The Mack Attack

Thought-provoking clap-trap for the skeptic-minded

Tuesday, February 28, 2006




H5N1 now in cats, pigs feared next

Geneva - The discovery of a bird-flu infection in a cat in Germany underscores what scientists have long known - that the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus can infect a wide range of mammals, said a spokesperson for the World Health Organisation on Tuesday.
"We know that mammals can become infected with H5N1," said Maria Cheng of the WHO.
"But, we don't know what this means for humans. We don't know if they would play a role in transmitting the disease.
"We don't know how much virus the cats would excrete, how much people would need to be exposed to before they would fall ill."
While it is the first confirmed case of a mammal being infected with H5N1 in Europe, the virus has proved deadly to tigers and snow leopards in a Thai zoo, where they were fed chicken carcasses, she noted.
Big cats died from H5N1 in Thailand in 2003 and 2004.
"That's been one of the features of H5N1, that it has been able to infect a pretty wide variety of mammals," said Cheng.
She said she knew of no case where an infected mammal had passed the disease on to a human being.
The cat was found dead on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, where most of the more than 100 cases of H5N1-infected wild birds in Germany have been found, said Germany's Friedrich Loeffler Institute lab on Tuesday.
It is possible the cat ate a bird, Cheng said. "Cats have often been experimentally infected in Holland."
Scientists are particularly concerned about bird flu infecting pigs, because swine also can become infected with human-flu virus.
The fear is that the two viruses could swap genetic material and create a new one that could set off a human pandemic that could prove more deadly than routine, annual influenza epidemics.
"We're particularly worried about pigs because they can have both human and bird flu at the same time and they can pass it on back to humans in a new form, which is essentially what happened in the last two pandemics (in 1957 and 1968)", said Cheng.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court dealt a setback Tuesday to abortion clinics in a two-decade-old legal fight over anti-abortion protests, ruling that federal extortion and racketeering laws cannot be used to ban demonstrations.
Anti-abortion groups brought the appeal after the 7th Circuit had asked a trial judge to determine whether a nationwide injunction could be supported by charges that protesters had made threats of violence absent a connection with robbery or extortion.
The 8-0 decision ends a case that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had kept alive despite a 2003 decision by the high court that lifted a nationwide injunction on anti-abortion groups led by Joseph Scheidler and others.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Justice Stephen Breyer said Congress did not intend to create “a freestanding physical violence offense” in the federal extortion law known as the Hobbs Act.
Instead, Breyer wrote, Congress chose to address violence outside abortion clinics in 1994 by passing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which set parameters for such protests.
Social activists and the AFL-CIO had sided with anti-abortion protesters in arguing that similar lawsuits and injunctions could be used to thwart their efforts to change public policy or agitate for better wages and working conditions.
Long-running battleThe legal battle began in 1986, when the National Organization for Women filed a class-action suit challenging tactics used by the Pro-Life Action Network to block women from entering abortion clinics.
NOW’s legal strategy was novel at the time, relying on civil provisions of the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was used predominantly in criminal cases against organized crime. The lawsuit also relied on the Hobbs Act, a 55-year-old law banning extortion.
A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction against the anti-abortion protesters after a Chicago jury found in 1998 that demonstrators had engaged in a pattern of racketeering by interfering with clinic operations, menacing doctors, assaulting patients and damaging clinic property.
But the Supreme Court voided the injunction in 2003, ruling that the extortion law could not be used against the protesters because they had not illegally “obtained property” from women seeking to enter clinics to receive abortions.
Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in the decision.
The cases are Scheidler v. NOW, 04-1244, and Operation Rescue v. NOW, 04-1352.

Supreme Court hears Anna Nicole Smith case

WASHINGTON- Former Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith got her U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday, when her lawyer argued she should collect millions of dollars she claims her late Texas oil tycoon husband had promised her.
At one point during the hour-long arguments, the 38-year old blond widow, dressed in black and sitting in the spectator section, became emotional and started crying, a witness and her lawyer said.
Smith, who formerly also has hosted her own reality television show, did not talk to the crush of reporters, photographers and camera crews when she entered and left the Supreme Court building.
The issue before the justices in the long-running legal battle is to review when federal courts can hear claims that are also involved in state probate hearings.
The justices seemed receptive to arguments by Smith's lawyer that federal courts have jurisdiction to consider her claims.
Smith was 26 when she married oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall in 1994. He was 89. They met three years earlier when she was working as a topless dancer in Houston.
Marshall was one of the wealthiest men in Texas, with assets estimated at more than $2.9 billion. His death in 1995 has triggered a long legal battle between Smith and his son, E. Pierce Marshall.
The court battle played out in two different states before reaching the Supreme Court.
A state probate court in Texas ruled that the 67-year-old son, who also attended the Supreme Court arguments, was entitled to his father's estate.
But a federal bankruptcy judge in California ruled in favor of Smith and awarded her $474 million because of her claims the son had interfered with the inheritance she was supposed to receive.
A federal judge then cut the award to Smith to $88 million, but a U.S. appeals court ruled that Smith was entitled to nothing because federal courts lack jurisdiction in probate disputes.
Justice David Souter during the arguments summarized Smith's claim as,


"Just give me the money I would have had."

Justice Stephen Breyer said Smith's claim was that her husband intended to give her this gift and that three pages of his living trust document had been altered after his death. "It's quite a story," he exclaimed.
Smith's lawyer, Kent Richland of Los Angeles, was supported by U.S. Justice Department attorney Deanna Maynard, who argued that the appeals court ruling in the case swept too broadly.
G. Eric Brunstad, arguing on behalf of the son, said Smith's federal claims amounted to an "end-run" around the Texas probate proceeding.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it an "extraordinary thing" for him to claim that Smith could not bring a related claim in federal court. "That's just not the way our system works," she said.
Justice Antonin Scalia said of Smith's claims, "That to me is something quite different than probating the will."
And Chief Justice John Roberts compared Smith's claims with a 1946 Supreme Court ruling that upheld federal court jurisdiction over a lawsuit to determine rights to property at issue in a probate proceeding.
Of the nine Supreme Court members, only Justice Clarence( pubic hair in the Coke) Thomas, who normally is silent during arguments, and new Justice Samuel (I'm all about abortion cases) Alito did not ask any questions.
After the arguments, E. Pierce Marshall said in a statement, "A decision in our favor by the Supreme Court will go a long way toward finally putting an end to this frivolous lawsuit with claims that are totally fabricated."
A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Coast Guard poo-poos ports takeover

The U.S. Coast Guard, in charge of reviewing security at ports operated by a Dubai maritime company, warned the Bush administration it could not rule out that the company's assets could be used for terrorist operations, according to a document released yesterday by a Senate committee.
State-owned Dubai Ports World plans to complete its takeover of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O) on Thursday, assuming ownership of operations at six major U.S. ports even as it pledges to hold off on asserting control while the Bush administration reviews the national security implications of the deal. The White House has strongly argued that a preliminary review showed that the sale would pose no threat to national security.
But in a Dec. 13 intelligence assessment of the company and its owners in the United Arab Emirates, the Coast Guard warned: "There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that preclude" the completion of a thorough threat assessment of the merger.
"The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities," says the document, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
"Security measures were thoroughly reviewed, including intelligence matters," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. She did not know whether the White House was briefed on the Coast Guard assessment, but, she said, "I do know that at the end of the day, when the process was completed and the transaction was approved, homeland security questions were resolved."
The Coast Guard document, completed about one month before the ports deal received government approval Jan. 17, was the strongest indication that members of the administration had expressed security concerns over the transaction. Officials from the departments of Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the secretive interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviewed the DP World deal, was unanimous in its position that no concerns had emerged to trigger the 45-day national security review required by the law that established the panel.
Among those who briefed the Armed Services Committee was Rear Adm. Thomas Gilmour of the Coast Guard, who said the agency had reviewed DP World's track record on port management but did not mention the document.
"Given the red-flag questions that the Coast Guard raised, very serious questions about operations, personnel and foreign influence, how could there not have been the 45-day investigation that's clearly required by law?" asked Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Gilmour insisted yesterday he could answer questions on the document only in a secret session to staff members with appropriate security clearances.
The issue is sure to stoke political concerns that a deal brokered last weekend between the company, the Bush administration and congressional GOP leaders does not go far enough. That deal provided that the company could go forward with its $6.85 billion acquisition of P&O, but it would not assert control over U.S. properties while the administration conducts a 45-day review of the deal's national security implications. Senators from both political parties moved yesterday to immediately stop the deal, pending the review's outcome.
"Congress has a right and responsibility in this case to conduct aggressive oversight and block a deal that could seriously undermine our national security," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). "This deal should not go through without an open investigation and congressional input."
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said: "Since the president won't act to keep our ports safe, we will."
The response from Republican and Democratic senators suggested the issue has in no way been defused. The Coast Guard document surprised even lawmakers charged with overseeing the Coast Guard. The assessment raises questions on the overall security environment at DP World facilities, the background of some personnel and foreign influence on company operations.
"This report suggests there were significant and troubling intelligence gaps," Collins said. "That language is very troubling to me."
Clay Lowry, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for international affairs, told Homeland Security Committee members the Coast Guard's concerns "were addressed and resolved."
But Collins questioned how such broad concerns raised by the Coast Guard could have been resolved by Jan. 6, when the Homeland Security Department gave its approval of the deal.
Lawmakers from both parties who loudly challenged the administration's acceptance of the deal last week were in no mood to take in those assurances. Republicans have grown particularly incensed that the administration has not kept them informed on issues of such political importance. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) said he will introduce legislation today mandating that security reviews by the homeland security and intelligence committees run concurrently with administration security reviews of company purchases.
"We have tried our best to support this administration at every turn, but to be blindsided by an issue of this magnitude demonstrates we have a lot of work to do," he said.
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), whose district suffered outsize losses in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said information that has emerged about the issue has made him even more adamant in opposing the deal.
Legislation to take a closer look at the transaction is piling up. A bill introduced yesterday by Coburn, Menendez, Collins, and Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) would halt the sale of P&O pending the 45-day review and would give Congress the authority to reject the deal after the investigation.
A separate bill by Menendez, Clinton, Lautenberg and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) would block the sale and ban companies owned by foreign governments from controlling operations at U.S. ports.

