Chicago Tribune, Aug. 21

Workers of the world, shop till you drop! Then belly up to a five-course meal! Say, how about a visit to a nice comedy club?

That’s how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg might express his novel offer to the many protesters expected at the Republican National Convention.

In exchange for their promise to be peaceful, the violence-averse mayor has announced, protesters can receive discounts at local restaurants, theaters and other tourist attractions much like (although not as upscale as) the discount offers Republican delegates receive.

All a protester has to do is to wear a “peaceful political activist” pledge pin, available at city tourism offices, to receive the discounts. …

It seems unlikely that hot-blooded, anarcho-socialists would moderate their outrage over global capitalism to receive a discount on a T-bone at Broadway Joe Steakhouse on 46th Street. Yet, even streetfighting men and women should any actually surface in New York eventually may want to take a guided walking tour of the city, shop for a new tattoo or perhaps take in a theater performance between arrests. At a healthy percentage off. …

Serious discussion will wait
Erie (Pa.) Times-News, Aug. 23

… The chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has proposed that the Central Intelligence Agency be broken into three new ones.

Kansas Republican Pat Roberts says, “We are not abolishing the CIA. We are reordering and renaming its three major elements. No one agency, no matter how distinguished its history, is more important than U.S. national security.” Well, breaking one agency into three sounds a lot like “abolishing” it, but let’s not stumble over the term Roberts uses. …

Roberts proposed that the CIA’s “directorates” operations, which employs spies; intelligence, which analyzes what the spies report; and technology, which provides the James Bond-like gizmos the spies use each becomes a separate unit. The advantage? No agency would have a vested interest in skewing results. Those who collect won’t analyze; those who analyze won’t collect; and those who supply the equipment won’t bother themselves about how it’s used. They won’t need to talk to each other. Presumably they’ll talk to the intelligence czar. …

This proposal revamping the obviously flawed CIA is certainly worth considering is worthy of serious, informed debate. It’s worth having right now.

Unfortunately, America is not likely to get one before the Nov. 2 election. In fact, America probably won’t get a debate until after Jan. 21, 2005, when the president (whoever he is) takes his oath of office and Congress gets back to business.

True, Americans deserve better, but realistically, they’ll have to wait.

Screaming over security
The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y., Aug. 25

Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” is one of the most famous, most reproduced images on earth. In the rarefied world of art masterpieces, it is one of those works usually referred to as “priceless.” That doesn’t mean it has no value $100 million is the figure tossed around a lot but rather that it’s irreplaceable. So it’s probably fortuitous that Munch painted four versions of “The Scream” because thieves in Norway have had no trouble stealing two of them. …

Is this any way to protect national treasures? Not only was the alarm at the museum silent, but also the guards, like many police in generally law-abiding Norway, were not armed. The paintings were attached to the wall only by a wire. …

Armed guards? Metal detectors? Fastening the paintings to the walls more securely? Something more could have been done. … None may be 100 percent effective, but any would be better than what is in place today.

Something should be done before “The Scream” becomes truly irreplaceable.

Rumsfeld’s protection bonus’
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt, Germany, Aug. 25

It has not yet been established to a sufficient extent whether there was systematic torture at the Abu Ghraib military prison and whether it was done on orders; whether prisoners were the victims of private sadism on the part of military police who were that way inclined and were overburdened; or whether the events were a combination of both. …

So far, only one thing is clear – there was a breakdown of military discipline and supervision at this notorious prison, and probably not just there.

Another commission is now laying responsibility at the door not of just on any old brigadier or underling but that of the Pentagon’s civilian and military leadership. ….

Even though the report does not go so far as to draw a direct line from the top of the Pentagon to the abusers, the verdict weighs heavily.

The American army, after all, places particularly great value on unconditional discipline and on obedience. …

Until the November elections, Defense Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld, who is a “revolutionary’ in the Pentagon and no apparatchik, and his closest aides will be able to enjoy a protection bonus’; but they probably won’t have a place in a second Bush administration.