Fire Hydrant of Freedom

This thread is for items of interest we run across about moments in history.  For example, I have never really understood WW1.  On this day in 1914 the British declared war on Germany, and the NY Times today has its article from then.  For me, it helps give a sense of what people then thought they were up to.  Here it is:
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England Declares War on Germany

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British Ship Sunk
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French Ships Defeat German, Belgium Attacked
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17,000,000 Men Engaged in Great War of Eight Nations
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Great English and German Navies About to Grapple
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Rival Warships Off This Port as Lusitania Sails
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State of War Exists, Says Britain, as Kaiser Rejects Ultimatum
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MUST DEFEND BELGIUM
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King George Issues Call to Arms and Thanks the Colonies for Their Support
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ENVOY LEAVES BERLIN
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British Foreign Office Makes Final Announcement One Hour Before Time Limit
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VOTE $525,000,000 Fund
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England Takes All Foreign Warships Building in Her Ports -- Two From Turkey
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JAPAN TO AID ENGLAND
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To Smash the Kiel Canal Probably English Fleet's First Attempt Against Germany
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Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES

Kaiser Hurls Two Armies Into Belgium After Declaring War: Liege Attack Repulsed: German Guns Are Reported to be Bombarding Both That City and Namur: Belgians Rush to Arms: Parliament Acclaims King's Appeal and Votes $40,000,000 for National Defense: French Border Clashes: Stronger German Forces Crossing the Border Near Marsla-Tour and Moineville: Russians Attack Memel: Seacoast Town of Germany Defeats Attempts of Enemy to Capture It

Over 17,000,000 Fighting Men of Eight Nations Now Engaged in the Colossal European War

Cunarder Slips Out; Will Pick Up British Cruisers as Escorts:

German Warships Near: Liner to Head for Newfoundland, Where Other English Ships Will Meet Her: French Cruisers Outside: Wireless Code Messages From Telefunken Station at Sayville Aid German Cruisers: To Be Sent to Washington: The Dresden Reported Off Cape Cod in an Attempt to Cut French Cable: Our Destroyers Put Out: Liner Olympic Sails in Under Convoy of Cruiser Essex -- German Warships Outclassed

German Fleet Sinks a British Mine Layer: Scoutship Pathfinder Is Chased by the Kaiser's Warships But Makes Its Escape

Two German Warships Taken, Another Sunk: French Fleet in the Mediterranean Reported to Have Won a Victory

Conspiracy Scare on the Vaterland:

Talk of Plot to Blow Her Up Brings Launches With Searchlights, and 50 Policemen
British Declaration of War With Germany, Following Rejection of Her Demand

England Calls All Unmarried Men From 18 to 30 to Serve King and Country in This Hour of Need
 
London, Wednesday, Aug. 5-- War is on between England and Germany. An ultimatum to the German Government that the neutrality of Belgium must be respected was rejected by the Kaiser's Government and the British Foreign Office announced last night that a state of war existed.

The time limit for Germany's reply was set at midnight, but the Foreign Office announced that as Germany had given his passports to the British envoy at an earlier hour, the state of war existed from 11 o'clock.

King George has issued his proclamation mobilizing the army and has sent a message to the colonies thanking them for their hearty support in the hour of national emergency.

The Government has assumed control of all the railways and the Admirality has taken over all the foreign warships now building in English ports. The House of Commons has voted a fund of $525,000,000 for the emergency.

England Cool in Great Crisis

England is facing this, the greatest crisis in her history, with calmness and courage. Sir Edward Grey's exposition has made it clear that the war is none of her seeking, and that she goes into it because her honor and her self-preservation alike compel her to do so. There is neither any sign of panic nor flame of war fever. All parties and all classes present a united front. The few exceptions are not worthy of mention. The protests that the Labor members of Parliament and a few Liberals have made in the House of Commons do not represent the prevalent feeling either in the ranks of labor or among the avowed pacifists. The peace-at-any price advocates are submerged beneath the huge majority who would have welcomed peace with honor but prefer war to dishonor.

Liberal newspapers like The Westminster Gazette, The Daily Chronicle, and even The Daily News accept the situation as inevitable.

"Here we stand, and we can do no other. The Germans will recognize that famous phrase," says The Westminster Gazette, "and understand that it expresses the feelings of the vast majority of the British people."

The demeanor of the crowds last evening and this morning began to betray growing excitement . A procession of a thousand young men marched along by Whitehall and up the Strand, cheering. It was headed by a squad carrying the Union Jack of England and the tricolor of France. As it passed Trafalgar Square there was some booing, but the cheering outweighed it. Fleet Street last evening was jammed by crowds watching the bulletins. Occasionally they sang "The Marseillaise" and "God Save the King."

Soon after the announcement of Germany's declaration of war against Belgium was displayed on the bulletin board- the crowds, evidently believing no greater news was likely to come, quietly dispersed, and by 11 o'clock Fleet Street was as quiet as usual.

Would Smash Kiel Canal

Premier Asquith's statement in the House of Commons yesterday that the German Government had been asked to give satisfactory assurances on the question of Belgium's neutrality by midnight was generally regarded as meaning that England was prepared to strike at once if the reply was unfavorable.

The German fleet is concentrated for the defense of the Kiel Canal. Its destruction will be the first object of the British fleet. Germany's compliance with the British ultimatum was not expected. Germany, according to a statement emanating from her London embassy, would have consented to refrain from using Belgian ports and would have confined her violation of neutrality to the inland districts if Great Britain would agree to hold aloof. It is obvious that a compact on such lines would have been useless to Great Britain. Belgian neutrality is strategically important in two ways -- by sea to Great Britain and Germany and by land to Germany and France. If England abandoned it in its land aspect, nobody, not even the Belgians, would have been willing to defend it when it was threatened in its sea aspect.

It seemed unlikely from the start that Germany would desist, because it was a matter affecting the military plans of her General Staff. The whole German theory of war is to make plans years ahead and have everything down to the last railway siding ready for their execution, and to carry them out without deviation. It is probable that the present plan was made as long ago as when Anglo-German hostility was an axiom, and there was no question in German minds of so shaping their strategy as to keep Great Britain neutral.

German Ships in Peril

As was anticipated, Germany's first naval effort was to deal a heavy blow to the Russians in the Baltic, but as yet there is insufficient evidence that it succeeded or that the Russian fleet was rendered powerless. Germany's most urgent need, according to experts, is to assemble all her available naval forces on the west, principally in the North Sea, but, these experts say, the Germans are not likely to seek battle, hoping the strength of their adversaries may be reduced by the action of mines and torpedoes.

Two German cruisers seem to be in peril. The battle cruiser Goeben, on the way from the Mediterranean, is reported to have passed Gibraltar, steaming westward. She will not venture through the English Channel, and must travel homeward via the west coast of Ireland and north of Scotland. An attempt certainly will be made to intercept her, and the need of carrying assistance to her may bring about a fleet action. The German cruiser Brealau is reported to have shelled Bona before proceeding westward toward Gibraltar. Her position seems perilous in the extreme.

Control of Railway Lines

The Governmet took over the railways to complete the co-ordination of the railway facilities, in view of the military and naval requirements and the needs of the civil communities. The staff of each railway remains as before. Supreme control is vested in a committee composed of the General Managers of the chief railways.

The Acting Chairman is H. A. Walker, manager of the London & Southwestern, who is well known among American railway men. The committee was formed some days ago. The Great Eastern is not represented, possibly because its General Manager, H.W. Thornton, is an American.

News Flashed to Navy

When the announcement of the state of war was made by the Foreign Office, and the quietness of the Summer night was suddenly broken by the raucus cries of the news venders, the streets were practically empty. The ordinary troops of theatregoers were conspicuous for their absence. Midnight was considered the fateful hour when orders would be flashed by wireless to the British Navy to begin operations.

Reports which had spread during the evening that German warships had sunk a British mine finder and chased the destroyer Pathfinder, were taken as another instance of Germany's method of taking an unfair advantage and acting before war actually was declared.

Sir John Jellicoe, who has been long regarded as predestined to head the fleet in case of war, has taken supreme command, with Rear Admiral Madden as Chief of Staff. Sir John Jellicoe, who is familiarly known as "J. J.," is a typical, keen-faced officer, distinguished for his personal courage as well as for scientific gunnery. He has the German decoration of the Red Eagle. Lord Kitchener is taking the Administrative part of the work of the War Office, where Lord Haldane is assisting Mr. Asquith.

The only panicky note which struck the English press hard came from The Evening News, which came out in a poster headed "Treachery" and stating that Lord Haldane's German sympathies made his apointment to the War Office a matter of suspicion to France. The New York Times correspondent saw Lord Haldane at Whitehall yesterday afternoon walking toward Westminster. When accosted he said there was nothing he could say.

Lord Haldane did yeoman service when at the War Office, and a Liberal paper says the worst news Germany could receive is that he has returned to the department.

England's war with Germany is likely to be purely a naval conflict for the time being. Germany will keep her fleet sheltered at Wilhemshaven and trust to her submarines and torpedo boats to reduce the strength of the British investing fleet. The reported sinking of a mine-layer probably is due to this. The feature of the Anglo-German war will be the strewing of the North Sea with floating mines.

Asquith's Impressive Speech

The first chapter of the critical events of the day was unfolded when Premier Asquith read his statement in the House of Commons. The Premier read in a firm and measured voice, and his hand shook as he held the typewritten copy. His words were listened to in a silence that was almost uncanny, so tense and overwrought was the crowded House.

After he had read the telegrams exchanged between London and Berlin and London and Brussels, Mr. Asquith's announcement of the ultimatum to Germany demanding an answer by midnight was greeted with prolonged applause. There was a strange note of solemnity in the deep cheers that rolled up from all sides like thunder waves beating on a rockbound shore. Plainly enough the telegrams had eaten deep into the feelings of the audiences, revealing Germany's disregard of the law of nations in browbeating Belgium.

Until yesterday afternoon a strong minority of the Liberal Party was in favor of British neutrality. Sir Edward Grey's speech reduced the minority to small proportions. Today's events almost extinguished it.

Even the Labor members, despite their sworn devotion to neutrality, were unfavorably impressed by this sample of German methods. A Scotch Radical member, who hates war, said: "Germany leaves us no alternative but to fight. We are standing for public law; she is trampling upon it.

"It is another struggle in the incessant conflict between right and force, wherein the rival champions in the last generation were Gladstone and Bismarck. Mr. Gladstone, who was a most peaceful statesman, said he would spend every shilling of the British exchequer and employ every soldier in the British Army in the defense of the independence of Belgium."

By Peter Zeihan

As students of geopolitics, we at Stratfor tend not to get overexcited when this or that plan for regional peace is tabled. Many of the world’s conflicts are geographic in nature, and changes in government or policy only rarely supersede the hard topography that we see as the dominant sculptor of the international system. Island states tend to exist in tension with their continental neighbors. Two countries linked by flat arable land will struggle until one emerges dominant. Land-based empires will clash with maritime cultures, and so on.

Petit vs. Grand Geopolitic
But the grand geopolitic — the framework which rules the interactions of regions with one another — is not the only rule in play. There is also the petit geopolitic that occurs among minor players within a region. Think of the grand geopolitic as the rise and fall of massive powers — the onslaught of the Golden Horde, the imperial clash between England and France, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. By contrast, think of the petit geopolitic as the smaller powers that swim alongside or within the larger trends — Serbia versus Croatia, Vietnam versus Cambodia, Nicaragua versus Honduras. The same geographic rules apply, just on a smaller scale, with the added complexity of the grand geopolitic as backdrop.

The Middle East is a region rife with petit geopolitics. Since the failure of the Ottoman Empire, the region has not hosted an indigenous grand player. Instead, the region serves as a battleground for extra-regional grand powers, all attempting to grind down the local (petit) players to better achieve their own aims. Normally, Stratfor looks at the region in that light: an endless parade of small players and local noise in an environment where most trends worth watching are those implanted and shaped by outside forces. No peace deals are easy, but in the Middle East they require agreement not just from local powers, but also from those grand players beyond the region. The result is, well, the Middle East we all know.

All the more notable, then, that a peace deal — and a locally crafted one at that — has moved from the realm of the improbable to not merely the possible, but perhaps even the imminent.

Israel and Syria are looking to bury the hatchet, somewhere in the Golan Heights most likely, and they are doing so for their own reasons. Israel has secured deals with Egypt and Jordan already, and the Palestinians — by splitting internally — have defeated themselves as a strategic threat. A deal with Syria would make Israel the most secure it has been in millennia.

Syria, poor and ruled by its insecure Alawite minority, needs a basis of legitimacy that resonates with the dominant Sunni population better than its current game plan: issuing a shrill shriek whenever the name “Israel” is mentioned. The Alawites believe there is no guarantee of support better than cash, and their largest and most reliable source of cash is in Lebanon. Getting Lebanon requires an end to Damascus’ regional isolation, and the agreement of Israel.

The outline of the deal, then, is surprisingly simple: Israel gains military security from a peace deal in exchange for supporting Syrian primacy in Lebanon. The only local loser would be the entity that poses an economic challenge (in Lebanon) to Syria, and a military challenge (in Lebanon) to Israel — to wit, Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, understandably, is more than a little perturbed by the prospect of this tightening noose. Syria is redirecting the flow of Sunni militants from Iraq to Lebanon, likely for use against Hezbollah. Damascus also is working with the exiled leadership of the Palestinian group Hamas as a gesture of goodwill to Israel. The French — looking for a post-de Gaulle diplomatic victory — are re-engaging the Syrians and, to get Damascus on board, are dangling everything from aid and trade deals with Europe to that long-sought stamp of international approval. Oil-rich Sunni Arab states, sensing an opportunity to weaken Shiite Hezbollah, are flooding petrodollars in bribes — that is, investments — into Syria to underwrite a deal with Israel.

While the deal is not yet a fait accompli, the pieces are falling into place quite rapidly. Normally we would not be so optimistic, but the hard decisions — on Israel surrendering the Golan Heights and Syria laying preparations for cutting Hezbollah down to size — have already been made. On July 11 the leaders of Israel and Syria will be attending the same event in Paris, and if the French know anything about flair, a handshake may well be on the agenda.

It isn’t exactly pretty — and certainly isn’t tidy — but peace really does appear to be breaking out in the Middle East.

A Spoiler-Free Environment
Remember, the deal must please not just the petit players, but the grand ones as well. At this point, those with any interest in disrupting the flow of events normally would step in and do what they could to rock the boat. That, however, is not happening this time around. All of the normal cast members in the Middle Eastern drama are either unwilling to play that game at present, or are otherwise occupied.

The country with the most to lose is Iran. A Syria at formal peace with Israel is a Syria that has minimal need for an alliance with Iran, as well as a Syria that has every interest in destroying Hezbollah’s military capabilities. (Never forget that while Hezbollah is Syrian-operated, it is Iranian-founded and -funded.) But using Hezbollah to scupper the Israeli-Syrian talks would come with a cost, and we are not simply highlighting a possible military confrontation between Israel and Iran.

Iran is involved in negotiations far more complex and profound than anything that currently occupies Israel and Syria. Tehran and Washington are attempting to forge an understanding about the future of Iraq. The United States wants an Iraq sufficiently strong to restore the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and thus prevent any Iranian military incursion into the oil fields of the Arabian Peninsula. Iran wants an Iraq that is sufficiently weak that it will never again be able to launch an attack on Persia. Such unflinching national interests are proving difficult to reconcile, but do not confuse “difficult” with “impossible” — the positions are not mutually exclusive. After all, while both want influence, neither demands domination.

Remarkable progress has been made during the past six months. The two sides have cooperated in bringing down violence in Iraq, now at its lowest level since the aftermath of the 2003 invasion itself. Washington and Tehran also have attacked the problems of rogue Shiite militias from both ends, most notably with the neutering of Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia, the Medhi Army. Meanwhile, that ever-enlarging pot of Sunni Arab oil money has been just as active in Baghdad in drawing various groups to the table as it has been in Damascus. Thus, while the U.S.-Iranian understanding is not final, formal or imminent, it is taking shape with remarkable speed. There are many ways it still could be derailed, but none would be so effective as Iran using Hezbollah to launch another war with Israel.

