..... Today, I am pleased to announce that by the end of this year, the Department will launch a nationwide, Internet-based, searchable National Sex Offender Registry.
Names like Jessica Lunsford and Megan Kanka highlight the importance of this new technology. Their smiles -- wiped away forever by sex offenders -- are a constant reminder that we must keep parents and communities informed and engaged.
The National Sex Offender Registry will provide one-stop access to registries from the 48 states that have them. And we will work with the two remaining states, to be sure that everyone gets on board with this important public notification system. With this technology, every citizen and law enforcement officer will be able to search the latest information for the identity and location of known sex offenders.
Our goal is to have 20 states live and available for public searches within 60 days -- and the rest online this fall.
And earlier this week, I signed a final rule that will help the Department prevent children from being exploited in pornographic materials. The rule requires producers of pornography to verify that their performers are not minors, and establishes a detailed Federal inspection system to make sure producers are keeping appropriate records -- and keeping children out of pornographic materials.
By clarifying -- and strengthening -- the rules regarding child pornography, we're taking steps to protect the most vulnerable among us from sexual exploitation.
Another priority I have outlined is the aggressive and effective prosecution of those who create, sell, and distribute obscenity. I am strongly committed to ensuring the right of free speech. But the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment does not protect obscene materials.
This month we took action on this priority when we announced the formation of an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. This Task Force will be staffed with our best and brightest: Prosecutors with expertise not only in obscenity prosecutions, but also in racketeering, money laundering, and computer crimes....
My goodness. What an interesting bundle of bad ideas, all collected into one speech.
Leaving aside for the moment the desirability of a public sex offender registray, a national registry would certainly be an intriguing idea ... if the states collected and reported data the same way. Some states' registries report all sex offenses as equal -- that is, they tell you that a person has offended without telling you what exactly it is that they did. Thus, they lump together the 19-year-old who had sex with the two-days-from-legal-consent sixteen-year-old with the person who sexually assaulted several children. Taking the information from the registries, rather than from the criminal records themselves, will yield a terribly unspecific database. (There's also the related technical issue of pulling the information from the various database systems used by the 48 states mentioned.)
Substantively, there is, of course, the much thrashed out issue of why sex offenders are singled out quite this way from other offenders. Why wouldn't we either maintain a comprehensive public registry of all criminals, or none? Why are sex offenders singled out for this sort of punishment after the legal term of their imprisonment has been completed? Somehow, we've made the judgement as a society that we should perpetually track and punish sex offenders ... but murderers can be let off. Granted, in part this is because serial sex offenses are possible in a way that serial murders are not; if you're a serial murderer who gets caught, at the very least you'll be imprisoned for life, and more likely executed (eventually). Nonetheless, depending on how it's done, it's possible in many states to kill more than one person, eventually get out of jail and off probation. With most sex offender registries, once you're in them, you can't get out again, even if you never re-offend.
The rule regarding child pornography is also interesting. As I understand it, alone among our laws, it turns the normal rules on their heads. No longer are you considered innocent until proven guilty; in this case alone, you're considered guilty until proven innocent. (In fact, assuming that charges are eventually brought against someone under this rules change, I'd think it particularly vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.) It also leaves open the issue of what happens to a producer who is lied to, as were several back during the Traci Lords and Jeff Browning scandals. None of the producers at the time were charged, as they had complied with the laws as they then stood; it's unclear whether or not they would be seen as legally culpable today under this rules change.
The Obscenity Prosecution Task Force will be interesting to see in action ... in a sort of appalling way. Since obscenity has never anywhere been defined in this country, one wonders what, exactly, the government will chose to prosecute. Chances are that whoever they take to trial will eventually either be found not guilty -- because the "community standards" rule will be profoundly unclear, given that as a country, we have no such standard -- or their sentences will eventually be overturned for the same reason. On its face, the task force would seem to exist purely to harrass the pornography industry.
Yes, the next four years ought to be interesting, indeed.
Posted by iain at 11:32 AM
The Supreme Court today threw out the June 2002 conviction of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm for destroying Enron Corp.-related documents, ruling unanimously that the jury instructions at the trial for the now-defunct company were improper.
The decision was a major defeat for the Department of Justice, which prosecuted one of the nation's largest accounting firms against the advice of numerous critics, who believed the case too weak for criminal trial.
The Andersen firm itself all but disintegrated. Many Andersen accountants and support staffers scattered to rival companies after Andersen's criminal conviction. Today, only about 200 employees perform administrative and legal duties for Andersen, which exists mainly to fight shareholder lawsuits related to its work for Enron, Global Crossing Ltd. and other clients.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the court, said the judge's instructions to the jury were too loose, failing to require proof that Andersen "knowingly" obstructed justice.
The instructions, he said, "failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing" on the part of Andersen and its employees. "Indeed," said Rehnquist, "it is striking how little culpability" the instructions required....
And so the administration's streak in the Enron-related cases continues. Those few cases it's brought -- this one, primarily -- it doesn't seem to win definitively, because it can't prove that the ancillary actors did anything "knowningly". And it has yet to do much of anything to people inside Enron, against whom they would seem to have more evidence of knowledgeable actions and who donated a portion of these dubiously obtained moneys to various campaigns like drunken sailors ... but let us not imply that they have purchased injustice, oh no no no! That said, at the rate these prosecutions are proceeding, nobody will remember any details of the Enron mess by the time any of the bigwigs go to trial. Which may or may not be a good thing; it will at least give a shot at a less inflamed trial.
