Monday, April 30, 2007
A lot hotter. Click on for 24 hour loop.
Two satellite views are missing from the 24 hour loop, 12 AM and 3AM. The satellite shows temperatures over zero in several views, but, that is still high tropospheric heat as the surface reporting stations don't reflect that. But, in comparing the hemispheric satellite from last week to this there are large masses of air moving off the top ice and reflecting higher temperatures there.
The warmest area is:
Reporting time is 7:00 AM DAVT
Davis, Antarctica
Elevation :: 59 ft / 18 m
Temperatures :: 33 °F / 0 °C (The temperature is actually a hair bit warmer than freezing but it is only reflected on the Fahrenheit scale. It has not moved enough to make the temperature 1 degree above zero C.)
Conditions :: Partly Cloudy
Humidity:42%
Dew Point:19 °F / -7 °C
Wind:40 mph / 65 km/h / from the NE
Wind Gust:-
Pressure:29.10 in / 985 hPa (Rising)
Visibility:19.0 miles / 30.0 kilometers
UV:0 out of 16
Aviation
Flight Rule:VFR ()
Wind Speed:40 mph / 65 km/h /
Wind Dir:50° (NE)
Ceiling:100000 ft / 100000 m
The coldest areas are :
Dome C
Reporting time 10:00 GMT
University Wi Id 8904, Antarctica
Elevation :: 10761 ft / 3280 m
Temperature :: -76 °F / -60 °C
Wind :: 2 mph / 4 km/h /
Pressure :: in / hPa (Rising)
Aviation
Flight Rule :: NA
Wind Speed :: 2 mph / 4 km/h /
Wind Dir :: ° ()
Ceiling :: -
Vostok, Antarctica
Reporting time 7:40 AM Vost
Elevation :: 11220 ft / 3420 m
Temperature :: -56 °F / -49 °C
Humidity :: 40%
Dew Point :: -64 °F / -53 °C
Wind :: 8 mph / 13 km/h / from the SSW
Wind Gust :: -
Pressure :: in / hPa (Rising)
Visibility :: 12.0 miles / 20.0 kilometers
Aviation
Flight Rule :: VFR ()
Wind Speed :: 8 mph / 13 km/h /
Wind Dir :: 200° (SSW)
Ceiling :: 100000 ft / 100000 m
Perhaps I'll revisit this tomorrow.
April 30, 2007
2309 gmt
West Pacific Satellite
This is the heat source for the equatorial heat mass that spawned those vortices into Antarctica. There is a heat mass crossing Australia and one north of New Zealand. The heat is building here because of the tropical nature of the islands. There is humidity there. Heat transfer requires clouds. Clouds require air particles and moisture to collect around them. On a dry planet the areas that still generate their own humidity will serve as an engine/conduit for heat transfer. Realizing this may be a pattern, the significance is that this pattern could repeat itself regardless of the sun's migration north. The equatorial islands may be the only area on the planet with enough humidity to generate these heat transfer systems, especially in the southern hemisphere.
May 1, 2007
0033 gmt
Pacific Global Satellite
The vortex approaching the peninsula can be noted at 6:00. There are two others each at 5 and 7:00. The equator is sparse of air masse because the current vortexes approaching Antarctica have broken away from the equator. The equatorial air will build again with each rotation of Earth. Also noted is the vortex now at the west coast of North America.
12 Hour Loop
April 30, 2007
9 PM
Winds of Antarctica
At 11:00 is the movement of frigid air from the continent. At 3 to 4:00 is the arrival of air from the Australian Pacific. The vortex from the Mid-Pacific east of the Indonesian Islands is approaching west of the peninsula. It will arrive within a day or two and cause high temperatures in the area of the ice sheets.
Still notable and larger in area is the southwest stagnation of wind over WAIS (the big blue spot). There is a 'settling' of increased temperatures. Overall the continent reporting stations are below zero C, but, the temperatures are lower than they have been. Vostok is down in the negative fifties.
April 30, 2007
6 PM
Antarctica Jet Stream
The peninsula is at 10 o'clock. It is across from the southern tip of South America. The water mass to the right is the Southern Atlantic. The frigid air from the Blue Ice is noted to be moving off the continent over the South Atlantic just east of the peninsula. Opposite that rush of air off the continent is the approaching vortex over the Pacific with air arriving to the ice continent from warmer origins. The wind patterns also reveal surface air moving in the same direction. It is safe to say the air distrubance in the Pacific is the cause of the change in air temperatures and climate conditions currently over Antarctica.
April 30, 2007
1928 gmt
South Pole Satellite
There is an episodic heat shift over Antarctica. There has been a significant heat build up over the Pacific Islands and Indonesia. As a result there was still enough 'heat' below the equator to spawn a fairly significant vortex, seen in this image at 9:00 to 10:00. I believe this is one episode that will resolve over a few days. The question is, will the West Pacific continue to build these large heat systems.
Georgia Wildfire keeps Florida road closed
April 29, 2007
Jacksonville, Florida
Photographer states :: Headed to Waycross...At about 6pm, the ash had stopped falling, but the sky was dark with smoke
April 30, 2007 18:15 EDT
WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP) -- A combination of high wind gusts and no rain continues to make life miserable for firefighters battling a massive wildfire in southeast Georgia that has blackened 125 square miles over the past two weeks.The 16-mile stretch of Route One between Waycross and Jacksonville, Florida, remains closed. And ash from the fire has blanketed homes, cars and businesses as far away as Orlando, Florida.The Georgia Forestry Commission says 830 firefighters from Georgia and neighboring states are battling the blaze, which is nearly two-thirds contained. But the fire is expected to continue burning at an intense pace for much of the week.It was sparked on April 16th when a tree fell on a power line.
WAYCROSS, Ga. (AP) -- A combination of high wind gusts and no rain continues to make life miserable for firefighters battling a massive wildfire in southeast Georgia that has blackened 125 square miles over the past two weeks.The 16-mile stretch of Route One between Waycross and Jacksonville, Florida, remains closed. And ash from the fire has blanketed homes, cars and businesses as far away as Orlando, Florida.The Georgia Forestry Commission says 830 firefighters from Georgia and neighboring states are battling the blaze, which is nearly two-thirds contained. But the fire is expected to continue burning at an intense pace for much of the week.It was sparked on April 16th when a tree fell on a power line.
United States: Supreme Court Rejects EPA’s Position On CO2
How quickly they forget.
In a landmark decision regarding global warming and greenhouse gas emissions that likely will have significant impact on electricity generation facilities, on April 2, 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 against Bush administration efforts to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.
In 1999, a group of 19 private organizations (including many environmental groups) petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide ("CO2"), under the mobile source provisions of the federal Clean Air Act ("CAA"). EPA denied the petition and concluded that the CAA did not authorize the agency to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change issues and – even if it had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions – the agency stated it would be unwise to do so at that time because a causal link between greenhouse gas emissions and purported global climate change had not unequivocally been established.
These private organizations – joined by the State of Massachusetts and other state and local governments – appealed EPA’s decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the EPA’s decision to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
In a strong rebuke to the EPA, the sharply-divided Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases fall well within the CAA’s definition of air pollutants and held that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate emissions of such gases from new motor vehicles. The Court further held that EPA’s decision that it was unable to regulate greenhouse gases is contrary to the CAA. The Court stated that EPA’s ultimate decision to regulate greenhouse gases must relate to whether such gases cause or contribute to air pollution that might reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
The Court stated that, under the clear terms of the CAA, EPA can avoid taking further action regarding greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if the agency provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether such gases do contribute to climate change. The Court found that EPA’s "laundry list" of reasons not to regulate had nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contributed to climate change and, further, if the scientific uncertainty of that causal effect is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment, EPA must state so affirmatively.
In a landmark decision regarding global warming and greenhouse gas emissions that likely will have significant impact on electricity generation facilities, on April 2, 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 against Bush administration efforts to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.
In 1999, a group of 19 private organizations (including many environmental groups) petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide ("CO2"), under the mobile source provisions of the federal Clean Air Act ("CAA"). EPA denied the petition and concluded that the CAA did not authorize the agency to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change issues and – even if it had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions – the agency stated it would be unwise to do so at that time because a causal link between greenhouse gas emissions and purported global climate change had not unequivocally been established.
These private organizations – joined by the State of Massachusetts and other state and local governments – appealed EPA’s decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit affirmed the EPA’s decision to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
In a strong rebuke to the EPA, the sharply-divided Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases fall well within the CAA’s definition of air pollutants and held that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate emissions of such gases from new motor vehicles. The Court further held that EPA’s decision that it was unable to regulate greenhouse gases is contrary to the CAA. The Court stated that EPA’s ultimate decision to regulate greenhouse gases must relate to whether such gases cause or contribute to air pollution that might reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
The Court stated that, under the clear terms of the CAA, EPA can avoid taking further action regarding greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if the agency provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether such gases do contribute to climate change. The Court found that EPA’s "laundry list" of reasons not to regulate had nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contributed to climate change and, further, if the scientific uncertainty of that causal effect is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment, EPA must state so affirmatively.
Day after tomorrow
April 30, 2007
22:53:55 gmt
This is the view looking northwest from Glacier Bay toward Canada. Well, no one said there would be snow, ice and glaciers from any view of Glacier Bay National Park, did they? That is something fairy tales are made of. Don't tell the kids but their chance of seeing real glaciers at their national park is long since gone !
U.S., China oppose climate report - JOKING !
April 30, 2007
22:57:35 gmt (Alaska is about 10 hours behind GMT) So that is about 2:00 PM in the afternoon. This is a current picture from Glacier Bay looking southeast toward the lower 48 states.
The weather at Glacial Bay National Park (Crystal Wind Chime) is freezing ????????
Elevation :: 33 ft / 10 m
Temperature :: 50 °F / 10 °C
Conditions :: Mostly Cloudy
Humidity :: 47%
Dew Point :: 30 °F / -1 °C
Wind :: 12 mph / 18 km/h / 5.1 m/s from the SSE
Pressure :: 29.97 in / 1015 hPa (Falling)
Windchill :: 46 °F / 8 °C
Visibility :: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV :: 3 out of 16
Clouds :: Mostly Cloudy 8000 ft / 2438 m
(Above Ground Level)
Aviation
Flight Rule:
VFR (PAGS)
Wind Speed :: 12 mph / 18 km/h / 5.1 m/s
Wind Dir :: 150° (SSE)
Ceiling :: 8000 ft / 2438 m
Temperature :: 50 °F / 10 °C
Conditions :: Mostly Cloudy
Humidity :: 47%
Dew Point :: 30 °F / -1 °C
Wind :: 12 mph / 18 km/h / 5.1 m/s from the SSE
Pressure :: 29.97 in / 1015 hPa (Falling)
Windchill :: 46 °F / 8 °C
Visibility :: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers
UV :: 3 out of 16
Clouds :: Mostly Cloudy 8000 ft / 2438 m
(Above Ground Level)
Aviation
Flight Rule:
VFR (PAGS)
Wind Speed :: 12 mph / 18 km/h / 5.1 m/s
Wind Dir :: 150° (SSE)
Ceiling :: 8000 ft / 2438 m
Sunday, April 29, 2007
tornado near Ft.Davis Texas...
April 29, 2007
Ft. Davis, Texas
Photographer states above and continues : ...a tornado sited April 29,2007 approx. 11:45am south of town(Ft. Davis) across from the tomato farm! A VERY RARE SITE!!
KINDLY NOTE !!!
Tornado warning didn't air in Eagle Pass, officials say
4/29/2007 2:51 PM
By: Associated Press
EAGLE PASS, Texas -- Did they get enough warning?(CLICK ON)
That's the question some are asking after the discovery that a tornado warning for the Eagle Pass area never aired on two primary media outlets.
The tornadoes killed seven people and injured 80 near the South Texas border town of Eagle Pass on Tuesday.
A warning from the National Weather Service apparently didn't interrupt programming on the area's cable television provider or its largest Spanish-language radio station.
Supercell over Texas. 12 hour loop. Tornado conditions are being noted again.
The National Weather Service in Midland has issued a* Tornado Warning for
... Crane County in West Texas
... extreme north central Pecos County in southwest Texas
... * until 745 PM CDT* at 648 PM CDT
... National Weather Service Doppler radar indicated asevere thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado near cordonalake
... or 16 miles southwest of Crane
... moving northeast at 20 mph.
* The tornado will affect the following locations
... Tubbs Corner
... cordona lake
... Crane.
.. A Tornado Watch remains in effect until 800 PM CDT Sunday evening forsouthwestern Texas.A tornado may form at any time
... take cover now. Abandon Mobilehomes and vehicles for more substantial shelter. Avoid windows.To report severe weather only
... call the National Weather Serviceforecast office in Midland at 1 800 597 3220.
Lat... Lon 3129 10272 3108 10261 3115 10230 3165 10231 3166 10254
Saturday, April 28, 2007
The point is this...
... out of a struggle from oppression came a movement that splintered from it's understanding as it still today didn't resolve the problems that beset it.
The Islamic groups of South Africa are now a problem. For many reasons, the least of which is that Muslim faith, when out of context, lends itself to violence. In the USA, The Nation of Islam was able to empower it's members to overcome oppression. It would seem in Africa there is still unrest ...
... YET ...
... still a very strong drive to become a brotherhood. All members of all radical organization came to a man's funeral. It didn't make front page headlines, but, it did get noticed.
The challenge to all governments, including those of South Africa, is to recognize the needs of these people while still unorganized and struggling before violence kills unnecessarily. Mother Teresa did it in Calcutta. She found a mission and the world took notice.
Civil War has it's heros and it's violence, it's inflammatory nature and it's ridicule, but, events such as this which lends itself to the development of terrorist networks is resulted directly from oppression and struggle. In the case of South Africa, nation building caused Apartheid.
The natural analogy I will make here is that the nation building pursued by the Bush Executive Branch of the USA government has caused the same if not worse radicalism.
There is a civil war in Iraq. The USA is occupying that nation for it's own purposes while Iraq is of no threat to it.
We don't belong in Iraq.
We never did.
The USA is oppressing the natural progression of developments in Iraq. Without us there would still be a civil war but with the inflow of arms and chronic confrontation of Iran, it would stop and there would be a government in place to settle the issues of sharing the wealth and providing provisional authority. The chance is that once the USA is out of Iraq it will find itself dividing into independant nations. I don't see that is bad so much as the people of that nation find their way to stability and self governance.
The people of South Africa want a nation of prestige they can find safety and life style. They have yet to achieve it but it appears they are well on their way. We need to offer the same chance to the people of Iraq. The course the Bush Administration is on now won't ever resolve the violence there.
The Islamic groups of South Africa are now a problem. For many reasons, the least of which is that Muslim faith, when out of context, lends itself to violence. In the USA, The Nation of Islam was able to empower it's members to overcome oppression. It would seem in Africa there is still unrest ...
... YET ...
... still a very strong drive to become a brotherhood. All members of all radical organization came to a man's funeral. It didn't make front page headlines, but, it did get noticed.
The challenge to all governments, including those of South Africa, is to recognize the needs of these people while still unorganized and struggling before violence kills unnecessarily. Mother Teresa did it in Calcutta. She found a mission and the world took notice.
Civil War has it's heros and it's violence, it's inflammatory nature and it's ridicule, but, events such as this which lends itself to the development of terrorist networks is resulted directly from oppression and struggle. In the case of South Africa, nation building caused Apartheid.
The natural analogy I will make here is that the nation building pursued by the Bush Executive Branch of the USA government has caused the same if not worse radicalism.
There is a civil war in Iraq. The USA is occupying that nation for it's own purposes while Iraq is of no threat to it.
We don't belong in Iraq.
We never did.
The USA is oppressing the natural progression of developments in Iraq. Without us there would still be a civil war but with the inflow of arms and chronic confrontation of Iran, it would stop and there would be a government in place to settle the issues of sharing the wealth and providing provisional authority. The chance is that once the USA is out of Iraq it will find itself dividing into independant nations. I don't see that is bad so much as the people of that nation find their way to stability and self governance.
The people of South Africa want a nation of prestige they can find safety and life style. They have yet to achieve it but it appears they are well on their way. We need to offer the same chance to the people of Iraq. The course the Bush Administration is on now won't ever resolve the violence there.
There was a concern voiced by a blogger about the violence that manifested at the funeral.
The most alarming statements were these:
By 2000, PAGAD was thought to be officially dead. The behavior at Saturday's funeral raises further doubts about the real disappearance of the group.
