Iranian Journalist Sentenced to Three Years in Jail

New York Times
September 28, 2010

Judicial authorities have sentenced a prominent reformist journalist to three years in prison, his family members confirmed Tuesday, while an Iranian-Canadian blogger was sentenced to a 19-year incarceration after having already spent more than two years in detention.

The punishments reinforced the repression on freedom of expression in Iran, where a crackdown under way since the disputed presidential election of June 2009 has intimidated and silenced many voices of dissent. Amnesty International has said 70 Iranian journalists are in prison, while many more, arrested then released, are at risk of arbitrary re-arrest.

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Colbert Testimony Before Congress (House Subcommittee)

Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert testified before Congress about immigration during a hearing called "Protecting America's Harvest."

Is It Ever Right to Buy or Sell Human Organs?

debate: Sally Satel and Jeremy Chapman

New Internationalists
September 23, 2010

A leading medical think-tank, The Nuffield Council for Bioethics in London, is currently examining this thorny issue. They are due to report their findings in 2011. In the meantime we have asked two experts to argue the case for and against.

SALLY SATEL

The global organ shortage has spawned illegal and unregulated organ markets. The World Health Organization estimates that five to ten per cent of all kidneys transplanted annually – perhaps 63,000 in total – are obtained in the organ bazaars of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and South America. Thus, we face a dual tragedy: on one side, thousands of patients who die each year waiting for a kidney; on the other, a human rights fiasco in which corrupt brokers deceive indigent donors about the nature of surgery, cheat them out of payment and ignore their post-surgical needs.

Altruistic appeals to organ donation have not yielded enough organs for transplantation. Not all developed countries have made the most use of posthumous donation, and of course they should. Unfortunately, much of the world transplant establishment – including the World Health Organization, the Transplantation Society and the World Medical Association – focuses exclusively on obliterating organ trafficking. While at face value this may seem reasonable, in reality it is a lethally one-sided prescription, because trying to stamp out underground markets either drives corruption further underground or causes it to flourish elsewhere. Government-sponsored compensation of healthy individuals who are willing to give one of their kidneys to save the life of a dying stranger is the best short-term solution.

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The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi

Based on previously classified documents and on interviews with former secret police officers and ordinary citizens, The Firm is the first comprehensive history of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, at the grassroots level. Focusing on Gransee and Perleberg, two East German districts located north of Berlin, Gary Bruce reveals how the Stasi monitored small-town East Germany. He paints an eminently human portrait of those involved with this repressive arm of the government, featuring interviews with former officers that uncover a wide array of personalities, from devoted ideologues to reluctant opportunists, most of whom talked frankly about East Germany's obsession with surveillance. Their paths after the collapse of Communism are gripping stories of resurrection and despair, of renewal and demise, of remorse and continued adherence to the movement. The book also sheds much light on the role of the informant, the Stasi's most important tool in these out-of-the-way areas. Providing on-the-ground empirical evidence of how the Stasi operated on a day-to-day basis with ordinary people, this remarkable volume offers an unparalleled picture of life in a totalitarian state.

Afghanistan's parliamentary election: Not exactly a ringing endorsement

Economist
September 23, 2010

Nobody sitting in the sun-drenched rose garden in Kabul where the self-styled leader of Afghanistan’s opposition likes to hold court could avoid the feeling of déjà vu. It was in the same setting in August 2009 that Abdullah Abdullah denounced the fraud that wrecked the legitimacy of the presidential election he lost. One year on and nothing seems to have changed. As the figurehead to a slate of parliamentary candidates, the nattily dressed politician announced that the legislative election on September 18th was beset by “massive fraud and rigging”. He even promised to repeat last year’s coup de théatre by showing videos of ballot stuffing. “Most of the mistakes of the past have repeated themselves,” he said.

The same problems are re-emerging largely because too little was done to clean up Afghanistan’s electoral machinery after last year’s flawed presidential poll. The country still has about 5m more voter cards than actual voters, for example. But in two respects, things have actually got much worse.

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The Mosque, the Nazis and Martin Luther King

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Huffington Post
September 22, 2010

Pretty much everyone now seems to understand that the proponents of the New York City mosque and community center have a First Amendment right to locate their facility near the site of the World Trade Center. That is, almost everyone now seems to acknowledge that the government cannot constitutionally prohibit a religious organization from constructing a church, a temple, a mosque, etc. at a particular location, if it would allow other faiths to construct such a facility there. Discrimination among religions is the paradigm violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty.

So, if this is not a legal dispute, what is it? It is a dispute between two groups of private citizens who must work it out for themselves. Because the First Amendment precludes the government from forbidding the mosque, the proponents of the mosque have the upper hand. They have a constitutional right to do what they want to do, and it therefore falls to their opponents to try to persuade them not to exercise that right.

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Voting in Afghanistan: Low bar

Economist
September 20, 2010

It did not take long for the international community to give Saturday’s parliamentary election a big thumbs-up. A coordinated torrent of praise from the main foreign missions in Afghanistan began to gush a few hours after polls closed.

The EU said the vote underlined “the will of the Afghan people to shape the future of their country”. For General David Petraeus the election proved that the “voice of Afghanistan's future does not belong to the violent extremists and terror networks.” The UN commended Afghans for “their courage and determination in exercising their democratic right to vote.” All of this over an election with manifest shortcomings. The only observation mission of serious size, the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), said in an initial assessment it had “serious concerns about the quality of the elections”.

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Cuba's Castro learns what most of us already knew

Washington Post
September 19, 2010

Fidel Castro, 84, may have failing eyesight but he has noticed something: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." So, the secret is out. And there is no joy among the alumni, if any still live, of the golden days of Les Deux Magots.

That Paris cafe, now a tourist magnet, was where, before and after World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre and kindred spirits compared notes on life's emptiness and the American menace. Of the latter, a major newspaper, Le Monde, editorialized on March 29, 1950: "Coca-Cola is the Danzig of European Culture." (Ancient history: Danzig was the Polish -- Germany thought German -- city that was a flash point in the approach of the war.)

For advanced thinkers, Castro was a happy harbinger of, among much else, "direct democracy." He came to power on Jan. 1, 1959, and the next year Sartre arrived to explain, in the manner of Parisian intellectuals, the Meaning of It.

