Call it another skirmish in the war on terror, which is translating these days as more or less anything deemed unpalatable to social harmony. Los Angeles school officials are pulling an edition of the Koran from the district's libraries because of complaints that the footnotes are anti-Semitic. This particular edition of Islam's Good Book dates from 1934.

An example of one such offending footnote: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. But there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in their philosophy. Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

This doesn't seem so bad, but I suppose you can never be too careful. A story in the Los Angeles Times reports that copies of "The Meaning of the Holy Quran" were donated in December to the Los Angeles Unified School District by a local Muslim foundation. A school district official told the Times that the books, a goodwill gesture in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were distributed to the schools last week "without the usual content review."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Enron, the biggest financial failure in U.S. history, is bigger than Enron. It's also bigger than Global Crossing and all the earn ings restatements headed our way, too.

"Systemic," "structural" and "epidemic" are the key words here. Take, for example, the gladsome tidings that Enron paid no taxes whatever during four of the past five years by cleverly transferring its assets to 881 subsidiaries in tax-shelter countries. (Also take the item that Enron would have gotten a $254 million tax rebate under the Republican "economic stimulus" package -- please. The bill is now mercifully defunct.)

Enron's tax practices are so common that the Center for Public Integrity estimates they cost the country $195 billion a year, which means the rest of us have to make up that missing tax money. That comes to $1,600 per taxpayer. See? Your very own stake in the Enron fiasco.

Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a hero because he saw this coming -- nobody paid attention to him the '90s, of course -- testified, "What has failed is

Right till the end of January, Dita Sari, an Indonesian in her late twenties, was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta, Indonesia, to Salt Lake City. She would bask Feb. 7 in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by the public relations department of Reebok for the thirteenth annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board including Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Reebok is a company that dukes it out each year with Adidas and New Balance for second place, far behind the behemoth of the business, Nike, in the world of sports shoes and apparel.

Make no mistake, the folk -- usually somewhere between four and six recipients -- getting these annual Reebok awards have all been fine organizers and activists, committed to working for minorities, the disenfranchised, the disabled, the underdogs in our wicked world.

Dita Sari's plan was to accept the ticket from Reebok, proceed to the podium in the Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake City, where the world's winter athletes are now assembled, and then, when offered the human

There has always been a fundamental struggle for the "soul" of hip hop culture, represented by the deep tension between politically-conscious and "positivity" rap artists versus the powerful and reactionary impulses toward misogyny, homophobia, corporate greed, and crude commodification.

The most recent example of this struggle for hip hop's "soul" was vividly expressed at the recent West Coast hip hop conference. Respected rappers such as Mike Concepcion and the D.O.C., and Def Jam founder and conference leader Russell Simmons, emphasized the need to mobilize artists around progressive goals, such as supporting voter education and registration campaigns. Solidarity was expressed for progressive feminist poet/artist Sarah Jones, who is suing over the Federal Communications Commission's fine imposed against an Oregon radio station's playing of her song, "Your Revolution." Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in his keynote address, urged the hip hop community to renounce lyrics promoting violence and social divisiveness. "From the suffering of our people came rap," Farrakhan observed. "That should make you a servant of those that produced you."

The politics of hip hop culture took an important step forward recently with the Russell Simmons-founded Hip Hop Summit Action Network's hosting of the historic West Coast Hip-Hop Summit. Organized by Summit President Minister Benjamin Muhammad, hundreds of influential performance artists, music executives, grassroots activists, public leaders, and others gathered to address key issues and to establish a progressive political agenda. Prominent participants included rappers Kurupt, DJ Quik, the Outlawz, Mack 10, Boo-Yaa Tribe, Mike Concepcion and the D.O.C., and radio personality/comedian Steve Harvey. Significantly, the keynote address was delivered by the leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan, who also keynoted the first national hip-hop summit, staged last summer in New York City.

This latest Hip-Hop Summit Action Network followed closely after two recent New York-based events connected with the effort to build a progressive hip hop political agenda. On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (January 21), the first hip hop youth summit was held at York College in Queens. Featuring