On Monday, August 29, 2005, there were warnings made by South Africa's Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils that al-Qaeda was believed to be trying to set up networks in the country.
He said: "There are groups in Africa that claim to be part of al-Qaeda and other structures, and here in southern Africa they have been discovered seeking refuge and quite possible attempting to set up networks. There is nothing to stop terrorists attacking a maritime target in Africa, along our busy sea lanes or in our harbors.... We must also note the potential for terrorist groups to use the sea.. Africa is not immune to this."
"The challenge to us is to develop our maritime power, our naval power, to a level where this continent will no longer be an easy target ... and to discourage adventures by foreign actors, be they states or non-state groups such as international terrorists, narcotics smugglers or mercenaries."
By 2000, PAGAD was thought to be officially dead. The behavior at Saturday's funeral raises further doubts about the real disappearance of the group.
On Monday, August 29, 2005, there were warnings made by South Africa's Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils that al-Qaeda was believed to be trying to set up networks in the country.
He said: "There are groups in Africa that claim to be part of al-Qaeda and other structures, and here in southern Africa they have been discovered seeking refuge and quite possible attempting to set up networks. There is nothing to stop terrorists attacking a maritime target in Africa, along our busy sea lanes or in our harbors.... We must also note the potential for terrorist groups to use the sea.. Africa is not immune to this."
"The challenge to us is to develop our maritime power, our naval power, to a level where this continent will no longer be an easy target ... and to discourage adventures by foreign actors, be they states or non-state groups such as international terrorists, narcotics smugglers or mercenaries."
The PAGAD was lead by a man now in prison for five years (click on).
Qibla's alliance with PAGAD highlighted its terrorist potential. PAGAD had a militant activist wing, called the G-Force. PAGAD emerged from an alliance of Muslims and local neighborhood watch groups, but turned to direct actions of vigilantism and eventually full-blown terrorist attacks. It was notorious for its killing of Rashaad Staggie on August 4, 1996 (pictured left).
There were some very violent characters at the funeral. What was so curious was they all laid claim to this man's cry for unity.
At Abrahams' funeral on Saturday, members of PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) were in attendance, along with some wearing Hizbollah sweaters, some with Hamas bandanas, and others with ANC and Qibla T-shirts.
April 27, 2007 in South Africa a local hero died
Ismail Abrahams, better known as "Boeta Mylie from Bonteheuwel", died on Friday after a long battle with cancer.
His dying wish was to unite radical Muslim factions with his fellow comrades from the fight against apartheid - such as Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Rasool, whom he saw "as his son", his family said.
The Islamic people of South Africa were also involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We all know that pressure from a world boycott was necessary to bring about the change long fought for by South Africans, but, that only makes the struggle all the more sweet.
The followers of Ismail Abrahams were among the groups involved in the Anti-Apartheid struggle.
What has come of them?
His dying wish was to unite radical Muslim factions with his fellow comrades from the fight against apartheid - such as Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Rasool, whom he saw "as his son", his family said.
The Islamic people of South Africa were also involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We all know that pressure from a world boycott was necessary to bring about the change long fought for by South Africans, but, that only makes the struggle all the more sweet.
The followers of Ismail Abrahams were among the groups involved in the Anti-Apartheid struggle.
What has come of them?
Where do a people congregate when all their availability to the political rhelm is cut off?
SOUTH AFRICA'S RADICAL TRADITION - A documentary history
volume one 1907 - 1950: edited by Allison Drew
This compilation of contemporary writings traces the origins and development of socialism in South Africa until 1950, shortly before the passing of the Suppression of the Communism Act, which made overt socialist organisation illegal. It covers the dilemmas, which socialist faced in confronting a racially-divided working class, their gradual recognition of the national question, and their effort to build political alliances. It also considers the impact of international socialist politics and of World War II, on the South African socialist movement. The introduction, written by Allison Drew, is an analysis of the documents and is vital part of the book. Much of the documented material has never been published before and has been collected from libraries, archives and private individuals in South Africa, Britain and the United States...
People seeking freedom from oppression and slavery congregate the only place ALLOWABLE by a society. In many instances that is under the wing of the freedom of faith.
But where did the Muslims come from and where did they go?
The African Independent Churches were the largest group of Christian churches (click on). There were more than 4,000 of these churches, with a total membership of more than ten million. Although these churches originally were founded as breakaways from various mission churches (the so-called Ethiopian churches), the African Independent Churches consisted mostly of Zionist or Apostolic churches and also included some Pentecostal branches. The Zionist Christian Church was the largest African Independent Church with 11.1 percent of the population. The African Independent Churches attracted persons in rural and urban areas.
The Muslims of South Africa were not unlike some colonists exported from Britain as prisoners to the early colonies of the USA.
Islam in South Africa probably predates the colonial period, and consisted of isolated contact with Arab and East African traders. Many South African Muslims are described as Coloureds, notably in the Western Cape, including those whose ancestors came as slaves from the Indonesian archipelago (the Cape Malays). Others are described as Indians, notably in Kwazulu-Natal, including those whose ancestors came as traders from South Asia; they have been joined by others from other parts of Africa as well as white or black South African converts. However, the current Muslim tradition in the country dates from the arrival of Sheikh Abdurahman Matebe Shah, a Malay sheikh from Sumatra, in 1668.
Sheikh Abdurahman Matebe Shah was exiled to Constantia, Cape Town in the Cape by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) following his resistance to the Dutch occupation of the East Indies. The sheikh used his exile to consolidate the teaching of Islam among slaves in the Cape, many of whom came from Muslim backgrounds in Malaysia and Bengal.
This is not unlike the awakening of Malcolm X when he began his rehabilitation in prison. I realize that is inflammatory but until today oppressed Blacks in the USA find solice identifying with men such as The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakan (click on). I realize Louis is very inflammatory and that is the point.
So what became of the Muslims in South Africa?
Clue.
Who stood against Apartheid?
How about a group of Muslims affiliated with the Shia side of Islam?
Getting the picture?
This is a tough subject but one worth exploring and why 'interferring' in civil war can result in poor outcomes for all people involved. No one by the way interferred in the USA civil war. Anyone take note of that? Just thought I'd mention it.
The Muslims of South Africa were not unlike some colonists exported from Britain as prisoners to the early colonies of the USA.
Islam in South Africa probably predates the colonial period, and consisted of isolated contact with Arab and East African traders. Many South African Muslims are described as Coloureds, notably in the Western Cape, including those whose ancestors came as slaves from the Indonesian archipelago (the Cape Malays). Others are described as Indians, notably in Kwazulu-Natal, including those whose ancestors came as traders from South Asia; they have been joined by others from other parts of Africa as well as white or black South African converts. However, the current Muslim tradition in the country dates from the arrival of Sheikh Abdurahman Matebe Shah, a Malay sheikh from Sumatra, in 1668.
Sheikh Abdurahman Matebe Shah was exiled to Constantia, Cape Town in the Cape by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) following his resistance to the Dutch occupation of the East Indies. The sheikh used his exile to consolidate the teaching of Islam among slaves in the Cape, many of whom came from Muslim backgrounds in Malaysia and Bengal.
This is not unlike the awakening of Malcolm X when he began his rehabilitation in prison. I realize that is inflammatory but until today oppressed Blacks in the USA find solice identifying with men such as The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakan (click on). I realize Louis is very inflammatory and that is the point.
So what became of the Muslims in South Africa?
Clue.
Who stood against Apartheid?
How about a group of Muslims affiliated with the Shia side of Islam?
Getting the picture?
This is a tough subject but one worth exploring and why 'interferring' in civil war can result in poor outcomes for all people involved. No one by the way interferred in the USA civil war. Anyone take note of that? Just thought I'd mention it.
There was a time in South Africa when Nation Building accomplished 'an end'...
...that end was...
Apartheid
Apartheid
Nation Building or a building nation?
Nation-building is a term used to describe deliberate efforts by a foreign power to construct or install the institutions of a national government, according to a model that may be more familiar to the foreign power but is often considered foreign and even destabilising. Nation-building is typically characterised by massive investment, military occupation, transitional government, and the use of propaganda to communicate governmental policy.
The term "nation-building" usually carries a connotation of futility and failure —efforts which may appear to be noble but are destined to bring disaster. The idea is controversial because it has overtones of imperialism and colonialism, whereby local populations view the foreign power as an oppressor attempting to impose a foreign system and culture.
The term "nation-building" usually carries a connotation of futility and failure —efforts which may appear to be noble but are destined to bring disaster. The idea is controversial because it has overtones of imperialism and colonialism, whereby local populations view the foreign power as an oppressor attempting to impose a foreign system and culture.
"Unholy Alliance" by the Scorpions Music :rudolf schenker Lyrics:klaus meine
It came up crawling from the ruins of the past
And I just can’t believe my eyes
It wears the same old face we thought was dead and gone
Forever buried by the time
Unholy alliance
Unholy alliance
It came up screaming from the ashes of the grave
To make this world a battle field
It’s got a voice that steals the courage from the brave
And leaves a scar that will not heal
Unholy alliance
Unholy alliance
Don’t wanna hear the same old lie that spreads the fear
Only fools think it’s cool
We must be blind not to see the signs
How can we dare to look away in the wake of yesterday
Troubled times don’t turn your back to the lions
Troubled times just learn your lesson well
The party is over
We must be blind not to see the signs
How can we dare to look away in the wake of yesterday
Troubled times don’t turn your back to the lions
Troubled times just learn your lesson well
The party is over
Unholy alliance...
And I just can’t believe my eyes
It wears the same old face we thought was dead and gone
Forever buried by the time
Unholy alliance
Unholy alliance
It came up screaming from the ashes of the grave
To make this world a battle field
It’s got a voice that steals the courage from the brave
And leaves a scar that will not heal
Unholy alliance
Unholy alliance
Don’t wanna hear the same old lie that spreads the fear
Only fools think it’s cool
We must be blind not to see the signs
How can we dare to look away in the wake of yesterday
Troubled times don’t turn your back to the lions
Troubled times just learn your lesson well
The party is over
We must be blind not to see the signs
How can we dare to look away in the wake of yesterday
Troubled times don’t turn your back to the lions
Troubled times just learn your lesson well
The party is over
Unholy alliance...
Astronauts recall view before Earth Day
This is a 'sunlit' view of Earth on Earth Day taken June 1,1996, during the flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour. NASA called it a 'sunburst' photo. Well, the sun doesn't look like it burst to me.
Some folks in the Executive Branch would like us to believe the sun is what is causing Human Induced Global Warming even after all the scientist in the world say otherwise and the Supreme Court of the USA has ruled carbon dioxide can be treated by the EPA as a gas to regulate because it effects human health.
It reminds me of the time when the entire United Nations Security Council with inspectors ON THE GROUND in Iraq stated, "There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" and Bush never listened. Interesting this administration CONTINUALLY has the same problem. Same problem with bringing home the troops. Same problem with having a vigorous diplomatic corp. Same problem with everything and everyone.
DO I SEE A PATTERN?
Let's see.
The Decider is always right !
A senior EU official urged the United States Friday to engage Iran in direct negotiations about its nuclear program and other issues to try to stabilize the Middle East.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security affairs chief, told an annual trans-Atlantic security conference he came away from two days of talks in Ankara with Iran's top nuclear negotiator this week believing that Ali Khameini, Iran's spiritual leader, was ready for direct talks with Washington.
"The United States must engage" with Iran, said Solana, who is to meet with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in Washington on Monday.
He said Washington's hostility toward Teheran only served to reinforce "a situation in which Iran is considered as a country that cannot be organized into some sort of dialogue."
The Boston Globe
Mass. steps up climate rules for developers
Pollution, traffic to be assessed
By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff
April 22, 2007
In a major change to Massachusetts environmental policy, private developers will now be required to estimate the greenhouse gases their large-scale projects will produce and reduce them with measures such as energy-efficient lighting, alternative fuels, or commuter shuttles.
Effective immediately, developers planning projects large enough to warrant a state environmental review will have to assess how the projects contribute to the pollution that leads to global warming, Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian A. Bowles told the Globe. Not only will the state look at direct emissions from smokestacks and heating with fossil fuels, but it will consider the indirect effect of thousands of workers driving to a new office park.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/mass_steps_up_climate_rules_for_developers/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Changing Climate for New England along the 45th Parrallel
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/climate_change/
A climate for growth
By Edward L. Glaeser
April 23, 2007
IN SOME places, April is a delightful month where cherry blossoms bloom in the warmth of spring. But not in Boston. As we watch northeasters chill marathon runners, global warming starts looking less like the environmental crisis that it is and more like a good regional development strategy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/23/a_climate_for_growth/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Japan PM to broach post-Kyoto cooperation with Bush
April 23, 2007
TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes to find ways in which the United States can cooperate on a post-Kyoto Protocol framework when he meets U.S. President George W. Bush later this week, the Japanese leader said on Monday.
A Japanese official said earlier that climate change and nuclear energy would be on the agenda when the two leaders meet during Abe's two-day visit to the United States from Thursday.
"An alliance is a relationship of trust and to show at home and abroad that this trust has been strengthened is in Japan's national interests," Abe said in a televised interview.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/04/23/japan_pm_to_broach_post_kyoto_cooperation_with_bush/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Reforms need enforcement
April 23, 2007
MISSED deadlines are rarely a good sign, but the US House task force charged with locking in high ethics standards, as embraced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, can claim success if it moves promptly to recommend strong enforcement, including a credible, independent voice.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/23/reforms_need_enforcement/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Calif. coalition aims to build surf reef
By Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
VENTURA, Calif. --Californians have created plenty of surf spots by accident with harbor jetties, power plant outflows and even drainage pipes. Creating one on purpose is proving more difficult.
In Ventura County, engineers want to build the nation's first successful artificial "surf reef" at a site known as Oil Piers, an accidentally created surfing hot spot that disappeared when a pier was demolished in 1998.
Surfers hope the project will revive the waves at what had been one of the most reliable surf spots on a strikingly picturesque stretch of the Southern California coast.
Environmentalists say the reef is needed to stop massive erosion eating away at the beach.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/23/calif_coalition_aims_to_build_surf_reef/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Kulongoski aims to protect water network
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press Writer
April 20, 2007
GRANTS PASS, Ore. --Inspired by California's expansion of marine reserves, Gov. Ted Kulongoski has put aside a proposal to nominate the entire Oregon Coast as a national marine sanctuary, and wants to protect a smaller network of state waters instead.
In a letter this week to the Ocean Policy Advisory Committee, Kulongoski said he had watched "with interest" California's recent designation of 29 new marine reserves, and asked the panel to recommend places to protect within Oregon's three-mile limit and a process for that considers the desires of the public and state and federal agencies.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/04/20/kulongoski_aims_to_protect_water_network/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Carpooling gets a new dash of green
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff April 23, 2007
CAMBRIDGE -- Robin Chase tried to transform the concept of car ownership seven years ago when she cofounded Zipcar Inc., the world's largest car-sharing company. Her newest venture fuses social networking and ride-sharing , aiming to change the way people think about car travel altogether.
GoLoco.org is part high-tech college ride board and part social calendar, with a dash of environmental conscience. The online service -- which went live yesterday, Earth Day -- brokers trips between friends, neighbors, and strangers, then automatically divvies up the cost, the seats in the car, and the carbon dioxide emissions.
"GoLoco: It means go loco -- go crazy, go free-spirited. Go location to location with local transportation. Go low cost. Go low carbon dioxide," Chase said.
http://www.boston.com/cars/news/articles/2007/04/23/carpooling_gets_a_new_dash_of_green/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Boston to plant 100,000 trees over 13 years
April 28, 2007
BOSTON --Boston plans to plant 100,000 trees over the next 13 years, with an emphasis on greening some of the city's least green neighborhoods.
City leaders say more trees will lower summer temperatures, absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water runoff from the ground, and improve the psychological health of city residents.
Mayor Thomas Menino told The Boston Globe that the plan would bring the tree coverage to more than one-third of all city land. He said Boston will partner with the U.S. Forest Service to designate the city an "urban experimental forest," where researchers will study the effects of trees on urban populations.
"There's no downside to having more trees," Menino said. "They bring people together and give people pride in their neighborhood."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/04/28/boston_to_plant_100000_trees_over_13_years/
On climate, a lack of leadership
April 22, 2007
THE DIFFERENT planet Earth that humankind is creating through global warming will be a much less habitable place for those living near the equator. But droughts, flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, violent storms, and species extinction will hit areas all over the globe, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
While human ingenuity will mitigate some of the worst effects, nations must agree quickly on measures to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. No meaningful agreement will take shape, though, unless the two biggest sources of carbon dioxide, the United States and China, stop sitting on the sidelines in the effort to limit emissions.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/22/on_climate_a_lack_of_leadership/
East Timor drowns in language soup
By Ahmad Pathoni April 22, 2007
DILI (Reuters) - Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation.
