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".

Iran: It's Not About *You,* People

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RJ Eskow
June 24, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Some Westerners have been driving themselves into a narcissistic frenzy over events in Iran, blind to the contradictions in their own behavior. John McCain's outrage over the tragic death of "Neda," a young woman who might have died under American bombs in his alternate reality, is merely one case in point. Suddenly the "clash of civilizations" crowd is finding new enthusiasm for an Islamist political party.

The President's remarks yesterday went as far as they could wisely go, but the opportunists and fantasists will both say it wasn't enough.

Why are the people who've been insisting there's a monolithic evil called "Islamofascism" suddenly backing one Iranian faction over another? As Prime Minister in the early days of the Islamic Republic , Mir-Hossein Mousavi helped orchestrate anti-American acts in Lebanon. Yet the crowd that's been demonizing the entire Muslim world is suddenly wearing green, which was adopted by Mousavi's party because it is the color of Islam. What's behind this seeming change of heart?

The behavior of pols like Lindsay Graham comes off as political expediency of the most cynical kind. They exploit American support for the brave demonstrators of Tehran by insisting the President isn't doing enough, knowing full well that to express more support than he has done would be counterproductive. It's the unattractive face of politics as usual.

For others, like McCain, it seems more genuine but no less misguided. He perceives no inconsistency as he careens from "bomb Iran" "jokes" to eulogies for those he might have bombed. He, like many Americans, is caught up in the emotions of the moment. And who can fail to be moved by the courage of the Iranian resistance? But let's not pretend that this moment is about us.

For some of us, people only become human and real when they give us an opportunity to play out our own ambitions or fantasies. That covers public figures like McCain. But it also includes bloggers who think they're commando superheroes because they're coloring their websites green and cut-and-pasting Tweets from Teheran.

To the virtual barricades, comrades!

That's exactly the kind of fantasy projection that allowed people to enthusiastically support an invasion of Iraq, against all reason. At last! A war of our own! A cause we can support, a flag we can wave, a battle that will make us the "greatest generation"!

But we're dealing with human beings, not figurines to be moved here and there on the maps of our own egos. Overzealous talk from narcissistic foreigners can get people killed. And Americans aren't the only offenders. Bernard-Henri Lévy's unsubstantiated assertion that this uprising is the "end of the Islamic republic" is equally irresponsible, playing directly into Ahmadinejad's hands by equating dissent with subversion. He may or may not be right about the outcome. Neither he nor anyone else can know right now. But either way, the Iranian people aren't helped by these sorts of grandiose pronouncements from the West.

There are several possible outcomes. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei could prevail. Or Mousavi and Rafsanjani could win out, thereby saving the Islamic Republic. Or this could be the beginning of a newly democratized Iran, with Mousavi as its Gorbachev figure.

Want to help the people of Iran reach that third outcome? Then why not start by seeing them as they are? They're people who adopted a very centrist candidate as the symbol, rather than the reality, of change. (Did I just hear some progressives mutter "that sounds familiar"? Now, now ...) In supporting a more moderate candidate they've been given a chance, but just a chance, to transform their country. Let's hope that history is with them.

Whatever the outcome, however, this is their battle. We can support the Iranian people and the principles of democracy without becoming partisans in an internal political struggle. That's a less melodramatic stance, and perhaps a less emotionally satisfying one. But it's wiser.

As much as we might like to wear green and dream that we and not they are on the front lines of history, that doesn't help anybody. Their movement is brave and important and real. But it's their movement, not ours. This is not our feel-good moment. Our play-acting is, in the end, a selfish act.

We all need to look in the mirror and remind ourselves: This isn't about you.

Amazon Uprising More Urgent Than Iran's: The Planet Depends on It

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A Fight for the Amazon that Should Inspire the World

Johann Hari
June 24, 2009 - The Independent/UK

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While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies - and, for today, they have won.

Here's the story of how it happened - and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru's right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country's swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon's trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."

There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia's plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn't bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?

But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block (12A)B, said in 2007: "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests." The company denies liability, saying they are "aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts".

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to an independent report, toxic waste allegedly dumped after Chevron-Texaco's drilling has been blamed by an independent scientific investigation for 1,401 deaths, mostly of children from cancer. When the BBC investigator Greg Palast put these charges to Chevron's lawyer, he replied: "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?... They have to prove it's our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible."

