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Daniel Altschuler: Stakes Rise for the United States in Honduras

2009-11-11T05:03:52Z

The stakes for the United States in the Honduran political crisis are higher than ever. At the end of October, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, celebrated the unprecedented overturning of a coup through dialogue. That assessment has now proved naïve, and the State Department finds itself in the awkward position of distancing itself from the rest of Latin America after saying it would recognize the Honduran elections whether or not Manuel Zelaya is restored to power. This crisis is an extremely important moment for Honduras, but it also now has the potential to undermine the Obama administration's efforts to mend the US's relationship with Latin America.

Since President Obama took office, his administration has worked hard to heal the wounds left by President George W. Bush in Latin America. Obama's most symbolic moves came with respect to Cuba, as he condoned the island nation's re-admission into the Organization of American States (OAS)--long a rallying cry of the OAS's other members--and eased the terms of the embargo. Obama has also toned down the rhetoric vis-à-vis Venezuela, cutting away at Hugo Chávez's platform for America-bashing. Whereas President Bush seemed to court confrontation in the region, the Obama administration has thus far sought compromise and consensus. These efforts have not radically altered US policy, but they have represented significant first steps towards repairing relations with Latin America.

Before last week, the United States had also marched in step with the rest of the Americas in its response to Honduras's June 28th coup. The United States supported the OAS's denunciation of the coup, suspended aid to Honduras and visas to leaders of the de facto regime, and continually demanded the restitution of President Manuel Zelaya. Until late October, the US assiduously avoided taking the lead on the Honduras issue, instead abiding by regional consensus and making sure not to stoke the flames with Hugo Chávez and the ALBA nations. State Department representative Thomas Shannon's deal-making visit to Honduras also built directly on the work of the OAS and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, assuring that the fleeting victory was shared by all partners.

But then the deal broke down. Roberto Micheletti insisted that the agreement did not guarantee Zelaya's restitution--a strict reading of the text reveals that he is right--while Zelaya insisted it did. This would have been a moot point if international pressure had remained strong enough to convince the Honduran Congress that it needed to restore Zelaya to power. The agreement began to unravel, however, because it established a deadline for creating a unity government without imposing a deadline on the Honduran Congress's determination on Zelaya's restitution. Whether Shannon did not realize the importance of placing a deadline--which is hard to believe--or simply wanted to do anything necessary to quickly reach an agreement, this omission could now prove extremely costly for both Honduran democracy and the United States' position in Latin America.

Shannon compounded the error when he declared in a CNN interview that the signing of the agreement assured that the US would recognize the elections whether or not Zelaya was reinstated. This was the moment when the US first strayed from its Latin American neighbors in handling the crisis, and it took the pressure off of the Honduran Congress to reinstate Zelaya.

The State Department had an obvious reason for wanting to wash its hands of the Honduran crisis as quickly as possible. Certain conservative Republicans--most notably, Senator Jim DeMint--have been a constant headache for Obama since the coup, defending Micheletti's assumption of power as a "constitutional succession". DeMint has exercised leverage by holding up two of Obama's Latin America appointments--Arturo Valenzuela and Thomas Shannon himself--to prove his point, and the State Department used its promise of recognizing the election to get DeMint to relent.

But the State Department jumped the gun, and the Obama administration now finds itself having strayed from its Latin American neighbors. While Shannon declared the US' intention to recognize the elections, the countries of the Río Group demanded Zelaya's immediate restitution. Meanwhile, OAS secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, conditioned OAS support on full compliance with the agreement, and he has now rejected Micheletti's self-proclaimed "unity" government. This means that the OAS election observation team is now on hold, while the US position remains unclear.

The State Department has now placed itself in an unenviable position. If it sticks to the position laid out by Shannon, it will risk alienating the Latin American countries that have vociferously demanded Zelaya's restitution. And if it backtracks from Shannon's declaration, conservative Republicans will raise Cain in Washington. Simply put, if the Honduran crisis is not resolved before the November 29th elections, the Obama administration will not come out unscathed.

The State Department should be willing to risk Conservatives' ire, however, because the first scenario would create much bigger and long-term problem for President Obama. If the United States recognizes the elections without Zelaya's restitution, it could undermine much of the work President Obama has done--and the goodwill he has developed--in the region in his first nine months. It could also provide cover for other countries, such as Panama, to defect from the regional consensus. Such defections would provoke intra-regional discord and undermine what, until now, has been a strong defense of the Inter-American Democratic Charter in response to the Honduran coup. This would be deeply unfortunate for the region as a whole. It would also undermine the Obama administration's avowed support for multilateralism and mutual respect in Latin America and provide fodder for anti-American rhetoric in Caracas and Managua.

It remains unclear whether the State Department will see the light. Already, spokesman Ian Kelly has criticized both sides for the failure to form a unity government, but the State Department has not retracted the position laid out by Thomas Shannon. On Saturday, the New York Times called for Shannon's hasty return to Honduras, but at least as important will be pressure from the agreement's Verification Commission--which includes former Chilean President, Ricardo Lagos, and the US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis--on Micheletti and the Honduran Congress to reinstate Zelaya. If the Verification Commission adopts a strong stance, this could provide the State Department with the necessary cover to condition its support for the elections on good-faith compliance with the agreements.

Whatever happens, US intervention in Honduras backfired. In a rush to get a deal signed, the State Department prematurely took pressure off of the Micheletti regime and made Zelaya's restitution--never a certainty--less likely. The United States cannot afford to compound this error. The State Department must be willing, again, to take a strong stand against the Honduran coup, or it will jeopardize President Obama's policy goals in the region.

(Copied with permission from http://www.americasquarterly.org.)

Lloyd Greif: Israel Stands Alone

2009-11-11T03:10:40Z

Eight months into President Barack Obama's administration, his Middle East peace "road map" is crystal clear. First, he dialed down the pressure on Iran, whose nuclear weapons program presents an existential threat to Israel. Second, he shifted the blame for Islamic extremism to Israel and solely blamed it for the Palestinian's plight. Then he unilaterally ratcheted up the pressure on Israel to cease building settlements and to ease its self-defense blockade of Gaza. Now, Obama has upped the ante even further, framing lasting peace in the Middle East as requiring Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders. Although he blandly claims that there are "no preconditions" to relaunching negotiations, in truth he has doomed the peace talks before they even start. Obama has set up Israel as the fall guy for negotiations that will ultimately fail and is the architect of that failure.

When Obama was elected -- with 78 percent of the Jewish vote -- there was concern about what his administration would mean for the 60 years of unwavering support America had provided Israel. Unlike his Republican opponent, John McCain, or his predecessor, George W. Bush, both longstanding supporters of Israel, Obama had no such track record and was championing a different course, one of détente with such hard-line regimes as Iran and Syria. Jews took heart when then-President-elect Obama selected a Jew, Rahm Emanuel, as his chief of staff, and Hillary Clinton, previously a staunch supporter of Israel from her days as senator from New York, as his secretary of state.