The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5 percent of its one million people now speak the European language.
After Lisbon cut the territory free, East Timor was occupied by neighboring Indonesia for 24 years before gaining full independence in 2002.
Under Indonesian rule, Portuguese was suppressed and speakers of the language now mostly come from the political elite or are older people educated in the colonial era.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/04/22/east_timor_drowns_in_language_soup/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Syria holds tightly controlled election
By Zeina Karam, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
DAMASCUS, Syria --Syrians voted Monday in a tightly controlled election to pick a new legislature, a vote President Bashar Assad hopes can consolidate his rule, soften his regime's authoritarian image and ease its international isolation.
The result of the election, which under the constitution guarantees the ruling Baath Party and its allies a two-thirds majority, was not expected before Wednesday. But there was no doubt about the outcome.
A priority facing the rubber-stamp parliament is approving the Baath's nomination of Assad for a second seven-year term in office. The president is expected to easily win a July referendum.
A dose of democracy, however limited, could serve to boost Assad's standing at home as he tries to soften Syria's hard-line image and ease its international isolation after being shunned by U.S. and European officials over policies in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/04/23/syrians_vote_for_new_parliament/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Man and woman shot at luxury hotel
By Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. --A man and a woman were killed at a luxury oceanfront resort when police fired into their bungalow after they refused to drop a handgun, authorities said.
Police were called Sunday to the Montage Resort and Spa by a security guard who said a man and a woman were engaged in a domestic dispute, said police Sgt. Jason Kravetz.
"It may not have been domestic violence, but that's how we were called to the scene," Kravetz said. "Usually in a domestic violence (case) the woman doesn't go out and try to shoot at other people."
Several 911 callers said a naked woman was running around the hotel waving a gun, authorities said. She was distraught and periodically threatened people with the gun, Kravetz said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/23/man_and_woman_shot_at_luxury_hotel/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Congress hesitant on legislation
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Despite calls for legislative action in the wake of last week's massacre at Virginia Tech, Democratic congressional leaders have no plans to bring up major gun control bills for votes, and supporters of stricter gun laws concede that significant gun legislation is highly unlikely to get serious consideration this year.
Democratic leaders, mindful of political damage their party has sustained in the past for seeking to crack down on guns, are hesitant to push for high-profile gun bills, such as mandating trigger locks or renewing the federal assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004.
Though Democrats are generally more supportive of gun control than Republicans, the gun issue splits the country more along regional and cultural lines than by political party. Indeed, Democrats won control of the House and Senate last year only with the election of Democrats from gun-friendly states including Virginia, Indiana, Kansas, and North Carolina.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/congress_hesitant_on_legislation/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Mayor's plan on guns appears to miss mark
Little impact seen for taking licenses
By Michael Naughton and Hailey Heinz, Globe Correspondents April 23, 2007
With gun violence in Boston up sharply in recent years, one of Mayor Thomas M. Menino's top legislative priorities this year would strip convicted gun offenders of their right to drive for up to five years.
Menino, however, wants to take away something that very few gun offenders have, according to a Globe analysis of more than 100 gun convictions last year and state Registry of Motor Vehicles records of those offenders.
Of the 119 gun offenders convicted in Suffolk County last year whose records were reviewed, 79 have already had their driver's licenses revoked or suspended for other reasons, for offenses from selling drugs near schools to repeatedly failing to appear in court on traffic violations.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/23/mayors_plan_on_guns_appears_to_miss_mark/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Man subdued by stun gun, dies
April 23, 2007
HAMDEN, Conn. --A 26-year-old man subdued with a stun gun after police say he was raging out of control, died about an hour after a Hamden officer used the Taser, police said.
David Mills was talking about demons, speaking incoherently and told police he was high on drugs when they found him on Helen Street early Saturday, police said.
Officers found Mills fighting on the ground with his friend, Adrian Teddington, police said. Police tried to intervene by separating the two, but Mills resisted by kicking, punching and biting officers, so they called for medical assistance and hit Mills with the Taser.
An autopsy was performed Sunday on Mills at the chief medical examiners office, according to Hamden police Capt. Ronald Smith.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2007/04/23/man_subdued_by_stun_gun_dies/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Campus police renew call to carry arms
Va. Tech slayings rekindle debate
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
Campus police at several Boston-area colleges are renewing calls to be allowed to carry arms in the aftermath of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech.
Brandeis University, which has rejected calls to arm its police in the past, has agreed to reconsider the idea. Framingham State College officials are talking about it, and students at Suffolk University are circulating a petition calling for an armed force.
The majority of campus police departments in the nation's four year colleges, including Virginia Tech's, are already armed, but officials at some small colleges for years have staunchly opposed the idea even as their police have requested arms. The big schools in Massachusetts, including Boston University, Northeastern, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and all five campuses of the University of Massachusetts, have armed police. Most colleges in the State College system also have armed police forces.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/campus_police_renew_call_to_carry_arms/
Teens face weapons, drug charges in Concord
April 28, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --Two teenage boys face weapons and drug charges after officers found drugs, alcohol and two handguns in their car this week. One of the weapons had been stolen from a Deerfield police officer's home a day earlier, police said.
Sean Miller, 17, of Concord, and a 16-year-old passenger in Miller's car were charged with possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle, receiving stolen property and drug possession.
Miller also was charged with transporting alcohol as a minor and the 16-year-old, whose name wasn't released, also was charged with carrying a loaded handgun without a license, possessing property without a serial number and drug possession with intent to distribute.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/04/28/teens_face_weapons_drug_charges_in_concord/
FBI director pledges help
Focus on gang violence
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said he pledged the bureau's help in cracking down on gang violence throughout the state during a meeting yesterday with Massachusetts State Police Colonel Mark F. Delaney.
"What is clear is that we have to work together to address the problem," Mueller told the Globe yesterday. Mueller said FBI officials in Boston have been meeting regularly with Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis and other law enforcement officials about tapping more federal resources to target gangs and deal with an increase in homicides.
" My own view is we ought to do whatever we can" to help law enforcement lower the homicide rate "because of the dramatic impact on a community from violent crime," Mueller said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/fbi_director_pledges_help/
Correction system 'mess' held inmates past their time
Man imprisoned four years too long
By Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff April 22, 2007
As Rommel Jones sat praying in the middle of his prison cell on a chilly spring evening two years ago, he was certain he heard a soothing voice that carried buoyant news.
You're going home tomorrow, it told him.
After intermittent prison sentences that stretched back into the 1980s, when he was a thief battling drug addiction and mental illness, he was eager to pack up. And when morning broke, he politely greeted his jailers at the medium security prison in Shirley.
"I'm leaving today," he recalls telling them. "My sentence is over."
Instead, Jones was whisked out of his cell and placed on a mental health watch at the adjacent maximum security prison for two weeks.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/correction_system_mess_held_inmates_past_their_time/
'Pay-as-you-go' threatens Dems' agenda
By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON --No tax cuts and no benefit increases that require government borrowing!
That vow by Democrats upon taking control of Congress has now slowed their own agenda, beginning with efforts to increase the minimum wage and cut interest rates on student loans.
Other Democratic promises also are in peril because Democrats revived the pay-as-you-go -- or pay-go, for short -- rule that prevailed during Bill Clinton's presidency and helped produce surpluses instead of deficits on the government's books. Among them are boosting health care for poor children, reforming a hidden middle-class tax increase and easing scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.
Under the pay-go regimen, legislation to cut taxes or boost federal benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid or a health insurance program for low-income children must be "paid for" with tax increases or other benefit cuts. Issuing government bonds to cover the costs is forbidden.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/pay_as_you_go_threatens_agenda/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Democrats challenge Bush on Iraq bill
By David Espo, AP Special Correspondent
April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON --A historic veto showdown assured, Democratic leaders agreed Monday on legislation that requires the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.
"No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration's incompetence and dishonesty," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a speech in which he accused the president of living in a state of denial about events in Iraq more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Bush, confident of enough votes to sustain his veto, was unambiguous in his response. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," he told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with his top Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/reid_bush_in_denial_over_war_in_iraq/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Amid tensions, US, Iran both give lift to Afghanistan city
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
April 23, 2007
HERAT, Afghanistan -- When the US government wanted to show its friendship here after the Taliban fell, it brought fuel to run the generators at the local hospital. When neighboring Iran wanted to show its friendship, it brought electricity to the entire city.
Today, Herat -- just 75 miles from the Iranian border -- is the only place in Afghanistan with power 24 hours a day, impeccably paved highways, and plans for a railroad. Even US officials acknowledge that this stunning progress occurred mostly thanks to Iran.
As tension mounts over Iran's nuclear ambitions and alleged support for militants in Iraq, Afghanistan offers the greatest chance for cooperation between Washington and Tehran. But it also stands the greatest risk of becoming the next battlefield.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/04/23/amid_tensions_us_iran_both_give_lift_to_afghanistan_city/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Cervical cancer vaccine in demand in N.H.
April 23, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --New Hampshire has no plans to accelerate its free distribution of the new cervical cancer vaccine despite high demand, a public health official said Monday.
"We expected all along there would be an initial demand, but there is a finite amount of resources," said Greg Moore, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services. "This program is going to take a significant part of our budget over the next four years."
New Hampshire was the first state to approve free distribution of Gardisil, which protects girls against four strains of a sexually transmitted infection called human papillomavirus, or HPV.
But four months into the program, doctors offices say demand, stimulated by advertising, has led to waiting lists and some soul-searching about who should get the shots first.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/04/23/nh_doctors_demand_high_for_cervical_cancer_vaccine/?p1=email_to_a_friend
FDA rejects Vioxx-like painkiller
Critics say drug faced higher bar on safety
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration yesterday rejected Merck & Co.'s new Vioxx-like painkiller because of some of the same heart concerns that pushed the blockbuster from the market.
Merck has invested millions of dollars to conduct more extensive clinical trials than any rival seeking to sell a similar painkiller . And it now must decide whether to invest millions more in Arcoxia to satisfy the FDA's heightened safety concerns. Peter S. Kim , Merck Research Laboratories president who just months ago hinted at seeking FDA approval to return Vioxx to the market, said the company is "disappointed" by the decision.
Daniel Troy , former FDA chief counsel , said the agency's higher standards for Arcoxia's approval represent "a major departure" from past practice. The FDA approves drugs that are proven safe and effective, but it cannot require manufacturers to demonstrate those therapies are more safe or more effective than available treatments.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/04/28/fda_rejects_vioxx_like_painkiller/
Testing Harvard
The federal government wants to start tracking how well the nation's colleges teach. This could spur some of the biggest changes campuses have seen in decades -- and perhaps threaten the very idea of a liberal education.
By Linda K. Wertheimer April 22, 2007
With neon green and purple chairs in tiered rows, the auditorium in Harvard's science center looks like a stadium theater. But the physics professor at the front of the room, Eric Mazur, takes pains not to behave like a sage on the stage.
Rather than lecture, he flashes questions on a movie-sized screen and asks the roughly 125 students to input their answers in hand-held devices. Then, their responses pour into his computer, and he sees an immediate answer to a question that many professors rarely ask: At $43,655 for tuition, room, and board, are Harvard students getting their money's worth?
Mazur is a pioneer in a growing movement that sees more aggressive evaluation as a way to transform higher education. Professors like Mazur have been experimenting with the idea for a decade. But over the last two years, an increasing number of colleges and universities, including Harvard, have begun using critical thinking and writing tests to see if their students are learning what they should. And now the federal government is pushing to require all colleges to regularly assess students' progress -- and reveal the results to the public.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/04/22/testing_harvard/
MANDATORY HEALTH INSURANCE THE FIRST YEAR
Progress and perils
Thousands more in state have coverage under ambitious program, but challenges lie ahead over funding and getting message out to all
By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff April 22, 2007
Massachusetts has made a strong start toward ensuring that all state residents have health insurance, but it faces major obstacles as it seeks to achieve the full promise of landmark legislation signed into law a year ago, according to more than a dozen analysts, policy makers, and advocates.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/progress_and_perils/
As US lags, economy in Mass. soars
First quarter growth 4 times national rate
By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
The Massachusetts economy surged in the first quarter, nearly quadrupling the national growth rate and recalling the technology-driven expansion of the 1990s.
The state's economy grew at a 4.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest pace in nearly 7 years, according to a report yesterday from the University of Massachusetts. The US economy grew at a 1.3 percent rate, its worst performance since early 2003, the Commerce Department said.
These reports represent a dramatic reversal. For most of the past few years, Massachusetts lagged the nation as the state's economy slowly shed the effects of the technology bust that began around 2001.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/as_us_lags_economy_in_mass_soars/
Mass. House approves $26.9 billion budget
Plan reaches further into state's reserves
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
The House adopted a $26.9 billion budget yesterday that dips further into reserves to add $175 million in spending -- including millions for Medicaid, anti gang initiatives, and economic development -- to the initial blueprint it released earlier this month.
Approved after a week of mostly private deliberations, the House budget gives a bit more deference to Governor Deval Patrick's high-profile proposals than the House Ways and Means Committee did, adding more money for extended learning time in schools, tobacco cessation, and community policing.
The governor's office said in a statement released yesterday afternoon that it was "pleased that there was some positive movement on some of the governor's priorities."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/mass_house_approves_269_billion_budget/
Patrick intervenes in loan crisis
Officials will speak with lenders to help at-risk homeowners
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
Governor Deval Patrick yesterday directed state banking officials to intervene on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosure by negotiating on ways to save their homes with their lenders.
Patrick's instruction was delivered after a protest at his State House office Thursday by financially troubled homeowners whose houses are scheduled to be auctioned off in coming days by lenders that have foreclosed on the delinquent loans and seized the property.
Banking Commissioner Steven Antonakes said his agency already has secured 60- to 90-day freezes on the foreclosure process from lenders on behalf of 11 of the protesters, and his office is waiting to hear from others who also filed complaints about their situation during the protest Thursday.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/04/28/patrick_intervenes_in_loan_crisis/
Hedging disaster
By Robert Kuttner April 28, 2007
THIS PAST WEEK, even jaded observers of Wall Street were startled to learn that last year's top hedge fund manager, James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, made $1.7 billion in 2006. Alpha Magazine reported that the top 25 hedge fund earners garnered an average of $570 million in 2006, up from $362 million in 2005.
The burgeoning hedge fund and private equity industries are both a cause and a symptom of a dangerously lopsided America. Because they are private (not listed on stock exchanges or offering shares to the public), these funds do not have to disclose their inner workings to regulators or to the public. Yet these unregulated funds are increasingly buying and selling some of our largest corporations, stripping assets, piling on debt, leaving employees and subsequent buyers to dig out of a deep hole.
The difference between hedge funds (unregulated mutual fund s for very wealthy individuals) and private equity (privately held firms that buy and sell entire companies) is collapsing, creating an unregulated sector of wild-west financial engineering rife with conflicts of interest.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/28/hedging_disaster/
POW/MIA families find hope as US presses for answers
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
April 22, 2007
When she was 8 years old, Mary Hagan answered the door at her home in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston. A Marine in full dress uniform told her family that her brother, Second Lieutenant Norman F. Whittredge, was missing in action. His Corsair fighter plane, hit by antiaircraft fire over the Amami islands between Okinawa and mainland Japan, had disappeared.
Sixty-two years later, Hagan, now a mother of six and grandmother of 10, is still hoping her brother's remains are found.
"I hope they bring him home," Hagan, 70, said, fingering her brother's Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Air Medal in the living room of her Needham home. "I hope we get to bury him in this country. I think we've waited long enough."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/powmia_families_find_hope_as_us_presses_for_answers/
continued …
Mass. steps up climate rules for developers
Pollution, traffic to be assessed
By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff
April 22, 2007
In a major change to Massachusetts environmental policy, private developers will now be required to estimate the greenhouse gases their large-scale projects will produce and reduce them with measures such as energy-efficient lighting, alternative fuels, or commuter shuttles.