A Taste of the Future

By David Ignatius

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." The acidulous wisdom of Mark Twain speaks to us across the ages, and never more than this week during the great congressional mobilization to save America's ports from the dreaded hand of Dubai.
The furor over Dubai is misplaced on so many levels, but let's start with the supposed terrorist threat. Military and CIA officials will tell you privately that the United Arab Emirates is among the most effective intelligence partners the United States has today in the Arab world. Its operatives are risking their lives to help gather information about al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. They don't advertise it, and when an operation goes bad -- such as the U-2 spy plane that crashed last June returning from Afghanistan to al-Dhafra air base -- they keep their mouths shut.
Certainly, al-Qaeda knows who the enemy is. Among the documents released last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point was a spring 2002 al-Qaeda warning to officials of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It accused the UAE leaders of working with the U.S. government "in order to appease the Americans' wishes which include: spying, persecution and detainments." Al-Qaeda claimed it has penetrated the UAE government, and the United States should certainly vet any UAE personnel working in the United States. But the idea that by purchasing the British company that has been managing six U.S. ports, Dubai Ports World is somehow opening the door to terrorism is, frankly, racist.
The hubbub over terrorism isn't the biggest problem with the Dubai flap. In a sense, the Bush administration had it coming, after having beaten congressional opponents over the head with the terrorism club for four years. What goes around comes around, and while it may be comical to hear a legislator accuse President Bush of having a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set, the White House made itself a fat target.
The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.
The best quick analysis I've seen of the fiscal squeeze comes from New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, in his useful online survey of economic information, rgemonitor.com. He notes that with the U.S. current account deficit running at about $900 billion in 2006, "in a matter of a few years foreigners may end up owning most of the U.S. capital stocks: ports, factories, corporations, land, real estate and even our national parks." Until recently, he writes, the United States has been financing its trade deficit through debt -- namely, by selling U.S. Treasury securities to foreign central banks. That's scary enough -- as it has given big T-bill holders such as China and Saudi Arabia the ability to punish the U.S. dollar if they decide to unload their reserves.
But as Roubini says, foreigners may decide they would rather hold their dollars in equity investments than in U.S. Treasury debt. "If we continue with our current patterns of spending above our incomes, by 2013 the U.S. foreign liabilities could be as high as 75 percent of GDP and an increasing fraction of such liabilities will be in the form of equity," he explains. "So, let us stop whining about the dangers of unfriendly foreigners owning our firms and assets and get used to it."
Here's how bad it is: The worst thing that could happen to the United States, paradoxically, would be for Arab and other foreign investors to take us at our xenophobic word and decide that America doesn't really want foreign investment. If they pulled out their money, U.S. financial markets would plummet in a crash that might make 1929 look like a sleigh ride.
Let's rashly assume that Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, the Republican Senate and House leaders, are serious in their expressions of concern about foreign ownership of American assets. What they should do right now is begin changing the fiscal policies that are transforming the United States into a ward of the world.
I'm dreaming, of course. Such policies would mean financial sacrifice on the part of Congress and the American people. They would require political leadership instead of quick-hit news conferences. What a quaint idea, that members of Congress actually might want to solve problems rather than make headlines.

Republican Port Politics

By Robert D. Novak

It was no surprise that Sen. Charles Schumer, a fiercely partisan Democrat always hunting for political advantage, ignited the furor over management of America's ports. But why did congressional leaders of George W. Bush's own party join the attack?
A second-term president hovering around 30 percent in popular approval ratings cannot expect full support on sensitive issues, even from his own party. But Bush contributed to the lack of Republican backing with faulty White House outreach to Capitol Hill, followed by his injudicious veto threat against still-undefined legislation.
Beyond the Bush political operation's shortcomings, deeper problems are reflected by overwhelming public opposition to a company owned by the government of a close Arab ally operating U.S. ports. Polls suggest the darker side of the American mind: isolationist, protectionist, nativist and xenophobic. Bush's ceaseless efforts to rouse his countrymen to support the war against terrorism may have unleashed the dogs of anti-Arab prejudice.
The firestorm over whether Dubai Ports World should be permitted to replace a British company in control of U.S. ports is unexpected largess for Democrats, who are desperate to regain control of Congress this year. Left-wing Democrats, led by Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton, seek the opportunity to trump Bush and the Republicans on their strong suit of national security. Newly appointed Sen. Robert Menendez, a less than appealing candidate shown by early polls to be trailing in the Democratic bastion of New Jersey, jumped into the fight against the port deal.
Republicans hurriedly joined the attack on the United Arab Emirates, an indispensable U.S. ally in the Middle East. Rep. Vito Fossella, suggesting that the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in his New York City district was imperiled by UAE management of the ports, compared the deal to letting Arabs control security at American airports. In fact, the Dubai company would not affect U.S. government security, and the ports would remain under state and local ownership. Rep. Peter King, the new Homeland Security Committee chairman, has acted as though he wanted immediate House action by suspending the rules.
It is not merely New Yorkers King and Fossella and other lawmakers with ports in their districts who have spoken out. In South Dakota, far from salt water, freshman Sen. John Thune said Arab management of the ports gave him "heartburn." With Congress in recess, Thune typified lawmakers encountering massive public resistance back home. That mood was generated by the feeding frenzy on cable television and the Internet that, in turn, was triggered by bipartisan congressional attacks.
Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt, an experienced Washington hand, is in charge of regulating foreign acquisitions at the Treasury Department and didn't give a heads-up to top Republicans in Congress. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist might have been less quick to attack the port arrangement if they'd had advance word. Hastert heard nothing from a former staffer, Kevin Fromer, now handling Treasury legislative affairs.
When the Democrats first opened fire, presidential counselor Dan Bartlett was alerted by congressional Republicans to stormy waters ahead and urged to do something about it. Bartlett replied in the imperial style of this presidency by suggesting he hoped Republicans could support the deal, but if they could not, it just would be too bad. That was followed by the president's rare session with reporters aboard Air Force One in which he threatened a veto.
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), whose Banking Committee has jurisdiction over the issue, was silent at first, but only because he was traveling in Europe. When he issued a brief, limited-circulation statement Thursday, it was not good news for the White House. "From Treasury's perspective," he said, "the [foreign acquisitions] process with respect to the Dubai transaction worked perfectly; from the Banking Committee's perspective, it failed miserably." He set hearings for Thursday that will not be pleasant.
The rest of the world may wonder how a relatively routine commercial transaction turned Republican leaders against their president. Frank McKenna, the Canadian ambassador, who is leaving Washington this week, has cracked the code by appreciating the existence of two U.S. governments, one executive and the other legislative. That system requires more presidential finesse than was displayed in handling the Dubai contract.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Hillary calls out Karl Rove

Albany - Reacting to a new book quoting Karl Rove as saying she will be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president, senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that President George W Bush's chief political strategist "spends a lot of time obsessing about me".
Noting that Rove and his White House aides have met regularly with her possible opponents in the 2006 senate race, Clinton said: "He spends more time thinking about my political future than I do."
The former first lady said she believed Rove, national Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman and other Republicans are using her to divert attention from Republican problems as the 2006 congressional elections approach.
"Karl Rove is a brilliant strategist. So, if I were thinking about this," she said to WROW-AM radio in Albany, "I'd say why are they spending so much time talking about me?"
"What they're hoping is that all of their missteps, which are now numbering in the hundreds, are going to somehow be overlooked because people, instead of focusing on the '06 election, will jump ahead and think about the next one," Clinton said.
In a new book out on Monday from Regnery Publishing, Strategery by veteran reporter Bill Sammon, Rove is quoted as saying: "She is the dominant player on their side of the slate.
"Anybody who thinks that she's not going to be the candidate is kidding themselves."
'Brittleness'
Nonetheless, Rove also says he does not believe Clinton can win the general election, in part, because there is a "brittleness about her".
That seems to mirror recent comments by Mehlman that Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger" and that Americans do not elect angry presidential candidates.
There was no immediate comment from Rove.
Clinton again refused to be pinned down on whether she would run for the White House, repeating her mantra that she is completely focused on re-election this year.
Asked if it was unfair to New York voters to not tell them whether she might run for president in two years, Clinton said: "Any New Yorker who worries about what might happen in the future should certainly take that into consideration."
Statewide polls have shown Clinton well ahead of her potential Republican senate challengers and national polls show her leading the field of potential 2008 Democratic presidential contenders.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

SUNDAY FUNNIES

CLICK ON CARTOONS TO ENLARGE

Saturday, February 25, 2006

A FAILURE OF THE PRESS

By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz
Thursday, February 23, 2006

There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.
The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.
We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.
Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.
The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.
In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.
But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."
But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.
So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.
While we may disagree among ourselves about whether and when the public interest justifies the disclosure of classified wartime information, our general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact -- not opinion but fact -- that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent. There should be no group or mob veto of a story that is in the public interest.
When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.

William J. Bennett is the Washington fellow of the Claremont Institute and a former secretary of education. Alan M. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard.

How Well Do You Know the First Amendment?

