U.S. Balks at New UN Climate Report

Forbes has this Associated Press story about the US and China wanting to water down a UN report on what can be done to slow down global warming. Key excerpt: "The upcoming third report will look at technologies and policies that could help head off damaging climate change, and at what cost, and discuss feasible goals for setting a ceiling on greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere. The week is shaping up as a test between the Europeans, who want a relatively low ceiling and speedy action, and the Bush administration, whose comments on the draft summary indicate it wants a document envisioning higher ceilings and a longer view on action."

U.S. Balks at New Climate Report
By MICHAEL CASEY
Associated Press
04.30.07

The United States and China want to amend a major report by U.N.-sponsored climate researchers to play down its conclusion that quick, affordable action can limit the worst effects of global warming, according to documents reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The critiques, among hundreds of government comments on the draft document, are the prelude to what is expected to be a contentious weeklong meeting as scientists and national delegations wrangle over final wording in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be issued Friday.

Two previous IPCC reports this year painted a dire picture of a future in which unabated greenhouse gas emissions could drive global temperatures up as much as 11 degrees by 2100, and said animal and plant life was already affected by warmer and rising seas, spreading drought and other effects.

The upcoming third report will look at technologies and policies that could help head off damaging climate change, and at what cost, and discuss feasible goals for setting a ceiling on greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.

The week is shaping up as a test between the Europeans, who want a relatively low ceiling and speedy action, and the Bush administration, whose comments on the draft summary indicate it wants a document envisioning higher ceilings and a longer view on action.

The IPCC assessment, the first in six years, will provide fresh background for ongoing international negotiations over a climate regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 1997 Kyoto pact requires 35 European and other nations to reduce industrial, transportation and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide and other warming gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Scientists believe emissions must be cut 50 percent or more within decades to avert drastic climate change.

President Bush rejected Kyoto's mandatory cuts, contending they would hobble the U.S. economy. China and other poor developing countries were exempted.

The draft of the third report, obtained by the AP, says greenhouse emissions can be cut below current levels if the world takes such steps as shifting away from coal and other fossil fuels, investing in energy efficiency and working to halt deforestation, which eliminates carbon "sinks."

The report, prepared and reviewed by hundreds of researchers, says that by quickly embracing an ideal basket of technological options - both already available and being developed - the world can stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to around 450 parts per million, slightly higher than the current 435 ppm.

Some scientists believe a 450-ppm ceiling might limit the global temperature rise to 3.6 degrees - 2 degrees Celsius - above the world's preindustrial temperatures, a level that might avoid the worst damage. Some economists believe, however, that a 450-ppm ceiling is unrealistic, and 550 ppm is more achievable.

Comments on the draft by Germany and the European Union seek to highlight a scenario with a 445-535-ppm range and the 2-degree-Celsius ceiling. The Europeans emphasize a passage on action in the next "two or three decades," while a U.S. comment seeks to replace that with a reference to "the end of the century" and to a scenario of 500-550 ppm concentrations. That might produce temperatures 5 to 6 degrees above preindustrial levels.

The U.S. wants clauses inserted saying the cost of available technologies to reduce emissions and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations "could be unacceptably high" and calling for a greater emphasis on "advanced technologies," many of which are aimed at extending the use of coal.

The United States and China also criticized the draft's economic projections, which conclude that stabilizing gases to establish the 2-degree-Celsius ceiling would cost less than 3 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) over two decades - compared with 3-percent yearly growth currently. China complained the number of studies supporting that optimistic forecast is "relatively small."

The damage from unabated climate change, meanwhile, might cost the global economy between 5 percent and 20 percent of GDP every year, according to a British government report last year.

In its defense, the United States said it is working to promote energy efficiency, vehicle fuel efficiency and clean-coal technology while sustaining economic growth.

"Our goal throughout the IPCC process is for the reports to best reflect the latest state of knowledge on addressing global climate change so that these reports are useful to the policy community and are supported by scientific and economic data," Harlan Watson, U.S. delegation head, said by e-mail.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the climate change panel, said "every country" would have a chance to express its views and "ultimately it's a balanced assessment of the science that will prevail."

More than 200 delegates chosen by 119 countries will examine the IPCC's report this week and recommend changes before it is finalized.

The Great Wall of Baghdad in pictures

Here are some photos of the wall around Baghdad's Adhamiya district, which I've posted about here.

Colonel Don Farris of the US Army declares "It's not a wall -- if you will -- the intent is that there's no limitation of pedestrian traffic."

George McGovern attacks Dick Cheney

George McGovern defends himself from recent attacks by Dick Cheney and then goes on the offensive.

Cheney Is Wrong About Me, Wrong About War
by George S. McGovern
The Los Angeles Times
April 24, 2007

Vice President Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today’s Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed “the Windy City.” Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.Cheney said that today’s Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat - a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today’s Democrats don’t appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.

They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.

Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney’s top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).

In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of “that old party of the early 1970s,” Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.

The Democrats’ 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.

Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.

On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today’s Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.

The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.

Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.

The Democrats are right. Let’s bring our troops home from this hopeless war.

There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney’s consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of ‘72?

THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my ‘72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: “I make one pledge above all others - to seek and speak the truth.” We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn’t it generally agreed that Nixon’s greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn’t President Reagan’s greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it’s better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?

We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it’s wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield - he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.

On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: “A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.”

George S. McGovern is a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.

Bill Moyers on "Buying the War": news reporters' complicity in selling the invasion of Iraq

PBS just aired a Bill Moyers documentary the other night called "Buying the War", which analyzes the current state of journalism in America with specific reference to the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. You can watch the documentary or read a transcript online at PBS's website.

Here is how PBS describes the documentary:

Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. He was hailed by media stars as a "breathtaking" example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of massdestruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House's claim that the war was won. MSNBC's Chris Matthews declared, "We're all neo-cons now;" NPR's Bob Edwards said, "The war in Iraq is essentially over;" and Fortune magazine's Jeff Birnbaum said, "It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context."

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

On Wednesday, April 25 at 9 p.m. on PBS, a new PBS series BILL MOYERS JOURNAL premieres at a special time with "Buying the War," a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Two days later on April 27, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL airs in its regular timeslot on Fridays at 9 p.m. with interviews and news analysis on a wide range of subjects, including politics, arts and culture, the media, the economy, and issues facing democracy. "Buying the War" includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of MEET THE PRESS; Bob Simon of 60 MINUTES; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by The McClatchy Company in 2006.

In "Buying the War" Bill Moyers and producer Kathleen Hughes document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration's case for war. "Many of the things that were said about Iraq didn't make sense," says Walcott. "And that really prompts you to ask, 'Wait a minute. Is this true? Does everyone agree that this is true? Does anyone think this is not true?'"

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. "I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda," he tells Moyers. "Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn't believe it for an instant." The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Iraq's "worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb," but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the "lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons" got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration's claims were given prominence. "From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration's case for war," says Howard Kurtz, the POST's media critic. "But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions."

"Buying the War" examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what's changed? "More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration," says THE WASHINGTON POST's Walter Pincus. "We've sort of given up being independent on our own."

David Sirota has commentary.

Work on Baghdad wall continues despite Iraqi prime minister's opposition

The German Press Agency reports that the American military is ignoring Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki's order to halt the walling off of neighborhoods in Baghdad. This demonstrates rather clearly who is in charge in Iraq, and it isn't the Prime Minister or Iraqis. But at least we are assured that the turning of Baghdad into a mass prison is only "temporary". I'm sure it's only temporary in Palestine, too, just until the terrorism ends, and just as it was in the ghettos of Poland and Germany, just until the war ends -- a quite reasonable security measure, if you think about it. I wonder why they haven't implemented this kind of thing in American cities.