An examination of the first 250 days of President Obama's administration convincingly demonstrates that the earlier concerns were well founded and the mitigating cabinet appointments mere window dressing. From his first telephone call as president to a head of state -- Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority -- and his first one-on-one television interview with any news organization -- Al Arabiya TV -- to his bowing to Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, then embracing the Muslim world at Cairo University and, most recently, rebuking Israel in an address to the United Nations General Assembly, Obama has shown far more concern for strengthening ties with authoritarian regimes on the Arabian Peninsula than to maintaining the historically close alliance with the region's only true democracy.

His Cairo speech scaled back his support of Israel in favor of establishing new diplomatic channels in the Arab world. He also equated the suffering of the Palestinians with the loss of 6 million Jewish lives in the Holocaust. Worse yet, Obama's affirmation of the Arab propagandist idea that Israel was created as a response to the Holocaust greatly undermined its legitimacy as a state and ignored Jews' forced diaspora and Judaism's historical ties to the Middle East that predate all other religions.

Instead of seeing Israel as the oasis and model for democracy that it is in the Middle East, Obama views the country and its conflict with its neighbors as "this constant wound ... this constant sore, [that] does infect all of our foreign policy." It is as if the president has blinders on: in effect repeating the red herring that blames the atrocities of 9/11 on America's support of Israel, in July 2008, Obama stated:

The lack of a resolution to this problem [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, so we have a national security interest in solving this.

Sound familiar? Former President Jimmy Carter, author of the canard, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," asserts, "lack of progress in the Middle East is one of the main causes for animosity, hatred and even violent acts against America." Both presidents conveniently neglect the fact that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, perpetrators of multiple attacks on America, never cared or linked any of their actions to the Palestinian cause until after 9/11. Islamic extremists are at war with the spread of Western culture, and the United States is the chief exporter of Western beliefs, so it is a pipe dream to assume that America can achieve détente with "anti-American militant jihadists" by, in effect, offering up Israel as a sacrificial lamb.

In his United Nations address, Obama called for Israel to establish "a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967." Like Bush before him, Obama referred to the territories Israel won in the Six-Day War -- a preemptive defensive strike against armies from nine Arab countries massing on its borders -- as "occupied territory" but, unlike Bush, Obama's proposal has Israel retreating from its own land, returning to indefensible 1967 borders and trusting in the peaceful intentions of its neighbors. Bush didn't go nearly that far, citing in his 2004 "road map" that "in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

Obama went even further, linking America's continuing support for the Jewish state's very security with his demand that it surrender the territory, stating, "The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians." Of all the countries in history that have won wars, only Israel is being denied the fruits of its victory in 1967.

Obama appears to have adopted as policy the controversial agreement Carter reached with Hamas last year to establish a Palestinian state in the territories won by Israel 42 years ago. Additionally, and again in sharp contrast to the Bush Administration, which opposed a Palestinian national unity government, Obama has communicated his support, through Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, for the formation of a Hamas-Fatah coalition government. Obama has even gone so far as to request Congress amend the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009 to enable the United States to continue to provide financial aid to any Palestinian government if the President determines that it is in the interests of national security.

As the United States, the European Union and other countries have classified Hamas as a terrorist organization, America under Obama would appear to have strange new bedfellows. Perhaps the president has forgotten that Hamas' charter (Article 7) advocates the killing of all Jews by Muslims, its leaders are Holocaust deniers, that his own FBI director, Robert Mueller, in testimony before the U.S. Senate, cited "the FBI's assessment that there is a ...threat of a coordinated terrorist attack in the U.S. from Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas," that Hamas has never accepted Israel's right to exist and is committed to "obliterating" it (preamble to Hamas charter), and that, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates last January, Hamas and another terrorist organization, Hezbollah, have joined with Iran in fomenting "subversive activity" in Latin America. Or perhaps he believes America's stated policy of not negotiating with terrorists -- established by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and reaffirmed by Obama as a presidential candidate in April 2008 -- should be scrapped.

The United States is proving to be a fair-weather ally, abandoning Israel in the face of an impending existential threat from a nuclear Iran. Obama's self-declared "evenhanded" approach to solving the Middle East "problem" would appear to consist of continually pressuring Israel to give up its secure borders while simultaneously enabling grave threats to Israel's very existence, refusing to engage the United States in taking action to halt Iran's nuclear weapons program. Last May, the president connected the dots thusly:

To the extent that we can make peace... between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I think it actually strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with a potential Iranian threat.

This idealistic view misses the point -- Iran isn't interested in a two-state solution. In the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "Israel must be wiped off the map," is a "stinking corpse," "is on its way to annihilation" and "has reached the end like a dead rat." Not a lot of room to negotiate there.

Nor is there room to negotiate Iran's nuclear weapons program. As Obama belatedly acknowledged on Sept. 26 regarding the country's newly disclosed nuclear power facility, "the size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program." Iran desires global power and to spread the religious and political ideology of the Islamic Revolution, so what's left to negotiate? Access to nuclear energy for peaceful uses isn't on Iran's shopping list.

Iran and Syria rank as the leading state sponsors of terrorism, yet the president has removed a longstanding export ban on American technology to Syria, allowing the transfer of spare aircraft parts, information technology and telecommunications equipment, all material that could also benefit the air force of Syria's close ally, Iran. At the same time, Obama actually suspended the sale of military equipment to Israel -- holding up the shipment of Apache helicopters after Israel moved to defend its citizenry against daily Hamas-enabled rocket barrages earlier this year -- equipment necessary to safeguard Israel's security against overwhelming odds. Syria, an unrepentant state supporter of terrorism, was exempted by Obama from the longtime ban on the sale of sensitive, dual-use technologies. Yet, it is only Israel that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States as America's most important and dependable ally in combating terrorism. Can the president see the difference?

Obama spoke eloquently to the United Nations about having compassion for "the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has ... no country to call his own." Where's his concern for the 3,000-year-old Jewish communities in Arab lands that were ethnically cleansed between 1948 and the early 1970s? Commencing with Arab League retaliation for the declaration of the State of Israel, 1 million Jews were forcibly removed from their homes and personal property, forfeiting 62,000 square miles of land (nearly five times Israel's 12,600 square miles) and assets worth approximately $300 billion. What of their "right of return?"