As everyone attuned to the Zeitgeist then was -- college students who owned black turtlenecks; aficionados of foreign films (not "movies," heaven forfend) -- Sartre was an existentialist. A critic called existentialism the belief that because life is absurd, philosophy should be, too. But Sartre's pilgrimage took him, with Castro, into Cuba's countryside. There they stopped at a roadside stand for lemonade and an epiphany.

The lemonade was warm, so Castro got hot, telling the waitress that the inferior drink "reveals a lack of revolutionary consciousness." She said the refrigerator was broken. Castro "growled" (Sartre's approving description) that she should "tell your people in charge that if they don't take care of their problems, they will have problems with me." Instantly Sartre understood "what I called 'direct democracy' ":

"Between the waitress and Castro, an immediate, secret understanding was established. She let it be seen by her tone, by her smiles, by a shrug of the shoulders, that she was without illusion."

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Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry

by Nicholas D. Kristof

New York Times
September 18, 2010

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

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Is Turkey becoming more democratic, or less so?

Washington Post
Editorial
September 19, 2010

Are the constitutional amendments approved by a referendum in Turkey last Sunday "a turning point" for Turkish democracy, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared? Are they "another important step by Turkey on the road towards Europe," as the German foreign minister put it? Or do they open the way to a "civilian dictatorship" by Mr. Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party, as the leader of the opposition is warning? Perhaps the most salient -- and worrisome -- characteristic of Mr. Erdogan's government after nearly eight years in office is that the answer is not obvious.

After a polarizing campaign that became more a referendum on his government than on the 26 proposed constitutional reforms, Mr. Erdogan was rewarded with a decisive victory: 58 percent of voters approved the changes in a charter that had been imposed by the military after a 1980 coup. Many of the changes are indisputably liberal and will strengthen democracy in a Muslim country that is a NATO member and has aspired to join the European Union. For example, military officers will be subject to civilian trials; the rights of women, the elderly, handicapped people and children will be enhanced; restrictions on unions will be lifted; and individuals will have greater privacy rights and the ability to appeal to the Constitutional Court.


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Athens court urged to dismiss libel action against journalist

Reporters Without Borders for Press Freedom
September 17, 2010

Reporters Without Borders condemns businessman Stavros Vitalis’ libel action against journalist Takis Michas, which an Athens court is to begin hearing on the 17 Septembrer. Vitalis is suing him over an article he wrote for the daily Eleftherotypia on 25 July 2009 in which he quoted from an article in the Serb weekly Global about the presence of Greek paramilitary forces at the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

A former “Greek volunteer,” Vitalis considers the use of the term “paramilitary” to be an insult to the military forces which he regards as “regular” because they were part of Bosnia’s Serbian army. He also disputes that these “contingents” participated in the massacres.

Michas is known for the quality and thoroughness of his reporting on a subject that is almost taboo in Greece. In his book Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic’s Serbia, he interviewed many people about the military support that “Greek volunteers” gave to Bosnia’s Serbs and criticised the past and current Greek governments for refusing to investigate these activities or release classified document that could shed light on them.

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Afghans brave Taliban to vote in parliamentary election

BBC News
September 18, 2010

Afghans have voted in a key parliamentary election, with turnout estimated at about 40%, although there have been a number of Taliban attacks.

At least 14 people were killed, the Afghan interior ministry said, including six security force members in a Taliban attack in the north.

There have also been some reports of fraud, including the washing off of supposedly indelible voting ink.

The poll is seen as a test of credibility for President Hamid Karzai.

More than 2,500 candidates are vying for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, or Wolesi Jirga.

Afghan soldiers and police have been on alert, backed up by nearly 150,000 foreign troops.

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Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'

Independent
September 17, 2010

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

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We must stanch Cuba's coming crisis

Washington Post
September 18, 2010

Is this the beginning of the end for the Castro brothers in Cuba, and if so, what should Washington do?

The announcement Monday that, over the next six months, Cuba will fire more than 500,000 workers -- or fully 10 percent of the workforce in a country of 11 million people -- is a far more radical change than any of the island's past free-market flirtations and an extraordinary admission of failure.

The firings have already begun, and the question is whether Raul Castro, the plan's champion, can control an unraveling of this perestroika any better than Mikhail Gorbachev did in the Soviet Union.

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When does a massacre become a genocide?

Economist
September 17, 2010

Cambodia’s United Nations-backed war-crimes court formally indicted four former Khmer Rouge leaders on September 16th. Their trial, set to begin next year, will be the second of its kind. In July Comrade Duch, the commandant of an infamous prison, was handed a 35-year sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity, reduced to 19 years against time served and a period of illegal detention. Next in the dock are the Khmers Rouges’ chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, their former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, both ministers in their government. The four stand charged, like Duch, with war crimes and crimes against humanity—and also with genocide. The court’s new charge should prove most contentious yet.

The term genocide has been used freely by Cambodians and foreign observers alike in reference to the atrocities committed during the Khmers Rouges’ ultra-Maoist revolution. In the mid- to late 1970s it cost the lives of nearly one in four Cambodians; all told, at least 1.7m people died. But the tribunal, started in 2007, only introduced this monumental charge at the end of last year. Investigating judges and prosecutors proposed adding it on the basis of their research into the defendants’ alleged role in the slaughter of Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims.

In 1999, UN experts concluded that there was strong evidence pointing to genocide by the Khmer Rouge. Ben Kiernan, a scholar of the Khmer Rouge and founder of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Project, for one, is adamant that the mass killing in Cambodia constitutes a genocide. In his research Mr Kiernan cites the disproportionate death toll inflicted on those two non-Khmer ethnic groups. He argues further that the regime called officially for the elimination of both minorities.

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Taliban Step Up Efforts to Disrupt Election

Wall Street Journal
September 18, 2010

The Taliban Friday stepped up their campaign to disrupt Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, kidnapping two candidates and several electoral workers across the country a day ahead of the vote.

Afghan and international forces are bracing themselves for a major showdown with the Taliban once the polls open Saturday morning, fearing spectacular insurgent attacks in Kabul and other major cities.

"The election day will be a violent day, probably the most violent day of the year," says Staffan de Mistura, the chief United Nations envoy here. "It remains to be seen how efficient this violence will be, and whether it will induce people not to go vote."

