's presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty.

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.

All Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah.

That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinises the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains.

Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results.

And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.

And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. [When they pointed out that] for example, al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest estimate - more than $500 billion.

Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.

As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.

And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's permission.

It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind, will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is ... you.

It is the American people and their economy. And for the record, we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa, Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration notice.

It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great horrors alone, the time when they most needed him.

But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers, we were given three times the period required to execute the operations - all praise is due to Allah.

And it's no secret to you that the thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war and told him: "All that you want for securing America and removing the weapons of mass destruction - assuming they exist - is available to you, and the nations of the world are with you in the inspections, and it is in the interest of America that it not be thrust into an unjustified war with an unknown outcome."

But the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America.

So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future. He fits the saying "like the naughty she-goat who used her hoof to dig up a knife from under the earth".

So I say to you, over 15,000 of our people have been killed and tens of thousands injured, while more than a thousand of you have been killed and more than 10,000 injured. And Bush's hands are stained with the blood of all those killed from both sides, all for the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business.

Be aware that it is the nation who punishes the weak man when he causes the killing of one of its citizens for money, while letting the powerful one get off, when he causes the killing of more than 1000 of its sons, also for money.

And the same goes for your allies in Palestine. They terrorise the women and children, and kill and capture the men as they lie sleeping with their families on the mattresses, that you may recall that for every action, there is a reaction.

Finally, it behoves you to reflect on the last wills and testaments of the thousands who left you on the 11th as they gestured in despair. They are important testaments, which should be studied and researched.

Among the most important of what I read in them was some prose in their gestures before the collapse, where they say: "How mistaken we were to have allowed the White House to implement its aggressive foreign policies against the weak without supervision."

It is as if they were telling you, the people of America: "Hold to account those who have caused us to be killed, and happy is he who learns from others' mistakes."

And among that which I read in their gestures is a verse of poetry. "Injustice chases its people, and how unhealthy the bed of tyranny."

As has been said: "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

And know that: "It is better to return to the truth than persist in error." And that the wise man doesn't squander his security, wealth and children for the sake of the liar in the White House.

In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No.

Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security.

And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.

Aljazeera
By

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Putin Tells the Russians: 'We Shall Be Stronger'

2004-09-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

September 5, 2004

MOSCOW, Sept. 4 - Following is a transcript of President Vladimir V. Putin's televised remarks at the Kremlin on Saturday night, as translated by The New York Times:

It is a difficult and bitter task for me to speak. A horrible tragedy happened in our land. During these last few days, each one of us suffered immensely, having all that happened in the Russian city of Beslan run through our hearts. We were confronted not just by murderers, but those who used their weapons against defenseless children.

In the first place, I am addressing today those who lost the dearest in their life, their children, their kin, their closest. I want you to remember all those who died at the hands of terrorists in the last few days.

There have been many tragic pages and difficult trials in the history of Russia. Today we are living in conditions formed after the disintegration of a huge, great country, the country which unfortunately turned out to be nonviable in the conditions of rapidly changing world.

Today, however, despite all difficulties, we managed to preserve the nucleus of that giant, the Soviet Union. We called the new country the Russian Federation.

We all expected changes, changes for the better, but found ourselves absolutely unprepared for much that changed in our lives. The question is why. We live in conditions of a transitional economy and a political system that do not correspond to the development of society. We live in conditions of aggravated internal conflicts and ethnic conflicts that before were harshly suppressed by the governing ideology.

We stopped paying due attention to issues of defense and security. We allowed corruption to affect the judiciary and law enforcement systems. In addition to that, our country, which once had one of the mightiest systems of protecting its borders, suddenly found itself unprotected either from West or East.

It would take many years and billions of rubles to create new, modern and truly protected borders. But even so, we could have been more effective if we had acted in timely and professional fashion. We have to admit that we failed to recognize the complexity and danger of the processes going on in our own country and the world as a whole. At any rate, we failed to react to them adequately. We demonstrated weakness, and the weak are beaten.

