A BUSH, THE CIA & A CORRUPT BANK

Here's a little story dumped on slow news day, Friday. If you want to know what the Bush White House wants you least to know, check the online news for Friday and Saturday (usually later in the day). Surprise! Look for the "secret" CIA kicker at the end of this piece. Skip this if you plan to vote GOP this fall because, hell, you don't give a f#@% anyway.

Bank, Big Oil Tied to African Payments

...The venerable Riggs Bank in Washington, an old-line financial institution that has served diplomats and aristocrats for years...The report, which describes a pattern of lax regulation and abuse of federal regulations against money laundering, was triggered by a story in The Times last year that detailed how Equatorial Guinea had deposited hundreds of millions of dollars in Riggs Bank. The story also raised questions about whether Equatorial Guinea's growing oil wealth had been used to enrich the country's leaders to the detriment of its poor....


US bank helped Pinochet hide millions of dollars: US Senate report
Fri Jul 16,12:43 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A respected American bank discretely helped former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to hide millions of dollars over an eight-year period, even after he was arrested in London in 1998 and a court froze his assets, a US Senate report said.

Executives of Washington-based Riggs Bank approached Pinochet in Chile in 1994 and invited him to open an account, said Senator Carl Levin, delivering the conclusions of the document in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Levin, calling the 88-year-old Pinochet a "notorious military leader accused of involvement with death squads, corruption, arms sales and drug trafficking," said the former general agreed to open the account.

"The bank opened an account for him personally, helped him establish two offshore shell corporations in the Bahamas called Ashburton and Althorp, and then opened more accounts in the name of those shell corporations both here and in the UK (Britain)," Levin said...


Riggs Bank's slogan for much of the past 20 years -- "The most important bank in the most important city in the world" -- was intended to distinguish Riggs from the common run of banking...


And here's the "secret" CIA kicker to the story:


The President and CEO of Riggs Bank is George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush!


Read John Kerry's book, "The New War" (written five years BEFORE 9/11 attacks), in which he explains how it's just this kind of banking corruption that allows terrorism to finance its operations across the globe. It's not enough to blow things up AFTER a terrorist attack, the president and the world need to attack the financing of terrorism via corrupt banking institutions such as Riggs.

Time for a new broom this November. The nation and the world cannot afford more of Bush's greed and tiny-minded vision.

Response to Email attack on Teresa Heinz Kerry

Sam Park, Teresa and Fe Bongolan in New Hampshire during the primaries.

One of our great Grassroots volunteers for John Kerry working here in Los Angeles had received the horrible email attacking Teresa Heinz Kerry, from of all people, his mother.

He chose to respond in a thoughtful manner.

Please send his response below to all your friends, those who may be on the fence and especially those considering voting for another 4 years of Bush and Company.

Also consider using it when you get the false email from someone and do tell them to inform others of their error in sending it.

If you haven't seen the email, you can view it at:


Email attack on Teresa Heinz Kerry


Email from John Malone to his Mother:
----------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to respond to the e-mail you forwarded to me assailing Teresa Heinz Kerry. I apologize in advance to anyone on this list who doesn't want to receive messages like this, but I get so irritated when I see such outrageous lies spread like viruses across the Interent, forwarded unknowingly by well-meaning people who are just struggling to figure out what is going on in such a confusing world. Please forgive me for going on and on about this, but I want to make sure that people receive the truth (rather than unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods) and make informed decisions. I'm a proud supporter of John Kerry for President, and I wrote this rebuttal myself. I'm well-informed, reasonably intelligent, and I'm happy to discuss these things privately with anyone who wants to. Feel free to forward this message if you like.

I find it interesting that one of the most corrupt, scandal-ridden administrations in history is so desperate to win re-election that they resort to baseless attacks against their opponent's wife. They can't talk about Bush's accomplishments with respect to jobs, education, health care, the environment, or preserving America's standing in the world. It would seem to me that these issues are far more important to the American people.