By tying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to improving Muslim-U.S. relations, Obama has forced Israel into the position of answering for U.S. failures in the Muslim world and making the sacrifices necessary to mend that relationship. Obama has placed immense pressure on Israel to halt settlement building. Where is the equal pressure on the Palestinian Authority to ensure Israel's security? Obama's far greater pressure on the Israelis has emboldened Arab intransigence and moved the Middle East farther away from the prospect of peace.

Case in point: Last weekend, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian chairman of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, asserted that Israel's nuclear weapons program, not Iran's, is "the number one threat" to Middle East peace. In the words of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, "Israel seeks Iran's recognition; Iran seeks Israel's destruction. So of course it is Israel that poses a threat." Obama's strong-arm policies toward Israel have created the opening Arab countries have long sought to solve "the Jewish problem" once and for all.

President Obama's new, "evenhanded" policy in the Middle East is anything but fair and balanced. His policies increasingly endanger and isolate Israel. At the United Nations, Obama forcefully stated that "the United States of America will never waiver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny," that is, of course, unless the people are Israelis. Without the Jewish state of Israel as a standard bearer for Western ideals of democracy in the Middle East, the world will be a far more dangerous place. Then it will be America's turn to stand alone as "Public Enemy No. 1" for Islamic fundamentalists.

This article originally appeared in the Jewish Journal.

Brazil Blackout: Two Largest Cities Hit By Massive Power Outages

2009-11-11T02:45:45Z

RIO DE JANEIRO — A massive power failure blacked out Brazil's two largest cities and other parts of Latin America's biggest nation for more than two hours late Tuesday, leaving millions of people in the dark after a huge hydroelectric dam suddenly went offline. All of neighboring Paraguay also lost power, but for only about 20 minutes.

The huge Itaipu dam straddling the two nations' border stopped producing 17,000 megawatts of power, resulting in outages in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and at least several other big Brazilian cities, Brazilian Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao said. He said outages hit nine of the 27 states in a country of more than 190 million people.

The cause of the failure had not been determined, but Lobao said strong storms uprooted trees near the Itaipu dam just before it went offline and could be to blame. Rio was the hardest hit city, he said.

At 12:37 a.m. Wednesday, the lights in Rio's Copacabana neighborhood flashed back to life, prompting cheers and thunderous car honking.

"It's sad to see such a beautiful city with such a precarious infrastructure," said Igor Fernandes, a shirtless 22-year-old law student peddling his bike down a dark Copacabana beach. "This shouldn't happen in a city that is going to host the Olympic Games."

Lobao said the hydro plant at the dam itself was working, but there were problems with the power lines that carry electricity across Brazil. Brazil uses almost all of the energy produced by the dam, and Paraguay consumes the rest.

In Paraguay, the national energy agency blamed the blackout on a short-circuit at an electrical station near Sao Paulo, saying that failure shut down the entire power grid supplied by Itaipu. All of Paraguay went dark for about 20 minutes, the country's leading newspaper, ABC Color, reported.

The company in charge of the dam, Itaipu Binacional, said the blackout did not start at the hyrdoelectric complex. It said the most likely cause was a failure at one or more points in the transmission system.

The blackouts came three days after CBS's "60 Minutes" news program reported that several past Brazilian power outages were caused by hackers. Brazilian officials had played down the report before the latest outages, and Lobao did not mention it.

Brazil's official Agencia Brasil news agency said Tuesday's outage started about 10:20 p.m. (1220 GMT), snarling streets in Rio, where traffic that is normally chaotic turned riotous. Cars, taxis and buses zoomed through dark intersections, honking to let their presence known as they zoomed through. Pedestrians scampered across avenues, and tourists scurried back to a handful of luxury beach hotels, the only buildings with light.

Flavia Alvin, 37, a shopkeeper in Copacabana, waited with her co-workers for the blackout to end before making the long bus ride home to western Rio. Asked if she was worried about violence or looting, she shook her head and pulled her young daughter closer.

"I've heard of problems like rioting in other places with blackouts, but Brazilians are more relaxed," she said. "All I can do is wait here and drink a beer."

That was what a crowd was doing at the Eclipse restaurant, a block from Copacabana beach. Drinking quickly warming beer at a restaurant beat sitting in a sweltering apartment, said Paulo Viera, 35, a graphic designer. But he worried about how the outage might look for a city that last month was picked to host the 2016 Olympics and will be the showcase city for soccer's World Cup in 2014.

"The image of Brazil, of Rio, is bad enough with all the violence," he said. "We don't need this to happen. I don't know how it could get worse."

Subway service was knocked out in both Rio and Sao Paulo, and the G1 Web site of Brazil's Globo TV said Sao Paulo subway users were forced to abandon train cars.

Some landing lights on runways at airports in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo went dark, affecting take-offs and landings, according to Globo TV.

In the city of Taguatinga near the national capital of Brasilia, a second division Brazilian league soccer game was halted after lights illuminating the field went dark. No power outages happened in Brasilia.

Utility companies that provide electricity for Rio and Sao Paulo did not immediately offer explanations for why the power went off or when it would be restored, Agencia Brasil said.

Sao Paulo is South America's largest city, with 12 million residents. Rio has 6 million citizens. But the metropolitan area of both cities are much larger. Also affected was Belo Horizonte in central Brazil and the northeastern city of Recife.

The Itaipu dam is the world's second biggest hydroelectric producer, supplying 20 percent of Brazil's electricity. China's Three Gorges dam is the largest.

___

Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Michael Warren in Buenos Aires and Alan Clendenning in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Chelsea-Lyn Rudder: Sexism Masquerades Behind a Mini Skirt

2009-11-11T00:23:43Z

On October 22nd Brazilian college student, Geisy Arruda, attracted more attention than she bargained for when she made a trip to the restroom, and a spontaneous student protest erupted. How did the 20-year-old, who studies tourism at Bandeirante University in Sao Bernardo do Campo, incite her fellow classmates into a vile demonstration? Arruda was escorted off campus by police and subsequently expelled from the university for wearing a mini skirt!

The offending attire is actually a short, hot pink dress, with long sleeves and a high neckline. I will leave the debate over the appropriateness of Miss Arruda's outfit to the moral and fashion police of Brazil. It is the discriminatory reaction of the university that is relevant to women throughout the world.

The horrific treatment that Arruda experienced at the hands of her classmates was shocking. Flanked by police, she was escorted out of the building as the visibly hostile crowd chanted "whore." Two weeks later the university responded to this act of aggression by notifying Miss Arruda of her expulsion by way of an advertisement, which appeared in several local papers on Sunday. The public outcry and government scrutiny in reaction to the university's decision to publicly rebuke and expel Arruda was so intense that the school decided to reverse its decision within twenty-four hours of publishing the offending ads.

