Exploring the Connections

Senate rejects kids citizenship measure

Opponents call the Dream Act 'amnesty' for immigrant children

By Nicole Gaouette and Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 25, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bill offering the children of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship if they serve in the military or complete two years of higher education. The defeat of the measure, which had attracted bipartisan support, underscored the difficulty of enacting even a narrowly tailored proposal in the polarizing atmosphere surrounding immigration reform.

The vote on the proposal was 52 to 44, short of the 60-vote margin needed to prevent a filibuster and begin debate. It was one small piece of a comprehensive immigration bill that collapsed in the Senate earlier this year, and it sparked a brief but heated debate.

read full article here

Pass the Dream Act

Editorial, New York Times, September 20, 2007

A small but worthy step toward immigration reform is returning as an amendment to the defense authorization bill. As the Senate debates that fat holiday wish book for the Pentagon, it should rescue this sliver of bipartisan good sense from the wreckage of last summer’s failed immigration debate.

It’s called the Dream Act, and it offers a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children after they graduate from high school and complete two years of military service or college. Its Senate sponsors, including Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Richard Lugar of Indiana, have championed it as a way to open a future to talented children whose opportunities are closed because of their parents’ decision to immigrate here illegally. They also see it as giving a needed boost to the military by opening a new stream of high-quality recruits.

The idea is modest and smart, but modest and smart usually don’t get very far these days. The anti-immigrant forces that buried the Senate’s comprehensive reforms under a wave of faxes and phone calls are at it again over the revival of this small part of that much bigger bill. They are convinced that giving a break to blameless young men and women — maybe about a million — who want to earn a college degree or serve in the military weakens the country instead of strengthening it. Their hostility to nurturing a new cohort of American citizens, their reflexive “no” even to this limited attempt at immigration decency, lays bare the bankruptcy of their self-defeating passions.

Passing the Dream Act would do more than give deserving young people a path beyond dead-end jobs and lives in the shadows. It would honor the thousands of immigrant soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lengthening list of those who have given their lives includes Cpl. Juan Mariel Alcántara, a 22-year-old New Yorker who was born in the Dominican Republic. The official date that he became an American was Aug. 6, the same day that a bomb killed him and three fellow soldiers in Baquba, north of Baghdad. He was the 103rd immigrant to become a citizen posthumously in this war.

Passage would also give encouragement to the budding activists on college campuses around the country who have rallied behind the Dream Act for themselves and their schoolmates. And it would give a small dose of hope to those who watched in dismay as Congress’s attempts at serious immigration reform last year and this year were demonized, disfigured and finally killed. It would show that the country has not entirely lost its ability to recognize, with grace and gratitude, the great potential in the immigrants among us.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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If you would like to help support student activists within our own Cathedral community, as they lobby our Senators in Washington, please read on:

Because we have been informed that US Senators are working hard to get the DREAM Act introduced and voted on as EARLY AS this WEEK - OCTOBER 22 - 26, we hope you can participate in a CALL-IN CAMPAIGN this October 22 to 24 (Monday to Wednesday). Our senators need to KNOW THAT TEXAS NEEDS AND SUPPORTS THE DREAM ACT

Please call every day until the vote happens.
    Our youth needs your help and action!
             SUPPORT the DREAM Act!

US Senators continue to get flooded with anti-immigrant/anti-DREAM Act calls, therefore we must let US senators know that the US needs the DREAM Act passed.  Let's show that our numbers are NOT just in the rallies and take our action a step farther... CALL-IN EVERYDAY. 

Telephone Numbers: (click on ther image to enlarge)

The American inquisition?

by Joan Chittester, OSB
From Where I Stand, Vol. 5, no. 34
National Catholic Reporter

There are some things that being born in the United States simply does not prepare a person to imagine. One of them is a headline on the front page of a local newspaper reporting a "debate" going on in Congress on the use of torture as a part of U.S. military policy. A debate? What's to debate about it? Unless, of course you, were working for the court of Philip IV in 14th century France.

But, no, it's here now. In the United States. In our generation. In fact, they're now making movies about it.

This column, be assured, is not a film review. Others closer to the industry will do that very well once the film is released Oct. 19. But film quality is not the issue at hand. Content is the problem.