They can't defend their running up of massive national debt, their irresponsible tax cuts aimed chiefly at their wealthy campaign contributors, their use of flawed intelligence and misleading statements to justify a war, their justifying of torture which led to the prison abuse scandal, their complete inattention to terrorism prior to September 11th...I could go on and on. So what do they do when their perceived credibility and competence are at an all time low ? Engage in a smear campaign against their opponent's wife. If this isn't gutter politics, I don't know what is.

Mrs. Kerry has for years been a champion for numerous worthy causes related to the environment, women, children, and healthcare. She has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and a strong supporter of the arts. She is not an extremist wacko, as the anonymous author of this piece attempts to imply. If you are interested in the truth, allow me to point out a few things about this shameless (and mostly false) hit-and-run aimed at a remarkably intelligent, compassionate, and generous woman:

1.) Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry

Are we supposed to be frightened because Teresa has a foreign-sounding name? Because she was born in another country and educated abroad? Because she is fluent in five languages? I've got news for you -- all of our ancestors were born in another country. That's what this country is made of. This is perhaps the lowest kind of bigotry I've heard in a long time.

2.) ...she only took his name eighteen months ago ...

So what? My wife continues to go by her maiden name to this day for professional reasons. Anyone who would suggest that this has any kind of sinister meaning obviously doesn't know me and obviously doesn't know her.

3.) If you thought John Kerry was scary, he doesn't hold a candle to his wife!

If you want to see something REALLY scary, I'd recommend that you go to your local movie theater and see "Fahrenheit 9/11". I've heard a lot of supporters of the President assail this film because it's highly critical of him, but none of them have actually SEEN the movie, and none of them point to any actual factual errors in the film. Some of the most shocking things in this movie are pieces of footage you will see with your own eyes that you never see on television. They are undisputable and they are truly alarming. This film is not some anonymous attack piece distributed on the internet. It is a well crafted and thoroughly researched documentary. Regardless of what you might think about Michael Moore, I think you will be surprised to learn a few things about Bush and the way he has led this country that you may not know, and that I'm sure he doesn't want you to know. It may have a point of view, and it may reach conclusions about the President that you don't agree with, but the facts are undisputable. Go see it for yourself and make your own decisions about whether we have a responsible leader in the White House. I dare you.

4.) ...she married Senator John Forbes Kerry, the liberal junior senator from Massachusetts...she became a registered Democrat..

That is NOT the way it happened. Although the Kerry's shared many of the same values, they belonged to different political parties through most of their marriage. Strong marriages can weather differences of opinion. Mrs. Kerry only became a registered Democrat less than two years ago, NOT immedately after marrying Sen. Kerry in 1995. She made the change in party after witnessing the shameful attacks on Max Cleland, a good friend of the Kerry's, when he was running for Senate in Georgia in 2002. Max Cleland, a veteran who left three limbs on the battlefield in Vietnam, was accused by the Republican Party of being "unpatriotic". Apparently, if you disagree with the President, you're "unpatriotic."I guess that makes me unpatriotic, too (which is ridiculous, I love this country more than you know). But to hang that label on a man who made such tremendous sacrifices for his country is laughable. Mrs. Kerry decided she could not belong to a party that practiced this kind of demonization of an American hero like Max Cleland. Neither could I. By the way, Thomas Jefferson was a liberal and a Democrat...I'd say he did pretty well writing the founding documents of our nation. In today's political discourse, labels like "liberal" or "conservative" are thrown around, not to inform, but to confuse. Listen to the ideas, not the labels.

5.) ...having inherited Heinz's $500 million fortune...

I'm sure, however, that the Bush family is in no way compromised by their tremendous fortune earned from the oil and defense industries. Remind me again what industries are benefiting from this tragic war in Iraq?

6.) A lot of hard-earned money, made through many years of hawking catsup, mustard, and pickles has fallen into the hands of two people who despise successful entrepreneurship and who believe in the confiscatory redistribution of wealth.