China and Russia both would like to see the Middle East off balance — if not on fire in the case of Russia — although it is hardly because they enjoy the bloodshed. Currently, the United States has the bulk of its ground forces loaded down with Afghan and Iraqi operations. So long as that remains the case — so long as Iran and the United States do not have a meeting of the minds — the United States lacks the military capability to deploy any large-scale ground forces anywhere else in the world. In the past, Moscow and Beijing have used weapons sales or energy deals to bolster Iran’s position, thus delaying any embryonic deal with Washington.

But such impediments are not being seeded now.

Rising inflation in China has turned the traditional question of the country’s shaky financial system on its head. Mass employment in China is made possible not by a sound economic structure, but by de facto subsidization via ultra-cheap loans. But such massive availability of credit has artificially spiked demand, for 1.3 billion people no less, creating an inflation nightmare that is difficult to solve. Cut the loans to rein in demand and inflation, and you cut business and with it employment. Chinese governments have been toppled by less. Beijing is desperate to keep one step ahead of either an inflationary spiral or a credit meltdown — and wants nothing more than for the Olympics to go off as hitch-free as possible. Tinkering with the Middle East is the furthest thing from Beijing’s preoccupied mind.

Meanwhile, Russia is still growing through its leadership “transition,” with the Kremlin power clans still going for each other’s throats. Their war for control of the defense and energy industries still rages, their war for control of the justice and legal systems is only now beginning to rage, and their efforts to curtail the powers of some of Russia’s more independent-minded republics such as Tatarstan has not yet begun to rage. Between a much-needed resettling, and some smacking of out-of-control egos, Russia still needs weeks (or months?) to get its own house in order. The Kremlin can still make small gestures — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chatted briefly by phone July 7 with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the topic of the nuclear power plant that Russia is building for Iran at Bushehr — but for the most part, the Middle East will have to wait for another day.

But by the time Beijing or Moscow have the freedom of movement to do anything, the Middle East may well be as “solved” as it can be.

The New Era
For those of us at Stratfor who have become rather inured to the agonies of the Middle East, such a sustained stream of constructive, positive news is somewhat unnerving. One gets the feeling that if the progress could hold up for just a touch longer, not only would there be an Israeli-Syrian deal and a U.S.-Iranian understanding, the world itself would change. Those of us here who are old enough to remember haven’t sensed such a fateful moment since the weeks before the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And — odd though it may sound — we have been waiting for just such a moment for some time. Certainly since before 9/11.

Stratfor views the world as working in cycles. Powers or coalitions of powers form and do battle across the world. Their struggles define the eras through which humanity evolves, and those struggles tend to end in a military conflict that lays the groundwork for the next era. The Germans defeated Imperial France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, giving rise to the German era. That era lasted until a coalition of powers crushed Germany in World Wars I and II. That victorious coalition split into the two sides of the Cold War until the West triumphed in 1989.

New eras do not form spontaneously. There is a brief — historically speaking — period between the sweeping away of the rules of the old era and the installation of the rules of the new. These interregnums tend to be very dangerous affairs, as the victorious powers attempt to entrench their victory as new powers rise to the fore — and as many petit powers, suddenly out from under the thumb of any grand power, try to carve out a niche for themselves.

The post-World War I interregnum witnessed the complete upending of Asian and European security structures. The post-World War II interregnum brought about the Korean War as China’s rise slammed into America’s efforts to entrench its power. The post-Cold War interregnum produced Yugoslav wars, a variety of conflicts in the former Soviet Union (most notably in Chechnya), the rise of al Qaeda, the jihadist conflict and the Iraq war.

All these conflicts are now well past their critical phases, and in most cases are already sewn up. All of the pieces of Yugoslavia are on the road to EU membership. Russia’s borderlands — while hardly bastions of glee — have settled. Terrorism may be very much alive, but al Qaeda as a strategic threat is very much not. Even the Iraq war is winding to a conclusion. Put simply, the Cold War interregnum is coming to a close and a new era is dawning.

WTF?!?

Why Is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?
By EDWARD J. MARKEY
June 10, 2008

Here's a quick geopolitical quiz: What country is three times the size of Texas and has more than 300 days of blazing sun a year? What country has the world's largest oil reserves resting below miles upon miles of sand? And what country is being given nuclear power, not solar, by President George W. Bush, even when the mere assumption of nuclear possession in its region has been known to provoke pre-emptive air strikes, even wars?

If you answered Saudi Arabia to all of these questions, you're right.

Last month, while the American people were becoming the personal ATMs of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Saudi Arabia signing away an even more valuable gift: nuclear technology. In a ceremony little-noticed in this country, Ms. Rice volunteered the U.S. to assist Saudi Arabia in developing nuclear reactors, training nuclear engineers, and constructing nuclear infrastructure. While oil breaks records at $130 per barrel or more, the American consumer is footing the bill for Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions.

Saudi Arabia has poured money into developing its vast reserves of natural gas for domestic electricity production. It continues to invest in a national gas transportation pipeline and stepped-up exploration, building a solid foundation for domestic energy production that could meet its electricity needs for many decades. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would require enormous investments in new infrastructure by a country with zero expertise in this complex technology.

Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.

Saudi Arabia's interest in nuclear technology can only be explained by the dangerous politics of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, a champion and kingpin of the Sunni Arab world, is deeply threatened by the rise of Shiite-ruled Iran.

The two countries watch each other warily over the waters of the Persian Gulf, buying arms and waging war by proxy in Lebanon and Iraq. An Iranian nuclear weapon would radically alter the region's balance of power, and could prove to be the match that lights the tinderbox. By signing this agreement with the U.S., Saudi Arabia is warning Iran that two can play the nuclear game.

In 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "[Iran is] already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. No one can figure why they need nuclear, as well, to generate energy." Mr. Cheney got it right about Iran. But a potential Saudi nuclear program is just as suspicious. For a country with so much oil, gas and solar potential, importing expensive and dangerous nuclear power makes no economic sense.

The Bush administration argues that Saudi Arabia can not be compared to Iran, because Riyadh said it won't develop uranium enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing, the two most dangerous nuclear technologies. At a recent hearing before my Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman shrugged off concerns about potential Saudi misuse of nuclear assistance for a weapons program, saying simply: "I presume that the president has a good deal of confidence in the King and in the leadership of Saudi Arabia."

That's not good enough. We would do well to remember that it was the U.S. who provided the original nuclear assistance to Iran under the Atoms for Peace program, before Iran's monarch was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Such an uprising in Saudi Arabia today could be at least as damaging to U.S. security.

We've long known that America's addiction to oil pays for the spread of extremism. If this Bush nuclear deal moves forward, Saudi Arabia's petrodollars could flow to the dangerous expansion of nuclear technologies in the most volatile region of the world.

While the scorching Saudi Arabian sun heats sand dunes instead of powering photovoltaic panels, millions of Americans will fork over $4 a gallon without realizing that their gas tank is fueling a nascent nuclear arms race.

Rep. Markey (D., Mass.) is chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

See all of today's editorials

“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” —John Stuart Mill


On this Memorial Day, four young men who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be at the malls, nor will they be at the family barbecue.

These young men are not much different from others who have served in the past or those serving today in our nation’s Armed Forces but for the fact that they responded to extraordinary circumstances with extraordinary courage.

They are Corporal Jason L. Dunham, USMC; Master-at-Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, USN; Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith, USA; and Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy, USN.

Their Medal of Honor citations read:

DUNHAM, JASON L. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Rifle Squad Leader, 4th Platoon, Company K, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines (Reinforced), Regimental Combat Team 7, First Marine Division (Reinforced), on 14 April 2004. Corporal Dunham’s squad was conducting a reconnaissance mission in the town of Karabilah, Iraq, when they heard rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire erupt approximately two kilometers to the west. Corporal Dunham led his Combined Anti-Armor Team towards the engagement to provide fire support to their Battalion Commander’s convoy, which had been ambushed as it was traveling to Camp Husaybah. As Corporal Dunham and his Marines advanced, they quickly began to receive enemy fire. Corporal Dunham ordered his squad to dismount their vehicles and led one of his fire teams on foot several blocks south of the ambushed convoy. Discovering seven Iraqi vehicles in a column attempting to depart, Corporal Dunham and his team stopped the vehicles to search them for weapons. As they approached the vehicles, an insurgent leaped out and attacked Corporal Dunham. Corporal Dunham wrestled the insurgent to the ground and in the ensuing struggle saw the insurgent release a grenade. Corporal Dunham immediately alerted his fellow Marines to the threat. Aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation, Corporal Dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body, bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his Marines from the blast. In an ultimate and selfless act of bravery in which he was mortally wounded, he saved the lives of at least two fellow Marines. By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty, Corporal Dunham gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

MONSOOR, MICHAEL, A. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as automatic weapons gunner for Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 29 September 2006. As a member of a combined SEAL and Iraqi Army Sniper Overwatch Element, tasked with providing early warning and stand-off protection from a rooftop in an insurgent held sector of Ar Ramadi, Iraq, Petty Officer Monsoor distinguished himself by his exceptional bravery in the face of grave danger. In the early morning, insurgents prepared to execute a coordinated attack by reconnoitering the area around the element’s position. Element snipers thwarted the enemy’s initial attempt by eliminating two insurgents. The enemy continued to assault the element, engaging them with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire. As enemy activity increased, Petty Officer Monsoor took position with his machine gun between two teammates on an outcropping of the roof. While the SEALs vigilantly watched for enemy activity, an insurgent threw a hand grenade from an unseen location, which bounced off Petty Officer Monsoor’s chest and landed in front of him. Although only he could have escaped the blast, Petty Officer Monsoor chose instead to protect his teammates. Instantly and without regard for his own safety, he threw himself onto the grenade to absorb the force of the explosion with his body, saving the lives of his two teammates. By his undaunted courage, fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of certain death, Petty Officer Monsoor gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

SMITH, PAUL R. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty: Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with an armed enemy near Baghdad International Airport, Baghdad, Iraq on 4 April 2003. On that day, Sergeant First Class Smith was engaged in the construction of a prisoner of war holding area when his Task Force was violently attacked by a company-sized enemy force. Realizing the vulnerability of over 100 fellow soldiers, Sergeant First Class Smith quickly organized a hasty defense consisting of two platoons of soldiers, one Bradley Fighting Vehicle and three armored personnel carriers. As the fight developed, Sergeant First Class Smith braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons, and organized the evacuation of three wounded soldiers from an armored personnel carrier struck by a rocket propelled grenade and a 60mm mortar round. Fearing the enemy would overrun their defenses, Sergeant First Class Smith moved under withering enemy fire to man a.50 caliber machine gun mounted on a damaged armored personnel carrier. In total disregard for his own life, he maintained his exposed position in order to engage the attacking enemy force. During this action, he was mortally wounded. His courageous actions helped defeat the enemy attack, and resulted in as many as 50 enemy soldiers killed, while allowing the safe withdrawal of numerous wounded soldiers. Sergeant First Class Smith’s extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the Third Infantry Division “Rock of the Marne,” and the United States Army.

MURPHY, MICHAEL P. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as the leader of a special reconnaissance element with Naval Special Warfare Task Unit Afghanistan on 27 and 28 June 2005. While leading a mission to locate a high-level anti-coalition militia leader, Lieutenant Murphy demonstrated extraordinary heroism in the face of grave danger in the vicinity of Asadabad, Konar Province, Afghanistan. On 28 June 2005, operating in an extremely rugged enemy-controlled area, Lieutenant Murphy’s team was discovered by anti-coalition militia sympathizers, who revealed their position to Taliban fighters. As a result, between 30 and 40 enemy fighters besieged his four-member team. Demonstrating exceptional resolve, Lieutenant Murphy valiantly led his men in engaging the large enemy force. The ensuing fierce firefight resulted in numerous enemy casualties, as well as the wounding of all four members of the team. Ignoring his own wounds and demonstrating exceptional composure, Lieutenant Murphy continued to lead and encourage his men. When the primary communicator fell mortally wounded, Lieutenant Murphy repeatedly attempted to call for assistance for his beleaguered teammates. Realizing the impossibility of communicating in the extreme terrain, and in the face of almost certain death, he fought his way into open terrain to gain a better position to transmit a call. This deliberate, heroic act deprived him of cover, exposing him to direct enemy fire. Finally achieving contact with his Headquarters, Lieutenant Murphy maintained his exposed position while he provided his location and requested immediate support for his team. In his final act of bravery, he continued to engage the enemy until he was mortally wounded, gallantly giving his life for his country and for the cause of freedom. By his selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty, Lieutenant Murphy reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

In my lifetime, I have been honored to know five men who have been awarded our nation’s Medal of Honor. To a man, they are among the most humble Patriots I have ever met. To a man, they have told me that they did nothing more than the men next to them would have done, but for fate, it was their turn to act.

All five of those men are now in the company of their Creator. Each of them could claim 2 Timothy 4:7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Monday, 26 May, is Memorial Day. Please set it aside in reverence for all those who have served with honor and are now departed.

from PatriotPost.com

We kick off this thread with a piece by the ever thoughtful Stratfor.com

Cyberwarfare 101: The Internet Is Mightier Than the Sword
Stratfor Today » April 15, 2008 | 1347 GMT
Summary
To say that the Internet is growing in importance these days is an understatement. It is perhaps less obvious to most people that cyberspace is also becoming weaponized. In addition to being a revolutionary medium of communication, the Internet also offers a devastating means of waging war. Understanding the evolution of the Internet is key to understanding the future and effectiveness of cyberwarfare.

Analysis

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of analyses on the emergence of cyberspace as battlespace. The series will be ongoing, with the initial pieces serving as a kind of primer on the Internet. Subsequent analyses will look at specific ways nations are dealing with the growing threat of cyberwar and its military, economic and geopolitical ramifications.

Related Special Topic Page
Cyberwarfare
Related Links
Cyberwarfare: A Glossary of Useful Terms
A Brief History

Although cyberspace has already established itself as a new medium for all manner of human interactions, its pervasive growth presents profound implications for geopolitical security. Nations, organizations and individuals alike are relying more and more on the Internet in unprecedented ways. This growing dependency entails vulnerability, which is one reason the Internet was created in the first place.

Older than many people might think, the Internet began in the 1950s as a group of primitive networks designed to share research data inside and among academic institutions (notably the RAND Corp.) and air surveillance data between military radar installations (notably the U.S. Semi-Automatic Ground Environment). The former use was based on the need for researchers across the country to access the few really powerful research computers operating at the time. The latter use was an outgrowth of the Soviet Union’s newfound intercontinental reach: the Tu-95 Bear strategic bomber, a large swept-wing four-engine turboprop that began operations in the mid 1950s with a combat radius in excess of 4,500 miles.

(click to view timeline)

The Soviets’ 1957 Sputnik launch spooked the Americans even more. Terrified that it had fallen behind Russia in science and technology, the United States scrambled to catch up. This effort involved, among other things, creation of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Later “Defense” would be tacked on to the agency’s name to create DARPA (which still exists today). One of ARPA’s early creations was ARPAnet, one of the seminal precursors to the Internet. ARPAnet’s design would be informed by a government-funded RAND study that advocated for a distributed network architecture that could survive — at least in part — a nuclear attack. While progress in developing the network was initially slow, by the 1980s, improvements in programming, technology and infrastructure — combined with increasingly accessible connections and affordable personal computers — were quickly cascading into what would become the Internet as we know it today.

Along the way, the challenges evolved. Technical hurdles early on were all about making the connections work (developing protocols, perfecting packet-switching, etc). It was only in the 1990s that the World Wide Web architecture we know today really took off. While the rapid growth of the Internet (numbers of users, the power or processors, connection speeds) continues apace, the nature of its growth is becoming increasingly organic, as users explore what is possible within connections that already exist.

The Nature of the Internet

The Internet itself is a fairly neutral environment: It is defined, more than anything, by its individual users, who create virtual extensions of themselves, their ideologies and their societies. In many ways, creating human connections is what the Internet is all about. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace allow Internet users to connect with disparate individuals and groups around the world. Connectivity outside of centralized Web sites is also growing rapidly; simply having a connection to the Internet potentially allows one person to interact with every other Internet user.