So why did the school paint Miss Arruda as the aggressor in this case and not the victim? Instead of protecting Arruda from a senseless and demoralizing attack, the university subjected her to additional public humiliation. Bandeirante University concluded that despite what is apparent in video of the incident, which has been viewed thousands of times on YouTube, Arruda's conduct provoked the situation, "which resulted in a collective reaction in defense of the school environment." According to the university's attorney, "She always liked to provoke boys, the problem was not with her clothes, but the way she acts, talks, crosses her legs, and walks."

In other words, she asked for it. By expelling Miss Arruda from their private institution, the school deprived her of an opportunity for higher education. But it is the double dose of humiliation that the school achieved through its public notice of her expulsion that reeks of disrespect and discrimination. The school supposedly suspended other students for their role in the incident, but those names and punishments were kept confidential. Only Arruda was permanently dismissed from the school, only she was forced to bear the scarlet letter.

Who would have thought that a short dress would cause a young woman to be treated so disgustingly by her peers in a country where the bikinis are so tiny that they necessitated the invention of the "Brazilian" bikini wax? Before finding out that Arruda had been expelled because of the incident, I assumed that this was just another YouTube generation publicity stunt. It seemed obvious that this was a staged ploy for attention, an audition to become Brazil's next break out reality star. If the footage was legitimate it seemed symptomatic of the universal principles of jealousy and insecurity. Many of the taunts aimed at Arruda were launched by other women. According to reports,a group of female students accused Arruda of attracting "too much attention" and attempted to force her into a pair of pants. This type of petty behavior amongst women is not limited to college campuses. This "threatened," "kill or be killed" mentality is visible in a multitude of social and professional settings. Believe it or not, there is not a finite amount of attention in this world. There is more than enough to go around, even for those who choose not to wear short pink dresses.

To her detractors' disappointment, Arruda's expulsion and speedy reinstatement has only garnered more attention for the young woman. The Brazilian government asked Bandeirante University to provide an explanation of its actions. Citing intolerance and discrimination, Nilcea Freire, Brazil's Minister of Policies for Women announced an investigation into the circumstances of Arruda's expulsion.

The Education Ministry gave the university 10 days to clarify its reasons for expelling the coed. Government, and civil society organizations immediately took notice, and held the university's feet to the fire. Combined with the negative media attention that the institution received it did not take long for a mea culpa to be announced. This incident appears to have reached an appropriate resolution. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that this will be the last time that a woman will be verbally assaulted and humiliated as a result of personal choice that is of little consequence to those around her.

Erwin Vermont Washington Drunk Pilot: United Pilot Arrested After Failing Breathalyzer Before London-To-Chicago Flight

2009-11-11T00:22:22Z

LONDON — A United Airlines pilot who was pulled from his trans-Atlantic flight to Chicago shortly before takeoff has been charged with having too much alcohol in his system, British police said Tuesday.

Scotland Yard said that 51-year-old Erwin Vermont Washington, of Lakewood, Colorado, was arrested after officers were called to United Airlines Flight 949, which was already full of passengers and due to leave London's Heathrow Airport just after noon on Monday.

BAA, Heathrow's operator, said the plane had been due to leave imminently. A BAA spokesman quoted by Britain's Press Association news agency added that the pilot had been reported to authorities by another member of United's staff. BAA did not immediately return a call from the AP seeking comment late Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear how much alcohol Washington was accused of having consumed. Under British law, pilots are forbidden from having any more than 20 micrograms of alcohol for each 100 milliliters of blood in their system, or .02 percent. For most average-sized men, that is the equivalent of having just had about half a glass of regular strength beer.

Scotland Yard said that Washington, who has been released on bail, would have to appear at a court in northwest London on Nov. 20. If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison, a fine, or both.

United Airlines spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said Washington, who she did not identify by name, has been removed from service pending an investigation. She said her airline had strict rules on alcohol "and we have no tolerance for violation of this well-established policy."

She declined to say how long Washington had worked for the airline.

McCarthy said that the flight was canceled and that the plane's 124 passengers were put on other flights.

Monday's incident bears a strong resemblance to the arrest in May at Heathrow of an American Airlines pilot – also scheduled to fly a plane to Chicago – after he failed a breath test. Airport security staff had alerted airport police about the pilot.

In January, Southwest Airlines put a pilot on leave after passengers at a security checkpoint in Columbus, Ohio, told authorities that he smelled of alcohol. The pilot ran into a restroom and changed out of his uniform jacket and called in sick.

Union leaders say pilots are under increased scrutiny by security agents and passengers because of high-profile cases involving drunk pilots.

___

Associated Press Airlines Writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.

John Feffer: Obama and Immigration

2009-11-10T23:57:50Z

Russia is disappearing. So is Japan. Europe is next to go.

It's not the rising waters of global warning that threaten these parts of the world. The problem is more basic. The Russians and Japanese, as well as large numbers of Europeans, are not having enough children to replace themselves. The birth rates across a large swath of Eurasia are considerably below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies.

To prevent further shrinkage, many of these countries have instituted policies that encourage reproduction, such as more generous family leave and better child care.While such policies are essential regardless of a country's fertility rate, they are not going to solve the disappearing country problem. Birth rates continue to remain very low in Taiwan (1.14), South Korea (1.21), Japan (1.21), Ukraine (1.26), Poland (1.28), and Italy (1.31). In the 1970s, only 24 countries had birth rates of 2.1 or less. Today, over 70 countries fall into this category.

Pushing for another baby boom is also globally irresponsible. At a time of climate and energy crises, the earth simply can't take on too many more passengers. Women bearing children in the industrialized world, in particular, have an enormous impact on global warming: American women having babies generate seven times the carbon output of Chinese women having babies.

The solution lies not in the greater production of people but in their more equitable distribution. The answer to the disappearing country problem is immigration.Birth dearth countries already rely heavily on foreign workers to meet their labor shortage. Their remittances, although reduced by the current global economic crisis, have helped in a modest way to bridge the wealth gap between the developing and developed world.

But foreign workers only temporarily address a symptom of the deeper problem. Only by lowering the barriers to citizenship -- as Germany did in 2000 -- can shrinking countries revive their economies and become more dynamic international players.

It won't be easy to persuade Russians to welcome large numbers of Chinese into Siberia or Italy to embrace more Nigerians. The rancorous immigration debate in America demonstrates that fear and xenophobia can overwhelm practical considerations even in immigration nations.Demography, however, is destiny. The pull of economic need and the push of population pressures in the global south are already creating the next great migration.

Rather than watch these patterns unfold, world leaders should act preemptively. We've had global summits on population, racism, and the environment. We urgently need a migration summit to coordinate immigration policies, improve the integration of migrants, and address the inevitable xenophobic backlash.