Posted by iain at 10:47 AM
Why is it that whenever a head of state passes this year, it sounds like an old Saturday Night Live routine? First the pope, and now this.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia reported dead (World Peace Herald)
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published May 27, 2005
Reliable sources in the Saudi capital Riyadh said Friday King Fahd is dead, reports the Saudi Institute.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia has been dead since late Wednesday, according to several well-placed sources in the capital Riyadh who spoke to the Saudi Institute, a pro-democracy think tank in Washington, on condition of anonymity....
Saudi king's in hospital for third day, more tests
May 29, 8:55 AM (ET)
By Isa Mubarak
RIYADH (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd remained in hospital for a third day on Sunday for further tests and treatment for respiratory problems amid rising concern about his condition. The health of the 83-year-old wheelchair-bound king has been frail since he suffered a stroke in 1995. The day-to-day running of the world's biggest oil exporter, which is fighting al Qaeda militants, was passed on to his half brother.
Alarm about the monarch's condition was sparked by a rare royal statement which announced his admission to hospital on Friday and called on his subjects to pray for his recovery. Officials said he was suffering from high fever, pneumonia and respiratory complications from water in his lungs. They said his condition was stable on Sunday and that he was still being treated for respiratory difficulties....
Well, if he actually isn't breathing, then I suppose he would be having respiratory difficulties of a sort, yes.
Mind, to any real extent, it doesn't matter whether or not he's dead. As the latter article notes, his brother has been running the kingdom for a decade now. That said, there is, of course, the issue of the succession and how they plan to handle that.
But seriously. It's not as if the Saudi people haven't had the past decade to get used to the idea that the king might be headed to the choir celestial for some time now. It's not as if they haven't had many years to get used to dealing with various insurgents and the possibility that they might decide that This Is Their Moment! so they need to prepare an extra dose of repression just in case. So what's with the comedy routine?
Posted by iain at 11:02 PM
By DYANA BAGBY
Friday, May 20, 2005
An HIV-positive man has been indicted in Fayette and Fulton counties on felony criminal charges for allegedly engaging in consensual sex with three other men without disclosing his HIV status, a violation of Georgia law. Gary Wayne Carriker, 26, of Fayetteville, is charged with one count of reckless conduct in Fayette County and two counts of reckless conduct in Fulton County. All three charges are felonies.
John Withrow, the 25-year-old man whose complaint led to the criminal charge against Carriker in Fayette County, also filed a civil suit in State Court in February against Carriker, claiming he has "suffered extreme and severe emotional distress arising from the fear of developing HIV."
"This is not really a money case," said Adam Jaffe, an attorney for Withrow, who lives in Peachtree City. "Our interest is to make sure [Carriker] does not do this again."
Carriker, a medical student at Emory University, did not respond to an email or calls to his home in Fayetteville from Southern Voice seeking comment. His attorney, H. Clay Collins of Fairburn, did not return calls by press time.
In his April 2 response to the civil suit, Carriker denies the allegations and requests the civil suit be dismissed.
Carriker was arrested in November in Fayette County for allegedly having consensual unprotected sex with Withrow between Dec. 10, 2003, and April 30, 2004, without informing him he was HIV-positive, according to an arrest warrant [...] Carriker was arrested in Atlanta on April 18 and again on April 25 and charged with reckless conduct after two men alleged Carriker did not inform them of his HIV status before engaging in sex with them in separate incidents. Carriker was released on $25,000 bond.
Carriker allegedly engaged in consensual oral sex with one of the men between Jan. 8 and Jan 25, 2005, according to his May 10 indictment in Fulton Superior Court.
The man told police he had consensual sex with Carriker several times before Carriker disclosed he was HIV-positive on Jan. 25, 2005, according to an incident report from the Atlanta Police Department.
“[He] stated that he met Wayne Carriker in late December of 2004 and they began dating and having consensual oral sex inside his vehicle” and inside his condominium in Midtown, according to the March 28 police report.
The indictment in Fulton also charges Carriker with having consensual oral and anal sex with a second Midtown man without disclosing his HIV status between June 1, 2004, and Aug. 31, 2004.
According to the Fulton indictment, Carriker is accused of “knowingly engaging in consensual sex without disclosing that the accused was an HIV-infected person, thereby consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk that sex without disclosure of HIV infection would endanger the safety” of the named partner. The law is seldom used in Fulton County, according to a spokesperson for the Fulton County District Attorney....
Right.
See, here's the problem with these sorts of laws.
First, they single out HIV in a way that's generally not justifiable. There are other sexually transmitted diseases that are incurable (herpes, hepatitis C, among a few); there are even other sexually transmitted diseases that can be eventually fatal -- vide the previously mentioned hepatitis C. Yet HIV is singled out in a way that seems to have been meant as a legal gaybashing. (In the event, it seems to have worked out primarily as a way of legal ethnic-minority bashing; it's enforced either against gay men when the state is absolutely forced to do so, as in this case, or against minority men who have had sex with women.)
But really, the major problem with this sort of law is: if you unknowingly and/or uncaringly have unprotected sex with someone who is HIV-positive ... it's pretty much your own damned fault.
There are exceptions, of course. People who think that they have a monogamous relationship and discover the hard way that their partner has been having sex outside the relationship. Maybe the condom breaks at just the wrong moment, or doesn't get used properly. People who are sexually assaulted. But really, outside of those types of things, you can largely control your exposure.
Frankly, I would not ask someone with whom I had a fairly casual relationship if they were positive. I would just assume it and act accordingly.