This has profound implications for both groups and individuals. The Internet can be a powerful facilitator of mass “grassroots” movements that can become forces to reckon with in everything from presidential elections to transnational radical Islamism. Just as the Internet allows Beijing to monitor and disseminate its views to users across China, those users — and expatriates abroad — can use the very same system to coordinate campaigns to undermine Beijing’s efforts. Indeed, the global Internet may be one of the greatest threats to the Communist central government. The accessibility of information on the Internet also allows a single user to learn from the conglomerated lessons of many. This can manifest itself in powerful new online research tools. It can just as easily be found on YouTube, a video hosting Web site where budding hackers can learn the tricks of the trade.

Ultimately, this sort of utility translates into a structural vulnerability that will only increase as the Internet further evolves. As it becomes ever more critical in everyday life, the Internet is likely to be exploited by groups and governments to achieve their strategic goals. This dynamic is the keystone of cyberwarfare.

Cyberwarfare

Cyberwarfare is a broad category. For our purposes here, we are using the term to encompass significant geopolitical conflict in cyberspace usually involving at least one nation-state or its critical infrastructure. Cyberwarfare can be a principal avenue for attack in and of itself or it can be used in a supporting manner, to aid operations in other domains. Cyberwarfare has five noteworthy characteristics:

It provides an extremely dynamic and utterly new battlespace.
It makes range obsolete.
Its operations are typically decentralized and anonymous.
It places great importance on the offense.
It has low entry costs and can give great power to the individual user of the Internet.

Although the word “cyber” suggests “virtual,” or not existing in actual fact or form, cyberspace does have its physical aspects — e.g., computers, servers, fiber-optic cables, network switches and, most important, the connections that make the Internet global, like the immense undersea cable network that stretches around the world. While one of these cables may run from New Jersey to Cornwall, the transmission of data can take place almost instantaneously. U.S. military dominance of the globe rests in no small part on its unparalleled and unprecedented ability to sustain complex logistical links around the globe. In cyberwarfare, the only link the warrior needs to worry about is his or her connection to the global network. Some countries admittedly are far more connected than others. This makes their connections redundant and, generally, they enjoy broader bandwidth. But it also makes them more accessible to those with malicious intent.

Because cyberspace makes range obsolete, an attacker can muster resources from all over the world and bring them to bear in an instant, often with little that could serve as an early warning amid the clutter of day-to-day Internet traffic. The Pentagon alone defends against hundreds — sometimes thousands — of such attacks each day, several of which succeed at some level in penetrating the network. While this clearly demonstrates that a mature network security system can stand up to a great deal of punishment, it takes time to recognize and react to a coordinated and comprehensive attack. Such an attack may come from thousands of remotely controlled computers from around the world and be well under way before a coherent response can be mounted. And none of the computers directly involved in such an attack necessarily has to belong to the attacker. One of the early purposes of computer networking was to share computers as a resource. Malicious hackers have learned how to do much the same thing by infecting and hijacking other computers, unbeknownst to their owners, in order to harness and redirect their processing power.

As interconnected as the Internet is — and with broadband connections and powerful personal computers increasingly affordable — the greatest limitation to the use of the Internet in cyberwarfare may be individual experience and skill. As we continue our look at cyberwarfare, we will focus first not on the amalgamated resources of a national actor but on the innumerable discrete actors that populate cyberspace.

Next: Black Hats, White Hats, Crackers and Bots

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...7/nasbo217.xml


Quote:
DNA database plans for children who 'could become criminals'

By Simon Johnson
Last Updated: 2:36am GMT 18/03/2008

Primary school children should be put on the national DNA database if their
behaviour suggests they will become criminals, a senior Scotland Yard
expert said yesterday.

Ed Balls plans 'baby Asbos' for 10-year olds

Gary Pugh, the director of forensic science and the new DNA spokesman
for the Association of Chief Police Officers, called for a debate on the
measures required to identify future offenders.

He said: "If we have a primary means of identifying people before they
offend, then in the long term the benefits of targeting younger people are
extremely large.

"We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to
society."

But critics said this was a step towards a police state that would risk
stigmatising youngsters who had yet to commit a criminal act.

The details of more than 4.5 million people, including about 150,000
children under the age of 16, are held on the Government's database,
making it the largest system of its kind in the world.

Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the
database after being arrested will have reached about 1.5 million this time
next year.

Police in England and Wales need parental consent to take a DNA sample
from children under 10, the age of criminal responsibility.

Children in Scotland can be charged with an offence at eight, but police
cannot take DNA if they are younger.

Julia Margo, from the Institute for Public Policy Research who wrote a
recent report on the issue, agreed that it was possible to identify risk
factors in children aged five to seven. But she said that placing young
children on a database risked stigmatising them.

Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers' Association, said Mr
Pugh's suggestion could be viewed "as a step towards a police state."

He added: "It is condemning them at a very young age to something they
have not yet done. To label children at that stage and put them on a
register is going too far."

Woof All:

Although the Spanish language forum has various threads for politics and economics in Latin America, this forum has only a thread specificallty on Mexico-US and one on Venezuela.  Latin America was my region of specialization for my International Relations major in college, and I have retained my interest in the region, particularly Mexico.   So, with this thread we begin a catch all thread for anything in the region wihich is not Mexico or Venezuela: 

Marc
==============

WSJ

The Chávez Democrats
March 10, 2008; Page A14
What is it about Democrats and Hugo Chávez? Even as the Venezuelan strongman was threatening war last week against Colombia, Congress was threatening to hand him a huge strategic victory by spurning Colombia's free trade overtures to the U.S.

This isn't the first time Democrats have come to Mr. Chávez's aid, but it would be the most destructive. The Venezuelan is engaged in a high-stakes competition over the political and economic direction of Latin America. He wants the region to follow his path of ever greater state control of the economy, while assisting U.S. enemies wherever he can. He's already won converts in Bolivia and Ecuador, and he came far too close for American comfort in Mexico's election last year.

Meanwhile, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe is embracing greater economic and political freedom. He has bravely assisted the U.S fight against narco-traffickers, and he now wants to link his country more closely to America with a free-trade accord. As a strategic matter, to reject Colombia's offer now would tell everyone in Latin America that it is far more dangerous to trust America than it is to trash it.

 
Yet Democrats on Capitol Hill are doing their best to help Mr. Chávez prevail against Mr. Uribe. Even as Mr. Chávez was doing his war dance, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus was warning the White House not to send the Colombia deal to the Hill for a vote without the permission of Democratic leaders. He was seconded by Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, who told Congress Daily that "they don't have the votes for it, it's not going to come on the floor," adding that "what they [the White House] don't understand it's not the facts on the ground, it's the politics that's in the air."

Mr. Rangel is right about the politics. No matter what U.S. strategic interests may be in Colombia, this is an election year in America. And Democrats don't want to upset their union and anti-trade allies. The problem is that the time available to pass anything this year is growing short. The closer the election gets, the more leverage protectionists have to run out the clock on the Bush Presidency. The deal has the support of a bipartisan majority in the Senate, and probably also in the House. Sooner or later the White House will have to force the issue.

 
Our guess is that Messrs. Baucus and Rangel understand the stakes and privately favor the accord. The bottleneck is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is refusing to allow a vote under pressure from her left-wing Members. These Democrats deride any link between Hugo Chávez and trade as a "scare tactic," as if greater economic prosperity had no political consequences. "President Bush's recent fear-mongering on trade shows just how desperate he is to deliver one final victory for multinational corporations," declared Illinois Democrat Phil Hare, who is one of Ms. Pelosi's main trade policy deputies.

These are the same Democrats who preach the virtues of "soft power" and diplomacy, while deriding Mr. Bush for being too quick to use military force. But trade is a classic form of soft power that would expand U.S. and Latin ties in a web of commercial interests. More than 8,000 U.S. companies currently export to Colombia, nearly 85% of which are small and medium-sized firms. Colombia is already the largest South American market for U.S. farm products, and the pact would open Colombia to new competition and entrepreneurship.

Which brings us back to Mr. Chávez and his many Democratic friends. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd's early support helped the strongman consolidate his power. Former President Jimmy Carter blessed Mr. Chávez's August 2004 recall victory, despite evidence of fraud. And then there are the many House Democrats, current and former, who have accepted discount oil from Venezuela and then distributed it in the U.S. to boost their own political fortunes. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt have been especially cozy with Venezuela's oil company. If Democrats spurn free trade with Colombia, these Democratic ties with Mr. Chávez will deserve more political scrutiny.

Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both competing for union support. But if they wanted to demonstrate their own Presidential qualities, they'd be privately telling Ms. Pelosi to pass the Colombia pact while Mr. Bush is still in office. That would spare either one of them from having to spend political capital to pass it next year.

Instead, both say they oppose the deal on grounds that Mr. Uribe has not done more to protect "trade unionists." In fact, Mr. Uribe has done more to reduce violence in Colombia than any modern leader in Bogotá. The real question for Democrats is whether they're going to choose Colombia -- or Hugo Chávez.

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

And add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum.

Well, its the NY Times, so McCain Feingold gets kid glove treatment, but FWIW:

The Real McCain
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By DAVID BROOKS
Published: February 26, 2008
You wouldn’t know it to look at them, but political consultants are as faddish as anyone else. And the current vogueish advice among the backroom set is: Go after your opponent’s strengths. So in the first volley of what feels like the general election campaign, Barack Obama has attacked John McCain for being too close to lobbyists. His assault is part of this week’s Democratic chorus: McCain isn’t really the anti-special interest reformer he pretends to be. He’s more tainted than his reputation suggests.

Skip to next paragraph
 
David Brooks

Go to Columnist Page » Well, anything is worth trying, I suppose, but there is the little problem of his record. McCain has fought one battle after another against lobbyists and special interests. And while I don’t have space to describe all his tussles, or even the lesser ones like his fight with the agricultural lobby against sugar subsidies, I thought that, amidst all these charges, it might be worth noting some of the McCain highlights from the past dozen years.

In 1996, McCain was one of five senators, and the only Republican, to vote against the Telecommunications Act. He did it because he believed the act gave away too much to the telecommunications companies, and protected them from true competition. He noted that AT&T alone gave $780,000 to Republicans and $456,000 to Democrats in the year leading up to the vote.

In 1998, McCain championed anti-smoking legislation that faced furious opposition from the tobacco lobby. McCain guided the legislation through the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-1 vote, but then the tobacco companies struck back. They hired 200 lobbyists and spent $40 million in advertising (three times as much as the Harry and Louise health care reform ads). Many of the ads attacked McCain by name, accusing him of becoming a big government liberal. After weeks of bitter debate, the bill died on the Senate floor.

In 2000, McCain ran for president and reiterated his longstanding opposition to ethanol subsidies. Though it crippled his chances in Iowa, he argued that ethanol was a wasteful giveaway. A recent study in the journal Science has shown that when you take all impacts into consideration, ethanol consumption increases greenhouse gas emissions compared with regular gasoline. Unlike, say, Barack Obama, McCain still opposes ethanol subsidies.

In 2002, McCain capped his long push for campaign finance reform by passing the McCain-Feingold Act. People can argue about the effectiveness of the act, but one thing is beyond dispute. It was a direct assault on lobbyist power, and earned McCain undying enmity among many important parts of the Republican coalition, who felt their soft money influence was being diminished.

In 2003, the Senate nearly passed the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. The act was opposed by the usual mix of energy, auto and mining companies. But moderate environmental groups were thrilled that McCain-Lieberman was able to attract more than 40 votes in the Senate.

In 2004, McCain launched a frontal assault on the leasing contract the Pentagon had signed with Boeing for aerial refueling tankers. McCain’s investigation exposed billions of dollars of waste and layers of contracting irregularity.

In 2005, McCain led the Congressional investigation into the behavior of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The investigation was exceedingly unpleasant for Republicans, because it exposed shocking misbehavior by important conservative activists.

Over the past few years, McCain has stepped up his longstanding assault on earmarks. Every year, McCain goes to the Senate floor to ridicule the latest batch of earmarks, and every year his colleagues and the lobbyists fume. For years, McCain has proposed legislative remedies — greater transparency, a 60-vote supermajority requirement — that were brutally unpopular with many colleagues until, suddenly, now.

Over the course of his career, McCain has tried to do the impossible. He has challenged the winds of the money gale. He has sometimes failed and fallen short. And there have always been critics who cherry-pick his compromises, ignore his larger efforts and accuse him of being a hypocrite.

This is, of course, the gospel of the mediocre man: to ridicule somebody who tries something difficult on the grounds that the effort was not a total success. But any decent person who looks at the McCain record sees that while he has certainly faltered at times, he has also battled concentrated power more doggedly than any other legislator. If this is the record of a candidate with lobbyists on his campaign bus, then every candidate should have lobbyists on the bus.

And here’s the larger point: We’re going to have two extraordinary nominees for president this year. This could be one of the great general election campaigns in American history. The only thing that could ruin it is if the candidates become demagogues and hurl accusations at each other that are an insult to reality and common sense.

Maybe Obama can start this campaign over.

Study finds human medicines altering marine biology
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Southern California toxicology researchers find chemicals from wastewater are ending up in coastal oceans -- and affecting the hormone levels of fish.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 17, 2008
BOSTON -- Sewage-treatment plants in Southern California are failing to remove hormones and hormone-altering chemicals from water that gets flushed into coastal ocean waters, according to the results of a study released Saturday.

The preliminary findings were part of the most ambitious study to date on the effect of emerging chemical contaminants in coastal oceans. It confirms the findings of smaller pilot studies from 2005 that discovered male fish in the ocean were developing female characteristics, and broadened the scope of the earlier studies by looking at an array of man-made contaminants in widespread tests of seawater, seafloor sediment and hundreds of fish caught off Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

The results, outlined by a Southern California toxicologist at a conference in Boston, reveal that a veritable drugstore of pharmaceuticals and beauty products, flame retardants and plastic additives are ending up in the ocean and appear to be working their way up the marine food chain.

Flame retardants used in upholstery and plastic additives are showing up in fish tissues at levels as high or higher than lingering residue of the banned pesticide DDT and another stubborn industrial pollutant, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

The study also showed that male flatfish contain unusually high levels of the female hormone estrogen, possibly in reaction to one or more of these hormone-altering chemicals.

As many as 90% of these male fish were found to have produced egg yolk proteins, and one had actually produced eggs, indicating that the feminizing of fish seen in freshwater streams and lakes can happen in the open ocean as well. This evidence, scientists said, suggests that diluting pollution with a vast amount of seawater may not be an effective way to dispose of these new and little-understood contaminants.

"Dilution is not the solution for some of these newer compounds," said Steven Bay, a toxicologist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project in Costa Mesa. He expects the study to raise policy debates over upgrading sewage-treatment plants.

Although some of these contaminants may be in urban runoff, the main source appears to be the 1 billion gallons of partially treated sewage that flows into the ocean every day from the region's four major sewage outfalls.

Women taking birth control pills excrete estrogen in their urine, which is flushed down the toilet and ends up in the ocean. The same is true of antidepressants, tranquilizers, anti-inflammatory medicine and other drugs, as well as musk fragrances, sunscreens, soaps and additives to plastics -- compounds known to mimic or disrupt hormones.

"Sewage-treatment plants only remove 50% to 70% of these chemicals," Bay said.

Bay sketched out the preliminary results in a special session at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

Much of Saturday's discussion focused on sex-changing chemicals in municipal wastewater. "It doesn't take much of the pill to stop fish from reproducing," said Karen Kidd, a biology professor at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

Kidd said sewage plants could remove virtually all estrogen with more advanced forms of treatment.

Primary treatment, the type used in San Diego, doesn't take out as much estrogen as secondary treatment, used by Los Angeles' Hyperion plant in El Segundo. Those plants, if upgraded to tertiary treatment, could remove nearly all of the estrogen, Kidd said.

Another study looked at how compounds used as fabric stain repellents, nonstick pan coatings and coatings in microwave popcorn bags have accumulated in the blood and tissue of loggerhead sea turtles. They are suppressing the immune systems of these turtles, which are officially designated as threatened with extinction.