Work on Baghdad wall continues despite premier's opposition
German Press Agency (dpa)
Monday April 23, 2007

Baghdad - The construction of a three-mile wall around a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad continued Monday, the military spokesman for the Iraqi government said, despite Premier Nuri al-Maliki's opposition to the plan.

Qassem Atta [a senior police officer and a spokesman for the Fard al-Qanoon security plan] confirmed the US military's plan to form a 3.5-metre-high concrete wall to enclose Adhamiya district, where tit-for-tat sectarian violence is threatening to spiral out of control.

He also insisted that Iraqi citizens had requested that walls be erected between neighbourhoods for security considerations, and so the work on the Adhamiya wall will continue, he told Iraqiya state television.

Atta also said that the defence minister had a "firm opinion" about the walls, namely that they were "temporary."

Atta's statements came only a day after al-Maliki had openly called for the halt of the separation wall, saying he opposed it.

Anger was sparked among citizens and some politicians in Baghdad after local and international news sources circulated the report of the wall that is expected to divide notorious neighbourhoods - and in turn Baghdad itself.

Atta had told the press that building such and similar walls across Baghdad was part of a security plan enacted on February 14 in an effort to quell ongoing violence in the city.

The planned walls are expected to reduce the traffic of armed militants between neighbourhoods. Each wall would have two access points only.

The Adhamiya wall's construction had already begun on April 10.

According to Britain's The Guardian, which blew the whistle on the construction last Saturday, US paratroopers from Camp Taji, some 30 kilometres to the north of Baghdad, transported "stacks of huge (6,300-kilogram) concrete barriers" in trucks into the capital.

"Cranes, protected by tanks, winched them into place. Building has continued every night since," the newspaper report read.

And according to Atta, similar constructions are to follow and are expected to appear in areas like Rasafa and Karakh.

Sunnis are increasingly concentrating to the west of the Tigris in Baghdad, while Shiites flee to the east.

American military walling off over ten neighborhoods in Baghdad

In a civil libertarian's nightmare, the Washington Post reports that the wall around the Adhamiyah neighborhood, construction of which Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has ordered be stopped, is only one of 10 or more neighborhoods being walled off by the American military in Baghdad. As the article describes, "In some sealed-off areas, troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents' fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges.... It will...let soldiers compare the fingerprints of people who enter with fingerprints collected during operations. 'We can pull fingerprints off all the bad stuff they handle and run it through the database,'"says one outpost's leader, Capt. Darren Fowler. For more on the subject, see my posts here and here.

'Gated Communities' For the War-Ravaged
U.S. Tries High Walls and High Tech To Bring Safety to Parts of Baghdad
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 23, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents, creating what officers call "gated communities" in an attempt to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city.

The plan drew widespread condemnation in Iraq this past week. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Nouri-al Maliki told news services that he would work to halt construction of a wall around the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, which residents said would aggravate sectarian tensions by segregating them from Shiite neighbors. The U.S. military says the walls are meant to protect people, not further divide them in a city that is increasingly a patchwork of sectarian enclaves.

The military sees a simple virtue in the barriers.

"If we keep the bad guys out, then we win," said 1st Lt. Sean Henley, 24, who works out of an outpost in southern Ghazaliyah, a Sunni insurgent stronghold on Baghdad's western edge that is among the first of the gated communities. The square-mile neighborhood of about 15,000 people now has one entrance point for civilian vehicles and three military checkpoints that are closed to the public.

In some sealed-off areas, troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents' fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges, military officials said. At least 10 Baghdad neighborhoods are slated to become or already are gated communities, said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, the deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad.

The tactic is part of the two-month-old U.S. and Iraqi counterinsurgency plan to calm sectarian strife and is loosely modeled after efforts in cities such as Tall Afar and Fallujah, where the military says it has curbed violence by strictly controlling access. The gated communities concept has produced mixed results in previous wars -- including failure in Vietnam, where peasants were forcibly moved to fortified hamlets, only to become sympathizers of the insurgency.

Soldiers and military officials said that it was too early to evaluate the success of Baghdad's gated communities and that adjustments would be made according to results and residents' feedback, some of which has been negative. But they insisted the measure is worth a try in the city's bloodiest neighborhoods.

"We've really taken a hard look and said, 'This is an area where we need to monitor people coming in and people coming out . . . and it is the only way we could do it,' " Campbell said.

Wartime Baghdad has become a tableau of barricades as violence has swelled. Enterprising residents put them to use as free advertising space, blank canvases for graffiti and sunny spots for drying carpets.

But the blockading of Baghdad has reached full throttle under this year's security crackdown, with dozens of new neighborhood military outposts needing protection -- and fast. The push has triggered a run on concrete barriers, which sometimes are not fully dry when military engineering units pick them up, said Capt. David Hudson, 30, who leads a company charged with building many of the city's blast walls. The unit now goes through as many as 2,000 barriers a week.

Hudson's unit spent weeks installing two six-foot-tall, mile-and-a-quarter-long walls along the northern, western and southern borders of southern Ghazaliyah. Another unit blocked the cross streets on the east side with waist-high Jersey barriers.

Under cover of darkness on a recent night, Hudson's soldiers placed 44 barriers at an intersection on the eastern edge of Ghazaliyah, a spot known for bombs and snipers. Tanks and Humvees provided security for the cranes and forklifts being used to build what would be the neighborhood's lone civilian checkpoint.

"They've been doing it in Florida, and the old people seem to like it," joked the platoon's leader, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Schmitt, 37, as he watched his team create the public entrance to the new gated community.

If there were ever a place that defied the tidy and tranquil image suggested by that term, it is Ghazaliyah.

Although the neighborhood used to be mixed, it was also home to many Sunni leaders of former president Saddam Hussein's army. Many fled when they were stripped of their jobs after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, but some stayed.

Their presence provided a foothold for Sunni militants, who found the area a convenient gateway to Iraq's Sunni insurgent heartland to the west. Now southern Ghazaliyah is a base for al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent groups, including the 1920 Revolution Brigades.

These days, dogs nose through a seemingly endless terrain of trash-filled dirt lots. Houses are riddled with bullet holes or marked with black X's, the insurgents' warnings to Shiites to leave or be killed. Businesses have shuttered, and services are intermittent. More than half the houses are abandoned.

The Delta Company of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment -- Henley's unit -- moved into one of the deserted homes in mid-March, establishing an outpost in a villa with chandeliers and recessed lighting. When they began doing sweeps, roadside bombs exploded often. Firefights and rocket attacks occurred daily. The soldiers found piles of mutilated bodies and empty houses whose interiors were smeared with blood.

But shootouts and explosions have slowed, the soldiers said. They are no longer finding piles of corpses these days -- "just onesies and twosies," according to Sgt. 1st Class Tom Revette, 36. Tips from residents have skyrocketed, leading the troops to weapons caches and wanted men. Before setting up shop, Henley said, the unit had "no viable targets, not one. Since we've been out here, we've got a laundry list."

The outpost's leader, Capt. Darren Fowler, 30, said the raids alone will not keep terrorists out. Walls and technology might, he figures.

So Fowler plans to have soldiers at the entry point use scanners to log the fingerprints and eye patterns of every person who enters southern Ghazaliyah. That will deter insurgents while building a sort of neighborhood census, he said, something counterinsurgency experts say is an essential step in tracking population movements. It will also let soldiers compare the fingerprints of people who enter with fingerprints collected during operations.

"We can pull fingerprints off all the bad stuff they handle and run it through the database," Fowler said in an e-mail. "The soldiers' favorite show to watch is CSI. We actually get some techniques from them."

Fowler is also considering issuing identification badges to every resident of the gated community. But the area will not be closed off to outsiders, because its markets are crucial to Sunnis who live in nearby Shiite neighborhoods and are too afraid to go to their own bazaars, he said.

