VNN’s FTL 4/20/7 notes

April 20, 2007

Tonight: VNN’s Free Talk Live begins@7PM, Live@9PM! - Vanguard News Network Forum

VNN’s FTL 4-13-7

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Moscow university orders foreign student
lockdown

 A leading Moscow
university ordered its foreign students on Thursday to remain in their
dormitories for the next three days because of fears of ethnic violence before
Adolf Hitler’s birthday this weekend, students said.




















Hundreds of students at the prestigious Sechenov Moscow Medical
Academy were told to stock up on food and warned they would not be let out of
the dormitories through Saturday in an attempt to protect them amid a marked
rise in hate crimes. In the past, some members of ultra nationalist groups have
marked Hitler’s birthday with attacks on ethnic minorities. “It is nice
that the university is taking care of us, but on the other hand it’s absurd
that our freedom is being limited because of some militant groups,” said
Liah Ganeline, a second-year medical student from Israel. “In a normal,
democratic country the authorities don’t obey the interests of these groups,
but on the contrary protect people from them,” she told The Associated
Press by telephone.

Hip-hop summit ends without
resolution

NEW YORK - In the wake of Don Imus’
firing for his on-air slur about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, a
high-powered group of music-industry executives met privately Wednesday to
discuss sexist and misogynistic rap lyrics.

During the furor that led to Imus’
fall last week from his talk-radio perch, many of his critics carped as well
about offensive language in rap music.

The meeting, called by hip-hop mogul
Russell Simmons’ Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, was held at the New York home
of Lyor Cohen, chairman and chief executive of U.S. music at Warner Music
Group. The summit, which lasted several hours, did not result in any specific
initiative.

Organizers billed the gathering as a
forum to “discuss issues challenging the industry in the wake of controversy
surrounding hip-hop and the First Amendment.” Afterward, they planned to hold a
news conference at a Manhattan hotel to discuss “initiatives agreed upon at the
meeting.” But by early afternoon, the news conference was postponed, because
the meeting was still going on.

After the meeting ended, it was
unclear whether there would be another one. Simmons’ publicist released a short
statement that described the topic as a “complex issue that involves gender,
race, culture and artistic expression. Everyone assembled today takes this
issue very seriously.”

Although no recommendations emerged,
the gathering was significant for its who’s-who list of powerful music
executives.

According to a roster released by
Simmons on Wednesday, attendees included: Kevin Liles, executive vice
president, Warner Music; L.A. Reid, chairman of Island Def Jam Music Group;
Sylvia Rhone, president of Motown Records and executive vice president of
Universal Music Group; Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Recording
Industry Association of America; and Damon Dash, Jay-Z’s former Roc-A-Fella
Records partner. Top-selling rapper T.I. also attended, organizers said.

Simmons declined to comment through
a spokeswoman. But he appeared this week with others at a two-day town hall
meeting on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to discuss the issue. While Simmons, Liles
and the rapper Common agreed “there is a problem,” Simmons cautioned against
trying to limit rappers’ free-speech rights.

He said that “poets” always come
under fire for their unsanitized descriptions of the world.

“We’re talking about a lot of these
artists who come from the most extreme cases of poverty and ignorance … And
when they write a song, and they write it from their heart, and they’re not
educated, and they don’t believe there’s opportunity, they have a right, they
have a right to say what’s on their mind,” he said.

“Whether it’s our sexism, our
racism, our homophobia or our violence, the hip-hop community sometimes can be
a good mirror of our dirt and sometimes the dirt that we try to cover up,”
Simmons said. “Pointing at the conditions that create these words from the
rappers … should be our No. 1 concern.”

Common said criticism of rappers and
their music should come with love. “When I talk to the cats, regardless of rap,
when I talk to cats on the street, they don’t wanna be in that situation,” the
rapper said. “We don’t wanna be in this painful situation. We want it to heal.
And we are apologizing for … the disrespect that does come from the mouths of
men to women whatever color.”

Meanwhile, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who
said he planned to challenge the recording industry on denigrating lyrics,
announced he had suspended plans to honor Def Jam’s L.A. Reid during this
week’s convention of his National Action Network in New York. Sharpton was
among Imus’ most vocal critics and demanded his firing.

Several rappers under Reid’s label
frequently use racial and sexual epithets.

Imus was fired last week by CBS,
which owned his radio show, and MSNBC, which produced the TV simulcast, for
having referred to the Rutgers players as “nappy-headed hos.”

College tapirman threatens VT style shoot up

 “(I)’m gonna (expletive) bring a gun
to your school and kill you and K (another female student) and everybody you
love. It’s gonna be VT all over again,” 20-year-old Andrew Rosenblum allegedly
wrote in an e-mail to the victim just hours after 32 people were gunned at
Virginia Tech.
    “Seriously I’m just that demented,” Rosenblum wrote,
according to a BPD report. He ended the message with a threat to commit
homicide and suicide: “killing people can change people’s lives forever. (T)he
best is in the end when I pull the trigger on myself, too.”

 

Around the Blogsphere

Tech

News

US expresses concern over Turkish
warnings of cross-border operation

The commander of US forces in the
Middle East has expressed concern about remarks from Turkish military calling
for a military operation in northern Iraq against the bases of the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.

“It’s one of the concerns, and
I certainly hope they don’t carry out this threat and we’re trying to convince
them this is not a good idea,” said Admiral William Fallon, the head of
the US Central Command.

Chief of Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt
said last week that a military operation against the PKK in northern Iraq was
necessary and would be useful in the fight against the group. Fallon told
lawmakers he has pressed Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq to stop Kurdish
separatist groups like the PKK that have been instigating violence in
Turkey.  “Because at the end of the day, it’s going to be certainly
to their decided disadvantage and hurtful to not only that region but to the
whole country if the Turks carry out this threat. We are working to try to play
a role to try to get this activity stopped,” he said, according to AFP.

In Washington, US Assistant
Secretary of State Daniel Fried said it was understandable that Turkey wanted
to defend itself against terrorism but added that a cross-border operation
might not be the best way of doing it. “We believe the best way is for
Turkey to work with us and the Iraqi government to make progress in eliminating
the PKK,” he was quoted as saying by the Ana-tolia news agency.