The people of the Amazon do not want to see their forests felled and their lands poisoned. And here, the need of the indigenous peoples to preserve their habitat has collided with your need to preserve your habitat. The rainforests inhale massive amounts of warming gases and keep them stored away from the atmosphere. Already, we are chopping them down so fast that it is causing 25 per cent of man-made carbon emissions every year - more than planes, trains and automobiles combined. But it is doubly destructive to cut them down to get to fossil fuels, which then cook the planet yet more. Garcia's plan was to turn the Amazon from the planet's air con into its fireplace.

Why is he doing this? He was responding to intense pressure from the US, whose new Free Trade Pact requires this "opening up", and from the International Monetary Fund, paid for by our taxes. In Peru, it has also been alleged that the ruling party, APRA, is motivated by oil bribes. Some of Garcia's associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies. The head of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Rep. Daniel Abugattas, says: "The government has been giving away our natural resources to the lowest bidders. This has not benefited Peru, but the administration's friends."

So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours. Using their own bodies and weapons made from wood, they blockaded the rivers and roads to stop the oil companies getting anything in or out. They captured two valves of Peru's sole pipeline between the country's gas field and the coast, which could have led to fuel-rationing. Their leaders issued a statement explaining: "We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world."

Garcia responded by sending in the military. He declared a "state of emergency" in the Amazon, suspending almost all constitutional rights. Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. More than a dozen were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: "The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?"

And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won. The Peruvian Congress repealed the laws that allowed oil company drilling, by a margin of 82 votes to 12. Garcia was forced to apologise for his "serious errors and exaggerations". The protesters have celebrated and returned to their homes deep in the Amazon.

Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return - but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.

Human beings need to make far more decisions like this: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and to leave rainforests standing. In microcosm, this rumble in the jungle is the fight we all face now. Will we allow a small number of rich people to make a short-term profit from seizing and burning resources, at the expense of our collective ability to survive?

If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to Professor Jim Hansen, the world's leading climatologist, whose predictions have consistently turned out to be correct. He says: "Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration."

Of course, fossil fools will argue that the only alternative to burning up our remaining oil and gas supplies is for us all to live like the indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But next door to Peru, you can see a very different, environmentally sane model to lift up the poor emerging - if only we will grasp it.

Ecuador is a poor country with large oil resources underneath its rainforests - but its president, Rafael Correa, is offering us the opposite of Garcia's plan. He has announced that he is willing to leave his country's largest oil reserve under the soil, if the rest of the world will match the $9.2bn in revenues it would provide.

If we don't start reaching for these alternatives, we will render this month's victory in the Amazon meaningless. The Hadley Centre in Exeter, one of the most sophisticated scientific centres for studying the impacts of global warming, has warned that if we carry on belching out greenhouse gases at the current rate, the humid Amazon will dry up and burn down - and soon.

Their study earlier this year explained: "The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change. Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050. A 3C rise is likely to result in 75 per cent of the forest disappearing while a 4C rise, regarded as the most likely increase this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are slashed, will kill off 85 per cent of the forest." That would send gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere - making the world even more inhabitable.

There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?

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Johann Hari is a columnist for the London Independent. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world.

Documents Back Saudi Royal Link to Extremists

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Eric Lichtblau
June 23, 2009

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Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers' copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed "support for terrorist organizations" at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants' activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.

Only a fraction of the documents have been entered into the court record, and much of the new material is unknown even to the Saudi lawyers in the case.

The documents provide no smoking gun connecting the royal family to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. And the broader links rely at times on a circumstantial, connect-the-dots approach to tie together Saudi princes, Middle Eastern charities, suspicious transactions and terrorist groups.

Saudi lawyers and supporters say that the links are flimsy and exploit stereotypes about terrorism, and that the country is being sued because it has deep pockets and was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers.

"In looking at all the evidence the families brought together, I have not seen one iota of evidence that Saudi Arabia had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks," Michael Kellogg, a Washington lawyer representing Prince Muhammad al-Faisal al-Saud in the lawsuit, said in an interview.

He and other defense lawyers said that rather than supporting Al Qaeda, the Saudis were sworn enemies of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was exiled from Saudi Arabia, his native country, in 1996. "It's an absolute tragedy what happened to them, and I understand their anger," Mr. Kellogg said of the victims' families. "They want to find those responsible, but I think they've been disserved by their lawyers by bringing claims without any merit against the wrong people."

