MISREADING A BATTLE EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, JUNE 22): The comparison by Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, of the World War II Battle of the Bulge with the war in Iraq doesn?t fit.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...ading_a_battle/

TALK BOLDLY WITH IRAN - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 23): "Here's the pitch that you can imagine Kissinger making: Iran's hopes of becoming a major power can be achieved only by halting its nuclear program and working with the United States to stabilize Iraq and the wider Middle East. I hope Secretary Rice is preparing a similar presentation."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6062201469.html

IRAN: US OPTS FOR REGIME CHANGE, NOT FORCE - GARETH PORTER (ASIA TIMES, JUNE 22): The administration's quiet abandonment of the military option and its real focus on regime change is being pursued through overt funding of Iranian opposition groups (including US$75 million to "promote democracy") as well as covert support for armed resistance elements operating in Iran's border areas.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF22Ak03.html

NEXT VICTIM: IRAN OR NORTH KOREA? RAY MCGOVERN (ANTIWAR.COM, JUNE 23): The synthetic urgency attached to these threats (Iran and North Korea) is a creature of the November election. The president will want to burnish his image as "war president" again.
http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=9193

A SECOND NUCLEAR FRONT? - CLAUDE SALHANI (WASHINGTON TIMES, JUNE 23): If Iran and North Korea are allowed to proliferate their nuclear ambitions, the risk of other countries feeling obliged to follow suit is all too real.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/200606...83913-9040r.htm

ISRAEL'S SELF-DESTRUCTION - LOUIS RENE BERES (WASHINGTON TIMES, JUNE 22): Called upon repeatedly by our "civilized" world to negotiate with unrepentant terrorists, every prime minister from Yitzhak Rabin to Ariel Sharon has agreed to assorted policies of national defeat. So has current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060621-085648-9557r.htm

EUROPE, PALESTINE AND PEACE - DANIEL SCHWAMMENTHAL (WALL STRET JOURNAL, JUNE 23): Olmert's Israel is to be the midwife to a Palestinian state.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1151012347...ain_europe_asia
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DON'T SHOOT, TALK EDITORIAL (HAARETZ, JUNE 22): Before deciding to escalate the conflict, before marking more and more individuals for assassination, it is appropriate to try the alternative: speaking instead of shooting.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/729860.html

LAND OF PARADOXES: - ALUF BENN (HAARETZ, JUNE 22): In a reversal of positions, Israel wants to leave the West Bank unilaterally, but the PA is opposed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/729859.html

BUILDING A NEW ERA IN U.S.-TURKEY RELATIONS - STEVEN A. COOK AD ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL (WASHINGTONPOST.COM, JUNE 22): In an ominous sign that all is not well between the United States and Turkey, a 2005 Pew Global Attitude Survey indicates that large numbers of Turks not only oppose U.S. foreign policy, but don't consider Americans to be honest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6062101613.html

DEMOCRACY AND THE MIDDLE EAST: POLICY REVIEW - DAVID SCHENKER (NEW REPUBLIC, JUNE 21): Has America abandoned the cause of democracy in the Middle East? Recent events give plenty of reason for concern.
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=w060619&s=schenker062106

ATTEMPT TO STEER THE NEWS BACKFIRES IN AFGHANISTAN: INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WARNING DRAWS OUTRAGE, RIDICULE - PAMELA CONSTABLE (WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 22): An unofficial attempt by Afghanistan's national intelligence service to quash sensational and negative coverage by the Afghan news media appears to have backfired badly this week, provoking both outrage and ridicule among journalists and opinion makers, and swift repudiation by the office of President Hamid Karzai.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6062101821.html

CAN FREEDOM AND OPIUM COEXIST?: WINNING AFGHAN HEARTS AND MINDS ONE POPPY FARMER AT A TIME - FRED KAPLAN (SLATE, JUNE 21): If the United States and NATO packed up tomorrow, the place would fall apart for sure.
http://www.slate.com/id/2144190/

MOSQUE MATTERS: MAYBE WE'D TACKLE THE TOUGH ISSUES IF WE GOT THAT WE'RE AT WAR - MICHAEL LEDEEN (NATIONAL REVIEW, JUNE 22): I'll bet you a good-sized farm that if we ever get to the bottom of 9/11 we'll discover that mosques were central in maintaining contact with and discipline over the terrorists.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODhkN...TdhZDg3ZDlkYzM=

POLL FINDS DISCORD BETWEEN THE MUSLIM AND WESTERN WORLDS - MEG BORTIN (NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 23): Non-Muslim Westerners and Muslims around the world have widely different views of world events, and each group tends to view the other as violent, intolerant and lacking in respect for women, a new international survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006, of more than 14,000 people in 13 nations indicates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/world/23...r=1&oref=slogin

AMEMBASSY LA PAZ BATTLES INFILTRATION CHARGES ECCENTRIC STAR (JUNE 22): President Evo Morales drew a sharp denial from the U.S. Embassy when he claimed in a speech that the United States is sending soldiers disguised as students and tourists to Bolivia.
http://eccentricstar.typepad.com/public_di...assy_la_pa.html

WE ARE THE WORLD - DAVID RIEFF (NATION, JUNE 14): We are back to American exceptionalism again. And there is a word for that, and that word is self-regard -- an attitude that rarely turns out well for those unable to get past it.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/rieff

THE TRIUMPH OF THE EAST - NIALL FERGUSON (NEW STATESMAN, JUNE 26): It is a commonplace that the past hundred years saw the ascent of the west, even that it was the "American century." But what really happened was the rise of Asia, and the start of a momentous global shift.
http://www.newstatesman.com/nssubsfilter.p...RN=200606260034
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FOUL! WHY, DESPITE EVERYTHING, AMERICA WILL NEVER EMBRACE SOCCER - JONATHAN V. LAST (WEEKLY STANDARD, JUNE 22): Turn on a World Cup game, and within 15 minutes you'll see a grown man fall to the ground, clutch his leg and writhe in agony after being tapped on the shoulder by an opposing player. Making a show of your physical vulnerability runs counter to every impulse in American sports.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...12/360zlcro.asp

U.S. VISITOR CRACKDOWN SPURS PASSPORT SCRUTINY - MARIE TYLER (WASHINGTON TIMES, JUNE 22): U.S. passports have become more closely scrutinized in recent years by foreign officials who are finding reasons to enforce long-standing policies on travel documents, as the U.S. has cracked down on visitors since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20060622-122221-7266r.htm

MORE PROOF THAT YES, I WOULD DEVOTE A BLOG TO URSULA PLASSNIK IF I WERE AUSTRIAN (PRINCESS SPARKLE PONY'S PHOTO BLOG, JUNE 21): Photos of Austrian Foreign Minister Plassnik with Secretary of State Rice.
http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2006/06/mo...uld-devote.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060623/pl_nm/...HNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Treasury confirms bank records surveillance 42 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior U.S. Treasury official on Friday confirmed the department has examined banking transactions in an international database in search of terrorist activity and insisted the secret program was legal.

"As part of our efforts to track the funds of terrorists, we are confirming that we have subpoenaed records on terrorist-related transactions from SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication)," said Under Secretary Stuart Levey.

"The legal basis for this subpoena is routine and absolutely clear," he added. The New York Times, in a report on Friday, quoted unnamed people who suggested the program took advantage of a "gray area" in law.

The program to examine banking transactions is run out of the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA) and overseen by the U.S. Treasury Department. The records examined mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas or into and out of the United States.

Levey said Treasury had briefed U.S. lawmakers as well as central bankers from the Group of 10 nations on the program and won support for it.

"The reaction from experts -- across the political spectrum -- has been that this is exactly the kind of creative and vigorous approach that is needed to combat the elusive terrorist threat that we face," he said.

Treasury took the somewhat unusual step of scheduling a news conference to confirm the secret program after the New York Times decided to publish its story on the programs despite Treasury's request that it not do so.

"This terrorist tracking program....is really government at its best," outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow said at the beginning of the press conference.

Snow said it was "entirely consistent" with efforts to strengthen government activities and to protect America from potential attacks by terror groups.


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The Earlybird: Headlines 6/23/06

(Updated after 8:30 a.m. ET)

From NationalJournal.com


Bush sees Iraq parallel in Hungary's democratic struggle, Senate rejects call for Iraq withdrawal, panel releases Abramoff report, SCOTUS rules on deportation & workplace protections, FBI thwarts terrorist plot against Sears Tower, Iranian support for Iraq insurgency grows, U.S. seeks diplomatic solution to North Korea:

"Comparing the struggle for freedom that started in Hungary 50 years ago to the fight in Iraq today, President Bush used a hilltop address Thursday to make a far-reaching homage to democracy," the Chicago Tribune reports. "'Liberty can be delayed but it cannot be denied,' Bush said from a majestic perch overlooking the Danube River coursing through Budapest."


Bush departed from Europe on Thursday "with support on confronting nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea but lingering questions about the war on terrorism," USA Today reports. "'This world needs us to work together, because there's a lot of challenges,' Bush said during a three-day trip that included a summit with leaders of the European Union."


"Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday he might have to testify in the CIA leak trial of his former chief of staff," AP reports. "Cheney made the comment in a CNN interview, following last month's suggestion by prosecutors that the vice president would be a logical witness in the case of" I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "who is accused of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI."


"The Bush administration urged Congress on Thursday not to tighten U.S. sanctions against foreign firms investing in Iran's oil and gas sectors, arguing it could damage the current major-power diplomatic initiative with Tehran at a delicate moment," Reuters reports. "'We're on the verge possibly -- possibly -- of a negotiation with Iran on the future of its nuclear weapons program,' Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told the Senate Banking Committee."


Congress: Senate Rejects Calls For Iraq Withdrawal


The Senate on Thursday "defeated two measures proposed by Democrats" calling on Bush "to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq," Bloomberg News reports. A proposal from Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., "to begin drawing down troop levels, with no deadline for full withdrawal, failed by a vote of 60-39." And a plan by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "calling for the withdrawal of the 127,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by July 1, 2007, was defeated 86-13."


"The Senate unanimously approved a $517.7 billion FY07 defense authorization bill Thursday after voting by a wide margin to reinstate the Air Force's multiyear procurement plan to buy 60 F-22A Raptor fighter jets -- despite strong GAO warnings this week that doing so would drive up costs," CongressDailyAM reports. (Subscription Required)


"With a little help Thursday from President Bush, House Republican leaders pushed through legislation beefing up presidential line-item rescission authority with a 'fast-track' process," CongressDailyAM reports. "In the end the vote was an overwhelming 247-172 in favor, with 35 Democrats crossing the aisle." (Subscription Required)


House Republicans were successful Thursday "in passing legislation that permanently reduces the estate tax but stops short of full repeal in hopes that the package would break a logjam in the Senate," MarketWatch reports. "The House voted 269-156" to approve the measure.