The sea turtles pick up these compounds through what they eat, said Jennifer M. Keller, a researcher with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "They eat crabs and clams and other shellfish -- a diet they share with humans."

The study in Southern California waters looked at contaminants in wastewater, surrounding ocean waters, sediments and in the flesh of 600 flatfish called hornyhead turbot.

These bottom-dwelling fish were selected because they reside near sewage outfalls.

The results showed that the chemicals and responses from the fish were widespread and not confined to areas near sewage outfalls, showing how easily the chemicals get dispersed.

Besides elevated estrogen levels in male fish, test results showed altered thyroid hormone levels in the turbot. They also had depressed cortisol levels, an indication that the fish were worn out and are vulnerable to disease.

So far, Bay said, no evidence has emerged that the chemicals are threatening their survival or ability to reproduce.

LA Times

Staredown with a Lion

I am one day by foot from the New Mexico border into Arizona's remote Blue Range. A mountain lion is at the water hole. It is a male, well over 100 pounds, lapping water from the edge. It does not know that I am here. I come on it from behind, staring a beeline down its long tail, which is laid flat against the ground. An early-morning breeze moves in my direction, taking my scent behind. I let down a 60-pound pack without making a sound. I focus binoculars to get a good look.

The mountain lion has been in battle. A long, old scar follows its right side. The males are territory defenders. They will fight over land and come out with ragged ears and torn skin. It looks healthy, though—a strong, agile lion, hunched to the water so that its shoulder blades form shields around its back. When it stands, it makes a careful visual sweep. I am blending into my background, and its eyes swing by mine, not lingering on me at all. It is keyed to motion and scent, and nothing registers. I look like a rock, a stump, something simple and expected. Even so, a shiver pounces down my back.

In America's suburbs and parks, mountain lions can be aggressive around people. Attacks are up. In fact, it is the mountain lion that has become most likely to make a meal of a human in North America. Close encounters in the deep wilderness are a different category. Concerning humans, lions out here avidly and skillfully avoid them. This is their territory, and I feel safe enough. I am dealing with precepts I think I understand.

The lion at the water hole eventually walks away, into a mesh of junipers that leads into the ponderosa forests and the high desert beyond. I wait for several minutes, then walk to the water to get a good identification, to take measurements and write it all down. The wind has shifted a few times, distributing my scent all over. But if I know the mountain lion, it is half a mile away by now, getting well out of my range.

At the water are many tracks in the mud, like sentences overlapping. I move to get a close look. Before I am on the ground, I scan the perimeter. At first I see nothing.

Then it is there, behind me. It has circled to my back. Eyes are in the shadows of a couple of low junipers, 30 feet away.

I move slowly, deliberately. The lion is probably startled by me. It may be hiding, like a rabbit that is nearly stepped on before it leaps away. But its eyes are not frozen like a hiding rabbit's, and its body is not bunched, ready for a line drive in the opposite direction. I am being observed.

I watch the lion, taking advantage of my proximity to study its features. I am expecting it to bolt any second, to dive into the woods and vanish. Remember this, I think. You will never be this close again.

Instead of running, it stands. Without a pause for thought, it moves out from under the shadows so that both of us are in the same sunlight. We make clear, rigid eye contact. It begins walking straight toward me.

My heartbeat lodges into my throat. My adrenaline dumps. All of it. No dilemma in the lion's eyes; it stares me down as if I am prey backed against a water hole. Even with a slow, lucid gait, it is quickly in my world. It looks up at me from under its brow so that its head is down and its eyes are shelved by a shadow. A stalking stare. The distance is closed in seconds.

The cat is going to attack me. I pull a knife off my right hip. It has a 5-inch blade. One claw against eight claws; hesitation against instinct. The advantage is not mine.

Mountain lions are known to take down animals six, seven, and eight times their size. Their method: attack from behind, clamp onto the spine at the base of the prey's skull, snap the spine. The top few vertebrae are the target, housing respiratory and motor skills that cease instantly when the cord is cut.

Cats have attacked people who have been crouched, or small, or running the other way. Even in zoos they sometimes charge at the cage when children come by. Parents are often asked to hold their children close as they pass cages, to break up the image of fast little kids making random movements. Mountain lions have stalked people for miles. One woman survived an attack and escaped by foot on a road. The lion shortcut the road several miles farther and killed her from behind.

Bone is rarely ever broken. Rather, the teeth slide between vertebrae and open the spine surgically. Cat teeth are heavily laden with nerves so that the animal can actually feel its way around the spine and find the area for incision.

The mountain lion keeps walking straight at me. A powerful voice in me says, Run!
Find shelter! The voice wants the mountain lion magically gone, it wants me to flee to my pack and bunch into a tiny ball. The lion is pushing my button, scrambling the innards of my instinct. Never have I felt fight or flight like this. My only choice, the message going to the thick of the muscle in my legs, is to run. I've got to get out of here before it's too late.

What I do, instead, is not move. My eyes lock onto the mountain lion. I hold firm to my ground and do not even intimate that I will back off. If I run, it is certain. I will have a mountain lion all over me. If I give it my back, I will only briefly feel its weight on me against the ground. The canine teeth will open my vertebrae without breaking a single bone.

Some of the larger animals push their faces toward an attacking lion. It can't get anything at the face. It has got to have a clear shot at the neck, from behind or the sides. It tries to intimidate and push the panic button with this kind of doubtless approach so the prey will turn. When the prey runs, the kill is sealed.

The mountain lion begins to move to my left, and I turn, keeping my face on it, my knife at my right side. It paces to my right, trying to get around on my other side, to get behind me. I turn right, staring at it.

Earlier I would have raised my arms and barked at it, but the lion had come too fast. Now any motion could snap the space we have. My stare is about the only defense I have. People working alone in the mangrove jungles at the mouth of the Ganges River in India sometimes wear the mask of a face on the back of their head. John Seidensticker, who studied the social organization of mountain lions, suggests that humans began to stand upright in order to more vividly show their faces to aggressive cats and to appear less like four-legged prey.

Most of my body has stopped. All that is left are my eyes, my right hand with the knife, and my ability to turn. The lion comes left again. When I rotate, it stops walking. It has got me in a stationary, tight stare from 10 feet. Its nose is moist and pale. Eyes made of gray and green. And that is where I see all of the energy, bound up and ready to flush into the body for one quick jump.

If it jumps, the knife goes into the rib cage. All my energy will be in the thrust. The lion may reconsider after that. But what shape will I be in after the single blow its entire body is built to deliver? Fifty million years of evolution to make an animal designed to kill on the first move. It could be that I will get in a good knife jab, but what will its jaws do around my face and throat? What will its claws do? And mountain lions are known to come back. They do stalk. Will I be holding my skin together with hands and bandanas when it finds me again?

It is looking for the approach. It looks one way, just a couple of inches to one of my sides, and then it looks to the other side. I won't give it leeway, moving my head to keep its eyes on mine. There have been cases in which a lion cleared 20 feet in about a second when eye contact was broken.

It steps to my right, coming clear around, and I synchronize myself with it. It is not focused on my knife, my body, or even my eyes. It is moving intently at some point through me, inside of me, perhaps the single point where life itself is seated. It has happened so often that a mountain lion has launched straight at a hunter or a field biologist who has a sidearm leveled at its head. The mountain lion does not stop and is shot point-blank, dead. Why is that? A coyote or a bear will know when a person has a gun, and will often behave much differently. But the mountain lion is a creature with too great a nature to see a gun or a knife. It is so focused that the rest of the world goes silent.

The distance between us increases slightly. The lion walks toward the water hole. Until now I haven't had the room to take a good posture without triggering an attack. It is customary to throw up your arms and make noise when encountering an aggressive animal at a fair distance. Or to put your hands in your pockets and flare out your coat, making yourself look 100 pounds heavier. It is an old bluff trick. Usually works. Now that it is 15 feet away, I lift my hands in the air. All the way so that my knife is an arm's length over my head, looking like something too unusual and unknown for a mountain lion to bother with.

It doesn't work. The mountain lion swings back and comes straight at me again. My arms drop. Fast. Right to my sides. Ice comes down my back. The lion stops there, close again. I have never been watched like this.

It begins a long, winding route, still trying to come from behind. It covers a great deal of space, going back and forth. There is a seamless continuum from the surrounding world, through the lion's eyes, into its heart, and back to the world. I am somewhere in there, holding steady like a rock planted beside the water hole. It watches me closely as it leaves. It walks into the forest and I no longer see it.

I stand for a few minutes, staring at the forest.

I never saw the lion again. For the next week of hiking, though, I could see it all around me. I slept half awake. When I came to water, I gathered it quickly and retreated. I kept my eyes trained into the shadows, waiting, seeing a mountain lion wherever I looked.

From the book The Animal Dialogues by Craig Childs. ©2007 by Craig Childs. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Co., New York, N.Y. All rights reserved.

Britain kow tows to China as athletes are forced to sign no criticism contracts

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By ROB DRAPER and DANIEL KING -


Paula Radcliffe

Gagged: Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe is likely to be one of those affected by the ban
British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China's appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.  It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team.  From the moment they sign up, the competitors – likely to include the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips and world record holder Paula Radcliffe – will be effectively gagged from commenting on China's politics, human rights abuses or illegal occupation of Tibet. 

Prince Charles has already let it be known that he will not be going to China, even if he is invited by Games organisers.  His views on the Communist dictatorship are well known, after this newspaper revealed how he described China's leaders as “appalling old waxworks” in a journal written after he attended the handover of Hong Kong. The Prince is also a long-time supporter of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader.

Yesterday the British Olympic Association (BOA) confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that any athlete who refuses to sign the agreements will not be allowed to travel to Beijing.


* Shameful picture of England squad giving Nazi salute still haunts British sport. Why, 70 years later, do we still suck up to dictators?

Should a competitor agree to the clause but then speak their mind about China, they will be put on the next plane home. 
The clause, in section 4 of the contract, simply states: “[Athletes] are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues.”
It then refers competitors to Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

Zara Phillips and Toytown

Contention: the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips stands to be among the athletes who will be forced to sign the gagging order

The BOA took the decision even though other countries – including the United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia – have pledged that their athletes would be free to speak about any issue concerning China.  To date, only New Zealand and Belgium have banned their athletes from giving political opinions while competing at the Games.

Simon Clegg, the BOA's chief executive, said: “There are all sorts of organisations who would like athletes to use the Olympic Games as a vehicle to publicise their causes.  I don't believe that is in the interest of the team performance.  As a team we are ambassadors of the country and we have to conform to an appropriate code of conduct.”

However, human rights campaigner Lord David Alton condemned the move as “making a mockery” of the right to free speech.

The controversial decision to award the Olympics to Beijing means this year's Games have the potential to be the most politically charged since 1936.  Adolf Hitler used the Munich Games that year to glorify his Nazi regime, although his claims of Aryan superiority were undermined by black American athlete Jesse Owens winning four gold medals.

More recently, there was a mass boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

But Colin Moynihan – now BOA chairman Lord Moynihan – defied Margaret Thatcher's calls for British athletes to stay at home and won a silver medal as cox of the men's eight rowing team.  Former Olympic rowing champion Matthew Pinsent has already criticised the Chinese authorities over the training methods used on children, which he regarded as tantamount to abuse.

Past shame: The England team give Nazi salutes at the 1938 Berlin Olympics, a memory which critics do not want to see recalled in China

Young gymnasts told him they were repeatedly beaten during training sessions.
Source Drudge

Mr Clegg confirmed that such criticisms would be banned under the team's code of conduct, which will be in force from when athletes are selected in July, until the end of the Games on August 24.

Mr Clegg said: “During the period of the contract, that sort of action would be in dispute with the team-member agreement.

“There are all sorts of sanctions that I can apply. I had to send a team member home in Sydney because they breached our sponsorship agreement and that is the first time it happened.  I have to act in the interest of the whole British team, not one individual. No athlete is above being part of the team.  There is a requirement on team members to sign the agreement. If athletes step out of line, action will have to be taken.”

Darren Campbell, Olympic relay gold winner at the 2004 Games in Athens, said the BOA's move would “heap extra pressure on athletes”. But he added: “We are there to represent our country in sporting terms, just as our Army do when they go off to war. It is not supposed to be about politics.”

The BOA is taking a far more stringent stance than authorities in other countries. Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said: “What we will be saying to the athletes is that it's best to concentrate on your competitions.

“But they're entitled to have their opinions and express them. They're free to speak.”

Jouko Purontakanen, secretary general of the Finnish Olympic Committee, said: “We will not be issuing instructions on the matter. The freedom of expression is a basic right that cannot be limited.

“But the starting point is that we will go to Beijing to compete, not to talk politics.”

Political gestures have been made at previous Olympics, most famously in Mexico City in 1968 when black American 200m champion Tommie Smith and bronze medallist John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute.

Both were suspended from the US Olympic team and barred from the Olympic village.

Forty years on, British athletes face similar sanctions if they highlight the abuse of human rights in China.

Last night Edward McMillan-Scott, Conservative MEP and the European Parliament vice-president, predicted a public outcry over the BOA's move.

He said: “Foreign Secretary David Miliband is off to China soon. But before he gets on the plane, he and the rest of the Government should tell the BOA to take this clause out of the agreement.”

Potentially the contract means that a British athlete who witnesses someone being mistreated on the way to a stadium is forbidden from even speaking to their colleagues about it.

Competitors emailing home or writing blogs will also have to exercise self-censorship – or face having their Olympic dreams ruined.

Lord Alton said: “It is extraordinary to bar athletes from expressing an opinion about China's human-rights record. About the only justification for participating in the Beijing Games is that it offers an opportunity to encourage more awareness about human rights.  Imposing compulsory vows of silence is an affront to our athletes, and in China it will be viewed as acquiescence.  Each year 8,000 executions take place in China, political and religious opinion is repressed, journalists are jailed and the internet and overseas broadcasts are heavily censored.  For our athletes to be told that they may not make any comment makes a mockery of our own country's belief in free speech.”

1982 Beirut, Lebanon:  Malcolm Kerr, President of American University, assassinated by Islamic Jihad.

I suppose this could be posted in the Media bias thread, but I feel like giving it its own thread.  It comes from WND, a site which often hyperventilates and IMHO sometimes plays fast and loose with the facts and with data, but often is worth keeping an eye on.  So with those caveats in place , , ,
========================

Here, with our readers' help, are WorldNetDaily editors' picks for the 10 most underreported stories of 2007:

1. Developments moving U.S. and continent closer to a North American Union: President Bush ridiculed any talk of a continental merger as conspiracy theory, and recent articles published in The Nation and Newsweek magazines have attempted to characterize "NAFTA Superhighways" the same way, but numerous developments and admissions by officials this past year indicate otherwise.


The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico conferred over the Security and Prosperity Partnership

Last month, for example, Canada announced a plan to complete a continental highway grid designed to accommodate an anticipated tsunami of containers from China and the Far East.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers in Oklahoma and Texas continued to battle plans for a "NAFTA Superhighway and North American Union" as threats to the sovereignty of the U.S.

A number of influential voices raised the possibility the U.S. dollar might be replaced by a regional currency called the amero.

Stephen Jarislowsky, known as the Canadian Warren Buffet, told a parliamentary committee that Canada and the U.S. should abandon their dollars and move to a regional North American currency as soon as possible.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox confirmed the existence of a plan conceived with President Bush to create a new regional currency in the Americas.

Fox admitted to CNN's Larry King he had agreed with Bush to pursue the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas – a trade zone extending throughout the Western Hemisphere – suggesting part of the plan was to institute a regional currency.

Much of the concern about incremental moves toward a continental merger centered on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, an agreement Bush entered after secret discussions with Mexico's then-president Vicente Fox and Canada's then-prime minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.

An insider who presented a paper at a recent North American Forum meeting in Mexico, however, says public exposure has sparked opposition to North American integration, stalling SPP efforts, .

