“Cinderella Man” James J. Braddock Defeats Max Baer
Unloading cargo on the docks of New Jersey in 1935, James Braddock was struggling to support his family. The condition of his right hand—broken in a boxing match—and the evaporation of his savings with the failure of the Bank of the United States compounded problems of irregular work, according to Sports Illustrated (SI).
Six years earlier, Braddock narrowly lost the light heavyweight championship to Tommy Loughran. Within two months of his defeat, the economy collapsed with the stock market crash of 1929. Braddock’s once-promising boxing career paralleled the economy’s decline as he lost 16 of his next 26 fights and eventually announced retirement, reports SI.
“The talents he had displayed in the late ’20s were fading rapidly from collective memory,” wrote Jeremy Schaap in SI, but Joe Gould, Braddock’s manager, tirelessly continued to promote Braddock, blaming Braddock’s losses on his broken right hand. The Boxing Commission, fearing for Braddock’s safety, was reluctant to put him back in the ring, according to SI.
Braddock’s luck changed when Jimmy Johnston, the Madison Square Garden matchmaker, had difficulty finding an opponent for rising star John ‘Corn’ Griffin. Johnston eventually succumbed to Gould’s persistent nagging and according to SI, said, “[D]on’t blame me if Griffin kills that old Irishman.”
Braddock knocked Griffin out after a rough first round and, after a series of upsets, found himself fighting for the championship a year later. Despite his momentum, the aging Braddock was a heavy underdog “[a]t odds of at least 10 to 1″ against the powerful Max Baer, according to SI.
“I’m scared stiff I’ll kill Braddock,” Baer told Time magazine in 1935 before the fight. His fears proved unfounded when, after 15 rounds, the judges announced Braddock as the new champion.
Nelson Mandela Sentenced to Life in Prison
Nelson Mandela, as a leader in the African National Congress, an organization dedicated to protesting the South African government’s policy of apartheid, had been arrested in 1956 on treason charges, but was acquitted.
The ANC was banned by the government in 1960, following the Sharpeville massacre. Mandela was forced underground, “adopting a number of disguises—sometimes a laborer, other times a chauffeur,” writes PBS. “The press dubbed him ‘the Black Pimpernel’ because of his ability to evade police.”
In 1961, believing that non-violent measures would not be successful, Mandela and other ANC leaders formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a militant wing of the ANC. Beginning on Dec. 16, 1961, MK, with Mandela as its commander in chief, launched bombing attacks on government targets and made plans for guerilla warfare.
Mandela was arrested on Aug. 5, 1962, and sentenced to five years in prison for inciting a workers’ strike in 1961. A year later, in July 1963, the government launched a raid on the Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia, which had been used as an ANC hideout. It arrested 19 ANC leaders and discovered documents describing MK’s plans for attacks and guerilla warfare.
The government charged 11 ANC leaders, including Mandela, with crimes under the 1962 Sabotage Act, writes Aluka. At the Rivonia Trial, Mandela chose not to take the witness stand, instead making a long statement from the dock on April 20, 1964. In it, he explained the history and motives on the ANC and MK, admitting to many of the charges against him and defending his use of violence.
He concluded, “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Mandela was found guilty on four charges of sabotage on June 11. The following day, he and seven on his co-defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, avoiding the death sentence, reported Time. Mandela and the other six non-white defendants were sent to the prison on Robben Island, a former leper colony located off the coast of Cape Town.
Study Clarifies a Depression Risk
Posted by bandolank in health and Fitness on June 3rd, 2009
Teenagers whose parents have a history of depression are at particularly high risk of becoming depressed themselves. Now, a large clinical trial has found that a group cognitive behavioral program that teaches coping and problem-solving skills to such high-risk teenagers can reduce the risk.
But, the study also found, the success rate of the prevention program varied greatly depending on the mental health status of the teenagers’ parents at the time they began intervention. The program was much more effective than standard care if the parents were also not depressed when the intervention began.
The study was published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Were we surprised?” said Judy Garber, a professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. “No. There is evidence in the literature that kids don’t respond as well to treatment if the parent is depressed.”
John Weisz, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who was not involved in the trial, said the results might help identify the best candidates for the prevention program.
He said there were several reasons why the treatment may be less effective when a parent is depressed. “It may be the biological risk for depression is greater in these adolescents — that if the parents were once depressed but aren’t depressed any longer, the biological risk isn’t as great,” he said.
