US senators call for Chinese drywall probe

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Peter J Brown
June 24, 2009 - Asia Times

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In early June, four prominent United States senators notified the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) that firm action needs to be taken by the CPSC over mounting evidence that drywall imported from China is causing damage to thousands of US homes and adversely impacting the health of thousands. The CPSC has acknowledged that the commission had received 360 complaints by the time the letter arrived.

Drywall is known by many names, including gypsum board, plasterboard, and wallboard. In homes around the world, it is used to form interior walls and ceilings. Drywall is manufactured by placing gypsum, a very soft mineral, between two sheets of paper and then drying it in a kiln.

Approximately a week after the letter arrived at the CPSC, 10 separate class action lawsuits in three states involving drywall imported from China were combined into a single legal proceeding under a US federal judge in New Orleans. The case is known as "Chinese-Manufactured Drywall Products Liability Litigation" and it brings together eight lawsuits from Florida, one from Ohio, and one from Louisiana.

In addition to these lawsuits, more than 60 other similar lawsuits have been identified and will ultimately be included as well.

A Chinese company, Knauf Plasterboard (Tianjin) Co Ltd (KPT) is named in three of these 10 lawsuits, and Knauf Gips KG is named in four of the lawsuits. Both are part of Knauf, a German conglomerate. Various US builders and drywall distributors are also named.

However, another Chinese company which has been linked to this tainted drywall phenomenon stands out from the rest. It is state-owned Beijing New Building Material PLC (BNBM) which holds a controlling interest in Taishan Gypsum Co Ltd, also known as Taian Taishan Plasterboard and Shandong Taihe Dongxin Co Ltd, according to the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune.

Not only is BNBM conducting its own investigation, but the CPSC and China's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) are also exchanging information about what is happening, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. There are reports that a mine in Shandong province is the source of the problem, but this has not been verified. [1]

In their letter, the four US senators make it clear that they are not going to stand by and await the outcome of the complex legal battle shaping up in New Orleans. These senators want something to happen now, and they have "directed" the CPSC "to expedite its investigation and testing "of the drywall products in question ... and to carry out the Chinese drywall investigation without delay".

The senators wrote:
Since 2006, more than 550 million pounds of drywall have been imported from the People's Republic of China. On May 21, 2009, the Commission's Director of the Division of Health Sciences testified that since December 22, 2008, the Commission has received over 320 complaints about problems associated with drywall from China. The Director stated that these complaints include: structural effects on homes, such as metal corrosion in air conditioning units, copper pipes and electrical wiring; as well as health effects on homeowners, such as unexplained nosebleeds, insomnia, skin irritation and asthma. These complaints have been lodged by homeowners in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
Last Thursday, a one-day conference was held in New Orleans entitled, "Chinese Drywall Litigation". Dozens of lawyers and experts were in attendance. One of the speakers, Dr Patricia Williams, is a leading toxicologist and president of Louisiana-based Environmental Toxicology Experts, LLC. She is also an associate professor at the University of New Orleans, and she has been hired by two law firms to help represent their clients who are plaintiffs in the above-mentioned lawsuits.

Williams finds many things unusual with the drywall imported from China.

"Chinese drywall generates a continuous release of particles. Residents complain of copious amounts of dust that when removed from surfaces reappears in a few hours. Smoke alarms are set off frequently in the same houses due to the dust particles that circulate in the ambient air," said Williams.

Another problem, according to Williams, is that "Chinese drywall has a filler that contains concentrated heavy metals from a coal source. Analytical chemists are evaluating the filler and possible coal sources are coal mining wastes and/or coal fly ash. These heavy metals are toxic and when inhaled can concentrate in the body. Strontium is one of the concentrated heavy metals."

"Strontium is believed to be responsible for the release of the sulfurous gas emissions. The most commonly detected sulfur compounds that are emitted include: carbon disulfide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. The concentration of strontium is two-10 times greater in Chinese drywall samples that have been tested by our analytical chemist than in US drywall," added Williams. "US drywall is free of sulfur compounds and does not emit these gases."