Professor killed at Virginia tech to
be flown to Israel

Tel Aviv (dpa) - The body of the
Israeli professor who was killed in the Virginia Polytechnic Institute shooting
spree is to be flown to Israel Wednesday, his son said.

Liviu Librescu, who according to
witnesses saved some of his students by blocking the door to the gunman with
his body, is to be buried at the cemetery of the central Israeli town of
Ra’anana.

His wife, Marilena, is accompanying
his coffin on the flight that is to depart from New York Wednesday and due to
arrive in Tel Aviv Thursday, 37-year-old son Arieh told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa in a telephone interview.

Librescu, 76, was born in Romania
and with his wife has lived in the US for more than 20 years, but has Israeli
nationality. Both his sons, Arieh and Joe, live in Israel.

Both Librescu and his wife were
Holocaust survivors. Ironically, the professor died as Israel was marking
Holocaust day Tuesday in honour of the 6 million Jews killed during the Second
World War.

Librescu spent the war in the ghetto
of Ploiesti, just north of Bucharest, but Arieh said he knew little details of
his father’s plight for survival - expect that he had to work as a child and
provide for his mother because his father was imprisoned in a labour camp.

“He never spoke of those times.
He is a person that really always looked forward. He never talked about
yesterday,” said Arieh.

We need to kill him

Israel should not shy away from
threatening to kill Iran’s Ahmadinejad

Uri Orbach

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has to be killed.
Really be killed, I mean, physically. He should be eliminated, put to death,
assassinated, and all those words that serve to say the same thing.

 

Former Mossad Director Meir Amit said this explicitly in a
recent interview with the “Kfar Chabad” weekly. It is indeed a very
impolite way to express our disgust with the Iranian archenemy. Government
officials, including ones who have retired already, usually merely hint at such
matters - that is, if they choose to talk about them at all.

 

And still, Meir Amit is right. Here too, while we are so
busy with manners and etiquette, the man in Teheran is vigorously advancing the
extermination plan for the people of Israel.

 

Since at this time he is personally responsible for Iran’s
nuclear program, and since he is ignoring the insistent pleading, various
pressures, persuasion attempts and temptations, an attempt should be made to
eliminate him.

 

Rules of etiquette must change

The importance of Meir Amit’s words at this stage is
particularly related to changing the rules of etiquette. After all, this is not
the customary way to speak about an enemy when it comes to diplomatic language.

 

Yet a return to a violent and threatening mode of expression
towards figures such as Ahmadinejad, our regional Hitler, may serve to grant
legitimacy to governments and their operational arms to seek this objective
without fear.

 

These personal threats may indeed serve to frighten the man
in Teheran. After all, he saw the noose tightening around former Iraqi Dictator
Saddam Hussein’s neck, so even if Ahmadinejad is unconcerned about Iran’s fate,
perhaps he will be concerned about the fate of his own neck.

 

Therefore, if we wish to still be here for our 70th
Independence Day celebrations, we must threaten to assassinate him.

 

Indeed, this is impolite, unaesthetic, not customary and
undiplomatic. Yet in order to stop this particular archenemy, we simply have to
explain to him that his end is nearing.

US And Israel Probe Alliance

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz Wednesday advocated preparations for
“real steps” against Iran’s nuclear program, but U.S. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates said, “The preferable course was to keep our focus on
the diplomatic initiative.”

The issue
was one of several topics the two officials discussed shortly after Gates
arrived in Israel on the third leg of his Middle Eastern tour. He has already
been to Egypt and Jordan.

It was the
first time in almost eight years that a U.S. secretary of defense visited
Israel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has come frequently, but she
focuses on attempts to advance the peace process, while Gates is expected to
focus on the threats in the region and what to do if there is no peace.

Uzi Arad,
director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya and a former director of intelligence at the Mossad, told
United Press International the visit has “dramatic significance.”

On the
regional, geo-political level, “We are in a dangerous period.” He
expected also “a laundry list” of bilateral subjects from cooperation
in developing anti-missile missiles to joint military maneuvers, closer ties
between Israel and NATO, and intelligence and money matters.

At a news
conference at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Gates said they
had reviewed security challenges in the region and talked at length about Iran.

For
Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat. Peretz said that 2007 “is
a critical year for diplomatic efforts to halt the Iranian program.”

He called
for “real steps to foil Iran’s malicious and dangerous intentions. The
diplomatic channel is preferable and should be exhausted, but other options
cannot yet be ruled out.”

However,
Gates said diplomacy “seems to be working.” He cited two U.N.
resolutions and the international community’s united stance in telling Iran
what it needs to do with respect to its nuclear program.

“These
things don’t work overnight but it seems to me, clearly, the preferable course
(is) to keep our focus on the diplomatic initiatives and particularly because
of the united front of the international community at this point,” he
added.

According
to Arad, Gates’ predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, never visited Israel partly
because he focused on Iraq, but there were also tensions in Israel’s relations
with the Pentagon. U.S. officials have been suspicious of Israel’s ties with
Communist China. The United States forced Israel to cancel a
multimillion-dollar agreement to provide China with the Falcon airborne system.
The United States said that system could endanger American pilots’ lives while
in that area. Later the Pentagon fumed over Israeli moves to upgrade drones
sold to China. Eventually the Pentagon reportedly refused to deal with senior
Defense Ministry officials.

Most of
those problems have been resolved and the visit signified “a return to
routine,” Arad said.

At
Wednesday’s meeting Israel presented its military capabilities, its needs and
talked about cooperation, Peretz said. He did not provide details, but at a
workshop on ballistic missiles and rockets held at Tel Aviv University on
Tuesday, experts outlined threats for which they must prepare.

The Arrow
missile interceptor has been tested against lone missile attacks but not
against a barrage of ballistic missiles. The experts expect the enemy to fire
barrages in which only some of the warheads would carry explosives or a nuclear
weapon. The problem is how to pick out and intercept the dangerous projectiles
hurtling towards Israel.

The Scuds
that Iraq fired in the 1991 war disintegrated in the air and tumbled around
before hitting the ground. That is why none of the Patriot missiles fired at
them intercepted any, said Reuven Pedatzur of the Strategic Dialogue Center at
the Netanya College. Israeli experts predicted its enemies would now try to
develop warheads that would purposely follow a meandering trajectory.