Another possibility is that living in a home with a depressed parent is difficult for a child, he added, while a third possibility is that the teenagers model their parents’ behavior.
The study was a randomized controlled clinical trial conducted in four cities: Nashville; Boston; Pittsburgh; and Portland, Ore. It included 316 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17, all of whom had parents who were either depressed or had been depressed at some earlier point in the child’s life.
The teenagers were randomly assigned to either the prevention program, which consisted of eight weekly 90-minute group sessions followed by six monthly sessions, or to receive only the usual care.
While almost one-third of the teens who got the usual care developed depression during the study period, only 21 percent of teens who participated in the prevention program became depressed.
But among teens whose parents were not depressed when the intervention started, the impact of the program was more dramatic. Only 11.7 percent of those teens became depressed, compared to 40.5 percent of teens with healthy parents who received the usual care.
Among teens whose parents actively suffered depression, however, the prevention program was less effective, with 31.2 percent becoming depressed compared with 24.3 percent among those who received the usual care. That difference was not statistically significant.
Women Bridging Gap in Science Opportunities
The prospects for women who are scientists and engineers at major research universities have improved, although women continue to face inequalities in salary and access to some other resources, a panel of the National Research Council concludes in a new report.
In recent years “men and women faculty in science, engineering and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities,” the panel said in its report, released on Tuesday. It found that women who apply for university jobs and, once they have them, for promotion and tenure, are at least as likely to succeed as men. But compared with their numbers among new Ph.D.’s, women are still underrepresented in applicant pools, a puzzle that offers an opportunity for further research, the panel said.
The panel said one factor outshined all others in encouraging women to apply for jobs: having women on the committees appointed to fill them.
In another report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Wisconsin reviewed a variety of studies and concluded that the achievement gap between boys and girls in mathematics performance had narrowed to the vanishing point.
“U.S. girls have now reached parity with boys, even in high school and even for measures requiring complex problem solving,” the Wisconsin researchers said. Although girls are still underrepresented in the ranks of young math prodigies, they said, that gap is narrowing, which undermines claims that a greater prevalence of profound mathematical talent in males is biologically determined. The researchers said this and other phenomena “provide abundant evidence for the impact of sociocultural and other environmental factors on the development of mathematical skills and talent and the size, if any, of math gender gaps.”
The research council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, convened its expert panel at the request of Congress. The panel surveyed six disciplines — biology, chemistry, mathematics, civil and electrical engineering and physics — and based its analysis on interviews with faculty members at 89 institutions and data from federal agencies, professional societies and other sources.
The panel was led by Claude Canizares, a physicist who is vice president for research at M.I.T., and Dr. Sally Shaywitz of Yale Medical School, an expert on learning.
The Wisconsin researchers, Janet S. Hyde and Janet E. Mertz, studied data from 10 states collected in tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind legislation as well as data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal testing program. Differences between girls’ and boys’ performance in the 10 states were “close to zero in all grades,” they said, even in high schools were gaps existed earlier. In the national assessment, they said, differences between girls’ and boys’ performance were “trivial.”
Taiwan Tech Firms Strive to Be Global
Posted by bandolank in Comunication on June 3rd, 2009
he Taiwanese companies built music players, laptops and cellphones to precise specifications dictated by customers like Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. The Western companies then slapped their familiar labels on the devices, marked up the prices and bombarded consumers with advertisements celebrating their innovative wares.
But in the last couple of years, that tight relationship has begun to fray. No longer content to lurk in the background, some of the Taiwanese companies have sought a more direct route to consumers — and the higher profits that come with owning a global brand.
A few of the Taiwanese companies have even developed reputations as technology leaders. With its Eee PC, Asustek practically invented the most popular category of personal computers today: the ultralight Web-oriented laptops known as netbooks.
Acer, poised to overtake Dell as the world’s second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard, has used its manufacturing might to produce powerful PCs that it can sell more cheaply than its competitors. And HTC developed the first smartphones to use Google’s Android operating system, becoming a showcase for the potential of the new software.
“There is a strong desire in the Taiwanese industry to try and break through,” said Mark Lee, a Taiwan native who runs a software start-up in Silicon Valley called DeviceVM. “I think the industry is going through that big transformation right now.”