Effective immediately, developers planning projects large enough to warrant a state environmental review will have to assess how the projects contribute to the pollution that leads to global warming, Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian A. Bowles told the Globe. Not only will the state look at direct emissions from smokestacks and heating with fossil fuels, but it will consider the indirect effect of thousands of workers driving to a new office park.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/mass_steps_up_climate_rules_for_developers/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Changing Climate for New England along the 45th Parrallel
http://www.boston.com/news/specials/climate_change/
A climate for growth
By Edward L. Glaeser
April 23, 2007
IN SOME places, April is a delightful month where cherry blossoms bloom in the warmth of spring. But not in Boston. As we watch northeasters chill marathon runners, global warming starts looking less like the environmental crisis that it is and more like a good regional development strategy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/23/a_climate_for_growth/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Japan PM to broach post-Kyoto cooperation with Bush
April 23, 2007
TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes to find ways in which the United States can cooperate on a post-Kyoto Protocol framework when he meets U.S. President George W. Bush later this week, the Japanese leader said on Monday.
A Japanese official said earlier that climate change and nuclear energy would be on the agenda when the two leaders meet during Abe's two-day visit to the United States from Thursday.
"An alliance is a relationship of trust and to show at home and abroad that this trust has been strengthened is in Japan's national interests," Abe said in a televised interview.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/04/23/japan_pm_to_broach_post_kyoto_cooperation_with_bush/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Reforms need enforcement
April 23, 2007
MISSED deadlines are rarely a good sign, but the US House task force charged with locking in high ethics standards, as embraced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, can claim success if it moves promptly to recommend strong enforcement, including a credible, independent voice.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/23/reforms_need_enforcement/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Calif. coalition aims to build surf reef
By Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
VENTURA, Calif. --Californians have created plenty of surf spots by accident with harbor jetties, power plant outflows and even drainage pipes. Creating one on purpose is proving more difficult.
In Ventura County, engineers want to build the nation's first successful artificial "surf reef" at a site known as Oil Piers, an accidentally created surfing hot spot that disappeared when a pier was demolished in 1998.
Surfers hope the project will revive the waves at what had been one of the most reliable surf spots on a strikingly picturesque stretch of the Southern California coast.
Environmentalists say the reef is needed to stop massive erosion eating away at the beach.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/23/calif_coalition_aims_to_build_surf_reef/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Kulongoski aims to protect water network
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press Writer
April 20, 2007
GRANTS PASS, Ore. --Inspired by California's expansion of marine reserves, Gov. Ted Kulongoski has put aside a proposal to nominate the entire Oregon Coast as a national marine sanctuary, and wants to protect a smaller network of state waters instead.
In a letter this week to the Ocean Policy Advisory Committee, Kulongoski said he had watched "with interest" California's recent designation of 29 new marine reserves, and asked the panel to recommend places to protect within Oregon's three-mile limit and a process for that considers the desires of the public and state and federal agencies.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/04/20/kulongoski_aims_to_protect_water_network/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Carpooling gets a new dash of green
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff April 23, 2007
CAMBRIDGE -- Robin Chase tried to transform the concept of car ownership seven years ago when she cofounded Zipcar Inc., the world's largest car-sharing company. Her newest venture fuses social networking and ride-sharing , aiming to change the way people think about car travel altogether.
GoLoco.org is part high-tech college ride board and part social calendar, with a dash of environmental conscience. The online service -- which went live yesterday, Earth Day -- brokers trips between friends, neighbors, and strangers, then automatically divvies up the cost, the seats in the car, and the carbon dioxide emissions.
"GoLoco: It means go loco -- go crazy, go free-spirited. Go location to location with local transportation. Go low cost. Go low carbon dioxide," Chase said.
http://www.boston.com/cars/news/articles/2007/04/23/carpooling_gets_a_new_dash_of_green/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Boston to plant 100,000 trees over 13 years
April 28, 2007
BOSTON --Boston plans to plant 100,000 trees over the next 13 years, with an emphasis on greening some of the city's least green neighborhoods.
City leaders say more trees will lower summer temperatures, absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water runoff from the ground, and improve the psychological health of city residents.
Mayor Thomas Menino told The Boston Globe that the plan would bring the tree coverage to more than one-third of all city land. He said Boston will partner with the U.S. Forest Service to designate the city an "urban experimental forest," where researchers will study the effects of trees on urban populations.
"There's no downside to having more trees," Menino said. "They bring people together and give people pride in their neighborhood."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/04/28/boston_to_plant_100000_trees_over_13_years/
On climate, a lack of leadership
April 22, 2007
THE DIFFERENT planet Earth that humankind is creating through global warming will be a much less habitable place for those living near the equator. But droughts, flooding, extreme heat, wildfires, violent storms, and species extinction will hit areas all over the globe, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
While human ingenuity will mitigate some of the worst effects, nations must agree quickly on measures to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. No meaningful agreement will take shape, though, unless the two biggest sources of carbon dioxide, the United States and China, stop sitting on the sidelines in the effort to limit emissions.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/22/on_climate_a_lack_of_leadership/
East Timor drowns in language soup
By Ahmad Pathoni April 22, 2007
DILI (Reuters) - Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation.
The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5 percent of its one million people now speak the European language.
After Lisbon cut the territory free, East Timor was occupied by neighboring Indonesia for 24 years before gaining full independence in 2002.
Under Indonesian rule, Portuguese was suppressed and speakers of the language now mostly come from the political elite or are older people educated in the colonial era.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/04/22/east_timor_drowns_in_language_soup/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Syria holds tightly controlled election
By Zeina Karam, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
DAMASCUS, Syria --Syrians voted Monday in a tightly controlled election to pick a new legislature, a vote President Bashar Assad hopes can consolidate his rule, soften his regime's authoritarian image and ease its international isolation.
The result of the election, which under the constitution guarantees the ruling Baath Party and its allies a two-thirds majority, was not expected before Wednesday. But there was no doubt about the outcome.
A priority facing the rubber-stamp parliament is approving the Baath's nomination of Assad for a second seven-year term in office. The president is expected to easily win a July referendum.
A dose of democracy, however limited, could serve to boost Assad's standing at home as he tries to soften Syria's hard-line image and ease its international isolation after being shunned by U.S. and European officials over policies in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/04/23/syrians_vote_for_new_parliament/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Man and woman shot at luxury hotel
By Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press Writer April 23, 2007
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. --A man and a woman were killed at a luxury oceanfront resort when police fired into their bungalow after they refused to drop a handgun, authorities said.
Police were called Sunday to the Montage Resort and Spa by a security guard who said a man and a woman were engaged in a domestic dispute, said police Sgt. Jason Kravetz.
"It may not have been domestic violence, but that's how we were called to the scene," Kravetz said. "Usually in a domestic violence (case) the woman doesn't go out and try to shoot at other people."
Several 911 callers said a naked woman was running around the hotel waving a gun, authorities said. She was distraught and periodically threatened people with the gun, Kravetz said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/04/23/man_and_woman_shot_at_luxury_hotel/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Congress hesitant on legislation
By Rick Klein, Globe Staff April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Despite calls for legislative action in the wake of last week's massacre at Virginia Tech, Democratic congressional leaders have no plans to bring up major gun control bills for votes, and supporters of stricter gun laws concede that significant gun legislation is highly unlikely to get serious consideration this year.
Democratic leaders, mindful of political damage their party has sustained in the past for seeking to crack down on guns, are hesitant to push for high-profile gun bills, such as mandating trigger locks or renewing the federal assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004.
Though Democrats are generally more supportive of gun control than Republicans, the gun issue splits the country more along regional and cultural lines than by political party. Indeed, Democrats won control of the House and Senate last year only with the election of Democrats from gun-friendly states including Virginia, Indiana, Kansas, and North Carolina.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/congress_hesitant_on_legislation/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Mayor's plan on guns appears to miss mark
Little impact seen for taking licenses
By Michael Naughton and Hailey Heinz, Globe Correspondents April 23, 2007
With gun violence in Boston up sharply in recent years, one of Mayor Thomas M. Menino's top legislative priorities this year would strip convicted gun offenders of their right to drive for up to five years.
Menino, however, wants to take away something that very few gun offenders have, according to a Globe analysis of more than 100 gun convictions last year and state Registry of Motor Vehicles records of those offenders.
Of the 119 gun offenders convicted in Suffolk County last year whose records were reviewed, 79 have already had their driver's licenses revoked or suspended for other reasons, for offenses from selling drugs near schools to repeatedly failing to appear in court on traffic violations.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/23/mayors_plan_on_guns_appears_to_miss_mark/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Man subdued by stun gun, dies
April 23, 2007
HAMDEN, Conn. --A 26-year-old man subdued with a stun gun after police say he was raging out of control, died about an hour after a Hamden officer used the Taser, police said.
David Mills was talking about demons, speaking incoherently and told police he was high on drugs when they found him on Helen Street early Saturday, police said.
Officers found Mills fighting on the ground with his friend, Adrian Teddington, police said. Police tried to intervene by separating the two, but Mills resisted by kicking, punching and biting officers, so they called for medical assistance and hit Mills with the Taser.
An autopsy was performed Sunday on Mills at the chief medical examiners office, according to Hamden police Capt. Ronald Smith.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2007/04/23/man_subdued_by_stun_gun_dies/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Campus police renew call to carry arms
Va. Tech slayings rekindle debate
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
Campus police at several Boston-area colleges are renewing calls to be allowed to carry arms in the aftermath of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech.
Brandeis University, which has rejected calls to arm its police in the past, has agreed to reconsider the idea. Framingham State College officials are talking about it, and students at Suffolk University are circulating a petition calling for an armed force.
The majority of campus police departments in the nation's four year colleges, including Virginia Tech's, are already armed, but officials at some small colleges for years have staunchly opposed the idea even as their police have requested arms. The big schools in Massachusetts, including Boston University, Northeastern, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, and all five campuses of the University of Massachusetts, have armed police. Most colleges in the State College system also have armed police forces.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/campus_police_renew_call_to_carry_arms/
Teens face weapons, drug charges in Concord
April 28, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --Two teenage boys face weapons and drug charges after officers found drugs, alcohol and two handguns in their car this week. One of the weapons had been stolen from a Deerfield police officer's home a day earlier, police said.
Sean Miller, 17, of Concord, and a 16-year-old passenger in Miller's car were charged with possessing a loaded firearm in a vehicle, receiving stolen property and drug possession.
Miller also was charged with transporting alcohol as a minor and the 16-year-old, whose name wasn't released, also was charged with carrying a loaded handgun without a license, possessing property without a serial number and drug possession with intent to distribute.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/04/28/teens_face_weapons_drug_charges_in_concord/
FBI director pledges help
Focus on gang violence
By Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said he pledged the bureau's help in cracking down on gang violence throughout the state during a meeting yesterday with Massachusetts State Police Colonel Mark F. Delaney.
"What is clear is that we have to work together to address the problem," Mueller told the Globe yesterday. Mueller said FBI officials in Boston have been meeting regularly with Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis and other law enforcement officials about tapping more federal resources to target gangs and deal with an increase in homicides.
" My own view is we ought to do whatever we can" to help law enforcement lower the homicide rate "because of the dramatic impact on a community from violent crime," Mueller said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/fbi_director_pledges_help/
Correction system 'mess' held inmates past their time
Man imprisoned four years too long
By Thomas Farragher, Globe Staff April 22, 2007
As Rommel Jones sat praying in the middle of his prison cell on a chilly spring evening two years ago, he was certain he heard a soothing voice that carried buoyant news.
You're going home tomorrow, it told him.
After intermittent prison sentences that stretched back into the 1980s, when he was a thief battling drug addiction and mental illness, he was eager to pack up. And when morning broke, he politely greeted his jailers at the medium security prison in Shirley.
"I'm leaving today," he recalls telling them. "My sentence is over."
Instead, Jones was whisked out of his cell and placed on a mental health watch at the adjacent maximum security prison for two weeks.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/correction_system_mess_held_inmates_past_their_time/
'Pay-as-you-go' threatens Dems' agenda
By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Writer
April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON --No tax cuts and no benefit increases that require government borrowing!
That vow by Democrats upon taking control of Congress has now slowed their own agenda, beginning with efforts to increase the minimum wage and cut interest rates on student loans.
Other Democratic promises also are in peril because Democrats revived the pay-as-you-go -- or pay-go, for short -- rule that prevailed during Bill Clinton's presidency and helped produce surpluses instead of deficits on the government's books. Among them are boosting health care for poor children, reforming a hidden middle-class tax increase and easing scheduled cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.
Under the pay-go regimen, legislation to cut taxes or boost federal benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid or a health insurance program for low-income children must be "paid for" with tax increases or other benefit cuts. Issuing government bonds to cover the costs is forbidden.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/pay_as_you_go_threatens_agenda/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Democrats challenge Bush on Iraq bill
By David Espo, AP Special Correspondent
April 23, 2007
WASHINGTON --A historic veto showdown assured, Democratic leaders agreed Monday on legislation that requires the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.
"No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration's incompetence and dishonesty," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a speech in which he accused the president of living in a state of denial about events in Iraq more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Bush, confident of enough votes to sustain his veto, was unambiguous in his response. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," he told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with his top Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/04/23/reid_bush_in_denial_over_war_in_iraq/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Amid tensions, US, Iran both give lift to Afghanistan city
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
April 23, 2007
HERAT, Afghanistan -- When the US government wanted to show its friendship here after the Taliban fell, it brought fuel to run the generators at the local hospital. When neighboring Iran wanted to show its friendship, it brought electricity to the entire city.
Today, Herat -- just 75 miles from the Iranian border -- is the only place in Afghanistan with power 24 hours a day, impeccably paved highways, and plans for a railroad. Even US officials acknowledge that this stunning progress occurred mostly thanks to Iran.
As tension mounts over Iran's nuclear ambitions and alleged support for militants in Iraq, Afghanistan offers the greatest chance for cooperation between Washington and Tehran. But it also stands the greatest risk of becoming the next battlefield.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/04/23/amid_tensions_us_iran_both_give_lift_to_afghanistan_city/?p1=email_to_a_friend
Cervical cancer vaccine in demand in N.H.
April 23, 2007
CONCORD, N.H. --New Hampshire has no plans to accelerate its free distribution of the new cervical cancer vaccine despite high demand, a public health official said Monday.
"We expected all along there would be an initial demand, but there is a finite amount of resources," said Greg Moore, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services. "This program is going to take a significant part of our budget over the next four years."
New Hampshire was the first state to approve free distribution of Gardisil, which protects girls against four strains of a sexually transmitted infection called human papillomavirus, or HPV.
But four months into the program, doctors offices say demand, stimulated by advertising, has led to waiting lists and some soul-searching about who should get the shots first.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/04/23/nh_doctors_demand_high_for_cervical_cancer_vaccine/?p1=email_to_a_friend
FDA rejects Vioxx-like painkiller
Critics say drug faced higher bar on safety
By Diedtra Henderson, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration yesterday rejected Merck & Co.'s new Vioxx-like painkiller because of some of the same heart concerns that pushed the blockbuster from the market.
Merck has invested millions of dollars to conduct more extensive clinical trials than any rival seeking to sell a similar painkiller . And it now must decide whether to invest millions more in Arcoxia to satisfy the FDA's heightened safety concerns. Peter S. Kim , Merck Research Laboratories president who just months ago hinted at seeking FDA approval to return Vioxx to the market, said the company is "disappointed" by the decision.
Daniel Troy , former FDA chief counsel , said the agency's higher standards for Arcoxia's approval represent "a major departure" from past practice. The FDA approves drugs that are proven safe and effective, but it cannot require manufacturers to demonstrate those therapies are more safe or more effective than available treatments.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/04/28/fda_rejects_vioxx_like_painkiller/
Testing Harvard
The federal government wants to start tracking how well the nation's colleges teach. This could spur some of the biggest changes campuses have seen in decades -- and perhaps threaten the very idea of a liberal education.
By Linda K. Wertheimer April 22, 2007
With neon green and purple chairs in tiered rows, the auditorium in Harvard's science center looks like a stadium theater. But the physics professor at the front of the room, Eric Mazur, takes pains not to behave like a sage on the stage.
Rather than lecture, he flashes questions on a movie-sized screen and asks the roughly 125 students to input their answers in hand-held devices. Then, their responses pour into his computer, and he sees an immediate answer to a question that many professors rarely ask: At $43,655 for tuition, room, and board, are Harvard students getting their money's worth?
