<a href=quote.bloomberg.com>Bloomberg By Alex Lawler

Vienna, April 21 -- OPEC, supplier of a third of the world's oil, is planning to cut production from its highest level in 1 1/2 years to prevent a price slump as demand slows and Iraqi sales near a return to the market.

Saudi Arabia led OPEC's output higher this year to avert shortages caused by outages in Venezuela and Nigeria and the war- related halt to Iraqi exports. Production is some 2 million barrels a day more than demand, OPEC ministers said last week.

Crude oil in New York has slid 24 percent from a 12-year high of $39.99 a barrel in February while the coalition deposed Saddam Hussein in Iraq and seized the country's oil fields. Faced with a seasonal drop in use, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meets Thursday to discuss how to prevent a glut.

OPEC is pumping an awful lot of oil,'' said Steve Thornber, who manages about 400 million pounds ($628 million) at Threadneedle Asset Management in London, including BP Plc shares. If OPEC doesn't take action or it's seen as not aggressive enough, you will see a sharp drop in the oil price.''

The group sets quotas to keep prices between $22 and $28 a barrel, and some members may be reluctant to lower production because of a need to raise government revenue. It had planned to next meet on June 11 in Doha, Qatar, though called this week's gathering after prices slid.

OPEC in March pumped 1.57 million barrels a day more than the target of 24.5 million, almost enough to supply Spain, according to Bloomberg estimates. Of the total, Saudi Arabia pumped 9.2 million barrels a day.

Some OPEC members will feel Saudi Arabia should take a greater proportion of any cut,'' said Paul Spedding, an oil analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. The debate is whether Saudi Arabia will agree with that.''

The return of Iraqi supplies will also be a challenge for OPEC. Production may resume from Iraq's northern fields as early as May, the U.S. military has said. Resuming exports depends on deciding who will sell the oil.

Too Much Oil?

Indonesia will ask OPEC to lower daily oil production by as much as 2 million barrels, the country's oil minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, has said. Venezuela, Qatar, Algeria and Iran have said markets have too much oil, signaling support for a cut.

Oil consumers, including the International Energy Agency, representing 26 industrialized countries, urge caution, saying supplies are needed to replenish inventories. U.S. crude stocks are 14 percent lower than a year ago, and a reduction in output would threaten to bring higher fuel bills at a time of slowing economic growth.

Algeria, OPEC's third-smallest producer, has called on OPEC members to comply with their targets. In comments that boosted world prices on Thursday, Iran, the second-largest OPEC producer, said any reduction should come from the quotas.

Any decision to cut the quota now would be premature,'' said Julian Lee, an analyst at Centre for Global Energy Studies, a consulting company founded by former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani. The world needs to rebuild stocks.''

Challenge

OPEC's oil price index was last at $26.25 a barrel, close to the middle of the group's range of $22 and $28 a barrel. The marker has been above the $22 floor since March 2002.

Saudi Arabia has yet to signal its policy. State-owned Saudi Aramco in May will fulfill all oil contracts to customers in Europe, Japan and South Korea, traders said after seeing notices from the oil producer.

We should expect to see a move for stricter quota adherence,'' said Brian Gibbons, an analyst at CreditSights Inc., an independent New York-based research company. The bulk of that will have to come from Saudi Arabia. It will be difficult for the small to mid-sized OPEC members to trim production.''

Brent crude in London will fall below $20 a barrel in the third quarter from about $25 now if OPEC holds supply near present levels, the CGES said in a report. Should OPEC adhere to the quota, prices will rise to $27.90 next quarter, the group forecast.

Iraq Invited

Iraq will be able to start pumping oil from its northern fields in weeks because of limited damage to installations, the U.S. military has said. Production in the south, where the harm is greater, can't resume for three months.

As a point of protocol, OPEC headquarters invited Hussein's oil minister to attend Thursday's meeting. The current whereabouts of Amer Rasheed, who appears as the six of spades in the deck of cards issued to U.S. forces in Iraq detailing the most-wanted members of Hussein's regime, are unknown.

One of five nations that founded OPEC in 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq has no quota because of United Nations sanctions imposed for the nation's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Iraq's Vienna embassy couldn't be reached to confirm if it will send a representative to the meeting.

Iraq will send a delegation led by Major General Jawdat al- Obeidi to the group's meeting Thursday, Reuters reported yesterday, citing an Iraqi opposition official.