"A bipartisan Senate report released on Thursday documented more than $5.3 million in payments to Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition and a leading Republican Party strategist, from an influence-peddling operation run by the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff on behalf of Indian tribe casinos," the New York Times reports. "The report by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee portrayed Mr. Reed, now a candidate for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in his home state of Georgia, as a central figure in Mr. Abramoff's lobbying operation, the focus of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department."


And "Rep. Bob Ney told Senate investigators he made no effort to help a client of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, a congressional report said Thursday," AP reports. "The section of the 373-page report that focuses on Ney is a fresh sign of potential legal trouble for the Ohio Republican who has become ensnared in a wide-ranging criminal probe of influence peddling in Washington."


The Senate panel concluded that "existing laws are sufficient to deal with the sort of massive fraud perpetrated by" Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a former aide to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, AP reports.


"House Republicans announced on Thursday a series of summer hearings on immigration policy to be held in California, Arizona and Texas and challenged the view that the sessions were intended to delay new immigration legislation," the New York Times reports. Sessions are planned in San Diego and Laredo, Texas, on July 5 and July 7, respectively, "on border vulnerabilities and international terrorism; hearings on English as the official language and enforcement of current immigration laws are planned for mid-July; and hearings are planned in Arizona in mid-August on costs to the government resulting from gaps in border control."


Courts: Justices Uphold Deportation, Workplace Protections


"Illegal immigrants who return to the United States after being deported are 'continuous lawbreakers' and are subject to automatic removal from this country, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday," the Los Angeles Times reports. "The 8-1 decision upholds a strict 1996 law that adopted a no-leniency policy for those who returned illegally to this country after having been deported."


The court also "substantially enhanced legal protection against retaliation for employees who complain about discrimination or harassment on the job, in a ruling on Thursday," the New York Times reports. "The 9-to-0 decision adopted a broadly worded and employee-friendly definition of the type of retaliation that is prohibited by the basic federal law against discrimination in employment."


"The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal of a key patent case by medical testing company Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings," Reuters reports. "The high court declined to issue a ruling on the merits of the case, which could have provided further guidance on the limits of what can be patented."


"A lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's domestic spying program must be dismissed because it threatens to reveal state secrets and jeopardize the war on terror, the government says," AP reports. "The case was set to go before a federal judge in San Francisco" today. "The Bush administration argues that the courts cannot decide the constitutionality of the president's asserted wartime powers to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants."


Terrorism: FBI Thwarts Planned Attack On Chicago & Miami


"FBI agents in an undercover sting operation arrested seven terrorism suspects in Miami on Thursday who allegedly were plotting to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, the FBI headquarters in Miami and other U.S. buildings, officials said," the Chicago Tribune reports. "The suspects had 'aspirations' but 'no means' to attack the Sears Tower or other buildings, a senior federal law-enforcement source said."


"Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials," the New York Times reports. "The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions."


"At least a half-dozen U.S. cities are considering a ban or limit on rail shipments of deadly chemicals in an effort to prevent terrorists from turning tank cars into weapons of mass destruction," USA Today reports. "The restrictions would apply to rail cars carrying lethal chemicals through populated neighborhoods."


Iraq: Iranian Support For Insurgency On The Rise


"Iranian support for extremists inside Iraq has shown a 'noticeable increase' this year, with Tehran's special forces providing weapons and bomb training to anti-U.S. groups, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said" Thursday, the Washington Post reports. Army Gen. George Casey "listed Iranian influence as one of the four major problems he faces in Iraq."


"After three days of congressional debate over possibly withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that no reduction is planned and that the military force could even grow," the Chicago Tribune reports. At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld "said Casey has been instructed to discuss the U.S. troop presence in Iraq with the new Iraqi government."


"Less than two weeks after al Qaeda in Iraq leader Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike, coalition forces detained a senior member of the terrorist network, according to the U.S. military," CNN reports. A statement from the military today "did not identify the man who was captured during a raid on Monday. That raid came two days after another senior member of the network -- Mansur Sulayman Mansur Khalif, also known as Sheikh Mansur -- also was killed in a coalition airstrike."


"Hundreds of chemical weapons found in Iraq were produced before the 1991 Gulf War and probably are so old they couldn't be used as designed, intelligence officials said Thursday," AP reports. "Two lawmakers -- Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. -- on Wednesday circulated a one-page summary of a military intelligence report that says coalition forces have recovered about 500 munitions with mustard or sarin agents, and more could be discovered around Iraq."


World: Officials Seek Diplomatic Solution To North Korea


"The U.S. will pursue diplomacy to ease tensions with North Korea over a possible North Korean long-range missile test, the U.S. State Department said," Bloomberg News reports. "'Diplomacy is the right answer and that is what we are pursuing,'" State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday.


U.S. officials also suggested Thursday "that the military has limited ability to shoot a North Korean missile out of the sky and spurned suggestions of a pre-emptive strike on the ground," AP reports. "Still, they warned that the Koreans would pay a price if they test-launched a long-range missile."


"Japan and the United States signed an agreement [today] to expand their cooperation on a joint ballistic missile defense shield, moving to protect themselves amid signs North Korea could test a ballistic missile," AP reports. "The pact, signed by Foreign Minister Taro Aso and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer, commits them to joint production of missiles to intercept incoming missiles, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement."


"Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas embraced each other [Thursday] and agreed to hold their first formal meeting in 18 months, raising hopes for a new phase in Middle East peacemaking," the Boston Globe reports. "Olmert vowed to make 'painful compromises' in the cause of peace and also apologized for the deaths of innocent Palestinians in Israeli rocket attacks."


"Somalia's transitional government and the Islamic militia that seized control of the war-torn capital Mogadishu have signed a cease-fire in which the two factions agreed to work together, a government representative said Thursday," CNN reports. "The Islamic Courts Union agreed to recognize the transitional government as part of the deal, said Dahil Murray, an aide to transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed."


Nation: UAW Buyouts, Hedge Fund Probe, Climate Report


"About 37,000 hourly workers have so far accepted offers by General Motors Corp. and auto supplier Delphi Corp. to leave the companies, union officials say, potentially giving the auto maker greater cuts than expected but presenting a new set of questions to overcome," the Wall Street Journal reports. "In one of the largest employee-buyout programs in U.S. corporate history, about 28,000 GM workers -- or nearly 25% of the car maker's work force represented by the United Auto Workers union -- had taken early-retirement offers or buyouts as of late [Thursday] for an offer that ends today, UAW officials said." (Subscription Required)


"One of the nation's most prominent hedge funds, Pequot Capital Management, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible insider trading, according to government officials briefed on the case," the New York Times reports.


"Earth's average temperature has been hotter over the last quarter century than during the previous four centuries and possibly much longer, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report Thursday that substantially supports the findings of a controversial 1998 climate study," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. "The report by a scientific panel appointed by the academy backed the most vivid feature of the so-called hockey stick graphic, a chart showing a long-term rise in temperature between A.D. 900 and today."




The Earlybird is produced each morning by Gwen Glazer, Erin McPike, Patrick Ottenhoff, Jane Roh and Irene Tsikitas.


©2006 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Al-Qaida No. 2 mentions al-Zarqawi's death 26 minutes ago

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader paid tribute to the slain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video Friday, extolling him as "the prince of martyrs."

In the video on Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri called al-Zarqawi — who was killed in a June 7 U.S. airstrike — "a soldier" and "a hero."

The deputy al-Qaida leader did not mention the new head of al-Qaida in Iraq which the group has declared to be Abu Hamza al-Muhajer. The omission of any reference to the successor might mean the tape was recorded before the successor was chosen, or it could indicate al-Zawahri does not endorse the new leader.

The video clip on the Qatari-based TV channel showed al-Zawahri in a white robe and black turban, with a picture of a smiling al-Zarqawi over his left shoulder.

The last video broadcast of al-Zawahri appeared to have been made the day after a May 29 accident in which a U.S. military truck crashed into traffic in Kabul, killing up to five people. The incident sparked anti-foreigner riots in Kabul.

Al-Zawahri, who is believed to be hiding in the mountains on the Pakistani-Afghan border, lashed out at the United States.

"You are not facing individuals but the whole of the Muslim nation," he told Americans. "America will not dream in security until security has become a reality in Palestine and the other Muslim countries."

He attacked U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad is "an Afghani renegade who has abandoned his religion, emigrated to America and bowed at the feet of the Zionists," al-Zawahri said.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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US fears home-grown terror threat BBC News
The US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales has warned that home-grown terrorists could pose as much danger to the US as foreign al-Qaeda operatives. Seven men have been charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, and attack FBI offices. The men, five from the US and two from Haiti, hoped to wage a "full ground war" against the US, according to the charges brought against them. Officials said the men were foiled at an early stage and posed no danger. Mr Gonzales said the group of "home-grown terrorists" were inspired by "a violent jihadist message". "They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy," he told reporters.

'Dangerous'
According to charges brought against the men, the group of men aged 22 to 32 had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, but had no contacts with it. They have been charged with conspiring to blow up both the Sears Tower and the FBI building in North Miami Beach. A federal indictment says they were conspiring to "levy war against the United States". They were arrested at a warehouse in Miami, during an undercover operation after their group was infiltrated by an agent posing as an al-Qaeda member. Mr Gonzales said the lack of direct link to al-Qaeda did not make the group any less dangerous. "Today terrorist threats come from a smaller, more loosely defined cells not affiliated to al-Qaeda," he said. "Left unchecked these home-grown terrorists may prove as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda."

'Wannabes'
Five of those charged appeared at a Miami federal court on Friday. They wore ankle chains and were chained together at the wrists, the Associated Press reported. Alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste apparently asked an undercover agent he thought was from al-Qaeda for help to build an "army to wage jihad", the indictment said. He is said to have told the agent he and his "soldiers" wanted al-Qaeda training and planning for a "full ground war" against the US in order to "kill all the devils we can". His mission would "be just as good or greater than 9/11", Mr Batiste said, according to the indictment. No weapons were found in the Miami warehouse, and the seven had not posed any immediate danger, the FBI said. Deputy FBI leader John Pistole said the plot had been "aspirational" rather than "operational". Neighbours in Miami's poor Liberty City area said the men apparently slept in the warehouse where they were arrested. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard," said Tashawn Rose. However a man claiming links to the arrested men told the news channel CNN that they were a peaceful religious group, who studied Allah.

US TV legend Aaron Spelling dies BBC News
Television producer Aaron Spelling, the man behind some of US TV's most famous shows, has died at the age of 83. Spelling's hits included Charlie's Angels, Dynasty and Starsky and Hutch, as well as Beverly Hills 90210. He died at his home in Los Angeles, where he was resting after suffering a stroke on 18 June, his spokesman said. During the 1970s and 1980s Spelling's shows brought success to the ABC TV network, and he also produced more than 140 TV movies in his career. He underwent radiation therapy for a lesion in his throat in 2001.