Huh? On what evidence is that ridiculous statement based? As the former Chairman and current Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, John Kerry has been a national leader in promoting small businesses growth.Kerry owned his own small business, a cookie and muffin shop Kilvert and Forbes that he opened in 1976 with a friend in Bostons Quincy Market, giving him first hand experience of the obstacles faced by small business owners. Every one of George W. Bush's business venutres was funded by his family's wealthy friends, and they all failed. Bush's tax plan is designed to benefit those who are ALREADY wealthy, not the struggling entrepreneur. The Kerry's would actually BENEFIT from Bush's tax plan. The fact that they oppose it demonstrates to me that they care less about themselves and more about average Americans. Kerry's tax plan is designed to HELP small businesses. This is "confiscatory redistribution of wealth?"Give me a break. We're talking about fundamental fairness here.

7.) Teresa Heinz Kerry donates millions of dollars to fringe political groups through the Tides Foundation.

False. Grants from The Heinz Endowments to The Tides Foundation have funded projects related to either environmental protection or youth education. Check out the following links to a press release from the Tides Foundation as well as to a website well known for debunking rumors and urban myths that are spread on the Internet.

http://www.tidesfoundation.org/press_rel_04.cfm

http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/tides.asp

Thanks for reading this. I welcome any comments or questions that anyone might have about this or other issues concerning the upcoming Presidential election. This couldn't be more important, because the future direction of our country is at stake.

When the Priests of Capitalism Sin

Patt Morrison

July 14, 2004

I was wondering how Grandma Millie has been doing. You remember her, the hapless California electricity customer, the one the potty-mouthed energy traders on those Enron tapes bragged about bleeping over on her energy bill? I can't even use dots or asterisks to substitute for what Trader Kevin and Trader Bob were saying, or that's all there would be — dots — between snarky references to stealing from poor old ladies and jamming Grandma Millie for 250 bucks a megawatt-hour.

This was three and four summers ago, when the hotshot megawatt traders were holding us prisoner in the heat and the dark and making jokes about our miseries. Think Abu Ghraib with a beach. When a wildfire took down a power transmission line, they chanted "Burn, baby, burn!" When blackouts surged through the West like tsunamis, and people got trapped in elevators, and assembly lines slammed to a halt, and milk curdled in coolers, Trader Kevin wished for an earthquake that would "let that thing float out to the Pacific."

Enron road kill — that was Grandma Millie. Just like the rest of us.

I was hoping Grandma Millie would be feeling cheerier these days, what with Kenny-Boy Lay doing the perp walk into a Houston courthouse after the life got sucked out of Enron, and with Pop Rigas and son — John and Timothy — all set to serve maybe 20 years in Club Fed for turning Adelphia, the cable TV company, into their own little mint. Not to mention the fact that California has shaken a little conscience money out of some energy companies, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has been trying to muscle major dough out of them.

But then FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has ordered California to refund $270 million to Enron and some other deadbeat outfits. Explain to Grandma Millie, please, what's up with that? A burglar sashays out the door with your TV and some federal flunky says you're supposed to run after him and yell, "Hey, you forgot to take the DVD player too"?

This is the same FERC that finally, belatedly, a year and a half after Enron declared bankruptcy, yanked Enron's license to play the energy game because of its "inappropriate trading schemes." (Who dreams up this mush-mouthed gabble? It sounds like Glen Campbell defending himself against a drunk-driving charge by saying he wasn't really all that drunk, he was just "over-served." The Power Rangers weren't really criminal conspirators gouging the West Coast — they were just overearning.)

California's state motto is "Eureka," meaning "I have found it." The bullying contempt of the energy traders got eurekaed this spring by about a dozen people laboring at a U-shaped table in a 600-square-foot "listening room" in Santa Cruz, which is how we met Grandma Millie and charmers like Kevin and Bob.

Santa Cruz energy economist Carl Pechman was handed 2,800 hours of encoded computerized recordings to unscramble. He hired an out-of-work Silicon Valley exec, a teacher and some UC Santa Cruz grads, and for three months they listened to the traders' braggadocio.

Pechman was brought in by a Washington state utility that had been skunked by Enron too. Its lawyer, Eric Christensen, who once worked at FERC, says of the traders' scheming, "I think we were surprised at the level of arrogance, the level of indifference to consumers, the greed and the extent to which they openly discussed fraud and larceny."