Having oral sex without a condom is at least arguably risky, although probably a small risk -- that said, you are of course risking other STDs, such as oral gonorrhea and syphilis and hepatitis. Having anal sex with someone whom you have only "asked [...] several times if he was 'disease and drug free'" is simply lunatic. People lie. People don't know. People are mistaken. If you haven't seen several negative test results from them, and you wish to remain negative yourself, then use your damn brain.
It would be nice to be able to trust that people wouldn't lie to you, or that they would know for certain, and you could act accordingly. But that isn't the world we live in. Hasn't been for at least 20 years.
Posted by iain at 02:43 PM
Interesting.
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday turned aside an appeal by a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas who contended he and 50 other Mexicans should have their death sentences overturned because they were improperly denied legal help from their consulates in violation of international law.
In an unsigned decision, justices dismissed as premature the case of Jose Medellin, who argued he was entitled to a federal court hearing on whether his rights were violated when a Texas court tried and sentenced him to death in 1994 on rape and murder charges without consular access. The court cited a last-minute maneuver by President Bush ordering state courts to revisit the issue, making Supreme Court intervention unnecessary at this time. It reserved the right to hear the appeal again once the case had run its full course in state court.
"In light of the possibility that the Texas courts will provide Medellin with the review he seeks," the opinion stated, "we think it would be unwise to reach and resolve the multiple hindrances to dispositive answers to the questions here presented." [...]
Most Court watchers had thought that the Court would take up the case, not because they disagreed with the administration's action, but because doing otherwise is to allow the executive branch an unusual amount of discretion in determining what the judicial branch will do with cases already in process.
...In a signed dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said she would have ordered the federal courts to review the important issue of whether international law should be binding on the U.S. courts.
The Supreme Court should not refrain from intervening in a case because of Bush's last-minute action and the mere possiblity Medellin might receive relief in the state courts, she wrote in an opinion joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, and Stephen G. Breyer.
In other words, it was a 5-4 decision for dismissal, with O'Connor on the losing side, for the second time in as many 5-4 decisions. Somewhat unusual, these days. It's also a somewhat unusual five-judge majority, with Ginzburg siding with the more conservative justices.
The truly puzzling thing is why the merits of this case aren't being heard. Normally, it takes only four justices to grant certiorari; having a majority for dismissal wouldn't normally seem dispositive. With a four-justice dissent saying that they thought the case should be heard, it would seem that technically, certiorari was granted, and then the case was immediately dismissed as "certiorari improvidently granted".
Posted by iain at 12:30 PM
The U.S. military has denied giving photos of Saddam Hussein in captivity to the popular British tabloid that published them -- contradicting the newspaper's version of events.
Senior military officials told CNN Friday it was not a sanctioned release, and they are investigating to determine whether an American individual or someone else with access to Saddam at that time. [...] In Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, director of the Combined Press Information Center, said: "This was not an official release and we are aggressively investigating to find out what happened and why it happened."
The Pentagon issued a statement as well. "These photos were taken in clear violation of DoD (Department of Defense) directives and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals," it said....
Right.
Because the US government is so very very concerned about not violating the Geneva Conventions.
Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.
Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time....
Somehow, deliberately murdering an innocent man would seem to be a more egregious violation of the Geneva Conventions than showing a deposed dictator in his undies. To be sure, the Conventions aren't a patchwork; administration assertions to the contrary, you can't pick and choose which ones you choose to obey. Nonetheless, the administration is demonstrating a touchingly public concern over the publication of Saddam's photos, while trying desperately to keep all mention of what little investigation there has been of prisoner abuses swept under the rug. The Times article about the Army's report lists an incredible catalog of abuses, caused primarily, so it would seem, by unclear orders, the excessive youth of the people put in charge, and lack of training.
Here's a fun little slightly related thing: the army's recent 15 month enlistment program will, ideally, ensure that they have a larger number of people available. Most of those people will be young. Because 15 months really isn't long enough to get a handle on things, especially when you're doing a fair amount of moving around, most of those people will be lightly trained -- not deliberately, but because the priority is getting them out in the field, and taking six months to get them solidly trained is not a reasonable use of a 15 month enlistment. (Never mind that almost nobody will server just 15 months; see previous day's entry on that.) Ideally, you'd be able to keep the short-termers here, and send out people with more training, but that's the precise opposite of what the military really needs right now. They need cannon fodder, pure and simple. Thus, a 15-month enlistment pretty much ensures that this sort of situation will repeat with some regularity.
So get used to seeing this sort of thing reported.
At least ... one hopes we will see this sort of thing reported when it occurs. Given the administration's desire to hide all information about anything anytime anywhere, and its appalling success rate, we're likely not to see much more about this published in the next few years.
Posted by iain at 11:59 AM
USATODAY.com - Army offers 15-month hitch By Dave Moniz, USA TODAY
The Army, faced with a severe and growing shortage of recruits, began offering 15-month active-duty enlistments nationwide Thursday, the shortest tours ever. The typical enlistment lasts three or four years; the previous shortest enlistment was two years. Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the head of the Army Recruiting Command, said 2006 could be even worse than this year, a continuation of "the toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer Army."
Recruits in the new 15-month program could serve in 59 of the more than 150 jobs in the Army, including the combat infantry, and then serve two years in the Reserve or National Guard. They would finish their eight-year military obligation in the Guard or Reserve, volunteer programs such as AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, or the Individual Ready Reserve, a pool of former active-duty troops who can still be called to duty but aren't affiliated with any military unit....
