Washington Post
Editorial
November 14, 2010
It tells you a lot about Burma that of two ostensibly historic events last week - its first national election in 20 years and the release from house arrest of Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi - the one that captured the world's attention, and has the potential to put the nation on a more positive path, was not the election.
In turn, it tells you just about everything you need to know about the election that the observer mission was led by North Korean diplomats. Burma (also known as Myanmar), a Southeast Asian nation of 50 million people, is rivaled in Asia only by North Korea for the repressiveness of its regime and the contrast between the wretched poverty of its population and the isolated splendor of its rulers' lives. When the regime allowed a free election in 1990, the overwhelming winner was the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who even then was under house arrest. The generals ignored the results and jailed many of the winners.
No doubt Burmese leader Than Shwe hoped that last week's election would erase, finally, the memory of that 1990 poll. But the vote was so rigged, it had the opposite effect. Rules were written so that, no matter how people voted, the military would retain control; but even so, the regime could not resist Election Day intimidation and ballot-box stuffing. So it remains as true as ever that the only players with claim to political legitimacy are the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi.
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Sunday, November 14, 2010
Burmese Dissident Tells Crowd Not to Give Up Hope
November 14, 2010
One day after being freed from house arrest, Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, addressed a wildly cheering crowd of thousands of supporters Sunday, saying she was listening to their needs and telling them not to give up hope.
“The basis of democratic freedom is freedom of speech,” she said in remarks reported by news agencies.
Her freedom and her immediate return to her political struggle set her on a path to a possible confrontation with the generals who had confined her to her home, out of the public eye, for 15 of the past 21 years.
“Democracy is when the people keep a government in check,” she said. “I will accept the people keeping me in check.”
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, urged her supporters to be politically active, saying, “You have to stand up for what is right.”
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Here’s a Woman Fighting Terrorism. With Microloans
New York Times
November 13, 2010
An old friend of mine here fights terrorists, but not the way you’re thinking. She could barely defeat a truculent child in hand-to-hand combat, and if she ever picked up an AK-47 — well, you’d pray it was unloaded.
Roshaneh Zafar is an American- educated banker who fights extremism with microfinance. She has dedicated her life to empowering some of Pakistan’s most impoverished women and giving them the tools to run businesses of their own. The United States should learn from warriors like her.
Bullets and drones may kill terrorists, but Roshaneh creates jobs and educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people — draining the swamps that breed terrorists.
“Charity is limited, but capitalism isn’t,” Roshaneh said. “If you want to change the world, you need market-based solutions.” That’s the point of microfinance — typically, lending very poor people small amounts of money so that they can buy a rickshaw or raw materials and start a tiny business.
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Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
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| Dr. Josef Mengele in 1956 |
November 13, 2010
A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.
It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.
The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.
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Read the Report
Into a bigger prison
Economist
November 13, 2010
Once again, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese opposition, is in theory at liberty. Her latest spell of house arrest ended on November 13th, when she came briefly out of her home in Yangon, where she had been detained, to greet a crowd of thousands of delighted supporters. In the past, such spells of freedom have been illusory. The junta has placed such strict limits on her activities that she has in effect simply been released into a larger prison.
This time, Miss Suu Kyi emerges into a somewhat changed political landscape. On November 7th the junta staged the first elections for 20 years. They were designed not so much to pass power to civilian politicians as to entrench the junta's own power. Its front “party” has indeed claimed a massive victory. But the polls have at least allowed a tiny flicker of pluralist light into the murk of Burmese totalitarianism.
More
November 13, 2010
Once again, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese opposition, is in theory at liberty. Her latest spell of house arrest ended on November 13th, when she came briefly out of her home in Yangon, where she had been detained, to greet a crowd of thousands of delighted supporters. In the past, such spells of freedom have been illusory. The junta has placed such strict limits on her activities that she has in effect simply been released into a larger prison.
This time, Miss Suu Kyi emerges into a somewhat changed political landscape. On November 7th the junta staged the first elections for 20 years. They were designed not so much to pass power to civilian politicians as to entrench the junta's own power. Its front “party” has indeed claimed a massive victory. But the polls have at least allowed a tiny flicker of pluralist light into the murk of Burmese totalitarianism.
More
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Burma democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi released
November 13, 2010
Myanmar's military government freed its archrival, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
A smiling Suu Kyi, wearing a traditional jacket and a flower in her hair, appeared at the gate of her compound as the crowd chanted, cheered and sang the national anthem.