For Pechman, the economist, it was the "burn baby burn" line. "The one thing the utility industry shared was this notion of service and this concern about service to customers," he says, "and the behavior of traders was so antithetical to that."

Can I assure Grandma Millie that things are going to be any better now? That a CEO who kills thousands of jobs and billions in pensions and investments will serve more serious time than a car thief who thrashes a Toyota? That California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, will get his wish and one of these days escort Ken Lay to a hard-time cell to serve his sentence with a "tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey' "? Not likely to happen.

Grandma Millie took one on the nose. We all did. But who got sent to intensive care? Capitalism itself, stabbed in the back by its truest believers. Capitalism is its own small-r religion. It prospers on faith as well as profit. Every time a billion-dollar headliner like Enron or WorldCom or Adelphia shakes down the Grandma Millies who trust their products and buy their stocks, it slanders its own faith as surely as any Catholic priest caught diddling the choirboy.

The priest can call it "ministering," and the energy trader can call it "arbitrage," but it's still a bleeping sin.

Ted Rall

Lincoln on the 1864 Presidential Election

Proof, for the zillionth time, that George Bush is no Lincoln. ---Sam


Lincoln's Response to a Serenade

November 10, 1864

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great emergencies.

On this point the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test; and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people, united, were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided, and partially paralized (sic), by a political war among themselves?

But the election was a necessity.

We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human-nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case, must ever recur in similar cases. Human-nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

But the election, along with its incidental, and undesirable strife, has done good too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility. It shows that, even among candidates of the same party, he who is most devoted to the Union, and most opposed to treason, can receive most of the people's votes. It shows also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now, than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, patriotic men, are better than gold.

Ron Reagan to address Democratic convention

BY GAIL SHISTER

Knight Ridder Newspapers

LOS ANGELES -(KRT) - In a move sure to embarrass Republicans, Ron Reagan will address the Democratic National Convention this month.

Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, will be at the podium on the second night of the four-day event in Boston, July 27, in support of stem-cell research, he said Sunday in an interview here.

David Wade, a spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, confirmed Reagan's appearance, but sources said the date had not been determined. Scott Stanzel, press secretary for President Bush's campaign, declined to comment.

Reagan, a Seattle resident with his wife, clinical psychologist Doria, said he was contacted about two weeks ago by the Democratic National Committee. He said he "had a nice chat" on the phone with Kerry, "but he wasn't pushing me. I had already decided."

A registered independent who has long been an outspoken political liberal, Reagan said he would not campaign for Kerry or any other candidate. He said he would vote for Kerry, however, "as a way to defeat Bush."

Reagan, 46, said he also did not vote for Bush in 2000, despite the fact that Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, was vice president during Ronald Reagan's two terms in the White House.

President Bush "has made some terrible mistakes," most notably, attacking Iraq, Reagan said.

Reagan also opposes Bush's stand on stem-cell research. That is the only reason Reagan accepted the Democrats' invitation, he said.

The Democratic Party's platform calls for lifting restrictions on research using stem cells from human embryos. Bush signed an executive order in August 2001 that limited federal help to financing stem-cell research on embryonic stem-cell lines then in existence. He said such a limit would not require the destruction of any more embryos.

Day-old embryos are destroyed when stem cells are extracted, and the process is opposed by some conservatives who link it to abortion.

Reagan and his mother, Nancy Reagan, are passionate advocates for stem-cell research, which could lead to a cure for Alzheimer's disease, among other disorders. After a 10-year battle against Alzheimer's, Ronald Reagan died June 5 at age 93.

"If they had asked me to say a few words about throwing George Bush out of office, I wouldn't do it," said Ron Reagan, in Los Angeles to attend "Hardball" host Chris Matthews' session with TV critics. Reagan is a political commentator for the show on MSNBC.

"This gives me a platform to educate people about stem-cell research," Reagan said. "The conservative right has a rather simplistic way of characterizing it as baby killing. We're not talking about fingers and toes and brains. This is a mass of a couple hundred undifferentiated cells."

Reagan, who will cover the Democratic and Republican conventions for "Hardball," said he expected criticism from many Republicans for his five-to-eight-minute speech to the Democrats.