A 15-month enlistment? Check Army's fine print
DeWayne Wickham, USA TODAY
Faced with the biggest recruitment shortfall since the draft was abolished in 1973, the Army has come up with what it thinks is a good idea. The nation's largest military force will allow new enlistees the option of serving just 15 months on active duty. [...] a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals might make the Army's latest recruitment offer look even less inviting. A three-judge panel ruled Friday that the Army can use its stop-loss authority to keep people in the service even beyond their full eight-year military obligation. "We do not minimize the disruption, hardship and risk that extension of his enlistment is causing," the appeals court said of Sgt. Emiliano Santiago, an Oregon Army National Guardsman who sued to keep from being forced to stay on active duty beyond the eight-year period. "For the reasons we have set forth, however, we conclude that the application of the stop-loss order did not breach his enlistment contract." [...]
So the military has the ability not only to yank someone out of their life, not only to send them to serve when they thought they were done, but then to keep them potentially far beyond even the maximum contracted period.
Given the length of enlistment, the military probably would be better served by a draft, or at least no worse served. In many ways, it would put some of the "volunteers" on the same footing as the draftees; the people who have been forced into extended service probably want to be there even less than the people who would be forced to serve in the first place. Politically, however, a draft would be disastrous. The president might come to propose such a thing -- he's a lame duck, so what does he care? -- but Congress, which applies for its jobs every two or six years, would not feel quite the same way about it. And the people who look to the military as an actual career, who are perfectly happy to serve for their entire professional lives, would suddenly find themselves utterly surrounded by discontented people who did not want to be there, thus making their work more difficult as well.
Posted by iain at 12:09 PM
What an ... interesting set of articles.
Herald.com | 05/08/2005 | Unprecedented choice for MVP begs question
DAN LE BATARD
dlebatard@herald.com
How much of this has to do with race?
A lot?
A little?
Or ''zero,'' as Miami Heat president Pat Riley said before the little white guy beat the big black guy for MVP?
I don't pretend to know these answers. There is no good way to do these measurements with science or math. And I, too, am tired of seeing racism thrown like a Molotov cocktail into discussions where racism doesn't exist.
But don't you have to ask these questions when confronted with something unprecedented?
Or do we just continue laughing and making noise at our playoff cocktail party while ignoring the pinkish elephant standing in the middle of the room in a Nash jersey?
No one who looks or plays like Steve Nash has ever been basketball's MVP. Ever. In the history of the award, a tiny, one-dimensional point guard who plays no defense and averages fewer than 16 points a game never has won it. But Nash just stole Shaquille O'Neal's trophy, even though O'Neal had much better numbers than Nash in just about every individual statistical measurement except assists, so it begs the question:
Is this as black and white as the boxscores that usually decide these things?
Nobody is suggesting voters made their selection while wearing Klan hoods. Today's racism rarely is that overt. It tends to be hidden better than that, as it is with the NBA's proposed age restriction, a rule that would ostensibly affect all creeds and colors but really affects only one.
Does that mean commissioner David Stern is racist? Of course not. But, in that age restriction, he is proposing something that basically affects only black people until the age of 20.
And you can see why blacks might see the prejudice in that, just like Jews might object if there was suddenly a $2,000 tax placed on all flights to Israel...
Race can still rock the vote
By Jason Whitlock
Special to Page 2
Dan Le Batard's column in the Miami Herald won't go away. And former NBA player and current TNT analyst Rex Chapman fanned its flames even further the other night.
Late in the fourth quarter of San Antonio's victory over Seattle, Chapman and co-commentator John Thompson debated the merits of Le Batard's contention that race might have played a role in Steve Nash winning the NBA MVP award over Shaq. Chapman, a white former NBA player who considers Nash one of his closest friends, backed Le Batard's assertion, saying that race is "the elephant in the room" and we're naive if we believe that at least a few voters didn't take Nash's white skin into account when they cast their ballots.
"There's plenty of things in this world that I don't feel strongly about, that I'd be politically correct about, but race and racism is really not one," Chapman told me. "From an early age, I saw it. I experienced it. You can stick your head in the sand and not acknowledge the elephant in the room, but it's there … I probably didn't do it justice [Tuesday night on the air]. I brought it up when it can't really be talked about in much detail." [...] Chapman, who is director of basketball operations for the Suns, agrees with me. Nash earned the MVP. His selection is not an injustice to Shaq. But it's foolish to dismiss Le Batard's assertions.
"I know [Le Batard]. I played in Miami for a year," said Chapman, a 12-year NBA vet and an All-American at Kentucky. "He's in Miami covering the Heat. They'll throw the 'homer' tag on him. Other journalists might say he just wants the shock value. I don't know Dan well enough to know what his motives are. But when I heard it, the first thing that went through my mind was, 'Damn right.' What mainly lends it credence, gives it some merit, is the MVP voting was close. You know, I grew up in a place (Owensboro, Ky.) where racism is an epidemic. I'm not talking about 20 years ago. I'm talking to this day. Drive through the South. But it's not just the South. [It's] other parts of this country, rural areas – hell, in the cities. It doesn't take but just a handful [to swing the vote]. It was silly to dismiss Le Batard's article as nonsense. Of course, race could have been a motivating factor in some people's vote."
In my view, if there were 10 factors that swung the vote in Nash's favor, his skin color cracked the bottom of the top 10. Race was a factor. In this case, I just don't happen to believe it was a determining factor.