Last Updated: April 20, 2003 19:01 EDT

Tuesday April 22, 2003 - 07:21:05 PM, PDT Last Updated Apr 22, 2003 at 16:31 Sierra Time SierraTimes.com, An Internet Publication for Real Americans By R. A. Hawkins

It is quite apparent that Iran was not interested in Saddam's "Please take a Baath" program because they told the escaping leadership to take a hike. Syria however seems to have a suicidal tendency just like Saddam's government. Now that the cash cow for the Palestinians is gone, maybe the parents of the children there can find better things for their kids to do than blow themselves up to line their parent's pockets. Saddam isn't around anymore to send them money. Syria's Assad might be dumb enough to take up where Saddam left off however. The only neighbor they have invaded is Israel which is cool with the Democrats unless they are in New York and have to court that Jewish vote.

Syria poses a bigger problem for all of us here because they actually have a rather nice missile program. I suspect that missile program is what prompted Sharon to go to the Al Aksa mosque. He knew exactly what he was doing when he went there, make no mistake. He was also aware that Arafat had violated everything he agreed to in the Oslo Accords. When Israel finally pushed back after Arafat let the inmates out of the asylum, they found all sorts of weapons and explosives that the Palestinians had promised not to keep or buy ever again. They seem to have a bit of trouble keeping their word. Rather than just attack them, Sharon simply pushed their little buttons and they acted accordingly. He knew the other side was depending on a bunch of loonies to do their dirty work. The problem with loonies is they have no self control and lots of buttons.

To all of the antis who have chanted "Not in our name", right you are. Nothing was done in your name at all. Those who have helped us in Iraq are better Americans then a lot of the antis. Those people are leaders and glad to have gotten rid of Saddam's sleazy regime. If Europe and all of the antis had gotten their way those people wouldn't have even had the chance to help get rid of Saddam. They probably would have ended up with a wife's or daughter's severed head on their porch.

Yes Syria is building an ICBM and they even have a base for it. Nice pictures we took of it to say the least. You can find them over on Newsmax.com. China and Russia have been helping with that for quite a while now: They are such great world partners. Russia and China have been quietly undermining us for a long time. Anybody ever hear of Yamantau mountain? Anybody ever seen the Chinese bases in the Bahamas? They are setting us up and the funny part is the rhetoric is all too familiar.

They are in Venezuela and blaming us for having tried to remove Chavez. If we had been involved in that, the guy would be pushing daisies. It wouldn't have had the stink and haunting familiarity of the phony kidnapping/coup in Russia. That was such a well orchestrated joke it was laughable. The really amazing part is the number of people, small though it is, who believe the Russian and Chinese lies in all of this. They are so contrary they will believe the government of the enemy before they will believe their own. When the WMD's are finally located those dullards will say we snuck them in. Never mind the fact that Saddam was probably smart enough to realize we were going to pound them with bombs and it might not be a very bright idea to keep those vials of VX next to the old head board or on his nightstand, or anywhere near him. They are buried and hidden, nice, safe and deep.

The funny part about all of the rhetoric lately is that it is quite familiar. All one has to do is change the scapegoat and it all sounds the same. That belies a single source. Anybody ever read any of Zhirinoffsky's comments? They sound like they are from 'Mein Kampf'. The same is true with a lot of the radicals here. In Ambrose Evan Prichard's book, 'The Secret Life of Bill Clinton', he had an interview with Mahon from Elohim city. He stated Iraq was helping to fund their movement. Now the amount of money wasn't much and he said they quit sending money the moment the OK bombing happened, but he said they were sending money up until then. Isn't that interesting? To those who think that bombing was a great and patriotic American achievement I would like to point out what was accomplished by that one act in OK city. Clinton had done such an incredible job he had just lost Congress to the Republicans. His loss was probably due to the assault weapons ban for one thing. Then there was that little fundraiser for the BATF in Waco. When that bomb went off he managed to regroup against the Republicans and started an open war on the real conservatives in this country. Nice Job! So if we look at that one act and ask the rather basic question of 'Who gained?', Bubba's name pops up on the screen doesn't it? I have noticed people have forgotten that Bubba is now gone and it will take years to root out all of the nasty people he installed. All of the really sleazy acts occurred after that incident. We had our nuclear secrets stolen and in the next election we suffered from China syndrome. It only got worse after that.

