Vice President Biden had to convince a skeptical Jay Leno on Friday that the United States didn’t get a raw deal from Russia …

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Vice President Biden defends spy swap on Jay Leno show

by Mike Krumboltz

If you’re a fan of the sporting life, this was one of your bigger weeks. Not so much for the games that were played, but rather for the bizarre announcements that riled up folks across the United States and around the world. LeBron James and Paul the Octopus have little in common, save for their exceptional talents for ticking off some sport fans while delighting others.

LeBron’s big announcement

The plan: To build excitement over which team LeBron James, one of the NBA’s biggest stars, would play for next season. The result: A whole lot of anger. After much speculation (

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LeBron and Paul: Two Big Announcements

Here’s a good article from bdnews24.com | English Version

The United States will review its strategy of increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan at the end of this year, President Barack Obama said in an interview with Italy's Corriere della Sera on Thursday.

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US to review Afghan troop surge by end of year: Obama

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US to review Afghan troop surge by end of year: Obama

Here’s an interesting post from Sri Lanka News – ColomboPage.com

July 07, Colombo: The United States government on Tuesday reiterated its support to the Panel of Experts appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to advise him on Sri Lanka’s accountability on the alleged violations of human rights during the last stages of war with Tamil Tigers.

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US reiterates its support to UN panel on Sri Lanka

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US reiterates its support to UN panel on Sri Lanka

AP – China said Tuesday that the United States and other countries should not expand on the latest U.N. sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

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China objects to US sanctions against Iran (AP)

AP – With a scorching holiday weekend in the rearview mirror, a real summer sizzle is about to wash over parts of the United States.

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Heat blankets US as workers return after holiday (AP)

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Bangladesh's textile and apparel exporters are giving a tough competition to their Indian counterparts in both the United States and European Union.

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India trail Bangladesh in apparel, textile exports

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India trail Bangladesh in apparel, textile exports

SPACE.com – An American astronaut
spending the Fourth of July in space wished the United States a happy
Independence Day from orbit on Sunday.

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Astronaut Sends Fourth of July Message From Space (SPACE.com)

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Co-authored by Ken Klukowski On the Fourth of July, we don’t only celebrate the birth of our nation. We celebrate American exceptionalism–everything that makes the United States the greatest nation on earth. In celebrating this, we reject President Obama’s blueprint for the kind of country he seeks to make us

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Ken Blackwell: Liberty and American Exceptionalism

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Ken Blackwell: Liberty and American Exceptionalism

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Another July 4th is around the corner, and the United States will turn 250 in less time than children born this week need to graduate from high school. Will humanity consider the U.S. a hero or a villain when that happens

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Ali Hakan Altinay: Is the United States a Hero or a Villain?

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Ali Hakan Altinay: Is the United States a Hero or a Villain?

The United States has urged Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, yielding to demands by Arab nations.

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Diplomatic Memo: Nudge on Arms Further Divides the U.S. and Israel

The farthest American flags from the United States are not in other countries, they’re leaving the solar system on NASA’s Voyager spacecraft.

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American Flag Farthest From Home Is Leaving Solar System

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The ballot initiative process, which allows citizens to place proposals for new laws before the voters, had been left for dead by our movement until The Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals revived its use in the early 1990s. In circumstances where animal-use industries and their allies in state legislatures summarily dismissed or fought off popular reforms in state capitols, or in some cases rejected even the idea of dialogue, the use of the initiative process became a course of last resort, and we’ve used it to great effect for our cause. Among other things, it’s been the pathway for us to ban the use of steel-jawed leghold traps and other body-gripping traps in a half dozen states, bear baiting and hounding in four states, cockfighting in three states, and inhumane factory farming practices in three states, most recently by passing Proposition 2 in California in November 2008.

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Wayne Pacelle: Ohio Landmark: Behind the Animal Welfare Agreement

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Wayne Pacelle: Ohio Landmark: Behind the Animal Welfare Agreement

Tiger Woods has acknowledged that Canadian sports physician Anthony Galea, who does not have a license to practice medicine in the United States, has treated him at his Florida home, but has also said the Toronto-based doctor has never provided him with illegal drugs.

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Tiger reveals Galea treatment to federal agents

The United States’ war on drugs costs our nation tens of billions of dollars each year, and receives mixed reactions from the American people. Many people believe that this money is wasted because it only serves to put people in jail who actually need rehabilitation.

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Drug Punishments around the World

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is accepting help from 12 countries and international organizations in dealing with the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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US accepts international assistance for Gulf spill

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , Sports Business and Media Television’s most intriguing image thus far in the World Cup soccer tournament from South Africa came Saturday when a camera caught former President Bill Clinton and eternal Rolling Stone Mick Jagger chatting at the match between the United States and Ghana. Too bad ESPN had no microphone nearby to eavesdrop

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Lend an Ear to World Cup Announcers

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Lend an Ear to World Cup Announcers

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Foreign Office named the United States embassy Monday as the worst offender among diplomatic missions that have racked up 36 million pounds ($54 million) in disputed traffic congestion charges.

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US tops list of unpaid London traffic toll fees

Here’s a good post from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Winston Churchill’s memorable quotation , “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” captured the nobility of the RAF’s performance protecting free people from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler during World War II. An irreverent paraphrase of this quotation, however, captures the Afghan war as it stands at this moment: Never was so much squandered by so many for so few. The United States is currently spending $7 billion a month on the Afghan war, yet progress remains elusive and the end nowhere in sight.

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William Astore: Leave Afghanistan Now

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William Astore: Leave Afghanistan Now

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , International Soccer , International , Soccer Posts , US Soccer , U.S. Men’s National Team , United States Mick Jagger joined Bill Clinton on Saturday to watch the U.S

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Bill Clinton, Mick Jagger Watch World Cup Match

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Bill Clinton, Mick Jagger Watch World Cup Match

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Born in a U.S. territory where he has lived all his life, Jose Marrero Rivera didn’t know his name and social security number were racking up thousands of dollars in unpaid charges in Chicago and Miami. The snack bar worker is one of thousands of Puerto Ricans caught up in a lucrative document-fraud scheme to hide illegal immigrants in the United States.

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Puerto Ricans, ID Theft Targets: Hispanic Last Names Sought To Hide Illegal Immigrants

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Puerto Ricans, ID Theft Targets: Hispanic Last Names Sought To Hide Illegal Immigrants

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , Soccer Posts , US Soccer , U.S. Men’s National Team , Ghana , United States RUSTENBURG, South Africa — The Man of the Match on Saturday night in a field in the shadow of the Pilanesberg Mountains in northern South Africa was a 20-year-old, Andre Ayew, the French-born son of Ghana’s greatest soccer player, Abedi Pele.

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Soccer Is Still the World’s Game, For Now

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Soccer Is Still the World’s Game, For Now

AP – The United States is warning Turkey that it is alienating U.S. supporters and needs to demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West.

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US: Turkey must demonstrate commitment to West (AP)

Here’s a good article from Sri Lanka News – ColomboPage.com

Jun 26, Washington: The United States has said that human rights is an essential element of Sri Lanka’s future to establish a new dynamic relationship with its people.

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Human rights is an essential element of Sri Lanka’s future, US says

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Human rights is an essential element of Sri Lanka’s future, US says

Michael Jackson fans in Japan, Taiwan, the United States and China pay tribute to the King of Pop one year after his death. (June 25)

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Raw Video: Jackson fans pay respects worldwide

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the United States and its allies are not “bogged down” in Afghanistan despite …

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Gates: U.S. not ‘bogged down’ in Afghanistan

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The United States football lovers were pretty excited to see yesterdays match. The World Cup FIFA match between United States of America and Algeria was going to decide whether the United States team will go any fur ther in the world cup or will they return to their country.

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Landon Donovan Goal

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Landon Donovan Goal

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ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari said Pakistan valued a long term, multifaceted and durable relationship with the United States and that no isolated incident should be able to adversely impact this relationship.

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Pak-US cooperation must continue to fight terror: Zardari

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Pak-US cooperation must continue to fight terror: Zardari

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , US Soccer , U.S. Men’s National Team , Slovenia , United States JOHANNESBURG (AP) — FIFA refereeing experts will comment Monday on the performance of match official Koman Coulibaly in the United States ‘ 2-2 draw with Slovenia .

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FIFA to Comment Monday on Koman Coulibaly, US Match Referee

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FIFA to Comment Monday on Koman Coulibaly, US Match Referee

The popularity of the United States has risen most notably in Russia and China, while it continues to have the most difficulty in Muslim countries.

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Obama Helps Buoy U.S. Popularity, Pew Survey Says

My first real job was as a junior enlisted member of the United States Air Force. I had great benefits, but as a low ranking enlisted member my take home pay wasn’t worth bragging about. I was earning a comfortable living for a 19-year-old, but I didn’t think I had enough money to invest.

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A Simple Way to Become Wealthy

Disney/Pixar has bought the very first “Promoted” trending topic with their ‘Toy Story 3′ Twitter trending topic ad. If you are an avid user of the micro-blogging website, you would have noticed a change in the United States’ trending topics in the toolbar on the right hand side.

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Disney/Pixar Promotes With ‘Toy Story 3′ Twitter Trending Topic Ad (GALLERY)

The fastest growing large county in the United States is not in a trendy Sun Belt state. It’s in Illinois, a member in good standing of the Rust Belt.

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The fastest growing counties in the United States

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The Flag Day is being celebrated in the United States of America.

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Flag Day

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Flag Day

Cocktails had been served on the terrace, the ubiquitous Washington buffet of tenderloin and salmon consumed, and the gay law students settled in to hear from the famed legal mind who is leading the battle to make sure they have the right to marry whomever they want, wherever in the United States…

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Stalwart of the right presses the case for gay marriage

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All of the focus after the game has been on Robert Green’s shocking error in front of the England goal. In the press, especially in the English press, Green will be depicted as the man that deprived England of a victory. While Green makes an easy scapegoat, and should be criticized for the error, the United States was not gifted a draw.

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Max Bergmann: USA-England – A Point Earned

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Max Bergmann: USA-England – A Point Earned

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POLOKWANE, South Africa — Hey England and America, look who’s on top of your World Cup group. Little Slovenia! Robert Koren scored a late goal Sunday to give Slovenia a 1-0 win over 10-man Algeria in the teams’ tournament opener, putting the World Cup’s smallest nation – population 2 million, about the size of Houston – ahead of the United States and England in Group C. The Slovenian captain struck a long-range shot that Algeria goalkeeper Fawzi Chaouchi misjudged and allowed to bounce into the net off his arm in the 79th minute.

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Slovenia Beats Algeria, 1-0 In World Cup Matchup

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Slovenia Beats Algeria, 1-0 In World Cup Matchup

22 reported dog bite related human fatalities in the United States in 2004, 2007 – 29 human fatalities, 2008 – 26. In 2009, there were 33 human fatalities. 45% of the attacks occurred to adults over the age of 18, and 55% occurred to ages below.

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Most Dangerous Dogs in the World

The Afghan president has been pressing to strike his own deal with the Taliban and Pakistan because he has lost confidence that the United States and NATO will win, officials said.

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Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban

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Israel’s deadly attack on the “Freedom Flotilla” is proof of how Gaza continues to give Israel a taste of its own medicine. Intended to help solve Israel’s problems with Hamas, the three-year-old siege of Gaza is developing into a siege of Israel, while it causes tremendous damage to the country’s image around the world. It should be clear to both Israel and the United States by now that the siege of Gaza has failed to accomplish its goals

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Fadi Elsalameen: End the siege on Israel

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Fadi Elsalameen: End the siege on Israel

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , US Soccer , U.S. Men’s National Team , Australia , England , United States The U.S. national team’s final exhibition before the 2010 World Cup begins was a 3-1 win over Australia at a small stadium outside Johannesburg that answered some questions and raised others

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Edson Buddle and Herculez Gomez Help US Finish Strong

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Edson Buddle and Herculez Gomez Help US Finish Strong

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As of 10:06 a.m., Sunday, May 30th, the United States will have spent $1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we approach this milestone, Americans of all political stripes should take a moment to consider what war spending on this scale means, not just in dollars spent, but in terms of opportunities lost to strengthen, invest in, and improve our country. While each of us intrinsically knows that wars have consequences, we are rarely presented with such a stark example of how the choice to pursue war at the expense of priorities at home impacts each of us

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Rep. John Conyers: A Trillion Dollar Turning Point?

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Rep. John Conyers: A Trillion Dollar Turning Point?

Here’s a good post from bdnews24.com | English Version

The United States has congratulated Sheikh Hasina's government for arresting Saidur Rahman, chief of the banned Islamic outfit JMB.

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US congratulates govt on arrest of JMB leader

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US congratulates govt on arrest of JMB leader

by Mike Krumboltz

For many, Memorial Day brings to mind images of parades and picnics, of barbecues and baseball games. What’s sometimes forgotten are the reasons for the holiday: The sacrifices made by American soldiers in times of conflict.

As the United States’ death toll passes 1,000 in Afghanistan, Memorial Day takes on an especially poignant meaning this year. Here’s a brief look at how the holiday got its start, and how people are searching for ways to honor the brave men and women who have lost their lives.

The first holiday
Originally, the holiday was known as “Decoration Day.” It

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Remembering Memorial Day

The President of the United States has rained on Carpentersville’s Memorial Day Parade. Organizers of the Healing Fields exhibit in Carpenter Park had planned for an Air Force flyover during the parade on Sunday.

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Obama in Chicago means Air Force can’t do Carpentersville flyover

Here’s an interesting article from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

WASHINGTON — A senior United Nations official is expected to call on the United States next week to stop Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, complicating the Obama administration’s growing reliance on that tactic in Pakistan. More on Pakistan

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UN Official To Ask U.S. To Stop CIA Drone Attacks, Limit Use To Military

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UN Official To Ask U.S. To Stop CIA Drone Attacks, Limit Use To Military

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed . Thanks for visiting! In a broad redefinition of U.S. strategic priorities, President Obama has said that the United States must revitalize its own economic, moral and innovative strength if it is to continue to lead the world.

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United States Need New International Order says Obama

May 27, Colombo: Sri Lanka was given a historic opportunity with a strong electoral result and the real challenge is how the government uses it to heal the divided society and offer equal opportunity to all the citizens, the United States said Wednesday.

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Challenge for the Sri Lankan government is to offer opportunity to all citizens, U.S. says

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Challenge for the Sri Lankan government is to offer opportunity to all citizens, U.S. says

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Filed under: UCLA , Sports Business and Media If you’re a sports fan with a legal bent, add this to your Memorial Day weekend reading list: The March 10 complaint in Case No. C 09-01967 CW, United States District Court, Northern District of California, Oakland Division . It’s 157 pages of straight-forward material that references some of college basketball’s greatest moments and personalities over the last 50 years: Texas Western’s 1966 upset of Kentucky , the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird championship game of 1979, Michigan ’s “Fab Five” teams of the early ’90s, and UCLA ’s stirring title run in 1995, led by forward Ed O’Bannon.

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NCAA Facing Its Own Erin Brockovich

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NCAA Facing Its Own Erin Brockovich

Latest Update Rock The Bells:The 7th annual Rock The Bells 2010 festival series lineup was announced May 24th at a launch party at the Key Club in West Hollywood, California. The event, sponsored in part by MySpace, revealed the lineup for the highly anticipated annual concerts which criss-cross the United States, and often feature many of hip hop’s old and new school elite and veterans.

This year, the buzz rose to a crescendo as URB.com confidently rumored to the world that Lauryn Hill would be the crown headliner jewel for the festival series, in a long-form style concert, performing her multiple-Grammy winning album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in it’s entirety.