The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Two federal judges and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have already ruled against the 7,630 people represented in the lawsuit, made up of survivors of the attacks and family members of those killed, throwing out the suit on the ground that the families cannot bring legal action in the United States against a sovereign nation and its leaders.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide this week whether to hear an appeal, but the families' prospects dimmed last month when the Justice Department sided with the Saudis in their immunity claim and urged the court not to consider the appeal.

The Justice Department said a 1976 law on sovereign immunity protected the Saudis from liability and noted that "potentially significant foreign relations consequences" would arise if such suits were allowed to proceed.

"Cases like this put the U.S. government in an extremely difficult position when it has to make legal arguments, even when they are the better view of the law, that run counter to those of terrorist victims," said John Bellinger, a former State Department lawyer who was involved in the Saudi litigation.

Senior Obama administration officials held a private meeting on Monday with 9/11 family members to speak about progress in cracking down on terrorist financing. Administration officials at the meeting largely sidestepped questions about the lawsuit, according to participants. But the official who helped lead the meeting, Stuart A. Levey, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, has been outspoken in his criticism of wealthy Saudis, saying they have helped to finance terrorism.

Even if the 9/11 families were to get their trial in the lawsuit, they might have difficulty getting some of their new material into evidence. Some would most likely be challenged on grounds it was irrelevant or uncorroborated hearsay, or that it related to Saudis who were clearly covered by sovereign immunity.

And if the families were to clear those hurdles, two intriguing pieces of evidence in the Saudi puzzle might still remain off limits.

One is a 28-page, classified section of the 2003 joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret section is believed to discuss intelligence on Saudi financial links to two hijackers, and the Saudis themselves urged at the time that it be made public. President George W. Bush declined to do so.

Kristen Breitweiser, an advocate for Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center, said in an interview that during a White House meeting in February between President Obama and victims' families, the president told her that he was willing to make the pages public.

But she said she had not heard from the White House since then.

The other evidence that may not be admissible consists of classified documents leaked to one of the law firms representing the families, Motley Rice of South Carolina, which is headed by Ronald Motley, a well-known trial lawyer who won lucrative lawsuits involving asbestos and tobacco.

Lawyers for the firm say someone anonymously slipped them 55 documents that contained classified government material relating to the Saudi lawsuit.

Though she declined to describe the records, Jodi Flowers, a lawyer for Motley Rice, said she was pushing to have them placed in the court file.

"We wouldn't be fighting this hard, and we wouldn't have turned the material over to the judge, if we didn't think it was really important to the case," she said.

Hall of Shame

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Gingrich comments on Uighurs don't sit well with some in GOP

Grace Chung
Jun 18, 2009 - McClatchy News

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got into a public spat with fellow Republicans this week after he denounced the 17 Chinese Muslims who're being released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , military prison as "terrorists" who should be sent back to China , where they're likely to face persecution.

Gingrich, the Republican party's most prominent spokesman, is "in the Hall of Shame" for his remarks, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher , R- Calif. , said in his opening statement during a Tuesday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Human Rights. Democrats and other Republicans also piled on Gingrich for "fear-mongering" and allegedly peddling Chinese propaganda.

The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in the northwest part of China . According to the 2008 State Department Human Right's report, they've been the target of human rights abuses in China .

Rep. Bill Delahunt ,D- Mass., the committee's chairman, said that Gingrich is either misinformed or intentionally circulating false information about the 17 Uighurs to "appease the Communist Chinese," who've repeatedly asked the U.S. to return the Uighurs to China . He said the Chinese "brutally persecute and oppress the Uighur minority."

Gingrich, who heads a communications and consulting firm, couldn't be reached to comment. His office in Washington said he was on a cruise in the Baltic with his wife.

This is the latest in a series of disputes to beset the GOP in its search for a new figurehead. Although Gingrich remains the most popular leader among Republicans, his outspoken comments — such as calling Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a "racist" — have given some in his party heartburn.

Gingrich and other Republicans, as well as some Democrats, have staunchly opposed the settlement of former Guantanamo detainees, including the Uighurs, in the U.S., making it more difficult for the Obama administration to carry out its pledge to close the prison by January.

The administration has asked at least 100 countries to take the Uighur prisoners, but so far, only Bermuda and Palau have offered to accept them.

Gingrich has staked out his position both in a television appearance, in his regular column in the Washington Examiner, a free newspaper handed out at transit stations, and on his blog.