Influence
"Mr. Spelling died at 6.25 pm this afternoon, he was in his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Candy and son Randy at his bedside. I don't know if his daughter Tori was with him at this moment," his publicist Kevin Sasaki said. Over decades spent working in the US TV industry Aaron Spelling became famous for his prodigious output and succession of hit shows. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Spelling was "the most prolific TV producer of all time," producing more than 5,000 hours of television programming, including more than 300 hours of made-for-television movies and at least a dozen films. A succession of stars launched their careers in Spelling's productions, from Farah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels to John Travolta and Nick Nolte, who won their first major roles in Spelling's TV movies. He was credited with launching the career of Heather Locklear, who co-starred with a post-Star Trek William Shatner in TJ Hooker and later appeared in Melrose Place. Other shows he produced included Hart to Hart, Matt Houston, Fantasy Island and Burke's Law. Spelling's own daughter, Tori Spelling, won a role in Beverly Hills 90210, a show based around a California high school which became popular in the 1990s.

Money-tracking leak angers Cheney BBC News
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has condemned as "offensive" US media disclosures of a secret programme that probes global financial transactions. The government has covertly tracked thousands of international money transactions for nearly five years as part of its so-called war on terror. Mr Cheney said leaking the programme played into the enemy's hands. The New York Times defended its coverage, saying the information was in the public's interest.

'Solid and sound'
Speaking in Chicago, Mr Cheney said the disclosures, which went ahead despite appeals from the White House, would make it more difficult for the administration to prevent future attacks. The operation uses a huge financial database in Belgium, known as Swift, to track private money transfers around the world. But civil liberty groups have raised concerns that the programme, which began soon after the 9/11 attacks in the US, may infringe individual rights to privacy.Mr Cheney said: "These are good, solid sound programmes. They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land." He added: "What I find most disturbing is the fact that some in the media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programmes, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people." The programme had earlier also been defended by Treasury Secretary John Snow. He called it an "effective weapon in the larger war on terror." The treasury says the programme is strictly confined to the records of suspected foreign terrorists. The government had compelled Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which links about 7,800 financial institutions around the world, to open its records, using subpoenas. The New York Times, which revealed the programme, defended its coverage. Executive editor Bill Keller said: "We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest." Although there is no direct connection, the scheme has echoes of a recently revealed US surveillance programme in which millions of international and domestic phone calls and e-mails were monitored, correspondents say.

Governor Refuses Bush Request for Troops at Border

SACRAMENTO-Concerned about overextending the state's National
Guard forces, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger won't send 1,500 more
soldiers to Arizona, New Mexico. By Peter Nicholas.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOH0EO

Officials Defend Bank Data Tracking

WASHINGTON-Amid privacy concerns, the Bush administration portrays
the Treasury Department's secret program as crucial to the war on
terrorism. By Greg Miller and Josh Meyer.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOI0EP

Where Taliban Rules Again

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan-The fundamentalist fighters have
regrouped to spread fear in one south Afghan province mired in
poverty and the drug trade. By Paul Watson.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOJ0EQ

Aaron Spelling: TV Mogul Spun Fluff Into Gold

Aaron Spelling, whose knack for tapping into the public's taste
for light entertainment made him both the most prolific and one of
the wealthiest producers in television history, died Friday
evening. He was 83. By Brian Lowry.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOL0ES

Troops Quell Fierce Fighting in Baghdad

BAGHDAD-Clashes between Shiites and Sunnis prompt a state of
emergency and a tighter clampdown in the capital. Dozens die in
violence across Iraq. By J. Michael Kennedy.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOM0ET

No Clear Favorite Emerges in Mexico's Polls

MEXICO CITY-The final polls before the July 2 ballot show Calderon
and Lopez Obrador running very close, with up to 15% of voters
still wavering. By Richard Boudreaux.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeON0EU

Democrats' Iraq Gap Narrows, Clinton Says

WASHINGTON-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says the recent debates in
Congress also helped her party show that Republicans "blindly
follow the president." By Ronald Brownstein.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOO0EV

'Mafia Cops' Claim Lawyers Botched Case

NEW YORK-Two officers convicted of moonlighting as mob hit men
criticize their defense, seek a mistrial. By Ellen Barry.
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Mineta, Cabinet's Sole Democrat, Quits

WASHINGTON-Norman Y. Mineta, the only Democrat in President Bush's
Cabinet, has resigned as secretary of Transportation. By Johanna
Neuman and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar.
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FBI Says 7 Terror Suspects Were Mostly Talk

MIAMI-The men never posed real danger, agents say - the "Al Qaeda"
contact was an undercover informant, and no weapons were found. By
Carol J. Williams and Richard B. Schmitt.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOR0EY

Top California Officials to Get 18% Pay Hike

SACRAMENTO-At a time when most California workers are struggling
to have their salaries keep pace with inflation, the state's top
elected officials will be treated to an 18% pay hike this year. By
Evan Halper.
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U.S. Berates Kaiser Over Kidney Effort

A withering report says the transplant program was poorly planned,
staffed and run. The HMO does not admit or rebut the accusations.
By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4W...Io30G2B0HeOU0Eb

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dl...379/1027/NEWS11



Thousands claim exposure in 9/11 aftermath
By SHAWN COHEN AND JAKE SHERMAN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: June 22, 2006)

David Worby is now at the helm of what he calls the largest and most important class-action lawsuit in U.S. history, representing thousands of people he says are dying at an accelerated pace from exposure to toxins at Ground Zero.

He says a national health emergency should be declared because his 8,000 clients are developing cancer, kidney and respiratory ailments in the nearly five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The big question: To what extent is this true?

The answer: No one really knows because Worby hasn't shared medical proof, and that's why even the government's 9/11 health coordinator recently stopped by his White Plains penthouse office to see what he's got.

The fact is that no one has done a comprehensive study of the health consequences on an estimated 75,000 police, firefighters and construction workers who responded to the World Trade Center site — and Worby has stepped into the vacuum.

"You're looking at the system," Worby said. "I'm it."

He has sued New York City and its contractors, who oversaw the rescue and cleanup, claiming they failed to protect workers from cancer-causing benzene and other hazardous chemicals that filled the air. Worby returns today to a federal court in Manhattan, where the defense will argue for a dismissal on the grounds that the city made a "good faith" effort to safeguard workers by providing them equipment, such as masks, and trying to ensure they used it.

The city's lawyers also claim that New York is legally immune from liability while providing services during an attack on U.S. soil.

Worby says the city should have shut down the operation, and declared it a hazardous waste site, immediately after it was clear no survivors would be found. Instead, workers remained there for months, forming bucket brigades that cleared debris and searched the smoking rubble for bodies.

He has thousands of clients saying they basically fended for themselves the first few days, then were given masks with filters that were later replaced because they were deemed insufficient to block out all the toxins.

It was 20 months after the attacks that Worby's first two clients — NYPD detectives John Walcott of Pomona and Richard Volpe of Mount Kisco — walked into his office to report they were suffering life-threatening conditions.

Both men arrived at Ground Zero shortly after the towers came crashing down. They searched the pile for survivors the first few days as part of the bucket brigade, wearing nothing more than surgical masks. They spent the next several months recovering body fragments, volunteering on days off. They felt so strongly about the mission that they braved the conditions, even as they began coughing up blood and black soot.

"I thought this could be doing something to my body, but at the same time, I was thinking it's my job and that they wouldn't put me in a dangerous situation like that," Volpe, 38, said.

"I was told everything was safe," Walcott, 41, said.

A married father with a newborn child, Walcott became increasingly sluggish in the ensuing months. He attributed it to having to wake up early to coach hockey at Fox Lane High School.

In May 2003, he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and told he would be dead in a week without treatment. So he began five months of chemotherapy and had a stem-cell transplant.

Told his cancer likely resulted from his exposure to benzene at Ground Zero, he also went in search of an attorney. He and Volpe — who is suffering kidney failure — contacted two attorneys whose fees were too high, before finding Worby.

Worby, a 53-year-old Bedford resident, already was one of the region's most successful personal injury lawyers, an outspoken advocate who set a Westchester and Putnam county record in 1989 by securing $18 million for a construction worker hit by a car on the Hutchinson River Parkway. He's also a composer, playwright, author, producer and TV writer, according to his Web site. Ice-T and Snoop Dogg, whom Worby calls "unrelated brothers," will star in one of his screenplays that begins shooting in the fall.

He came out of semiretirement to file the suit in September 2004.

Initially, his lawsuit got little attention, partly because few took him seriously, including the news media he was courting. But his client list kept growing, largely by word of mouth. Walcott and Volpe, for their part, have referred several people with whom they worked at the World Trade Center site.

Although Worby has only met a couple of hundred of his clients, he now has more than a dozen lawyers working full time on the case and a team of medical consultants. His profile has grown to the point that media and politicians are now seeking him out.

"David Worby has given a voice to 9/11 heroes who would otherwise be suffering in silence," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who has met Worby to discuss his suit and her fight for a greater government response to the health concerns. "Because our government has basically abandoned these workers, advocates like Mr. Worby have had to intervene on their behalf."

This month, he's sat down with everyone from The New York Times to "60 Minutes," declaring that 57 of his clients have already died from 9/11 causes, including two this week.

"I predicted two years ago that I would have hundreds of people dying and nobody listened," he said. "I have 300 people dying of cancer in the next few months. We're just now entering the latency period for these toxins."

But as with most of the sickness and deaths, he won't disclose names or evidence linking the illnesses to 9/11, citing privacy concerns. He referred The Journal News to one doctor who is assisting his case, but that person did not return repeated calls.

"All you people in the media are torturing me," Worby said. "You say, 'Give me doctors, give me scientists.' Find your own scientists. Challenge me."

He has no medical degree, though one of his consultants dubbed him a "brown-shoe epidemiologist."

The reality is one of the deaths formally linked to 9/11 recovery work was NYPD Detective James Zadroga of New Jersey, whose autopsy found he died from respiratory failure caused by exposure to toxic dust.

Some experts say the types of cancer Worby's reporting typically wouldn't occur for at least 10 years after exposure but note it could be hastened by the extreme level of toxins at Ground Zero.

"It's a very sad commentary that a lawyer working on his own knows more about the health of people who were exposed to 9/11 hazards than the government, which has a responsibility to protect the public health," said Jonathan Bennett, spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.

The federal government did set up a health registry in 2003 for lower Manhattan residents, workers and rescue personnel. But while 71,000 people participated, the program has come under fire because it gave no medical testing, care or referrals.

Under one federal program, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City has screened about 16,000 World Trade Center responders and treated 1,800 people, though the treatment has a 16-week wait list.

Dr. Robin Herbert, the program's co-director, said "at least a few" of them have developed cancer, although doctors haven't studied whether they're linked to Sept. 11.

"We are not near the point where we can say anything scientific about the cancer rates among our population," Herbert said.