Besides the CPSC, which has been named as the lead US federal agency for this investigation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also active, working with both the CPSC and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC-ATSDR). According to an EPA analysis conducted earlier this year at the request of the CDC-ATSDR, "sulfur was detected at 83 parts per millions (ppm) and 119 ppm in the Chinese drywall samples. Sulfur was not detected in the four US-manufactured drywall samples ... Strontium was detected at 2,570 ppm and 2,670 ppm in the Chinese drywall samples. Strontium was detected in the US-manufactured drywall at 244 ppm to 1,130 ppm."

What concerns Williams is that the general public does not have a good understanding of the threat posed by this drywall.

"The general public as well as some of the residents in the houses with the drywall do not understand the acute and chronic health effects of the gases and particles released by the drywall as well as the safety risks of the sulfurous erosion of electrical wiring," said Williams. "The health effects range from acute exposure irritation effects to chronic exposure systemic effects such as asthma attacks, stroke, neurological damage, Parkinson disease, lung damage, and much more."

Williams points to other possible toxicants that are known to occur in incinerated coal sources that have not yet been tested for in the Chinese drywall. These include Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), and radioisotopes such as Radium 226, which are known to occur in coal mine waste and coal fly ash.

"The bleaching process, as well as uncontrolled incineration of coal sources, can generate chlorinated compounds, such as dioxins or chlorinated PAHs. These chemicals have not yet been fully investigated," said Williams.

In November 2006, a team from the Arkansas-based Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH), conducted its own analysis of air samples taken from homes in Florida where Knauf Tianjin gypsum plasterboard had been used to see if "the measured compounds posed an unacceptable public health risk".

"The testing revealed that the Knauf Tianjin product released low levels of certain naturally-occurring sulfur-containing compounds. Testing of the bulk material revealed the likely source of these compounds was a sulfur-containing mineral known as iron disulfide. One of the other two products manufactured in China presented a similar odor and also contained the iron disulfide mineral," reported the CTEH team.

However, the team concluded that, "measured concentrations of the detected chemicals in air were not present at levels that present a public health concern". This finding came despite the fact that, "certain naturally-occurring sulfur-containing compounds can be emitted from the Knauf Tianjin product at concentrations higher than present in background air".

The looming legal battle is likely to be a protracted and hotly contested showdown. Attempts by Asia Times Online to reach both German and Chinese company were unsuccessful.

According to Jack Landskroner, a managing partner of the Cleveland law firm Landskroner Grieco Madden, which is representing one of the plaintiffs, nobody has any idea as to the actual number of homes that might be affected, let alone how much money is involved.

"We know that some of the builders are estimating that a minimum remediation effort will cost at least $75,000 per home with an approximate square footage of 2,000. The cost will go up from there based on square footage and the adequacy of the remediation being suggested," said Landskroner.

Some observers see this base estimate as extremely conservative, and do not rule out the possibility that a figure twice as big may emerge over time. This possibility cannot be dismissed entirely given the fact that this estimate simply includes materials, fittings and certain items in the home. It does not include health care costs and other expenses incurred by the people living in the homes.

Although all the class action lawsuits have now been consolidated for the purposes of preliminary management in front of one judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, it is too early to discuss any timetable or schedule as this case was just assigned to the judge in New Orleans.

"He will likely be holding a hearing in the next few weeks to discuss with the lawyers how the case will proceed," said Landskroner.

Scheduling aside, Landskroner contends that "the claims of our clients are meritorious and that we will obtain a fair and adequate recovery on their behalf by way of an agreed to settlement with the defendants or by way of judgment should the builders and manufacturers choose not to adequately address their culpability to these homeowners. Our clients paid premium prices to purchase their dream homes and instead they are now suffering the effects of bargain basement materials used by the builders which continue to [affect] their property and may also have long term effect on their health."

One resident of Fort Myers, Florida, described the Chinese drywall affair as "huge", but went on to add that while many builders and small businesses in the US would end up in very bad shape - if not out of business entirely - as a result of this situation, "the big guys" overseas named in the lawsuits would likely emerge without a scratch. Others wonder how US homeowners might be compensated for all the damages they may have suffered as a result. Can the foreign companies in question be compelled to mail checks to US homeowners? Many think not.