The
workshop was open to the public, so the presentations were very general and did
not touch on Israel’s plans. However, the defense establishment is trying to
develop means to intercept medium and short-range rockets that the Arrow –
built for longer-range attacks — cannot stop.

During the
Second Lebanon War Hezbollah fired some 4,000 Katyusha rockets and paralyzed
northern Israel. Palestinians have been firing rockets that the head of
Israel’s anti-aircraft forces, Brig. Gen. Daniel Miloh, said were produced by
welding irrigation pipes. “When there is one (such rocket) it’s not
terrible. When there are 10,000 they become a strategic threat,” he said.

Developing
interceptors, even for “flying pipes,” is costly, and the price of
each missile interceptor would be much higher than the price of the Qassam
itself, experts said.

Since the
United States funded much of the Arrow program and helped develop a laser beam
that was supposed to melt incoming rockets, it seems a safe bet that Israel was
hoping for U.S. aid in developing the new systems as well.

“We
examined joint projects,” Peretz told reporters. The U.S. Defense
Department and Israel’s Defense Ministry have reached “an understanding on
the answers we can produce” in order to cope with the threats, he added.

Joint
teams are expected to look into U.S. plans to sell precision guided munitions
to Saudi Arabia, and Peretz said he expected U.S. help in preserving Israel’s
qualitative advantage over all the threats in the Middle East.

Both
countries have held also joint military exercises, and Miloh said the
cooperation with the U.S. army has been “exceptional.”

Hundreds
of U.S. soldiers took part in such exercises in Israel using more advanced
equipment than Israel has, and that helped “interoperability” between
the two forces, Miloh added.

Chinese Open New Chapter With the
People of the Book

Xu Xin | Fri. Apr 20, 2007

The Chinese and Jewish cultures are
both great, rich civilizations. These two major societies developed highly
civilized forms in ancient times and persist until today, keeping continuous
recorded accounts of their origins. Each of them has had a significant impact
on world history, although the two cultures seldom met. As a result, not much
was known in China about Jews, Jewish culture and Israel until recently. During
my first visit to Israel and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1988, I
made the sweeping statement that

 “Chinese find Israel a country even more alien
and mysterious than those in the Western Hemisphere.” In order to understand
just why, one must examine the Chinese knowledge of, and attitude toward, Jews
from a historical viewpoint before the 1948 founding of the State of Israel.

Indeed, the Jewish presence in China
can be traced back to at least the eighth century. The well-known Kaifeng
Jewish community is believed to have arrived in China in the 11th century and
has resided in Kaifeng ever since, continually practicing as an observant
Jewish community for at least 700 years. But the fact that Jews resided in
China does not mean that the Chinese had any great awareness of their presence.
The majority of the Chinese knew very little. In fact, until the middle of the
19th century, Jews were simply referred to as Blue-hat-hui-hui (people who came
from the West to China) or Tiao-jin-jiao (sect that plucks out the sinews).
Both names are based on customs of the Kaifeng Jews. But no one, not even the
most knowledgeable scholars in China, had a glimmer of suspicion that the Jews
in Kaifeng might represent a larger religious population who were scattered in
many countries, held common beliefs and shared a similar life style.

Historically speaking, Chinese
society has been quite ethnocentric. China considered herself the Middle
Kingdom, which mediated between heaven and earth and was thereby superior to
all other civilizations. Traditional Chinese education, therefore, did not
cover the Western world, let alone a small ethnic group like the Jews.
Encounters between China and the Western world happened frequently at different
times in history; however, academic work concerning Occidental subjects
remained unknown for a very long time. The situation began to change at the end
of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th. Western scholarship
became very popular among Chinese scholars after they saw the increasing power
brought to Japan by her open-door policy to the West. Judaic studies appeared
for the first time in Chinese history as an inevitable result of the deepening
of Occidental studies in China, since Judaism is one of two main sources of
Western civilization. Information about Jews and Judaism was disseminated
through China via two main sources: foreigners who now were permitted to enter
China for missionary, commercial, trade or diplomatic ventures, and Chinese who
had been sent to either study or work abroad and who returned to China with new
information gleaned from their exposure to the Western world.

Nevertheless, while some limited
knowledge existed among a small number of Chinese intellectuals, the vast
Chinese majority still knew very little, if anything, about Jews and
Jewish-related matters. The movement to learn from the West was cut short by
foreign interference, Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and civil wars
between the communists and the nationalists. So were Jewish studies.

The study of Jewish subjects by
Chinese scholars restarted at the end of the 1980s, when China adopted a new
open-door policy, which accelerated after the normalization of diplomatic
relations between China and Israel in 1992. A number of centers for Jewish
studies have been established. Among them the Center for Jewish Studies at
Nanjing University plays a unique role. It was established shortly after the
establishment of full diplomatic relations between China and Israel in January
1992 to meet a growing demand for Judaic studies in China — especially to
promote the study of Jewish subjects among Chinese college students and a
better understanding between the two peoples.

The center carries out a number of
programs and projects to promote the study and teaching of Jewish subjects
among Chinese, and it has achieved significant results. The following are some
of its far-reaching achievements:

• The center offers regular courses on Judaism, Jewish
  history, Jewish culture, and Holocaust studies, etc., and greatly promotes
  the study of Jewish subjects at the university and college level.
• The center launched the publication of the first
  Chinese edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, with more than 800 pages and
  more than 1,600 entries. The encyclopedia has become the major reference
  work for Chinese to study Jewish subjects. Other books written by the
  center’s faculty include “Anti-Semitism: How and Why” (1996) and “A
  History of Jewish Culture” (2006).
• The center organizes international conferences to
  explore the latest discoveries and development in the field of Judaic
  studies, and exchange views and achievements among Jewish scholars.
• In the summers of 1997, 1999 and 2002, the center
  successfully conducted at Nanjing University three-week workshops on
  Jewish history and culture. More than 100 Chinese scholars attended. The
  purpose of these workshops was to present reliable, unprejudiced and
  accurate information on Jewish history and culture to Chinese professors
  of world history or Western civilization. This, in turn, would enable them
  to incorporate relevant information into the courses they teach at their
  home institutions.