Nope. This is nothing like the Heisman Trophy voting that has handed college football's top individual prize to five straight white quarterbacks, most of whom were undeserving. Did you really believe that Jason White, Eric Crouch and Chris Weinke were the most outstanding players in college football? If you did, you probably thought Danny Wuerffel, Gino Torretta and Ty Detmer also deserved the Heismans that voters stole for them during the 1990s.
ESPN: Chapman: 'Most preferred that I keep it confidential'
Former Kentucky star Rex Chapman told a newspaper that school officials tried to stop him from dating black women or at least "hide it" rather than inflame fans.
"There were certain aspects of my time there that were really ugly," Chapman, who is white, said in a story published by The Courier-Journal on Monday. "I don't know how it is today, but that's how it was 20 years ago." [...] "It's the climate of how things were," he was quoted as saying. "People were bothered by the fact that sometimes I dated black girls. Most preferred that I keep it confidential and hide it.
"I was being asked to lead a lifestyle that was absolutely wrong, simply for the fact that some people didn't like that I dated somebody of a different race," Chapman told the paper. "I mean, what is that? Is that America?"...
Well ... yes, it is. And was. And it would have been desperately naive of someone to have thought otherwise 20 years ago ... but then, 18-year-olds are usually desperately naive, aren't they?
We do like to think that racial issues and sports don't have anything to do with each other, that somehow, these days, all the battles have been fought and won and maybe there's this one area where we can say "race is never an issue here".
But it seems that it's not true. Otherwise, this would never even have come up.
Posted by iain at 03:37 PM
It's looking like the war in Sudan will never end.
Tarjab Jalab, a sinewy, bearded rebel commander in the Sudan Liberation Army militia, limped across this scarred and half-empty village on a bandaged foot. Dozens of leather pouches hung from his arms and legs, each containing Koranic verses. The amulets had not saved Jalab from being shot by pro-government militiamen, but he was still eager for battle. "We will keep fighting," he vowed one recent morning, as young men clanking with guns and grenades listened to his combat instructions, then clambered into three pickup trucks and roared off in clouds of dust. "Darfur is not over."
Forty miles away from Muhajara, in another charred village called Marla, Mussa Mohamed Hassab, a hulking tribal militia leader, sipped tea and surveyed Darfur's war from the other side. Hassab, 47, said his tribal security force had pledged its allegiance to the Sudanese government to keep fighting the rebels. "It's a war," declared Hassab, who wore a billowing white robe and leopard-skin slippers. "We were told to fight by the government. We also wish for this. Why would we stop now?"
In some ways, the towns of Muhajara and Marla are virtually identical. Both swarm with teenage soldiers, swimming in baggy camouflage outfits and lugging Kalashnikov assault rifles. Both are half-deserted, haunted by hungry, sick people who have been pushed off their land into sweltering camps. Both groups of inhabitants resent the combatants' presence and wish the fighting would end.
But neither militia, it became clear after visits of several days to each town, is in any hurry to put down its guns.
Even though the International Criminal Court in The Hague is seeking to prosecute a number of Darfur's war crime suspects, including government officials and rebel leaders, there are few signs of change in this vast, ravaged region of western Sudan after more than two years of conflict, flight and suffering. Civilians remain trapped in camps and reliant on aid, and villages continue to be burned. Rebel groups have become fractured and more difficult to negotiate with, while officials are finding it tougher to rein in the government-allied Janjaweed militiamen. The small force of about 2,400 African Union peacekeepers has been unable to curb the violence.
Trying to persuade nearly 2 million people to return home has proved futile, according to aid officials. Permanent mud houses are being built in dozens of camps, replacing the flimsy shelters of sticks and plastic. Women collecting firewood are still raped so often that aid groups have introduced fuel-efficient stoves to discourage them from venturing outside the camps.
Now, there are growing fears that Darfur's struggle may join the list of long, intractable conflicts on the African continent, including northern Uganda's 19-year war and Burundi's 12-year civil war, in which sporadic fighting has continued despite several peace plans.
Sudanese officials have questioned the Hague process, suggesting that an international court could not understand the complexities of Sudanese society and that the trials might add to instability. Foreign observers agree that a court thousands of miles away will not be enough to make combatants relinquish their weapons.
"Court or no court, everyone is very scared here," said B.M. Anuwa, a Nigerian army lieutenant on patrol near Muhajara. "We have serious problems. This is not the season of peace for Darfur. Unless more is done, Darfur will keep suffering." [...]
SUDAN: Militia attacks in Darfur intensified in April - UN
NAIROBI, 13 May 2005 (IRIN) - Militia attacks and other forms of violence in Sudan's western region of Darfur continued to cause human suffering in the strife-torn area in April, a senior UN official told the Security Council.
"Attacks on civilians, rape, kidnapping and banditry actually increased from the previous month," Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Hédi Annabi, told the Council on Thursday when he presented UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s latest report on Darfur. "While there was no evidence of direct involvement by regular government forces last month, there were widespread reports of abuse by militia," he added.
The report said the government had made some efforts to restrain its Popular Defense Forces militia and prevented some criminal acts, but these efforts were "evidently inadequate", judging from the extensive reports of abuse against civilians by those groups in areas not controlled by rebels [...] Short-term stability in the region, he added, would require considerable strengthening of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which currently consisted of 2,409 troops and 244 police. "The Council applauds the vital leadership role the African Union (AU) is playing in Darfur and the work of AMIS on the ground," the Council president for May, Ambassador Ellen Margrethe Løj of Denmark, said in a statement on Thursday. The Council supported the decision taken by the AU’s Peace and Security Council on 28 April to expand its mission in Darfur to 7,731 personnel by the end of September 2005, she added.