"The Chinese company involved in this matter as well as the German company have both been named as defendants in our lawsuits. We are in the process of having them served with copies of the lawsuits and expect that they will be party to this litigation," said Landskroner.

One Republican Louisiana state senator said what is unfolding here is tantamount to Chinese companies dumping "toxic waste" between two sheets of paper and exporting it to the US as drywall. Still, an effort during the latest session of the Louisiana state legislature to provide some form of relief to the state's affected homeowners went nowhere.

The consolidation of the lawsuits and the mounting pressure from the US Congress on the CPSC will no doubt bring additional publicity. Yet there are no assurances that demonstrations of concern and greater media scrutiny will bring any relief to thousands of irate US homeowners.

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Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from the US state of Maine and a frequent contributor to Asia Times Online.

Zen (sniff) Moment of the Day

Sanford's infidelity admission adds to an ever-growing list of woes for the out-of-power Republican Party as it looks to rebound against President Barack Obama and his emboldened Democrats. The episode is another distraction for a party seeking a turnaround after disastrous losses in consecutive national elections as it confronts a stark reality: its less than diverse ranks are steadily shrinking, its regional heft is limited to the South and it lacks a leader of stature to guide the party back to power.

- Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/25/sanford-scandal-latest-blow-republicans/

Afghan farmers ditch opium for saffron

Saffron, the world's most expensive spice, is derived from the stigmas of the saffron crocus.

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Farooq Faizi
Jun 25, 2009 - Asia Times

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HERAT, Afghanistan - Abdul Samad has given up growing poppies. The farmer from Gulmir, from a village in Pashtun Zarghon district of Herat province, has found monetary and spiritual benefits in switching to saffron.

"I always felt sinful when I was growing poppies," he said. "The money brought me no joy, and did not allow me to change my life."

In 2007, Afghanistan supplied more than 90% of the world's opium poppy, the raw material for heroin.

Abdul Samad grew the illegal crop for five years until a new

government program helped him make the switch to saffron, the world's most expensive spice.

"I make more money than I used to," he said. "With poppy, I got between US$400 and $600 for each jerib of land. Now I make more than US$5,000." A jerib is approximately half an acre.

Saffron is prized for its taste and color, and is used in food and dyes. People in Herat use it to brew tea when they can afford it. Even locally, a small five-gram knot of the substance costs close to US$25, a bit pricey for villagers making no more than $200 per month.

But saffron is catching on. Bashir Ahmad Ahmadi, head of the marketing department for Herat's Department of Agriculture, estimates that the province now has 212 hectares planted in saffron, with annual production approaching 50-70 tonnes. This may be miniscule compared to the 7,700 tonnes of opium that Afghanistan produced from 157,000 hectares in 2008, but it is a start.

The nation's naturally conservative poppy farmers say they need more secure international markets for saffron before they make the switch in bigger numbers.

The world price of saffron has skyrocketed over the past few years, and is now running at about US$3,000 per kilogram. Rumors that it may prove therapeutic in cancer treatment has caused demand to spike even further.

This is good news for Afghan farmers, who are looking for an alternative to poppy. The banned opium plant is expensive to harvest, and there is the risk of police involvement and possible legal destruction. Worst of all, it is bringing in much less money than it used to. The price of black tar opium has fallen precipitously over the past three years, mainly due to overproduction.

Experts say that saffron is being grown in 16 provinces of Afghanistan, including the northern provinces of Balkh and Kapisa, but the bulk of the product comes from Herat, in the west of the country on the border with Iran.

Saffron has a history in Herat stretching back more than 80 years. The first plants were cultivated in the Hauz-e-Karbos area of the province, and in 1973-74 the government conducted experiments in saffron cultivation.

But war intervened, and the project was dropped. Not until 1991-92, with the influx of returnees from Iran, was saffron reintroduced. Iran, jealously guarding its near-monopoly on saffron in the region, did not allow saffron bulbs to be exported. The enterprising Afghans smuggled them in.

"The returnees from Iran brought bulbs with them, illegally, and began to grow saffron in Ghoreyan district [in Herat]," said Ahmadi.

When the Taliban took over in 1996, they encouraged farmers to grow poppy, said Abdul Qader, a farmer from Pashtun Zarghon.