"The Republican Party now is not the Republican Party of my father, not that it would be of great concern to me, one way or the other," he said. "I'm not a Republican and I never have been.

"My father wouldn't expect me to be a Republican just to emulate him. He raised his kids to be independent thinkers. ... I'm not terribly popular, apparently, with a lot of Republicans. I imagine some of them are pretty angry about what I've said about the Bush administration."

Should he be asked, Reagan said he would not attend the planned tribute to his father at the Republican convention, which is Aug. 30-Sept. 2 in New York.

"I don't think, in good conscience, I could take the chance that somebody could read that as an endorsement of this administration," he said. "I'll support any viable candidate who can defeat Bush."

Instead, Reagan suggested that the Republicans invite his half-brother, Michael, an evangelical and stem-cell research opponent, to speak at their gathering.

"Then we could have dueling Reagan sons," he said.

Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.

"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Reagan.

"It's costing us a lot of money, isolating us from our allies and friends," said Halper, who gave $1,000 to George W. Bush's campaign and more than $83,000 to other GOP causes in 2000. "This is not the cakewalk the neoconservatives predicted. We were not greeted with flowers in the streets."

Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are increasingly uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady drumbeat of violence in postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his fellow Republicans say. The conservatives' anxiety was fueled by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and has not abated with the transfer of political power to the interim Iraqi government.

Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in November, undercutting Bush's re-election bid.

"I don't think there's any question that there is growing restiveness in the Republican base about this war," said Halper, the co-author of a new book, "America Alone: The Neoconservatives and the Global Order."

Some Republicans dismiss the rift as little more than an inside-the-Beltway spat among rival factions of the GOP intelligentsia. Indeed, conservatives nationwide are still firmly behind Bush. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 97 percent of conservative Republicans favored Bush over Kerry.

But anger is simmering among some conservatives.

"I am bitterly disappointed in his actions with this war. It is a total travesty," said Tom Hutchinson, 69, a self-described conservative from Sturgeon, Mo., who posted yard signs and staffed campaign phone banks for the Republican in 2000. Hutchinson said he did not believe the administration's stated rationales for the war, in particular the argument that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Hutchinson, a retired businessman and former college professor, said his unease with Iraq may lead him to do something he has not done since 1956: avoid the voting booth in a presidential election.

Jack Walters, 59, a self-described "classical conservative" from Columbia, Mo., said he hadn't decided which candidate to vote for.

"Having been through Vietnam, I thought no, never again," Walters said. "But here comes the same thing again, and I'm old enough to recognize the lame reasons given for going into Iraq, and they made me ill."

The tension has been building in official Washington, where conservative members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees have pressed the administration for answers on combat operations; disagreed with the Pentagon on troop levels; and expressed frustration with an administration they feel has shown them disdain by withholding information.

Chief political adviser Karl Rove's formula for re-election is primarily to push Bush's conservative base to the polls.

Another administration official involved in Bush's re-election effort has voiced concern that angry conservatives will sit out the election.

But Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist, described the fear of losing conservative support as "just ludicrous."

Bush is "as strong among conservative Republicans as any Republican president has been" — higher than President Reagan's approval among conservatives during his re-election campaign of 1984, Dowd said.

Yet, Halper said his critical review on the administration's performance on Iraq last week was met with expressions of support in the conservatives' weekly meeting, which is closed to journalists.

The marquee speaker sent by the administration was Eric Ciliberti, who spent several weeks in Iraq this year and told the audience of broad progress being made there.

Ciliberti complained to the group that those in the news media were not reporting the positive developments out of Iraq. Ciliberti did not return several calls late in the past week from a reporter seeking his account.

A Book? Reading? Hey, get out of the way of the TV!

Remember when someone choked on a pretzel while watching TV? He doesn't read newspapers nor magazines and his staff reads digests of reports to him...