"Rendition" is a film dealing with the newly refined U.S. practice of outsourcing U.S. military prisoners to other countries for incarceration and "questioning." (I use the word loosely.) "Enhanced questioning," the President calls it. "Torture," the rest of the world is calling it.

That such a thing can happen here, by us, with little public response to it, is almost impossible to believe if you grew up bathed in the honor, integrity and high moral ground of this country. In fact, to say otherwise -- to say almost anything about maintaining traditional national standards -- is to be accused of "blaming America first." So much for "removing the speck in your neighbor's eye and ignoring the log in your own." Let alone "freedom and justice for all." But what a log it is. And what an injustice it can create. Which makes you wonder who are the real conservatives here.

The most startling public awareness of U.S. torture came in 2006. But not in this country. Oh, no. Instead, the British Broadcasting Corporation released a documentary in London detailing the work of plane spotters from one end of Europe to the other who had traced the routes of secret U.S. aircraft involved in the transport of "disappeared' detainees to clandestine prisons. The sites ranged from Eastern European countries to Egypt, Syria and Yemen. And all of it with the support and collaboration of European countries that simply looked the other way as the U.S. crossed their airspace hauling men taken in a "sweep," meaning without clear cause to do it, to secret, unknown prisons for what Washington later called "aggressive interrogation." "This can't be true," I thought, as I watched the methodical detailing of British investigative journalism. "We wouldn't do such a thing."

But Amnesty International had also been gathering information on the process. April 6, 2006, AI published its damning and definitive report titled Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and 'disappearance.' [1]

The article detailed with chilling specificity the systematic breaking down of human beings to gain information that they did --- or didn't have.

So, I give up, tell me again: What's the debate about?

The government says it's about "keeping the American people safe." But from what? From decency, from humanity, from morality, from law? Because by now, the stories of official U.S. atrocities are pouring out from all over the world. Just surf over to this page, www.thegully.com/essays/torture/torture2.html [2], skim the headlines. Surely that ought to be enough to tell us that we are up to our necks in tactics too close to sadism to overlook. Tactics that break the minds of innocents and decay the soul of those who call themselves victors.

But forget the morality question in an era when annihilation is a tactic on tap. What can we possibly hope for in human standards in an age when destruction of the globe is one possible option. And anyway, it's for a good cause, isn't it? After all, the very phrase, "the war on terror," is a magic phrase. It justifies anything we do, doesn't it? Peccadillos all, I'm sure, as long as we're the ones who are doing them.

For those with enough conscience left to question the project, however, maybe it wouldn't hurt to look instead at another news story from Oct. 13, 2007.

This story (Vatican to tell true knights' tale [3]) records that the Vatican has just recently published secret documents about the inquisition and heresy trial of the Knights Templar in 1307. Pope Clement V, it seems, initially absolved the medieval religious order of heresy. But under pressure from King Philip IV of France, who saw the wealth of the Knights as a threat to his kingdom, Clement suppressed the order. Then Philip used the accusations to arrest the leaders of the order and extract, under torture, confessions of heresy that justified Philip's seizing of their property.

Now what's to regret? It was a good cause, after all. No doubt King Philip was "saving the church" as well as "saving his country." Just as we are. The confessions he got under torture, unfortunately, belied the findings of the trial. But they did, conveniently, even if wrong, give the king a way to seize the riches of the order.

I'm sure the Vatican was sorry about it all.

But therein lies the lesson: Material gained under torture is simply not credible, a conclusion reached by Eyemeric, the Grand Inquisitor of Aragon himself in 1357, who said, information gained under torture "is deceptive and ineffectual." Which means that the torturer isn't credible either. Or, to put it another way, how can we ever hope to stop the school shootings and gang warfare we abhor while we're doing it ourselves? How do we tell our children that their violence is bad but our violence is good?

From where I stand, torture is too unreliable an item to build the morality, the credibility, the integrity of a church -- or a nation -- on it. After all, we can't have it both ways. Either the Inquisition was good -- or it wasn't.

Ahmadinejad's U.S. visit was a missed opportunity for us

by Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB
"From Where I Stand", Vol. 5, No. 14
National Catholic Reporter, October 2, 2007

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, part of President George Bush's "Evil Empire" came to town last week. The question is who knows and who cares and who knows enough to care anything rational about it anyway? Good questions.

According to the latest Pew Research Center Survey on Religion and Public Life, 58 percent of the more than 3,000 respondents said they knew little or nothing about Islamic practices, but 70 percent of non Muslims said they did know that Islam was very different from their own religious beliefs. (Los Angeles Times, Wed., Sept 26, 2007) At the same time, the numbers of U.S. citizens whose attitudes toward Muslims are unfavorable are rising. What's even more disconcerting is that few Americans even know a Muslim personally. Those who do, the survey found, were more likely to be positive about Islam than those who did not.

The problem is clear: If feelings between the two groups harden -- one fearing violence, the other fearing prejudice -- the mercury of animosity on both sides rises, too. And with it the potential for civic polarization and, eventually, global warfare.

Clearly, then, we each have a personal stake in peace, a responsibility to see that our governments are not permitted to choose our enemies for us. Clearly, prejudice is the foundation of war, the ground upon which warring governments stand for support, the strategy of national threat that governments use to seduce a people away from peace. And we have all heard it used. It is "the weapon of mass destruction" that was, according to President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, only "12 minutes away from our shores."

We know the strategy works. We've been there. And thousands are now paying the price of the subterfuge.

But all the while we talk about "freedom of speech." It is the banner under which we stand, the Americanism of which we are most proud.

For years, U.S. diplomats stayed in touch with Soviet officials during years of the worst threat the world had ever known. In the crosshairs of one another's nuclear weapons daily, a red phone sat on a desk in the Kremlin and in the Oval Office in the United States to make sure that no lower-level accident, miscalculation, over-reaction, prejudice, fear began the end of the world.

In our own time, we were told that a nation ravaged for a decade by sanctions was poised to destroy the West in one fell swoop. And we believed it despite the educated skepticism of most of the rest of the world. Now we are being told that another country, one other man, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself, has the power -- has the intention -- to destroy us, as well. Like cats sniffing around cheese in a trap, we are being prepared, some think, for another invasion. This time Iran.

At the center of the issue, surely, lies both understanding and freedom of speech. Understanding, survey participants say, we lack. Free speech we say we have. But one depends on the other. In which case, forget Iran's weaknesses, we may just have failed our own principles badly.

In Iran's present government structure, according to the Iran Chamber Society, a decision -- every decision -- is legal and effective only after the approval of the Supreme Leader, a cleric. In this case, that is Ayatollah Ali Khameini. Even national elections are lawful only when the Supreme Leader signs his approval.

The Supreme Leader also controls the armed forces and all intelligence and security operations. Only the Supreme Leader can declare either war or peace. He appoints the entire judiciary, the radio and TV networks and the Council of Guardians.

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has a high public profile but is subordinate to the Supreme Leader in all things. According to the Iran Chamber Society, "Iran is the only state in which the executive branch does not control the armed forces." Point: If we have someone to fear in Iran, Ahmadinejad is not the one. No matter how bizarre, unpredictable, erratic or threatening he may seem to the Western mind, he can't push any buttons, send any troops, or build any bombs. We have made him out to be a great deal more than he is.

That may be the first thing we ought to understand.

Then, maybe we ought to look at our own past history and present use of "freedom of speech." This is a country that greeted Nikita Khrushchev in 1960 with a 21-gun salute at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, drove him and President Eisenhower by presidential cavalcade 13 miles through Washington to his residence, treated him to conversations with a host of the highest officials in the country, toured him through Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles and ended his stay with a visit to Camp David. This is the country that met its counterparts with courtesy and, after almost 30 years, finally talked and listened its way, one Soviet leader at a time, to the end of the Cold War.

That was freedom of speech. For us and for them.

In this era, our administration will not talk to those they call our enemies. A president of one of our most illustrious universities, President Lee Bollinger of Columbia, introduces Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a foreign dignitary, on camera with a rant of insulting diatribes, and the city police refuse to allow him, a foreign figurehead -- someone, it is said, who has less power than the Prince of Wales -- to visit Ground Zero with a wreath.

You have to wonder what we might have learned by allowing him to present himself without our labeling him first. You have to think about whether or not he might really have been trying to reach out a bit and what happened when we refused the handshake. You have to contemplate what might have happened if we had taken the opportunity to talk with him decently. What if we could both have come to see the human in one another? And more than all of that, what if we had been true to ourselves?

You have to question what we really mean by "freedom of speech." And for whom?

There was one bright spot in the debacle, however. One group of U.S. citizens trusted that the process of freedom of speech was still worth risking. In a chapel across the street from the United Nations, in a meeting conducted without advance publicity, a panel of Christian leaders from the U.S. and Canada -- a Quaker, a Catholic, an Anglican, a Baptist and a representative from the World Council of Churches -- before an audience of 140 other religious leaders held a two hour question and answer period with President Ahmadinejad that was low-key, respectful, and honest. No topics were ruled out. No questions were denied. No insults were traded. (The New York Times, Goodstein, "Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics," September 27, 2007)

Did it do anything? In the realm of immediate political postures, probably not. But it did signal to both sides that it was possible to step back from the brink -- if you really believe in freedom of speech. And it may have signaled to the world that there is such a thing as "being Christian."

From where I stand, the moment was a call to both spiritual and political maturity. We missed on one. Thanks to the courage of a few, we may have managed to salvage the other.

U.S. Is Top Arms Seller to Developing World

by Tom Shanker
New York Times, Oct 1, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world in 2006, followed by Russia and Britain, according to a Congressional study to be released Monday. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the top buyers.

(click on image to enlarge)

The global arms market is highly competitive, with manufacturing nations seeking both to increase profits and to expand political influence through weapons sales to developing nations, which reached nearly $28.8 billion in 2006.

That sales total was a slight drop from the 2005 figure of $31.8 billion, a trend explained by the strain of rising fuel prices that prompted many developing states — except those that produce oil — to choose upgrading current arsenals over buying new weapons.

The report, “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations,” was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, and presents a number of interesting observations linking arms sales and global politics. For example, Russia has been a major supplier of weapons to Iran in past years, including a $700 million deal for surface-to-air missiles in 2005.

But anxieties over Iran’s nuclear program can be seen as having deterred Moscow from concluding significant new conventional arms deals with Iran in 2006, deals that could be viewed as overly provocative while the Security Council debates new sanctions on Iran.

At the same time, though, Russia continues to nurture an arms-trade relationship that is deeply disturbing to the Bush administration, by signing weapons deals with oil-rich Venezuela and its anti-American leader, Hugo Chávez.

The Russian agreements with Venezuela in 2006 included the sale of two dozen Su-30 fighter jets valued at more than $1 billion, along with attack and transport helicopters valued at more than $700 million.

Russia also sold Venezuela a large number of AK-series assault rifles in a deal that included a pledge to build a factory in Venezuela to produce those rifles and ammunition, together valued at more than $500 million.

“Venezuela’s populist president, Hugo Chávez, has taken a hostile approach to relations with the United States in recent years,” wrote Richard F. Grimmett, a specialist in national defense at the Congressional Research Service.

“Thus his decision to seek advanced military equipment from Russia is a matter of U.S. concern,” Mr. Grimmett wrote in the report. “Chávez appears embarked on an effort to make Venezuela an important military force in Latin America.”

The study makes clear also that the United States has signed weapons-sales agreements with nations whose records on democracy and human rights are subject to official criticism.

The announcement of major new arms agreements with Pakistan last year renewed debate over whether the Bush administration was elevating its counterterrorism priorities above its pledge to spread democracy around the world.

Pakistan was a major recipient of American arms sales in 2006, including the $1.4 billion purchase of 36 new F-16C/D fighter aircraft and $640 million in missiles and bombs. The deal included a package for $890 million in upgrades for Pakistan’s older versions of the F-16.

At the same time, the State Department’s own survey of global human rights in 2006 noted a variety of shortcomings in Pakistan’s record on human rights and democratization.

But the Bush administration has argued that it is important to maintain the support of a nuclear-armed Pakistan in the broader counterterrorism fight, in particular as Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders regroup in the rugged North-West Frontier Province along the Afghan border.

In 2006, the United States agreed to sell $10.3 billion in weapons to the developing world, or 35.8 percent of these deals worldwide, according to the study. Russia was second with $8.1 billion, or 28.1 percent, and Britain was third with $3.1 billion, or 10.8 percent.

Pakistan concluded $5.1 billion in agreements to buy arms in 2006. That total was followed by India with $3.5 billion in agreements and Saudi Arabia with $3.2 billion in deals.

The combined value of arms sales worldwide to both developed and developing nations in 2006 reached $40.3 billion, a decline of nearly 13 percent from 2005.

When combining totals for arms sales to developed and developing nations, the ranking of world arms dealers remained the same. The United States led with $16.9 billion, followed by Russia with $8.7 billion and Britain with $3.1 billion. The 2006 sales figures for all three nations were higher than their totals in 2005.

China plays an interesting role in the arms market, being both a purchaser of advanced air and naval weapons, from Russia, and as a supplier of less-expensive arms to developing nations.

Mr. Grimmett’s study uses figures in 2006 dollars, with amounts for previous years adjusted for inflation, to give a constant financial measurement.

Proxy war could soon turn to direct conflict, analysts warn

US strikes on Iran predicted as tension rises over arms smuggling and nuclear fears

by Julian Borger and Ian Black
The Guardian, Sept 15, 2007

The growing US focus on confronting Iran in a proxy war inside Iraq risks triggering a direct conflict in the next few months, regional analysts are warning.

US-Iranian tensions have mounted significantly in the past few days, with heightened rhetoric on both sides and the US decision to establish a military base in Iraq less than five miles from the Iranian border to block the smuggling of Iranian arms to Shia militias.

The involvement of a few hundred British troops in the anti-smuggling operation also raises the risk of their involvement in a cross-border clash.

US officers have alleged that an advanced Iranian-made missile had been fired at an American base from a Shia area, which if confirmed would be a significant escalation in the "proxy war" referred to this week by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq.

"The proxy war that has been going on in Iraq may now cross the border. This is a very dangerous period," Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.

Iran's leaders have so far shown every sign of relishing the confrontation. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared yesterday that American policies had failed in the Middle East and warned: "I am certain that one day Bush and senior American officials will be tried in an international court for the tragedies they have created in Iraq."

In such circumstances, last week's Israeli air strike against a mystery site in northern Syria has triggered speculation over its motives. Israel has been silent about the attack. Syria complained to the UN security council but gave few details. Some say the target was Iranian weapons on their way to Hizbullah in Lebanon, or that the sortie was a dry run for a US-Israeli attack on Syria and Iran. There is even speculation that the Israelis took out a nuclear facility funded by Iran and supplied by North Korea

The situation is particularly volatile because the struggle for influence threatens to exacerbate a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The US has called a meeting of major powers in Washington next Friday to discuss Iran's defiance of UN resolutions calling for its suspension of uranium enrichment. It comes amid signs that the Bush administration is running out of patience with diplomatic efforts to curb the nuclear programme. Hawks led by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, are intensifying their push for military action, with support from Israel and privately from some Sunni Gulf states.

"Washington is seriously reviewing plans to bomb not just nuclear sites, but oil sites, military sites and even leadership targets. The talk is of multiple targets," said Mr Cronin. "In Washington there is very serious discussion that this is a window that has to be looked at seriously because there is only six months to 'do something about Iran' before it will be looked at as a purely political issue."

US presidential elections are due in November 2008, and military action at the height of the campaign is usually seen by voters as politically motivated.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief who is now a security analyst, said: "The decision to attack was made some time ago. It will be in two stages. If a smoking gun is found in terms of Iranian interference in Iraq, the US will retaliate on a tactical level, and they will strike against military targets. The second part of this is: Bush has made the decision to launch a strategic attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, although not before next year. He has been lining up some Sunni countries for tacit support for his actions."

US and British officials have complained to Iran about the use by Shia militias in Iraq of what they say are Iranian-made weapons. The main concern is the proliferation of roadside bombs that fire a bolt of molten metal through any thickness of armour, which the officials say must have been made in Iran.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Major General Kevin Bergner, raised the stakes when he said the 240mm rocket that hit the US military headquarters outside Baghdad this week, killing an American soldier and wounding 11, had been supplied to Shia militants by Iran.

Gen Bergner used to work in the White House, where he was aligned with administration hawks, and his dispatch to Baghdad was seen by some as a move to increase pressure on Iran.

"There are an awful lot of lower level officers who are very angry about the deaths from explosively formed projectiles said to come from Iran. There is a certain amount of military pressure to do something about this," said Patrick Clawson, the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That said, it is very difficult for us to do anything without much better evidence. In that respect, border control is a sensible solution."

Any US decision to attack Iran would force Gordon Brown to choose between creating a serious rift in the transatlantic alliance and participating in or endorsing American actions. British officials insist that Washington has given no sign it is ready to abandon diplomacy and argue that UN sanctions are showing signs of working. They point to the resurgence in Iran of Hashemi Rafsanjani, seen as a pragmatic counterweight to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Hopes that a new war could still be avoided have also been boosted by Gen Petraeus's claim that Iran's covert Quds force alleged to be supporting Shia attacks on coalition forces had been pulled out of Iraq. If true, it could be that in the stand-off between the US and Iran, Iran has blinked first.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Conquering sectarianism: Can Ulster be a model for Iraq?

by David McKittrick
Belfast Telegraph, September, 2007

In a way there is hardly a better figure than Martin McGuinness to take the lead in an extraordinary session of Iraqi peace talks which, it has just emerged, secretly took place in Helsinki.

The 16 representatives of Sunni and Shia factions who for four days, sat together in uneasy proximity, know that Mr McGuinness, now Northern Ireland's number two public figure, was an IRA commander.

So when he told them that violence should cease and that inclusive dialogue was the way ahead, they listened. In addition, they agreed a set of principles as a basis for further talks.

While it is an exaggeration to characterise this, as Mr McGuinness has, as "a tremendous breakthrough", it is surely encouraging that the round of talks did not end in bitter recriminations and angry walkouts.

At the same time, the 12 issues specified – commitment to non-violence and democracy, eventual disarmament, full participation of all in a political process and so on – demonstrate what a daunting task reaching eventual agreement will be.

Nonetheless, the fact that the conference was co-chaired by Mr McGuinness and a former South African minister, Rolf Meyer, must have driven home the powerful message that even the most apparently intractable conflicts can be brought to an end. Mr McGuinness and Mr Meyer made detailed presentations on how Northern Ireland and South Africa had reached political settlements. The Iraqis were, according to the Sinn Fein leader, "amazed and very impressed" to see him in government with the Rev Ian Paisley – "it had a massive impact on them," he related.

Once all sides had signalled they were amenable to consider these exploratory talks, a well-used international network came into play. There exist many organisations, some private, some academic, keen to facilitate such dialogue. At least two were involved in this instance.

One was the Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative, an independent, non-profit organisation specialising in conflict resolution. Its founder, the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, has been involved in peacemaking in areas such as Namibia and Kosovo. In 2005 the group helped to broker a peace deal between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels in Aceh after secret talks in Finland. Mr Ahtisaari, currently attempting to sort out the future of Kosovo on behalf of the UN, is also no stranger to Northern Ireland, having been involved for years in the process of arms decommissioning there.

The other group behind the Iraq initiative was a department of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, a college which has for decades sought to promote dialogue in Northern Ireland.

Read the rest of the story here

U.S. and Russia cooperate in destroying arms

By C. J. Chivers, International Herald Tribune (Europe)
Friday, August 31, 2007

KRASNOARMEYSK, Russia: At 5:34 p.m. Wednesday on a military compound northeast of Moscow, three men sat in a room before small metal boxes adorned with red plastic buttons. Each button was connected to a cable that snaked through a hole in the wall to the forest outside.

Upon a command from Sergei Shevchenko, a senior official at the missile technologies directorate of Russia's space agency, the men pushed the buttons. Outside, from a few hundred yards away, a roar filled the air. The ground began to shake.

The buttons had ignited the solid fuel in a rocket motor that had been removed from an SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile.

In a little more than two minutes, the missile component burned itself out, the latest piece of Soviet-era nuclear hardware to be destroyed under an American taxpayer-financed effort known as Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction.

The brainchild of Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and Sam Nunn, a Democrat who was then a senator from Georgia, the effort has grown into one of the main areas of enduring collaboration between Russia and the United States. The two countries celebrated the effort's 15th anniversary this week.

Programs under its umbrella have helped Russia and other former Soviet states to account for, secure and destroy nuclear, chemical and biological materials and the equipment related to their delivery as weapons. This has happened even though some elements have suffered delays and bureaucratic resistance, and a renewed climate of secrecy in Russia has made negotiations and access difficult at some weapons or material storage sites.

Still, nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads have been deactivated, and silos, mobile launchers, submarines and strategic bombers that were once integral to their deployment and potential use have been destroyed. In addition, the effort has helped to safeguard highly enriched uranium from research reactors and nuclear power plants, and blend it down to low enrichment — still useful for generating electricity, but not as material for a nuclear device.

In a time of fresh diplomatic disputes between the Kremlin and the White House, the nonproliferation work is a rare area where Russia and the United States still agree. "This is one of the bright spots in the relationship," said William Tobey, a deputy administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency that coordinates the Department of Energy's nonproliferation programs.

During the second terms of Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin, each country has accumulated a list of grievances against the other. Russia has criticized the United States for what it has called a unipolar approach to foreign affairs. It has complained about what it characterizes as a reckless war in Iraq, efforts to expand NATO, support for opposition movements in former Soviet countries and a plan to install a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Washington has criticized Russia for the consolidation of political power at the Kremlin, for crackdowns on dissenters and for its creeping control over the country's broadcast media, as well as the manipulation of its energy exports to pressure neighboring countries. It also worries over Russia's foreign policy, from its support of separatists in Georgia and Moldova to its arms sales to Venezuela and Iran.

The public positions have hardened to the point that the United States has publicly questioned Russia's commitment to democracy and political pluralism. Putin has suggested that the United States could be compared to the Third Reich.

But an opposite sort of posture was evident as the two countries celebrated their work together this week. The three men pushing the buttons on Wednesday were Senator Lugar, Nunn and William Burns, the American ambassador to Russia. Shevchenko noted that it was the first time that Americans had been allowed to be so involved.

He said that the collaboration was an example of what the countries could achieve together, and suggested that the model could be extended to research and programs combating infectious disease. "This important problem, and many other important problems, can be solved when we work together," he said.

Lugar noted the "extraordinary circumstances of history that brought us together" with the collapse of the Soviet Union and he praised Russia for its work thus far. Nunn, in a sign of the discord inside foreign policy circles surrounding some of Bush's policy choices, expressed deep skepticism about the White House's proposals for a missile defense network in Europe. He urged cooperation with Russia in developing any shield, as the Kremlin has suggested.

"I think strongly that we ought to take very seriously Putin's proposals," he said.

Nunn is now a co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private organization that augments government nonproliferation efforts by underwriting complementary programs.

Several participants said that the Nunn-Lugar programs would probably be renegotiated and continue into the future, but suggested that Russia, a former pauper state that has paid down debts and built up large cash reserves as oil and gas prices have surged during Putin's terms, would be asked to pay for a larger share of the work.

The participants also noted that cases of nuclear smuggling continued, as recently as last year, when a Russian crossed into Georgia with a small amount of highly enriched uranium 235 — radioactive contraband that apparently had made its way out of nuclear facilities in Russia.

Hurricane recovery, Republican-style

Many are still struggling on the Gulf Coast. But casino and real estate investors are living large -- thanks to Republican officials.

by Tim Shorrock
Salon.com

A resident looks at the waterfront where he used to live in Biloxi, Miss., Aug. 29, 2005; (inset) Beau Rivage Resort and Casino.

Aug. 29, 2007 | As residents of Mississippi's Gulf Coast gather today to commemorate the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, they will recall a cataclysmic storm that spared no one, rich or poor, from its destruction. Virtually every structure along the 90-mile stretch of coastline was either wrecked or swept away after Katrina's 140-mile-an-hour winds and 40-foot storm surge came ashore like a steamroller from hell. Yet, while the national media has focused its attention on New Orleans, it has given relatively little coverage to the hurricane's impact elsewhere, even though the destruction to coastal Mississippi, which bore the full brunt of the storm, was as bad as, and in some places worse than, the calamity that struck New Orleans when the levees there broke.

Two years later, some of these areas are still distressed. One reason for the lack of attention paid to the Gulf Coast may be the massive investments made in the region by casino, hotel and real estate interests. That has created the appearance of a recovery that business promoters say has brought, and will continue to bring, enormous growth to the area. But many locals say that the casino-led development has done little to alleviate post-disaster conditions for most residents, including the 37 percent of the population -- approximately a half million people -- who earn below what federal guidelines deem low to moderate income. Moreover, maneuvering in Washington by the state's Republican leaders has diverted aid money away from some of the people who need it the most.

Hurricane Katrina "leveled everybody" on the Gulf Coast, says Reilly Morse, a civil rights lawyer from Biloxi who works for the Mississippi Center for Justice, a statewide organization that provides legal assistance to low-income residents. "For a very short while, everybody had the same experience, and that spawned a sense of community that I don't think ever existed before." But since the aid money began flowing, said Morse, "there's really been two recoveries here: one that generally favored homeowners with resources, and another one that basically priced the poor out of the housing market."

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Once Upon America

by John Cory, Guest Contributor, Truthout, July 4th, 2007

"No one man can terrorize  a whole nation unless we are his accomplices"
~~Edward R. Murrow

And so it goes. The 4th of July is here with its parades and "what America means to me" essays, and picnics and fireworks, and all those pretty speeches about freedom and democracy and the true meaning of Independence Day. But it is all a facade. A lie.

Modern America now spies on its citizens, conducts warrantless wiretaps, suspends habeas corpus, creates "free speech zones" to corral protestors out of sight of sensitive royal eyes, and politicizes the very justice system meant to protect people's rights by turning it into a fraternity of God-fearing Republican conservatism. Neocon America rewards hate speech with celebrity, reviles the very immigration that built this country, and sells out to the highest lobbyist while poisoning its people. Preemptive war trumps truth, and death is glorified by those who never have to sacrifice an ounce of flesh. America has become the personal ATM machine of Bush and the GOP while their corporate cronies line their pockets with the lives of our loved ones.

Washington is no longer that "shining city on the hill," but rather a dismal swamp cloud of shadows that slink about in swirls of deception. The people's house is a piceous cavern of razor black secrets that shred the Constitution with every breath. And those charged with defending the Constitution - defending the Bill of Rights - scurry around in frantic search for the cheese of compromise and campaign contributions.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Americans have become orphans of the great silence.

Democrat and Republican alike have forsaken representation of the people and the people's will. The latest polls show that 77 percent of Americans want the troops home from Iraq. And still the politicians argue for more time, maybe more money, maybe there is a way to support the troops without confronting the GOP machine. Congressional approval is at the same depressing nadir as that of George Bush. The people voted for change and got nothing but wimpy words and bluster and more political petulance - and more death and destruction.

America needs leadership, not Congressional co-conspirators or senatorial somnambulists. We need inspiration, not desperation. Edward R. Murrow said: "We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion - a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply."

I'm not a smart guy, nor educated in the fine political arts, but here's the deal: it's time to wake up and step up, dear Democrats. Plan all you want to take Congressional seats in the '08 elections - but be prepared to pay the price for inaction today. Nothing is off the table. Nothing. Ever.

Push the subpoenas to this White House. Don't fold. Don't whine. Don't run. And while you push the subpoenas to find the truth, fashion your spending bill that America supports, the one with the timetable for bringing our loved ones home. And then push that the day after you push the subpoenas. And when Bush vetoes the spending bill, shout it from the nearest blog and rooftop, that George Bush just vetoed America. Vetoed the will of the American people. And push for another vote.

And then generate the bill to bring back the Draft. That's right, the Draft. If Bush's war is so damned patriotic that he keeps recycling the troops over and over - then it is the patriotic duty of every American son and daughter to be drafted and serve. And when Bush vetoes that, remind America that the war is not all that patriotic, and certainly not for everyone - just those that Bush picks to die in the sandbox of incompetence and violence that is Iraq.

And then you start impeachment procedures against Bush and Cheney and Rove. You push the hearings that must be shown to all the American people - the voters - the ones who live and die at the hands of these ruthless, greedy thugs and power-hungry politicians.

And when you are called un-American and unpatriotic, point your finger at Bush and Cheney and remind everyone of Ronald Reagan, who said: "Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty." And that, my Democratic friends, is all the bipartisanship this country needs. The words of Dr. King should be your comfort. "When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."

It is the 4th of July. Celebrate Independence Day by repeating the words of George Bush when he addressed the UN Assembly on September 21, 2004. "The desire for freedom resides in every human heart. And that desire cannot be contained forever by prison walls or martial laws, or secret police. Over time, and across the Earth, freedom will find a way."

Any other choice and we become a story that begins, "Once upon America there used to be democracy and freedom"

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John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.