The First Amendment rights of students in a public-school setting:

1) Is it constitutional to teach about religion in a public school?
2) Can students share their religious faith in public schools?
3) Is it constitutional for a public school to require a neutral "moment of silence"?
4) Can schools enforce speech codes on school grounds?
5) Can a school punish a student for wearing long hair or dying it an unusual color?
6) Must a public school student salute the flag during a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance?
7) Is profanity a form of expression protected by the First Amendment?
8) When does student speech constitute "harassment"?
9) Can a school punish a student for wearing clothing with the Confederate flag?
10) Can students form religious or political clubs in secondary public schools?

ANSWERS:

1) Yes.
2) Yes, as long as the activity is not disruptive and does not infringe upon the rights of others.
3) Yes, one that does not encourage prayer over any other quiet, contemplative activity, although students can use it to pray.
4) Within limits, public schools have discretion in implementing speech codes, especially involving harassment. Problems arise when codes extend beyond their goal and restrict areas of protected First Amendment speech.
5) It depends. Courts are divided; students' rights in this regard largely depend on where they live.
6) No, although nearly three dozen states require schools to include recitation of the pledge during the school day.
7) It can be, depending upon the circumstances and context. There is no general exception for profanity under the First Amendment unless the profanity qualifies as "fighting words," which by their nature incite an immediate breach of the peace.
8) There is no clear legal line. Generally, when a student or students repeatedly intimidate or threaten another student, the behavior rises to the level of harassment. Harassment can also be written, oral or physical acts that harm a student, damage property, interfere with the student's education or disrupt the operation of a school. School officials must restrict certain kinds of harassing language and actions they know about, or they can be held civilly liable.
9) It depends. School officials would need to reasonably forecast that the attire would lead to substantial disruption.
10) Yes, as long as other extracurricular, non-curriculum-related groups are allowed by the school. However, teachers and other school employees cannot participate in student religious clubs.
Adapted from http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/ .

Danish paper rewarded for controversy

Copenhagen - Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which angered the Muslim world by publishing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad last year, has won a Danish critical journalism award for its initiative, the jury said.
Denmark's largest daily was honoured with the Victor Prize for "having opened everyone's eyes by showing how easy it is to introduce cracks in freedom of expression and how so-called political correctness is infiltrating what we believe to be inalienable rights," Hans Engell, the editor of tabloid Ekstra Bladet which awards the prize, said during a prize ceremony in Copenhagen late on Thursday.
The Victor Prize, named for the late editor-in-chief of Ekstra Bladet Victor Andreasen, was handed to Jyllands-Posten's editor Carsten Juste.
"This prize is awarded to Jyllands-Posten for its adamant defence for months of freedom of expression, which is under threat," Engell told AFP.
Freedom of expression
"Jyllands-Posten only did its duty: exercise its right to freedom of expression," he added.
Juste, guarded by two secret service bodyguards, noted "how fragile freedom of expression is" as he accepted the award, his newspaper reported.
The 12 drawings of Muhammad, which first appeared in Jyllands-Posten last September, have sparked violent protests in Muslim countries against Denmark especially, as well as against other European countries where the cartoons have since been reprinted.
Islam considers any image of the prophet blasphemous.
Both the newspaper and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen have repeatedly refused to apologize for the publication of the cartoons, insisting that freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Denmark.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Ladies, now you can wee standing up!

Ever been miles from a toilet, or been faced with a toilet so filthy it would have made Attilla the Hun wince? Or been desperate next to a highway, but unwilling to drop your pants and squat? Now help is at hand. So to speak.
There is a new device on the market that you will enable you to urinate standing up. Two female private investigators, Emma Burger and Nina Overton, came up with the idea after often being faced with a lack of public toilets while being out doing surveillance.

No toilet to use?

“We realized that we weren’t the only ones – women on hiking trails, people at music festivals, concerts, or fairs, women travelling long distances, or simply women in an area with no toilets, all have the same problem, namely no toilets, or filthy toilets. Many women in the townships are also faced with this problem.”
The bacteria lurking on most public toilets include staphylococcus, psuedomonas, E. coli and streptococcus. And as if that is not enough, the fungal infections with which you can come into contact are the following: aspergillus, candida, flu, herpes zoster and herpes. Infectious diseases you can pick up from toilet seats also read like a horror story: cholera, amabesis, para-typhoid A, B and C, typhoid fever, enteric fever and hepatitis A.

A pocket-sized solution

And unlike men, women cannot just go and stand behind the nearest bush. Up until now, that is.
There is now an easy-to-use cardboard product that enables women to urinate while standing up. It is small enough to be folded up and put into your pocket before use. It is discreet and made from water-resistant cardboard that can be thrown into a bin after use, or put back in your pocket.
This product, called Femmeplus, means that women no longer have to squat. If it sounds funny to you, just think of the fact that it is no more funny than it would be to squat next to a highway and have a whole bus full of passengers watching you as they go by.
This device simply folds out into a kind of funnel, the wide open side of which you can place under the flow area between your legs. The urine then runs out the narrow front, making it possible for you to stand while doing this. And if you are wearing a skirt, the people around you will hardly know what you are doing. Pants need to be pulled down slightly, but nothing as exposing as pulling them right down and squatting in a public place.

Just carry along some toilet paper in your purse to wipe with.

“It will also make it a lot easier to give your doctor a urine sample. No more struggling with odd plastic containers that have a way of being everywhere except where you want them to be. Femmeplus should also make it easier for people in wheelchairs to urinate,” say Burger and Overtone.”


For more information about this product, you can visit the web page of Femmeplus at:

http://www.femmeplus.co.za./.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

HOLY WAR ESCALATES

Pope to Muslims: Stop it!

Paris (Feb. 22) After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.
Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.
After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.
Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.
"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.
"We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.
Reciprocity -- allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely -- is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.
Vatican diplomats argue that limits on Christians in some Islamic countries are far harsher than restrictions in the West that Muslims decry, such as France's ban on headscarves in state schools.
Saudi Arabia bans all public expression of any non-Muslim religion and sometimes arrests Christians even for worshipping privately. Pakistan allows churches to operate but its Islamic laws effectively deprive Christians of many rights.
Both countries are often criticized at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for violating religious freedoms.
Pope Benedict signaled his concern on Monday when he told the new Moroccan ambassador to the Vatican that peace can only be assured by "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others, in a reciprocal way in all societies".
He mentioned no countries by name. Morocco is tolerant of other religions, but like all Muslim countries frowns on conversion from Islam to another faith.
Iraqi Christians say they were well treated under Saddam Hussein's secular policies, but believers have been killed, churches burned and women forced to wear Muslim garb since Islamic groups gained sway after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Christians make up only a tiny fraction of the population in most Muslim countries. War and political pressure in recent decades have forced many to emigrate from Middle Eastern communities dating back to just after the time of Jesus.
As often happens at the Vatican, lower-level officials have been more outspoken than the Pope and his main aides.
"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves," Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa. Jesus told his followers to "turn the other cheek" when struck.
"The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he said.
Bishop Rino Fisichella, head of one of the Roman universities that train young priests from around the world, told Corriere della Sera the Vatican should speak out more.
"Let's drop this diplomatic silence," said the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. "We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."

Holy war riot deaths hit 146

Onitsha, Nigeria - At least 146 Nigerians died in five days of rioting by Muslims and Christians across Africa's most populous nation, where uncertainty over the political future was exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions.
Human rights group, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), said that in mainly Christian Onitsha in the southeast, at least 85 people were killed in two days of mob violence.
Christian youths rampaged through the streets attacking Muslims with cutlasses and setting fire to them with petrol to avenge the killing of at least 46 people, mostly Christians, by Muslim mobs in the north.
Emeka Umeh, head of CLO in Anambra state, said: "Dead bodies were littered in various parts of Onitsha. We counted 60 on Tuesday and 25 on Wednesday.
"The majority of victims were Hausas but some Ibos were killed too." He gave a detailed breakdown of numbers of bodies sighted in specific areas.
The Hausa are the main ethnic group in northern Nigeria and most of them are Muslims, while the Ibo are the dominant tribe in the southeast and they are almost all Christians.
The Anambra police commissioner declined to give a death toll, but he said about 11 000 people, mostly Hausas, had fled their homes and were camping in army barracks or police stations, too frightened to venture out.
Nigeria's 140 million people were split roughly equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, though sizeable religious and ethnic minorities lived in both regions.
Thousands of people had been killed in religious violence since the restoration of democracy in 1999, and killings in one part of the country often triggered reprisals elsewhere.
The killings in Onitsha started when news emerged of Ibo deaths in the north. On Wednesday, the tit-for-tat violence spread to Enugu, another Ibo city in the southeast, where seven people were killed.
In Onitsha, Ibo mobs torched mosques and shanty towns, where Hausas lived, while thousands of looters invaded Hausa markets.
Sectarian violence in Nigeria often had roots in politics as leaders manipulated religious sentiment to bolster their power bases.
Religious and secular leaders had linked this week's violence in three northern cities to rising political tensions.
In Maiduguri and Bauchi, the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and an alleged blasphemy started the trouble.
In Katsina, the trigger was a constitutional review, which was controversial because many saw it as an attempt to keep President Olusegun Obasanjo in power for longer.
Under the constitution, Obasanjo can't seek a third term in 2007 elections and he said he would uphold the charter. But, he had declined to comment on a powerful lobby to amend the constitution to allow him to stay.
The idea of a third term was unpopular with a wide range of interest groups across Nigeria

Muslim/Christian fighting gets ugly

Lagos, Nigeria - Bodies littered the streets of the southern Nigerian city of Onitsha on Wednesday as the death toll from days of Christian-Muslim violence across Nigeria rose to at least 146.
"I've counted more than 20 people killed today," said Onitsha resident Isotonu Achor after gangs of rioters armed with machetes and shotguns poured through the mainly Christian city.
A police official earlier said five Hausas had been killed in the neighbouring city of Asaba, where thousands of Muslims had fled after the Onitsha riots.
Frank Nweke, a magazine editor, who ran the gauntlet of the mob to escape Onitsha and made it to the bridge, told reporters that he had seen 15 more corpses lying in the streets of the city.
Some of them had been beheaded, others had had their genitals removed.