Mazur is a pioneer in a growing movement that sees more aggressive evaluation as a way to transform higher education. Professors like Mazur have been experimenting with the idea for a decade. But over the last two years, an increasing number of colleges and universities, including Harvard, have begun using critical thinking and writing tests to see if their students are learning what they should. And now the federal government is pushing to require all colleges to regularly assess students' progress -- and reveal the results to the public.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/04/22/testing_harvard/
MANDATORY HEALTH INSURANCE THE FIRST YEAR
Progress and perils
Thousands more in state have coverage under ambitious program, but challenges lie ahead over funding and getting message out to all
By Alice Dembner, Globe Staff April 22, 2007
Massachusetts has made a strong start toward ensuring that all state residents have health insurance, but it faces major obstacles as it seeks to achieve the full promise of landmark legislation signed into law a year ago, according to more than a dozen analysts, policy makers, and advocates.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/progress_and_perils/
As US lags, economy in Mass. soars
First quarter growth 4 times national rate
By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
The Massachusetts economy surged in the first quarter, nearly quadrupling the national growth rate and recalling the technology-driven expansion of the 1990s.
The state's economy grew at a 4.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest pace in nearly 7 years, according to a report yesterday from the University of Massachusetts. The US economy grew at a 1.3 percent rate, its worst performance since early 2003, the Commerce Department said.
These reports represent a dramatic reversal. For most of the past few years, Massachusetts lagged the nation as the state's economy slowly shed the effects of the technology bust that began around 2001.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/as_us_lags_economy_in_mass_soars/
Mass. House approves $26.9 billion budget
Plan reaches further into state's reserves
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
The House adopted a $26.9 billion budget yesterday that dips further into reserves to add $175 million in spending -- including millions for Medicaid, anti gang initiatives, and economic development -- to the initial blueprint it released earlier this month.
Approved after a week of mostly private deliberations, the House budget gives a bit more deference to Governor Deval Patrick's high-profile proposals than the House Ways and Means Committee did, adding more money for extended learning time in schools, tobacco cessation, and community policing.
The governor's office said in a statement released yesterday afternoon that it was "pleased that there was some positive movement on some of the governor's priorities."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/28/mass_house_approves_269_billion_budget/
Patrick intervenes in loan crisis
Officials will speak with lenders to help at-risk homeowners
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff April 28, 2007
Governor Deval Patrick yesterday directed state banking officials to intervene on behalf of homeowners facing foreclosure by negotiating on ways to save their homes with their lenders.
Patrick's instruction was delivered after a protest at his State House office Thursday by financially troubled homeowners whose houses are scheduled to be auctioned off in coming days by lenders that have foreclosed on the delinquent loans and seized the property.
Banking Commissioner Steven Antonakes said his agency already has secured 60- to 90-day freezes on the foreclosure process from lenders on behalf of 11 of the protesters, and his office is waiting to hear from others who also filed complaints about their situation during the protest Thursday.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/04/28/patrick_intervenes_in_loan_crisis/
Hedging disaster
By Robert Kuttner April 28, 2007
THIS PAST WEEK, even jaded observers of Wall Street were startled to learn that last year's top hedge fund manager, James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, made $1.7 billion in 2006. Alpha Magazine reported that the top 25 hedge fund earners garnered an average of $570 million in 2006, up from $362 million in 2005.
The burgeoning hedge fund and private equity industries are both a cause and a symptom of a dangerously lopsided America. Because they are private (not listed on stock exchanges or offering shares to the public), these funds do not have to disclose their inner workings to regulators or to the public. Yet these unregulated funds are increasingly buying and selling some of our largest corporations, stripping assets, piling on debt, leaving employees and subsequent buyers to dig out of a deep hole.
The difference between hedge funds (unregulated mutual fund s for very wealthy individuals) and private equity (privately held firms that buy and sell entire companies) is collapsing, creating an unregulated sector of wild-west financial engineering rife with conflicts of interest.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/04/28/hedging_disaster/
POW/MIA families find hope as US presses for answers
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
April 22, 2007
When she was 8 years old, Mary Hagan answered the door at her home in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston. A Marine in full dress uniform told her family that her brother, Second Lieutenant Norman F. Whittredge, was missing in action. His Corsair fighter plane, hit by antiaircraft fire over the Amami islands between Okinawa and mainland Japan, had disappeared.
Sixty-two years later, Hagan, now a mother of six and grandmother of 10, is still hoping her brother's remains are found.
"I hope they bring him home," Hagan, 70, said, fingering her brother's Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Air Medal in the living room of her Needham home. "I hope we get to bury him in this country. I think we've waited long enough."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/04/22/powmia_families_find_hope_as_us_presses_for_answers/
continued …
El-Attar jailed for 15 years
Former Toronto bank teller Mohamed el-Attar flashes a victory sign to reporters on April 21 before a judge in Cairo found him guilty of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison. The Egyptian Canadian made a confession in prison but now says it was forced out of him with torture.
This story just hit me funny. A teller banker. Had information important enough to take it to Israel? Whom in Israel would listen to a teller banker? And if this is all true, what did he tell Israel that mattered? Something about how Egypt was 'dealing under the table' with Palestine? None of it sounds very kosher. Maybe it's me. It's just that Egypt and Jordan were asked to host the next Peace Summit with Israel by the Arab League. Hm?
Morning Papers - continued ...
Journalism at Risk
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84
By DINITIA SMITH
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?ex=1177560000&en=6434453fb7041610&ei=5070
THE NEW YORK TIMES “ZOO NEWSROOM”
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/04/10/the-new-york-times-zoo-newsroom/
CALIFORNIA FOLLOWS THE WRONG TREND WITH ANOTHER “ZOO NEWSROOM”
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/04/11/california-follows-the-wrong-trend-with-another-zoo-newsroom/
The Zoo Office Room
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katewood/303319274/in/set-72157594386780490/
Farewell to Journalism Great David Halberstam
As has been widely reported, acclaimed journalist David Halberstam was killed yesterday morning in a three-car accident in Menlo Park. Halberstam, 73, gave a lecture at UC Berkeley Saturday night as part of the Graduate School of Journalism’s annual alumni weekend, and was on his way to conduct an interview for an upcoming book when the collision occurred. Today, local papers have revealed a few details about the J-school student who had been driving the car.
http://blogs.eastbayexpress.com/92510/2007/04/as_has_been_widely_reported.php
Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune Book Editor
The National Book Critics Circle has launched a Campaign to Save Book Reviewing. This post is part of the campaign’s blog series , which features posts by concerned writers, op-eds, Q and As, and tips about how you can get involved to make sure those same owners and editors know that book sections matter.
Q. Your section was folded into "Living" and the budget cut after Katrina. How have you handled this change?
A. Until Katrina, our book pages appeared at the end of a freestanding Sunday Travel section; after Katrina, our Food, Travel and Book sections were all folded into Living, the natural place for our readers to look for our features. In many ways, it meant no change at all -- working with the same wonderful Living editor/page designer I've always worked with, the same copy editors -- except for the reduction in space. But I am writing more than ever, and I must use wire copy from time to time. As soon as it was at all feasible, we were given a regular Sunday page; now that space is up to a page and a half, sometimes two. Living is where all my author interviews appear, and those editors, who all love books, have been extremely generous with space, so many of my stories are finding a place there as well as occasional placements in our weekend entertainment guide, Lagniappe. We send all of our book reviews to our web site, nola. com.
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/04/susan-larson-new-orleans-times-picayune.html
Zimbabwe: 85 Jailed for Flouting Mining Rules
The Herald (Harare)
April 26, 2007Posted to the web April 26, 2007
Harare
EIGHTY-FIVE people have been jailed since January for failing to adhere to mining regulations following the Environmental Management Agency's countrywide crackdown on illegal mining activities.
Acting spokesperson for the agency Mr Johane Gandiwa yesterday told journalists at a two-day environmental reporting workshop that stringent measures, which included tightening environment-related laws, were underway while offenders were being jailed at least two years.
"So far, we have testified in 100 court cases and 85 people have since been jailed for not less than two years for degrading the environment," Mr Gandiwa said.
He said an investigation conducted by the agency showed that at least 600 000 people were still mining illegally countrywide.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704260274.html
DISSENT: Critics Quickly Jailed in Cuba, China, Turkey
A renowned Chinese clean-water campaigner in the industrialized Shanghai watershed was taken from his home last week by undercover police officers on charges of blackmail.
Although pollution there is bad enough to have brought visits by top Communist Party officials, Wu Lihong's family says his work upset local officials who profit from factory taxes.
Critics say Chinese harassment and detention of activists is commonplace.
In Cuba, journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan was arrested, tried and jailed all on the same day; a week later, human rights advocate Rolando Jimenez Posada was given a 12-year sentence after being held without charges for four years.
Both trials were held in secret, and neither had defense lawyers present. The Miami Herald reports that secret trials are common in Cuba, but are only recently coming to light.
http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004259.html
Malaysia lodges protest with BBC
Friday, April 27, 2007
4/26/2007 8:46:53
Source AFP
KUALA LUMPUR • Malaysia has lodged a protest with the BBC for airing interviews with "rejected" leaders of opposition political parties, state media reported yesterday.
Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin criticised the British broadcaster for giving air time to opposition leaders he said had been "rejected" by voters-a veiled reference to ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.
He also said the move by the BBC would undermine bilateral relations between Malaysia and Britain, the state Bernama news agency reported. "It would be appropriate if the air time was given to the opposition political parties that had a place in politics in Malaysia but why focus on people who have been rejected?" Zainuddin was quoted as saying by Bernama. "What is the objective of the BBC in doing so?" he said.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=April2007&file=World_News2007042684653.xml
April 26, 2007
Leaking Secrets
I was dismissed as Ambassador to Uzbekistan when one of my diplomatic telegrams was leaked to the Sunday Times. The telegram complained of our continual receipt, via the CIA, of intelligence obtained by torture in Uzbekistan. It detailed London meetings which had approved this policy, referred to the CIA flying people to Uzbekistan and handing them over to the Uzbek intelligence services, and explained the illegality of this activity.
Interestingly the Financial Times decided to publish only a tiny fraction of this information, which was explosive back then in October 2003, as extraordinary rendition had not yet hit the headlines. But the leak was enough to get me sacked, and to institute a formal leak inquiry. Once it became plain that I was not the leaker, the inquiry was quietly stopped.
I have therefore been more sensitive than most to the Government's continued habit of leaking "Intelligence" when it suits it. My objection has largely been that the government does this in order to exaggerate the threat of terrorism and instil fear, which they view as helpful in rallying popular support to the "War on Terror".
I was therefore furious when I saw a headline "Al-Qaeda planning Big British Attack" in the Sunday Times of 22 April. So furious I have been carrying the cutting in my pocket all the way to Moscow, until I got the chance to blog about it. I see in the interim the opposition have started making a related point.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/04/leaking_secrets.html
Rasool blasted in mosque uproar
Premier Ebrahim Rasool is fuming after the funeral of a Cape struggle hero in a city mosque was disrupted by radicals and nearly degenerated into a free-for-all.Ismail Abrahams, better known as "Boeta Mylie from Bonteheuwel", died on Friday after a long battle with cancer. His dying wish was to unite radical Muslim factions with his fellow comrades from the fight against apartheid - such as Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Rasool, whom he saw "as his son", his family said. But at his funeral on Saturday, Rasool was lambasted with insults, forcing security guards to intervene and resulting in his abandoning his planned tribute.
"Things were on the verge of getting quite ugly," Rasool confirmed today. "They made the funeral an advertisement for intolerance and extremism, instead of fulfilling Boeta Mylie's wishes for building reconciliation."Abrahams was a militant anti-apartheid activist and an early member of the Call of Islam, one of the organisations under the United Democratic Front umbrella in the 1980s. Described as "fiery" and "outspoken", Abrahams also belonged to Qibla - the anti-apartheid movement inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 - which was created in the early 1980s to promote the aims and ideals of the Iranian revolution in South Africa and to transform the country into an Islamic state, under the slogan "One Solution, Islamic Revolution".
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20070425113156349C685571
African plight of the press
More than 480 journalists have been killed or incarcerated in Africa during the last 14 years by governments hell-bent on silencing the free press.Nigerian-born journalist Eyobong Ita, a Kiplinger Fellow at Ohio State, kept count as the dead bodies piled up."About 186 journalists have been killed from 1992 to 2006. Eight have disappeared without a trace and are suspected dead," Ita said during a presentation in Page Hall Tuesday.
More than 300 journalists have been jailed since 1992 throughout various countries in Africa, Ita said. The vast majority of the killings and incarcerations came after journalists criticized public officials. "The governments of countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, those leaders are not so media friendly," Ita said. "Many of them don't care."The situation in Zimbabwe might be one of the most dire, as the former breadbasket of southern Africa has no independent broadcast medium and just one independent publication remaining.
http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2007/04/25/Campus/African.Plight.Of.The.Press-2879738.shtml
Cuban Dissident Stand Trial
"Secret trials in Cuba criticized; Two Cuban dissidents went before secret trials this month as one of the island's longest-serving political prisoners was released. CUBASource: The Miami Herald 04/24/2007
A Cuban dissident was sentenced to 12 years in prison in the second secret trial in less than a week, while a third government opponent was freed after completing a 17-year sentence.
Lawyer Rolando Jiménez Posada's 12-year sentence came as one of the island's longest-serving political prisoners, Jorge Luís García Pérez, known as Antúnez, was released after serving a sentence marked by hunger strikes, allegations of beatings and a bold escape.
Last week, independent journalist Oscar Sánchez Madan was sentenced to four years in prison, after being arrested, tried and convicted all in the same day -- and also without a defense lawyer present.''Those kinds of things only happen with an order from up top,'' said Manuel Vázquez Portal, a former political prisoner who now lives in South Florida. ``What I think is that after Fidel Castro's apparent recovery [from intestinal surgery] the government feels reborn and is taking measures in the name of that recovery.
http://checksnbalances.blogspot.com/2007/04/cuban-dissidents-stand-trial.html
Turkey : Kurdish parties
(Source : Eurasianet.org With parliamentary elections approaching later this year, Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party is finding itself at a crossroads, beset by increasing pressure from both within and without. In recent weeks, the Democratic Society Party (DTP) has endured a crackdown, with dozens of its top leaders arrested or jailed and several of its offices raided by the police. An Ankara court in February sentenced party co-chairs Aysel Tugluk and Ahmet Turk to 1 1/2 (...) )
http://www.turquieeuropeenne.eu/article1908.html
Iran Journalists Call For Colleague's Release
April 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- More than 250 Iranian journalists have called in an open letter to Iran's top judiciary official for the release of jailed colleague Ali Farahbakhsh, Radio Farda reported.
Farahbakhsh was sentenced in March to three years in prison on espionage charges.
His fellow journalists say the judiciary has not provided evidence to support the conviction.
Farahbakhsh was arrested in November after returning from an economics conference in Thailand.
Media groups worry that Farahbakhsh was jailed solely for exercising his right to free expression.
Several Iranian journalists and rights activists have been detained in recent months in connection with appearances at international conferences.
http://www.payvand.com/news/07/apr/1266.html
SEAPA holds forum on journalists' safety to commemorate World Press Freedom Day
27 April 2007
Source: Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and the Indonesian Press Council will kick off a series of events in Jakarta, Indonesia, to commemorate World Press Freedom Day.
Starting on the eve, 2 May 2007, is a half-day forum supported by UNESCO to discuss this year's theme: 'Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity', followed by a workshop on defamation organised by AJI on 3-4 May.
The half-day forum, from 2:00-5:00 p.m., will highlight the increasingly dangerous environment journalists now find themselves working in. Journalists are being sued, arrested, kidnapped, attacked and murdered, while many of the perpetrators of the crimes against them get away scot-free. The situation is particularly dire in the Philippines, where at least 125 journalists have been killed since 1986, when democracy was restored, 63 of them in the line of duty, according to the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR).
Journalists, however, are also vulnerable to other physical threats and put themselves at risk during the coverage of disasters, for instance. The February ferry tragedy in Indonesia, which claimed the additional lives of two journalists who were accompanying an investigating team probing into the tragedy, is a stark reminder. Such non-political safety issues will also be taken up during the discussions.
http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/newsdetail.php?No=659
Washington gets a reporter's shield that covers the Net.
Now it's time for a federal privilege
By Richard Koman for Silicon Valley Watcher
Tomorrow, Gov. Christine Gregoir will sign a bill adding Washington to the list of states with reporter's shield laws. California's shield was written into its Constitution into the 1970s. Washington's shield law is notable for including the Internet in its definition of news media and explictly protecting non-news sources against subpoenas. But state shields offer no protection for journalists in federal court, as the incarceration of Judith Miller - and to some degree Josh Wolf - show.