"If we work in unity, we will achieve our goal. We have a lot of things to do," she told the well-wishers, who quickly swelled to as many as 5,000. Speaking briefly in Burmese, she said they would see each other again Sunday at the headquarters of her political party.
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What Rhymes With Ayatollah?
by Bary Weiss
Wall Street Journal
November 13, 2010
President Obama provoked some controversy earlier this fall when he professed his affinity for the rap of Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, the latter of whom spent the past eight months jailed at Rikers Island on gun charges. But if the president really wants to cause a stir next time he's asked what's on his iPod, he should mention Hichkas and Yas instead.
Those are the names of two of Iran's most famous rappers—musicians who have a huge following among Iranian youth despite the fact that their songs are officially banned by the regime.
Since Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Western music has been forbidden in the Islamic Republic. To record a CD, musicians have to get the official blessing of the Culture Ministry. No prize for guessing what sort of lyrics they deem kosher.
But perhaps no musical genre vexes the regime quite so much as rap. And understandably: Hip hop was born in the South Bronx. Iranian rappers openly admit that they've been inspired by American artists like Tupac and Eminem, imitating their use of slang and heavy beats. Forced to record in basement studios, these determined rappers—men and women—get their songs out on black-market CDs, websites devoted to Persian music, and YouTube.
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Wall Street Journal
November 13, 2010
President Obama provoked some controversy earlier this fall when he professed his affinity for the rap of Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, the latter of whom spent the past eight months jailed at Rikers Island on gun charges. But if the president really wants to cause a stir next time he's asked what's on his iPod, he should mention Hichkas and Yas instead.
Those are the names of two of Iran's most famous rappers—musicians who have a huge following among Iranian youth despite the fact that their songs are officially banned by the regime.
Since Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Western music has been forbidden in the Islamic Republic. To record a CD, musicians have to get the official blessing of the Culture Ministry. No prize for guessing what sort of lyrics they deem kosher.
But perhaps no musical genre vexes the regime quite so much as rap. And understandably: Hip hop was born in the South Bronx. Iranian rappers openly admit that they've been inspired by American artists like Tupac and Eminem, imitating their use of slang and heavy beats. Forced to record in basement studios, these determined rappers—men and women—get their songs out on black-market CDs, websites devoted to Persian music, and YouTube.
More
A Defeat for Checks and Balances
New York Times
Editorial
November 12, 2010
The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to allow the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to remain in effect is a victory for theory over reality and a defeat for America’s system of checks and balances.
It also underscores the bravery and competence of Virginia Phillips, the federal judge who mustered logic and persuasive evidence in September when she struck down the statute enacting the policy. She did the same in October when she issued a ban on its enforcement.
The Supreme Court’s order included no explanation, so it’s sensible to look for that in the Justice Department filing that urged the court to rule as it did. Repeatedly, it mentioned repeal of the law by Congress and the process under way in the executive branch laying the groundwork for that. It said the wrong way to overturn the law is by “judicial invalidation” and the right way is by “repeal of an act of Congress by Congress itself.”
Sometimes the courts have to act when Congress lacks the sense or the courage to do so. The Senate could have joined the House in repealing the antigay law in September. It did not. Given the sharp rightward turn of Congress in the elections, how can the Justice Department now make that argument with a straight face?
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Editorial
November 12, 2010
The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to allow the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to remain in effect is a victory for theory over reality and a defeat for America’s system of checks and balances.
It also underscores the bravery and competence of Virginia Phillips, the federal judge who mustered logic and persuasive evidence in September when she struck down the statute enacting the policy. She did the same in October when she issued a ban on its enforcement.
The Supreme Court’s order included no explanation, so it’s sensible to look for that in the Justice Department filing that urged the court to rule as it did. Repeatedly, it mentioned repeal of the law by Congress and the process under way in the executive branch laying the groundwork for that. It said the wrong way to overturn the law is by “judicial invalidation” and the right way is by “repeal of an act of Congress by Congress itself.”
Sometimes the courts have to act when Congress lacks the sense or the courage to do so. The Senate could have joined the House in repealing the antigay law in September. It did not. Given the sharp rightward turn of Congress in the elections, how can the Justice Department now make that argument with a straight face?
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Cindy McCain Calls for Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask’
New York Times
November 12, 2010
Speaking in a video for an ad campaign aimed at ending the bullying of gay teenagers, Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain of Arizona, broke with her husband and called for a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
In a new public service announcement for NOH8, a group devoted to promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Mrs. McCain faces the camera and says: “Our political and religious leaders tell L.G.B.T. youth that they have no future.”)