Nowhere is the transformation more clear than in the market for netbooks. Acer and Asustek claim about two-thirds of the nascent category, whose sales have soared despite an overall plunge in PC sales.
In addition, Asustek ended last year as the fastest-growing PC company in Europe. Acer, which sells computers under its own name as well as through acquired brands Gateway, eMachines and Packard Bell, is the fastest-growing PC maker over all, according to the research company Gartner.
Despite their sales gains, the Taiwanese companies still have a long way to go to match the marketing flair of an Apple or H.P. Their brands, while strong in Asia, remain largely unknown to consumers in the United States. They do little direct selling to individual or corporate technology buyers, preferring to work through retailers and other intermediaries. And a tradition of secrecy has led to an awkward relationship with the news media.
“They have to adapt and sort that stuff out,” said Mark Hamblin, who helped develop the touch-screen technology for the Apple iPhone and now runs Touch Revolution in San Francisco. “But if someone with that Taiwan base really figures that side out, they will be very, very successful.”
The changing role of the Taiwanese manufacturers is apparent this week at the annual Computex technology trade show in Taipei.
Traditionally, the event has focused on manufacturers’ showing off their latest wares to current and potential partners. Thousands of people come to see components such as power supplies and the fans used to cool computers. Signs herald “overclocking memory with the latest heat spreader,” language that, while foreign to most people, makes hardware enthusiasts drool.
Recently, though, exhibitors at Computex have started to promote much more than their latest circuit boards. Local and foreign companies now use the show to introduce products that they hope will shake up the computing market.
Noury Al-Khaledy, the general manager for mobile products at Intel, says out that Computex has risen in importance as Asian countries, especially China, have turned into the largest potential growth markets.
Two years ago, Asustek introduced the Eee PC at Computex. The small, cheap laptop ignited a wave of enthusiasm in the PC industry. Now, all of the major computer makers sell similar products.
This year, many Taiwanese computer makers are showing ultralight, full-featured laptops that cost less than $600 and other machines that can operate all day on one battery charge. Meanwhile, American companies like Intel and Microsoft are talking about their chips and software aimed at very thin, cheap laptops and computers with sophisticated touch-screen technology.
Next year, Computex could well stand as the showcase for breakthrough smartphones, as those devices approach the capabilities of basic PCs.
Acer, Asustek and HTC stand out as the most prominent examples of Taiwanese companies entering the limelight.
In the last few years, Acer and Asustek have split off their manufacturing arms and chosen to compete directly against the likes of H.P. and Dell in the PC market with their own brands.
“Acer started doing their own brand, and they started seeing their profits go up and up,” said Joseph Wei, who runs SJW Consulting, a Silicon Valley business that links United States and Asian technology companies. “So the Taiwanese government started to encourage more companies to follow this model.”
HTC used to operate completely behind the scenes, manufacturing cellphones other companies would sell under their names. But by embracing Android, HTC won new attention as the maker of the “Google phone.”
In many ways, Taiwanese suppliers have had little choice but to broaden their ambitions. As the computer industry has consolidated, manufacturers have faced increasing pressure to cut prices. To escape declining margins, they need to diversify.
Some of Taiwan’s manufacturers have invested in Silicon Valley software companies to expand margins and get the inside track on new technology. Mr. Lee’s company, DeviceVM, which makes software for booting PCs quickly, has investments from Asustek and executives at a number of large manufacturers. The story for Mr. Hamblin’s Touch Revolution is similar.
Even the largest Taiwanese companies have started to branch out. Foxconn — which employs more than 500,000 people, mostly in China, to produce Apple iPods, Nintendo Wiis and other popular products — recently hired thousands of software developers and built up its services arm. The company is also working on Chinese-language applications for the iPhone and software for e-readers and Android, according to industry executives.
“I am starting to see a bunch of the manufacturers try to climb up the value chain,” Mr. Hamblin said. “They know that they have to build software teams and tie into content now.”
Rising Interest on Nations’ Debts May Sap World Growth
As governments worldwide try to spend their way out of recession, many countries are finding themselves in the same situation as embattled consumers: paying higher interest rates on their rapidly expanding debt.
Increased rates could translate into hundreds of billions of dollars more in government spending for countries like the United States, Britain and Germany.
Even a single percentage point increase could cost the Treasury an additional $50 billion annually over a few years — and, eventually, an additional $170 billion annually.