Since 2001, the center has
increasingly responded to the needs of its expanding programs through a series
of fundraising activities. Thanks to a most generous gift from the Diane and
Guilford Glazer Fund and to donations from many individuals, the center has a
space of 3,000 square feet in a brand-new building at Nanjing University. In
order to express its gratitude and appreciation, the Center was renamed The
Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish Studies following its dedication
ceremony last November. Due to its great efforts the Institute is increasingly
recognized as a leader in its field and as an important resource for
information and guidance in China, serving not only locally but also
nationally.

The advancement of Jewish studies in
China is great, and the impact on Chinese academia is obvious and strong, but
there is still a long way to go and much to be done. Chinese scholars need to
deepen their study of, and research in, Jewish subjects. It is imperative that
Chinese scholars upgrade their studies to meet international standards. How to
continue to improve their scholarship in general is a challenge currently faced
by Chinese scholars, as is how to make unique contributions to the scholarly
study of Jewish subjects in particular.

Now, the institute is taking steps
to meet the challenges by establishing both Master of Arts and doctoral
programs of Jewish studies to train a new generation of Chinese Jewish
scholars. In order to do so, it needs additional support from outside. You can
help by engaging in one (or more) of the following:

• Send books on Jewish history, religion, thought, people
  and traditions to enrich its library for research and teaching.
• Provide scholarships for its M.A. or Ph.D. students.
• Make donations to its lecture and publication fund.

British journalists call for boycott
of Israeli goods

By Alan
Cowell

 

LONDON: Britain’s biggest journalists’
union, The National Union of Journalists, has criticized Israel’s
“military adventures” and has voted narrowly in favor of a boycott of
Israeli goods. The vote followed calls by some British academics last year to
ostracize their Israeli counterparts.

At the
annual delegates meeting of the journalists’ union last Friday, a vote calling
for “a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles
against apartheid in South Africa” was approved 66 to 54.

The
delegates also urged Britain and the United Nations to impose sanctions on
Israel.

The union
has about 40,000 members, represented at the annual meeting by about 150
delegates from more than 60 branches.

The ballot
did not, however, make calls for a boycott of contacts with Israeli journalists
similar to previous academic efforts to ostracize Israeli university teachers.

The call
for a boycott was initially part of a broader condemnation of what the union
called Israel’s “slaughter of civilians” in Gaza and “savage
pre-planned attack” last year on Lebanon, but the boycott was voted on
separately. The condemnation of Israeli military action in Gaza and Lebanon was
approved by a wider margin.

In the
debate leading to the vote, some delegates argued that a call for a boycott
would not help British journalists do their job in Israel. Others argued that
it was not the job of a journalists’ union to get so involved in such issues.

The timing
of the ballot was particularly delicate because a BBC journalist, Alan
Johnston, has been held for more than a month in Gaza, making the boycott call
seem one-sided. A Palestinian group claimed Sunday to have killed Johnston but
the BBC said it was treating the report as a rumor.

“We
had a whole separate section of the conference” devoted to Johnston’s
plight, said Jeremy Dear, the union’s general secretary.

According
to the union’s Web site, www.nuj.org.uk, the delegates voted unanimously to
“keep up the urgent global campaign for Alan’s release” and
criticized the Palestinian authorities for failing “to carry out their
promises to do all they can to free Alan.”

Dear said
there had been “some feedback,” primarily from unidentified e-mail
correspondents in the United States, saying Johnston “should be put in a
concentration camp” or tried for hate crimes.

He said
those who supported a boycott had argued that while the union represented
journalists, it still had a duty to uphold things “that are in our
constitution” concerning human rights.

On the union’s
conference blog, however, a critic of the vote, identified as Olivia Lang,
said, “It is not going to make life easier for journalists anywhere in the
world” to be seen to be taking sides. “We need to strive to maintain
our objectivity when reporting,” she wrote.

The vote
stirred little immediate comment in Britain, however. Jonathan Freedland, a
columnist for The Guardian and The Evening Standard, who said he is a member of
the National Union of Journalists, took issue in a telephone interview with the
union’s decision, saying it made no distinction between Israel itself and
Israeli settlements in occupied territories. “This punishes Israel proper
along with settlers as if the two were the same,” he said.

Moreover,
he said, “as a tactic, it strikes a raw nerve in the Jewish
psyche.”"You won’t win over the Jewish diaspora” with such
boycott calls, he said. Last year, the largest British association of
university teachers voted to encourage individual academics in Britain to sever
professional contact with their counterparts in Israel. That vote echoed an
appeal one year earlier by a smaller association, which first demanded a
boycott of two Israeli universities and then withdrew the call under pressure
from some of its members. The two associations later merged and the policy
lapsed, said Trevor Phillips, a spokesman for the combined association. It will
be discussed again next month, he said.The New York Times

Bystanders disrupt standoff with murder suspect

Story Highlights

• Suspect surrendered to Tulsa police following a three-hour
standoff
• Shots fired as group of more than 100 bystanders threw rocks at police
• Rico Starks charged with second-degree murder in killing of 18-year-old

TULSA, Oklahoma (AP) — A murder suspect surrendered to police
following a three-hour standoff at an apartment complex that was complicated by
a crowd of bystanders who threw rocks at police, authorities said.

After dispersing the crowd, officers negotiated with murder suspect Rico
Starks, 19, for several hours before he surrendered at about 12:30 a.m. EDT on
Sunday, said Officer Scott Walton.

Walton said police were not sure whether Starks had been armed, since he had
been moving from location to location in the evacuated building.

Walton said officers were first called to the scene about 9 p.m. and
encountered neighborhood opposition.

“They were met by a large group — over 100 people — that made an
effort to assault officers by throwing rocks at their vehicles and the officers
themselves,” Walton said. “There were shots fired, and the officers
had their hands full trying to contain the crowd.”

The officers called in reinforcements to help disperse the crowd. Some of
the additional police wore riot gear and carried batons.

Dominic Armstrong, a cameraman from television station KOTV, said he was
standing next to a vehicle that was hit by gunfire from the crowd.

“Early on, there was a lot of chaos, and we didn’t know what we
had,” he told the Tulsa World newspaper.

Starks is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 18-year-old
Mark Jordan, who was shot August 21 in north Tulsa.

Man arrested in student’s 19-hour
torture

NEW YORK - A homeless ex-convict has
been arrested in the rape and torture of a Columbia University graduate
student, who was held hostage for 19 hours, cut with a knife and left tied up
with the bed set ablaze.

Robert Williams, 30, faces attempted
murder, rape, kidnapping, arson and other charges stemming from last week’s
assault, police said Friday.

Investigators said evidence found at
the victim’s apartment and an anonymous tip pointed to Williams. The suspect,
also known as William Roberts, has previous convictions for attempted murder
and assault.

Williams was stopped Thursday
leaving a building where a burglary had been reported. While being questioned,
officers noticed he fit the description of the rape suspect, including a scar
on his stomach, police said.

Williams was expected to be
arraigned late Friday. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.

The victim, who is nearing her
degree at the Graduate School of Journalism, was still hospitalized with cuts
to her eye lids and other injuries.

The attack shocked the journalism
school and sparked fears that the rapist could strike again.

“Obviously, we’re all very
relieved,” the school’s spokeswoman, Barbara Fasciani, said about the arrest.

The attack began April 13 after the
assailant slipped inside the victim’s upper Manhattan apartment building and
forced his way into her home. Over the next several hours, the assailant raped
her on her futon bed, tied her up with computer cables, force fed her drugs and
alcohol and used a knife to slit her eyelids, police said.

Before fleeing at about 4:30 p.m.
Saturday, the assailant ignited a corner of the futon. The victim used the
flames to loosen the cables and run for help, police said.

Investigators recovered a
surveillance videotape from a neighboring market showing the man believed to be
the rapist walk in wearing a large jacket over a hooded sweat shirt. He is seen
walking toward an automated teller machine, where, police said, he withdrew
$200 from the victim’s bank account.

AIPAC trial judge throws out government’s secrecy motion

Alleged
secrets are the “heart of the case” against two former American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers, a federal judge said — and
that’s why the government must not keep them from public review.

In his most sweeping ruling yet in the case against Steve Rosen, the AIPAC’s
former foreign policy chief, and Keith Weissman, its former Iran analyst, Judge
T.S. Ellis III rejected a government proposal to obscure evidence from the public.

Ellis, who until now has sought compromises in a series of pretrial rulings,
was unequivocal: The government’s request violates not only the procedures of
the Classified Information Protection Act but two articles of the U.S.
Constitution.

The plan “closes significant parts of this trial and fails to pass
constitutional muster,” Ellis ruled Monday in the U.S. District Court in
Alexandria, Va.

The government’s plan would have sworn jurors to secrecy; referred to countries
and individuals mentioned in the document in codes that would change from
reference to reference; and kept documents discussed at trial out of public
view.

The crux of the charges against Rosen and Weissman is that they allegedly
shared information on Iran with Israeli diplomats, journalists and others. The
defense strategy will be to argue that much of the information was in the
public domain.

The government’s proposal was “novel,” “creative” and
“imaginative,” Ellis said, but it would mean “what the public
does not see or hear is the heart of this case.”

That would violate two constitutional amendments, he said: the sixth,
protecting a defendant’s right to a public trial, and the first, protecting the
public’s right to be apprised of judicial proceedings.

“It is always true that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to
be done,” he said.
Defense lawyers looked back at Rosen and Weissman and smiled.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Amcha, the only Jewish organization that has formally
come to the defense of Rosen and Weissman, through an amicus brief, welcomed
the ruling.

“How do they propose to close the court?” Herzfeld said of the
prosecution. “Is this Soviet Russia?”

The ruling was watched closely by major media groups and free-speech advocates.
A number of them combined to file an amicus brief.

Ellis also said the procedure would confuse and prejudice the jury against the
defense, since how could they judge whether information was properly in the
public domain if they were told to keep it secret?

“It not only invites juror confusion, I think it virtually guarantees
it,” he said. The prosecution appeared unprepared for Ellis’ sweeping
dismissal.

The judge was prepared to schedule a session Thursday to move to the next stage
and decide whether to apply more moderate secrecy restrictions on some of the
evidence on a case-by-case basis, as is routine in such cases. Government
prosecutors admitted that they had not prepared for such an eventuality,
apparently believing their proposal to black out most of the evidence would pass
muster.

Such presumptions appeared to annoy the usually avuncular Ellis.

Ellis’ pretrial rulings have tended to favor the government, albeit with
caveats. Last summer he rejected a defense motion to dismiss as
unconstitutional the government’s unprecedented use of a 1917 statute that
criminalizes the receipt of classified information, but struck down its
provision that obtaining such information would be unlawful if it were “to
the advantage of any foreign nation.”

That would be unconstitutional, Ellis ruled at the time, were it applied to
allies, leaving prosecutors with the hurdle of either proving that releasing
the information “could be used to the injury of the United States,”
according to the statute, or that Israel is not an ally.

On Monday, prosecutors left open the possibility that they would appeal Ellis’
decision to the 4th Circuit appeals court, although Ellis emphasized that he
had based his
decision principally on that court’s opinions.

Ellis’s frustration appeared driven in part by delays in trying the case. FBI
agents raided the offices of Rosen and Weissman in August 2004, and the AIPAC
pair was indicted a year later. The latest trial date — the fifth — is June
4.

“It is important we get it tried as soon as possible — or not tried,”
Ellis said.
That was the first of two times that Ellis appeared to hint that the
prosecution should consider dropping the case.

In a tense exchange with Ellis, Thomas Reilly, the Justice Department’s liaison
with intelligence agencies, insisted that prosecutors still held that the whole
trial could be subject to secrecy, despite Ellis’ ruling.

“You have to decide” whether to advance to the next stage, Ellis
said. “If you tell me that this is it, take it or leave it, I have to go
to 6E,” the section of the Classified Information Protection Act that
would allow Ellis to throw out the whole case.

Yahoo! sued over torture of Chinese dissident

Chinese political prisoner sues Yahoo! in a US federal court in what is
believed to be first case of its kind

Rhys Blakely

A Chinese political prisoner sued Yahoo! in a US federal court, accusing the
internet company of helping the Chinese government torture him by providing
information that led to his arrest.

The suit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims
Protection Act, is believed to be the first of its kind made against an
American internet company.

Wang Xiaoning, who is serving a 10-year sentence in China, and his wife, Yu
Ling, who is currently in San Francisco, are seeking damages and an injunction
barring Yahoo! from identifying political opponents to the Chinese authorities.

Mr Wang was arrested after distributing online articles calling for
democratic reform and a multiparty system in China via Yahoo! sites in 2000 and
2001. His suit contends that Yahoo!’s Hong Kong office provided police in China
with information that linked him to the postings. Mr Wang was arrested in
September 2002 and says he was beaten while in detention.

Hillary Picks La Raza Leader As Campaign Co Chair

The former president of an extremist group that organized many of the
country’s disruptive pro illegal immigration marches and advocates the return
of the American Southwest to Mexico will co-chair Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign.

Best known for his radical pro Chicano work during 30 years as president of
the National Council of La Raza, Raul Yzaguirre is being promoted by the
Clinton campaign as a prominent Hispanic activist who will lead the New York
senator’s outreach to Hispanic
voters.

The reality is that Yzaguirre alienates many American citizens of Hispanic
descent (in other words, those qualified to vote) with his so-called La Raza
rhetoric, which has been repeatedly labeled racist.

The National Council of La Raza
describes itself as the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization
in the United States, but it caters to the radical Chicano movement that says
California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas belong
to Aztlan.

The takeover plan is referred to as the “reconquista” of the Western U.S.
and it features ethnic cleansing of Americans, Europeans, Africans and Asians
once the area is taken back and converted to Aztlan.

While this may all sound a bit crazy, this organization is quite powerful
(thanks to Hillary’s new campaign co-chair) and annually receives millions of
dollars in federal grants. Its leaders also managed to get included in
congressional hearings regarding immigration. Last year alone, the National
Council of La Raza received $15.2 million in federal grants and one senator
gave the group an extra $4 million in earmarked American taxpayer dollars.

The organization
uses the money to support projects like a Southern California elementary school
with a curriculum that specializes in bashing America and promoting the Chicano
movement. The school’s founder and principal, a Calexico-educated activist
named Marcos Aguilar, opposes racial integration and says Mexicans in the U.S.
don’t want to go to white schools or drink from white water fountains.

ISRAELI ‘BIAS’ WASN’T KOSHER

By DAREH GREGORIAN

March 29, 2007 — A former bigwig at the real estate company that bought The
Plaza hotel says he got thrown out on his tuchus because he didn’t speak
Hebrew.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, John Bove says he was fired from
his job as chief financial officer of the Israeli company Elad Properties
“because he’s not Israeli.” Bove, a U.S. citizen who’s not Jewish,
“was discriminated against because of his national origin,” said his
lawyer, Daniel Kaiser.

Elad, which bought The Plaza for $675 million in 2004, denied the charges.

“The allegations have no foundation,” the company’s lawyer, Robert
Gosseen said. “Indeed, Mr. Bove’s replacement is an Indian national and
U.S. citizen” who’s multilingual - but doesn’t speak Hebrew.

Kaiser, however, said his client was replaced by an Israeli national after
he was axed last year.

Bove went to work as the real estate giant’s chief financial officer in the
spring of 2005, and “received nothing but accolades” and received a
27 percent pay hike.

Things started to change last July, when the company started importing
Israeli nationals into key positions, the suit says.

Bove suddenly found several of his duties were being taken away.

In October, he was told not to go to any more monthly board meetings even
though he’d always gone to them.

One of his new Israeli bosses explained to Bove that his attendance
“was no longer useful” because the participants would be speaking
only in Hebrew, the filing says.

He was fired a few days later.

Operation into Iraq will spell
‘disaster,’ says Clinton

 

ANKARA (TZ) The US
administration should protect Iraqi Kurds from external attacks, former US
President Bill Clinton said, while arguing that a possible Turkish military
operation into Iraq would bring “a disaster” to the region.

“America should deploy its troops in Iraq in Kurdistan and regions
neighboring Kurdistan,” Clinton was quoted as saying by the ANKA news
agency in an interview with London-based Arabic language daily Asharq Al-Awsat.
The troops to be deployed would prevent Turkey from entering the region, thus
helping to protect Iraqi Kurds from external forces, Clinton said.
“Although Turkey has all along been an ally for us, it should not be let
to enter Iraqi lands. Turkey’s incursion into the region will bring disaster to
the region,” he said.

Clinton’s remarks came as an apparent comment on Turkey’s top general’s call
for a military operation to quash members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK) in northern Iraq. At a rare press conference last Thursday, Chief
of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt said that from a military point of view,
a (military) operation in northern Iraq must be made. Büyükanıt added that the
military had not asked Turkey’s Parliament to authorize a cross-border
operation.

The PKK is listed both by Washington and the EU as a terrorist organization as
well as by Turkey. The US State Department said last week US Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Dan Fried telephoned
Turkey’s Ambassador to the US Nabi ?ensoy on Thursday to urge Turkey to work
with Iraq to resolve the matter amicably. American assistance in combating the
PKK made Clinton, who served as 42nd president of the US between 1993 and 2001,
the most popular US president in Turkey, Sedat Laçiner, head of the
Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization (ISRO/USAK), argued
in an article dated May 2006.

“The situation has shifted dramatically after the Iraq War. The PKK, which
was on the US’ and EU’s terrorist organization list, established many terrorist
camps in northern Iraq. The US authorities first promised to remove all these
camps when they invaded Iraq. Iraq was their responsibility and removal of the
terrorists, including the PKK, was their one of the foremost tasks. However,
the Americans ignored the PKK terrorists for the past years,” he explained
in the same article titled “The West and Terrorism: PKK as A Privileged
Terrorist Organization.”

EU-Russia relations ‘at low ebb’

Trust
between the EU and Russia has reached its lowest level since the end of the Cold
War, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has warned.

He said
this was partly due to concerns over energy, which both thought the other was
using as a political weapon.

Mr
Mandelson urged the creation of a “grand bargain” with security of
demand and supply on both sides as well as investment in each other’s markets.

Another
cause was different perceptions of the 1990s post-Soviet transition.

There was
also a lack of respect between the two sides, he said.

“Neither
[side] thinks they enjoy the respect from the other they are entitled to
expect,” he said at a conference in the Italian city of Bologna.

To
overcome this mistrust it would be necessary to anchor the Russian economy in
the EU’s single market and the international trade system, he added.

Partnership
call

“Relations
between the EU and Russia … contain a level of misunderstanding or even
mistrust we have not seen since the end of the Cold War,” he told the
conference.