My view is that we have an alliance with Israel and we should stick to it. Any nation that dumps its allies when the going gets tough is doomed to have no allies. I don't back the European approach that said a long time ago "Send them down there and we can get rid of them later." That approach is just more Nazism with a stupid little smiley face pasted on it. Since my view makes me a neo-con that makes those who hold the European view Neo-whats?

Comments are always welcome. Please send them to ironwyng@aol.com.

R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva", available through amazon.com. Visit Entropical Paradise for more commentaries and editorials by R.A. Hawkins.

Post-gazette.com Monday, April 21, 2003 By Byron Spice, Post-Gazette Science Editor

Something odd was happening as the Boeing 737 made its approach to Chicago's Midway Airport. A cockpit instrument called the course deviation indicator, or CDI, showed the plane was on course, but the pilots, peering through the night sky at the lights below, thought they were too far south. An air traffic controller radioed the same concern.

Then the CDI's vertical needle suddenly swung to the left, showing the plane north of its course. After the captain made a scheduled turn to align the plane with the runway, the CDI needle again indicated the plane was on course. But then the needle swung again, showing the plane too far south.

By this time, the runway was in view and the pilots could see they were too high and too far north to land.

The apparent cause of these electronic gremlins was discovered as the plane circled around for another approach and the captain asked the passengers to make sure they had turned off all electronic devices.

The flight attendants reported that a woman passenger had been talking on her cell phone. When she turned it off, the instruments immediately settled down and the plane landed safely.

This incident, which the captain reported last year to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, is just one example of how portable electronic devices -- everything from cell phones to Game Boys -- can interfere with the electronic navigation and communication systems aboard a modern airliner.

No one has yet blamed an aircraft accident on a malfunctioning laptop computer or an overactive pager, but the profusion of cell phones, laptops, CD/DVD players, game systems and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, that passengers now carry onboard is raising concern about electronic interference with avionic equipment..

"I don't have a sense [electronic interference] is increasing, but I sure see the potential there," said Kent Horton, general manager of avionics engineering for Delta Airlines.

It's not just the sheer number of devices being carried onboard, but their changing capabilties. A particular worry are wireless technologies, which go by such names as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a new one called ultrawideband. They allow laptops and PDAs to communicate with each other or connect with the Internet.

"They're so new we don't know a lot about these things," Horton said.

The wireless technologies operate at very low power but, like cell phones, are designed as transmitters, increasing the likelihood of interference. The Federal Aviation Administration has asked the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, a private, not-for-profit group that advises the agency, to convene a special committee this summer to evaluate the new technology and determine whether it poses a threat to safety.

Cell phone use already is prohibited aboard planes and the FAA recommends that use of all portable electronic devices be limited below altitudes of 10,000 feet. But technological changes are making it more difficult to enforce those rules.

"As wireless devices become embedded into other devices, such as laptops, and the antennas for other devices become less conspicuous, it places a greater challenge on our flight crews to identify potential interference sources," said Timothy W. Shaver, program leader for flight avionics engineering at United Airlines.

None of this suggests that a crisis is at hand, emphasized Granger Morgan, head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Air travel is getting safer and safer," Morgan said. "We've got most of the big things under control." Attention to portable electronic devices, however, could help prevent a small threat from becoming something more. "At the most fundamental level, we need to increase the level of vigilance across the board."

Electronic interference alone might not be a major threat, but combined with other factors, such as bad weather or pilot fatigue, could contribute to accidents, said Bill Strauss, an avionics engineer at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.

It's more than just a safety threat, noted Strauss, who is working toward a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon. Incidents of interference end up costing airlines money, as planes get pulled from service and technicians look in vain for something wrong.

Enforcing restrictions on portable electronic devices can trigger confrontations between passengers and crew.

An airliner was forced to taxi back to the gate at the airport in Caracas, Venezuela, early last year when a passenger refused to turn off his cell phone, at one point slipping into a lavatory to continue a conversation. Last summer, the crew of an MD-80 landing in Atlanta summoned the state police to board the plane after landing when a doctor became abusive when asked to turn off his CD player as the plane descended. And, on a flight from Miami to Chicago O'Hare, a passenger wouldn't turn off her cell phone until the captain came into the cabin to talk with her; after the plane landed, she went into the cockpit and gave the captain an earful.

"She just kept stating that it was very upsetting to her that she was reprimanded for not turning off her cell phone," a flight attendant said in a report filed for NASA's ASRS database.