2. Bush's refusal to pardon imprisoned Border Patrol Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who were prosecuted by the president's friend, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton: Last month, a bi-partisan resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives calling on President Bush to commute the former agents' sentences immediately, allowing them to be home with their families by Christmas.

But Ramos and Compean continue to serve 11- and 12-year federal prison sentences for shooting an admitted drug smuggler as he fled across the border after smuggling into the U.S. a load of 750 pounds of marijuana in a van.

A Border Patrol activist group accused Sutton of protecting the drug smuggler, Osvaldo Adrete-Davila, from facing perjury charges, calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the U.S. attorney for subornation of perjury for allowing Aldrete-Davila to take the stand under "false pretenses."
Former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos embraced his wife, Monica Ramos, two days before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison (Courtesy El Paso Times)

Aldrete-Davila was arrested at the Mexican border in November for alleged drug offenses committed while under immunity to testify as the star witness in the case.

WND also reported a long list of lies Aldrete-Davila told under oath, including the claim he committed a single drug offense because he was under duress to get money to buy medicine for his sick mother after he lost his commercial driver's license in Mexico.

Last month, the three judges hearing the Ramos and Compean appeal for the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans were harshly critical of the prosecution in their questions and comments from the bench. Remarkably, the U.S. government admitted in federal court that Aldrete-Davila lied under oath. One judge said the "government overreacted" in applying a law that requires an additional 10-year minimum prison sentence if felons in the act of committing crimes such as rape or burglary carry a weapon.

WND reported on the intervention of Mexican consulates demanding the law enforcement agents be prosecuted for using force, even against illegal aliens committing crimes in the U.S. The demands were a major factor leading to prosecution not only of Ramos and Compean but others, including deputy sheriff Gilmer Hernandez of Rocksprings, Texas, who was convicted for shooting a fleeing van of illegal aliens who tried to run him over.

Sutton also prosecuted former Border Patrol agent Gary Brugman, who served a 24-month sentence in federal prison for a minor scuffle with an illegal alien at the U.S. border in January 2001. Brugman told WND, "For many years after what happened to me, I lost faith in the United States of America."

3. Research refuting man-made global warming: Former Vice President Al Gore won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his global warming campaigning to add to the Oscar for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth. But numerous reports were issued throughout the year challenging the mainstream media's oft-repeated contention that the debate is settled over whether or not humans are causing global warming.


A new U.S. Senate report documented hundreds of prominent scientists – experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide – who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man's activities.

An analysis of peer-reviewed literature by the Hudson Institute found more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting the current man-made global warming scare.

After an investigation, a veteran meteorologist found dire "global warming" predictions were based on bad science from the very start, pointing out surface temperatures recorded throughout the U.S. are done with almost no regard to scientific standards.

Anthony Watts found temperature monitoring stations used by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were constructed and placed without regard to achieving accurate recordings of natural temperatures.

The assessment supports another study on which WND reported, revealing carbon dioxide levels were largely irrelevant to global warming. Those results prompted Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, to quip, "You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide."

WND also reported on a NASA-funded study that noted some climate forecasts might be exaggerating estimations of global warming. Taking aim at Gore and other "climate change" activists, the founder of the Weather Channel said the campaign to promote the theory of man-made global warming is "the greatest scam in history."

John Coleman, now a meteorologist for San Diego TV station KUSI, called it a "manufactured crisis" by "dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives" who have "manipulated long-term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming."

Muriel Newman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research called for Gore's Nobel to be rescinded after British High Court judge Michael Burton concluded "An Inconvenient Truth" should be shown in British schools only with guidance notes to prevent political indoctrination. The decision followed a lawsuit by a father, Stewart Dimmock, who claimed the film contained "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush." The British court pointed to 11 inaccuracies in the production.

A cover story in Newsweek reported a "denial machine," bought and paid for by big industry, was preventing critical government action to stop global warming. But the following week's issue of Newsweek contained a scathing report by longtime contributing editor Robert J. Samuelson characterizing the previous cover story as "highly contrived" and "fundamentally misleading."

A dramatic documentary produced by the UK's Channel 4 TV deviated from the dire presentations on impending global-warming disaster. In "The Great Global Warming Swindle," British TV director Martin Durkin interviewed scientist after scientist who claim the current hysteria over global warming is, in a word, nonsense.

4. Lack of action on border fence mandated by Congress: The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of a double-layered barrier covering 854 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, but Democrats led efforts to squelch the plan.


Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter blasted a Democrat-sponsored House bill that would prevent the fence from being built.

"By eliminating the double fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our Southern land border," said Hunter. "This goes against the interests of any family that has been touched by illegal drugs or any American who has seen their job taken by an illegal alien."

Also, in the Senate, as WND reported , an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for the Department of Homeland Security 2008 budget was aimed at gutting the already-approved Secure Fence Act.

The Hutchison amendment would allow the secretary of homeland security to use discretion in deciding whether a fence was the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control along the border with Mexico.

5. California bill introducing homosexuality to young children: Children as young as two years of age are in the bull's-eye of coming changes in California's school curriculum, which "gay rights" advocates now admit will alter the very foundation of information presented to public school classrooms.

Opponents of a new state law that bars "discriminatory bias" in public schools because of a "characteristic," including "perceived gender," argued before its passage that it would foster a pro-homosexual bias that would eliminate references to "mom" and "dad" or "husband" and "wife."

Supporters steadfastly maintained the bill only clarified anti-discrimination laws already on the books. But, already, demands by homosexual advocacy groups such as Equality California indicate the new law actually paves the way for editing of all school curricula in the state.

A list of school resources, sponsored by a homosexual-advocacy group called Safe Schools Coalition, suggests "Felicia's Favorite Story," which tells how a girl was "adopted by her two mothers." It also promotes a book called "Are You a Girl or a Boy?" for children ages 4-8 that advocates homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other lifestyles. Other resources promoted in the wake of California's new law include books authored by officials with Planned Parenthood and the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

One book, called "Tackling Gay Issues in School," is for kindergarten through grade 12, and features recommended "extracurricular" activities for classes.

WND also reported how thousands of requests for information about homeschooling organizations and Christian schools have been bombarded with requests for information.

A grass-roots advocacy group is working on a referendum and the non-profit Advocates for Faith and Freedom is filing a lawsuit challenging the law.

Let's Not Panic and Ruin the World
By BRIAN S. WESBURY
December 7, 2007; Page A17
WSJ

You can't move these days without bumping into an economic pessimist. "Recession in America looks increasingly likely," said the Economist magazine on Nov. 17. Two days later, in the International Herald Tribune, Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson brought up the specter of the Great Depression. And then, on Nov. 26, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote in the Financial Times that, "the odds now favor a recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis."

The pressure on policy makers to do something is intense. Not only is there a desire to see the government get even more involved in the housing loan market -- witness the Bush administration's plan to freeze starter rates -- there is also tremendous pressure on the Fed to make another large 50 basis-point rate cut in attempt to alleviate credit-market problems.

 
This desire for government intervention to fix problems that grown adults have created for themselves is dangerous. Constantly counting on the government to save the economy undermines confidence in free markets, conditions people to believe they don't have to live with bad decisions, and creates a willingness to take imprudent risk. Actions to stabilize the economy in the short term can destabilize it in the longer term, and set the stage for even more intervention to fix the new problems at a later date.

Moreover, all this pessimism makes serious economic problems less likely. If it really happens, a recession in the next year could be the most anticipated ever. That fact alone makes it improbable. Recessions usually surprise the consensus. When a recession is expected, the odds of rapidly rising inventories, excessive investment, or a surprise drop in new orders are reduced.

In the past, when manufacturing was a larger share of the economy and inventory control was less exact, recessions often began abruptly, sometimes on the heels of very strong growth. Today, with services a larger share of the economy, and technology speeding up information flow, the economy tends to glide more gently into recession. Given this, all the doom and gloom seems unnecessary.

Real GDP in the U.S. grew 4.9% at an annual rate in the third quarter, and has averaged 4.4% in the past two quarters. While real growth in the current quarter will slow (our forecast is 1.5% to 2.0%), this is more of a payback for the past two quarters of strong growth than it is a new direction for the economy. Average annualized growth in real GDP from March to December will be roughly 3.5%.

In addition, nominal GDP, or total spending, has accelerated from a 3.6% annual growth rate in the second half of 2006 to 6.2% in the past two quarters. This is an excellent signal that Fed policy is still accommodating. When the Fed is tight, the growth rate of nominal GDP, or aggregate demand, does not accelerate.

Despite all of this, many believe that credit-markets problems have increased economic risk dramatically. Mr. Summers argues that "levels of the federal-funds rate that were neutral when the financial system was working normally are quite contractionary today." "Speculative markets will not stabilize themselves," wrote Paul Samuelson. For Messrs. Summers and Samuelson, only Fed action can save the world.

But this argument confuses money and credit. It is increases in the money supply that drive total spending (or aggregate demand), not increases in credit. Many people confuse the idea of a "money multiplier" with money creation. They believe banks can create money. This is not true: The Fed is the only entity in the world that creates new dollars.

In a fractional reserve banking system, the money multiplier works as banks lend out part of their deposits and keep some in reserve. Then the next bank, which receives deposits as a result of the first bank's loan, lends out part of the money again. This is repeated over and over so that every dollar of the monetary base is "multiplied" into many more dollars of lending or credit.

Despite problems at many major financial institutions, this process is not breaking down. The Fed is not behind the curve. When the Fed buys bonds to inject new liquidity into the banking system, that money doesn't go into a black hole. Even if a bank has had its capital eroded by large write-downs, it must invest the new cash. Some banks are putting the cash right back into Treasury bonds, which is one reason Treasury yields are so low. Banks need less capital to hold Treasury bonds than they need to hold loans to the private sector.

But, contrary to popular belief, when a bank buys Treasuries, the money mechanism does not stop. For every debit there must be a credit, and this continues endlessly. In fact, it may be that banks are buying those Treasury bonds from foreign holders, say the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which just made a huge investment in Citibank. In this case, the money came right back into the U.S. banking system.

There are an infinite number of paths that the monetary transmission mechanism can take. The only time it breaks down is when investors expect deflation, as in the Great Depression. This is when hording cash makes sense. But this is not the case today. Consumer prices are up 3.5% versus last year. As a result, as long as the Fed is accommodative, money will find its way into the financial system and the multiplier process will continue.

This does not require massive money center banks such as Citibank. It can happen through any well-capitalized institution. For example, tens of thousands of community and regional banks made few or no subprime loans and have large amounts of excess capital. They are in fantastic shape. However, because the cost of funds for banks does not fall quickly, and adjustable rate loans reset immediately, a rate cut can hurt these banks' earnings. In addition, with uncertainty about the economy elevated, forcing banks to lend at lower rates doesn't make sense. Widening spreads between Treasury and private-sector bond yields are a signal that the federal-funds rate is too low, not too high. This helps explain why many regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents sound hawkish.

Hedge funds, private equity firms and nonfinancial corporations also have trillions in cash that is already being put to work. Citadel, a hedge fund, bought at-risk loan pools from E*Trade, and increased its investment stake by $2.5 billion. The French parent of CIFG Services Inc., a major bond insurer, injected $1.5 billion of new capital to shore up its balance sheet. Bank of America invested in Countrywide and HSBC brought its high-risk loans back onto its balance sheet.

The only real problem is that these "fixes" are not cheap. Citibank is paying 11% to Abu Dhabi. E*Trade reportedly sold its problem loans to Citadel for 27 cents on the dollar, a price many think is well below the true value. Institutions with cash and capital will make huge profits in this environment, while those without these two things will fight to survive. While not everyone is happy about it, the market is healing itself.

Some say that we can't risk a spillover of credit problems into the economy as a whole, but that ignores two things. First, outside of housing-related businesses and financial institutions that invested in subprime securities, the economy is in good shape. Despite many months of fearful forecasts and an erosion in consumer confidence, the economy remains resilient. Early holiday shopping data have been strong, car and truck sales rose in November and manufacturing continues to expand.

Second, more Fed rate cuts risk a weaker dollar, rising inflationary pressures and a new round of lax lending standards. Don't forget that similar arguments were used between 2001 and 2004 to justify a 1% federal-funds rate that was designed to ward off the significant and serious risk of deflation. That policy helped create the subprime lending crisis in the first place.

To top it off, as long as the Fed allows the market to believe more rate cuts are coming, the greater the incentive to put off business activity. An investor who wants to buy distressed property or debt, a potential home buyer, or a hedge fund looking to make a leveraged investment may choose to wait for lower interest rates before taking action. This delays the self-healing process of the marketplace.

All of this argues for a much more laissez-faire approach. Attempting to offset the problems caused by a few (i.e., a bailout), actually creates larger risks for the economy as a whole. The very act of saving the world puts it at greater risk.

Mr. Wesbury is chief economist for First Trust Portfolios, L.P.

All:

Unfortunately it looks like yet another excrement storm is coming.  I use this piece from Stratfor to start this thread because it seems to give a good yet quick initial sense of the clusterfcuk that apparently is coming down the pike.

Marc
================

Kosovo: The Fuse on the Balkan Powder Keg
Summary

Kosovo's expected Dec. 10 declaration of independence from Serbia is already inspiring minor violent incidents throughout the Balkans. If tensions erupt over the issue, the fighting is almost certain to spread beyond Kosovo and Serbia.

Analysis

Kosovo is set to hold parliamentary and local elections Nov. 17 amid tensions surrounding talks on the region's status and the boycott of the elections called by the Serbs. Leading up to Kosovo's expected Dec. 10 declaration of independence from Serbia, small sparks of violence are surfacing not only in Kosovo and Serbia, but also in other Balkan states -- illustrating that if this powder keg blows, the explosion will not be limited to Kosovo and Serbia.

Though the international community is completely split on the issue of Kosovar independence -- and has been since the region's 1999 provisional break from Serbia -- the small secessionist government has said it will not wait any longer. Serbs consider Kosovo the birthplace of their national identity and view Kosovar Albanians as little more than a recent infestation, though the province's population is now more than 90 percent Albanian and less than 5 percent Serbian. The Kosovars want nothing less than independence, and the Serbs want to give them anything but.





Kosovo had expected the West to continue supporting what it called the inevitability of Kosovar independence. However, that inevitability is now lost in the shuffle of a larger political battle between global power players such as Russia, the European Union and the United States, and Serbia and Kosovo are left with only uncertainty.

All sides fear this uncertainty will turn volatile -- and possibly bloody. If an explosion of violence does occur, it will not be contained within Serbia and Kosovo's borders; it could destabilize the entire Balkan region. Minor incidents of violence and instability have already been seen in Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Serbia and Kosovo

Serbia and Kosovo seem to have avoided violence on the scale of that seen in the late 1990s, mainly because the Radicals did not come to power during Serbian elections and because Kosovar independence was continually put on the back burner this year. This does not mean, however, that such violence can be avoided altogether, especially as each side gets more fed up with the situation. Small-scale violence has been seen and is not unexpected. Tensions are high between Kosovars and Serbs and within each ethnic faction as well.

The Serbs within Kosovo do not make up enough of the population to attempt any meaningful military operations, but there are other threats. The most obvious -- but not the most likely -- is that Serbia could do what it did in 1999 when it wanted to reassert full control over Kosovo: send in the army. But the military is not in the shape it was in then. Moreover, the Serbs within Serbia proper are too fractured; some are willing to forgo Kosovo to gain EU membership, while others are willing to fight to the end for the small province. That is enough to cause trouble, since only a few radicals are needed to form paramilitary groups like those seen during the war.

There are also small Serbian terrorist groups that have been operating periodically in Serbia and Kosovo. The best known is Tsar Lazar's Guard, which was a joke when it first formed but has been gaining support -- and reportedly weapons -- as Dec. 10 approaches. Serbs are not the only group reported to have militants working for their cause; the Albanian National Army militant group reportedly has been recruiting new members and equipment recently.

Kosovar Albanians also have been stirring unrest inside the recently independent Montenegro. The small Albanian population in Montenegro on the Kosovar border has already been stirred up, however; a handful of Albanians were arrested in Ulcinj, Montenegro, and Kosovar Albanians began flooding over the border and stormed the police station in protest.