In a Fox News interview on May 10 , Gingrich spoke critically of the Obama administration's decision to try to find a location in the U.S. for the Uighurs, and said they should be sent home. Asked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace whether Uighurs would face a hostile reception there, Gingrich retorted: "Why is that our problem? Why are we protecting these guys? Send them to China ."

Writing in the Washington Examiner on May 21 , Gingrich said the Uighurs had been trained in "weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing" and "instructed by the same terrorists responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 ."

Rohrabacher, who'd been a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan , is generally credited for writing the speech defining the "Reagan Doctrine" and of supporting groups that fight communism. He's been one of the most focused members of Congress on the developments in Afghanistan and issued warnings about the threat from the Taliban rule in the 1990s when few others were paying attention.

"Many if not all of the negative allegations against the Uighurs can be traced back to Chinese intelligence, whose purpose is to snuff out an independence movement that challenges the communist bosses in China ," Rohrabacher said at Tuesday's hearing.

Although Gingrich didn't respond to repeated requests for comment, his communications director, Joe DeSantis , expressed surprise at the attacks and posted a response dated June 17 on Gingrich's blog.

"A lot of disinformation and spin is being hurled about. There is no question that the human rights record of China is deplorable. The question is whether the United States should release any of these Uighur detainees into the United States ," he said.

Rohrabacher said that Gingrich had misled the public and stirred popular opposition to receiving the Uighurs on American soil.

"No one on the Republican side was arguing facts. They were arguing what was presented to them by people like Newt Gingrich ," Rohrabacher said in an interview. "I am ashamed of the leadership of my party."

Iran Charging Bullet Fee

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Farnaz Fassihi
June 23, 2009 - Wall Street Journal

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TEHRAN — The family, clad in black, stood at the curb of the road sobbing. A middle-aged mother slapped her cheeks, letting out piercing wails. The father, a frail man who worked as a doorman at a clinic in central Tehran, wept quietly with his head bowed.

Minutes before, an ambulance had arrived from Tehran's morgue carrying the body of their only son, 19-year-old Kaveh Alipour.

On Saturday, amid the most violent clashes between security forces and protesters, Mr. Alipour was shot in the head as he stood at an intersection in downtown Tehran. He was returning from acting class and a week shy of becoming a groom, his family said.

The details of his death remain unclear. He had been alone. Neighbors and relatives think that he got trapped in the crossfire. He wasn't politically active and hadn't taken part in the turmoil that has rocked Iran for over a week, they said.

"He was a very polite, shy young man," said Mohamad, a neighbor who has known him since childhood.

When Mr. Alipour didn't return home that night, his parents began to worry. All day, they had heard gunshots ringing in the distance. His father, Yousef, first called his fiancée and friends. No one had heard from him.

At the crack of dawn, his father began searching at police stations, then hospitals and then the morgue.

Upon learning of his son's death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a "bullet fee"—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said.

Mr. Alipour told officials that his entire possessions wouldn't amount to $3,000, arguing they should waive the fee because he is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. According to relatives, morgue officials finally agreed, but demanded that the family do no funeral or burial in Tehran. Kaveh Alipour's body was quietly transported to the city of Rasht, where there is family.

Everyone in the neighborhood knows the Alipour family. In addition to their slain son, they have two daughters. Shopkeepers and businesses pasted a photocopied picture of Mr. Alipour on their walls and windows. In the picture, the young man is shown wearing a dark suit with gray stripes. His black hair is combed neatly to a side and he has a half-smile.

"He was so full of life. He had so many dreams," said Arsalan, a taxi driver who has known the family for 10 years. "What did he die for?"

Zenb Momenent of the Bay

These Peeple Are Insane

For a refreshing break from the real world, consider the latest antics of the GOP. Under a misspelled banner for a conference to revitalize the GOP, right-wingers talked up English-only initiatives and said Obama will force Americans to speak Spanish; despite a vow to give a "fair and respectful" hearing to Sonia Sotomayor, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) blew off a meeting with her because she was 10 minutes late, no doubt due to the cast on her leg; and State Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-MO) argued against a summer food program for low-income kids by saying hunger is good for us.

"Bigger governmental programs take away our connectedness to the human family, our brotherhood and our need for one another...Hunger can be a positive motivator."

- Abby Zimet, Common Dreams

Israeli 'Settlements': Fictions on the Ground

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Tony Judt
June 22, 2009 - The New York Times

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I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements ("a small village or collection of houses" or "the act of peopling or colonizing a new country," Oxford English Dictionary).