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Rock The Bells

Supporters of alleged drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke took to the
streets of Kingston, Jamaica to protest of the government’s decision to
extradite him to the United States to face drug trafficking and gun
charges…

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Jamaica Declares State of Emergency Due to Violence

AP – The United States and China are still at odds about how to deal with North Korea over the sinking of a South Korean warship it has been blamed for, a senior U.S. official said Sunday. They also remain apart on the specifics on new U.N. sanctions to impose on Iran over its suspect nuclear program, the official said.

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US official: At odds with China over NKorea, Iran (AP)

May 22, Colombo: Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs Professor G L Peiris will leave the country today for an official visit to the United States on an invitation by the Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, government sources said.

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Sri Lanka Minister of External Affairs to meet US Secretary of State

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Sri Lanka Minister of External Affairs to meet US Secretary of State

Image by AFP via @daylife

Judging by the government’s handling of the spill zone, I’d be hard pressed to tell you who is in charge of the country right now. BP has stifled the freedom of the press, given the finger to the EPA, and will not be forced to testify in Obama’s shiny, new commission. Honestly, I’m amazed Obama’s first reaction wasn’t to rename the country The United States Of BP.

Mac McClelland, a human rights reporter for Mother Jones, has been chased away from spill site by a local policeman, who claims he was just doing “what they told me to do.” McClelland asked the logical que

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BP rules spill zone with iron fist, ignoring Obama

Reuters – President Barack Obama declared on Saturday the United States cannot act alone in the world and pledged to shape a new “international order” as part of a national security strategy to seal his break with Bush-era policies.

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Obama: U.S. can’t act alone in world (Reuters)

AP – The mothers of three Americans jailed in Iran returned to the United States on Saturday, pained to leave their children behind yet heartened to find they’re being treated well and are “in reasonable health.”

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Moms of jailed Americans return to NY from Iran (AP)

Let’s face it: Hillary Clinton is one hell of a dominatrix. At first the United States Secretary of State said the Brazil-Turkey mediation to get Iran to accept a nuclear fuel swap was destined to fail

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Pepe Escobar: Iran, Sun Tzu and the Dominatrix

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Pepe Escobar: Iran, Sun Tzu and the Dominatrix

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to a packed house in Vancouver. The 42nd president spoke about world issues and the United States’ “rigidity” when it comes to things like health care.

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Bill Clinton brings down the house in Vancouver

Miley will give you brain damage…. Miley Cyrus’ children’s jewelry line has been yanked from the shelves of Wal-Mart stores across the United States after an report revealed the accessories contained high levels of a toxic metal. Jewelry from two Cyrus-branded lines being sold exclusively at the discount retailer — including bracelets and necklaces — contain high levels of the toxic metal cadmium, an Associated Press investigation has found.

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Miley Cyrus Jewelry Pulled From Wal-Mart Shelves

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Miley Cyrus Jewelry Pulled From Wal-Mart Shelves

Latest Update News Manhattan Declaration ; Six months and more than 440,000 signatures after its introduction, the Manhattan Declaration has announced new resources in support of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty.

The Manhattan Declaration was launched in November with an initial 150 signatures from Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical Christian leaders. It calls on Christians to adhere to their convictions and not to abandon their conscience.

Presbyterian Lay Committee President Carmen Fowler was among the first Christian leaders to sign the Declaration, which is nearing a half-million signatures. Layman Editor Emeritus Parker T. Williamson also has signed.

Seeking a more user-friendly medium, the expanded Web site offers social media tools, an archive of related news articles, an events schedule and links to a variety of resources.

The site also features downloadable translations of the declaration in more than a dozen languages. Another indication that the Declaration’s reach has extended beyond the borders of the United States is that its authors have reported a similar statement in Europe.

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Manhattan Declaration

A draft U.N. Security Council resolution against Iran will target the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the security and paramilitary forces that have grown to dominate Iran’s economy since 2005, according to U.S. officials familiar with the U.S.-backed plan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that the United States reached an agreement with Russia and China, two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on new sanctions that seek to punish Iran for violating U.N. controls on its uranium enrichment

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U.N. sanctions to target Iran’s forces

President Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, 57, has been granted asylum in the United States after four years of living as an illegal alien. Onyango, who first came to the United States in 2000 on a valid visa, was previously denied…

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President Obama’s Aunt Granted Asylum

In my Earth Day blog I mentioned that 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides were sprayed per year in the United States with an annual cost of $11 billion, while the total world pesticide use exceeded 5.0 billion pounds in 2000 and 2001 (for a combined total of $64.5 billion). That should take care of all those nasty bugs! But, less than 0.01 percent of all those billions of pounds that are sprayed actually make it to the intended pest! Oops. Kind of surprising that such an inefficient system is still in use today, isn’t it?

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Dr. Walter Crinnion: Pesticide Loss: A Massive Public Health Issue

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Dr. Walter Crinnion: Pesticide Loss: A Massive Public Health Issue

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , International Soccer , U.S. Men’s National Team , United States PRINCETON, N.J. — U.S.

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Charlie Davies Decision Not Personal, Bob Bradley Says

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Charlie Davies Decision Not Personal, Bob Bradley Says

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Filed under: FIFA World Cup , International Soccer , United States PRINCETON, N.J.

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US National Team Kicks Off Camp in N.J.

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US National Team Kicks Off Camp in N.J.

A Boston immigration judge has granted President Barack Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango asylum, clearing the way for her to stay in the United States and possibly to become a US citizen, her lawyers said today.

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Obama’s aunt given OK to stay in United States

I would not live anywhere but the United States (except maybe in an Italian villa). But we could take some lessons from what we patronizingly call the “old world.” Old, after all, usually means they know how to survive and learn

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Saul Friedman: The New British PM And Socialized Medicine

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Saul Friedman: The New British PM And Socialized Medicine

The United States Army special operations community is comprised of four main combat elements: Delta Force, Green Berets (Special Forces), Rangers and Nightstalkers (Special Operations Aviation Regiment or SOAR). In the past thirty years, these units have participated in conflicts around the globe.

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Top United States Army Special Operations Conflicts

The United States may currently be running deficits of comparable size to Greece’s, but its economic position and fiscal outlook is vastly better.

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Op-Ed Columnist : We’re Not Greece

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Filed under: Team USA , International Hockey COLOGNE, Germany — If the United States hasn’t pressed the panic button yet at the IIHF world championships, this team should at least have its finger hovering over it. While the rest of the hockey world has been captivated by the Stanley Cup playoffs, the USA’s entry at international hockey’s showcase is teetering on the edge. Team USA is heading to the relegation round of the 16-team world tournament after losing all three of its first round matches.

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Team USA Tries to Avoid International Embarrassment

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Team USA Tries to Avoid International Embarrassment

LOS ANGELES — A federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted seven people on charges of illegally smuggling an endangered fish considered lucky in Asia into the United States.

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Dragon Fish Smuggling: Seven Charged With Smuggling Endangered Asian Arowana

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Dragon Fish Smuggling: Seven Charged With Smuggling Endangered Asian Arowana

MEXICO CITY | Mexico has extradited a former state governor to the United States to face charges of helping smuggle cocaine through Cancun to the U.S., in a high-profile demonstration of the nation’s increased willingness to extradite suspects as it battles surging drug violence. Mario Villanueva, governor of the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo from 1993 to 1999, was in U.S. custody on Sunday, a day after authorities handed him over, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. Meanwhile, two young men were found murdered near the Pacific beach city of Zihuatanejo, and federal polic

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Mexico extradites politician to U.S.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent.

Other central banks, including the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank, are also involved in the effort.

The action reopens a program put in place during the 2008 global financial crisis under which dollars are shipped overseas through the foreign central banks. In turn, these central banks can lend the dollars out to banks in their home countries that are in need of dollar funding to prevent the European crisis from spreading further.

The Fed said action is being taken “in response to the reemergence of strains in U.S. dollar short-term funding markets in Europe.”

The debt crisis first erupted in Greece and there are fears that it could spread to Spain, Portugal and other eurozone countries. The crisis has pushed up demand for the U.S. dollar and has sharply weakened the value of the euro, the currency used by 16 European countries.

The Fed said the action was being taken to “prevent the spread of strains to other markets and financial centers.”

The Bank of Japan will be considering similar action soon, the Fed said.

A so-called “swap” line with the Bank of Canada provides up to $30 billion. Figures weren’t provided for the other central banks. The arrangements are authorized through January 2011.

The Fed had wound down these crisis-era programs with other central banks in February, along with other emergency programs to get lending flowing more freely again and return stability to financial markets. At that time, financial strains in the United States were easing, and the Fed began to take steps to move policy closer to normal.

It also had begun to lay out a plan to reel in the unprecedented stimulus money pumped out during the crisis. The Fed’s balance sheet ballooned to $2.3 trillion, more than double where it stood before the crisis struck. The program reopened on Sunday will expand the Fed’s balance sheet, economists say. However, the program poses little credit risk to the Fed because the arrangements are with other central banks, they added.

More on The Fed

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Fed Opens Line Of Credit To Europe

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Fed Opens Line Of Credit To Europe

This has been a providential month for teachable moments. They have included the details of the government’s civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs; the gruesome and needless corporate murder of miners in West Virginia; the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico; and then to complete the circle, the stock market going berserk because a technical error caused a domino effect of computerized automatic selling.

What do these events have in common? Every one of them demonstrates why the private profit motive cannot be relied upon without some steering or harnessing mechanism by government. A president committed to rallying public opinion to the cause of a more balanced economy would be all over these teachable moments, connecting the dots, rebuilding the ideology of managed capitalism, making the case for tougher government action in the public interest, and rallying the citizenry to his cause.

Let’s review how President Obama has actually done. He gave a pretty good speech in New York April 22, on the Wall Street origins of the crisis. Reform efforts in the Senate are moving in a constructive direction, mostly thanks not to the White House but to the leadership of a couple of dozen progressive senators and the fact that Wall Street is so unpopular that even some Republicans have voted for strengthening amendments.

Though Obama did help steer Sen. Chris Dodd, the Banking Committee Chairman, off his earlier course of negotiating a weak bipartisan compromise with his Republican counterpart, Sen. Richard Shelby, the president has been mostly hands-off when it comes to the key amendments. His senior staff has been on the wrong side as often as not, with Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner actively lobbying key Senators to oppose Bernie Sanders’ amendment to require an audit of the Fed. A slightly weakened version of the original Sanders measure was approved by the Senate last week.

On derivatives reform, Geithner was opposed to Senator Blanche Lincoln’s amendment for greater transparency in derivatives trades and limits on the ability of large banks to trade for their own accounts. This in fact was the effort of Lincoln and Senate progressives to carry out a major part of the so-called Volcker Rule that Obama himself embraced last January in a desperate moment of populism after Scott Brown won the senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy. But Obama is not lending his own personal support to make this principle a reality, and his own Treasury Secretary is mostly on the wrong side of the issue — working to protect Wall Street’s lucrative derivatives book at the expense of the public interest in honest and transparent markets.

After the West Virginia mining disaster, which was caused by the company’s repeated violations of mine safety orders, Obama gave a moving eulogy April 25 for the 29 lost coal miners. But the administration is too caught up in the politics of “clean coal” (a non-existent category) for the White House to have jumped on the tragedy to enlist public opinion to on behalf of a crackdown on a notoriously scofflaw industry and a more rapid move to renewable energy.

There are few silver linings to the Gulf oil spill. But one of them is that several billion dollars in public relations spending to re-brand BP as Beyond Petroleum is now about as effective as the company’s ruined oil rig. Beyond Shame would be more like it–a gift for the public understanding of the risks of offshore drilling and inadequate safety enforcement, and the need to move even more quickly to renewable energy. Did I miss that speech? Obama’s May 2 remarks in Venice, Louisiana, had exactly one line well down the speech on BP’s responsibility for the mess.

“BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill. But as President of the United States, I’m going to spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues. And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused. And while there will be time to fully investigate what happened on that rig and hold responsible parties accountable, our focus now is on a fully coordinated, relentless response effort to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the Gulf.”

Well, yes….but this was–is–surely a moment to point out the gross irresponsibility of the oil industry and its Republican defenders, and the need for adult supervision as well as a post-petroleum economy. Rush Limbaugh, for one, has had a difficult time with the oil disaster. He initially suggested that this might be the work of enviro-nazi saboteurs (“What better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.”) When this proved too preposterous even for Limbaugh, he then both minimized the disaster and faulted Obama for not moving to assert leadership more quickly. Curiously absent from Limbaugh’s rants was criticism of BP. But then, such criticism was largely absent from Obama’s speeches as well, perhaps because of the president’s awkwardly timed embrace of drill-baby-drill, in March.

Then came another gift from the progressive gods. Computerized trading of the kind that helps insiders get extremely rich, and does nothing for ordinary people, caused the stock market to lose more than a thousand points before it recovered to a loss of over three hundred. A more rudimentary version of this auto-pilot disaster was banned after the stock market collapse of October 1987. But in the intervening 22 years, the wise guys have figured out new ways to enlist computers to play the role of sorcerer’s apprentice. The practice cries out for regulation.

So let’s pause for a moment to review the bidding. The market economy has had a meltdown and regular people are still suffering. The administration is getting little credit for the half-steps that it has taken. The public is still uncertain whether government is part of the problem or part of the solution.

You might think, with these well timed gifts, that a progressive president would demonstrate leadership. Had the tables been turned, and the government rather than the private market perpetrated a series of disasters, you can just imagine how Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush and their strategists would have gone to town.

But after 16 months of pummeling by the right, this presidency is still pursuing his Quixotic quest for common ground. Obama’s most notable speech in recent weeks was his May 1 commencement address at the University of Michigan. The White House had plenty of time to decide what message the president wanted to send. It was characteristic Obama and the president had some very good lines about the importance of government:

“Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities, and the servicemen and women who are defending us abroad. (Applause.) Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them. (Applause.) Government is this extraordinary public university — a place that’s doing lifesaving research, and catalyzing economic growth, and graduating students who will change the world around them in ways big and small. (Applause.)”

But then he said this:

Now, the second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate….[so] if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. (Applause.) It is essential for our democracy. (Applause.)

Now, while we should appreciate the plug for the Huffington Post, there is something profoundly offensive about the presumption of moral equivalence….as if we are fringe left the way Limbaugh is fringe right. The fact is that Limbaugh, Beck, and the Wall Street Journal routinely lie. HuffPost and the New York Times editorial page don’t. And while writers like me push Obama to be more resolute and more effective, we don’t demonize him. Obama’s juxtaposition of the moderate left and the lunatic right as both worthy of attention reminds me of Robert Frost’s definition of a liberal as the fellow who is so high minded that he won’t take his own side in an argument

Where is a speech like this?

“My fellow Americans, in the past weeks we have witnessed a string of avoidable tragedies caused by the excesses of corporations and their executives. Millions of innocent people have suffered economic losses and dozens have lost their lives. The heedless rapacity of BP will cause suffering to the fishing industry, damage to the Gulf’s fragile ecology and new economic losses to a region that is only beginning to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

“The mining disaster is another reason why we cannot rely on corporations to act in the public interest. Unless government vigorously policies mine safety, more miners will lose their lives, more wives will lose husbands and more children will lose fathers. But better enforcement of oil and coal safety will never solve the entire problem. We as a nation must do what BP cynically professed it was doing. We must move beyond petroleum and beyond carbon.

“And the mother of all economic catastrophes, the financial collapse, is further proof that markets must not be left to their own devices. We need the toughest possible regulation of Wall Street so that the rest of the economy can recover.

Gentle reader, presidents on occasion have actually made speeches like this. Roosevelt did. Lyndon Johnson did during the civil rights era. You could look it up. They used events to move public opinion. They built popular support for progressive interventions.

This president has the capacity to be a great teacher. But we are still waiting for him to seize the moment and the moment is passing him by.