Today's Mack Attack is aimed at tensions between Russia and Israel.
Russia's formal acceptance of Hamas in Palestine and its offer to enrich uranium for Iran have combined to set tensions between these two countries to all-time highs.

It was rumored, during the Gulf War, that Russia was warned by Israel to stay out of the fighting, or risk nuclear retaliation. That had to take some balls.

That insult supposedly stung the former Soviet Union even more when the US then lent Israel its support after the threat was issued. Well, what else were we going to do? Iraq was sending Stinger missiles into Israel, baiting them to side with the US against Iraq so that we would then lose the support of every Arab nation on the planet, including Saudi Arabia, where we had military bases at the time. The US offered Israel anything it wanted to stay out and not retaliate against Iraq. Even so, It took all of Israel's restraint to keep its word; as it did Russia to sit back and take the slap issued by Israel.

Well, now these sores have been reopened, and the timing keeps me up at night.
Why? because Russia and Israel feature prominently in what the bible calls "The battle of Armageddon."


The battle of Armageddon is described in part in Ezekiel 38: a massive confederacy of nations invading the land of Israel just before the establishment of the Kingdom of God. The leader of the confederacy is called "Gog" of the land of "Magog." Bible students have consistently looked to Russia to fulfill the role of Gog. Magog was an ancient name for the land of the Scythians in the southern part of what is now Russia.
Ezekiel 38:5 adds that in league with Gog (Russia) will be "Persia" (Iran).


Look it up yourself!

Israel is referred to in verse 8 as:
"The land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations." (Ezekiel 38:8)
Scripture warns, "When they shall say, 'Peace and safety'; then sudden destruction cometh upon them" (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
In Bible times Iran was known as Persia and the Persian empire was one of the great world empires. Unlike many ancient nations Persia has continued as a distinct nation, to emerge into the modern world. (ready to fulfill Bible prophecy?) Between the Second World War and the Islamic revolution in 1979 Iran was pro-Western. Now it is more against the West than ever before and especially antagonistic towards Israel.

Iran is now aligned with Russia and closet links between former republics of the USSR and Iran will be something to watch for in upcoming months as events turn toward what I hope is not the "final conflict."

Russia-Iran enrichment talks shaky but continue

MOSCOW (Feb. 22)- Iran and Russia ended two days of talks in Moscow with no progress reported on ending the international standoff over Iran's nuclear program, although Tehran's chief negotiator Tuesday called the talks "positive and constructive."
The Russian foreign minister also expressed optimism, declining to say the talks failed.
Iran insists on its right to develop a nuclear energy program that Western countries suspect is a cover for producing nuclear weapons. Moscow has proposed moving Iran's uranium enrichment to Russian soil to ensure that uranium is not diverted for weapons.
The Russian offer, which is backed by the United States and the European Union, is widely seen as the last chance for Iran to address the West's concerns before a March 6 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency that could start a process leading to a review by the U.N Security Council.
The council has the power to impose economic and political sanctions.
A visiting U.S. diplomat said that although "no new ground was broken" the international coalition pressuring Iran was working well.
"I think we've got a truly multilateral approach in place," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Moscow. "I think the momentum is with this coalition."
Neither Iran nor Moscow reported movement toward a compromise as chief Iranian negotiator Ali Hosseinitash left Russia on Tuesday, but both nations were optimistic.
"In our belief, the trend of negotiations was positive and constructive," Hosseinitash, deputy secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said, adding that the two countries had agreed to continue talks.

Russia-Iran nuclear deal signed

Russia and Iran have signed an agreement for Moscow to supply fuel to Iran's new nuclear reactor in Bushehr.
Under the deal Iran has to return spent nuclear fuel rods from the reactor, which was designed and built by Russia.
The clause is a safeguard meant to banish fears that Iran might misuse the rods to build nuclear weapons, a concern of the US, Israel and others.
The agreement sets out a time-frame for delivery of the fuel, but officials said the dates would be kept secret.
The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says the deal is significant because Bushehr will be Iran's first reactor to go on stream - a project that has become an issue of national prestige in the face of intense US opposition.
The signing, which had been expected on Saturday, was apparently delayed over disagreements about when the spent fuel should be returned.
Russia had been insisting that no spent fuel should be diverted for the manufacture of weapons.
Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear programme is solely for the generation of power.
'Strongest indication yet'
But despite Iran's denials, diplomats said investigations showed Tehran had had full possession of enrichment know-how for two decades, after acquiring the information from Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan's black-market network.
The Washington Post on Sunday quoted officials as saying that the programme originated at a secret meeting in Dubai 18 years ago between Iranian officials and Mr Khan's associates.
The officials said Tehran, which was then at war with Iraq, bought centrifuges and an enrichment starter kit but also used the meeting as a guide before purchasing more expensive items elsewhere.
The offer "was the strongest indication to date" that Iran had a nuclear weapons programme, a diplomat was quoted as saying.
'Confidential protocol'
Iran's nuclear energy chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh and his Russian counterpart, Alexander Rumyantsev, agreed the deal.
"We have signed a confidential protocol that sets out the timetable for the delivery of fuel to the nuclear power plant at Bushehr," Mr Rumyantsev said, quoted by Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Russia has rejected US pressure to cut nuclear co-operation with Iran.
Washington is also concerned that the nuclear project could allow for the covert transfer of weapons technology to Iran.
At a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President George W Bush in Slovakia on Thursday, both sides agreed Iran should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.
The signing of the nuclear fuel deal has been delayed several times, apparently over technical and financial issues.
Our correspondent says Iran is currently in negotiations over its nuclear programme with Europe, and one of the incentives on the table is an offer of a nuclear reactor from the West.
If Iran is already receiving nuclear fuel and technology from Russia, she says, it is in a stronger negotiating position.

Russia recognizes Hamas; Israel stunned

JERUSALEM, (Feb 19) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's plans to invite to Hamas leaders to visit Moscow was met on Thursday by surprise in Israel, which does not see the Islamic militant group as a peace partner.Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would not negotiate with the group sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state until it "recognises Israel's right to exist, renounces terror and accepts the Middle East peace process".Hamas, which has carried out more than 60 deadly suicide bombings against Israelis since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000, won a crushing victory over President Mahmoud Abbas's long-dominant Fatah group in a Jan. 25 election.Putin told a news conference in the Spanish capital on Thursday that he intended to invite Hamas leaders to Russia, a member of the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators along with the United States, the United Nations and the European Union.A senior Hamas official welcomed any such invitation.But Israel was surprised. "(Russia) agreed to the Quartet's statements, so people in Jerusalem are raising an eyebrow -- what's going on here?" an Israeli government source said.At a meeting in London on Jan. 30, Quartet representatives called on Hamas to renounce violence and recognise Israel if it participates in a Palestinian government.U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told a news conference after the session the international community should be able to work with Hamas if the group "transforms itself from an armed movement into a political party respecting the rules of the game".Senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyah said its leaders would visit Moscow if they received an official invitation.U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that international aid could not flow to Hamas until it recognised Israel's right to exist.The group, which is expected to form a new Palestinian government soon, has said it would ask Arab and Muslims states for political and financial support to counter such threats.


Russia insulted by Israeli political ad

Moscow (Feb. 22)--An Israeli campaign ad featuring President Vladimir Putin's image has sparked outrage from the Russian government, leading to an official complaint from the Foreign Ministry and an apology from former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ad, titled "Red Dawn," was released on the Internet and in movie theaters by the opposition Likud party last week. The ad used Putin's decision to invite Hamas leaders to Moscow to criticize Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
"It wasn't Putin who gave Hamas the right to participate in elections in West Jerusalem," the ad's voiceover says, while a portrait of Putin is ripped away piece by piece to reveal Olmert's face. "It wasn't Putin's chief adviser who opened talks with Hamas. And it certainly wasn't Putin who gave Hamas 250 million shekels [$53 million]."
The screen fades to a group of masked and armed militants marching through the streets.
"It was Ehud Olmert who rolled out the carpet for Hamas. Putin only dyed it red," the voiceover says, as the screen turns red.
Likud pulled the ad from its web site and from movie theater trailers on Friday after Russian Ambassador to Israel Gennady Tarasov telephoned Netanyahu, the Likud leader, to complain, a Russian Embassy spokesman said Monday.
"We believe the ad was unethical and inappropriate," spokesman Anatoly Yurkov said by telephone from Tel Aviv.
"Any country has the right to criticize President Putin's decisions or policies, but to use his image alongside Prime Minister Olmert's in this way is quite clearly inappropriate."
Likud spokesman Dmitry Shimelfarb said that Netanyahu apologized for the ad, calling it "a mistake," but Shimelfarb insisted the ad was in no way intended to insult the Russian president.
"The text of the ad states in clear, plain language that Putin is not to be blamed" for Hamas' electoral success, Shimelfarb said by telephone from Tel Aviv. "We had no problem removing the ad because we had no desire to say that Putin was responsible."
The ad has not aired on television, as Israeli election law allows television and radio ads only during the final three weeks of the campaign. Elections to the Knesset, Israel's 120-member parliament, are scheduled for March 23.
Putin drew criticism from the United States and the European Union earlier this month when he issued the invitation to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that won a surprise victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections on Jan. 25. Washington and Brussels have called for the isolation of the group, which has carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings in Israel since 2000, until it renounces violence and recognizes Israel's right to exist.
Netanyahu sent a personal letter to Putin earlier this month protesting the invitation, Shimelfarb said.
In response to the criticism, Putin has said Hamas came to power in free, democratic elections and that the choice of the Palestinian people must be respected.
A Hamas delegation is due in Moscow in early March.
With Likud running far behind Olmert's recently formed Kadima party in polls, Likud's ad was a clear attempt to turn anger over Putin's invitation against Kadima, Tel Aviv-based political commentator Gil Hoffman said Monday.
"There is a lot of animosity against Putin" over the invitation, "both among Russian immigrants and non-Russians," Hoffman said by telephone from Tel Aviv. "To associate Olmert with that is the ultimate way of alienating voters."
Olmert has been acting prime minister since the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, suffered a debilitating stroke on Jan. 4.
Though polls show Olmert's personal popularity declining, his party's position remains strong, with a Feb. 16 poll by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz giving Kadima a projected 40 seats out of 120, and Likud only 13.
Lily Galili, a senior writer for Haaretz, disagreed with Hoffman's assessment, saying that both the ad and politicians' reactions to Putin's invitation had been intentionally cautious.
With Russian immigrants making up almost one-sixth of Israel's population of 6.3 million, "Israelis are interested in good political relations with Russia," Galili said by telephone from Tel Aviv.
"Everyone dealing with Putin is quite cautious. There are over a million people here with friends and family who are still in Russia.
Those people aren't interested in a scandal between their new homeland and their old one," Galili said.
She also noted that Likud recently hired the Russian PR firm Imidzh-Kontakt to work on the campaign, a fact that was confirmed by Shimelfarb.
"No one in Likud wants to alienate the Russians," Galili said.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Absolutely loved this song when it came out 23 years or so ago.