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Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell won't stay execution of Teresa Lewis

Washington Post

September 18, 2010

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Friday evening that he will not spare the life of a 41-year-old woman who is set to become the first woman executed in the state in nearly a century.

Teresa Lewis, who conspired with two men to carry out the 2002 murders of her husband and stepson, is scheduled to be killed by lethal injection Thursday in Virginia's death chamber. Her appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lewis's supporters have argued that she does not deserve to die because she is borderline mentally retarded and was manipulated by a much smarter conspirator. They say it is unfair that Lewis was sentenced to death while the two men who fired the shots received life sentences.

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Battle Over Burqas

Wall Street Journal
Opinion Journal
September 17, 2010

Deputy Editorial Page Editor Bret Stephens and Editorial Board Member Matthew Kaminski debate France's decision to ban the garment worn by many Muslims.

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On Free Association, Business and Labor Agree

by Greg Lebedev and John Sweeney

Wall Street Journal
September 17, 2010

Business and labor often disagree on what's best for our nation. But on one big idea we agree: The best way to create public policy is through a vigorous give-and-take between elected representatives and citizen groups. This is an indispensable element of American democracy. But it is lacking in too many other countries.

In January, Freedom House identified growing barriers to civic engagement by freely organized groups as a major feature in a global decline in democracy. To counter this trend, the Center for International Private Enterprise helps businesses and the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center helps workers to assert and defend their freedom of association. This right is crucial for building democracies that deliver for all segments of the population.

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The Relentless Revolution - Joyce Appleby on the History of Capitalism

Reason TV
September 17, 2010

"Exploitation is not exclusively capitalist, but wealth creation is." So says Joyce Appleby, professor emerita at UCLA and author of the new book, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.

Although she criticizes certain aspects of capitalism, Appleby credits it for producing countless marvels of the modern world. "If you want this level of enjoyment," says Appleby, "Science, the arts, food, transportation, information—then you have to realize what's generating the wealth to create it."

Reason.tv's Ted Balaker sat down with one of our nation's most accomplished historians to discuss the history of capitalism, how capitalism stacks up against competing systems, and why Americans should root for a wealthy China.

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Sarkozy Blasts EU as Flap Over Gypsies Grows

Wall Street Journal
September 17, 2010

A war of words between the European Union and France over a French campaign to deport Gypsies spilled into a summit of EU leaders Thursday. French President Nicolas Sarkozy angrily denounced a top EU official who had alluded to Nazi horrors in her condemnation of the removals, and insisted they would continue.

The 27 EU leaders weren't scheduled to talk about Gypsies, also known as Roma in Europe. But controversy abhors a vacuum, and the summit's light schedule of nebulous foreign-policy discussion was quickly overtaken by an escalating international dispute that touches on the reach of Brussels' authority, the sanctity of European rights, the pursuit of law and order, and a very peeved French president.

Over a lunch initially dedicated to a progress report from an economic task force, Mr. Sarkozy and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, exchanged "very fierce" words, Bulgarian Premier Boyko Borisov told reporters afterward. "Quite lively," said U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron.

Asked about the lunchtime contretemps, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Lunch was good, as far as the food was concerned."

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Could Kyrgyzstan be the democracy in Afghanistan's back yard?

by Thomas A. Daschle

Washington Post
September 17, 2010

Kyrgyzstan rarely makes headlines in the United States. It is a small, landlocked country in Central Asia that is overshadowed by neighbors such as China, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. When I recently visited Bishkek, the capital, it was clear that Kyrgyzstan's strategic importance and democratic impulses deserve greater attention. At the same time, the people of Kyrgyzstan would rather be recognized for their democratic ambitions than as an asset in the war in Afghanistan.

One narrative among American Kyrgyzstan-watchers goes something like this: Kyrgyzstan is important because it hosts a U.S. airbase, which serves as a key transit point for personnel en route to Afghanistan. Although the rights to this base were reasonably secure under the autocratic administration of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, his ouster in April threw the fate of the base into question. Kyrgyzstan is now ruled by a more democratic but weak interim government that was unable to quell the deadly ethnic violence that erupted in June, has been unable to remove a hostile mayor in the south, has been unreliable about meeting international commitments, and has risked increasing tensions by holding a constitutional referendum in June and scheduling parliamentary elections in October. The narrative's subtext seems to be that this government is less predictable than its authoritarian predecessor. Indeed, a recent headline in The Post described Kyrgyzstan as a "new headache" for U.S. policy.

I see it differently. Kyrgyzstan is important not only because it houses an airbase but also because it has the most democratic potential in the region. Processes and institutions do not yet align with citizens' aspirations, but popular demand and respect for democracy still burn bright. The Bakiyev regime toppled in April at least in part because it failed to deliver on democratic promises and trampled on political freedoms and human rights.

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A More Democratic Turkey

New York Times
Editorial
September 16, 2010

Turkey, already the Muslim Middle East’s sturdiest democracy, fortified its freedoms in a referendum on Sunday, with 58 percent of voters approving a package of constitutional amendments meant to end army meddling in civilian politics. That overwhelming “yes” vote showed that Turks are fed up with ultimatums and coups and want elected politicians fully in charge.

Turkey’s Army and its closely allied judicial establishment long considered themselves guarantors of the militant secularism preached by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That claim cloaked a succession of repressive military coups — three in the past half-century. President Obama rightly hailed the vote as a tribute to Turkish democracy.

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Khmer Rouge Figures Indicted

Wall Street Journal
September 17, 2010

A United Nations-backed tribunal in Cambodia indicted four senior members of the former Khmer Rouge regime, assuring that the country will keep grappling with its war-time past for at least another year.

The trial, which is expected to begin by mid-2011, is likely to be far more complex—and possibly more controversial—than the recently completed case against former Khmer Rouge prison commander Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, who was convicted of crimes against humanity in July. That case drew international attention because it was the first international-tribunal trial against a Khmer Rouge member after the collapse of the regime, which governed Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and is blamed for 1.7 million deaths in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

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Don’t Enforce ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

New York Times
Editorial
September 16, 2010

For almost a generation, the argument against allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military rested heavily on the claim that they would damage the morale and readiness of America’s armed forces.