The refugee camp itself sounds not only like it's going to become a permanent city, but a walled city; if women are still being raped with such frequency, it will be the only way to keep them at all safe. (As fewer of them venture outside, it's very likely that these rapists will increase their depredations inside the essentially undefended camp itself. It's what predators do, after all.) And it's not a viable walled city; if people can't go outside the camp to collect firewood, they certainly can't go outside to grow crops. Foreign aid groups will never be able to sustain a sufficient flow of food and medicine; even if they could do so on their own, as Darfur fades into yet another endless African conflict, foreign governments will begin to scale back their contributions, husbanding their resources for the next human disaster. And, of course, there will be another, and another and another...
It is an interesting, if appalling, study in unintended consequences. While the Sudan government was likely perfectly happy to arm the Janjaweed militia and let it engage in ethnic warfare against Sudan's own people, they can't possibly have meant for things to go on as long as they have. There are very few people who can profit from endless civil war; it's sharply curtailed what trade Sudan did have. As government and rebel resources run low -- looting without allowing people to replant and replenish their own resources eventually leaves looters without anything new to take -- they'll be unable to pay their arms merchants, the people who must be bankrolling this charge into insanity.
It may eventually be that exhaustion will provide an end to the war. However, the examples of Burundi and Uganda, the periodic civil wars in Liberia and Angola and Cote d'Ivoire do not provide a salutary example. More likely, the Janjaweed will start more extensive pillaging over the Chad border -- they have, after all, left themselves little recourse, and Chad isn't much more able to defend itself than the people of Sudan.
The problem is that the Organization for African Unity is unwilling or unable to provide a large enough police force to stabilize the area. While they will be increasing their force to nearly 7800 from the current 2400, this is manifestly too small a force to provide protection even within Darfur itself. Without the participation of the United States, the United Nations seems unable, or unwilling, to do so, and at the present time, the United States is unable to contribute more than a small token force ... and the Arab and Muslim northern Sudanese would be (and should be) understandably reluctant to trust the United States to conduct an evenhanded truce in any event.
And just to make matters even worse for Sudan, Uganda's ongoing civil war is spilling into Sudan's southern areas, just as it seemed that Sudan had quieted its own civil war in those regions:
KAMPALA, 16 May 2005 (IRIN) - //CORRECTED// At least 5,000 people in southern Sudan have fled food shortages and attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and sought refuge in northwestern Uganda since January, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
"[Some] said they were running away from LRA attacks, while the majority have fled their camp of Nimule in southern Sudan to Arua in Uganda due to food shortages, as relief supplies to the camp stopped some time back," UNHCR spokeswoman Roberta Russo, told IRIN on Saturday.
The refugees, she added, were from Torit, Nimule and Yei. They were being registered at the Ugandan border districts of Adjumani, Arua and Moyo, where UNHCR was feeding them.
Ugandan government officials said most of the new arrivals crossed the border in mid-March after the LRA stepped up attacks against civilians. The government and UNHCR were trying to find land on which they could set up homes and begin farming to supplement relief supplies, one official said.
"The rebels attacked [some of them] with machetes and clubs, looted and set grass-thatched huts ablaze and in one such attack, 12 people were killed," an official from the Ugandan prime minister’s office in the capital, Kampala, told IRIN.
According to the official, who had been to Palorinya, a makeshift reception centre in Arua, some of the recent arrivals had wounds sustained during such attacks. Many had walked for 10 to 15 days to reach the Ugandan border and were in poor health. A number of children had died on the way....
Media Relations: revenge of the nerdish/ May 13, 2005
My, but this just gets more and more interesting, in a bizarre "what on earth can these people be thinking?" sort of way.
Air Force Chaplain Tells of Academy Proselytizing - New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: May 12, 2005
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force's chief chaplain. The academy chaplain, Capt. MeLinda Morton, 48, spoke publicly for the first time as an Air Force task force arrived at the academy in Colorado Springs on Tuesday to investigate accusations that officers, staff members and senior cadets inappropriately used their positions to push their evangelical Christian beliefs on Air Force cadets.
The academy began developing the tolerance program, called Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People, or R.S.V.P., in response to a survey it took last year. The survey found that more than half of the cadets said they had heard derogatory religious comments or jokes at the academy. For more than a year, the Air Force has been struggling to respond to accusations from some alumni, staff members and cadets that evangelical Christians in leadership positions at the academy were creating a discriminatory climate. Air Force officials say the task force they dispatched this week shows that they are taking the accusations seriously. The investigators are to make a preliminary report on May 23.
In an interview on Tuesday, Captain Morton, a Lutheran who has been a chaplain at the academy for two and a half years, said that the initial reception to the tolerance program helped illustrate the climate. She said the R.S.V.P. program was significantly altered after it was screened last fall for 300 academy staff members and officers. Military officials confirmed that the program had been altered but said changes were routine in the development of such training programs [...] Critics including Captain Morton attribute the problem in part to the academy's location in Colorado Springs, headquarters to dozens of the largest evangelical ministries and churches. They say there is significant crossover between the leadership of the academy and those organizations and churches in or near Colorado Springs, including Focus on the Family, the Navigators and the Officers' Christian Fellowship. [...] Captain Morton said she had decided to step forward without authorization from the public affairs office because: "It's the Constitution, not just a nice rule we can follow or not follow. We all raised our hands and said we'd follow it, and that includes the First Amendment, that includes not using your power to advance your religious agenda."
She added, "I realize this is the end of my Air Force career."