President Obama, the son of an immigrant, should spearhead the initiative. By pushing for a migration summit, he can demonstrate that the United States is finally ready to play well with others. Such a Statue of Liberty play would be a fitting way for the president to spend the political capital of his Nobel Prize and secure his legacy as a global leader.

Cross-posted from Foreign Policy In Focus, where you can read the full post. To subscribe to FPIF's e-zine World Beat, click here.

Sharon Kelly: The Tide is Turning in the Fight to Close Guantanamo

2009-11-10T23:45:54Z

Yesterday, a heated debate took place on the Senate floor over an amendment proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham that would have prevented the 9/11 defendants from facing justice in U.S. federal courts. It did not pass. In a major victory for our campaign to close Guantanamo the Senate rejected this attempt to derail Guantanamo's closure and prevent the United States from rebuilding our reputation.

The voices of dozens of retired military leaders, experienced prosecutors, correctional officers, and committed activists who all want to see Guantanamo swiftly closed -- and understand that our institutions are up to the job of dealing with terrorist suspects -- is starting to break through and be heard by Congress. As we await the announcement of President Obama's plan to close Guantanamo, we can be hopeful that the tide of fear-mongering that has muddied this debate is being to ebb.

Victories like this take work. Last night on the Senate floor, Senator Patrick Leahy pointed to the bipartisan declaration signed by 120 prominent Americans including former Members of Congress, high-ranking military officials and judges, that Human Rights First partnered with the Constitution Project to organize. As today's Wall Street Journal noted, "Hours after the petition's release, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have barred prosecuting Guantanamo inmates in federal court."
Also yesterday, Human Rights First traveled to Michigan where a debate has been underway over whether Guantanamo detainees will be sent to the Standish prison facility. Two retired military leaders who traveled there with us had their message of support for closing Guantanamo appear in an op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press.

Most importantly, this victory took the help of people all across the country. Within hours of sounding the alarm, thousands took action, sending messages to their Senators letting them know that they opposed this destructive amendment.

Join us in this important effort to make sure Guantanamo is closed. You can sign up to help and stay informed on our website and on Facebook.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Between Justice and the Cliché, We Must Choose Justice

2009-11-10T23:30:42Z

We are in the process of constructing a new myth: that of the "fall-of-the-wall-that-no one-predicted."

Because finally...

That no one knew the exact moment it would happen, yes, of course.

That the playing out of the episode itself, the chain of causes and circumstances that ultimately made it happen, remains enigmatic still today, sure.

That the form of this revolution followed the form of all revolutions, the true ones, those that rupture the rhythm of days in interrupting the regularities; that no historical explanation can render a perfect account of it because this revolution, like all revolutions, excludes and suspends, by nature, normal historical logic; that we were the witnesses, there, of a kind of miracle where we saw the people of the small nations of Central Europe reclaim the rudder of History from the great powers and reappropriate their own destiny, it is evident.

But to conclude, based on this evidence, that we witnessed this spectacle in a state of total stupor; to infer from the true fact that the event was incalculable the false idea that it was unimaginable; in short, to conclude from the extraordinary character of this upheaval the fact that the entire world would have swallowed whole the fable of an indestructible Sovietism; this is what is consistent neither with the truth of the matter, nor with the memory of those who had the chance to experience this unprecedented moment.

I remember the writers who, from Chalamov to Soljenitsyne, very clearly predicted that communism would collapse.

I remember the men and women that were called dissidents and who, like Andrei Amalrik, writing, already in 1970, a book with an unequivocal title, Will the USSR Survive until 1984?, had doubts only about the date.

I remember intellectuals who, in the West, relayed the words of these dissidents, and thus gave a second wind to an anti-totalitarianism whose message was that the demystification of the communist fraud was not only desirable, but probable, and, sooner or later, inevitable.

I remember an essayist, Cornelius Castoriadis, who in one of his last books Devant la Guerre [Facing War], saw in the hypertrophy of the Soviet military apparatus, in its exponential, insane metastatic growth, the sign of a cancer eating the system away from the inside, and ultimately condemning it.

I remember, to limit myself to the deceased, another essayist, my friend Jean-François Revel, who wouldn't have been so distressed about the "totalitarian temptation" in democracies, of the "grand parade" in which they engage to please the men of stone of a Sovietism that was itself petrified, of their incomprehensible, dizzying, suicidal "cowardice," if he hadn't known these regimes were at death's door.

I remember Michel Foucault saying and repeating that all discursive and political formation has a birth, and thus a death--and that this formation will indeed finish, one day, like the others, by dying.

I remember Pope John Paul II who, when he evoked the appearance of the Virgin Mary announcing, already in 1917, the death of Sovietism to the three shepherds of Fatima, told us unconditionally that the hour so anticipated wasn't, all of a sudden, very far away.

I remember the simple people that I came across in my travels in Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union, before 1989, and who were increasingly less duped by the mystification that was holding on only by the fear it inspired or by the spinelessness of a "free world" betraying its own values.

We are in the process, in other words, of leisurely confusing two things.

Cowardice and blindness.

The fact that we didn't want to hear and the fact that nothing was said.

The attitude, on one hand, of the Kissingers, Brandts, or Giscard d'Estaings slamming the door on the condemned from the east; that of Thatcher or Mitterrand who, we know now, did everything, up until the last moment, to prevent the reunification of Germany and to save what could be saved from the former order; that, finally, of an intellectual clergy who, it cannot be disputed, found, in its immense majority in the United States as well as in France, nothing to find fault with in the scandal that was putting half of Europe in a space, a time, a civilization definitively different--we are in the process of confusing that with, on the other hand, the apparent silence, the long, silent, angry murmur of people who, on the ground, had understood for a long time and who were only waiting for the final spark to dare say that the king, or in other words the dictatorship, was naked.

This confusion is more than a mistake; it is a fault.

It is worse than a legend; it is disinformation.

And this disinformation, far from dissipating the lie, revives it in another way.

This is how we scratch out, in spirit, decades of the history of thought and of struggle.

And this is how we lay the foundation for tomorrows that will become disillusioned with a rewritten, distorted, revised History.

Sick of, yes, the banality, the clichés, rehashed ad nauseum; and honor to those who, with their minds or with their feet, saw the collapse approach and hastened it.

Translated from French by Sara Phenix.