July 10, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The Closing of the American Book
By ANDREW SOLOMON

A survey released on Thursday reports that reading for pleasure is way down in America among every group — old and young, wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated, men and women, Hispanic, black and white. The survey, by the National Endowment for the Arts, also indicates that people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who don't to visit museums and attend musical performances, almost three times as likely to perform volunteer and charity work, and almost twice as likely to attend sporting events. Readers, in other words, are active, while nonreaders — more than half the population — have settled into apathy. There is a basic social divide between those for whom life is an accrual of fresh experience and knowledge, and those for whom maturity is a process of mental atrophy. The shift toward the latter category is frightening.

Reading is not an active expression like writing, but it is not a passive experience either. It requires effort, concentration, attention. In exchange, it offers the stimulus to and the fruit of thought and feeling. Kafka said, "A book must be an ice ax to break the seas frozen inside our soul." The metaphoric quality of writing — the fact that so much can be expressed through the rearrangement of 26 shapes on a piece of paper — is as exciting as the idea of a complete genetic code made up of four bases: man's work on a par with nature's. Discerning the patterns of those arrangements is the essence of civilization.

The electronic media, on the other hand, tend to be torpid. Despite the existence of good television, fine writing on the Internet, and video games that test logic, the electronic media by and large invite inert reception. One selects channels, but then the information comes out preprocessed. Most people use television as a means of turning their minds off, not on. Many readers watch television without peril; but for those for whom television replaces reading, the consequences are far-reaching.

My last book was about depression, and the question I am most frequently asked is why depression is on the rise. I talk about the loneliness that comes of spending the day with a TV or a computer or video screen. Conversely, literary reading is an entry into dialogue; a book can be a friend, talking not at you, but to you. That the rates of depression should be going up as the rates of reading are going down is no happenstance. Meanwhile, there is some persuasive evidence that escalating levels of Alzheimer's disease reflect a lack of active engagement of adult minds. While the disease appears to be determined in large part by heredity and environmental stimulants, it seems that those who continue learning may be less likely to develop Alzheimer's.

So the crisis in reading is a crisis in national health.

I will never forget seeing, as a high school student on my first trip to East Berlin, the plaza where Hitler and Goebbels had burned books from the university library. Those bonfires were predicated on the idea that texts could undermine armies. Soviet repression of literature followed the same principle.

The Nazis were right in believing that one of the most powerful weapons in a war of ideas is books. And for better or worse, the United States is now in such a war. Without books, we cannot succeed in our current struggle against absolutism and terrorism. The retreat from civic to virtual life is a retreat from engaged democracy, from the principles that we say we want to share with the rest of the world. You are what you read. If you read nothing, then your mind withers, and your ideals lose their vitality and sway.

So the crisis in reading is a crisis in national politics.

It is important to acknowledge that the falling-off of reading has to do not only with the incursion of anti-intellectualism, but also with a flawed intellectualism. The ascendancy of poststructuralism in the 1980's coincided with the beginning of the catastrophic downturn in reading; deconstructionism's suggestion that all text is equal in its meanings and the denigration of the canon led to the devaluation of literature. The role of literature is to illuminate, to strengthen, to explain why some aspect of life is moving or beautiful or terrible or sad or important or insignificant for people who might otherwise not understand so much or so well. Reading is experience, but it also enriches other experience.

Even more immediate than the crises in health and politics brought on by the decline of reading is the crisis in national education. We have one of the most literate societies in history. What is the point of having a population that can read, but doesn't? We need to teach people not only how, but also why to read. The struggle is not to make people read more, but to make them want to read more.

While there is much work do be done in the public schools, society at large also has a job. We need to make reading, which is in its essence a solitary endeavor, a social one as well, to encourage that great thrill of finding kinship in shared experiences of books. We must weave reading back into the very fabric of the culture, and make it a mainstay of community.

Reading is harder than watching television or playing video games. I think of the Epicurean mandate to exchange easier for more difficult pleasures, predicated on the understanding that those more difficult pleasures are more rewarding. I think of Walter Pater's declaration: "The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it to a life of sharp and eager observation. . . . The poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most; for art comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass." Surely that is something all Americans would want, if we only understood how readily we might achieve it, how well worth the effort it is.

Andrew Solomon is the author of "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression."