This and that

Going to the Olympics? The No. 1 killer in the world's biggest (and most toxic) market: Just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power has no clear parallel in history, its pollution problem is rising just as quickly.

Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. In fact, air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

What's more, there's been a sharp rise in cigarette sales over the last 30 years. When you add this to the increased pollution, China's public health crisis is reeling. According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, cancer is now the country's leading cause of death. — Forecasts & Strategies newsletter

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Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. — Isaac Newton

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This thing we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down. — Mary Pickford

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I've read a number of articles recently on Islamic extremists (including a fascinating article in the recent New Yorker magazine). I don't think most Americans realize the seriousness of this threat. So far the United States has surpassed all odds against another major terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

In Europe, where the leadership doesn't expect assimilation of cultures into the country's citizenship, the outcomes have been different.

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Stark contrast: Since 2003, Europe — not the U.S. — has experienced a series of attacks and near-constant threats, ranging from bombed subways and rail stations to Islamic demands to censor cartoons, operas, films and papal exegeses. It is in Europe — not in post-Iraq Kansas — where a Turkish prime minister announces to Muslim expatriate residents that they must remain forever Turks and assimilation is a crime; it is in post-Iraq Europe — not Los Angeles — where politicians and churchmen talk of the inevitability of Sharia law. And it is in post-Iraq Europe — not the U.S. — where honor killings and Islamic rioting are common occurrences.

Why? A number of reasons, but despite all the misrepresentation and propagandas, the message has filtered through the Middle East that the United States will go after and punish jihadists — but also, alone of the Western nations, it will risk its own blood and treasure to work with Arab nations to find some alternative to the extremes of dictatorship and theocracy. Europe, in contrast to its utopian rhetoric, will trade with and profit from, but most surely never challenge, a Middle Eastern thug. — Victor Davis Hanson

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Sick: For all the palaver from politicians and private foundations about the need to eradicate the ghastly and often deadly disease of malaria, health officials still won't vigorously employ the most effective weapon against it: DDT. Applied judiciously inside houses, DDT virtually eliminates the incidence of malaria, which takes 1 million lives a year, mostly those of children.

No other chemical has been so wrongly vilified as has DDT. True, there is a Chinese drug that's efficacious in treating malaria, but public health programs using it have been plagued by useless counterfeits. More to the point, the Chinese drug is used after a victim contracts malaria — it does not prevent the disease, as does DDT.

Contrary to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, there's no evidence that DDT caused cancer in humans — you are exposed to more carcinogens in a cup of coffee than from long-term exposure to DDT. And those supposed environmental effects, such as the eradication of birds because of the softening of their eggs, are almost all fictitious.

In 2005 President Bush unveiled his malaria initiative; officials said it would include the use of DDT. A year later the World Health Organization dramatically changed its anti-DDT stance. Yet no countries that weren't using DDT in 2005 are using it today. Environmental opposition to this pesticide is still fierce, and companies that make weak alternatives to DDT fan this fanatical opposition.

One would be hard put to find a more murderously emotional, know-nothing position than the one on DDT. President Bush should instruct U.S. officials to actively push the use of DDT. And at least one of the foundations concerned about eradicating this disease — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation immediately comes to mind — should take a courageous lead here and aggressively advocate employing DDT, even though the foundation would come in for screeching and uninformed criticism. Millions of lives are at stake. — Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine

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American Indian eloquence (reprinted from "Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads 2001) by Roy H. Williams): America's Thanksgiving holiday originated when the Pilgrims gave thanks to God for sending them an Indian friend named Squanto. This much you already knew. What you didn't know is that long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this same Squanto had been captured by two English sea captains, George Weymouth and John Hunt, ad abused as a slave for fourteen years. Squanto had been free less than five years when Capt. John Bradford's Pilgrims arrived on the good ship Mayflower.

Squanto had every reason to organize a killing party and wipe out the pale-skinned invaders, but he chose to help them instead. Gazing with pity at Bradford's pathetic band of would-be settlers as they huddled around Plymouth Rock, Squanto thought, "If I don't help these silly white men, they're all going to die in the coming winter." And with that, he walked out of the woods and introduced himself.

Squanto died two years later of a disease contracted from these same Europeans.

When I was a boy, all the movies were about heroic cowboys and evil Indians. And in virtually every one of them, courageous settlers had to circle the wagons to defend themselves against unprovoked attacks from apelike savages who said things like "Ugh. Me want'um whiskey."

Would you like to know how Indians actually spoke back then? Consider the musings of Ispwo Mukika Crowfoot, a Blackfoot Indian who was twenty years old in 1803, the same year that Lewis and Clark launched their famous expedition. As he lay dying, Ispwo left us with these last words: "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which run across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Was Ispwo Crowfoot a particularly eloquent Indian? Not at all. Fifty-nine years earlier, when George Washington was just a 12-year-old boy, the collected chiefs of the Indian nations met to discuss a letter from the College of William & Mary suggesting that they "send twelve of their young men to the college, that they might be taught to read and write." The chiefs sent the following reply:

Sirs,

We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinc'd, therefore, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal: and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same with yours. We have some experience of it. Several of our Young People were formerly brought up at the colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less oblig'd by your kind Offer, tho we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlemen of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take care of their Education; instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.