“They can’t serve our country openly,” says Mrs. McCain, whose husband, a Republican and veteran of the Vietnam War, has described the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as “imperfect but effective.” (His office did not return a phone call seeking comment.)
More
November 12, 2010
Speaking in a video for an ad campaign aimed at ending the bullying of gay teenagers, Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain of Arizona, broke with her husband and called for a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
In a new public service announcement for NOH8, a group devoted to promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Mrs. McCain faces the camera and says: “Our political and religious leaders tell L.G.B.T. youth that they have no future.”)
“They can’t serve our country openly,” says Mrs. McCain, whose husband, a Republican and veteran of the Vietnam War, has described the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as “imperfect but effective.” (His office did not return a phone call seeking comment.)
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Ban on Gays in the Military Stays in Effect
New York Times
November 12, 2010
The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy restricting openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from serving will remain in force while a legal challenge is considered by a federal appeals court, the United States Supreme Court declared Friday.
In an unsigned, two-paragraph order, the justices denied a request by the Log Cabin Republicans, the group trying to overturn the law, to reinstate an order by a federal district judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips, that prohibited enforcement during the appeal. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled, however, that the military could continue enforcement during the appeal, and on Friday the Supreme Court agreed. The decision did not address the merits of the case.
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November 12, 2010
The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy restricting openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from serving will remain in force while a legal challenge is considered by a federal appeals court, the United States Supreme Court declared Friday.
In an unsigned, two-paragraph order, the justices denied a request by the Log Cabin Republicans, the group trying to overturn the law, to reinstate an order by a federal district judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips, that prohibited enforcement during the appeal. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled, however, that the military could continue enforcement during the appeal, and on Friday the Supreme Court agreed. The decision did not address the merits of the case.
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Burma generals 'sign Aung San Suu Kyi release order'
BBC
November 12, 2010
Reports from Burma say military authorities have signed an order authorising the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But hopes she would be freed on Friday were dashed: there has been no official confirmation of a release order.
A leader of her NLD party told 2,000 supporters gathered at its headquarters to go home and return on Saturday.
Ms Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, and her house arrest term expires on Saturday.
More
November 12, 2010
Reports from Burma say military authorities have signed an order authorising the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But hopes she would be freed on Friday were dashed: there has been no official confirmation of a release order.
A leader of her NLD party told 2,000 supporters gathered at its headquarters to go home and return on Saturday.
Ms Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, and her house arrest term expires on Saturday.
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DNA Tests Undermine Evidence in Texas Execution
November 11, 2010
Claude Jones always claimed that he wasn’t the man who walked into an East Texas liquor store in 1989 and shot the owner. He professed his innocence right up until the moment he was strapped to a gurney in the Texas execution chamber and put to death on Dec. 7, 2000. His murder conviction was based on a single piece of forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene—a strand of hair—that prosecutors claimed belonged to Jones.
But DNA tests completed this week at the request of the Observer and the New York-based Innocence Project show the hair didn’t belong to Jones after all. The day before his death in December 2000, Jones asked for a stay of execution so the strand of hair could be submitted for DNA testing. He was denied by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
A decade later, the results of DNA testing not only undermine the evidence that convicted Jones, but raise the possibility that Texas executed an innocent man. The DNA tests—conducted by Mitotyping Technologies, a private lab in State College, Pa., and first reported by the Observer on Thursday—show the hair belonged to the victim of the shooting, Allen Hilzendager, the 44-year-old owner of the liquor store.
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Justices Leave Military Gay Ban in Place
Associated Press/New York Times
November 12, 2010
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military to remain in place while a federal appeals court considers the issue. The court did not comment in denying a request from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to step into the ongoing federal court review of "don't ask, don't tell." The Obama administration urged the high court not to get involved at this point.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the policy violates the civil rights of gay Americans and she issued an injunction barring the Pentagon from applying it. But the San Francisco-based appeals court said the policy could remain in effect while it considers the administration's appeal.
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November 12, 2010
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military to remain in place while a federal appeals court considers the issue. The court did not comment in denying a request from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to step into the ongoing federal court review of "don't ask, don't tell." The Obama administration urged the high court not to get involved at this point.
Last month, a federal judge ruled that the policy violates the civil rights of gay Americans and she issued an injunction barring the Pentagon from applying it. But the San Francisco-based appeals court said the policy could remain in effect while it considers the administration's appeal.
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Friday, November 12, 2010
J.R. Ewing Shot Down Communism in Estonia
New York Times
November 11, 2010
Imagine growing up in the Estonian capital city, Tallinn, during the cold war and discovering Dallas transmitted by television from Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland. Life in the 1970s was drab in Estonia, then a Soviet republic under the thumb of Moscow.