In my view the roots of these misunderstandings lie in different perceptions of the 1990s and what’s happened since the collapse of the Soviet empire Peter Mandelson

But he
later clarified his remarks, saying there was not the same animosity between
the two sides that there was during their nuclear-based confrontation.

“Since
the Cold War we’ve had obviously very different, much better relations, …
nonetheless I think they’re going through a very difficult period,” he
told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

“I’m
somebody who believes that Russia’s interests and Europe’s interests will be
served by the strong partnership between the both of us,” he added.

“You’re
only going to create that partnership if you deal with the current
misunderstandings and mistrusts between us, and in my view the roots of these
misunderstandings lie in different perceptions of the 1990s and what’s happened
since the collapse of the Soviet empire.”

The trade
commissioner said it was not surprising that Russians were sceptical about
democracy and the market economy, in view of the unhappiness caused by economic
liberalisation and privatisation during the 1990s.

‘No
respect’

Mr
Mandelson told the conference that the EU needed guarantees Russia would not
cut off oil and gas supplies.

Recent
rows over energy costs between Russia and former Soviet states have caused
temporary disruption of supply to western Europe and sparked accusations that
Russia is using energy exports as a political weapon.

Russia,
meanwhile, believed that the EU was generating an insecurity of demand for its supplies,
Mr Mandelson said, and urged Europe not to give the impression it was
determined to avoid dependence on Russian oil and gas at all costs.

He said
Russia should diversify its economy away from a reliance on energy.

“In
the modern age, the essential characteristics of a country with Russia’s huge
potential cannot be heavy, centralised political control, and an economy based
on the rents from energy resources,” he said.

Membership
of the World Trade Organisation would both strengthen the Russian economy and
make resolving trade disputes easier, he told the conference.

Racists among us

When
will a marriage between a Yemenite and a Pole be as legitimate in our society
as that of a Hungarian and a German Jew? When will we once again become one
nation and the gene pool will once again be united?

On Shabbat
I overheard a children’s conversation that I wished I had not. I passed by a
Hasidic synagogue, whose name I won’t mention to avoid embarrassing it, when I
overheard an honest conversation between two boys. They sat on the steps at the
entrance to the building when the younger one, a cute boy with curly sidelocks
and an innocent expression, turned to the older boy and asked him a question
that threw me off balance: “Tell me, what are Yemenites?” The second boy,
without thinking for even a second, answered: “Yemenites are worse than
Sephardim, because they are browner”. This conversation transported me back 18
years – a scared girl in the famous Hassidic Beit Yaakov school. I was the only
“suntanned” girl in grade 3b, and I was a leper.

 

I remember
hiding in the classroom during recess so that the sun won’t darken my skin. My
only “outcast” friend was Tzipi. She was born with the “right genes” and did
not have “mixed blood” like me, yet even Poles can sometimes be born with dark
skin. Her beautiful green eyes and flowing hair did not help her pass the
strict acceptance test put forth by the china dolls, our class mates. A girl
who in secular society would have been placed on a highway billboard sat
hunched next to me, apologizing for her existence- yes, the only two “brown”
girls in the class.

 

Besides
the feeling that we would never be as beautiful as the pure white skinned girls
who populated our school, we were also considered dumb, because stupidity and
darkness go hand in hand, in a distorted logic that I never understood.

 

Outcast
status  

Even when
I transferred from my private school to a “general” Beit Yaakov school, where
the range of colors changed considerably- the concept of prejudice did not
disappear. To my good fortune, my “mixed” ethnicity and Ashkenazi last name
saved me from being classified in the wrong category, but in my heart I was
there, absorbing my outcast status with disgust.

 

This
feeling of “you will not succeed” that is deeply ingrained in dark skinned
children in the strictly-Orthodox sector would not leave me, and were it not
for an excellent teacher in high school who made me believe in myself, I do not
know if I would have received my matriculation certificate, and certainly not
an academic degree.

 

I am
painfully aware that this horrifying outlook is not the exclusive domain of
evil eight-year-old girls. In the strictly-Orthodox world there are mature,
educated people, rabbis and community leaders that think exactly this way.

 

The
strictly-Orthodox who posses this racist outlook find many ways to disguise
their extreme opinions with a wide variety of excuses. “It is a question of a
couple’s compatibility in food and customs”, one person justified it to me. The
fact that his Hungarian grandmother curses the sweet, Polish gefilte fish that
his wife makes is not a good enough explanation for him. Even though Jewish law
“in its ultimate audacity” solves this “crisis” and sets forth clear rules on
marriages between ethnicities, they choose to leave this irrelevant topic
inside the Code of Jewish Law in the hopes that this matter will never
actualize, at least not in their family.

 

Theories
of better races  

Today when
I hear about a talented rabbinical judge who took a long time to become part of
the system because “unfortunately” he was born to a Sephardi mother and
Ashkenazi father- I go back in time. When a wicked woman, sorry but I have no
other definition for her, who is not aware of my “brown” genes tells me about
her new neighbors, and how relieved she is that “despite their ethnicity” they
are neat and well-kept, I politely smile on the outside and want to throw up on
the inside.

 

So tell me
how long can this go on? Sixty years ago they burned us because we were an
“inferior race” of Jews, and now six million are no longer with us. Why today
when there are only 12 million of us left in the world, are theories of better
or worse races still come out of our mouths and seep into our hearts?

 

When will
a marriage between a Yemenite and a Pole be as legitimate in our society as
that of a Hungarian and a German Jew? When will we once again become one nation
and the gene pool will once again be united? Only this will allow for the
disappearance of this horrible phenomenon and we will no longer have to hear
people who think “is he Iraqi or Austrian?” is a legitimate question in
arranging marriages, jobs or political fortunes.

Iraqi Kurds oppose draft oil law

The de facto autonomous regional
Kurdish administration in northern Iraq is sticking to its objection to a draft
oil law that would centralize control of most of the country’s resources while
the central government’s oil minister has already announced that the draft
would be sent to the Parliament next week.

An Iraqi worker walks toward the oil exporting installation near the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Iraq is likely to sign billions of dollars in investment deals with foreign oil companies if its new oil law goes into force.

Ashti Hawrami, minister of natural
resources for the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, told Reuters
on Wednesday that “Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will not
sign up to details in the emerging oil law.” Annexes to the draft oil law
that aim to wrest oilfields from regional governments and place them in the
hands of a newly formed state-oil company are unconstitutional, Hawrami
attending an oil conference in Dubai, argued. Meanwhile, Iraq’s Oil Minister
Hussain al-Shahristani, also attending the conference in Dubai, said on
Wednesday the draft would go to lawmakers before the next week was out,
avoiding giving a specific day.

“We are broke. Nobody is going
to lend Iraq any new money to invest in its old, lousy oil fields. We have to
do these professionally and on a competitive basis,” Hawrami also said,
while speaking to Dow Jones Newswires at the Dubai meeting. He added that
proposals to the draft law that would give the Iraqi National Oil Co. control
over 90 percent of the country’s oil reserves threaten the law’s approval.

Iraq sits on 115 billion barrels in
proven oil reserves which make it the world’s third-largest. Still, Iraq has
lagged in exploration technology. Iraq exports about 2 million barrels of oil a
day, of which about 1.6 million barrels are exported through the port of Basra
and some 300,000 are pumped from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish
port of Ceyhan. Oil production has plummeted since the US-led invasion in March
2003 as the oil pipelines have faced repeated insurgent sabotage, attacks on
maintenance crews, alleged corruption, theft and mismanagement.

Disagreement could delay the
country’s parliament from passing the law, seen as key to attracting billions
of dollars in foreign investment needed to overhaul the industry and boost oil
output. The Iraqi oil legislation, which was endorsed by the cabinet last
February, will open the door for the government to sign contracts for
exploration and production of the country’s vast untapped reserves. It was
designed to create a fair distribution of oil profits to all Iraqis and it is
perhaps the most important piece of legislation for Iraq’s American patrons.

The fact that Iraqi Kurds had
dropped their demands for autonomy in oil exploration and production –
allowing the Iraqi Cabinet in late February to approve a draft oil law — at
the time removed a key concern for Ankara, which appeared to be the prospect
that the Iraqi Kurds would get a central role in oil exploration and autonomy
in northern Iraq. Then diplomatic sources welcomed the draft, describing it
“very positive.”

Last week, The Times reported that
the state-run Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) and a multinational oil
company of Anglo-Dutch origin had struck a deal to extract gas in northern
Iraq, though the agreement still needs to be ratified by the central Iraqi
government in Baghdad. Royal Dutch Shell PLC is expected to work in partnership
with TPAO to build a pipeline from the disputed city of Kirkuk to Ceyhan on the
Mediterranean coast of Turkey, The Times said in its report, which was neither
denied nor confirmed by TPAO officials in Ankara.

Dem unity raises questions on Iraq bill

Anti-war liberals worried about party unity are reluctant to mount
opposition to war spending legislation in the House even if it does not set a
firm date for troop withdrawal.

Their support would pave the way for Democratic leaders next week to send
President Bush a bill that would fund the Iraq war and still call for troops to
leave by March 31, 2008, albeit a nonbinding withdrawal date.

The measure would be weaker than House Democrats wanted but is advocated by
the Senate, where Democrats hold a slimmer majority and many party members
oppose setting a firm timetable on the war.

Rather than let the bill sink, “we want to get it to the president and
let him veto it,” said Rep. Diane Watson (news, bio, voting record),
D-Calif., a party liberal who opposes funding the war at all.

In the Senate, the debate on the war grew sharper Thursday when Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) said the war had been
lost and that Bush’s troop buildup is not stemming violence in Iraq. That
statement prompted Republicans to declare that Democrats don’t support the
troops in Iraq.

“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and
— you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know)
this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by
the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.

At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack bristled at Reid’s
reference to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s thinking, saying he should
“not try to be a mind reader.”

“Secretary Rice would never countenance continuing to send young
American men and women to Iraq in pursuit of a strategy that she didn’t think
had a chance of success,” McCormack said.

Bush has promised to veto any bill that sets a timetable on the Iraq war,
contending that decisions on troop deployments must be left to the commander in
chief and military commanders on the ground. His position raises the bigger
question of what Democrats will do after the veto.

The quiet support of a House-Senate compromise among the rank-and-file
represents a new tack by Democrats who say they want to pull together in their
fight against Bush on the war.

Rep. Hank Johnson (news, bio, voting record) of Georgia, a freshman Democrat
who represents a district strongly opposed to the war, said lending his support
to a bill that funds the war without setting a firm end date will be difficult.
On the other hand, he added, Democrats might be in a tougher spot if they can’t
pull the caucus together long enough to act against Bush.

“We have to look at the political realities of being the party that’s
in control, and prove to the American people we can govern,” he said.

Last month, Watson was one of several liberal Democrats who threatened to
block passage of the House bill because she did not think the measure went far
enough to end the war. Watson and California Democratic Reps. Lynn Woolsey
(news, bio, voting record), Barbara Lee (news, bio, voting record) and Maxine
Waters (news, bio, voting record) said they refused to fund the war and wanted
language that would end combat before the end of 2007.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) launched an aggressive
whip operation to persuade members the bill was their best shot at trying to
force Bush to abandon his Iraq policy. Eventually, the group said they would
help round up support for the bill despite their intention to personally vote
against it.

The bill passed narrowly, mostly along party lines, in a 218-212 vote. House
appropriators are now trying to negotiate a final bill that could be sent to
the president by next week.

With Senate leaders nervous the final bill would fail if it included a firm
deadline, aides said Democrats were leaning toward accepting the Senate’s
nonbinding goal. The compromise bill also is expected to retain House
provisions preventing military units from being worn out by excessive combat
deployments; however, the president could waive these standards if he states so
publicly.

On Thursday, Pelosi, D-Calif., summoned Woolsey, Lee, Waters and several
other of the party’s more liberals members to her office to discuss the issue.
According to aides and members, concerns were expressed but there were no loud
objections to a conference bill that would adopt the Senate’s nonbinding goal.

Watson said she would personally oppose the final bill, as she did last
month, but would not stand in Pelosi’s way if the speaker agrees to the Senate
version.

“It’s still a timeline,” she said. “We’re not backing down
from that.”

 

 

 

 

 

French go to the polls today

Gonzales is out

VNN Video at Kos and LGF fallout

Cho Shooting

Gunman—gun man, hardly denoting that a person is involved in the crime. 

Lemming-like behavior of students.

 

TJB

 

 

 

Main

 

OTHER

 

 

End

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