Robert Kuttner’s new book is “A Presidency in Peril.” He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos.

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Robert Kuttner: Teachable Moments — But Where’s the Teacher-in-Chief?

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Robert Kuttner: Teachable Moments — But Where’s the Teacher-in-Chief?

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has delivered new and stiff warnings to Pakistan after the failed Times Square car bombing that it must urgently move against the nexus of Islamic militancy in the country’s lawless tribal regions, American and Pakistani officials said.

The American military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, met with the Pakistani military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, at his headquarters here on Friday and urged Pakistan to move more quickly in beginning a military offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda in North Waziristan, Americans and Pakistanis familiar with the visit said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of continuing diplomatic efforts here.

The Pakistani-American man who admitted to the Times Square attack, Faisal Shahzad, 30, told American investigators that he had received training in North Waziristan, the main base for the Pakistani Taliban, Al Qaeda and other militant groups.

“We are saying, ‘Sorry, if there is a successful attack, we will have to act’ ” within Pakistan, one of the American officials said.

That issue has been a source of growing tension between the countries. Pakistani officials, already alarmed by the increase in American drone aircraft attacks against militants in northwestern Pakistan, have been extremely sensitive about any hint that American ground troops could become involved in the fight. And attempts by the United States to increase the presence of Special Operations forces there even in an advisory or training role have been met with great resistance by the Pakistanis.

General Kayani, with whom General McChrystal has forged a positive relationship, was essentially told, “ ‘You can’t pretend any longer that this is not going on,’ ” another American official said.

‘We are saying you have got to go into North Waziristan.’

“The element of threat is definitely different from the last few months,” said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador who also served in the United States. .

The Obama administration was planning to use the failed terrorist attack to impress on the Pakistanis of the urgency of getting American development aid in place in the tribal areas where militancy thrives, and into Karachi, the biggest city, where radical religious schools, known as madrasas, are popular.

“Last week’s incident makes it more urgent and more true” of the need to bring stability and security to these areas where the militants have multiplied, an American official said.

About $150 million was appropriated by Congress for assistance to the tribal areas in the coming period for reconstruction and other projects. But a host of problems, including American insistence on being able to monitor the money being spent, has made it a slow process.
U.S. urges action in NWA

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NEW YORK — Terror can come cheap.

Confessed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appears to have financed his failed plot with a wad of $100 bills, but the amount of money needed to execute the scheme was fairly modest.

There was his plane ticket to the U.S. from Pakistan, as well as a return flight to the United Arab Emirates, at a cost of less than $800 each way. Add to that his living expenses, including three months rent for a Connecticut apartment at a little less than $1,200 per month.

His car bomb was relatively cheap, too: $1,300 for a rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder and the cost of some firecrackers and tanks of gasoline and propane.

Shahzad, who seemed to have paid cash for many and maybe all of his purchases, bought himself a Kel-Tec rifle, which sells for around $400, but skimped on luxuries.

The 30-year-old slept on an air mattress in a sparsely furnished apartment, and, according to one account, tried to get a job at a jewelry store where he had worked as a young college student.

Shahzad’s finances are under scrutiny, as authorities try to learn whether he got cash from a terror group.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday that investigators had identified and were looking for a person who helped courier money to Shahzad from an overseas source. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury intelligence official, now a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the fact that Shahzad paid for the car and plane ticket in cash, sometimes using $100 bills, was a “red flag.”

The money trail, he said, may provide valuable clues as to whether Shahzad had any help.

Yet the bombing plan, as described by authorities, appears to have been simple enough that even a single person or a small group with limited means could stage this sort of attack.

Shahzad’s rent from mid-February to the start of May, his two airline tickets, gun and vehicle purchases appear to total less than $7,000. The actual bomb components – fertilizer, propane tanks, and a few boxes of cheap firecrackers – were even cheaper, maybe a few hundred dollars at most.

“You don’t need to have a lot of money to put together a bomb. It’s all relative to what you want to make,” said Leo W. West, a retired FBI explosives expert. He noted that a more sophisticated device containing exotic chemicals would have been more expensive.

Prosecutors said that on May 1, Shahzad tried to detonate an SUV filled with flammable materials in Times Square. The vehicle smoldered, but didn’t explode. He was arrested after investigators traced him through the SUV’s previous owner.

Shahzad is in federal custody. Authorities said he is coopering with investigators. He has yet to be arraigned. The whereabouts of his wife and children has not been made public, but they are believed to be living overseas.

Born in Pakistan, Shahzad spent more than a decade in the U.S., going to school, working and starting a family, before moving back to Pakistan last spring.

Shahzad has been characterized as being in money trouble when he left the U.S., but records and interviews suggest he still had resources.

He came from a well-to-do family. In America, he held a steady white-collar job as a budget analyst for years – a job he only gave up when he left the country.

Until that departure, there was no trail of lawsuits or missed payments indicating he was in trouble. In fact, his financial history was clean enough that Wachovia Bank gave him a $65,000 home equity line in January 2009.

Five months later, he left the U.S., stopped paying his mortgage and his home heating oil bill and let the bank initiate foreclosure proceedings, but it is possible that step was made, not out of financial desperation, but because it made economic sense.

As of June 1, 2009, he owed $200,673 on his mortgage, according to court records. That, plus the home equity loan, raised his liability to $265,000 – more than the home’s current appraised value.

It was unclear from public records how much of the home equity loan Shahzad used before moving his family to Pakistan, but if he pocketed all $65,000, it meant that by walking away from both loans he could recover most of his investment in the house and leave the country with a nice stake for the future.

Shahzad’s financial situation in Pakistan was unclear. Friends and relatives have offered little information on where he and his family lived or how they supported themselves.

His father, Bahar ul-Haq, is a retired vice marshal of Pakistan’s air force and owns property in several parts of the country. Shahzad’s wife, Huma Mian, also comes from a successful family. Her father, Mohammad Asif Mian, is a petroleum engineering expert who has written several books and technical manuals, worked for energy companies including Saudi Aramco and Qatar General Petroleum, and has two master’s degrees from Colorado School of Mines.

Still, when Shahzad initially returned to the U.S. in February, he phoned an old boss at a New Haven jewelry store where he had worked while attending the University of Bridgeport and asked for a sales clerk job.

Sylvia Lee, of Dynasty Jewelry, told the New York Daily News she had to turn him down because business was slow.

Acquaintances continued to express bafflement this week as to why Shahzad might have done it.

“He was a normal guy. Normal guy. Just enjoying life,” said Shakeeb Murtaza, who was part of Shahzad’s circle of friends when he lived in Connecticut. He said he hadn’t been in touch with him since he left.

Nasir Khan, a relative in the family’s ancestral village of Mohib Banda in northwest Pakistan, said he remembered Shahzad talking about the problems of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also said Shahzad had become more religious over his time in the U.S., compared to how he was as a boy.

“I saw a little change in him. When he was here, he was not religious-minded. But he was, when he came back from the United States,” Khan said.

Col. Abdul Aziz, a close friend of the family who served with Shahzad’s father in the air force, called him an “obedient and such a nice boy.”

“I am flabbergasted that they say he has done this. Someone must have brainwashed him,” he said. He added that he didn’t believe the allegation that Shahzad had gone to Pakistan’s tribal areas to get terror training, saying it was unlikely he could have traveled there without his father finding out.

“His father would never have given him permission,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Karachi, Pakistan; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad; Adam Goldman in Washington; Samantha Gross in New York and John Christoffersen in Shelton, Conn., contributed to this report.

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Times Square Car Bomb Cost: Total Budget May Have Been Under $7,000

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Times Square Car Bomb Cost: Total Budget May Have Been Under $7,000

ABILENE, Kan. — Warring against waste, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday he is ordering a top-to-bottom paring of the military bureaucracy in search of at least $10 billion in annual savings needed to prevent an erosion of U.S. combat power.

He took aim what he called a bloated bureaucracy, wasteful business practices and too many generals and admirals, and outlined an ambitious plan for reform that’s almost certain to stir opposition in the corridors of Congress and Pentagon.

“The Defense Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed and operated – indeed, every aspect of how it does business,” he said in a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in the former command in chief’s home town. Gates was the keynote speaker at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender in World War II.

The library was a fitting setting for Gates to caution against unrestrained military spending. In his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office in January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the “grave implications” of having built during that war an enormous military establishment and a huge arms industry that could wield undue influence in American society.

“Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state – militarily strong but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent,” Gates said. He recalled Eisenhower’s impatience with a mindset within the military that often sought to add new weaponry without regard for cost or efficiency – “pile program on program,” as he once put it.

Gates said he had recently come to the conclusion about the urgent need for big cuts in light of the recession and the likelihood that Congress no longer will give the Pentagon the sizable budget increases it has enjoyed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time,” he said.

In earlier remarks to reporters, Gates said it was clear that defense budgets will be tight “for as far into the future as anyone can see.”

The current defense budget, not counting the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is $535 billion; the administration is asking for $549 billion for 2011.

Gates used tough talk to stress that he will personally oversee the effort to reshape the Pentagon bureaucracy, and that he won’t be denied.

“We’re not going to just roll over to preserve programs that we think we don’t need – regardless of where the pressure is coming from,” he told reporters Friday.

Pressed to say whether he would remain as defense secretary next year to wage the budget battle with Congress, he replied, “We’ll get this done.” Gates has told Obama he will remain at the Pentagon through 2010, but his future beyond that is unclear.

Gates said it highly unlikely that the Pentagon will get Congress to approve budgets in the coming years that grow enough to sustain the current size of the military. That’s why he is looking for roughly $10 billion in savings from trimming the bureaucracy and applying that money to sustaining the combat force and investing in its modernization. He said the savings must be repeated in additional years.

“Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do,” he said. “These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time.”

Gates noted that for the past two years he has focused his budget cuts on major weapons programs that he believed were unnecessary or unaffordable. He managed to get Congress to agree last year, for example, to stop production of the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter earlier than previously planned, and he halted an Army ground combat vehicle project that had been a top Army priority.

“More is needed – much more,” he said.

That means cutting what he called “overhead” – the bureaucratic machinery that he said chews up about 40 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.

In this category he included the hierarchy of flag officers – the generals and admirals who run the military services.

To illustrate his point that there are too many of these top officers, Gates said that while the overall troop strength of the Army was sliced by nearly 40 percent during the 1990s, the reduction in generals and admirals across the military was about half that. He suggested that this was a top-heavy structure that is making it harder to get proper resources to the war fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Consider that a request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan – or for any other unit – has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated and eventually dealt with,” he said.

It is widely known, but also widely accepted, in the military that the bureaucracy is bloated.

Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, the commanding general of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., said Friday that it is obvious there are going to be more intense pressure to save money and that the bureaucracy is going to be a prime target.

“There’s tons of bureaucracy,” Caslen said in an interview with reporters traveling with Gates, who visited Leavenworth Friday.

In his Abilene speech, Gates also took on the Pentagon’s approach to setting what it calls “requirements,” or the numbers, types and capabilities of weapons it says it needs to accomplish its mission. He suggested that the military has overstated its requirements in a post-Cold War world.

“Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?” he asked.

___

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defense.gov/

Eisenhower Library: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/

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Robert Gates Says Urgent Need For Big Cuts At Defense Department

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Robert Gates Says Urgent Need For Big Cuts At Defense Department

BRUSSELS — Hundreds of flights between Europe and North America were either delayed or canceled on Saturday due to the spreading cloud of volcanic ash stretching across much of the northern Atlantic, the European flight control agency said.

Flights had to be rerouted north over Greenland or south over Spain to avoid the 1,200-miles (2,000-kilometer) -long cloud stretching from Iceland to northern Spain, Eurocontrol said. This will increase flying times by about an hour in either direction.

“We assume that basically most of the trans-Atlantic flights will have to be rerouted on Saturday,” Eurocontrol spokeswoman Kyla Evans said. “We expect substantial delays because of that.”

Approximately 600 airliners make the oceanic crossing every day. Around 40 percent will be rerouted southward and the rest will skirt Iceland from the north.

The plume of ash also forced the closure of 15 airports in northern Spain on Saturday and is expected to expand into southern France during the day, carried along by Atlantic winds. Spain’s main international airports of Madrid and Barcelona were expected to remain open.

Just over 100 flights were canceled at mainland Portugal’s three international airports on Saturday because of the ash cloud, the national airport authority ANA said.

Aer Lingus canceled flights from the United States to Dublin, citing the exceptionally circuitous routes to get around the cloud.

“During the day, the area affected by volcanic ash is expected to extend from Iceland, south to Portugal and possibly as far east as Barcelona and Marseille,” a Eurocontrol advisory said.

But relief appeared to be on the way, because meteorological charts showed that the area of predicted high ash concentration may move westward into the ocean – away from the Spanish and Portuguese coasts – on Saturday night.

In Paris, Jerome Lecou, an engineer with the national weather service Meteo France, said that the Civil Aviation authority was doing a flight evaluation with an aircraft equipped with sounding devices to gather a maximum of information in order to determine whether the closure of some airports may be warranted.

He said it remained unclear whether the annual Cannes Film festival which opens Wednesday would be affected by the flight disruptions. Normally, stars, journalists and fans descend in hordes on the Riviera site.

Until Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl), the volcano in southern Iceland, stops its emissions, the key to the future course of Europe’s ash crisis will be the prevailing winds. The eruption of the glacier-capped volcano has shown no signs of stopping since it began belching ash April 13. It last erupted from 1821 to 1823.

Since the ash is reaching altitudes of up to 35,000 feet (10,000 meters), right in the path of most trans-Atlantic flights, it will effectively block the usual routes. Eurocontrol said this would cause significant congestion, particularly in the airspace over Spain and Portugal where many of the diverted flights are heading.

A trans-Atlantic trip from New York to Paris, which is normally about 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles) long, could add on another 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) by being diverted over the Iberian Peninsula.

An Air France flight from Boston arrived in Paris Saturday with a delay of more than four hours.

Tracks across the Atlantic normally follow “great circles” – the shortest path between two points on the globe. They are determined each day by air traffic control centers on both sides of the Atlantic, generally depending on the jet stream from North America to Europe.

Planes flying the track system typically follow each other in 10-minute intervals and at altitude levels 1,000 feet (300 meters) apart, in order to maintain safety in airspace which is beyond the range of radar control.

___

AP Correspondents Elaine Ganley in Paris, Barry Hatton in Lisbon and Harold Heckle in Madrid contributed to this report.

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Volcanic Ash Causes More Flight Disruptions Between Europe And North America

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Volcanic Ash Causes More Flight Disruptions Between Europe And North America

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t be able to attract an audience for a “Brooklyn Manufacturing Expo” outside of their own staff so every year they host the BKLYN DESIGNS exhibition. Walking around the exhibition though you are struck by how design, and by extension designers, drive manufacturing. With the collapse of manufacturing in the United States over the last few decades it’s hard to fathom just how many jobs we had in Brooklyn making things. All of the work was not only designed here in Brooklyn but as a matter pragmatism, most of it is made here.

Here are a few of my favorite things.

Tree table and stool by April Hanna

April Hannah gets the chutzpah award. She’s an artist who three months ago when she applied for a booth, saw a need, had an idea, and a couple of cardboard models. Twelve weeks later, her Tree Table Collection is debuting here. The collection, shown with a few of her artworks, as a sort of visual DNA, is smart, cohesive, well crafted (thanks in part to a brother who according to Hannah “can make anything”),and built with kids and the environment in mind.

Jeff Mayer’s bench and growing family

Jeff Mayer’s 718 Made in Brooklyn is “form follows environment”. His design and manufacturing is a direct outgrowth of his lifestyle and Brooklyn aesthetic. He’s a former professional bmx racer, a lifelong skateboarder, and denizen of the public transportation system. All of these things come through in the objects, clothing, and furniture he designs and manufactures.