"The air rage potential right now is probably a worse scenario than any interference events we are aware of," Strauss said.

Some people seem particularly skeptical about the in-flight ban on cell phone use, suggesting it's an airline effort to force passengers to use extra-cost phones located in the seatbacks.

In fact, the prohibition is a Federal Communications Commission rule. An activated cell phone, even when not being used for conversation, sends signals to the nearest base station. High in the air, a cell phone can "light up" base stations in a wide swath beneath the airplane's path and cause headaches for the cell network.

Even without the FCC rule, the FAA and airlines would want to restrict "intentional emitters" such as cell phones. But devices such as laptops, CD players, and the insulin pumps used by diabetics also can emit radio signals, though they are not designed to do so. Dropping a laptop, for instance, can damage it in ways that cause it to emit excessive amounts of electromagnetic radiation.

About 60 percent of all interference caused by portable electronics has been linked in reports to either cell phone or laptop use. But proving a cause-and-effect relationship is daunting.

"A lot of people in the field call it 'black magic,'" Strauss said.

The numbers of possible sources and possible interference paths are virtually impossible to count. Most airliners have 12 to 15 different antennas for various systems, Delta's Horton said, and radio emissions that escape through windows or around doors can reach one or more of these antennas, depending on the device's frequency, power and location.

Strauss said the devices also can cause interference within the plane, infiltrating electronic control boxes or the plane's wiring. A worn bit of electrical insulation, a missing shield, or a grounding wire mistakenly left disconnected may leave aircraft electronics vulnerable.

Even having what appears to be the culprit device in hand doesn't help. Horton said the airline has confiscated cell phones and other items suspected of causing in-flight interference, but has never been able to duplicate the interference.

Other factors no doubt are at work, Horton said. For instance, a passenger's low-power device might not affect voice communications when the plane is near a ground station, where the signals are strongest, but might interfere when the plane is far away from the station and receiving weaker signals.

Strauss suspects that more than one device may be causing interference in some cases. Several low-power devices operating in the passenger cabin can have additive effects, resulting in emissions stronger than any single device could generate, he explained. Turning one of those devices off might alleviate the interference and cause cockpit instruments to return to normal, but trying to recreate the effect using only that one device would be impossible.

Delta has done extensive measurements on the ground of "path loss," noting how a radio emitter might affect various antennas from various locations within different aircraft.

Up to now, though, there haven't been measurements during commercial flights. Strauss and Morgan have obtained a small FAA grant to perform what they say are the first in-flight measurements of the radiofrequency environment. Carrying a spectrum analyzer and an antenna aboard commercial airliners, Strauss will attempt to record the types and amounts of electrical emissions that occur at various points during the flights.

His own analysis of ASRS reports of interference incidents from 1995 through 2001 has convinced Strauss that a lot of cell phones are being switched on during landing approaches. Passengers may be eager to call people on the ground to let them know they have arrived, he reasoned, and may not realize that the cell phone can cause interference when it's turned on, not just when a call is being made or received.

Some of the solutions may simply be procedural, like the rule limiting the use of electronics at altitudes below 10,000 feet. The FAA says the number of interference incidents dropped dramatically when that recommendation was made in 1996.

In addition to direct observation by flight attendants, it may be possible to monitor electronics use by equipping planes with radiofrequency detectors. Handheld detectors could help the crew identify individual devices, particularly those generating excessive radiation, Morgan and Strauss suggest.

Greater cooperation between the FCC and FAA, they added, might result in wireless devices being designed with an override capability so that a centrally transmitted control signal could disable the devices during critical phases of flight.

Byron Spice can be reached at bspice@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578.

By Michael Radu <a href=frontpagemag.com>FrontPageMagazine.com | April 21, 2003

Recently, following a pattern understood by all but American liberals, Fidel Castro again did something he always does in response to U.S. efforts to improve relations with Cuba. He answered renewed congressional efforts to weaken the embargo by cracking down on the opposition. In the past, when then-President Jimmy Carter tried to improve ties, we wound up with the Mariel exodus and the emptying of Cuba's jails through migration to the U.S.; when Bill Clinton tried to improve relations, it ended up with American citizens being blown out of the skies  by Castro's fighter planes and yet another mass send-off to Florida. This time, when a combination of greedy Republicans from farm states and leftist Democrats tried to weaken the embargo in the name of free trade, Castro answered by jailing 79 dissidents for sentences totaling over 2,000 years.