Some want to tear off a big chunk of our country. Others help them to do it. They help because they think that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be eliminated. And terrorism is only an instrument to achieve these goals.

As I have said on many occasions, we have faced crises, rebellions and terrorist acts many times. But what has happened now - the unprecedented crime committed by terrorists, inhuman in its cruelty - is not a challenge to the president, the Parliament or the government. This is a challenge to all of Russia, to all our people. This is an attack against all of us.

Terrorists think that they are stronger, that they will be able to intimidate us, to paralyze our will, to erode our society. It seems that we have a choice: to resist or to cave in and agree with their claims; to give up and allow them to destroy and to take Russia apart, in hope that eventually they would leave us alone.

As president, as the head of the Russian state, as a man who gave an oath to protect the country and its integrity, as a citizen of Russia, I am convinced that in fact we do not have any choice, because as soon as we allow ourselves to be blackmailed and to panic, we shall immerse millions of people in a series of bloody conflicts, similar to Karabakh, Trans-Dnestria and other well known tragedies.

We cannot but see the evident: we are dealing not with separate acts of intimidation, not with individual forays of terrorists. We are dealing with the direct intervention of international terror against Russia, with total and full-scale war, which again and again is taking away the lives of our compatriots.

All the world's experience shows that such wars do not end quickly. In these conditions, we simply cannot, we should not, live as carelessly as before.

We must create a more effective security system, and demand from our law enforcement agencies actions adequate in level and scale to the new threats.

But what is more important is a mobilization of the nation before the general threat. Events in other countries prove that terrorists meet the most effective rebuff where they confront not only the power of the state but also an organized and united civil society.

Dear fellow citizens, those who sent terrorists to commit this horrible crime had the goal of setting our peoples against one another, to intimidate citizens of Russia, to unleash a bloody feud in the North Caucasus. In this connection, I would like to say the following:

First, in the near future, a complex of measures aimed at strengthening the unity of our country will be prepared.

Second, I consider it necessary to create a new system of forces and means for exercising control over the situation in the North Caucasus.

Third, it is necessary to create an affective crisis management system, including entirely new approaches to the work of law enforcement agencies.

I would like to stress that all these measures will be implemented in full accordance with the Constitution.

Dear friends: Together we live through very hard, mournful hours. I would like to thank all those who demonstrated patience and civic responsibility. We shall always be stronger than they, by our morale, courage and our humane solidarity.

One could see it today and the night before. In Beslan, soaked with pain and grief, people expressed even more care and support to each other and were not afraid of jeopardizing their lives for the sake of the lives and safety of others. Even in the most inhuman conditions, they remained human. It is impossible to reconcile the pain of the losses. The trial has brought us even closer together, made us re-evaluate many things. Today, we have to be together. Only thus we shall defeat the enemy.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

BATTLE IN BESLAN: 250 Die as Siege at a Russian School Ends in Chaos

2004-09-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

September 4, 2004
By C. J. CHIVERS and STEVEN LEE MYERS

BESLAN, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 4 - The siege of a school here in southern Russia ended Friday in panic, violence and death 52 hours after it began. At least 250 people - most of them students, teachers and parents - died, according to official reports and witnesses, after two large explosions set off pitched battles between heavily armed captors and Russian forces that continued for hours.

Ambulances, police cars and any other free vehicle rushed as many as 700 people to hospitals in frenzied convoys that careered through the streets of this small, leafy city in the republic of North Ossetia.

Early Saturday, 531 people remained hospitalized, including 283 children - 92 of whom were said to be in "very grave" condition, The Associated Press reported.

Scores of hostages survived, staggering from the school even as intense gunfire sputtered and grenades exploded around them. Many were barely dressed, their faces strained with fear and exhaustion, their bodies bloodied by shrapnel and gunshots. Many others never got out. Their bodies lay in the charred wreckage of Middle School No. 1's gymnasium, the roof of which had collapsed and burned, a police officer said. Many people here feared the toll would rise.