Christina Fesmire’s Fugle Swing

Pratt Institute seeks to instill in all graduates aesthetic judgment, professional knowledge, collaborative skills, and technical expertise. Their booth there was evidence of a promise fulfilled. The quality of the designs and the execution did not suffer by comparison with their professional counterparts by any means. I was particularly taken by Tobin Spann’s spare, simple, beautifully executed Surface Series furniture. My other favorite work was Christina Fesmire’s Fugle Swing. Both of those students have bright futures ahead of them as long as we can get this economy moving again.

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Steven Mesler: The Best of Brooklyn Designs

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Steven Mesler: The Best of Brooklyn Designs

UNITED NATIONS – From the Sugar Plum Fairy to Musetta’s Waltz, the former Soviet republics showed off some brilliant young talent performing Romantic Era greats: Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Puccini.

The three-year old Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), conducted by renowned maestro Vladimir Spivakov, ended its program in the 2,000-seat UN General Assembly Hall with the Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, played in precise marching cadence. Since it was not listed in the program, few among the largely Russian-speaking audience recognized it.

But it followed the familiar Victory Day song (written 30 years after the end of World War II by Vladimir Shainsky) which brought the audience to its feet, clapping in unison while archive film of Soviet celebrations at Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945 flickered on two screens.

Not all the numbers were from another era. The concert opened with a tribute to the Holocaust: the theme by John Williams from Schindler’s List.

Russia has spent a week organizing exhibits and other events to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe when Germany surrendered in May 1945. (Victory Day in the former USSR, Victory in Europe Day in the United States)

The events ended on Friday with the concert by the youth orchestra that Mikhail Shvydkov, co-chair of the foundation that supports the orchestra, said was for the families of ordinary people who won the war. (Ironically it coincided with the first week of the nuclear non-proliferation conference that saw countless Japanese recalling the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.)

The classics began with out of sync brass in Rachmaninov’s piano Concerto No. 2, despite the excellent playing by a professional pianist, Denis Matsuev, 35. However, the subsequent numbers grew more spirited and precise through eight sequences of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Swan Lake ballets, although the occasional horn blasts made it difficult to envision a ballerina. But the trumpet solo was marvelous.

The overture to Verdi’s La forza del destino opera was delicately performed, oboes et al, and featured another young professional, soprano Alevtina Yarovaya, who just started at the Bolshoi and delivered arias from Puccini’s La bohème and Gianni Schicchi.

Two numbers not on the program included a small youth delivering a virtuoso xylophone performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumblebee that brought down the house. So did a wonderful rendition of Lezinka, a boisterous dance in a raging tempo, drums ablaze, that is popular in the Caucasus mountains and beyond.

Balkans Balk
But the no UN event is without politics. Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters on Thursday after 30 nations, including Germany, spoke at a commemoration, that some “countries in Europe” did not allow Soviet veterans to wear their decorations.

Presumably he was speaking of Latvia and Estonia, occupied by the Soviet Union during and after the war. Parades in honor of Waffen-SS veterans are held annually in the two Baltic states. Churkin said people had to learn that if the Nazis had won, the future of civilization would have been different because “racism and national annihilation would have triumphed.”

Conductor Spivakov, born in 1944, had a different story to tell. His father volunteered at the Ukrainian front but was injured and sent to Ufa near the Ural mountains to work in a factory that made engines for bombers. His mother lived through the siege of Leningrad – and some members of his family died in the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps, he told a news conference.

Many years later, he was asked to conduct the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in Dachau (no date given) and initially refused because “it felt as if I was having a number tattooed on my forearm.” But he did go and played Shostakovich, which was received in a “cosmic silence” by his German audience. He then conducted Bach and said members of the audience stood up and cried and he felt he “was part of the universe” again.

What he did not relate but is revealed in media stories is that Spivakov, already a famous violinist, created the Moscow Virtuosi chamber orchestra in 1979 but found that after the fall of the Soviet Union life was untenable for many orchestra members. In the turmoil Jews became scapegoats. He moved the musicians and their families to Spain and they returned home in the late 1990s.

The youth orchestra is funded by the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, supported by CIS states. It performed for the first time in November 2007 in Astana, the Kazakhstan capital, and includes 98 musicians from 11 countries. On Friday, some 80 musicians, 50 of them on string instruments, played. The youngest was 15, the oldest 30.

Youth Orchestra at UN

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Evelyn Leopold: VE Dau at the UN: Russia Brings Tchaikovsky and a Bit of Politics

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Evelyn Leopold: VE Dau at the UN: Russia Brings Tchaikovsky and a Bit of Politics

On Thursday night the Foreign Policy Roundtable (FPR) held one of it’s salon style events in Los Angeles to bring together international scholars, journalists, and some of Hollywood’s elite to discuss one of the most important foreign affairs issues: Iran’s disputed nuclear program. FPR invited Reza Aslan, a highly regarded scholar and writer who has become an expert on foreign affairs issues, most notably Iran. Also present to moderate the dialogue was NPR’s diplomatic and roving foreign affairs correspondent, Mike Shuster.

The FPR event was hosted by Hollywood producer, manager, and Oceana board chair Keith Addis and his wife, producer Keri Selig.

The evening offered a very informative perspective on Iran. Here are some takeaways — tidbits and misconceptions — that I’d like to share with you.

Tidbit #1: What is Iran’s current nuclear capability? According to Aslan, no one really knows. But he believes the consensus opinion is that “Iran is one to two years away from having the capability of weaponizing its program, and probably two to three years away from that point of being able to deliver a nuclear weapon.”

Tidbit #2: Prior to last June, Iran’s elections have been the fairest and freest relative to any other country in the Middle East with the exception of Israel. As Aslan said “the autocratic dictatorial tendencies of this regime masks the reality which is that they are absolutely and desperately reliant on the will of the people, and that they are scared to death of the Iranian people.” It was only three decades ago that the Iranian public stood up and overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi — a memory that remains fresh in the minds of today’s rulers.

Tidbit #3: Like most middle easterners, Iranians love the American people but they don’t love America’s foreign policy. The Iranian people are a well-educated group and as we all saw this past June, also technologically savvy. “It’s an incredibly intelligent, sophisticated population. The literacy rate for women, just women, is 90%,” Aslan said. According to UNESCO statistics from 2006, 96.6% of Iranian youth are literate. We also witnessed during the civil uprising how plugged in Iranians were in using their cameras and mobile phones to document the country’s unrest and share it with the world through social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Tidbit #4: “While everyone else outside of Iran can think of nothing more than Iran’s nuclear program, in Iran it’s not a topic of conversation… Nobody talks about it, there’s no debate,” Aslan said. Probably one of the biggest concerns among Iranians is their crumbling economy. “Official” unemployment numbers from Iran say unemployment is around 11% but Virginia Tech economics professor, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, said “young people accounted for a worrying 70 percent of the jobless total.”

Tidbit #5: “At the risk of sounding rude, anyone who tells you that Iran wants a nuclear weapon in order to use it is a moron,” Aslan said. “Iran wants a nuclear weapon for the same reason everyone wants a nuclear weapon, as a deterrence.”

Reza Aslan and Mike Shuster

Misconception #1: Iran is a closed society with no access to the rest of the world. Iran is actually a very open and public society. Mike Shuster went to Iran about fourteen times, going two to three times a year. He says it’s “very easy to go there and talk to people and feel at home. It is not isolated the way many people in the United States feel it is isolated. It is unusually open or at least it was until last June.” Aslan later added “everything that you see and everything that you know about the world, Iranians know and see. They love Jersey Shore as much as we do.”

Misconception #2: Sanctions have prevented and will prevent a nuclear Iran. There is no argument that sanctions have destroyed the Iranian economy. Aslan pointed out Iran has been under international sanctions for three decades but “it’s also quite responsible for the Iran we see today and it certainly hasn’t done anything that it was supposed to do, which was regime change.” With regards to the latest push for more sanctions against Iran, Glenn Kessler wrote in the Washington Post: “administration officials acknowledge that even what they call ‘crippling’ sanctions could prove ineffective in keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Misconception #3: Iran’s green movement is over. “Nothing can be more further from the truth,” Aslan said. “This movement is still very much alive and planning its next steps probably linked to the one year anniversary coming up in June of the elections.”

Misconception #4: A nuclear Iran will start an arms race in the Middle East. ” I don’t buy that for a minute. If Israeli weapons didn’t convince Egyptians to build their own nuclear weapon, I don’t think an Iranian one does,” Aslan said.

The audience was most interested in learning more about the overall political response to Iran’s nuclear pursuit. Aslan’s belief is that “If Iran wants a nuclear weapon, there is nothing anyone on this earth can do to stop it.” But Aslan said the real question needs to be “how do we get Iran to not want to become a nuclear weapon state?” Writer and Professor Avner Cohen wrote in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz that “the result is that when we (Israelis) look at Iran we see ourselves: how we would behave in a similar situation.” As Aslan explained, Iran is surrounded by the US military in its neighboring countries and Israel which Iran considers both to be a threat to its national security, hence Iran’s nuclear pursuit.

FPR Director Donna Bojarsky said “the idea (of this event) is to challenge you and to introduce you to some things you didn’t know before. While many in Thursday night’s discussion focused on Iran’s nuclear program, the important thing to keep in mind is that there are many other layers to this culturally rich nation. So what do you think?

More on Iran

Read more here:
Nour Akkad: Reza Aslan and NPR’s Mike Shuster Discuss Iran’s Nuclear Program, Its Government, and Its People

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Nour Akkad: Reza Aslan and NPR’s Mike Shuster Discuss Iran’s Nuclear Program, Its Government, and Its People

A pushback from the military and a skeptical secretary of defense have dashed the hopes of some Obama administration officials for closer cooperation with a global war-crimes tribunal that some fear could prosecute American service members, current and former U.S. officials say. Although the United States has rejoined the meetings of the International Criminal Court (ICC) member states after an eight-year absence, it has taken little new action to work more closely with the court. In fact, many international legal analysts argue that there was a more significant change in U.S. policy toward th

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Obama keeps distance from tribunal

Following the release of a new report exposing Cargill’s role in rainforest destruction, activists in Minneapolis occupied the offices of the nation’s largest private agribusiness company – Cargill. The activists held a banner reading: “Mr Page: Rainforest Destruction Stops With You,” asking CEO Gregory Page to take immediate action to halt Cargill’s rainforest damaging palm oil plantations.

The report: “Cargill’s Problem with Palm Oil” documents Cargill’s direct destruction of rainforests in Indonesia to produce palm oil. It turns out that Cargill, who both owns their own palm oil plantations in Borneo and buys and trades palm oil from other dubious companies, has mowed down an area of rainforest the size of Disney World (including the hotels) and replaced it with palm oil plantations.

Cargill publicly profiles their palm oil plantations in Indonesia as models of sustainability, where they follow rules set out by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (the only available certification body — of which Cargill is a certified member). However, on their own Indonesian plantations, Cargill is violating those RSPO rules – clearing and burning rainforest, polluting waterways, taking land from communities without permission or compensation and destroying carbon-rich peat swamps (a major trigger for climate change).

Of course, Cargill denies that they have done any of this and honestly, no one wishes that they were telling the truth more than we do. Pictures, maps and on the ground evidence don’t lie, however. Even Cargill admits that they “developed” the land on their plantations, although they claim that the forest they cut down was not “zoned as forest.”

That’s silly. All forests between the tropic of Capricorn and the tropic of Cancer are scientifically classified as tropical rainforests. What’s more, the Indonesian rainforest that Cargill is destroying is one of the most important, but highly threatened, tropical forest regions on the planet. It is home to critically endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and spectacular birds that exist nowhere else on Earth. The expansion of palm oil plantations is tightly linked to the record-breaking rate of rainforest destruction in Indonesia, and, as a result, is a major threat to animal habitats.

On top of that, the extremely high rate of deforestation has bumped Indonesia up to being the third largest global warming polluter in the world, after China and the United States.

Almost half of all consumer goods sold in grocery stores contain palm oil, a thick, long-lasting oil that is sourced mainly from tropical nations like Indonesia and Malaysia. Its use is widespread and increasing around the world, but particularly in the United States, where its consumption has tripled in the last five years.

Since Cargill sells this palm oil to most of the nation’s largest food companies — including General Mills, Mars, Kraft, and Nestle – it is critical that they take a leading role in cleaning up their atrocious supply chain and setting the standard for rainforest protection.

Cargill’s Minnesota executives may be in denial, but the cost if Cargill doesn’t clean up its act is nothing less than the future of Indonesia’s rainforest, the existence of endangered rainforest animals like the orangutan and the climate.

More on Climate Change

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Rebecca Tarbotton: What’s in Your Food that is Destroying Rainforests?

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Rebecca Tarbotton: What’s in Your Food that is Destroying Rainforests?

They will say, nobody saw it coming. Who could have predicted it… It is worth noting that the 1932 stock market crash is deemed to be the worst in the 20th century and not the one in 1929. By mid-1930, the market was up 30% from the trough of the 1929 crash. However, by the summer of 1932, the Dow reached a low of just 11% of its high in 1929, or a loss of roughly 89%, trading more than 50% below the low it had reached on October 29th, 1929. If one had $1000 on September 3rd 1929, it would have gone down to $108 by July 8th, 1932 — end of the worst crash — or an 89.2% loss. To recover from such a loss, one would have to watch one’s portfolio go up by 825%!

All this happened despite assurances from prominent government and business leaders of-the-time that the worst was behind. Here is a news headline that may sound familiar:

. September 1929: “There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue.” – Andrew W Mellon, US Secretary of the Treasury

After the stock market crash in October 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) partially recovered in November-December 1929 and early 1930.

Reassuring headlines such as the following became increasingly common:

. May 1, 1930: “I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States – that is, prosperity!” – US President Hoover

. August 29, 1930: “American labour may now look to the future with confidence.” – James J Davis, US Secretary of Labour

. October 16, 1930: “Looking to the future I see in the further acceleration of science continuous jobs for our workers. Science will cure unemployment.” – Charles M Schwab.

On July 8th, 1932 the Dow reached its lowest level of the 20th century and did not return to pre-1929 levels until 23rd November, 1954. The full impact was not felt until the next year. By 1933, the Great Depression was very real and it would take more than 22 years before the market would regain what had been lost.

So severe was the impact of the 1929-1932 crash, that by spring of 1933, when President Roosevelt (FDR) took the oath of office, unemployment in the US had risen from 8 to 15 million — roughly 1/3rd of the non-farm workforce — and the GDP had decreased by more than 45% from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion. Although the depression was worldwide, no other country except Germany reached so high a percentage of unemployment as the US. The poor were hit the hardest. By 1932, New York’s Harlem district had an unemployment rate of 50% and property owned or managed by African Americans fell from 30% to 5% in 1935. Farmers in the Midwest were doubly hit by economic downturns and the Dust Bowl. Schools, with budgets shrinking, shortened both the school day and the school year. The breadth and depth of the crisis made it the Great Depression.

FDR, after assuming the presidency, promoted a wide variety of federally funded programs aimed at restoring the American economy, helping relieve the suffering of the unemployed, and reforming the system so that such a severe crisis could never happen again. After the crash in 1932:

1. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established;

2. The US Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act mandating a separation between commercial banks, which take deposits and extend loans, and investment banks, which underwrite, issue, and distribute stocks, bonds and other securities;

3. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established to insure individual bank accounts for up to $100,000; and

4. Works Projects Administration (WPA), the largest New Deal agency, was set up employing millions to carry out public works projects.

However, while FDR’s New Deal did help restore the GDP to its 1929 level and did introduce basic banking and welfare reforms, FDR refused to run up the government deficits that ending the depression required. Only when the federal government imposed rationing, recruited 6 million defence workers (including women and African Americans), drafted 6 million soldiers, and ran massive deficits to fight World War II did the Great Depression finally end.