The method of screening entrants is chosen by the Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground and will vary from one gated community to another, said Campbell, the deputy commander in Baghdad. Some might check Iraqi food ration cards, which show the holder's address, and use biometrics -- which many soldiers have been collecting during sweeps -- as a second-tier check.

"Most of the Iraqis have a card that tells where they live," Campbell said. "So if they don't have one for that particular area, then [soldiers will] go through the biometrics and see if there's any past history of any activity that we would not want to have."

Many weary residents of southern Ghazaliyah are pleased with the effort to shut out the blood bath, the soldiers said, while others have griped about the inconveniences it presents.

Earlier this month, Fowler led off the nightly meeting of Iraqi and American soldiers, gathered around a dining table to review operations on PowerPoint slides.

"Because of your help, I have gone one full week without being shot at," said Fowler, a tall Southerner famed among his peers for having survived 13 roadside bombings unscathed, 11 of them in Ghazaliyah.

Soon he addressed the barrier plan. The rural lanes to the west would be sealed off soon, he said, "so terrorists cannot use the farm roads to get into Ghazaliyah."

Many of the Iraqi soldiers nodded. But not Maj. Hathem Faek Salman, who fears the barriers are more likely to anger residents than shut out violence.

"This is not a good plan," Salman, 40, had said before the meeting. "If my region were closed by these barriers, I would hate the army, because I would feel like I was in a big jail. . . . If you want to make the area secure and safe, it is not with barriers. We have to win the trust of the people."

The next day, a convoy rumbled out to Bakriyah, a small village west of Ghazaliyah -- just outside the walls and a little more than two miles from the civilian checkpoint. It was a peaceful mission: to track down a town leader who is on a local citizens' council that the soldiers meet with regularly. The man, Najim Abdullah, had skipped a recent meeting, and the soldiers thought his absence might have been to protest the barriers.

Three U.S. soldiers, an interpreter and an Iraqi soldier removed their helmets and sat down on the ornate carpets in Abdullah's home, leaning against the walls with pillows propped behind their backs. Abdullah's wide-eyed grandsons served sweet tea.

Abdullah, cross-legged in a gray dishdasha, or traditional robe, said he had missed the meeting because of an emergency. But the gated community idea, he said, "doesn't make any sense." His villagers had long driven into Ghazaliyah's west end to go to its markets or continue toward central Baghdad. Now they would have to drive around it.

"The barriers cannot be moved until all of the Ghazaliyah barrier plan is in place," responded Lt. Lance Rae, 25. "But we will not forget the people down here. They've been very faithful to us."

"It's your order. I disagree with it. But I accept it," Abdullah said. "It does not matter to me. It matters to the people."

Abdullah rose, turned toward the blank white wall and sketched an invisible picture of the area with his hands. He pointed left, to Bakriyah. And a few feet right, to the checkpoint.

"It will take two hours to get from here to here!" he said.

Rae simply nodded and said, "Security is the key."

Iraqi Prime Minister orders halt to wall construction

The New York Times reports that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has ordered that construction of a wall around Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, which I mentioned in several previous posts, stop. Whether America will heed his order remains to be seen.

Iraqi premier orders work halted on wall around Sunni area
He says barrier in Baghdad's Sunni area is a reminder of 'other walls'
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
New York Times
April 23, 2007

BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki on Sunday said he was ordering a halt to the construction of a controversial wall that would isolate a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad from other areas, saying it reminded people of "other walls."

The announcement, which al-Maliki made in Cairo, Egypt, while on a state visit, appeared designed to allay mounting criticism from both Sunni Arab and Shiite parties about the project.

"I oppose the building of the wall, and its construction will stop," al-Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. "There are other methods to protect neighborhoods."

'In a dialogue'

A spokesman for the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said the military would remain "in a dialogue" with the Iraqi government about how best to protect citizens. The military did not say whether the wall's construction would be halted.

Al-Maliki did not specify in his remarks what other walls he referred to. However, the separation barrier in the West Bank being erected by Israel, which Israel says is for protection but greatly angers Palestinians, is a particularly delicate issue among Arabs.

In Baghdad, the wall would surround the Adhamiya neighborhood, a Sunni Arab enclave bordered by Shiite areas. Adhamiya often comes under mortar attack and suffers incursions from those neighborhoods.

However, it has also been a stronghold of militant Sunni Arab groups, and the wall would have helped the Iraqi security forces to control their movements.

Earlier, the spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq sought to allay criticism of the project and explain its intent by saying that was meant to be only a temporary barrier to improve security.

The military does not have a new strategy of building walls or creating "gated communities," the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said in a written statement.

He described it as a tactic being used only in a handful of neighborhoods and not an effort to divide the city, much less the country.

However, U.S. military officials said last week in a statement that the Adhamiya wall was "one of the centerpieces of a new strategy." They also said that the wall was aimed at separating Sunni Arabs in Adhamiya from Shiites to the east.

Oases of safety

The Washington Post reported that the U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using high technology to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city.

The Post, citing U.S. military officials, reported that in some sealed-off areas, troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents' fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges.

Opposition to the Adhamiya wall has gathered steam since the news release was issued. On Sunday Sunni Arab and Shiite groups sharply criticized the idea. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party and the Shiite group linked to the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr both announced that they opposed dividing Baghdad by sect. They said the wall would increase sectarian hatred and fuel efforts to partition the country.

"Surrounding areas of the capital with barbed wire and concrete blocks would harm these areas economically and socially," the Islamic Party said in an e-mail message to news organizations. "In addition it will enhance sectarian feelings."

Abu Firas al-Mutairi, a representative of the Sadr movement in Najaf, which has supported al-Maliki, said: "The Sadr movement considers building a wall around al-Adhamiya as a way to lay siege to the Iraqi people and to separate them into cantons. It is like the Berlin Wall that divided Germany."

"This step is the first step toward dividing the regions into cantons and blockading people there," he added. "Today it happens in Adhamiya. Tomorrow it will happen in Sadr City," referring to the Shiite slum in Baghdad that is a stronghold of al-Sadr.

The wall, which was being built as a part of the security plan, had been a joint project with the Iraqi army. The Iraqi government has a final say over how the security plan proceeds, but most policies are being intensively negotiated with the Americans, who are deploying nearly 30,000 additional troops to help secure Baghdad and the surrounding areas.

Sunni Arabs execute 23 members of small religious sect

Al-Maliki's announcement came as sectarian violence continued across Iraq, with a horrific execution by Sunni Arabs in Mosul of 23 members of a small religious sect, known as Yezidis.

The Yezidis, who are most numerous in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, practice an offshoot of Islam that combines some Muslim teachings with those of ancient Persian religion.

At least 60 people died Sunday in Iraq, with 18 killed by car bombs in Baghdad. Eleven bodies were found in the capital and five in the city of Al Kut, to the south.

But the most chilling attack was the one in Mosul. It followed the marriage in early April of a Sunni Arab man and a woman from the Yezidi faith, the police said.

The police said that when the woman married, she converted to Islam, which angered some of the Yezidis. She was kidnapped and as she was being brought back to her tribe, a crowd gathered and stoned her to death, said Brig. Gen. Muhammad al-Waqa of the Mosul police.

The Sunni Arabs in the area demanded that the Yezidis turn over the killers and the police also issued a warrant for their arrest. In one Yezidi-majority town east of Mosul, residents found leaflets saying, "Unless you turn them over, we will never let any Yezidi breathe the air."

The Yezidis refused. On Sunday afternoon, armed men stopped minibuses traveling from a government textile factory in Mosul where many Yezidis and Christians were known to work. The men dragged the passengers off the buses, checked their identity cards and lined the Yezidis against a wall and shot them, killing 23 people and wounding three, Waqa said.

