Short Takes: News From All Over: September 30, 2004

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The Crisis of Universalism: America and Radical Islam After 9/11
By Fred Halliday, openDemocracy
We are still taking stock of the many losses caused by 9/11, but one of its most significant casualties is one of its most subtle. Universalism, the acknowledgment of crucial commonalities that facilitates collaborative foreign policy, has been trampled on all sides since the terrorist attacks, with nationalism and tribalism pervading the rhetoric of every country involved. With the dramatic factionalization of the world into warring nations and diametrically opposed ideologies, our capacity to cooperate and peacefully negotiate agreements seems to be buried in the Lower Manhattan rubble. -- Brendan Themes
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-77-2092.jsp

Fox Hunts Student Voters
By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
True to the American idiom, Fox News is not content with its War on Journalism; it wants to add a War on Voting to its blossoming resume. A local Fox affiliate bum-rushed a voter registration drive at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, accusing students of potentially assisting felonies by facilitating voter misrepresentation. Though out-of-state students can legally vote in Arizona, Fox has done little to correct their misinformation, choosing crass sensationalism over factual reporting. -- Brendan Themes
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041011&s=pollitt

Party Affiliation: What it is and What it isn't
By Staff, The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
In this highly contested election, we're hearing complaints that even election polls and surveys have a partisan bias. A survey can now be widely discredited if too many respondents appear to be affiliated with one party or another. But these complaints reflect a widespread misunderstanding of surveys. The final question on Pew Research Center surveys, 'In politics today, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or Independent?' is meant to measure nothing more than current feelings about politics -- not how respondents are registered, how they have voted in the past, or how they have thought of themselves throughout most of their lives. -- Elizabeth Dwoskin
http://people-press.org/commentary/display.php3?analysisID=97

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