Lyrics are even more apropos today than they were then.

Cartoon riots spawn "Christian" revenge

At least 27 Killed in Nigeria

ONITSHA, Nigeria (Feb. 22)--Revenge attacks against Muslims killed at least 27 people in southeastern Nigeria on Wednesday after anti-Christian violence spawned from cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammud killed dozens and left thousands homeless in the mainly Muslim north.
The slaughter raised the death toll from five days of religious riots fueled by political tensions in Africa's most populous country to at least 73, and possibly many more.
"There are thousands of boys with cutlasses and sticks on the rampage. I've counted at least 20 bodies here by the Onitsha bridge," said Reuters photographer George Esiri in the southeastern commercial hub of Onitsha.
"They are Hausas. Some of them are burned and some have their stomachs cut open," he said.
The Hausa are the main ethnic group in the north, while Onitsha is located in the ethnic Ibo heartland. Rioting started in Onitsha on Tuesday after news of the northern riots emerged.
The revenge violence spread on Wednesday to Enugu, another southeastern city, where the Red Cross said at least seven people were killed and 150 injured.
In Onitsha, troops and police were unable to contain the violence. A group of soldiers prevented the mob from crossing the Niger River bridge into neighboring Delta state, but did not attempt to stop the killing.
"We are evacuating some internally displaced people to Asaba for temporary sheltering because they were being overcome and attacked in places where they were initially camped, such as police stations," said a Red Cross official in Lagos.
A doctor at Onitsha general hospital said police carried in 20 corpses, but it was impossible to verify if these were the same people as the doctor did not know where the corpses had come from. The local police commissioner declined to comment.
Oliver Onah, an Onitsha resident, said he saw an enraged mob burn two policemen to death at a roundabout in the city.
Nigeria's 140 million people are split roughly equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, though sizeable religious and ethnic minorities live in both regions.
Religious violence is often stoked by political leaders seeking to bolster their own power bases. Fighting in one part of the country usually sparks reprisal killings elsewhere.
There was no official death toll from Tuesday's fighting in Onitsha but a security source said there were at least a dozen fatalities, possibly many more, while the Red Cross said 325 people were injured and 2,000 displaced.
In the northern cities of Maiduguri, Bauchi and Katsina, at least 46 people were killed and thousands were left homeless during four days of clashes between Muslims and Christians.
"The political atmosphere in the nation is already very bad and with high poverty there are a lot of unemployed youths. That is why this kind of crisis starts easily," said Adamu Abubakar, a Red Cross official in Bauchi.
The violence in Katsina and Maiduguri broke out days before the two cities were due to stage public hearings on constitutional reform.

Brits outline terrorism future

London - There will be at least one terrorist attack on a European target this year and either Osama bin Laden or his right hand man will be killed or captured in 2006, British security experts predicted on Thursday.
Furthermore, there will be no civil war in Iraq as insurgents lose the support of the mainstream population, and Iran will back down in its nuclear dispute with the West without sanctions or military action, Aegis Defence Services said.
In its annual terrorism report, Aegis, which assesses global risks for governments and international companies, said the net was closing on the leaders of bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.
It called bin Laden a "spent force", whose only role was as a talisman, and predicted he or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would be out of circulation in the next 12 months.
At the same time, it said, al-Qaeda was showing signs of moving away from destruction towards more "earthly" political aims, meaning talks might be possible with their successors.
"Al-Qaeda is striving to cast themselves in a political role," Aegis managing director of research and intelligence Dominic Armstrong told Reuters.
"There is going to be more practical engagement."
But Aegis, which correctly predicted there would be a large-scale bombing in the UK last year, said growing radicalisation of Islamist youths in Europe, combined with social and economic alienation, would mean further attacks.
Britain and Italy top targets
Britain and Italy remained the most likely targets but France, Spain and the Benelux countries were also at risk.
"We are not going to see a 9/11 level of attack or that sort of destructive spectacular," Armstrong said.
"It is more likely to be a number of smaller attacks against softer targets with an economic knock-on effect."
Weapons of mass destruction would not be used, he said.
"They do not own and will not own nuclear weapons or lethal pathogens," he said.
"The successful attacks that take place this year will be conventional."
Aegis, which has a $293m US contract to co-ordinate security for contractors in Iraq and has 1 000 staff on the ground, said the situation there was not as bad as the media portrayed and the country was not on the verge of civil war.
"The insurgency will continue, but it will increasingly be down to criminals and foreign fighters as mainstream Iraqis become involved in the political process," Armstrong said.
He said 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces were trouble-free.
"Foreign fighters will be made to feel less welcome and that will be a turning point for Iraq.
"For all the insurgency, the political process has not been delayed by a single day."
The report also predicted Iran would back down in its dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions with an agreement to allow it to use foreign-supplied enriched uranium for reactors, thus avoiding sanctions or any military action.
"They are going to take it as far as they can, but they will step back," Armstrong said.
"It's only aggressive brinkmanship."

German Cannibalism runs rampant

Frankfurt - A German cannibal, who admits killing and eating a man five years ago, said in court on Tuesday that he still has daily fantasies about butchering humans.
"It's like a film that goes on in my mind," said Armin Meiwes, 44, at a re-trial in Frankfurt where prosecutors are seeking to upgrade his manslaughter conviction with eight and a half years' jail into a murder verdict and life imprisonment.
Meiwes said he gets the urge every time he sees a good-looking person on television or in a newspaper.
The court heard how Meiwes made a video of how he mutilated and then ate his victim, 43-year-old Berlin engineer Bernd Jürgen Brandes.
Meiwes said he wanted to document "the entire process from A to Z" in order to demonstrate that Brandes sacrificed himself willingly.
But he did not film himself eating his victim, saying this was because, "optically it was not possible to differentiate between the flesh you saw on the plate and animal food".
Ate 20kg
The case is being retried after an appeals court ruled the act had many hallmarks of a murder, regardless of evidence that Brandes volunteered to take part in it.
After butchering the remains, Meiwes said he cooked and ate about 20kg of the human flesh.
Meiwes told the court he had been worried about getting HIV/Aids from eating the meat from Brandes's corpse despite the fact that the two men had earlier had unprotected sex.
The killing was not carried out for sexual gratification as the prosecutors maintain, insists Meiwes.
He asserts his main interest was in cutting a man to pieces and eating him, not killing.
Meiwes had told the court he had met Brandes via the internet after advertising for a "slaughter victim" and that Brandes had repeatedly told him he must carry out his plan.
According to Meiwes, the two men met for the first time when Brandes arrived on March 9 2000 at the railway station in Kassel near Meiwes's country home.
He said Brandes's instructions were that he was to be killed once he became unconscious.
The defendant said he had prayed for God's forgiveness for himself and his victim just before cutting Brandes's throat that night.


Berlin - A man who was inspired by a high-profile cannibal case to kill and dismember a man he met on the internet was convicted of murder on Tuesday and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The Berlin state court ordered Ralf Meyer, 41, into psychiatric care.
Meyer, who went on trial last week, had acknowledged killing Joe Ritzkowsky, a 33-year-old music teacher from Berlin who answered an internet solicitation for sadomasochistic sex.
Meyer "must be dealt with accordingly and locked away," presiding Judge Peter Faust said as he announced the verdict.
Meyer's defence team has said he was inspired by the case of Armin Meiwes, who was convicted in January 2004 in western Germany of killing and eating a man he met on the internet.
Corpse dismembered
In the Berlin case, Ritzkowsky's corpse was dismembered and parts were stored in Meyer's refrigerator in his apartment in the working class Neukoelln neighbourhood, but Meyer testified that, after the killing, he was too disgusted to actually eat the body parts.
"My biggest mistake was that I didn't go into psychiatric care at the right time," Meyer said in a closing statement to the court. He added that "I would like to apologise to the people who knew him, his friends and his mother".
Prosecutor Johannes Kroll had called for Meyer to be sentenced to 14 years and nine months. The defence asked that the sentence be limited to 10 years, saying he did not premeditate the killing.
Ritzkowsky was likely suffocated, but a doctor testified he could not be certain of the exact cause of death because the corpse was so badly mutilated.