"The programs we're operating were not funded to specifically track nor identify deaths among WTC responders," she added.

She refused to comment on the suit but said screeners at Mount Sinai have been "badly surprised by the persistence of our patients' WTC-related illnesses."

"We do know there were various cancer-causing agents in the environment, and I think there is certainly reason to be concerned and to watch this group very carefully," she said.

Worby has not declared how much money his suit will seek but said that his priority is getting the government to address the crisis facing his clients and others.

"This is a mission, this is not a case," he said. "I've never seen anything like this in my life. It has nothing to do with being a lawyer. It has everything to do with understanding the medical catastrophe and helping people."

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/0...0845378960.html


US lobby stonewalls illegal arms curb
Date: June 24 2006


Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent in New York

PRASAD KARIYAWASAM seems like an unlikely person to receive 5000 letters a day. Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United Nations is a softly spoken diplomat, more likely to avoid controversy than provoke it.

But in the past few weeks, his office has been overwhelmed with at least 100,000 letters, mostly from supporters of America's National Rifle Association, who believe that he is trying to take away their guns.

How could the Sri Lankan UN ambassador pose a danger to the right to bear arms of 80 million gun-owning Americans?

He is the chairman of a two-week UN conference, beginning on Monday, which will review progress made in the past five years to curb the trade in small arms, which fuel and sustain many international conflicts.

Under a 2001 agreement, all countries in the UN made a commitment to collect and destroy illegal weapons, crack down on illicit trade in small arms, regulate the activities of arms brokers and impose import and export controls. There has been some progress. Since 2001, more than 50 countries have tightened their gun legislation, and more than 60 countries have destroyed illegal small arms. But only 32 countries regulate small-arms brokers.

In Africa, regional agreements have been developed on light weapons and small arms but arms embargoes against states such as Sierra Leone have proved ineffective, while conflicts costing millions of lives continue in Congo and Darfur, fuelled by the ready availability of small arms.

Mr Kariyawasam explains that the conference is about the illicit gun trade, and has nothing to do with Americans who legally own weapons. The gun lobby says the UN is dedicated to passing "a global treaty banning ownership of firearms - including yours", but the envoy says the UN will not pass any treaty. The meeting will review progress on a non-binding agreement of five years ago.

In fact, as much American criticism of the world body notes, the UN seems incapable of doing almost anything efficiently, let alone undertake the task of disarming America.

Although there are numerous arms control treaties covering the instruments of the Cold War - ballistic missiles, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and even landmines - the numbers killed by those weapons are minuscule compared with the human toll taken by small arms, such as the ubiquitous AK-47 rifle. This weapon and its derivatives are still the weapons of choice for armies, militias and terrorists around the world.

The Small Arms Survey, a Swiss research project, estimated that in 2003 between 80,000 and 108,000 people were killed by guns in conflicts.

The International Action Network on Small Arms says 1000 people a day die as a result of guns. Most of these are homicides, but about a quarter are in wars. It estimates that the gun trade is worth $US4 billion ($5.4 billion) a year, of which a quarter may be illicit. Rebecca Peters, the head of the network, knows what it is like to be in the sights of the gun lobby. She is an Australian who rose to national prominence as the foremost gun-control advocate after the Port Arthur massacre.

She says the National Rifle Association campaign against the UN is "vicious, mean-spirited and deceiving of their own members". She says that the association does not believe its own propaganda, but is using the UN conference as a fund-raising campaign.

The gun lobby, for its part, calls Ms Peters the mastermind of a global conspiracy to take guns away from Americans.

Ms Peters says that her organisation is not aimed at the US; that the US conforms to the international agreement because it does have gun laws - hundreds, even thousands of them. The problem is that it has a patchwork of laws across different states, so that the worst tend to rule, a problem that existed in Australia until the passage of national gun laws after Port Arthur.

The idea that the US would allow any UN agreement to dictate its national gun laws is laughable, she says. "The USA hasn't even ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child," she says, by way of illustrating the US's dislike of international treaties.

Ms Peters would like to see the 2001 agreement to regulate the trade in arms become meaningful by tying it to human rights standards. This proposal, pushed by Britain, is supported by the US.

Five years ago the US blocked a proposal to ban arms sales to "non-state actors" - private armies, or liberation or rebel groups - reserving the right to arm groups when it believes regime change is warranted. It still holds to this policy.

Ms Peters says many countries are looking to the UN for international standards for national gun laws, but this is not on the agenda because of the insistence of the US. She points out that almost all guns start out as legal possessions but, at some point, many cross over into the illegal world.

"They move into the illegal market when there are gaps in your legal regulation.

"Over the last five years it has become clear that having strong national gun laws is essential."

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/0...0845378963.html



As Pentagon narrows focus, a little local knowledge might be wise
Date: June 24 2006


Hamish McDonald

WHEN John Howard goes to China next week to see the first tanker arrive with liquefied natural gas from the North West Shelf, he will be pursuing what is now a regular balancing act in his diplomatic repertoire.

While the lavish praise he got on his recent Washington trip was no doubt welcome, the Prime Minister will know the best prospects for strategic advances in Australia's economic position lie in North-East Asia.

For all the big risks Howard has taken in joining George Bush's interventions against Islamist extremism and rogue regimes, all the cultivation of the Bush "Vulcans" through the Melbourne businessman Phil Scanlan's annual US-Australia Leadership Dialogue (the latest this week), all the investment in expensive US military hardware, the economic pay-off has been pretty insulting, to judge by the US-Australia "free trade" agreement.

Proponents of the US alliance say it earns quiet respect for Canberra, whatever the public sniping about being a subservient ally. But the intimacy with the Americans may not be such a plus in Asia if the US keeps making policy fumbles in the region.

If, as Canberra's policy-makers like to convince themselves, Australia acts as the wise and knowledgeable counsel for a distracted US on Asian affairs, like the British in Europe and the Middle East, then we are either not doing a good job or not being paid much heed.

There is little sign of Howard arguing strongly, or being influential, on any of the big policy issues between the US and the main Asian countries. He seemed totally taken aback by Bush's abrupt embrace of India as a nuclear power this year, and is still fumbling for a nuclear materials policy that squares the American action with Canberra's longtime reliance on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The Prime Minister has skated away from the nasty row between China and Japan, ostensibly over the way wartime history is treated by Japan's conservatives but actually being manipulated by ruling parties in both countries in a contest for strategic ascendancy.

Canberra says it is not interested in any "containment" of China, but has taken the lead role since 2001 in tightening the linkage between the US-Japan and US-Australia defence alliances with China's growing naval power clearly in mind.

With Junichiro Koizumi likely to be succeeded soon as Japan's prime minister by a longtime China-basher and defence hawk, Shinzo Abe, the tension could become even worse between the two Asian giants. Neither Washington nor Canberra seems to be telling the Japanese neo-conservatives to cool it - instead, it is welcomed as a sign of Japan becoming a "normal" country.

Canberra has, meanwhile, been a silent spear-carrier to the puzzling US stance towards North Korea, allowing China to cover its dubious dealings with Pyongyang by its flurry of "helpful" diplomacy through the six-nation talks while refusing the direct contact that seems needed to make any actual diplomatic breakthrough.

The impasse over North Korea's nuclear program was highlighted this week by the retired head of the State Department's Korea desk, David Straub, who blamed the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, for vetoing the then secretary of state Colin Powell's proposal to negotiate directly with the North Koreans in 2002-03.

Straub told a Washington group of Korea specialists that the Administration never wanted any "real give and take", immediately sabotaged the progress at the six-nation talks last September by issuing "clarifications", and constantly upset the South Koreans by reminding everyone that "all options" were open. Opinion polls showed many South Koreans considered the US a bigger problem than North Korea. "I can't think of a better definition of diplomatic failure," Straub said.

Towards China, Howard has been making a point in his recent speeches to US audiences that China's emergence as a global economic and political power was not necessarily threatening and should be engaged rather than confronted by the West.

It took the Bush Administration five years to reach the same point, with the deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick's key speech being to urge China to approach world affairs as a responsible "stakeholder". This week he announced his resignation, removing perhaps the most balanced and knowledgeable source of sound policy on East Asia in the Administration's upper levels.

The steady movement of State Department moderates towards the exits - Zoellick follows the respected Richard Armitage - suggests Bush's last two years will be guided by the narrower perspectives of the Pentagon, where China is the latest excuse for huge spending proposals. There is a gap here that advice from the region can fill, and Howard might be best placed to carry it.




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http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/0...0845378975.html


Muslims and West locked in culture of misunderstanding
Date: June 24 2006


Meg Bortin in Paris

NON-MUSLIM Westerners and Muslims around the world have widely different views of world events, and each group tends to view the other as violent, intolerant and lacking in respect for women, a survey of more than 14,000 people in 13 countries indicates.

In what the survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project for 2006, called one of its most striking findings, majorities in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey said, for example, that they did not believe that Arabs had carried out the September 2001 attacks in the US.

The findings illustrating the chasm in beliefs follow another year of violence and tension centred on that divide. In the past 12 months there have been terrorist bombings in London; riots in France by unemployed youths, many of them Muslim; a global uproar over Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad; and no let-up in the war in Iraq.

This led majorities in the US and in countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to describe relations between Muslims and people in Western countries as generally bad, Pew found.

Overall, Muslims in the survey, including the large Islamic populations in Britain, France, Germany and Spain, broadly blamed the West for the bad relations, while Westerners tended to blame Muslims.

Muslims in the Middle East and Asia depicted Westerners as immoral and selfish, while Westerners saw Muslims as fanatical.

The results were not uniform, and delivered some surprises. Support for terrorism declined in some of the Muslim countries surveyed, dropping sharply in Jordan, where terrorist bombings killed more than 50 people in Amman in November.

Two-thirds of the French surveyed expressed positive views of Muslims, and even larger majorities of French Muslims felt favourable toward Christians and Jews. British Muslims represented a "notable exception" in Europe, with far more negative views of Westerners than Islamic minorities elsewhere on the continent. A significant majority saw Westerners as selfish, arrogant, greedy and immoral. Just over half said they were violent.

Pew found sharp divergences on respect towards women: non-Muslims in the West view Muslims as lacking respect, the survey indicated, while Muslims outside Europe say the same of Westerners.

Pew, which interviewed Muslims in Europe as a group for the first time this year, said their views represented "a bridge" between the widely divergent views of other Europeans and of Muslims in Asia and the Middle East.

The overall results, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Centre, show that "even though relations are not good, there hasn't been a spike in outright hostility between the two groups over the past year".

Even so, majorities in every country surveyed except Pakistan expressed pessimism about Muslim-Western relations.

Pew surveyed 14,030 people from March 31 to May 14 in Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the US. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 to 4 percentage points in every country except Britain and Germany, where it was 6 points.