Gunfire and explosions erupted sporadically in and around the school deep into the night, as pockets of guerrillas continued to fight, including three hunkered inside a nearby building, reportedly holding an unknown number of hostages. Officials did not declare the crisis over until 11:30 p.m., more than 10 hours after the violence began.

The battle around the school - which Russian officials said erupted unexpectedly after the explosions, which still have not been fully explained - ended a siege that began when more than two dozen masked and camouflaged militants stormed the school on Wednesday as children and parents gathered for a festive first day of classes.

The number of dead and wounded far surpassed the number of hostages that were reported being held, prompting accusations here that the authorities deliberately played down the severity of the crisis. On Friday, a presidential adviser, Aslambek Aslakhanov, said for the first time that as many as 1,200 hostages might have been held; earlier, officials had put the number at around 350.

President Vladimir V. Putin, confronted with perhaps the worst crisis of his five years in office, did not immediately address what unfolded here on Friday, but arrived early Saturday and visited a hospital. "Today all of Russia suffers for you," he said in a televised meeting with Aleksandr S. Dzasokhov, the president of North Ossetia.

Mr. Putin ordered security forces to seal the city and block the region's borders in an apparent attempt to track down any hostage-takers who may have escaped.

Other officials, in Moscow and in North Ossetia, said on Friday that Russian forces had not instigated the firefights but had been forced to return fire and then to storm the school following the first explosions, which occurred just after 1 p.m.

"Taking advantage of the panic, hostages began to escape," Lev Dzugayev, a spokesman for Mr. Dazasokhov, said in an interview. "The bandits began shooting them in the back. The special forces on our side had to cover the fleeing hostages. This is unfortunately how it happened."

Even the preliminary toll of this hostage crisis exceeded that of Russia's last one, when at least 41 armed guerrillas stormed a theater in Moscow and held hundreds of hostages in October 2002, a siege that ended with striking similarities. A daring rescue by commandos killed all the guerrillas, but also 129 of the hostages, most from nerve gas pumped into the building.

The dead this time included several Russia soldiers and security officials and more than 20 of an estimated 30 or more guerrillas. Three of the attackers were reported captured and at least a few were reported to have escaped.

Maj. Gen. Valery A. Andreyev, director of North Ossetia's branch of the Federal Security Service, said half of the dead fighters were foreigners, apparently from Arab countries. If verified, that would comport with the Kremlin's assertions that Chechnya's rebels were receiving aid and manpower from abroad.

The afternoon's violence ended the fretful vigil by the relatives since Wednesday, for many families joyously, but for others grievously. Two girls who escaped, tattered and wan but apparently unhurt, emerged from a car not far from the school and raced to their family's courtyard, where they met and hugged their mother.

The morgue at the city's main hospital, though, overflowed. More than 20 bodies lay on stretchers on grass outside. Men and women filed through lifting the sheets that covered the dead, which included children and Russian soldiers or security officers. Recognition brought wrenching, piercing wails. A mother in a red and white blouse knelt on the ground, weeping as she kissed her dead daughter's face.

There were conflicting accounts of the source and the reason for the initial explosions. Some witnesses and officials cited by news agencies said the attackers had mishandled a bomb, while others said two female fighters had detonated explosive belts wrapped around them. Sergei N. Ignatchenko, the spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service, said the explosions might have been staged by the attackers to sow confusion and to escape.

Some of the attackers, he said in an interview in Moscow, changed into civilian clothes and blended into the panicked crowd fleeing the building. He and others said some of the guerrillas, including a sniper on the roof or in a second-story window, had fired on those who fled.

"When they opened fire, we were compelled to give the order for the special forces to attack in order to save people," he said.

The carnage began even as negotiators held intermittent talks with the fighters, the morning after they had let 26 women and babies leave the school. The Kremlin had sent Mr. Aslakhanov as its envoy.

The guerrillas had also agreed to allow emergency workers to remove the bodies of those who died in the initial seizure of the school. They had just left the school when the explosions occurred, officials said.

