In a denouement worthy of Oedipus, SBC bought — and usurped the moniker of — its former parent, AT&T. As if to highlight how far Ma Bell had fallen behind her progeny, the deal was valued at one-fourth the $67 billion mustered, weeks later, to resorb former sibling BellSouth. CEO Edward Whitacre is itching to replay the strategy of using cash generated by the profitable, if vanishing, landline business to fund growth in wireless, data and video transmission. In its last incarnation, AT&T jettisoned these promising businesses to defend against the (fraudulent) success of rival WorldCom. But now that Bernie Ebbers is safely behind bars, it’s time to try again, albeit against the fledgling opposition of voice-over-internet-protocol competitors like Vonage and Skype. Remember, it was only two years ago that AT&T sold its cellular division to Cingular, then co-owned by SBC and BellSouth. The recent spate of mergers, therefore, has done little more than to put things back where they were in the first place.

Baseball, as distinct from other major sports, has embedded within it the curious goal of winding up exactly where you started — namely, home plate. That hulking athletes like Barry Bonds require steroids to achieve so little remains a stubborn mystery. Yet it was Japan, with its roster of willowy players, which secured the inaugural World Baseball Classic championship in San Diego. Cuba, thankfully, came up short by losing 10-6 in the final game. Despite the estimation proffered by team physician and dictator’s son Antonio Castro that the tournament was about baseball rather than politics, nothing, when it came to Cuba’s participation, could have been further from the truth.

At first, the U.S. Treasury Department, citing sanctions implemented in the ‘60s, denied the Cuban players entry visas. Then, during a preliminary game in Puerto Rico, a Cuban official attacked a fan holding a sign that read “Abajo Fidel” (loosely: Castro is an asshole). A diplomatic furor erupted when said official was taken into police custody and lectured on the Pre-Patriot Act standards of Free Speech. In Miami’s Little Havana, political overtones surrounding the championship game found shopkeeper Angel Hernandez rooting against his ancestry: “If Cuba wins, Fidel wins,” he figured. “I hope Japan wins.” Even more disturbing was the feckless performance of our United States team, which despite a stacked lineup of high-priced talent, failed to make the semi-finals. While some argue that in a global economy, competition — whether in business or sport — shouldn’t be constrained by borders or governments, I remain sickened by our nation’s pitiful showing. Baseball, like basketball, is our game; we invented it, we made up the rules. But nowadays, international competition, more often than not, reminds us of America’s swift and jagged decline. During the Second World War our military was able to rescue not one but two entire continents. Today, as in Viet Nam, we are unable to handle a small civil war in some backwater, Third World country. The French, for example, would never concede defeat to a bunch of foreigners. This week half a million protesters took to the streets not only to decry pending labor reforms, but also to show those Muslim immigrants that when it comes to rioting and looting, NOBODY outshines the French.

Though the cheese-eaters may protest in larger numbers, and with greater élan, the Palestinians show a more violent, irrational flair. Fatah gunmen stormed a ministry building in Gaza, shot up a bunch of functionaries and amidst the hail of bullets had the audacity to demand jobs… in the security force. I guess the shooters were trying to establish their credentials, but in any event, the exhibition backfired as the incoming Hamas government announced massive bureaucratic layoffs (read: purging of former Arafat loyalists). The GM-sized downsizing will be orchestrated by pending Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek who got his PhD from Iowa State University. While the French desperately cling to their tenured jobs and twelve weeks of paid vacation, Americans (and our disciples) are proud to show the world that NOBODY callously fires employees like we do.

Yanks (well, at least the Republican members of the polity) are also uniquely adept at demonizing their antagonists. When Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced legislation to censure the President over illegal domestic wiretapping, his erstwhile colleague, Wayne Allard (R-CO), said the action shows that Feingold “has time and time again taken the side of the terrorists that we’re dealing with in this conflict.” Given Allard’s diatribe, you’d think Russ was running through the Capitol with a keffiyah and an AK-47 shouting, “Allah Akbar!” And besides, if anyone strikes a chummy tone with the terrorists it’s the Bush administration. It is well documented that American airspace was sealed off after the attacks of 9/11 — except for charter flights allowing the Bin Laden family to flee before being interrogated by the FBI. Rummy’s failure to secure Baghdad’s weapons depots has supplied Iraqi militants with all the IEDs an insurgency could want. Last week, Bush himself fixed on yearend to remove troops from Iraq even though, in his own words, “Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would [1] send a message across the world that America is a weak and an unreliable ally… [2] signal to our enemies – that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends… [and 3] vindicate the terrorists’ tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder – and invite new attacks on America.”

As for Osama and his henchmen, the President swore, “It’s not a matter of if they are captured and brought to justice, it’s when they are brought to justice.” Yet after being pressed on the issue, he revealed, “I don’t know where he is and I don’t really care and I don’t think about him that much.” And don’t forget the lucrative port deal that nearly gave over our security apparatus to the UAE. Dubai, of course, was the transfer point for Pakistan’s nuclear contraband as well as the locus of financial and logistical support for the World Trade Center attacks. In other words, the Emirates had a much more intimate and proximate connection to Al Qaeda and WMD than Saddam ever did. More insidious than seizing the terrorist portal of container shipping is the enemy’s command of the computer infrastructure undergirding the Pentagon, Congress, the FAA, Departments of Justice and Energy, the IRS, NATO and the FBI. The enterprise architect software used by these vital entities was supplied and is maintained by Ptech (renamed GoAgile), whose primary investor, Yassin al-Qadi has been named by the feds as a “specially designated global terrorist.” Yet it was Yassin who personally guided Dick Cheney on his visit to Saudi Arabia. Then there is former Ptech board member Soliman Biheri who was recently convicted for lying to investigators about his relationship with a New Jersey-based terrorist front. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department asserts a “close relationship” between Al Qaeda and the company’s founder, Abdurahman Alamoudi who once boasted, “We are all supporters of Hamas… I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” Yet before Alamoudi could be jailed for illegal dealings with Libya, he was inexplicably invited by President Bush to a national prayer service just three days after the events of 9/11.

Given all this, how in the world was the President re-elected in 2004? Perhaps the Christian Right does not register these subtle undercurrents, however pernicious they may be. What they do acknowledge, unquestionably, is the horror that our own puppet government nearly executed an Afghan man for accepting Jesus as his savior. Yet Kabul’s Islamic court may be on to something. They no doubt feel about spread of Christianity the way we view the contagion of Bird Flu. To wit: A couple of years ago when the priest abuse scandal reached epic proportions, the Vatican dismissed the miasma of molestation as “an American problem.” But a report recently published by the archdiocese of Dublin casts a much wider net. Eight Irish priests have been convicted, millions of euros have been paid out is settlements and scores of other clergy are suspected of abusing hundreds of European children. It may not come as a surprise then that when a Tennessee minister was found shot in his parsonage, mid east bazaars were abuzz with chatter that a former victim had killed 31-year-old Matthew Winkler and kidnapped his wife and three young girls in order to “do unto others…” But when Mary Winkler confessed a day later, one Imam was forced to modify the prevailing hypothesis: “She discovered he was fornicating with his own daughters and slaughtered him with the hand of God.” I wonder what Senator Allard has to say about that.