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/04/washington_gets.php
Venezuelans protest government closure of TV network
Venezuelans took to the streets Saturday to protest Hugo Chavez's closure of the country's oldest privately-owned television station, Radio Caracas Television, in what's being reported as the opposition's strongest showing yet in support of the station. "Democracy is being lost in Venezuela," one 72-year-old protester told the Associated Press, echoing the concerns that press freedom groups have voiced particularly since Chavez's re-election and subsequent vows to take the country even deeper into socialism. This has been evident in Chavez's increased enforcement of laws (with steeper penalties than before) against criticizing the president or any public officials. The media cannot do its job if it can't take leaders to task when necessary and tell the public the unadulterated truth.
http://journalism.about.com/b/a/000092.htm
JOURNALIST KILLED, ANOTHER WOUNDED IN SEPARATE SHOOTINGS
A murdered radio reporter and another journalist ambushed by gunmen last week are two of the latest victims of politically motivated attacks on journalists, activists and opposition leaders in the Philippines, report the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other press freedom groups. Most of these types of attacks go unpunished.
Carmelo Palacios, crime reporter for the government-run radio station dxRB Radyo ng Bayan, was found dead on 18 April in Nueva Ecija province, with gunshot wounds on his chin, heavy bruising on his body and a broken jaw. According to CMFR, the police officer heading the murder investigation said that Palacios must have "earned the ire of scallywag policemen and politicians," on whose crimes Palacios had reported. Palacios headed a local anti-crime group and had done a series of hard-hitting reports on the alleged misuse of funds by a congressman.
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/82788/
CHINA: Jailed ST journalist's wife presses for parole
Ching Cheong's wife and family continue to lobby for the journalist's early release under medical parole
Straits Times
Monday, April 23, 2007
Hong Kong --- The wife of jailed Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong prayed yesterday for his early release on the second anniversary of his detention.
Ms Mary Lau said her husband's health is ailing and the family will continue to lobby for his early release under medical parole.
"When we saw him the last time, his health was very poor. His mood swung. His blood pressure and heart rate were not stable," she said.
She has visited him twice since he was transferred to Guangzhou Prison from Beijing on Jan 31 following the family's appeals for the move.
"He's taking three medicines and seeing a doctor. We're very worried," Ms Lau said.
Ching, 57, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for this newspaper, was arrested in southern Guangdong province on April 22, 2005.
He was sentenced to five years' jail after a one-day trial last August on charges that he was spying for Taiwan. A Chinese court rejected his appeal in late November.
Ching's family is allowed to see him once a month.
About 10 of the couple's supporters prayed for blessings yesterday at a Buddhist temple on an outlying island in Hong Kong. They insist that Ching is innocent and that there is no real evidence to prove the spying charge.
Date Posted: 4/23/2007
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=68317
Journalist jailed in Rwanda
23/04/2007 19:50 - (SA)
Nairobi - A Rwandan journalist has been sentenced to one year's jail for libel against authorities, said a human rights group on Monday.
Agnes Nkusi Uwimana, who runs the independent bi-monthly Umurabyo, was on Friday found guilty of "contempt, libel and serious slander of the head of state, political and military authorities and of other private people", the League for Human Rights in the Great Lakes Region said on its website.
Uwimana, who was arrested on January 12, was also found guilty of "discrimination and sectarianism" and of writing bad cheques, according to the group.
The league said the journalist had "pleaded guilty and apologised" during the trial, but according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based media watchdog, she had only done so in exchange for a reduction of the five-year sentence requested by the state prosecutor.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2103324,00.html
African Officials Express Concerns About US Africa Command Plan
By Al Pessin
Washington
23 April 2007
A senior U.S. official says he encountered some resistance to the plan to create a new U.S. military command for Africa during a recent visit to six countries on the continent. But the official, Undersecretary of Defense Ryan Henry, says he believes that once the African leaders heard the specifics of the U.S. plan, they were more supportive. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.
Undersecretary Henry says he encountered "varying degrees of frankness" during his meetings last week in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana and Senegal, and with African Union officials.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-23-voa60.cfm
SAHEL: Traffickers targeting poorest countries
DAKAR, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - Organised crime is on the rise across the Sahel region of West Africa as traffickers target the ancient trading region’s remote desert routes and cities to move drugs, people and illicit goods across borders and to Europe, officials and analysts warn.
In Niger, where earlier this month twelve men with three container trucks loaded with drugs and guns were arrested, President Mamadou Tandja on Monday evening declared that Niger’s army will step up its policing to stop the country being “entrenched” by drug and arms traffickers who he said pose a “real threat” to Niger.
Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso, the amount of drugs intercepted over the last three months is “astounding”, according to Christophe Compaore, coordinator of the Committee Against Illicit Drug Trafficking in Burkina Faso, who warns of an emerging drug transit road in the west and south west of his country.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71765
CENTRAL AFRICA: Indigenous communities fight discrimination
IMPFONDO, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - From the day he started school, François Ababehu-Utauta's short stature made him a laughing stock among other children, but still he persevered with his studies.
"No [child] wanted me to sit next to him in class," the 18-year-old, 1.40m tall Ababehu-Utauta said. "For them, I do not have this right and I am not like them.
"I considered abandoning my studies to devote myself to the activities of the forest," he told IRIN. "Then I told myself that freedom is a fight; I had to resist the uncivil acts of the [other children]. I did not give up because I know I am bright."
Ababehu-Utauta is a member of the Mbuti community, sometimes known as pygmies, who live in the tropical rainforests of central Africa. He originally came from Oriental province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71750
Harsh anti-citizen journalism law will be impossible to implement
By Graham Holliday
Saturday, 21 April 2007
I'm a journalist. I write a blog. I upload photographs to the photo sharing site Flickr and video to YouTube. I also post snippets of text to the mini-blog site Twitter, sometimes using my mobile phone to do so. These are all free online publishing services and they're used by millions of people worldwide. For some governments, this is a problem. At least it is in France and the US.
On 25 March in Toulouse, there was a small-scale riot.
About 300 Toulousains took to the streets in protest against the appearance of far-right presidential candidate Jean Marie Le Pen at a rally in the city. Police were deployed, tear gas used, a helicopter monitored events from above and in total 20,000 euros (£13,000) was reportedly spent containing the small number of protesters.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/210407/graham_holliday_anticitizen_journalism_law
Eritrea: Two Journalists Captured in Somalia Are Shown in Video Posted On Ethiopian Pro-Government Website
Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
April 19, 2007
Posted to the web April 20, 2007
A video published on an Ethiopian pro-government website on 13 April 2007 includes footage of two Eritrean state TV journalists, cameraman Tesfalidet Kidane Tesfazghi and reporter Saleh Idris Gama, who have been held in secret since their December 2006 arrest in Somalia.
"We are certain of their identity and of the fact that they are professional journalists who were sent to Somalia to work for the TV station that employs them," Reporters Without Borders said today. "That foreigners, including Eritreans, fought alongside the Union of Islamic Courts and are now prisoners of war is one thing. But Tesfalidet and Saleh were not combatants and should not be used to settle scores between Ethiopia and Eritrea."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704200810.html
Ethiopia and Eritrea the Top Jailers of Journalists
Nairobi (HAN) December 15, 2005 -The Committee to Protect Journalists listed Eritrea as the worst offender, for having jailed the largest African journalists last decade. Ethiopia & Cuba was ranked second for imprisoning other number of reporters in 2005, followed by Uzbekistan. The most journalists in jail this year, together accounting for two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photojournalists imprisoned around the world, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
The United States, which is detaining four journalists in Iraq and one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rose to sixth among countries jailing journalists. Twenty-four countries in all have journalists in jail, according to the Dec. 1 tally, the committee said. Subversion, divulging state secrets and acting against the interests of the state were the most common charges lodged against the media worldwide, the organization said. The number of jailed journalists around the world rose from 122 in 2004.
http://www.geeskaafrika.com/ethiopia_14dec05.htm
U.S. Tied With Burma For Jailed Journalists
December 14, 2005
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/12/14/us_tied_with_burma_for_jailed_journalists.php
U.S. Ranks Sixth Among Countries Jailing Journalists, Report Says
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: December 14, 2005
The United States has tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Each country is jailing five journalists. The United States is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and one Sudanese, a cameraman who works for Al Jazeera, at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. None of the five have been charged with a specific crime.
This year, China topped the list of countries with the most journalists - 32 - in jail, many of them for activity on the Internet. This is the seventh year in a row in which China has led the list.
Fifteen of the Chinese journalists are being held under national security legislation for writing critically about the Communist Party online, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/media/14journalists.html?ex=1177905600&en=74f327ee3b3785fc&ei=5070
CHINA: CPJ urges Hu to release journalists, shed notorious title
December 13, 2005
TO: His Excellency Hu Jintao
President, People's Republic of China
C/o Embassy of the People's Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
Via facsimile: (202) 588-0032
Your Excellency:
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the imprisonment of journalists for their work. In a survey released today, CPJ found that China is the world's leading jailer of journalists for the seventh consecutive year, with 32 writers and editors behind bars. Four were imprisoned this year, adding to the long list of journalists previously jailed.
Fifteen, or roughly half, of the imprisoned journalists are Internet writers, including Zhang Lin, Li Jianping, and Yang Maodong (commonly known by his pen name Guo Feixiong), who were jailed this year. As China's Internet users surpass 100 million, jailing individuals for voicing their opinions online or for transmitting news and information deprives Chinese citizens of the right to participate in their country's future.
http://www.cpj.org/protests/05ltrs/China13dec05pl.html
ETHIOPIA: Two more journalists jailed on old charges
New York, December 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged that two more journalists have been jailed on criminal charges that have been revived since a crackdown on the press in November. The convictions last week relating to articles published up to seven years ago bring the number of journalists now behind bars in Ethiopia to at least 15, according to CPJ research.
"It is scandalous that Ethiopian authorities have persisted in using outdated and illegitimate charges to send these journalists to jail," said Ann Cooper, executive director of CPJ. "We call on authorities to release our Ethiopian colleagues immediately, and to work towards removing criminal penalties for press offenses."
http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Ethiopia12dec05na.html
Advocacy Group calls on Bush to condemn Ethiopian violence, impose sanctions
Dece 11, 2005 — Ethiopian Americans for Democracy (EAD), a US-based advocacy group today called on US President George Bush to personally speak up against the ongoing slaughter in Ethiopia before it is too late.
EAD also called on Mr. Bush to pressure Zenawi to step down to spare the country further blood shed, and to impose Zimbabwe-style sanctions if he refuses to go.
The group criticized US policy that has closed its eyes to the massive violence unleashed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. According to EAD, Zenawi has effectively marketed himself as the only reliable US ally to fight terrorism in the Horn of Africa, giving him a blank check to hunt down and destroy domestic opponents.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=12990
Journalist’s widow cited in Reporters Without Frontiers awards
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews)—Gemma Damalerio, widow of jour-nalist Edgar Damalerio who was killed on May 13, 2002 in Pagadian City, is among those cited in the 2005 Reporters Without Frontiers.
Gemma is one of two runners-up in the “defender of press freedom” category, an honor she shares with the Save Inde-pendent Radio Movement (Nepal).
The winner in the “defender of press free-dom” category is the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ, for-merly SOJON), founded in Mogadishu in 2002 to defend journalists and press freedom in Somalia, which has been torn apart by civil war since 1991.
http://bond.lanesystems.com/sitegen/article.asp?wid=125&cid=451&aid=34080
TAJIKISTAN:
Authorities ignore second Supreme Court order to free journalist
New York, December 9, 2005—Tajik authorities have ignored a second Supreme Court order to release jailed independent journalist Jumaboy Tolibov, according to a local CPJ legal source, who is monitoring the case.
The court ruled on October 11 and again on November 28 that Tolibov should be freed from a detention center in the town of Istarafshan in the northern region of Sogd. But the Prosecutor General's Office in the capital Dushanbe has effectively blocked his release, the source said. Tolibov was jailed in April this year after criticizing a local prosecutor in three newspaper articles in 2004.
"The government's flagrant disregard for the country's highest judicial authority calls into question Tajikistan's commitment to the rule of law," said Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Jumaboy Tolibov must be freed immediately."
http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Tajik09dec05na.html
Dated
Congo journalists not let to publish Rwanda interviews
afrol News, 3 January - A large group of Congolese journalists, who had travelled to the war ravaged North Kivu and Rwanda, was banned from publishing interviews they had made with Rwanda's President as they returned to Kinshasa. Congo government officials deplored that the journalist had been "shamelessly manipulated by the Kigali government."
From 20 to 24 December, a group of 11 journalists from various Kinshasa-based, privately-owned newspapers carried out a mission to Goma, capital of North Kivu province, to report on the armed conflict that rages in eastern Congo Kinshasa (DRC). The group also requested and was granted interviews with Rwandan authorities, including Foreign Minister Charles Morigande and President Paul Kagame.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/15121
No newspapers as journalists protest killing
afrol News / IRIN, 18 July - No newspapers were published in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday in protest at the killing of a reporter 10 days ago.
"A day without newspapers throughout the country; it is our way of protesting against those who want to muffle the freedom of the press and that of expression. We are not afraid of death, but we will continue doing our work," John Richard Kasonga, the secretary of the National Union of the Congolese Press, said.
At least 1,000 journalists took part in a demonstration on Monday in the capital Kinshasa, during which they presented a memorandum to the United Nations Mission in the DRC, MONUC, seeking its protection.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/20736
Russian Court Orders New Trial in Editor’s Killing
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: November 9, 2006
MOSCOW, Nov. 9 — Russia’s Supreme Court today overturned the acquittal of three men accused of involvement in the killing of Paul Klebnikov, the American who was editor of Forbes magazine here, and ordered a new trial.
The ruling revived a criminal case that appeared to have unraveled last May when a jury rejected prosecutors’ arguments and refused to convict Kazbek Dukozov and Musa Vakhayev, the two men charged with carrying out the killing in July 2004, as well as a third suspect, Fail Sadretdinov, who was charged with related crimes.
At the same time, the court’s ruling today underscored what some defense lawyers here have called a worrisome trend: the appeal and, frequently, the reversal of decisions by juries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/world/europe/10russiacnd.html?ex=1320728400&en=e9827091ba5858f5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Newspaper Tribute to Anna Politkovskaya
By Judith Ingram
The Associated Press
Anna Politkovskaya's colleagues, supported by the independent Russian Union of Journalists and hundreds of domestic and foreign media outlets, published a newspaper Thursday devoted to the slain journalist, who focused on uncovering torture, abductions and other abuses against civilians in Chechnya.
The 16-page, tabloid-style paper included tributes to the journalist and rights activist, a sampling of her work, a list of 211 journalists killed in Russia between 1992 and the present, and her mother's recollections.
Raisa Mazepa recalled begging her daughter to be more cautious in her work.
"I remember she told me then: 'I understand, of course, that the sword of Damocles is always hanging over me. I understand that, but I don't want to give up,'" her mother was quoted as saying by Politkovskaya's newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Thursday's newspaper also contained a rebuke to President Vladimir Putin, who on the day of Politkovskaya's funeral played down her influence on political life as "very minor." It reprinted government instructions to act to correct the problems raised in her stories. The paper said close to 40 criminal investigations had been opened on the basis of Politkovskaya's work.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/10/27/015.html
Azeri Radio Barred From Airing Foreign Programs
The Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Azeri authorities will bar local broadcasters from airing programs of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America starting next year, the country's broadcasting chief said.
The opposition media denounced the move as part of a government campaign against the freedom of speech.
Nushirrin Maharramov, head of the National Broadcasting Council, said Wednesday that local broadcasters lacked the necessary licenses to air programs of the foreign radio stations. The three radio stations would be barred from airing their programs through local broadcasters starting Jan. 1.
Maharramov said the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty would be able to continue broadcasting on frequencies allotted to them by Azeri authorities. He said authorities were ready to discuss providing a frequency to Washington-based Voice of America, which currently does not have one.
"We are ready to provide additional frequencies to foreign radio stations if necessary," he said.
The BBC World Service said in a statement that it was "watching the situation carefully" and wanted "to continue to offer our listeners in Azerbaijan independent and impartial news and information."
Asked why the foreign stations that had been using local broadcasters for years were barred from doing that now, Maharramov responded that his National Broadcasting Council had been created three years ago and spent the first two years in tackling organizational issues.
"We have stepped up our activities during the last year," he said.