Alberto Gonzales: "dull-witted apparatchik", liar, or both?

The New York Times has a news analysis on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's testimony to the Senate. Most articles in the mainstream press studiously avoid the core question of the case: Why were the 8 prosecutors fired? This editorial suggests that the answer is the same as the one given in a previous post I made, that these prosecutors refused to play ball with the White House's "voter fraud" campaign to reduce voting among poor and minority citizens.

Gonzales v. Gonzales
Editorial - The New York Times
April 20, 2007

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. Mr. Gonzales failed to create the most rudimentary standards for judging the prosecutors’ work, except for political fealty. And when it came time to explain his inept decision making to the public, he gave a false account that was instantly and repeatedly contradicted by sworn testimony.

Even the most loyal Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee found it impossible to throw Mr. Gonzales a lifeline. The best Orrin Hatch of Utah could do was to mutter that “I think that you’ll agree that this was poorly handled” and to suggest that Mr. Gonzales should just be forgiven. Senator Sam Brownback led Mr. Gonzales through the names of the fired attorneys, evidently hoping he would offer cogent reasons for their dismissal.

Some of his answers were merely laughable. Mr. Gonzales said one prosecutor deserved to be fired because he wrote a letter that annoyed the deputy attorney general. Another prosecutor had the gall to ask Mr. Gonzales to reconsider a decision to seek the death penalty. (Mr. Gonzales, of course, is famous for never reconsidering a death penalty case, no matter how powerful the arguments are.)

Mr. Gonzales criticized other fired prosecutors for “poor management,” for losing the confidence of career prosecutors and for “not having total control of the office.” With those criticisms, Mr. Gonzales was really describing his own record: he has been a poor manager who has had no control over his department and has lost the confidence of his professional staff and all Americans.

Mr. Gonzales was even unable to say who compiled the list of federal attorneys slated for firing. The man he appointed to conduct the purge, Kyle Sampson, said he had not created the list. The former head of the office that supervises the federal prosecutors, Michael Battle, said he didn’t do it, as did William Mercer, the acting associate attorney general.

Mr. Gonzales said he did not know why the eight had been on the list when it was given to him, that it had not been accompanied by any written analysis and that he had just assumed it reflected a consensus of the senior leaders of his department. At one point, Mr. Gonzales even claimed that he could not remember how the Justice Department had come to submit an amendment to the Patriot Act that allowed him to fire United States attorneys and replace them without Senate confirmation. The Senate voted to revoke that power after the current scandal broke.

At the end of the day, we were left wondering why the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a bumbling fool. Perhaps it’s because the alternative is that he is not telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply involved.

Yesterday, Mr. Gonzales admitted that he had not been surprised by five of the names on the list because he had heard complaints about them — from Republican senators and Mr. Rove.

In another telling moment, Mr. Gonzales was asked when he had lost confidence in David Iglesias, who was fired as federal prosecutor in New Mexico. His answer was an inadvertent slip of truth.

“Mr. Iglesias lost the confidence of Senator Domenici, as I recall, in the fall of 2005,” Mr. Gonzales said. It was Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, of course, who made a wildly inappropriate phone call to Mr. Iglesias in 2006, not 2005, to ask whether charges would be filed before the election in a corruption inquiry focused on Democrats. When Mr. Iglesias said he did not think so, Mr. Domenici hung up and complained to the White House. Shortly after, Mr. Iglesias’s name was added to the firing list.

We don’t yet know whether Mr. Gonzales is merely so incompetent that he should be fired immediately, or whether he is covering something up.

But if we believe the testimony that neither he nor any other senior Justice Department official was calling the shots on the purge, then the public needs to know who was. That is why the Judiciary Committee must stick to its insistence that Mr. Rove, Ms. Miers and other White House officials testify in public and under oath and that all documents be turned over to Congress, including e-mail messages by Mr. Rove that the Republican Party has yet to produce.

"Are we in the West Bank?": Baghdad residents react to US plan to build wall

Related to my previous post, the Los Angeles Times has another article on the new wall being built by the US in Baghdad to divide Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods:

In Baghdad, U.S. troops build wall to curb violence
But residents aren't happy with the barrier cutting of a Sunni district from surrounding Shiite areas.
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2007

BAGHDAD — A U.S. military brigade is constructing a 3-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital's most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq's most populous and violent city.

U.S. commanders in northern Baghdad said the 12-foot-high barrier would make it more difficult for suicide bombers to strike and for death squads and militia fighters from sectarian factions to attack one another and then slip back to their home turf. Construction began April 10 and is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Although Baghdad is replete with blast walls, checkpoints and other temporary barriers, including a massive wall around the Green Zone, the barrier being constructed in Adhamiya would be the first to be based in essence on sectarian considerations.

A largely Sunni district, Adhamiya is one of Baghdad's trouble spots, avoided not only by Shiites, but Sunni outsiders as well. The area is almost completely surrounded by Shiite-dominated districts such as Shamasiya and Gurayaat.

The ambitious project is a sign of how far the U.S. military will go to end the bloodshed in Iraq. But U.S. officials denied that it was a central tactic of the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown launched Feb. 13.

"We defer to commanders on the ground, but dividing up the entire city with barriers is not part of the plan," U.S. military spokesman Army Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Thursday.

News of the construction was first reported Thursday by the Stars and Stripes newspaper

Shiite and Sunni Arabs living in the shadow of the barrier were united in their contempt for the imposing new structure.

"Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?" said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who would identify himself only as Abu Ahmed, 44. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation."

Some of Ahmed's customers come from Shiite or mixed neighborhoods that are now cut off by large barriers along a main highway. Customers and others seeking to cross into the Sunni district must park their cars outside Adhamiya, walk through a narrow passage in the wall and take taxis on the other side.

Several residents interviewed likened the project to the massive barriers built by Israel around some Palestinian zones.

"Are we in the West Bank?" asked Abu Qusay, 48, a pharmacist who said that he wouldn't be able to get to his favorite kebab restaurant in Adhamiya.

Residents complained that Baghdad already has been dissected by hundreds of barriers that cause daily traffic snarls.

Some predicted the new wall would become a target of militants on both sides. Last week, construction crews came under small-arms fire, military officials said.

"I feel this is the beginning of a pattern of what the whole of Iraq is going to look like, divided by sectarian and racial criteria," Abu Marwan, 50, a Shiite pharmacist, said.

Marwan lives in a mostly Shiite area adjoining the wall, but works in Adhamiya. Since the wall was begun, he has had to walk to work rather than drive.

Najim Sadoon, 51, was worried that he would lose customers at his housewares store. "This closure of the street will have severe economic hardships," he said. "Transportation fees will increase. Customers who used to come here in their cars will now prefer to go to other places."

Majid Fadhil, 43, a Shiite police commissioner in a neighborhood north of the wall, said flatly, "This fence is not going to work."

So far, the barriers have cut off streets and sidewalks, avoiding homes and backyards, residents said.

Pentagon officials first broached the idea of creating "gated communities" in Baghdad this year.

But more recently, military officials have emphasized political negotiation as well as increased troop presence as a way to stem sectarian conflict.

On a tour of the Middle East this week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates repeatedly struck chords of unity and reconciliation. He is expected to meet with sectarian leaders and government officials in Baghdad today.

The construction in Adhamiya is not the first time U.S. military planners have attempted to isolate hostile regions. In 2005, U.S. troops tried to surround the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra with earthen berms to prevent insurgents from entering and leaving the city. A similar strategy was deployed in Tall Afar and Fallouja. Experiments with less extensive walls and trenches also have been attempted in Baghdad and Kirkuk.

The latest project is the work of the 407th Brigade Support Battalion, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, based in north Baghdad's Camp Taji. Since April 10, soldiers have ventured out almost nightly after curfew, overseeing installation of the 14,000-pound wall segments, using giant construction cranes and employing Iraqi crews, said Army Sgt. Michael Pryor, a public affairs specialist for the unit.