Kevin Coval: The Wall: 20 Years After Berlin

2009-11-10T23:29:50Z

"The night of Nov. 9... was the fulfillment of a dream." German Chancellor Angela Merkel

today concrete stretches into sky,

twenty-six feet high. drab slabs

cut into four hundred and thirty-six

miles of country. dominos to block

the sun. an accordion of cement,

strung like a clothes line, wheezing

a deep, lone note.

today in al-Ma'sara children

grab barbwire with bare hands. march

toward a wall soldiers protect with guns.

soldiers push the children back,

bloody their hands on barbwire.

today armed men push children in the holy land.

today in Berlin, people celebrate.

politicians give speeches. the east and west

battle to tell the story in the light

that most suits them. regardless

how it is spun, people demanded

the wall fall.

twenty years later, more walls.

nations erect walls to keep people out.

walls are static, ugly and stupid.

people are resilient, fluid and numerous.

people break walls.

The Court in The Hague said the wall

is illegal. the wall is Israel's myopia.

america's revisionism. the wall bulldozes

hundreds of Palestinian homes

in a shrinking, stolen land.

today in Qalandiya, protestors

tore one slat of wall down,

twenty years to the day the wall

in Berlin fell.

today Palestinians wear neon yellow

shirts, black block letters across their chest

read, JERUSALEM, WE ARE COMING.

coming thru jidar al fasal al unsari!

coming thru the wall of apartheid!

coming to the city of peace!

as long as the wall exists

the city will have no name!

sons and daughters of the city

coming to reclaim the name!

walls fall like dominos.

the earth moves and people

demand the freedom to move

as the earth does; the freedom

to see cousins, to buy olives,

to visit hospitals. walls fall

or get ripped down or knocked

over. people walk thru walls

like superheroes.

today the state of Israel builds a wall.

today a piece of the wall was toppled down.

today the people of Palestine and today the people

everywhere dream of peace, dream no walls,

dream of the day the wall will

come down, piece by piece.

Johann Hari: Face the Facts -- and End the War on Drugs

2009-11-10T23:19:53Z

The proponents of the ‘war on drugs’ are well-intentioned people who believe they are saving people from the nightmare of drug addiction and making the world safer. But this self-image has turned into a faith – and like all faiths, it can only be maintained by cultivating a deliberate blindness to the evidence. The recent furor about the British government’s decision to fire its chief scientific advisor on drugs, Professor David Nutt, missed the point. Yes, it is shocking that he was ditched for pointing out the mathematical truth that taking ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding and smoking cannabis is less harmful than drinking alcohol. But this is how the war on drugs has to be fought. The unofficial slogan of the prohibitionists for decades has been: The facts will only undermine the war, so invent some that show how successful we are, fast.

Look at the United States, the country that pioneered the drug war, and still uses its military and diplomatic might to demand the rest of the world cracks down. In 1998, the Office of National Drug Policy (ONDP) was ordered by Congress to stop funding any scientific research that might give the impression that we should redirect funding from anti-trafficking busts into medical treatment of addicts, or that there is any argument to legalize, regulate or medicalize drug use. It’s Nutt cubed: only tell us what we want to hear. So, to give a small example, the ONDP spent $14 billion on anti-cannabis ads aimed at teenagers, and $43 million to find out if the ads worked. They discovered that kids who saw the ads were more likely afterwards to get stoned, so the evidence was suppressed, and the ad campaign marched on.

What would happen if we started to build our drugs policy around the facts, rather than our desire for a fuzzy feeling inside? Professor Nutt only took tiny baby steps in this direction before he was booted out. He argued that we should rank drugs by the harm they do, rather than by the size of the panicked headlines they trigger. Now the row is fading, it is possible to see how conservative he was. A must-read new report out this week – ‘After The War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation’ – follows the facts as far as they will take us. It shows that the rational solution is to take the drug market back from the unregulated anarchy of criminal gangs, and transfer it to pharmacists, off-licenses, and doctors who operate in the legal economy. To see why this is necessary, we have to look at some of the facts our politicians refuse to see.

Fact One: The drug war hands one of our biggest industries to armed criminal gangs, who unleash terrible violence across the country. When alcohol was prohibited in the US in the 1920s, it didn’t vanish. No: armed gangsters like Al Capone stepped in and sold it – and they shot anybody who got in their way. Yet today, Wine Rack does not shoot up Thresher’s. Oddbin’s does not threaten to kill anybody who sees its staff selling wine. Why? Because it wasn’t the booze that caused the violence; it was the prohibition. Once alcohol was reclaimed for legal businesses, the dealer-on-dealer violence swiftly stopped.

Where there is a huge profit to be made in a black market – it’s 3000 percent on drugs today – people will fight and kill to control it. Arrest a dealer, and you simply trigger a new war for his patch, with the rest of us caught in the crossfire. The Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman calculated that there are 10,000 murders in the US alone every year caused this way. Legalize, and you bankrupt most organized crime overnight. With their profits in free-fall, the gangsters don’t suddenly become cuddly – but the huge financial incentives to remain a gangster wither fast. It’s the drug war that keeps them in business, and legalization that shuts them down. As Friedman said, “Prohibition is the drug dealer’s best friend.”

Fact Two: Under prohibition, drug use becomes more hardcore. Before alcohol prohibition, most Americans drank beer and wine. After prohibition was introduced, super-strong moonshine became the most popular drink, as booze rapidly became 150 percent stronger. Why? The writer Richard Cowan called it “the iron law of prohibition”: whenever you criminalize a substance, it gets stronger. Because they are smuggling and stashing a substance, the dealers condense their product to give the biggest possible kick while taking up the smallest possible space. It’s at work today: it’s why dealers invented crack in the 1980s. The researchers Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen found: “The increased deadly nature of drugs under prohibition led to 15,000 more deaths in 2000 [in the US alone] than [if] prohibition had not made drugs more dangerous.”

Fact Three: The drug war doesn’t reduce drug use – but the alternatives can. Some people believe these two dark side-effects are a price worth paying if prohibition stops a significant number of people from picking up their first bong or needle. It was an understandable enough argument – until the evidence came in from countries that have experimented with ending the drug war. On July 1^st 2001, Portugal decriminalized the possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. You can have and use as much as you like for your own needs, and if you are caught, the police might refer you to a rehab programme, but you will never get a criminal record. (Supplying and selling remains illegal.) The prohibitionists predicted a catastrophic rise in addiction, and even I – an instinctive legalizer – was nervous.

Now we know: overall drug use actually fell a little. As a major study by Glenn Greenwald for the Cato Institute found, among teenagers the fall was fastest: 13-year-olds are 4 percent less likely to use drugs, and 16-year-olds are 6 percent less likely. As the iron law of prohibition predicts, the use of hard drugs has fallen fastest: heroin use has crashed by nearly 50 percent among the young, who were not yet addicted. The Portuguese have switched the billions that used to be spent chasing and jailing addicts to providing them with prescriptions and rehab. The number of people in drug treatment is now up by 147 percent. Almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back. Indeed, many citizens want to take the next step: legalize supply too, and break the back of the gangs.