Air Force Academy chaplain says she was fired for speaking out on religious climate
By Robert Weller and Jon Sarche
The Associated Press
DenverPost.com
A top Air Force Academy chaplain said today she was fired for speaking up about anti-Semitism and other reports of religious intolerance among cadets and staff, including allegations that evangelical Christians wield too much influence.
Capt. Melinda Morton said she was fired last week by her boss, Col. Michael Whittington, after he pressured her to deny a professor's account of a religious service for new cadets last year.
Both chaplains had been scheduled to leave the school this year, with Whittington, the chief chaplain, retiring and Morton, his executive officer, scheduled for an overseas assignment.
She called that an excuse to get rid of her. "I believe I was fired and I believe the other staff would say I was fired and that was the point of doing it," she said in a telephone interview.
An academy spokesman, Lt. Col. Laurent Fox, denied the claim. "She's still working and she's still a chaplain," he said.
Fox said Morton's reassignment was moved up 30 days to accommodate Whittington's retirement in June, which originally had been planned for July. He said Whittington wants a new executive officer in place before he leaves. The academy said Whittington was unavailable because he was being interviewed for a Pentagon investigation into more than 50 complaints of religious intolerance in the past several years, including cases in which one Jewish cadet was reportedly told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.
Morton said she was pressured to deny a report by Yale Divinity School professor Kristen Leslie that a chaplain told 600 cadets during basic training last year "to go back to their tents and tell their fellow cadets that those who are not born again will burn in the fires of hell."
"I was told by Chaplain Whittington that if someone was going to be loyal to the chaplaincy and the Air Force, then someone would take a certain view of the Yale report and view Dr. Leslie as disloyal," Morton said....
You know ... given that a major investigation is underway -- the second in as many years -- you'd think that the academy's administration would see the value in not doing something as boneheaded as changing the appointment of a whistleblower. Granted that it's only a 30 day shift in appointment. Granted that they didn't change her appointment; she's still going to what she herself has described as a nice station. Nonetheless, it's hard to see this as anything other than the academy administration exercising what punitive powers they possess in this situation, and it's hard to see what they gain by making this 30-day shift.
To be sure, it reads less as punitive and more as wanting to get her out of the way of investigators, now that they're starting to appear on campus. If she's off in Okinawa -- one of the articles I've read cited that as her next appointment -- and redoing her arrangements to move, changing scheduling, etc, until then, she's going to be more difficult to contact. Not impossible, of course, but given an investigation that likely most in AFA administration wishes would just disappear, "difficult" may suffice.
Posted by iain at 12:25 PM
An interesting conundrum: when a deliberate fraud has been committed upon the public purse, so to speak, who gets to pay for it? Who decides who gets to pay for it? And how much do they have to fork over?
It was a fitting place to plead for forgiveness. At Lakewood Baptist Church in Gainesville, Ga., last Thursday, Pastor Tom Smiley delivered a statement from Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride whose disappearance triggered a massive search effort and media frenzy before she surfaced in New Mexico with a concocted tale of abduction. "I am truly sorry for the troubles I caused," the statement read. "I was simply running from myself and from certain fears controlling my life." Meanwhile, at a former Baptist church an hour's drive away in Duluth -- the town where Wilbanks lived with her fiance -- a more temporal bid for redress was underway. There, behind the granite walls that now house police headquarters, authorities were calculating the cost of Wilbanks's misdeed. Salaries for some 60 officers deployed for the search: $42,000. Logistical support, including food and fuel: roughly $18,000. After learning that "the entire episode was a charade," says Duluth Mayor Shirley Lasseter, "I realized the costs involved."
Now it's up to officials to decide -- likely in the coming week -- what restitution to seek and whether to file charges against Wilbanks. It's a quandary authorities increasingly face in the age of 24-hour cable news, in which merciless media coverage forces law enforcement to devote copious resources to solve crimes that turn out to be hoaxes. Last year a student in Wisconsin faked her kidnapping, prompting a $97,000 mobilization of manpower. (She pleaded guilty to obstructing officers and agreed to pay back $9,000.) A few months later a runaway bride in Ohio sparked a search involving bloodhounds and helicopters, only to be discovered at her friend's house several days later. (She was charged with "inducing panic," but prosecutors later dropped the complaint.) In these cases, as in Wilbanks's, the press descended, the public clamored for resolution and authorities stewed in a pressure cooker. In another era, Wilbanks's case might not have been covered at all and resources might have been deployed more cautiously, says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. "A lot of people have criticized her, but of course, we're the ones who called on the dogs."
And that brings up another interesting question: given that crime rates are at historic lows, why on earth did the disappearance of one woman, in the midst of seriously over-the-top wedding preparations, provoke such a response, and the desire for such a response? Granted that her own actions made the story a bit more newsworthy -- especially the false kidnapping report and charge -- but why is it that the news is so quick to jump on a story that in days gone by would never have been mentioned outside local media until the false kidnapping report? Editors would have said, "Until we see some hard evidence that it's anything besides a woman running away from her wedding, we're not touching this." So what's changed?
Posted by iain at 04:25 PM
Media Relations: missing white female alert / May 9, 2005
...Siempre que pintas iglesias,
Pintas angelitos bellos,
Pero nunca te acordaste,
De pintar un ángel negro....
To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.
The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.
"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, California, that seeks gay sperm donors.
Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.
Although there is disagreement over whether the FDA guideline regarding gay men will have the force of law, most doctors and clinics are expected to observe it....