In follow-up interviews in countries surveyed about the results, Muslims attributed the poor relations with the West to a variety of causes. But many pointed to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as the main cause and accused the West of double standards on terrorism.

Among Muslims there was strong disbelief that Arabs were behind the September 11 attacks. In Indonesia, for example, 65 per cent took that view, as did 59 per cent in Turkey and 56 per cent in Britain.

The New York Times, The Guardian




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http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15724


Schumer Makes the Bush Administration Look Good

by Jay D. Homnick
Posted Jun 23, 2006

Doctor: I have bad news and worse news.
Patient: Give me the worse news first.
Doctor: You have cancer.
Patient: Oh, no, that's terrible. What's the bad news?
Doctor: You have Alzheimer's.
Patient: Phew, at least I don't have cancer.

This grim jest has long characterized the state of our media. Today's news assumes such urgency, such immediacy, that yesterday's images fade into nothingness. This applies not only to news of the present but even to fears of the future. The fact that yesterday's doomsday scenario had more sizzle than steak and finally fizzled as a fake does not give our xanthous journals pause when they announce the latest phantom phobia. As I like to say: Today is so busy being tomorrow's yesterday that it forgets to be yesterday's tomorrow.

So the idea of a three-year-old story dominating a current news cycle seems unimaginable. Yet that is precisely what we have witnessed this week. Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.) told a tale, in or out of school, about a plot by al Qaeda to spray cyanide in the air at New York City subway stations. This scheme, hatched three years ago, is believed to have been abandoned by its authors. Therefore, says Schumer, we must shoo more terrorism by allocating bigger bucks to his home state of New York.

Now, we need not chuck our skepticism on his mere say-so. The gentleman from New York has always had a penchant for making news, even if that called for making up news. Science fiction, let us recall, can be set in the past as well as the future. Someone might have been overheard on the A Train saying "That Al Keider is a real gas" and that would have been plenty of evidence to get the good senator hyperventilating.

But be charitable, says I. Let us grant the premise. We will concede the veracity. (As we like to tell Senator Chuck: don't let your lack of gravitas get in the way of your veritas.) The story, we shall allow, is true. A major, elaborate plot was concocted by the brain trust of al Qaeda for the purpose of murdering some New Yorkers and terrorizing the rest. The plan did not come to fruition. Why not? Surely the cabal of killers did not suddenly gain compassion or lose motivation. Obvious conclusion: the nefarious stratagem was not junked, it was foiled.

Yep, foiled. By us. By the good guys. By the duly elected and appointed and constituted bodies of our government. By Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all those other lackeys of Big Oil. Apparently neither Halliburton nor the Saudi royal family nor Karl Rove's poll-taking could dissuade them from performing their sworn obligations.

Schumer, for once, is right. He's right that al Qaeda and its sympathizers would sorely love to make this country a target again. They want to show that 9/11 was no fluke, that they can inflict pain at will. We don't need a high security clearance to get this: it is so obvious as to be in the nature of a tautology. There's probably a mural of the Empire State Building painted on the wall of bin Laden's cave.

If, in fact, nearly five years have passed and there is no subway gas or Super Bowl bomb or Disneyland explosion anywhere in the United States, that tells us that our government, particularly its arms of law enforcement, has been expending gargantuan efforts on our behalf, efforts that have met with a perfect record of success. The subtext of Schumer's retroactive news flash is that nothing has happened. And that nothing speaks very loudly.

He may not have Alzheimer's, but the senior senator from the great state of New York has forgotten the main point of this bit of ancient history. That point is this: If the people who are sporting an impeccable record of protecting your lives and livelihoods tell you that your state has received enough funding for its security needs, it's tacky to get up and proclaim that you know better.

Unless, of course, it's all about money. As in the other doctor-patient joke, the one immortalized by the late Henny Youngman.

Doctor: You have six months to live and my fee for the consultation is $1,200.
Patient: But I'm poor and I can only make payments of $100 a month.
Doctor: In that case, you have 12 months to live.


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

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

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June 22, 2006
Media Advisory: United Nations to Address Control of the Small Arms Trade


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 22, 2006

Contact: Whitney Parker, Phone: 202.797.5287

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The United Nations will be holding a two-week conference to address the proliferation and misuse of small arms beginning Monday, June 26. The upcoming UN meeting will review progress made on implementing the Program of Action (PoA), a voluntary agreement established by all UN member states in 2001, and potentially clarify and elaborate state’s existing commitments. This is the third meeting since the watershed 2001 UN Small Arms Conference, marking the first ever comprehensive global small arms initiative. UN member states also met in 2003 and 2005 to discuss the control.

One thousand people are killed every day around the world by small arms and light weapons. An estimated 640 million small arms are in circulation around the world – another 8 million additional weapons and 10 billion to 14 billion rounds of ammunition are manufactured each year: enough weapons to arm one in every 10 people in the world and enough ammunition to shoot every person in the world twice.

According to CDI Senior Analyst Rachel Stohl, “From Afghanistan and Iraq to Sudan , Sierra Leone and Colombia , these weapons fuel conflicts and instability. They also cause immeasurable human suffering. But, unlike every other class of weapon, there are no international legally-binding global controls on the small arms trade. The international community must act now to save lives.”

The United States , which has an outstanding record on PoA implementation, will likely spark controversy at the meeting, as they did at the first UN small arms conference in 2001. The United States is notorious for its hostility to the UN small arms process and unwillingness to compromise on key issues. This meeting will likely be no different, as the United States has already publicly stated its policy redlines, and most controversially, does not want mandatory review conferences on the issue – thus far, the United States is the only country to announce its opposition to standard follow-up meetings.

Stohl, a noted expert on the small arms trade with the World Security Institute’s Center for Defense Information, will be attending the meeting and will be available for interviews. Stohl has done research and analysis of the small arms issue for over 10 years. She is co-author of the forthcoming book The Beginners Guide to the Small Arms Trade (November 2006, Oneworld Publishing) and her work has appeared in numerous publications including the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Small Arms Survey. She is quoted regularly in international newspapers and has been a frequent guest on radio programs, with numerous appearances on National Public Radio and documentaries, including “Making a Killing: Inside the International Arms Trade,” which appears on the feature film Lord of War DVD.

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printve...am/document.cfm

June 21, 2006
U.S.-EU Summit: Rule of Law Paramount for Leading Issues of Iran, Iraq, Middle East Democratization, Counter-Terrorism, Trade and Foreign Investment


On June 21, 2006, a U.S.-EU summit will take place in Vienna, Austria, involving President George W. Bush, European Council President (and Austrian Chancellor) Wolfgang Schuessel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Likely additional participants include Commissioner for External Relations and Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Four main areas slated for discussion are: foreign policy, energy security, trade and global challenges.

Directly or indirectly, legal issues, or rule of law as a broad concept, could permeate relevant issues such as:

The Iranian nuclear program, consideration of which is shaped in part by related international legal frameworks such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), UN Charter, and the role of the UN system and its various elements such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and UN Security Council (UNSC).
Other proliferation issues, such as efforts to develop stronger frameworks to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from terrorists.
War on terrorism detainee issues, such as Guantanamo Bay, rendition, and alleged CIA over-flights.
Terrorist finance, requiring legally prescribed financial regulatory tools to disrupt, as well as immigration and border security issues such as the U.S. visa waiver program and whether it will be extended to all EU member states.
Iraq nation-building, requiring as it does institution-building grounded on law and order, accountability, and respect for human rights, with the most dramatic transition away from Saddam Hussein being the aspiration for a government of laws and not of men, with sovereignty derived from the popular will expressed through democratic elections.
Trade and foreign investment issues, including issues surrounding security-sensitive investment such as gave rise to controversy over the ill-fated Dubai Ports World effort to become involved with some U.S. port terminal operations as a by-product of acquiring British company P&O.
For its part, the White House has flagged the following priorities:


nuclear proliferation
terrorist finance
democratization
Iraq reconstruction
promoting peace and democracy in Europe and beyond
trade barriers
energy security
The European Union (EU) has highlighted:

Iran, the Middle East and democratization
trade: concluding negotiations of the Doha World Trade Organization (WTO) round
foreign investment, with an eye towards maintaining open investment regimes
intellectual property rights enforcement strategy for third countries, including joint U.S.-EU efforts to combat counterfeit/pirated goods
extending the U.S. Visa Waiver Program to all EU citizens
EU-U.S. strategic cooperation on energy and energy markets principles of good practices
global climate change
The Transatlantic Declaration, adopted in 1990, formalized U.S.-EU contacts and set forth principles for greater U.S.-EU cooperation.

War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000

BAGHDAD-Higher than the U.S. estimate but thought to be
undercounted, the tally is equivalent to 570,000 Americans killed
in three years. By Louise Roug and Doug Smith.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePd0Ej

Dry Southwest in the Line of Fire

SEDONA, Ariz.-Conditions are prime for what could be a season of
"historic" severity, as large blazes already suggest. And summer's
just begun. By Miguel Bustillo and Nicholas Riccardi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePe0Ek

Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away

JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER, Greenland-The massive glaciers are
deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the
ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet. By Robert Lee
Hotz.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePf0El

EPA to Crack Down on Remodelers' Lead Dust

New EPA regulations for homes built before 1978 seek to reduce
children's exposure. By Marla Cone.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePg0Em

Oil Dispute Seeps Down to Grass Roots

CAYAMBE, Ecuador-Small businesses and workers in Ecuador may pay
the price if the U.S. pulls free-trade benefits over seizure of a
field from L.A.-based firm. By Chris Kraul.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePi0Eo

2 Palestinians Held in Israel's First Arrest Raid in Gaza Since Pullout

JERUSALEM-The suspected militants were planning "a large-scale
terror attack," the army says. Troops kill three fighters in a
clash along the border. By Ken Ellingwood.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePj0Ep

A Matter of Jurisdiction, Justice

POJOAQUE, N.M.-Tribal sovereignty issues had a stabbing case
bouncing from court to court for almost four years, adding to
tension in one small community. By Nicholas Riccardi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePk0Eq

Inquiry Sought Into Vegas Jurist

LAS VEGAS-A senior federal judge said that he had urged the U.S.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals to investigate the actions of a Las
Vegas jurist reported to have awarded millions of dollars in
judgments and fees without disclosing his ties to those who
benefited. By Don Woutat.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePl0Er

Once Symbolic, Flag Amendment Close to Passage

WASHINGTON-The constitutional ban on flag burning may have enough
Senate votes. Debate begins this week. By Janet Hook.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePm0Es

Ronald Brownstein: With Job-Based Healthcare Ailing, It May Be Time to Seek a Cure
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HePn0Et

Exit Exam Not the End for High School Seniors

High school seniors who failed California's new exit exam are
being welcomed into two-year colleges for another shot at a
diploma. By Stuart Silverstein and Seema Mehta.
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'The Great Satan' Makes a Comeback

Iranian public sympathy toward the U.S. has soured in a hurry. By
Azadeh Moaveni.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HeP50Ew

Islam's Ann Coulter

The seductive and blinkered belligerence of Wafa Sultan. By
Stephen Julius Stein.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4X...Io30G2B0HeP60Ex

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle....TTLE-STAKES.xml




Shuttle program's future rides on July launch
Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:41 AM ET



By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Space shuttle Discovery will carry more than crew and cargo for its scheduled July 1 launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The whole shuttle program's future is riding on this flight.