Soldiers have dubbed the project the "The Great Wall of Adhamiya." Commanders in the 82nd Airborne could not be reached for comment Thursday. In a press release Tuesday, military officials said the project was intended to protect citizens on both sides.

The wall is "on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods," Army Capt. Marc Sanborn, brigade engineer for the project, said in the release. He said the concept was closer to an exclusive gated community in the United States than to China's Great Wall.

In an e-mail, Pryor said it was too soon to judge how residents would respond.

"Bear in mind that the wall is an ongoing project," Pryor wrote. "We're not completely sure how the population feels either way."

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

A special correspondent in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Latest US Solution to Iraq’s Civil War: A Three-Mile Wall

The Associated Press reports the latest strategy in the US occupation of Iraq: walling off an entire Sunni neighborhood, with checkpoints for entry or exit. I guess they figure if it's worked for Israel, it will work for Iraq. If you can't "catch the terrorists", just turn the entire city into a jail.

Latest US Solution to Iraq’s Civil War: A Three-Mile Wall
by Sinan Salaheddin
Published on Saturday, April 21, 2007 by Associated Press

BAGHDAD — A wall U.S. troops are building around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad came under increasing criticism on Saturday, with residents calling it “collective punishment” and a local leader saying construction began without the neighborhood council’s approval. The U.S. military says the wall in Baghdad is meant to secure the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.” The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the U.S. military said earlier this week.

But some residents of the neighborhood, which is surrounded by Shiite areas, complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.

“This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”

“We are in our fourth year of occupation and we are seeing the number of blast walls increasing day after day, suffocating the people more and more,” al-Dulaimi said in an interview.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs. But the Azamiyah project appears to be the biggest effort ever to use a lengthy wall in Baghdad to break contact, and violence, between Sunnis and Shiites.

The U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq now involves persuading Iraqis to live in peace and support their democratically elected government and launching a security plan in the capital that calls for 28,000 additional American troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers.

On Saturday, one American soldier was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad, the military said. A separate roadside bombing, in Diwaniyah about 80 miles south of the capital, killed a Polish soldier late Friday.

Khalid Ibrahim, 45, said the Americans were working hard to divide Baghdad’s neighborhoods - something he said he wasn’t sure was a good thing.

“This is good if it is temporary, to help the area with security problems. But if this wall stays for the long term, it will be a catastrophe for the residents and will restrict our movements,” said Ibrahim, an Azamiyah resident who works at the Interior Ministry.

The U.S. military says it began building the barrier April 10. AP Television News footage from the site on Saturday showed small concrete blocks, piles of dirt and coils of barbed wire on a main street. Eventually, the military said, the wall will be three miles long and include sections as tall as 12 feet.

Community leaders said Saturday that construction began before they had approved an American proposal for the wall.

“A few days ago, we met with the U.S. army unit in charge of Azamiyah and it asked us, as a local council, to sign a document to build a wall to reduce killing and attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces,” said Dawood al-Azami, the acting head of the Azamiyah council.

“I told the soldiers that I would not sign it unless I could talk to residents first. We told residents at Friday prayers, but our local council hasn’t signed onto the project yet, and construction is already under way.”

In other violence Saturday, two bullet-riddled dead bodies were discovered in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, police said. One of the bodies was found floating in the Euphrates River, and the other was discovered in a deserted area. Both victims had their hands and legs bound, and showed signs of torture, police said.

Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson paid an unannounced visit to Iraq and met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss the coalition’s efforts to improve security in cities such as Baghdad, the government said.

Australia has about 1,400 troops in and around the country.

Al-Maliki and Nelson met at the prime minister’s office in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, and al-Maliki “underlined that Iraqi forces are unified in battling terrorists and outlaws, and are now fighting shoulder to shoulder throughout Iraq,” especially in hard-hit areas such as Baghdad and the provinces of Anbar, west of the capital, and Diyala, to the northeast, a government statement said.

Bill O'Reilly bullies Denver Post reporter on illegal immigrant drunk driver story

Following my previous post, Bill O'Reilly's bullying continues with this story about Denver Post television critic Joanne Ostrow, who wrote an article criticizing O'Reilly for the illegal immigrant/drunk driving story and calling it racist. O'Reilly invited her on the show, she declined, his staff asked her for an interview, she declined, and so his producer, Porter Berry, followed her to a grocery store parking lot and forced an interview on her, demanding an apology, all captured in this YouTube video posted by O'Reilly's fans, who had nothing but praise for him:

100% Correct! - If you are a lier, a name-caller, liberal loon and a kool-aid drinker like the one in this video, then you better hide behind a rock or something, because Bill O'Reilly will find you and make you pay for your crimes.

That woman is a stupid MORON and should be deported for being ignorant and a know nothing C*NT

Good for you O'Reilly. Those boys showed her what's what.

Geraldo Rivera vs. Bill O'Reilly on drunk driving and illegal immigrants

Check out this video at YouTube of Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly arguing about a story on O'Reilly's show about an illegal immigrant who was caught driving drunk. Rivera argues that illegal immigrants don't get drunk or drive drunk more often than American citizens, so O'Reilly is only interested in the story because it shows immigrants in a bad light and he's trying to drum up hatred of them.

Administration tried to curb election turnout in key states

The Baltimore Sun reports that investigations have revealed a systematic campaign by the Bush Administration to block voting in key districts over the past six years. Says Joseph Rich, the former head of the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, "As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens."

Administration tried to curb election turnout in key states
Campaign against alleged voter fraud sought to bolster the GOP
By Greg Gordon
Mcclatchy-tribune
April 19, 2007

WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears today before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights "fundamentally flawed."

She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws," citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English-speaking voters.

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

• Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election.

• Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

• Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

• Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

Senate bars Medicare negotiations for lower drug prices

That this New York Times article is page A20 news and not front-page material -- when there are three front-page articles and a photo on the Virginia Tech killer -- just boggles my mind. Really, it just shows the collusion between corporate America, which includes the New York Times and its advertisers, and government.

Senate Bars Medicare Talks for Lower Drug Prices
By ROBERT PEAR
The New York Times
April 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 18 — A pillar of the Democrats’ program tumbled on Wednesday when the Senate blocked a proposal to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices for millions of older Americans, a practice now forbidden by law.

Democrats could not muster the 60 votes needed to take up the measure in the face of staunch opposition from Republicans. The opponents said private insurers and their agents, known as pharmacy benefit managers, were already negotiating large discounts for Medicare beneficiaries.

Fifty-five senators, including six Republicans, supported a Democratic motion to limit debate and proceed to consideration of the bill; 42 senators voted against it. The Senate had a brief debate on the merits of the bill, which is a priority for the new Democratic majority in Congress.

Republicans framed the issue as a choice between government-run health care and a benefit managed by the private sector. The benefit is delivered and administered by private insurers under Medicare contracts.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, denounced the bill as “a step down the road to a single-payer government-run health care system.”

Democrats said they were merely trying to untie the hands of the secretary of health and human services so he could negotiate on behalf of 43 million Medicare beneficiaries.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs is able to negotiate for lower-priced drugs,” said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. “H.M.O.’s can negotiate. Wal-Mart can negotiate. Why in the world shouldn’t Medicare be able to do that?”

A 2003 law prohibits Medicare from negotiating or setting drug prices or establishing a uniform list of covered drugs, or formulary.

Mr. Reid said Democrats fell short because of “the power of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry,” which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying and advertisements against the bill.

The vote also reflected ineffectual advocacy by Democrats, who were slow in responding to the vehement arguments of well-prepared Republican senators like Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

“Private competition works,” said Mr. Grassley, a principal author of the 2003 law. “The Department of Health and Human Services has had very little experience and a dismal track record” figuring out what to pay for drugs.