Editors of leading opposition newspapers and media freedom advocates issued a statement late Tuesday voicing concern about official plans to end foreign broadcasts.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/10/27/013.html
In an idealist world
Are our researchers into terrorism being appropriately critical or merely hypocritical, ask David Martin Jones and Carl Ungerer
… Meanwhile, a brief cruise through the University of Adelaide's e-journal Borderlands regales the unwary reader with titles such as Terror Australis: Security, Terror and the "War on Terror" Discourse or New Languages: Power, Feeling and Communication. Opening a few of these articles, moreover, we discover that critical terror study requires no research into the evolution, ideology or strategic thinking of transnational non-state actors such as al-Qa'ida or its regional affiliates.
Instead, critical engagement is a euphemism for an assault on the Australian, British and US government responses to terrorism, viewed from this perspective as a disturbing new international phenomenon.
Thus, Katrina Lee Koo of the Australian National University informs us that "the ease in which the US war on terror discourse has been assimilated into the discourse and practice of Australia's security reflects the enduring commitments that both have to notions of statism, permanent threat and insecurity and the acceptance of violence against those who may threaten us". She concludes that the war on terror, therefore, has merely "reinforced an unethical practice of security".
In a similar but lucidity-challenged vein, Anthony Burke (University of NSW), in an essay on social identities that also doubles as a chapter in his oddly titled book Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other (2006), explores the relationship between Freedom's Freedom: American Enlightenment and Permanent War.
Burke maintains, or more precisely rambles, that an "onto-technology of freedom through US history, the Cold War and the war on terror and considering its functional mirroring by the Islamist threat" exposes "the multiple dangers posed by the aggressive assertion of a simultaneously instrumental and universalising image of historical action and inevitability that rejects any restriction of its powers and any responsibility for their effect".
In a more coherent effort in the Carnegie Council's journal Ethics and International Affairs, Burke reveals the target of this critical assault is the modern liberal democratic state and its "violent and exclusivist" understanding of sovereignty that lingers "like a latent illness in the very depths of modern cosmopolitanism". In the biographical notes accompanying this article, Burke informs us he is working on an ARC-funded project on the politics and ethics of the use of force.
We can derive from Burke's oeuvre what this new ethical perspective reveals: namely, terrorism is our fault and the use of military force is unethical and unnecessary. According to this distorted view of transnational terror, state discourses of security have served only to reinforce a process "othering" Islamic radicalism. Othering, critical theory's favourite gerund and key explanatory tool, reveals that the modern state "ultimately secures sovereignty, physically and existentially, through violence against and alienation from the Other".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20615979-12332,00.html
continued...
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84
By DINITIA SMITH
Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.
Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?
He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?ex=1177560000&en=6434453fb7041610&ei=5070
THE NEW YORK TIMES “ZOO NEWSROOM”
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/04/10/the-new-york-times-zoo-newsroom/
CALIFORNIA FOLLOWS THE WRONG TREND WITH ANOTHER “ZOO NEWSROOM”
http://www.innovationsinnewspapers.com/index.php/2007/04/11/california-follows-the-wrong-trend-with-another-zoo-newsroom/
The Zoo Office Room
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katewood/303319274/in/set-72157594386780490/
Farewell to Journalism Great David Halberstam
As has been widely reported, acclaimed journalist David Halberstam was killed yesterday morning in a three-car accident in Menlo Park. Halberstam, 73, gave a lecture at UC Berkeley Saturday night as part of the Graduate School of Journalism’s annual alumni weekend, and was on his way to conduct an interview for an upcoming book when the collision occurred. Today, local papers have revealed a few details about the J-school student who had been driving the car.
http://blogs.eastbayexpress.com/92510/2007/04/as_has_been_widely_reported.php
Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune Book Editor
The National Book Critics Circle has launched a Campaign to Save Book Reviewing. This post is part of the campaign’s blog series , which features posts by concerned writers, op-eds, Q and As, and tips about how you can get involved to make sure those same owners and editors know that book sections matter.
Q. Your section was folded into "Living" and the budget cut after Katrina. How have you handled this change?
A. Until Katrina, our book pages appeared at the end of a freestanding Sunday Travel section; after Katrina, our Food, Travel and Book sections were all folded into Living, the natural place for our readers to look for our features. In many ways, it meant no change at all -- working with the same wonderful Living editor/page designer I've always worked with, the same copy editors -- except for the reduction in space. But I am writing more than ever, and I must use wire copy from time to time. As soon as it was at all feasible, we were given a regular Sunday page; now that space is up to a page and a half, sometimes two. Living is where all my author interviews appear, and those editors, who all love books, have been extremely generous with space, so many of my stories are finding a place there as well as occasional placements in our weekend entertainment guide, Lagniappe. We send all of our book reviews to our web site, nola. com.
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/04/susan-larson-new-orleans-times-picayune.html
Zimbabwe: 85 Jailed for Flouting Mining Rules
The Herald (Harare)
April 26, 2007Posted to the web April 26, 2007
Harare
EIGHTY-FIVE people have been jailed since January for failing to adhere to mining regulations following the Environmental Management Agency's countrywide crackdown on illegal mining activities.
Acting spokesperson for the agency Mr Johane Gandiwa yesterday told journalists at a two-day environmental reporting workshop that stringent measures, which included tightening environment-related laws, were underway while offenders were being jailed at least two years.
"So far, we have testified in 100 court cases and 85 people have since been jailed for not less than two years for degrading the environment," Mr Gandiwa said.
He said an investigation conducted by the agency showed that at least 600 000 people were still mining illegally countrywide.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704260274.html
DISSENT: Critics Quickly Jailed in Cuba, China, Turkey
A renowned Chinese clean-water campaigner in the industrialized Shanghai watershed was taken from his home last week by undercover police officers on charges of blackmail.
Although pollution there is bad enough to have brought visits by top Communist Party officials, Wu Lihong's family says his work upset local officials who profit from factory taxes.
Critics say Chinese harassment and detention of activists is commonplace.
In Cuba, journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan was arrested, tried and jailed all on the same day; a week later, human rights advocate Rolando Jimenez Posada was given a 12-year sentence after being held without charges for four years.
Both trials were held in secret, and neither had defense lawyers present. The Miami Herald reports that secret trials are common in Cuba, but are only recently coming to light.
http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/004259.html
Malaysia lodges protest with BBC
Friday, April 27, 2007
4/26/2007 8:46:53
Source AFP
KUALA LUMPUR • Malaysia has lodged a protest with the BBC for airing interviews with "rejected" leaders of opposition political parties, state media reported yesterday.
Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin criticised the British broadcaster for giving air time to opposition leaders he said had been "rejected" by voters-a veiled reference to ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.
He also said the move by the BBC would undermine bilateral relations between Malaysia and Britain, the state Bernama news agency reported. "It would be appropriate if the air time was given to the opposition political parties that had a place in politics in Malaysia but why focus on people who have been rejected?" Zainuddin was quoted as saying by Bernama. "What is the objective of the BBC in doing so?" he said.
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=April2007&file=World_News2007042684653.xml
April 26, 2007
Leaking Secrets
I was dismissed as Ambassador to Uzbekistan when one of my diplomatic telegrams was leaked to the Sunday Times. The telegram complained of our continual receipt, via the CIA, of intelligence obtained by torture in Uzbekistan. It detailed London meetings which had approved this policy, referred to the CIA flying people to Uzbekistan and handing them over to the Uzbek intelligence services, and explained the illegality of this activity.
Interestingly the Financial Times decided to publish only a tiny fraction of this information, which was explosive back then in October 2003, as extraordinary rendition had not yet hit the headlines. But the leak was enough to get me sacked, and to institute a formal leak inquiry. Once it became plain that I was not the leaker, the inquiry was quietly stopped.
I have therefore been more sensitive than most to the Government's continued habit of leaking "Intelligence" when it suits it. My objection has largely been that the government does this in order to exaggerate the threat of terrorism and instil fear, which they view as helpful in rallying popular support to the "War on Terror".
I was therefore furious when I saw a headline "Al-Qaeda planning Big British Attack" in the Sunday Times of 22 April. So furious I have been carrying the cutting in my pocket all the way to Moscow, until I got the chance to blog about it. I see in the interim the opposition have started making a related point.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/04/leaking_secrets.html
Rasool blasted in mosque uproar
Premier Ebrahim Rasool is fuming after the funeral of a Cape struggle hero in a city mosque was disrupted by radicals and nearly degenerated into a free-for-all.Ismail Abrahams, better known as "Boeta Mylie from Bonteheuwel", died on Friday after a long battle with cancer. His dying wish was to unite radical Muslim factions with his fellow comrades from the fight against apartheid - such as Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Rasool, whom he saw "as his son", his family said. But at his funeral on Saturday, Rasool was lambasted with insults, forcing security guards to intervene and resulting in his abandoning his planned tribute.
"Things were on the verge of getting quite ugly," Rasool confirmed today. "They made the funeral an advertisement for intolerance and extremism, instead of fulfilling Boeta Mylie's wishes for building reconciliation."Abrahams was a militant anti-apartheid activist and an early member of the Call of Islam, one of the organisations under the United Democratic Front umbrella in the 1980s. Described as "fiery" and "outspoken", Abrahams also belonged to Qibla - the anti-apartheid movement inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 - which was created in the early 1980s to promote the aims and ideals of the Iranian revolution in South Africa and to transform the country into an Islamic state, under the slogan "One Solution, Islamic Revolution".
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20070425113156349C685571
African plight of the press
More than 480 journalists have been killed or incarcerated in Africa during the last 14 years by governments hell-bent on silencing the free press.Nigerian-born journalist Eyobong Ita, a Kiplinger Fellow at Ohio State, kept count as the dead bodies piled up."About 186 journalists have been killed from 1992 to 2006. Eight have disappeared without a trace and are suspected dead," Ita said during a presentation in Page Hall Tuesday.
More than 300 journalists have been jailed since 1992 throughout various countries in Africa, Ita said. The vast majority of the killings and incarcerations came after journalists criticized public officials. "The governments of countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, those leaders are not so media friendly," Ita said. "Many of them don't care."The situation in Zimbabwe might be one of the most dire, as the former breadbasket of southern Africa has no independent broadcast medium and just one independent publication remaining.
http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2007/04/25/Campus/African.Plight.Of.The.Press-2879738.shtml
Cuban Dissident Stand Trial
"Secret trials in Cuba criticized; Two Cuban dissidents went before secret trials this month as one of the island's longest-serving political prisoners was released. CUBASource: The Miami Herald 04/24/2007
A Cuban dissident was sentenced to 12 years in prison in the second secret trial in less than a week, while a third government opponent was freed after completing a 17-year sentence.
Lawyer Rolando Jiménez Posada's 12-year sentence came as one of the island's longest-serving political prisoners, Jorge Luís García Pérez, known as Antúnez, was released after serving a sentence marked by hunger strikes, allegations of beatings and a bold escape.
Last week, independent journalist Oscar Sánchez Madan was sentenced to four years in prison, after being arrested, tried and convicted all in the same day -- and also without a defense lawyer present.''Those kinds of things only happen with an order from up top,'' said Manuel Vázquez Portal, a former political prisoner who now lives in South Florida. ``What I think is that after Fidel Castro's apparent recovery [from intestinal surgery] the government feels reborn and is taking measures in the name of that recovery.
http://checksnbalances.blogspot.com/2007/04/cuban-dissidents-stand-trial.html
Turkey : Kurdish parties
(Source : Eurasianet.org With parliamentary elections approaching later this year, Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish political party is finding itself at a crossroads, beset by increasing pressure from both within and without. In recent weeks, the Democratic Society Party (DTP) has endured a crackdown, with dozens of its top leaders arrested or jailed and several of its offices raided by the police. An Ankara court in February sentenced party co-chairs Aysel Tugluk and Ahmet Turk to 1 1/2 (...) )
http://www.turquieeuropeenne.eu/article1908.html
Iran Journalists Call For Colleague's Release
April 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- More than 250 Iranian journalists have called in an open letter to Iran's top judiciary official for the release of jailed colleague Ali Farahbakhsh, Radio Farda reported.
Farahbakhsh was sentenced in March to three years in prison on espionage charges.
His fellow journalists say the judiciary has not provided evidence to support the conviction.
Farahbakhsh was arrested in November after returning from an economics conference in Thailand.
Media groups worry that Farahbakhsh was jailed solely for exercising his right to free expression.
Several Iranian journalists and rights activists have been detained in recent months in connection with appearances at international conferences.
http://www.payvand.com/news/07/apr/1266.html
SEAPA holds forum on journalists' safety to commemorate World Press Freedom Day
27 April 2007
Source: Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and the Indonesian Press Council will kick off a series of events in Jakarta, Indonesia, to commemorate World Press Freedom Day.
Starting on the eve, 2 May 2007, is a half-day forum supported by UNESCO to discuss this year's theme: 'Press Freedom, Safety of Journalists and Impunity', followed by a workshop on defamation organised by AJI on 3-4 May.
The half-day forum, from 2:00-5:00 p.m., will highlight the increasingly dangerous environment journalists now find themselves working in. Journalists are being sued, arrested, kidnapped, attacked and murdered, while many of the perpetrators of the crimes against them get away scot-free. The situation is particularly dire in the Philippines, where at least 125 journalists have been killed since 1986, when democracy was restored, 63 of them in the line of duty, according to the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR).
Journalists, however, are also vulnerable to other physical threats and put themselves at risk during the coverage of disasters, for instance. The February ferry tragedy in Indonesia, which claimed the additional lives of two journalists who were accompanying an investigating team probing into the tragedy, is a stark reminder. Such non-political safety issues will also be taken up during the discussions.
http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/newsdetail.php?No=659
Washington gets a reporter's shield that covers the Net.
Now it's time for a federal privilege
By Richard Koman for Silicon Valley Watcher
Tomorrow, Gov. Christine Gregoir will sign a bill adding Washington to the list of states with reporter's shield laws. California's shield was written into its Constitution into the 1970s. Washington's shield law is notable for including the Internet in its definition of news media and explictly protecting non-news sources against subpoenas. But state shields offer no protection for journalists in federal court, as the incarceration of Judith Miller - and to some degree Josh Wolf - show.
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/04/washington_gets.php
Venezuelans protest government closure of TV network
Venezuelans took to the streets Saturday to protest Hugo Chavez's closure of the country's oldest privately-owned television station, Radio Caracas Television, in what's being reported as the opposition's strongest showing yet in support of the station. "Democracy is being lost in Venezuela," one 72-year-old protester told the Associated Press, echoing the concerns that press freedom groups have voiced particularly since Chavez's re-election and subsequent vows to take the country even deeper into socialism. This has been evident in Chavez's increased enforcement of laws (with steeper penalties than before) against criticizing the president or any public officials. The media cannot do its job if it can't take leaders to task when necessary and tell the public the unadulterated truth.
http://journalism.about.com/b/a/000092.htm
JOURNALIST KILLED, ANOTHER WOUNDED IN SEPARATE SHOOTINGS
A murdered radio reporter and another journalist ambushed by gunmen last week are two of the latest victims of politically motivated attacks on journalists, activists and opposition leaders in the Philippines, report the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and other press freedom groups. Most of these types of attacks go unpunished.
Carmelo Palacios, crime reporter for the government-run radio station dxRB Radyo ng Bayan, was found dead on 18 April in Nueva Ecija province, with gunshot wounds on his chin, heavy bruising on his body and a broken jaw. According to CMFR, the police officer heading the murder investigation said that Palacios must have "earned the ire of scallywag policemen and politicians," on whose crimes Palacios had reported. Palacios headed a local anti-crime group and had done a series of hard-hitting reports on the alleged misuse of funds by a congressman.
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/82788/
CHINA: Jailed ST journalist's wife presses for parole
Ching Cheong's wife and family continue to lobby for the journalist's early release under medical parole
Straits Times
Monday, April 23, 2007
Hong Kong --- The wife of jailed Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong prayed yesterday for his early release on the second anniversary of his detention.
Ms Mary Lau said her husband's health is ailing and the family will continue to lobby for his early release under medical parole.
"When we saw him the last time, his health was very poor. His mood swung. His blood pressure and heart rate were not stable," she said.
She has visited him twice since he was transferred to Guangzhou Prison from Beijing on Jan 31 following the family's appeals for the move.
"He's taking three medicines and seeing a doctor. We're very worried," Ms Lau said.
Ching, 57, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for this newspaper, was arrested in southern Guangdong province on April 22, 2005.
He was sentenced to five years' jail after a one-day trial last August on charges that he was spying for Taiwan. A Chinese court rejected his appeal in late November.
Ching's family is allowed to see him once a month.
About 10 of the couple's supporters prayed for blessings yesterday at a Buddhist temple on an outlying island in Hong Kong. They insist that Ching is innocent and that there is no real evidence to prove the spying charge.
