Be very afraid, please

Reuters

AMERICA and Israel often hint at military action to stop Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons programme. The latest rumblings, however, may be more serious. The atmosphere has been charged by a combination of factors: Iran’s expanding uranium-enrichment programme, faltering diplomatic efforts to halt it, a dying American administration and a nervous Israel. Throw in the latest war games by Israel, America and Iran—and Iran’s apparent rejection of the latest international incentives to halt its nuclear work—and some reckon the sparks could soon fly.

On July 9th Iranian television showed the test-firing of nine missiles (see picture), a day after an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened to “burn” Tel Aviv and American ships in the Gulf, and strike at America’s “vital interests around the globe”, if it were attacked. More tests took place on July 10th.

This was a response to Israel’s demonstration of its own long arm in June, when about 100 Israeli jets took part in exercises that appeared to rehearse the bombing of distant targets. Western officials were struck by helicopter sorties of more than 800 miles (1,290km), about the distance from Israel to Iran, to simulate the rescue of downed pilots. Israel conducted the exercise with Greece, rather than its traditional partner, Turkey, maybe because Greece has some of the Russian SA-20 anti-aircraft missiles Iran recently bought.

In the Gulf, meanwhile, American, British and Bahraini ships are involved in a joint exercise to protect gas and oil installations. This seems to be a reaction to Iran’s threats to retaliate against any attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for roughly 40% of the world’s traded oil, and striking at neighbouring countries.

Does this public bellicosity really make military action more likely? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, dismissed the idea this week as a “funny joke”. And, yes, Israel could well be bluffing, waving its big stick in order to make the rewards the Europeans, Americans, Russians and Chinese are offering Iran in return for an end to uranium enrichment look more tempting. But whether or not Israel has frightened Iran, it has clearly rattled others.

France’s Total, an energy giant, said this week it was giving up plans to invest in Iran because of the risk. A top British government official puts the chance of an Israeli strike at 30%. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, was worried enough to say publicly that a third war (after Afghanistan and Iraq) would be “extremely stressful, very challenging, with consequences that would be difficult to predict”. As to whether Israel might act alone, he said: “This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to become more unstable.”

One uncertainty is how close Iran is to being able to make a nuclear weapon (an aspiration it vehemently denies). America’s controversial National Intelligence Estimate, made public in December, said that Iran had indeed run a weaponisation programme but seemed to stop it in 2003. The Iranians continue (despite UN sanctions) to enrich uranium, but most Western experts think they have much to learn before being able to make the high-enriched variety for a bomb. America’s estimate is that the soonest Iran could make enough for one device would be the end of 2009, but that it could take five or more years longer.

Israeli officials are less sanguine. So far Iran has produced only a small amount of low-enriched uranium, but this could eventually be converted to the bomb-making sort. For all its sabre-rattling, Israel still says that diplomacy is preferable to war. But a number of political and military considerations may yet convince Israel to act alone—sooner rather than later.

One of these is the departure of the friendly Bush administration and the possible advent of a President Obama, who has promised to do “everything” to stop Iran getting a bomb but who is distrusted by many Israelis. Another is that Iran’s Russian-built reactor at Bushehr is due to start working in October. This is less worrying than the underground enrichment facility at Natanz. But if Israel intends to bomb it, it would be best to do so before it is loaded with nuclear fuel. Finally, it would be easier for Israel to act before Iran deploys its SA-20s, which may happen in early 2009.

That said, an effective attack against Iran’s buried and dispersed nuclear facilities would not be easy, even if Israel knew where all of them were. There will be no element of surprise, as when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and a Syrian facility which America said afterwards was a secret reactor last September.

Another unknown is whether Israel would dare to strike Iran without a green or at least an amber light from the Americans. Without one, flying to Iran the direct way—through American-controlled Iraqi airspace—would be fraught with danger. An unauthorised Israeli strike that added to America’s miscellaneous woes in the Middle East would test even the closest alliance, jeopardising Israel’s relationship with its vital patron and armourer.