In the early 1960s, I spent time on Kibbutz Hakuk, a small community founded by the Palmah unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Begun in 1945, Hakuk was just 18 years old when I first saw it, and was still raw at the edges. The few dozen families living there had built themselves a dining hall, farm sheds, homes and a "baby house" where the children were cared for during the workday. But where the residential buildings ended there were nothing but rock-covered hillsides and half-cleared fields.

The community's members still dressed in blue work shirts, khaki shorts and triangular hats, consciously cultivating a pioneering image and ethos already at odds with the hectic urban atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Ours, they seemed to say to bright-eyed visitors and volunteers, is the real Israel; come and help us clear the boulders and grow bananas - and tell your friends in Europe and America to do likewise.

Hakuk is still there. But today it relies on a plastics factory and the tourists who flock to the nearby Sea of Galilee. The original farm, built around a fort, has been turned into a tourist attraction. To speak of this kibbutz as a settlement would be bizarre.

However, Israel needs "settlements." They are intrinsic to the image it has long sought to convey to overseas admirers and fund-raisers: a struggling little country securing its rightful place in a hostile environment by the hard moral work of land clearance, irrigation, agrarian self-sufficiency, industrious productivity, legitimate self-defense and the building of Jewish communities. But this neo-collectivist frontier narrative rings false in modern, high-tech Israel. And so the settler myth has been transposed somewhere else - to the Palestinian lands seized in war in 1967 and occupied illegally ever since.

It is thus not by chance that the international press is encouraged to speak and write of Jewish "settlers" and "settlements" in the West Bank. But this image is profoundly misleading. The largest of these controversial communities in geographic terms is Maale Adumim. It has a population in excess of 35,000, demographically comparable to Montclair, N.J., or Winchester, England. What is most striking, however, about Maale Adumim is its territorial extent. This "settlement" comprises more than 30 square miles - making it one and a half times the size of Manhattan and nearly half as big as the borough and city of Manchester, England. Some "settlement."

There are about 120 official Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank. In addition, there are "unofficial" settlements whose number is estimated variously from 80 to 100. Under international law, there is no difference between these two categories; both are contraventions of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force, a principle re-stated in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.

Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between "authorized" and "unauthorized" settlements is specious - all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been "frozen" or continues apace. (It is a matter of note that Israel's new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, belongs to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, established in 1982 and illegally expanded since.)

The blatant cynicism of the present Israeli government should not blind us to the responsibility of its more respectable-looking predecessors. The settler population has grown consistently at a rate of 5 percent annually over the past two decades, three times the rate of increase of the Israeli population as a whole. Together with the Jewish population of East Jerusalem (itself illegally annexed to Israel), the settlers today number more than half a million people: just over 10 percent of the Jewish population of so-called Greater Israel. This is one reason why settlers count for so much in Israeli elections, where proportional representation gives undue political leverage to even the smallest constituency.

But the settlers are no mere marginal interest group. To appreciate their significance, spread as they are over a dispersed archipelago of urban installations protected from Arab intrusion by 600 checkpoints and barriers, consider the following: taken together, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights constitute a homogenous demographic bloc nearly the size of the District of Columbia. It exceeds the population of Tel Aviv itself by almost one third. Some "settlement."

If Israel is drunk on settlements, the United States has long been its enabler. Were Israel not the leading beneficiary of American foreign aid - averaging $2.8 billion a year from 2003 to 2007, and scheduled to reach $3.1 billion by 2013 - houses in West Bank settlements would not be so cheap: often less than half the price of equivalent homes in Israel proper.

Many of the people who move to these houses don't even think of themselves as settlers. Newly arrived from Russia and elsewhere, they simply take up the offer of subsidized accommodation, move into the occupied areas and become - like peasants in southern Italy freshly supplied with roads and electricity - the grateful clients of their political patrons. Like American settlers heading west, Israeli colonists in the West Bank are the beneficiaries of their very own Homestead Act, and they will be equally difficult to uproot.

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities - with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water - will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise - to point to the 2003 "road map" and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call "the facts on the ground."

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state - on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression - he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won't build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand "legal" ones according to their natural rate of growth. (It is not by chance that he chose to deliver this speech at Bar-Ilan University, the heartland of rabbinical intransigence where Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 1995.)

THE reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait - uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu's "support" for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel's land-grab in "Judea and Samaria."

Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.

Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel's defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.

But if I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel's settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of "authorized" settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel's political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster. The United States would be humiliated in the eyes of its friends, not to speak of its foes. If America cannot stand up for its own interests in the region, at least let it not be played yet again for a patsy.

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Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of "Postwar" and "Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century."

Are Mind-Enhancing Drugs a Dangerous Fad or a Great Way to Get Ahead?

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Jeremy Laurance
June 23, 2009 - Independent UK

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Advocates say they are an irresistible way of improving students' performance. Critics argue they are a dangerous fad.

In the middle of the exam season, the offer of a drug that could improve results might excite students but would be likely to terrify their parents. Now, a distinguished professor of bioethics says it is time to embrace the possibilities of "brain boosters" -- chemical cognitive enhancement. The provocative suggestion comes from John Harris, director of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Ritalin is a stimulant drug, best known as a treatment for hyperactive children. But it has also found a ready black market among students, especially in the US, who are desperate to succeed and are turning to it in preference to the traditional stimulants of coffee and cigarettes. Users say it helps them to focus and concentrate, and this has been confirmed in research studies on adults.

David Green, a student at the University of Harvard, told The Washington Post: "In all honesty, I haven't written a paper without Ritalin since my junior year in high school."

Matt, a business finance student at the University of Florida, claimed a similar drug, Adderall, had helped him improve his grades. "It's a miracle drug," he told The Boston Globe. "It is unbelievable how my concentration boosts when I use it."

Some experts have condemned the trend and accused students of gaining an "unfair advantage" by doping, without explaining why it is any more unfair than hiring a private tutor or paying for exam coaching.

Professor Harris says that the arguments against the drugs "have not been persuasive" and that society ought to want enhancement.

"It is not rational to be against human enhancement," he writes. "Humans are creatures that result from an enhancement process called evolution and moreover are inveterate self improvers in every conceivable way."

Although no drug can be guaranteed safe and free of all side-effects, Ritalin has been judged safe enough for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and has been widely used to treat them over many years, he says.

The drug is a stimulant which was introduced in 1956 and appears to influence the way the brain filters and responds to stimuli. It increases energy as well as confidence and has been compared to cocaine. Possible side-effects are typical of stimulants and include insomnia, loss of appetite, dizziness and depression on withdrawal.

Other drugs investigated for their mind-enhancing properties include donepezil, a treatment for dementia and modafinil, used in narcolepsy, the condition in which sufferers repeatedly fall asleep.

Both drugs are thought to boost highly skilled performance, where concentration and alertness are prerequisites. One study found commercial pilots who took donepezil for one month performed better than pilots on a placebo when dealing with emergencies on a flight simulator. A study of modafinil found that it boosted the performance of helicopter pilots flying on simulators who had been deprived of sleep.

Writing in the online British Medical Journal, Professor Harris says the use of cognitive enhancing drugs should be seen as a natural extension of the process of education. Drug regulatory agencies should assess the benefits and risks in the same way as they would for any other medical intervention.

"Suppose a university were to set out deliberately to improve the mental capacities of its students. Suppose they further claimed that not only could they achieve this but that their students would be more intelligent and mentally alert than any in history. We might be sceptical but if the claims could be sustained should we be pleased?"

His answer is an unequivocal yes. He concludes that it is unethical to stop healthy people taking Ritalin to enhance their mental performance.

But in total disagreement, Professor Anjan Chatterjee from the University of Pennsylvania argues in the BMJ that there are too many risks. In the US, the drug carries a "black box" warning, the most serious, because of its high potential for abuse, serious adverse risks on the heart and the risk of sudden death.

He adds that there are cognitive trade-offs in taking Ritalin, with a loss of creativity, and points out that "being smarter does not mean being wiser." He raises the spectre of children at top preparatory schools taking Ritalin in "epidemic proportions" and pilots, police and doctors being pressurised to take it when on-call.

Progress often carries risk, says Professor Harris. The development of "synthetic sunshine" (firelights, lamplight and electric light) could have forced people to work through the night. The answer was not to ban it but to introduce laws to regulate working hours. "The same is or will be true of chemical cognitive enhancers," he concludes.

A stimulating debate: The pills in question

Ritalin

A stimulant drug introduced in 1956 for the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children, it has become increasingly widely used, especially in the US. In recent years, reports have emerged of it being abused by students seeking aids to help them through their exams.