Portugal is no fluke. It turns out that wherever the drug laws are relaxed, drug use stays the same, or – where spending is switched to treatment – falls. Between 1972 and 1978, eleven US states decriminalized marijuana possession. The National Research Council found that the number of dope-smokers stayed the same. In Switzerland, a decade ago the government started providing legal centres where people could safely inject heroin – for free. Burglary rates fell by 60 percent, and street homelessness ended. A study by the Lancet – one of the most respected medical journals in the world – found that the rate of people becoming new heroin addicts fell by 82 percent. Why? Heroin addicts didn’t need to recruit new addicts to sell to in order to feed their habit. The pyramid scheme of heroin addiction was broken.

So the drug war doesn’t achieve its goal of reducing addiction. All it does achieve is horrific gang violence – and in some cases the cartels gut whole countries like Mexico and Afghanistan. It does unwittingly press people into using harder and more dangerous drugs. And it does waste tens of billions of dollars that could really reduce drug addiction, by spending it on treatment for addicts.

The prohibitionists are therefore left a contradiction between their message and the facts. They can either change their message, or try to suppress the facts. Last week, the British government made its choice. But how long will this be tenable for them or the wider world? The prohibitionists are – from the best intentions and the highest motives – unleashing a catastrophe. Human beings have been finding ways to get stoned or high since we lived in caves. In our attempt to end this natural impulse, we have created a problem worse than drug use itself.

There is another way. Imagine a country with no drug dealers killing to protect their patch or terrorizing whole estates. Imagine a country where burglary fell by 60 percent. Imagine an America where we spent all these billions treating addicts as ill people who need our help, not hunting them down as criminals who need punishment. We can be that country. We just have to come down from chasing the dragon of a drug-free world – and start looking soberly at the facts.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here. You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com

To read an archive of his articles about drugs, click here.

Johann is also a contributing writer for Slate magazine. To read his latest article for them - about the loon Ayn Rand - click here.

You can follow Johann on Twitter at www.twitter.com/johannhari101

Blackwater Said To Approve Iraqi Payoffs After Shootings

2009-11-10T22:54:14Z

Former top executives at Blackwater Worldwide say the U.S. security contractor sent about $1 million to its Iraq office with the intention of paying off officials in the country who were angry about the fatal shootings of 17 civilians by Blackwater employees, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Four former executives described the plan under the condition of anonymity, the newspaper said.

Iraqis had long complained about ground operations by the North Carolina-based company, now known as Xe Corp. Then the shooting by Blackwater guards in Baghdad's Nisoor Square in September 2007 left 17 civilians dead, further strained relations between Baghdad and Washington and led U.S. prosecutors to bring charges against the Blackwater contractors involved.

The State Department has since turned to DynCorp and another private security firm, Triple Canopy, to handle diplomatic protective services in the country. But Xe continues to provide security for diplomats in other nations, most notably in Afghanistan.

The former executives told the Times that the payments were approved by the company's then-president, Gary Jackson. They did not know if he came up with the idea.

It's also not clear whether the payments were actually delivered, or which Iraqi officials were intended to receive them. Any payments would have been illegal under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bans bribes to foreign officials. The company has paid legitimate compensation to several victims of the shootings, the Times reported.

Two of the former executives said they were directly involved in discussions about paying Iraqi officials, and the other two said they were told about the discussions by others at Blackwater.

Jackson, who resigned as president of Blackwater early this year, criticized the newspaper when reached by phone and said, "I don't care what you write."

Xe spokesman Mark Corallo said the company disputes "these baseless allegations" and had no comment on former employees.

The plan to pay Iraqi officials caused a rift within the company, the former executives said.

Five Blackwater guards involved in the Nisoor Square shooting are scheduled to face trial on federal manslaughter charges in February in Washington. A sixth guard pleaded guilty in December. Iraqi victims are also suing the company and its founder, Erik Prince.

The Iraqi government suspended the firm's license after the shooting and demanded that Blackwater be expelled from the country within six months. Iraqi authorities denied Xe an operating license in early 2009, but the company has continued to have some presence in the country. In September, the State Department announced it had extended a contract with a Xe subsidiary to provide air support for protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

A wide-ranging federal grand jury investigation is being conducted on Xe's operations. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Raleigh declined to comment to the Times on the probe and did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday evening by The Associated Press.

Several former Blackwater employees told the Times they have been interviewed by prosecutors or the grand jury on various topics, including alleged weapons smuggling. Two former employees have pleaded guilty to weapons charges and are believed to be cooperating with prosecutors.

___

Information from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com

Noura Erakat: Delusional Self-Defense, Delusional Congressional Vote

2009-11-10T22:43:13Z

By Jimmy Leas and Noura Erakat

The 344-36 House vote last week condemning the Goldstone Report, which encourages Israel and Hamas to conduct "credible" independent investigations of war crimes committed in Gaza, may help Israeli leaders avoid prosecution in the short-term. However, the House vote and the negative US votes at the UN will have long-term detrimental effects both on Israel and on the U.S.'s moral authority.

Consider that within the General Assembly, 110 nations endorsed the Report, while the U.S. was among the minority of 18 nations that voted against the endorsement. The Congressional vote will increase the likelihood of a worldwide campaign to push the UN General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, or other countries, under universal jurisdiction, to hold Israel to account for war crimes committed in Gaza.

Self-defense is of utmost concern because self-defense was a central element of Israel's ongoing argument for the war and is the heart of the U.S.'s rejection of Goldstone. Israeli officials have featured that claim in every forum leading up to Operation Cast Lead's pummeling strikes. It was Israel's justification in its letter to the UN Secretary General when Israeli State officials announced the war on December 27, 2008. It was the main theme of Netanyahu's recent speeches to the General Assembly and to the Knesset. It was the main theme of the most recent House Resolution. It will be the U.S.'s main reason to veto the forthcoming Security Council vote. The self-defense claim is not just a matter of public relations; it is essential. Absent self-defense, political and military officials in Israel are subject to charges that go beyond those in the Goldstone Report, including, but not limited to, the crime of war of aggression.

However, the self-defense claim propagated by Israeli and U.S. politicians since the initiation of Operation Cast Lead is inconsistent with both the facts and the law. Within weeks of entering into the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement, Hamas rocket fire had come to a halt. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ceasefire was so successful that it brought "normal life and "calm" back to Israeli towns near Gaza. In an article posted on July 27, 2008, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs even lauds Hamas, stating:

Publicly, Hamas leaders have stated time and again that the lull is a Palestinian national interest. On several occasions, Hamas members have arrested Fatah operatives who were involved in firing at Israel and confiscated their arms.