The extent of the economic devastation of the 1930s went far beyond the imagination of anyone in the financial markets or governments across the world.

More on The Fed

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DK Matai: 1932: The Unexpected Second Shock

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DK Matai: 1932: The Unexpected Second Shock

Teaching art isn’t for everyone, and teaching art to prison inmates probably appeals to an even more select group. “It took me three years to get used to walking through cell blocks without having butterflies in my stomach,” said Lynne Vantriglia, a Key West, Florida painter who has taught male and female inmates at prisons in Florida and South Carolina as a volunteer through an Art Behind Bars program she founded in 1994. Her reaction is not atypical. Penitentiaries are associated with brutality, a holding pen for monsters, the dark side of civilization, perhaps, but certainly not with creativity. However, the inmates themselves “are always so appreciative that you’re doing something for them. There is so little productive for inmates to do, and it may be the only positive experience they have while inside.”
Eventually, Vantriglia lost those butterflies, and her enjoyment of instructing inmates grew and deepened (“I’ve never taught anywhere else”). She is not alone, as more and more artists have ventured into jails and prisons, gaining teaching experience and striving to make a difference in the world through this work. “The students are great,” said Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, a painter and professor in the art education school of the University of Iowa, who has taught in prisons off and on since the early 1990s. “They’re polite and eager to learn, and the diversity — and I don’t mean just racial, but language and learning levels as well — is wide.”
The good that art does for prison inmates seems self-evident — provides accomplishments, offers a different avenue for self-expression than violence, builds confidence, frequently leads to other areas of learning — but has not been studied and quantified, although the directors of several prison art programs offer anecdotes of former inmates who have left the path of crime. In part, the lack of research reflects the varying state definitions of recidivism (ex-convicts returning to criminal activities) — does it mean back to jail in six months or two years? Does a suspended sentence or parole count? — in addition to the fact that criminologists have not regarded the benefits of prison art programs as worthy of quantitative analysis.
Prison art programs have two principal goals: As with any form of teaching, these classes aim to teach skills and discipline, developing a creative outlet for personal expression. On occasion, there are prison art exhibitions, sometimes used as fundraisers for various causes (Texas prisons operate hobby-craft shops where inmate-produced art and other objects are sold with the proceeds used for civic improvement); at other times inmates make use of these skills to embellish letters to family members with images and designs. If one were to classify it, this is outsider art. Still, few people make high claims on behalf of the art produced in prisons. The other goal is giving inmates something positive to do.
“You can’t just throw them away, no matter what they did,” Williams said. “People who do well in art classes gain confidence and take other class, which is important since most inmates have very little education. They are motivated to try to change their lives. Would I rather have someone leave prison who has had a chance to reflect on what he or she has done than someone else who did nothing improving and just came out angry and ready to commit another crime?”
As many inmates have little education or workplace skills, the ability to draw — especially to render likenesses — is high prized in prisons, according to many artists who teach in these facilities. Inmates who can draw are often asked to create portraits for other inmates who are writing letters to family members, as well as to design tattoos, for which they may be paid in some form of prison barter. Helping inmates trade portraits for cigarettes, money or even some contraband “may not be something you or the prison officials want to encourage,” Williams conceded, and Phyllis Kornfeld, a painter in Stockbridge, Massachusetts who has taught in prisons since 1984, stated that she has asked inmates to leave her classes when learning how to render likenesses appeared to be their principal goal: “If an inmates wants pencils to do portraits, so he can get something, then the experience isn’t transformative,” she said. “There’s no seriousness, no commitment.” Still, Williams stated, these are skills, and they offer other outlets than violence or anger to fill the time.
Like Vantriglia, both Williams and Kornfeld recalled nervousness during their first entry into prisons but claimed that they quickly got over it, preferring inmates to some other students in less restrictive settings. “There are long waiting lists to get into an art class, so they wouldn’t want to jeopardize it by hurting me,” Kornfeld said, noting that her favorite inmate students are in maximum security prisons. “The higher the security, the more I like it. They’re focused; they know they will be in there for a long time, and they want something to do with their time.” Short-term inmates, whose crimes may be less heinous, on the other hand, usually are less interested in investing their time in what an outside instructor has to offer, she added. The inmates in a prison art class are not chosen at random but have signed up to be there; that self-selection weeds out more disruptive types whom artists would likely be glad are not there.
Still, artists are not left on their own but are often outfitted with an alarm that would quickly summon guards, or there may be guards posted at the door of the art room. “I’ve never been threatened,” said Grady Hillman, a poet and president of Southwest Correctional Art Network, which places artists of various disciplines in prisons. “There have never been any physical threats. No one has ever pulled a knife. I’ve encountered my share of sociopaths, but it’s no worse than teaching in a junior high school.”
Artist entering a prison receive a certain amount of training, either from a sponsoring organization or from prison officials. Often, they will be patted down and searched on entering and leaving the institution. In all cases, they are told not to provide personal information, such as a last name, an address or work affiliation, as well as the names of siblings or other family members. Hugging and other forms of touching also are to be avoided. Artists may not accept gifts or take out of the prison a written note. Vantriglia noted that “a few people have fallen in love with me; someone sent me a wedding contract.” Williams, who has primarily worked with women inmates, noted that some relationship have become more personal “after I’ve gotten to know them for a number of years.” She even attended a former inmate’s wedding, but clear boundaries exist for a reason. The husband of an inmate in one of her art classes once “came to my house, bringing me something he wanted me to give to his wife, and that was a little weird.” She refused (with no repercussions). Since respect is often a major issue among inmates, especially younger ones, Hillman stated, artists should not humiliate their students — “don’t make jokes at the expense of someone, or set someone up as an example.”
Artists usually are advised not to turn their backs on students, to wear modest clothing — no exposed midriffs, no torn pants — and not to make comments that are risqué, regardless of the intent. “It’s a waste of time to make jokes,” Kornfeld said. “This isn’t a social event. I want them to stay focused, not to banter.”
Not offering personal information is perhaps the most notable difference between teaching in a prison and anywhere else, but it becomes easier over time, since inmates similarly don’t reveal much to each other. Prison rules are quite strict for a reason, and artists need to maintain a structured environment rather than create an art school’s do-your-own-thing sensibility in these classes. A limited number of supplies may be bought in or supplied by the prison — nothing with sharp points, such as scissors, nothing with toxic odors, such as oil paints, nothing that must be assembled can be disassembled — and each item is likely to be counted at the beginning and end of a given class. Not all prisons follow the same security rules (some facilities allow inmates to take paper and pencils back to their cells, in order to practice skills between classes), but safety is always a concern.
Prison art classes may last from 90 minutes to five hours (including set-up and clean-up time), depending upon the project inmates are working on, and take place one or more times per week. In most instances, artists are paid by a sponsoring organization, a particular prison or a governmental agency, at the rate of between $35 and $50 per hour, although some artists also go in as volunteers. Auburn University in Alabama, Brown University in Rhode Island and the University of Michigan each run prison arts programs in which students are sent into correctional facilities as teachers for school credit.
For professional artists, the diversity of a class may seem more daunting than anything else, with a wider range of natural abilities and education among inmates than artists are likely to find in other teaching opportunities. “Many of them don’t have long attention spans, and many cannot follow complicated instructions,” Vantriglia said. As a result, she usually has four or five different activities taking place within a class, all of them focused on community service, such as making Valentines Day cards for patients at a Veterans Administration hospital, Christmas cards for those in nursing homes, painted t-shirts for at-risk teenagers and canvas paintings for more skilled inmates. “You don’t want an art class to become one more thing they can fail at.”
Williams noted that artists going into prisons should “prepare themselves for a feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, everyone seems very nice and respectful; they’re very appreciative that you’ve come there to do this for them. You also know that they have done, in many cases, really horrible things. You’re sitting across from someone who might otherwise seem like a monster.” Not knowing the particular crimes they have committed, and not asking, enables her to focus on teaching art skills, and she also stated that “people are not their crimes” — that sentiment is universal among the artists who go into penitentiaries. They are not there to forgive or provide therapy or to be voyeurs. While not discounting personal responsibility, Williams and others involved in this realm of teaching said that most inmates come from single-parent impoverished households in low-rent communities, are members of minority groups and have limited education and skills. “Whatever they may have done, these are human beings, who need to be treated humanely and given creative things to do,” she said. It is an argument people in this field have found themselves making when confronted by members of victims rights advocacy groups. Susan Wolfe, a painter in Wichita, Kansas who taught art to inmates at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Hutchinson, Kansas for a number of years, countered criticism of her work inside a penitentiary by citing the Gospel According to Matthew (26.43-5), “The Bible says we should minister to people in the prisons,” she said. A larger program, the Healing Walls Project of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Mural Arts Program, has prisoners and victims of crime work together to create murals. Producing murals that will be placed in the various neighborhoods from which they came results in inmates taking pride in their communities. “It’s a civic engagement and creating art at the same time,” said Jane Golden, a muralist and director of the Mural Arts Program. “By giving back, they start to figure out how to reconstruct the narrative of their own lives. Art can play a significant role in their rehabilitation.”
Opportunities abound for artists to work in correctional institutions. There are currently 5,000 or so jails (short-term incarceration) and prisons (long-term) around the United States, housing approximately 2.2 million convicted criminals, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Prisons Foundation (which has an art gallery displaying images created at facilities around the country). One-fifth of these lock-ups have creational programs — jails tend to offer fewer classes than prisons, because of the more rapid turnover of inmates. A clear drawback of teaching in prisons is distance, since these facilities usually are sited in remote, mural areas, requiring drives of up to an hour or more each way. State and country bureaus of correction are likely to know of private programs that place artists in prisons, and many correctional institutions have their own recreation and treatment director who works with outside groups or arranges to bring in individuals to teach. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, on the other hand, refers inquiries from artists to directors of individual institutions. The entire federal involvement at this point is $20,000, provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, to hire two writers to teach workshops in federal prisons.

More here:
Daniel Grant: Artists as Teachers in Prisons

More here:
Daniel Grant: Artists as Teachers in Prisons

LAHORE: The US government asked Pakistan’s government to provide them help to solve the incident of Times Square bomb attack planning.

According to some media reports, the US official have asked Pakistan to make arrangement to solve this case as the person involved in it was Pakistani.

Faisal Shahzad is a man found involved in these attacks. He is Pakistani citizen and also got American nationality. Faisal Shahzad is son of Pakistani vice air marshal. According to US intelligence he got training from Taliban and they also financed their trainees.

According to reports, Obama administration has requested Pakistan to provide fast assistance to solve this case. The administration also sought Pakistan to give access to Faisal’s parents for investigations.

According to some Pakistani media reports, Faisal shazad’s parents and relatives were investigated but Pakistan’s officials denied it. However Pakistan’s government provides assurance to US official that they will provide full help to US.

Pakistan also said that if anyone found guilty on their soil then they will take action again him. The request is launched to find Faisal Shahzad’s link with terrorist organization.

After TTP accepted the responsibility of attacks in US it is very tense situation for US officials. On Wednesday US officials shut down New York’s busy Triborough Bridge due to a suspected truck with smoke coming out of it. According to latest news there is no bomb in the truck and the bridge will reopen soon.

U.S. officials said that they had reached no firm conclusion about whether Shahzad had ties to any domestic militant group in Pakistan but that information gathered thus far continued to point to the Pakistani Taliban, which has asserted responsibility for the bombing attempt.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said it was possible that two or more groups had worked together in grooming Shahzad for a terrorist mission during an extended trip he made to Pakistan last year. “There is a serious Venn diagram issue going on here,” the official said. U.S. intelligence suspects there is increasing overlap and coordination among domestic Pakistani groups and the Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda.

In New York, Shahzad continued his extensive cooperation with members of the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, law enforcement officials said. He waived his right to an initial court hearing.

The official said the administration’’s goal was to present a detailed request for cooperation to Pakistan by the end of this week.

A senior Pakistani official said that the United States “hasn”t done any comprehensive briefing of what they want from us. That doesn”t mean they haven”t told us what they would like.”
US seeks Pak for access to Faisal’s parents

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US seeks Pak for access to Faisal’s parents

Given the general attention-deficit disorder that afflicts the public – when they pay attention to the news long enough for anything substantial to register – the information packed into Alex Gibney’s crisply overwhelming indictment of Republican business-as-usual – Casino Jack and the United States of Money – should come as a surprise and a shock to much of the electorate.

That is, providing they actually go to a theater to see it (or rent it when it goes to DVD or watch it when it shows up on TV). I highly recommend this movie – and I have little faith that the audience that most needs to see a film as intelligent, searing and provocative as this one would actually make the effort to seek it out.

I’d go so far as to call this the most important political film since Gibney’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side. And the Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

In clear, concise and infuriatingly thorough detail, Gibney tells the story of the rise of the conservative movement in the 1970s and 1980s – and the consequent metastasis of power into influence-peddling, bribery and general wrong-doing, spear-headed by greedy, grasping, conniving super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Unfortunately, when I described the film to several friends and acquaintances after I saw it at Sundance in January, I was disheartened by the number of people who stopped me to say, “Jack who?”

Jack Abramoff – and shame on anyone who considers themselves to be attuned to what’s been happening politically in the past 10 years who doesn’t know his name. As Gibney’s film illustrates, Abramoff was a self-promoting conservative hustler who figured out how to transform his lobbying practice into the stacked-deck kind of backroom shenanigans that many people assume is the basis of all government.

A nationally known leader of the college Republicans, Abramoff quickly turned his efforts to lobbying, gradually building a reputation as the guy who had the juice. He lobbied on behalf of everything from Chinese sweatshops to Indian tribes (which proved his undoing, when he tried to play both sides against the middle).

As the film shows, Abramoff was a master at greasing the skids with gifts, lavish travel, expensive meals – and with cashing in on the needs of others. With the Indian tribes, he landed one tribe as clients to help them hold on to their casino license – then bled the tribe that was challenging for that license by promising to lobby for their effort as well.

He understood the mutual back-scratching needs of Washington: Businessman A has money, which Politician B needs for his reelection campaign. Politician B has the capability of pushing Businessman A’s cause – deregulation, regulation, whatever. Let’s make a deal – with Jack Abramoff in the middle, skimming his profit off the top.

Abramoff mastered the art of insinuating himself into powerful circles and became the go-to guy for anyone who wanted the ear of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Eventually, he was also providing a similar service to the Bush White House through Karl Rove, offering skybox tickets to the Washington Redskins, or meals at his lavish restaurant in Washington (“Liberal portions at conservative prices!”).

Before long, the cause took a backseat to the money. Abramoff and his partners in crime had found a way to bring in big bucks by promising everything – without necessarily having to deliver. He just had to show he tried.

A movie buff and L.A. native who wanted to produce movies, Abramoff seemed to see himself as a larger-than-life, above-the-law figure. As someone says about him in the film, “He believed the rules don’t apply because the cause is so important.”

But when the cause is lining your own pocket, of gaining and maintaining influence, of keeping your friends in power so they can funnel business and cash to you – which cause is it exactly that is so important that you can ignore the law?

This review continues on my website.

More on Karl Rove

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Marshall Fine: Movie review: Casino Jack and the United States of Money

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Marshall Fine: Movie review: Casino Jack and the United States of Money

You have to hand it to John Mearsheimer.

Just when you think he can’t outdo himself for shoddy scholarship and sheer chutzpah, he surprises.

His co-authored screed on the “Israel Lobby,” replete with dark images of a conspiracy perpetrated on American foreign policy by sinister pro-Israel forces, was bad enough. Reviews were scathing, and rightly so.

Now Mearsheimer has reached new heights of ignorance and ignominy.