A judicial opinion last week by Virginia Phillips, a federal trial judge in California, musters compelling logic and persuasive evidence to show that the policy has done the opposite and has damaged the interests of the United States. Judge Phillips also made a strong case that the federal statute enacting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy violates the Constitution.


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Read the Opinion

Waging Culture Wars on Women’s Bodies

by Asma Afsaruddin

Center for the Study of Islam and Democacry
September 2010


The recent passage of the bill banning the burqa in the French Senate and the heated discussion preceding it have brought into relief a time-honored (masculine) practice of waging culture wars on the bodies of women. In this case, the bodies are those of veiled Muslim women serving as ideological sites for passionate French debates about national identity and cultural authenticity.

For all the female emancipatory rhetoric which heavily cloaks (pun intended) this piece of legislation, the paternalism of those who are agitating for it is unmistakable. After all, it is mostly male French legislators who are in the process of deciding, without the consent of and consultation with the women involved, what is good for them. If, as has been argued correctly in my opinion, no one has the right to force women to wear the burqa, then to be consistent, it should similarly be argued that no one has the right to force them to desist - both smack of unconscionable paternalism and condescension. In the current highly-charged French atmosphere, the former is deemed offensive, the latter not - even though both measures deny the women themselves any agency and rob them of their voices, a situation that these legislators are supposed to be against. French president Sarkozy, of all people, has tied the ban to an attempt to protect “the dignity of women” and prevent their “oppression.”

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Dispute Grows Over France’s Removal of Roma Camps

New York Times
September 16, 2010

A meeting of European Union leaders that was intended to help promote Europe’s role on the global stage, instead descended on Thursday into open discord over the expulsion of thousands of Roma from France.

After heated exchanges, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France vowed to keep dismantling illegal immigrant camps and rejected complaints that the French authorities were racist and deliberately targeted the Roma for deportation.

The disagreement underlines how migration within the 27 nations of the European Union has become a combustible issue in the wake of the European economic crisis. The union’s latest expansion, which brought in the relatively poor and underdeveloped nations of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, has renewed concern about immigration and integration, particularly during an economic downturn that has spurred many to migrate in search of work.

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Egypt's Youth Build New Opposition Movement

Associated Press/NPR
September 16, 2010

Inside a small apartment tucked away in a middle class Cairo neighborhood, a trainer teaches a dozen volunteers of a budding opposition movement the basics of political organization — communication, recruiting, gathering signatures.

The instructors draw inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and download books from American scholar Gene Sharp, whose tactics of civil disobedience influenced public uprisings against authoritarian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Iran and elsewhere.

Over the past six months, about 15,000 of these volunteers have formed the kernel of a burgeoning youth opposition movement in Egypt who are pinning their hopes for leadership on Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel peace laureate and former chief of U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency.

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Raheel Raza confronts Tariq Ramadan, Pakistan - United Nations

International Humanist and Ethical Union
September 16, 2010

Famous human rights activist, Board member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) Representative Raheel Raza confronts Tariq Ramadan and the Pakistani Ambassador representing the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Video recorded by IHEU representative David Cornut, United Nations meeting, September 16, 2010.

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See also

Roma, on Move, Test Europe’s ‘Open Borders’

New York Times
September 16, 2010

This city is full of stark, Soviet-era housing blocks, and the grimmest among them — gray towers of one-room apartments with communal bathrooms and no hot water — are given over to the Roma population.

Roma like Maria Murariu, 62, who tends to her dying husband in a foul-smelling room no bigger than a jail cell. She has not found work in five years.

“There is not much for us in Romania,” she said recently, watching her husband sleep. “And now that we are in the European Union, we have the right to go to other countries. It is better there.”

Thousands of Romania’s Roma, also known as Gypsies, have come to a similar conclusion in recent years, heading for the relative wealth of Western Europe, and setting off a clash within the European Union over just how open its “open borders” are.

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Kagame plays a straight bat

Economist
September 16, 2010

Off to the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London to see the Rwandan president Paul Kagame give a guest lecture. The topic that Mr Kagame had chosen to talk about was his favourite: “The Challenges of Nation-Building in Africa: The case of Rwanda”. But what a packed room really wanted to hear was his response to the draft UN report on war crimes in Congo leaked a few weeks ago that virtually accuses his forces of committing genocide there in the late 1990s. Did he mention the burning subject of the moment in his 20-minute speech? Not at all. He just waited for the question and answer session, and then smoothly dismissed the allegations; “baseless” and “absurd”, he said.

As this was one of the first times that he has appeared in front of a critical Western audience since the UN report made headlines around the world, Mr Kagame’s high-handed dismissal of it was either very smart or very dumb—and I can’t quite decide which.

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Σχέδιο για σύμφωνο συμβίωσης ομοφυλόφιλων ζευγαριών

Τα Νέα
17 Σεπτεμβρίου 2010

Σύμφωνο συμβίωσης για άτομα του ίδιου φύλου προωθεί η κυβέρνηση, σύμφωνα με όσα δήλωσε στο ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό ΒΗΜΑ FM 99,5 ο υπουργός Δικαιοσύνης Χάρης Καστανίδης.

Ο κ. Καστανίδης ανέφερε ότι σε συνεργασία με τη Γενική Γραμματεία Ισότητας, το υπουργείο Δικαιοσύνης έχει δημιουργήσει μια νομοπαρασκευαστική επιτροπή που θα καταθέσει προτάσεις για το σύμφωνο συμβίωσης ατόμων ιδίου φίλου.

Το σύμφωνο συμβίωσης σήμερα ισχύει μόνο για τα ετεροφυλόφιλα ζευγάρια.

Περισσότερα

Reform in Cuba Towards a mixed economy

Economist
September 16, 2010

Ever since Raúl Castro took the reins of power in Cuba in 2006, he has seemed to hint that he wants to reform the island’s moribund centrally planned economy. But the changes he has introduced have been either limited or almost inconsequential, such as giving more freedom to farmers, allowing self-employment for barbers and letting Cubans have (unaffordable) mobile phones. Until now. On September 13th the government announced, through the mouth of the official trade-union confederation, that more than 1m people—a fifth of the workforce—will be made redundant from state jobs, half of them by April 1st 2011.