"The Taliban were buying our harvest for a very high price," he explained. "Many saffron farms were destroyed, and converted to poppy."

Poppy cultivation rose quickly, said Qader, as drugs were the main funding source for the Taliban. But in 2000-2001, the Taliban banned poppy. Some see savvy marketing behind the prohibition.

"When the price of opium dropped on world markets in 2000-2001, [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar issued a decree banning poppy," said Ahmadi. "They wanted to boost the price of poppy in world markets."

After the Taliban were routed in the 2001 United States-led offensive, farmers returned to the now lucrative poppy trade, joining an Afghanistan-wide movement that made the country the number one opium producer in the world.

Drug money funds the insurgency and fuels government corruption, hindering development and threatening to turn Afghanistan into a pariah state. The search for an alternative to poppy has been going on for several years, and some think that saffron might be the answer.

The government of Herat, with assistance from the local, Italian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, began to distribute saffron bulbs free of charge to those willing to make the switch. Saffron grows well in Herat's hot, dry climate, say farmers. It is also easier and cheaper to grow and harvest than poppy.

"Saffron does not need a lot of water," said Abdul Qader. "It does not need a lot of fertilizer, and you need fewer people to harvest it." Also, he added, the bulbs, once planted, are productive for six years.

Like Abdul Samad, Qader said that his life had improved dramatically since he began to grow saffron.

"This plant has brought blessings to our land," he said. "During the first three years I was making one kilogram of saffron per jerib of land. But by the fifth year I was getting three kilograms."

The value of his land has also increased, he explained. Before farmers began growing saffron in the area a jerib of land sold for 70,000 afghani ($1,400). The price has now more than doubled to 150,000 afghani.

According to Mohammad Hashem Aslami, a saffron expert and head of the agriculture section of the Danish organization DACAAR in Herat, Afghan saffron, particularly the Herati variety, is the best in the world.

"There are three reasons for our high quality," he explained. "First, we have the right climate; second, we harvest by hand; and third, we have a very great capacity for production."

Ghafar Hamidzai, director of Afghanistan's largest saffron company, Afghan Saffron, agrees. "If the farmers use the right methods of cultivation and harvesting, Afghanistan's saffron will be the best," he said. "We are attracting a lot of attention from Western markets."

Saffron could be a boon to Afghanistan's agricultural export industry if it is properly managed, according to the agriculture department's Ahmadi.

"Over the next six years, if farmers receive help from the government and non-governmental organizations, the production of saffron will increase to 50-70 tons per year," he told IWPR. "This is a very positive step for the development and prosperity of this country and the region."

But help from the Afghan government has been slow in coming, complain the farmers.

"The Ministry of Agriculture encouraged us to plant saffron, and promised us lots of assistance," said Qader. "But they have not done anything for us yet."

Not true, says Ahmadi. His office has distributed saffron bulbs to the farmers free of charge, he insisted. They sponsored some of them to go to Kabul for training, and they are working on getting Afghan saffron into international markets.

Hajji Toryalia Rausi, an official of the Herat chamber of commerce, told IWPR that farmers had not asked his organization for help.

"The farmers have not told us about problems with marketing of saffron," he said. "If they provide information on their rate of production, we can approve a specific and stable rate for their product."

But still, says DACAAR's Aslami, Afghanistan's farmers require more substantive support.

"It would be difficult for Afghanistan to compete with Iran on saffron production," he told IWPR. "We still lack a comprehensive plan."

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Farooq Faizi is an IWPR trainee in Herat.

Israel stunned by Obama's tough love

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Seema Sirohi
Jun 24, 2009 - Asia Times

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JERUSALEM - United States President Barack Obama's bold new rulebook for the Middle East attempts a much-needed balance in a US foreign policy that has long tilted in favor of one against the region's many.

Israel is no longer more equal than others, the Palestinians no longer a mere backdrop and all evil does not emanate from the Arab world. Obama has changed language and tone to break through the tough mythologies of the region, calcified in years of failure to make peace.