His April 29th speech to the Palestine Center in Washington is a must-read for its misinformed, misguided, and mendacious outlook.

Posing as a Middle East maven, he catered to his audience, liberally sprinkling his remarks with defamatory references to Israeli policy. Israel was accused of everything from “massacres” to “brutal assaults,” from “massive cleansing” to “racism,” from “apartheid” to “colonization.”

For Mearsheimer, the historical narrative is straightforward. It’s all about Zionist “expansionism” stifling the quest for peace and human dignity. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are nothing more than unfortunate pawns in the Israeli power play, with no control over their own destiny and, heaven forbid, no responsibility for their own predicament.

Mearsheimer refuses to acknowledge that it takes two sides to achieve two states.

Missing, therefore, from his tedious and repetitive text are any references whatsoever to the 1947 Partition Plan, which proposed a two-state solution to the competing claims of Jewish and Arab nationalism – rejected by the Arab side – or the subsequent Arab declaration of war on the fledgling state of Israel the next year.

Is there a war in history which did not produce a stream of refugees? Of course, for Mearsheimer, the responsibility lies solely on Israel’s shoulders, even though the Arab side started the war. And don’t hold your breath for any mention of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. That would disturb Mearsheimer’s idée fixe.

He also entirely ignores how Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza – the Six-Day War, which threatened Israel’s destruction – and subsequent peacemaking efforts along the way.

For instance, he notes that Prime Minister Barak “seriously flirted with the idea of creating a Palestinian state at Camp David in July 2000,” but never explains why it did not come to pass. President Clinton has provided the answer: Arafat was to blame.

Referring to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni), Mearsheimer asserts, “It is by no means clear that either of them would be willing or able to make the concessions that would be necessary to create a legitimate Palestinian state. Certainly, Olmert did not do so when he was prime minister.”

Really? According to none other than Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat, Olmert offered a remarkable deal in 2008, including a shared Jerusalem and territory equaling 100 percent of the West Bank. Like the Clinton-Barak offer of 2000, it was turned down by the Palestinian side.

In other words, Mearsheimer, so eager to protect his airtight narrative of a bellicose Israel uninterested in a two-state peace deal with the Palestinians, simply glides past all evidence to the contrary, including surveys of Israeli public opinion that regularly reaffirm support for a two-state accord.

Here is his assessment of the current state of affairs: “The Palestinians are badly divided among themselves and not in a good position to make a deal with Israel and then stick to it.” That sounds reasonable, even if he never once mentions Hamas by name or the nature of the PA-Hamas conflict. But then there’s the very next sentence: “That problem is fixable with time and help from Israel and the United States.” Once again, the onus is on Israel, not the Palestinians, to sort out an internecine Palestinian dispute that has endured for years.

And speaking of Hamas, notably absent from Mearsheimer’s speech is a single mention of Israel’s security environment. In his world, there are no Hamas tunnels, rockets, and mortars; no Hezbollah arsenal; no Iranian nuclear program; no Syrian arms transfers; no al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; and no Palestinian incitement against Israel, Zionism, or Jews.

No, those things presumably don’t exist in Mearsheimer’s mind. Perhaps they are just figments of the Israeli imagination, or are inflated by Israel to divert attention from its “refusal” to countenance a peace deal, or have no relevance to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So how does Israel get away with it? Again, for Mearsheimer, the answer is clear-cut. Diabolical forces at play in the United States protect Israel. Who might they be? Christian Zionists, he claims, coupled with a group he maliciously dubs the “new Afrikaners” – Jews in the U.S. who have “blind loyalty” to Israel, “will back Israel no matter what it does,” and who will “convince themselves and others that Israel is not an apartheid state.”

Well, I may have missed out on President Nixon’s enemies’ list, but I made Mearsheimer’s, and I consider it a badge of honor, irrespective of what slur he uses. And since he lumps together everyone who dares to stand up for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, including many who actively support a two-state deal, the company is quite illustrious.

It includes, for example, Lester Crown and Mort Zuckerman. In 2005, they helped raise funds to purchase greenhouses in Gaza and, in the wake of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, present them as a goodwill gift to local Gazans. The gesture was meant to protect 3,500 jobs and boost the economy. Instead, the greenhouses quickly became targets of Palestinian violence and looting.

It’s even more illuminating to see who made Mearsheimer’s list of “righteous Jews” in his outrageous “selection” process.

In 2007, Mearsheimer and co-author Stephen Walt claimed to be “‘pro-Israel,’ in the sense that we support its right to exist, admire its many achievements, want its citizens to enjoy secure and prosperous lives, and believe that the United States should come to Israel’s aid if its survival is in danger.”

Perplexing, then, that the Jews who made Mearsheimer’s cut – and merit his applause – include:

Noam Chomsky, who said of Israel’s creation, “I think that a socialist binationalist position was correct then [in 1947], and remains so today.” Chomsky has also said that Hezbollah, a group that calls for Israel’s destruction and doesn’t much love Jews, either, has a “reasoned” and “persuasive” case for keeping its arsenal of missiles.

Richard Falk, who wrote of the Second Intifada, “Suicide bombers appeared as the only means still available by which to inflict sufficient harm on Israel so that the struggle could go on.”

Tony Judt, who asserted, “Israel, in short, is an anachronism.”

Sara Roy, whose review of a new book about Hamas was rejected by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs because, according to the editor-in-chief, “all reviewers found the piece one-sided” in favor of Hamas.

Philip Weiss, who proclaims that “My feelings are not neutral about Zionism; I don’t like it.”

And the list goes on.

If John Mearsheimer actually cares a whit about Israel, why does he admire so many people who want it to disappear?

Mearsheimer has long ago lost any semblance of academic stature on the Middle East – if he ever had it. Instead, he has turned himself into a maniacally obsessed cheerleader for the most rabid anti-Israel voices.

Fortunately, his impact on the real Middle East is nil.

But tragically, his impact on impressionable students passing through his university classroom is daily.

More on Middle East

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David Harris: Mearsheimer’s Mere Slime

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David Harris: Mearsheimer’s Mere Slime

Cinco De Mayo, or the Fifth Of May, is being celebrated today in Mexico and parts of the United States.

The observance commemorates a major moment in Mexican history some 148 years ago.

Find out what that moment was and six other key facts about Cinco De Mayo and its history below. Rank each fact based on its importance in your mind.

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Cinco De Mayo History: 7 Must-Know Facts About The Annual Celebration (PHOTOS)

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Cinco De Mayo History: 7 Must-Know Facts About The Annual Celebration (PHOTOS)

This Sunday, thanks to the recently enacted health care reform legislation, millions of mothers throughout the United States, and their families who love them, should take a moment to reflect upon the work of thousands of women, like Mrs. Carol Blocker, who turned her pain into passion and made a lasting difference in the battle to treat and, I hope one day, to defeat postpartum depression and psychosis.

Lost in the epic struggle to obtain health insurance coverage for more than 30 million uninsured Americans was the fact that, after nine long years, our determined efforts to secure the adoption of the Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research and Support for Postpartum Depression Act have born fruit. Today, The MOTHERS Act is the law of the land. In this session of Congress, working in partnership with my friend and legislative counterpart, U. S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), we secured the adoption, in its entirety, of all The MOTHERS Act’s provisions.

This legislation marks a giant step forward for women’s health as it commits federal resources to medical professionals who study and treat women suffering from postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. The MOTHERS Act calls for the creation of a national public awareness campaign, to be administered by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, aimed at increasing awareness and knowledge of postpartum depression and psychosis. It creates a grant program to enable public or nonprofit private entities to deliver or enhance outpatient, inpatient and home-based health and support services, including case management and comprehensive treatment services for individuals with, or at risk for, postpartum conditions. Key provisions get underway this year as Congress authorized an initial $3 million, with the Secretary of Health and Human Services having the discretion to appropriate more in 2011 and beyond. Details about these and other provisions of the law can be found in Sec. 2952 of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148) that President Barack Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010.

While I was honored to witness that historic moment only inches away from the President, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and so many other friends and colleagues who worked with me in support of this legislation, I couldn’t help but reflect on the woman whose life ended tragically on that sunny day in June 2001, and the amazing legacy she leaves behind.

In the shadow of Mother’s Day this Sunday, please embrace the bittersweet story of Melanie and her Mom.

“I’m Carol Blocker and I lost my daughter to postpartum psychosis,” these are the words so often whispered by Melanie’s mother, Mrs. Carol Blocker, when she speaks, often through her tears, to women’s groups and mental health professionals throughout the United States.

Carol Blocker’s valiant efforts to save her daughter’s life is a story that sadly befalls thousands of new mothers in the United States each year. According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control, postpartum depression occurs in about 80 percent of all women who’ve recently given birth, while at least 15 percent of new mothers suffer from post partum psychosis. These numbers do not even begin to count the untold thousands of other women who suffer in silence with this treatable illness. Carol Blocker’s daughter, Melanie Blocker Stokes, was one of a smaller but significant group of women who suffer from post partum psychosis.

Carol Blocker often tells the story of how Melanie, who was 40 years old when she gave birth to her healthy daughter Sommer Skyy, picked out that name for her daughter when she, herself, was just a bright and beautiful teenager who looked forward to a life that was filled with promise.

Carol talks often about her daughter excelling in school and developing a successful career. Above all, Melanie dreamed about becoming a wife and mother. As an accomplished student at Spelman College in Atlanta, Melanie would often tell her mother that she wanted her daughter to also be a Spelman woman one day.

After marrying Sam Stokes, a physician, Melanie took fertility drugs in an effort to bear a child. After finally conceiving Sommer, Melanie and Sam were overjoyed as her pregnancy developed.

Melanie was over joyed by her new arrival. However, after about a week, that joy gave way to long silences, fatigue and a slow but steady emotional descent into postpartum psychosis.

The valiant struggle Melanie endured was widely reported in assorted Chicago media as hers was a prominent, middle-class family that I proudly served in my first congressional district.

I must admit that I never knew Melanie and I did not meet her family or get to know her mother until shortly after her death. But through the course of fighting to get this legislation passed, I think I got to know something about Melanie’s character. Consider these words from Melanie, herself, as written in her journal and shared with the media, by her mother, after her death, “How can I explain to anybody how something has, literally, come inside my body…I’m no good to anyone. No good to myself.”

Despite these words, Melanie continued to fight valiantly, with the support of her mother and father, Walter, who spent many nights at her bedside. Thankfully, she was surrounded by a loving family who all took turns holding vigil as she fought as hard as she could to save her life and return to her daughter. She even underwent electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), or so-called “shock treatments.” All of these efforts failed.

After undergoing assorted therapies and several rounds of ECT, this already petite 5′ 6″ woman lost weight and, at one point, only weighed 100 pounds. Over time, Melanie began to feel like she would never get better. When Melanie lived to experience her first Mother’s Day, she was back in a psychiatric ward at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. It strikes me as particularly cruel that for a young woman who, all her life, dreamed about being a mother, postpartum psychosis robbed her joy even on her first Mother’s Day with her precious little girl.

And so as Melanie and her family surrounded her with all the love and strength they could muster–as well as the finest medical care anyone could have–Melanie never got back to her old self.

The last time her family members saw her was on June 6, 2001, five days after being back home from what turned out to be her last hospital stay.

The next day, through a series of phone calls and notes to her family, Melanie tried her best to say what they now view as her last “goodbyes” to those she loved. On that day, her husband Sam missed the note she’d left on the kitchen table when he arrived home. Before he found the note, he had made several phone calls and two trips to Chicago’s lakefront to look for his wife. When he returned home he found her note. It read, “Sam, I adore you, Sommer and Andy, Mel.” Andy was her stepson.

It was at this point, when Melanie’s husband and family could not find her, that the police and news media in Chicago did what they could to circulate Melanie’s picture in a furtive attempt to save her life.

To this day, my wife, Carolyn, and I remember praying for Melanie and her family. Together, we were all part of an anxious, South Side Chicago community as we desperately hoped that Melanie would be found safe and sound. But it was not to be.

Melanie’s lifeless body was found after she fell from the rooftop of a Chicago hotel. And, on a Sunday morning, I like many Chicagoans first heard the news, in church, that Melanie Blocker Stokes’ life had come to an end.

But, thank God, the story doesn’t end there.

Only days after Melanie’s funeral, I met her courageous, selfless mother, Mrs. Carol Blocker. While she was and remains grief stricken, she was bound and determined never to let another family endure the emotional pain and agony she went through.

Less than 30 days after Melanie died, I introduced the Melanie Blocker Stokes Postpartum Depression, Research, and Care Act of 2001. And I did that, consistently, during the next sessions of Congress. But, when I introduced this Act again in 2007, we were able to advance this bill with a strong, bipartisan vote of 391 – 8.

As he had done in the last session of Congress, the bill’s Senate sponsor, my friend U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, shepherded this legislation through the highly grueling process of advancing legislation in today’s politically toxic environment. But, thankfully, with the tireless support of women’s groups, activists and supporters in Chicago, throughout the state of Illinois as well as in Senator Menendez’ state of New Jersey, together, we got this done through attaching the bill to the historic healthcare reform bill in March of this year.

On May 6, around the noon hour, dozens of leaders from women’s health activist organizations and so many others will join us as we celebrate this historic legislative achievement on behalf of women’s health. Melanie’s Mom will be there.

I look forward to the nation getting to know the dignified and honorable woman who raised Melanie and fought to save her life to the bitter end. Carol Blocker is an inspiration to me, to my Chicago community and to thousands of women and families throughout the United States.

As proud as I am of the fact that The MOTHERS Act is the law of the land, the task at hand, now, is to work across the country to help make sure women of child bearing age know that, thanks to this legislation, they no longer need to suffer in silence or shame and that there is help to successfully treat this illness. Right now, leaders within the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services are beginning to implement key provisions of this law and as they do so they have my full support.

As I celebrate this Mother’s Day with my beloved wife, Carolyn, my family and my church family, I will say a special prayer for Melanie, her Mom and their family.

My hope and prayer will always be that our science and interventions will advance so that, one day, no woman will have to endure the pain of letting post partum depression, or psychosis, rob their joy.

I invite you to join me in this prayer for Melanie’s family and for all families who are confronted with this illness. May God bless mothers everywhere, this Sunday, and always.

U. S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-IL)
Chairman, Energy and Commerce Committee
Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection

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Rep. Bobby Rush: Melanie’s Story: How One Woman’s Tragic Encounter with Post Partum Psychosis Led to Landmark Women’s Health Legislation

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Rep. Bobby Rush: Melanie’s Story: How One Woman’s Tragic Encounter with Post Partum Psychosis Led to Landmark Women’s Health Legislation

What if Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square car bomber, had turned out to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico? Imagine the fuel it would have provided to those who are using national security as an excuse for cracking down on hardworking immigrants in Arizona. The reality is that the terrorists who have attacked us, every one of the 9/11 hijackers included, all had their papers in order.

Shahzad had entered the country back in 1999 on a student visa and then was granted an H-1B visa, offered to those whose technical skills are needed in the economy. At the time of his arrest he was a naturalized citizen, and there is no evidence of his ever having broken any laws in getting to that status. Another point of interest is that the “weapon of mass destruction” he is charged with attempting to detonate was as primitive as it gets, and was the basic part of a woefully inept attempt to employ the fertilizer bomb technique used with horrid efficiency in the Oklahoma City bombing by several–born in the USA–self-defined patriots.

The Times Square car bomb, while certainly capable of inflicting death on scores of innocents and destroying nearby structures, hardly qualifies for WMD designation and indeed would seem to mock our highly warranted concern over such threats. The case is also a reminder that the massive defense budgets for high-tech warfare that have pushed close to a trillion dollars a year since the 9/11 attack are beside the point in countering terrorists who turn firecrackers into bombs. This man was caught because of old-fashioned police work, after officers were alerted initially by a vigilant Times Square T-shirt peddler.