Big companies that offer the Medicare drug benefit, like Caremark and Medco Health Solutions, “have more market power than Medicare” because they negotiate for tens of millions of people in private plans, as well as for Medicare recipients, Mr. Grassley said.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said he did not want the government to supplant private plans. But, Mr. Wyden said, Medicare could negotiate better bargains on selected drugs that have no therapeutic equivalents or competition.

The House passed a bill requiring the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices by a vote of 255 to 170 on Jan. 12, eight days after Congress convened. The Senate bill permits but does not require negotiations.

President Bush had threatened to veto both versions. AARP, the lobby for older Americans, supported both.

The Republican senators who joined Democrats in voting to take up the bill on negotiating prices were Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and John McCain of Arizona, were not present.

An aide to Mr. McCain said he was campaigning in South Carolina and would have voted with the Democrats. An aide to Mr. Brownback said he would have sided with most Republican senators.

In creating the benefit in 2003, Congress made a radical departure from traditional Medicare, which has uniform benefits defined by law. Medicare recipients in every state have a choice of prescription drugs plans with different benefits, premiums, co-payments and deductibles. The 2003 law prohibited the government from interfering in negotiations between drug manufacturers and companies that provide the benefit. The House and Senate bills would repeal that ban.

Employers and health plans typically obtain discounts on particular drugs in return for encouraging patients to use those medicines, rather than competing products.

The Congressional Budget Office said that the Senate bill, like the House measure, “would have a negligible effect on federal spending.”

“Without the authority to establish a formulary or other tools to reduce drug prices, we believe that the secretary would not obtain significant discounts from drug manufacturers across a broad range of drugs,” the budget office said.

Some Republicans prepared to filibuster the Senate bill, but that proved unnecessary. Their whip, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, said Republicans had blocked consideration of the bill because they did not want to dicker with Democrats over amendments on unrelated topics, “with no happy end in sight.”

Mr. Wyden predicted that the Senate would vote again on the issue, perhaps as an amendment to a spending bill or other measure. “The fight will go on,” he said.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, said the vote showed that “the power of big pharma,” the pharmaceutical industry, “is still a presence in the halls of Congress.”

For mature audiences only, part 2: A Houston fuss over breast-feeding

Related to my earlier post on American perception of nudity is this New York Times article on a woman being threatened with eviction from the Ronald McDonald House (which, ironically, "provides low-cost lodging for families of gravely ill children") for breast-feeding her child in public:

A Houston Fuss Over Breast-Feeding Strikes a Responsive Nerve
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
April 19, 2007

HOUSTON, April 18 — It is an argument that nobody relishes. Not Jessica Mayo-Swimeley, who says that all she wanted to do was breast-feed her 17-month-old twin son Tobin after his surgery for a brain tumor.

And not Ronald McDonald House, which says it did not banish Ms. Mayo-Swimeley to her room to nurse her child.

But no dispute is obscure in the age of the Internet, so what might have been a local, if tearful, standoff has drawn a national spotlight, after Web postings by the aggrieved mother and her sister over an incident last Thursday crashed the Ronald McDonald House Web site in a deluge of recriminations.

Ms. Mayo-Swimeley, 27, an Air Force wife and a homemaker, said a McDonald House manager had admonished her for nursing her son in a lounge after the father of another child complained, and that she was then told to do the nursing in private, in her room, on threat of being evicted.

But Naomi Scott, executive director of Ronald McDonald House in Houston, which provides low-cost lodging for families of gravely ill children, said the charity supported breast-feeding, that Ms. Mayo-Swimeley had been asked only to nurse “more privately” and that she would never have been thrown out.

Both sides called the exchanges “intense” in an environment where family pain produced raw emotions, but agreed there were no villains.

“These are not bad people,” said Melanie Mayo-Laakso, Ms. Mayo-Swimeley’s sister, who joined her here this month for Tobin’s operation and a stay at one of Houston’s three McDonald Houses. “We love Ronald McDonald House.”

But Ms. Mayo-Laakso, who is nursing her 3-year-old daughter, added, “We want to make sure this is not happening to other people.”

After several days in Houston hotels, with their mother and four of their children, including Tobin’s twin brother, Elliot, Ms. Mayo-Swimeley, from San Antonio, and Ms. Mayo-Laakso, 29, from Two Harbors, Minn., arrived at McDonald House on April 4. Tobin underwent a 13-hour operation that day at the nearby M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to remove a slow-growing ganglioma.

Last Thursday about 5 p.m., Ms. Mayo-Swimeley said, she was in a lounge at McDonald House nursing Tobin — discreetly, she said — when she was told of the father’s complaint and was asked “would I please go up to my room.”

“I told her what I knew of Texas law — that it protected breast-feeding,” Ms. Mayo-Swimeley related, and her sister actually ran up to her room to look up the law on her laptop. The law essentially states, “A mother is entitled to breast-feed her baby in any location in which the mother is authorized to be.”

Ms. Mayo-Swimeley said she responded, “No, I don’t want to go into my room.”

After the surgery, Tobin had a second operation to remove a fluid buildup, and, she said, “the only thing that makes him feel better is to nurse.”

Supervisors were unrelenting, she said, adding, “I was crying — I felt we would have to leave.” The next day, she said, McDonald House called her social worker at M. D. Anderson to suggest other lodging if the sisters were unhappy there.

Meanwhile, Ms. Mayo-Laakso posted their account of events on a Web site about mothering, giving the e-mail address and telephone number of McDonald House, which was soon overwhelmed with protests.

On Monday, Ms. Scott and other administrators convened a meeting at McDonald House with the sisters, by then joined by allies including Marcia Lutostanski, a board member of La Leche League, the leading pro-nursing organization.

They agreed that the sisters could nurse in public areas if they were sensitive to others around them. McDonald House would work on clarifying its guidelines, Ms. Scott said.

Asked if the staff might have avoided the confrontation, Ms. Scott said: “It happened so fast, I don’t know what else we could have done. We feel we fell down the rabbit hole with all this.”

Micheline Donnelly, director of development for McDonald House here, said the organization supported breast-feeding. But Ms. Donnelly added, “We don’t advocate for causes; we provide shelter for families who travel far from home and are trying to save their child.”

Rachel Mosteller contributed reporting.

For mature audiences only: Perception of nudity in America and elsewhere

Alternet has an interesting story comparing perception of nudity in the Netherlands, where some gyms have "Naked Sundays", to perception of nudity in America, where PBS posts the warning "For mature audiences only" before showing the statue of David.

Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked?
By Dara Colwell, AlterNet
April 19, 2007

When Catholic protesters recently shut down a New York exhibit displaying a naked, life-sized Jesus sculpted from chocolate, the outcry wasn't totally unexpected. Labeled offensive by critics, the artwork touched an angry nerve by pushing religion and nudity -- two substances that historically don't mix -- into the limelight. While the media was quick to exploit the story, it also expressed surprising modesty when it came to the naked Christ, avoiding the full frontal and opting for photos of the Lord's backside.

But in Europe, and particularly the Netherlands, where bakeries display anatomically-correct marzipan nudes in their front windows right next to chocolate bunnies and chicks, such furor over confectionary draws a complete blank. On this side of the Atlantic, when it comes to nudity, Europeans happily assert they've got absolutely nothing to hide.

"The Netherlands is a liberal country where public nakedness is allowed, and that's the way it should be -- that's why there's a law for it," says Ragna Verwer of the Dutch Naturist Federation (NFN), a 70,000-member-strong organization established to expand naturist activities.

According to Verwer, 1.9 million Dutch regularly get nude, going to nude beaches or stripping down in their own gardens, though she estimates the numbers are much higher as NFN doesn't include sauna-goers in its research. "Naked recreation is well accepted here. But we have to take care that things stay this way, which is why we often discuss these matters with local city councils and recreation areas to create more places."