This could put unprecedented pressure on other government spending, including social programs and military spending, while also sapping economic growth by forcing up rates on debt held by companies, homeowners and consumers.
“It will be more expensive for everybody,” said Olivier J. Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund in Washington. “As government borrowing in the world increases, interest rates will go up. We’re already starting to see it.”
Since the end of 2008, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note has increased by one and a half percentage points, rising to 3.54 percent from 2 percent, the sharpest upward move in 15 years. Over the same period, the yield on German 10-year bonds has risen to 3.57 percent, from 2.93 percent. And British bond yields have increased to 3.78 percent, from 3.41 percent.
Concern over the long-term effect of greater debt prompted Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, to say in testimony before Congress on Wednesday, “Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats to financial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance.”
For now, the cost of more debt is the price government is willing to pay to spend its way out of recession, hoping that a return to fiscal health will increase tax revenue and repay the debt.
But in the last three weeks, the pace of the increase in the 10-year Treasury note’s yield has quickened, spurred by a Congressional Budget Office estimate that net government debt will rise to 65 percent of the gross domestic product at the end of fiscal 2010, from 41 percent at the end of fiscal 2008.
In 2009 and 2010, Washington will sell more than $5 trillion in new debt, according to Citigroup. A decade from now, according to the Congressional Budget office, Washington’s outstanding debt could equal 82 percent of G.D.P., or just over $17 trillion.
Governments borrow money in part by getting investors to buy their bonds, which are essentially i.o.u.’s. To attract investors for all the new debt, governments will have to compete with stock and corporate bond markets for investors’ money, hence the rising yields.
Although interest rates remain low by historical standards, the recent spike in rates comes at a critical juncture, threatening to damp the positive effects of new stimulus spending by governments around the world.
Under President Obama’s 2010 budget, total interest payments by the federal government could rise to $806 billion in 2019, from $170 billion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Much of that projected increase is a result of higher government borrowing, but the forecast also assumes that the average 10-year note yield will increase to 4.7 percent.
Some of the increase in rates earlier this year actually stems from rising confidence in an economic recovery and growing tolerance for risk, as investors abandon government bonds for higher-yielding but riskier corporate bonds and stocks.
Now the threat posed by the rise in government debt is getting increasing attention from investors and traders.
“It’s a gigantic issue,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and the co-author of a forthcoming book, “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” “It leaves us very vulnerable to a global rise in interest rates that might be substantially beyond our control.”
Mr. Rogoff estimates that if the budget office’s debt estimate proves correct, every one percentage point increase in rates could eventually cost Washington an added $170 billion a year.
The long-term situation is particularly perilous, because the added interest costs will worsen what have become record deficits as Washington has rushed to bail out industries and stimulate the economy.
A year ago, under old budget and policy assumptions and before the financial crisis escalated, the Congressional Budget Office projected that outstanding federal debt would hit $5.3 trillion in 10 years.
“It’s an exaggeration of course, but it’s a little like what happened to the subprime borrowers,” Mr. Rogoff said. “People are just assuming the funding will always be there.”
These assumptions may not hold over time. Spending could be reduced, economic growth could be greater than predicted or interest rates could be affected by other factors.
In the meantime, Europe is also turning to the markets to replenish overstretched coffers. In 2009 and 2010, according to Citigroup, the 16-nation euro zone will sell nearly 1.6 trillion euros ($2.6 trillion) in new debt, while Britain plans to offer £490 billion ($799 billion) in new debt.
Britain’s debt sales might seem less alarming than the multitrillion-dollar offerings from the euro zone and the United States. But Mark D. Schofield, global head of interest rate strategy at Citigroup in London, said, “It’s a huge increase in percentage terms, and it dwarfs anything else.”
Standard & Poor’s caught some traders and investors off-guard last month when it warned that Britain’s sovereign debt was in danger of losing its AAA rating, lowering the outlook to negative from stable. It was the first time since Standard & Poor’s initiated coverage of British debt in 1978 that the country received a negative outlook.
Britain’s government debt now equals 55 percent of G.D.P., but Standard and Poor’s estimates it could approach 100 percent by 2013.
“It wasn’t just a message for the U.K., but they were the easiest of the G-7 to target,” said Mark Wall, chief euro-area economist at Deutsche Bank in London, referring to the seven largest industrial nations. “The global financial markets took this as a message as much for the U.S. as the U.K.”