Montenegro understands what it is like to push for independence from Serbia, but unlike Kosovo the country is still very divided over whether it is content with its new independence. Approximately 40 percent still consider themselves ethnically Serbian -- especially since they share the same church and same language -- and are thus loyal to Belgrade. Some Montenegrin Serbians have already pledged to help fight if Kosovo gets its independence.

Macedonia

The militants in Kosovo have also been linked to Albanians crossing the border from Macedonia. Albanians are the ethnic minority within Macedonia but hold the majority of the northwestern part of the country. The Macedonian-Kosovar border is mountainous and incredibly porous, leading to large border crossings that the already weak Macedonian military cannot prevent. These Albanians and Kosovar Albanians have been seen actively engaging in violence on both sides of the border, proving that the wounds from the 2001 Macedonia conflict -- in which the Albanians within the country began attacking Macedonian forces -- are still fresh.

Internally, Macedonia has been politically unstable because of the main Albanian party actively pushing against the government as it keeps its eyes on Kosovo. Macedonia is trying to keep a lid on any large-scale violence because of its aspirations to join the EU, but hostilities have broken out within Macedonia's borders. On Nov. 7, Macedonian police killed four Albanians in an operation called Mountain Storm on Mount Sar Planina. Macedonian police said the Albanians were planning a major terrorist act that would destabilize both Kosovo and Macedonia.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Bosnia-Herzegovina could be a flashpoint in the struggle over Kosovo. Bosnia-Herzegovina is split between two autonomous regions -- the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska (the Serb Republic) -- and three ethnic groups: Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. In short, the country does not have a comfortable ethnic, social, historic or political mixture. The U.N. administrative presence is the only thing keeping relative peace and general unity in the country.

However, control is being transferred from the United Nations to the European Union -- something many radical Serbs within the country are not happy with because it means the loss of Russia's voice in Bosnia's future (Russia is on the U.N. Security Council and supports the Orthodox Serbs). The Muslims within the country do not want EU supervision, claiming the Union is not friendly to Muslims. Republika Srpska has criticized the transfer, since they pledge their loyalty to their brother Serbs next door and to their more numerous Orthodox brothers in Russia.

The Muslim Bosniaks and Serbs -- with the Croats in flux -- are keeping the country from moving toward any political unity or a real constitution. But with Kosovo in play, the Serbs from Republika Srpska are threatening to declare their own independence. It is no secret that the majority of Serbs within Republika Srpska want Serbia proper to annex their region, though many Serbs in Serbia proper look upon them as radicals or country bumpkins. Serbs in Republika Srpska could become very problematic if they either split from Bosnia-Herzegovina or decide to flood across the border to fight with their fellow Serbs. NATO -- which commands the European forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina -- is rumored to have a contingency plan to sweep into Republika Srpska if either of these events happens, taking the government buildings and media outlets and blocking the main roads into Serbia.

The Threat of Greater -- and Spreading -- Violence

Contagion effects of Balkan violence are well known; they were seen both in the early 20th century and in the 1990s, and the recent outbursts are following the same pattern. Since EU and NATO forces are present, there have been no large wars declared by the states themselves. But if the region does ignite, Western forces could face many problems. First, those forces are a mere shadow of what they were during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s -- during which it took four years to get the region generally under control. European and U.S. forces are deployed only in the non-Serbian section of Bosnia-Herzegovina and within Kosovo, not throughout the region. Furthermore, NATO and the United States are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to juggle threats larger than the Balkans -- namely Iran and Russia.

To put it plainly, the West is not paying much attention to the Balkans other than as a bargaining chip with other global players such as Russia. But with or without the world watching, the actors in the Balkans are ready to move.

This certainly could fit within the Health thread, but I'm going to give it one of its own:

=======

NY Times

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: October 23, 2007
The task looks as simple as a “Sesame Street” exercise. Study pairs of Easter eggs on a computer screen and memorize how the computer has arranged them: the aqua egg over the rainbow one, the paisley over the coral one — and there are just six eggs in all.

Most people can study these pairs for about 20 minutes and ace a test on them, even a day later. But they’re much less accurate in choosing between two eggs that have not been directly compared: Aqua trumped rainbow but does that mean it trumps paisley? It’s hazy.

It’s hazy, that is, until you sleep on it.

In a study published in May, researchers at Harvard and McGill Universities reported that participants who slept after playing this game scored significantly higher on a retest than those who did not sleep. While asleep they apparently figured out what they didn’t while awake: the structure of the simple hierarchy that linked the pairs, paisley over aqua over rainbow, and so on.

“We think what’s happening during sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture,” said the study’s senior author, Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist who is now at the University of California, Berkeley. He added that many such insights occurred “only when you enter this wonder-world of sleep.”

Scientists have been trying to determine why people need sleep for more than 100 years. They have not learned much more than what every new parent quickly finds out: sleep loss makes you more reckless, more emotionally fragile, less able to concentrate and almost certainly more vulnerable to infection. They know, too, that some people get by on as few as three hours a night, even less, and that there are hearty souls who have stayed up for more than week without significant health problems.

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking — a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.

The theory is controversial, and some scientists insist that it’s still far from clear whether the sleeping brain can do anything with memories that the waking brain doesn’t also do, in moments of quiet contemplation.

Yet the new research underscores a vast transformation in the way scientists have come to understand the sleeping brain. Once seen as a blank screen, a metaphor for death, it has emerged as an active, purposeful machine, a secretive intelligence that comes out at night to play — and to work — during periods of dreaming and during the netherworld chasms known as deep sleep.

“To do science you have to have an idea, and for years no one had one; they saw sleep as nothing but an annihilation of consciousness,” said Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatry professor at Harvard. “Now we know different, and we’ve got some very good ideas about what’s going on.”

The evidence was there all along. Infants make sucking motions when asleep, and their closed eyelids quiver, as if the eyeballs beneath had a life of their own. But it wasn’t until the early 1950s, in a lab at the University of Chicago, that scientists recorded and identified what was happening.

Eugene Aserinsky, then a graduate student in physiology, reportedly was monitoring sleep and waking in his 8-year-old son, using electronic leads stuck to the boy’s head, connected to a brain-wave detecting machine. He had attached two leads to the boy’s eyelids as well, so he could tell whether his son woke up. One night he noticed percolating wave patterns that showed the boy had awoken. But he hadn’t.

Dr. Aserinsky confirmed the activity in others, and in 1953 he and his adviser, Nathaniel Kleitman, published the finding in a now-famous paper in Science. They later called the odd, unconscious state rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep.

“This was really the beginning of modern sleep research, though you wouldn’t have known it at the time,” said Dr. William Dement, then a medical student in Dr. Kleitman’s lab and now a professor of psychiatry and sleep medicine at Stanford University. “It took years for people to realize what we had.”

Dr. Dement, infatuated with Freud’s theories about dreams, quickly threw himself into the study of REM. He found that it was universal and occurred periodically through the night, alternating with other states. He gave them names: Stages 3 and 4, or deep sleep, when electrical waves roll as slow as mid-ocean swells; Stage 2, an intermediate stage between REM and deep sleep; and Stage 1, light sleep.

He also confirmed the link between REM and dreaming, and for a time hopes for sleep research — and money for it — soared.

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Yet Drs. Dement, Hobson and others found in their studies scant evidence to confirm that dreams were the disguised, forbidden wishes described by Freud. They found instead a tangle of apparent anxieties, fantasy and vivid, often nonsensical replays of events that showed few verifiable patterns or measurable function.

They had hit a wall, and sleep research, like its nocturnal subjects, dropped from REM excitement back into a void. “You had this great excitement, basically followed by 40 years of nothing; it was just horrible,” said Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard. “Just a period of darkness.”

The sun came up in 1994, in Rehovot, Israel. There, a research team led by Avi Karni found that depriving people of REM sleep undermined memory of patterns they had learned the day before, while depriving them of deep sleep did not.

This result raised more questions than it answered — Were the participants simply sleepy, or stressed? Why just REM? What was the purpose of the other sleep states? — but it was an invitation to researchers interested in sleep.

“I called Karni immediately, and he sent me all his protocols, everything,” Dr. Stickgold said.

Others called, too. The field was waking up, and now turning its focus to a long-neglected area: learning and memory.

Since then the study findings have come almost too fast to digest, and they suggest that the sleeping brain works on learned information the way a change sorter does on coins. It seems first to distill the day’s memories before separating them — vocabulary, historical facts and dimes here; cello scales, jump shots and quarters over there. It then bundles them into readable chunks, at different times of the night. In effect, the stages of sleep seem to be specialized to handle specific types of information, the studies suggest.

On a recent Monday afternoon in Dr. Stickgold’s lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, a postdoctoral student, Matthew Tucker, was running a study of the effect of naps on memorized words. In a neighboring room, a Boston University student was cramming on a list of 48 word-pairs; in another, a stubbly University of Massachusetts student had finished studying and was reclining for a nap, his face covered with electrode patches, like leeches sprouting antenna.

“College students are always ready for nap; we have no problems there,” Dr. Tucker was saying, as he moved back and forth, checking his watch, timing one student’s nap and the other’s study period.

He sat down for a moment. “We are finding that if a person takes a nap that contains slow-wave sleep — deep sleep — that performance on declarative memory tasks, which require the memorization of fact-based information like word-pairs, is enhanced compared to a person who doesn’t take a nap,” Dr. Tucker said.

Previous studies of nocturnal sleep have found the same thing. Memory of learned facts, whether they are names, places, numbers or Farsi verbs, seems to benefit in part from deep sleep. Healthy sleepers usually fall into deep sleep about 20 minutes or so after head meets pillow. They might spend an hour or more in those lolling depths early in the night, and typically less time later on. When cramming on facts, in short, it may be wiser to crash early at night and arise early, than to burn the candle until 2 a.m., the research suggests.

REM sleep, the bulk of which comes later in the night, seems important for pattern recognition — for learning grammar, for example, or to bird-watch, or play chess.

In one 2003 study, Sara Mednick, then at Harvard and now at the University of California, San Diego, led a team that had 73 people come into the lab at 9 a.m. and learn to discriminate between a variety of textured patterns. Some of the participants then took a nap of about an hour at 2 p.m. and the others did not.

When retested at 7 p.m. the rested group did slightly better. When tested again the next morning, after everyone had slept the night, the napping group scored much higher. The naps included both REM and deep sleep.

“We think that a nap that contains both these states does about the same for memory consolidation as a night’s sleep,” when it comes to pattern recognition learning, Dr. Mednick said.

Not that Stage 2 is an empty corridor between destinations. In series of experiments that he began in the early 1990s, Dr. Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Canada has found a strong association between the amount of Stage 2 sleep a person gets and the improvement in learning motor tasks. Mastering a guitar, a hockey stick or a keyboard are all motor tasks.

===============

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Musicians, among others, have sensed this for ages. A piece that frustrates the fingers during evening practice often flows in the morning. But only in recent years has the science caught up and given their instincts a practical shape.

For instance, Dr. Smith said that people typically got most of their Stage 2 sleep in the second half of the night. “The implication of this is that if you are preparing for a performance, a music recital, say, or skating performance, it’s better to stay up late than get up really early,” he said in an interview. “These coaches that have athletes or other performers up at 5 o’clock in the morning, I think that’s just crazy.”

For all these nighttime fireworks, memory researchers have yet to work out a complete picture of how all the pieces fit together. Each has a theory, but they differ: Dr. Smith focuses on Stage 2, others on deep sleep, still others on REM or a combination of REM and deep sleep. And no one knows how individual differences, between night owls and early birds, for instance, affect nighttime learning.

In addition, said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, millions of people have taken drugs that suppress REM without reporting serious memory problems. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that sleep contributes to learning and memory consolidation, but the claim is that it’s essential, that it’s doing something the waking brain won’t, and the research hasn’t shown that,” Dr. Siegel said.

Even the college all-nighter provides evidence that some consolidation occurs during waking, he said. “College students know that the best way to learn stuff isn’t to stay up all night because it’s going to impair your judgment,” Dr. Siegel said, “but it doesn’t matter how good your judgment is if the information isn’t in there. And students know from experience that a lot of it is.”


One reason some neuroscientists are confident that the sleeping brain is actively working on the day’s streaming video of information is because they have seen it with their own eyes — or heard it, at least.

In his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Matthew Wilson has been studying rats and mice wearing what look like Carmen Miranda hats. These are ultralight implants through which researchers thread hairlike wires to record the activity of single cells deep in the brain, in the left and right hippocampus, where the day’s memories are recorded.

Past research has shown that the hippocampus is spatially sensitive: it seems literally to pair the firing of individual neurons with locations outside the body. These systems are thought to function in similar ways in humans and rodents.

Computers record the cells’ firing in real time and can broadcast it over speakers. “I would listen to this background music of the brain sometime when the animals were asleep, and I started hearing this section that sounded very much like the pattern when the animals were in the maze,” Dr. Wilson said in an interview. “I recognized the firing pattern.”

The maze route is an important memory for these animals; it’s about all they know. In a paper published last December, Dr. Wilson and Daoyun Ji reported that in sleeping animals they had recorded chatter in neurons in the visual center of the neocortex, followed by an apparent response in the hippocampus — and not just any response, but a replay of the activity in the hippocampus that occurred during a maze task.

Dr. Wilson thinks of this as a kind of off-line conversation between the neocortex, which is involved in conscious learning during waking, and the hippocampus. “What we notice is that the light goes on in the neocortex a fraction of a second before it goes on in the hippocampus, as if the cortex is asking for information,” he said.

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He said that this process was probably similar to what goes on when people take a moment to reflect, without distractions, sifting through the experiences of the day, also flagging important details, replaying events. “The question is not whether this is an essential process; it is,” Dr. Wilson said. “The question is whether there is something going on during this process that is unique to sleep.”

Subimal Datta, a neuroscientist across the river at Boston University School of Medicine, thinks so. In his studies of animals, he has documented that during sleep the brain is awash in a chemical bath unlike any during waking. Levels of inhibitory transmitters increase sharply, and levels of many activating messengers drop, or shut down entirely.

Even before REM is detectable, Dr. Datta said, a small pocket of cells in the brainstem spurs a surge in glutamate — an activating chemical — which leads to protein synthesis and other changes that support long-term memory storage.

“During waking we have a thousand things happening at once, the library is filling up, and we can’t possibly process it all,” Dr. Datta said. While awake the brain is also gathering lots of valuable information subconsciously, he said, without the person’s ever being aware of it.

“It’s during sleep that we have this special condition to clear away this overload, and these REM processes then help store what’s important,” Dr. Datta said.

In the jargon of the field, the “signal to noise ratio” becomes much stronger. The neural trace of the trivia has weakened, and crucial details are replayed and reinforced.


Dreams still defy scientific measurement but they, too, have a place in the evolving theory of sleep-dependent learning.

It is likely during REM, some scientists argue, that the brain proceeds to mix, match and juggle the memory traces it has preserved, looking for hidden connections that help make sense of the world. Life experience is cut up and reordered, sifted and shuffled again. This process could account for the cockeyed, disjointed scenes that occur during dreams: the kaleidoscope of distilled experience is being turned.

It also might account for that golden gift often attributed to a night’s sleep: inspiration.

To hear some people tell it, a night’s sleep changed their world. It was reportedly during sleep that the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements tumbled into place. Friedrich August Kekule, a 19th-century chemist, said he worked out the chemical structure of the benzine ring — an important discovery — when he dreamed of a snake biting its tail. Athletes, including the golfer Jack Nicklaus, have also talked about insight coming during sleep.

Slight corrections in technique are revealed; sand traps are averted; mountains move.

“It does make sense these insights come during REM,” Dr. Walker said. “I mean, what better time to play out all these different scenarios and solutions and ideas than in dreams, where there are no consequences?”

The problem, he and others say, is how to study it. That, most neuroscientists agree, will take some very creative thinking — both of the daytime and nighttime kind.

Woof All:

I suppose this thread could have gone on the P&R forum, or the MA forum, but I decided to put it here.  I open with a long documentary on MS-13.  The piece is quite a serious look at the serious problem of MS 13-- althoughI could have done without the occasional implications that US deportations of illegal aliens caused it all. 

I'll add one piece of background context.  El Salvador has extremely high population density rates and last I read (20 years ago) extremely high population growth rates (3.6% or so!!!  ).

Marc
===========

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c65_1191773085

Woof All:

As those of you who read here regularly know, I often post from my subscription to Stratfor.  I find Stratfor to be an outstanding resource.  Although it is not cheap, it is quite a bargain in terms of value received.  What I share here is a small fraction of what I receive from Stratfor.  I have subscribed for several years now, and find the high quality it achieves to be quite consistent over time and have paid for a lifetime subscription.

Here is a good opportunity for those so inclined to check it out:

https://www.stratfor.com/offers/070910-iraqreport/index.php?camp=070910-iraqreport-a&ref=email-vertresp-html&utm_campaign=070910-iraqreport&utm_medium=email-vertresp-html&utm_content=070910-iraqreport-button&utm_source=070910-iraqreport-a

The Adventure continues,
Marc

Woof All:

I find this long piece to be important enough to give it its own thread.

TAC,
Marc
------------------------

Freedom Fetishists
The cultural contradictions of libertarianism.

BY KAY S. HYMOWITZ
Wednesday, September 12, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

More than perhaps any other American political group, libertarians have suffered the blows of caricature. For many people, the term evokes an image of a scraggly misfit living in the woods with his gun collection, a few marijuana plants, some dogeared Ayn Rand titles, and a battered pickup truck plastered with bumper stickers reading "Taxes = Theft" and "FDR Was A Pinko."

The stereotype is not entirely unfair. Even some of those who proudly call themselves libertarians recognize that their philosophy of personal freedom and minimal government can be a powerful magnet for the unhinged. Nor has recent political history done much to rehabilitate libertarianism's image as an outlier.

The Libertarian Party's paltry membership has never reached much beyond the 250,000 mark, and polling numbers for Ron Paul, the libertarian candidate the Republican presidential nomination, remain pitiable. Worse, despite Bill Clinton's declaration that "the era of big government is over," antistatist ideas like school vouchers and privatized Social Security accounts continue to be greeted with widespread skepticism, while massive new programs like the Medicare prescription-drug benefit continue to win the support of re-election-minded incumbents. A recent New York Times survey found increasing support for government-run health care, and both parties are showing signs of a populist resurgence, with demands for new economic and trade regulation.

And yet, judging by their output in recent years, libertarians are in a fine mood--and not because they are in denial. However distant the country may be from their laissez-faire ideal, free-market principles now drive the American economy to a degree unimaginable a generation ago. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who as a young economist sat at the knee of the libertarian guru Ayn Rand, presided in the 1990s over one of the most prosperous stretches in American history, with the support, no less, of a Democratic president. When the avowedly libertarian economist Milton Friedman died last November, he was lauded just about everywhere, and even given respectful treatment in places like the New York Review of Books.

Nor have libertarian victories been limited to the economic arena. Americans are increasingly laissez-faire in their attitudes toward sex, divorce, drugs and gay marriage. In the personal sphere as in the world of business and finance, freedom has become the guiding principle, especially for the young. As the motto of Reason magazine, the movement's flagship publication, trumpets: "Free minds and free markets."

The diverse origins of libertarianism and its recent accomplishments are the subjects, respectively, of two new books by capable advocates of the creed. "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement" by Brian Doherty is (as its subtitle suggests) an appreciation of even the most gnarled branches of the ideological family tree. Brink Lindsey's "The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture" is, by contrast, a broad survey of the social and cultural changes sparked by the free market's triumph in postwar America. Perhaps because of their differences, however, the two books are neatly complementary. Together they make clear why libertarianism has yet to find a secure place in the American mainstream.


 

Anemic though its following has been over the years, libertarianism is a quintessentially American philosophy. As Mr. Doherty, a senior editor at Reason, writes in his massive, lively history, "Libertarianism is all in Jefferson. Read your Declaration of Independence." For Jefferson, citizens are the bearers of inalienable rights, and the purpose of government is to protect those rights. Libertarians see this bargain as the essence of public life--and any departure from it, especially in the name of some grander idea of justice, as a violation of the social compact. Among the many colorful libertarian trailblazers described by Mr. Doherty is Lysander Spooner, a 19th-century radical who compared the government to a highwayman pointing a gun at your head and demanding "your money or your life." Spooner poured his energies into establishing a privately run postal service (a project still dear to many libertarians).
Closer to our own day, the decisive influences on libertarianism were the free-market economists Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and his disciple Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992). Though both were Austrian by birth and education, they eventually landed in America, where they continued to develop their powerful (and now vindicated) critique of socialist economics. As Doherty emphasizes, both thinkers rejected central planning largely on the grounds that human beings are not very good at predicting the future. Socialism was bound to fail, they argued, because it did not take into account the evolving preferences (or "subjective valuations") of individuals. It was a grossly inefficient, necessarily coercive system for meeting human needs.

Doherty disabuses readers of the idea that libertarianism is exclusively concerned with economics. As he emphasizes, it has a political and moral dimension as well, "a vision of a radical and just future." According to many of the thinkers he profiles, liberty is essential to the initiative and self-sufficiency that make ethical behavior possible. Doherty devotes considerable attention, for example, to the mid-20th-century anarchist Murray Rothbard, sometimes called "Mr. Libertarian." Rothbard was one of the first observers to stress the now-familiar point that government action on behalf of the poor and minorities would undermine the responsibility and self-discipline they needed for advancement.

Many of the figures described by Mr. Doherty believe that libertarianism is also good for the social fabric. Capitalism may not lead to the fraternité naively dreamed of by more conventional revolutionaries, but it does expand the circle of human trust beyond the traditional limits of family and tribe; social bonds thrive in an atmosphere of freedom. Indeed, several of Mr. Doherty's subjects (particularly Hayek) argue that government meddling positively discourages the human instinct for association. If politicians and bureaucrats would get out of the way, people would more readily cooperate and support one another. As David Friedman (the anarchist son of Milton) concluded in studying the economics of tipping, people are capable of developing their own rules for distributive justice, and will pay for social goods of their own free will.


 

For Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute, Americans today are the fortunate heirs of Mises and Hayek. Since World War II, he argues in "The Age of Abundance," the libertarian principles of competition, free trade, and deregulation have given the United States a level of prosperity that would have astounded our ancestors. For most of human history (and, even now, for much of the developing world), the lot of ordinary people has been scarcity, brutal work, and lives cut short by ill health. No more--thanks to the bounty of modern capitalism.
As Mr. Lindsey writes, Americans "live on the far side of a great fault line." On one (now distant) side, there were polio, diphtheria, outhouses, child labor, candlepower, life expectancy of under 50 years, sweatshops and the Great Depression. On our blessed, present-day side, there are miracle drugs, hip replacements, peaches from Chile in winter, Russian caviar in the summer, central air-conditioning, 500 TV channels, master bathrooms with whirlpools, and Dow 14000. Marx predicted that civilization would travel from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom" (the title of Mr. Lindsey's first chapter). About that much, he was right--but the engine has been bourgeois capitalism, not class struggle.

To critics who say that the market is a nasty rogue, supplying the fortunate with mansions and Cristal Brut while condemning the luckless to rags and scraps, Mr. Lindsey gives no ground. America's late-19th-century Gilded Age, frequently described by the economically naive as an example of "unbridled capitalism," was anything but that. The "robber barons," he writes, were little more than crony capitalists, insiders who manipulated government to squelch competition and keep themselves flush. By contrast, the more authentic free-market practices of the past several decades, Mr. Lindsey argues, have improved the material lives not just of millionaires but of deliverymen, waitresses and teachers.

As for today's poor, they are less likely to suffer from hunger than from obesity, and they are able to afford such luxuries as cable television, washers and dryers, microwaves and cell phones primarily because of deregulated global markets. Instead of laboring in dangerous mines or steel mills, less skilled workers are security guards or restaurant workers. Such jobs are not exactly easy street, but they beat getting black-lung disease or third-degree burns.


 

Mr. Lindsey goes well beyond most libertarians in his claims for the moral benefits of the creed. In his view, it is not simply freedom that improves morals; it is the prosperity that follows in freedom's wake. Wealth allows us to transcend "the cruel dilemma of lifeboat ethics," in which scarcity prevails. Moreover, wealth expands human tolerance and imagination. Drawing upon the psychologist Abraham Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs, Mr. Lindsey proposes that once people are confident of their survival and comfort, they feel free to pursue "postmaterialist values." They have the time, energy and ease of mind to try to perfect themselves.
As a practical matter, this means that Americans no longer just take jobs to support their families; they look for meaningful work. They do not just marry the girl next door; they search for their soulmates. They do not just sink quietly into flabby middle age; they jog, go on yoga retreats in Costa Rica, and stock their bedrooms with Viagra and vibrators. Playboy, the decline of the Victorian paterfamilias, permissive childrearing, feminism, the sexual revolution, the fitness boom, gay rights and even the civil-rights revolution--all, in Mr. Lindsey's view, are logical outcomes of the age of abundance. The expanding marketplace has unleashed individual desire from traditional constraints in favor of an "ethos of self-realization and personal fulfillment."

Is Mr. Lindsey, then, just one more defender of everything that falls under the rubric of "the '60s"? Not exactly. He has read his Max Weber and knows that middle-class norms are the indispensable cultural infrastructure of free-market economics; he appreciates the irony that without Protestant self-discipline and respectability, Americans would not be enjoying their Napa Chardonnay and Internet porn. He thus condemns "the wild overshooting of the Aquarian Left," which (in addition to despising capitalism) "trashed . . . legitimate authority and necessary restraints." Indeed, in his view, the rise of the religious right was a predictable, and to some extent even salutary, response to the excesses of the '60s.

Fortunately, by the 1990s, Mr. Lindsey contends, Americans had found a middle ground between the antinomianism of the Aquarian left and the pinched moralizing of the Moral Majority. As he wrote recently in an online discussion of his book:


It turned out that the American Dream retained its vitality even in an age of abundance, because Americans still wanted more--more comforts, more conveniences, more opportunities, and more challenges, all of which were best provided through continued economic development. The strength of this desire, and not the fading hold of old cultural forms, provided the basis for ongoing commitment to middle-class self-restraint--self-restraint as a means to exuberant self-expression.
Americans, in Lindsey's view, have reached a noble synthesis. They are tolerant, open-minded, inclusive--and enthusiastic practitioners of free enterprise. "The culture wars are over," he concludes, "and capitalism won."

 

The Big Easy’s Billion Dollar Boondoggle
August 29, 2007
Lawrence Kudlow (203) 228-5050



So, the president and Mrs. Bush went down to New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Who knows? Maybe over a latté with leading Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards they discussed spending even more money down there. After all, everyone seems to be saying New Orleans needs more cash.

Here’s a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart?

I’ll give you the answer because you’ll never guess it. The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief).
That’s right: a monstrous $127 billion. Of course, not a single media story has highlighted this gargantuan government-spending figure. But that number came straight from the White House in a fact sheet subtitled, “The Federal Government Is Fulfilling Its Commitment to Help the People of the Gulf Coast Rebuild.”

Huh?
This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. So the cash spent there nearly matches the entire state gross GDP. That’s simply unbelievable. And to make matters worse, by all accounts New Orleans ain’t even fixed!

You might be asking, Where in the hell did all this money go? Well, the White House fact sheet says $24 billion has been used to build houses and schools, repair damaged infrastructure, and provide victims with a place to live. But isn’t everyone complaining about the lack of housing?

Perhaps all this money should’ve been directly deposited in the bank accounts of the 300,000 people living in New Orleans. All divvied up, that $127 billion would come to $425,000 per person! After thanking Uncle Sam for their sudden windfall, residents could head to Southern California and buy homes that are now on sale thanks to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and bid up the sagging house prices in the state.

The fact sheet goes on to say that $7.1 billion went to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild the levees; that the U.S. Department of Education spent $2 billion on local schools; and that the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries has awarded more than $2.5 million (the pikers). The administration also provided $16.7 billion as part of the largest housing-recovery program in U.S. history.

So the billion-dollar question becomes: Where did the rest of that money go?
Meanwhile, according to an article by Nicole Gelinas at the Manhattan Institute, New Orleans has earned the distinct honor of becoming the murder capital of the world. The murder rate is 40 percent higher than before Katrina, and twice as high as other dangerous cities like Detroit, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

Think of this: The idea of using federal money to rebuild cities is the quintessential liberal vision. And given the dreadful results in New Orleans, we can say that the government’s $127 billion check represents the quintessential failure of that liberal vision. Hillary Clinton calls this sort of reckless spending “government investment.”

And that’s just what’s in store for America if she wins the White House next year.
Remember President Reagan’s line during the 1980 campaign about how LBJ fought a big-government spending war against poverty, and poverty won? Well think of all this Katrina spending as the Great Society Redux. And it failed. I suppose the current Bush administration would like to label this “compassionate conservatism.” But guess what? That failed, too.

Right from the start, New Orleans should have been turned into a tax-free enterprise zone. No income taxes, no corporate taxes, no capital-gains taxes. The only tax would have been a sales tax paid on direct transactions. A tax-free New Orleans would have attracted tens of billions of dollars in business and real-estate investment. This in turn would have helped rebuild the cities, schools, and hospitals. Private-sector entrepreneurs would have succeeded where big-government bureaucrats and regulators have so abysmally failed.

This is the real New Orleans Katrina story. It’s a pity that the mainstream media isn’t writing about it. Call it one of the greatest stories never told.

All:

Some of you may know that my mom for the last five years my mom has lived in southern Peru helping the village of Humay, population about  200.  Humay is about 18 miles east of Pisco, pictures of which have figured prominently in the fotos in the news reports the last few days about the huge 8.0 earthquake in Peru.  Humay is about 10 miles from the epicenter of that 8.0 earthquake.  Since then there have been 14 follow-up quakes above 5.0, with most of those being above 5.5.  The devastation is extensive.

On a personal note, my mom, who is a post-youthful 75 years old, with the help of the cook had to smash her way through her living room window as debris rained down blocking the door.  There is a substantial breach in the adobe wall around her property and most of Humay is leveled.  People are sleeping in the streets and are hungry.  Water supplies are rapidly exhausting and people are thirsty.  The two small stores are closed for fear of looting.  There is no electricity and the road to the main road is out of commission.   Social order hangs in the balance.

What about the government?  Well, the Peruvian Army briefly landed a helicopter on the soccer field, unloaded four boxes of shampoo and left.

My mom is carefully husbanding what remains of her gasoline for the generator.  A wall to the prison up the road collapsed during the earthquake and 680 hardened criminals, a number of whom mom put in there, have escaped.  Newspapers are reporting 500 deaths already and the number is sure to climb substantially from there.  In short, the situation is bad.

Some friends of mom in Lima are buying the supplies that they can and are going to see if they can get through.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post-- what you can do:  I am asking each and every person here to donate as generously as they can.  Rarely in this life will you get a chance to get as much bang for the buck as here.  THERE IS NO ORGANIZATIONAL OVERHEAD.  The money will go 100% to my mom, who will spend 100% of it helping the people of Humay.  Five years ago she left her life in the USA behind to go help this village and is perfectly positioned to know what needs to be done, and who should be doing it.

Please make checks out to the "Judy H Foundation" and send them to
Judy H Foundation
c/o Arista Investment Advisors, Ltd
255 Washington Ave. Ext. #106
Albany, NY 12205

If the funds are to be wired, please use the following information:
Citibank NA
111 Wall Street
New York, NY   10043
ABA #:  021000089
FBO:  Charles Schwab & Co. Inc.
A/C #:  40553953
For the benefit of:  Judy H Foundation
Account: # 7107-3796

For tax receipt purposes, please ask those wiring funds to let us know who they are and how much they wired.  They can email my mother's financial advisor Jerry Schwartz at (gnfps@aol.com) or Chris in Albany (aristaadv1@aol.com) or call 518-464-0319 and leave the information.  The identities do not come through with the wire, only the amounts received.

For any who want to check out the Foundation, please go to
www.guidestar.org and search under "Judy H Foundation."
Thanks for all you can do.

Marc

 New Race for the Arctic
By ERIC POSNER
August 3, 2007; Page A8

Melting polar ice and the high cost of energy are creating a new battleground at the top of the world. Yesterday a Russian mini-sub released a capsule containing a Russian flag onto the seabed at the North Pole. This was the climax of a research expedition whose purpose is to support Russia's claim to what could be billions of tons of oil and gas reserves in an area of the Arctic twice the size of France. Russia has already been setting up new military and civilian posts, such as in the Zemlya Frantsa Iosifa archipelago in the northeastern Barents Sea.

Meanwhile, Canada has reasserted its claim over the melting Northwest Passage, a portion of the Arctic Ocean linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Its recent announcement that it will build patrol vessels in order to establish sovereignty over the passage had a belligerent tone uncharacteristic of our peaceful neighbor.

The United States has long resisted both claims. The international legal arguments are esoteric, but boiled down they amount to this: Russia's claim is based on the principle that a coastal nation controls the mineral resources of its continental shelf, and the as-yet unproved assertion, which the U.S. disputes, that the continental shelf abutting Russian territory extends deep into the Arctic. Canada argues that the straits composing the Northwest Passage amount to inland seas, and therefore are subject to Canadian sovereignty, just as the U.S. controls Lake Michigan. The U.S. replies that these straits are part of the high seas, and thus anyone can enter them without obtaining Canada's consent.

Power, not international law, will settle the issue. Indeed, international law recognizes this fact by making title dependent on a nation's ability to exert control over an area. That is why Russia is sending ships into the Arctic, and why Canada is saying that it will patrol the Northwest Passage. As long as such expressions of power are credible, other nations, disadvantaged by distance, will generally acquiesce and sovereignty will be extended accordingly.

Russia's expression of power is credible; Canada's is not. Canada cannot prevent other countries from sending ships up the Northwest Passage, as the U.S. has demonstrated from time to time for just this purpose. The melting of the Northwest Passage will significantly shorten the sea route between oceans, as well as open up access to energy resources. The U.S. does not want Canada to reap all the benefits of control of the passage, but this is a side show. The real threat is the Russian bear, not the Canadian beaver.

The world is divided into two types of space: areas controlled by states and areas that are uncontrolled. Oceans are mostly uncontrolled, with the significant exception of territorial seas, where states have been able to exert some control with naval resources. International law has long recognized states' control over their coastal seas (which extend about 12 miles), which means they can block and regulate foreign shipping in those areas. The high seas, however, are free to all.

The major naval powers have always advanced the principle of freedom of the seas for the simple reason that their naval forces dominate them. But "commons" are subject to overexploitation, and overfishing has been the predictable consequence of uncontrolled oceans. Predictable and unavoidable: If no one can control the oceans, then the problem cannot be solved by giving a country nominal title to them.

Where a state can exert control, it is best for it to do so, because this avoids the commons problem. It is in the world's interest for Canada to control the Northwest Passage, even if it will profit and has the formal power to keep the rest of the world out. Canada has an interest in protecting the passage and exploiting its resources, which the rest of the world can purchase. But given its military weakness, Canada cannot have this control without the support of the U.S.

Russia's claims present a different case. It is re-emerging as a global troublemaker, and its claims are far more ambitious than Canada's. At some point, Russia, the U.S. and other countries will carve up the Arctic into mutually exclusive economic zones. Russia is positioning itself to take the lion's share. Russia has major advantages over Canada and the U.S. in the battle over the Arctic. Control over the seas is determined by two things: power and propinquity. With respect to the Arctic, Russia has both. The U.S. has power but not, for the most part, propinquity; Canada has propinquity but not power. As long as the U.S. and Canada are at loggerheads over the Northwest Passage, they will have trouble resisting Russia's claims to the rest of the Arctic.

If the U.S. supports Canada's claim to the Northwest Passage, in return for some sort of guarantee of U.S. military and civilian access, the two countries will strengthen their position vis-à-vis Russia. As the world heats up, the two countries need to prepare themselves for the re-emergence of old rivalries, and in the battle over control of the Arctic, the U.S. and Canada are natural allies.

Mr. Posner, professor of law at the University of Chicago, is co-author of "The Limits of International Law" (Oxford University Press, 2005).
WSJ

Woof All:

I suppose I break the Rules of the Road a bit by giving this its own thread, but , , , well , , , its my house 

As best as I can tell, this man is the best choice for next President of the United States:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9cqtJTvF4

The Adventure continues,
Marc

WSJ:

The Gitmo Distraction
By DAVID B. RIVKIN, JR. and LEE A. CASEY
July 9, 2007; Page A15

Reports suggest that President Bush's top advisers are again wrestling with whether to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There is no doubt that holding captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at that facility has become a significant diplomatic liability.

But the potential foreign policy benefits of moving war on terror prisoners must be weighed against the very real strategic, tactical and legal costs that this decision would entail. After looking at these, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that maintaining the Guantanamo Bay facility is not only justifiable but necessary.

 
Perhaps the most important cost of closing Guantanamo would be strategic. From the start of this conflict, al Qaeda's strategy for victory has been to take maximum advantage of Western sensibilities and institutions, including public opinion and legal rules which limit what states can do in their own defense. The Bush administration sought to minimize the impact of this type of strategy by itself adopting a wartime legal paradigm, declaring a war against terror and using the full force of the United States military -- rather than relying primarily on American law-enforcement resources -- against al Qaeda and its allies. Detaining captured al Qaeda and Taliban operatives as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay was, and remains, a central aspect of that policy and there is little doubt that abandoning it will be seen by al Qaeda as a failure of American nerve and a vindication of their strategic vision.

Closing Guantanamo would also be a victory for al Qaeda because the other alternatives for detaining captured jihadis either give terrorists a legal advantage. The status quo is the best option we have.

There are three basic alternatives to Guantanamo: First, transferring the detainees back to U.S. bases in Afghanistan (such as Bagram Air Base) or elsewhere in the world; second, bringing them to the U.S. to be housed, still as captured enemy combatants, at federal military or civilian prison facilities; or last, having brought them to American soil, processing the detainees through the criminal justice system as civilian defendants, much like the "20th" 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui.

The first alternative, moving the detainees to a different overseas location, would incur considerable expense (the current facilities would have to be more or less replicated in another location) and would almost certainly provoke a constitutional crisis between the president and the Supreme Court. The justices have already ruled in Rasul v. Bush (2004) that Guantanamo Bay, based on its unique status as Cuban territory subject to the U.S.'s exclusive authority, is subject to federal court jurisdiction.

Although this case was wrongly decided in light of the court's other precedents, withdrawing detainees from Guantanamo now would prompt the Supreme Court to consider another expansion of federal judicial power, effectively following the detainees wherever they are moved. And, given swing Justice Anthony Kennedy's uncertain temper in war on terror cases, a five-justice majority may well find a pretext to do just that. The president would then be placed in the unenviable position of accepting judicial oversight not merely at Guantanamo Bay, but also in active, foreign theaters of war -- or ignoring the court's ruling.

The second alternative, bringing the detainees into the U.S., also would be no panacea. This too would be costly, involving creation of new maximum-security prison space in an already overcrowded federal system. Relocation to the homeland would also raise the potential for escapes into the civilian population and would open vast new litigation vistas for the detainees and their American lawyers -- including challenges not merely to their classification as enemy combatants, but to the ongoing conditions of their confinement as well. Although Congress could attempt to avoid this projected litigation explosion by statutorily limiting detainee rights -- as it did in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and 2006 Military Commissions Act -- there is no guarantee that these or similar provisions will withstand constitutional scrutiny once detainees are in the U.S. and subject to the U.S. Constitution.

This is especially true with regard to proposals for the creation of a type of administrative detention that would permit the most dangerous detainees to be held indefinitely -- without criminal trial in either civilian or military courts. Despite the rhetoric of the administration's critics, the detainees are not now subject to indefinite detention. Under the laws of war, they may be held until the armed conflict is over, at which time they must be tried or set free. The laws of war do not provide a basis for post-conflict preventative detention, and the constitutional basis for such detention is far from obvious. To date, the courts have accepted truly preventative detention in only very limited circumstances, generally involving cases in which the prisoner has a mental disease or defect.

Thus, even assuming that congressional Democrats would accommodate the administration's request for such legislation -- and they do not appear to be in an accommodating mood -- the government may still lose the inevitable legal challenges. These are likely to be even more difficult than the one arising in the Guantanamo context which the justices have docketed for next fall. The administration could find itself having to charge the detainees as civilian criminal defendants or watch the courts release them onto America's streets.

This frightening possibility is real enough, because the final option -- processing the detainees in the civilian court system -- is also not possible. Some of the detainees would not be subject to trial in the United States at all because, unless they have actively opposed U.S. forces or otherwise directly targeted U.S. nationals, they are not obviously subject to American criminal laws. Attacking U.S. allies is not necessarily an adequate basis for jurisdiction. However, even if the underlying statutory framework were available to prosecute most of the detainees as civilian criminals, the government would be fatally handicapped in presenting its case.

Leaving aside the fact that evidence against the detainees has not (and could not have) been collected at overseas battlefields in accordance with normal exacting police procedures, the Constitution requires that every element of a criminal charge be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by admissible evidence presented in open court. This would require the compromise of classified, national security information being used as the price of a conviction. Although proponents of a criminal law approach to al Qaeda often claim that the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) answers this objection, it does not.

CIPA permits the government to protect classified information throughout the pre-trial, including the "discovery," phase of a criminal prosecution. In addition, it allows the court to consider whether there are acceptable evidentiary alternatives to the admission of classified material at trial. However, if the court does not accept those alternatives, or if it concludes that the defendant would not receive a fair trial without the use of classified information, the government must accept the disclosure of that information (damaging the war effort) or see the case dismissed. Meanwhile, as was the case with the indefinite administrative detention option, any statutory restrictions on a defendant's right to have the evidence against him presented in open court -- another legislative option allegedly contemplated by the administration -- is neither likely to be adopted by Congress nor blessed by the courts.

Finally, in addition to these costs, the potential benefits of closing Guantanamo are illusory. The most commonly articulated reason for this step is to improve relations with our allies, especially in Europe. However, Europe's real objection is not to the detainees' location at a U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, but to their confinement as enemy combatants in the first place. By and large, Europe has never accepted that there is a "war" on terror. Moving detainees to Afghanistan or the U.S. will not change this.

To obtain any "public diplomacy" advantage from closing Guantanamo, the president must be prepared to declare an end to military operations against al Qaeda, and a return to the pre-9/11 policy mixture of law enforcement, diplomacy and surgical strikes against al Qaeda outposts that failed miserably. This is also why lesser changes at Guantanamo, such as inviting European allies to participate in both the operation and review of continued detentions, are impractical. Those allies simply do not believe there is a war in which these fighters can legally be held.

Just as nothing short of total U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would appease the administration's opponents, the critics of Guantanamo Bay will not be satisfied with anything other than abandonment of the war against al Qaeda. If, as the president says, a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be a key defeat in the war on terror, ending that war itself -- leaving al Qaeda bruised, but very much in possession of the global battlefield -- would be an even greater calamity.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

I suppose I could have posted this Peggy Noonan piece on the immigration thread, but somehow it seems more fitting to open a thread dedicated to July 4th.
=======================

On Letting Go
How we become American.

Friday, June 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Happy Fourth of July. To mark this Wednesday's holiday, I share a small moment that happened a year ago in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I was at a wake for an old family friend named Anthony Coppola, a retired security guard who'd been my uncle Johnny's best friend from childhood. All the old neighborhood people were there from Clinton Avenue and from other streets in Brooklyn, and Anthony's sisters Tessie and Angie and Gloria invited a priest in to say some prayers. About a hundred of us sat in chairs in a little side chapel in the funeral home.

The priest, a jolly young man with a full face and thick black hair, said he was new in the parish, from South America. He made a humorous, offhand reference to the fact that he was talking to longtime Americans who'd been here for ages. This made the friends and family of Anthony Coppola look at each other and smile. We were Italian, Irish, everything else. Our parents had been the first Americans born here, or our grandparents had. We had all grown up with two things, a burly conviction that we were American and an inner knowledge that we were also something else. I think we experienced this as a plus, a double gift, though I don't remember anyone saying that. When Anthony's mother or her friend, my grandmother, talked about Italy or Ireland, they called it "the old country." Which suggested there was a new one, and that we were new in it.

But this young priest, this new immigrant, he looked at us and thought we were from the Mayflower. As far as he was concerned--as far as he could tell--we were old Yankee stock. We were the establishment. As the pitcher in "Bang the Drum Slowly" says, "This handed me a laugh."

This is the way it goes in America. You start as the Outsider and wind up the Insider, or at least being viewed as such by the newest Outsiders. We are a nation of still-startling social fluidity. Anyone can become "American," but they have to want to first.

It has had me thinking a lot about how people become American.





I don't know that when my grandfather Patrick Byrne and his sisters, Etta and Mary Jane, who had lived on a hardscrabble little farm in Donegal, on the west coast of Ireland, felt about America when they got here. I don't know if they were "loyal to America." I think they were loyal to their decision to come to America. In for a penny, in for a pound. They had made their decision. Now they had to prove to themselves it was the right one. I remember asking Etta what she'd heard about America before she got here. She said, "The streets were paved with gold." All the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century used that phrase.
When I was in college in the 1970s, I got a semester abroad my junior year, and I took a boat from England to Ireland and made my way back to Donegal. This was approximately 55 years after my grandfather and his sisters had left. There I met an old man who'd been my grandfather's boyhood friend. He lived by himself in a shack on a hill and was grateful the cousins I'd found had sent me to him. He told me he'd been there the day my grandfather, then a young man, left. He said the lorry came down the lane and stopped for my grandfather, and that his father said goodbye. He said, "Go now, and never come back to hungry Ireland again."

My grandfather had his struggles here but never again went home. He'd cast his lot. That's an important point in the immigrant experience, when you cast your lot, when you make your decision. It makes you let go of something. And it makes you hold on to something. The thing you hold on to is the new country. In succeeding generations of your family the holding on becomes a habit and then a patriotism, a love. You realize America is more than the place where the streets were paved with gold. It has history, meaning, tradition. Suddenly that's what you treasure.

A problem with newer immigrants now is that for some it's no longer necessary to make The Decision. They don't always have to cast their lot. There are so many ways not to let go of the old country now, from choosing to believe that America is only about money, to technology that encourages you to stay in constant touch with the land you left, to TV stations that broadcast in the old language. If you're an immigrant now, you don't have to let go. Which means you don't have to fully join, to enmesh. Your psychic investment in America doesn't have to be full. It can be provisional, temporary. Or underdeveloped, or not developed at all.

And this may have implications down the road, and I suspect people whose families have been here a long time are concerned about it. It's one of the reasons so many Americans want a pause, a stopping of the flow, a time for the new ones to settle down and settle in. It's why they oppose the mischief of the Masters of the Universe, as they're being called, in Washington, who make believe they cannot close our borders while they claim they can competently micromanage all other aspects of immigration.





It happens that I know how my grandfather's sister Mary Jane became an American. She left a paper trail. She kept a common-place book, a sort of diary with clippings and mementos. She kept it throughout the 1920s, when she was still new here. I found it after she'd died. It's a big brown book with cardboard covers and delicate pages. In the front, in the first half, there are newspaper clippings about events in Ireland, and sentimental poems. "I am going back to Glenties . . ."
But about halfway through, the content changes. There is a newspaper clipping about something called "Thanksgiving." There are newspaper photos of parades down Fifth Avenue. And suddenly, near the end, there are patriotic poems. One had this refrain: "So it's home again and home again, America for me./ My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be./ In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars/ Where the air is full of sunlight, and the flag is full of stars."

Years later, when I worked for Ronald Reagan, those words found their way into one of his speeches, a nod from me to someone who'd made her decision, cast her lot, and changed my life.

I think I remember the last time I told that story. I think it was to a young Mexican-American woman who was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton. I think she completely understood.

God bless our beloved country on the 231st anniversary of its birth.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.