In the eyes of the Communist leadership, that American serial with its jousting millionaires epitomized the creeping allure of capitalist decadence.
In the facetiously lighthearted documentary Disco and Atomic War, the director Jaak Kilmi, who grew up in Tallinn in those days, recalls how the exploits of J.R. Ewing and company mesmerized his city in the far north of the country, where the broadcast infiltrated the Iron Curtain.
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At Death’s Door
The Sun
November-December 2010
Since 1977 more than 1,200 people have been executed in the United States, with the overwhelming majority of those executions taking place in Southern states. One of those killed was Elmo Patrick Sonnier, convicted by a Louisiana jury of murdering David LeBlanc and Loretta Ann Bourque on the night of their high school homecoming. While Sonnier was on death row, he began corresponding with Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun in New Orleans. Their correspondence, Prejean says, turned her life upside down. Today she is one of the world’s foremost death-penalty abolitionists.
Prejean was born into privilege and entered the convent intent on seclusion. It wasn’t until a fellow nun asked “What are you doing to stop the suffering in the world?” that Prejean decided to leave the cloister and help the urban poor. After moving into a housing project in New Orleans, Prejean became Sonnier’s spiritual adviser. She visited with him in person, right up to the last hours of his life. Sonnier was electrocuted before her eyes, and his story led her to write the Pulitzer Prize–nominated book Dead Man Walking (Vintage).
Prejean has since served as spiritual adviser to five more death-row inmates and travels the world to speak in opposition to the death penalty. Her second book is titled The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (Vintage), and she is at work on a spiritual autobiography, River of Fire. She also assists families of murder victims in New Orleans through Survive, a victims’ advocacy group that she founded.
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The CIA tapes: Case not closed
Washington Post
Editorial
November 12, 2010
After nearly three years of work, a Justice Department special prosecutor announced this week that he will not seek criminal charges against Central Intelligence Agency officials for destroying dozens of videotapes depicting the harsh interrrogation of two suspected terrorists.
The decision by John H. Durham, a career prosecutor with an impressive record in organized-crime and corruption cases, was condemned by civil liberties and human rights groups that argue that there was plenty of information suggesting that officials destroyed the evidence to impede an investigation into unlawful interrogations. Mr. Durham appears to have aggressively probed the issue, calling some witnesses repeatedly before a grand jury, before concluding that he did not have sufficient evidence to lodge criminal charges.
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Editorial
November 12, 2010
After nearly three years of work, a Justice Department special prosecutor announced this week that he will not seek criminal charges against Central Intelligence Agency officials for destroying dozens of videotapes depicting the harsh interrrogation of two suspected terrorists.
The decision by John H. Durham, a career prosecutor with an impressive record in organized-crime and corruption cases, was condemned by civil liberties and human rights groups that argue that there was plenty of information suggesting that officials destroyed the evidence to impede an investigation into unlawful interrogations. Mr. Durham appears to have aggressively probed the issue, calling some witnesses repeatedly before a grand jury, before concluding that he did not have sufficient evidence to lodge criminal charges.
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Silent on Egypt
Washington Post
Editorial
November 12, 2010
Senior Obama administration officials profess to share congressional concerns about recent political developments in Egypt. With a parliamentary election due Nov. 28, 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak has launched a crackdown against his opposition and independent media; he also has rejected a direct appeal from President Obama to allow international observers at the polls. So when Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit visited the State Department on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton might have been expected to press him about the repression - and also to make clear to Egyptians where the United States stands.
After the meeting, Ms. Clinton duly appeared with Mr. Aboul Gheit in the State Department's treaty room and offered a summary. She said that they had discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and she commended "the personal commitment of President Mubarak"; she said that they talked about the upcoming referendum in Sudan and the political situation in Lebanon. Said Ms. Clinton: "We also discussed our shared hope that Iraqis will soon form an inclusive government that reflects the interests and the needs of the entire Iraqi population and shares power fairly and legitimately."
About the Egyptian government - which, to say the least, does not "share power fairly and legitimately" - Ms. Clinton said nothing; not one word. To judge from her statement, the subject never came up. "You covered everything," Mr. Aboul Gheit proclaimed after she finished.
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Editorial
November 12, 2010
Senior Obama administration officials profess to share congressional concerns about recent political developments in Egypt. With a parliamentary election due Nov. 28, 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak has launched a crackdown against his opposition and independent media; he also has rejected a direct appeal from President Obama to allow international observers at the polls. So when Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit visited the State Department on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton might have been expected to press him about the repression - and also to make clear to Egyptians where the United States stands.