While still worrisome, the short-term debt picture within the euro zone is better than that in either Britain or the United States, Mr. Schofield said.
Over the long term, however, he said that higher rates could compound Europe’s larger problem of prolonged economic weakness and slow its recovery from the current recession.
Even regions that are unlikely to issue substantial amounts of new debt — like South America and Eastern Europe — will be affected by rising rates as they refinance their existing debt.
Asian economies have the least to fear from the prospect of increased rates. “Asia is in much better shape with lower levels of debt and they can afford larger deficits without the market penalizing them,” Mr. Blanchard of the I.M.F. said. “China, for example, is in a very strong position to pay for its stimulus.”
Regulator to Detail Plan for Derivatives
Gary G. Gensler, the top regulator for futures trading, will provide significant new details of a plan announced three weeks ago by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner. Mr. Gensler will disclose his proposal before the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the commission.
Lawmakers said they had been told that Mr. Gensler would propose two sets of regulations — one set for the individual dealers of derivatives and a second set for the marketplaces where the instruments are traded.
Mr. Gensler has said that taken together, the two sets of rules would largely eliminate the loopholes that critics said would have weakened the Treasury secretary’s plan, although some expressed concern that the proposals still might not go far enough to fully address problems that contributed to the market collapse.
If adopted, Mr. Gensler’s proposal would fundamentally alter the way that derivatives dealers do business by imposing requirements, for example, for capital reserves and collateral — assets that would be forfeited in a default. The rules would impose significant new expenses on derivatives dealers, and could reduce their profitability.
Mr. Geithner said his proposal recognized the significant role that unregulated derivatives, particularly credit-default swaps, played in the financial crisis. Such swaps, a form of insurance against the default of a bond, played a central role in the near collapse of the American International Group last year. Rather than limiting risk as they are supposed to do, the swaps wound up spreading the crisis globally.
The plan is expected to run into sharp resistance from the industry, which this week proposed its own set of voluntary rules as part of an effort to head off more aggressive legislation. Some lawmakers who applauded Mr. Geithner’s plan said they intended to press Mr. Gensler to be more aggressive in policing the marketplace even before Congress completes work on the derivatives legislation.
“Gensler has to show that the C.F.T.C. will have teeth and we can implement some things right now,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. She said she had asked Mr. Gensler in recent days to revoke exemptions given to some oil futures traders through what are called no-action letters that she said could permit the manipulation of prices to consumers.
“He laments that Wall Street will be pushing back on the plan proposed by the administration and him. I told him they could get a quick gold star by revoking the no-action letters,” she said.
Some longtime critics of the absence of regulation of the derivatives markets applauded Mr. Gensler’s approach.
“I’m very enthusiastic about it,” said Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School who has been critical of the lack of regulation of the market and is a former director of trading and markets at the commodities futures commission. “There has never been a proposal before to regulate the swaps dealers.”
But Frank Partnoy, another longtime critic of the lack of derivatives regulation, said the administration’s plan did not go far enough. “Disclosure to regulators will not be particularly useful,” said Mr. Partnoy, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law who has written extensively about derivatives regulation. “We’ve been through decades of watching regulators chase innovation and fall progressively further behind.”
The proposal on swaps dealers would include antifraud and antimanipulation provisions as well as potential limits on market positions and holdings. It would apply regardless of whether a dealer issued standard derivatives or specially tailored ones to meet the needs of specific companies.
One major criticism of the Geithner plan was that it would permit less regulation of some of the more complicated derivatives that are custom-written, rather than plain-vanilla instruments, and would open a loophole that would keep much of the market unsupervised and opaque.
But Congressional officials said Mr. Gensler, in his testimony, would describe mechanisms to both supervise the marketplace of customized derivatives and impose standards that presume most derivatives are standard and subject to more rigorous oversight. For instance, any derivative accepted by a clearinghouse for settlement would be presumed to be a uniform derivative, not a customized one.