And while some Republican politicians, led by Sen. John McCain, attempted to turn this into an occasion for attacking civil liberties and stoking the Miranda rights debate, it is clear that the investigation moved forward in an extremely effective and expeditious manner with full regard for constitutional protections.

Credit Glenn Beck of Fox News for breaking with that sort of demagoguery and asserting that the rule of law is basic to our freedom and not just an inconvenient indulgence. “He [Shahzad] is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens,” Beck had the guts to assert in a Fox broadcast. “If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution; [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution.” Beck added, “We don’t shred the Constitution when [doing so] is popular. We do the right thing.”

Compare those profound words of wisdom from one that many liberals loathe to the advice from a former Democratic Party vice presidential candidate for whom many of us voted. Sen. Joe Lieberman went further than McCain and argued for summarily obliterating all constitutional rights for citizens charged with terrorism. Lieberman even suggested stripping them of their citizenship before they are convicted of any crime:
“I think it’s time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship, and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act.”

If ever a real WMD is used against us, such as a primitive nuclear weapon in a suitcase smuggled into Manhattan, look to Lieberman to demand we do massive roundups of tens of millions of suspicious folks in sight, opening wide the concentration camps. If a fizzled attempt to explode propane in a car in Times Square can drive Lieberman to summarily sacrifice centuries of this nation’s devotion to the rule of law and protection of the individual, it wouldn’t take much to send him into the dark world of totalitarian madness.

It is safe to argue that almost every society in the history of the modern world has experienced acts of terrorist violence that make that car bomb in New York City seem like a drunk’s pathetic rendition of a recipe from the “Anarchist Cookbook.” Throughout the world, far deadlier threats are an ongoing reality, and yet America has often urged restraint in reaction to such dangers, asserting that the abrogation of individual freedom, particularly in times of duress, makes a society weaker, not stronger. That is the advice we gave Russian leaders only a month ago when they were dealing with much more serious threats.

Fortunately we now have a president and an attorney general who embrace that indelible wisdom in defense of due process at home as well. It is a very good thing that Lieberman is not a heartbeat away from ruling–and ruining–us all.

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Robert Scheer: Glenn Beck Gets It Right

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Robert Scheer: Glenn Beck Gets It Right

North Korea and Israel have a lot in common.

Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community. Israel and North Korea are equally paranoid about outsiders conspiring to destroy their states, and this paranoia isn’t without some justification. Partly as a result of these suspicions, both countries engage in reckless and destabilizing foreign policies. In recent years, Israel has launched preemptive strikes and invaded other countries, while North Korea has abducted foreign citizens and blown up South Korean targets (including, possibly, a South Korean ship in late March in the Yellow Sea).

And they’re both exceptions in their regions: Israel is a Jewish state in an Arab region; North Korea is an old-style feudal dictatorship in an Asian region marked by relative prosperity and political openness. But the two countries often behave as if they are exceptions to all other rules as well. For instance, they both share an antipathy toward human rights organizations that attempt to hold them to international standards. Witness the recent attacks by Israel (and its hard-right supporters) of Human Rights Watch because of reports critical of Israel’s human rights record. North Korea also routinely rejects human rights inquiries as a challenge to its sovereignty. (For a proposal on a better strategy to engage North Korea on human rights issues, check out my latest piece Starting Where North Korea Is.)

Despite these similarities, these two roguish powers haven’t had a great deal of interaction. Between 1992 and 1994, Israel secretly negotiated a billion dollar buy-out of North Korea’s missile export program to the Middle East, and the United States intervened to nix the deal (only to explore a similar option with North Korea at the end of the Clinton administration). In 2007, Israel bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria that may or may not have been built with North Korean assistance. Otherwise, the two countries maintain their innocence and distance.

And yet one country is an official rogue and the other country only plays one on Arab TV. The difference in designation owes much to U.S. policy. One of the perks of world domination is the chance to make like Adam in Genesis and name all the animals. North Korea, according to Washington, is beyond the pale. Israel, however, is “one of us”: firmly ensconced in the Judeo-Christian tradition, accorded honorary European status, and even considered worthy of membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In certain respects, of course, Israel readily qualifies for OECD membership. Its per-capita GDP is larger than current OECD members Turkey and Mexico. But as Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) contributor Adam Robert Green explains in Does Israel Belong in the Club?, Israel faces two types of barriers to access. On the one hand, Israel is increasingly according second-class status to its non-Jewish citizens. On the other hand, he writes, “Israel occupies swathes of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, and exerts physical and bureaucratic control over these regions, without granting any political representation to the inhabitants. By governing de facto, without giving voice to those governed, Israel cannot be described as a democracy: not technically and not in spirit.”

So, why does Israel merit this exceptional treatment? Certainly, the country has a supportive constituency in the United States, although this “Israel lobby” doesn’t have the magical powers that some would ascribe to it. The United States supplies Israel with $2-3 billion annually in military aid for geopolitical reasons, to have a friend in the region. But we also send over $1 billion every year to Egypt for the same reason. Heck, we used to send arms to Saddam Hussein, and it wasn’t because of an “Iraq lobby” pulling the strings.

Of greater salience is the overlap in the exceptionalist traditions of Israel and the United States — the notions of “chosen people,” the “redemption” of the land by settling it — which I’ve written about here before. This symbiotic exceptionalism can also be found in the relationship between North Korea and China. Both Beijing and Pyongyang view themselves as the centers of the world and, through transmuted nationalism, the true heirs of the communist tradition.

In both cases, however, the sense of overlapping exceptionalism may be coming to an end. Beijing tolerated Pyongyang’s out-there behavior because both countries were part of a larger communist bloc, the Cold War in Asia required clear allegiances, and at times North Korea was useful as a cat’s paw to swipe at the United States and its allies. Pyongyang tolerated Beijing’s older-brother paternalism because — to quote Woody Allen’s famous joke about the guy who accepts his brother’s delusion that he’s a chicken — it needed the eggs, namely China’s shipments of food and energy. Today, however, these two countries are no longer as “close as lips and teeth.” By pursuing nuclear weapons and refusing to pursue Beijing-style economic reform, North Korea has become like one of those embarrassing relatives who keeps getting thrown in jail and refuses to go into rehab. China tried tough love but now much of the love has drained from its approach, leaving only toughness.

So, too, have U.S. and Israeli interests begun to diverge. Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its refusal to stop new settlements in the West Bank, and its on-again-off-again desire to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities are all anathema to the realists in the Obama administration. Important actors in the U.S. political scene will still support Israel regardless of its behavior, since they want to see Hamas punished, Palestine carved up and impotent, and Iran batted about by our cat’s paw ally. But mainstream opinion is beginning to shift away from Israel — or at least the Israeli right’s version of Israel. From above, the public criticism of Israel by the U.S. president and vice president conveys Washington’s anger and frustration. From below, the emergence of J Street, the pro-Israel and pro-peace policy outfit, challenges the monolithic, Israel-right-or-wrong consensus that has had such a stranglehold over U.S. policy.

Just as China would not likely abandon North Korea, the United States isn’t about to sever relations with Israel any time soon. Rogue allies are allies first, rogues second. But both North Korea and Israel may soon find that they’ve invoked their exceptional status one time too many. Some day, when they look over their shoulders for back-up, they might find nothing but air.

To read the rest of this World Beat, click here.

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More on North Korea

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John Feffer: Israel and North Korea: Separated at Birth?

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John Feffer: Israel and North Korea: Separated at Birth?

It might seem extraordinary, but in the midst of deficit-cutting mania it’s a rating agency, Standard and Poor, that is talking common sense about government debt.

By doing so they are challenging members of the international Austerity Party – a political party that dominates economic debate across the world.

In this case the rating agency was commenting on the crisis in Greece and Portugal – but the comment could just as well apply to the United States – or any other economy trying to recover from a financial crisis induced by private bankers.

Standard and Poor officials are quoted by the New York Times (28 April, 2010) as saying:

“The main reason for downgrading the debt of Greece and Portugal was the prospect that forced austerity packages would be an even bigger drag on economic growth.

It is the most vicious of circles: stagnating economies are forced to cut back more, which reduces their ability to generate revenue and thus pay off their debts.”

This economic common sense makes a refreshing change from the suicidal howls of the lemming-like hordes leading the international Austerity Party. These dominate all economic debate on the airwaves, in newspaper columns, economic blogs and political outlets.

As they head for the cliffs, they can be heard baying for cuts in government spending – regardless of economic common sense; regardless of the likely economic impact.

Their argument is simple: when a nation is at its weakest, when its debts are highest, when the economy is at greatest peril, then it is imperative to apply draconian policies for cutting the deficit.

These policies must include vicious cut-backs on efforts by the government to stimulate economic recovery, and generate the revenues that will repay debts.

In particular government must cut back on public investment in infrastructure that creates jobs, generates tax revenues (through the ‘multiplier’) and helps the economy recover, so that debts can be repaid.

In other words, when an economy – any economy – is heavily in debt and on its knees…..

That is the moment, argues the Austerity Party, to cut off its legs.

Before forcing it to run the marathon.

Forgive the violence of my analogy, but sometimes words, as Keynes argued, have to be a little wild, to rouse people from their blindness to grave threats and risks.

Right now the European Union and IMF, with the forceful backing of the German Chancellor and Finance Minister, are coercing the democratically elected Greek government into effectively disabling the Greek economy.

According to the Financial Times (2 May 2010) there is to be ” a huge fiscal tightening equal to 16 per cent of gross domestic product – an extra 11 per cent on top of the 5 per cent already announced.”

“Greece’s vicious recession is poised to continue and deepen……The fiscal targets require huge upfront cuts in public spending, including reductions in public sector pay, jobs and pensions.”

The IMF’s representative Poul Thomsen had the gall to argue that this disastrous economic strategy “is credible because it has a lot of support from the international community; it is credible because it is socially well balanced; it is credible because it is the [Greek] government’s programme.”

This is a dishonest and delusional statement.

It is dishonest because it is blatantly not the Greek government’s program. It is the German government’s condition for making bailout funds available.

It is delusional, because it is an economic strategy designed to fail.

While it may be credible with the members of the international Austerity Party – it is not economically viable.

Ask Standard and Poor.

The voice of common sense.

Drowned out by the hysteria and flawed economics of the Austerity Party.

More on Financial Crisis

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Ann Pettifor: Standard and Poor: The Voice of Sanity on the Deficit

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Ann Pettifor: Standard and Poor: The Voice of Sanity on the Deficit

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is paying a visit to the United States on Monday.

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Ahmadinejad Pays Visit to United States

If you consider the most famous pictures from Scandinavia (Munch’s “The Scream”) and the Mediterranean (Monet’s “Water Lilies”), which place would you choose to live?

This is more than an intellectual exercise, as a united Europe (European Union, or EU) becomes more homogenized, and as globalization impacts the entire world. The EU, for example, increasingly establishes social policy across the continent, if not officially, then through international agencies like WHO and through the spread of what are considered universal best practices.

I am especially interested in this dynamic because (a) I am studying and debating international alcohol policies, (b) I have come to Italy immediately following the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) conference held in Liverpool.

I am writing this looking out over fruit trees in a converted farmhouse outside the town of Cuneo, which is 90 km from Turin. This morning I rode a bike down a trail from the home where I’m staying, dismounting to walk to and to sit by a river. Later my host and I picked a free-growing vegetable which she cooked in a pasta. We also ate cheese and fruit we bought at the market this morning. We had wine and espresso. We ate outside in their garden. My colleague and I were joined by her partner and her son, who came home from work and school.

I like Liverpool, and especially the side trip some colleagues and I took a bit north to the beach along the estuary where the Mersey River meets the sea. Liverpudlians are, as one colleague put it, the salt of the earth. But Italy has certain advantages — wine, sunshine, olives, open-air markets for buying fruit, cheese and vegetables, and a lifestyle that many people seem to relish.

Moreover, you still see throughout the United Kingdom debauched, noisy nighttime drinking that doesn’t occur for the most part in Italian cities. In Liverpool, I fear my diet also deteriorated. No, it wasn’t the beer instead of wine — I count the pint of “bitter” I had daily as a plus. But (and this is my own fault) I am addicted to “pasties” — those encrusted confections of meat, potatoes and mushrooms they seem to sell at every intersection. Fresh vegetables are at a much higher premium in the United Kingdom, and much less of a staple there.

Globalization is reducing some of these cultural differences, however. In Northern European countries, as well as the United States, many people (particularly in higher social strata) are adopting elements of the Mediterranean lifestyle, including wine, olive oil, pasta, darker coffees and fresh fruit and vegetables. On the other hand, fast food outlets and prepared foods in supermarkets are much more evident than before in Italy and France.

European policies are likewise passing each other going in opposite directions. In Scandinavia, historically characterized by binge drinking of spirits, and where high taxes and strict controls have traditionally been imposed, alcohol tariffs and prices have been lowered lately. Southern Europeans, meanwhile, have started adopting Northern European alarmist policies towards alcohol. My colleague told me that Italian authorities had recently reduced the designated low-risk level of alcohol for seniors to one drink daily. Since someone having wine with lunch and dinner would exceed this, media have been announcing a crisis in drinking by Italian seniors.

Experts tend to acknowledge that the Italian lifestyle can’t be imported willy-nilly into northern regions. Globalization, on the other hand, has accomplished something like that. While policy experts had predicted that Nordic drinking would range out of control with lower alcohol prices, Scandinavians seem to have adjusted to the new situation. Although consumption increased somewhat immediately following initiation of lower taxes, it has since declined, and a recent study found people are actually reporting fewer alcohol problems in Scandinavia. I suspect that greater familiarity with the Mediterranean lifestyle due to travel and the Internet has played a role in this moderation of Nordic drinking styles. In Stockholm, I noted that professionals in a high-end pub drank in what I reckoned was the “normal” style for such establishments internationally.

Where all of this will end up, nobody knows. Sometimes, while dozing lazily in the Italian sun after a second glass of wine, I imagine a plot is being spearheaded in the US. Since we are only able to import the Mediterranean lifestyle to a limited degree, I think that Americans and Northern Europeans are secretly trying to create alcohol and emotional problems in Southern Europe. At dinner, the preparation and eating of which occupied all evening, the Italian family expressed incomprehension over adolescent diagnoses of ADD, depression and bipolar disorder. “How naive they are!” I could hear my fellow Americans saying.

In my imagined plot, it is only when we and they discover that many Mediterraneans (and their children) are really alcoholics, depressed, and require massive doses of psychiatric meds will we feel justified in our own way of life.

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Stanton Peele: Globalization and Its Discontents: War of Lifestyles

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Stanton Peele: Globalization and Its Discontents: War of Lifestyles

DETROIT — A judge ordered on Monday that nine jailed members of a Michigan militia be released, saying there’s no risk to the public if they go home while awaiting trial on charges of trying to plot war against the government.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts overturned the April 2 decision of a federal magistrate judge and questioned the strength of the government’s case. She said all nine can be released with electronic monitoring devices and other strict conditions.

They’re being held in county jails in southeastern Michigan and won’t actually go free until Tuesday, after they return to court to be processed, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

The government says the members of a southern Michigan militia called Hutaree are radicals who planned to kill police officers and more. They were charged in March with conspiracy to commit sedition and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction.

Defense lawyers, however, say it’s just a case of irrational, hateful speech.

Prosecutors “need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators,” the judge said. “But the defendants are also correct: Their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

Roberts said prosecutors failed to show that jail was the only way to protect the public and ensure that the nine return for court hearings. She had heard nearly 10 hours of testimony and argument over two days last week as militia members appealed the earlier detention order.

“Discussions about killing local law enforcement officers – and even discussions about killing members of the judicial branch of government – do not translate to conspiring to overthrow, or levy way against, the United States government,” the judge said Monday.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said an appeal was being considered.