Calm prevailed for four months until Israeli forces broke the ceasefire agreement on November 4, 2008. While the world's gaze turned to one of the U.S.'s most historic elections that day, Israel launched an armed incursion into Gaza, accompanied by aerial bombing, killing six Hamas members and catapulting the region into a renewed wave of violent hostilities. Hamas rocket fire immediately followed the Israeli attack. Two weeks later Israel's largest circulation paper quoted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admitting that "the recent waves of rocket attacks are a result of our operations, which have resulted in the killing of twenty Hamas gunmen." Barak's admission, consistent with the fact that Israel broke the ceasefire, makes Israel's self-defense claim baseless.

Still, Hamas offered to reinstate and extend the ceasefire a month later on December 23, 2008. Israel refused, ducking the chance to reach a diplomatic agreement that would have again ended rocket fire and brought the security desired by Israel. Instead, Israel chose massive escalation and four days later launched a gruesome aerial offensive against Gaza.

On the Offensive's 17th day, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni boasted that Israel was "going wild-and this is a good thing." The targeting of civilians described in the Goldstone Report seems to corroborate this Israeli attitude as Israeli forces attacked targets in Gaza that had nothing to do with Israel's stated military objective of stopping rocket fire. Israeli forces targeted schools, hospitals, factories, agricultural land, the only flour mill in Gaza, an egg farm, thousands of private homes, government buildings, and Palestinian civilians.

The Goldstone Report concluded:

While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.(Goldstone par. 1883)

A central element of the law of self-defense, as well as the laws regarding the conduct of war once started, is one unequivocal standard around which no controversy exists: the prohibition on targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. As demonstrated not only by the Goldstone Report, but also in reports by Israeli soldiers who participated in Operation Cast Lead and reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and the National Lawyers Guild, Israeli forces directly targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure during its 22-day offensive. Even if Israel had not itself broken the ceasefire, its legal argument for self-defense would therefore be ineffective. Israel's only rebuttal to these charges was a military investigation conducted by the Israeli Army itself. But that self-serving investigation was nearly unanimously condemned as lacking independence and impartiality (see PDF).

Thus, neither the facts nor the law support an Israeli self-defense claim. Rather than condemn Israel's act of aggression and its ongoing occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Congress added its name to a pungent piece of manipulative delusion: that Israel's onslaught of Gaza constituted an act of self-defense. The House is now on record disavowing international law and international accountability mechanisms. People around the world will be persuaded that protests, boycotts, and divestment campaigns are all the more necessary, and they will look to places outside the US political establishment for justice.

Noura Erakat is a Palestinian-American attorney and James Marc Leas is a Jewish-American attorney, and both participated in the National Lawyers Guild delegation to Gaza in February.

World In Photos: November 10, 2009

2009-11-10T22:42:06Z

Here is the HuffPost's selection of photos of today's news and events from every corner of the globe. Check back Monday through Friday for this HuffPost World feature.

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Vatican Joins Search For Alien Life

2009-11-10T22:39:13Z

VATICAN CITY — E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology – the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe."

Thirty scientists, including non-Catholics, from the U.S., France, Britain, Switzerland, Italy and Chile attended the conference, called to explore among other issues "whether sentient life forms exist on other worlds."

Funes set the stage for the conference a year ago when he discussed the possibility of alien life in an interview given prominence in the Vatican's daily newspaper.

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system – including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

"If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound," he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions.

In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said in that interview.

"Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom."

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered "part of creation."

The Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

Earlier this year, the Vatican also sponsored a conference on evolution to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

The event snubbed proponents of alternative theories, like creationism and intelligent design, which see a higher being rather than the undirected process of natural selection behind the evolution of species.

Still, there are divisions on the issues within the Catholic Church and within other religions, with some favoring creationism or intelligent design that could make it difficult to accept the concept of alien life.

Working with scientists to explore fundamental questions that are of interest to religion is in line with the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made strengthening the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

Recent popes have been working to overcome the accusation that the church was hostile to science – a reputation grounded in the Galileo affair.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the ruling against the astronomer was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

The Vatican Museums opened an exhibit last month marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first celestial observations.

Tommaso Maccacaro, president of Italy's national institute of astrophysics, said at the exhibit's Oct. 13 opening that astronomy has had a major impact on the way we perceive ourselves.

"It was astronomical observations that let us understand that Earth (and man) don't have a privileged position or role in the universe," he said. "I ask myself what tools will we use in the next 400 years, and I ask what revolutions of understanding they'll bring about, like resolving the mystery of our apparent cosmic solitude."

The Vatican Observatory has also been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world's best.

The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has his summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.

___

On the Net:

Vatican Observatory, http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo

___

Associated Press writers Victor L. Simpson and Alessandra Rizzo contributed to this report

Robert Enke Dead: German Goalkeeper Dies In Apparent Suicide

2009-11-10T22:21:31Z

FRANKFURT — A goalkeeper expected to play for Germany at the World Cup died after being hit by a train in what police suspect is a suicide. He was 32.

Robert Enke played for the German club Hannover. Team president Martin Kind confirmed his death, and police later released a statement saying a man had been fatally struck by a train Tuesday night. The statement said the "first police indications are that it was a suicide."

"You expect many things, but not something like that," Kind said. "I do not know how and why it happened, but I do not think that it had anything to do with football."

The train crossing was not far from Enke's Hannover home. His car was found near the scene, unlocked, with his wallet on the seat. The two train drivers reported seeing a man on the tracks and applied the brakes while traveling at about 100 mph but could not stop in time, police said.

"We are speechless," German soccer federation president Theo Zwanziger said.

Hundreds of fans lit candles and placed flowers outside the Hannover stadium on Tuesday night.

Enke had been diagnosed with a bacterial stomach ailment and missed nine weeks before returning 11 days ago and playing two Bundesliga games.

He had not been selected for Germany's exhibition games against Chile on Saturday and Ivory Coast on Wednesday. But coach Joachim Loew had said Enke remained the leading candidate to be Germany's goalie at next year's World Cup in South Africa.

Enke and his wife lost their 2-year-old daughter to a heart ailment in 2006. The couple adopted a girl in May, who is now 8 months old.

"We are all shocked. We can't find the words," national team manager Oliver Bierhoff said from Bonn, where the national team assembled.

Enke played eight matches for Germany. After Jens Lehmann retired following the European Championship in 2008, Enke was promoted to No. 1 for Germany, but was set back by a broken hand.

Enke debuted for the national team in a 1-0 loss to Denmark in 2007. His last international game was a 2-0 win over Azerbaijan on Aug. 12.

He made 196 Bundesliga appearances and also played for Borussia Moenchengladbach after starting his career in East Germany at Jena. He also played for foreign clubs, among them CD Teneriffa, Fenerbahce, Barcelona and Benfica.