Date Posted: 4/23/2007
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=68317
Journalist jailed in Rwanda
23/04/2007 19:50 - (SA)
Nairobi - A Rwandan journalist has been sentenced to one year's jail for libel against authorities, said a human rights group on Monday.
Agnes Nkusi Uwimana, who runs the independent bi-monthly Umurabyo, was on Friday found guilty of "contempt, libel and serious slander of the head of state, political and military authorities and of other private people", the League for Human Rights in the Great Lakes Region said on its website.
Uwimana, who was arrested on January 12, was also found guilty of "discrimination and sectarianism" and of writing bad cheques, according to the group.
The league said the journalist had "pleaded guilty and apologised" during the trial, but according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based media watchdog, she had only done so in exchange for a reduction of the five-year sentence requested by the state prosecutor.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2103324,00.html
African Officials Express Concerns About US Africa Command Plan
By Al Pessin
Washington
23 April 2007
A senior U.S. official says he encountered some resistance to the plan to create a new U.S. military command for Africa during a recent visit to six countries on the continent. But the official, Undersecretary of Defense Ryan Henry, says he believes that once the African leaders heard the specifics of the U.S. plan, they were more supportive. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.
Undersecretary Henry says he encountered "varying degrees of frankness" during his meetings last week in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana and Senegal, and with African Union officials.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-23-voa60.cfm
SAHEL: Traffickers targeting poorest countries
DAKAR, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - Organised crime is on the rise across the Sahel region of West Africa as traffickers target the ancient trading region’s remote desert routes and cities to move drugs, people and illicit goods across borders and to Europe, officials and analysts warn.
In Niger, where earlier this month twelve men with three container trucks loaded with drugs and guns were arrested, President Mamadou Tandja on Monday evening declared that Niger’s army will step up its policing to stop the country being “entrenched” by drug and arms traffickers who he said pose a “real threat” to Niger.
Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso, the amount of drugs intercepted over the last three months is “astounding”, according to Christophe Compaore, coordinator of the Committee Against Illicit Drug Trafficking in Burkina Faso, who warns of an emerging drug transit road in the west and south west of his country.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71765
CENTRAL AFRICA: Indigenous communities fight discrimination
IMPFONDO, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - From the day he started school, François Ababehu-Utauta's short stature made him a laughing stock among other children, but still he persevered with his studies.
"No [child] wanted me to sit next to him in class," the 18-year-old, 1.40m tall Ababehu-Utauta said. "For them, I do not have this right and I am not like them.
"I considered abandoning my studies to devote myself to the activities of the forest," he told IRIN. "Then I told myself that freedom is a fight; I had to resist the uncivil acts of the [other children]. I did not give up because I know I am bright."
Ababehu-Utauta is a member of the Mbuti community, sometimes known as pygmies, who live in the tropical rainforests of central Africa. He originally came from Oriental province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=71750
Harsh anti-citizen journalism law will be impossible to implement
By Graham Holliday
Saturday, 21 April 2007
I'm a journalist. I write a blog. I upload photographs to the photo sharing site Flickr and video to YouTube. I also post snippets of text to the mini-blog site Twitter, sometimes using my mobile phone to do so. These are all free online publishing services and they're used by millions of people worldwide. For some governments, this is a problem. At least it is in France and the US.
On 25 March in Toulouse, there was a small-scale riot.
About 300 Toulousains took to the streets in protest against the appearance of far-right presidential candidate Jean Marie Le Pen at a rally in the city. Police were deployed, tear gas used, a helicopter monitored events from above and in total 20,000 euros (£13,000) was reportedly spent containing the small number of protesters.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/article/210407/graham_holliday_anticitizen_journalism_law
Eritrea: Two Journalists Captured in Somalia Are Shown in Video Posted On Ethiopian Pro-Government Website
Reporters sans Frontières (Paris)
PRESS RELEASE
April 19, 2007
Posted to the web April 20, 2007
A video published on an Ethiopian pro-government website on 13 April 2007 includes footage of two Eritrean state TV journalists, cameraman Tesfalidet Kidane Tesfazghi and reporter Saleh Idris Gama, who have been held in secret since their December 2006 arrest in Somalia.
"We are certain of their identity and of the fact that they are professional journalists who were sent to Somalia to work for the TV station that employs them," Reporters Without Borders said today. "That foreigners, including Eritreans, fought alongside the Union of Islamic Courts and are now prisoners of war is one thing. But Tesfalidet and Saleh were not combatants and should not be used to settle scores between Ethiopia and Eritrea."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704200810.html
Ethiopia and Eritrea the Top Jailers of Journalists
Nairobi (HAN) December 15, 2005 -The Committee to Protect Journalists listed Eritrea as the worst offender, for having jailed the largest African journalists last decade. Ethiopia & Cuba was ranked second for imprisoning other number of reporters in 2005, followed by Uzbekistan. The most journalists in jail this year, together accounting for two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photojournalists imprisoned around the world, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
The United States, which is detaining four journalists in Iraq and one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rose to sixth among countries jailing journalists. Twenty-four countries in all have journalists in jail, according to the Dec. 1 tally, the committee said. Subversion, divulging state secrets and acting against the interests of the state were the most common charges lodged against the media worldwide, the organization said. The number of jailed journalists around the world rose from 122 in 2004.
http://www.geeskaafrika.com/ethiopia_14dec05.htm
U.S. Tied With Burma For Jailed Journalists
December 14, 2005
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2005/12/14/us_tied_with_burma_for_jailed_journalists.php
U.S. Ranks Sixth Among Countries Jailing Journalists, Report Says
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: December 14, 2005
The United States has tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, for sixth place among countries that are holding the most journalists behind bars, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Each country is jailing five journalists. The United States is holding four Iraqi journalists in detention centers in Iraq and one Sudanese, a cameraman who works for Al Jazeera, at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. None of the five have been charged with a specific crime.
This year, China topped the list of countries with the most journalists - 32 - in jail, many of them for activity on the Internet. This is the seventh year in a row in which China has led the list.
Fifteen of the Chinese journalists are being held under national security legislation for writing critically about the Communist Party online, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/media/14journalists.html?ex=1177905600&en=74f327ee3b3785fc&ei=5070
CHINA: CPJ urges Hu to release journalists, shed notorious title
December 13, 2005
TO: His Excellency Hu Jintao
President, People's Republic of China
C/o Embassy of the People's Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
Via facsimile: (202) 588-0032
Your Excellency:
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the imprisonment of journalists for their work. In a survey released today, CPJ found that China is the world's leading jailer of journalists for the seventh consecutive year, with 32 writers and editors behind bars. Four were imprisoned this year, adding to the long list of journalists previously jailed.
Fifteen, or roughly half, of the imprisoned journalists are Internet writers, including Zhang Lin, Li Jianping, and Yang Maodong (commonly known by his pen name Guo Feixiong), who were jailed this year. As China's Internet users surpass 100 million, jailing individuals for voicing their opinions online or for transmitting news and information deprives Chinese citizens of the right to participate in their country's future.
http://www.cpj.org/protests/05ltrs/China13dec05pl.html
ETHIOPIA: Two more journalists jailed on old charges
New York, December 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged that two more journalists have been jailed on criminal charges that have been revived since a crackdown on the press in November. The convictions last week relating to articles published up to seven years ago bring the number of journalists now behind bars in Ethiopia to at least 15, according to CPJ research.
"It is scandalous that Ethiopian authorities have persisted in using outdated and illegitimate charges to send these journalists to jail," said Ann Cooper, executive director of CPJ. "We call on authorities to release our Ethiopian colleagues immediately, and to work towards removing criminal penalties for press offenses."
http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Ethiopia12dec05na.html
Advocacy Group calls on Bush to condemn Ethiopian violence, impose sanctions
Dece 11, 2005 — Ethiopian Americans for Democracy (EAD), a US-based advocacy group today called on US President George Bush to personally speak up against the ongoing slaughter in Ethiopia before it is too late.
EAD also called on Mr. Bush to pressure Zenawi to step down to spare the country further blood shed, and to impose Zimbabwe-style sanctions if he refuses to go.
The group criticized US policy that has closed its eyes to the massive violence unleashed by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. According to EAD, Zenawi has effectively marketed himself as the only reliable US ally to fight terrorism in the Horn of Africa, giving him a blank check to hunt down and destroy domestic opponents.
http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=12990
Journalist’s widow cited in Reporters Without Frontiers awards
MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews)—Gemma Damalerio, widow of jour-nalist Edgar Damalerio who was killed on May 13, 2002 in Pagadian City, is among those cited in the 2005 Reporters Without Frontiers.
Gemma is one of two runners-up in the “defender of press freedom” category, an honor she shares with the Save Inde-pendent Radio Movement (Nepal).
The winner in the “defender of press free-dom” category is the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ, for-merly SOJON), founded in Mogadishu in 2002 to defend journalists and press freedom in Somalia, which has been torn apart by civil war since 1991.
http://bond.lanesystems.com/sitegen/article.asp?wid=125&cid=451&aid=34080
TAJIKISTAN:
Authorities ignore second Supreme Court order to free journalist
New York, December 9, 2005—Tajik authorities have ignored a second Supreme Court order to release jailed independent journalist Jumaboy Tolibov, according to a local CPJ legal source, who is monitoring the case.
The court ruled on October 11 and again on November 28 that Tolibov should be freed from a detention center in the town of Istarafshan in the northern region of Sogd. But the Prosecutor General's Office in the capital Dushanbe has effectively blocked his release, the source said. Tolibov was jailed in April this year after criticizing a local prosecutor in three newspaper articles in 2004.
"The government's flagrant disregard for the country's highest judicial authority calls into question Tajikistan's commitment to the rule of law," said Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "Jumaboy Tolibov must be freed immediately."
http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/Tajik09dec05na.html
Dated
Congo journalists not let to publish Rwanda interviews
afrol News, 3 January - A large group of Congolese journalists, who had travelled to the war ravaged North Kivu and Rwanda, was banned from publishing interviews they had made with Rwanda's President as they returned to Kinshasa. Congo government officials deplored that the journalist had been "shamelessly manipulated by the Kigali government."
From 20 to 24 December, a group of 11 journalists from various Kinshasa-based, privately-owned newspapers carried out a mission to Goma, capital of North Kivu province, to report on the armed conflict that rages in eastern Congo Kinshasa (DRC). The group also requested and was granted interviews with Rwandan authorities, including Foreign Minister Charles Morigande and President Paul Kagame.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/15121
No newspapers as journalists protest killing
afrol News / IRIN, 18 July - No newspapers were published in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday in protest at the killing of a reporter 10 days ago.
"A day without newspapers throughout the country; it is our way of protesting against those who want to muffle the freedom of the press and that of expression. We are not afraid of death, but we will continue doing our work," John Richard Kasonga, the secretary of the National Union of the Congolese Press, said.
At least 1,000 journalists took part in a demonstration on Monday in the capital Kinshasa, during which they presented a memorandum to the United Nations Mission in the DRC, MONUC, seeking its protection.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/20736
Russian Court Orders New Trial in Editor’s Killing
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: November 9, 2006
MOSCOW, Nov. 9 — Russia’s Supreme Court today overturned the acquittal of three men accused of involvement in the killing of Paul Klebnikov, the American who was editor of Forbes magazine here, and ordered a new trial.
The ruling revived a criminal case that appeared to have unraveled last May when a jury rejected prosecutors’ arguments and refused to convict Kazbek Dukozov and Musa Vakhayev, the two men charged with carrying out the killing in July 2004, as well as a third suspect, Fail Sadretdinov, who was charged with related crimes.
At the same time, the court’s ruling today underscored what some defense lawyers here have called a worrisome trend: the appeal and, frequently, the reversal of decisions by juries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/world/europe/10russiacnd.html?ex=1320728400&en=e9827091ba5858f5&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Newspaper Tribute to Anna Politkovskaya
By Judith Ingram
The Associated Press
Anna Politkovskaya's colleagues, supported by the independent Russian Union of Journalists and hundreds of domestic and foreign media outlets, published a newspaper Thursday devoted to the slain journalist, who focused on uncovering torture, abductions and other abuses against civilians in Chechnya.
The 16-page, tabloid-style paper included tributes to the journalist and rights activist, a sampling of her work, a list of 211 journalists killed in Russia between 1992 and the present, and her mother's recollections.
Raisa Mazepa recalled begging her daughter to be more cautious in her work.
"I remember she told me then: 'I understand, of course, that the sword of Damocles is always hanging over me. I understand that, but I don't want to give up,'" her mother was quoted as saying by Politkovskaya's newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Thursday's newspaper also contained a rebuke to President Vladimir Putin, who on the day of Politkovskaya's funeral played down her influence on political life as "very minor." It reprinted government instructions to act to correct the problems raised in her stories. The paper said close to 40 criminal investigations had been opened on the basis of Politkovskaya's work.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/10/27/015.html
Azeri Radio Barred From Airing Foreign Programs
The Associated Press
BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Azeri authorities will bar local broadcasters from airing programs of the British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America starting next year, the country's broadcasting chief said.
The opposition media denounced the move as part of a government campaign against the freedom of speech.
Nushirrin Maharramov, head of the National Broadcasting Council, said Wednesday that local broadcasters lacked the necessary licenses to air programs of the foreign radio stations. The three radio stations would be barred from airing their programs through local broadcasters starting Jan. 1.
Maharramov said the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty would be able to continue broadcasting on frequencies allotted to them by Azeri authorities. He said authorities were ready to discuss providing a frequency to Washington-based Voice of America, which currently does not have one.
"We are ready to provide additional frequencies to foreign radio stations if necessary," he said.
The BBC World Service said in a statement that it was "watching the situation carefully" and wanted "to continue to offer our listeners in Azerbaijan independent and impartial news and information."
Asked why the foreign stations that had been using local broadcasters for years were barred from doing that now, Maharramov responded that his National Broadcasting Council had been created three years ago and spent the first two years in tackling organizational issues.
"We have stepped up our activities during the last year," he said.
Editors of leading opposition newspapers and media freedom advocates issued a statement late Tuesday voicing concern about official plans to end foreign broadcasts.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/10/27/013.html
In an idealist world
Are our researchers into terrorism being appropriately critical or merely hypocritical, ask David Martin Jones and Carl Ungerer
… Meanwhile, a brief cruise through the University of Adelaide's e-journal Borderlands regales the unwary reader with titles such as Terror Australis: Security, Terror and the "War on Terror" Discourse or New Languages: Power, Feeling and Communication. Opening a few of these articles, moreover, we discover that critical terror study requires no research into the evolution, ideology or strategic thinking of transnational non-state actors such as al-Qa'ida or its regional affiliates.
Instead, critical engagement is a euphemism for an assault on the Australian, British and US government responses to terrorism, viewed from this perspective as a disturbing new international phenomenon.
Thus, Katrina Lee Koo of the Australian National University informs us that "the ease in which the US war on terror discourse has been assimilated into the discourse and practice of Australia's security reflects the enduring commitments that both have to notions of statism, permanent threat and insecurity and the acceptance of violence against those who may threaten us". She concludes that the war on terror, therefore, has merely "reinforced an unethical practice of security".
In a similar but lucidity-challenged vein, Anthony Burke (University of NSW), in an essay on social identities that also doubles as a chapter in his oddly titled book Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other (2006), explores the relationship between Freedom's Freedom: American Enlightenment and Permanent War.
Burke maintains, or more precisely rambles, that an "onto-technology of freedom through US history, the Cold War and the war on terror and considering its functional mirroring by the Islamist threat" exposes "the multiple dangers posed by the aggressive assertion of a simultaneously instrumental and universalising image of historical action and inevitability that rejects any restriction of its powers and any responsibility for their effect".
In a more coherent effort in the Carnegie Council's journal Ethics and International Affairs, Burke reveals the target of this critical assault is the modern liberal democratic state and its "violent and exclusivist" understanding of sovereignty that lingers "like a latent illness in the very depths of modern cosmopolitanism". In the biographical notes accompanying this article, Burke informs us he is working on an ARC-funded project on the politics and ethics of the use of force.
We can derive from Burke's oeuvre what this new ethical perspective reveals: namely, terrorism is our fault and the use of military force is unethical and unnecessary. According to this distorted view of transnational terror, state discourses of security have served only to reinforce a process "othering" Islamic radicalism. Othering, critical theory's favourite gerund and key explanatory tool, reveals that the modern state "ultimately secures sovereignty, physically and existentially, through violence against and alienation from the Other".
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20615979-12332,00.html
continued...
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