Some of the unemployed will be offered new government jobs, including in the police and tourism. But hundreds of thousands will be expected to fend for themselves. To help them, self-employment is to be legalised in dozens of areas, from transport to construction. The reforms will also allow many small state-owned businesses to become co-operatives, run by their employees. They will have to pay taxes, though how much has not yet been spelled out.

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On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View

Seattle Weekly
September 15, 2010

You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It's all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon.

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Europe's Romanies: Hot meals for hard cases

Economist
September 16, 2010

Preaching to outsiders comes naturally to the European Union’s leaders. They are comfortable castigating Iran for its abuse of human rights or America for its unequal society. They are less happy when outsiders point to their own shameful social problem: the conditions and treatment of the continent’s 10m-plus Romani (or Gypsy) citizens.

On every social index, from income to life expectancy, from illiteracy to health, from criminality to child welfare, the Romanies do worse than any other European group. They are not just poor, but also persecuted. In some countries even allegations of forced sterilisation persist, amid official denials.

Until the European Union expanded eastwards, this was mostly a problem for eastern European countries. But many Romanies have since moved westwards, boosting the numbers of an ethnic group which is rarely welcomed. Rightly or wrongly, locals believe they bring with them dirt, crime, begging and squatter camps at beauty spots.

Some western European governments have a simple solution: deport them. Pioneered by Italy, that approach has now spread to France, which has sent some 8,000 Romani home to Romania and Bulgaria this year, in what it insists are mostly voluntary deportations, aided by cash resettlement grants. The policy is generally popular among voters.


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Confessions of a Gay Soldier

by Anonymous

New Republic
September 16, 2010

I am a soldier. I am a gay man. I believe there is no greater honor than to serve in uniform. I cannot tell my name.

And I’m exhausted.

As the country slowly—very slowly—approaches a turning point in the debate over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” I want to offer some perspective on what it is like to be a soldier under this policy. On how I, the commander of a unit in the United States military, balance the tasks of soldiering, leading soldiers, and watching over my shoulder, constantly, lest I reveal my true self and risk my career. And, finally, on why DADT not only serves to drain some of the military’s best talent—see what just happened to the ninth-ranked cadet at West Point—but also erodes several of the most valuable lessons service has taught me.

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The strange death of social-democratic Sweden

Economist
September 16, 2010

Outside Scandinavia, Sweden is generally known for two things: social democracy, and the books of Stieg Larsson. That may change, for if the polls in the run-up to the election on September 19th are correct, the first may end up looking like one of the corpses so often found in the second.

The election is expected to return the centre-right government voted in four years ago. Indeed, the main centre-right party, the Moderates, could oust the Social Democrats as Sweden’s biggest single party—for the first time since the 1930s. The centre-right’s success has not only undermined the view, widely held outside Sweden, that the place is a social-democratic paradise; it has also chipped away at a social model that foreigners find enviable but Swedes find expensive.

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With Presidential Drones, Who Needs Judges?

by Nat Hentoff

Cato Institute
September 15, 2010

President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are now defendants in a historic lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Washington, by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The case is brought on behalf of American citizen Nasser al-Awlaki.

The complaint in the case starkly and accurately lays out the constitutional issue at stake: "This case concerns the executive's asserted authority to carry out 'targeted killings' of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed conflict."

As I and other reporters have confirmed, the complaint continues: "the (U.S.) government maintains lists of suspects — 'kill lists' — against whom lethal force can be used without charge, trial or conviction."

That is an utterly clear description of how to deny the Fifth Amendment's command that "no person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."


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Turkey’s referendum: creating constitutional checks and balances

by Aslı Ü. Bâli

Foreign Policy
September 15, 2010

In recent months, commentators have given warning of creeping Islamization in Turkey's domestic and foreign policy. Descriptions of the new "swagger" in Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's approach to the Middle East are paired with allegations of an increasingly authoritarian style of government by the ruling AKP party. Many have seized upon this weekend's constitutional referendum in Turkey as evidence that the country's secular establishment has been displaced and Islamist forces are consolidating power. While the referendum followed a period of intense political polarization, this simplistic account of Islamist forces arrayed against embattled secularists is both wrong and dangerous.

The twenty-six constitutional amendments at issue in the referendum are difficult to criticize on substance. They include provisions that: empower civilian courts while reducing the jurisdiction of military courts; strengthen gender equality and protections for children, the elderly, veterans and the disabled; improve privacy rights and access to government records; expand collective bargaining rights; and remove immunities long afforded to those responsible for the 1980 military coup. The overwhelming effect of these provisions amounts to civilianizing the military coup-era constitution, strengthening individual freedoms and undertaking much-needed judicial reform. Unsurprisingly, then, the European Union gave its strong support to the amendment package and President Obama called to congratulate Prime Minister Erdogan on the outcome of the referendum.

Why, then, should these amendments have been treated as controversial? The main objections centered on two elements: procedurally, the amendments were offered as a single package rather than allowing the electorate to vote on each provision individually. More importantly, opposition groups saw provisions for changes to the composition and selection process of the constitutional court and a board to oversee judicial appointments as an attempt at court-packing that would undermine judicial independence. While procedurally it might have been preferable to offer the amendments for referendum individually, the substantive concerns about the judiciary are the core of the controversy and they are largely baseless.

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A vote on gay rights: The Senate's chance to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell'

Washington Post
Editorial
September 16, 2010

The Senate will have a historic and long overdue opportunity next week to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

This should not be a difficult choice. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called for repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," as has President Obama. Recent polls show that nearly 80 percent of the American people also favor repeal. The House and the Senate Armed Services Committee voted this year to abolish the Clinton-era measure and gave the Pentagon until Dec. 1 to release a plan to implement a repeal. The president, Mr. Gates and Adm. Mullen would have to certify that implementation of the repeal would not hurt recruitment, readiness or retention. But the plan will be meaningless unless the Senate also acts -- and soon.

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Turkey's Choice

by Soner Cagaptay

Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2010

Had I voted in Sunday's referendum in Turkey, I would have struggled to decide whether to vote for or against the constitutional amendments put forth by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

On the one hand, the reform package includes progressive amendments, such as constitutionally guaranteed gender equality. On the other hand, it grants the AKP the power to appoint most of Turkey's high court judges without a confirmation process. Prior to Sunday, the secular courts were the last remaining check on the power of the AKP—an authoritarian movement with Islamist roots that has often interpreted democracy as unchallenged majority rule. That judicial check is now gone.