Last week, Roberts had ordered the government to present an investigator who is familiar with the case, but FBI agent Leslie Larsen didn’t reveal much from the witness stand.

Larsen, the lead agent, said weapons seized last month were still being examined. At other times, she couldn’t answer questions because she hadn’t lately reviewed investigative reports.

The judge said prosecutors failed to rebut the defendants’ position that the only “live-fire training” amounted to shooting at dirt mounds on private property twice a year.

An undercover agent secretly recorded militia leader David Stone and others talking about killing police. But no specific names or dates were mentioned, and the conversations were sprinkled with laughs and a mix of subjects, such as strippers and drawing Hitler mustaches on photos of state troopers.

Stone’s lawyer, William Swor, said they’re grateful for Roberts’ reversal of the detention order.

Stone will be in the custody of his 71-year-old father on Ray Stone’s farm in Lenawee County, where they live in separate homes. He is barred from using a computer.

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Hutaree Militia Members Can Leave Jail Until Trial, Judge Rules

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Hutaree Militia Members Can Leave Jail Until Trial, Judge Rules

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected allegations his country is developing nuclear weapons, citing “not a single credible proof.” In the first day of a monthlong conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Iranian leader dismissed allegations that his country’s uranium enrichment program is designed to produce a bomb, prompting the United States and other nations to call for sanctions. Mr. Ahmadinejad also chided the United States for refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. He invited President Obama to join a “humane moveme

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At U.N., Iran leader rejects nuke charges

I’m here to speak for my grandparents.

Last week I was in the part of Manhattan called the Lower East Side, the first American home of my grandparents and parents. That they settled in the Lower East Side was no surprise — it’s been the first home of a whole lot of new Americans including Italians, Irish, Jews from Poland and Germany, Latinos from Central America and a whole lot of folks from the Caribbean. I imagined what the neighborhood would have sounded like when my parents lived there, as people yelled out open windows across narrow streets in a frenzy of languages as rich and diverse as the smells of the food cooking; Polish, German, Italian, Yiddish, Spanish. The Lower East Side in the 1920’s was crowded, smelly, poor, and brimming with the optimism of a new beginning.

Then I pictured the effect on that multicultural neighborhood of SB 1070, Arizona’s Immigration Law.

Cops required to stop anyone who might be illegal based on ‘reasonable suspicion?’ In the Lower East Side of the 1920’s that would have been everybody. Imagine a cop walking along East Fifth Street; in front of him’s a pushcart owner speaking Italian while his customers speak Yiddish and around them little kids shout in German. How could he tell who was legal? Would he demand papers from everyone? ‘Show me your papers.’ Imagine the panic and despair rising in my grandparents, hearing those four words spoken by authorities of their new home as it had been in the place they left. My Grandpa and Grandma were legal citizens of the United States but I guarantee they would have ended up in jail; if confronted by a cop saying ’show me your papers’ what little confidence they had in their ability to speak English would have deserted them. Imagine the fear of their neighbors, knowing their English was no better and they could be next.

There were a lot of Americans in the 1920’s who didn’t think much of the polyglot of ethnicity that sat smack in the middle of America’s biggest city, any more than Russell Pearce thinks positive thoughts about the number of Mexicans in Arizona today. In 1916 a lawyer named Madison Grant wrote a book called The Passing of a Great Race, in which he expressed concern that America was being overrun with undesirables, certain immigrants from certain places — specifically, Eastern and Southern Europe. His solution for undesirables already here was the creation of ghettos. His solution to prevent more undesirables from coming to the United States became law in 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was a quota which limited the number of new immigrants solely by race and origin. Those most affected were Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans; Asian immigrants were shut out completely, thanks to an accompanying act with the shockingly truthful name of the Asian Exclusion Act. This was racial profiling to the umpteenth degree; the 1924 law rated the desirability of immigrants purely on their country of origin. In defense of the Immigration Act of 1924, Senator Ellison DuRant Smith said this on the floor of the United States Senate:

I would like for the Members of the Senate to read that book just recently published by Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations. The time has come when we should shut the door and keep what we have.

An America made up of “pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock” was not the America my grandparents believed in. They believed the words of Emma Lazarus, who said America welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free regardless of where they were born. They thought America was a place of refuge, a country that said, “send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.”

I know what my grandparents thought of the Immigration Act of 1924, that it was punitive and unfair, that it excluded people based on race and ethnicity. Most of all my grandparents felt the Immigration Act of 1924 was un-American, and when they said something was un-American, when they said it ran counter to all that was good and worthy and inspirational about their new home, that was as profound an insult as they could deliver.

That’s what my grandparents would have said about any law based in fear and grounded in hate.

Arizona’s new Immigration Law is deeply and disturbingly un-American. My grandparents aren’t here to say it. But I am.

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Marlene H. Phillips: Arizona Parties Like It’s 1924

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Marlene H. Phillips: Arizona Parties Like It’s 1924

Spring 2010 has offered a bounty of arms control. First came the new START treaty that promises to reduce Russian-American deployed nuclear arsenals. Then the Washington D.C. nuclear terrorism summit garnered the consensus of nearly 50 leaders to expedite efforts to reduce the vulnerability of nuclear materials to terrorist diversion. While neither measure marked a revolutionary dampening of atomic risks, we can still welcome the incrementalism.

Now comes the final nuclear arms control leg of the season, the May 3, three-week Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference that convenes in New York. But this meeting will be different. The gathering, that brings together many of the 180 plus NPT parties, will include adversaries that repeatedly have butted heads over Treaty compliance. Whether diplomacy can overcome acrimony remains to be seen.

The Review Conference, which meets every five years, comes against a troubling backdrop. In 2005 conferees failed to come to agreement. In subsequent years North Korea conducted nuclear tests and today shows no inclination to rejoin the NPT. Iran continues to resist Security Council resolutions to halt nuclear enrichment. Syria, a surprising new proliferation contender (at least until 2007 when Israel bombed a secret reactor), continues to defy IAEA requests for inspections.

All is not gloom. The United States comes to the gathering in a better diplomatic position than 2005 to promote its agenda. Then Washington opposed ratification of the comprehensive test ban. It had not entered into a full-fledged replacement agreement for the strategic arms reduction treaty. The Obama administration, which struck a new direction in both regards, has added a new wrinkle to delimit nuclear use. In the recent Nuclear Posture Review U.S. defense planners now exclude targeting countries without nuclear weapons.

But for many review conference attendees, Washington’s nuclear arms control, along with the failure of Russia, China, Britain and France to eliminate arsenals, marks a slap to fulfillment of NPT Article VI that calls for the abolishment of nuclear arsenals “at an early date,” an ambition uttered forty years ago. Although some conferees will make hay over the disarmament failure, there will be little ardor to sink the review conference over this issue.

What poses greater challenge will be the jousting over steps to assure Treaty compliance of non nuclear weapons parties. Washington and others will press for universal adoption of the Additional Protocol, that allows IAEA inspection of all suspect nuclear sites. Only half of NPT parties have ratified the Protocol, neither Iran or Syria among them. The U.S. likely will call for language to hold countries that exit the Treaty – a legal option under Article X – to be accountable for cheating during their tenure.

Iran will rebut that it and others cannot be held to a protocol or UN sanctions that impede the “inalienable” right of all under NPT Article IV to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. To put the United States on the defensive, Tehran and allies will attempt to make Israel’s nuclear program the region’s atomic pariah.

As this banter proceeds, coalitions of countries, as they have in the past, will attempt to lock down matters generally of common concern. This includes a treaty banning the production of fissile material, global ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty, a call upon states outside the NPT to join not only the treaty but regional nuclear free zones, reaffirmation of IAEA safeguards, access to civil nuclear technology without discrimination for countries in good standing and implementation of reactor safety standards, plant security and safeguards against theft of sensitive nuclear material or equipment.

These benign principals may serve as the core of the conference’s consensus document. Coupled with vague language that papers over differences on treaty compliance, and advances nonbinding endorsement of a Middle East Free Zone and the principal of nuclear disarmament, the meeting could end with an agreement that nominally reinvigorates the NPT.

Of course, such an accord that fails to include implementation timetables and biting enforcement mechanisms to combat cheating ought satisfy no one. But it may suffice as long as it does no harm to institutions responsible for the real nonproliferation heavy lifting, the IAEA, the Security Council and diplomats and defense planers in individual countries and alliances that make it their mission to prevent proliferation. Evidently in a world of conflicting interests, this is the best we can do.

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Bennett Ramberg, Ph.D.: Prospects for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference

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Bennett Ramberg, Ph.D.: Prospects for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference

The recent Commission on the Future of Graduate Education report, “The Path Forward: The Future of Graduate Education in the United States,” represents a perfect example of why you should not ask a bunch of business people and university presidents to plan the future of higher education. While the overall message of the report is that that the federal government needs to pour billions of dollars into graduate programs to make America more competitive in the new global knowledge economy, this extensive study ignores most of the basic problems dominating graduate education in the United States.

The report begins with an interesting analysis of the current state of the global economy:

The manufacturing economy was built on the shoulders of citizens who had a high school education and who could rest assured that their livelihoods would be secure until they retired. But times have changed, and the knowledge economy, which is based on creating, evaluating, and trading knowledge and information, has arrived. Predictions are that the U.S. economy will become bifurcated, with one sector of the workforce performing services that cannot easily be exported, such as hospitality services, construction, car repair, and healthcare, while the other sector will perform work in the knowledge industries. The production of goods and services such as automobiles, electronic goods, and clothing is likely to continue to take place in other countries where there are lower labor costs and workers with lower literacy levels and educational attainment.

According to this analysis, jobs that do not require graduate education will be mostly shipped overseas (except construction and car repair), and so the only jobs we will have left in the United States are ones that either require a master’s degree (nursing, social work, teaching) or a doctorate or professional degree (science, law, medicine).

While this report does predict an increase in the demand for college and university faculty, it accepts the idea that most of these future jobs will be off of the tenure track:

The projection for postsecondary teachers is mixed. This occupation is projected to grow over the next 10 years due to two factors. First, an increase in student enrollment in higher education will reflect the projected population increases of 18-24 year olds, with increased num-bers of students in colleges requiring increased numbers of instructors. Second, the expected retirement of current faculty hired in the 1960s and 1970s will produce openings. However, much of this growth will not be in full-time academic positions, which are a shrinking proportion of the academic workforce, but rather in adjunct or nontenured positions (20).

This shift from tenured to nontenured positions is never criticized or challenged; instead it is accepted as an inevitable fact.

Since this national report affirms that doctoral students in the humanities and the social sciences have very little chance of getting a tenure-track job when they graduate, the authors recommend that universities simply mentor students to accept jobs outside of the academy:

Little is known about students’ willingness to invest in the type and length of training for the doctorate if a tenure-track position is not the light at the end of the tunnel. If the tenure-track position remains the desired goal, students and faculty may have to adjust their mindset to a more complex landscape.

In other words, if doctoral students anticipate getting jobs for the profession for which they are being trained, they should change their expectations and realize that their education does not fulfill its intended mission.

This push for universities to mentor graduate students to consider jobs outside of higher education is combined with statistics showing that most grad students in the humanities and social sciences do not get jobs outside of academia:

According to one estimate about half of the doctoral recipients with post-graduation employment commitments obtained jobs outside of the academy, but the percentages vary widely by field (85% from engineering, 66% from physical sciences, 38% from social sciences, and 14% from humanities)(17).

While it is clear that many graduate students in the sciences gain training and education that prepares them for specific non-academic jobs, it is unclear what graduate training in the humanities and social sciences train students for besides being professors in the humanities and social sciences.

Before further analyzing the future of graduate education in the humanities, we should realize that for the sciences and related fields, the majority of students earning doctorates at American universities are from other countries, and thus our most successful programs are actually training our competition in the global knowledge market:

In 1977, 82% of doctoral degrees awarded in the U.S. were granted to U.S. citizens, but by 2007 this figure had fallen to 57%. In engineering only 29% of doctoral degrees went to citizens (down from 56% in 1977), and the percentage today in the physical sciences is 43% (down from 76% in 1977 (21).

While it may sound xenophobic to criticize the fact that most of the doctorates generated in the sciences and engineering go to students who are not even citizens, we should question why one of the central proposals of this study is to increase the federal funding for foreign students:

Because there is a need for U.S. graduate schools to continue to attract the best and brightest students from around the world, universities could apply up to 20% of the total fellowship funding to support international students (49).

So let me get this right: we need more federal funding for graduate programs because we are losing our competitive edge in the global knowledge economy, so the solution is to pour more federal money into the training of our competitors.

The repressed truth at the heart of this study is that graduate education in America is not driven by the goal to improve our job market or educate students; instead, graduate education is about generating prestige and profit. Thus, graduate programs in the sciences need to continue to recruit students from outside of the United States because these students have higher test scores, and therefore they help to push up the rankings of the graduate departments. Moreover these foreign grad students provide cheap labor to staff science labs at American universities.

While graduate students in the sciences are helping to produce important knowledge and research, as they provide universities and faculty with exploitable labor, grad students in the humanities and social sciences serve to staff high enrollment undergraduate courses. One of the perverse effects of this system is that grad students cannot get good jobs in academia once they earn their doctorates because so many courses area already being taught by other grad students. The study glosses over this problem in the following way:

This shift has resulted in a change in the overall mix in the proportion of instructional staff that are in full-time tenure-track positions. The move to using adjuncts, graduate students, and non-tenured lecturers to teach the increasing college population is also reflected in a move to hire new faculty off the tenure track. . . For many doctoral students, however, explicitly preparing for a career in the business, government, or non-profit realm will be the most prudent path to take.(34-35).

The argument here appears to be that we need more teachers in higher ed, but because we cannot stop exploiting them by hiring them off of the tenure track or by turning them into inexpensive grad student instructors, all we can do is to tell them to lower their expectations and take a job unrelated to their particular training.

One of the great concerns of the report is that not only are we not accepting enough grad students into our universities, but the ones that are accepted often fail to get their degrees:

Despite the rigorous selection processes used for graduate admissions and the high achievement level of those pursuing a graduate degree, some estimates indicate that the attrition rate in doctoral education is in the range of 40% to 50% (27).

Of course, one reason why so many students drop out and why it takes them so long to graduate is that they are forced to teach so many courses that they do not have enough time to work on their dissertations. The result of this system is that after ten years of study, many grad students end up with nothing but a huge pile of debt:

But even if more loan dollars were to become available, it is not clear that increased student debt would solve the problem. Current data indicate that master’s degree graduates who have debt carry a cumulative debt load of $51,950 at graduation on average, and doctoral students who have borrowed report an even steeper debt burden of $77,580. Clearly these debt loads may have a chilling effect on aspirations for graduate school and may impact completion rates themselves (37).

In order to turn around this system, the answer is not to come up with another plan to simply fund more doctoral students; what we need is a major restructuring of higher education, and it should start by reducing the number of graduate students teaching undergraduate courses. Instead of putting inexperienced teachers without degrees into the classroom, grad students should be funded out of grants, and full-time faculty should be hired to teach undergraduate courses. The effect of this solution would be to decrease the time it takes for doctoral students to get their degrees and increase the number of job opportunities in the humanities and the social sciences, while the quality of instruction could be improved by granting tenure based on teaching.

In terms of grad programs in the sciences, we should do what our competitors do and that is to greatly restrict the number of foreign students admitted into their programs. If we want to build America’s knowledge economy, it makes no sense to train students from China and India in our federally funded labs. Of course, this move would require a de-emphasizing of test scores in how graduate departments are rated and ranked.

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Bob Samuels: Rethinking the Future of Graduate Student Education

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Bob Samuels: Rethinking the Future of Graduate Student Education