He seems to want an honest engagement with the Muslim world and an honest accounting of the Israeli conduct. Obama is sending signals to all the regional players - from Syria to Iran, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, even Hamas - to begin afresh and "unclench" fists. The new policy tries to level an uneven playing field on which Israel has always won, no matter the contest or context.

Obama's decision to plunge headlong into the world's toughest region, to resolve its most difficult conflict, is farsighted because success here can multiply into success wherever Muslims live. To try to remove the most persistent agenda item from the long list of grievances is a move laden with possibilities, most of them positive.

By addressing the Middle East problem early in his administration, unlike his two predecessors who paid attention to the festering wound only towards the end of their terms, shows his seriousness and resolve to resuscitate the peace process. Depending on how his partners - the Israelis, the Palestinians and certain Arab countries - translate his plan, relations between the West and the Islamic world could improve with wider implications on other fronts.

Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, advocating a separate state for Palestine was a dramatic opening salvo, a frank admission of what needs to be done. He equated Palestinian and Jewish suffering, speaking of the two peoples in the same breath, something no other American president has done. He humanized and elevated the Palestinians who have long languished in the netherworld of neglected priorities of both the West and the Arab world.

Obama also loudly demanded an end to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as a prerequisite to restarting the peace process. A future Palestine weighed down by illegal Jewish settlements is a recipe for more, not less, conflict. It is also an issue where Israel has no cover - international law bars any demographic changes in the occupied territories.

No wonder Washington's new stance has rattled the Israeli government, lit up the Jewish blogosphere and made the religious right angry. Posters calling Obama "anti-Semitic" and wearing the kaffiyeh (scarf) are being waved at rallies in Jerusalem while YouTube videos filled with anti-Obama hate speech are multiplying.

That his middle name is "Hussein" has suddenly become a potent cry in Israel. A recent poll indicated that 51% of Israelis think he is pro-Palestinian. Many say he is pushing Israel to score "points with the Muslim world".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, heading a right-wing coalition, replied to Obama with his own "speech" trying to put limits on this new American enterprise. Full of conditions and caveats, his short answer was "No, you can't" to Obama's campaign pledge of "Yes, we can."

Netanyahu has been cold to the idea of Jerusalem as a shared capital of two separate states. He refused to freeze settlements and referred to the occupied territories by their Biblical names of Judea and Samaria. Although Netanyahu uttered the word "Palestine" for the first time, he envisioned it as a state without sovereign power, one that can not buy arms or control its own air space. He demanded many promises and assurances from the Palestinians even before negotiations began.

"He persuaded no one that he really intends to fight for peace. He did not lead Israel to a new future. He only collaborated with its old, familiar anxieties," wrote David Grossman, an Israeli author and peace activist on the front-page of Ha'aretz, a liberal newspaper. Palestinians have derided the speech as a non-starter. Mustafa Barghouti, a moderate Palestinian MP, said Netanyahu's speech endorsed "a ghetto", not a state. But Netanyahu's right-wing support has remained intact.

While a future state is still down the line, the most immediate test for Obama is the question of settlements. Will he compromise and allow what Israelis call "natural growth" - expansion of already existing settlements? Palestinian leaders and Arab governments say it is a litmus test for Obama.

According to researchers, nearly 300,000 Israelis live in 121 settlements in the West Bank, occupying 35% of the land through an intricate system of separate jurisdictions, security zones, schools, industrial areas and roads. Palestinians are not allowed to enter these settlements or use the road network.

Former US president Jimmy Carter and others have called this apartheid, but successive Israeli governments have encouraged, connived at and supported the settlements.

So far, the US Congress and the American Jewish community are behind Obama in his attempt to invigorate the process. The Europeans support him as do liberal Israelis who want a two-state solution.

If Obama gains momentum on this thorny issue, he can legitimately ask the Arab states to make gestures towards peace - such as low-level trade with Israel and tourism. He would also gain support for his policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan if he could heal rifts with the Muslim world.

But equally, a public spat with Israel, if prolonged, could erode his own base and unleash the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Can Obama and his advisers realize their vision?

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Seema Sirohi is a correspondent based in Jerusalem.