On Friday morning, Mr. Dzasokhov told hundreds of relatives gathered in the city's House of Culture that the use of force was not being considered but that the behavior of the fighters, who rebuffed offers of safe passage and who refused to allow food or water into the school, was trying everyone's patience.

He said the authorities had turned to Chechnya's separatist leaders to help negotiate a peaceful end to a crisis that has transfixed and horrified a country that has endured a week of terrorist attacks and other violence stemming from the war in Chechnya.

Mr. Dzasokhov said he had received instructions to open a channel to Alsan Maskhadov, who was Chechnya's president until fleeing Russian forces in 1999. Mr. Dzasokhov and Ruslan Aushev, the regional leader who negotiated the release of 26 hostages on Thursday, both called Mr. Maskhadov's chief representative abroad, Akhmed Zakayev, on Thursday and again on Friday.

That appeared to reverse the Kremlin's policy of never negotiating with people that Mr. Putin calls terrorists. After the assault, a Kremlin spokesman, Aleksandr Smirnov, distanced Mr. Putin from the contacts, saying they were "the personal initiative" of Mr. Aushev.

Mr. Zakayev, who lives in exile in London and is wanted by the Russians on criminal charges, said in a telephone interview that he and Mr. Maskhadov were prepared to assist.

"I assured them that President Maskhadov was as distraught as they were," Mr. Zakayev said before chaos fell on this city. "He is ready without any conditions to make all efforts to save these children and resolve this crisis."

The contacts with Mr. Zakayev - the first since a fleeting meeting at a Moscow airport in November 2001 - underscored the evident desperation to end the standoff. The entreaties, obviously, came too late.

The first explosions, separated by less than a minute, sent a large, dusty white cloud over the school and were followed by a period of ferocious gunfire. Some residents joined Russian police and army forces in firing at the building; others rushed the school, under fire, to escort or carry out the fleeing hostages and take them to the hospital.

In one vehicle was a teenage girl, her black hair matted to her bloody face, her mouth open, apparently gravely wounded. "Where is the hospital?" the driver of a Mercedes screamed. Inside were two adults with children on their laps.

Teimuraz Kanukov said he had shuttled six times between the school and the hospital ferrying hostages, three wounded, three dead. His shirt was soaked with blood. "These were children," he said, "shot in the head." Eight of his own relatives were among the hostages, he said, then headed back toward the school.

By 2 p.m., officials announced that commandoes had entered the school, but fighting continued as some hostage-takers tried to escape. As helicopters circled overhead, a small group of fleeing fighters occupied a nearby house, where fighting raged for hours.

Fierce fighting broke out by a railroad crossing hundreds of feet from the school, apparently as a separate group of fighters fled southward. Half an hour later, two tanks headed toward the school, almost immediately firing heavy shells.

Russian special forces have earned a reputation for rashness in hostage situations, particularly with the storming of the Moscow theater. But evidence suggesting that Russian forces had not planned to storm the building could be seen around the two tanks, whose soldiers milled about, evidently in confusion after the initial blast, before rallying and heading into the battle.

Hours after the hostages streamed from the school, several fighters remained positioned on the school grounds and battled fiercely, indicating not only their suicidal determination but also a high degree of planning. "They showed up with crates and crates of ammunition," Mr. Ignatchenko said.

The violence, particularly as it involved children, induced vigilantism. There were reports of angry Ossetians attacking captured guerrillas. A man believed to be one of the fighters made his way to an alley near the school and hid under an army truck before being captured by Russian soldiers during the fighting. A crowd then set upon the manand beat him, tearing at his clothes, while the soldiers tried to shuffle him away.

"Everybody tried to beat him," said Khariton Valiyev, 58, who was in the crowd. "People wanted to tear him to pieces. I myself would have pulled his eyes from his head with my fingers."

That fighter's fate was not known.

C.J. Chivers reported from Beslan for this article, and Steven Lee Myers from Moscow. Viktor Klimenkocontributed reporting from Beslan.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company