Legally, in Netherlands people are allowed to be naked anywhere except public roads or when they annoy others, a law in play since 1986. It is not uncommon to find nude swimming sessions at public swimming pools, nude or topless beaches. Recently, Fitworld, a gym in Heteren in the eastern Netherlands, introduced Naked Sunday, offering locals the opportunity for bare workouts. This quickly proved a popular idea -- at least with journalists, photographers and television crews, who easily outnumbered participants on the opening day.

"I've done interviews with people from Russia, Ireland, Canada, Australia, America and Turkey," says Fitworld's owner, Patrick de Man, who says Naked Sunday was in part a competitive response to other gyms offering pole dancing courses, but also a response to a request from two of his naturist clients. De Man says the amount of attention he received both from home and abroad was surprising because "being naked is absolutely normal here," though admittedly, bare bench presses were totally new to Holland. But the owner has also received complaints from locals, mostly about sanitation, and at least one member wrote on the club's website that he was switching gyms.

"A lot people from the church have sent me letters about God and stuff like that. But I tell them God was the first man of naturism. He and Adam and Eve were all naked on Earth," says de Man, taking the criticism rather pragmatically. True -- at least until the couple donned their first fig leaves, provoking centuries of subsequent debate.

"Nudity is definitely not shocking or even arousing," says Mandy Servais, a customer at Amsterdam's Sauna Deco, in a robe wrapped loosely around her body, which for all intents and purposes, was naked, as Dutch saunas are visited in the buff. Says Servais, who has frequented saunas since she was a teen, "I think as a society we're very simple and take a practical approach to sex and nudity. We think that everything that exists is normal so there's no need to make a fuss. We're not really occupied with what others think."

Verwer mirrors Servais' response. "I think the Dutch believe let everyone have their dignity and do what they enjoy most. This isn't just how we think about naked recreation, the same goes for gays --everyone's accepted," she says.

While the Dutch seem to accept that underneath their clothing everyone's naked, the same laissez-faire attitude doesn't apply in the States, where the public has been schooled in the cultural ideology that "nude is naughty," and nudity is regarded as sexual.

Perhaps much of this attitude can be chalked down to America's cultural forefathers, the Puritans, whose deeply religious moral zeal made them fear nudity so much they refused to bathe, ensuring a future of national prudishness.

This might appear a huge contradiction given the American media's rampant appetite for sex, but how else to explain the fury over Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" and the network's rush to cleanup before facing clampdowns and stiff fines? Or PBS's need to position the disclaimer "For mature audiences only" when broadcasting footage of Michelangelo's David.

A further inconsistency when it comes to nudity is what Americans regard as risqué: barely clad Victoria Secret models strutting their way across television or nude grandmothers? As Dove soap found out this March, it's the latter. The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates America's broadcast media, banned a series of prime-time ads depicting six middle-aged women posing nude for Dove Proage products, claiming it was inappropriate, though the ads ran successfully in Europe and Canada.

Ironically, Dove's parent company is the Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever. While a number of pro-family and women's groups complained the ad contributed to the further commercial sexualization of women -- an ongoing and valid debate -- clearly, older nudity is threatening because our culture rarely separates nakedness from sex, which is something the elder crowd, at least until Viagra, wasn't supposed to be having.

On a similar note, in 2004 Wal-Mart, never one to balk at profits, refused to sell Jon Stewart's book "America," which featured doctored nude photos of Supreme Court judges. Old, saggy bodies were simply too offensive compared to, say, the number of slasher films Wal-Mart also carries.

Of the Dove Proage ads, says Claire Taylor, who works in international advertising, including projects with Ogilvy & Mather, the company responsible for the Dove ad campaign, "If the ad featured 20-year olds, there'd be no problem. It's so hypocritical."

Taylor, an American who has lived in Amsterdam for the last 25 years, thinks the negative reaction stateside is due to "puritanical prudishness," which doesn't balk at violence or soft porn on television, yet is offended by older nudity. "Now seeing older bodies -- that's reality TV if you want reality," Taylor quips.

Another, perhaps sobering, reality: America has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, and a rate that exceeds the Dutch by nine-fold. A healthy attitude to nudity as well as sex, something the Dutch are regaled for, might have a positive impact as more exposure typically leads to greater information.

Still, in America, being naked remains complex. Because our associations are often limited to porn, hippy naturalists, or the $400 million a year nude recreation industry, nudity is either seen as sexual or a gimmick. Take journalistic "undercover" exposes -- a choice phrase, given the situation -- on nudists at play ("Just look at those guys playing tennis!").

Or the media's buzz over photographer Spencer Tunick and his nude landscapes. Tunick, who specializes in photographing hundreds of naked bodies sprawled together in abstract forms against an urban backdrop, has definitely pushed social boundaries at home. But in Amsterdam, where Tunick is due this summer, it's a different story -- or no story. "Is it a big deal that's everyone's naked when everyone's naked?" asks Servais.

In Europe, then, clearly neither moral outrage nor public disorder greets nudity. Men don't go wild, women remain safe and the zero fashion statement remains just that, something with zero impact.

Taylor, who has fully adapted to Dutch ways, has taken her American sisters to the sauna when they visit and watched their transition from shock to comfort. "They're both overweight, so at first they were horrified. But one of my sisters quickly got used to being naked and it felt natural. When you see that other people are flabby and kind of falling apart, it's OK," she says, laughing. "Listen, you got to check out each other's parts, but seeing the Cesearean scars, fat rolls, cellulite, eczema and aging bodies of the over 50s crowd puts it all in perspective -- you realize how absolutely unique a gorgeous naked body is. Americans might associate nudity with eroticism but here, it's only associated with nakedness," she says.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Sometimes nudity can be a useful, positive statement, even in the States. Like the World Naked Bike Ride, a sort of "Critical Ass" of cyclists organized to protest car culture, promote sustainability practices and celebrate creative expression. Organized by Conrad Schmidt, a South African living in Vancouver, British Columbia, the international event is clothing optional.

"It's a way of challenging the stifling conformity we get here in Vancouver and North America, and certainly nudity laws challenge a system that needs shaking up," says Schmidt, who has been surprised how trouble-free the rides have been on a whole, though in America, Chicago tried to shut the event down and Los Angeles, never a hotbed of community activism, boasted a larger police-to-participant ratio.

"In Portland, people are always riding naked these days, but what's strange is they're apparently harassed more by the police when they're clothed," he says. "Nudity is tough for law enforcement because it involves the concept of indecent exposure. There's no good definition of what's indecent about the human body."

Dara Colwell is a freelance writer based in Amsterdam.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50732/

Virginia Tech school shooting exposes dysfunctional American society

The World Socialist Web Site has a editorial on the school shooting at Virginia Tech and what it says about American society:

The Virginia Tech massacre—social roots of another American tragedy
By David Walsh
18 April 2007

A day after the mass killing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, along with grief and dismay, some reflections on life in the US are clearly in order. The event was horrifying, but no one who has followed the evolution of American society over the past quarter-century will be entirely shocked. Such psychopathic episodes, including dozens of multiple killings or attempted killings in workplaces and schools, have occurred with disturbing regularity, particularly since the mid-1980s. A timeline assembled by the Associated Press and the School Violence Resource Center lists some 30 school and college shootings alone since 1991.

Official reaction to the Blacksburg deaths, one feels safe in predicting, will be as superficial and irrelevant as it has been in every previous case.

The appearance of George W. Bush at the convocation held on the Virginia Tech campus Tuesday afternoon was especially inappropriate. Here is a man who embodies the worst in America, its wealthy and corrupt ruling elite. As governor of Texas, Bush presided over the executions of 152 human beings; as president, he has the blood of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Afghans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on his hands. His administration has made unrelenting violence the foundation of its global policies, justifying assassination, secret imprisonment and torture.

Speaking of the Blacksburg killings, Bush commented: “Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone—and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.” If he and his cronies were not entirely immune to the consequences of their own policies, it might strike them that they could be speaking about the masses of the dead in Iraq, who have also done “nothing to deserve their fate.”

The president, in his perfunctory remarks, appeared anxious, above all, to put the events behind him. Bush’s comment that “It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering” comes as no surprise. He recognizes instinctively, or his speechwriters do, that considering the “violence and suffering” in a serious manner would raise troubling questions, and even more troubling answers. When the president concluded, “And on this terrible day of mourning, it’s hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal,” he said more than he perhaps wanted to. This is an admission that something has gone terribly wrong at Virginia Tech—and in this regard the university is a microcosm of the larger social reality—and will not easily be put right.

In general, those speaking at the gathering—school officials, politicians and clergy—seemed in haste to get past the event. In some cases, this may stem from a sincere desire to console and to lift the community’s collective spirits. However, a major tragedy, with broad social implications, has taken place and it needs to be considered.

The events at Virginia Tech follow almost eight years to the day the mass killing at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in which 15 people died. At the time, the media and politicians performed a ritual breast-beating, with Bill Clinton in the lead. Much was made of the need for new gun controls, increased security in the schools and the need to counsel troubled students. Then, as now, official American public opinion refused to recognize the killings as a social disorder.

What has occurred in the intervening years? Can anyone argue that American society has developed since 1999 in such a manner as to make tragedies similar to Columbine less likely?

Everyday life in America has continued to have a violent, remorseless backdrop. In April 1999 US and NATO forces were launching cruise missile after cruise missile against the former Yugoslavia and inflicting lethal sanctions and periodic bombing raids on Iraq. Somalia and Afghanistan had also already come in for punishment from the Clinton administration.

American militarism, however, has truly flourished in the present decade. The US has been occupying portions of Central Asia or the Middle East for most of the eight years since Columbine. Following a hijacked election and making use of the terrorist attacks on September 11, the Bush-Cheney regime launched a war based on lies. The lesson taught by the ruling elite is clear: in achieving one’s aims, any sort of ruthlessness is legitimate.

At the same time, the social gap in America has widened in the past decade. By 2005 the top one-tenth of 1 percent of the US population earned nearly as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Those 300,000 wealthy individuals each received 440 times as much income as the average person in the poorest half of the population, nearly doubling the divide from 1980. The rich lord it over everyone else, piling up fortunes that come directly at the expense of wide layers of working people. Society is divided starkly into “winners” and “losers.” For the latter, the future is bleak.

The decay of social solidarity, the domination of the political process by cash, the erosion of democratic rights, the transformation of the media into more or less a propaganda arm of the government and the Pentagon—all of these processes, under way in 1999, have now attained a far more finished state.

More generally, the past twenty-five years have witnessed a sharp lurch to the right by the American political and media establishment, driven by its relative economic decline, and an accompanying coarsening and degeneration of the social atmosphere. Brutality in language and action is now the preferred policy of the powers that be.

The proliferation of violence, the continuous appeals to fear, the incitement of paranoia—all of this has consequences, it creates a certain type of climate. American society has for so long tried to cover up or ignore its most pressing problems. What are the official responses? Punishment first, then the invocation of the deity. The suppression of contradictions, however, doesn’t make them disappear.

The culture as a whole has suffered. Without giving any ground to the right-wing morality police, the prevalence of video games, popular music and films that celebrate rape and killing can hardly be taken as a sign of social well-being. Every effort has been made to atomize people, to render them callous and inured to the suffering of others. Human life has been devalued and often held in contempt.

Clearly, there have been consequences. The ability to kill one’s fellow students methodically in cold blood reveals a terrible level of social anomie. A doctor at Montgomery Regional Hospital, where the injured were treated, commented: “The injuries were amazing. This man was brutal. There wasn’t a shooting victim that didn’t have less than three bullet wounds in him.”

The gunman in Blacksburg, a 23-year-old Korean-American, Cho Seung-Hui, is one of those forlorn individuals who inevitably figure in such tragedies. He was a “loner,” says one college official. His roommates describe him as “weird,” a young man who ate by himself, refused to engage in conversation, appeared to have no friends or girl-friends and who sat at his computer for hours or simply sat “staring at his desk, just staring at nothing.”

Cho’s English professor indicated that there “were signs he was troubled,” based on his work in a creative writing course and directed him to counseling. One of his fellow students in a playwriting class described his work as “really morbid and grotesque.” She remembered one of his plays: “It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play the boy threw a chainsaw around, and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father with a Rice Krispy treat.” It’s unpleasant to have to acknowledge, but would such a scenario be unthinkable in the contemporary American film industry?

Cho, who came to the US as a child and attended high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, in suburban Washington, DC, left behind a note, in which he reportedly ranted against “rich kids,” “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans.” He also wrote, “You caused me to do this.” According to school authorities, the young man posted a warning on a school online forum, “im going to kill people at vtech today.”

This was a troubled person, but nothing was done. He fell through the cracks, like so many. There are plenty of well-meaning individuals in America, more than willing to lend a hand, but as a society it is uncaring. Many obstacles—institutional, financial—block the way of truly helping people, and all of this takes place in unyieldingly competitive conditions.

The incident in Blacksburg, dreadful as it is, is not unique or isolated. One day after the mass shooting in Virginia, university administrators in Texas, Oklahoma and Tennessee locked down or evacuated campuses, along with officials at two public schools in Louisiana. In Hollywood Hills, Florida, a high school was closed after a student sent a picture of a gun over his cell phone and threatened to kill himself. In Iowa, Rapid City’s Central High School was also locked down after a report of someone on the school grounds carrying a gun.

What has been learned since Columbine about the source of this social alienation? A perusal of the editorials in the nation’s major newspapers would inevitably draw one to the conclusion ... essentially nothing.

The editors of the New York Times lament the fact that Americans face some of the gravest dangers “from killers at home armed with guns that are frighteningly easy to obtain.” They also remind their readers that after Columbine “public school administrators focused heavily on spotting warning signs early enough to head off tragedy.”

Hundreds of millions of guns circulate in the US, and they are no doubt too easy to get one’s hands on. However, this is largely beside the point. Such arguments do nothing to explain the regularity with which sociopathic behavior manifests itself in American life. As for keeping one’s eyes open for “warning signs,” this may well be good advice, but it is hardly an answer either.

Editorials in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, USA Today and Detroit Free Press do no more to shed light on the situation. Respectively, they raise questions (“Should metal detectors be ubiquitous in American classrooms and universities?”), abstain from commenting (“We should remember that there are times when silence is the best response”), express astonishment (“It is hard to imagine how anyone could annihilate so many fellow humans, so senselessly”) and anger (“Today, however, the focus should properly be on revulsion at what the gunman wrought and heartache for his victims”) or moralize (perhaps the violence is “a symptom of a society with loose moral footing”).

In the absence of serious discussion or commentary, the 24-hour coverage of a tragedy like this one on the cable television networks begins to take on the character of exploitation.

Virtually no portion of the media coverage is devoted to the social causes of the events. The political and media establishment responds to the Virginia Tech massacre as it does to every significant indication of social malaise, with a combination of denial and self-delusion. In deluding themselves that the epidemic of shootings can be treated by increased vigilance or the transformation of campuses into fortresses, the politicians and editorialists demonstrate how far from reality they are.

Such events bring home how necessary it is for another way to be found, for more sensitive answers, real answers to problems. This, in turn, raises the need for a different social orientation, which calls into question the present foundations of American society. And such searching critiques should not be reserved only for moments of national calamity.