So let me get this straight-ish:
- Despite the fact that testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases is relatively simple to do,
- Despite the fact that any sperm bank worth going to already does that sort of testing, because getting sued because you gave a patient HIV is an extraordinarily unpleasant, expensive and above all unnecessary ordeal these days,
- Despite the fact that there are no reasonable scientific grounds whatsoever underlying this recommendation,
Despite all that, the FDA recommends that sperm banks refuse anonymous donations from any men who have had sex with other men in the past five years.
... Well, all-righty, then!
Dr. Deborah Cohan, an obstetrics and gynecology instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, said some lesbians prefer to receive sperm from a gay donor because they feel such a man would be more receptive to the concept of a family headed by a same-sex couple. "This rule will make things legally more difficult for them," she said. "I can't think of a scientifically valid reason -- it has to be an issue of discrimination."
I do agree that it's nothing more than discrimination, yes. That's all it could possibly be, given, as mentioned, that any reputable clinic will be doing that sort of testing anyway.
That said ... about the only reason to specify the sexual orientation of the donor in the first place is to practice some odd sort of genetic craps. Lesbian's egg plus gay man's sperm = higher chance of gay kid. Assuming that there is a genetic component to homosexuality, then yes, it likely does mean you have a higher chance of getting a gay kid. But the receptiveness of the donor to the idea of a same-sex household is just a nonstarter; why on earth would that matter, once you have the sperm? If the kid winds up needing or wanting to trace the father later on -- and most clinics will not allow that for other than some dire health reasons, although some states have started requiring that the records be kept and released to the child under certain specific circumstances -- that's the only time the father's opinion on anything at all might matter.
Frankly, it feels like both sides are playing some genetic pool here. The archconservatives controlling the government, and what was once a proud scientific branch thereof, are themselves using the opportunity to reduce the number of gay kids around, just a little. Of course ... this would also seem to concede that there is a major genetic component to homosexual orientation, now wouldn't it?
Posted by iain at 04:55 PM
Another year, another investigation of the Air Force Academy.
A task force will investigate the religious climate at the Air Force Academy after reports of intolerance, including incidents of anti-Semitism, officials said today. It will assess Air Force policy and guidance when it comes to religious respect and tolerance, acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez said in a statement. The task force also will look into practices by commanders "that either enhance or detract from a climate that respects both the free exercise of religion and the establishment clauses of the First Amendment." A preliminary assessment is due by May 23, officials said.
The creation of the task force comes after complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive. Last week, Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a 14-page report based on a two-month investigation. The group said it talked with about 15 cadets and staff. The report concluded that students, faculty, staff and members of the chaplains' office frequently pressured cadets to attend chapel and receive religious instruction. Others said prayers were frequently conducted before official events....
I will admit that I am surprised that religious instruction is even an option at a state supported academy. It certainly shouldn't be, unless it's handled off-campus, preferably by people not affiliated with the academy.
One thing I do wonder is what makes Air Force so unique among the military academies. You don't hear of this sort of thing at West Point or Annapolis. Is it that Air Force really attracts a different sort of person, or is it that Army and Navy are better at keeping this sort of thing quiet than Air Force is? Or maybe even that Army and Navy have commanders who have better sense than to let this sort of thing get so very out of hand? Who can say?
One does wonder, though, if we looked at the other academies, what exactly we would find.
Posted by iain at 04:40 PM
Apparently, the Kansas Board of Education just loves being mercilessly mocked by the entire world.
Students in Lisa Volland's advanced biology class examine flowers, lemons and corn under the microscope, pondering how the plants evolved over time to improve their chances of survival. The Topeka West High School teacher does not discuss the biblical story of creation or "intelligent design," just "the big e-word," as she jokingly calls it. "I don't think you can talk about living organisms without talking about evolution," she said. "We don't talk about religion."
Classrooms like Volland's have come under scrutiny -- again -- in Kansas' seesawing battle between left and right over the teaching of evolution. The battle could heat up over the coming weeks, with Kansas' State Board of Education expected to revise its science standards in June. In 1999, the board deleted most references to evolution in the standards, bringing international ridicule and wisecracks from the late-night comedians. Elections the next year made the board less conservative, resulting in the current standards describing evolution as a key concept for students to learn. Last year's elections gave conservatives a majority again, 6-4. A subcommittee plans six days of hearings in May, and advocates of intelligent design plan to put nearly two dozen witnesses on the stand to critique evolution.
National and state science organizations plan to boycott the hearings, contending they are going to be rigged in favor of intelligent design. "We are concerned that the hearings will be an attempt to give scientific credibility to a nonscientific concept," said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science...
One wonders how much chance the soon-to-be-revised standards have of surviving federal scrutiny. It's clearly a transparent attempt at inserting religious concepts into state-sponsored schools. (Given the peculiar ability of Kansas' state courts to serenely ignore blunt directives from the Supreme Court, only a fool would take these cases into Kansas' own courts.) However, given the grand guignol brouhaha soon to occur on Capital Hill over the federal judiciary, these are anything but ordinary times for this sort of case.
Quite apart from anything else, forcing intelligent design into the classroom in this way means that you're only hearing one version of a religious creation myth. What about Hinduism? What about Islam's version? (Teaching that in Kansas these days would be a ragingly popular decision, no doubt.) As a purely practical issue, both of those religions are practiced by larger numbers of people than western-style Protestantism (albeit not here, to be sure), so surely those should be taught as well.
Of course, teaching creation as comparative mythology -- aside from being woefully inappropriate to biology classes -- would be entirely beside the point of this sort of thing, wouldn't it?
Posted by iain at 04:38 PM