Europe Zoos prepare for worst from bird flu

Paris - Europe's zoos are drawing up plans to vaccinate, confine or, in worst-case scenarios, to slaughter their avian boarders in order to prevent the spread of the deadly strain of bird flu.
The H5N1 strain - lethal to feathered friends and humans alike - has been detected in hundreds of migratory water fowl found dead across Europe, and animal health officials worry the disease could insinuate itself into open-air bird populations in hundreds of zoos and nature preserves.
In the absence of centralised guidelines from European officials, individual zoos have adopted their own strategies for coping with the threat, ranging from vaccinating everything with feathers to confinement indoors.
A few zoos, however, have opted for a wait-and-see approach, looking to Brussels or national governments for guidance.
Belgium's main zoos started vaccinating hundreds of rare birds this week.
"It is mainly pelicans, cranes, ostrich and water fowl that must stay in the open and thus run the greatest risk of infection," explained Ilse Segers, spokesperson for Antwerp zoo, the largest in the country.
The vaccine by injection is easily administered in most cases, but there are exceptions.
"Trying to catch an ostrich can take a bit of time," said zoo director Steffen Patzwahl.
The Dutch Association of Zoos, grouping the 15 largest animal parks in The Netherlands, has adopted an even more proactive, blanket approach - most of its birds were already vaccinated in December.
Two zoos in Portugal, Grandola and Europaradise, also decided that vaccination was the best option, along with the Schoenbrunn zoo in Vienna.
Other establishments, however, have simply confined their avian inmates indoors to prevent any possible contact with wild, migratory fowl.
"We plan to make small pools inside aviaries to let our birds have some water, but visitors will not see pelicans, ducks and other birds in our (outdoor) ponds," said Vaclovas Dumcius, director of Lithuania's only zoo, located in Kaunas.
In Denmark, Copenhagen zoo has confined most of its birds and is feeding them only in places where wild birds will not be attracted by the food.
Administrators of Riga Zoo in Latvia have decided - for the time being - to keep their birds outdoors.
"It would be a last resort to put Japanese cranes or peacocks in rooms," said spokesperson Ingmars Lidaka.
"If confined, she explained, "new birds would not be born. The cranes have already started their 'wedding dances' - it would be cruel to lock them in rooms."
Several zoos in Switzerland have been allowed leave some of their birds in the open, particularly those which are mating, on the condition that they make regular checks on them.
The most radical measure envisaged by authorities so far is that of Froso zoo in central Sweden and in a Paris zoo.
Froso is prepared to put down all its 500 birds if H5N1 bird flu reaches the Scandinavian country, zookeepers told TT news agency last week.

Famous Ravens in danger from Bird Flu

London - The Tower of London, home to Britain's Crown Jewels, has put its famous ravens into indoor aviaries to protect them from bird flu.
A spokesperson for the fortress, a former prison on the banks of the River Thames, said on Tuesday the six black birds had been moved from lawns outside the 11th century castle into specially built cages in one of its towers.
"Although we don't like having to bring the Tower ravens inside, we believe it is the safest thing to do for their own protection, given the speed that the virus is moving across Europe," said Raven Master Derrick Coyle.
"We are taking advice on the vaccinations against avian flu, and in the meantime, we will continue to give our six ravens as much care and attention as they need," he added.
Bird flu cases have been reported across Europe this month, marking a sudden resurgence of the deadly H5N1 influenza virus, which scientists fear could trigger a pandemic if it mutates and jumps from person to person.
Many of the outbreaks have involved wild birds and the World Health Organisation says migratory fowl are believed to be one way the virus is spreading.
Legend has it that the ravens must stay at the Tower of London or the castle and the Kingdom will fall, so they are protected by a special decree issued in the 17th century by Charles II.
Notoriously unfriendly, the birds - Branwen, Hugine, Munin, Gwyllum, Thor and Baldrick - have their wings clipped so that they cannot fly away.

After tough talk on ports, Bush now tries to weasle out of responsibility

Washington, DC--The White House says President Bush was unaware of an Arab-owned company planned on taking over operations at major American seaports until the deal was completed.
The highly debated transaction apparently slid past the President’s desk without him knowing.
The White House released a statement on Wednesday saying President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration.
Still defending the deal, the Bush administration admits that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction.
Tuesday saw President Bush trying to ease objections by leaders in the Senate and House that the $6.8 billion sale could raise risks of terrorism at American ports.

Gruesome torture in S. Africa

Lydenburg - Three policeman are accused of torturing a suspected thief to death by pulling his genitals off with a pair of pliers and caving-in his chest with a hammer.
Musa Sibiya, 21, of Mashishing township outside Lydenburg in Mpumalanga was arrested last Wednesday after being accused of breaking into the offices of the labor department in Lydenburg.
According to the case docket, he was charged with stealing a computer mouse, but investigators at the independent complaints directorate (ICD), who are investigating his death, said Sibiya was accused of stealing the whole computer.
Sibiya's family was told of his death on Friday morning.
His brother, Sparks Sibiya, said the family went to the police station and that the inmates told them police had killed his brother.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Bush defends sale of US ports to Arab nation

President Bush today strongly defended plans to allow a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates to assume management of key U.S. ports, a stance that distanced him from a growing number of Republicans, including the congressional leadership that has threatened to pass legislation to stop the move.
In a 20-minute impromptu meeting he called with reporters aboard Air Force One, Bush said he would veto any legislation to hold up the port deal. He warned that if the United States derailed the deal, it would send "mixed signals" because no criticism was raised when a British company was in charge. Lawmakers, he said, must "step up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard."
The president's comments on the way home from a speech in Colorado came shortly after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called on the administration to review its approval of the $6.8 billion sale of a British company that operates six U.S. ports to a company controlled by the United Arab Emirates.
Frist (R-Tenn.) said if the administration didn't reexamine the issue, he would introduce legislation to block the transfer.
"The decision to finalize this deal should be put on hold until the administration conducts a more extensive review of this matter," Frist said in a statement. "If the administration cannot delay the process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold."
Also today, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) raised concern about the deal and urged the administration to "conduct a more thorough review." Without offering details, Hastert said in a letter to Bush that "this proposal may require additional congressional action in order to ensure that we are protecting Americans at home," the Associated Press reported.
But Bush was direct in his response. "They ought to listen to what I have to say about this," the president said after inviting pool reporters on his plane back to his compartment to talk. "They ought to look at the facts, and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."
Bush said he did not consider this a political fight and stressed that he felt the sale had been carefully vetted for security concerns.
"This is a process that has been extensively reviewed, particularly from the point of view as to whether or not I can say to the American people, this project will not jeopardize our security," he said. " . . . I really don't understand why it's okay for a British company to operate our ports, but not a company from the Middle East, when our experts are convinced that port security is not an issue."
Bush repeated his concerns for television cameras as he arrived back at the White House.
Frist and Hastert are the latest lawmakers to express concerns about the administration's approval of the sale of Britain's Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., commonly known as the P & O Co., to the UAE's state-owned port company, Dubai Ports World.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which has representatives of 12 U.S. agencies that review foreign takeovers of U.S. companies or possible risks to national security, examined the implications of the sale on U.S. ports and approved the transaction.
Last week seven Democratic and Republican members of Congress said the deal should be looked at again, citing security concerns. They noted that the United Arab Emirates is an ally of the United States, but they said that that some of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks traveled through the UAE and its banking system has been used by groups affiliated with al Qaeda.
In addition, two Republican governors, New York's George Pataki and Maryland's Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., yesterday expressed concern about the sale and said they would consider canceling lease arrangements at ports in their states.
In the deal, DP World would control most operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore and New Orleans.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing today that the U.S. Coast Guard would remain in charge of security at those ports.
"I'm told that nothing changes with security," Rumsfeld said when asked about the security concerns. "Our Coast Guard are the ones who make judgments about the security of the port."
National Security Council spokesman Fred Jones said it is "totally misleading to say this is about port security or port ownership." He said the "U.S. would never outsource security to another entity."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Feb. 17 that it was the "considered opinion of the U.S. government that this can go forward."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said Frist and other lawmakers were "playing on fear and racism" in trying to stir up opposition to the deal.
"The rhetoric these lawmakers have used is so shameful, so irresponsible, so fraught with danger for our country, our image in the world and our ability to do business around the world," Zogby said in a phone interview from Saudi Arabia. He said Dubai was an ally of the United States that deserved far better treatment.



Book Review:

Prayers for the Assassin
by Robert Ferrigno

Enormous in scope and vividly imagined, this sensational thriller set in a futuristic America delivers a powerhouse read filled with violence, betrayal, and intrigue. Not just high-concept, but highly entertaining, Prayers for the Assassin is set thirty-five years from now, after a civil war in which most of the United States has become a moderate Islamic republic and the Bible Belt has broken away to become a Christian nation. In stores now, or order online.


Robert Ferrigno was born in South Florida, a tropical backwater rife with mosquitoes and flying cockroaches.After earning college degrees in Philosophy, Film-Making, and Creative Writing, he returned to his first love, poker. He spent the next five years gambling full-time and living in a high-crime area populated by starving artists, alcoholics, thieves and drugdealers, becoming friends with many people who would later populate his novels.He used some of his winnings to start a punk rock magazine called The Rocket, where he interviewed the Clash, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, etc. The success of The Rocket got him a job as a feature writer for a daily newspaper in Southern California, where he took the adventure-and-new-money beat.Over the next seven years he flew jets with the Blue Angels, drove Ferraris, and went for desert survival training with gun nuts. He ultimately gave up his day job to become a novelist, and his first book, The Horse Latitudes, was called "the fiction debut of the season" by Time magazine.
His most recent novel, The Wake-Up, was described by Kirkus Reviews as "Sharp, fast, and slick. Ferrigno can read like Raymond Chandler on speed, with pages turning and adrenaline pretty high throughout."Prayers for the Assassin is his ninth novel.
He lives in Washington State with his family.

http://www.prayersfortheassassin.com/

How it all began; a cartoon-cum-holy-war retrospective

It was Oct. 13, 2005 when Teguh Santosa, a 30-year-old editor with wire-rim glasses, slicked-back black hair and a stubbly beard, decided to make a point in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. His idea was a small gesture in a broader confrontation, illustrating the power of images in shaping sentiments. He scanned a dozen cartoons published in September by a Danish newspaper that lampooned the prophet Muhammad and chose to publish the one on his news Web site that has proven the most inflammatory: the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.
"I wanted them to know why it was insulting," said the thickset Santosa, a Muslim who runs the widely read Rakyat Merdeka Online.
To his surprise, there was almost no reaction. A few e-mailed comments to the Web site, he said. That was all. So he republished the caricature more than a week later, on Oct. 22. Again, nothing.
"We were confused," he recalled, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. "Why aren't people reacting to this story?"
What followed was a quintessentially 21st-century battle, a conflict steeped in decades, even centuries of grievances, reshaped by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath. A digitally interconnected world propelled it forward, as did a series of slights and missteps. And a cultural divide, at times so deep two sides cannot seemingly occupy the same space, transformed an almost incidental decision to publish a dozen cartoons on a page inside a small newspaper in Denmark into a global conflagration.
Protests have erupted in an arc stretching from Europe through Africa to East Asia and, at times, the United States. About a dozen people have died in Afghanistan; five have been killed this week in Pakistan. Muslim journalists were arrested for publishing the cartoons in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen. European countries have evacuated the staffs of embassies and nongovernmental organizations, Muslim countries have withdrawn ambassadors, and Danish exports that average more than $1 billion a year have dried up in a span of weeks.
But the scope of the fallout tells only one story. The debate over the cartoons is replete with unintended consequences, some still taking shape this week. On one side is a defense of freedom of expression, on the other an unforgivable insult to a sacred figure. In between are potentially longer-lasting repercussions: a rethinking of relations between Europe and the Muslim world, and a rare moment of empowerment among Muslims who have felt besieged. Given the moral certainty pronounced by each party, some in the middle feel forced to take sides, blurring the diversity of religious thought that might offer grounds for compromise.
In the United States and Europe, some officials have suggested that the governments of Syria and Iran, isolated abroad, have stoked the protests for internal political reasons. A few Muslim leaders have contended the controversy would have ended quickly with an apology. But the conflict illustrates a broader collision of worldviews, often fueled by feelings of Muslim weakness and injury that date back long before the cartoons were published.
"The way I see it, the war has already started," said Daii al-Islam al-Shahal, a Sunni Muslim cleric in the coastal Lebanese town of Tripoli, who helped organize protests this month against the cartoons in his home town and in Beirut. "Will it end soon, or will it come to a close only after it has completely wiped out the two sides? That is up to God."
This is the story of how it unfolded.September
Denmark Challenging a Religious Taboo
In September, Flemming Rose, a tall, soft-spoken editor for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, had an idea.
He had read that museums in Sweden and London had removed artwork that their staff members deemed offensive to Muslims. A comedian told him he would be afraid to desecrate the Koran, a reluctance he did not have about the Bible. Then he read that a Danish children's book author couldn't find illustrators willing to work under their own names to draw illustrations of Muhammad, the 7th-century prophet of Islam, for a new book on the religion.
Frustrated, Rose decided to contact 25 Danish newspaper cartoonists with a request to draw Muhammad as they saw him. A dozen responded, and his newspaper published each illustration on Sept. 30.
"We have a tradition of satire in Denmark," said Rose, 47, the paper's cultural editor, who saw it as a matter of principle. "We do the same with the royal family, politicians, anyone. In a modern secular society, nobody can impose their religious taboos in the public domain."
"We were astonished and extremely shocked," responded Ahmed Abu Laban, a prominent cleric in Denmark. Representations of the prophet are banned by most schools of Islamic thought. For the devout, even his name is rarely uttered without the phrase "Peace and God's blessings upon him." To Abu Laban, it was not just a portrayal: One cartoon pictured Muhammad with the explosive turban. Another depicted him in heaven greeting suicide bombers; in Islamic tradition, martyrs are promised sensual rewards in paradise. "Enough," Muhammad is portrayed as saying. "We've run out of virgins."
"Muslims have been stigmatized," Abu Laban said. The cartoons, he added, are "the drop that made the cup overflow."
Within a week, Abu Laban and others began organizing. He and leaders of 11 Muslim groups wrote letters to the newspaper and to the Danish culture minister. They received no immediate response. They circulated a petition and submitted 17,000 signatures to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. They met with ambassadors from 11 Muslim countries, who asked Rasmussen for a meeting, which he declined.
"After that, we tried to figure out a way to get more voices with us and how to be heard and get respect here in Denmark," said Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born theological student who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the groups.December
Middle East Envoys of Protest
They decided to travel to the Middle East, where anti-American sentiment has long festered over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and a perceived U.S. intention to dominate the region. In recent years, surveys have shown that Muslims in the Arab world and elsewhere overwhelmingly see the U.S.-led war on terrorism as a war on Islam.
Akkari carried a 43-page dossier with photocopies of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, along with 10 more illustrations that were published on Nov. 10 in Weekend Avisen, another Danish newspaper.
The dossier also included illustrations that depicted Muhammad as a pig and engaged in bestiality. Abu Laban and Akkari said those cartoons, and other obscene drawings of the prophet, had been mailed anonymously to Danish Muslim leaders after the controversy over the cartoons began. Critics have said the delegations deliberately inflamed the situation by passing off those cartoons as the ones published by Jyllands-Posten. Akkari and Abu Laban said those drawings were never represented as having appeared in the newspaper. Rather, they said they were included to illustrate what they called anger and prejudice against Muslims in Denmark.
"Freedom of expression without limits is like a car without brakes," Akkari said.
A delegation of five Danish Muslims went to Egypt on Dec. 4 and met with Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, head of al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam's foremost establishments; Ali Juma, the mufti, or top cleric, of Egypt; and Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League. They also met with an assistant to Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister. Akkari said the group stayed in Egypt about a week and gave a news conference that was covered extensively in the Arabic-language media.
A second delegation of four Muslims, including Akkari, went to Lebanon on Dec. 17 and met with Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, grand mufti of Lebanon; Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual head of the country's Shiite Muslims; and Nasrallah Sfeir, patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church. The group stayed in Lebanon until Dec. 31. Akkari said he also made a day trip to Syria and gave a copy of the dossier to Sheik Ahmed Badr Eddine Hassoun, the grand mufti of Syria.
Among those they met was al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric in Tripoli, who cringed at the sight of the pictures.
"Ugly and repugnant," he recalled thinking.January
Saudi Arabia 'A Revolution Inside Me '
Over the weeks that followed those trips, the conflict germinated, sometimes by the most modern of means.
In Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Hashim Balkhy, a 43-year-old plastic surgeon who would not consider himself unduly conservative by his country's standards, heard about the cartoons on about Jan. 21. He received a text message on his cell phone from a friend in Medina, one of Islam's holiest cities, saying Danish newspapers had been making fun of the prophet for months.
We must boycott them, his friend said.
That night, after his wife and children had gone to bed, he spent almost four hours online, smoking Carlton cigarettes and reading Web sites. He discovered that within weeks, an entire virtual world had already been dedicated to the subject. He stayed up past dawn.
A few days later, he got an e-mail from a Yahoo discussion group called al-Bostan, which published the cartoons. His eyes wandered over the photos until he got to one portraying the prophet wearing a turban as a bomb. He stared at it.
"They don't know our prophet," he recalled thinking. "And they can't get away with this."
Balkhy was already upset with the West. The photos of torture by members of the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had outraged him. He was bitter at American support for Israel. He had already stopped drinking Pepsi and Coke, as a symbolic gesture. But the victims in those cases were people -- Palestinians and Iraqis -- and this was the most pure man we know, Balkhy said.
"A revolution inside me started," he said.
He found that the most informative Web sites were the most religiously rigid. In the past, he had recoiled at some of their views, but he now came to rely on them for help in what had become a personal campaign.
On one Web site, he found the e-mail addresses of Danish embassies overseas, and a form letter to them. He cut and pasted a 27-page letter, written in both Arabic and English, and sent it to the embassies. The following day he sent a shorter version of the letter to the same list as well the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet, which had republished the cartoons in January. This time it was only in English. The third day, he e-mailed the same group a copy of a letter calling for a boycott.
He sent a copy of each e-mail to a separate list of 100 people, including colleagues in Egypt and Lebanon. Some he knew from training in Canada, others he met at conferences in the region. In the past, the list was often used to send jokes. This time, his messages encouraged those on the list to boycott Danish goods and, like him, write letters of protest to Danish diplomats, journalists and businessmen.