Israelis Say Bush Agreed to West Bank Growth
JERUSALEM — Senior Israeli officials accused President Obama on Wednesday of failing to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement “freeze.” The complaint was the latest in a growing rift between the Obama administration and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to move forward to achieve peace in the Middle East. Mr. Obama was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and is scheduled to address the Muslim world from Cairo on Thursday. The Israeli officials said that repeated discussions with Bush officials starting in late 2002 resulted in agreement that housing could be built within the boundaries of certain settlement blocks as long as no new land was expropriated, no special economic incentives were offered to move to settlements and no new settlements were built. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could discuss an issue of such controversy between the two governments. When Israel signed on to the so-called road map for a two-state solution in 2003, with a provision that says its government “freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements),” the officials said, it did so after a detailed discussion with Bush administration officials that laid out those explicit exceptions. “Not everything is written down,” one of the officials said. He and others said that Israel agreed to the road map and to move ahead with the removal of settlements and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 on the understanding that settlement growth could continue. But a former senior official in the Bush administration disagreed, calling the Israeli characterization “an overstatement.” “There was never an agreement to accept natural growth,” the official said Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “There was an effort to explore what natural growth would mean, but we weren’t able to reach agreement on that.” The former official said that Bush administration officials had been working with their Israeli counterparts to clarify several issues, including natural growth, government subsidies to settlers, and the cessation of appropriation of Palestinian land. The United States and Israel never reached an agreement, though, either public or private, the official said. A second senior Bush administration official, also speaking anonymously, said Wednesday: “We talked about a settlement freeze with four elements. One was no new settlements, a second was no new confiscation of Palestinian land, one was no new subsidies and finally, no construction outside the settlements.” He described that fourth condition, which applied to natural growth, as similar to taking a string and tying it around a settlement, and prohibiting any construction outside that string. But, he added, “We had a tentative agreement, but that was contingent on drawing up lines, and this is a process that never got done, therefore the settlement freeze was never formalized and never done.” A third former Bush administration official, Elliott Abrams, who was on the National Security Council staff, wrote an opinion article in The Washington Post in April that seemed to endorse the Israeli argument. The Israeli officials acknowledged that the new American administration had different ideas about the meaning of the term “settlement freeze.” Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have said in the past week that the term means an end to all building, including natural growth. But the Israeli officials complained that Mr. Obama had not accepted that the previous understandings existed. Instead, they lamented, Israel now stood accused of having cheated and dissembled in its settlement activity whereas, in fact, it had largely lived within the guidelines to which both governments had agreed. On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel “cannot freeze life in the settlements,” calling the American demand “unreasonable.” Dov Weissglas, who was a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wrote an opinion article that appeared Tuesday in Yediot Aharonot, a mass-selling newspaper, laying out the agreements that he said had been reached with officials in the Bush administration. He said that in May 2003 he and Mr. Sharon met with Mr. Abrams and Stephen J. Hadley of the National Security Council and came up with the definition of settlement freeze: “no new communities were to be built; no Palestinian lands were to be appropriated for settlement purposes; building will not take place beyond the existing community outline; and no ‘settlement encouraging’ budgets were to be allocated.” He said that Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser at the time, signed off on that definition later that month and that the two governments also agreed to set up a joint committee to define more fully the meaning of “existing community outline” for established settlements. In April 2004, President Bush presented Mr. Sharon with a letter stating, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” That letter, Mr. Weissglas said, was a result of his earlier negotiations with Bush administration officials acknowledging that certain settlement blocks would remain Israeli and open to continued growth. The Israeli officials said that no Bush administration official had ever publicly insisted that Israel was obliged to stop all building in the areas it captured in 1967. They said it was important to know that major oral understandings reached between an Israeli prime minister and an American president would not simply be tossed aside when a new administration came into the White House. Of course, Mr. Netanyahu has yet to endorse the two-state solution or even the road map agreed to by previous Israeli governments, which were not oral commitments, but actual signed and public agreements. In his opinion article in The Washington Post, Mr. Abrams, the former Bush official who was part of negotiations with Israel, wrote: “For the past five years, Israel’s government has largely adhered to guidelines that were discussed with the United States but never formally adopted: that there would be no new settlements, no financial incentives for Israelis to move to settlements and no new construction except in already built-up areas. The clear purpose of the guidelines? To allow for settlement growth in ways that minimized the impact on Palestinians.” Mr. Abrams acknowledged that even within those guidelines, Israel had not fully complied. He wrote: “There has been physical expansion in some places, and the Palestinian Authority is right to object to it. Israeli settlement expansion beyond the security fence, in areas Israel will ultimately evacuate, is a mistake.”
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