Zealots

Albert F. Canwell, a one-term Washington state legislator and anti-communist zealot who helped set the national stage for McCarthyism, has died at age 95. Canwell died April 1 in his native Spokane of unspecified causes. In 1948, Canwell conducted the first nationally publicized hearings into anti-communist activity, well ahead of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whom he claimed to have befriended and tutored. "I was helpful to [McCarthy] in selecting targets.

President Bush's inclusion of Iran in an "axis of evil" is a bizarre and seemingly inexplicable expansion of his war on terrorism. It involves a disturbing--and major--policy shift: Iran is now a potential military target primarily because U.S. officials say it is developing weapons of mass destruction. Bush's hostile rhetoric, furthermore, has strengthened the hands of Iran's religious hard-liners at the expense of its reformers, who now have no alternative but to unite behind the conservative clerics' virulent anti-Americanism.

The young men who sat cross-legged on the rug, squeezed into a semicircle around the seminary's principal, are the mullahs of tomorrow. Most are poor and from the countryside and not yet old enough to have full, bushy beards. On the admission applications they clutched in their hands, they had agreed not to smoke, get "English-style" haircuts, question decisions of the seminary or join political movements.

Re "No Escaping the Memories," April 11. Siranosh Papazian Tanossian's recollection of the Armenian genocide commences with the Turkish government sending soldiers to people's houses to collect their guns. Registration, confiscation, then execution seems to be a worldwide trademark of all gun-control zealots. It is ironic how at a time when the same thing is happening to the Albanians, this Democratic-controlled state is pushing the most draconian gun control laws ever. So if the government comes knocking at your door for your guns, family, property or whatever, just remember what political party distrusts you the most.

On Tuesday, not long after President Clinton visited Masada, the mountain, the Shubert Theatre hosted a concert performance of the new "Masada: The Musical." The show's creators hope to stage a full production atop the real Masada in Israel during the millennium celebration. They're also aiming for Broadway and beyond. But they've got some rewrites to do first.

At a recent Santa Barbara wine auction, a benefit for the Music Academy of the West, the honorees included Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat winery and the other winemakers who share the same facility ("The Wine Zealot," by Doug Adrianson, Nov. 1). I was reminded that one of Clendenen's most important attributes wasn't mentioned in Adrianson's fine article. Clendenen has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities over the years and continues his high level of participation with generous donations of time, money, wine and auction lots.

I'm so tired of Paula Jones. Whatever trauma, real or imagined, she experienced has given way to the lure of life as a litigious exhibitionist pawn of the vultures of the far right, who are interested only in the destruction of a president who has proved impervious to more direct attack.

Standing scornful and defiant, the defendants shout their cases. They are sovereign citizens, not subject to the court! The judges are unqualified! The lawyers are illegal! "To hell with you and your kangaroo court!" one defendant bellows at his sentencing for dealing drugs. The bizarre claims are trademarks of the Montana Freemen, the militant antigovernment zealots who have been jailed here, awaiting trial, since their 81-day standoff ended 16 months ago.