The stakes could scarcely be higher: if the flight proceeds with a clean, safe lift-off and a trouble-free 13 days, NASA officials have planned two more shuttle flights this year, aiming for the eventual completion of the much-delayed International Space Station and a possible fix for the aging but cherished Hubble Space Telescope.

But if Discovery is seriously damaged at launch and the shuttle crew is sent to shelter aboard the space station, NASA chief Michael Griffin has said he would consider ending the quarter-century-old shuttle program.

In that case, Griffin said on June 17, "I would be moving to shut the program down. ... I think, at that point, we're done."

That would make it virtually impossible to finish building the space station as currently designed or repair the Hubble. It would also leave the United States with no homegrown way to get humans to space until the next generation of vehicles is ready, probably around 2011.

NASA's human space flight program has been under a cloud since the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on February 1, 2003, killing all seven aboard.

An investigation found that a chunk of foam insulation fell from the shuttle's tank during lift-off and hit the ship's left wing, opening a gash that let in super-heated gas on re-entry and ultimately ripped the craft apart.

The investigation also found a "broken safety culture" at NASA, where schedule pressures sometimes dictated the launch timetable and safety concerns were inadequately communicated to those with the power to delay a flight or fix a problem.

In the three years since then, NASA worked to change its internal culture and redesigned parts of the shuttle tank to avoid the problem of falling debris. But the fleet was grounded after last July's shuttle mission when a piece of foam dropped off Discovery during launch.

If Discovery's upcoming mission fails, it would be a low note for a program that originally aimed to make space travel commonplace, said Roger Launius, who heads the division of space history at the National Air and Space Museum.

"ENORMOUS BLACK EYE"

"NASA's human space flight program has been since its beginning oriented toward prestige," Launius said by telephone.

After years as a reliable world symbol of engineering expertise and competence, Launius said, retiring the shuttle as an unsafe vehicle "would be an enormous black eye for the American people and for the nation as a whole, that we would end the activity on such a failure."

It could also have diplomatic consequences, because without the shuttles' ability to carry heavy loads into orbit, construction on the space station would be difficult if not impossible, raising questions for the international partner nations that have contributed money, time and talent.

"For Japan and Germany, (retiring the shuttles) would be very, very difficult to swallow," said Vincent Sabathier, a former representative of the French space agency, which is also a partner on the space station.

Sabathier, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said he doubted any decision would be made until after U.S. congressional elections in November, since many lawmakers have a vested interest in keeping shuttle operations going.

At least in part, this is because the shuttle employs thousands of people at NASA centers around the United States. Griffin has said he wants to retain this skilled workforce to start work on the shuttle's successor, known now as the Crew Exploration Vehicle.

But if the shuttle is permanently grounded, with the new vehicle still in the design phase, many of these workers will find other jobs, and some of the most experienced ones will retire.

John Pike, a longtime NASA watcher, acknowledged that stakes are high but questioned the shuttle's overall relevance. He noted that the shuttle is not expected to be a part of President George W. Bush's ambitious plan to return Americans to the moon and eventually send them to Mars.

"NASA sort of seems like an agency where the money goes in and nothing comes out," said Pike, who runs the Globalsecurity.org Web site. "After their first return to flight (last July) you just wonder if these guys have lost the right stuff."



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URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13493736/


New details on WMD ‘fabricator’ emerge
Warnings that Iraqi was lying about bioweapons ignored, ex-CIA aide says
By Joby Warrick
The Washington Post


Updated: 4:06 a.m. ET June 25, 2006
In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.

"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."

While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.

Drumheller, who is writing a book about his experiences, described in extensive interviews repeated attempts to alert top CIA officials to problems with the defector, code-named Curveball, in the days before the Powell speech. Other warnings came prior to President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003. In the same speech that contained the now famous "16 words" on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium, Bush spoke in far greater detail about mobile labs "designed to produce germ warfare agents."

The warnings triggered debates within the CIA but ultimately made no visible impact at the top, current and former intelligence officials said. In briefing Powell before his U.N. speech, George Tenet, then the CIA director, personally vouched for the accuracy of the mobile-lab claim, according to participants in the briefing. Tenet now says he did not learn of the problems with Curveball until much later and that he received no warnings from Drumheller or anyone else.

"No one mentioned Drumheller, or Curveball," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff at the time, said in an interview. "I didn't know the name Curveball until months afterward."

Con artist taxi driver
Curveball's role in shaping U.S. declarations about Iraqi bioweapons capabilities was first described in a series of reports in the Los Angeles Times, and later in a March 2005 report by a presidential commission on U.S. intelligence failures regarding allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Drumheller's first-hand accounts add new detail about the CIA's embrace of a source whose credibility was already unraveling.

More than a year after Powell's speech, after an investigation that extended to three continents, the CIA acknowledged that Curveball was a con artist who drove a taxi in Iraq and spun his engineering knowledge into a fantastic but plausible tale about secret bioweapons factories on wheels.

But in the fall of 2002, Curveball was living the life of an important spy. A Baghdad native whose real name has never been released, he was residing in a safe house in Germany, where he had requested asylum three years earlier. In return for immigration permits for himself and his family, the Iraqi supplied Germany's foreign intelligence service with what appeared to be a rare insider's account of one of President Saddam Hussein's long-rumored WMD programs.

Curveball described himself as a chemical engineer who had worked inside an unusual kind of laboratory, one that was built on a trailer bed and produced weapons for germ warfare. He furnished detailed, technically complex descriptions of mobile labs and even described an industrial accident that he said killed a dozen people.

The German intelligence agency BND faithfully passed Curveball's stories to the Americans. Over time, the informant generated more than 100 intelligence reports on secret Iraqi weapons programs -- the only such reports from an informant claiming to have visited and worked in mobile labs. Other informants, also later discredited, had claimed indirect knowledge of mobile labs.

In late 2002, the Bush administration began scouring intelligence files for reports of Iraqi weapons threats. Drumheller was asked to press a counterpart from a European intelligence agency for direct access to Curveball. Other officials confirmed that it was the German intelligence service.

The German official declined but then offered a startlingly candid assessment, Drumheller recalled. "He said, 'I think the guy is a fabricator,' " Drumheller said, recounting the conservation with the official, whom he declined to name. "He said, 'We also think he has psychological problems. We could never validate his reports.' "

When Drumheller relayed the warning to his superiors in October 2002, it sparked what he described as "a series of the most contentious meetings I've ever seen" in three decades of government work.


Although no American had ever interviewed Curveball, analysts with the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control believed the informant's technical descriptions were too detailed to be fabrications.

"People were cursing. These guys were absolutely, violently committed to it," Drumheller said. "They would say to us, 'You're not scientists, you don't understand.' "

Warning ignored
In January 2003, Drumheller received a new request from CIA headquarters to contact the German intelligence service about Curveball. This time, Drumheller recalled, the U.S. spy agency had three questions:

Could a U.S. official refer to Curveball's mobile lab accounts in an upcoming political speech?

Could the Germans guarantee that Curveball would stand by his account?

Could German intelligence verify Curveball's claims?

The reply from Berlin, as Drumheller recalls it, was less than encouraging: There are no guarantees.

"They said: 'We have never been able to verify his claims,' " Drumheller recalled. "And that was all sent up to Tenet's office."

When Drumheller listened to Bush's speech several days later, he was astonished to hear the mobile labs described in detail.

"Boom, there it was," he said.

A few days later, Drumheller was handed a draft of another key speech on Iraq: Powell's remarks to the U.N. Security Council accusing Hussein of reconstituting his WMD programs. This time, the speech included an obvious reference to Curveball -- an unnamed "chemical engineer" who worked in one of the labs -- as well as detailed drawings of mobile labs inspired by Curveball's descriptions.

Drumheller said he called the office of John E. McLaughlin, then the CIA deputy director, and was told to come there immediately. Drumheller said he sat across from McLaughlin and an aide in a small conference room and spelled out his concerns.

McLaughlin responded with alarm and said Curveball was "the only tangible source" for the mobile lab story, Drumheller recalled, adding that the deputy director promised to quickly investigate.

Portions of Drumheller's account of his meetings with McLaughlin and Tenet appear in the final report of the Silberman-Robb commission, which was appointed by Bush to investigate prewar U.S. intelligence failures on Iraq's weapons programs. The report cites e-mails and interviews with other CIA officials who were aware of the meetings.

In responding to questions about Drumheller, McLaughlin provided The Post with a copy of the statement he gave in response to the commission's report. The statement said he had no memories of the meeting with Drumheller and had no written documentation that the meeting took place.

"If someone had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell's speech," McLaughlin said in the statement.

Wilkerson: We were suspicious
In their briefings to Powell on Feb. 4, one day before the secretary's U.N. speech, Tenet and McLaughlin expressed nothing but confidence in the mobile-lab story, according to Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was present during the briefings.

"Powell and I were both suspicious because there were no pictures of the mobile labs," Wilkerson said. The drawings were constructed from Curveball's accounts.

But the CIA officials were persuasive. Wilkerson said the two men described the evidence on the mobile labs as exceptionally strong, based on multiple sources whose stories were independently corroborated.

"They said, 'This is it, Mr. Secretary. You can't doubt this one,' " Wilkerson said.

On the eve of the U.N. speech, Drumheller received a late-night phone call from Tenet, who said he was checking final details of the speech. Drumheller said he brought up the mobile labs.

"I said, 'Hey, boss, you're not going to use that stuff in the speech . . . ? There are real problems with that,' " Drumheller said, recalling the conversation.

Drumheller recalled that Tenet seemed distracted and tired and told him not to worry.

The following day, Tenet was seated directly behind Powell at the U.N. Security Council as the secretary of state presented a detailed lecture and slide show about an Iraqi mobile biological weapons program.

Tenet, responding to questions about Drumheller's accounts, provided to The Post a statement he had given in response to the Silberman-Robb Commission report in which he said he didn't learn of the problems with Curveball until much later. He did not recall talking to Drumheller about Curveball, and said it was "simply wrong" for anyone to imply that he knew about the problems with Curveball's credibility.

"Nobody came forward to say there is a serious problem with Curveball or that we have been told by the foreign representative of the service handling him that there are worries that he is a 'fabricator,' " Tenet said in his statement.

In late summer 2003, seven months after the U.N. speech, Tenet called Powell to say that the Curveball story had fallen apart, Wilkerson said. The call amounted to an admission that all of the CIA's claims Powell used in his speech about Iraqi weapons were wrong.