Israeli Leader Reveals Why Israeli Shuns Negotiation

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Ira Chernus
June 24, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Israeli government officials are experts at finding excuses to avoid negotiating with Palestinians. Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Ya'alon, pulled out an old one the other day: "There is no partner on the Palestinian side, we just give, and we get nothing."

Others have now come up with a new one: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his recent speech, "Let us begin peace negotiations immediately without prior conditions"; but the Palestinians, backed by the Obama administration, are demanding a halt to settlement expansion as a precondition to talks.

Either way, it seems, the Palestinians (as usual) must take all the blame.

But now, in a rare moment of unguarded honesty, Israel's second ranking leader, Ehud Barak -- Defense Minister, former Prime Minister, former head of the military -- has let the truth slip out. According to Israel's premier newspaper, Ha'aretz, Barak told reporters: "In negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel is the 'only one that can give, the Palestinians are the underdog and the talks are asymmetrical.' But in regional talks, Barak said, it becomes clear that Israel is the isolated party."

Israel has to look like the isolated underdog to keep up the myth that it is the innocent, virtuous, aggrieved party. That has always been a fundamental principle of Israeli strategy: Someone else must take all the blame for the conflict that keeps Israelis as well as their neighbors insecure. The only difference now is that a top Israeli leader has admitted it in public.

Barak knows perfectly well that the other excuses for avoiding direct negotiations with the Palestinians are bogus.

Take the "no partner" ploy. For many years the Israelis had a universally-accepted Palestinian partner, Yasser Arafat. Arafat could not embrace Barak's so-called "generous offer" at Camp David in 2000 because it was actually an offer to create a state of Palestine that was bound to fail. The New York Times recently called it, quite rightly, an "archipelago" of small clumps of land separated by Israeli settlements, security roads, and check points. The Israelis continue to offer only variants on the same impossible plan.

When Arafat turned down the offer, knowing that his people would never tolerate it, the Israelis launched a calculated plan to make him "irrelevant" and then proclaim that they had "no partner for peace." Unfortunately, the plan worked all too well.

After Arafat's death and the electoral victory of Hamas, the Israelis' great fear was that the two major Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, would create a unified government, whose head would obviously be a partner for peace. So they torpedoed every effort in that direction, exacerbating (with U.S. help) the conflict between the two parties that continues to the present day.

Palestinian unity efforts continue, too. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has just ordered the release of all Hamas prisoners held by his security forces, in a goodwill gesture aimed at speeding the formation of a single Palestinian government. We can expect some kind of high-profile Israeli violence to break up that effort any day now, to make sure there is "no partner for peace."

The other Israeli argument against negotiations -- the claim of Palestinian preconditions -- is equally bogus. It was Netanyahu who recited, in his major address, a litany of conditions the Palestinians would have to accept in any settlement, many of them so painful that he can be quite sure they're impossible for his foe to swallow: no capital in Jerusalem, no right of return (not even a symbolic one), no withdrawal from or even freeze on settlements, and a state at some vague future date with no army, no control of their air space, no right to sign treaties unless Israel approves them.

As Barak rightly pointed out, Israel is in a position to demand such preconditions because it has all the power. It is "the only one that can give," and that leaves it in a position to dictate the outcome of negotiations from the beginning. Against all that, the Palestinian negotiators have to come up with some way to shift the power balance a tiny bit in their direction. Otherwise, they will sit down at the negotiating table powerless. And then, why should they bother to talk at all?

So against all of Israel's preconditions they've come up with this one, relatively minor precondition of their own: freezing expansion of the settlements immediately, which means only that Israel should begin complying with international law. Full compliance with Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention would mean removing all the quarter-million or so Jewish settlers from the occupied territories, as Tony Judt recently pointed out. However, as Judt noted, Netanyahu has made it painfully clear that the settlements will stay: "His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel's land-grab in "Judea and Samaria."

That makes it all the more important for the Israelis to find some way to avoid direct talks with the Palestinians while keeping up their image as the innocent underdogs. Hence, as Barak said quite plainly, they will resist two-way talks with the Palestinians and demand a regional peace conference -- which can be dragged on for years, with the settlement issue lost amid the vast complexities of regional matters, while the settlements themselves continue to grow quite unnaturally. Thank you, Mr. Defense Minister, for that rare moment of honesty.