Against this must be weighed Israel’s visceral sense of vulnerability, sharpened not only by the Jewish state’s history but also by the implacability of Iran, whose government rules out any accommodation with the “Zionist regime” and repeatedly predicts its disappearance. Nobody can be quite sure that in a corner, confronting what it believed to be existential peril, Israel will not act—alone if necessary.

“Bailiff, sequester these 12 angry men”

A Massachusetts jury found a British man guilty of murdering his wife and child this week. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole, but his lawyers quickly promised an appeal. Among their claims: that his jury was biased by intense media coverage of the crime.

Whether or not you believe that claim, it goes right to the heart of the U.S. justice system–which relies, to a large degree, on the notion of trial by a fair and impartial jury.

In fact, America’s founders thought that jury trials were so important that the U.S. Constitution covers them in three places: first in Article III, and again in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments. Here’s what that founding document says.

Article III, Section 2

“The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.”

The Constitution didn’t say much about rights until the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Yet it did guarantee the right to trial by jury, an idea inherited from British common law. Starting in 1215, the Magna Carta, in particular, protected an English nobleman from being punished “except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

By colonial times, all “freeborn Englishmen” assumed the right to a jury trial. In 1774, the First Continental Congress declared that British subjects in America were entitled to “the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by peers.” Two years later, the Declaration of Independence condemned the king for “depriving us . . . of the benefits of Trial by Jury.”

The Sixth Amendment

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”

The Sixth Amendment demands that juries be impartial and local. Courts strive for impartiality in two ways. First, they draw juries from pools of citizens that must, by law, accurately represent the community. Second, they select jurors from the pool carefully, through “voir dire” (Anglo-French for “to speak the truth”). During voir dire, attorneys from both sides question prospective jurors to see if they are biased. Those found to be so are generally sent home.

Requiring local juries was partly a response to pre-Revolutionary War cases in which the British shipped colonists off to England to stand trial before unsympathetic jurors. It was also part of common law precedent. In a draft of the Sixth Amendment, James Madison wrote that juries should be made up of “freeholders of the vicinage” (common law parlance for “neighborhood property owners”).

The Seventh Amendment

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

Though we now associate juries more with criminal cases, they were used to try civil cases first. The Seventh Amendment guarantees that their use in such cases will continue–at least as long as people continue to sue each other for sums exceeding $20.

The Seventh Amendment also explicitly preserves a common law tradition in which juries, and not judges, decide cases’ facts. Judges answer questions of law. For example, a judge decides which evidence is legally admissible (a question of law), but a jury decides what that evidence actually proves (a question of fact). The judge is the legal expert. But the power to determine guilt or innocence, or civil liability, belongs to the community itself.

–Steve Sampson

Zoom in on Iran Zoom out on the Middle East

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made headlines again yesterday, with a speech calling for the downfall of both Israel and the United States. Of Israel, the Iranian leader said, “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime . . . has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Of the United States, he said, “the time for the fall of the satanic power . . . has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has begun.”

Amid such animosity, we decided it was time to zoom in on Iran. So today, we’ll measure the nation by the numbers and place it squarely on your mental map. Then, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll retrace Iran’s history, from Alexander the Great to the rise of the current regime.

ran, By the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place “Persia” and to start using the name natives use: “Iran.” The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi–from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran’s western-supported shah (”king”) into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran’s total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That’s slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran’s total population. That’s more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It’s a youthful country–about half of its people are under 25–and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran’s largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country’s growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi’a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi’ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation’s post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world’s leading natural gas exporters.

Iran, On the Map

Get a printable map of Iran’s mountainous geography:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_physical.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s mixed ethnicity:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_ethno.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s population centers:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_pop.pdf

–Michael Himick

What’s new in Kathmandu

Nepal’s newly elected Constituent Assembly began meeting this week, bringing renewed hope for a democratic future to the Himalayan nation. The Constituent Assembly is charged with governing Nepal while it rewrites the country’s constitution–and hopefully, puts an end to more than a decade of intermittent civil war.