Even the communist, Portuguese José Saramago, Nobel laureate in Literature and supporter of any leftist cause this side of the Milky Way, declared in an interview with Spain's El Pais that "This is my limit." ("Saramago critica ejecuciones en Cuba," AP, April 14). This reminds one of the late 1960s, when Castro's Stalin-like purges of intellectuals forced Jean-Paul Sartre, another lifelong fellow traveler, to reach his limit with Fidel. And Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, whose goal seems to be indirectly helping the Marxist-Leninist terrorists/drug traffickers of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) by blasting every effort of that country's democratic government to fight FARC, also seems to have seen the light. He criticized the UN Human Rights Commission's proposed resolution condemning Castro's persecution of dissidents and demanding that they be released as "weak . . . a slap on the wrist."

Those conversions, along with the fact that the UN resolution was submitted by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Peru, are the good news from a UN organization now improbably chaired by Libya. Costa Rica aside, the Latin sponsors have paid heavy prices in fighting and defeating Marxist-Leninist insurgencies over the past few decades. They know what communism is, does, and may lead to.

There is another, less symbolic but darker side to the issue. Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde, a lame duck but nonetheless representative of his people's feelings, declared that Argentina will abstain from voting on the Resolution, calling the timing of the vote "inopportune" given the "unilateral war [in Iraq] that has violated human rights." Brazil will also abstain and in Mexico some 50 leftist intellectuals and the majority in the Mexican Congress have asked President Vicente Fox to abstain as well. They could not bring themselves to support Havana, but, again using Iraq as a pretext, claimed that abstention is the best way to deal with Castro. As Mexico's human rights ombudsman stated, regretfully, "only poor countries are condemned" and thus, in his logic, condemning Cuba is unfair - in effect asking for some kind of proportional condemnation, regardless of  realities.

Ultimately it comes down to fundamental differences among the Latin countries. The politics of most of the larger of them vis-à-vis the United States are adolescent, based on the desire to demonstrate independence from Washington. Nowhere is this more evident than in Mexico. To support the U.S. position on any matter, from the treatment of rocks on Mars to dissidents in Cuba, is politically dangerous, opening a leader to accusations from the intellectual elites of being a "gringo puppet." These elites have a disproportionate, and usually nocive impact on politics. In Brazil those sentiments are enhanced by most Brazilians' emotional belief that their country, by virtue of its size and relative economic power, is entitled to a leading role that Washington unfairly challenges.

It was the very same adolescent politics that led the left-of-center governments of Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela to recently refuse to do the obvious, common-sense thing: to declare as terrorists the three irregular forces-FARC, the smaller, also communist National Liberation Army (ELN), and the anti-communists of the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC)-that are trying to destroy or avoid the democratic government of neighboring Colombia. They refused to do so despite the fact that FARC at least, and certainly soon enough the AUC, which is hunting them, operates across the borders in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, and especially Venezuela, whose government is openly supportive of the insurgents.

In the case of Mexico, which has a seat in the UN Security Council (likely to the chagrin of President Fox), not supporting the U.S. approach to the Iraq issue was not a foreign policy or national interest issue, but one of national identity. Supporting the United States is a "sell out to the gringos." Teenagers of the world, unite!

In Chile, the most rational and pragmatic country in Latin America and certainly the most successful in economic, free-market terms, the story is the same, and equally depressing. President Lagos, a Socialist leading a coalition with the Christian Democrats, had never behaved as a socialist in either economic or political terms until Iraq, when he had Chile withhold support for the United States in the Security Council. Why? Because of anti-Americanism. It does not cost much, it is popular-especially in a country where hating capitalism and the United States is still popular among elites and the small (3 percent in the last elections) but organizationally effective Communist Party. Likewise with enthusiastically supporting whatever Havana does. Furthermore, Santiago, like Ciudad de Mexico, Brasilia, and Buenos Aires, still has difficulty understanding that Washington is less tolerant of adolescent games now than prior to 9/11. When President Bush stated that "those who are not with us are against us" in the war on terror, most Latins did not take it seriously. They may well have to now.

Ultimately, abstaining on or voting against a largely meaningless UN criticism of Cuba is itself irrelevant. However, a combined accumulation of Latin American positions suggests that when it comes to choosing between the obvious violations of freedom by one of their own (Havana) and supporting anything proposed by the United States, most Latin American governments will choose opposing Washington.