Amphetamines

The stimulant was first synthesised more than a century ago and has been used and abused to boost energy, increase wakefulness and prolong endurance. Its users have been as diverse as long distance lorry drivers wanting to ward off drowsiness and women trying to lose weight. Today it is prescribed for ADHD and narcolepsy, and has been investigated for its role in helping stroke victims re-learn motor skills.

Donepezil

Scientists in aviation medicine and in the military have been examining medicines which might increase alertness and concentration to minimise risk of pilot error and maximise endurance. Donepezil, used to treat of dementia, has been shown to boost the performance of pilots on flight simulators, especially in emergencies.

Modafinil

Modafinil, a drug used to treat the sleep disorder narcolepsy, has also been tested on pilots and other members of the armed forces. While commercial pilots have strict rules governing flying time and rest periods, fighter pilots may be called to action at a moment's notice. Tests on helicopter pilots flying on simulators who had been deprived of sleep showed the drug boosted performance.

Health Care Showdown: The Alleged 'Center' Must Not Hold

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Paul Krugman
June 22, 2009 - The New York Times

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America's political scene has changed immensely since the last time a Democratic president tried to reform health care. So has the health care picture: with costs soaring and insurance dwindling, nobody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change.

The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it's 1993.

And yes, I mean Democratic senators. The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the health care debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogans — Government-run health care! Socialism! Europe! — hoping that someone still cares.

The polls suggest that hardly anyone does. Voters, it seems, strongly favor a universal guarantee of coverage, and they mostly accept the idea that higher taxes may be needed to achieve that guarantee. What's more, they overwhelmingly favor precisely the feature of Democratic plans that Republicans denounce most fiercely as "socialized medicine" — the creation of a public health insurance option that competes with private insurers.

Or to put it another way, in effect voters support the health care plan jointly released by three House committees last week, which relies on a combination of subsidies and regulation to achieve universal coverage, and introduces a public plan to compete with insurers and hold down costs.

Yet it remains all too possible that health care reform will fail, as it has so many times before.

I'm not that worried about the issue of costs. Yes, the Congressional Budget Office's preliminary cost estimates for Senate plans were higher than expected, and caused considerable consternation last week. But the fundamental fact is that we can afford universal health insurance — even those high estimates were less than the $1.8 trillion cost of the Bush tax cuts. Furthermore, Democratic leaders know that they have to pass a health care bill for the sake of their own survival. One way or another, the numbers will be brought in line.

The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by "centrist" Democratic senators who either prevent the passage of a bill or insist on watering down key elements of reform. I use scare quotes around "centrist," by the way, because if the center means the position held by most Americans, the self-proclaimed centrists are in fact way out in right field.

What the balking Democrats seem most determined to do is to kill the public option, either by eliminating it or by carrying out a bait-and-switch, replacing a true public option with something meaningless. For the record, neither regional health cooperatives nor state-level public plans, both of which have been proposed as alternatives, would have the financial stability and bargaining power needed to bring down health care costs.

Whatever may be motivating these Democrats, they don't seem able to explain their reasons in public.

Thus Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a "deal-breaker." Why? Because he didn't think private insurers could compete: "At the end of the day, the public plan wins the day." Um, isn't the purpose of health care reform to protect American citizens, not insurance companies?

Mr. Nelson softened his stand after reform advocates began a public campaign targeting him for his position on the public option.

And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota offers a perfectly circular argument: we can't have the public option, because if we do, health care reform won't get the votes of senators like him. "In a 60-vote environment," he says (implicitly rejecting the idea, embraced by President Obama, of bypassing the filibuster if necessary), "you've got to attract some Republicans as well as holding virtually all the Democrats together, and that, I don't believe, is possible with a pure public option."

Honestly, I don't know what these Democrats are trying to achieve. Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex — but who in politics doesn't? If I had to guess, I'd say that what's really going on is that relatively conservative Democrats still cling to the old dream of becoming kingmakers, of recreating the bipartisan center that used to run America.

But this fantasy can't be allowed to stand in the way of giving America the health care reform it needs. This time, the alleged center must not hold.

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Paul Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The New York Times. Krugman was the 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Obama’s Right Turn

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William Fisher
June 22, 2009 - Inter Press Service

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Human rights and open government advocates were heartened by President Barack Obama's pledge during his first week in office to create "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and "establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration".