First up on the Assembly’s agenda: toppling Nepal’s 240-year-old monarchy and putting a republic in its place. Unfortunately, changing the government may prove easier than actually governing. Here’s a frame-by-frame replay of Nepal’s recent past to put its current events in perspective.

Instant Replay
Nepal’s Re-Return to Democracy

1990 - Leftist political parties join with the centrist Nepali Congress Party in the “Movement to Restore Democracy”–though democracy had previously existed in Nepal for just 18 months, from 1959 to 1960. Massive demonstrations and strikes compel King Birenda to give up absolute power and become a constitutional monarch.

1991 - Nepal holds parliamentary elections. The Nepali Congress Party carries the day, and Girija Prasad Koirala becomes prime minister.

1994 - Dissension within the Nepali Congress leads to the dissolution of parliament. New elections follow, but no party wins a majority of seats. A minority government led by the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) takes over, making Nepal, for a time, a communist monarchy.

1996 - The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launches a violent insurgency. Its goal is to topple the monarchy altogether and establish a “people’s republic.” Over the next 10 years, the insurgency will claim more than 13,000 lives and assume de facto control over much of rural Nepal.

1999 - The Nepali Congress again wins a majority of seats in parliament, but party infighting again prevents stable governing. Early in 2000, Girija Prasad Koirala again takes over as prime minister, forming the ninth new government in 10 years. None lasted, and many were corrupt.

2001 - The Maoists spearhead a general strike that shuts down much of the country. King Birenda and other members of the royal family are murdered in a palace massacre. Birenda’s younger brother Gyanendra assumes the throne.

2002 - With more Maoist attacks and another nationwide general strike, King Gyanendra dissolves parliament. A few months later, he fires his council of ministers and calls off parliamentary elections. Instead, he appoints a royalist prime minister of his own.

2004 - In August, the Maoists blockade Kathmandu, preventing supplies from reaching the city for a week. Commentators argue that the Maoist insurgency has led to military stalemate. Nepal’s army doesn’t have the muscle to defeat the Maoists, but the Maoists can’t win either.

2005 - In February, King Gyanendra assumes direct power and suspends civil liberties, citing the need to defeat the Maoists. In September, the Maoists declare a unilateral ceasefire. In November, opposition political parties make a deal with the Maoists designed to restore democracy.

2006 - After three weeks of general strike, King Gyanendra gives up absolute power and reinstates Nepal’s parliament, which promptly strips much of the king’s remaining power. The hard work of putting Nepal back together then falls on a coalition of seven political parties–instigators of the largely peaceful uprising–and on the Maoists.

2008 - Nepalis go to the polls to pick a Constituent Assembly. More than 50 parties field candidates in the election. Maoist party candidates win the most seats, but not enough for a Maoist majority. Nepal’s new rulers will have to succeed where their elected predecessors have failed–in building and maintaining coalitions.

–Steve Sampson

A deep sea singer returns

Whale watchers worldwide got a bit of good news this week, with the release of a new study that says humpback whales are making a comeback in the North Pacific.

According to the study, the number of whales in the North Pacific may have reached 20,000 for the period between 2004 and 2006. That’s up from a total of fewer than 1,500 whales 40 years ago, when humpback hunting was banned.

Experts still worry that some humpback subgroups are taking longer to bounce back, but one described the news as “definitely very encouraging in terms of the recovery of the species.” It’s certainly enough to make us want to dive in for a closer look at one of the ocean’s marvelous mammals.

Uproarious Rorquals

Humpbacks hail from the family of whales called “rorquals,” which includes the fin whale, the sei whale, and the blue whale, the world’s largest animal. Blue whales can grow to 100 feet (30 meters) and weigh up to 330,000 pounds (150 metric tons), bigger than any dinosaur we’ve yet discovered.

At 45 feet (14 meters) and 80,000 pounds (36 metric tons), humpbacks aren’t nearly as big as cousin Blue. But they can really sing. In fact, according to a 2006 study, humpback whales sing grammatically, combining sounds into phrases, and phrases into songs, according to complex rules called a “hierarchical syntax.” It’s similar to our ability to combine words into clauses and clauses into sentences.