Understanding this, now let's consider both Castro's recent summary execution of thee ferryboat hijackers and the broader issue of how these Latin American attitudes toward U.S. global positions will affect their U.S. relations.

On the first issue, there is only one thing to say: a hijacker is a hijacker, period. As for capital punishment, it remains what it always was - a matter of political culture. Latins are fast to condemn US executions, especially when they involve their own citizens, but have little or nothing to say when Castro sentences people to death.

As to the price Latin America will pay, some sort of price for their recent behavior? Mexico is clearly doing its best to diminish, if not destroy, whatever support there was in Congress for the legalization of millions of its nationals living illegally in the United States. Chile was a legitimate applicant for NAFTA membership and possessed all the right social, economic, and political credentials, but it has how raised questions about its belonging there. Instead of facing Congressional opposition only from U.S. Democrats opposed to free trade, it will also now face opposition from Republicans, whether they are for or against free markets. Washington must make clear that being "anti-gringo" just on principle cannot continue in the age of international terrorism. Behavior should cost in terms of how many benefits one can expect to continue from Washington. Opposing the United States on matters of American security should have a cost in that regard, and Washington should impose it. Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina should be convinced that the cost is real and immediate.

Michael Radu is Senior Fellow and Co - Chair, Center on Terrorism and Counterterrorism, at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Salon.com Books

This season's intellectual pinup, Fareed Zakaria, author of "The Future of Freedom," explains why the romantic myth of freedom could harm Iraq -- and why power elites aren't so bad.

By Michelle Goldberg

April 21, 2003  |  Since Sept. 11, hawks in the Bush administration have presented themselves as evangelists for democracy. The absence of democracy, in the neoconservative analysis, creates the climate of desperation and frustration that breeds extremism. Democracy's introduction into the Middle East, via regime change in Iraq, would bring a bracing new spirit of liberty to the region, undermining the stagnant authoritarianism of Iraq's neighbors.

Yet were it implanted tomorrow, democracy in most of the Middle East would bring to power the very totalitarian theocrats who most menace us. Indeed, argues Fareed Zakaria in his incisive new book "The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad," democracy isn't necessarily the opposite of tyranny. From Venezuela to Kazakhstan, the last decade has seen a rise in elected autocrats, challenging American bromides that posit universal suffrage as the answer for all the world's ills.

The book and its 39-year-old author, the editor of Newsweek International, is getting an extraordinary amount of attention. In New York magazine, Marion Maneker gives him the movie star treatment, writing, "Dimple-chinned, with expressive eyebrows and a thick head of black hair, Fareed Zakaria could easily be the Indian reincarnation of Cary Grant." He may be the first of a new, post Sept. 11 breed -- the policy wonk as sex symbol.

For all the buzz he's generating, Zakaria's ideas about democracy's failures aren't that new -- in much of the foreign-policy establishment, they've become a kind of conventional wisdom, popularized by writers like Robert Kaplan and Amy Chua. It's clear to anyone who's been paying attention, after all, that the heartening triumph of democracy around the world in the last decade has coincided with brutal outbreaks of ethnic nationalism, civil war and genocide.

Yet Zakaria's book goes further than others, scanning the history of Western culture and identifying a series of fallacious assumptions about the roots of liberty that threaten not just fledgling Third World republics, but America as well: "Western democracy remains the model for the rest of the world, but is it possible that like a supernova, at the moment of its blinding glory in distant universes, Western democracy is hollowing out at the core?"

Freedom, Zakaria argues, comes not from politicians' slavish obeisance to the whims of The People, divined hourly by pollsters. It comes from an intricate architecture of liberty that includes an independent judiciary, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, a free press, autonomous universities and strong civic institutions.

In America, all of these institutions have been under consistent attack for the last 40 years from populists of the left and right seeking to strip power from loathed elites and return it to the masses. "The deregulation of democracy has ... gone too far," Zakaria writes.

Much of what Zakaria writes will anger liberals. He criticizes 1970s reforms that opened up the closed workings of Congress to the public, arguing, "The purpose of these changes was to make Congress more open and responsive. And so it has become -- to money, lobbyists, and special interests." The World Trade Organization is opposed by anti-globalization activists in part because of its secretive, unresponsive nature, but Zakaria argues that's precisely why it works.