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Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea and the forthcoming book "Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin."

Bush Assails Those Who Offer Terrorists 'Therapy'

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Though His Administration Sent Detainees to Saudi Counseling Center

June 18, 2009 - ABC News

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At a speaking engagement last night, former President George W. Bush defended his administration's counterterrorism policies, including Guantanamo Bay, the Washington Times reports.

"The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again," Mr. Bush said.

Refraining from directly criticizing President Obama, Mr. Bush said, "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

Interestingly, it was the Bush administration that sent some Gitmo detainees to a Saudi jihadi rehabilitation camp -- called the "Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Care and Counseling."

To decidedly mixed success.

Earlier this year the Saudi government published a list of 85 wanted terrorism suspects. Eleven of them had been prisoners at Guantanamo put through the Saudi rehabilitation program.

Said Ali al-Shihri, transferred to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo during the Bush administration in 2007, is currently the deputy leader of al Qaeda's Yemen branch.

The Bush administration also released Gitmo detainee Ghulam Rasoul into the Saudi rehabilitation program. Now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, he's a leader against U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan, according to military and intelligence officials.

Daring to Dream

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David Sirota
June 18, 2009 - Truthdig

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Most of the great advances we remember involve reimagination and dreams, not merely tweaks and tinkers. The Wright Brothers' plane wasn't a newfangled horse and buggy, Einstein's theories weren't a simple update of old physics, and Edison's creations didn't aspire to make a brighter-burning wax candle. It's been the same thing in politics. The Founding Fathers' Constitution didn't replicate monarchy, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal wasn't just tinkering with Hooverism, and Ronald Reagan's revolution didn't merely dismantle the welfare state.

All of these inventors envisaged machines, theories or societies that never before existed. And that's why for all the positive, even admirable steps Obama's America seems poised to take, the aspirations still seem too small, too unimaginative, too confined by old parameters and old conceptions of how things must work.

Consider the Wall Street bailouts. By simply giving banks trillions of dollars with no strings attached, our government theorizes that the problem is not the financial system, but a momentary cash drought that can be solved by temporary recapitalization. These bailouts do not aspire to change the whole industry into one dominated by many small institutions rather than a few big ones. They also don't reach for "a tightly regulated banking system, which made finance a staid, even boring business," as Paul Krugman said we once had—they envision the same get-rich-quick casino that generated huge profits and huge losses.

On health care, even as the Obama administration pushes to create a public health care option for consumers to buy into, most of the proposals for universal health care being debated in Washington still imagine a health care system integrally involving private insurance companies. In fact, the one proposal that sees a new health care system without those companies—a single-payer system—has been shoved to the side by both parties as too radical.

Same thing, again, for efforts to address global warming. Bills compelling companies to cap their carbon pollution and then trade it for credits are positive steps. However, they still embrace an energy system that relies on fossil fuels—and they don't strive for a day when we power our economy primarily with clean renewable energy.

I could go on, but you get the point. We are suffering from a lack of imagination—a failure of "the vision thing," as George H. W. Bush once called it.

Part of that is a product of a money-dominated political system whose most powerful forces don't want anything reimagined because they have a vested interest in the no-imagination status quo.

Another part of that shortsightedness, however, stems from our president's natural disposition. When I interviewed him in 2006, he acknowledged that the difference between reimagining institutions and aiming only to tinker with them is always the question that determines a political era. "Are you a revolutionary or are you a reformist?" as he put it before firmly stating which one he is.

"I think within the institutional structures we have, we can significantly improve the life chances of ordinary Americans," he said.

There's certainly merit to that line of thinking. We can, in fact, improve things for a lot of people by simply making many existing institutions work better. Patch a few banks, revamp the private insurance system and fiddle with our existing energy policies and we can prevent hundreds of financial industry bankruptcies, thousands of unnecessary deaths, and millions of tons of carbon emissions. Those would be no small achievements.

However, if that's all we aim for, then we will have passed up this historic opportunity to structurally transform the country for the long haul. In short, we will have missed the chance not just to tweak, but to dream again.

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David Sirota is the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover"  and "The Uprising".