Humpbacks can dance, too. They are among the most acrobatic of whales, sometimes leaping entirely out of the water. Such breaching is common among males during mating season, when humpbacks migrate from polar feeding grounds to tropical breeding grounds. It’s also during mating season that humpback males sing their syntactically sophisticated songs, presumably in pursuit of humpback gals.

Straining for Snacks

Like all rorquals, humpbacks are baleen whales. They feed by taking huge mouthfuls of seawater–literally tons of it–then forcing the water out between hundreds of plates of baleen (a.k.a. “whalebone”) that hang from the roofs of their mouths. The baleen plates work like a sieve, letting water out but keeping krill and other munchable marine life in.

To catch that seafood dinner, humpbacks sometimes use a special technique called “bubblenetting.” First, one or more humpbacks swim in a circle beneath a school of fish, blowing bubbles that float up to form a wall around their prey. Then the humpbacks swim up through their “bubblenet,” slurping the fish-filled water as they go.

It’s clever, and tremendously effective. A humpback whale can catch, and eat, as much as 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of food in a day. But that’s not too surprising–coming from a creature smart enough to sing in syntax.

–Steve Sampson

Don’t try yelling “fire” in here

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law against child pornography on Monday, concluding in a 7-2 ruling that “offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment”–which, as you may know, says that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”

For most Americans, this particular case wasn’t particularly controversial. But it does raise an interesting point. Even with the Constitution’s free speech protections, there are times when, legally, we have to keep our big mouths shut.

So when aren’t you free to shoot from the lip? There are basically four types of speech that the First Amendment doesn’t protect: obscenity, incitement to illegal action, defamation, and fighting words. There are also restrictions on things like advertising and harassment, but we’ll cover those another time.

Limit #1: Obscenity

The Constitution doesn’t give you the right to be obscene (not that we really think you’d want to be). Although the Supreme Court has struggled for years to define “obscenity,” it has consistently maintained that, whatever it is, it’s not legally protected. The key test was established in Miller v. California in 1973. The Court held that expressions are obscene if they meet all three of the following criteria:

1. “The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.”
2. “The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.”
3. “The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

The questions this test raises are pretty obvious. What’s an “average” person? What are “community standards,” and who sets them? Who decides what counts as “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”? Nevertheless, you still have to follow these rules–for as Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

Limit #2: Incitement to Illegal Action
In 1919, the Court held that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” The justices weren’t aiming to guarantee the sanctity of your moviegoing experience. Rather, their point was that the First Amendment doesn’t protect speech that creates a “clear and present danger” of “substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

More recent cases have clarified this limitation, and left you with a fair amount of freedom. Basically, you’re allowed to argue for anything–even, say, the violent overthrow of the government. You just can’t incite imminent illegal activity. For example, at a rally outside IRS headquarters, saying “we should overthrow the government and dismantle the IRS!” would be protected speech. Saying “attack those agents coming out the door!” would not.

Limit #3: Defamation
You also aren’t free to go around damaging other people’s reputations by lying about them. That’s defamation, and it basically comes in two forms. Slander is spoken defamation. Libel is written (or otherwise recorded) defamation.

The Court has established fairly tough standards for public figures (like politicians and celebrities) who accuse you of defamation. They have to prove not only that what you said was untrue, but also that your lie showed “actual malice.” A private citizen, on the other hand, can win a claim simply if you’re careless about the facts. Of course, it’s easy to avoid defaming people. Just follow a version of mom’s old rule: “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything untrue.” If what you say is true, it’s not defamatory.

Limit #4: Fighting Words
Suppose someone cuts in front of you in line. If the colorful language you then direct toward that person is so abusive and insulting that fisticuffs are likely to follow, you can’t take refuge behind the First Amendment. Fighting words–”those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace”–aren’t protected.

Basically, that means you’re not free to spew insults and abuse into another person’s face. The police, or other authorities, can intervene and stop you without violating your First Amendment rights. On the plus side, it follows that other people aren’t free to spew insults and abuse into your face, either. But then, why would anyone do something like that to a nice person like you?

Panic on parade

THE Mujahideen Day parade in Kabul on April 27th was meant to show Afghanistan’s new, Western-trained, armed forces coming of age. President Hamid Karzai, the country’s political elite and a jumble of Western diplomats packed a podium to review the troops. Then, just as a 21-gun-salute began, three lightly armed Taliban fighters began to take pot-shots from a shabby hotel nearby. The dignitaries scrambled in panic for safety.

Casualties were not as serious as they might have been: the gunmen managed to kill three and wound 11 but missed their main target, Mr Karzai. Afghanistan’s intelligence chief said there was evidence that the attackers had ties with militant groups linked to al-Qaeda and based in Pakistan (see article). For the Taliban the attack is a propaganda victory, showing that Afghanistan’s capital is within their reach. This was the second big attack in Kabul this year. In January a four-man Taliban suicide-squad blasted its way into a luxury hotel, killing eight staff and guests.

This time, it could have been worse. Called in for a dressing-down by Afghan parliamentarians, the country’s intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, claimed that security forces had foiled two further attacks that day. Other attacks have reportedly been foiled in Kabul in recent months.

Optimists point out that Afghanistan’s government remains relatively stable and, despite the setbacks in Kabul, that there is no evidence of a jump in Taliban capability. Indeed, Western commanders say the younger Taliban leaders now emerging are more radical but less competent than their predecessors. It seems likely that in August, as scheduled, Afghan forces will take on responsibility for security around the capital. That would be a symbolic first step towards an eventual reduction in Western troop numbers. NATO’s commander thinks this might be feasible from 2011.

However, recent hints by some Western officials that the Taliban are crumbling look premature. Overall, Taliban violence is in fact rising. Military deaths in the first three months of the year were one-third higher than a year ago, though there were far fewer injuries (99 compared with 187 last year). More casualties among Western forces are caused by tactics such as roadside bombs and suicide-attacks. This time last year such assaults caused 44% of casualties; now it is more like 80%. That suggests the Taliban are eschewing firefights, when body armour often saves soldiers’ lives, in favour of lethal terrorist attacks.

A shift to “asymmetric” warfare would be understandable. The attack in Kabul fits in with that evolving strategy. Such “spectaculars” require little in the way of logistical support, but they mould public opinion. In conventional battles the Taliban forces were estimated to be losing 15 fighters, at least, for every NATO soldier killed.

Outside Kabul, too, Taliban leaders may have decided to swap set-piece battles for hit-and-run attacks. This would still allow them to keep the war going long enough to capitalise on disenchantment with the present regime. Grievances about corruption, bad government, worsening local feuds and foreign soldiers could all fuel anger at rule from Kabul. The Taliban’s best hope may be to outlast rather than outgun the West.

Iran is conducting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq, declared Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.

How? Gen. David Petraeus explained. The Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah are arming, training and directing the Shia militia fighting U.S. and Iraqi forces in Basra and firing rockets into the Green Zone. Said Petraeus, the Quds Force is responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers.

If true, these are acts of war from a privileged sanctuary. And Bush would be as justified in attacking these Iranian base camps as was Nixon in ordering U.S. forces to clean out the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia.

While there is no reason to question the truth of what Petraeus and Crocker allege, this proxy war raises a question. What is Tehran’s motive?

Iran, after all, is the principal beneficiary of the U.S. invasion that dethroned its enemy Saddam, ended the Sunni Baath Party’s monopoly of power and opened the door to Shia politicians with strong ties to Tehran. The regime in the Green Zone is the same regime that rolled out a red carpet for President Ahmadinejad.

Why, then, would Iran bloody it up? Why, when things are going Iran’s way in Iraq, would it risk war with the United States over Iraq?

The April 16 Los Angeles Times offers an answer. Iran’s proxy war

against us in Iraq may be Tehran’s response to a U.S. proxy war being waged against Iran. Ahmadinejad may be exacting blood for blood.

According to Times’ writer Borzou Daragahi, Iran believes the United States is behind groups that are systematically killing Iranians along the border.

One such group is the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, which is linked to the PKK that has conducted a terrorist war in Turkey and is considered by the United States a terrorist organization. The founder of PEJAK is Osman Ocalan, brother of the founder of the PKK, who is now serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison.

As Turkey retaliates against the PKK with artillery fire and raids into Kurdistan, Iranians are now doing the same.

A second group, regarded by both the United States and Iran as terrorist, is the Mujahedin Khalq, a cult-like group, operating inside Iraq on the Iranian border. Iranians also believe the United States is behind attacks in the oil-rich and Arab Khuzestan region of southwest Iran.

And, as Daragahi reports, “Baluch militants have killed dozens of members of Iran’s security forces, including 11 elite Revolutionary Guard in a car bomb attack last year in Zahedan, a town near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Jundallah, or God’s Party, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Last year also, a Kurdish woman killed several Iranian officers and soldiers in a suicide bombing.

According to Daragahi, “Iraqi Kurds say perceived U.S. support for PEJAK and other anti-Iranian groups prompted Iranians to reactivate Ansar al Islam, a Sunni Muslim group with ties to al-Qaida that has been launching attacks against Kurdish officials.”

The danger here is that these proxy wars could explode into U.S. air attacks on the Quds Force, followed by Iranian retaliation against U.S. troops, followed by U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and a third U.S. war in the Middle East, dropped into the lap of an overstretched U.S. military and onto the desk of the next president.

In his speech last week, Bush warned that the regime in Tehran “has a choice to make,” and if “Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, and our troops and our Iraqi partners” — i.e., this is Tehran’s last warning.

Query: Where is the Congress of the United States? It alone has the power to authorize or declare a war of

the magnitude toward which we may be headed because of proxy wars about which the American people know next to nothing.

Up on Capitol Hill, GOP Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina is seeking to rewrite the War Powers Act to ensure that — if the United States goes to war again — it be the “collective judgment” of both elected branches, as the Founding Fathers intended.

Needed now are congressional hearings to determine if President Bush has authorized a proxy war against Iran — by funding or arming guerrillas to attack the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and if that is what is behind the IRG-backed attacks on U.S. forces.

Even before such hearings, both Houses should pass a joint resolution declaring that no appropriated funds may be used for any pre-emptive U.S. air strikes on Iran — unless and until Congress has authorized such acts of war. If we are headed for war with Iran, it should be the collective judgment of all the nation’s elected leadership, and not done on the whim of a lame-duck president unsure about his place in history.

Your morning medicine?

Coffee drinkers will tell you that their brains don’t really work until they’ve had their morning cups. Well, this week, neuroscientists announced that those caffeinated cups may actually protect drinkers’ brains–by shoring up a remarkable bit of anatomy known as the blood-brain barrier.

Marvelous Membrane

First noticed by doctors more than 100 years ago, the blood-brain barrier is a sort of physiological filtering system inside the tiny capillaries (blood vessels) inside your head. It helps to protect your brain from chemicals and other “foreign bodies” that may be floating in your blood, including things that do you no harm as long as they don’t invade your brain.

By allowing only certain tiny molecules to squeeze between protective cells, the blood-brain barrier protects your mental machinery from infection–even as it enables essential communication between your brain and your blood.

“Great,” you say, “but what does that have to do with my coffee?” Maybe a lot, especially if your diet isn’t perfect. A new study by U.S. researchers suggests that a daily caffeine supplement, equivalent to a single cup of joe, could help keep your blood-brain barrier hale and hearty.

Caffeine vs. Cholesterol

Previous research has shown that high cholesterol can lead to “leaks” in the blood-brain barrier (and may play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease). Meanwhile, other previous research has pointed to a possible connection between brain health and coffee drinking.

So, for 12 weeks, the researchers fed lab rabbits high-cholesterol diets. They also gave some of their rabbits daily caffeine supplements. Then they tested the rabbits’ blood-brain barriers for damage. Result: the caffeinated rabbits had significantly less blood-brain barrier leakage.

Of course, that doesn’t mean your doctor is about to start prescribing coffee. But it certainly is food for thought. As the study’s lead researcher notes, “caffeine is a safe and readily available drug, and its ability to stabilize the blood-brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.” Plus, it’s one medicine many would find easy to swallow.

–Steve Sampson

Andrew Jackson did it

City leaders in New Orleans are up in arms this week about the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimate of the storm-ravaged city’s population. The Census Bureau says New Orleans had fewer than 240,000 people in July 2007. That’s down from more than 450,000 before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, but up from around 210,000 in July 2006.

City leaders say the actual population is higher–and they need every person counted because such figures help determine grant dollar distribution. We can’t tell you how many people have gone back to New Orleans. But we can go back to New Orleans’s history–and tell you how a hard fight for the Big Easy helped establish the United States.

Big Easy History

Say “New Orleans” and most people think jazz, Mardi Gras, or the French Quarter. But the city once exercised Thomas Jefferson’s mind for more strategic reasons. “There is on the globe one single spot,” he said, “the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”

Jefferson knew that New Orleans commands the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River–which, through its many tributaries, drains much of North America. Before the invention of the railroad, many goods couldn’t make it to market except via the big river. So whoever held New Orleans had huge power over the newborn United States.

French Foundations

The French had founded the city in 1717, and called it Nouvelle-Orléans after Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, then regent of France. From the start, they envisioned New Orleans as a “port of deposit” for Mississippi trade. Back then, French territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

In 1803, Napoleon sold French Louisiana to the United States for less than three cents an acre. President Jefferson had actually been looking to buy just New Orleans and a bit of west Florida, but he took the rest of the 828,000-square-mile (2,144,520-square-km) territory into the bargain–and so nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Un-Impressed

Unfortunately, getting bigger and grabbing New Orleans didn’t make other security concerns disappear. Unresolved issues with the British had festered for years, including disputes over trade, incitement of Indian attacks, and the “impressment” of sailors on U.S. ships into British naval service. Tensions came to a head in 1812, and Congress voted to declare war on Britain–though only by margins of 79-49 in the House and 19-13 in the Senate.

The War of 1812 would see the destruction of York (now Toronto) in Canada, the burning of Washington, DC, and the penning of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It would also see an attack on New Orleans that came after a peace deal–the Treaty of Ghent–had already been signed.

Battle on the Bayou

In December 1814, 7,500 British forces under Sir Edward Pakenham landed in Louisiana, just miles from New Orleans. U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson went to meet them, slowing their advance toward the city. By January, Louisiana militiamen, batallions of free blacks, a band of Choctaw Indians, and a pack of pirates led by the swashbuckling Jean Lafitte had joined with U.S. regulars to defend New Orleans.

Meanwhile, British and U.S. representatives had signed their peace deal in Ghent (now in Belgium). But news of the deal didn’t make it to New Orleans in time. On January 8, 1815, the British began a full-scale attack on the American position under cover of dense fog.

By the time British troops reached Jackson’s well-fortified lines, the fog was long gone. U.S. artillery and riflemen opened up, destroying perhaps a third of the British ranks in less than an hour. Pakenham and two of his top officers were among the dead. The remaining British forces retreated, and major post-war hostilities came to an end.

Its Aftermath

Obviously, the bayou battle had no impact on the negotiations that ended the war. Yet the battle’s symbolic significance outstripped its actual military importance. News of the victory at New Orleans reached the nation nearly at the same time as news of the Treaty of Ghent. Soon, a war that had deeply divided the nation, and actually ended in stalemate, began to look like a victory.

While the Treaty of Ghent merely restored the pre-war status quo, the win at New Orleans helped inspire a renewed U.S. nationalism and sense of strength. In the words of Albert Gallatin, treasury secretary under Presidents Jefferson and Madison, the end of the war “reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given.” Now, people felt and acted “more American . . . more as a nation.”

For his part, Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero, and eventually rode his fame all the way to the White House. Meanwhile, Jean Lafitte and his pirates went on to establish their own short-lived “kingdom” on the island that’s now Galveston, Texas. But that’s a story for a different day.

–Steve Sampson