He joined what had become a virtual sphere of activism, with themes repeated from London to Jakarta, Indonesia. Its speed and scope were unprecedented; to him, it was empowering. As Balkhy sent his e-mails, thousands of others were circulating as well. Dozens of Web sites were set up. Among them was http://www.no4denmark.org/ . Text messages beeped on cell phones: "Danish papers are making fun of our prophet," read one. "Boycott their products." Supermarkets in Saudi Arabia began pulling Danish goods from their shelves, and Saudi companies published advertisements citing their support for the boycott. The kingdom recalled its ambassador to Denmark.
"We had accomplished something," Balkhy said. "Our campaign was working."
Denmark Stopping Short of an Apology
By Jan. 30, intense pressure had built on Rasmussen, a tough-talking farmer's son, and the editors at the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Protesters in Muslim countries were burning Danish flags. The economic boycott that started in Saudi Arabia had nearly shut down sales of Danish cheese, butter and other products in the Muslim world. On that day, a Monday, Rasmussen expressed his first public criticism of the cartoons.
"I personally have such respect for people's religious feelings that I personally would not have depicted Muhammad, Jesus or other religious figures in such a manner that would offend other people," Rasmussen told Danish television. He stopped short of the apology demanded by Muslim leaders, saying he could not apologize for what was printed in a newspaper exercising free speech.
At about the same time, Carsten Juste, editor in chief of Jyllands-Posten, posted a similar statement. "In our opinion, the 12 drawings were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims, for which we apologize," he wrote.
Al-Shahal, the Lebanese cleric, watched Rasmussen's remarks on al-Jazeera satellite television. So did Balkhy, on both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, another Arabic-language satellite network. Both felt the same way. "Truthfully, it wasn't a real apology, in the precise meaning of the word," al-Shahal said. Balkhy was blunter: Rasmussen had "tried to weasel out of an apology."February
Berlin A Free Expression Paradox
In Berlin, Roger Koppel, editor of Die Welt newspaper, saw the apologies by Rasmussen and Juste as an alarming defeat for Europe's tradition of free speech. The next day, Tuesday, Jan. 31, he met with his editorial team and ordered up a front-page story on the issue, including a reproduction of the cartoon of Muhammad with the bomb in his turban positioned at the top of Page One. At least six other European papers did the same, sharply increasing anger in the Muslim world about how the dispute was being handled.
"This had now become a huge political story," Koppel said. "In a secular Western society, a prime minister and a newspaper had to issue an apology for exercising their right to satire."
Koppel said he found many of the cartoons "ridiculous," but the quality of the images wasn't the point.
"You don't deliberately stir up religious hatred, but, sorry, we live in a secular country in the West," he said. "It's part of our culture. It's just not possible that our culture gets somehow penalized by threats."
It is illegal in Germany -- and punishable by prison time -- to make statements denying or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. It is also a crime to make "patently false statements" about the Holocaust, such as minimizing the number of victims. Some Muslims have argued that such laws constitute a double standard: in the West it's fine, they argue, to denigrate Muslims, but not Jews.
"It's not a double standard because it's the right of every culture to have its own taboos," Koppel said.
Koppel said that given Germany's painful history with the Nazis and the Holocaust, German society had chosen to establish certain limits on free speech. He said people in Germany must abide by those laws, just as people in Muslim countries must abide by the laws and traditions of those lands. He said a newspaper publishing the Muhammad cartoons in a Muslim country should expect to be punished, while a newspaper publishing them in Germany should expect to be protected by German guarantees of free speech.
In Milan, Gianni Riotta, deputy editor of the Corriere della Sera newspaper, was framing it in a different way.
While defending Jyllands-Posten's right to publish, he said the Danish newspaper made a mistake in judgment by running all 12 cartoons, which he said carried the implication that "all Muslims are terrorists." Riotta said it reminded him of his days studying at Columbia University in New York under famed American television news producer Fred Friendly. He recalled Friendly telling the class, "Shouting fire in a crowded theater is not freedom of expression, it's being stupid."
Riotta had in mind publishing something with what he thought was a clearer perspective. The Corriere, one of Italy's most respected papers, ran a package of nine cartoons: three of the "least offensive" Danish cartoons, along with three anti-Semitic cartoons taken from Arab newspapers and three Nazi-era propaganda posters.
"We wanted to publish to show that these cartoons were really offensive and really racist," Riotta said. "We wanted to give our readers some perspective: This was not Salman Rushdie." Riotta said that, as a reporter, he had covered the controversy over Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," and that he believed the Danish cartoons could not be considered in the same literary league with Rushdie's book.
Muslim World Building Solidarity
Republishing the cartoons unleashed a torrent of response.
Governments were already taking action: Interior ministers from 17 Arab nations called on the Danish government to punish the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The Saudi interior minister urged the other nations to recall their ambassadors from Denmark. Protesters burned a large photo of Prime Minister Rasmussen outside the U.N. compound in Gaza City, scenes repeated elsewhere in Muslim countries. Algeria and Yemen, among others, were calling for U.N. action against Denmark.
In Indonesia, Santosa, the Web site editor, decided to publish one of the cartoons yet again.
"But then after I published the picture, a lot of Muslim people got angry at me. Then I said, 'Oh my God, what happened?" He put the cartoon up at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 2. He pulled it down less than 12 hours later.
In time, editors in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan were arrested for publishing the cartoons, often to bring attention to the offense.
Some of the region's most influential leaders weighed in.
Fadlallah, the senior Lebanese Shiite cleric, dismissed defending the cartoons under the principle of freedom of expression. Why, then, were some European networks banning al-Manar, the television station of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, on the grounds that it incited people? Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, a leading Sunni Muslim scholar, called on Muslims to use the dispute to strengthen solidarity. "The whole nation must be angry and rise up to show their anger," he said. "We are not a nation of donkeys. We are a nation of lions."
Protests erupted the next day, Feb. 3, after Friday prayers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. They would be dwarfed by the scenes that unfolded that weekend in Lebanon and Syria.Feb. 4
Middle East 'Defending the Prophet'
For days in Damascus, diplomats had heard about protests planned for Saturday. In the streets, there were posters of a Danish flag with a red X across it. Text messages went out on Friday, their source unclear: "Join us in defending our prophet and what is sacred." It added, "What are you going to do in order to answer to your prophet in the afterlife?"
The Norwegian and Danish embassies requested extra security, the diplomats said, but received none.
The protesters gathered on Feb. 4 carrying Syrian flags and banners calling on the Danish ambassador to leave the country. They tore down the flags hanging on the building. Soon, people began throwing rocks and gasoline bombs. Diplomats said they saw what appeared to be Syrian intelligence agents in the crowd. Before dusk, the Danish Embassy was ablaze, and other protesters went to the Norwegian Embassy, burning it as well. Another crowd went to the French Embassy, but was driven back by water hoses.
Ammar Sahloul, a wealthy businessman, heard about the demonstration through text messages, canceled work on Saturday and went with nearly 60 of his employees. He said he reached the Danish Embassy's doors and tried to calm things down, in vain.
"I wanted to express our resentment in the way that the prophet taught us," said Sahloul, 40. "He would not have wanted things to happen the way they happened outside the embassies."
That day, typewritten leaflets were circulating in neighboring Lebanon, calling for another demonstration in Beirut on Sunday. "They have declared war," it read. "So for the victory of our Prophet, we must accept the challenge." The 1,000 leaflets were issued by the Salafi Group in Lebanon, headed by al-Shahal, who first met the Danish delegation in December.
Hundreds boarded buses in Tripoli, flying green-and-black banners with white Islamic inscriptions from the windows. They passed at least seven army checkpoints on the way to Beirut unhindered. In time, thousands gathered in the Lebanese capital, some rampaging through a Christian neighborhood and setting fire to the building that housed the Danish Embassy. Al-Shahal, carrying a loudspeaker, said he was among the clerics who tried to restrain the crowd.
"The truth? I felt sorry when I saw it," he said. "The protest should have demonstrated strength, but with wisdom."
A day later, in Afghanistan, protesters chanting anti-American slogans tried to storm the U.S. air base in Bagram. Afghan security forces fired on the crowd, killing at least three people. More protests followed in other Afghan cities, the grievances multiplying and mixing. In all, about 12 people were killed. Unlike in Lebanon and Syria, calls were passed not by technology, but word of mouth. Few had seen the cartoons, but they had become the topic of Friday sermons there, each retelling tinged with another exaggeration.
"I haven't seen the cartoon itself, but I was told that our prophet has a hand grenade on his turban and each of his fingers, too," said Haji Mohammed Rafiq Shahir, head of a council of professionals in the western Afghan city of Herat.This Week
Beirut Silencing Voices of Moderation
Amira el-Solh, 28, is a Lebanese Palestinian who lives in Beirut. She had heard about a text message calling for the protest in Lebanon. She, too, was angry about the caricatures, but recalled thinking that the Lebanese have greater worries today.
"Ten minutes of thought," she said she gave it.
The next day, as the protests raged in Beirut, she stayed glued to the television: Lebanese channels, CNN and the BBC. She talked to friends in Beirut, in Europe and the United States. At night, she met with friends, all disgusted with the way things had turned out.
But as she looks back at the dispute -- from the repeated publishing of the cartoons, to the protests, to the violence that pulled at Lebanon's frayed sectarian tapestry, to the moral certainty infusing the debate -- she sees the controversy as less about a dozen cartoons and more about a sense of siege in the Muslim world that forces everyone to take sides. "It's upsetting that you have to defend your identity as a Muslim constantly," she said.
She thought back to other divides in history -- the Green Line that partitioned civil war-era Beirut, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. She resented having to qualify herself as liberal or conservative, secular or religious. She worried that, in time, those definitions might become irrelevant. Perhaps they already have.
"These walls weren't so long ago," she said. "It was people who built them, and it will be people who will resurrect them."
"Do you want to silence voices of moderation, of coexistence?" she asked this week. "And this is what the generalizations of these cartoons do. It silences any individual as a Muslim and groups me along with everyone else."

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