But now, well into Obama's second 100 days in office, many are expressing outrage and disappointment that many of the president's decisions have followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

The Obama administration has invoked the "state secrets" privilege several times to prevent lawsuits dealing with "extraordinary renditions" and warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Justice Department lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention.

The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even though the Defense Department has cleared these men for release and declared that they present no threat to U.S. national security.

Reliable reports suggest that Obama is considering "indefinite detention" for GITMO detainees who cannot be tried in U.S. courts because the evidence against them was obtained through torture.

The government has gone to court to appeal a court ruling ordering the release of a 2004 report from the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describing the harsh treatment of prisoners in the agency's secret prisons. And the new president has refused to make public photographs reportedly depicting abusive interrogations at these and other government detention centers.

Obama recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies because the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications".

On the issue of electronic surveillance, the new president has not repudiated the Bush-era executive orders supporting warrantless wiretapping and the legal opinions used to support them. Obama has resisted a "truth commission" to investigate former officials who allegedly broke the law and committed crimes, saying he would rather look forward than back.

Government lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought on behalf of a couple who were placed on a terrorist watch list.

And when watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department seeking records related to former vice president Dick Cheney's interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the "outing" of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the Justice Department declined to turn over the records.

IPS interviews with human rights and open-government advocates produced few explanations of the president's actions, beyond calls for him to live up to his promises.

But some have offered insights as to the "why" of what they see as Obama's u-turn.

Among them is Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school. He told IPS, "After winning the Democratic Party against Senator Clinton by appealing to its progressive wing, Obama immediately veered far to the right and co-opted all of the Clinton people into his campaign and then administration. So what we are seeing now is a third Clinton term with a continuation of many of the same foreign and domestic policies pursued by the Bush Jr. administration."

He added, "This has little to do with personnel and personalities. It has to do structurally with the preservation and further extension of the American empire abroad that necessarily requires the further consolidation of an American police state at home," he said.

"Hence the Obama administration has continued to ratify the illegal and unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration in court cases across the board, while escalating the Bush admistration's imperialist intervention into Afghanistan and now expanding it into Pakistan."

Another explanation came from Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has mobilised dozens of pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantanamo prisoners.

"Why did Obama make promises about less secrecy, transparency and a narrowed state secrets privilege and proceed to have his administration assert positions and back legislation that was directly contrary to those promises?" he asked rhetorically in response to an IPS question.

"In the U.S., we complain about Chile hiding the crimes of the Pinochet regime, or Germany hiding the Nazi crimes or Russia the crimes of the KGB, yet where is the screaming when President Obama hides the war crimes of the Bush administration?"

His answer: "In part, the recent blatant assertions of secrecy are to hide crimes of former and some current officials. That is why President Obama is keeping the torture photos hidden. That is why he is continuing to assert broad state secret claims to try and hide the rendition program."

"That is why the 2004 CIA report on the secret site interrogations will be released with heavy redactions. Not only would the photos and documents implicate the Bushies, but remember some of those abuses were apparently committed by units under the command of the recently appointed commander in Afghanistan, General (Stanley) McChrystal," Ratner noted.

"Some of the crimes were allegedly approved or committed by the current deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, who is keeping his job," he added. Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee offers another perspective. He told IPS, "There are undoubtedly elements of truth in each of the theories - or excuses - I've imagined or heard for the president's broken January promise."

"But the hedging and retaining litigation and other exceptions, instead of restoring the full presumption of transparency and openness in interpreting FOIA, are as disappointing as the hedging and retaining exceptions on other core planks of the rule of law, such as the prohibition on torture, military commissions, preventive detention, and maintaining ubiquitous surveillance."

He added, "The free information flows and social networking technologies in the Iranian protests are only the latest indication of transparency's new historical power. Obama himself recognized in that context the new meaning for Martin Luther King's injunction that 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice'."

"Obama would be better advised to be on the right side of that history than on the side of darkness and cover-up," he said.

A more hopeful note comes from Peter M Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University. He notes that the Bush administration "had the most ambitious view of executive power in history. Bush sympathizers see little difference in the Obama administration. Bush's detractors, in some respects, agree."

But the truth, he says, is probably closer to the Obama administration casting aside some of the Bush administration's more audacious claims while "still struggling to find a consistent stance with regard to its philosophy of executive power."

How the new administration will ultimately resolve its conflicts between secrecy and open government remains to be seen. But, as President Obama said over the weekend in relation to the current Iranian conflict, "the world is watching".