"They had hung on for a long time, but finally Tenet called Powell to say, 'We don't have that one, either,' " Wilkerson recalled. "The mobile labs were the last thing to go."

Staff researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2301420_pf.html




'Wal-Mart Bill' Assailed Before Judge

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 24, 2006; D01



A U.S. district judge in Baltimore yesterday heard arguments over the validity of Maryland's controversial law requiring large companies -- namely Wal-Mart -- to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits.

At issue was whether the state legislation is preempted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which sets minimum standards for private companies' voluntary pension and health plans. The state law was enacted earlier this year despite a veto attempt by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

The Maryland law applies to four companies with at least 10,000 employees in Maryland: Northrop Grumman Corp., Giant Food LLC, Johns Hopkins University and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. But all except Wal-Mart were exempted from the law or have already met its provisions, resulting in the nickname "Wal-Mart bill" as the legislature deliberated over it.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, which filed the legal challenge and counts Wal-Mart among its members, said the law unfairly targets the world's largest retailer. The association also argued that the law restricts the way businesses provide health benefits for their employees.

"This law is highly discriminatory," said Eugene Scalia, the group's attorney and son of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Judge J. Frederick Motz shot back: "In cases where people have been targeted, they've generally been vulnerable."

State Assistant Attorney General Gary W. Kuc denied that the legislation was intended to single out Wal-Mart. He also noted that the law gives companies the option of paying into a state insurance plan for the poor or setting up first-aid clinics for employees instead of increasing health benefits.

The state also questioned whether the retail association had standing to challenge the law, which does not take effect until Jan. 1. But association President Sandra L. Kennedy said that the law has the potential to affect all of the retailers the group represents.

"I think it's an industry issue," she said.

Motz said he would consider the possible national implications of his ruling, which could help determine how much power local governments have in setting health and economic policy.

The case is being watched closely by Suffolk County in New York, which is considering legislation similar to Maryland's, and Massachusetts, which recently passed a universal health-care bill.

Vincent DeMarco, president of Maryland Citizens' Health Initiative, an advocacy group that pushed for the Maryland bill, said overturning it would "prevent other states from doing what needs to be done on this issue."

Motz indicated that he would rule soon but gave no timeline for his decision.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexa...html?view=print


Larisa Alexandrovna


06.25.2006
Of Slush Fund, Insider Trading, and Terra Threats
Yes, I know, seven people were arrested - five Americans - in a strange thought crime - plot to bomb the Sears Tower.

In other news, the Bush administration has apparently been doing more illegal domestic surveillance, this time of banking records.
Is it a coincidence that news of the first supposed terra-folks located within the United States since the attacks of 2001 would come on the same day as this damning story?

Perhaps, but this is after all an administration that writes its own news and disseminates it. While it is easy to dismiss such questioning as simply cynicism, the reality is far too ugly to ignore - namely, that people who have already violated Federal and international law and repeatedly lied despite evidence contrary to their assertions would abuse their powers yet again for such an obvious and naked ploy.

According to a ten page article in the New York Times this past Thursday, in case you missed it due to the lack of a functioning and independent fourth estate, the Bush administration is using the Treasury Department and the CIA to mine American banking records, all in an effort to find the next terra cell, which by the way they just happened to do the very day this news broke.

What the NYT describes can only be seen as illegal and far reaching, leaving any reasonable person laughing in horror at the idea of John Snow and Porter Goss -- or now General Hayden -- working together to sift through our finances, all looking for the ghost of Osama Bin Laden. Chances are that looking for the actual Osama might yield better results, but this is not an administration searching for Osama, when the myth of him is so much more politically potent. Osama won't be "found" until he is needed for a victory dance that will neatly tie Iraq, Iran, WMD and 911 together in some fantasy story, delivered just in time for political purposes. Will Osama's head too be splashed all over the news and displayed at press briefings in a large wooden frame?

But back to Snow, who appears terribly concerned about locating the terrorists via bank files, our bank files that is. There is of course a good reason to track suspected terrorists and drug traffickers by following the money, as it will, of course, lead to the culprits eventually. But somehow I don't think Snow is looking for that kind of information.

After all, was it not John Snow who approved the Dubai Ports deal, allegedly without notifying the President of the United States, the Defense Department, or the Tsar of Homeland Security?

Not only that, Snow continued to argue despite these facts that the proper people were briefed and assured us that we were all snug and safe in our beds. But aside from the obvious questions surrounding Snow's alleged involvement in some shady business dealings, what is most fascinating is the contradiction of the Dubai Ports deal juxtaposed against the backdrop of these newest revelations of domestic surveillance.

Dubai is the hub for the banking needs of terrorists, drug dealers, and all manner of criminals who wish to launder, transfer, or simply hide large amounts of cash. In fact, Dubai is directly connected to the events of 911 and directly connected to the 911 hijackers' money transfers.

Forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but why is a man who approves access to 21 sensitive and unprotected points of interest in the United States for the very people who helped fund the 911 hijackers given carte blanche to look for terrorists in our bank records? Am I missing something here?

---

"The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records."
"The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift." (NYT)


---

Emergency economic powers? What emergency economic powers would those be? I guess those powers granted to the Decider by the voices in his head and on his payroll.

According to the Times' article, not only is the Treasury Department running this scam, but it is doing so along with the CIA, which is prohibited from domestic surveillance by the way. But as with Watergate and the CIA operatives who broke into that apartment complex on the orders of an out- of - control White House, all laws are meant to be broken when the one breaking those laws is also in charge of deciding the definition of those laws. In other words Nixon's "Well, when the President does it, that means that it's not illegal," is exactly what Bush said when he simplified that statement into a tantrum of "I am the Decider."

The appointment of General Hayden (yes, the same person who failed to translate an intercept on September 10 describing the attack that was to take place the next day), to head the CIA suddenly makes a great deal of sense given this new context. It would appear that since Hayden was already operating an illegal surveillance program at the NSA, his appointment to head the CIA was simply a logistics move to make the process of domestic surveillance that much more streamlined. I am speculating of course, because I am given no answers as a tax payer and citizen of this country.

But, moving on - this would be farcical if it were not so criminal - exactly what safeguards against "unwarranted searches of Americans' records" did the CIA and the Department of Treasury impose on this black op?

---

"Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization." (NYT)
---

No Congressional authorization or oversight? Is this a new type of safeguard that we little people are just too stupid to grasp? Anyone feel comfortable with this type of safeguard? Does Congress even know?

In any case, one would hope that the law would serve some balance here, even if just as an institutional failsafe, and that perhaps the Justice Department would attempt to work within the law when this kind of program is being used by Snow and his friends. Right?

---

"We are not on a fishing expedition," Mr. Levey said. "We're not just turning on a vacuum cleaner and sucking in all the information that we can."

Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution." (NYT)

---

Now let me see if I understand this: Although the administration claims "safeguards are in place" they have no Congressional approval or oversight and the company handling this is exempt from American laws. Is that about right?

---

"Among the program's safeguards, government officials said, is an outside auditing firm that verifies that the data searches are based on a link to terrorism intelligence. Swift and Treasury officials said they were aware of no abuses. But Mr. Levey, the Treasury official, said one person had been removed from the operation for conducting a search considered inappropriate." (NYT)
---

Outside auditing? Like the kind that Arthur Anderson provided to Enron? Again, pardon my girlish ignorance, but why would a man like John Snow - someone who thinks it is a good idea to give over our ports to the very peopled tied to 911 funding - be in a position or have the clearances to oversee something this corruptible? Anyone care to venture a guess? Moreover, why would it be okay for him to use the services of the CIA domestically, when the CIA cannot operate legally within the United States to begin with?

And why would a company not subject to US laws be permitted near the records of countless US citizens and how is that any form of safeguard? Anyone think this sounds a bit too much like BCCI affair (see if you can spot any familiar names) of using American banks to stash drug money and proceeds from illegal arms sales? Or perhaps this might remind some of Iran Contra's banking operation using all sorts of trustworthy players from such high regarded organizations as the mafia and South American drug-lords?

Baffling, but perhaps it is best to approach the question of what this program may truly be used for from the most obvious direction - that is, from the standpoint of greed.

Let me try my hand at guessing what could be done with such an operation:

*How about using this type of setup because it would be a convenient way to move around a great deal of money that perhaps went missing in Iraq, oh say billions?

Of course I am just speculating here for lack of any government transparency.

*Perhaps this program is being/could be used for covert funding of the terrorists that we like, such as the MEK?

*Or how about this type of operation being used to blackmail members of Congress who may have taken one too many golf filled trips to a foreign resort?

I can come up with an arsenal of possible uses for this type of operation and all of them would be more plausible than the nonsense of an explanation provided to us by these people, who have incidentally lied over and over and over already.

And how does this story hold up over on the other side of the isle? Well, the right wing blogs have become crazed and want a full investigation and a public execution for treasonable offenses. That is, they are calling for the heads of the reporters and the sources. It is amazing what fear will do to small souls and how easily they will hand over things they cherish the most in exchange for a safe little corner far away from the boogeyman. Some call this stupidity. I call it cowardice and I call the Bush administration criminal. But I am also a strong adherent to reason and such reasonable and provable assertions that 2 + 2 does in fact equal 4.

What else is there to say or to own at this point, other than our own thoughts? So keep telling yourself that 2 + 2 = 4 and cling to it at all costs, because that is the only thing that stands between reason and revolution.

Families deny US terror plot link BBC News
Relatives of seven men arrested over an alleged plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and attack FBI offices have been protesting the group's innocence. Marlene Phanor, sister of one of the accused, said they have been unfairly dubbed terrorists and that they were victims of US scaremongering. According to the charges, the men, five from the US and two from Haiti, hoped to wage a "full ground war" on the US. Officials said the men were foiled at an early stage and posed no danger.

Infiltrated
US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales said the group of "home-grown terrorists" were inspired by "a violent jihadist message". "They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy," he told reporters. A federal indictment says they were conspiring to "levy war against the United States". According to charges brought against the men, the group, aged 22 to 32, had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, but had no contacts with it. They have been charged with conspiring to blow up both the Sears Tower and the FBI building in North Miami Beach. They were arrested at a warehouse in Miami, during an undercover operation after their group was infiltrated by an agent posing as an al-Qaeda member

'Trying to scare'
Mr Gonzales said the lack of direct link to al-Qaeda did not make the group any less dangerous. "Today terrorist threats come from a smaller, more loosely defined cells not affiliated to al-Qaeda," he said. "Left unchecked these home-grown terrorists may prove as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda." However, Ms Phanor, sister of Stanley Grant Phanor, one of those arrested, denied that her brother had any terror links. "They're labelling him something that he's not," she told Miami's WSVN TV station. "He's... no terrorist; he's in a religious group that's trying to support the community." "It's all a show, they're scaring people, there's nothing to be scared at all," Ms Phanor told the AFP news agency.