After the meeting, Ms. Clinton duly appeared with Mr. Aboul Gheit in the State Department's treaty room and offered a summary. She said that they had discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and she commended "the personal commitment of President Mubarak"; she said that they talked about the upcoming referendum in Sudan and the political situation in Lebanon. Said Ms. Clinton: "We also discussed our shared hope that Iraqis will soon form an inclusive government that reflects the interests and the needs of the entire Iraqi population and shares power fairly and legitimately."
About the Egyptian government - which, to say the least, does not "share power fairly and legitimately" - Ms. Clinton said nothing; not one word. To judge from her statement, the subject never came up. "You covered everything," Mr. Aboul Gheit proclaimed after she finished.
More
Frustrations Increase After Myanmar Vote
November 12, 2010
Frustration over Sunday's national election in Myanmar is rising as evidence mounts that government-backed candidates dominated the polls amid reports of voting irregularities.
Myanmar's secretive military regime has only slowly released official results. As of Thursday, the government's Union Solidarity and Development Party had won 140 of the 182 contested parliamentary seats whose outcome was reported by election officials. Prime Minister Thein Sein and other prominent members of the ruling junta were among the winners.
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Video Games and the First Amendment
New York Times
Editorial
November 11, 2010
If the Supreme Court renders justice in a case it heard this month, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, it will strike down a California law barring the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under 18. That would end a violation of free expression — but not prevent the states from finding other ways to support parents who do not want their children to play violent games.
Some of these games are grotesquely violent. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Postal 2, and Duke Nukem 3D graphically depict mutilation, torture, rape and murder. Players don’t read about violence or just see it. They act it out. Parents worry that young people may engage in violent behavior or suffer psychological harm.
Restricting the content of games, however, would mean adding to the short list of expression excluded from the First Amendment’s protection. Just last April, the court said the Constitution does not permit the government to impose a restriction “simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”
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Editorial
November 11, 2010
If the Supreme Court renders justice in a case it heard this month, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, it will strike down a California law barring the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under 18. That would end a violation of free expression — but not prevent the states from finding other ways to support parents who do not want their children to play violent games.
Some of these games are grotesquely violent. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Postal 2, and Duke Nukem 3D graphically depict mutilation, torture, rape and murder. Players don’t read about violence or just see it. They act it out. Parents worry that young people may engage in violent behavior or suffer psychological harm.
Restricting the content of games, however, would mean adding to the short list of expression excluded from the First Amendment’s protection. Just last April, the court said the Constitution does not permit the government to impose a restriction “simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”
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Assertive Chinese Held in Mental Wards
New York Times
November 11, 2010
Xu Lindong, a poor village farmer with close-cropped hair and a fourth-grade education, knew nothing but decades of backbreaking labor. Even at age 50, the rope of muscles on his arms bespoke a lifetime of hard plowing and harvesting in the fields of his native Henan Province.
But after four years locked up in Zhumadian Psychiatric Hospital, he was barely recognizable to his siblings. Emaciated, barefoot, clad in tattered striped pajamas, Mr. Xu spoke haltingly. His face was etched with exhaustion.
“I was so heartbroken when I saw him I cannot describe it,” said his elder brother, Xu Linfu, recalling his first visit there, in 2007. “My brother was a strong as a bull. Now he looked like a hospital patient.”
Xu Lindong’s confinement in a locked mental ward was all the more notable, his brother says, for one extraordinary fact: he was not the least bit deranged. Angered by a dispute over land, he had merely filed a series of complaints against the local government. The government’s response was to draw up an order to commit him to a mental hospital — and then to forge his brother’s name on the signature line.
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Little Harm Found if Gay Ban Is Lifted
New York Times
November 11, 2010
The draft of a new Pentagon report comes to the conclusion that repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law will not cause overall harm to the military but might cause temporary disruptions, people familiar with the report said on Thursday.
In the case of any temporary disruptions, the draft report says they can be mitigated with effective leadership.
The people familiar with the report, who are in favor of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, also said the report did not recommend separate housing for gay service members. But they said the report showed that a number of active-duty service members remained opposed to openly gay service, with the largest proportion in the Marines and the Army.
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November 11, 2010
The draft of a new Pentagon report comes to the conclusion that repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law will not cause overall harm to the military but might cause temporary disruptions, people familiar with the report said on Thursday.
In the case of any temporary disruptions, the draft report says they can be mitigated with effective leadership.
The people familiar with the report, who are in favor of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, also said the report did not recommend separate housing for gay service members. But they said the report showed that a number of active-duty service members remained opposed to openly gay service, with the largest proportion in the Marines and the Army.
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Media freedom in Russia Smashing the messengers
Economist
November 11, 2010
Late on November 5th Oleg Kashin, a journalist with Kommersant, a Russian daily, was almost bludgeoned to death in the courtyard of his house in central Moscow. The assault was both shocking and demonstrative in its brutality. As Mr Kashin’s peers related it, the attackers smashed his fingers so the journalist could not write, broke his jaw so he could not talk and broke a leg so he could not walk. Doctors had to put Mr Kashin into an induced coma to avoid a pain shock.
Mr Kashin wrote about big issues in Russian society. A sharp publicist, he switched sides, made enemies and faced threats. Kremlin-sponsored youth thugs had called him a traitor and pledged to punish him. His writing also upset local officials in Khimki, a suburb of Moscow where a battle has unfolded over plans to build a road through a forest. (The Russian firm carrying out the construction has powerful political connections.) The Khimki battle has already claimed several victims. Only a day before the attack on Mr Kashin a local activist was beaten up.
More
November 11, 2010
Late on November 5th Oleg Kashin, a journalist with Kommersant, a Russian daily, was almost bludgeoned to death in the courtyard of his house in central Moscow. The assault was both shocking and demonstrative in its brutality. As Mr Kashin’s peers related it, the attackers smashed his fingers so the journalist could not write, broke his jaw so he could not talk and broke a leg so he could not walk. Doctors had to put Mr Kashin into an induced coma to avoid a pain shock.
Mr Kashin wrote about big issues in Russian society. A sharp publicist, he switched sides, made enemies and faced threats. Kremlin-sponsored youth thugs had called him a traitor and pledged to punish him. His writing also upset local officials in Khimki, a suburb of Moscow where a battle has unfolded over plans to build a road through a forest. (The Russian firm carrying out the construction has powerful political connections.) The Khimki battle has already claimed several victims. Only a day before the attack on Mr Kashin a local activist was beaten up.
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Don't you dare go to dinner
November 11, 2010
“Ii is the unrelenting, unremitting continuance of pressure that often yields results on human rights.” Thus Britain’s then prime minister, John Major, during a visit to Beijing in 1991. On the first trip to China since then by a Conservative prime minister, David Cameron was far more cautious. In the face of Chinese fury over the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to an imprisoned Chinese dissident, Mr Cameron opted for deference.
Liu Xiaobo’s prize on October 8th has made Western governments almost as uncomfortable as China’s. Since the early 1990s the West and China have largely managed to accommodate their differences over human rights while pursuing closer economic ties. “Pressure” has consisted of polite but unproductive “human-rights dialogues” between lower-ranking Chinese and Western officials. The peace prize has pushed the issue back to the fore.
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Cameron and Obama: two approaches to human rights
Prospect
November 11, 2010
“The rise in economic freedom in China has been hugely beneficial to China and to the world. I hope in time this will lead to a greater political opening because I am convinced that the best guarantor of prosperity and stability is for economic and political progress to go in step together.” So said David Cameron in a speech yesterday to students in Beijing.
Contrast Cameron’s determination to challenge China on its human rights record with President Obama’s failure to raise human rights issues on his trip to Indonesia. Just a day before Mr Cameron’s speech in Beijing, the American president made a comparable speech at the University of Indonesia. But instead of focusing on bilateral relations between the US and Indonesia, Obama used this stage in the world’s most populous Muslim nation to set out his vision for rebuilding ties with the Muslim world.
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Thursday, November 11, 2010
Reform in Cuba: Raúl the pragmatist
November 11, 2010
Shortly after he took charge of Cuba from his ailing brother, Fidel, in 2006, Raúl Castro declared that his country’s moribund communist economy needed to change. But his failure to make anything more than marginal adjustments disappointed hopes that he would follow Chinese and Vietnamese communist leaders in combining capitalist economics and growing social freedom with continued party control.
Now, at last, Mr Castro is showing signs of boldness. Over the past few weeks he has launched some potentially far-reaching changes. By April 1st 500,000 Cubans will be laid off from their state jobs and encouraged to make their own living in small businesses. Over the next two or three years, another 800,000 are likely to join them. Eventually up to two Cubans in five will no longer work for the state.
This week Mr Castro convened a much-postponed Congress of the Communist Party for late April: its job will be to bless the new economic model. Meanwhile, the government has released more than 50 political prisoners. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is Cuban communism finally on the way out?
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On Kristallnacht Anniversary, Critical Lessons Remain Unheeded
by Brian Levin
Huffington Post
November 10, 2010
NAZIS SMASH, LOOT AND BURN JEWISH SHOPS AND TEMPLES UNTIL GOEBELLS CALLS HALT, The New York Times announced on its front page of November 11, 1938. From Austria, the newspaper reported "All Vienna's Synagogues Attacked" and "Many of those arrested were sent to prisons or concentration camps in busses." From Berlin correspondent Otto Tolischus wrote of concentration camps and the errie noise of the "shattering of shop windows falling to the ground." Tolishus described:
Dramatic historical events are often made singularly important and there are frequent efforts to derive lessons from them. Such is the case as the world marks the seventy-second anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom against German, Austrian and Czech Jews, which occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Kristallnacht's importance lay not only in the violence that occurred those evenings, but in the incremental measures that preceded it and the unspeakable evil that it would presage in the years to come. The name Kristallnacht, strictly translated from the German "crystal night" refers to actually two evenings of shattered glass across the region. Historian Dr. Michael Berenbaum in The World Must Know notes that the broken glass losses alone were five million marks or over two million dollars. Of course broken glass was the least of what was destroyed. While Kristallnacht marks a critical point on Germany's directed march toward genocide, it was far from the first of many more graduated steps that started with estrangement and degradation and culminated in the Holocaust.
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Huffington Post
November 10, 2010
NAZIS SMASH, LOOT AND BURN JEWISH SHOPS AND TEMPLES UNTIL GOEBELLS CALLS HALT, The New York Times announced on its front page of November 11, 1938. From Austria, the newspaper reported "All Vienna's Synagogues Attacked" and "Many of those arrested were sent to prisons or concentration camps in busses." From Berlin correspondent Otto Tolischus wrote of concentration camps and the errie noise of the "shattering of shop windows falling to the ground." Tolishus described:
A wave of destruction, looting and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years War and in Europe generally since the Bolshevist Revolution, swept over Great Germany today as National Socialist cohorts took vengeance on Jewish shops offices and synagogues....In extent, intensity and total damage, the day's outbreak exceeded even those of the 1918 revolution and by nightfall there was scarcely a Jewish shop, café, office or synagogue in the country that was not either wrecked, burned or severely damaged.
Dramatic historical events are often made singularly important and there are frequent efforts to derive lessons from them. Such is the case as the world marks the seventy-second anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom against German, Austrian and Czech Jews, which occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Kristallnacht's importance lay not only in the violence that occurred those evenings, but in the incremental measures that preceded it and the unspeakable evil that it would presage in the years to come. The name Kristallnacht, strictly translated from the German "crystal night" refers to actually two evenings of shattered glass across the region. Historian Dr. Michael Berenbaum in The World Must Know notes that the broken glass losses alone were five million marks or over two million dollars. Of course broken glass was the least of what was destroyed. While Kristallnacht marks a critical point on Germany's directed march toward genocide, it was far from the first of many more graduated steps that started with estrangement and degradation and culminated in the Holocaust.
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Justice Stevens on ‘Invidious Prejudice’
New York Times
Editorial
November 9, 2010
A great deal of what public figures have said about the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan has been aimed at playing off fear and intolerance for political gain. Former Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, on the other hand, delivered one of the sanest and most instructive arguments for tolerance that we have heard in a long time.
Justice Stevens, who retired at the end of the court’s last term, served for two and a half years as an intelligence officer in Pearl Harbor during World War II. In a speech on Thursday in Washington, he confessed his initial negative reaction decades later at seeing dozens of Japanese tourists visiting the U.S.S. Arizona memorial.
“Those people don’t really belong here,” he recalled thinking about the Japanese tourists. “We won the war. They lost it. We shouldn’t allow them to celebrate their attack on Pearl Harbor even if it was one of their greatest victories.”
But then Justice Stevens said that he recognized his mistake in “drawing inferences” about the group of tourists that might not apply to any of them. “The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago,” he said, just as “the Muslims planning to build the mosque are not responsible for what an entirely different group of Muslims did on 9/11.”
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Editorial
November 9, 2010
A great deal of what public figures have said about the proposed Islamic cultural center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan has been aimed at playing off fear and intolerance for political gain. Former Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court, on the other hand, delivered one of the sanest and most instructive arguments for tolerance that we have heard in a long time.
Justice Stevens, who retired at the end of the court’s last term, served for two and a half years as an intelligence officer in Pearl Harbor during World War II. In a speech on Thursday in Washington, he confessed his initial negative reaction decades later at seeing dozens of Japanese tourists visiting the U.S.S. Arizona memorial.
“Those people don’t really belong here,” he recalled thinking about the Japanese tourists. “We won the war. They lost it. We shouldn’t allow them to celebrate their attack on Pearl Harbor even if it was one of their greatest victories.”
But then Justice Stevens said that he recognized his mistake in “drawing inferences” about the group of tourists that might not apply to any of them. “The Japanese tourists were not responsible for what some of their countrymen did decades ago,” he said, just as “the Muslims planning to build the mosque are not responsible for what an entirely different group of Muslims did on 9/11.”
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Porn stars hunted by police in Sri Lanka
November 9, 2010
Sri Lankan police have launched a campaign to trace more than 80 local people who have appeared in pornographic films by printing their pictures in newspapers.
Earlier this week more than three dozen porn actors were pictured in a full-page advertisement in one local newspaper. Police plan to publish images, taken from the films, of around 50 more in the coming days. The mug shots have been obtained by a special police squad viewing films "round the clock", officers said.
Of the 83 actors police hope to identify, three are men, said Superintendent Prishantha Jayakody, a police spokesman. He said police had requested permission from a magistrate for the new initiative because they had become increasingly concerned by the phenomenon of schoolchildren downloading and exchanging clips of locally made pornographic films on their mobile phones.
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Iran to Defend Women's Rights and Philosophy? No, Unfortunately, it's Not a Joke
Huffington Post
November 8, 2010
We're not done with Iran. First of all, of course, because of Sakineh, who has been granted a new stay of execution but remains imprisoned, in solitary confinement, like her own son. And the sentence may be executed at any moment. The summum of ignominiousness, the local presiding justice of Tabriz had the gall to declare that Sakineh is in good health. But because of two other affairs (I don't dare say two new affairs, for they are known and have been going on, the one and the other, for several months now) that have been little discussed, far too little, when they are just as indicative of the blindness, the cowardice, and the absence of democratic reflexes of the West when confronted with Iran.
The first concerns World Philosophy Day, organized every November by UNESCO and which, it has been decided, will be held this year in -- Tehran! Before the incredulousness and disturbance the news caused in philosophical circles, the organizers attempted to duck the issue by scheduling a pre-opening, in Paris, on November 18th, followed by a series of meetings in the days thereafter in Mexico, Tunis, or Dakar. But they did not go so far as to cancel the days in Tehran. So, if things remain as they are, one will philosophize from November 21st to 23rd in one of the world's capitals of fanaticism and tyranny.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/tehran-capital-of-philoso_b_780776.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=110910&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily+Brief
State and federal marijuana laws collide
November 9, 2010
People who use marijuana for medicinal purposes in states where it is legal are being penalized by the federal government because pot is still illegal under U.S. law.
At Denver unemployment offices, medical users fired for failing a drug test are denied unemployment benefits, says lawyer Kimberlie Ryan, who represents some of those applicants.
In California, Jim Lacy, 60, who has an arthritic hip and uses medical marijuana for pain relief, says he has had his stash confiscated and been threatened with arrest at Border Patrol checkpoints near his Jacumba home.
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The Children of the Storm
New Republic
November 9, 2010
China’s Cultural Revolution—the murderous political and social upheaval initiated by Mao in 1966 and concluded by his death ten years later—is sometimes described as the most perplexing historical event of the twentieth century. The world outside China is still, forty years later, only beginning to understand it. The problem is not a lack of available evidence, but the absence of a single narrative frame—a problem that goes all the way back to Mao himself, who kept changing his mind about what kind of “revolution” he wanted, with catastrophic consequences every time he opened his mouth.
The plainest solution, which most observers in the West have adopted by default, is to focus, and quite properly, on the Revolution’s horrific results: the tens or perhaps even hundreds of thousands killed, maimed, or driven to suicide; the innumerable cultural relics destroyed; the denial of education and a meaningful childhood to an entire generation of citizens; the outbreaks of mass savagery, including the well-documented cannibalizing of “class enemies” in one province, comparable to the worst state-sponsored crimes of the Khmer Rouge or the Rwandan Hutus. This impression is largely amplified by the novels and the films about the period that have found a wide audience in the West, from Farewell My Concubine to Xiu Xiu, The Sent-Down Girl to Ma Jian’s recent Beijing Coma.
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