With the amendments now passed, the AKP promises to draft a new constitution for Turkey. But regardless of the laws and amendments that Ankara passes, the question remains whether the AKP will actually transform the country into a liberal democracy.

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Convertible Castros?

Wall Street Journal
Editorial
September 16, 2010

An old joke from the Soviet era had it that "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." Most Cubans stopped pretending to work a long time ago, and this week the Castro regime announced that it will now stop pretending to pay them.

That might be the best way to think about the news, reportedly contained in an Aug. 24 internal document, that Cuba's Communist Party is proposing to lay off more than 500,000 workers by March 2011 because it can no longer afford to maintain its "bloated payrolls." If nothing else, this is an historic acknowledgment that the revolution has failed—and from its own architects.

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Sherry F. Colb D.C. Circuit Holds that Month-Long Police GPS Monitoring Triggers Fourth Amendment

by Sherry F. Colb

FindLaw
September 15, 2010

Last month, in United States v. Maynard, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Fourth Amendment "reasonable search" requirement applies to police when they track the movements of a person's car via an attached GPS device. In so holding, the D.C. Circuit joined a growing list of federal appellate courts that have opined on both sides of the question whether GPS-tracking constitutes a "search" for purposes of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

This question is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court before long, and it asks about the nature and extent of privacy that the Constitution grants us against government intrusion.

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U.S. Commission On Civil Rights To Debate Its Own Existence After Promoting Conservative Values

Talking Points Memo
September 15, 2010

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is hosting its national conference tomorrow in D.C., but don't expect a big turnout of civil rights organizations.

"I'm not attending the conference. I think it's a sham," Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told TPM.

The USCCR, established in 1957 as a bulwark against racial discrimination against African-Americans, has historically been associated with a pro civil rights agenda. But under the presidency of George W. Bush, conservatives who had long opposed the commission's work were able to stack the commission with like-minded commissioners, who took the agency in a different direction -- including focusing much of its work on instances of reverse racism.

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Torture Tort Terror

by Jacob Sullum

Reason
September 15, 2010

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama criticized the Bush administration for its excessive secrecy, noting that it had "invoked a legal tool known as the 'state secrets' privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court." Obama also promised to end "extraordinary rendition," a practice through which "we outsource our torture to other countries."

But last week the Obama administration used the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit by five former captives who say they were tortured as a result of extraordinary rendition. Although candidate Obama surely would have been outraged, President Obama is for some reason less concerned about abuses of executive power.

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When Islamism Is Liberal-Democratic

by Max Fisher

Atlantic
September 14, 2010

Turkish voters' overwhelming approval of a package of sweeping Constitutional reforms on Sunday has been marked as a victory for the country's staunchly Islamic ruling party. This watershed moment for the popularity and power of the religious party, a major defeat for the secular military rule that has made Turkey one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East, has understandably worried many Western observers. The U.S. has learned from decades in the Middle East to distrust what the New York Times and others describe as "Islamism" (the Times calls this vote a victory for "the Islamist-rooted government that continued the country's inexorable shift in power away from the secular Westernized elite that has governed modern Turkey for most of its history"). Islamism is a vague and imperfect term, but generally means the use of Islam in politics, ranging from Saudi Arabia's monarchy to Pakistan's sharia-seeking extremists to Turkey's democratically elected Justice and Development (AK) Party. However, conflating all such groups as scary-sounding "Islamists" misses the important point that not all Islamic governments are bad. In fact, Turkey's step away from secular rule comes in the form of Constitutional reforms that promote, more than anything else, liberal-democratic values. That's not a coincidence. Islamic rule and liberal democracy, far from mutually exclusive in the Middle East, can go hand-in-hand.

Though we in the West typically focus on the militant extremists, they are merely the fringe of political Islam. Middle Eastern Islamic political movements are, more than anything else, populist. They represent the interests of the working class, oppose authoritarian rule by elites, tend to be a bit nationalistic, and are in general not so different from the populist movements of the U.S. and elsewhere. As Turkey's Constitutional referendum demonstrates, they're also quite good at bolstering democratic institutions. These reforms will bar gender discrimination, improve privacy and civil liberty protections, reduce the special legal protections afforded to elites, and overhaul the judiciary. These changes will roll back much of the military rule that, though decidedly non-democratic, has made Turkey so reliably secular.

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Ukrainian Democracy in Peril

by Alexander J. Motyl

Wall Street Journal
September 15, 2010

Ukraine's already weak democracy has just received three body blows from the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

On Sept. 7, Ukraine's parliament passed a law effectively depriving the inhabitants of Ukraine's capital city, Kiev, of self-rule. According to the law, the executive functions of the city now belong to the so-called Kiev City State Administration. Who appoints the head of that body? The president. The parliamentary measure now gives Mr. Yanukovych control over the one city in Ukraine that has consistently voted against him, his party, and his cronies; that was the site of the Orange Revolution that disgraced him in 2004; and that has the country's highest concentration of foreign diplomats, journalists, and business people. Mr. Yanukovych knows that he cannot control Ukraine without controlling Kiev. Now he does.

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Power to the (Blogging) People

by Thomas L. Friedman

New York Times
September 14, 2010

This moment was inevitable. Ever since China began to shuck off communism and turn itself into a global economic power, its leaders have followed the strategy of a “peaceful rise” — be modest, act prudently, don’t frighten the neighbors and certainly don’t galvanize any coalition against us. But in recent years, with the U.S. economic model having suffered an embarrassing self-inflicted shock, and the “Beijing Consensus” humming along, voices have emerged in China saying “the future belongs to us” and maybe we should let the world, or at least the ’hood, know that a little more affirmatively. For now, those voices come largely from retired generals and edgy bloggers — and the Chinese leadership has remained cautious. But a diplomatic spat this past summer has China’s neighbors, not to mention Washington, wondering for how long China will keep up the gentle giant act. With an estimated 70 million bloggers, China’s leaders are under constant pressure now to be more assertive by a populist- and nationalist-leaning blogosphere, which, in the absence of democratic elections, is becoming the de facto voice of the people.

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Supreme Court Case Prompts $1 Million ACLU Gift

Wall Street Journal
September 15, 2010

In April 2009, 19-year-old Savana Redding appeared before the Supreme Court with her lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union. Ms. Redding was in eighth grade when she was strip-searched by officials at her middle school in an effort to find contraband ibuprofen. The ACLU argued that the actions of Safford United School District officials violated the young woman's constitutional rights and, ultimately, the justices agreed.

Andrea Soros was also in the chamber that day to observe the case, which she says was "pretty amazing" to watch. Ms. Redding "was basically somebody whose dignity was violated and who responded to that and found a partner in the ACLU," said Ms. Soros.

Seeing ACLU lawyers "under the gun" is part of what motivated Ms. Soros and her husband, Eric Colombel, to give a $1 million gift to the ACLU's Leading Freedom Forward campaign.

Ideas of "dignity and diversity" inform all of Ms. Soros's giving and this gift is to help build momentum around the organization's grassroots initiatives.

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Glenn McCoy (September 14, 2010)

Bill Would Repeal Military Gay Law

Wall Street Journal
September 15, 2010

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) is pushing ahead with a measure that would repeal the Pentagon's ban on gays serving openly in the military, setting the stage for a possible confrontation with Republicans.

Language that would begin the process of repealing the law—known as "don't ask, don't tell," because it allows gays and lesbians to serve as long as they don't disclose their sexual orientation—is included in the $726 billion defense authorization bill that has been approved House but not by the Senate.

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Microsoft and Russia

New York Times
Editorial
September 14, 2010

Microsoft made the right decision to stop helping Russian authorities use claims of software piracy to harass and silence dissenters. On Monday, it announced that it is barring its lawyers from taking part in such cases and will provide a blanket software license to advocacy groups and news media outlets in Russia, undercutting the Kremlin’s tactic.

Still, Microsoft’s willingness to lend itself to politically motivated investigations — it changed course only after an article by Clifford Levy in The Times on Sunday — suggests a shocking failure of corporate responsibility. The Times said lawyers for Microsoft bolstered state police in politically tinged cases across Russia. They made statements suggesting the company was a victim and called for criminal charges. After police seized a dozen computers from a Siberian environmental group, the group said all its software was legally licensed and asked Microsoft to confirm this. Microsoft would not. The police used information from the computers to track down and interrogate some of the group’s supporters.

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Burqa Is Banned in France

Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2010

France risked the wrath of the Islamic world on Tuesday by banning burqas and other full-body robes worn by some Muslim women, in a long-debated move that shows the depth of concern over the rise of Muslim culture in Europe.

The vote—passed primarily by the center-right party of President Nicolas Sarkozy, with most opposition Socialist Party lawmakers abstaining—came as a number of European countries are trying to figure out how to reconcile the values of modern Europe with more assertive expressions of Islamic faith.

Switzerland, for example, banned the construction of minarets after a referendum last year. Belgium and Spain are discussing measures to outlaw similar full-body cloaks. In Sweden, long known as one of Europe's most tolerant societies, an anti-immigration party that has called for Swedish Muslims to integrate more is expected to win its first Parliamentary seat in this weekend's elections.

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Rabbis for Human Rights

by Nicholas D. Kristof

New York Times
September 14, 2010

The Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof sees how Rabbis for Human Rights are a voice of conscience in the West Bank, protecting Palestinian farmers from some hostile Jewish settlers.

"The Kids Are Alright": Family Life and Family Law on the Big Screen

by Joanna L. Grossman and Lawrence M. Friedman

FindLaw
September 14, 2010

Hollywood has now made a movie, The Kids Are Alright, of a type that would have been unthinkable in the bad old days of the Hays Office (Hollywood's private association, founded in 1922, charged with upholding moral standards in films); and even much more recently than that. Not only is the movie full of sex, but some of the sex is between two women.

The two women, Nic and Jules--brilliantly played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore--are, in a way, married to each other. We never learn whether they have actually gone through a ceremony of marriage somewhere (probably not), or have entered into a domestic partnership or other formal arrangement. In any event, they are in a longstanding, committed relationship; they own a house together; and they are raising two teenagers together, a boy, Laser, and a girl, Joni.

Each woman is the birth mother of one of the children. The father of both children was the same anonymous sperm donor. But as the movie begins, the kids have located him, and they meet him, greet him, and bring him more or less into the family. The results are disastrous, especially when he and one of the Moms have bouts of hot sex together. This infidelity threatens to destroy the "marriage," but, by the close of the movie, there is a happy ending. Of a sort.

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Crist says he's reviewing gay-adoption ban

Orlando Sentinel
September 14, 2010

Gov. Charlie Crist is reviewing whether the state should drop a lawsuit that seeks to uphold the state's ban on gay couples adopting children.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman threw out the ban in January 2008 in the case of Martin Gill, a gay man who adopted two boys, but the decision is being appealed by the state Department of Children of Families.

A decision on that appeal from the 3rd District Court of Appeal is pending, but Crist, who has said recently that he doesn't support the ban, acknowledged Tuesday that he is reviewing the appeal.

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Snooping on teens reduces their American individualism

by Gene Healy

Washington Examiner
September 13, 2010

Downtown D.C.'s booming Gallery Place corridor has lately been plagued by disruptive, loitering teens. Two weeks ago, after meeting with District officials, business owners hit on a novel solution: installing the latest in crowd-control technology outside the Chinatown Metro entrance.

Like a reverse dog whistle, the "Mosquito" emits a piercing beep at a frequency only young ears can hear. "Cool stuff," brags a spokesman for the British company selling the device. "Drives kids crazy."

Nobody likes getting jostled by unruly punks, but there's something a tad creepy about "fixing" the problem with a human "bug zapper" -- a machine that harasses guilty and innocent alike.

Kids are getting used to this sort of thing, though. This generation has been poked, prodded, monitored, and controlled more than any other in American history.

When you look at our public schools, which educrats are busily turning into high-tech dystopias, you wonder how the regimented teen is supposed to grow up into an independent, free-thinking citizen.

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Le Monde accuses Nicolas Sarkozy of ordering 'spying' on reporters

Guardian
September 13, 2010

France's most respected newspaper has accused Nicolas Sarkozy of ordering the counterintelligence services to spy on one of its reporters.

Quoting a law enacted during Sarkozy's presidency, Le Monde said it was suing for breach of confidentiality of sources linked to one of the most embarrassing scandals to hit the government.

The paper claimed that the DCRI, the equivalent of Britain's MI5 domestic secret service, had broken the law by investigating the source of leaks related to claims of tax evasion and illegal party funding by the L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. "The law is absolutely clear. 'The confidentiality of journalists' sources is protected in the exercise of their mission to inform the public'," wrote Le Monde in its editorial.

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Cuba’s Public-Sector Layoffs Signal Major Shift

New York Times
September 13, 2010

In perhaps the clearest sign yet that economic change is gathering pace in Cuba, the government plans to lay off more than half a million people from the public sector in the expectation that they will move into private businesses, Cuba’s labor federation said Monday.

Over the past several months, President Raúl Castro has given stern warnings that Cuba’s economy needs a radical overhaul, beginning with its workers. With as many as one million excess employees on the state payroll, Mr. Castro has said, the government is supporting a bloated bureaucracy that has sapped motivation and long sheltered a huge swath of the nation’s workers.

“We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working,” he told the National Assembly last month.

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The US Soldier Who Committed Suicide After She Refused to Take Part in Torture

by Greg Mitchell

Nation
September 13, 2010

With each revelation, or court decision, on US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo—or the airing this month of The Tillman Story and Lawrence Wright's My Trip to Al-Qaeda—I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who died seven years ago this week. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003.

Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the US Senate committee probe and various press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it.


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The Privilege of Prejudice

by William Saletan

Slate
September 13, 2010

Republican opponents of the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero constantly invoke the feelings of 9/11 families. "It's a very bad idea to build that mosque and center that close to Ground Zero," Newt Gingrich said yesterday on Fox News Sunday. "It is, in fact, an affront to virtually all the families who lost loved ones at 9/11." On Meet the Press, Rudy Giuliani agreed: "The people [it's] hurting here most are the families that have lost loved ones. … Eighty or 90 percent feel extremely hurt by this. It's making them relive the pain. They should be the ones to get the most consideration."

But what's behind those feelings? Why do these families object to a house of worship for Muslims who had nothing to do with 9/11?

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Europe Reverts to Type

by Bret Stephens

Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2010

If a top European mandarin mouths off about Jews and the rest of Europe's political class acts like it's no big deal, does that make them cowards, accomplices—or just politically astute? Probably all three.

Earlier this month, Karel De Gucht, the European Union's trade commissioner and a former foreign minister of Belgium, gave an interview to a Flemish radio station in which he offered the view that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were sure to founder on two accounts: first, because Jews are excessively influential in the U.S; second, because they are not the sorts to be reasoned with.

"Do not underestimate the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill," Mr. De Gucht said, dispensing with the usual fine-grained, face-saving distinction about the difference between a "Jewish" and an "Israel" lobby. "This is the best organized lobby, you shouldn't underestimate the grip it has on American politics—no matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats."

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Erdogan pulls it off

Economist
September 13, 2010

Turkey’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party has won a ringing endorsement from voters in a bitterly contested referendum on constitutional changes that are poised to raise democratic standards and further erode the powers of the country’s once omnipotent generals.

Final results show that 58% of Turks approved the government's proposed changes to the constitution, which was written by the army after it overthrew the government in 1980. Both government and opposition leaders cast the referendum as a vote of confidence in the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan's AK party has governed Turkey since 2002, when it catapulted to single-party rule on a platform of democratic reform and market liberalisation.

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Cuba to Cut State Jobs in Tilt Toward Free Market

Wall Street Journal
September 14, 2010

Cuba will lay off more than half a million state workers and try to create hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs, a dramatic attempt by the hemisphere's only Communist country to shift its nearly bankrupt economy toward a more market-oriented system.

The mass layoffs will take place between now and the end of March, according to a statement issued Monday by the Cuban Workers Federation, the island nation's only official labor union. Workers will be encouraged to find jobs in Cuba's tiny private sector instead.

"Our state can't keep maintaining...bloated payrolls," the union's statement said. More than 85% of Cuba's 5.5 million workers are employed by the state.

Cuba's effort to reorient its labor force represents the country's biggest step toward a freer economy since the early 1990s, when Havana embarked on a brief attempt to make changes in a bid to survive without subsidies after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main benefactor.

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No Gay Divorcees in Texas: An Appellate Court Refuses to Dissolve a Same-Sex Marriage

by Joanna L. Grossman

FindLaw
September 13, 2010

Can a couple that marries in one jurisdiction get divorced in another? For most couples, the answer is yes, as long as they reside in the state where the divorce is sought. But for same-sex couples, the answer is no better than "Maybe" (and in many cases, it is clearly "No") due to the patchwork of inconsistent state laws regarding same-sex marriage.

This column will discuss a recent appellate court decision from Texas, In the Matter of the Marriage of J.B. and H.B., which illustrates the problem and its harsh consequences for many affected couples.

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The eviction of the Roma: Reding and the riot act

Economist
September 14, 2010

"France is a large country. It is sovereign… France is not before a tribunal.” So declared Pierre Lellouche, the French minister for European afffairs, as he tried to fend off on September 13th the growing questions about his country’s eviction of Roma (gypsy) migrants. A day later comes the news that France may indeed be placed before the judges.

For weeks, the European Commission has shied away from declaring France’s actions illegal, although it has strongly hinted at its disapproval, asking for further information and issuing coded warnings.

Today Viviane Reding (pictured), the commissioner responsible for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, unexpectedly turned up the regular noon briefing and dropped the euphemisms. “I personally have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a member-state of the European Union just because they belong to a certain ethnic minority. This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second world war.” The commission, she predicted, would have no choice but to begin formal “infringement proceedings”, a process that could end with France being taken before the European Court of Justice, based in Ms Reding’s native Luxembourg.

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Five myths about prostitution

by Sudhir Venkatesh

Washington Post
September 12, 2010

Last weekend, Craigslist, the popular provider of Internet classified advertising, halted publication of its "adult services" section. The move followed criticism from law enforcement officials across the country who have accused the site of facilitating prostitution on a massive scale. Of course, selling sex is an old business -- most say the oldest. But as the Craigslist controversy proves, it's also one of the fastest changing. And as a result, most people's perceptions of the sex trade are wildly out of date.

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