'Boot camp'
Neighbours in Miami's poor Liberty City area said the men apparently slept in the warehouse where they were arrested. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard," said Tashawn Rose. However a man claiming links to the arrested men told the news channel CNN that they were a peaceful religious group, who studied Allah at the warehouse. Five of those charged appeared at a Miami federal court on Friday. They wore ankle chains and were chained together at the wrists, the Associated Press reported. Alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste apparently asked an undercover agent he thought was from al-Qaeda for help to build an "army to wage jihad", the indictment said. He is said to have told the agent he and his "soldiers" wanted al-Qaeda training and planning for a "full ground war" against the US in order to "kill all the devils we can". His mission would "be just as good or greater than 9/11", Mr Batiste said, according to the indictment. No weapons were found in the Miami warehouse, and the seven had not posed any immediate danger, the FBI said.

Buffett Pledges Billions to Gates

Business titan Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest
person, has pledged to begin giving away 85% of his
$40-billion-plus fortune in July - most of it to the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation. Some experts are calling it the biggest
philanthropic gift ever. By Charles Piller and Maggie Farley.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQh0EK

2 Israeli Troops Killed in Attack

KEREM SHALOM, Israel - The Israeli government threatened drastic
consequences after a rare cross-border raid by Palestinian
militants that left two Israeli soldiers dead and another missing,
apparently seized by the attackers. By Laura King and Ken
Ellingwood.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQi0EL

Divisive Plan to Unify Iraq

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki unveiled an ambitious,
U.S.-backed plan for bringing together ethnic and sectarian
factions that left open the possibility of offering amnesty to
some insurgents who had killed American or Iraqi troops. By Borzou
Daragahi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQj0EM

Voters May Be Asked to Ease L.A. Term Limits

Two civic groups, citing City Hall power shifts, hope to get a
measure on the November ballot. By Steve Hymon and Jim Newton.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQk0EN

California, Here They Come

Be it for love, money or just the good food, folks keep moving to
the Golden State, despite its flaws, where newcomers still surpass
defectors. By Maria L. La Ganga and David Streitfeld.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQl0EO

Chinese Tourists Export a Mix of Cash and Brash

BEIJING - They're boosting their nation's image, and the world
economy. But there are culture clashes. By Mark Magnier.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQm0EP

Vernon Turns Files Over to D.A.

After a year of legal battles, Los Angeles County prosecutors have
obtained volumes of documents from Vernon City Hall that are at
the center of a public corruption probe of the small industrial
city. By Hector Becerra.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQt0EW

Doubts Cloud Pellicano Wiretap Case

Almost four years after FBI agents swarmed the offices of
Hollywood's most infamous private eye, Anthony Pellicano, there
are signs that a sweeping investigation of alleged wiretapping and
other crimes might end up like most things in Tinseltown and fall
short of its billing. By Greg Krikorian and Kim Christensen.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQu0EX

Bob Sipchen: Deal Is a Lesson in Education Politics
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQv0EY

The birth control divide

Poor and uneducated women have higher rates of unplanned pregnancy
- they are now four times more likely to face an unintended
pregnancy than those who are better off. They're also three times
more likely to get an abortion. Public health experts say more
funding is not necessarily the answer. By Stephanie Simon.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQ70EV

Erase the past for good

Farewell, face-lift. New wrinkle fillers resist the march of time.
The Food and Drug Administration is set to decide this summer
whether to approve ArteFill, the first so-called permanent dermal
filler. Consumers may shortly have the cosmetic fix of their
dreams: a treatment that fills a wrinkle and keeps it filled for
years. By Shari Roan.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeQ80EW

A key to Apple's success

Government officials in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and France have
been taking up one of consumers' core complaints about Apple's
wildly popular iPods and online iTunes Music Store: They don't
work with competitors' offerings. The efforts could lead the
European Commission to seek compatibility requirements across the
continent.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeRB0Eh

The Dems' Iraq gap

It's understandable that Democrats in the U.S. Senate would use
the war in Iraq to send a political message to the party faithful,
as some did last week in voting for doomed resolutions to
fast-track the withdrawal of U.S. forces from that country.
Trouble is, the message sent to the rest of the country may be
that Democrats can't be trusted when it comes to national
security.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4Y...Io30G2B0HeRD0Ej

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HF24Dg01.html
Hollow US defense for an empty threat
By David Isenberg

WASHINGTON - The news that North Korean is preparing to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time since 1998 is the latest "threat" to roil the international scene.

Predictably, duly certified experts have gone public to wring their hands, intone what a grave menace such a launch represents, and prescribe solutions. Thus far, the most ludicrous is the June 22 Washington Post op-ed by Ashton B Carter and William J Perry, who were respectively assistant secretary of defense and secretary of defense under US president Bill Clinton and are now professors at Harvard and Stanford universities, who wrote that the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong 2 missile before it can be launched.

This is premature, to say the least, considering North Korea may
not even have an ICBM. According to DefenseTech, a leading website on military technology, the North Koreans have previously launched exactly one intermediate-range ballistic missile. That missile, a combination of smaller Nodong and Scud missiles - went about 2,000 kilometers or so.

Now, US intelligence assumes the North Koreans have been working on strapping together more Nodong and Scud engines for an ICBM - something that can reach three to five times as far, and hit the United States. But no one has actually seen the missile. Even how many stages the mystery missile has is unknown; some folks say two, others say three.

But, by far, the most laughable news is the US government announcement that it is activating its missile defense system. This, no doubt, is causing the North Korean leaders to shake - in fits of laughter. One can only imagine some flunky saying, "Good news, Dear Leader: the American imperialists have activated their missile defense system. Now we can launch."

The activation of the system is what one can only call a Pyrrhic readiness gesture, considering the system has a particularly distinguished record of failures in its operational tests to date and is still considered to be in the laughing-stock stage by most impartial experts.

As most people have learned in the 20-plus years since the late president Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, shooting down an incoming ICBM even under the best of conditions is a daunting challenge.

And the US missile defense system is far from perfect. Phillip Coyle III, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information and former assistant secretary of defense and director, operational test and evaluation, said this in January:
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has not had a successful flight intercept test with its Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) system for three and a half years. In the most recent two flight-intercept tests, the interceptor never got off the ground. Nevertheless the GMD system is being deployed in Alaska and California. The MDA plans 20 or 30 more developmental flight-intercept tests before they will be ready for realistic operational testing. At the current rate of success it could take over 50 years before the system was ready to be tested under realistic operational conditions.
If spending rises as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, US taxpayers could spend more than a trillion dollars on missile defense in that period. This does not include the roughly US$100 billion already spent on missile defense since Reagan's "Star Wars" speech in 1983.

Currently, the Pentagon spends about $8 billion a year on national missile defense. The ground-based missile-defense component was over budget by more than $365 million last year and delivered fewer interceptors than planned without proof they would work, according to a review by the Government Accountability Office this year.

Even the few so-called successful tests of the GMD system are dubious. According to Coyle, flight-intercept tests have been conducted under artificial and unrealistic conditions.

Examples include prior knowledge by the defender as to the time of attack, the type of attacking missile, its trajectory and intended target location, and the makeup of its payload. No real enemy would ever knowingly provide such information to the US military in advance of an attack.

As a result, while there have been 10 flight-intercept tests of the GMD system since 1999, five of which were successful, the GMD system has no demonstrated capability to defend the US under realistic operational conditions. In fact, the system has not successfully intercepted a single missile in its current configuration.

The Washington, DC-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation put out a news release noting that the past tests of the system prove an intercept is feasible only:

When operators know in advance the location of a single target missile, the date and time of its launch and its flight trajectory.

When a surrogate booster rocket launches the missile, which flies at slower than normal speed in daylight and good weather.

When the target re-entry vehicle is equipped with global-positioning technology and a radar beacon to send its position to a surrogate ground-control radar.

Actually, things are even worse. According to Victoria Samson, also of the Center for Defense Information, the GMD program has nine interceptors on the ground in Fort Greely, Alaska, and two more in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. And the last test intercept was made in October 2002. The past two times - December 2004 and February 2005 - the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) tried to attempt an intercept, the US rocket didn't even leave the launch pad. (For the latter, it turned out that the arms holding the missiles up in their silos weren't properly built for the salty environment in which they were fielded, so the MDA is replacing those components in all the silos.)

Furthermore, Samson notes, the radar system that is needed to help detect missile launches, the sea-based X-Band Radar (SBX), is still undergoing tests outside Hawaii - nowhere near its home port of Adak, Alaska. The satellite network being built to track missiles once they're launched - the Space-Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) - isn't planning its initial launch of two test satellites until next year, with the goal of getting the system up and running somewhere around 2012.

And the command and control system necessary to link everything together was cited in a recent report by the Pentagon's Inspector General's Office as having such poor network security that it very well could be hacked. That report proved so embarrassing that the Pentagon subsequently removed it from the inspector general's website.

However, there is one bit of good news. Samson said the program did have significant success in that last December the MDA held a flight test where the major goal was to get the rocket off the ground. That they were able to do.

David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms-control and national-security issues. The views expressed are his own.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/bro...0,7119684.story


TOWN HALL MEETING

Pull out of Iraq now, congressman urges

Cover-up of Haditha killings wrong, he says


By Elizabeth Baier
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

June 25, 2006



American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to a crowd of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

Murtha was the guest speaker at a town hall meeting organized by U.S. Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Miami, at Florida International University's Biscayne Bay Campus. Meek's mother, former U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, was also on the panel.

War veterans, local mayors, university students and faculty packed the Mary Ann Wolfe Theatre to listen to the three panelists discuss the war in Iraq for an hour.

A former Marine and a prominent critic of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, Murtha reiterated his views that the war cannot be won militarily and needs political solutions. He said the more than 100,000 troops in Iraq should be pulled out immediately, and deployed to peripheral countries like Kuwait.

"We do not want permanent bases in Iraq," Murtha told the audience. "We want as many Americans out of there as possible."

Murtha also has publicly said that the shooting of 24 Iraqis in November at Haditha, a city in the Anbar province of western Iraq that has been plagued by insurgents, was wrongfully covered up.

The killings, which sparked an investigation into the deadly encounter and another into whether they were the subject of a cover-up, could undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq more than the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib in 2004, Murtha said.

"[The United States] became the target when Abu Ghraib came along," Murtha said.

U.S. efforts to win over Iraqis were tarnished when it was revealed that U.S. military personnel had abused and humiliated people held at Abu Ghraib, a prison outside Baghdad.

Most in the crowd agreed with Murtha and the need to redeploy troops from Iraq as soon as possible. "I believe we are in a mess over there [in Iraq]," said Alnoor Jamal, 49, of Miami.


Elizabeth Baier can be reached at ebaier@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4637.


Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel